• zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    I’m reminded of the struggle session from a few months back, when “North Korea is arming Hamas!” was trending and I expressed doubt because… how?

    The response was simply “you can get to Gaza from North Korea by land”. And… jesse-wtf

    • oregoncom [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      10 months ago

      North Korea has been openly supporting the Palestinian cause for decades. Also it’s not that hard to smuggle something to Egypt from NK and then to Gaza by tunnels. A state actor like NK can definitely do that.

      • zifnab25 [he/him, any]@hexbear.net
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        10 months ago

        North Korea has been openly supporting the Palestinian cause for decades

        How much real material support is a small, semi-industrialized nation under heavy international sanction and a full panopticon of surveillance able to deliver to an open-air prison half a world away?

        Also it’s not that hard to smuggle something to Egypt from NK

        By what means? Is Kim sending supplies via FedEx? Are there big Maersk cargo ships loaded up with North Korean made small arms and explosives that Mossad just hasn’t noticed? Are they coming up through the earth in one of those drill machines that The Shredder uses in TMNT?

        A state actor like NK can definitely do that.

        A state actor like the folks in NK can definitely get supplies into neighboring Russia and China without much trouble. And it is not inconceivable to believe smugglers shipping arms through the extensive rail networks of these two countries can put NK made weapons into Turkey or Iran. But that’s a long journey and one replete with hazards. Not the least of which are people who will just take valuable military equipment for their own purposes.

        Far more likely, NK is simply a large exporter of military equipment that they’ve been mass producing since the Cold War. If NK-made weapons are getting to Palestine, that is only because they’re in wide circulation and of universal enough design to make them popular with people who need simple durable equipment, like any number of guerrilla insurgent groups and poorer paramilitary units across the Middle East and North Africa.

        The idea that Kim is direct delivering equipment all the way from NK to Palestine is romantic, but utterly impractical from a logistics perspective.