Yemen Part 3 - the Hot Take

Still with me? Because we're going to the first hot take.

One thing I want to make clear - the general assumption that the Houthis are proxies for Iran is just plain wrong. In Yemen, they are the most grassroots group. Their relationship with Tehran is completely unlike what is implied. The Houthis are self-funding (through extorting their own people). They don't take orders, but they do take suggestions. Tehran has influence over them - not control. Let's review.

The Houthis came to our attention in 2023/2024 when they announced a blockade of Israel bound ships. This involved actually striking shipping vessels and even boarding and capturing the Galaxy Leader. The Houthis were the only group outside Palestine that was taking up arms in defense of Gaza. And yet what was Iran doing at this time?  Trying to normalize relations with the House of Saud - the Houthis main nemesis, responsible for Gaza-esque air strikes on Houthi territories. 

I don't want to imply that they are fully independent. I think a lot of Houthis travelled to Iran to learn from the IRGC in the early days. I also think that this training vector now flows both ways and the IRGC is learning a lot from Ansar Allah.  Also, Iran is providing weapons and weapon technology. Iran is almost certainly a major part of the arms smuggling network that keeps the Houthis as deadly as they are.

But this is cooperation or mutual aid. It is not a proxy arrangement.

By contrast, the Yemeni government under the PLC gets payroll from Saudi Arabia. This explains the "ghost soldier" phenomenon you might have been hearing about - Saudi pays salaries for soldiers - whether they exist or not, so an enterprising militia commander can make a little extra on the side. 

Even the southern forces created and funded by the STC - with the UAE kicked out, someone had to pay the salaries of the Southern Giants Brigade. An elite brigade of mercenary fighters with UAE supplied hardware and already based where Saudi Arabia has a lot of "interests"? The same goes for Saleh's National Resistance forces. Meaning that Ansar Allah is the only truly domestic militia. Aligned with Tehran in the Axis of Resistance, but that alignment only goes so far.

Here's the hot take - people who think the Houthis attacked the Saudi pipeline are off their rockers. It was in fact Tehran that ordered the pipeline hit, and specifically to reduce the influence of the Houthis.

Let me explain. The Houthis rush for the coast started on September 3. They abandoned positions around Taiz in a strategy of "lose the desert, gain the coast". By September 10, Mocha had fallen and the Houthis were essentially in full control of Bab Al Mandeb.

Now you might think that Iran was loving this - it made their blockade of Hormuz much more effective being a double blockade that Saudi Arabia could not bypass. And yet on September 11, the east west pipeline through Saudi Arabia was hit (from Iraq). What's the point of this? The Houthis were already blockading Bab Al Mandeb. This was the least important time to hit the pipeline. 

UNLESS - Iran did this explicitly to reduce the Houthis ability to bargain. Iran already had all the leverage it wanted at the time - capturing Bab Al Mandeb was gilding the lily - only the Iranian blockade had turned into a double blockade, meaning that Tehran had to share the leverage over the world economy. But if the pipeline was hit - control over Bab Al Mandeb only impacts the few days of oil in storage on the Red Sea coast. IOW, Tehran activated their Iraqi proxy militia groups to strike the pipeline with the expectation that this would reduce Houthi leverage and Iran would be the sole negotiator for Middle East peace.

This theory discards the lazy Tehran proxy framing and considers the Axis forces as independent if aligned actors. And it explains the nonsensical timing of it all - striking the pipeline when it was the least necessary time to do so.

To be clear - this was not to hurt the Houthis. Tehran remains highly aligned with Sana'a. This was Iran acting to protect its monopoly on negotiating a way out of the current energy crisis. Hitting the pipeline means the only escape hatch for Saudi oil is Hormuz, where Tehran calls the shots.

Yemen Part 2

So what is going on in Yemen today? It's been over a decade of civil war, who are the two sides? Okay, here's what I've managed to put together.

There's the Houthis, led by Abdul Malik al Houthi. Despite the constant framing of them as Iran's proxy, this is arguably the most homegrown domestic faction. If you are reading this, you're probably not surprised that the reality on the ground is the opposite of the stories - but we need to also bear in mind that our own prejudices may cut the other way as well. Despite being the actual anti-imperialist/anti-colonial faction, the stories of them being racist as fuck are true. Their motto literally calls for a curse on all Jews. They are a Zaydi supremacist group with an ideology that posits a bloodline pure imam that will rule The Imamate. Notably however - Abdul Malik does not claim to be this imam. Anyways, take home point is they are seeking to establish a theocratic state with Zaydi Muslims running the show.

That said, my impression is that this is an incredibly pragmatic faction. unlike the Taliban. They are motivated by factors beyond religious fundamentalism, even though religious fundamentalism makes up a lot of the DNA. While they believe in the supremacy of their sect, they are not eliminationist of other faiths, except Jews - super antisemitic these guys, so they aren't innocent of ethnic cleansing. But unlike the stereotype, they are not trying to purge Sunnis or non-Zaydi Shia. They are considered the most Sunni friendly of the various Shia sects. So there's some degree of religious tolerance, so long as you're Muslim. This may be due to their pragmatism - Sunni outnumber Shia in Houthi controlled territory two to one. On the other hand, it has also been part of their origins and has been evident throughout their history - which opens up a huge can of rabbit holes that one may get bogged down in forever.  Suffice to say that the tenets of Zaydi Islam are actually less aligned with authoritarian totalitarianism relative to other groups like the Taliban. Not unaligned, just less aligned. Short version - they aren't as bad as the Taliban - yes this is a very low bar to clear.

I believe they have two sets of goals for Yemen. The first involves purging foreign influence, of which there is plenty and has been immensely damaging to the country. This is the part of their program that is very popular.  The second set involves taking over the country, to become the rulers of all of Yemen. This is the unpopular part of the program. I guess I didn't need to point that out.

BUT - all indications are that Abdul Malik al Houthi is pragmatic. He seems to understand that the Houthi movement has limits in what they can achieve, and it is in careful application of force, respecting those limits - that this one insurgency in one of the poorest nations in the world has managed to hold the global economy hostage. And despite the Zaydi supremacist mindset, I believe he understands that ruling over all of Yemen is impossible. The non-Zaydi populations in other regions are still Yemeni - with the resilience and resistance that this implies. He knows that empires with infinite resources have attempted it and failed. That Yemen is a nation built on overthrowing oppressors, so that would be an uncomfortable position to step into. In short, I think Houthi leadership is susceptible to being bribed into peace.

The other side is the Internationally Recognized Government. Just to illustrate what "Internationally Recognized" means - territory under Houthi control make up 70% to 80% of the population - but since that remaining rump is made mostly of colonial proxies, guess which gets recognized.

