Victory is Certain
Victory is certain, the resistance starts within.
Victory is Certain
ep 8. "Is the IDF on the Brink of Collapse? A Deep Dive into Challenges and Consequences"
Transitioning from the battlefield to the barracks, we tackle the sobering reality of military equipment shortages that threaten the lives of Israeli soldiers. From interceptor missile deficits to the financial strain of warfare, this discussion exposes the psychological toll on IDF personnel, marked by increasing suicide rates and a reluctance to serve. We consider how media narratives shape public perception and question the dehumanization inherent in modern warfare, probing the mental health crisis that reverberates through the ranks.
Finally, we pivot to the economic and geopolitical pressures squeezing Israel, from looming recession risks to labor shortages exacerbated by regional instability. Delve into how missile attacks on ports disrupt trade and agriculture, further inflamed by cultural boycotts like BDS. By drawing parallels with historical conflicts such as the Vietnam War, we underscore the resilience and ingenuity of resistance movements and the broader consequences for regional stability. This episode is a candid examination of the complex interplay of military, economic, and cultural dynamics challenging Israel today.
Yeah, so anyway, is the IDF collapsing?
Speaker 2:Yes, cool. From the copious amount of notes that I have, the answer is yes. The answer is pretty much yes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you went on a research plane.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of research and got like a lot of articles and I did read so many articles I don't even know how many they are in here altogether.
Speaker 1:And I love that this is a bubble for people to come to for a easily digestible package of research yeah, I'll do all the reading for you, don't even stress about it and I'll translate to human language for sure.
Speaker 2:So the question today is is the idf collapsing? Um? We've been getting you know a couple of reports recently that seems like maybe they are, but I know majority of the coverage that we see, whether it's like al jazeera or um, you know, like mainstream news, not that I. I don't think that a lot of people even like who's watching cnn to get their coverage on gaza?
Speaker 2:nobody you know, but you know if it's, if it's um al Jazeera or Instagram or TikTok or however you get your news. Um, I think a lot of the time the focus is on the devastation and because there are so many censors on social media, on like just about every platform, you can't really talk about the resistance because it'll be flagged as terrorism, and so I think a lot of people don't get to see how the IDF is actually losing pretty significantly.
Speaker 1:Okay, so where do we start with losses Like, how do we Cool?
Speaker 2:So I broke it down into three sort of major foundational questions about how to establish whether or not a military is functioning, and so the question of is the IDf collapsing? Falls into these three questions of, first of all, operational effectiveness. So, like the recent performance, the command and control, the leadership, the stocks and supply of weaponry, so just basic functionality, of functionality everything that makes a yeah, yeah, functionality, everything that makes uh the idf as an organization yeah just as a team work yeah.
Speaker 2:And then personnel issues, so like morale retention, recruitment, the overall well-being of the soldiers, like if they're getting the medical treatment that they need and the support that they need, and all of that crap. The staff, yeah. And then, lastly, the budget and funding of the IDF Okay, cool. So when it comes to operational effectiveness and the recent performance, recently they've been dying. They've been dying, they've been getting marked. Yesterday alone, 38, 38 dead IDF soldiers in Gaza by Al-Qqassam brigades. We watched like a couple of those videos where it's the. The video is of a disabled al-qassam fighter running up to a tank, putting an explosive on a tank, running back and then watching the tank explode and he like throws up a peace sign afterwards. It's, it's dope, like it's really dope, um, and so yeah, so they, they did a bunch of these, like ambushes and attacks on macabre tanks specifically, and they just destroyed 38 idf soldiers yesterday alone. That's just in gaza.
Speaker 2:That's not even talking about the south of lebanon, where they're getting marked on the daily and this is, uh like referring to that video of the guy we saw the sluffies yeah, basically just running up and putting it an explosive in a tank yeah, and just on the top of a tank, which is crazy, like the amount of bravery that it takes to run up to a tank. What he wasn't in armor he wasn't in, like yeah, look he had no protection.
Speaker 2:He was, he didn't have anything else on him. He wasn't, like you know, nothing else to protect him, nothing to defend him, just running up to a tank running back and I don't want to even, I don't think we can even limit it to just the, the feeling of bravery.
Speaker 1:It's also purpose like yeah someone comes in and attacks your, your wife. Um, you aren't going to stand up because you're brave, you can stand up because you have to and um, yeah, that's sort of one of the differences, but the bravery is real yeah, it's insane the amount of courage that they have.
Speaker 2:But, um, when it comes to the south of lebanon, they're also getting marked every day, the galani brigade specifically. We have an article over here that was from yesterday saying uh, idf reports six israeli soldiers killed in lebanon, and that was the gulani brigade. The gulani brigade is like their elite forces. It's the first combat unit of the idf, so they are supposed to be battle ready, they're supposed to be the ones on the ground, but they're a bunch of nerds and they just like the, the. I think I showed you that one video from maybe the first week of them being in lebanon, where it's about 20 soldiers just like standing around, no one's covering anybody, no, but nobody's even on the lookout, and then a missile just comes, destroys them all. So they die, die in Lebanon.
