As Gazans Scrounge for Food and Water, Hamas Sits on a Rich Trove of Supplies
By Matthew Rosenberg and Maria Abi-Habib
Hamas has spent years stockpiling desperately needed fuel, food and medicine, as well as ammo and weapons, in the miles of tunnels it has carved out under Gaza. As supplies of virtually every basic human necessity dwindle in Gaza, one group in the besieged enclave remains well-stocked: Hamas.
Arab and Western officials say there is substance to Israeli claims of Hamas stockpiling supplies, including desperately needed food and fuel. Hamas, they say, has spent years building dozens of kilometers of tunnels under the strip where it has amassed stores of virtually everything needed for a drawn-out fight. It is a reality that Israel may soon find itself grappling with if it makes good on its threat to invade Gaza.
Hamas has hundreds of thousands of liters of fuel for vehicles and rockets; caches of ammunition, explosives and materials to make more; and stockpiles of food, water and medicine, the officials said. A senior Lebanese official said the militants, who are estimated to number between 35,000 and 40,000, had enough stocked away to keep fighting for three to four months without resupply.
One of the four Israeli hostages released by Hamas even described the militants providing captives with medicine, shampoo and feminine hygiene products. All are now said to be extraordinarily scarce in Gaza more than two weeks after Israel, aided by Egypt, imposed what it called a “complete” blockade following the attack by the terrorist group on Oct. 7. The Arab and Western officials who described Hamas’s supply situation all spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were disclosing information gleaned from human sources, communications intercepts and other streams of intelligence. The stockpiles are typically kept underground, they said, and cautioned that precise details on Hamas’s supplies were difficult to come by.
While the blockade has left Gaza’s roughly 2 million people scraping by with what little food and water they scrounge up, it does not yet appear to have begun to degrade Hamas’s ability to fight. The militants have launched hundreds of rockets at Israel since the blockade began and have fended off preliminary Israeli incursions into the enclave. The supply situation speaks to the relative sophistication of Hamas as a fighting force — an axiom among military professionals is that while amateurs talk about tactics, professionals talk about logistics. Yet with Gazans facing a humanitarian catastrophe, Hamas’s stockpiles raise questions about what responsibility, if any, it has to the civilian population.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/27/us/politics/palestine-gazans-hamas-food.html?
Comment: This NYT article was gifted by “Doctor G of the Algarve.” You can follow his link to read the entire article if, like me, you don’t have a NYT account.
Judging by the level of preparation shown in this article, Hamas seems ready to fight to the last surface dwelling Palestinian. I fear Israel is ready to do the same. If Bibi wants to get rid of Hamas, or at least its ability to wage war, he will have to send the IDF into the tunnels after them. I’m sure the IDF knows this, but do they have the steel to venture into the darkness?
Short of this, they will continue to pulverize and kill the Gazan Palestinians in the forlorn hope that Hamas will surrender both the hostages and themselves. Not going to happen. They are religious fanatics prepared to die for the cause. They expect the hapless Gazans to do the same whether they want to or not. I suspect this may be the Hamas “commander’s intent” as to how this battle will unfold. Will the Israelis stick to the Hamas script? Will they show the world they can be just as blood thirsty as Hamas against civilian targets? That’s not going to help them win the information war and it may not help them achieve their goal of destroying Hamas.
If I was in Bibi’s shoes, I’d stop the wholesale bombardment of Gaza and not waste a bunch of time with those overnight armored thunder runs. Concentrate on securing the known tunnel entrances and start spelunking. Hamas may blow some of the tunnels as they’re penetrated. I would. The IDF will have to find more tunnel entrances and keep burrowing. Meanwhile, allow humanitarian aid to flow to the Gazans, not just from Egypt, but from the Israeli side as well. It’s a tough strategy fraught with risks. My question is do the Israelis have the will, the grit and the military ability to execute such a strategy.
TTG
Marvelous reporting, superb TTG. You deserve reporting decorations.
WAG or is it SWAG? …
The Israelis will re-enact the Nazi gas Chambers right there worldwide on everyone’s smartphone and widescreen Smart TVs. Poison gas them to surrender and or horrendous agonizing death. A shame it couldn’t have been to those bastard SS murders of Himmler and Co, rather than these heroic freedom fighters, who are very probably going to re-enact Wounded Knee or the 300 Spartans at Thermopolae. Totally, utterly fucked over people by history.
And they will very likely get away with it because: The big bad United States and the Almighty Dollar. And because, looking over the opposing team’s lineups – remember, neither roosters nor chickens nor ostriches and emus can fly, not that has been reported. That doesn’t refer to Hamas or Hezbollah, who are brave warriors, rather the rest of the Islamic world, their rulers fat and happy with trillions in oil wealth, tipsy on their yachts or in Miami casino-resorts like one of Netanyayu’s sons.
Are you guys and gals investing in popcorn futures or only stocking up? I am hoping TTG is right and that somehow or other the Israelis simply don’t have the stomach for an all out unadulterated poison gassing mass atrocity right there in front of god and everyone. But no one ever wear broke betting on human depravity.
Nope.tunnels are a red herring.Thats why they took hostages.
Surround and seige Khan Younis.Exchange hostages.then ultimatum.
“A senior Lebanese official said the militants, who are estimated to number between 35,000 and 40,000, had enough stocked away to keep fighting for three to four months without resupply.”
So the Queen of Jordan and the President of Turkey have been lying to us about Hamas being neither a military or a terrorist entity.
mcohen
Red herring?
you’re confused again MC O’Hen. You’re thinking of the Red Sea, and ok, it’s entirely understandable that a clever person such as yourself might expect the herrings in the Red Sea to themselves be red, but it doesn’t work that way.
mcohen – very very few people (percentage-wise) know the actual meaning of the terminology “parting the red sea.” I am one of those select few. And no I’m not referring to the mistranslation or transcription error whereby a small and existing “Reed Sea” in the Sinai area of olden days (which actually does “part” under certain conditions) became the “Red Sea” of fairytale myth and current cartography. It refers to something entirely else. And you wouldn’t like it mcohen, and no, not because it has anything to do with blood (or wine).
