Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.
PaperclipPerfector
4mo ago
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Transnational Thursday for December 28, 2023
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Notes -
Israel and Palestine
The conflicts continues to rage on, with Israel conducting raids both into the West Bank and into refugee camps in Gaza. The flareups on the northern border with Lebanon have worsened as well, with Hezbollah stepping up attacks and Israel having by now evacuated at least 42 settlements worth thousands of people. Israel is now conducting air raids into southerly Lebanese towns and insisting that Hezbollah withdraw thirty miles away from the border.
Major media, or at least the stuff in my diet, feels like it has been increasingly critical of Israel’s role in the conflict. The NYTimes released an investigation claiming that Israel not only routinely attacked the “safe” areas they instructed civilians to cluster inside, but that they used 2000 pound bombs, among the most destructive in their traditional (non-nuclear obviously) arsenal. These bombs were provided by the US, which is continuing to ship them up even now, though apparently they are shifting to sending more small munitions.
Wapo also recently realized a visual review measuring buildings destroyed, demonstrating that the destruction of Gaza has outpaced the bombing campaigns of Aleppo, Mosul, and Raqqa. The death toll from the current conflict is still lower than the other three (20k in Gaza vs 50k in Aleppo out of roughly 2 million people in both areas), but the previous campaigns lasted much longer - at the current rate the death toll from this war could easily exceed the others.
I wonder why places where people live are called "towns" in Lebanon but "settlements" in Israel.
Actually I think this is a mistake here - 30 km or 18 miles. This is not a random number - that's where the Litani river is - and by UN Security Council Resolution 1701, Hezbollah is not supposed to have any military presence south of Litani. Of course, Hezbollah has been blatantly ignoring it all the way since 2006, but now Israel is insisting on finally implementing this decision.
It is important to note here that the only source for this data is Hamas, these numbers are not verifiable outside Hamas, and people giving those numbers are the same people that told us there were over 500 casualties from an Islamic Jihad rocket falling on Al Ahli hospital (they said it was Israeli attack) which was a complete fabrication. Moreover, they declared the number within less than a day (which would be utterly impossible if they actually counted anything). Given that absolutely no identity information is disclosed about any of the supposedly deceased (except Hamas terrorists high profile enough to deserve official acknowledgment when they are eliminated) - not that, again, it'd be possible to verify that information outside Hamas - a smart person would consider these numbers with enormous amount of skepticism. The real number is probably around 10x less.
Ah thanks for the correction.
I think that's why the study went with 'buildings destroyed" rather than casualties, since it's easier to verify externally. Given the rapid rate of bombing relative to Allepo, etc, I think saying less than half that bodycount has been produced doesn't seem like a wildly exaggerated number.
An Israeli military spokesperson earlier this month was saying probably about 5000 militants killed, with twice as many civilians killed for a total of around 15,000. Since the conflict hasn't stopped since then around 20k seems like about what both sides figure.
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