It's insane for infantry to carry cellphones into combat, because cellphone locations can be tracked. But Hamas seems to be recording everything they do, and they're stopping to upload new footage as they capture it. They're taking the risk of carrying trackable devices in combat for the intended benefit of the display. I'd be very curious to hear if they're all carrying standardized, organization-issued cellphones, and I'd be very curious to see a detailed analysis of where all of the footage is appearing first. This is a deliberate information operation.
My only disagreement would be that they are taking risks by carrying trackable devices. I don't think they care. The all willing to die so that they can meet the 72 virgins they were allegedly promised for doing (their small g) god's work. They believe they are doing a holy job. The rest of the assessment is spot on. And extremely sobering.
This entire thing is strange. We've just gone thru an exp. where the authorities censored anything they didnt like so people would remain ignorant. Why do the authorities want us to see this?
Wasn't Israel founded using terrorism against the British?
The problem with thinking that everything is an op, and all of what appears to be reality is "the authorities" always choosing what you see, is that it denies agency to everyone else, and elevates "the authorities" into a godlike status of absolute power. Hamas is also made up of people, who can also have intentions and take action.
My enduring impression of the last twenty years of narrative manipulation and information operations is that it's shabby and stupid -- the Peter Hotezes of the world trying to pretend they pull the strings. All of the THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK reactions to events, even though I see very clearly that we're lied to and manipulated all the time, gives "them" -- "the authorities" -- a power that they're not smart enough to have. Some things are manipulation. Some things are real. Some things just happen. Sorting all of that is very hard. Discarding all of the apparent world as "Why do the authorities want us to see this?" strikes me as being exactly as bad a choice as total credulousness.
Indeed, all of lies and manipulation are signs of a failing empire. We can retreat from empire peacefully, or we can let them drag us into wars that are none of our concern. We should take everything with a grain of salt, and not let our emotions get the best of us. We complained about "the other side" being ruled by their emotions during covid. Lets not be them now. Can you blame anyone after the last six years? Election was stolen! (its ok to say that when our side claims it), RussiaRUSSIARUSSIA!, SAFE AND EFFECTIVE, INSURRECTION AT THE CAPITAL! Saddam has WMDS! Bin Laden is in Afghanistan! We had to dump his body at sea to follow Muslim funeral rights or something. We had to sacrifice capitalism to save it! No bankers lost their jobs for ruining the economy (because they are a needed appendage of empire), We can't help out homeowners but we can guarantee trillions of bad debt for bankers. Should i go on?
Some participating by the British- see Orde Wingate.
Above all the Jewish British soldiers learned war in WW2.
Israel was a project that began in the 19th century.
It took off hard with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Communal violence rose through the 20s and 30s.
WW2 trained millions in war.
The main armaments for the Israeli in 1947-48 came from liberated war surplus, a large shipment of Czech arms (Stalin) and above all the British had trained and equipped the Israelis, Jordanians (the Jordan Legion was British Officer led) Egyptians, Iraqi armies.
Great Britain was like America now, on both sides.
The Stern Gang aka Irgun (Menacham Begin) did blow up the King David hotel where the British were, but in General this was a handoff to the locals ala India and before that Ireland (more complicated than known).
No, Israel wasn’t an American ally, never mind project, until 1967 war.
Why did they show us people dropping dead in China? How did those videos get out of China? Isn't it the second most spied upon society after Israel, though that could be us also nowadays.
Why did the authorities show us all those mostly safe and peaceful riots in 2020? Why did they show us anybody protesting the lockdowns was awful and a super spreader?
Such a great point! Carrying highly trackable cell phones is wildly against opsec. And how does the most surveilled country in the world not catch this?
Same as IS/AQ. This MO is all over, including soldiers from AZ in the recent Nagorno Karabagh ethnic cleansing. Their contempt for beautiful women is obvious also. And these people don't blink. They are used to this. They do not seem to me like some average Palestinian villagers. It is already common for mercenaries from Syria to be transported to other theaters including Libya as they were to NK by Turkey, a big backer of Hamas and Islamic Brotherhood. Also fighters come from Tunisia etc. And that includes child soldiers who are transported. Some of those terrorists looked quite young
Israel aided in the creation of Hamas, as a foolish attempt to steer Palestinian politics. The wisdom of that maneuver is wide open for debate, and it's a discussion I'm happy to have with anyone who doesn't pretend that Hamas didn't just commit an extraordinarily ugly act of violence. There are many, many, many fair debates to be had, here.
What? So the Israelis allowed Hamas to murder 1000 of their people so they could start a war that they’ve been trying to avoid for decades? Not likely. Here is the obvious truth, the Palestinians have been waging an unsuccessful war to exterminate the Jews since WWI. Every negotiation is only to obtain a better line of departure for the next attack. They don’t want peace, they want a war of annihilation. Just like the Russian are attempting with the Ukrainians.
Oddly enough, the Russians have been trying to annihilate the Ukrainians since about WWI too. Or did your history books skip the Holodomor? The purge of the Kulaks? Recent events North and East of Kyiv, etc.?
Th Holodomor was not Russians exterminating Ukrainians. It was Communists exterminating peasants. You think the Holodomor stopped at the Ukraine border? Do you think kulak was just code for Ukrainian? Do a little more research.
It hit the Ukrainians harder and more. I’m sure there were others as Commies are brutal. But the rest did not fight a guerrilla war against the Russians/Soviets after they drove out the Germans, but the Ukrainians did. And the Ukrainian lands have been free of Muscovite (Russian) control for much of their history. So, the point remains —- Ukrainians are NOT Russians. And currently the Russians have been attempting ethnic cleansing in this area, including murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, destruction of cultural features, etc.
“why did the war in the ukraine happen? might it be because land formerly belonging to one nation was taken and made into a new country whose borders and demographics don’t make a ton of sense and then, on top of that provocation the US backed a coup/far right governmental switcheroo to replace the government with some truly corrupt nasties that included quite the passel of actual (not even metaphoric or allegorical) nazis? because that’s not small beer as poking the bear goes.
pile on some sabre rattling about crossing a clear “bright line” by offering NATO membership to this “country” that stabs into russia in a manner that would make it a bit like the soviet union seeking to add texas to the warsaw pact during the cold war and it’s not exactly puzzling how the tensions got high.
it’s not like putin is a swell guy or innocent of lying and playing nasty games of his own or stands as some sort of good actor here, but given the US response to cuba back in the day, imagine what we’d do if russia helped overthrow the mexican government and inducted them into a soviet defense compact. anyone think that would have been mild or peaceful? we’d have had troops across the rio grande faster than you could say “51st state.”
"The Soviets" were just the Russians with a hammer & sickle cloak on. Stalin may have been a Georgian by birth, but he was a full convert to bog-standard Russian imperialism.
The Soviets were Russian…yes, I know Stalin was actually a Georgian. Hardly matters. Calling Ukrainians ‘Russians’ is like calling the Spanish ‘Italians’. Different but related language, different customs, different but related churches and different but related ethnicity — since the days of the Mongols. And these two groups have been fighting sometimes on the same side and sometimes opposite sides since the Middle Ages. For example, the Czars used the Cossacks (Ukrainians) to suppress Russians.
Russia is not exterminating Ukrainians, many of whom consider themselves to be Russian. The term "land dispute" belittles the death and destruction but the war in Ukraine is about land not the annihilation of Ukrainians. What's happening in Israel is a continuation of the attempted genocide that started centuries ago.
I'm sure I'll be labeled a Putin stooge for that but I couldn't let that one go.
They have also forgotten Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell’s speech at the UN convinced a lot of people that Sadam really had those weapons. After all he was a respected military officer; and yet he lied. Thousands of Iraqis died because everyone jumped on the bloody bandwagon of revenge based on a lie.
Now, just as a majority of Americans were starting to turn against funding the Ukrainians; an unexplained and unprecedented breach of security occurs in Israel. Perhaps it’s a sign that the IDF and Mossad are not what they used to be, but someone needs to explain how all those weapons and equipment were snuck into one of the most highly surveilled places on Earth. And just like that Americans who just a few days ago were tired of war and massive military spending are baying for intervention in another foreign conflict. There will be many victims in the coming weeks, but as always the military industrial complex scores another win.
So you're saying that Palestinians come to New York and attack temples? It's a war over territory augmented by a religious and ethnic tension. I find it funny that you compare it to Ukraine. In Ukraine, we're arming the Ukrainians because Russia is encroaching on their territory, but in Israel you're on the Russian "side," the encroachers. That's quite the selective set of principles you have.
Yes. That is exactly what happens. Been happening for decades, as far back as Paris in 1980 and Rome in 1982. Jews - not even Israeli nationals - are attacked by Arabs in Western countries for the sake of being Jews.
Do you know who else attacks Jews for being Jews? White people. Do you know who else gets attacked by radical Muslims for not being, well, Muslim? Non-Muslims, of any stripe, even those who would otherwise be considered Arabic or Middle Eastern. Seeing a trend here?
Also, no it's not "the Palestinians." It's radicals that might be from Palestine, but your average work-a-day Palestinian is not catching planes to far flung regions and blowing things up. They're too busy trying to figure out how to survive behind the blockade.
You don’t think Palestinians commit terror outside of Israel? C’mon. I don’t know your politics, but one can support Palestinian causes without endorsing murder, rape and kidnapping.
There’s a difference between advocating for something and cheering mass murder imof civilians. And I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing.This is an organized group of fascists exterminating Jews because they are Jews. Just like the Nazis.
They are not exterminating Jews because they are Jews. They do not come to America and "exterminate" Jews. They are angry because they feel they have the same claim to the same land and their claim is stronger. That's it. That they happen to be Jews on one side and Muslims on the other is about like the English happened to be Protestant and the Irish happened to be Catholic. It might add an extra layer of complexity and even be a catalyst, but it is not *the original reason* for the tension.
That is incorrect. The Koran explicitly advocates for the murder of Jews. They kill Jews wherever they can. And they kill Americans, Jews or not. Who blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut? Who just killed 15-20 Americans and took another 20 hostage from Israel this weekend? Stop trying to rationalize murder. It's distasteful.
The Muslims are interested in ethnic cleansing, not the Jews. The Muslims are the ones that nobody can live with in their own home countries. Talk to an Iraqi Christian or a Maronite Christian or a Palestinian Christian. You are missing the bigger picture.
And it's not about "supporting." It's about finding a pragmatic solution that doesn't lead to a world war. That's not going to happen until we stop the hyperbole and get emotion out of the mix.
Seriously? You're not going to get emotion of out the mix. You can forget about that. It's not just Hamas. It's Islamic Jihad. It's Hezbollah. It''s Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Popular Resistance Committees. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Harakat Al-Sabireen.