The rest of your comment is more interesting, but needs clarification – what ultimatum? Do you actually believe that either the Israelis have not already written off the hostages or that Hamas formulated its strategy with the survival of the hostages being paramount in the calculations of their opponents? Their strategy centered on doing things so outrageous that Israel would feel compelled to strike back visibly and disproportionately and thus lure their forces into the vacated place that Gaza is being turned into that they can be humiliated in a prolonged bloody urban setting of ruins and unseen tunnels.
Who are you today.
mcohen, lack of imagination again. Call me Fan Dan d’Long if need, be but F&L is just fine. “Parting the red sea” is a method, alchemical or chemical, of purifying gold. Because it was a precious secret years ago, it was obscured by disguising it with a silly name. Many of the stories of Moses in Egypt are actually tales of expedition s in search of gold deposits or military excursions to secure them and or wrest them from other hands. But if you want to believe that he spoke with god or turned sticks into snakes and waved his staff and red sea obediently opened a path for him, be my guest. This mcohen fellow is a bit rude this morning, MC O’Hen, did you feed him something?
Well now we have expert on ⁶ Moses and his rocks parting her red sea looking for gold.In the bull rushes.9 months later.
Getting close.almost biblical f & longer
IDF had ways of dealing with it in ’14., I suspect tunnels won’t be an issue . (But have a plan or two.)
So far. it looks like a repeat of 2014. Hamas had no plan.
The big advantage the Israelis have is that their enemies can’t work together and won’t cut the Israeli internal lines of communications.
Hamas no longer has enough rockets/missiles to degrade IRON DOME. Not finding and killing the Radars, C&C and Launchers was a fatal error.
Hamas may not have intended commit “suicide by cop on an operational level” but it appears they have.
John Minehan
Didn’t Hamas win in 2014?
No, that was 2008-’09 and somewhat in ’12.
In ’14 IRON DOME checkmated the rockets and the tunnels were not effective.
That may be the case for Hamas (and likely always was), but I think Israel should be very careful in going after Hezbollah at this point.
FWIW, I don’t see Hezbollah feeling that Hamas is the hill their going to die on. They are likely to continue to maintain their rocket/missile arsenal as a Fleet in Being to constrain Israeli actions in the north.
unfortunately, I have a bit of experience w/ GPR (grd penetrating radar) & also working in undergrd infrastructure. GPR is highly specialized, tedious & time-consuming work. it is rarely performed in real-time – one collects data & then goes back to the office for image processing & analysis. urban terrain is tough under benign conditions, much less warfare. one may note that public works (construction / water & sewers maint / tunnels / mining / etc) generate high worker accident & death rates. so, there is technology and Israel is a known leader in the dev & fielding of such tech. however, I do not know how operationally effective their military systems may be at this point. there are other phenomenologies that may also have been developed for military applications. {given the constrained space, use of chemical weapons is tempting due to effectiveness in those conditions} very dry & homogenous media improves GPR results. it’s use in Gaza (or any military action) might be most useful in long-standing surveillance efforts “mapping the underground battlespace”. all told, underground combat demands a degree of spatial awareness in complex environs very difficult to achieve.
{note: Underground Combat is the Next New Thing – even though its been around forever, as usual.)
as to strategy, I do not understand why Israel (& everyone else who would like to see Hamas “removed from power”) has not mounted a huge, well crafted info-op to urge Gaza’s civilian population to pressure / reject Hamas for triggering this war, esp managing their initial surprise success so badly. Hamas well deserves the destruction that’s upcoming. innocent civilians do not. such is war.
Why can’t they just order everyone in Gaza the f out (civvies) and then bomb the areas which contain the tunnels? Bunker busters applied sequentially and then the areas bombed are cleaned up by earth removing equipment .. and then the procedure repeats – bunker busters again, again followed by earth movers and repeat till infinity?
How close to the surface does GPR have to be to work? Can it be operated from the air with the new super AI analytics?
Aside from the sketch in paragraph 1 above – what about plain vanilla demolition in conjunction with huge numbers of bulldozers & dumptrucks etc?
Order them out to go where? That might work if Israel was prepared to accept them onto their territory for the duration of the operation.
Exactly. As a PR exercise Israel urging the Gazan civilian population to leave the strip so that the IDF can be unconstrained is a losing proposition.
If Israel wants the Gazan civilians to move out of the way then the legal and moral onus is on the Israelis to open their three border crossings and allow those civilians to enter Israel.
There is no legal nor moral onus on Egypt to open its one and only border crossing, for the simple and indisputable reason that the Egyptians do not want to blast the Gaza Strip into rubble nor kill any and all Hamas militants.
Israel does, so providing for the safety and security of the protected persons is Israel’s responsibility.
In any case, Israel remains the Occupying Power, with all the obligations that come with that.
Continuing response to ked, above.
You have a cavernous structure. You have hollows. (The tunnel system).
Approach it like a demolition problem, but instead of demolishing a skyscraper or apartment complex you’re demolishing a large system of tunnels. Has this been done? I don’t know. So task 1 – find out the about the relevant knowledge.
Then with good blueprints in hand regarding the dimensions and layout of the cavernous obstacle you need to cause to cave in and destroy – figure out a focused arrangement of placements of directed explosive charges which will do sufficient damage for an initial cataclysm. If you need to use nuclear charges then educate the public about how the ones you are going to use won’t be the old highly radioactive ones – lie if you need to, the goal is terror and clearing out people before blasting and illustrating the utter hopelessness of the defender’s plight. Do a demo in the Mohave desert with mock ups if you want to, since there is so much talk of canceling and real.cancing of weapons testing treaties anyway you might as well go ahead and do such tests and demos and pick up the silky gauntlets. Once it’s all figured out, having determined where to put the clean nukes or maybe conventional explosives if that’s what your computers say will do the job – then with plenty of TV fanfare behind you and all fair warning – bring down the tunnel systems with your focused charges planted in the right geometry.
What can anyone do about it? Nothing that isn’t outright suicidal.
F&L,
You make it sound too methodical and antiseptic. It is similar to city fighting with a labyrinth of dark cellars and basements. You don’t know where you’re going and you can’t see where you’re going. You go in with plenty of magazines and grenades and maybe a hatchet just in case. You go in as a squad with at least a dozen squads behind you to take your place. You use up what you got including energy and nerve and come away with multi-tone ringing in your ears that will last a lifetime. And you don’t stop until there’s silence… except for your newly acquired tinnitus.
