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There was a Hezbollah rocket attack on the Golan heights about 45 minutes ago. I don’t think it was that large overall, but one of the rockets hit a school soccer practice. Mass casualties confirmed, including at least four dead children. Prime Minister Netanyahu has been pulled into an emergency security meeting due to the incident. My gut tells me the response will be severe and that this will trigger a war between Israel and Hezbollah, which has already been brewing for some time.
Edit (7:30 PM GMT) Israeli media is reporting that Prime Minister Netanyahu has received approval from the United States for a major operation against Hezbollah.
Edit 2 (8:00PM GMT) Israeli authorities are saying at least 10 dead.
Edit 3 (8:47PM GMT) Massive GPS jamming occurring throughout the Mediterranean
Edit 4: (10:23PM GMT) Prime Minister Netanyahu has expressed condolences to the Druze community, dates that the attack “will not pass on silence”
Edit 5 (4:43AM GMT) Unconfirmed reports in Lebanese media of Israeli air strikes in Lebanon.
Edit 6 (5:10 PM GMT) Confirmed IAF air strikes on Lebanon occurring now.
Edit 7 (7:32 PM GMT) Israeli drones are airborne over Beirut. Israel is calling up medical volunteers to surge staff to hospitals in northern Israel in anticipation of large volumes of casualties.
Edit 8 (8:02 PM GMT) Municipal officials in Western and Northern Galilee regions are ordering residents into shelters
Edit 9 (3:04PM GMT) The Israeli Cabinet has given Prime Minister Netanyahu authorization for a strike on Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.
Is there a way to determine the strike origin? I wouldn’t put it past Israel to false-flag themselves to enhance support for intervention in Lebanon. This attack helps Israel at zero expense (Druze were killed, not Jews), at the crucial time that Netanyahu is in DC looking for support, while covering up the story of the school in Gaza that was targeted.
As opposed to covering up the context of an ongoing indirect fire conflict that had already seen hundreds of thousands displaced?
Blood libel credibility aside, northern Israel has been subject to a bombardment campaign for nearly 8 months now as part of Hezbollah and Iran's attempts to open a second front, and the Israeli-Jews and others evacuated a long time ago. Something like 80k Israelis were evacuated by March, not including those on the Lebanese side, and while reliable numbers on rockets fired are hard, we are talking in the relative ballpark of ten thousand, and part of the reason Israel withdrew its people is to reduce the cost of trying to intercept all those rockets by, well, not needing to. And thus letting them land.
When you are willing to launch thousands and thousands of rockets, even low probability events will keep happening. The low odds of a Hamas rocketing it's own hospital in Gaza didn't make it an Israeli strike, and it's not like Israel is timing its diplomatic engagements to the US with Hezbollah attack planning, or Hezbollah/Iran changing their attack plans during Israeli state visits to the US.
What is “blood libel credibility”?
The credibility you granted to a currently unfounded conspiracy theory of Jews secretly arranging the murder of children for their nefarious ends.
I am all for recognizing the potential of false-flag operations, but setting up one in the format of a cliche is, well, a cliche. Hence setting it aside after recognizing it.
Was the Lavon Affair blood libel? When Israeli intelligence told us that Iraq was responsible for the anthrax attack, was that blood libel as well? When the NYT came out and declared that Israel attacked a hospital, was this also blood libel? Do you think Israel should be given the unique privilege of never being analyzed because of (checks notes) a medieval trope? Really trying to understand what you mean by blood libel here.
Apparently not?
Do you have evidence to your claim, or do you not?
If not, why should your accusation not be analyzed in the context of unfounded anti-semitic conspiracy theories it shares notable parallels with?
You are not exactly countering that unfounded blood libel accusations exist or are invoked. Your own list of events to rebut the structural parallel... doesn't, on a trifacta of ignoring the structure (Isaeli claims on Iraqi actions is not structurally analogous to accusing jews of killing children), of invoking a demonstration as a counter-point (yes, the NYT and other global media parroting Hamas propaganda falsely accusing the Israelis of bombing a hospital and killing children is an example of spreading Jews-kill-children conspiracy theories), and a general composition fallacy (even were all your examples valid, it wouldn't mean anything on how others invoke anti-semetic conspiracy theory tropes and usages).
