Bulletins and News Discussion from September 23rd to September 29th, 2024 - The War In The North

It’s a bit cliché but it really does come down to a materialist analysis of the world around us; and trying to divorce yourself as much as possible from what you “want” to be true when it doesn’t appear to match the facts.

IRL, my friends think I’m some sort of wizard because I’ve turned out to be very correct about things like the Russia/Ukraine war and the Chinese weather balloon from day 1. It’s not just that they swallow propaganda whole, though that’s a big part of it. It’s also that they WANT Ukraine to win. They WANT to think the see-see-pee wants to know that I just built a patio in my backyard. And they generally think Israel is “good”. At the start of the SMO I wasn’t particularly pro-Russia but when you looked at any source that wasn’t part of the western mainstream media, it was pretty clear what was actually happening. And sure, there were plenty of sources spouting Russian propaganda. But you can pretty quickly filter out who’a giving you good info and who’s giving you propaganda by comparing what they’ve said in the past with how the situation plays out.

But with Gaza, getting any sort of good “facts” is incredibly difficult. Not to mention I and most here feel much more emotionally invested in a certain outcome. It’s not about being a “doomer”, but it’s important to be recognize how seeing things how you want them to be colors your own analysis. I also accept that I probably will not be able to “know” all that much about Gaza due to the situation on the ground. It’s urban guerilla warfare. For now we see through a glass, darkly.

I just try and piece together information to come up with a theory of what’s really happening. What appears to be correct are two things: 1.) The IOF is killing innocent civilians every day with no regard to whether they are combatants or not. There is now hardly even a pretense that “Hamas was in that building” anymore. And 2.) the Resistance does not appear to have their fighting capabilities degraded at all since Oct 7. They are scoring kills and disabling/destroying equipment at a steady pace (for this I usually watch Jon Elmer’s segment on The Electronic Intifada’s livestream). Am I biased to think the Resistance is doing well on the ground? Sure, but I also think all the facts point to they are not losing at the very least.

So I combine the two facts into a theory: Israel is going to keep murdering civilians until the Resistance gives up, because they are a bloodthirsty fascist regime that does not value Palestinian lives even a bit. And the Resistance, while I’m sure they know how much people are suffering, also know that surrender means even greater suffering: likely the eradication of the population of Gaza one way or another, if not immediately then in the future. So they will fight as long as they can and as long as they feel they are meeting their military objectives. Most liberals in the west can’t even accept this because they don’t think Israel would be that evil. That’s why they don’t flinch when Israel or the US kills dozens or hundreds of people to score a kill on a “terrorist”: they cannot conceive of the US or Israel being the “bad guys”. And they also don’t understand guerilla warfare or that victory in anti-colonial resistance doesn’t look like victory on an 18th century battlefield, where two armies line up and one clearly “wins” while the other “loses” in short order.

How do you all find and digest information about Gaza, Lebanon, and the wider movement to oppose "Israeli" settlers and their American backers? Of course I personally ally absorb a mix of mainstream and primary sources, comparing e.g. Reuters to direct Hezbollah and PFLP statements. But how do you personally synthesize this information? Do you do it alone or as a group in your org?

It's not that dissimilar to here if I'm honest about it. People consuming a stream of information, learning to filter out the noise, discussing, and then gradually coalescing around certain thoughts. This tends to happen openly in the org spaces that cater to it and then also have an official group within the org that functions in a steering way. This might be a media section or a theory section, usually as a form of committee with people that have a degree of experience. One of the main things I've seen org members focusing on is trying to hone the ability to recognise what is bullshit and what isn't. This has varying degrees of success tbh. I can't speak for how exactly these groups synthesise the information and make decisions on steering because I've not actually been on one .

For the second question. Mostly unanswerable, but it's not illegal for money to go to Palestinians as long as people doing the donating are unaware of it going to a proscribed organisation like PFLP. The nuts and bolts of how you reach and convince an audience to donate money to [insert thing or person here] is not something I can elaborate on but anyone with a creative mind, friends in Palestine, and the willingness to bend the truth can probably come up with some ideas.