I once went to see the Củ Chi tunnels with my fiancée and her son. I’m quite happy never to have been asked to go clear something like that – they are not sized to accommodate me (I’m 6’1″); I assume that’s not coincidental.
About halfway through my fiancée’s son started crying hysterically. Based on the exhibit signage and the guides’ commentaries, he had formed the opinion that they were going to kill me because I’m American (he was seven at the time).
a very useful overview of the battlespace below ground, w/ an embedded link to a paper by someone at the WP Modern War Institute;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/28/a-spiders-web-of-tunnels-inside-gazas-underground-network-being-targeted-by-israel
quick & dirty response to your questions, F&L:
“How close to the surface does GPR have to be to work?”
> usually best to directly couple the active transmit antenna(s) & receiver(s) to the media – in this case, the earth (or concrete, asphalt, etc. solid metal is a no-go for EM signals, obviously). nice smooth field like a football field, or a cemetery is as good as it gets. an active urban warfare setting is arguably the worst use-case. related to range & coupling, there is power & arrayed sensors, dsp, & the usual active sensor issues (display, list goes on).
“Can it be operated from the air with the new super AI analytics?”
> Absolutely! “in the fullness of time…” & lotsa $$$. I’m sure AI-hungry contractors, niche start-ups, academics ready to jump to making Big $, garaged visionaries & hungry VCs are on it as we speak.
> “AI Analytics” does not overcome physics. the greater the operational range or signal-dense, complex mediums the more power required. & if a rapid update rate + high resolution is required (much less desired… it’s always desired until the cost analysts show up), an even more exotic system is called-for. phased arrays can help a lot, but may not be operationally “elegant”.
the pitch for AI might best be in the development phase. applied in learning from a huge amount of best sensor data (good luck getting THAT) to tune the hw & processing for the specific case (or, one could pitch a TFX Program approach, depending upon how connected the developer is, & how old the folks on the selection committee happen to be).
some “AI Inside!” processing module could conceivably become part of a real-time learn-as-you-go / where-to-go operational suite. speculation on my part – I’m no AI systems designer. {I’ve only witnessed quite a few overblown magic solutions that will revolutionize everything easily through my careers. the price of progress is not just dead ends, but the momentum of failures.}
Thanks.
After reading your helpful linked article my browser fed me this story. Is DeSantis really this cravenly needy to invent absurd stories like this? Or is the Guardian on the Democratic payroll knocking down republican contenders?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/27/ron-desantis-sending-weapons-israel-military-fake
Ron DeSantis’s claim he sent military equipment to Israel unravels
Florida governor receives pushback for falsely declaring he worked with Israel’s consul general in Miami to send weapons.
I don’t think DeSantis qualifies as a legitimate Republican contender at this point.
I never picked you for a Hasbara TTG. I liked the nice little touches: hamas stockpiles of “shampoo and feminine hygiene products”, how thoughtful. As usual, no attribution, no sources, no confirmation and carried by the NYT. Where is your common sense? You should at least post a warning that this story could be self serving BS.
Yes, there is the little nugget of truth, one would expect hamas to have stockpiled the necessities to keep their members fighting – an army marches on its stomach you know. However you at least must know that those supplies wouldn’t last a microsecond for two million people – the U.N is talking 500 trucks of supplies PER DAY. That alone should have indicated the idiocy of this propaganda.
walrus,
The stockpiled supplies aren’t meant to support 2 million Gazans, just the Hamas fighters.
I don’t know if the IDF has it in them go into the tunnels. They’ve been beating up on kids and old people for too long.
Correct, they don’t. It’s obvious. That’s why, in answer to your response to me above, they’re (the Israelis) either going to have to cease and desist, which they can’t or they lose their country as they see it, or they have to utterly pulverize them with some refinemwnts to my crude sketch.
Your illustration by the way perfectly makes the case that they can’t do it the way you know from experience it has been done at times in the past. Maybe they can try, but they will take too many losses. Remember as Colonel Lang never tired of saying – the Israelis simply cannot take serious losses. That leaves mercenaries, poison gas, flooding by pumps from the Mediterranean or my psycho pulverization ideas and combinations thereof. Both sides in this dispute are in my opinion unholy bastards. There’s been way too much killing already. No one should go in there and get maimed, die or acquire lifelong tinntinnitus for these miserable religious fanatics on either side. We have the technology, the brains, the power and the time to offer them the choice of either emerging with hands up or being obliterated and erased from existence and memory. They made their beds as the saying goes.
F&L,
Yep. They really got their ass in a sling, don’t they.
F&L
well, there’s always Zelensky.
He is Jewish, he can take very serious losses and has a good supply of experienced, trench storming troops.
Troops for Iron dome batteries.
Walrus
Concerning TTG and whether he is Hasbara, it’s a fair question given his background. Has bar a.
1- Has a BAR? Yes possibly, a Green Beret retired Lt Colonel might keep a Browing Automatic Rifle handy.
2- Has BAR A? A Might refer to Army, BAR as previously in 1.
3- Has Bara or Barbara? Possibly. Or BARA is another of your weird acronyms like SWMBO in place of wife.
4- Has BA RA. He has a bachelor of arts degree, after which one cheers “RA!” in celebration, or as in a report to Ra, the ancient Egyptian sun god – in other words – He Has a Bachelor of Arts degree, oh great Ra, your eminence.
F&L and Walrus,
I had to look up what hasbara actually means. I always thought it was a term to describe a committed apologists for Israel and Zionism. Probably close. It’s a hasbara word for explanation. It’s used as a vast information operation, not a search for truth or objective explanation. As a student of anthropology, I do enjoy the search for truth and objective explanations of how societies work. As a former practitioner of information operations, I know that truth is just a tool in the quiver of the IO practitioner. The Israeli use of hasbara has a similar relationship with the truth. It’s propaganda, pure and simple.