Palestinian Liberation Front. The PLO. Those are just most of the big ones. There are others. It's an entire societal problem. Palestinians are committed to political and religious violence. Their organizations pay millions of dollars a month in stipends to criminals who attack civilian Jews in Israel. And so are Muslims around the world in varying degrees. There have been attacks in Munich, Athens, the Achille Lauro, hijackings, Buenos Aires, and in the US as well all done by Palestinian terror groups.
Everybody wants to avoid world war except for the people who think they can win.
It is what it is. Pretending it is something different doesn't solve the problem. It just kicks the can down the road. Now is the time to solve this. It's not going to get easier when the Iranians have a nuclear bomb, courtesy of that POS Barack Obama and his imbecile corps of diplomatic amateur Commies.
The answer is to my mind simple: this has to be solved, and it has to be solved with finality - the opinions of the press and everybody else not withstanding. Line up at the Gaza border as many Catepillar D11 dozers as you have available and after every last building in Gaza has been bombed until not one stone stands over another, begin to push the debris toward the Mediterranean. Do not stop until there is a pile of rubble five miles deep and two hundred feet high. Then open the raw land to Israeli citizens. Solved, and permanently.
I fully and absolutely agree. It's tragic that this festering boil hasn't been lanced earlier. There is no two-state solution. There is no peace unless these animals are all gone. Israel now needs to get stuck in resolve this once and for all.
And what of the 2 million people living there? The Palestinians should have been resettled in new cities in the Sinai on the Mediterranean coast 70 years ago. They could have built them themselves with funding and assistance from Israel, the US, and Arab countries. They could have built a paradise for themselves. However unjust their expulsion was, there was never a possibility of going back. But no Arab country wanted them. Why? Why has this problem been allowed to fester and grow for nearly a century? Who benefits?
First of all, there is no such thing as a "Palestinian." Many indigenous peoples were found in current "Palestine" for many generations, and a plurality of those people were Jews, by the way. The name derives from the ancient name for the Philistines, who occupied a tiny section of what is now "Palestine." It never had defined borders, but was a vague term for a particular area - think of "New England" or "Dixie," so again there is no such people as "Palestinian."
Your point about "no Arab country wanted them" is a good one. Why would that be, do you think? Why wouldn't they welcome their refugee Arab brothers? Let me suggest a reason:
it's simply because the squalor in which they are living can be used to fuel their hatred of the Israelis. Can't hate on our muslim brothers who won't take us in, can we now? Must be the Jews' fault. And we hate them so much we put our military operations in hospitals and schools so that if the Israelis strike back, they will kill our children and LOOK BAD.
No, Meir had it perfectly: there will be peace when the Arabs' love for their children exceeds their hatred of the Jews.
I'm having none of it. This tore it, and it's time to make an end. Once and for all.
The hatred of Jews is foundational in the Muslim culture. This has been aggravated by the alliance with Leftist revolutionary thought. So you have islamofascists and Marxists joined at the hip in this effort. The Palestinian Arabs have nowhere to go because their leadership get billions a of dollars a year from Western governments. They are content not to solve the problem. The terrorists can’t build anything anyway. Simultaneously Muslim nations wanted a constant thorn in Israel’s side, so they let them languish, much as they let their own people languish in poverty and stoke the flames of Jew hatred by blaming Israel for all their failings. Taking all the Palestinians as refugees into their countries would just be an admission of defeat by Israel.
Previously read and liked. I just subscribed to your substack.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me."
I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
Uh - I don’t recall any passages in the New Testament calling for murdering all the Jews. I also don’t think they cover genocide as a Christian behavior at Sunday School. But ask any 7 year old Palestinian Arab Muslim kid what you should do to Jews and he’ll give you the answer. It’s also in the Quran and in the Hamas Charter.
Let me try a different analogy and make it simpler for you: Suppose I have a small piece of property - one that I have by my own hands turned from raw land into a beautiful oasis, while my neighbors have been busy living it up on wealth from a natural resource found on their land - neighbors who have spent their time whooping it up and fighting instead of improving their lives. And suppose those neighbors spend every living moment plotting and planning to kill me, all my children and all theirs - neighbors who know where I live on a tiny plot of ground such that they can shoot at me from it anytime they please or slip across the property line to ambush me and my family. What is my best move? Hope they change their mind?
I don't think so. My best move is to go to THEIR house and wipe them out, or at the very least make sure they don't ever again live against my property line.
I didn't, but people who look just like me kicked off the in'juns and then stole it fair and square. Now I own it - at least for a little while - and then it will own ME for a LONG time, so I don't worry much about its history.
That tends to be the solution Jews have for their enemies. Why do you think the West is getting flooded with immigrants by their duel-citizen politicians?
Successful, local genocide has been the goal of Palestine leadership ever since there has been such a thing as Palestine leadership. Genocide eliminates the existence of one of the two warring civilizations. If the problem is endless war and the threat of war that is one problem solved by genocide. It would seem genocide by Israel not genocide of Israel is what the Palestine leadership is about to get.
Great article, and IMHO, right on the money. Tom Paine said that, "If there must be trouble, let it come in my time, so that my children may live in peace." Israel has tried every possible tactic in the hopes of simply being let alone. None of it has worked. Now it is time to gird one's loins and do what is required, so that Israel's children may live in peace.
FYI The edit option is not available when using the app, only when using the platform through a browser. It would be nice if it were included in the app though.
Excellent analysis. Many of the comments reveal the anti-Semitism of the commenters. The terrorists didn’t do what they did, what they filmed themselves doing. It’s the tricky Israelis, see? They made them do it. Right.
We know the security apparatus failed. We don’t know why. There are a variety of explanations that should be considered, but the default explanation for the bigots, the one the like the most, is that this is an Israeli plan.
Could there have been a cyber attack? Could there be moles in the defense forces? Could there have been a massive fuck up? Could there be a political calculus? Don’t know. There will undoubtedly be investigations and controversies. We do know that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews. And we know they’ve attacked many times before and that Iran funds them directly, with the imbecile governments in Europe and the United States contributing at least indirectly. It is reported that Hamas was created or nurtured in the 1970s by Israel to balance the PLO. More idiocy. We’ve seen that Islamist “freedom fighters “ aren’t really on our side ever. We saw this in Afghanistan with the mujahideen who became Taliban and Al
Queda. We saw it in Iraq. Currently in the USA we don’t need to wonder about our invaders. They are invited in by the power class to be a permanent underclass and facilitate social engineering and compliance.
We don’t apparently have any time for mourning. We need to blame the Jews. Islamofascist Hamas did this. They filmed it. The people in Gaza cheer murder and rape as they do in Arab enclaves in the West, who will undoubtedly try to do the same types of things again at some point. They’ve committed murder many times before. In the meantime Israel will extract revenge.
It's not anti-semitism, it's just a complete lack of trust in government and the narrative they advance through an almost thoroughly captured media. If such an attack were to happen in the US, many would immediately discount the official version and speculate about the true reason for what occurred.
Conspiracy theories flourish where trust in authority is destroyed. And governments throughout the world are showing that they're run by incompetent men and women.
Are you not even the tiniest bit suspicious about how an incursion from the most surveilled piece of real estate on Earth into the most heavily guarded country in the world came about? Not even a little bit? No one gets into Israel without the Israeli security apparatus knowing about it.
I get it. Israel is not going to have a civil war. Hamas made a huge step to unifying the country through this terror. There is going to be no “proportionate response”.
So somehow it's Israel's fault that people crossed their border and murdered people by the hundreds? Beheaded babies? Raped young women in the streets, killed them and then stripped their bodies and carried them face-down in the back of a pickup truck? And we are supposed to focus on how they got in? Struggling at the gnat and swallowing the camel....
We live in a time of inverted morality. Many people are simply unable to distinguish right from wrong. And then there are people with blind hatred of Jews. And there are the Leftists who also have no compassion for who ever they consider their opposition. So murder is condoned if it’s done to the group they hate. Israel has long been the target of Commies and Islamofascists. It’s a weird allegiance, but it’s a real one.
It is the fault of whoever it was on the Israeli side who decided to let this happen (or make it happen), as well as the Hamas savages. No, it is certainly not the fault of the ordinary people of Israel.
Are you looking for an apology? If you’re not a bigot I’m not calling you a bigot. If you are a bigot than that’s not my problem. If you read some of the comments maybe you’ll see what I am talking about. Then again maybe you won’t.
I have seen few saying this was wholly planned by Israel, but more say that it was known about by some higher ups in Israel and was allowed to occur because it frees the board for retaliatory action, similar to the FDR administration having been forewarned about Pearl Harbor.
People can and will say anything. It’s possible there’s a conspiracy. But in this case for many it’s an excuse to criticize Israel and shift blame.
Governments do a lot of stupid things, sometimes evil, more often incompetent. Time will tell. But when the initial reaction is that it’s a false flag and it’s obviously an Israeli operation, there’s often an anti-Semite saying it.
Maybe, but the intelligence officials leaking that Egypt gave warning are presumably not anti-Semites, either, so that criticism just muddies the waters.
Is that news real or is it designed to blame Israel? Why would an intelligence agency leak that? Look I don’t know the answer. And I know why people are inclined to conspiracy theories.Because a lot of the theories turn out to be correct. But there’s more nuance to my point than you may be giving credit for.
Israel has committed similar massive intelligence screw-ups in the past.
The opening days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 were viewed very much like this past weekend - Israeli forces were caught snoozing and massive casualties were inflicted before Israel managed to call up their reserves and finally wallop Egypt and Syria.
The Israelis convened their own "Warren Commission" - the Agranat Commission - to investigate the screw-ups and its contents are probably mostly in earnest because the Israelis kept 99% of it classified and secret for over 20 years.
Now that it's been declassified we have a window into the workaday bureaucratic incompetence, hubristic assumptions and tactical miscalculations that allow a disaster like that to unfold.
My personal theory about recent events, based on that Israeli military history plus the history of Gaza for the past 20 years leans towards something like:
Israeli intelligence knew ahead of time that something, broadly speaking, was in the works. But they probably hubristically assumed that it would be yet another big rocket barrage which could be adequately managed with air raid sirens and Iron Dome interceptors, and that sny Hamas ground forces that were being activated were going to be deployed in a defensive posture, as in earlier episodes, mainly to deter Israeli attempts to use ground force lightning raids to seize high value targets in Gaza (the Israelis do better with that tactic in the West Bank and largely don't even try that any more in Gaza). Meanwhile, briefing the land forces on all this would risk leaking intelligence sources and methods (to no real end, because after all this was going to be just another rocket barrage) so they didn't alert that department. And they made the Pearl-Harbor-esque assumption that absorbing the first blow (which wouldn't endanger too many Israeli lives, they figured) would make it easier politically and diplomatically to engage in retaliatory airstrikes, versus preemptively attacking the Arab rocket batteries, which is a fool's errand because anyway the rockets are all stored in the basements of schools and hospitals so you look like a real ogre for blowing up a classroom full of kids one fine blue day for no obvious reason.
