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naraburns  nihil supernum  7mo ago (text post)   28903 thread views

Israel-Gaza Megathread #1

This is a megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.

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Alright a little war gaming here. Suppose Hamas launched these attacks in order to provoke Israel into invading Gaza. Having stockpiled weapons received from Iran including ATGM and S2A missles, has chosen Gaza as their battlefield, the middle eastern Stalingrad. The IDF goes into Gaza and takes a real beating, close urban warfare diminishing Israeli technological advantage.

With the IDF being bogged down in Gaza Hezbollah attacks from the north, or Israel makes some preemptive strikes, in any case Iran gets involved, mines the straight of Hormuz. US joins the fray and gets dragged in, China sees its opportunity and launches its invasion of Taiwan. Oil skyrockets and the US enters a hard recession. US/NATO weapon stockpiles and strategic oil reserve depleted, makes for a rough start to WW3.

What do you think happens domestically (in the US) and globally? I don't think there is enough political unity nor appetite for the US population to enter into another war. Will any other countries enter the conflict? IMO this would not end well for US hegemony.

In the short term it is going to be hilarious to see the Republicans be hypocrites, against Ukraine aid but fervently for Israeli aid and support.

Edit: Also curious what the mottizens think on how these current events, and the aforementioned hypotheticals, will affect the US 2024 election.

close urban warfare diminishing Israeli technological advantage.

They have an IQ advantage and probably vastly better training. Also way more ammo.

There seems to be a lack of real understanding of what Iran getting ‘directly involved’ looks like. Israel doesn’t have the capacity to fight a conventional war with Iran, it’s possible they could nuke Tehran in a Samson Option scenario but other than that they can’t wage war with Iran for a huge number of logistical reasons. Iran is very unlikely, too, to send conventional forces to Israel, supply routes are questionable and if they attempted it it’s likely the US would strike them as they crossed through Iraq. If Hamas gets pounded to dust the survivors can still receive support from Iran, Hezbollah can certainly still receive support from Iran and so on, its not game over and there’s no need for suicidal direct intervention, which even in a best case scenario likely results in a US strike on Tehran that kills a lot of senior leadership and ends the relatively comfortable life many of the leadership live.

I agree an intervention of Iran would at least start with Hezbollah as proxy.

ALl of your post is basically incoherent. Israel is in control of all of the terms of engagement going forward. They never have to put a single troop into Gaza and yet could shell almost all of its landmass without committing a single warcrime, as almost all of Gaza is a military target. They also can do the same to the North and the East, as those are also legitimate military targets. The Arabs' only weapon is pity. If the international community is not idiotic dupes, Israel will win easily and everyone will be neutral/happy. If they are dupes, then Israel will have to put on lots of stupid trials demonstrating that, yes, Hamas/Hezbolla was housing rockets in an elementary school.

Of course, the "international community" is stupid, at best. Realistically, it is antisemetic and full of Israel haters. So they will have a mild uphill battle until Biden goes mask off and embraces Iran fully (as he wants to, but probably cannot realistically do). If that is the case the game will be very hard for Israel, but also its true enemy (American leftists) will be exposed and perhaps deposed.

I didn't think it was that incoherent, a little rushed perhaps. This post of yours is not much better. If Israel could just shell Gaza then why are they massing 100,000 troops and equipment at the border?

Because they know that they will be spuriously accused of war crimes and that those accusations are much more important than deaths of soldiers in the long term. It is unfortunate, but it is the reality we are dealing with.

Do you think that launching an invasion with tens of thousands of troops (along with cutting off all electricity, food, and water) won't lead to accusations of war crimes?

It will, but it they should not be taken seriously.

So they will have a mild uphill battle until Biden goes mask off and embraces Iran fully (as he wants to, but probably cannot realistically do).

Biden's old school, he's probably actually for Israel.

(to give the Devil his due)

I have heard claims that Israel simply lacks enough artillery to level Gaza, ostensiy because they donated a large chunk of their stockpile at the behest of the US to Ukraine.

How true that is, I don't know, and I sprinkled some salty disclaimers on it just in case.