The anthropologist and the former intelligence officer in me seeks an explanation for actions and thought processes for all the actors in the Palestine/Israel region. I think Eric Newhill came up with a most succinct explanation for the whole lot of them, at least the ones who are driving the actions on both sides. “The region is just a goat screw full of backwards, stubborn, uncompromising people that love to hate and to violently expunge anyone with a different belief system.” In line with that explanation, Israel wants to destroy Hamas. They must destroy Hamas. To do that they will have to go into those tunnels one way or another. The retired Army officer in me is interested in how they plan on doing that and how Hamas plans to defend. They, both the Israeli government and Hamas, don’t care if most of the Gazan Palestinians, Moslem or Christian, are killed in the process. I think the Israeli government and the IDF would rather have us destroy Hamas for them or at least continue to give them unquestioning top cover for the destruction of Hamas and Gaza in the process. We probably will.
So, in conclusion, I reject Walrus’ labeling me as hasbara.
Well said
Thanks for the acknowledgment TTG.
However, I can’t fully take credit for that explanation. It more or less came from my father with the nodding approval of my grandfather and some relatives, though I have independently contemplated and studied on what he said since I heard it at around age 14 or 15.
As you know, on my father’s side, my family, immediate and extended came from the region – from Armenia (after the Turkish and Kurdish slaughter of Armenians) to Syria and Lebanon and then to the US. They had the smarts to get the hell out of there. The last batch came over when the Lebanese civil war kicked off.
Sadly, to this day, Muslims – this time Azerbaijani Turkoids – are still beheading Christian Armenians to the cheers of crowds (see video I posted on an earlier thread). Crazy ass Palestinians are murdering Jewish women and children (f’ing coward punks). Brainwashed social justice, virtue signaling, Americans and other English speakers sympathize with the Muslims/Palestinians. Too weird for me.
I think it’s the lack of water and scant farmable land + the explicitly violent religion of Islam that make the region and its people what they are; fiercely clannish savages. No New Testament in Islam.
I don’t blame the Israelis for doing whatever they do. They have a history of persecution throughout most of the world and need a safe home. They have merely been playing by the rules of region…..scratch that, they have generally been more civilized than that, but sometimes it takes savage to kill an opposing savage.
So I too laugh at those who call me a racist, zionist, Hasbara, etc. I have no particular affinity for Israel or Jews. I do have empathy for what they have faced. I have no empathy for the Palestinians. They sold their land to the Israelis, who developed it, and wanted to steal it back via war. Every time the flunky Arabs wage war, they lose and lose more land. Then they get angrier and more hateful – and have the audacity to say THEY are the oppressed and wronged party. Dumb asses.
Eric – Since you brought up the slaughter of Christians by Turks.
let me mention a book on that subject by the Israeli historian, Benny Morris:
The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924
https://a.co/d/8D0MSNd
I wonder if you are familiar with it, and have an option on it.
All,
“UN General Assembly adopts resolution on “protection of civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations” on the ongoing Gaza crisis.”
FOR: 120
AGAINST: 14
ABSTAIN: 45
Israel should take the hint and adjust their strategy to do a little protecting civilians and upholding legal and humanitarian obligations. The next resolution and vote could be much worse for them.
TTG
Israel showed recently how much they care about the UN. As long as they have the US in their corner, they are fine.
The US, on the other hand, should take a hint and realize that it’s unconditional support for Israel could start costing a lot, if Israelis continue wholesale destruction of Gaza.
Agree. The bombs only dig their own graves deeper. It’s glaringly disproportionate and obviously so to any five year old. Hamas has several options. Tunnels go up, down, east, north, south and west and also, I bet, to Egypt and to the sea. You can fight the info war in such a way that it promotes dissention within the ranks of the tunnel fighters and logistic staff. They will have all sorts of things to contend with including tending to wounded in questionable conditions and watching large numbers perish underground. How do they power or manage their food supplies? Refrigerators, ice boxes, dry ice, old-time canning and salting etc .. batteries, generators which require fuel, surely no plugs in the socket .. . Create positive incentives to internally discohere and rebel while simultaneously offering egress to nourishment, medical care and safety.
As long as the US runs cover for Israeli’s crimes at the UN nothing will happen.
This is part of why we are at where we are at. Decades of being not held to account has made Israel rightly think they do not have to conform to international norms. Had the US let the process play out normally Israel would have to change its actions and likely there would have been some sort of peace decades ago.
Israel cannot count on US largess forever. Attitudes towards Israel, almost across the board, are changing. Especially with the young. Too bad our politicians do not reflect the Attitudes of the people who elect them on this matter.
I would talk about the damage done to US credibility on the matter, but we havent had any when it comes to this issue in decades. Meanwhile we have our own illegal occupation next door in Syria which we are now launching attacks from.
Israel could have done a great deal to avoid criticism if they had opened their three border crossings and allowed the Gazan civilian population to move out of the strip and THEN go all Whammer-Jammer! on the Hamas militants.
But they didn’t. They insisted that Egypt had to open its Rafah crossing and allow the civilian population to flee into the Sinai Desert.
Bad, bad PR. Not only did it make the Israelis look arrogant, but it reinforced existing perceptions that Israel has been on the lookout for an excuse to eject Palestinians from the occupied territories.
Gazans could have avoided a lot of bloodshed and destruction if they had held their elected government to account and not enabled them to launch thousands of rockets at the people on the other side, cross over in multiple military attacks by air and land and kill 1,400 people and then kidnap a few hundred more.
“occupied territories”
When did the IDF leave Gaza, 2005 or so? What did the Palestinians do in the intervening years? Besides arm, train, and equip the forces that killed 1,400 people on the 7th?
“Elected government?” That’s a bit specious, given that the last election was held in 2006. You might as well say that “North Koreans could have avoided a lot of starvation if they had held their elected government to account.” Actually, that’s a much more accurate statement, given that North Korea’s latest national elections were in 2019.
Peter Hug and Fred,
I agree with Peter’s observation. Actually, Gazans never voted Hamas into power. Fatah retained the presidency. Palestinians voted Hamas into parliament in the 2006 elections. Later, Hamas perpetrated a coup in Gaza against the Palestinian Authority.There’s a good Slate article on how Hamas in Gaza came to be. Here’s the beginning.
“In a speech during President Biden’s visit to Israel last week, he urged the nation’s military to do all it can to minimize civilian casualties in its war with Hamas. “The vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas,” he said. “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” How did Hamas come to power in Gaza in the first place? That history is worth revisiting now, two and a half weeks into the war, as it tests whether Biden’s point is true.”
