If we are talking about rocket strikes, let’s compare and contrast these two styles of attacks:

-indiscriminate attacks targeting random people

Of course there’s a thousand reasons killing random people or doing things that gesture at that are bad ethically/tactically. For states they ironically call this ‘strategic bombing,’ for non state actors or states unaligned with NATO or whatever they call this terrorism.

The goal of such attacks for states is to break the morale of the populace being bombed, to inflict terror and wear down their willingness to resist and produce. For non-state actors it’s similar with the added factor of wanting to embarrass the authorities responsible for the attacks and shattering the facade of social peace, often ‘bringing the war home’ as it were. If you’re just looking for escalation this is a way to get their especially if you and your enemies kill all the moderates. After all no tactic exist in a vacuum.

Some of the problem with these tactics is the are basically enemy and precedent for repression generating machines. They can drastically decrease sympathy from a base, decrease potential for contagion across difference. They also may not even decrease your enemies power if you’re fighting an insurgency because while you may send shockwaves through your enemies supporters you will probably not do enough to deplete their population and will again galvanize the population against you.

In the case of Hamas we can see they have managed, with the help of Israel, to be as popular as ever in Gaza, but they and they’re tactics are also part of the reason things don’t pop off in the rest of Palestine despite many supporting them there. But again no tactics exists in a vacuum.

In the case of Israel and the US, killing ‘civilians’ is the number one recruiting tool for their enemies.

It’s worth repeating child killed air strikes and bombings is an accident it is either the whole point, like Israel drooping cluster bombs in Lebanon’s fields where kids play, or it’s “an acceptable loss” that the military accounted for.

-logistics oriented attacks with precise strikes targeting infrastructure

Attacking infrastructure can be attacks on the civilian population like when the US bombed water infrastructure in Iraq in Operation Iron Hammer named after a Nazi operation that devastated Russian civilian and military infrastructure.

But let’s talk about underdog attacks on infrastructure. Attacking infrastructure attacks power directly and highlights said power’s weak spots. Infrastructure and logistics are how EVERYTHING operates and so much of it can be targeted easily. It’s also more palatable to a broader set of potential supporters. And for actual supporters it can be like fireworks without going into a morbid death-cult direction. Death cults can of course be successful, look at the Islamic State for an example of this, but their project is at its core very different than a truly liberating project and if your goal is to actually escape or to “shake off” the oppressor as Intifada can be translated to mean, other methods must proliferate.

🚨 In a few moments, Al-Qassam Brigades will release a video of a "Shehab" suicide plane attacking the chemical factory in Nir Oz, hitting it directly this morning.

This will yet again expose Israeli lies that all drones were intercepted with no impacts.

(Update) Video here

Since the uptick in settler violence Israeli state forces have been right there backing them up.

https://twitter.com/m7mdkurd/status/1393238194993442821?s=21

As people, including many displaced Palestinians, in Jordan rush the border with Israel to support the Palestinian struggle let’s take a moment to reflect on the historical significance of this. Many Palestinians were displaced to Jordan and their liberation orgs followed. However, in the 1970s the King turned on the PLO, PFLP, etc in a brutal wave of repression known as Black September (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_September) which marked a desperate turn for Palestinian armed struggle and since then there’s been little unrest in Jordan.

Likewise something similar happened a little bit later with Hafez Al-Assad in Syria turning on the PLO and even bombarding Palestinian refugee camps. (https://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/01/world/dispute-threatens-plo-syrian-reconciliation.html)

Suffice to say that this could mark the return of an international solidarity not seen in some time.

No casualties or places hit in strikes by modern militaries are accidental. If civilians die, hospitals burn, etc they are either the targets or considered acceptable losses. With the commonness of “strategic bombing” being palatable in contemporary military theory it is quite possible that civilians and their infrastructures are indeed the target.

In the case of Israel they absolutely meant to to bomb the international press just as the US did during the invasion of Iraq. Likewise Israeli media just admitted to bombing high rises to disrupt the “middle-class” rather than to hit Hamas targets.

acab gang

Are you preparing for what a real self defense situation might look like? Cutting cake ain’t what it’s like in the movies.

related wisdom

Paul Lafargue
The Right To Be Lazy
(1883)

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1883/lazy/