Speaker 2:There's another article that says Netanyahu considering ending war in Lebanon due to mounting losses. That's how much they're dying. That Netanyahu's like hmm, maybe. And the thing is like now that Yov Galant, the previous defense minister, was fired. Now Israel Katz is the new minister of defense and he's even more psychotic and he's talking about we're gonna destroy Hamas and Hezbollah and we're gonna keep going with this war, which is bad for the IDF, like. My theory about it is that they are going to.
Speaker 2:It's going to be the IDF that does like a turncoats or something. A turncoats rebellion is when the military turns against the state and I think it's going to be that because the I don't think that they can maintain fighting this war and they have no other option but to continue fighting Netanyahu on a personal level and just in general. For them to continue having any support, they need to keep fighting. Their people need to keep seeing devastation, because that's how they judge whether or not they're winning, which is so stupid. And they, their soldiers, are gonna keep dying in gaza, keep dying in lebanon, they and they're gonna keep suffering and then eventually, I think it will lead to the ultimate collapse do you think that it's a lack of purpose, similar to us soldiers in vietnam?
Speaker 2:yeah, okay, yeah we can talk about vietnam as well. But the other thing was the other article israeli army struggles to secure ground in southern lebanon. After three-week incursion, israeli forces have failed to gain control of any area in the region, despite deploying tens of thousands of soldiers in the ground operations. Bad investment, bad investment, um. And then so that that's kind of like on the recent performance, that's the very recent performance, that was yesterday um, so they're not doing well. And then when it comes to like the actual command structure of the idf, we can see that it's 100 failing.
Speaker 2:Because when it comes to like the war crimes, like the seven um, the seven workers from the central central world kitchen um, that were killed, like purposefully, their, their um, their convoy was targeted and then they tried to like flee and they were targeted again. They tried to flee, again they were targeted for a third time, eventually killing everyone there. So it was very much a targeted operation and the IDF claims that this was like mid-level officers. It wasn't a commander that gave the order to do this. So that means that soldiers are just doing whatever they want in Gaza.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Is it sort of? Are soldiers essentially like pawns in the play? In chess terms, you are there willing to sacrifice the soldiers?
Speaker 2:There was this other article from the Guardian where the quote is I can't justify this military operation anymore. The IDF reserve is refusing to return to Gaza. And in this article, the soldier that's refusing to serve, he says I saw soldiers graffiting houses or stealing all the time. They would go into a house for a military reason, looking for weapons, but it was more fun to look for souvenirs. They had a thing for necklaces with Arabic writing that they collected.
Speaker 2:We were given an order. We were inside a house and our commander ordered us to burn it down. When he raised the issue with the head of his company, he added the answers he gave me were not enough. I said if we're doing all of this for no reason, I'm not going to participate. I left the next day. So that shows you, like the command structure within the idf, either they aren't take the, the commanders are not taking the blame for war crimes, or they're directing their soldiers to do war crimes. And from this quote, like you can see that the soldiers are like okay, but the war crimes are not leading to any military goals.
Speaker 1:But are so. It's essentially that they're sending soldiers out with, like if someone's going to be sacrificed, there needs to be a return on that particular strategy.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Where, as in this case, it's just go out there and plunder sort of like pirates disrespectful to pirates.
Speaker 2:When you do that, when your entire army is just committing war crimes and doing a genocide, how does that achieve any of your military goals? So that's why the IDF has once again had to go into Jabalia and that's why 38 of their soldiers just got killed in jabalia again, because they, they will go there. Jabalia is in the north of gaza. It's the part that's currently being besieged. I think it's like day 30 something that the north of gaza has been besieged. People, people have had to evacuate and flee. So many times it's been like really, really devastating. But the point, the idea, if they do this every single time, they'll do a massive bombing campaign to try to clear the area. Then they'll bring in their tanks and their bulldozers and they'll think that that's advancing. But the Al-Qassam Brigades and every other militant group in Gaza will just keep popping up out of tunnels and keep ambushing the way that they have been ambushing. They destroy Jabalia. They've bombed and bombed and bombed, and still 38 of their soldiers got killed is there.
Speaker 1:So the reason for the target on Jabalia is, well, like they're going for the north now. So so far they've taken or they've bombed out no way.
Speaker 2:What do you mean?
Speaker 1:Like are there have in terms of like regions in Gaza that are still alive.
Speaker 2:No, there's nothing. They've destroyed the entirety of Gaza from the north to the south, like Rafa, everything. Destroy the entirety of Gaza from the north to the south, like Rafah everything. There's a very small percentage of Gaza that is considered a safe zone and even that is not even considered an actual safe zone Under humanitarian laws. It keeps getting bombed.