Nor are you countering that the context of this event is an ongoing conflict of such danger that over a hundred thousand displacements already occurred nearly half a year ago, or that such attacks are routinely ongoing without respect to Israeli foreign policy travel, or that the act of launching tens to hundreds of thousands of rockets into northern Israel will, over iterations, reasonably result in killing people on the ground in northern Israel.
Israel is routinely a target of conspiracy theories, so many that it ranges from the victim-blaming (accusations that the current government deliberately let the Hamas atrocity occur) to the comedic (the entire genre of local arab authorities arresting animals as jewish spies if tagged by Israeli universities). As such, charges that share the structure of conspiracy theories can be expected to provide supporting evidence, rather than just vaguely claim interests... not least because the demonstrated interests of large numbers of commentators in the topic also aligns with spreading and insinuated unfounded conspiracy theories.
We are discussing an event that just transpired, and my original comment is inquiring whether we can find evidence. It’s odd that you’re asking for evidence for my… question of whether we can find evidence and then mention of a possibility. If we can’t conclusively determine where the strike originated, and if Israel knows this, then a false flag attack is on the table. What’s my evidence that a false flag is on the table? The false flag attacks I have listed in my previous comments! That’s why false flags are done to begin with: they are useful for the party doing them. So to determine whether a false flag is a possibility, we may ask (1) how possible is it to determine the strike location, and (2) does the the attack benefit the attacked country. For (2), there are four unlikely benefits for the attacked country: no Jews were killed, and the ruling party is an explicitly Jewish party; Netanyahu is in DC as we speak; his party has recently attributed the Paris metro attack to Iran, a funder of Hezbollah; Israel recently struck a school in Gaza.
Maybe Israel has one of the sophisticated intelligence services in the world, perhaps they know that they can weaponize a “libel libel” attack on whoever criticizes Israel. Maybe this has been written about by academics, like Mearsheimer? If Israel knows that their supporters in the West will fanatically impugn the motive of her critics, then this increases the possibility of a false-flag, not decreases.
Because there is a more reasonable context to analyze current events. Because the idea that a medieval trope is influencing the modern day perspective on Israel is hilariously biased and unfounded. (Who is promoting this medieval trope? Is it the Jesuits? Of course — a europhobic and anti-Catholic canard). Because many normal people who are not tied to Israel are skeptical and critical of Israel, which you can see by typing “Israel” into Twitter search and sorting the tweets by those liked over 30,000 times (are these funded by Persians or Russians?).
Israel is fine with making up info that will lead to the death of hundreds of American soldiers. This rebuts the idea that the killing of Druze children (an outgroup with zero influence) is off the table. .
I would argue there are more involving Russia and America. And then probably Syria (gas attacks). The last Israel conspiracy theory that had mainstream appeal was in 2001. Whereas conspiracy theories involving American invention and Russian influence are mainstream and commonplace.
And I was quite willing to set aside the blood libel parallels, hence noting the credulence given but explicitly focusing on different elements that worked against the premise. You chose to ignore those and turn the topic to what was set aside, and then awkwardly doubled down on it.
Which you are doing so again, not only by further doubling-down on false flag parallels without evidence of a false flag, or attempting to deny the relevance of a common contemporary antisemtic conspiracy theory format, but even via further choice of expertise to reference. (Mearsheimer is definitely a poor choice of academic to cite for his IR views, given his history of commentary on both the regional subject and on international affairs beyond the theoretical in general.)
You don't seem particularly interested in addressing whether there were factors that would normalize the occurrence of a tragedy, you seem more interested in arguing the credibility of a conspiracy theory... including on the basis of a separate incident that was proven to be an unfounded conspiracy theory.
Which, itself, is a symmetrical counter-argument to the claim that past Isaeli naughtiness is itself evidence, as you also have narrative counter-evidence that others will falsely blame the Israelis for what Israeli opponents have done. Choosing which of these to dismiss and which to hold as evidence is little more than rhetorical gerrymandering to assume the conclusion.
I find that boring, and a common failure mode of unsubstantiated antisemetic conspiracies. So far, you're doing little to distinguish your theory from them.
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