October 11, 2024 • 26 mins
Mia and Gare discuss a new Israeli push into northern Gaza and their expanding war on Lebanon.
Sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9vp7dg3ml1o
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's it could happen here. It's the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
I didn't write an intro for this because everything, everything
incredibly sucks. This is the podcast where bad things happen.
I'm your host with me as Garrison.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, it's been a lot of bad things the past week,
past year, but the past week and a half it's
been pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
And one of the things that's been very bad is
literally everything Israel has been up to, like I mean,
since it was founded, but the last three four weeks
somehow things have gotten worse, which is a sort of
unbelievable thing to say about a genocide, but it's expanding.
So yeah, there is at the end of this one
(00:48):
of the most bizarre trunk quotes I've ever seen. So
that's my promise to you to stick with this. But
oh boy, everything is very very bad. So we now
have I guess I don't even know if French is
the right way to talk about this, but what we
have in Gaza, which is where the main Israeli offensive
(01:08):
is going right now, well we'll get into that. There's
a bunch of stuff in Lebanon too, where they're pulling
troops to but in Gaza, everything just continues to get worse,
even though so these Raelis have pulled out some troops
from Gaza, but they're also still making another offensive into
northern Gaza. And the thing about the way that the
(01:29):
Israelis make offensive into places is that the thing that
the Israelis do is they just immediately start shooting at hospitals.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So that's been a big part of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Something that used to be like controversial and like widely news,
where the a year ago at taxon hospitals now have
become so normalized, to be sensitized that it doesn't even
make headlines, which that's been one of the most indicative
factors that this has gone about as bad as it
could have. I remember a year ago, we were like
(02:01):
debating whether or not the Israeli military intentionally like struck
a hospital, and this was like this was like a
week's long debate trying to figure out what exactly happened.
And now attacks on hospitals are just complete commonplace. It's
like we've just totally lost.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, like it's not even
just that that the Israelis are deliberately targeting hospitals, it's
that the temporary facilities people have been trying to set
up because the hospitals are being blown up are also being.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Attacked, Yeah, which has also been going on for ages, yeah,
almost a year now, like almost immediately as soon as
like humanitarian aid and like and like like impromptu medical
tents were set up, those were also the targets. And
this is also just continued.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And I think the thing that's you know, it's bleak
about it, right is like, I mean, I mean, it's
not the thing. The thing that's bleak about it is
that they're blowing up hospitals. But I mean, we've reached
a point into this where it's not even user but
be the Israelis don't even like attempt to justify it anymore.
I mean, if you if you remember a year ago
when they were doing this, it'd be all of the
(03:07):
stuff about how, oh we found homas tunnels under the hospitals,
and there's just not.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
E vent anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
They're just they're just shooting at hospitals. Sometimes they give
evacuation orders. They've been That's the other thing that's been
happening periodically is the Israelis keep basically you know, in
places in northern Gaza. They'll be like, everyone has to
leave now, and then they'll bombit it and they'll keep
bombing it. Part of the thing about covering Gaza right
is all of the stuff that we're saying is stuff
(03:34):
that was a major news story like six months ago
and is no longer a major news story because the
slaughter has become just sort of so rutinized. But you know,
so people are fleeing from northern Gaza into what's supposed
to be the safe zone in central Gaza, except the
Israelis keep shooting at their refugee camps in central Gaza,
(03:56):
so it's not actually there's there's not actually a place
you can be in Gaza where you're not getting bombed.
What there is is some places sometimes are less bond
than other places. And you know, I think there had
(04:18):
been a tiny amount of hope that the only conceivable
upside about the invasion lebanonmal that the would be a
pull out of troops and we'd see less offensive, But
you know, they've just been escalating bombing campaigns and are
doing some offensive anyways. So yeah, there's there's there's continuingly
sort of is really attacks into into Partian North and Gaza.
(04:39):
The other big thing, and this is what most of
this episode is going to be about, is a new
front after already having like having this entire thing in Gaza.
There was also like an invasion of the West Bank,
which again is like, I don't know how to express
how insane it is to have a war where you're
nominally fighting against Hamas and then invade the West Bank,
(05:01):
a place where there isn't Hamas. But they've done that too.
There's been parts of the West Bank, there's been a
bunch of really troops and you know, we know they've
been fighting in Yemen as much bombings in Yemen, but
also now they've just straight up invaded Lebanon. And this
is the sort of chain of events of this was
I don't know if kicked off is the right word,
(05:22):
but it was. It was dramatically accelerated by the assassination
of Fassan Nosraala, who is I think most.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
People are aware that he's the head of Hesbalon.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Has been the head of his blow since like nineteen
ninety two, which is longer than anyone who's on this
episode right now has been alive.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Was this the one who was killed in those like
apartment like carpet carpet bombings. Yeah yeah, so I mean yeah,
even still, assassination is a strong word for or I
guess a light word for just bombing. Like it was
like what three large apartment complexes.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, they just obliterated a bunch of complexes with like
something like eighty bunker busters.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So this is actually the second time that the Israelis
have just straight up killed someone they were supposed to
nominally be negotiating with. They killed the head of Hamas
like in Iran. So you know, we talked about on
this show the initial wave of attacks on Lebanon, which
is the sort of the Pager explosions, and the fallow
up to the Pager explosions was that they figured out
(06:25):
what bunker that ISRAELA was in and they just killed him.
