The Israeli military says its Northern Command has approved operational plans for war with Lebanon.

Israel is ready for an “all-out war” in Lebanon and has plans approved for an offensive targeting Hezbollah, officials have said.

Israel and Hezbollah have been engaged in border fighting since shortly after the start of the war on Gaza, following the October 7 attacks on Israel. The confrontation is increasingly expanding, with both sides saying they are ready to go to war.

More than 400 people have been killed in Lebanon, including journalists and paramedics, over the past eight months, with 25 deaths in Israel. At least 90,000 people have been displaced in Lebanon, and more than 60,000 have been forced from their homes in northern Israel.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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    4 months ago

    Again, you asked for evidence and I gave it to you. Did you even read the article? From his best friend? Who talks about exactly how he’s creating a dictatorship? Do you think there wouldn’t be thousands of Israelis at protest rallies demanding an election if they were having elections like normal?

    • rdri@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I hear Putin is a dictator and there are tons of evidence. I hear Xi is a dictator and there are tons of evidence. The evidence you gave (an article with words from one person) is laughable at best, sorry. Israeli people seem to live just fine under Netanyahu. Also it doesn’t seem probable that he would attack Gaza if the October 7 attack didn’t happen (and people are having a hard time trying to prove that he somehow made it possible). Same with Lebanon.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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        4 months ago

        Israeli people seem to live just fine under Netanyahu.

        People said the same about the Spanish under Franco and Yugoslavia under Tito. Didn’t make them any less dictators.

        Again, huge numbers of Israelis are demanding an election. Why would they do that if it’s a democracy?

        • rdri@lemmy.world
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          4 months ago

          You’re acting ignorant with the last sentence. There is no line between democracies and dictatorships. There is a long way until we could call Israel a dictatorship. When they will marsh the streets after some next elections get cancelled (unconstitutionally), and huge numbers get arrested, then we’ll talk.

            • rdri@lemmy.world
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              4 months ago

              You don’t need to ask me how I prefer calling a regime in a country in order to make it look bad. I don’t have such preferences. There are people suffering in any country including yours, and their lives could get better with new elections. This is not an extraordinary situation.

              I don’t need to invent words for Israel. I would call it bad when I see it does terrible things to its own people. This is not a case for now and from what I know, there is no imminent conflict/crisis between government and citizens. That’s aside from the war conflict/intervention situation of course. I would also appreciate hamas if they did a better job at governing gaza, but instead they bombed it with inaccurate missiles as a side effect of trying to harm Israel. This is a huge difference - I call the Palestinian regime bad because of that, and suggest they could manage it much better. When compared to Israel, I don’t see much obvious room for improvement (I don’t see a lot of Israeli people suffering) and thus I can’t call it bad.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldM
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                4 months ago

                “Bad” is not a form of government. You claim it isn’t a dictatorship. What form of government is it? Don’t change the subject.

              • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                The Israeli regime enacts in all the territory it contols (Israeli sovereign territory, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip) an apartheid regime. One organizing principle lies at the base of a wide array of Israeli policies: advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.

                B’Tselem rejects the perception of Israel as a democracy (inside the Green Line) that simultaneously upholds a temporary military occupation (beyond it). B’Tselem reached the conclusion that the bar for defining the Israeli regime as an apartheid regime has been met after considering the accumulation of policies and laws that Israel devised to entrench its control over Palestinians.

                President Joe Biden has said that there is “every reason” to believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is continuing his assault on Gaza for political gain, appearing to acknowledge that Netanyahu is not interested in pulling out of the region despite the Biden administration’s insistence that the latest ceasefire deal is backed by Israel.

                Protesters demanding new elections in Israel clashed with police near the Jerusalem house of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday after he dissolved the government’s War Cabinet, leaving him as the unquestioned decision-maker regarding the eight-month-old conflict in Gaza.

                • rdri@lemmy.world
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                  4 months ago

                  Not helping. Apartheid or not, my criteria is how well government cares about its citizens, and that term ignores that. Political gain or not, my stance is that it started with October 7th attack, which was not prepared by current Israeli government, therefore it’s correct to blame another party. Protesters doing their thing is good for everyone, we should start worrying when they are unable to do that anymore due to oppressive laws, police raids etc.

                  • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
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                    4 months ago

                    Sure, if you ignore the discrimination and inequality of the millions of Palestinian citizens of Israel, on top of the millions within the Occupied Territories that have been under Israeli Military Control since 1967. If you ignore all of that, then your criteria of ‘how well government cares about its citizens’ could make sense.

                    Yet holding elections is not enough. Totalitarian regimes also engage in a process they refer to as “elections,” but this does not make them democracies. Democratic elections must reflect core principles such as equality, liberty and freedom of expression. These allow not only the act of voting itself, but also the free exchange of ideas and meaningful participation in shaping the future. Democratic elections must also ensure one vote for every citizen that is exactly equal to all others, and allow all citizens to run for office, present their platforms and work to further their agendas. Legal restrictions on voting and on running for office must be extremely limited, if at all permitted.

                    Roughly 5.5 million Palestinian subjects live in the territories occupied by Israel in 1967: about 3.5 million in the West Bank (including roughly 350,000 in East Jerusalem) and some 2 million in the Gaza Strip. None of them are allowed to vote or run for Knesset, and they have no representation in the political institutions that dictate their lives.

                    Your criteria doesn’t make sense, and ignores the reality of Apartheid. If you consider a democracy based on equality, liberty and freedom of expression, and also consider all aspects of the Apartheid Regime; Israel falls tremendously short of being a Democracy.