Speaker 1:Earlier this week we saw another tent massacre where they were bombing tents again. Okay, yeah, um, so can you talk to me about the shortage of interceptors?
Speaker 2:yeah, so that's the other part, like the stocks in the supply of the weapons. That's the other very vital part of the just basic structure of the idf. So we've been getting reports for a while now, but like when you actually see all of them combined you're like okay, they are actually dying out here. So Germany has stopped approving uh, war weapons exports to Israel. Um, there's another article. Israel raises approval level for for use of heavy weapon amid ammunition shortage. So because they don't have the weapons they they needing, they're just using bigger weapons and bigger bombs. Here's another one Israel faces potential shortage for interceptor missiles. Israel is facing a serious shortage of interceptor missiles. Idf equipment failures, endangered soldiers, while the IDF cited concerns about the quality and safety of donated gear. It's difficult to shake the feeling that pride and bureaucracy played a significant role in their decision. Was there another one?
Speaker 1:A shortage of interceptor missiles.
Speaker 2:That means that they are provided with the weaponry, it's just they're not executing the last one is Israeli army admits it suffers shortages of tanks and ammunition amid Gaza war. So they don't have tanks, they don't have ammunition, they're running out of bombs. They don't have interceptor missiles and the equipment that they are getting donated is failing and has functional failures, and it's endangering soldiers.
Speaker 1:And this is like not to say that they didn't have this at some point, they just flumbled it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean they've been. They've been committing a genocide for the past year. Over 400 days now. It's not a sustainable campaign to just continue to drop massive amounts of munitions on people while still not achieving any of your military goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I mean they can't handle the guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but when it comes to the interceptor macelles specifically, we can see how it's failing. Like in last night there was this massive barrage of missiles fired from lebanon into haifa over a hundred missiles and it was so funny to watch the iron dome try to intercept it because they were just failing. And the thing about the iron dome is that one interceptor missile costs between um like a hundred thousand and two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, whereas the missiles that he's always firing at them costs between three hundred dollars for like a katusha to maybe like five thousand dollars. So it's ideally not expensive stuff that they're shooting and they have a lot of it, like they've been getting a significant amount. And, uh, the asymmetrical warfare that's being fought, also with Russia, because the US is funding Ukraine, and so Russia's response and this is what Vladimir Putin has openly said his response will be to fund America's enemies, which is obviously the axis of resistance, and that's why we see like a lot of the weaponry that's used and it's coming from Russia.
Speaker 1:So what has it been like for soldiers right now just realizing that, essentially, their genocide is not going according to plan?
Speaker 2:Well, they didn't have a plan to begin with, other than to commit the genocide but I mean, like, where does that leave the morale of the israeli soldiers?
Speaker 2:while they're committing suicide. So, and they're refusing to serve. So that's the other part of with, like, the personnel issues, um, the morale and the retention recruitment. So, first of all, the idea if he's not offering any mental health assistance to the people who want to kill themselves because of what they did in gaza and you know they why are you laughing? You're laughing at people ending their own lives it's so sad I don't know.
Speaker 2:I made it to dua for it personally. I said, listen, if I'm not doing it, if Al-Qassam Brigade's not doing it, if Hezbollah's not doing it, they're doing it to themselves. I said, is this not the best? Is this not the best option?
Speaker 2:The first time that I saw the occupied uh territories of palestine, um, I was in jordan. I was driving past and, um, I was getting all like worked up and I was with someone that was also getting very like worked up and like, oh fuck, israel, whatever. And then we started making it to our and I was like I just hope they all start killing themselves. I hope that, even if it's not about what happened in gaza, I hope there's just small inconveniences in their lives that start to eat away at them. Their medication goes out of stock, you know, the antidepressants become too expensive, maybe your medical aid is no longer covering it, and now you're sad and your girlfriend leaves you and you lose your job and eventually, eventually, like it starts to feel like, why am I here anymore? I mean, like that's what I hope for, the idea of my assumption, and it's never good to assume where suicide comes from, but um were soldiers, probably feeling disillusioned with what?
Speaker 1:yeah?
Speaker 2:I think you probably you, I mean what, what you do when you commit those war crimes. I don't think that you can remain a human being after you do things like that. I think you have to break your psyche in order to commit those crimes in the first place and if at some point, you start realizing what you've done and the the, because dehumanization ultimately is a delusion. The people that you kill are human beings, like in that article that CNN did where they were talking about. You know the idea if they get out of Gaza, but Gaza doesn't get out of them, cuck like that. Those soldiers were talking about having run a bulldozer over hundreds of Palestinians, squashing them to death. The bra goes yeah, now I can't eat meat anymore because I watched Palestinians get driven over with a bulldozer.
Speaker 1:And then he killed himself. It's probably the Israel media that's reporting it, though like reporting this is a worrying trend, yeah. What are they hoping to achieve by reporting that this is what are you doing? Like understanding like that every pro-israel piece of media is deeply rooted in propaganda like what are they trying to put in into society? I?
