Once again, we have the inane posturing about how “we shouldn’t send US troops to fight in Israel”.
Folks, based on how successful the American troops have been in the past 70 years, nobody wants them showing up to help. In fact, I’m sure we could probably get people pay good amounts of money to have US troops abstain from helping.
If you disagree, I invite you to re-watch the footage of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. I hear Putin watches it a couple of times a week just to have a good laugh. And how could you blame him?
These endless fantasies about how massively sought after the US troops are around the world remind me of the BLM activists who similarly are convinced that everybody wants to touch their hair. They fret about it constantly and it’s embarrassing because nobody has any interest in their hair.
Clarissa's Blog 
Ime, people actually do love to touch curly and kinky hair, though not to the degree some people act like. Certainly more often than they want US troops to fight their wars though!
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It’s true, having very limp hair myself, I was riveted by the corkscrew curls of my Brazilian-extracted teacher as a kid. I really wanted to know if they’d bounce like little springs 🙂 But I kept my hands to myself and never asked. Because, you know, we weren’t friends at a sleepover practicing braids. But when I traveled in SE Asia, girls did touch my hair a lot. A bit unnerving, tbh, but more because they just have very different ideas about personal space there! Not a sign of racism, afaik. But the reluctance to do so without asking is very American. I reckon it means the people getting offended about it have very thoroughly absorbed American ideas about touching, privacy, and personal space… that aren’t the norm everywhere.
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I mean, we are American, nothing to be ashamed of. Personally, I actually don’t usually mind that much if I have some sort of social rapport with the person+they ask. One guy, without asking, really shoved his hand up in there because he was trying to figure out if it was a wig. That was not appreciated.
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They did it only out of ideology, I am sure:
// Gaza terrorists make purchases with credit cards stolen from Israelis
Families of kidnapped, murdered Israelis report purchases made from Gaza; credit card companies promise to block cards.
Yesterday I read in Hebrew about one kibuttz family: when terrorists couldn’t break into the safe room in their home, they started breaking and stealing things from their house.
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At last, news articles in English start appearing. Somebody asked whether people bear arms there:
// Untrained, lacking proper arms, local security teams defended their Gaza border homes
Farmers, doctors, teachers, all residents of border area communities engaged with hundreds of terrorists infiltrating their homes, repelling attacks sometimes for hours, until troops could arrive
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1yx3zhwt#autoplay
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Did you listen to Arestovych’s interview to Israeli radio? He said, among other things, that Israel needs to do a better job explaining its position to the international community.
He says the same about Ukraine but in much harsher terms, and I agree with both points. Ukraine has failed massively and we are now paying the price. Painful, unforgivable mistakes were made.
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\ Did you listen to Arestovych’s interview to Israeli radio?
Yes. I heard this.
Now we’re only starting zoom education again, so I have much more time at home. I know you’re against zoom, but for high school students it’s a blessing in the current situation. One cannot tell them to come to school and, heaven forbid, kill hundreds of students with one missile.
I also listened to the conversation of Dr Mohammad Farajallah with Романенко and Фельдман. Expected Farajallah to be a bit more fair since in his view Israel is 100% to blame for not retreating to 1967 borders right now, while Palestinians were 100% for peace at signing of the Oslo Accords.
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Of course, during war you have to do what you have to do. I wouldn’t blame anybody for going to Zoom when bombs are flying. I pray that you and your family are safe. I also pray Arestovych is wrong and we are not at the start of a 30-year global war.
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Loved the latest from Arestovich:
“- Where history ends, zoology begins.
Dedicated to Fukuyama.”
In other news, re the siege of Gaza
// In a social media post, Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said no “electrical switch will be turned on, no water hydrant will be opened and no fuel truck will enter” until the “abductees” are free. //
On a famous Russian lj I follow Israel is already presented as genociding Palestinians. Was so since the start of the bombing, while cutting off electricity and water contributed to it.
“(Reuters) – Egypt has discussed plans with the United States and others to provide humanitarian aid through its border with Gaza Strip but rejects any move to set up safe corridors for refugees fleeing the enclave, Egyptian security sources said on Wednesday.”
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I don’t know how you manage to read these lies on Russian blogs. I avoid all sources that do anti-Ukrainian propaganda because I get too angry. As it is, I struggle all the time with trying not to wish death on Russian civilians.
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\ I don’t know how you manage to read these lies on Russian blogs.
The funny thing is that Алексей Рощин is a psychologist and the author of “Страна утраченной эмпатии. Как советское прошлое влияет на российское настоящее.” I read the book and it is good.
He is openly against “СВО” and defines the current ruling Russian ideology as “НДС” = “надо быть скотом.”
He is truly a worthy normal person in general in the top 1% of Russians imo.