So the land positions on the border were not reinforced with extra troops, the units who were there on the day weren't told to be on high alert for anything suspicious, the fresh-faced lieutenant commanding the observation post on the Gaza fence wasn't going to instantly mortar a couple of civilian-looking bulldozers that wandered into the quite narrow neutral zone (Gaza and the nearby Israeli villages are all small, so all the distances involved here a tiny - a mile or two this way or that) - he'd be tried as a war criminal for murdering a construction crew! - and the AA gunner wasn't going to instantly shoot down a handful of paragliders that were seemingly blown off course - he'd be gunning down hapless tourists!
Even if these soldiers hit the panic button the minute the bulldozers knocked down the fence and terrorists in jeeps started barrelling out of hiding in nearby barns and greenhouses into the breach, it's still a couple of hours before you can bus down a regiment of friendlies from Tel Aviv to engage them. That's more than enough time for a few hundred crazed gunmen to shoot, rape and kidnap a thousand unsuspecting civilians.
That's all you need: Some errors of judgment - none obviously that egregious - a bold and diabolical enemy, and a couple lost hours... and you have yourself a massacre for the history books.
Of course, there are some additional longer-term mistakes and vulnerabilities at play here, so one can already write the Agranat II report and recommendations:
1. Bigger neutral zone in Gaza before the fence. Now with added landmines!
2. All major commands (land, sea, air, border police) briefed whenever there is suspicion of something brewing in Gaza.
3. Flood with seawater those two gigantic stone quarries that the Gazans have been operating right near the boundary fence.
4. Israeli-side neutral zone with limits on tourism and mass gatherings. (Why was there a freaking "Rave For Peace" taking place *right next to the Gaza fence* ?!?! Who goes for a beach vacation in Somalia?!?)
5. Require all Israeli-side neutral zone villages to have armed volunteer civil defense units. Some vulnerable Israeli communities have long had these; reports from this past weekend suggest that where these were in place near Gaza, the Hamas attackers were successfully repelled.
6. Build up foul and land-intensive heavy industries in the Israeli neutral zone to deny access and create unattractive targets to buffer Israeli population centers (stockyards; meatpacking plants; lead smelters; garbage incinerators).
7. Defense-in-depth with additional forward bases and fortifications at varying distances from the Gaza fence.
Totally agree. The idea that a big party on the border with a terror enclave was a good idea was truly idiotic. Every population center should have a civilian militia. They need a DMZ. They need to liberalize firearm ownership and every able bodied person should carry. A large percentage of the population is already trained in firearm use to some level.
There have been some other serious errors in counterterrorist operations as well on a smaller scale throughout the history of the country. The problem with terror besides the atrocities is that the terrorists can harm indiscriminately, but the responding authorities have to be perfect every time and that's impossible. On top of that you have a population that expects perfection and that paralyzes the security apparatus sometimes because a mistake can be career ending. There are a lot of facile explanations for everything in life. Lately however there have been a lot of conspiracies that have proven to be exactly what we fear, and trust has been lost. On top of this, Israel can't catch a break in the media and court of public opinion, which adds fuel to the fire. It's also possible that things work out a certain way not because of an evil genius at the heIm, but because of the demands and constraints of a given dynamic. I'm sure there will be lengthy recriminations and investigations here. In the meantime, we shouldn't forget how this was started and the victims of the massacre.
Up to and including 9/10/01, the playbook for an airliner hijacking was to cooperate with the hijackers in the air, land the plane wherever you could, and either pressure the Cuban Government to return your citizens safely; or, if they landed in a place reachable by Western forces, have a SWAT team take out the hijackers if hostage negotiations didn't make progress.
But after 3 planes hit their targets on 9/11, the rules suddenly changed and then it became understood that a hijacked plane had to be brought down quickly and in an unpopulated area before it could be turned into a kamikaze missile. Hence Flight 93 going down in Nowheresville PA (I've visited the memorial out there, by the way).
But have we endured another airliner hijacking / hostage crisis since then? No. Even the terrorists don't bother; they know they'll never land again in any desirable location with a planeload of hostages.
Similarly, I expect that fundamental assumptions will change after this. No Israeli soldier is going to get in trouble for having an itchy trigger finger around Arabs who get too close to the fence. No big tourist group will ever voluntarily get within 5 miles of that fence, especially not without a good armed escort.
"Currently in the USA we don’t need to wonder about our invaders. They are invited in by the power class to be a permanent underclass and facilitate social engineering and compliance."
Exactly. So if US authorities (the powers that shouldn't be) are actively undermining the US, why would we neglect the possibility that the same could happen with leaders elsewhere, including Israel? Even if not deliberate treason, sometimes leaders consider that they're sacrificing pawns for "larger purposes," very common historically, as with Pearl Harbor and 9/11, to which the Hamas attacks are now being compared. Remember Netanyahu's words on the very day of 9/11 (according to the NYT): "'It’s very good.' Then he edited himself: 'Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.' He predicted that the attack would 'strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.'”
The psychopaths who run Israel's government have no more to do with the innocent people who live there than the ones in our own countries have to do with us. Branding everyone who criticizes them racist is you falling for their propaganda. I don't see anybody here calling for death to Jews or even an end to Israel. Maybe I missed one or Chris Bray is deleting their comments.
I do see a few calling for death to muslims and and end to Palestine... but I'll write that off as horror at the situation and ill-advised hyperbole. It can be hard not to paint with a broad brush when you're full of outrage and disgust, but don't let the pathocracy twist that into support for their grand genocidal schemes.
I'm not branding everyone who criticizes Israel as a racist. But I'm telling you that some people who criticize Israel are racists. Criticism of Israel is a proxy for criticizing Jews for those people. You're a smart person. You can understand that concept. As far as death to Muslims - Hamas needs to go and by go I mean leave the surface of the Earth. Hamas is dedicated to killing Jews and destroying Israel. It's in their founding charter.
I suspect that our ideas about "Palestine"will diverge.
I agree about Hamas. Forgive my squeamishness about being excited for calls to grind over a million people to dust to root them out. Gaza is not uninhabited. If even one in ten of them were Hamas fighters, they'd have overwhelmed Israeli forces decades ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
There's no easy answer left here, and the pathocrats have made sure of that. If I had some brilliant idea for how to get rid of criminals, terrorists and psychotics without anybody getting hurt I guess I wouldn't have time to comment on the internets.
As for Israel, if you don't know their government is psychotic you're hearing about them only through heavy filters. Netanyahu is a madman. Don't take my word for it. Just read and listen to what he says. The fact that he's still in power I don't think reflects on Israelis any more than the fact that nutcases running most of Europe and the US are still in power reflect on the people living there. Gaming democratic political systems to remain in power isn't hard, apparently.
My objection here and I think the objection of everyone else who similarly replied is that you came in here waving around anti-semitism while everyone else, as far as I can tell, is speaking in good faith and nobody likes what's happening in Israel right now. Unless Chris is doing a great job of cleaning up, which maybe is the case and I just haven't seen it. If I had seen it I wouldn't have said anything. Otherwise save the accusations for a forum where they're justified. I doubt there is a single person anywhere on the internet who is not painfully and constantly aware that somewhere out there anti-semites are lurking, but it gets tiresome when it gets tossed around every time Israel (as a government) is not being sufficiently #supported.
Have seen several versions of a comment about me "cleaning up." I'm not, and I haven't. No comments have been deleted, including comments I hate. I think we should have an open discussion. In the lifetime of this site, I've deleted maybe ten comments, mostly for drooling idiocy that crossed the line into extreme tediousness.
Not that you need me saying it, but allwoing the Fool to openly display his foolishness is by far better than clamping down and preventing that; how else will others know the Fool is indeed a fool?
And yes, sometimes I'm the Fool - no argument there, but I'd rather be an honest fool in the open, than some kind of whisperer in secret.
Your post is well said Chris. The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is a huge - and much neglected - subject. Read Christina Lamb's shocking 2020 book Our Bodies Their Battlefield which I reviewed here: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo. Our Bodies cannot but rend the heart of anyone with a heart. Her stories of rape, torture and sadistic maiming on a massive scale are so horrific that you are left emotionally punch-drunk and numb before you reach the end of the first chapter. But as a permanent record of brutality inflicted on literally millions of women – of a kind beyond the capacity of most people even to imagine – it is an invaluable document.
As usual Chris you cut through all the noise and tell it like it really is. It is truly horrifying the methodical way in which these atrocities were carried out. For most the motive just appeared to be to kill as many Jews as possible. But the idea of using these attacks and rapes and murders as a way to claim territory because victims and descendents do not want to return is even more disgusting. Any apologists for Hamas, or for those Palestinian supporters who drove through the streets of Mississauga, Ontario. cheering and honking their horns in joy, need to have their heads examined. Funny how no police came to stop the honking in this as they did to the truckers. Have they not yet figured out who the real terrorists are. Apparently not CBC who labeled the truckers in that way, but recently sent a memo to its staff advising them not to label Hamas as terrorists. I don't know how many times l say this these days but you can.t make this stuff up.
People in general seem to feel the need to wallow in the evil of one side while wearing blinders to the evil of the other, or if not that, engage in carefully curated scorekeeping to justify that their team is less evil and therefore the good guys.
In real life, it's a huge majority of innocent people on either side who never hurt anyone, a small minority of angry people who have very good personal reasons to be angry on either side blinded by their own private rage, and a tiny handful of scheming lunatics running both shows. So basically how it is everywhere else.
There's nothing about that to be celebrated, and no simple solutions that don't entail a whole lot of bloodshed (and even then aren't simple). Try not to be too excited about it.
I'm getting some serious 9/11, Mandalay Bay, Dead migrant kids washing up on Mediterranean beaches vibes from all this. I won't go so far as to say it's a false flag, but something stinks here given Israel's legendary intel apparatus. These innocent women and kids didn't deserve any of this. None of us deserve what is coming.
It might be Netanyahu's regime let it happen as a pretext for finally seizing the last remnants of palestine. The man is a stone cold psychopath and tyrant - this should be clear from just watching him talk - so that wouldn't be surprising.
Or, it may be that Hamas just got their hands on enough weapons smuggled out of Afghanistan and Ukraine to make it happen, which anyone paying enough attention to how the US arms trade operates should have seen coming. We knew billions in equipment had been abandoned in Afghanistan, and billions more has gone "missing" in Ukraine. It was inevitably going to find its way into the hands of terror groups, which suits the death merchants just fine because it makes more customers.
The talking heads seem to think Israel's intel is top notch and there's no way they could have been surprised by this, but they're not any better than any other intel agency. They talk a big game and have lots of fancy gadgets but when it comes down to it they're a bunch of bureaurat desk jockeys like everyone else. Why put in the legwork to track down unknown enemies when you can just create known, well contained ones and shoot fish in a barrel? Government efficiency at its best.
Yeah, if this were a Dick Cheney vs Mohammed Atta situation, I'd be rooting for injuries, but that's never how these things turn out. It's always "let's you and him fight". I don't like anyone involved, except for the Israeli people who in my experience are an overall good group.