“It was in January 2006 that the Palestinian territories held what turned out to be their last parliamentary elections. Hamas won a bare plurality of votes (44 percent to the more moderate Fatah party’s 41 percent) but, given the electoral system, a strong majority of seats (74 to 45). Neither party was keen on sharing power. Fighting broke out between the two. When a unity government was finally formed in June 2007, Hamas broke the deal, started murdering Fatah members, and, in the end, took total control of the Gaza Strip. Those who weren’t killed fled to the West Bank, and the territories have remained split ever since.”
“In other words, Hamas’ absolute rule of Gaza is not what the Palestinians voted for back in 2006. In fact, since the median age of Gazans is 18, half of Hamas’ subjects weren’t even born when the election took place. Since they have known no alternative, have absorbed little information but Hamas propaganda, and have witnessed periodic outbursts of violent conflict with Israel throughout their lives, it is impossible to know what they really think about their rulers.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/10/was-hamas-elected-to-govern-gaza-george-w-bush-2006-palestinian-election.html
The US could have avoided 9/11 and a lot of bloodshed if it held its government to account. The first gulf War, support of absolute monarchs in the Middle East, unrestrained support of Israel.
All things cited by bin Laden to justify 9/11 and other attacks against the US. When we start holding the populace of a state to be responsible, to the extent of being killed, for failing to hold their populace to account, we here in the US are standing in quick sand. The difference is the ability to hand out death for the infractions of the people to hold their elected officials to account.
If others in the world had to ability to make the US pay, in bodies, for failure to hold their leaders to account, imagine what that would look like?
People can say such nonsense with a straight face because they don’t have to worry about their children being made to pay in blood for the second invasion of Iraq and the hundreds of thousands who died because of it. Or a hundred other events that the US elected officials were never held to account for.
So you’re saying that blood thirsty Muslims had a personal beef with each and everyone in the World Trade Towers?
Or are all those people like the Palestinians?
Bin Laden and his merry band of jihadists, like Hamas, don’t understand Islam? They got it all wrong?
Because I see a hell of a lot of collective punishment and murder of infidels being committed by Muslims. Then people like you say that Israel is immoral to do those things. Typical…..
Eric,
I am using your calculus that all Palestinians deserve what is happening to them because of their elected leaders, and applying it to the US.
If all Palestinians are responsible for the actions of their leaders, then all Americans are responsible for the actions of their leaders.
When Netanayahu calls Palestinians Amalek on TV, we know what his plans are. The Bible instructs the Israelis to kill them, infants, children, women, men, to even destroy their animals. To destroy even their memory. It is a blatant call for genocide.
As for “bloody thirsty Muslims”….how would you describe a nation who attacked a country, caused around 1,000,000 people to die in that and subsequent conflicts yet has not held ONE elected official to account for that?
Your problem is you think the US and Israel should be able to do anything they want, cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and your own issue is when others do it.
That type of thinking is a ticking time bomb. Because there will always be a price to pay for these actions. Then you complain and moan when the bomb goes off.
How many non Muslims have been killed Muslims since 9/11 and how many Muslims have been killed by non Muslims in the same time period? A quick google will show you almost all of the dying that has been done is Muslims.
“Your problem is you think the US and Israel should be able to do anything they want, cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands, and your own issue is when others do it.”
Nope. Complete misrepresentation. I’m a realist, not a social justice warrior. More powerful people will crush less powerful people that are troublesome or in the way somehow. That is life on earth. Always has been and always will be. At least the west doesn’t deliberately target women and children like Muslims do, though, of course, plenty of both die in the crossfire.
How many did the Turks kill circa 1915? I like how you guys always avoid mentioning such events that are so unfavorable to your attempts at moral superiority.
Your problem is that you want to make excuses for Muslim depravity based on social justice concepts. That’s a non-starter – and I suspect a mere debate technique. I’m just pointing out your hypocrisy (which you try to flip onto me) .
Actually, your real problem is that Muslims suck at organizing the Ummah and fighting wars. So they always get their collective ass kicked. Then, instead of getting smart and learning, they just hurl more bombs and make other lame efforts and get their asses kicked worse.
Fred, dear, I found the article linked below fascinating at the time. But yes, we are now all a little more educated on “the Arab mind” (and genes?) I guess. Aren’t we? You were already then, having studied PL’s PowerPoint slides closely?
David Rose, The Gaza Bombshell
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/04/gaza200804
THE MIDDLE EAST, APRIL 2008 ISSUE,
The Gaza Bombshell
After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.
What happened to David Rose?
The IDF might just take an example from the siege at the Grand Mosque in Mecca a few decades ago. Anyone here remember that?
Extremists took control of the Grand Mosque in Mecca and were unable to be driven from the extensive lair underneath the Mosque, which was largely unknown about except to bootleggers who used the many chambers to brew alcohol in, from which they sold.
Saudi soldiers, at a loss for what to do, could not get them out. The Saudi authorities hastily brought in foreign troops who were “converted” to Islam for their trip to Islam’s most holy city to kill Muslims.
Seeing how dangerous the fight for the underground tunnels would be and realizing rhe high price point in human capital should they try to take it by storm, they deployed a different method.
They pumped a large amount of water into the tunnels and when there was enough, electrified the water. Problem solved. Any extremists left surrendered. The few that did not were much more easily mopped up.
I first read about the events in a book, later confirmed, with nore details added after a lengthy conversation on the issue with a Saudi military attache I knew who worked as a diplomate in DC
I am no expert on the logistics of such a thing, but Gaza is next to the ocean. Bring in massive pumps and fill them full of sea water. Does Hamas stockpiles include scuba gear with unlimited O2 for thousands of fighters? I would think not.
I hate Hamas and bear no love for IDF soldiers nor the decades of murderous mistreatment of the Palestinians by the Israeli government of whatever political stripe. But the civilians of Gaza, the children, deserve better. Thousands of children have already died. Enough already.