The Internationally Recognized Government consists of two factions - the Saudi owned northern faction based out of Marib and the UAE owned faction based out of the rural areas around Aden. Despite Aden being the interim capital of this government, the Marib faction is dominant and the southern faction (which used to be the Southern Transitional Council or STC) is in decline. The leader of the STC has fled to Abu Dhabi under accusations of treason - the STC was a separatist faction, so that's likely where that comes from. 

Just to make things more confusing, what used to be the STC itself is also two factions. The people living in Aden itself, an urbanized cosmopolitan population shaped by over a century of being a British colony, and the more rural tribes in the surround region who are much more like mercenaries under the employ of the UAE. But with the collapse of the STC, this separatist movement is on the rocks.

The UAE is effectively kicked out of Yemen, so the STC is no longer viable with no one paying the bills.  The Marib faction is facing similar issues - Saudi Arabia is desperate to withdraw. They do not want to continue pouring more and more money into Yemen with no hopes of success.  They need to cut a deal with Yemen in its entirety, and that includes Houthis.

Yemen Part 1

Made it a year before the voices forced me back to rant here.  So unsurprisingly, it's going to be a long one.

First to open with a couple caveats. The minor one - I only knew a little bit about Yemen before the Houthis started blockading Israeli ships coming through the Red Sea - while I've "done my own research" since then - this is by no means anything close to representing a decent amateur's understanding, let alone an expert's. More important caveat - the previous one doesn't matter. The only important opinions on what happens to Yemen are Yemeni - which I am not.

Okay - the main issue is that Yemen is one of the poorest countries in the world, despite having substantial oil deposits and a strategic location on one of the world's most important shipping routes. That poverty is mostly inflicted by external forces. 100% due to external forces putting the nation under blockade and a decade of bombing runs. And split responsibility (but mostly foreign influenced) for a decade long civil war mostly fueled by those same external forces.

Yemen is an ancient civilization, and a proud one, and as we are coming to learn, an incredibly resilient one. The nation has been subject to crazy waves of imperialist colonization, all broken by the many factors which make it ungovernable. I've identified the brutal terrain and the fragmented tribal groups and resulting complex network of relationships therein - but again - not even a decent amateur's understanding of the country, so there are likely more. It's resisted the Ottomans, the British, and the Russians. It's currently got Saudi and Emirati meddling - neither of which are going to last - although they have caused immense damage tied to that decade long civil war.

And yet despite it all, the Yemenis have resisted - although they have been forced into deeply fundamentalist nationalist groups for survival and to push out the colonizers, earning it the nickname "Graveyard of Empires".  Sound familiar? Kind of reminiscent of Afghanistan if you ask me. And that should serve as a big flashing warning sign to the international community - we're creating a new Taliban here. And both Ansar Allah and Al Islah aren't that far off already.

More importantly though, even after a brutal civil war claiming hundreds of thousands of lives, both these groups still identify as Yemeni. The Yemeni national identity is real and incredibly durable - also not unlike Afghanistan.

It's a nation that has taken what imperialist colonial empires can throw at it and still remains strong today. Strong enough to enforce a blockade on global trade that has real and meaningful effects - despite being one of the poorest countries in the world. So what needs to happen is that instead of meddling, foreign powers (and domestic ones too) have to recognize that "owning" Yemen is impossible. Many empires tried and they all failed. And more importantly, an "owned" Yemen - some sort of colony forced to pay tribute - this is less beneficial not only for the Yemenis but for whichever sucker empire wants to pout untold resources and lives into the impossible task of pacifying the locals. Far better to support and foster an independent Yemen, one that rebuilds with its oil wealth and then cements its place in the global community with its maintenance of one of the world's most important trade routes.

Abolish ICE

Not that anyone needs another reason to say “Abolish ICE” - but there is another reason:

https://bsky.app/profile/stevenmazie.bsky.social/post/3lydlxhu6lc2y

It's All Bibi's Fault

Just a quick observation for when this continues to fall apart and the establishment looks to deflect blame by scapegoating Netanyahu. With the exception of 1 single year (June 2021 to June 2022), Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister of Israel since 2009. And 2009 was the start of his second time as PM. 

If you go back to when George Bush was president, Bibi has been PM of Israel more often than he has not. And I mean the elder George H.W. Bush.

A Pencil to a Knife Fight

The "duelling resolutions" on Gaza perfectly sums up the Democratic Party and why there either needs to be a deep fucking purge or progressives need to just say "fuck it" and start over from scratch. 

One resolution - calling for "release all the hostages, let in humanitarian aid, call for a ceasefire" was passed unanimously. This might sound good - if it were early 2024. This was put forward explicitly to head off the second resolution calling for "a complete arms embargo on Israel and the recognition of a Palestinian state". The DNC passed one and killed the other - on voice vote. And they did this less than a week from famine being officially declared in Gaza. 

Speaking of famine - Ken Martin's opening speech "stop bringing a pencil to a knife fight" kept talking about how voters were hungry for a party that fights. He kept using that word - "hunger". Starting at 15 seconds into that video, he says it five times in fifteen seconds. Literally while he was trying to derail efforts at stopping Israel from inflicting famine on hundreds of thousands. You know who else is hungry Mr. DNC Chair? The people you keep trying to shove back under the bus.

That's not the part that just encapsulates the whole fucking disaster. It was obviously clear that mutiny was going to break out - so Martin fucking withdrew the watered down amendment. So that they could discuss it more. So what he did was kill even the watered down amendment - meaning the DNC summer meeting is going to say absolutely nothing about Gaza at all.

He opened the meeting talking big talk about fighting and doing more and letting the voters know they are being heard. He said they were going to stop bringing pencils to the knife fight. Turns out what he meant was "we only have pencils, so we aren't going to go to the fight at all."

Here is the only real question for progressives - can the Democratic Party be saved? All signs point to no. They cannot.

BUT BUT BUT - won't splitting the vote result in Republican electoral dominance? To that I say - what the fuck do we have now! Donald fucking Trump got re-elected even after closing out his campaign at a fascist white supremacist party by giving a microphone a blowjob. Progressives fucking did this - they let the fucking neoliberal shitbags run the Cheney hugging, gun toting, genocide denying campaign that Democratic leadership demanded - the Squad dutifully lined up behind the party line with AOC repeating the pure nonsense of "tirelessly working for a ceasefire". And Harris put in the worst performance of a Democratic candidate since fucking Walter Mondale.  And where are we now - with the same leaders in place?

• Trump is polling at minus 14.
• Republicans are polling at minus 17. 
• Democrats? Minus 30.

Now the DNC decides that "let's pass the same bullshit toothless resolution we've been flogging since the start of Harris' 107 days if not longer - and then pull it so we don't even get that approved" is how they show they are listening to the people. Where Democrats support Israel's military campaign by a whopping 8%. That's not a net 8% over not supporting - that's only 8% of Democrats still support this monstrosity.

