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I have no idea how you can analyze this conflict and not see immense Israeli competence. The pager attack, the elimination of all Hezbollah's top leaders, the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, these are all impressive results.
IMO, Israel has by far the most competent military and secret service of any country. The United States? We can't even successfully fight the Houthis in the Red Sea. China? They haven't fought a war in decades and were last seen brawling against India with melee weapons. Russia? Don't make me laugh. Europe? Competent fighters but hamstrung by effete leadership.
This is just... bizarre. This isn't a math test, this is war.
I mean just yesterday former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed that the head of Iranian counterintelligence was found in 2021 to be a Mossad double agent (alongside about 20 others in the unit). The head of counterintelligence! Pardon my swearing, but the one guy whose job it was to find spies was a fucking spy himself! Assuming it's true, and I don't see why it wouldn't be as it's massively shameful for Iranians to admit it, it's an absurd level of superiority and dominance Israel is showing. Israeli intelligence is so ahead of them that Iranians were unable to meaningfully vet that ONE guy at the top of the pyramid.
US had something similar happen two decades ago: Ana Montes, the senior analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) responsible for Cuba (nicknamed "Queen of Cuba") turned out to spy for Cuba throughout her entire career at the DIA.
This situation isn't as ironic as it sounds. Cuba recruited Montes back when she was a college student, and persuaded her to go into the career that would be of most benefit. I am sure there were others, but this one happened to be the one that succeeded.
I'd bet the success rate is higher than you think, because the Cubans can feed her accurate or seemingly accurate Scoops about Cuba.
An intelligence analyst isn't that different from a beat reporter. They're examining a pile of information from different sources and trying to write a report guessing at the truth.
So much like a Yankees blogger secretly handpicked by Brian Cashman could quickly rise to the top by "correctly" predicting roster moves, a Cuban intelligence analyst working for Cuba can repeatedly guess meaningless facts correctly, showing brilliance in intuitions from limited data because she already knows the answers.
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Didn't the same thing happen with the head of British counterintelligence being a Soviet double agent? And look how that turned out.
Yes, and Soviet human intelligence was the best there was. The west kept up by dominating in turn on signal intelligence.
Israel is dominating its opponents on both.
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An aside, and I don't mean to pick on you, but I'd like to kill the trend of relying on a a single historical anecdote when making an argument.
The two biggest fallacies I see are this:
Chamberlain appeased Hitler in 1938 therefore all appeasement is bad.
Prohibition in the United States led to more crime therefore all drugs must be legalized
There are huge differences between Israel today and the Soviet Union then. Yes, the Soviet Union's secret service was elite, just like Israel's. So why did the West win despite an inferior secret service? It's simple, Russians willingly defected to the West and then just gave us all their secrets.
To make the parallel work, we'd have to see Israelis defecting to Iran or other Muslim countries. Since this isn't happening, I just don't think the analogy works.
My point is just that I don't think intelligence and counterintelligence are all they're cracked up to be. The Soviets won the intelligence war, but their little victory was swept away by the uncaring maelstrom of socioeconomic forces, along with their country and their ideology. They should have spent less on guns and more on butter.
Israel is far and away the wealthiest country in the region that earned it(Dubai did not). It's unclear what socioeconomic forces are going to get them got.
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Yeah, I heard that too. The Mossad is scary good. I'll bet that they have something to do with the recent helicopter crashes as well. If not, Iran could be forgiven for thinking so. I doubt Khameini will be hopping into any choppers for the next while.
Further speculation: Iran's nuclear program is riddled with Israeli spies and key elements of its supply chain are tainted. I wouldn't be surprised if there is an "accidental" nuclear explosion in Iran some time in the next 10 years, assuming they can even get that far.
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They fought a small town that doesn't have any weapons and still haven't really been able to win in a year. The only thing they manage to do is get weapons as welfare checks and blast large numbers of civilians.
And they have a population that is physically and academically weak.
While Israeli badassery is overstated, 'physically and mentally weak' is just not true. Israel's military is up to first world snuff and functions like it.
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Physically and academically weak? What on earth are you talking about?
Are you imagining like woody Allen in combat boots, kvetching about the quality of the food in the mess hall? Your mental image of the average Israeli is a bit off.
An IDF soldier can go toe to toe with just about any soldier in the world except the Americans and maybe the British on a good day. They’ve been actively waging war for large portions of the last fifty years and are an actual developed country with a martial tradition that is as hardcore as any of the advanced war fighting nations.
I’m having a hard time explaining this level of copium outside of a dose of anti-semitism that could kill a horse and which subsequently leaves the taker mentally retarded.
Where is the evidence that the Americans or the British are particularly effective soldiers? They haven't fought a war that didn't amount to clicking targets on a screen in a context of absolute air superiority for over half a century. In a 1v1 setting like paintball with real guns, I'd bet on the average Russian, Ukrainian or even North Korean (assuming they get to eat full meals for a month prior) soldier, and, yes, of course on an average Israeli one, over the average American.
Time on task.
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Frankly if a country gets sneak-attacked twice on the same religious holiday within living memory they have to give up the mantle of super high-IQ warrior nation. You would've thought that after Yom Kippur the Israelis would've learnt something but apparently not!
This is a nuclear level cope, I have a hard time taking this seriously. Sneak attacks work, that’s why people use them.