Speaker 2:mean, I think, to some extent, these kinds of reports uh, the report being israeli lone soldiers suicides becoming a warning trend, um, I think it's also so that they can like try to get some support from the idf. They also have this, this vision of the idf being this, you know, this beacon of their like sexism yeah this is the.
Speaker 2:this is the epitome of what their state is the strong, proud IDF soldier that will fight for his homeland. And so they have this like myth around the IDF. And when members of the IDF are not treated, while they start having mental breakdowns about it and they're like, no, you have to provide them with mental health care. You know, you have to take care of the veterans, cuck. And it's funny. Yeah, it's just. It's funny because, like I don't know if you've seen like some of the funerals that they have for IDF soldiers, it's hilarious.
Speaker 2:And now, with, like, the ground invasion of Lebanon and them just getting murked in Lebanon on the daily, there's quite a few of these funerals and you'll just watch these people lose their minds, like they are screaming and crying and throwing up because their soldiers are dying and it's like, but now, that's what the soldier is supposed to do? Duh, but they don't have that understanding of what an army is meant to do, because it's a conscript military, you have mandatory service, so you can't make it seem like, well, this is something that's going to, you know, result in your death. You have to be like no, it's a fun little place where you just make, you know, tiktok videos. It's fun.
Speaker 1:Well, they're dying. They're dying and there's a I think there's also a confusion with just wording, with the term hostage and it's a soldier.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's a prisoner of war.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a prisoner of war, and that's something I would actually ask people to just refer to them as.
Speaker 2:But you see what I'm saying about, like this myth of the IDF. They aren't even like categorized as soldiers 're categorized as civilians. When you talk about the 7th of october, nobody talks about, well, these were the amount of soldiers and reservists that were killed. They talk about the overall 1200 israelis were killed and it's like, yeah, but some of them were soldiers, they're not just civilians and contradiction itself, the idea of the people they're trying to develop.
Speaker 1:It's they're trying to make yeah.
Speaker 2:Zionists seem like these strong supermen yeah while at the same time making them sympathetic yeah um yeah, we spoke about that in like a previous episode, the um, the Theodor itself version of the new Jew being like, basically, aryan race, strong, proud, will not be holocausted. He's, you know, he's now in this European colonial outpost me and the patriarchy I'm gonna let you out, but yeah, like, just think about the, the morale and the way that these soldiers are having like psychotic breaks.
Speaker 2:And so 25 percent of reservists have also refused to serve. There was also this letter that was signed by 130 of the reservists, a public letter explaining why they don't, why they are refusing to fight in Gaza, which is like a pretty big deal, the fact that they don't want to fight. And then, on top of it, you have the Haredi Jews that are being conscripted into the military now, and these are people who don't believe in the use of violence, like for religious reasons, they don't believe in the use of violence, um, like, for religious reasons, they don't believe in using violence at all. And so they are now being drafted and responding to this no, they're fighting there in the road. Maybe they're fighting each other, they're doing protests. It's a mess like it's a complete mess. And it says here it requires the idf requires some 10,000 new soldiers, 75% of whom will be combat troops, but can only accommodate the enlistment of an additional 3,000 ultra-orthodox soldiers. That's sad. Imagine you need 10,000 troops. You need 10,000. How many kilometers of land? 44.
Speaker 2:Oh my God, it's from like.
Speaker 1:Simon's town to town. That is weak, weak that is.
Speaker 2:But um yeah. So like on the point of like the morale and stuff, I just want to talk about vietnam and my, my like trip to vietnam and what I saw there.
Speaker 1:Before you go there, can I just ask the soldier that what is the investment cost into developing a soldier If we think of, okay, this is what the missile costs, into an idea of soldier to be not really genocide ready? I'm just trying to put numbers together of the amount of money being wasted.
Speaker 2:I don't know how to quantify it like that, really but I mean it's a two year. It's a two year mandatory service. So you get trained for two years and then at that point you are just a reservist. So you go on to like live a normal civilian life, but you will get called into the army at any point and so if you do decide to become part of the army, like professionally, like that's your job, then you're spending extra time special specializing in whatever that's also a cost to to them.
Speaker 2:But training or like, if you look at the, at the list of idea soldiers that have been killed, then they usually say like, uh, you know he's whatever his rank was the amount of like captains and majors, and then he's a 21 year old, so you're 18 when you join the idf. You have two years of mandatory conscription and then you, it's just one more year and then all of a sudden you are major. That's not how it works.