I keep asking - what's the end game here? What is the plan? Progressives have to keep supporting these fucking genocidal assholes as they continue to chase the Republicans down the abyss? This was the plan this past November and how did that turn out? And now progressives are being told that the only way to win in the future is to keep doing the things that have gotten us to this point.

The Most Moral Army in the World

There's a wild piece of bullshit going on about how Israel actually does a remarkable job of protecting civilians - that modern urban warfare usually has a 9:1 civilian to combatant ratio while Israel's is 1:1.  It's of course bullshit and lies, excellently taken apart here by Alonso Gurmendi - among others.  But there's a couple things I'd like to get to regarding it. You might know one of them, it's been making news and I'm mentioning it here because it's pretty new. That is - according to Israel's own assessment of who is a terrorist - they are still killing 6 civilians per Hamas fighter. So not 1:1. And this assessment of "who is a terrorist" is Israel's own and would include people like Anas Al-Sharif. IOW, the real ratio is almost certainly worse than 5:1.

Here's the other point - and I would love to see someone pushing the 9:1 line get questioned on it.  Do you know what had a much lower ratio than 9:1?  October 7th.

The latest toll from the attack is now 796 civilians, 379 members of the security forces and 14 civilian hostages, giving a total of 1,189.

796/379 is 2.1.  Also, let's not forget that numerous Israeli civilians were killed in that attack by the IDF. For example, all the charred bodies and smoking wrecked cars at the Nova Music Festival? Hamas goons are mostly armed with AK-47's - IDF helicopters fired Hellfire missiles on the crowd.

The paper notes, “This deception worked for a considerable time until the Apaches had to skip all the restrictions. It was only around 9:00 a.m. that some of them began to spray the terrorists with the cannons on their own, without authorization from superiors.”

“The rate of fire against the thousands of terrorists was tremendous at first, and only at a certain point did the pilots begin to slow down the attacks and carefully select the target,” the paper added.

Despite the confusion, twenty-eight Israeli combat helicopters fired all of the ammunition they were holding, including hundreds of 30 mm cannon shells and Hellfire missiles, during the day.

After landing his Apache to reload ammunition at roughly 10:00 am, the commander of the 190 squadron instructed the other pilots “to shoot at everything they see in the fence area,” separating Israel from Gaza.

Anyways, it would be amazing to see someone try this bullshit 9:1 ratio argument and be confronted with Hamas' ratio of 2:1. I guess October 7th wasn't all that horrific because it was actually far safer for civilians than normal modern urban warfare. That would make heads explode.

Oh and also - my main point here.  Yes, Hamas is a terrorist organization that killed almost 800 civilians in a single attack, and took huindreds of people hostage at the point of a gun. BUT the IDF is far worse.

Edit: maths is hard. 1/6 is 5:1 not 6:1

Does Israel Have a Right to Exist?

What a loaded question. And one that completely shows the questioner's racist nature. What about Palestine? Does Palestine have "a right to exist"? If only every single idiot who has asked about Israel's right to exist was forced to answer the same question about Palestine, maybe we'd have fewer genocide inciting monsters in the public discourse.

Francesca Albanese has a great answer to this question - Israel exists. It just does. There's no question of "right to exist" - it simply does exist. And this answer takes the wind out of the sails of the question.

The question having a good answer is a good reason to move on - but that's not how I roll. I'm instead going to go into what's being asked. The question isn't about Israel per se - but rather the foundational principle of Zionism - do Jewish people have a right to a national homeland?  Some people say no - ethno-states are inherently unfair and undemocratic. Their very nature posits a two tier system with second class citizens - it is a recipe for apartheid. And most people agree that apartheid is bad.

It's a purity test - true states must grant equal rights to all of its citizens. This is a noble goal and I would love to support it. But I personally don't think the world we live in is unflawed enough to enshrine this rule.

Here is my disagreement - the history of the Jewish peoples is one of persecution and displacement and literal fucking genocide. For a lot of history, Jews have been deprived membership in any state and this is not only unfair, but also creates the circumstances for gross human rights violations - including one of the greatest crimes in all of human history. I do believe there is a need for a Jewish national homeland because of the long history of Jews being denied their right to self-determination. I believe that antisemitism still exists and it is pervasive and deadly dangerous, and that there is a movement that is actively trying to return all Jews to a position of statelessness and to deny them the right to self-determination.

But something I have now come to accept is that this does not mean that "Israel has a right to exist". This is how I reconcile my belief for a need for a Jewish national homeland while still considering myself an anti-Zionist. There should be a Jewish state - but not Israel, at least not the Israel we have now.

Statehood is defined by acceptance and recognition by other states. It is a political question - of course it is! The idea of statehood not being a political question is crazy and flies in the face of what a state is - a political entity.

As a result, recognition of states depends on its reputation. And that depends on the nature of the state. For example (at the risk of triggering Godwin's Law) - there are very few people who have issues with the existence of Germany as a state. There are a lot of people who would have issues with the existence of Nazi Germany as a state.

Does Israel have a right to exist?  Depends on what you mean by "Israel"? Does a messianic terrorist apartheid state committed to genocide in the name of Greater Israel have a right to exist? Does a rogue state with pure and intense contempt for international law and a deep sense of grievance and belligerence towards all of its neighbours and an inability to extend basic human dignity to starving children - does such a state have a "right to exist"? No, it does not. No state with ambitions to subjugate or exterminate another people has a right to exist. That's my purity test - do you intend to do genocide? If yes, then I am opposed to you. And in a just world - the international community would hold the same position. And this is absolutely compatible with a belief in a Jewish homeland. Jews do have a right to a nation-state, but not to a nation-state that is actively engaged in genocide.

How Could He Be Any Worse?

It's been a minute.  Nowhere near as long as the long hiatus - but certainly not a short break. I guess the urge to scream about the atrocities has died down after seeing how utterly ineffectual it is. Anyways, let's get to it.

About a year ago, when the discussion was about how everyone had to support the racist fucking monsters funding a literal fucking genocide - I asked how Trump could be worse on Gaza. Biden had literally given Netanyahu everything that Bibi wanted. Despite the performative wringing of hands and threats of withholding arms, here's the sum total of what the Biden Administration actually did to curb the killing:

• They delayed one shipment of weapons - which did not actually impede the flow of weapons from the US to Israel.
• They imposed sanctions on a handful of Israeli settler terrorists that had been attacking the West Bank - and then immediately paused any impact of those sanctions "for humanitarian reasons".
• They identified one single IDF unit that was not eligible to receive US military aid due to their propensity to commit gross human rights violations - and then, based on literally nothing - said that the unit had reformed enough to reverse the original decision.
• They did not veto one Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza - which they then immediately discredited by calling it "non-binding".