Like an idiot AWFL mom who thinks chemically sterilizing her kid helps transvestites, it feels like we're getting played with emotion, only in this case it's anger and fear instead of egalitarianism.
In the end random innocent people suffer thanks to the schemes of pathocrats, aided and abetted by knee-jerk bobblehead hashtag-supporters. Here innocent Israelis are going to be murdered en masse and worse, as they have been for decades already, but at a larger scale if it turns into a full on war; and nothing changes for random innocent Palestinians either, who have been getting raped, tortured, shot and blown up for decades too. Nobody should be excited at this prospect except the politicians and arms dealers, who will both benefit greatly.
Israel's intelligence is very good. But that doesn't mean that the terrorists don't learn and adapt. The Mossad isn't omniscient and omnipotent. And Gaza has been primarily the responsibility of the IDF's intelligence function, which is a separate entity.
Netanyahu doesn't have a regime. He barely has a coalition. You keep saying he's a psychopath. This is because....?
Hi again. I say this because I've watched his speeches, and read articles about his policies, seen the choices he makes, and how he speaks about his opponents, and can come to no other conclusion. There are few politicians on the world stage I'm more certain about this. It's like, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Netanyahu, and a couple others on that tier. They tell you who they are, if you listen. But hey, I could be wrong. I'll stick to my own judgement until I see otherwise.
Edit: oh, re: regime, the fact that he holds on to power when it seems clear, at least from the outside, that he's not wanted only deepens my suspicions of him. You're right about that for sure. I have been hoping for a while, to the extent I take interest in what's happening outside my own borders, that they'd finally manage to oust him and get someone sane in his place. But we hope the same things in the US and yet the insane cling to power.
Hmmm. Netanyahu is the least of the Israeli's problems. The Left in Israel is doing to him what they are doing to Trump here. Nobody else has been able to hold together a government if you've followed Israeli politics. Netanyahu has in fact been instrumental in transitioning Israel from a Socialist country. I'm still a little vague on why you think he's a nut. He's not anything like those you compare him to. I'm pretty surprised you feel that way. He's a former commando, businessman, and MIT architecture grad. He's not a policy wonk or activist who never lived in the real world. His brother was killed in a raid on Entebbe to rescue Jews taken hostage by terrorists. Netanyahu was on that raid. Personally, for me, a major foundational problem is that Israel has been too accommodating to terrorists and this is why they are vulnerable at this time. This is an existential crisis for Israel. There will be harsh decisions taken and harsh actions taken. There have to be. There are no easy solutions. Living in harmony is not an option with military organizations dedicated to your destruction. The Palestinian Arabs created this crisis with assists from bad foreign policy by the USA, the EU and Israel. This will only stop with wiping out Hamas, Hezbollah, and regime change in Tehran. These people fear peace. Their grift is terror and war. That's why they did this now, because Saudi is interested in a peace accord with Israel. I have friends and family from Israel. They have friends and relatives who have been killed or kidnapped at this time.
Think about if your friend or relative and their children were indiscriminately murdered or kidnapped for their choice of religion.
I know this is emotional for everybody. But Israel exists to be a safe homeland for the Jews. The same internatlonal law that the Palestinians scream about when they suffer retaliation is the law that created the nation of Israel.
I get that, and you are welcome to have a different impression of the man than I do. I trust my own character judgement, and his background doesn't change what I think of him.
I don't know what Israel is supposed to do. I wish I was clever enough to have perfect answers to difficult problems and charismatic enough to get people to sign up for them.
But I'm not big on the idea of overwhelming retaliation on Gaza, because it's just going to lead to more vendettas and make the problem worse, if not draw all of us closer to a global war that seems inevitable at this point and benefits nobody, least of all Israelis. A direct attack on Iran in particular is incredibly dangerous, because it potentially draws NATO in conflict with an ally of Russia and friend of China. That will not end well. Which, I think, is exactly what the whole chickenhawk industrial complex wants.
Normally I'm not this serious but this situation is deadly serious.
I really don't have words to describe the heaviness. Your explanation feels true to me, tragically so, and that's about all I know. Everything else -- all of the speculation and theories on geopolitical maneuvering, false flags, etc. -- feels hollow to me, and I can't engage in it. All I can do right now is gather the souls of those women and children into my heart.
Agreed. I’m not sophisticated enough to engage in all the 5D analysis and the multi dimensional chess board assessments taking place. Is it possible that the full and complete explanation for what happened is that “evil people are capable of doing evil things”.
My mother immigrated to the US after WWII (1952). She was born (1935) and raised in what is now Serbia. She is of German descent and became a displaced person, along with her mother and two brothers, during 1941 until they immigrated during 1952. The stories of rape, knife mutilation, and general gun fire killings she describes are horrific.
When I was 5 years old my parents (my father immigrated during 1947 from Greece) gave me a buzz cut and dressed me in my brother's hand-me-downs to send me to school. They were going to make sure I was as safe as possible from predators. When I ask my mom today, she says she would not do anything differently.
So yes, this sexual violence is an act of war, and very very effective.
Your conclusion that "Hamas is making sites of trauma" is, I think, absolutely correct. The goal is to create instinctive fear and revulsion, the same way animals remember the places where they were beaten or their offspring killed. It is a grim and brutal analysis and it is necessary.
Pressing the "like" button seems woefully inapproriate for this column. There are other signs that the Biden Administration has blood on their hands in this atrocity. They reinstituted the support funds for the palestinians that rewarded terrorism against Israelis. "Secretary of State Anthony Blinken deleted a tweet that called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas." Too late it signalled the "official" anti-Israeli sentiments of the current government, not to speak of reaproachement with money for Iran. the sponsors of this atrocity against civilians. Our Universities with Anti-Israeli organizations are complicit as are some members of our congress - openly! Yet, there are some who claim this to be an Israeli operation "to justify war with Iran" - really!! When will folks see terrorism for what it is : terror! And it needs to be adressed and eliminated with the same zeal that our DOJ is going after J6 trespassers.
All is very confused. Your point of view is a very interesting one, to care about.
The whole attack seems to be a False Flag operation, and they even compare it with 9/11 ("the" false flag MEDIATIC OPERATION). Time will tell. Here a video, with some other lectures, and a "verbal mistake" of the israeli militar speaker about the attack....who reminds the "verbal mistake" of GW Bush recently, who trying to vilify the russian "invasion" of Ukraine, said: "Irak" instead of Ukraine. They are lying, and they know they are lying.
I have the feeling that we only have pieces of the puzzle, and we can not see really the whole picture, if someday we perhaps can see it. Meanwhile, people die and suffer, and the psycho-de-facto-in-charge don´t care about it, people are numbers, pawns, expendable things in their game of power.
The US State Dept assures us that the unfreezing of $6billion dollars to Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the killing in Gaza. So much deception fueling so much evil.
I agree with you that hostility to Jews should be called what it is, but the origin of the term antisemitism is far from P.C.: it was coined in the era of “scientific” racism and eugenics to give a modern rationale to old hatreds, without having to resort to religious practice or scripture.
Hamas certainly knows that Israel will show no mercy in its retaliation. The death toll in the punitive, justified response will be much, much higher than that of their brutal incursion. Israel is about to inflict their own traumatic memory on the Muslims in the region. And Hamas, so blinded by hate and willing to engage in a war of attrition, finds it acceptable. Such an incredibly evil group.
It’s even simpler. They (Hamas) are raised on a steady diet of Jew-hatred. They hate Jews and, like the Nazis, feel empowered and euphoric by harming and humiliating Jews. Anti-Semitism is not a strategy, it is pathological hatred. The only response to it is to annihilate them.
It's insane for infantry to carry cellphones into combat, because cellphone locations can be tracked. But Hamas seems to be recording everything they do, and they're stopping to upload new footage as they capture it. They're taking the risk of carrying trackable devices in combat for the intended benefit of the display. I'd be very curious to hear if they're all carrying standardized, organization-issued cellphones, and I'd be very curious to see a detailed analysis of where all of the footage is appearing first. This is a deliberate information operation.
My only disagreement would be that they are taking risks by carrying trackable devices. I don't think they care. The all willing to die so that they can meet the 72 virgins they were allegedly promised for doing (their small g) god's work. They believe they are doing a holy job. The rest of the assessment is spot on. And extremely sobering.
This is not combat. It is a wholesale massacre of civilians. Combat would involve opposing armies.
They knew an opposing army would show up at some point, though.
This entire thing is strange. We've just gone thru an exp. where the authorities censored anything they didnt like so people would remain ignorant. Why do the authorities want us to see this?
Wasn't Israel founded using terrorism against the British?
"Why do the authorities want us to see this?"
The problem with thinking that everything is an op, and all of what appears to be reality is "the authorities" always choosing what you see, is that it denies agency to everyone else, and elevates "the authorities" into a godlike status of absolute power. Hamas is also made up of people, who can also have intentions and take action.
My enduring impression of the last twenty years of narrative manipulation and information operations is that it's shabby and stupid -- the Peter Hotezes of the world trying to pretend they pull the strings. All of the THAT'S WHAT THEY WANT YOU TO THINK reactions to events, even though I see very clearly that we're lied to and manipulated all the time, gives "them" -- "the authorities" -- a power that they're not smart enough to have. Some things are manipulation. Some things are real. Some things just happen. Sorting all of that is very hard. Discarding all of the apparent world as "Why do the authorities want us to see this?" strikes me as being exactly as bad a choice as total credulousness.
Indeed, all of lies and manipulation are signs of a failing empire. We can retreat from empire peacefully, or we can let them drag us into wars that are none of our concern. We should take everything with a grain of salt, and not let our emotions get the best of us. We complained about "the other side" being ruled by their emotions during covid. Lets not be them now. Can you blame anyone after the last six years? Election was stolen! (its ok to say that when our side claims it), RussiaRUSSIARUSSIA!, SAFE AND EFFECTIVE, INSURRECTION AT THE CAPITAL! Saddam has WMDS! Bin Laden is in Afghanistan! We had to dump his body at sea to follow Muslim funeral rights or something. We had to sacrifice capitalism to save it! No bankers lost their jobs for ruining the economy (because they are a needed appendage of empire), We can't help out homeowners but we can guarantee trillions of bad debt for bankers. Should i go on?
The last six years, or the last twenty, are unforgivable, and I know where to send the bill for the loss of trust. But sort what you discard.
Yes.
And No.
Some terrorism against the British.
Some participating by the British- see Orde Wingate.
Above all the Jewish British soldiers learned war in WW2.
Israel was a project that began in the 19th century.
It took off hard with the Balfour Declaration of 1917.
Communal violence rose through the 20s and 30s.
WW2 trained millions in war.
The main armaments for the Israeli in 1947-48 came from liberated war surplus, a large shipment of Czech arms (Stalin) and above all the British had trained and equipped the Israelis, Jordanians (the Jordan Legion was British Officer led) Egyptians, Iraqi armies.
