Radio War Nerd EP #404 — HAMAS, Pt. 1

The book about the Palestinians dying in the water truck is Men in the Sun by the legendary Ghassan Kanafani. I would highly recommend all of his writing, especially “A Letter from Gaza”.

OSINT in the current media environment strikes me a lot like modern polling in the early 2010s — a place where legitimately interesting advances in method a flattened by media into a sort of tv-csi-science version of themselves. All sorts of academic points can be well served by a a Planet account, you can maybe build up a given unit’s order of battle, but people want to treat it as “Nate Silver is an oracle.”

I’m not sure if you and John have seen this but I’m reading a Naval War College report on the transformation of the IDF over the past decade that seems like it would be pretty interesting to everyone here: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol74/iss2/4/

The book I would recommend on Hezbollah is called Hezbollah: Mobilization and Power

To cultivate loyalty via providing healthcare, housing assistance etc requires funds. From where have Hamas gotten financing since their start? They must be good at fundraising. These days the mainstream media says they get funding from Iran and I’ve also seen Qatar mentioned.

Here's a vote for an episode on the Japanese Red Army. The bass player from Les Rallizes Dénudés was part of the Yodo Go hijacking.

I'm new to the patreon - I started listening last night on firefox and found when I went to continue listening today it didn't remember my spot. Anyone have a solution to this (besides direct download)

Not directly related, but Iran made an antitank missile launcher to defeat the Israeli Trophy active protection system, and it's apparently being used by Hezbollah to some success right now. On which principle does this advanced missile work? Simple addition and subtraction. The Trophy APS requires 1.5 seconds to reload before it can intercept another missile. That doesn't sound like all that much of a weakness, but it's enough to exploit. The Iranian missile launcher is two Kornet missile tubes mounted together, and when the first is fired, the second fires 0.4 seconds later. When the first missile is intercepted by Trophy, the second missile still has 1.1 seconds to reach the target before Trophy is reloaded. Simple as that.

Hey Mark love the ep but I don't know how you can say Hamas may turn into ISIS, as I really doubt that Ismail Haniyeh and co are keen to jump on the CIA payroll

Regarding the terror of air raids and the Tokyo firebombing in particular: Japanese culture was congenitally scarred in interesting ways by that (pointless) flex of air power. A Japanese video game came out a few years ago with these intimidating man-sized combat robots, and Western audiences were confused because these deadly war machines make cow noises. The devs explained that during the firebombing of Tokyo, survivors would take shelter underground, and they were forced to listen as the herds of cows aboveground died screaming in terror and agony as they burned alive. Ever since, the noises of cattle have become rather traumatic to a Japanese audience. Americans simply have a vested interest in refusing to understand the horror of air power. They get it, on some level; remember the scene in the Short Timers when a VC guy on foot with a rifle manages to bring down an American attack helicopter, and the American spectators cheer him on. But the culture refuses to properly contextualize it because it would mean acknowledging that our tactics are actually more horrific than, say, Daesh beheading a relatively small number of people or hurling them off rooftops.

Can you please send me the subscriber feed url? I’m trying a new podcast app but I can’t find the link.

Hamas should turn into ISIS so Israel will stop bombing them and start treating their wounded

Def allowed to happen https://twitter.com/mazzenilsson/status/1714668599237824540

Thanks for this pod, watching people eat up the PIJ story has me really depressed.

The PFLP also helped train the PKK- some Kurdish PKK cadres fought against the IDF during the 1982 Lebanese war. There’s also a small, but tantalizing passage in Robert Fisk’s “Pity the Nation” where he describes an Irish volunteer who was fighting with the PFLP during the siege of Beirut. The young Irishman is unnamed, and never heard from again by the author. https://newlinesmag.com/argument/the-kurds-who-died-for-palestine/

Hell yeh

Fixed the RSS feed, I blame Unit 8200!

John Dolan is living in a Cronenberg movie, always some body horror with this poor guy

An item on the history of the Palestine conflict from the Palestinian perspective would be a wonderful antidote to a lot of our Western shibboleths.

One takeaway I have is a point John often said during the show, especially during Syria war. Israel has been "in bed" with the entire Sunni bloc (Saudi and Turkey in particular) for decades. They also covertly and even openly supported the Sunni militias in Syria. And the main summary from the Israeli perspective was "who cares about these toothless Sunni? The Shia are our true enemy". So, the fact that they were so unprepared for Hamas isn't too surprising. Policy can influence how these intelligence organizations and militaries view the world (like how anti communism truly shaped US thinking). The Israelis seemed to genuienly believe Hamas was not a threat. You both spoke on how dumb this mindset is, which it is. But it's amazing how we're seeing first hand how it backfired so quickly. Like any mistake, will there be any reckoning and self reflection on this? Probably not. But to be fair, the Israeli public seem much more critical of their military/political elite then the US is.

Biden, the president of the United States, going on tv to denounce islamophobia & anti-semitism in equal measure- then later that night has his proxy military conduct an airstrike one of the oldest Orthodox Christian churches in the world.... whole thing possesses the rhythm of a cruel joke. Real “both-sides” style punchline.

Mark, the story you referenced is Men in the Sun by Ghassan Kanafi. Great piece, I read it in college as a Zionist Jew as well

Is this not showing up on other peoples rss feed or is it just me?

Thank you!

Get to the chompers!!!