However, when it comes to Israel, he started into conspiracy theories of Israel letting it happen on purpose, then continued into talking how Israel is teaching Ukrainians and Russians (!) it’s OK to bomb многоэтажки \ high-rise buildings, how Israel is moving the Overton window and it may turn Russian-Ukrainian war into the new WW2 from war crimes pov…
You can try reading his book here, I do recommend to check it out:
http://loveread.ec/view_global.php?id=99878
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I heard these conspiracy theories, and I’m stunned that anybody could be so ignorant of the Holocaust trauma to assume that a group of Israelis could collude in murdering Jewish children to make a point. Or for any purpose. You have to really know nothing and understand nothing about Israeli culture to come up with something like this. Of all conspiracy theories, this must be the most moronic one aimed at absolute morons.
As for the man you reference, he is an example that we can modify the famous statement that every Russian liberal loses his liberalism when confronted with the issue of Ukraine. In the rare cases that he doesn’t lose his mind about Ukraine, he’ll lose it about Israel.
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Regarding water:
“EU funded water pipelines despite Hamas boast it could turn them into rockets
European Union is continuing aid to Palestinians amid growing fears over how it is being used”
https://twitter.com/Natsecjeff/status/1397186381756125184
From an Israeli blogger in Russian:
“News 2015:
Israel doubles water supply to the Gaza Strip. Hamas regularly uses construction materials supplied to rebuild houses to build terrorist tunnels.
News 2019:
Israel is building a fourth water pipeline to Gaza. There are currently three pipelines carrying fresh water from Israel to Gaza in three sections along the border. Under agreements with the Palestinians, Israel has committed to transfer 10 million cubic meters of water to Gaza annually, but in practice it is slightly more, about 11.5 million cubic meters.
News 2023:
Hamas posts videos of water pipes being dug out of the ground to make rockets.”
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Has this site started sending into moderation posts with even one link? Linked to one book and now the comment isn’t here.
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You forgot to put your name in the name section, so the comment was held.
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Please don’t stop coming back here and giving updates or I’ll freak out that something happened to you. How are you doing emotionally? Are you coping?
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Thank you very very much for caring.
I less sensitive than many people in this case, so am fine. From my pov, nothing qualitatively new happened yet. Hamas always wanted to genocide us; that Saturday that had the possibility to do what always declared as their goal. If we start ground invasion of Gaza (looks like it) and truly destroy Hamas (am unsure we’ll do that), a new page will be opened in this conflict. Otherwise, it’ll be ‘ all sound and fury, signifying nothing’ in the long term. Moreover, if we don’t change our long term plans, it’ll be ‘sound and fury’ too, with or without Hamas. Had been living in Israel more than 25 years and lost hope of seeing good changes within my lifetime.
Besides, it’s easy for me since I don’t have drafted relatives. A coworker burried a relative today; he was an IDF soldier. Other coworkers have numerous drafted relatives and naturally worry a lot.
My relatives, who left Russia around a year ago, do worry much more than us since they hadn’t been accustomed yet to Israeli realities.
For now we have 1300 killed, among them 222 soldiers. Around 3000 injured.
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Looks like a very good article about the functioning of Gazan economy, explaining why Hamas has zero incentive to change. Reading about the role of UNRWA makes me wonder whether we wouldn’t have been better without this foreign aid, instead forcing us Israelis and Palestinians to deal with our mutual problems.
Сектор Газа: страна, смысл существования которой – борьба с Израилем
https://www.moscowtimes.ru/2023/10/12/chto-takoe-sektor-gaza-bez-hamas-a109781
QUOTES
“Another system-forming factor was the activities of UNRWA, the UN Agency for Relief of Palestine Refugees. It is financed mainly by Western countries, and it recruits its many employees (thousands of teachers, doctors and other employees) locally. UNRWA is responsible for the obvious successes in education and medicine in Gaza.
But along the way, it freed Hamas from numerous non-military worries, essentially becoming its civilian division. There is no control over it from Western sponsors. Education in schools is subordinated to Hamas ideology and is carried out in an atmosphere of frenzied ideological pumping.”
AND
“any economic activity in the Gaza Strip that is not tied to aggression, in the eyes of the regime, looks like something optional.
More than half of the workforce is unemployed, receiving meager benefits from the UN and other sponsors, but sufficient for subsistence. And those who are employed somewhere (there are 250–300 thousand of them) either serve in units of Hamas and other militant organizations (there are about 50 thousand in total), or work in military construction and the handicraft military industry, or provide support for the Hamas machine the services she needs.
There are simply fewer of those outside this system. Some of them are fleeing Gaza (about 10 thousand a year), some are trying to get out to Israel, some are floundering in the remnants of the local economy. It is important that the regime can easily do without all of them.”
Three preliminary conclusions
The Hamas regime has neither ideological nor material motives for any peaceful rebirth. It is quite harmonious, based on seventy years of local tradition and can either be destroyed or preserved as is. It is impossible to re-educate it by combining pressure and concessions.
The Gaza Strip as a whole and its residents individually have no experience of living peacefully on their own. The skills that most of them have are aimed at the administration of ideological and martial practices, and not at work of the usual type. Leaving them to their own devices and hoping that they will somehow cope is unrealistic.
The only non-crisis alternative to the Hamas regime is therefore external governance, combined with external financing, and introduced for a sufficiently long period. But today there is no one in sight who would be ready and capable of doing this.
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