A Ukrainian friend shared “Russia has recruited as many as 15,000 Nepalis to fight its war. Many returned traumatized. Some never came back” (CNN):
He is one of as many as 15,000 Nepali men to have joined the Russian military, multiple sources have told CNN, after the Russian government last year announced a lucrative package for foreign fighters to join the country’s military.
The package included at least $2,000 salary a month and a fast-tracked process to obtain a Russian passport. Nepal’s passport is ranked one of the worst in the world for global mobility, below North Korea, according to an index created by global citizenship and residence advisory firm Henley & Partners, and the Himalayan nation is among the world’s poorest, with a per capita GDP of $1,336 for 2022, according to World Bank data.
Israelis have gotten a huge amount of bad press for fighting against the Islamic Resistance Movement (“Hamas”), UNRWA, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other armed groups within Gaza. Critics say that Israeli soldiers have killed too high a ratio of civilians to soldiers (how anyone can know this is beyond me, given that the Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza do not distinguish between civilian and combatant “martyrs”).
What if the noble Palestinians weren’t being attacked by the evil First World Israeli soldiers (most of whom are Jews, though some of whom are Arabs/Muslims)? Suppose that it was a “brown people” v. “brown people” fight. Wouldn’t white progressives who support Hamas have a lot more difficulty criticizing the non-Hamas side?
The Israelis could easily afford to outbid the Russians, paying $4,000 per month, for example, and the noble Gazans do not seem to be as fearsome opponents as the Ukrainians so it would be a safer job.
I think it’s the indiscriminate bombing of civilians more than the videos of inhumane behavior of soldiers that is causing Zionists poor press exposure
It is a darn shame that those nasty “Zionists” try to protect their country and their families rather than as in the good old days when they were so amenable to slaughter.
Ted: “indiscriminate bombing of civilians”? When an air force using equipment that is primitive by modern standards targeted and bombed civilians, the result was 100,000 deaths in a single night (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945) ). If you accept the numbers published by Hamas, which don’t distinguish between ordinary “martyrs” (what we might call “civilians”) and hero martyrs (active fighters for Hamas, UNRWA, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or another armed group), and then assume that exactly 0 of those killed have been hero martyrs, that’s fewer than 30,000 noble Palestinian civilians killed in more than 130 days since the glorious Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. That’s less than 230 noble civilian martyrs per night, not 100,000/night as when the U.S. bombed Tokyo.
Videos and photos from Gaza suggest that residents have no fear of being bombed, indiscriminately or otherwise. They gather in enormous crowds right in the open. They make no attempt to stay in or near cover. Instead of looking up and scanning the sky for aircraft, drones, and other sources of bombs, they hold up their fully charged smartphones (kind of a miracle, since the UN told us that Gaza was out of electricity as of October) and capture additional video of things happening on the ground.
Some recent examples in which people look down at their smartphones instead of up at the sky for bombers: https://x.com/UNRWA/status/1757414643453096400?s=20 ; https://x.com/UNRWA/status/1757332127526293861?s=20 ; https://x.com/UNNewsArabic/status/1752525099767312880?s=20 ; https://x.com/UNRWA/status/1755864707406209230?s=20 (they’re so sure that they won’t be bombed they organize an outdoor dense gathering of children with brightly colored fabric parachute perfect for aerial targeting)
Doesn’t make a lot of sense that Israel using brown people would gain them sympathy since that has not happened for the Russians.
jdc: The proposal in the original post is for Israel to use an all-Brown army for any kind of direct encounter with the noble Brown residents of Gaza. This hasn’t been tried by Russia, which has a multi-ethnic army to begin with.
Most Americans(including me) does not care about Israel or/and Palestine. They can blow up each other by themselves or by other’s help, who cares. Make America Great Again.
Anon: We can test your theory by checking out what audience-/advertising-hungry media choose to put on their front page.
https://www.nytimes.com/ : halfway down the front page, a story about Egypt beefing up its wall to keep the noble Palestinians out.
https://www.cnn.com/ : tending to prove your theory, just one headline mentioning “Gaza” in a crowded front page, but on the other hand, the very first tab for live updates categories is “Israel-Hamas war”
The deplorables at https://www.foxnews.com/ : one main story https://www.foxnews.com/world/israel-eliminates-hezbollah-senior-commander-terror-group-warns-pay-price
https://www.cbsnews.com/ : “Israeli troops enter Al Nasser Hospital, Gaza’s biggest hospital still functioning, amid the war with Hamas”
https://abcnews.go.com/ : multiple articles related to Israel-Gaza
@phil, news media, including left and right are not reflection of American people. They are mostly for profit organizations and sensationalize the news to get more viewers in turn to get more profits.