This is extremely bad for a lot of reasons, one
of which is that has blawed kind of hadn't really
been on full war footing until this point. Like they've
been doing a bunch of rocket attacks on northern Israel,
right and there've been these sort of exchanges of rocket
(06:46):
fire across the border, but they hadn't really escalated beyond that.
And then the Israelis were like, well, just fuck it, okay,
we want our invasion of Lebanon, and Raala was kind
of like, I don't know if like auderating force is
quite the right term here, but his policy wasn't that
Hesbolah was going to fight a total war against Israel,
(07:07):
and the Israeli just fucking murdered him anyways, So we
should probably talk about who Nocerala is. He's not from
like the original Hesbela cadres from from the original lebaneseivil
war when it emerges is an eighty two. He's not
from that cadre, but he's a pretty old school Hesbola
guy by this point. He's you know, I've talking about
like he's been in charge of Hesbelag for fucking ever.
(07:29):
Like I am not old enough to remember a time
when he was not in charge of Hesblah because I
wasn't born yet, I don't know. He's he's one of
the people who's seen Hesbelah's sort of expansion and also
seen Hesbelod be able to be like the only of
the sort of major Lebanese political parties who are in
(07:50):
the negotiations to end the civil war. He kind of
oversaw the process of Hesblah being like the only armed
party like left in in Lebanon other than like the
regular army.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
He was also very famously in charge of Hesbela's I
don't know how exactly you wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
There's a whole bunch of stuff about how the war
in two thousand and six started. But in two thousand
and six Israel made this attempt to sort of like
do their big antie Hesbelah push. They invaded Lebanon, and
Israel didn't do very well. They were expecting and I
think what most people were expecting has Bla to fight like,
you know, like a gorilla army right doing hit a
(08:29):
run attacks, doing doing the sort of like the whole
sort of last century of gorilla hit and run campaigns.
And they didn't do that. They basically they sat there.
It fought like a conventional army with a bunch of
bunker networks. And the Israelis did extremely poorly in that war.
And I think this is influenced a lot of the
way that people were thinking about how this how this
fight was going to work, and it hasn't. But you
(08:52):
know the fact that I was able to sort of
stave off the initial attack, and then the Israelis spent
like forty more days doing a bombing campaign and everyone
just called it quits. Was absolutely huge for Hesbelaws a
political force. Unfortunately for them, I guess they burned an
unbelievable amount of that political capital that they'd gotten from
(09:14):
being really the first people in a long time to
like actually be able to viably claim that they defeated Israel.
And I mean, it's obviously like both both sides of
that declared victory, but Hesbelood puts up a better fight
against the Israelis, and like it's like stops their ground
advance in a way that like was almost unimaginable at
that point. Even though Hesbola had sort of fought pretty
(09:36):
well during the Lebanies of the world, is better than
most of the other sort of like anti Israeli factions
that weren't a state, and even I mean even most
of the states that have fought issue have done extremely poorly.
We're going to go to ads and then when we
come back, we're going to talk a bit about how
has Blood's position weakened and how the Israelis have just
sort of decided that this is a moment they can.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Just murder everyone in.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So we are back with more I guess, very very
short summary of what has been up to over the
last about thirty years. So part of the reason that
things haven't been going enormously well for HESBLA is that
a lot of their capacity was weakened by the fact
that HESBA law during the Ausurian Civil War through their
(10:31):
entire backing behind the SOD And this was like hideously
unpopular for I think, I think reasons that are obvious
most people listening, But one of the big ones is
it's hideously unpopular in like in Palestine, God I Thine
who ran the poll, but there so there's a very
famous pole that was showing like the disapproval rating in
(10:53):
paleside different world leaders. I mean, they didn't pull in
that in Yahoo because obviously, like isn't that Yahoo, But
like the two highest ones that weren't at Yahoo, where
it was like Biden at eighty percent, and then slightly
higher than Biden was Bashar al Assad because he is
hideously unpopular, partially for a bunch of shit that he
did in a very very large palasinine refugee camp there
(11:15):
that you know, has belat fucking backed them for and
so has well spent a lot of the last decade
just sort of running around Syria backing the Assaud machime
and that I don't know, Garrison, I that doesn't make
you popular anywhere other than like extremely weird sections.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Of the American left. Yeah, I mean, I guess some
of the American right.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
When you're backing a guy who is just like who
is doing a thing the israelis due like obviously on
a smaller scale, but like shooting up like Palsaden refugee camp,
He's not going to be normally popular.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Whenever there's a guy who's like seriously maimed your family members, Yeah,
it's pretty pretty easy to dislike him.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, and like whatever things that's going on in the
story that like we need a fucking seven depart episode
to talk about. But Syria occupied a bunch of Lebanon
for a long time, and that also like hasn't made
him enormously popular in the region.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But you know, Heslo's.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Position is that they had like they have the slogan
that goes the road to Jerusalem runs to a Lepo,
which is just like just not how any of this
has worked, it's been a complete fiasco, has lost.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Performance in Syria hasn't been very good.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And it can explain what that phrase means.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah. Yeah, So so the point of this basically was
that in order to defeat the Zionists through some incredibly
murky logic, like the Asade regime had to be kept
in power, and this was this was a sort of
the justification that was used by Hesbela to just send
a bunch of troops there to coordinate with a bunch
of other different groups there. And I mean, like it's
it's a really terrible decision, both on a moral and
(12:52):
a strategic level, in the sense that like it caused
a rift between what it's supposed to be the resistance
factions in Palestine, and it just killed a bunch of people.