Three actual actions, which were all immediately undermined so much as to render them completely ineffective. Effectively, Biden's Administration did absolutely nothing to slow down the genocide. Absolutely nothing.

So with Biden 100% fully supporting anything that Israel chose to do - and only reserving the right to act upset about it - the question was "how could Trump be any worse?"

Well, it's been long enough that we can check. We can look at how things are going and see if it is worse. Let's start with the kill count.  Under Joe, 47 thousand Palestinians in Gaza were confirmed killed by Israel. This took 472 days - so a murder rate of just under 100 per day, slightly over if you subtract the one week long ceasefire. And under Trump? Today's kill count is 61,600 or 14,600 higher. And he's had control for 202 days - but there was a 6 week long ceasefire in there, so 160 days of killing. That works out to 91 Gazans killed per day - certainly within the range of uncertainty for these numbers. So essentially - the IDF daily murder rate is pretty much the same as it was under Joe. AND Trump did manage to secure five more weeks of ceasefire than Biden did. IOW - the original assessment, that what the US president wants is irrelevant to how much the IDF slaughters Arabs - basically proven at this point. The IDF's natural murder rate is about a hundred Gazans per day. And this was normalized under a Democratic president.

That said - Trump has brought his own flavour of suffering to the Gaza Strip - the mass starvation is clearly worse with him in charge. Not to say that Biden did not allow and provide dioplomatic cover for the intentional affliction of starvation on a people. Biden absolutely did do this. Recall that the ICC warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant specifically for starving the people of Gaza were for actions between October 8, 2023 and May 20, 2024. But the situation is much worse under Trump. Now this is also due to the fact that this is how starvation works - that the longer you go on a severely calorie deficient diet, the closer you get to dying. That people don't starve to death overnight - and it takes time to starve an entire population. Or possibly it is due to the continued descent of Israel into genocidal mania - that a year ago, they might have been more opposed to intentionally starving children to death.

Still, regardless of the reasons - the use of mass starvation has been much worse under Trump - and as Truman noted, the buck has to stop somewhere. Under Biden, there was an intentional mass starvation campaign very early on targeting Northern Gaza - which was only lifted months into it by the delivery of way too little aid into the targeted area. That of course resulted in the Flour Massacre which set off a full month of the IDF mass killing aid seekers. So horrific and inhumane that I thought this was the worst they could do - but I underestimated the cruelty of the human spirit. Under Trump, Southern Gaza was subjected to starvation after the ceasefire. Two months of starvation with zero aid being allowed in, only to be lifted by the operations of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation - a group that has been mowing down aid seekers since the end of May. It's been longer that they've been using aid distribution as bait for killing fields and way more people have starved to death in Gaza this year than previously. And the starvation continues. And the murder of around a hundred Palestinians continues on its daily pace. Because this is the New Normal. Genocide is happening but we are unable or unwilling to do sweet fuck all about it. So it's now just been accepted as part of what happens daily. The sun rises, the IDF kills a hundred people, 2 million people have starvation forced upon them. The usual daily routine.

Only - there is one more normalized aspect of all of this. And that is that it is constantly getting worse. Israel keeps brainstorming new atrocities to try out - to shock our conscience so badly that we normalize this new thing. The reports of children being used for target practice or of the IDF forcing Gazans to act as human shields before murdering them - did not prompt any real action to curb their crimes, so they reach for the next depraved thing they can add to the arsenal of atrocities. A new push to conquer Gaza City is starting now - a year and a half after they claimed full control over the area. This is going to bring fresh new horrors for us to be shocked at, before accepting as just part of the new normal.

Silver Linings

You gotta find them wherever you can. A few months ago, I suggested that one possible silver lining in the absolute shitshow that's going on is that Trump's annexation threats are going to have an impact on the inevitable Canadian election. It's been over a year since it looked like we were headed for a Conservative landslide victory, going into cartoonishly large margins by the end of 2024.  Following Chrystia Freeland's resignation from cabinet, polling had vote intention for the Liberals at 20% versus the Conservatives at 45%. More than double. It was going to be a spanking.

And then Trump started making "Governor Trudeau" jokes and comments about Canada becoming the 51st state. On top of that, he started the stupidest trade war ever.

Fun fact - the one thing that unites Canadians more than anything else is our smug self-satisfied sense of superiority that we get from not being American. "At least we're not the USA" is the one thought that is shared by more Canadians than any other. It is essentially the core of Canadian identity - our non-American-ness.

And so we had a rally round the flag effect. And the deeply unpopular Justin Trudeau announced his resignation. And the new guy - still does not have a seat in Parliament - took over. And now the Liberals are leading the Conservatives by 6.

I had initially thought that the bump the Liberals would get from Trump's antics would have moved us from strong Conservative majority to Conservative minority government - but that ship has sailed and we're now verging towards a Liberal majority. Without an election campaign or really much of anythign being said by any candidates. Just solely on us freaking out about US imperialism.

So, sorry that Trump is fucking you Yanks six ways from Sunday - and much of the rest of the world is also getting screwed over pretty royally. And even us Canucks are getting shafted by the big stinky orange turd. But at least you're saving us from our own Trumpian dipshit asshole becoming head of government.

Worst Case Ontario

So we had an early provincial election called by Doug Ford yesterday - and well, nothing much changed. At least from the perspective of the seat count and balance of power. Doug still has a strong majority (gaining one seat to go from 79 to 80 - out of 124) and the NDP is still the official opposition (dropping from 28 seats to 27 seats). There were a handful of Independents, although only one was elected as such (Bobbi Ann Brady from Haldiman-Norfolk). The rest were NDP and PC MPPs who were expelled from their own parties, all of whom either retired or were defeated - so the Liberals picked up 5 seats to take them to 14. The Greens kept their 2.

Despite the Liberals large increase in seat count and popular vote share (29.95% up from 23.91% in 2022), this wasn't great for the Liberals. They had a leadership race and chose ultra conservative Bonnie Crombie (former mayor of Mississauga) over more progressive Nathaniel Erskine-Smith (who is decent despite being a Nate). And Bonnie Crombie failed to win her own seat. Losing to a conservative candidate who had contested only one other election previously where she came in third for a local city council seat.

Both our opposition parties are as weak and feckless as all centre-left parties have become in this age of growing fascism. We're in a space where a large chunk of the electorate has been abandoned - as conservative parties lurch further rightwards and the opportunistic shitbag opposition trip over each other chasing them. Voter turnout was 45.4%, only squeaking in above the 44.06% last time - which are the two lowest turnouts we've ever had. So this is most likely going to result in both Crombie and Stiles keeping their positions as leaders. 

So the depressing part of it all isn't that the Conservatives won again, but that the opposition seems to be quite happy with this state of affairs.