Speaker 2:So whatever the investment is, bro, I feel like increase it increase it a bit intern, maybe senior like video, like when I look at the, it's always like the gulani brigades and I just need to emphasize how important it is that it's the gulani brigades. This is considered their best fighting force. They dying all the time, all the time in the south of lebanon they're getting marked, marked daily and also, just to point out the contradiction, even more, the iranian forces, which are the ground forces for hezbollah. They have not sent out their best brigades yet. In 2006 it was 30 days, so 33 days obviously this has been much longer. I think it's approaching 50 days at this point, but during 2006 they didn't send out their best brigades and they won without sending out their best brigades. The I mean, and you can see like the escalation of the use of weaponry he's why isn't using the stuff that they have. Yet they've been putting out these videos of of the ballistic missiles, their tanks, all of the stuff.
Speaker 1:They aren't using it yet so it hasn't even it's, we haven't even shown you, yeah you don't even know about it yet okay, let's go to uh vietnam yeah, so I went to vietnam a few years ago.
Speaker 2:Um, I'm a big, you know history nerd and I don't know like my family never really like travels to a country to have a nice time.
Speaker 2:They always travel to a country for a political reason, it's just, or like research purposes, you know yeah so we went to vietnam to go to like the tunnels specifically, me and my dad, we like we've always wanted to go and, um, I have to say, like being in vietnam, just just being there initially, just coming into the country. It's a very like joyful place and the people are so warm and kind and open that you'd never you never think that these were people that suffered under such great occupation and such like violence. People are genuinely very happy and they're very proud of the resistance, and vietnam was occupied by the french until 1885 as well, for about 30 odd years, and um, then, in the 1950s, with Laos and Cambodia, there was this campaign by the US, occupation of Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia as well, followed by massive bombing campaigns, nate bombing, the use of agent orange both of those being like chemical weapons and then actual troops.
Speaker 1:What was the US's issue with Vietnam? They were fighting communism yeah oh, so they didn't have an issue huh, it was cold war.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cold war, business no yeah, just us doing us yeah, it was nonsense. It was complete nonsense. Um but um. So I I went to the kuchi forest at c u c h I. You know it's vietnamese, not a rude word but never on the show never, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So, um, you like I was. We drove from saigon, the capital city, to the kuchi forest and the kuchi forest was where the vietcong, the vietnamese resistance in the north, where they had like the stronghold in this forest and this forest was napalmed massively. Um, they used agent orange, massive bombing campaigns. Um, and yeah, like they, this is where the vietnamese like fought against the americans so hectically that it caused them to withdraw. It was one of the reasons that they ultimately withdrew from from vietnam overall.
Speaker 2:Um, but on the way into the forest, like it's just agricultural land and villages and stuff and it's just farmlands, and we stopped at the shop and they were making these really like beautiful handmade bowls. And we walk into the shop and we see the people like making the bowls. All of them have physical disabilities or they're like physically disfigured somehow, and I asked someone about it and they explained to me that these are like centers that are set up to give people who have been physically affected by napalm and by agent orange, to give them jobs. And it was so shocking because the the people were of all ages, was young people and older people, and it was just this, like a realization that the scars of american imperialism, and they're still very much there.
Speaker 2:We're still living in that era yeah, like seeing people like in their 20s with physical disabilities because of agent orange was it was crazy. And then we drove from there into the forest and like, obviously, that's the, that's the feeling that I'm going into this forest with, like I want to see the booby traps, I want to see how they died. Now and you go on this tour and like it starts off within a bunker, in a tunnel and it's just dope, but the forest itself is like very thick and dense and like loud, like it's like you know, forest loud, lots of animals, lots of like birds and yeah, it's loud the sound of a forest.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and once you go into a tunnel it's like complete and utter silence, like you don't hear anything. It's pitch dark. It was crazy. The first level of tunnels in Vietnam is just like a labyrinth and it's all very like small and tight tunnels. And the thing is, uh, the leader of the, the vietcong, ho chi minh, he lived in gaza for a few months and he was kind of like working with the resistance. So I don't know, I the the tunnels. Tunnels in Gaza are probably like way better from the tunnels in Vietnam in the 1960s.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just advanced.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and also because they've been occupied for a longer period. So the tunnels in Gaza are greater than the tunnels in Vietnam. The tunnels in the south of Lebanon are greater than the tunnels in Gaza because the south of Lebanon is not besieged and occupied in the same way, and yeah, yeah. So just bear that in mind when I describe how crazy these tunnels are um and yeah.
Speaker 2:So like the first level, it's just this labyrinth and then they take you and they, they show you like all the booby traps. So there's this one thing called a punji pit where it's literally just like spears, that. And then the spear some of them are like flared on the top, like it's a love flare, so that once it pierces through you if you try to pull out of it, it tears your skin as it.
Speaker 1:As you try to pull out the tears your flesh like a sort of like a sword with thorns on it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, basically and also, you're falling into this pit in the complete and utter darkness of a tunnel. You don't know what's happening. And you're falling into this pit in the complete and utter darkness of a tunnel. You don't know what's happening and you're getting impaled, like in seven different parts of your body.