Stefan,
Books have been written about this in France. Movies made. The three GIGN officers under the direction of Christian Proteau were Paul Barril, Christian Lambert, and Ignace Wodecki. All are famous. Several have written autobiographies. Look them up. Wikipedia could fill you in. They used a form of gas, purportedly nonlethal. The Pakistani army did the dirty clearing operation along with others, including of course Saudis. Your allegation that a bootleg operation making ‘Sediki’ had been running from some of the thousand rooms under the Grand Mosque is crazy. That would be a capital crime. It would have been smelled and discovered. The Bin Laden Group construction company had been doing extensive renovation work and new additions under the mosque for months, there were workmen all over the place, vehicles and machinery, which was one reason the Juhayman fighters were able to get a lot of people including women as well as a number of truckloads of supplies down there. They also took weapons inside of coffins. Families brought their dead there to be blessed, and some of those underground rooms were also mortuaries for people who died making haj. That is an aspect of the pilgrimage that was a little surprising to me reading about it and watching videos. You don’t want your old parents going on this journey, but, poignantly, they do. It is stressful and risky and always has been, as Doughty noted. The whole enormous enclosure was not seriously guarded. The guards carried sticks. It really was a place of peace. People were astonished. The Ulama had to debate and adjudicate on the whole question of the use of violence by Saudi police in this sanctified place. When you say that a Saudi military attache told you that water had been pumped in and electrified, you have gone too far.
Not my allegations mate. I have heard this from numerous Saudis, including the Saudi military attache, born and raised in Mecca, as well as his wife, whose family actually owns the famed ‘welll of Zamzam” for which the Saudi royal family set up a huge “waqf” that pays out money quarterly to ever member of this extended family.
Along with tales of drug use and prostitutes within a stone’s throw from the Grand Mosque. If you think things being a capital crime means it doesn’t happen, I have a bridge on Brooklyn to sell you.
I have known Saudis, from low born, middle class, diplomats and members of the royal family and the stories are always similar. This, along with having family members makes it gospel for me.
I havent gone too far, I can just tell what I have been told and read. I suggest you need more real world interaction with Saudis because you seem to have a rather unrealistic view of them and life there.
Stefan,
It’s an open secret about the flow of Saudis across the causeway into Bahrain to engage in debauchery every weekend.
Indeed. It blew up a few years ago because a drunken Saudi man drove across the causeway, ran into another vehicle and killed an entire family.
Times have changed, they can party, go to movies and concerts at home now. The alcohol was always there in Saudi, but with more risk than driving across the bridge.
This is what religious extremists have never got. You cant control people, no matter what potential price you put on their actions. This is why drugs, alcohol and prostitutes have always been available there, even in Mecca. Interesting to note, the Saudis even pretty much imported foreign workers for sex work. Yemenis in Saudi were known for being a large part of the sex trade there. “Sharmoot from Hadramawt” being a well known term of derision.
What do you think of MBS and his project, the new city of Neom? Will it work?
Good question. It is a huge gamble and MBS has shown he is not a prudent gambler when it comes to high stakes ventures. His disastrous war on Yemen is the prime example.
I want to say it will not work. It might gain a following for Saudis, but I still find it hard to believe that the Saudis will find enough people from outside the country and outside the region to make it work. The Saudis want to be the new Dubai on steroids.
I am still highly skeptical of Saudi “reforms” and “changes” because at the end of the day it is window dressing for an absolute monarchy. These changes did not happen from a bottom up reformation of society, it happened on command by top to bottom diktat by a murderous, absolute monarch. The changes happen because MBS thinks it is good for him and his plans. If his calculus changes…..those “reforms” could disappear like a fart in a sandstorm.
I readily admit my thinking might be buried in the past, my personal experiences with Saudi and the diplomats in DC. Shaped by the couple of years I spent in DC lobbying against the Saudi war on Yemen, often having to come in and deal with the likes of the Senate Foreign Relations Council attorneys after they just had met with a whole team of US PR experts hired by the Saudis willing and able to spend millions of dollars to push their agenda.
Time will tell.
Will they show the world they can be just as blood thirsty as Hamas against civilian targets?
The Israeli government has repeatedly proven itself to be even more blood thirsty.
Its matters not which tools were/are utilized (eg rifles, Qassam rockets, F16’s, GBU’s, Merkava’s – etc) in murdering innocents – it is the end result.
The results of Israel’s blood thirsty endeavors speak for themselves – from 2008 through September 2023 there have been (UN OCHA data) over 6,400 Palestinian civilian deaths in Gaza and West Bank directly attributable to Israeli military actions while during the same time period over 300 Israeli civilian deaths can be attributed to Palestinian attacks.
https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Palestinian civilian deaths 2008 – September 2023 are 20 times those of Israeli civilian deaths clearly showing the Israeli government is even more blood thirsty than Hamas.
Palestinian civilian deaths that can be attributed (eg lack of access medical care not available in Gaza) to to Israel’s 16 year blockade of Gaza are not included in OCHA data.
Another glaring example of blood thirsty Israeli government methods is the use of collective punishment against Palestinians.
Holding 2 million plus innocents trapped in Gaza accountable for the depraved actions of Hamas Izz ad-Din al-Qassam brigades is a unconscionable immoral blood thirsty endeavor which clearly exposes Israel’s “leaders” as fractions of human beings.
Let us not today fling accusation at the murderers. What cause have we to complain about their fierce hatred to us? For eight years now, they sit in their refugee camps in Gaza, and before their eyes we turn into our homestead the land and villages in which they and their forefathers have lived.
We should demand his blood not from the [Palestinian] Arabs of Gaza but from ourselves. . . . Let us make our reckoning today. We are a generation of settlers, and without the steel helmet and gun barrel, we shall not be able to plant a tree or build a house. . . . Let us not be afraid to see the hatred that accompanies and consumes the lives of hundreds of thousands of [Palestinian] Arabs who sit all around us and wait for the moment when their hands will be able to reach our blood. ~ Moshe Dayan 1956 speech
Sixty seven years later what has changed?
Mayhap it is time for a new paradigm to emerge?
It is unknown if the IDF will have to clear tunnels the old fashioned way. Maybe they have gathered enough intelligence to make it unnecessary. One thing Israel will have to fight is a three head enemy…HAMAS, Hezbola and dishonest western media.
The Israelis, mirroring what was done to them, as they always do, will simply throw in canisters of zyklon B and seal the tunnels for a week or two.If we suggest it, they might even recruit Palestinians , dressed in striped pajamas, to recover the bodies.