I’m from partially Jewish family myself and fully support Israel in this endeavor. However, it is clear that Israel military plays fast and loose, and even kills their own civilians by mistake – they killed lawyer who was helping in firefight, hostages that run away from Hamas, and so on. So while we don’t know for sure specific ratio, high ratio is not going to be surprising. (Hamas created situation were there was no good solution to this crisis, at huge detrimental cost to themselves, really stupid)
As for foreign legioners, they will also have to offer Israeli passport in the deal if they want to match Russia – I suspect passport is larger motivator for nepalis than cash!
SK: What’s your evidence that the IDF kills more people by mistake than other armies? War is confusing.
https://www.texasmonthly.com/news-politics/fatal-error-inspired-plan-to-reduce-friendly-fire/
says “The [U.S.] Army’s own research suggests that the proportion of U.S. battle deaths caused by friendly fire was 23 percent in Desert Storm, between 13 and 20 percent in Vietnam (even at 13 percent, the death toll would have been at least 7,569), 13 to 16 percent in World War II, and 10 percent in World War I.”
For a more recent war, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_friendly_fire_incidents#War_in_Afghanistan_(2001%E2%80%932016)
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/07/25/archives/turks-admit-they-sank-own-vessel-off-cyprus-loss-confirmed-denial.html is kind of sad.
A tragic military blunder during the brief conflict on Cyprus, in which a Turkish plane or planes bombed and sank Turkish destroyer mistaken for part of an invading force from Greece, is causing consternation in Government circles here.
About 80 men were thought to be killed and 110 missing In the attack Sunday off Paphos on the west coast of Cyprus. Forty‐two survivors life rafts were picked up Monday by an Israeli vessel.
Honestly, these numbers are shocking, I would never have guessed them.
Using the friendly fire stats for US forces may not be setting a high bar. The great nation is notorious for terrorising its own allies almost as much as the enemy. But as war is hell and confusion, incidents like that in WW2 where Royal Navy torpedo bombers seeking the Bismarck tried to sink their own cruiser (it didn’t shoot back) will always happen.
Did Israel also rape by mistake, tie up family members together and murder them by mistake, behead its own babies by mistake, dress up as hamas terrorists and film itself by mistake?
Thought the auto blog poster would have something about how the Superbowl shooting proved the 49ers were the rightful winners & the game was rigged. Maybe the winner should be based on how long the fans of the winning team survive.
May as well try Nepalese contractors. Of course, military training in a country with $1000 per capita GDP can not compare to US soldiers of fortune training and equipment, but since most of Israeli recruits in training had never seen guns before entering military and themselves needed protection on military base on 10/7, Nepalese soldiers would be a plus. They can definitely replace first year draftees who are just learning the ropes, especially given that they are a significant part of Israeli military. Also replace some older soldiers. People, who are contributing to Israeli considerable by Nepalese standards GDP and leave families behind, getting killed in booby trap buildings and engineering mishaps. Pay $4000 annually once save $80000+ annually, for decades.
I do not believe that there could be any security issue, since already IDF is bringing Arab workers from so-called West Bank to rebuild “security” fence.
Great idea, Philip. I would say this is the greatest suggestion of 2024 so far.
> The Israelis could easily afford to outbid the Russians, paying $4,000 per month
The real genius of this plan is that the US will pay for it, not Israel. When $30B in foreign aid currently hung up in congress eventually wiggles out, it will easily pay for enough mercenaries to overrun Palestine ($1B = 20,000 mercenary-years). And congress seems to have an endless appetite to send even more.
$1B = 25,000,000 mercenary-years at $4000/year.
Arithmetic, my man:
$1B = 250K mercenaries @4K/year.
If you use American mercenaries instead of cheap amateur Nepalese labor the math does work out to the original anon number above at around 20k mercenaries years per billion.
https://www.glassdoor.com/Salaries/mercenary-salary-SRCH_KO0,9.htm
Also remember that a good chunk of that money will be wasted since we have no audit or accountability when spending Other People’s Money.