Speaker 2:Impaled brutally, yeah. And then they also had this other thing which was like it was like two wheels and each, like every spoke, was like a spear with one of those flares on the top. And then there were some of the spokes that even had like another another little you know spear section coming out of it, and then the wheels like turned in opposite directions like that. So if you fall into it and you try to move, it's just going to turn and rip you further.
Speaker 1:What was the tour guides like? Don't like explaining these things to you.
Speaker 1:It was actually kind of interesting because, um, he's taking us like through all of these the booby traps, like some of them are uncovered and you can like see some of them, or like you have to look down and see them, and he's, he also shows, uh, the american soldiers uniforms, uh that's just like left behind like and yeah, you see, yeah, it was wild like they even had americans like the, the ak-47s that they managed to get and you could go shoot them for yeah, that's great because of, like you know, like, like our british tour guide does it in like a museum where they're like we stole this, yeah, like, oh, we stole this, like I'm so glad we took this off them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, um, but it was crazy because the the tour guide at some some point. He's like going through all the booby traps and showing us like all the different ways that they just destroyed american soldiers, and he stops at some point and he's like we didn't want to do this to them. We knew that the people coming to fight here were young men that were drafted. There were 19 year olds, there were young boys and we didn't want to do this to them, but we had no other weaponry. We didn't have their fighter jets, their Apache helicopters, their machine guns, their tanks. We only had spears and knives, that's it. We had to use what we could use and we hoped that they would be so brutally injured that it would stop them from coming.
Speaker 2:And he also said they didn't want to kill them. They just wanted them to be injured at least so that they would stop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I don't think that I let that get lost on the fact that this is tact as opposed to someone coming with the airplane and the helicopter and doing the thing. This is pure tact, and strategy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the whole aim of guerrilla resistance is that you know that the fight is asymmetrical.
Speaker 2:The one side is stronger, more powerful, has greater military might and greater military technology than you, but you have to exploit every single one of the weaknesses.
Speaker 2:And that's what the Viet Cong did, like they were so, so good at it. The one of their tactics was um, whenever troops were trying to advance, like american troops were trying to advance, they would allow them to advance and then ambush them where they were and then, as they were retreating, they would then attack them further and whenever they were like so so this is also what happens in in lebanon and in gaza like the idea will think that they are advancing, only to be ambushed in that position. So when you think about, like the morale and the psychological warfare of that, that every time you you take a little bit of territory, you're getting murked, the minute you get there, it messes you up and actually, like going into the tunnels it was so insane because it's very disorientating you kind, kind of you're in the tunnel, I mean you're above ground, and then you step into the tunnel and it feels like you're only stepping, like you step down like a meter.
Speaker 1:Okay, and it's like dark.
Speaker 2:But the minute you get in there it's like complete silence, peach black. Also. Vietnam is extremely hot. It's high fifties, forties sometimes, and it's like 97 humidity. So it's insanely hot, yeah, and inside tunnels that are small and tight and pitch dark it's hella scary, like it's so disorientating because you also don't know. You don't know where you're going, you can't see in front of you, you just have to feel.
Speaker 2:And these soldiers, what was happening was that they were feeling around in the tunnels, crawling around and then falling into an ambush or falling into like a pit, falling into a booby trap and getting impaled in the complete and utter darkness of these tunnels. And when I went into these tunnels, there was one that was like, uh, the guy said it's like five meters and then you feel to the left and you you'll get out or there's, if you don't get out at that point you go down for a kilometer and then you get out. And maybe I was like, oh, I'm brave, I can do this. You know, I wanna. Did you do it? Yeah, I did it was the worst.
Speaker 2:It was the worst it was. It was, I mean, it wasn't the worst, it was a nice. You know, now I have the knowledge, have the knowledge of this experience, but I'll never do it again. It was so scary, like it was so so scary because I knew in the back of my mind, like the Viet Cong are no longer here, even if they were, they'd know I was on their side. You know, I'm small and Asian, looking just like them, like I'll be fine, I'm not not gonna fall into a booby trap, all of those things. But I was scared in those tunnels because it's so like you. It's claustrophobic, you don't know where you're going, it's pitch dark, like it's just it's really, really scary.
Speaker 1:So you're moving with the tour guide and like going through all of the memorabilia yeah, they just had like tons.
Speaker 2:They were like this is from the americans, this is what they. We got this from them.
Speaker 1:Crazy so where does it go from there?
Speaker 2:you go through the tunnel yeah, I went through the tunnel and I came out and genuinely like being in that forest afterwards, like I was just kind of like walking around for a bit and I was feeling like so hopeful and I felt like liberation for palestine is so possible within our lifetime, because if this is what the boys are doing, if this is what they have, and this is all that they have to do, really I know it seems really hectic that it's this massive, horrible, terrifying army that's committing this genocide, that's expanding this war to Lebanon now, now to syria, bombing iran, bombing iraq, just everywhere, and no one is able to stop them.
