Bulletins and News Discussion from July 22nd to July 28th, 2024 - Fracas in Dhaka - COTW: Bangladesh

This MF literally was talking about “Israel’s vision of Palestine” like ok well who said that you get to have a vision on Palestine?

Netanyahu could bring out the blueprints of how he's gonna construct the biggest theme park in the world over the ruins of Gaza and it wouldn't really make it not the mutters of a deranged idiot. The Israeli economy is experiencing as big a cataclysm as their army is. They're in just as much a position to dictate terms as Ukraine is over Russia.

The economic indicators speak of nothing less than an economic catastrophe. Over 46,000 businesses have gone bankrupt, tourism has stopped, Israel’s credit rating was lowered, Israeli bonds are sold at the prices of almost “junk bonds” levels, and the foreign investments that have already dropped by 60% in the first quarter of 2023 (as a result of the policies of Israel’s far-right government before October 7) show no prospects of recovery. The majority of the money invested in Israeli investment funds was diverted to investments abroad because Israelis do not want their own pension funds and insurance funds or their own savings to be tied to the fate of the State of Israel. This has caused a surprising stability in the Israeli stock market because funds invested in foreign stocks and bonds generated profit in foreign currency, which was multiplied by the rise in the exchange rate between foreign currencies and the Israeli Shekel. But then Intel scuttled a $25 billion investment plan in Israel, the biggest BDS victory ever.

These are all financial indicators. But the crisis strikes deeper at the means of production of the Israeli economy. Israel’s power grid, which has largely switched to natural gas, still depends on coal to supply demand. The biggest supplier of coal to Israel is Colombia, which announced that it would suspend coal shipments to Israel as long as the genocide was ongoing. After Colombia, the next two biggest suppliers are South Africa and Russia. Without reliable and continuous electricity, Israel will no longer be able to pretend to be a developed economy. Server farms do not work without 24-hour power, and no one knows how many blackouts the Israeli high-tech sector could potentially survive. International tech companies have already started closing their branches in Israel.

Israel’s reputation as a “startup nation” depends on its tech sector, which in turn depends on highly educated employees. Israeli academics report that joint research with universities abroad has declined sharply thanks to the efforts of student encampments. Israeli newspapers are full of articles about the exodus of educated Israelis. Prof. Dan Ben David, a famous economist, argued that the Israeli economy is held together by 300,000 people (the senior staff in universities, tech companies, and hospitals). Once a significant portion of these people leaves, he says, “We won’t become a third world country, we just won’t be anymore.”

If they start shit with Hezbollah, and Hezbollah deigns to strike Israeli electricity generation and other civilian facilities, it is over. Hell, if Yemen decides that they want to do that, it is over. The only problem is how many thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps even millions of people Israel will kill as the temple columns fall around them. Perhaps that's why Hezbollah seems to be content to bide their time and wait for the Israelis to engage first; time is not on Israel's side, it is on the Resistance's. In a purely military sense, of course, though. In a civilian sense, every month that the Resistance continues the current pace, tens of thousands more Gazans perish. They have decades of experience fighting Israel though, so I trust that they know what they're doing.