Image is of Iranian missiles flying over the Knesset, the Israeli parliament building in Jerusalem.
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Israel-Palestine Conflict
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against Israel. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
UNRWA daily-ish reports on Israel's destruction and siege of Gaza and the West Bank.
English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news (and has automated posting when the person running it goes to sleep).
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
English-language PalestineResist telegram channel.
More telegram channels here for those interested.
Various sources that are covering the Ukraine conflict are also covering the one in Palestine, like Rybar.
Russia-Ukraine Conflict
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Sources:
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
It's extremely frustrating to be talking with some libs who agree that Israel is doing genocide/war crimes and that America is actively participating, only for them to turn around and claim that Israel "owns US politicians" and that things would just change if AIPAC et. al. disappeared. A bunch of these motherfuckers don't want to admit a bunch of Americans are true believers in zionism.
hot take: I think the view people on here have - that American politicians are just zionists in a vacuum and AIPAC/other lobbies have nothing to do with it is really reductive. the situation would be infinitely better if AIPAC/similar lobbies didn't exist. sure, some Americans are ideological zionists (probably nowhere close to a majority) but there's a reason 100% of politicians are zionists.
Obviously, American politics would be better in at least some ways if the Israel lobby didn't exist. However, zionism doesn't have support in the US just because AIPAC/J Street/DMFI dump a bunch of money into races. If all it took to create that was money, Americans would be singing the praises of the Gulf monarchies and Azerbaijan.
AIPAC isn't just going out and forcing politicans to be pro-zionist. They are going out and finding politicans who are already that way and giving them money. Amplifying something that already exists is different from creating it from nothing. The argument that America is "under the control of the Israel lobby" hinges on the idea that supporting Israel "isn't in America's best interests". But what is in America's best interests is mostly subjective. For millions of Americans, and a lot of US politicians and bureaucrats, support of Israel provides a lot of important benefits to the US, beyond any purely ideological commitment to zionism, that have outweighed the costs of supporting it.
in a way, they do though. they have insane influence over elections to the point where they can dump millions of dollars into random races to make sure their candidate wins. anyone running for office knows they can't criticize Israel or they'll get annihilated by the lobby, so it's just easier to say "Israel has a right to defend itself" a bunch of times. it's documented that there are politicians who never really say anything about israel during their campaign trail, then when they win, they get flown to israel, handed a list of talking points, etc.
If AIPAC was what is primarily responsible for pro-Israel positions among US politicians, then Israel would have been more broadly unpopular among the US public, who do not receive AIPAC campaign donations. Sure, there are definitely politicians who will say whatever they think they need to say, but I would also remind you that most politicians, especially at the federal level, are groomed/picked ahead of time by the parties. There are layers and layers of networks (city/county/state parties, NGOs, media groups, etc) within the two parties that function to filter out the "wrong people" from political power, and all of that happens before AIPAC ever even writes them a check. There are lots of little college-aged political freaks who dream of holding office, don't get a drop of AIPAC money, and are not only happy to but feel morally compelled to support Israel. Zionism is embedded in American culture, it's not imported by AIPAC. One of the little Young Republican freaks at your college shouting how Israel should nuke Gaza today is tomorrow's congressman from Ft. Lauderdale.
the public's support for israel doesn't exist in a vacuum. this is what AIPAC is for - when 100% of politicians are zionists, when 100% of the media are zionists, of course there's a segment of the public that are zionists too. at the same time, like I said, I doubt even a majority of the public are zionists whereas 100% of politicians are. what else would explain this? they offered a guy in Michigan $20 million to run against Rashida Tlaib for her mild criticism of israel. and this is just what we know about. what percentage of elections are straight up just bought by AIPAC? how many times did someone critical of zionism lose only because of the lobby funding their opponent?
I really don't understand this reticence to admit that these lobbies play a major, outsize role in our politics. there's a reason they exist and do what they do, \ otherwise what's the point? if all americans are just organically zionists, why do any of these organizations exist?
I haven't anywhere said that AIPAC doesn't play a big role in politics. My original comment was criticizing liberals who think that AIPAC is the root cause of support for zionism in America, and that support would sublimate if it disappeared. I am arguing that American support for zionism is the base and AIPAC is the superstructure. You seem to be arguing the opposite, but my apologies if I am misinterpreting. In my mind, the argument that AIPAC is what drives support for zionism in America is like arguing that Ansar Allah or Hezbollah are just Iranian puppets, instead of organic movements/parties within their society that Iran supports.
As an American who has lived in both the bluest of blue and reddest of red states, that is not my experience.
The majority of Americans are apolitical/politically illiterate and even more are unconcerned with geo-politics.
Its like looking for a vegan butcher. Just because vegans exist as a percentage of the population you can't expect them to be represented in that percentage of all occupations.
AIPAC is just a special interest under the Military Industrial Complex Lobby. They are more vocal than most and they get more media time but their influence is overstated in comparison to the arms manufactures.
Israel is a bipartisan American imperialist project supporting it is like supporting the troops. Support for American imperialism is a requirement for being elected in America. There are a few exceptions and they are usually only in word and not in deed.
AIPAC is basically just the US' funding for Israel finding its way back to help sustain more funding. It's an effect and cause of the cycle but is the lesser partner to imperial interests. If capital were threatened by the existence of the Zionist entity the cycle would change overnight.
Kind of like a mass line
Yeah it also completely misses the actual class interests that DO own US politicians. Even when starving and bombing Gaza is unpopular it doesn't change because the ruling class has decided maintaining this base is necessary regardless of the human toll.
But admitting that would invalidate the
ideology.
I really disagree that support for Israel is just a straightforward extension of imperialist interests. It really is its own project that exerts outsized political influence even to the detriment of the imperialist project as a whole. The ambivalent attitude towards Israel by early post-war US governments demonstrates this. Truman and Eisenhower treated Israel on the basis of objective interests of the empire. US politicians in more recent times will sacrifice imperial interests to support Israel, and that is definitely due to their political influence and blackmail operations.
I don't think they believe they're actually sacrificing imperial interests, it's more likely to be a miscalculation or delusion. Perhaps one helped along by AIPAC influence, but American politicians are easily convinced that the US can't really be stopped if it tries something, and that it's important to have a cooperative base of operations in the region. That's being strained to some degree by Israel's failure to cooperate right now, but so far it hasn't actually hurt oil prices or spiraled out of control. Our foreign policy establishment seems convinced that we can just shake the entire region enough times for everyone to agree to like Israel eventually no matter what we do.
I think a realistic analysis of the situation suggests that in the long run pissing off everyone in order to do our pet projects is a huge mistake. But American foreign policy has also more or less always operated this way since the Cold War ended, none of the current generation of politicians have a realistic view of the US' limitations. They're all still living in the end of history. Every failure so far has been rationalized as 'we just didn't try as hard as we could have' or whatever. The idea that we could actually seriously fuck up isn't conceivable to these people.
It's a combination of geopolitical and ideological reasons, which is why the US will never let go of the Zionist entity. They will not abandon Israel like they did with Apartheid South Africa. The US will sink with Israel.
"The Jews control the us govt" is a hell of. A take. Plus Israel serves us interests so it's a mutual materialist thing as well as ideological.
Well... there's the "true believers" then there's those who just don't want to be called "antisemitic" because they "don't support Israel".
Pretty sure AIPAC and some other Israel lobbying groups spend a whole lot of time pushing that narrative.
Christian Zionism predates English colonization of the US.
Wouldn't that fall into the category of "true believers"?