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Iran and Israel

 Not a good sign:




I think they knew the attack was coming.



Later:



Biden told USA military to help shoot down missiles. ABC

Video of missals raining down.




Bibi met with Trump and decided to delay a ceasefire with Hamas till after November 3rd. Now the war is spreading to Lebanon and Iran. Those two countries were looking for reason to lob some bombs, and they gave it. In the world of asymmetric war, where all the fundamentalist Islam countries take their pot shots at Israel.

Iran will say they killed a Hezbollah leader in Iran, so they have a right to strike back.

Israel invaded Lebanon to stop the Hezbollah bombs coming from there. Luckily Syria is too poor to send too many missiles. 

Both sides keep giving each other reasons to strike back. Everyone thinks their righteous killing people. 

So many hostile countries lobing in bombs, you root out when they come inside your country, there's going to be no mercy for Hamas. I get that Israel is set up on all sides by enemies. I just don't really see how they don't try to create an inclusive society where Gaza Palestinians feel comfortable and don't want to support Hamas, they don't want to encourage peaceful resolution. Try waging peace, aren't you tired of war?

Foreign countries are going to plant information to stir up Americans about genocide, in an open society, we are all to susceptible to foreign trolling on social media. Russia buys podcasters, and has troll farms. I'm sure other countries do too. 

It might even be a genocide, even if they're taking unusual pains to reduce civilian casualties. They've bombed Gaza and killed so many, does Gaza even exist any more? 

Did Israel get provoked to do something to ignite this regional conflict? Does their tough guy stance go too far? How complicit is America? 

Israel was going to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia and that's why Hamas stuck, things were too peaceful and too friendly. Even if thousands of people are dead, you can't have peace, you need to keep stoking the fire of asymmetric warfare, fighting western liberal society. Israel takes the bait, they escalate. 

Supposedly Reagan called up Israel and told them to knock it off, and they did. He said he didn't know he could do that. I think that's why so many people blame America, inside America, for the genocide in Gaza. Israeli don't like it called that, but they themselves call it that. 

The Israeli who don't like war, the Gaza Palestinians who don't like war, the Lebanon people who don't like war, the Iranians who don't like war, the Americans who don't like war. We're all being subjected to it.  The leaders are too much cowards to wage peace, they have a poverty of imagination and humility.



Update 10/3/24: Listen to Christiane Amanpour speaks with Karim Sadjadpour on CNN. I heard in the interview that only about 15-20% of the people support the government, and that it's so ideological that it's really sort of empty of ideas that really adapt to circumstances and understands what's going on, although the resistance and the possibility of overthrowing the government is slim too. Ayatollah Khamenei is the oldest dictator in the world. I didn't know he was born in Mashhad. His 35 years ruling makes him the longest ruling head of state in the Middle East. Their air strike in retaliation of Israel killing the Hezbollah leader only killed one person in Israel. Israel tends to think they really have to whomp anyone who attacks them.  

“From Israel’s perspective, we have been in a regional war since Oct. 7, and that war is now an all-out war,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, a historian and one of the country’s more hawkish diplomats. “We are in a war for our national survival, period.” Winning over the next few weeks, he said, is a “duty” for a nation “created in the aftermath of the Holocaust.” NY Times

Further: "The behind-the-scenes negotiations now boil down to Mr. Netanyahu’s intent. Will he send another message to Iran about what Israel could do in the future, as he did in April when he aimed at military facilities in the holy city of Isfahan? Will he take out oil production facilities and ports?

Or will he aim directly for the facilities he has threatened to strike for years, starting with the underground Natanz facility where Iran is enriching uranium to near-bomb grade?

American officials believe they can persuade Mr. Netanyahu to make his point without setting off a full-blown war. But they concede that the Israeli prime minister may see the next five weeks until the American presidential election as a ripe moment to try to set that program back by years. After all, former President Donald J. Trump would not complain about a major attack on Iran’s military infrastructure, and Democrats cannot afford to be accused of restraining Israel after Tuesday’s missile attack.

“Israel will do its best to be disproportionate,” Gen. Wesley K. Clark, a former supreme allied commander of NATO, said on CNN on Tuesday. White House officials take the opposite view: Mr. Netanyahu, they say, cannot afford to be anything but proportionate."


Honestly it's hard not to see pro-Palestine people not as dupes of the propaganda of the Muslim nations surrounding Israel, and it's hard not to see the pro-Israel people as justifying fairly exaggerated savage reprisals. Both sides have to chill out, not hunker down in their justifications of violence. 

Why does Israel get to kill 41,500 Gaza people for 1,139 Israeli? I suppose in an apartheid, certain lives are more valuable. It's more than the biblical sevenfold or tenfold. That's thirty six fold. 

I understand with bombs coming from outside the country, and you want to snuff it out inside the country, and they're going to extra pains to try and avoid casualties supposedly, though it's hard not to see that as spin when you look at the numbers. 

Seems like Gaza has almost been bombed out of existence. In some ways I have sympathy that every time Israel is attacked, they enlarge themselves, I mean just quit attacking them. If you launch missiles from Lebanon, they want to stop that and might invade some. They have a right to self defense. In a way you can't blame Israel for the viciousness of their defense given the viciousness of the attacks against them, surrounding them. But at a certain level, you say enough. 

Iran only killed one person in Israel with their bombs, it's a pretty feeble attempt to pay them back for Israel launching bombs into Iran to kill a leader of Hezbollah. Iran has to look at itself in the mirror and ask how they knew where he was. Iran has the longest dictatorship in the middle east. The ideology isn't really flexible enough to figure out this situation. They could do some real damage to themselves by getting in a war with Israel, that's not smart. 

My friend in Iran says the government is about making the people miserable. 

Like I wrote, both sides need to work on justifications for peace and not war. Israel and Palestinian, and Israel and Lebanon, Israel and Iran. 



10/1/24 argument for letting Israel take the gloves off. The Free Press

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