And like the Iranians are sending I don't actually know
howny people know about the story, but one of the
like terrifying things that's happening in this is that there's
a bunch of refugees from Afghanistan you flee to Iran,
and the Iranians like basically conscrict a bunch of these
(13:14):
people and send them into Syria with rifles. So it's
like these people are like fighting alongside has balon Hesla.
They don't do great because Hezeblah has always been good
at fighting like fairly obviously morally justified defensive wars inside
of Lebanon. And then they go off and fight basically
like a semi imperial war in Syria.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It's fucking shit show.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And this has been extremely bad for their capacity and
it also really hurt has Blot politically because again it
was also very very unpopular in Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And this kind of all leads us.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
To the last few weeks of like terrible shit that's
been happening, where yeah, these Reeli's just fucking launched this
hideous bombing campaign, I mean just really just all over Lebanon, right,
you know, most of the most of the reporting has
been about their attacks in the south, but like they've
(14:09):
bombed the capital, they've bombed Tripoli, they've killed I think
so far it's one of these things where the death
counts kind of have stopped updating, but in the last
few days it looks like they've killed about two thousand people.
It's not enormously clear, but yeah, things that things have
gotten extremely unbelievably bad. And this has also really, I
(14:32):
think been a kind of mask off moment for both
the US and the Israelis, where all of the things
that they've been pretending for the last year, they've just
straight up saying that they don't believe anymore. I think
that the best indicator of this is there's a White
House press conference and Matthew Miller, who's one of the
White House spokesperson answered a question about, yeah, it's just
(14:56):
about the conflicts, and he said, quote, yes, we do
so port Israel launching these incursions to degrade has blows infrastructure,
which like kind of sounds like a standard like the
US word Israel thing, But if you actually read into
what that's saying, he's saying the US's official position is
no longer ret there trying to get a ceasefire, right,
That's that's what he's saying. This is immediate and active
(15:18):
support for the israelis not not only not attempting to
end the war, but expanding it into Lebanon. And this
is something that like hadn't been in an explicit like
war goal for for Israel sort of until this point.
The line had always been that the point of this
was to bring back the hostages, right, but like there's
(15:38):
no fucking hostages in Lebanon, Like there isn't there just aren't.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, That's that's not how any of this works.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
And at this point all of the sort of pretenses
falling away and it it just degrading into this pure slaughter.
And when we when we come back from this ADS,
we're gonna wrap up with more stuff that mostly sucks.
And also Trump's latest thing on this, which is very weird.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
We are back.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So as this has been going on in the past
couple of days, Netanyahu posted a I don't even know
how to describe it, one of the weirdest videos I've
seen since like that insane Kevin Bacon won. That's just
him threatening Lebanon. He says, quote, you have an opportunity
to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of
(16:33):
a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering
like we see in Gaza. She's just straight up threatening Lebanon.
As as Israeli troops are moving across the borders or
shoes for occupying or tempted occupied cities. He's just straight
up saying, like Lebanon needs to just throw out Hesbela somehow,
even though it's just like a political party. They need
(16:54):
to completely destroy Hesbela somehow Otherwise Israel is going to
do to Lebanon when they've done to Gaza, and that,
I don't know is a unbelievably hideous expansion of the war.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Could you give some context for like why Israel is
making moves into Lebanon. We know like their targeting has
been but there's also like a degree of territorial dispute
over where Israel ends and Lebanon begins. Yeah, that Israel
has been kind of like wanting to increase tensions over
(17:24):
for a while, and it feels like they're just using
the war in Gaza as a cover to also try
to claim like territory of southern Lebanon.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, And I mean this gets into so I think
there's three kind of reasons, and I think that are
all overlapping factors for different groups of people, you know,
because like different Israeli political factions, different sort of strategic
like elements of the military set, etc. Are doing things
for sometimes overlapping sometimes different reasons. Like there's the obvious one,
which is like, Okay, there's a dislike for has blawed.
(17:56):
That's been funneled because a bunch of people in settlements
in northern Israell have been like have been evacuated because
they keep getting bombed, right, and those people are unbelievably
pissed off, and they've been pushing for this for a
long time. There's the second one, which is I think
the one that liberals use as is like the excuse
for the entire the entire genocide was wrong. But it
is also true that net and Yahoo does like personally
(18:17):
need this war to keep going because the moment the war.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Stops, he's gone, He's screwed. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, So like that that's a personal extentive for net
and Yahu. There's also another one outside of the political
pressure from from the northern settlers and you know, the
general idea has bluffing and net Yahoo personally, which is
like is really so doas have always been. It's it's
most extreme, like most sort of far right, most genocidal
like political element right. But increasingly we're watching them get
(18:43):
radicalized even further in real time, and we're watching them
become increasingly powerful. And one of the things that those
people want is they have this unbelievably deranged thing that
I mean, I guess all nationalist movements eventually get to
there greater whatever your country is thing, But they've entered
the greater Israel phase where they're talking about just like
(19:04):
you're talking about Israel as this as a state that's
supposed to like encompass like all of Lebanon again, like
I mean, I've seen so many different maps like encompassing
a bunch of partial Syria.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I mean, and this is also what's influenced their
continued attacks in the West Bank, specifically in the past
few months, where they're similarly using what's going on in Gaza,
like hiding behind their own atrocities in Gaza as a
cover to like try to actually claim more territory in
the West Bank, or at least at least push more
of like the Palestinian people out of their homes to
(19:37):
expand the Israeli settlements. So I think both of these
are kind of happening for similar reasons. And Israel's trying
to like just weaponize the actual atrocities that are going
on in Gaza as a big shield because those are
getting so much more attention. Trying to get away with
this territorial expansion in other areas, not just the Strip.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, And I mean also I should say that there's
a lot of a lot of the people on the
ground are pretty convinced that the Israelis are trying to
basically just like completely ethnically cleanse like parts of.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The Strip so they can annex it.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And I mean it's not something that we like have,
like we don't have like a document from Israeli High
command that says we're going to annex all of this stuff,
but it's it's something that's very least consistent with everything
they've been doing. And this is also like another sort
of one of the cyclical factors here. This is a
cyclical factor behind the settlements. We've talked about this back
(20:34):
when we did episodes about the West Bank, is that
the Israelly housing market is such a fucking disaster. And
this this is something that you know, like this kind
of real estate speculation shape. And in the same way
that like George Washington, as a real estate speculator was
was sort of like motivated to do more attacks on
an indigenous land in the US, and this sort of
(20:55):
like field westward expansion is all these land speculators, you know,
moved out, and people who couldn't afford like houses in
like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where housing prices are really high.