Speaker 2:But they are being stopped like we can see it. Yeah, they're dying constantly, they they're running out of arms, their tanks are being destroyed, their morale is being destroyed, and that's what guerrilla resistance is. It's exploiting your enemies, every single, like every weakness of your enemy, exploiting it to the nth degree, and that's what they're doing and that's how, that's how the idf is collapsing and that's how we're winning, and it's some of what they're doing.
Speaker 1:I mean, we are not close to as smart as the yeah it is on the ground resistance no, not even close.
Speaker 2:I mean, do you know how many times like I'd be like yo guys, that was crazy, that was wild how you did that.
Speaker 1:I can't even imagine what they're like yeah. What are they up to? Right now so if we move on from.
Speaker 2:Oh, the other thing that I want to say about like Vietnam specifically, and what I learned there, was that because the land belongs to you, you're indigenous to the land, you are familiar with the terrain and you adapt to the terrain and you work with the terrain, like they created these tunnels and like also within the forest. It was just so crazy like there'd be just like a random rock formation and then a tunnel at the bottom of it, just and they knew where everything was. They'd be like this is the tree where the tunnel goes in over here, and because the the tunnel system is so complex, so it's this massive labyrinth on the top and then you go down further into like bunkers, into kitchen areas and stuff, and the way that they like used every aspect of their environment. There was also this other thing that they would do. So there's very long like reeds and grass in vietnam and the vietcong would like sit in these positions for weeks on end waiting for American soldiers to come through the grass and then they'd daunt them in the grass.
Speaker 1:Yeah, creeping on the low, low yeah.
Speaker 2:And yeah, like that's what you fight against. You fight against indigenous people who know this area, who know this terrain In Lebanon, they know the terrain In Gaza, they know the terrain, they work with it, and that's also that fact.
Speaker 1:It gives us hope. Yeah, it definitely does it gives us hope and understanding that, as much as they are overbearing, we can't resist.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we are.
Speaker 1:We are.
Speaker 2:We are and we're winning. And yeah, I think the last point was the actual budget and funding of the IDF. Oh, yeah, yeah. So economy struggles. Leading economists say that ending the war in Gaza would help. Israel's economy has plunged into uncertainty labor shortages, inflation, mounting difficulties in agriculture and construction. The reason that there's mounting difficulties in agriculture and construction is because they no longer are capable of relying on cheap palestinian labor, because they aren't giving work permits to palestinians any longer, even palestinians from the west bank they relied on, like workers from gaza as well can't rely on elitists to get a job done and there used to be a lot of workers from Thailand that would come and work in the agricultural sector.
Speaker 2:But because 100% of Thai workers had been sexually abused, 100% Thailand, the country of Thailand was like we're not sending our people there anymore, you can't go there anymore, sorry, yeah isn't prostitution legal in thailand? Yeah, but they don't want to hide, like israelis, to be abusing their people. I feel like sex work and sexual abuse.
Speaker 1:No, it's completely different. Yeah, I'm just saying, like they are, I'm I'm so happy for for that factor for thailand yeah recalling it also like takes a stigma away from what yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're very progressive on that front. It's quite interesting, not happy about the 100%.
Speaker 1:Like that's disgusting.
Speaker 2:Israel is approaching recession and seeing its budgetary leeway collapse. Israel says Eilat port bankrupt. After months of Houthi naval blockade, port of Eilat declares bankruptcy, and this is my favorite one also of y'all. Israel faces a harder scenario if Haifa port targeted by Hezbollah. Guess what was targeted last night in Haifa with over 100 missiles?
Speaker 1:I don't know, tell me.
Speaker 2:The port of Haifa. The port of Haifa gets about like 87% of all the shipping, because now the port of Eilat has been destroyed.
Speaker 1:So 85% drop in activity from. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping seeking aid from the Israelis. I love.
Speaker 2:Yemen. Shout out to the boys of Yemen.
Speaker 1:The port of Eilat declared bankruptcy due to an 85% drop in activity from Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping seeking aid from the Israelis. Eilat declared bankruptcy due to an 85% drop in activity from OT attacks on Red Sea shipping seeking aid from the Israeli government. Okay, explain what the port of Eilat is.
Speaker 2:So it's just, it's a port like a harbor or whatever. I don't know what to. Yeah, a port, yeah, it's a port, but because of the naval blockade by yemen, um, ships are not getting to go in anymore, so a lot of them have like diverted to like cyprus, okay, um, yeah, and now it's gone bankrupt, because that's the main function is the attacks on late sea shipping, which is that refers to?
Speaker 2:the yeah, so yemen is targeting any zionist commercial vessels or anything affiliated to the zionist regime. Anyone sending anything to the zionist regime will be targeted by yemen um this.
Speaker 1:I see also that like they're having mounting difficulties in agriculture yeah, israel economy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what we were just talking about now, so I like is is it land issues, it's.