Phase Two - All of the Hostages

Hamas has put in their opening bid for Phase Two of the ceasefire - they will release all of the remaining hostages in one go in exchange for Israel complying with their requirements of Phase Two also being done in one go. This is the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody and the complete withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza. Essentially, a permanent end to the "war". Just something to keep in mind when the entirety of media insists that it is Hamas that's holding up the peace process or when genocide defenders say that Hamas could end the war simply be freeing all of the hostages. Hamas is saying "we will free all of the hostages to end the war" - a position I might note that they offered in October 2023. 

This in spite of the last news of the ceasefire being that Phase One was fragile and precarious. Well, Hamas did release the hostages they were scheduled to as per the deal. Supposedly because Israel had allowed some of the pre-fab homes into the territory. Since that update I've learned that Hamas did have a point about Israel not complying with the terms of the deal with respect to the surge of aid that was supposed to be getting into Gaza.  Apparently during Phase One, Israel must allow at least 60,000 temporary homes and 200,000 tents into Gaza - the actual amount that had entered by the point Hamas threatened to withhold hostages? Zero of the 60,000 temporary homes and 20,000 of the 200,000 tents. I don't know if that has actually improved - there are still a lot of new reports that Israel is blocking this aid.

There is one interesting takeaway from this offer that likely won't be noticed. It's about Hamas' capabilities and their continued coherence as a group - despite the assassinations of their leaders. The specifics of this current ceasefire deal were in place as early as May 2024 - and one of the reasons given as to why Hamas needed the two six week periods to return the hostages was because they did not have adequate control of all of the hostages in order to return them. This makes sense - the hostages were taken by not just Hamas, but various other resistance groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Hamas would need to coordinate with allied but not controlled groups in order to agree. Furthermore - one of the characteristics of these groups is that they are decentralized. Basically, numerous cells of agents acting with very little direct control. It's likely that Hamas did not know exactly how many hostages they had in custody for a significant fraction of the war - with various agents holed up all across the enclave.

But now they are saying they will return all of the remaining hostages - meaning they have control over the people holding the hostages, possibly for the first time since October 7th. IOW, they've not only refilled their ranks with new recruits, but they've established communication and control with everyone that was holding hostages. Something they did not have back in May. This is bad for the Israelis. It means that they've not only strengthened Hamas in terms of their influence and support - but also, the killing of the old leaders has resulted in a more efficient and effective control system over the resistance fighters.

The Fetus Must Have Been Hamas

Our corporate media is getting sloppy. ABC News has posted this wire service story from AP. I mean I guess they thought that if AP was covering it, it would be pre-sanitized of anything critical of the IDF. That's actually a decent assumption given the deference AP has shown to Israel and their obviously false statements. But somehow this story slipped through.

The Red Crescent said that the International Committee of the Red Cross had secured approval from the Israeli military to allow medics inside the camp. But the paramedics were detained twice, for a half-hour each time, as they made their way toward the battered car, it said.

The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment on why soldiers had blocked ambulances.

It wasn't until after 8:00 a.m. that medics finally reached the young couple, and were detained a third time while rushing the husband out of the camp to the hospital, the Red Crescent said.

Yazan Shula was unconscious and in critical condition, and, as of Tuesday, remains on life support at a hospital. Shalabi was found dead. Her fetus also did not survive the shooting.

It doesn't seem to be getting much pick-up from other mainstream outlets. MSNBC had a piece yesterday, where they could gloss over things with a "details of the deaths were not immediately clear". Maybe they'll be able to disappear this story - there are hundreds if not thousands of similar stories that have gone quietly. But just the simple act of questioning why these victims just bled out instead of just assuming that the IDF was morally justified in the killing of an 8 month pregnant woman is a pretty bug shift in the tone of coverage.

The Ceasefire is at Risk

Ceasefire deal is in danger of collapse. Hamas is delaying hostage release because it claims that Israel has been in violation of the ceasefire terms by impeding aid delivery and killing people in Northern Gaza. There was an incident a few days ago where the IDF said they "fired warning shots" and killed three people. There's also video from Ceasefire Day One of a teenaged boy being killed by a sniper and a second Palestinian is shot and injured trying to recover the body. That's not the only incident - there are reports of multiple Gazans being killed by the IDF during this ceasefire.

I've been trying to find information about the truck volumes.  There's this story from the first week of the ceasefire, which says 4,200 trucks entered in six days - and that's including a drastic drop in volume on the sixth day down to 339 trucks. On average this is 700 trucks per day, above the minimum of 600 required under the deal - although it's not clear to me if an average is acceptable or if it has to be at least 600 every day. 

I also found this update saying it's "over 10,000" on February 6th. Meaning 5,800 trucks entered between January 25 and Feb. 6 - or over the span of 12 days - which is below 500 averaged over that time frame. And finally, there are stories like this one claiming "over 12,600 trucks" as of Feb. 9. This last one seems dodgy to me,  Feb. 9 marked 21 days of ceasefire - so if we assume the deal is for the average number of trucks, 12,600 is literally the bare minimum requirements. 

We do have a statement from Euro-Med Monitor that the amount of aid being allowed is insufficient and falling short of the agreed upon volumes.

Is it possible that the actual bare minimum number of trucks (using the assumption that it is 600 trucks averaged out over time) have been delivered and Hamas is lying about impeded aid? Yes. I do believe the possibility that Hamas is lying. Is it also possible that truck volume surged in the first five days of ceasefire while everyone's attention was being drawn and has since tailed off to below the required minimums? Also yes - this is definitely a distinct possibility.

Still, the fact remains that Israel is still shooting Gazan civilians to death under the "ceasefire" and judging by how the "ceasefire" in Lebanon has been going, it's entirely reasonable to believe that they are not abiding by the terms - and also that the "guarantors" are letting them get away with it.

The situation though - still vastly improved over what it was like at any point in 2024. But those improvements might not be durable at all. And now we are facing the challenge of trying to keep the fragile peace intact all while Trump continues to insist on ethnic cleansing and mainstream media keeps sanewashing the proposal.

What About a One State Solution?

Two states has been the de-facto solution, supported by basically every nation in the world - even notionally Israel. But a lot of people, now including the Israeli Knesset, have deemed this answer to be unworkable. It's an interesting point - the idea of two states peacefully co-existing beside one another - with the current levels of animosity between them - this sounds like it will never work. But of course, this is nonsense - Germany and France co-existed and shared a border through both World Wars and are now close allies. India and Pakistan were given arbitrarily drawn borders by the British and religiously segregated into unfriendly sides, and they co-exist with only low level belligerence between them - despite both being controlled by highly nationalistic fascist or near-fascist governing bodies. It certainly can work - it's only opposed because Israel sees this as a massive loss of power and influence.

