Will the War in Gaza Ignite the Middle East?..Israel and Iran On a Collision Course

Which in no way negates what I've said.

 

Its funny how the "people in both parties are salivating" is always brought up when 90% of the salivating has been done by only one party.

Yes. Hezbollah would lose quite quickly as they have in the past. The best they can be is fire all their rockets at Israeli cities, and the hunker down in their bunkers and try to survive the Israeli retaliation

 

Hezbollah has never lost to Israel, much less quickly. Most western observers call the 2006 war a stalemate while others see it as a Hezbollah win. That is just totally delusional. Even the Israelis promise a quick victory over Hezbollah, but rather that Lebanon would be destroyed in case of a Hezbollah attack.

 

A win? What exactly did they win, other than the presumed 72 virgins in the afterlife? What was their goal, and did they reach is? No, they did not reach any goals, and the casualty count was 10 to 1 in Israel's favor. Hezbollah was lucky Israel showed restraint and didn't level their cities, which they are fully capable of doing.

 

When Israel started the 2006 war, it announced that its objective was to disarm Hezbollah and remove it as a threat to Israel. At the time, Hezbollah had around 10,000 rockets of slightly more sophistication than the ones Hamas has. When that war ended, while Lebanon (and Lebanese civilians) suffered, Hezbollah became a much much stronger force. Today, it is estimated to have 150,000 rockets, including advanced ballistic missiles, drones, etc. And since then, Israel has not even contemplated another war with Hezbollah. The deterrence capability built up by Hezbollah is substantial.

Militarily, the Battle of Bint Jbeil was representative of the huge failure of Israel in the war against Hezbollah on all fronts:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Bint_Jbeil
Battle of Bint Jbeil

Anyway, I honestly don't see much to gain arguing about a war now more than a decade old. There are just times when the differences in viewpoints are so stark that you really question whether the person claiming the position they are advancing truly believes it or is just saying it? If you believe that Israel won that war, fine. I am not sure anyone else shares that view. Even calling it a stalemate is not accurate IMO, but ultimately it doesn't matter as dynamics this time around can be quite different. Both sides have changed since then.

 

Every day that Israel exists is a defeat for Hezbollah.

 

1) 100%
2) 100%
3) 100%
4) 100%

A land invasion will occur. Hezbollah has already started getting involved. A siege posture will eventually be returned to. Hezbollah is already involved.

We parked 2 carrier groups and an amphibious troop carrier packed to the gills for a reason. **** around and find out already.

 

Victory is often a subjective notion. If Hezbollah's idea of victory is simply surviving the conflict, then I suppose they won in their minds.

 

Iran has been waging war on Israel, using the Palestinian people for some 50 years. Israel has no obligation to let them.

 

Victory or defeat can also be looked at from a more objective lens. Did Hezbollah/Israel gain or lose in their respective position, leverage, and power viz a viz one another because of the war? ...

Anyway, lets move on. The issue to me is one of those I don't feel is advanced much through debate or discussion. More relevant now perhaps, is the following breakdown of Hezbollah's missile and rocket arsenal. If Hezbollah's UAV capabilities were also included in the chart it would be better still, but the most important of the weapons in Hezbollah's arsenal are Fateh and Zelzal missiles. Hezbollah is estimated to have tens of thousands of such missiles. They are precision guided missiles that most likely will be able to evade Israeli air defenses carrying 1,000+ pound bombs. They can deliver tens of thousands of such munitions on their targets with accuracy and reliability. Its tactical and strategic implications are enormous.

 

And then purge the US? The Iranian regime has chanted, "Death to America, death to Israel" for some 50 years. The US Congress doesn't regularly, or ever, join Biden in chants of death to Iran.

As a lowly warehouse worker, outside observer, I'm supposed to look at these 2 and pick the one chanting death as the rational actor?

No, I see very clearly what's going on: there are many Jew haters in the world, including in the UN, who feel that Jews shouldn't have a state, and thus are unwilling to acknowledge any violation of soveriegnty, or any attack on Israel. This event has made it obvious that antisemitism is what is driving the opposition, even diplomatic, against Israel, and they are willing to blow up the world in order to oppose Jews.

 

So, when Hezbollah runs raids into Israel and kills people, and fires rockets into Israel, it means that Israel started the war?

That's Palestinian logic my friend.

Some survived. The rest went to "paradise" looking for the virgins.