Those people have become this political force to keep pushing
this and this is you know, just fueling the expansion
of the Israeli occupation into more and more places.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So right now, where we're at with Lebanon is that
one point two million people have fled their homes, which
is I mean, even if like the Israelis had literally
done nothing else in the entire time that this has
been happening, right, forcing one point two million people to
flee their homes, is it an unimaginable level of suffering.
(21:38):
And this is like just effectively being reported as a
footnote in the fact that they've fucking done all of
this other shit.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And just in the past week and a half, they've
killed thirteen hundred people. Yeah, it's insane, And like that's
more than the number of people who were killed in
Israel on October like seventh. Yeah, that just doesn't matter
because of because of like all of the racialized aspects
of how of how like israel genocide campaign has been
(22:07):
able to operate, Like you're not going to see memorials
in the States or the thirteen for the thirteen hundred
people killed in Lebanon, the same way that we will
for October seventh.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yeah, you might get them on a college campus for
the cops destroy it.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
But like that's and that's just in one week.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It's over.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
They've done over a thousand air strikes the past week.
They've killed all these people, and that's I don't yeah,
I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, I'm going to close by on a slightly lighter
note from this one of the like even by Trump's standards,
an extremely weird quote that he gave we Gaza. This
is from The Guardian. Quote asked by Hewitt, which is
a guy whose podcast he was on, if Gaza could
be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied, quote,
(23:00):
it could be better than Monaco. It has the best
location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything.
It's got it it's the best. I've said for years.
I've been there, and it's rough. It's a rough place.
Before all the attacks and back and forth it's happened
over the last couple of years. He went on, I
mean they have the back of a plant facing the ocean.
You know, there was no ocean as far as that
was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know,
(23:22):
as a developer. It could be the most beautiful place,
the weather, the water, the whole thing in the climate.
It was so beautiful, it could be the best thing
in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean that's in line with stuff that Kushner has
been saying for a long time and how they are
hoping to turn Gaza into a part of Israel, specifically
to do real estate development, to turn it into like
a resort, to turn it into a golf course, and
they're willing to kill tens of thousands of people to
do it. And that is like the primary driver at
least like for them, for like Trump's team, for why
(23:51):
they are they're very happy to see in NATANYAHUU just
do whatever he wants.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, And I think there's something else here, which is
that like a lot of the kind of Marxist analysis
of this from like a very sutent kind of Marxist
has been about how Palestine has been rendered as like
surplus population. This is the population that has been kicked
out of the circuit of a capital accumulation they're not
(24:18):
necessary for capital to reproduce itself to make more capital,
and so no one cares if you kill them. And
I think that's wrong, and I think this quote is
actually evidence of why they're wrong. Like this, You know,
these people think purely, and like people like Trump right,
think purely in terms of economic assets, and there are
there's an unbelievable amount of economic assets, like in Palestine
that a regime that is like maybe only thirty percent less,
(24:44):
like hideously cruel and murderous, like could have turned into
viable economic engines. But the Israelis don't want that. They
have made a decision, like an actual conscious decision that
instead of trying to expect people for labor, they'd rather
just fucking kill them all and try to steal their land.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
They have decided that this fucking real estate speculation bullshit
on a bunch of land that they're taking by just
fucking slaughtering all of its inhabitants is more efficient for
them than even doing fucking regular capitalism. And that's an
absolutely fucking hideous note. And it's the kind of thing
that Biden is saying, okay too, and Trump fucking loves
(25:20):
because fundamentally, like Trump's fucking real estate brain, is pro
genocide and Biden doesn't give a shit about stopping them,
and he's also pro this. So yeah, the gears of
genocide continue to grind. These Reelis are plotting their attack
against Iran that they're going to do in response to
(25:41):
Ron shooting missiles at them, in response to them killing
the leader of Festivo La. I don't know by the
time this comes out, it's possible that attack will have happened.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're going to do something. It's going to make everything worse.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But yeah, until then, this has been an update on
the genocide and Palestine and the new invasion of Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
All Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
It's it could happen here. It's the podcast.
Speaker 3 (00:08):
I didn't write an intro for this because everything, everything
incredibly sucks. This is the podcast where bad things happen.