Or just leave the bodies there for future archaeologists to discover.
HAMAS has let it be known that they intend to kill off the Saturday People and then the Sunday People. Clear enough for me.
walrus,
It’ll be CS tear gas. Heard they are preparing “foam bombs” (probably two-part polyurethane foam) to block entrances (air as well). Blowing up the vents tends to leave gaps for air, the expanding foam in an intact tunnel.
Mark Logan,
I would think they’d use BZ or a similar incapacitating agent like the one used in that Moscow theater years ago. Those foam bombs would be most useful if the attacker has to bypass tunnels or retreat from them.
TTG, I need to correct my post a wee bit, Israel is calling them “sponge” bombs, not foam.
Bibi said today they intend to be in there for a “long time”. No doubt they intend to take their time with those tunnels to limit casualties. Could mean gas, could mean they are willing to sit there for 2-6 months or whatever it takes to starve them out.
Mark Logan,
I think I told F&L that those sponge bombs reminds me of that aerosolized expanding foam used to fill cracks in rough carpentry. I have a can sitting in the cellar. It’s called Great Stuff and i never remember to put on rubber gloves before using it. If it gets on your skin you have let it wear off.
📚… and he respected his wife so much and was sometimes so afraid of her that he even loved her.
” Idiot” 1868
F. M. Dostoevsky
Against, 14:
Croatia
Czechia
Hungary
Paraguay
Guatemala
Papua-New Guinea
Marshal Islands
Micronesia
Nauru
Tonga
Fiji
Autralia
Israel
Usa
Seems the overpopulated Pacific states are out in force.
Nah, just kidding.
With friends like that…
d74,
Abstaining 45, could you list them. Apparently they can’t make up their minds, unlike everyone on the internet.
Speaking of tunnels, my take is the settlers or the Israeli defense forces will load up the tunnel under that Islamic Holy Mosque with explosives and set it off at some point.
You mean the one on the mount in Jerusalem, that’s the 3rd most holy site in Islam? I remember shin bet caught some crazies in the 70s or 80s who had actually aquired the means to do that and were going forward – Israeli crazies. They caught them in the act just in time. The retired head of the Israeli domestic intelligence service explained in an interview that if the demolition had succeeded it would have resulted in the end of the Israeli state. That was many yrs ago. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition today is so far right that many of them are advocates for the most depraved of depraved extreme acts of religious desecration and mass human expulsion. And now they’re inflamed. I wasn’t joking when I said on an earlier thread that US Anti-aircraft & Anti-missile assets should most properly be understood as being there to shoot down Israeli as well as Iranian missiles. The same goes for our other assets over there such as intelligence – in a sane world the Israelis need to be watched over and protected from themselves. But we’re not in an entirely sane world and the Israelis have overstepped so persistently and cruelly at such length and extremity of disregard for anyone else that they have fully earned the honor of being left to go pound every grain of sand in their brutal Sparta on the Eastern Mediterranean. And people have their own problems and affairs to tend to.
That’s the one. I read somewhere that recently the whole Israeli government cabinet had a meeting in that tunnel right under the Mosque. Evidently the far right part of Netanyahu’s coalition government are obsessed with building the so called Jewish 3rd temple right where the Al Aqsa Mosque stands.
Israel needs more pornhub and less schizophrenic religion.
Frustrated & limp
Needs pornhubcap for hump.lol
What is wrong with you people? Are you so lacking in morals and humanity that you gaily talk about Gaza simply in terms of the technical feasibility of different approaches to destroying tunnels and of those persons inside them? For God’s sake there is a genocide taking place and whatever your views on Hamas nothing justifies what Israel is now doing. Your country, the US, and mine, the UK, should be calling for an immediate ceasefire not applauding the wanton destruction and the killing of thousands of innocent men women and children. Our politicians are a disgrace, a blot in humanity, and we should be demanding that they do something positive to help clear up the mess that thay have done so much to create.
Bp,
“Do something”
I agree. I demand our disgraceful politicians (collectively guilty from Barack to Hilary (Benghazi and slavery returning to Libya reference) and Boris (your guy)(who stopped a settlement in Uuuukraine. How many dead since then?)) Do something. I do not recommend the hokey pokey, ’cause when politicians stick things in and shake it all about, we get things just like what’s going on now. I do suggest they DO SOMETHING!!!! (see the all caps and exclamation points for emphasis) about those who are not to be named terrorists who don’t have a military (Queen Rania and all of the Arab Spring veterans reference) who managed to DO SOMETHING on October, what day was that, the MSM made me forget just what day, and how many were, what’s the word, GENOCIDED, that’s it, on that day. Anyway I demand that our politicians (the non-disgraceful ones anyway) demand that Qatar turnover the head of Hamas (Qatar is where he’s been living for months or years), which organized the butchery on that forgotten day of October (they can keep the rest of the guy, I just demand the head). When they are done with fulfilling that demand the non-disgraceful politicians can then ‘politely request’ the UN turn over an audit of spending of ‘relief funds’ of various types sent to Gaza over the past decade and a half since that one man, one vote, one time election put Hamas in power.
Who, whom as Stalin or Lenin or one of them said. Who got the money, whom was it spent on? Making Gaza a Singapore on the Mediterranean it wasn’t. Somebody, like the guy living in Qatar, got rich though.
What did Trump do except get on his knees and give the Israelis one of their key demands? ALL US leaders are equally guilty, the Orange One being no exception.
well, he got a cut of the Javanka deal w/ MBS, so there’s that.
PROBABLY got a cut. If I were him I wouldn’t hold my breath until the check clears – she is a Trump, you know…
America’s Fault! Say it again, say it loud and proud. Because Gazans, or if you prefer, Palestinians, dindu nuff’n; and can’t be held responsible for all the dead Israelis, the ones raped, or the ones kidnapped on October 7th. It’s NOT THEIR FAULT. American leaders are to blame: for not bringing peace, justice, and the American way to Gaza all those years Hamas was in power. Or if you prefer, not giving Palestinians what they demanded. Apparently that justifies killing a few hundred people, raping more, and kidnapping others.
Those pigs always have the finest manicures and haircuts. Did Fidel order out from Macdonald’s? Wanted to nuke the East coast. No Trumpenstein ordered the big Macs with fries and sodas.
