2024·
1 month agoI don’t think it’s clear that they are not trying to minimize civilian casualties, it’s hard to imagine a more targeted attack than the pager attack.
I don’t know what the numbers are like for the Lebanon part of the war, obviously, but in almost all modern conflicts we see that between 25 and 80% of casualties are civilians. I imagine we’re on the high end here as hezbollah like to fight and hide amongst civilians and use them as shields.
I struggle to see how you can combat such an organization without heavy civilian casualties, no matter how you go about it. I’m not saying the Israelis are not making mistakes or even being disproportionate at times, but I just can’t see how you’re going to fight hezbollah without heavy collateral damage.
People turn fascist when they’re desperate and angry, same as always. So when people experience economic hardship they look for somone to blame, often immigrants. So we call them racists, and I guess that’s true, but it comes from something else; economic inequality.
In Europe we do the same thing, in the French elections the rural population voted overwhelmingly for the fascists - here in brown.
In the German elections, the poorer former East-German provinces also supported the fascist AfD, here shown in the darker colours.
Even in Denmark, where I live, the more right-wing and extremist parties are popular in the southern, western, and northern parst of the country - the poorer rural areas, who’s seen their jobs disappear, their shops close, and their income stall even as the country as a whole gets richer.
So the challenge of liberal democracy is clear; show the population outside the cities that they, too, can get their piece of the pie. If we cannot solve that, then we’ll see more countries turn fascist in the next decade.