I'm your host with me as Garrison.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
Yeah, it's been a lot of bad things the past week,
past year, but the past week and a half it's
been pretty bad.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
And one of the things that's been very bad is
literally everything Israel has been up to, like I mean,
since it was founded, but the last three four weeks
somehow things have gotten worse, which is a sort of
unbelievable thing to say about a genocide, but it's expanding.
So yeah, there is at the end of this one
(00:48):
of the most bizarre trunk quotes I've ever seen. So
that's my promise to you to stick with this. But
oh boy, everything is very very bad. So we now
have I guess I don't even know if French is
the right way to talk about this, but what we
have in Gaza, which is where the main Israeli offensive
(01:08):
is going right now, well we'll get into that. There's
a bunch of stuff in Lebanon too, where they're pulling
troops to but in Gaza, everything just continues to get worse,
even though so these Raelis have pulled out some troops
from Gaza, but they're also still making another offensive into
northern Gaza. And the thing about the way that the
(01:29):
Israelis make offensive into places is that the thing that
the Israelis do is they just immediately start shooting at hospitals.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So that's been a big part of what's happening.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Something that used to be like controversial and like widely news,
where the a year ago at taxon hospitals now have
become so normalized, to be sensitized that it doesn't even
make headlines, which that's been one of the most indicative
factors that this has gone about as bad as it
could have. I remember a year ago, we were like
(02:01):
debating whether or not the Israeli military intentionally like struck
a hospital, and this was like this was like a
week's long debate trying to figure out what exactly happened.
And now attacks on hospitals are just complete commonplace. It's
like we've just totally lost.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Yeah, And I mean, you know, like it's not even
just that that the Israelis are deliberately targeting hospitals, it's
that the temporary facilities people have been trying to set
up because the hospitals are being blown up are also being.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
Attacked, Yeah, which has also been going on for ages, yeah,
almost a year now, like almost immediately as soon as
like humanitarian aid and like and like like impromptu medical
tents were set up, those were also the targets. And
this is also just continued.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (02:46):
And I think the thing that's you know, it's bleak
about it, right is like, I mean, I mean, it's
not the thing. The thing that's bleak about it is
that they're blowing up hospitals. But I mean, we've reached
a point into this where it's not even user but
be the Israelis don't even like attempt to justify it anymore.
I mean, if you if you remember a year ago
when they were doing this, it'd be all of the
(03:07):
stuff about how, oh we found homas tunnels under the hospitals,
and there's just not.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
E vent anymore.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
They're just they're just shooting at hospitals. Sometimes they give
evacuation orders. They've been That's the other thing that's been
happening periodically is the Israelis keep basically you know, in
places in northern Gaza. They'll be like, everyone has to
leave now, and then they'll bombit it and they'll keep
bombing it. Part of the thing about covering Gaza right
is all of the stuff that we're saying is stuff
(03:34):
that was a major news story like six months ago
and is no longer a major news story because the
slaughter has become just sort of so rutinized. But you know,
so people are fleeing from northern Gaza into what's supposed
to be the safe zone in central Gaza, except the
Israelis keep shooting at their refugee camps in central Gaza,
(03:56):
so it's not actually there's there's not actually a place
you can be in Gaza where you're not getting bombed.
What there is is some places sometimes are less bond
than other places. And you know, I think there had
(04:18):
been a tiny amount of hope that the only conceivable
upside about the invasion lebanonmal that the would be a
pull out of troops and we'd see less offensive, But
you know, they've just been escalating bombing campaigns and are
doing some offensive anyways. So yeah, there's there's there's continuingly
sort of is really attacks into into Partian North and Gaza.
(04:39):
The other big thing, and this is what most of
this episode is going to be about, is a new
front after already having like having this entire thing in Gaza.
There was also like an invasion of the West Bank,
which again is like, I don't know how to express
how insane it is to have a war where you're
nominally fighting against Hamas and then invade the West Bank,
(05:01):
a place where there isn't Hamas. But they've done that too.
There's been parts of the West Bank, there's been a
bunch of really troops and you know, we know they've
been fighting in Yemen as much bombings in Yemen, but
also now they've just straight up invaded Lebanon. And this
is the sort of chain of events of this was
I don't know if kicked off is the right word,
(05:22):
but it was. It was dramatically accelerated by the assassination
of Fassan Nosraala, who is I think most.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
People are aware that he's the head of Hesbalon.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
Has been the head of his blow since like nineteen
ninety two, which is longer than anyone who's on this
episode right now has been alive.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Was this the one who was killed in those like
apartment like carpet carpet bombings. Yeah yeah, so I mean yeah,
even still, assassination is a strong word for or I
guess a light word for just bombing. Like it was
like what three large apartment complexes.
Speaker 3 (05:56):
Yeah, they just obliterated a bunch of complexes with like
something like eighty bunker busters.
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
So this is actually the second time that the Israelis
have just straight up killed someone they were supposed to
nominally be negotiating with. They killed the head of Hamas
like in Iran. So you know, we talked about on
this show the initial wave of attacks on Lebanon, which
is the sort of the Pager explosions, and the fallow
up to the Pager explosions was that they figured out
(06:25):
what bunker that ISRAELA was in and they just killed him.
This is extremely bad for a lot of reasons, one
of which is that has blawed kind of hadn't really
been on full war footing until this point. Like they've
been doing a bunch of rocket attacks on northern Israel,
right and there've been these sort of exchanges of rocket
(06:46):
fire across the border, but they hadn't really escalated beyond that.