So what is the alternative? It's a one-state solution. Israel - from the river to the sea. Technically the status quo. We can see the obvious problems with that - mostly deriving from the denial of the right to self-determination for the Palestinians. This manifests itself in problematic ways - whether you call it "resistance" or "terrorism" - it is the obvious response to oppressing a large mass of people. This is the point that the Abraham Accords dipshits refuse to acknowledge - "oh, let's just pretend that the Palestinians just don't exist and maybe they will go away". It is born of deep ignorance and stupidity and a whole lot of racism.

The other problem with that is legitimacy. This would not be seen as a legitimate solution by a large part of the world - it would be what it is now, an apartheid state. Fundamentally, it is being denied the right to vote but being subject to the laws and rules forced upon you. It's like the American Founding Fathers with their "no taxation without representation" - only "taxation" in this case means dehumanizing oppression in every single aspect of your life. It's kind of wild that the denial of the resistance of the oppressed is so strong in America, born from revolution and maniacally fixated on the notion of Freedom - but I guess racism is a helluva strong drug.

Apartheid regimes are limited in their legitimacy - much of the world will not recognize it as valid. While it is possible to have an apartheid regime in the modern world, don't expect to be a member in good standing of the global community. This is the story of Apartheid South Africa and the birth of the Boycott Divest Sanction movement. Even if the elites love the racism and want to support the racist state, the public won't accept it and will force change. And while Israel had many advantages in avoiding BDS given that the state was born out of the singular horror that was the Holocaust, the genocidal campaign in Gaza has burned much of that forbearance.

Israel cannot withstand BDS. It's not a major economic power like China or Russia, that can just ride it out. It's network of allies that will support it despite the apartheid is ever shrinking and support from those allies becomes more tenuous with every bomb the IDF drops. The only thing keeping Israel as an existing state right now is the unconditional support of the USA - which explains the ludicrous efforts and resources being expended by AIPAC. You don't even need a pro-BDS president, just one that's not a hardcore Zionist. This would basically undermine the entire existence of Israel as a sovereign state.

So that is the alternative. A one-state solution, Israel from the river to the sea. And believe it or not, this is what a lot of pro-Palestine activists want too - a one-state solution, only without the apartheid. Some Palestinians want to return to the lands their parents and grand-parents were expelled from during the Nakba. I imagine that there might even be some Nakba survivors remaining today. And adding some 5 million Arab voters to the Israeli electorate would certainly change the way Israel does anything - but also, is a scenario that much of the Israeli elite would despise even more than a two state solution.

The denial of a Palestinian state is thus a doubling down on what is now seen as a lost bet. Israel and the US put a bet down on Palestine suddenly not being a problem any more - because reasons. And the past sixteen months have shown that this was an incredibly stupid bet. I mean - what is the prize if they won this bet? A strip of land polluted with unexploded ordnance and still holding thousands of bodies buried under the rubble? Did they think that opening a US-Israel theme park in Gaza was going to be met with world-wide acceptance? Where do they think "terrorism" comes from?

But there's more in how badly they lost this bet. What they did not expect (and still refuse to acknowledge) is that Palestinians are fucking unbelievably amazing. The resilience and solidarity of the people of Palestine is mind blowing. As I have gotten older, I have become more jaded and cynical about human nature, but the spirit of the people of Palestine has shown me that I'm an idiot. It was back in December of 2023 that I thought their spirit might be broken - that would have been more than enough to have broken me. But time and again, even as the entirety of the Gaza Strip was completely destroyed and they suffered pain and losses unimaginable - they kept going. And they keep going. And they kept right on going. And I may never understand where they find the strength but they do. The amount of denial of reality that's required to look at what Gaza has been through and the people still standing tall despite it all and thinking that they can still be defeated? It would require a truly breathtaking amount of delusional stupidity and intense racism - but here too I guess I have underestimated the scope of human nature.

The Hostages

The ceasefire is holding - knock on wood. There was just an exchange of 3 Israelis for 183 Palestinians, and one aspect of the Palestinians released caught my attention. You might have missed it - I get caught up on some of the weirdest things. Let me quote it below:

Detained in Gaza on suspicion of militancy, the 111 Palestinians released Saturday have been held without trial since the day after the Oct. 7 attack.

Something I have been saying for a while is that the IDF is worse than Hamas. By every conceivable measure. One of these was hostages kidnapped - Hamas took a few hundred hostages on October 7th and these hostages are the only hostages that are referred to when the word hostages is used.  But as I said - the IDF is worse.

111 people in Gaza were taken by the IDF on October 8. "Detained", And now released. Not Hamas terrorists - as noted in the article, no prisoners that participated in the October 7th attack would be released. IOW, the IDF rounded up 111 Gazans on October 8th and just fucking held them in custody even after determining that they had nothing to do with October 7th. No charges let alone convictions - just held and now released, they have been in custody for 1 day less than the hostages that everyone is so concerned about.

To be clear - I am not defending Hamas. They attacked civilians, killed many of them, and kidnapped others. These are criminal acts - even given that they are resisting occupation and siege. They are a terrorist organization. But they are practically angels and boy scouts compared to the Israeli state and the IDF. Even going by the unbelievably biased standard of starting the clock on October 7th, Israel and the IDF are so much worse than Hamas. Fully an order of magnitude worse - likely much more than that.

Anyways - 3 hostages taken on October 7th were released, as well as 111 hostages taken on October 8.

Democracy is the Worst Form of Government Except for All of the Other Ones

One thing about gangs of thieves is that betrayal is a feature, not a bug. The buzz right now is that Trump is expanding Witkoff's mandate based on his securing the Gaza ceasefire. Specifically, the speculation is about getting Witkoff to do a deal with Iran. Traditional establishment types, the kind who loved McCain's Bomb Iran song, are getting booted and I'm pretty curious about how AIPAC is taking it.

It shouldn't be surprising - all of Trump's owners are making moves with Iran. Putin just finalized a military co-operation deal with Iran, and Saudi Arabia is moving forward with settling their long standing rivalry. There's definitely a current of bringing Iran into the club - it is one of the expansion nations in BRICS. While Trump does count on the Israel lobby to back him at every step, apparently he feels like he owes them nothing in return. They need him more than he needs them and he knows it.  

Am I noting this because I think it'll be good for Gaza (because it is obviously bad for Israel)? Maybe? It's complicated. 

I don't think this is good for Gaza. Acting in opposition to Israel specifically with regards to the generations of occupation and apartheid and now this recent stage of full blown genocide? That is good - but it does not excuse the horrible shit that came with it. Hamas is a terrorist organization that specifically targeted civilians for violence and harm. More over, they were not and are not a responsive and fair governing authority. Violating human rights in the Gaza Strip is not a practice unique to the occupying IDF forces. Hamas, well they're no angels.  