Sam, I doubt that use of limited number of highly qualified US soldiers of fortune would have turned better results then IDF has in Gaza. For reference see first and second battles of Fallujah during US war in Iraq. It included fair number of well – paid Blackwater soldiers of fortune along side of well trained contract US troops. Fallujah had 8 to 10 times less population then Gaza and smaller territory, no tunnels and rag-tag small insurgent force, much weaker then Hamas. Nobody kept financing Fallujah insurgents nor supplied them with fuel and electricity, and no one put any constraint on US and allied tactics and firepower in Fallujah.
So I am all for Philip suggestion try Nepalese mercenaries for $4000/year, under IDF direction.
According to Michael Oren (historian, ex-ambassador to US, ex-member of Knesset) the ratio of non-fighters killed in Gaza vs fighters killed is about 2, astoundingly low for urban warfare. Compared with US efforts in Fallujah and Mosul which was more like 4.
Mercenaries are OK for certain things but there’s a resaon Israel never used them and never will. Mercs have no intrinsic motivation. Sinve Israel can never afford to lose a war it has to draw upon the most socialized segments of the population.
No bayonet charges and hand to hand combat there. Just swarm the tunnels with 100,000 mercenary soldiers at $10,000 / year compensation. Equip them and pay bonus per terrorist neutralized. Problem solved.
Should Israel hire mercenaries from Nepal to deal with armed Palestinians? Yes!
What if the noble Palestinians weren’t being attacked by the evil First World Israeli soldiers (most of whom are Jews, though some of whom are Arabs/Muslims)? The ¸Zionist image may improve slightly at the expense of security.
Wouldn’t white progressives who support Hamas have a lot more difficulty criticizing the non-Hamas side? No!
Why would Israel do that when they can just keep leveling hospitals and refugee camps and blame all civilian casualties on Hamas? Honestly, I don’t see how any intelligent person could suggest a need to intensify the already disproportionate response to October 7th.
The IDF freely admitted an “immense and complex quantity” of deaths on that day were due to friendly fire, although “it would not be morally sound to investigate,” whatever the fuck that means.
You need to take your blinders off and take a good hard look at the callous disregard for human life that is being openly embraced by Israel. It’s plain to see, assuming you’re willing to see it for what it is.
Callous disregard for human life? If Israel wanted to kill civilians in Gaza, why would the IDF be on the ground there? My understanding is that the tunnel network is reserved for freedom fighters, which leaves the civilians exposed on the surface (as well as any of the fighters who can’t fit into the maximum population of the tunnel system). The IDF could kill most of the people on the surface via bombing and never risk the life of a single soldier (i.e., the US/UK plan for Japanese and German civilians in WWII).
Regarding your accusation that Israel is “leveling hospitals”, here’s a story from CNN (so we know it is true): https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/19/middleeast/gaza-nasser-hospital-doctors-strip-idf-intl?cid=external-feeds_iluminar_google
Israeli troops forced doctors and other medical staff to leave the Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza, strip down to their underwear, and wait in the cold for hours before the troops allowed five doctors to go back into the building to treat patients, an eyewitness told CNN on Monday, while the Israeli military said it had arrested hundreds of militants at the hospital, including some posing as doctors.
Israeli forces also said they found medications with the names of Israeli hostages on them inside the hospital, releasing a video of soldiers showing medicine boxes with inscriptions and sometimes photos on the labels of who they apparently were prescribed to.
The IDF said Monday they apprehended “hundreds” of Hamas militants hiding in Nasser Hospital, including some of whom they say had been posing as medical staff, and that they found medicines with the names of Israeli hostages on them during their raid on the medical complex.
————–
Once the IDF had an inkling that some of Gaza’s noble soldiers were camped out in the hospital it would have been a lot simpler and safer to have simply leveled this hospital, but apparently Israel did not do that because the doctors were able to walk back into the still-standing building.
(But I think you’re proving my point. It would certainly be expedient to kill everyone in a building once it was established that there were some Hamas fighters inside. At tremendous costs to themselves in terms of casualties and also with a big cost to effectiveness (the commanders of the Gazan forces have time to slip away), the IDF hasn’t been doing that and yet people such as yourself assert that the IDF has been doing it. If the IDF hired soldiers from Nepal they could do whatever was simplest and lowest risk to themselves and progressives wouldn’t be able to complain that Jews had done something bad!)
There are hospitals and hamaspitals. Hamaspitals look like hospitals but usually have a bunch of terrorists hiding amongst the patients and they should defiantly be bombed.