And then the Israelis were like, well, just fuck it, okay,
we want our invasion of Lebanon, and Raala was kind
of like, I don't know if like auderating force is
quite the right term here, but his policy wasn't that
Hesbolah was going to fight a total war against Israel,
(07:07):
and the Israeli just fucking murdered him anyways, So we
should probably talk about who Nocerala is. He's not from
like the original Hesbela cadres from from the original lebaneseivil
war when it emerges is an eighty two. He's not
from that cadre, but he's a pretty old school Hesbola
guy by this point. He's you know, I've talking about
like he's been in charge of Hesbelag for fucking ever.
(07:29):
Like I am not old enough to remember a time
when he was not in charge of Hesblah because I
wasn't born yet, I don't know. He's he's one of
the people who's seen Hesbelah's sort of expansion and also
seen Hesbelod be able to be like the only of
the sort of major Lebanese political parties who are in
(07:50):
the negotiations to end the civil war. He kind of
oversaw the process of Hesblah being like the only armed
party like left in in Lebanon other than like the
regular army.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Right.
Speaker 3 (08:00):
He was also very famously in charge of Hesbela's I
don't know how exactly you wanted.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
There's a whole bunch of stuff about how the war
in two thousand and six started. But in two thousand
and six Israel made this attempt to sort of like
do their big antie Hesbelah push. They invaded Lebanon, and
Israel didn't do very well. They were expecting and I
think what most people were expecting has Bla to fight like,
you know, like a gorilla army right doing hit a
(08:29):
run attacks, doing doing the sort of like the whole
sort of last century of gorilla hit and run campaigns.
And they didn't do that. They basically they sat there.
It fought like a conventional army with a bunch of
bunker networks. And the Israelis did extremely poorly in that war.
And I think this is influenced a lot of the
way that people were thinking about how this how this
fight was going to work, and it hasn't. But you
(08:52):
know the fact that I was able to sort of
stave off the initial attack, and then the Israelis spent
like forty more days doing a bombing campaign and everyone
just called it quits. Was absolutely huge for Hesbelaws a
political force. Unfortunately for them, I guess they burned an
unbelievable amount of that political capital that they'd gotten from
(09:14):
being really the first people in a long time to
like actually be able to viably claim that they defeated Israel.
And I mean, it's obviously like both both sides of
that declared victory, but Hesbelood puts up a better fight
against the Israelis, and like it's like stops their ground
advance in a way that like was almost unimaginable at
that point. Even though Hesbola had sort of fought pretty
(09:36):
well during the Lebanies of the world, is better than
most of the other sort of like anti Israeli factions
that weren't a state, and even I mean even most
of the states that have fought issue have done extremely poorly.
We're going to go to ads and then when we
come back, we're going to talk a bit about how
has Blood's position weakened and how the Israelis have just
sort of decided that this is a moment they can.
Speaker 2 (09:56):
Just murder everyone in.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
So we are back with more I guess, very very
short summary of what has been up to over the
last about thirty years. So part of the reason that
things haven't been going enormously well for HESBLA is that
a lot of their capacity was weakened by the fact
that HESBA law during the Ausurian Civil War through their
(10:31):
entire backing behind the SOD And this was like hideously
unpopular for I think, I think reasons that are obvious
most people listening, But one of the big ones is
it's hideously unpopular in like in Palestine, God I Thine
who ran the poll, but there so there's a very
famous pole that was showing like the disapproval rating in
(10:53):
paleside different world leaders. I mean, they didn't pull in
that in Yahoo because obviously, like isn't that Yahoo, But
like the two highest ones that weren't at Yahoo, where
it was like Biden at eighty percent, and then slightly
higher than Biden was Bashar al Assad because he is
hideously unpopular, partially for a bunch of shit that he
did in a very very large palasinine refugee camp there
(11:15):
that you know, has belat fucking backed them for and
so has well spent a lot of the last decade
just sort of running around Syria backing the Assaud machime
and that I don't know, Garrison, I that doesn't make
you popular anywhere other than like extremely weird sections.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Of the American left. Yeah, I mean, I guess some
of the American right.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
When you're backing a guy who is just like who
is doing a thing the israelis due like obviously on
a smaller scale, but like shooting up like Palsaden refugee camp,
He's not going to be normally popular.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
Whenever there's a guy who's like seriously maimed your family members, Yeah,
it's pretty pretty easy to dislike him.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
Yeah, and like whatever things that's going on in the
story that like we need a fucking seven depart episode
to talk about. But Syria occupied a bunch of Lebanon
for a long time, and that also like hasn't made
him enormously popular in the region.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
But you know, Heslo's.
Speaker 3 (12:13):
Position is that they had like they have the slogan
that goes the road to Jerusalem runs to a Lepo,
which is just like just not how any of this
has worked, it's been a complete fiasco, has lost.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Performance in Syria hasn't been very good.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
And it can explain what that phrase means.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
Yeah. Yeah, So so the point of this basically was
that in order to defeat the Zionists through some incredibly
murky logic, like the Asade regime had to be kept
in power, and this was this was a sort of
the justification that was used by Hesbela to just send
a bunch of troops there to coordinate with a bunch
of other different groups there. And I mean, like it's
it's a really terrible decision, both on a moral and
(12:52):
a strategic level, in the sense that like it caused
a rift between what it's supposed to be the resistance
factions in Palestine, and it just killed a bunch of people.
And like the Iranians are sending I don't actually know
howny people know about the story, but one of the
like terrifying things that's happening in this is that there's
a bunch of refugees from Afghanistan you flee to Iran,
and the Iranians like basically conscrict a bunch of these
(13:14):
people and send them into Syria with rifles. So it's
like these people are like fighting alongside has balon Hesla.