Additionally, Iran is a far-right theocracy - not the type of people I want to see becoming more influential in our already broken world. So this is bad in many ways. That said - my objections are pretty high minded relative to the fact that it is a fucking genocide going on. I'm going off that Ben Franklin quote - " those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." But the fact is, Palestinians (especially those in Gaza) already have neither liberty nor safety. Worrying about the spread of far right religious extremists is a luxury that is pretty alien to a devastated territory that has been essentially bombed out of existence. These concerns are well into "let them eat cake" levels of out-of-touch.  

Here's where I am - the US has lost a fuckton of standing in the world, and the new Commander-in-Chief is absolutely not going to reverse that trend. And as terrible as US foreign policy has been, I still see this as a very bad thing. The West built up an international order, which had a lot of very real problems, but also too delivered a lot of real benefits. Maybe I can say this because I am not a citizen of the Global South, but I do believe that the "international rules based order" has been a net positive, and by a pretty significant margin. But the whole thing has been severely damaged by the ridiculous antics of the Biden Administration - just absolutely shredded and left with little to no legitimacy whatsoever.  

And it wasn't just Biden, although clearly he was the driving force behind it all. The whole lot of us -Canada, the EU, our allies like Japan and Australia - we all went along with it. Maybe some of us put up some resistance eventually, but certainly not enough. We are at this point because Western democracy has failed so spectacularly and now the consequences are starting to show themselves.  There are other games in town - and as much as we tell ourselves that "democracy is the worst form of government except for all of the other ones" - well maybe we have been rating it too highly. 

Screams Without Words

I got a lot of pushback when I suggested that the accounts of Hamas using rape as a weapon of war might be lies. Hamas is a terrorist organization! Of course they were systemically raping people in their October 7th attack! Except of course, now we know that there was an active effort to lie about this. Basically every story that was exploded into the front pages was discredited. The big one - which this post is named after - was written by someone who approvingly liked some outright genocidal posts on social media. Where multiple people she interviewed said that they were misrepresented and interviewed under false pretenses.

The Israeli prosecutor who had charge of investigating these cases eventually conceded "we don’t have any complainants. What was presented in the media compared to what will eventually come together will be entirely different…"

As far as I know, there are zero substantiated cases of rape committed by Hamas on October 7th. Zero.

That's not necessarily evidence that Hamas terrorists did not commit rapes in the attack - but it is absolutely evidence that the accusations widespread use of rape and sexual violence as weapons of war were bullshit. Also I would like to note - it is immensely more evidence than should be required. If we go by past behaviour, the assumption should be that the IDF is lying. They are shameless in their lying - they make Republican politicians look like an honest men. No really, they are that bad. Just awful, terrible purveyors of bullshit. 

Also too - it actually is believable that the Hamas fighters did not commit any rapes or sexual assaults. Now I said the IDF lies all the time, but that does not mean that Hamas is strictly honest. They are a terrorist organization, they deliberately targeted civilians, it is completely unsurprising that they too would lie and peddle bullshit stories to cover up their war crimes. Only thing is - the explanation for why their fighters didn't rape anyone actually makes Hamas look worse. And that was why I felt it was believable.

Hamas noted two items. First, their fighters are religious nutjob "holy warriors" on what was likely going to be a suicide mission. This was the blaze of glory they were going to go down in - and they are religious fundamentalist extremists - so they wouldn't sin by committing haram acts at that moment. This is hardly a flattering description - so it does ring true. Now it is also true that a lot of people claiming to be deeply religious also do a lot of systemic sexual abuse - but very few of them are the kind so committed to the cause that they go on suicide missions to slaughter civilians. Regardless, this is the less strong explanation for why Hamas did not rape on October 7th.

The second thing the Hamas spokesperson said was that their fighters knew they were on a clock - that the overwhelming response from the Israeli military was on its way and that they only had a short window to kill as many Israelis as they could. So they didn't commit rape because that would take away from their murdering time. Which, holy shit - this "excuse" kinda makes them seem even worse.

Anyways, this is still not complete exoneration. The explanations as to why Hamas would not have raped during their terror attack are believable and match the evidence so far - which is that there is no credible evidence of rape. But it still remains possible - perhaps the only rape victims were also murdered. A lot of people were murdered that day. But really, this is the extent we have to go to in order to substantiate a belief that Hamas committed rape.

OTOH, we do have criminal charges about rape and the use of sexual assault as torture on Palestinian prisoners held by Israel at Sde Teiman. IOW, if we use as a standard - the number of criminal charges for rape laid by the Israeli criminal justice system - the IDF is still worse than Hamas.

It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It

A fun book and maybe worth looking back into in these dark times ahead. The title comes from a story of a small town fire department being dispatched to a building with smoke billowing out the window. They found a man lying down on a smouldering mattress. After dousing the burning bed, they questioned the man - was he smoking before going to sleep? That sort of thing. His answer is the title of this post.

There's a lot of things this title could refer to. The most apt topic - admitting something truly monumentally ridiculous just to avoid conceding that they may have done something wrong. Even if that excuse is way more wrong.  Very relevant for our times now. This post is not that - it's about the LA wildfires.

Wait, those are still a thing? Yes, those are still a thing. 10,000 acres near Bel Air has gone up in flames. And still the reporting on it is likely to not say anything about climate change. These fires are 100% due to climate change, even though there are countless people desperately seeking the one initial cause of these fires.

Wildfires happen. All the time. There are countless different things which might start them. And most of the time, they aren't an issue. They burn themselves out before become a big deal - or firefighting gets dispatched and they get the blaze contained in short order. This is how things normally work - and there are a lot of resources put into monitoring for new fires as well as respond to them as quickly and effectively as possible. This is how it has always gone - tall towers out in the sticks with a person regularly scanning the forest for wisps of smoke - calling incidents in and having aircraft at the ready to be dispatched. The methodology we have used for generations.

But these fires are around LA. The population of Greater Los Angeles is over 18 million people - these fires were going to be spotted very early, and there are massive resources sitting right there, ready to deploy in no time flat. This is why we normally don't get fires threatening large metropolitan areas - the concentration of people automatically makes the area exceptionally well suited to preventing wildfire outbreaks. It takes a very rapidly growing fire - one with access to a lot of high quality fuel - to actually get out of control. And that only happened because of the climate change inflicted drought.