If Israel had even close to population parity in any of those wars some of the nations that had waged war against them in the past likely wouldn’t even exist today.
How hard is it to keep up military readiness even on a religious holiday? This does not happen to proper armies, they don't lower their guard in predictable annual patterns.
The Israelis have been fighting this war in frankly amateurish ways. They keep clustering up in ways that would get them massacred on a real battlefield in Ukraine - fortunately for them their opponents don't have much in the way of artillery or heavy equipment. Israeli urban combat performance has been pretty poor, they've failed to take and hold ground. They go on these glorified chevauchees into Gaza and Hamas just sweeps back in once they leave. There doesn't seem to be any real plan for victory, only (impressive) tactical ploys like the pager trick.
If the US weren't constantly bailing them out with weapons shipments, diplomatic and air cover they would be in a very unpleasant position.
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Are we talking about the Gaza Strip?
Yes, it is abolutely tiny and they haven't been able to properly take it in a year despite exceptional brutality.
Gaza is not a small town, it's a city. It has a higher population than Phoenix, AZ.
I don't think your point is entirely well-formed. This isn't a game of capture the flag, it isn't enough to just "take" Gaza. They're looking for insurgents who are hiding among the general population. It's naturally time-consuming. They could just bomb all 2.1 million civilians into smithereens in about a week, but if they did I doubt that would satisfy either you or the American government.
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They are barely fighting that war. Again, they have to take into account the opinion of American leftists who view military competency as evil and think hiding rocket launchers in hospitals and preschools are legitimate tactics.
They are commiting war crimes on a regular basis. They have fought with exceptional brutality.
They also have to deal with people who are sick of AIPAC influencing the US, Europeans who don't want Ben Gvir to move the population of Gaza to Europe and those who dislike Israel when they are ethnically cleansing christians.
Specify the war crimes. I am unaware of any Israeli strikes that were executed without reasonable suspicion of combatants or assets being in the area.
The population of Gaza should obviously stay in Gaza and be annexed by Egypt. This is the common sense solution. The Egyptians will then execute a repression of the population dozens of times harsher, but without people complaining about it in the US/Europe.
All of the middle east, minus Israel has already ethnically cleansed their Christians. I am unaware of credible accusations of such in Israeli territory.
I think the argument that Israel’s offer to the Maronites being rejected by the Maronites constitutes ethnic cleansing of Lebanon’s Christians.
I find your articulation of the situation a bit confusing. Are you saying Israel ethnically cleansed Christians in Lebanon?
No, I’m saying Israel never ethnically cleansed Christians.
No argument from me.
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War crimes, yes. Deliberately attacking humanitarian relief convoys, yes. Cruelly doing their utmost to starve the Gazans to death while still maintaining some level of deniability, also unfortunately yes. But given the relatively low fatality rate, can you really say that the actual fighting has been all that brutal?
I’m no fan of Israel’s behavior, but let’s be clear about what heinous actions they are and aren’t committing.
A bunch of inaccurate statements. No war crimes , no DELIBERATE attack of relief convoys , and nobody is starving. Absolute hamas propaganda by you.
Israelis were literally protesting for rapists in their military to be freed. There was a televised scene from the Israeli cabinet where somebody asked 'how is it appropriate that we are shoving metal rods up the anus of prisoners' and this other guy shouts 'they're Hamas, we can do anything we like to them'.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/israel-hamas-war-idf-palestinian-prisoner-alleged-rape-sde-teinman-abuse-protest/
Members of their cabinet are practically shouting 'I love war crimes' and enjoy a significant following amidst the public but a good chunk of the media is persisting with the whole 'most moral army' routine, it's laughable.
What is your point exactly? I am sure you would find people thinking and acting like that in literally every country. Or are you going to pretend that torture is an israeli specialty ? Pay a visit to an Egyptian prison and then we can talk.
My point is that 'no war crimes' is grossly estranged from reality, as is the 'most moral army' meme. The Egyptian army is not known for its moral rectitude but they don't go around crowing about how they're so noble and civilized for all the world to see.
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I would consider killing uninvolved civilians to be a war crime, and I believe that triple tapping a convoy is pretty deliberate. As for starvation, I defer to the humanitarian organizations and foreign governments that have been involved in relief efforts, who almost unanimously agree that Gaza is on the brink of famine.
Edit: Oh, and as to the last point, let’s not forget that at least one member of the Israeli government has gone on record that it is “just and moral” to starve the entire Gazan population until Israeli demands are met.
Well you are not very well informed then. Killing civilians is not a war crime. The war crime is killing them INTENTIONALLY. And before you ask , if intention was there it would be very easy to prove. There is zero proof israel is intentionally killing civilians. I challenge you to provide any.One very complicated event does not constitute evidence. Unless you want to pretend that mistakes never happen in war . The supposed famine in Gaza is absolute nonsense please don't even get me started. Tons of supplies are going in there and if any of it is not reaching the people then it's HAMAS's fault who we know is trying to steal it.
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Just because Gaza is on the brink of famine (allegedly) doesn't mean its due to Israel. More credible sources indicate that all or almost all humanitarian aid is appropriated by Hamas, thus doesn't reach the population. And a blockade of all aid is reasonable under that circumstance (even though food is being let through). That Gaza is too unproductive and poor to afford food for its rabbit-like population of breeders is also of no moment.
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As I was saying. An iranian bot
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