Speaker 1:It's the people that they don't have the labor.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they don't yeah, they don't have the labor, they don't have the workforce, um, and also, like a lot of the farmlands in the north, people can't go there anymore because it's yeah on the border with lebanon and it's getting rained down with uh missiles.
Speaker 1:Oh wow so it's fun. It's a quite a oh. This is a fancy situation for them, isn't it?
Speaker 2:holistic defeat yeah, fully so. When it comes to, like the question of is the idf collapsing on the three fronts of operational effectiveness?
Speaker 1:finished so personal issues like food yeah, I think so.
Speaker 2:There's this one um uh analyst that I always listen to, scott ritter. He's a former marine intelligence officer. He was involved in, like the iraq, weapons of mass destruction. He was part of the us the un investigating body that was seeing if iran, iraq, had nuclear weapons or weapons of mass destruction, and he obviously found that they didn't have any. Uh, but the us didn't listen to him. They wanted to do a war. Um, but he says that, like the state of Israel is no longer going to exist, like it cannot, it's, it's on its last legs is this uh?
Speaker 1:are they essentially surviving on donors?
Speaker 2:yeah oh, wow and the thing is it's not becoming like it's not a good investment anymore. Nobody wants to invest in them. I mean, you can see the gulf states pulling away from them. They don't want to do any normalization agreements because they don't see a point in doing it. It's not just the pressure that comes from the um, from the yeah, from the people in the country. It also comes from the fact that, like it's not a good investment to do business with a country that's in the middle of a war that they're losing and I mean structurally.
Speaker 1:Structurally, if they're losing like that and main income is from donors, it also speaks to the importance of boycotting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, fully boycott, fully, always boycott.
Speaker 1:I mean, that's the threat.
Speaker 2:The fact that they spend so much money and so many resources on combating BDS means that BDS is, like, really, really important. The amount of money that they spend on um, making sure that laws are passed in the us to prevent you from from signing on to bds, the amount of money that they spend like calling it anti-semitic oh my god, it's it's insane, like they spend a lot because it's very important. So BDS.
Speaker 1:It's not anti-Semitic to decide what you want to do with your money.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no no, it is actually. We established that if Israel or Israelis lose a soccer match, that's anti-Semitism.
Speaker 1:So yeah, but I love that there's a such a point of power for people who are not there to play on in the resistance. I mean when boycotts are in, and they are in full force yeah, when they go further. Yeah, that's gonna further the end for them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh my god and I think, like the, the boycott needs to be cultural as well and and the cultural boycott needs to pick up a lot more Like. People need to be a lot more aggressive about allowing Zionists into a space, and I know a lot of people get touchy about it, like, oh, but not all the Zionists Shut up. Zionism and the belief in Zionism is very simply that you believe God gave you the right to do colonial violence onto another people. That's tati behavior. If you believe even a little bit that because god made you a promise, allegedly, even though god promised everybody everything like. But if you believe that god promised you something so badly that you get to genocide a people for it, that you and like the argument is always like um, well, I, you know, I don't want the palestinians to get hurt, but I do think that israel has the right to exist and they, like we have a right to a jewish homeland.
Speaker 2:That's just settler colonialism. You're just saying divine justification for settler colonialism and the violence that comes with that. It's not. It's not a good no like. It doesn't make any sense and we should isolate zionists like wherever we find them. They shouldn't be made like, they shouldn't be comfortable anyway, like people who who were for the, the system of apartheid, they should not be accepted anyway. People who were for nazi germany should not be accepted anyway. Like that belief needs to be eradicated. Yeah, and I'm not saying that like you need to. You know, go do violence against zionists wherever you find them, but I'm saying that like there needs to be a block between you and and and people who believe in zionism, even if it's just being like I'm not interested in talking to you, I don't want to talk to you about this. Just isolate them in those ways, because you can't allow this stupid ideology to gain any type of legitimacy.
Speaker 1:And I mean the same thing that happened here in SA will likely happen after the resistance wins.
Speaker 2:What do you mean? Negotiations, no, no no, all the Teresa's people that supported apartheid all of a sudden disappeared yeah, like, uh, yeah you, you know everybody voted for the anc allegedly so now's the time call them out. Yeah, that it's um, like sana said the last time as well, take screenshots of these nerds that want to stand with israel because the hake is calling.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, and just by the way, according to south african law, actually in our constitution it says that if you um promote propaganda or proliferate propaganda relating to a war that our country is against, which obviously south africa is against what is is doing, they're calling it a genocide at the ICJ and laying formal charges against them. If you proliferate propaganda in favor of a war that our country is in opposition to, then you're committing an act of treason. So, yeah, if you just want to file something there by the NPA, quick, quick, you know, if you want to call up state security, let them know the npa offices are actually right next to clocks. So if one day you just you know you're walking around going to clocks getting coffee, go to the npa as well stop these uh acts of treason yeah, acts of treason, you know thank you everyone for joining us donate.
Speaker 2:Donate to the link in bio and subscribe yeah, peace out.