Great Britain was like America now, on both sides.
The Stern Gang aka Irgun (Menacham Begin) did blow up the King David hotel where the British were, but in General this was a handoff to the locals ala India and before that Ireland (more complicated than known).
No, Israel wasn’t an American ally, never mind project, until 1967 war.
Why did they show us people dropping dead in China? How did those videos get out of China? Isn't it the second most spied upon society after Israel, though that could be us also nowadays.
Chris
Why did the authorities show us all those mostly safe and peaceful riots in 2020? Why did they show us anybody protesting the lockdowns was awful and a super spreader?
Such a great point! Carrying highly trackable cell phones is wildly against opsec. And how does the most surveilled country in the world not catch this?
Same as IS/AQ. This MO is all over, including soldiers from AZ in the recent Nagorno Karabagh ethnic cleansing. Their contempt for beautiful women is obvious also. And these people don't blink. They are used to this. They do not seem to me like some average Palestinian villagers. It is already common for mercenaries from Syria to be transported to other theaters including Libya as they were to NK by Turkey, a big backer of Hamas and Islamic Brotherhood. Also fighters come from Tunisia etc. And that includes child soldiers who are transported. Some of those terrorists looked quite young
Did Israel create Hamas?
Israel aided in the creation of Hamas, as a foolish attempt to steer Palestinian politics. The wisdom of that maneuver is wide open for debate, and it's a discussion I'm happy to have with anyone who doesn't pretend that Hamas didn't just commit an extraordinarily ugly act of violence. There are many, many, many fair debates to be had, here.
Of course it's horrific! Wasn't sure so thought I would ask.
The upgrade to Founding to comment is not the way to keep getting me to pay.
Please don't go there.
I don't know what this comment refers to -- I have no plans to do this.
What? So the Israelis allowed Hamas to murder 1000 of their people so they could start a war that they’ve been trying to avoid for decades? Not likely. Here is the obvious truth, the Palestinians have been waging an unsuccessful war to exterminate the Jews since WWI. Every negotiation is only to obtain a better line of departure for the next attack. They don’t want peace, they want a war of annihilation. Just like the Russian are attempting with the Ukrainians.
Until your last sentence there, you were dead on the money. What a shame.
Oddly enough, the Russians have been trying to annihilate the Ukrainians since about WWI too. Or did your history books skip the Holodomor? The purge of the Kulaks? Recent events North and East of Kyiv, etc.?
Th Holodomor was not Russians exterminating Ukrainians. It was Communists exterminating peasants. You think the Holodomor stopped at the Ukraine border? Do you think kulak was just code for Ukrainian? Do a little more research.
It hit the Ukrainians harder and more. I’m sure there were others as Commies are brutal. But the rest did not fight a guerrilla war against the Russians/Soviets after they drove out the Germans, but the Ukrainians did. And the Ukrainian lands have been free of Muscovite (Russian) control for much of their history. So, the point remains —- Ukrainians are NOT Russians. And currently the Russians have been attempting ethnic cleansing in this area, including murder, rape, torture, kidnapping, destruction of cultural features, etc.
The Soviets, particularly Stalin, caused the Holodomor. You're the one in need of a history lesson.
Indeed. To quote El Gato Malo from a post today:
“why did the war in the ukraine happen? might it be because land formerly belonging to one nation was taken and made into a new country whose borders and demographics don’t make a ton of sense and then, on top of that provocation the US backed a coup/far right governmental switcheroo to replace the government with some truly corrupt nasties that included quite the passel of actual (not even metaphoric or allegorical) nazis? because that’s not small beer as poking the bear goes.
pile on some sabre rattling about crossing a clear “bright line” by offering NATO membership to this “country” that stabs into russia in a manner that would make it a bit like the soviet union seeking to add texas to the warsaw pact during the cold war and it’s not exactly puzzling how the tensions got high.
it’s not like putin is a swell guy or innocent of lying and playing nasty games of his own or stands as some sort of good actor here, but given the US response to cuba back in the day, imagine what we’d do if russia helped overthrow the mexican government and inducted them into a soviet defense compact. anyone think that would have been mild or peaceful? we’d have had troops across the rio grande faster than you could say “51st state.”
"The Soviets" were just the Russians with a hammer & sickle cloak on. Stalin may have been a Georgian by birth, but he was a full convert to bog-standard Russian imperialism.
Soviets are Russians, no?
The Soviets were Russian…yes, I know Stalin was actually a Georgian. Hardly matters. Calling Ukrainians ‘Russians’ is like calling the Spanish ‘Italians’. Different but related language, different customs, different but related churches and different but related ethnicity — since the days of the Mongols. And these two groups have been fighting sometimes on the same side and sometimes opposite sides since the Middle Ages. For example, the Czars used the Cossacks (Ukrainians) to suppress Russians.
Russia is not exterminating Ukrainians, many of whom consider themselves to be Russian. The term "land dispute" belittles the death and destruction but the war in Ukraine is about land not the annihilation of Ukrainians. What's happening in Israel is a continuation of the attempted genocide that started centuries ago.
I'm sure I'll be labeled a Putin stooge for that but I couldn't let that one go.
I don't have a dog in this fight, but shouldn't we wait before we jump to conclusions? Has everyone already forgotten "Safe and effective"?
They have also forgotten Sadam’s weapons of mass destruction. Colin Powell’s speech at the UN convinced a lot of people that Sadam really had those weapons. After all he was a respected military officer; and yet he lied. Thousands of Iraqis died because everyone jumped on the bloody bandwagon of revenge based on a lie.
Now, just as a majority of Americans were starting to turn against funding the Ukrainians; an unexplained and unprecedented breach of security occurs in Israel. Perhaps it’s a sign that the IDF and Mossad are not what they used to be, but someone needs to explain how all those weapons and equipment were snuck into one of the most highly surveilled places on Earth. And just like that Americans who just a few days ago were tired of war and massive military spending are baying for intervention in another foreign conflict. There will be many victims in the coming weeks, but as always the military industrial complex scores another win.
So you're saying that Palestinians come to New York and attack temples? It's a war over territory augmented by a religious and ethnic tension. I find it funny that you compare it to Ukraine. In Ukraine, we're arming the Ukrainians because Russia is encroaching on their territory, but in Israel you're on the Russian "side," the encroachers. That's quite the selective set of principles you have.
Yes. That is exactly what happens. Been happening for decades, as far back as Paris in 1980 and Rome in 1982. Jews - not even Israeli nationals - are attacked by Arabs in Western countries for the sake of being Jews.
Do you know who else attacks Jews for being Jews? White people. Do you know who else gets attacked by radical Muslims for not being, well, Muslim? Non-Muslims, of any stripe, even those who would otherwise be considered Arabic or Middle Eastern. Seeing a trend here?
Also, no it's not "the Palestinians." It's radicals that might be from Palestine, but your average work-a-day Palestinian is not catching planes to far flung regions and blowing things up. They're too busy trying to figure out how to survive behind the blockade.
"Woe unto the evildoer and woe unto his neighbor."
- Medieval French Proverb
You don’t think Palestinians commit terror outside of Israel? C’mon. I don’t know your politics, but one can support Palestinian causes without endorsing murder, rape and kidnapping.
There’s a difference between advocating for something and cheering mass murder imof civilians. And I’m not saying that’s what you’re doing.This is an organized group of fascists exterminating Jews because they are Jews. Just like the Nazis.
They are not exterminating Jews because they are Jews. They do not come to America and "exterminate" Jews. They are angry because they feel they have the same claim to the same land and their claim is stronger. That's it. That they happen to be Jews on one side and Muslims on the other is about like the English happened to be Protestant and the Irish happened to be Catholic. It might add an extra layer of complexity and even be a catalyst, but it is not *the original reason* for the tension.
That is incorrect. The Koran explicitly advocates for the murder of Jews. They kill Jews wherever they can. And they kill Americans, Jews or not. Who blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut? Who just killed 15-20 Americans and took another 20 hostage from Israel this weekend? Stop trying to rationalize murder. It's distasteful.
The Muslims are interested in ethnic cleansing, not the Jews. The Muslims are the ones that nobody can live with in their own home countries. Talk to an Iraqi Christian or a Maronite Christian or a Palestinian Christian. You are missing the bigger picture.
Hamas might, but Palestinians, no.
And it's not about "supporting." It's about finding a pragmatic solution that doesn't lead to a world war. That's not going to happen until we stop the hyperbole and get emotion out of the mix.
Seriously? You're not going to get emotion of out the mix. You can forget about that. It's not just Hamas. It's Islamic Jihad. It's Hezbollah. It''s Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Popular Resistance Committees. Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Harakat Al-Sabireen.
Palestinian Liberation Front. The PLO. Those are just most of the big ones. There are others. It's an entire societal problem. Palestinians are committed to political and religious violence. Their organizations pay millions of dollars a month in stipends to criminals who attack civilian Jews in Israel. And so are Muslims around the world in varying degrees. There have been attacks in Munich, Athens, the Achille Lauro, hijackings, Buenos Aires, and in the US as well all done by Palestinian terror groups.
Everybody wants to avoid world war except for the people who think they can win.
It is what it is. Pretending it is something different doesn't solve the problem. It just kicks the can down the road. Now is the time to solve this. It's not going to get easier when the Iranians have a nuclear bomb, courtesy of that POS Barack Obama and his imbecile corps of diplomatic amateur Commies.
The answer is to my mind simple: this has to be solved, and it has to be solved with finality - the opinions of the press and everybody else not withstanding. Line up at the Gaza border as many Catepillar D11 dozers as you have available and after every last building in Gaza has been bombed until not one stone stands over another, begin to push the debris toward the Mediterranean. Do not stop until there is a pile of rubble five miles deep and two hundred feet high. Then open the raw land to Israeli citizens. Solved, and permanently.
I fully and absolutely agree. It's tragic that this festering boil hasn't been lanced earlier. There is no two-state solution. There is no peace unless these animals are all gone. Israel now needs to get stuck in resolve this once and for all.
And what of the 2 million people living there? The Palestinians should have been resettled in new cities in the Sinai on the Mediterranean coast 70 years ago. They could have built them themselves with funding and assistance from Israel, the US, and Arab countries. They could have built a paradise for themselves. However unjust their expulsion was, there was never a possibility of going back. But no Arab country wanted them. Why? Why has this problem been allowed to fester and grow for nearly a century? Who benefits?
First of all, there is no such thing as a "Palestinian." Many indigenous peoples were found in current "Palestine" for many generations, and a plurality of those people were Jews, by the way. The name derives from the ancient name for the Philistines, who occupied a tiny section of what is now "Palestine." It never had defined borders, but was a vague term for a particular area - think of "New England" or "Dixie," so again there is no such people as "Palestinian."