I wonder if in the Republican primary someone like DeSantis will respond to Haley (who made the claim softness on Ukraine created this situation) something along the lines of:

Your constant war mongering has led to the situation where one of our closest allies lacks the means to fully engage a true existential threat because you gave all of our weapons to a corrupt regime with zero oversight to the point a decent amount of those weapons ended up in Hamas and the southern border. Only an idiot fights a war on two borders. Only the heir to the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 13 fronts. But that is always your policy notwithstanding how it puts us and our closest allies into worse positions. We cannot continue to fund Ukraine and Israel especially as it weakens our defenses (which we really need to worry about — this could spill out of control if Iran gets involved or China attacks Taiwan). This is similar to the pandemic. We need targeted aid; not just “fund everything”

Only the heir to the kingdom of idiots fights a war on 13 fronts.

Great reference.

Are you thinking of this story, re the US moving artillery ammunition it had stored in Israel to Ukraine?

So if I’m reading that correctly it was us owned ammunition that was stored in Israel not a donation

That is what it sounds like.

I never saw a primary source, but thanks for digging that up, it's probably what they were referencing.

Now that I think about it, it might have been our own Kulak, now modestly popular on Twitter, with brain damaging catgirl avatar and all.

It's not hypocrisy to be in favor of supplying Israel but not Ukraine. I think our alliance with Israel is dumb and one-sided but we are actually allies in contrast to Ukraine where we don't really owe them anything.

It would take a long time to prepare for an invasion of Taiwan so unless they already have everything ready to go (and the CIA has completely dropped the ball and missed it) then I don't see how they would be able to do that before Israel squishes Hamas like a grape. Even if they managed to take Taiwan it's not like the US has to surrender because they captured the flag, they can just continue to blockade China from a distance indefinitely. It wouldn't be the first time somebody took the "Americans are too weak to accept casualties fighting in a distant war" gamble and historically that hasn't worked out well.

The US would suffer a massive recession if Chinese goods were suddenly cut off but oil wouldn't be a major problem. The US is already energy self-sufficient and China couldn't stop them from importing as much as they want from Mexico and the Middle East.

We would probably have an official recession because productivity fell leading to lower gdp but I don’t think War with China would feel like a real recession. Wal-Mart junk shelves would be empty. But the financial flow of dollar to China for crap would stop so it would actually improve the US balance sheet. And jobs would be plentiful. It’s just people wouldn’t be getting their Amazon packages.

How many supply chains depend on Chinese parts at this point? If you can't buy a $25 drill/driver because Harbor Freight stops getting shipments of them from China, that's fine; the $50 drill is worth it anyway. If you can't buy a $25K car or get a job assembling $25K cars because the assembly lines got throttled down while they figured out how to re-source a bunch of little @$25 parts shipped from China, that could be a giant pain.

Don’t disagree it would be bumpy. A lot of people would need to innovate. Germany would likely boom as would a bunch of Europe which has a lot of machine part suppliers.

We would have shortages for a time. A lot like COVID while we figure shit out.

But it wouldn’t be doomerism. China I believe would take it harder unless their navy is capable of operating far from their shores as they wouldn’t have enough energy or raw materials.

  1. You could have very strong reasons to reject funding to Ukraine while supporting funding to Israel. For example, Hamas is much less a threat compared to Russia.

  2. You may think Israel is much more a strategic ally compared to Ukraine.

  3. You may think the cause of Israel is better than Ukraine.

Maybe I should have said some republicans, as I'm pretty sure the majority do still support Ukraine funding. However it seems like some of the framing recently on the right around the Ukraine aid is that we can't afford it. I thought Gaetz has said that - correct me if I'm wrong - and I wonder if he will make a special exception for Israel.

Only a slim majority of Democrats in last week's Reuters/Ipsos poll, 52%, supported helping arm Ukraine. Support among Republicans was down at 35%.

This kind of thing is incredibly sensitive to question phrasing and context and such, though. A poll last month reported 77% and 50% support levels. Questions about economic assistance are pretty much in line with questions about military assistance.

Gaetz’ district is interesting. Unlike some other parts of Florida, it has very few Jews, but it does have a large population of military families because of the major base. I would expect Gaetz to abstain from voting to support Israel, although I’m more skeptical that he’d actively vote against it.

Even then, you can still square it. If I’m poor, I still might pay for my wife’s heart surgery even if I wouldn’t pay for say my sister-in-law’s boob job.

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