I would see this war as the end of a string of wars initiated by Iran through Hamas in October 7.
This left Israel similar to the USA post 9/11 or Peal Harbor. On a streak to make it never happen again in a very decisive/brutal way. Hegemony wasn't the moving factor for Israel, at least until very late in the war, and due to the same reasons
The attack plan of October 7 is generally so similar to the attack plan prepared for Hezbollah by the IRGC, that it is not surprising it is one and the same.
That's why Israel in this current conflict early on made moves on Iran and why the end game is this war.
> More broadly, this is the Levant versus Persia, a power contest as old as civilization.
Wasn't it more, Egypt and Greece vs Persia while the Levant was rapidly conquered?
That's not particularly enlightening, to be frank.
People always ask here why the community flags every post on these issues. Comments like this are why. Hardly anyone on this site knows even basic information on the nations involved.
If I were in charge of HN, I'd geoblock anyone from commenting on the Middle East who isn't at an IP from the Middle East. I wouldn't be able to comment either, but at least there might be enlightening information in the comments.
That said, the first page of any reputable history on Iran/Israel relations would go over 1979, when Israel went from friend of Iran to foe, based on Khomeini's interpretation of Islam.
It’s literally the same numbers as the posted ones, and exactly aligned with what I’m saying.
> The current official toll is 64,718 Palestinians killed in Gaza and 163,859 injured, since the start of the war on 7 October 2023
You may have been misled by the headline “X killed or injured”.. those are two different things, and we’re talking about the number killed.
I don’t know if those numbers are accurate (the article about the IDF solider claims it is), but I’m not even questioning that. The GP is claiming that an order of magnitude more people have been killed than even GMH claims.
> Halevi stepped down as chief of staff in March after leading the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for the first 17 months of the war, which is now approaching its second anniversary.
> The retired general told a community meeting in southern Israel earlier this week that more than 10% of Gaza’s 2.2 million population had been killed or injured – “more than 200,000 people”.
The point is that we know 64,000 is almost certainly an undercount. Notably it hasn't changed much in the last year since the Hamas ministry of health collapsed.
The commenter above is correct in saying the bound of deaths is very likely between 45,000 and 600,000. We have good reason to suspect it was over 100,000 late last year. We won't know the actual number until an independent assessment can occur.
You are using the "more than 200,000 people" quote to imply that the GHM estimate of 64,718 is wrong, but it is completely in line with it. There is nothing about this revelation that suggests the existing estimates are too low. I don't know what I'm supposedly cherry-picking.
More explicitly: 64,718 killed + 163,859 injured =~ "more than 200,000 people"
I don't understand what basis you (and other commenters) have to suggest that these estimates are all wrong, you merely say "we have good reason". What reason?
GP here. The GMH number doesn’t include indirect deaths, i.e. all the deaths that happen because of war that aren’t bullets and bombs. Disease, famine, not getting cancer screenings or antibiotics because all the hospitals have been blown up… that stuff.
So while 680k (the current highest estimate) is probably higher than reality, god i hope it is, it’s also true that reality is probably much higher than the current GMH numbers.
>The extreme pirate position is equivalent to expecting doctors to provide cosmetic surgery for free
This analogy is not even remotely applyable to piracy. Piracy is about content that can be shared, you can't grab a surgery and share it with someone else after buying it.
China doesn't pretend to be a democracy, so as they don't are nor pretend to be a democracy the rest of us should abandon democracy? Should be stop begin democratic because China isn't?
I’m not advocating that we abandon democracy. To use your argument the other way around, why should we treat china as a democracy as it doesn’t pretend to be one? They don’t allow our businesses to operate on an equal footing there, so why afford them easy access to our markets?
In the case of any foreign ownership of mass media, it is trivial to weaponize that platform to wage asymmetric war against a political adversary by driving division in between the population through lies, half truths, and selected context. That’s why the US has laws to ban foreign ownership of broadcast media outlets.
Israel, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Oman, Thailand, Vietnam. That's not counting those relations that aren't close nor adversarial.
The only authoritarian regimes not allied, nor neutral, with the US are Cuba, Iran, NK, Russia and Venezuela.
It's not present day but let's not forget the series of military genocidal dictarships supported, founded and allied by the US in south america in the second half of 20th century.
Amazing how this site's comments have been decaying in quality since a few years now. Obvious propaganda article, from a media that doesn't even try to hide that it's mainly a propaganda media, is commented on seriously without any kind of reality filter, and it gets to the top comments...
I've been using HN long enough to know this kind of comment has been repeated since the old days. It's just a weird ad-hominin comment people make when they aren't used to disagreeing with the majority.
The only thing you ever say is baseless criticisms of the intellectual prowess of HN and the media. Either justify these criticisms, accept we are the way we are, or leave.
>the book itself is about totalitarian censorship in the Soviet Union
Animal farm is a critic of any kind of totalitarian government AND a critic of capitalism itself. The book literally ends with:
>Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
The expert they are quoting is a pretty well known figure, who has been saying lots of things often not aligned with media retoric.
To borrow his twitter bio as an introduction
> PhD student @warstudies (Department of War Studies at Kings College). Senior Fellow @FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute). Previously @USMC (US Marine Corp), @ColumbiaSIPA (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs), @CentreAST (Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies), and @AlfaFellowship. Focused on Russian defense policy.
To imply that they're just pulling in random people is flat out wrong. This is a person who has been studying Russia from a military standpoint for many years.
You can nearly always find a qualified individual who already is saying what you want said, just needing a microphone to say it louder or at the right time. That's how expert witnesses tend to work for instance.
You have to thank the actions of the genocidal State of Israel that anything below it is somewhat acceptable. Reaping what they sow themselves.
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