They didn’t declare war. So how is this No?! All they did was throw threats and exchange fire. That doesn’t constitute official war

@MonaSalama

Right, that's why it's no

@SemioticRivalry Yea but it declared a No as a lost

@MonaSalama you bought yes at 39% and then no at 7% so you ended up losing a bit here

@SemioticRivalry Got it. Thanks for explaining

Not officially at war ; Fighting, yes, but not a war yet.

Resolves NO

I really don't understand what's going on right now. A commander from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) threatened to destroy the Israeli cities of Tel Aviv and Haifa if the United States attacked Iran. Israel's response? We've already bombed Iran twice in 2022. What?

@ersatz naftali Bennett isn't speaking for anyone but himself and didn't pass that oped through the IDF censor

Not rooting for a war but the timing is interesting given this question ends in days. https://nypost.com/2023/12/28/news/israeli-threatens-to-open-second-front-if-lebanon-doesnt-stop-hezbollah-rocket-strikes/

@GeoffWolfe these threats have been basically constant and unchanging since 10/7.

Israeli Defense Minister says they are fighting a “war” against Hezbollah. https://youtu.be/4ZjcX7K4TYo?si=LSD4Jc00nuY6urhU

@GeoffWolfe Lol. I am fighting war against crabs but nobody calls me Poseidon.

@Mirek there's a cream for that

@Mirek You are Poseidon.

We will need the 2024 version of this market

@PlainBG

Does anyone know of a concise and up-to-date counter of Hamas hostages released vs held, with daily figures?

Hezbollah sent it's largest flurry of rockets since the conflict started.

also, apparently I always must qualify my posts or else people jump down my throat - this isn't a resolution, I am just sharing info. y'all ppl are crazy.

@Haws Jish is a mostly Maronite Arab town. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jish

If anything good comes out of this war, it will be more Jewish-Arab unity in Israel, the retirement of Netanyahu, the marginalization of Ben-Gvir and his ilk, Israel-KSA normalization, etcetera. Salaam and Shalom.

Sorry for the political comment but I have to note that Hezbollah is shooting at a majority Maronite minority Muslim 100% Arab town.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/fm-warns-un-security-council-of-regional-war-if-resolution-to-disarm-hezbollah-not-implemented/

Foreign Minister Eli Cohen warns the UN Security Council that a regional war is likely if resolution 1701, which calls for the disarmament of the Hezbollah terror group, is not fully implemented.

“For the good of regional stability and to avoid further escalation, the next session of the UN Security Council must adopt a totally different approach in order to end the dangerous violations by Hezbollah and other terrorist groups on the border,” Cohen writes to the Security Council, Channel 12 News reports.

Stating the obvious or warning of escalation?

@ICRainbow this is the first time Israel has actively, seriously threatened war as an official stance of government. It was all sabre rattling, but this is a concrete statement: "fix it, or we will".

One running theory in Israeli forums is that the IDF will use the imminent pause in combat to launch a blitz through southern Lebanon. In my opinion, this is the closest to war it's been since the start of the conflict, and border skirmishes are only getting worse.

Of course, you just don't know with this country anymore. Things just kind of happen out of nowhere, we only see the signs in hindsight.

@Felicity You don’t blitz a counterinsurgency this is ridiculous.

@ersatz don't you? Israel has a track record of incredibly aggressive maneuvers achieved in incredibly short amounts of time. Pretty much all of our wars involved bulldozing attacks on the border and pushing them back using armor.

I'm not using blitz as the literal tactic, it's more of a speed thing than anything else. I'm not sure why you feel the need to call it ridiculous. If you don't agree that's fine but maybe you should save your comment if this is all you have to say. Really. I was under the impression that all of our discussions here were relatively respectful and I definitely don't recall ridiculing your comments. Have a nice rest of your day.

@Felicity It's ridiculous because you don't have an army to blitz, you can't bomb random cities and so on. You have to clear street by street, sometimes house by house. This kind of thing takes a lot of time.

And I don't think describing the concept of "blitz a counterinsurgency" as "ridiculous" is disrespectful to anyone.

@ersatz my issue is not with the wording it's with the one sentence comment that dismisses my post without any further elaboration. Just calling someone's point of view ridiculous without explaining why is disrespectful in my eyes. If you'd posted your second comment initially I wouldn't have an issue with it an I'd happily engage like I have before, but you can't tell me that you'd be very excited to try and have a conversation with someone who - from the get go - makes very it clear they view your take as ridiculous. It immediately puts the other person in a position where they have to justify their opinion not against questions or a different opinion but against a comment that just thinks it's invalid in the first place.

Would you say this to a stranger in real life if you happened to have this conversation with them? Would you look them in the eyes and tell them you think their (non-harmful) opinion is ridiculous, without any explanation? I don't think so, and there's no reason to treat people online any different, in my eyes. If you want to talk about the conflict, great, if you just want to attack my opinions because they seem incorrect to you, please don't bother.

@Felicity I have nothing more to say about this other than I disagree that it was disrespectful to call a concept ridiculous. I don't think you should take this kind of thing personally, but ultimately it's up to you.

@ersatz you can try to bibilitz it, if you're bibi enough 😂