Your point about "no Arab country wanted them" is a good one. Why would that be, do you think? Why wouldn't they welcome their refugee Arab brothers? Let me suggest a reason:
it's simply because the squalor in which they are living can be used to fuel their hatred of the Israelis. Can't hate on our muslim brothers who won't take us in, can we now? Must be the Jews' fault. And we hate them so much we put our military operations in hospitals and schools so that if the Israelis strike back, they will kill our children and LOOK BAD.
No, Meir had it perfectly: there will be peace when the Arabs' love for their children exceeds their hatred of the Jews.
I'm having none of it. This tore it, and it's time to make an end. Once and for all.
The hatred of Jews is foundational in the Muslim culture. This has been aggravated by the alliance with Leftist revolutionary thought. So you have islamofascists and Marxists joined at the hip in this effort. The Palestinian Arabs have nowhere to go because their leadership get billions a of dollars a year from Western governments. They are content not to solve the problem. The terrorists can’t build anything anyway. Simultaneously Muslim nations wanted a constant thorn in Israel’s side, so they let them languish, much as they let their own people languish in poverty and stoke the flames of Jew hatred by blaming Israel for all their failings. Taking all the Palestinians as refugees into their countries would just be an admission of defeat by Israel.
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/invasion-of-the-virtue-signallers
https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
Previously read and liked. I just subscribed to your substack.
Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me."
I said, "God loves you. Do you believe in God?"
He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Christian or a Jew?" He said, "A Christian." I said, "Me, too! Protestant or Catholic?" He said, "Protestant." I said, "Me, too! What franchise?" He said, "Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Baptist or Southern Baptist?" He said, "Northern Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist or Northern Liberal Baptist?"
He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist." I said, "Me, too! Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region, or Northern Conservative Baptist Eastern Region?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region." I said, "Me, too!"
Northern Conservative†Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1879, or Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912?" He said, "Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912." I said, "Die, heretic!" And I pushed him over.
-Emo Philips
I've not come across Emo Philips....but it brought a smile. And thank you for the pledge.
Tanto,
It isn't in Christianity?
JFC!!
Acts 4: 27-30
For Fuck sakes Tanto!!
Uh - I don’t recall any passages in the New Testament calling for murdering all the Jews. I also don’t think they cover genocide as a Christian behavior at Sunday School. But ask any 7 year old Palestinian Arab Muslim kid what you should do to Jews and he’ll give you the answer. It’s also in the Quran and in the Hamas Charter.
Read this:
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/savage-nihilism-free-palestine
Uh huh possibly I just sent you the exact text from the bible?
The blood of christ on your hands?
What part of that does not
with you?
What part of Every Pogrom through out history was inspired by The Attomer that the Jews were responsible for the death of Christ?
How many Jews have died because if Christians.
Are you seriously questioning Bible Prophecy?
Are you really questioning the Catholic Church and Christian Orthodox Doctrine?
Are you really questioning HAMAS Doctrine that Every Jew will be pushed into the Sea or murdered? ( israel)
And then the rest of the world?
Touché
To Fucking Che!
Oh my my
Yes
Exactly
I don't understand how genocide will actually solve any problems.
It will solve it in the same way that capital punishment ends that particular criminal's crime spree. They never kill again.
So, just to be clear, you are for genocide?
That's what you are saying:
You want Israel to commit genocide? You think that is the right, good, and moral thing to do: commit genocide?
I didn't say that now, did I? Straw man fallacy.
Let me try a different analogy and make it simpler for you: Suppose I have a small piece of property - one that I have by my own hands turned from raw land into a beautiful oasis, while my neighbors have been busy living it up on wealth from a natural resource found on their land - neighbors who have spent their time whooping it up and fighting instead of improving their lives. And suppose those neighbors spend every living moment plotting and planning to kill me, all my children and all theirs - neighbors who know where I live on a tiny plot of ground such that they can shoot at me from it anytime they please or slip across the property line to ambush me and my family. What is my best move? Hope they change their mind?
I don't think so. My best move is to go to THEIR house and wipe them out, or at the very least make sure they don't ever again live against my property line.
I hope that's easier for you.
"wipe them out"
That is genocide! It doesn't matter if you didn't use the word.
Genocide is exactly what you described!
I hope this easier for you: you are a coward fucking Nazi
Didn't your mother ever tell you that when the name-calling starts, it's prima facie evidence that the other person knows he's lost the argument?
You forgot the part about how you took the property from someone else to begin with.
I didn't, but people who look just like me kicked off the in'juns and then stole it fair and square. Now I own it - at least for a little while - and then it will own ME for a LONG time, so I don't worry much about its history.
Isn't the other option the genocide of Jewish people? Hitler tried that. Thankfully, he did not completely succeed but did kill 8 million Jews.
That tends to be the solution Jews have for their enemies. Why do you think the West is getting flooded with immigrants by their duel-citizen politicians?
What?
Successful, local genocide has been the goal of Palestine leadership ever since there has been such a thing as Palestine leadership. Genocide eliminates the existence of one of the two warring civilizations. If the problem is endless war and the threat of war that is one problem solved by genocide. It would seem genocide by Israel not genocide of Israel is what the Palestine leadership is about to get.
There are people on both sides calling for genocide. Both are wrong.
They have to commit genocide, just let them all go elsewhere.
Maybe this helps everyone forget how they were just threatened the past few years and feel like they're on the team again?
https://spectator.org/what-israel-needs-to-do-now/
I agree with this man's perspective on what needs to happen.
Great article, and IMHO, right on the money. Tom Paine said that, "If there must be trouble, let it come in my time, so that my children may live in peace." Israel has tried every possible tactic in the hopes of simply being let alone. None of it has worked. Now it is time to gird one's loins and do what is required, so that Israel's children may live in peace.
Barbarism is no basis for a civilization. I don’t care who you propose to cleanse by murder, it’s wrong.
Jim,
It hurts me to say this, really hurts me, but I agree with you. I'm done, sorry By whatever means, by whatever it takes.
This evil has to be stopped , lets start here!
Radical Islam is exactly what it is! What the name says.
What does Not one person seem to get about Radical! ??? ?
You see its ugly head rising in Australia , Europe, US , Canada.
And at every University in The Western World , Leftist Professors Instill in their students minds, these sick cancerous ideas,
Stop It
Caterpillar, not Catepillar. Notwithstanding, not "not withstanding." Slipping in my old age....
There's an edit button under the "..." menu. Typos happen.
FYI The edit option is not available when using the app, only when using the platform through a browser. It would be nice if it were included in the app though.
Aaah, gotcha. I don't use the app, wouldn't know. That sucks.
Excellent analysis. Many of the comments reveal the anti-Semitism of the commenters. The terrorists didn’t do what they did, what they filmed themselves doing. It’s the tricky Israelis, see? They made them do it. Right.
We know the security apparatus failed. We don’t know why. There are a variety of explanations that should be considered, but the default explanation for the bigots, the one the like the most, is that this is an Israeli plan.
Could there have been a cyber attack? Could there be moles in the defense forces? Could there have been a massive fuck up? Could there be a political calculus? Don’t know. There will undoubtedly be investigations and controversies. We do know that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews. And we know they’ve attacked many times before and that Iran funds them directly, with the imbecile governments in Europe and the United States contributing at least indirectly. It is reported that Hamas was created or nurtured in the 1970s by Israel to balance the PLO. More idiocy. We’ve seen that Islamist “freedom fighters “ aren’t really on our side ever. We saw this in Afghanistan with the mujahideen who became Taliban and Al
Queda. We saw it in Iraq. Currently in the USA we don’t need to wonder about our invaders. They are invited in by the power class to be a permanent underclass and facilitate social engineering and compliance.
We don’t apparently have any time for mourning. We need to blame the Jews. Islamofascist Hamas did this. They filmed it. The people in Gaza cheer murder and rape as they do in Arab enclaves in the West, who will undoubtedly try to do the same types of things again at some point. They’ve committed murder many times before. In the meantime Israel will extract revenge.
It's not anti-semitism, it's just a complete lack of trust in government and the narrative they advance through an almost thoroughly captured media. If such an attack were to happen in the US, many would immediately discount the official version and speculate about the true reason for what occurred.
Conspiracy theories flourish where trust in authority is destroyed. And governments throughout the world are showing that they're run by incompetent men and women.
Exactly right except in some cases it is also antisemitism, but not all. Trust me on this one.
I was with you up until the word 'incompetent'.
incompetent to amoral to evil. the spectrum is frustrating
Are you not even the tiniest bit suspicious about how an incursion from the most surveilled piece of real estate on Earth into the most heavily guarded country in the world came about? Not even a little bit? No one gets into Israel without the Israeli security apparatus knowing about it.
Didn’t say that. I am quite curious.
I get it. Israel is not going to have a civil war. Hamas made a huge step to unifying the country through this terror. There is going to be no “proportionate response”.
You say you are curious and yet, in your comment above, you state that the most logical explanation is the default position of bigots.
So somehow it's Israel's fault that people crossed their border and murdered people by the hundreds? Beheaded babies? Raped young women in the streets, killed them and then stripped their bodies and carried them face-down in the back of a pickup truck? And we are supposed to focus on how they got in? Struggling at the gnat and swallowing the camel....
We live in a time of inverted morality. Many people are simply unable to distinguish right from wrong. And then there are people with blind hatred of Jews. And there are the Leftists who also have no compassion for who ever they consider their opposition. So murder is condoned if it’s done to the group they hate. Israel has long been the target of Commies and Islamofascists. It’s a weird allegiance, but it’s a real one.
It is the fault of whoever it was on the Israeli side who decided to let this happen (or make it happen), as well as the Hamas savages. No, it is certainly not the fault of the ordinary people of Israel.
Yeah. But that doesn’t mean everybody who says it is a bigot. But it does mean bigots are going to say it.
On rainy days bigots often say 'It's raining'. So what? Should everyone else keep quiet about the weather?
Are you looking for an apology? If you’re not a bigot I’m not calling you a bigot. If you are a bigot than that’s not my problem. If you read some of the comments maybe you’ll see what I am talking about. Then again maybe you won’t.
I have seen few saying this was wholly planned by Israel, but more say that it was known about by some higher ups in Israel and was allowed to occur because it frees the board for retaliatory action, similar to the FDR administration having been forewarned about Pearl Harbor.
People can and will say anything. It’s possible there’s a conspiracy. But in this case for many it’s an excuse to criticize Israel and shift blame.
Governments do a lot of stupid things, sometimes evil, more often incompetent. Time will tell. But when the initial reaction is that it’s a false flag and it’s obviously an Israeli operation, there’s often an anti-Semite saying it.
That makes no sense at all. I don't trust my own government. Why would it make me an anti-Semite if I don't trust the Israeli government, either?
It doesn’t. But antisemites will say the same thing you’re saying for a different reason.
Maybe, but the intelligence officials leaking that Egypt gave warning are presumably not anti-Semites, either, so that criticism just muddies the waters.