They don't do great because Hezeblah has always been good
at fighting like fairly obviously morally justified defensive wars inside
of Lebanon. And then they go off and fight basically
like a semi imperial war in Syria.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
It's fucking shit show.
Speaker 3 (13:37):
And this has been extremely bad for their capacity and
it also really hurt has Blot politically because again it
was also very very unpopular in Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And this kind of all leads us.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
To the last few weeks of like terrible shit that's
been happening, where yeah, these Reeli's just fucking launched this
hideous bombing campaign, I mean just really just all over Lebanon, right,
you know, most of the most of the reporting has
been about their attacks in the south, but like they've
(14:09):
bombed the capital, they've bombed Tripoli, they've killed I think
so far it's one of these things where the death
counts kind of have stopped updating, but in the last
few days it looks like they've killed about two thousand people.
It's not enormously clear, but yeah, things that things have
gotten extremely unbelievably bad. And this has also really, I
(14:32):
think been a kind of mask off moment for both
the US and the Israelis, where all of the things
that they've been pretending for the last year, they've just
straight up saying that they don't believe anymore. I think
that the best indicator of this is there's a White
House press conference and Matthew Miller, who's one of the
White House spokesperson answered a question about, yeah, it's just
(14:56):
about the conflicts, and he said, quote, yes, we do
so port Israel launching these incursions to degrade has blows infrastructure,
which like kind of sounds like a standard like the
US word Israel thing, But if you actually read into
what that's saying, he's saying the US's official position is
no longer ret there trying to get a ceasefire, right,
That's that's what he's saying. This is immediate and active
(15:18):
support for the israelis not not only not attempting to
end the war, but expanding it into Lebanon. And this
is something that like hadn't been in an explicit like
war goal for for Israel sort of until this point.
The line had always been that the point of this
was to bring back the hostages, right, but like there's
(15:38):
no fucking hostages in Lebanon, Like there isn't there just aren't.
Speaker 2 (15:42):
Right, That's that's not how any of this works.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
And at this point all of the sort of pretenses
falling away and it it just degrading into this pure slaughter.
And when we when we come back from this ADS,
we're gonna wrap up with more stuff that mostly sucks.
And also Trump's latest thing on this, which is very weird.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
We are back.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
So as this has been going on in the past
couple of days, Netanyahu posted a I don't even know
how to describe it, one of the weirdest videos I've
seen since like that insane Kevin Bacon won. That's just
him threatening Lebanon. He says, quote, you have an opportunity
to save Lebanon before it falls into the abyss of
(16:33):
a long war that will lead to destruction and suffering
like we see in Gaza. She's just straight up threatening Lebanon.
As as Israeli troops are moving across the borders or
shoes for occupying or tempted occupied cities. He's just straight
up saying, like Lebanon needs to just throw out Hesbela somehow,
even though it's just like a political party. They need
(16:54):
to completely destroy Hesbela somehow Otherwise Israel is going to
do to Lebanon when they've done to Gaza, and that,
I don't know is a unbelievably hideous expansion of the war.
Speaker 1 (17:04):
Could you give some context for like why Israel is
making moves into Lebanon. We know like their targeting has
been but there's also like a degree of territorial dispute
over where Israel ends and Lebanon begins. Yeah, that Israel
has been kind of like wanting to increase tensions over
(17:24):
for a while, and it feels like they're just using
the war in Gaza as a cover to also try
to claim like territory of southern Lebanon.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
Yeah, And I mean this gets into so I think
there's three kind of reasons, and I think that are
all overlapping factors for different groups of people, you know,
because like different Israeli political factions, different sort of strategic
like elements of the military set, etc. Are doing things
for sometimes overlapping sometimes different reasons. Like there's the obvious one,
which is like, Okay, there's a dislike for has blawed.
(17:56):
That's been funneled because a bunch of people in settlements
in northern Israell have been like have been evacuated because
they keep getting bombed, right, and those people are unbelievably
pissed off, and they've been pushing for this for a
long time. There's the second one, which is I think
the one that liberals use as is like the excuse
for the entire the entire genocide was wrong. But it
is also true that net and Yahoo does like personally
(18:17):
need this war to keep going because the moment the war.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
Stops, he's gone, He's screwed. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
Yeah, So like that that's a personal extentive for net
and Yahu. There's also another one outside of the political
pressure from from the northern settlers and you know, the
general idea has bluffing and net Yahoo personally, which is
like is really so doas have always been. It's it's
most extreme, like most sort of far right, most genocidal
like political element right. But increasingly we're watching them get
(18:43):
radicalized even further in real time, and we're watching them
become increasingly powerful. And one of the things that those
people want is they have this unbelievably deranged thing that
I mean, I guess all nationalist movements eventually get to
there greater whatever your country is thing, But they've entered
the greater Israel phase where they're talking about just like
(19:04):
you're talking about Israel as this as a state that's
supposed to like encompass like all of Lebanon again, like
I mean, I've seen so many different maps like encompassing
a bunch of partial Syria.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Well, I mean, and this is also what's influenced their
continued attacks in the West Bank, specifically in the past
few months, where they're similarly using what's going on in Gaza,
like hiding behind their own atrocities in Gaza as a
cover to like try to actually claim more territory in
the West Bank, or at least at least push more
of like the Palestinian people out of their homes to
(19:37):
expand the Israeli settlements. So I think both of these
are kind of happening for similar reasons. And Israel's trying
to like just weaponize the actual atrocities that are going
on in Gaza as a big shield because those are
getting so much more attention. Trying to get away with
this territorial expansion in other areas, not just the Strip.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
Yeah, And I mean also I should say that there's
a lot of a lot of the people on the
ground are pretty convinced that the Israelis are trying to
basically just like completely ethnically cleanse like parts of.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
The Strip so they can annex it.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And I mean it's not something that we like have,
like we don't have like a document from Israeli High
command that says we're going to annex all of this stuff,
but it's it's something that's very least consistent with everything
they've been doing. And this is also like another sort
of one of the cyclical factors here. This is a
cyclical factor behind the settlements. We've talked about this back
(20:34):
when we did episodes about the West Bank, is that
the Israelly housing market is such a fucking disaster. And
this this is something that you know, like this kind
of real estate speculation shape. And in the same way
that like George Washington, as a real estate speculator was
was sort of like motivated to do more attacks on
an indigenous land in the US, and this sort of
(20:55):
like field westward expansion is all these land speculators, you know,
moved out, and people who couldn't afford like houses in
like Tel Aviv and Jerusalem where housing prices are really high.