 

I would tell Iran that freedom of the seas is still applicable, even after your hated Jew enemy suffers a horrible attack. Where is the world condemnation for these attacks? Iran is clearly not attacking us out of any defensive imperative...

 

The drones are a problem. I really hope my military leaders understand how vulnerable our carriers are, and how they may have become obsolete. We need to construct many more, much smaller carriers, that are capable of deploying thousands of drones.

 

You could not have more completely misread my post if you tried. I was referring to them stepping up to rid their own nation of its religious zealots.

 

Oh yes! I am absolutely disgusted by US and Israeli leaders making this deal or that with these evil groups, and I do hope the citizens of both countries throw out these fools who thought they were good ideas. And yes, I've heard ridiculous statements from a portion of Israeli leaders who appear to be zealots. But they aren't chanting with Bibi, death to Iran...yet.

 

Israel isn't just randomly attacking areas in Gaza, they are retaliating for a terrorist attack. I realize in the middle east the differences between terror attacks targeting civilians deliberately and state to state warfare are a lot more muddled than how we view it in the West. I think the residents in Gaza will be unlikely to get the sort of treatment by Israel that Hamas dished out to Israeli civilians.

I would agree that a war with Iran would be bad for everyone. Sure it would be bad for Iran, but the United States is not the superpower it once was. Unfortunately everyone who seems to be in leadership in the US seems to think it's 1991. That sort of war could well be a Suez moment for the US, and I would rather try to avoid that, but I don't have any power and I'm unsure if our leadership are, what you might call, rational actors on the world stage currently.

 

.....I was just thinking....what about food and water and medical supplies and fuel and all the other basics of life for living in a city....you know...like looking out for the very same people they pretend to be fighting for....you're sitting at you're keyboard wanking over these bombs and doohdads and witter on about how much money these wankers have been spending on gathering weapons...mate that's great!....brilliant!!...hey, you must be so pah'leeeased.

But what about the people they're supposed to represent, those dumb bloody schmucks living down in the crapper...or Gaza...as they call it; how many gazillions have these Hezbolloks tossers conned and stolen from them? How much have they spent on weapons and crap, and how much have they salted away in their off-shore bank accounts and how many villas in Dubai do they have. And all those Gazaites at the bottom of the heap living in a shyte hole....scabbling around trying to make a living......now dying for those corrupt thieving little c**ts.

Trouble with people like them and your illiterate Iranian Mullahs is that they are just users....Iran and their likes just use people....they are happy to arm people and poison them with all the required radical religious crap so as to perpetuate these conflicts that make them oh sooooo much cash and guess what.....they stand up on Fridays in their little prayer gatherings looking ooooohhh so righteous and pious and casually blame it all on others. All so they can have a comfortable life...feeding off the billions in aid provided by the west...aye they just use people.

So you keep masturbating over your imagined guns and missiles or whatever the latest imaginary military titwank is....just maybe though if your f**ked-up illiterate mullahs had an ounce of humanity they'd ditch all this exporting of war and terror.....meh...who the f**k cares....they're all just full of crap.

But hey...as long as they're rich right.....

 

I think if it happens now, before the rot gets any worse here, it'll work out.

If we allow it to progress to the next cycle I'm not as confident.

 

I don't know if it is a "Middle East" v non-Middle East thing, but it seems to me that most people with human decency would or should be able to tell the difference between whitewashing ongoing crimes not only causing mass casualties to civilians in Gaza but intended for the purpose of starving and killing off the population to facilitate Israeli geopolitical moves, as opposed to crimes which have already taken place and which can be investigated and the culprits for any proven crimes punished without the need to create an atmosphere of frenzy and hatred to justify what amounts to genocide. (You may wish to call it as some form of collateral damage, but there is nothing collateral about this. No more than dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima or Nagasaki was intended to destroy some military facilities there but instead to force capitulation by virtue of the civilians it was killing).

Whether you realize it or not, you are living in a country that has been fundamentally corrupted itself, not by just some of the forces of corruption you implicitly and explicitly identify, but more fundamentally by those whose crimes you ignore or even encourage. Those who want to perpetuate hate to further their agendas and who do everything in their power to silence even modest and not very vocal expressions of common human decency, might have "Muslims" and such in their sights now, but will easily shift those tactics against anyone else on their path to self-aggrandizement and power. The dynamics that were unleashed by the grip and corruption of the coalition that underpins the so-called pro Israel lobby is one that doesn't stop at just destroying the fabrics of truth and decency in one theater. Its flames will and have consumed the entire American political process and people who have been promoted and taught to be indecent, to lie, to obfuscate, and to push hatred, will use those lessons against their domestic opponents and rivals too.