Is that news real or is it designed to blame Israel? Why would an intelligence agency leak that? Look I don’t know the answer. And I know why people are inclined to conspiracy theories.Because a lot of the theories turn out to be correct. But there’s more nuance to my point than you may be giving credit for.
Who cares? Enough with throwing around this word “antisemite” already
Who cares about what
Israel has committed similar massive intelligence screw-ups in the past.
The opening days of the Yom Kippur War in 1973 were viewed very much like this past weekend - Israeli forces were caught snoozing and massive casualties were inflicted before Israel managed to call up their reserves and finally wallop Egypt and Syria.
The Israelis convened their own "Warren Commission" - the Agranat Commission - to investigate the screw-ups and its contents are probably mostly in earnest because the Israelis kept 99% of it classified and secret for over 20 years.
Now that it's been declassified we have a window into the workaday bureaucratic incompetence, hubristic assumptions and tactical miscalculations that allow a disaster like that to unfold.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agranat_Commission
My personal theory about recent events, based on that Israeli military history plus the history of Gaza for the past 20 years leans towards something like:
Israeli intelligence knew ahead of time that something, broadly speaking, was in the works. But they probably hubristically assumed that it would be yet another big rocket barrage which could be adequately managed with air raid sirens and Iron Dome interceptors, and that sny Hamas ground forces that were being activated were going to be deployed in a defensive posture, as in earlier episodes, mainly to deter Israeli attempts to use ground force lightning raids to seize high value targets in Gaza (the Israelis do better with that tactic in the West Bank and largely don't even try that any more in Gaza). Meanwhile, briefing the land forces on all this would risk leaking intelligence sources and methods (to no real end, because after all this was going to be just another rocket barrage) so they didn't alert that department. And they made the Pearl-Harbor-esque assumption that absorbing the first blow (which wouldn't endanger too many Israeli lives, they figured) would make it easier politically and diplomatically to engage in retaliatory airstrikes, versus preemptively attacking the Arab rocket batteries, which is a fool's errand because anyway the rockets are all stored in the basements of schools and hospitals so you look like a real ogre for blowing up a classroom full of kids one fine blue day for no obvious reason.
So the land positions on the border were not reinforced with extra troops, the units who were there on the day weren't told to be on high alert for anything suspicious, the fresh-faced lieutenant commanding the observation post on the Gaza fence wasn't going to instantly mortar a couple of civilian-looking bulldozers that wandered into the quite narrow neutral zone (Gaza and the nearby Israeli villages are all small, so all the distances involved here a tiny - a mile or two this way or that) - he'd be tried as a war criminal for murdering a construction crew! - and the AA gunner wasn't going to instantly shoot down a handful of paragliders that were seemingly blown off course - he'd be gunning down hapless tourists!
Even if these soldiers hit the panic button the minute the bulldozers knocked down the fence and terrorists in jeeps started barrelling out of hiding in nearby barns and greenhouses into the breach, it's still a couple of hours before you can bus down a regiment of friendlies from Tel Aviv to engage them. That's more than enough time for a few hundred crazed gunmen to shoot, rape and kidnap a thousand unsuspecting civilians.
That's all you need: Some errors of judgment - none obviously that egregious - a bold and diabolical enemy, and a couple lost hours... and you have yourself a massacre for the history books.
Of course, there are some additional longer-term mistakes and vulnerabilities at play here, so one can already write the Agranat II report and recommendations:
1. Bigger neutral zone in Gaza before the fence. Now with added landmines!
2. All major commands (land, sea, air, border police) briefed whenever there is suspicion of something brewing in Gaza.
3. Flood with seawater those two gigantic stone quarries that the Gazans have been operating right near the boundary fence.
4. Israeli-side neutral zone with limits on tourism and mass gatherings. (Why was there a freaking "Rave For Peace" taking place *right next to the Gaza fence* ?!?! Who goes for a beach vacation in Somalia?!?)
5. Require all Israeli-side neutral zone villages to have armed volunteer civil defense units. Some vulnerable Israeli communities have long had these; reports from this past weekend suggest that where these were in place near Gaza, the Hamas attackers were successfully repelled.
6. Build up foul and land-intensive heavy industries in the Israeli neutral zone to deny access and create unattractive targets to buffer Israeli population centers (stockyards; meatpacking plants; lead smelters; garbage incinerators).
7. Defense-in-depth with additional forward bases and fortifications at varying distances from the Gaza fence.
Totally agree. The idea that a big party on the border with a terror enclave was a good idea was truly idiotic. Every population center should have a civilian militia. They need a DMZ. They need to liberalize firearm ownership and every able bodied person should carry. A large percentage of the population is already trained in firearm use to some level.
Excellent discussion!
There have been some other serious errors in counterterrorist operations as well on a smaller scale throughout the history of the country. The problem with terror besides the atrocities is that the terrorists can harm indiscriminately, but the responding authorities have to be perfect every time and that's impossible. On top of that you have a population that expects perfection and that paralyzes the security apparatus sometimes because a mistake can be career ending. There are a lot of facile explanations for everything in life. Lately however there have been a lot of conspiracies that have proven to be exactly what we fear, and trust has been lost. On top of this, Israel can't catch a break in the media and court of public opinion, which adds fuel to the fire. It's also possible that things work out a certain way not because of an evil genius at the heIm, but because of the demands and constraints of a given dynamic. I'm sure there will be lengthy recriminations and investigations here. In the meantime, we shouldn't forget how this was started and the victims of the massacre.
In many ways this is like 9/11.
Up to and including 9/10/01, the playbook for an airliner hijacking was to cooperate with the hijackers in the air, land the plane wherever you could, and either pressure the Cuban Government to return your citizens safely; or, if they landed in a place reachable by Western forces, have a SWAT team take out the hijackers if hostage negotiations didn't make progress.
But after 3 planes hit their targets on 9/11, the rules suddenly changed and then it became understood that a hijacked plane had to be brought down quickly and in an unpopulated area before it could be turned into a kamikaze missile. Hence Flight 93 going down in Nowheresville PA (I've visited the memorial out there, by the way).
But have we endured another airliner hijacking / hostage crisis since then? No. Even the terrorists don't bother; they know they'll never land again in any desirable location with a planeload of hostages.
Similarly, I expect that fundamental assumptions will change after this. No Israeli soldier is going to get in trouble for having an itchy trigger finger around Arabs who get too close to the fence. No big tourist group will ever voluntarily get within 5 miles of that fence, especially not without a good armed escort.
How many times must we make the same mistakes? Humans are doomed to repeat history.
"Currently in the USA we don’t need to wonder about our invaders. They are invited in by the power class to be a permanent underclass and facilitate social engineering and compliance."
Exactly. So if US authorities (the powers that shouldn't be) are actively undermining the US, why would we neglect the possibility that the same could happen with leaders elsewhere, including Israel? Even if not deliberate treason, sometimes leaders consider that they're sacrificing pawns for "larger purposes," very common historically, as with Pearl Harbor and 9/11, to which the Hamas attacks are now being compared. Remember Netanyahu's words on the very day of 9/11 (according to the NYT): "'It’s very good.' Then he edited himself: 'Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy.' He predicted that the attack would 'strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror.'”
The psychopaths who run Israel's government have no more to do with the innocent people who live there than the ones in our own countries have to do with us. Branding everyone who criticizes them racist is you falling for their propaganda. I don't see anybody here calling for death to Jews or even an end to Israel. Maybe I missed one or Chris Bray is deleting their comments.
I do see a few calling for death to muslims and and end to Palestine... but I'll write that off as horror at the situation and ill-advised hyperbole. It can be hard not to paint with a broad brush when you're full of outrage and disgust, but don't let the pathocracy twist that into support for their grand genocidal schemes.
Who's the psychopath and why?
I'm not branding everyone who criticizes Israel as a racist. But I'm telling you that some people who criticize Israel are racists. Criticism of Israel is a proxy for criticizing Jews for those people. You're a smart person. You can understand that concept. As far as death to Muslims - Hamas needs to go and by go I mean leave the surface of the Earth. Hamas is dedicated to killing Jews and destroying Israel. It's in their founding charter.
I suspect that our ideas about "Palestine"will diverge.
I agree about Hamas. Forgive my squeamishness about being excited for calls to grind over a million people to dust to root them out. Gaza is not uninhabited. If even one in ten of them were Hamas fighters, they'd have overwhelmed Israeli forces decades ago and we wouldn't be having this conversation.
There's no easy answer left here, and the pathocrats have made sure of that. If I had some brilliant idea for how to get rid of criminals, terrorists and psychotics without anybody getting hurt I guess I wouldn't have time to comment on the internets.
As for Israel, if you don't know their government is psychotic you're hearing about them only through heavy filters. Netanyahu is a madman. Don't take my word for it. Just read and listen to what he says. The fact that he's still in power I don't think reflects on Israelis any more than the fact that nutcases running most of Europe and the US are still in power reflect on the people living there. Gaming democratic political systems to remain in power isn't hard, apparently.
My objection here and I think the objection of everyone else who similarly replied is that you came in here waving around anti-semitism while everyone else, as far as I can tell, is speaking in good faith and nobody likes what's happening in Israel right now. Unless Chris is doing a great job of cleaning up, which maybe is the case and I just haven't seen it. If I had seen it I wouldn't have said anything. Otherwise save the accusations for a forum where they're justified. I doubt there is a single person anywhere on the internet who is not painfully and constantly aware that somewhere out there anti-semites are lurking, but it gets tiresome when it gets tossed around every time Israel (as a government) is not being sufficiently #supported.
Have seen several versions of a comment about me "cleaning up." I'm not, and I haven't. No comments have been deleted, including comments I hate. I think we should have an open discussion. In the lifetime of this site, I've deleted maybe ten comments, mostly for drooling idiocy that crossed the line into extreme tediousness.
I appreciate that. Didn't realize that was your policy. Thanks for clarifying!
Not that you need me saying it, but allwoing the Fool to openly display his foolishness is by far better than clamping down and preventing that; how else will others know the Fool is indeed a fool?
And yes, sometimes I'm the Fool - no argument there, but I'd rather be an honest fool in the open, than some kind of whisperer in secret.
Your post is well said Chris. The use of sexual violence as a weapon of war is a huge - and much neglected - subject. Read Christina Lamb's shocking 2020 book Our Bodies Their Battlefield which I reviewed here: https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/life-in-the-shadows-of-metoo. Our Bodies cannot but rend the heart of anyone with a heart. Her stories of rape, torture and sadistic maiming on a massive scale are so horrific that you are left emotionally punch-drunk and numb before you reach the end of the first chapter. But as a permanent record of brutality inflicted on literally millions of women – of a kind beyond the capacity of most people even to imagine – it is an invaluable document.
It seems like the planet just needs better people .
I can’t possibly read this. I would hate humanity.