Those people have become this political force to keep pushing
this and this is you know, just fueling the expansion
of the Israeli occupation into more and more places.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
So right now, where we're at with Lebanon is that
one point two million people have fled their homes, which
is I mean, even if like the Israelis had literally
done nothing else in the entire time that this has
been happening, right, forcing one point two million people to
flee their homes, is it an unimaginable level of suffering.
(21:38):
And this is like just effectively being reported as a
footnote in the fact that they've fucking done all of
this other shit.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
And just in the past week and a half, they've
killed thirteen hundred people. Yeah, it's insane, And like that's
more than the number of people who were killed in
Israel on October like seventh. Yeah, that just doesn't matter
because of because of like all of the racialized aspects
of how of how like israel genocide campaign has been
(22:07):
able to operate, Like you're not going to see memorials
in the States or the thirteen for the thirteen hundred
people killed in Lebanon, the same way that we will
for October seventh.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Yeah, you might get them on a college campus for
the cops destroy it.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
But like that's and that's just in one week.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
It's over.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
They've done over a thousand air strikes the past week.
They've killed all these people, and that's I don't yeah,
I don't know what else to say.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
Yeah, I'm going to close by on a slightly lighter
note from this one of the like even by Trump's standards,
an extremely weird quote that he gave we Gaza. This
is from The Guardian. Quote asked by Hewitt, which is
a guy whose podcast he was on, if Gaza could
be transformed into Monaco if properly rebuilt, Trump replied, quote,
(23:00):
it could be better than Monaco. It has the best
location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything.
It's got it it's the best. I've said for years.
I've been there, and it's rough. It's a rough place.
Before all the attacks and back and forth it's happened
over the last couple of years. He went on, I
mean they have the back of a plant facing the ocean.
You know, there was no ocean as far as that
was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know,
(23:22):
as a developer. It could be the most beautiful place,
the weather, the water, the whole thing in the climate.
It was so beautiful, it could be the best thing
in the Middle East.
Speaker 2 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
I mean that's in line with stuff that Kushner has
been saying for a long time and how they are
hoping to turn Gaza into a part of Israel, specifically
to do real estate development, to turn it into like
a resort, to turn it into a golf course, and
they're willing to kill tens of thousands of people to
do it. And that is like the primary driver at
least like for them, for like Trump's team, for why
(23:51):
they are they're very happy to see in NATANYAHUU just
do whatever he wants.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Yeah, And I think there's something else here, which is
that like a lot of the kind of Marxist analysis
of this from like a very sutent kind of Marxist
has been about how Palestine has been rendered as like
surplus population. This is the population that has been kicked
out of the circuit of a capital accumulation they're not
(24:18):
necessary for capital to reproduce itself to make more capital,
and so no one cares if you kill them. And
I think that's wrong, and I think this quote is
actually evidence of why they're wrong. Like this, You know,
these people think purely, and like people like Trump right,
think purely in terms of economic assets, and there are
there's an unbelievable amount of economic assets, like in Palestine
that a regime that is like maybe only thirty percent less,
(24:44):
like hideously cruel and murderous, like could have turned into
viable economic engines. But the Israelis don't want that. They
have made a decision, like an actual conscious decision that
instead of trying to expect people for labor, they'd rather
just fucking kill them all and try to steal their land.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (24:59):
They have decided that this fucking real estate speculation bullshit
on a bunch of land that they're taking by just
fucking slaughtering all of its inhabitants is more efficient for
them than even doing fucking regular capitalism. And that's an
absolutely fucking hideous note. And it's the kind of thing
that Biden is saying, okay too, and Trump fucking loves
(25:20):
because fundamentally, like Trump's fucking real estate brain, is pro
genocide and Biden doesn't give a shit about stopping them,
and he's also pro this. So yeah, the gears of
genocide continue to grind. These Reelis are plotting their attack
against Iran that they're going to do in response to
(25:41):
Ron shooting missiles at them, in response to them killing
the leader of Festivo La. I don't know by the
time this comes out, it's possible that attack will have happened.
Speaker 2 (25:53):
They're going to do something. It's going to make everything worse.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
But yeah, until then, this has been an update on
the genocide and Palestine and the new invasion of Lebanon.
Speaker 2 (26:10):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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