This forum has too many voices that fit the category I allude to. I rarely get involved in attempts to invoke pseudo moralistic arguments because (a) I don't accept the authority of those who want to sit in judgment on these issues, finding them personally and collectively too compromised for their opinions on right versus wrong to be all that illuminating for me; and (b) issues of right versus wrong aren't things you can truly resolve on a message board. Hence, my focus here is and prefers to be on issues that can be illuminated through what are more or less uncontested facts on the larger scale of things (even if the facts are unknown to those being exposed to them here for the first time). There are of course delusional people who have been taught to even question those simple facts as somehow "imaginary" because it doesn't fit their ignorant stereotypes and images, but that is how it rollls in this world we live in.

I will not, incidentally, respond to anyone with any comments on what I have said on the issues I allude to in this post. I care about these issues very much, but this isn't the forum to advance any of it. In the meantime, on a personal level, my most pressing problem in life, given the world and the direction its forces have been taking it, is how to raise fundemantally good, decent, kids without undermining their ability to survive in this jungle of indecency and lies? If I raise them well equiped for this real world, they will lose some of the innocence that causes me to love them so dearly. If I raise them (for my own selfish reasons, i.e. the need to love them for being good) in the decent, honest and upright manner I like to, I know I am also not equiping them properly to deal with a world that is really not conducive to human decency.

Anyway, sorry for my rant and my intention is that for this to be my last. So carry on with your views on morality and which side you feel is superior in that department and others.

 

By depriving the entire population of Gaza of clean water, no food, no electricity and no medical aid... they are actually flat out targeting all of Gaza with everybody in it. Those few trucks Israel allows is around 1/10 of the absolute bare minimum what is required, and so utterly totally not sufficient and only a propaganda theme. And by blasting the entire neighborhoods, it starts to be far from plausible that these were all needed to be destroyed for the sake of the war. There is no need to just believe Israel, when they are already targeting the entire population. And even Hamas would use some roof on a tuesday, and Israel bombs it on a wednesday, than it's obvious that Hamas wasn't hit but the civilians were... on purpose. In the meantime the NYT unraveled that a projectile from a IDF position was flying straight at the hospital right before that place blew up in a way no Hamas rocket ever hit a target. Israel who had no problems in hitting hospitals in the past, and now pulled the plug on all of those who need care there. Your random American got a massive problem when such a plug is pulled, but not when it's about a Palestinian civilian who got oppressed it's entire life by the Jewish state. Racist hypercriticism floats right off the coast of an entire fleet who just watch them die.

Israel has already dragged in the US. Israel has also dragged in Syria by frequently bombing the place with the approved seal of Russia who controls their airspace and can just blast down any invader. So Russia is also already in on it. And in return Israel isn't selling any military equipment to Ukraine. Total coincidence.

And the way Israel justifies blowing up entire neighborhoods, seems to suggest Hezbollah can just blow up all of Israel under the same set of makeshift rules.

 

....which to me sort of reinforces the total lunacy of this whole bloody absurd escapade....it's Einstein's definition of lunacy writ large....I mean what did these twunts think was going to happen by lobbing missiles and stuff at Israel....same shyte different day.

...which ultimately as you intimate is all this is about....it's all for the short term aims of that total cockwomble Putin....and the only winner out of this is China...sitting back watching everyone flailing round achieving f**k all....they on the other hand put Putin in their pocket and watch the yanks politically and socially implode and the Brits and Europeans just flounder impotently around, pretending to stand firm and sending messages of support and that meaningless shyte....whilst in all reality the "west" is totally and utterly incapable of doing anything constructive....

But then again this is all about money.... and March 2024....screw the lot of them

 

A valid war aim in 1945 and a valid war aim now.

 

Hezbollah are welcome to try. I doubt they will like the outcome.

 

Indeed it's only about the money. The only winner is the US defense industry. While the Jews remain the biggest losers. They got shown they will never be safe in Israel with their endlessly violent racist ways of oppressing Arabs and colonize their lands. They also got shown they are still at the mercy of the US, and if they are willing to help out to violent oppress Arabs. They don't got the equipment and money to do it on their own. But with 1 in 10 Jews in Israel being also American, it seems they are still set for now.