As usual Chris you cut through all the noise and tell it like it really is. It is truly horrifying the methodical way in which these atrocities were carried out. For most the motive just appeared to be to kill as many Jews as possible. But the idea of using these attacks and rapes and murders as a way to claim territory because victims and descendents do not want to return is even more disgusting. Any apologists for Hamas, or for those Palestinian supporters who drove through the streets of Mississauga, Ontario. cheering and honking their horns in joy, need to have their heads examined. Funny how no police came to stop the honking in this as they did to the truckers. Have they not yet figured out who the real terrorists are. Apparently not CBC who labeled the truckers in that way, but recently sent a memo to its staff advising them not to label Hamas as terrorists. I don't know how many times l say this these days but you can.t make this stuff up.
All of the politicians and media people who "condemn the evil" need to read this and really look at the evil.
People in general seem to feel the need to wallow in the evil of one side while wearing blinders to the evil of the other, or if not that, engage in carefully curated scorekeeping to justify that their team is less evil and therefore the good guys.
In real life, it's a huge majority of innocent people on either side who never hurt anyone, a small minority of angry people who have very good personal reasons to be angry on either side blinded by their own private rage, and a tiny handful of scheming lunatics running both shows. So basically how it is everywhere else.
There's nothing about that to be celebrated, and no simple solutions that don't entail a whole lot of bloodshed (and even then aren't simple). Try not to be too excited about it.
Great moniker btw
I'm getting some serious 9/11, Mandalay Bay, Dead migrant kids washing up on Mediterranean beaches vibes from all this. I won't go so far as to say it's a false flag, but something stinks here given Israel's legendary intel apparatus. These innocent women and kids didn't deserve any of this. None of us deserve what is coming.
It might be Netanyahu's regime let it happen as a pretext for finally seizing the last remnants of palestine. The man is a stone cold psychopath and tyrant - this should be clear from just watching him talk - so that wouldn't be surprising.
Or, it may be that Hamas just got their hands on enough weapons smuggled out of Afghanistan and Ukraine to make it happen, which anyone paying enough attention to how the US arms trade operates should have seen coming. We knew billions in equipment had been abandoned in Afghanistan, and billions more has gone "missing" in Ukraine. It was inevitably going to find its way into the hands of terror groups, which suits the death merchants just fine because it makes more customers.
The talking heads seem to think Israel's intel is top notch and there's no way they could have been surprised by this, but they're not any better than any other intel agency. They talk a big game and have lots of fancy gadgets but when it comes down to it they're a bunch of bureaurat desk jockeys like everyone else. Why put in the legwork to track down unknown enemies when you can just create known, well contained ones and shoot fish in a barrel? Government efficiency at its best.
Yeah, if this were a Dick Cheney vs Mohammed Atta situation, I'd be rooting for injuries, but that's never how these things turn out. It's always "let's you and him fight". I don't like anyone involved, except for the Israeli people who in my experience are an overall good group.
Like an idiot AWFL mom who thinks chemically sterilizing her kid helps transvestites, it feels like we're getting played with emotion, only in this case it's anger and fear instead of egalitarianism.
In the end random innocent people suffer thanks to the schemes of pathocrats, aided and abetted by knee-jerk bobblehead hashtag-supporters. Here innocent Israelis are going to be murdered en masse and worse, as they have been for decades already, but at a larger scale if it turns into a full on war; and nothing changes for random innocent Palestinians either, who have been getting raped, tortured, shot and blown up for decades too. Nobody should be excited at this prospect except the politicians and arms dealers, who will both benefit greatly.
Theory of the case:
https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/israel-hamas-war-surveillance-attack-101696910254581.html
Israel's intelligence is very good. But that doesn't mean that the terrorists don't learn and adapt. The Mossad isn't omniscient and omnipotent. And Gaza has been primarily the responsibility of the IDF's intelligence function, which is a separate entity.
Netanyahu doesn't have a regime. He barely has a coalition. You keep saying he's a psychopath. This is because....?
Hi again. I say this because I've watched his speeches, and read articles about his policies, seen the choices he makes, and how he speaks about his opponents, and can come to no other conclusion. There are few politicians on the world stage I'm more certain about this. It's like, Hillary Clinton, Justin Trudeau, Netanyahu, and a couple others on that tier. They tell you who they are, if you listen. But hey, I could be wrong. I'll stick to my own judgement until I see otherwise.
Edit: oh, re: regime, the fact that he holds on to power when it seems clear, at least from the outside, that he's not wanted only deepens my suspicions of him. You're right about that for sure. I have been hoping for a while, to the extent I take interest in what's happening outside my own borders, that they'd finally manage to oust him and get someone sane in his place. But we hope the same things in the US and yet the insane cling to power.
Hmmm. Netanyahu is the least of the Israeli's problems. The Left in Israel is doing to him what they are doing to Trump here. Nobody else has been able to hold together a government if you've followed Israeli politics. Netanyahu has in fact been instrumental in transitioning Israel from a Socialist country. I'm still a little vague on why you think he's a nut. He's not anything like those you compare him to. I'm pretty surprised you feel that way. He's a former commando, businessman, and MIT architecture grad. He's not a policy wonk or activist who never lived in the real world. His brother was killed in a raid on Entebbe to rescue Jews taken hostage by terrorists. Netanyahu was on that raid. Personally, for me, a major foundational problem is that Israel has been too accommodating to terrorists and this is why they are vulnerable at this time. This is an existential crisis for Israel. There will be harsh decisions taken and harsh actions taken. There have to be. There are no easy solutions. Living in harmony is not an option with military organizations dedicated to your destruction. The Palestinian Arabs created this crisis with assists from bad foreign policy by the USA, the EU and Israel. This will only stop with wiping out Hamas, Hezbollah, and regime change in Tehran. These people fear peace. Their grift is terror and war. That's why they did this now, because Saudi is interested in a peace accord with Israel. I have friends and family from Israel. They have friends and relatives who have been killed or kidnapped at this time.
Think about if your friend or relative and their children were indiscriminately murdered or kidnapped for their choice of religion.
I know this is emotional for everybody. But Israel exists to be a safe homeland for the Jews. The same internatlonal law that the Palestinians scream about when they suffer retaliation is the law that created the nation of Israel.
I get that, and you are welcome to have a different impression of the man than I do. I trust my own character judgement, and his background doesn't change what I think of him.
I don't know what Israel is supposed to do. I wish I was clever enough to have perfect answers to difficult problems and charismatic enough to get people to sign up for them.
But I'm not big on the idea of overwhelming retaliation on Gaza, because it's just going to lead to more vendettas and make the problem worse, if not draw all of us closer to a global war that seems inevitable at this point and benefits nobody, least of all Israelis. A direct attack on Iran in particular is incredibly dangerous, because it potentially draws NATO in conflict with an ally of Russia and friend of China. That will not end well. Which, I think, is exactly what the whole chickenhawk industrial complex wants.
Normally I'm not this serious but this situation is deadly serious.
No perfect answer.
I really don't have words to describe the heaviness. Your explanation feels true to me, tragically so, and that's about all I know. Everything else -- all of the speculation and theories on geopolitical maneuvering, false flags, etc. -- feels hollow to me, and I can't engage in it. All I can do right now is gather the souls of those women and children into my heart.
Same.
Agreed. I’m not sophisticated enough to engage in all the 5D analysis and the multi dimensional chess board assessments taking place. Is it possible that the full and complete explanation for what happened is that “evil people are capable of doing evil things”.
My mother immigrated to the US after WWII (1952). She was born (1935) and raised in what is now Serbia. She is of German descent and became a displaced person, along with her mother and two brothers, during 1941 until they immigrated during 1952. The stories of rape, knife mutilation, and general gun fire killings she describes are horrific.
When I was 5 years old my parents (my father immigrated during 1947 from Greece) gave me a buzz cut and dressed me in my brother's hand-me-downs to send me to school. They were going to make sure I was as safe as possible from predators. When I ask my mom today, she says she would not do anything differently.
So yes, this sexual violence is an act of war, and very very effective.
Your conclusion that "Hamas is making sites of trauma" is, I think, absolutely correct. The goal is to create instinctive fear and revulsion, the same way animals remember the places where they were beaten or their offspring killed. It is a grim and brutal analysis and it is necessary.
Thank you for explaining the vile strategic thinking behind this attack. That's the first explanation that makes sense.
Pressing the "like" button seems woefully inapproriate for this column. There are other signs that the Biden Administration has blood on their hands in this atrocity. They reinstituted the support funds for the palestinians that rewarded terrorism against Israelis. "Secretary of State Anthony Blinken deleted a tweet that called for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas." Too late it signalled the "official" anti-Israeli sentiments of the current government, not to speak of reaproachement with money for Iran. the sponsors of this atrocity against civilians. Our Universities with Anti-Israeli organizations are complicit as are some members of our congress - openly! Yet, there are some who claim this to be an Israeli operation "to justify war with Iran" - really!! When will folks see terrorism for what it is : terror! And it needs to be adressed and eliminated with the same zeal that our DOJ is going after J6 trespassers.
All is very confused. Your point of view is a very interesting one, to care about.
The whole attack seems to be a False Flag operation, and they even compare it with 9/11 ("the" false flag MEDIATIC OPERATION). Time will tell. Here a video, with some other lectures, and a "verbal mistake" of the israeli militar speaker about the attack....who reminds the "verbal mistake" of GW Bush recently, who trying to vilify the russian "invasion" of Ukraine, said: "Irak" instead of Ukraine. They are lying, and they know they are lying.
I have the feeling that we only have pieces of the puzzle, and we can not see really the whole picture, if someday we perhaps can see it. Meanwhile, people die and suffer, and the psycho-de-facto-in-charge don´t care about it, people are numbers, pawns, expendable things in their game of power.
The US State Dept assures us that the unfreezing of $6billion dollars to Iran has absolutely nothing to do with the killing in Gaza. So much deception fueling so much evil.
I hate that inaccurate, PC term "anti-semitism." After all, Arabs are Semites too. Let's call a spade a spade: Jew-haters and Jew-hatred.
I agree with you that hostility to Jews should be called what it is, but the origin of the term antisemitism is far from P.C.: it was coined in the era of “scientific” racism and eugenics to give a modern rationale to old hatreds, without having to resort to religious practice or scripture.
Excellent analysis of this horror.
Hamas certainly knows that Israel will show no mercy in its retaliation. The death toll in the punitive, justified response will be much, much higher than that of their brutal incursion. Israel is about to inflict their own traumatic memory on the Muslims in the region. And Hamas, so blinded by hate and willing to engage in a war of attrition, finds it acceptable. Such an incredibly evil group.
Correct, and the more that Israel retaliates, the more the anti -semites will say, “See? Israel is bad.”
It’s even simpler. They (Hamas) are raised on a steady diet of Jew-hatred. They hate Jews and, like the Nazis, feel empowered and euphoric by harming and humiliating Jews. Anti-Semitism is not a strategy, it is pathological hatred. The only response to it is to annihilate them.
"In this moment I am euphoric. Not because of any phony god's blessing, but because I am enlightened by my own antisemitism."