Typically, fires that do major damage to cities are fires that start in the city - because many buildings are exactly the sorts of high fuel density structures that result in out of control fires. Building codes and urban planning have done a lot to reduce this problem - but there are still bad decisions that can result in very bad outcomes.  The 2023 Tantallon Fire in suburban Halifax for example - subdivisions built right into the forest had to be evacuated. Not just because they were built into the wildlands, but also because they were built with "dry hydrants" - essentially a pipe that leads out to a lake. In hindsight, these were recognized as inadequate. Also too, these were subdivisions with houses scattered across half a dozen blocks or more - maybe a hundred houses or so - all with a single 2 lane road as a gateway to the main arterial. Suboptimal for getting firefighting crews in and evacuating residents out.

The other threat to urban areas is when remote wildfires grow out of control and then continue growing until they start to encroach on cities. In 2016, the Fort McMurray fires started 15 km away from the city. This one also was enabled by climate change and the drought induced build up and drying out of fuel. Fire crews responded and were spraying within an hour. Under normal circumstances, this would have been another contained wildfire, but that's not how it went.

The Pacific Palisades fire started about 5 km away and fire trucks were on the scene 45 minutes after getting the call. This is problematic - they should have responded faster, but apparently they were already dispatched to numerous other fires happening at the time. Because, as I noted initially, wildfires happen all the time. And as we have seen - the conditions were extremely conducive for wildfires. Perhaps LAFD needed more resources - that certainly seems believable. Still, 45 minutes is not a long time for a forest fire under normal conditions. It should have been contained - and only wasn't because the entire area was a tinderbox full of fuel that had been dried out after literally nine months without rain.

So climate change is 100% the cause of the damage. You cannot prevent all wildfires from happening - they always happen and have always happened. But we've developed methods for containing the threat and respond to the danger - only problem is that those methods were developed in a pre-climate change environment, and they are now woefully inadequate in our more extreme weather world. That's what happened here - and it is going to happen more and more frequently. 

Fun fact - preventing wildfires has been recognized as one of the causes of extreme wildfire damage. When you stop all wildfires as soon as you can, the amount of fuel builds up. More trees die or drop branches, which sit on the ground, drying out over time. If these don't burn normally, then they just contribute to the danger when the next wildfire eventually does come close. 

How it's Going in Gaza

Been a while since we looked in on this. It's just so goddamned depressing - reviewing the circumstances at any point in the past half year or so means grappling with the fact that the Gaza Strip has been destroyed. Most of the buildings have been demolished or are severely damaged that they will need to be demolished. All of the normal infrastructure that's associated with human habitation, also destroyed. Water, sewer, electrical, libraries, schools, markets, and of course the entire healthcare system - pretty much wiped out.

So, what was achieved? What can Biden and Netanyahu say they managed to accomplish over these fifteen months of genocidal rage?

Nothing. And that's being as generous to them as possible about it. Even if you don't count a literal genocide as negative (because you are a racist fuckhead like Joe Biden or his foreign policy brain trust) - this whole tragedy has only incurred massive costs on the US and Israel. Israeli society was allowed to sink into the darkest depths of genocidal fever - which is going to result in a very serious reckoning when the time comes. But even aside from these future implications, they've paid a significant cost now.

The international standing of these countries is in tatters. And their strenuous efforts at postponing and delaying accountability means that this continuous harm to their reputations will persist. The ICC and ICJ cases will continue to have developments keeping the genocide as an active issue - all while we start getting information out from Gaza about how hellish the situation really is. The Hind Rajab Foundation's pursuit of IDF soldiers with complaints and requests for arrests being made anywhere exposed IDF soldiers travel is eventually going to have a hit and lead to an arrest. As much as everyone just wants to move on and not think about the genocide, we will be confronted by it repeatedly in the coming years.

Here's something I did not see as being part of the cost to Israel and their lobby in the US. That control over US foreign policy has been shaken. The genocide is so bad that large swaths of the American public and many people in the system itself - are now doing the previously unthinkable - questioning US support of Israel. This has been a forbidden topic for so long - it was always taken for granted that the US would back Israel no matter what. Well, the absolute shitshow this has resulted in has changed the game. Also too - and it's wild that someone as evil and shitty as he is - Donald Trump's return to power has changed the game. While most politicians, and basically anyone prior to Trump that could make it as a viable candidate for president, must have had extreme loyalty to Israel - Trump doesn't. Trump's only loyalty is to Trump. The fact that he's even worse than your usual politician is the gamechanger.  For him, there are no sacred cows - anything can be sacrificed to the higher purpose of appeasing whatever shiny thing has his attention at that moment in time. And that includes the US' ironclad support of Israel.

Nearly a thousand IDF soldiers have died. Many times more than that have been injured. And many times more than that have been traumatized. Israel had been scraping the bottom of their conscription reserves for some time - forcing people who had retired out of service to pick up guns and cutting off time for reservists to lower than had previously been legally allowed. Worse - Iran now knows how to defeat the missile defense system. Even the Houthis were able to successfully hit Israel through the Iron Dome and with a US carrier group assisting the interception efforts. This easily offsets whatever deterrence impact they managed to get from the assassinations of Hamas and Hezbollah leadership. Hell, Sinwar died in a manner that made him a frigging hero. Holding off an IDF squad single handedly. Literally single handed - he lost one in the fighting, and still managed to push a squad back, forcing them to fall back on a quadcopter to kill him. And he went down fighting to the very end. On the front line.

The traumatization of IDF soldiers is going to get worse. As I mentioned before, there will be a reckoning as Israeli society starts to come to grips with what they have done. Now to be clear - there are definitely parts of Israeli society that won't give a shit - but it's absolutely not everybody. Some of them will see how they got played by Netanyahu and the far right. The harm to Gaza was especially bad because so many children were killed and maimed - and not every Israeli will continue to be able to justify this by ralling back on being racist shits and discounting those children just because they are Arabs. Some Israelis are going to realize what's happened - what they did. And some of those people are drone operators and snipers.

Their stated goals were to destroy Hamas and rescue the hostages. Hamas is not destroyed. The US believes that Hamas has essentially replenished their ranks by recruiting as many fighters as had been killed. Also too - it's not like that boost in recruiting ability is temporary, so undoubtedly - the military arm of Hamas is in better position now than they were on October 7. As for rescuing hostages? They did manage to rescue some hostages by force. Something like 8 hostages have been rescued alive by the IDF. This is fewer than the IDF has killed with their bombings.

Biden's position on any post-war Gaza was that Hamas could not have any role in it - in any way, shape, or form. But this was always stupid - who the hell is the ceasefire deal with then? If Hamas doesn't exist, there can be no ceasefire deal since there's no one to deal with. And sure enough, Hamas is not only still around, but remains the de-facto government of Gaza. The PA has stated that they are ready to take over in Gaza, but this will be pure theatre. It will be the same people who are doing the job now that will be doing the job after. And also too, even if Hamas steps away from their governance role, there is nothing in the ceasefire agreement about Hamas disarming or dismantling itself. And why should there be? As noted - Hamas is in a stronger position now than they were over a year ago.