YasSir AHairIcut of the PLO maybe not so much. Heroic man, machine guning tourists in airports, tossing Leon Whatshisname off the tour boat in his wheelchair no less! Those were the days my friend I thought they’d never end ..
And they haven’t. 🙉➡️🐫⬅️
We like to joke around and frankly many of us are indeed a bit sick in mind and body. We live in a country where over 700 mass shootings occur annually, many targeting children at school, one in particular featured 367 armed police standing guard over the slaughter for 90 minutes before pretending to do their jobs. Are you surprised then at what inhuman beasts we can be? Would it surprise you if say Aztec cannibals enjoyed the shows at the Roman amphitheatre during Nero’s reign? We also are inhabitants of a nation with a well documented record of military atrocities particularly with bombings, nuclear, napalm and conventional. You fellows are not lazy and idling over evil yourselves, your Gen Geoffrey Amherst distributed smallpox ridden blankets to the native Americans. A nice touch, because we living now today get the blame, not you just as we get the blame for ensnaring, transporting, shackling, enslaving and whipping half to death millions of Africans – that was you, the Spanish and the Portuguese, not us who got the ball rolling on that too.
If I was a less jolly good fellow and an extreme optimist I might hope outloud, having read this below pasted from Telegram and translated from Russian, that Joe Biden and his Pentagon have forced the UK warmongering Tory party to surrender to us their nuclear submarine with it’s nuclear missiles and are in the process of turning it into scrap or at the very least deceived them in the same spirit because of their maniacal hatred of Russia and folie de brinkmanshippe.
What I think of the Israelis especially their leadership and the fanatically aggressive neocons and extremist Zionist billionaires who have taken over our country probably couldn’t be printed here. Thank you though for providing an opportunity to be clear about it. Enjoy Madam Tussaud’s Wax Museum Wing of Horrible Tortures and Criminal Misdeeds. Hope you eventually apprehend Jack the Ripper, though he still earns you fortunes in film and television while on the loose.
——————————
https://t.me/subforcherald/1375
Meanwhile, the British strategic missile submarine HMS Vanguard reached the east coast of the United States. Late yesterday evening, the nuclear-powered submarine arrived at the Kings Bay naval base (Georgia) /pictured/ for subsequent tests of its missile system with a test launch of the Trident-II SLBM.
The transatlantic crossing took almost two weeks. Before it began, on the afternoon of October 14, the Vanguard submarine made a short approach to the outskirts of the Clyde base, after which it went overseas.
Bp –
Not many here are cheering on a Palestinian genocide. Only one that I know of and he was rebuked by several others here on a previous post.
So called collateral damage on civilians is a plague on humanity. As is war itself. But as much as I’d like to see war disappear from the earth, it’s not going to happen in our lifetime or the lifetime of our great-grandchildren.
I would hope you also called for a ceasefire 11 years ago when the Yarmouk Palestinian Refuge Camp near Damascus was turned into rubble by Assad the Elder and his allies, murdering thousands. BTW Assad’s allies in that massacre included Iran, and the Palestinian PFLP was there too killing their fellow Palestinians. I also hope you called it genocide when Putin’s Air Force used bombs and missile attacks on hospitals and civilian apartment blocks in both Syria and Ukraine.
“Not many here are cheering on a Palestinian genocide. Only one that I know of and he was rebuked by several others here on a previous post.”
I’d love to see TTG telling this guy to go f*ck himself. Go somewhere else to cheer for a genocide.
Bp, ‘ceasefire’.
So you like the ‘Purgatory Position’ it seems. Lots of western elites including that misery called the Mayor of London have found their way there. No thanks. The Gazans have supported their terror masters and cheered them.
Bp, I can appreciate your emotion.
F. Scott Fitzgerald opined (’36); ” The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.”
IMO, Israel will probably attack the tunnel systems and Hamas a-holes inside of them by pumping in nerve gas and by flooding with water. There is mining equipment that would allow both techniques to work very effectively. Good riddance Hamas.
As for the international PR issues that has everyones’ panties in a bunch, why would Israel care any more than Russia cares about various world leaders squawking mean things? Israel, like Russia, is going to do what it has to do to protect itself from an increasingly existential foe – i.e. annihilate radical Islam in Gaza once and for all. Let the women fight with words.
The other Muslim countries aren’t going to do anything to Israel. Egypt dislikes the Palestinians almost as much as Israel does. Jordan isn’t going to mess up their relationship with Israel and neither is Saudi Arabia. Syria is busy with internal strife. Iran is too far away and too scared of the US. Maybe Hezbollah will try to intervene, but that is low probability as well. Especially with the US Navy and Marines off the coast ready to jump in on Israel’s behalf.
So Hamas is toast – and so are a lot of Palestinian “civilians” that support Hamas and other jihad groups (most of the Palestinians). Like the citizens of Dresden and Nagasaki/Hiroshima/Tokyo, the Palestinians will pay the price of following and supporting bloodthirsty leaders. It’s a story as old as human society itself. Doesn’t matter if you think it’s “unjust”. Everyone commenting here is doing so from land taken from some other people.
It amazes me how those uppity Persians are able to manipulate so many lowly Arabs to do their dirty work for them. If there were no more Jews anywhere in the Levant, Persian and Arab would resume killing each other as infidels and ‘cursing the mustache’ of each other.
Exactly.
So many want to make the current conflagration out to be a social justice matter, with Israel as the oppressor bad guys that are responsible, at bottom, for causing it. That is a perspective that totally ignores the realities of the region.
The region is just a goat screw full of backwards, stubborn, uncompromising people that love to hate and to violently expunge anyone with a different belief system.
“The region is just a goat screw full of backwards, stubborn, uncompromising people that love to hate and to violently expunge anyone with a different belief system”
Israel fits in well. Proof they are Middle Eastern after all.
Of course.
So what? At least they don’t want to kill us like the Muslims do.
nerve gas & flooding, if effective at all, is likely to kill far far more innocents than combatants. very bad karma, being a form of industrialized genocide rhyming w/ the Holocaust.
I’m gonna guess that most of the hostages are down in those tunnels too…
Maybe hit Vlad up for a radiological multimegaton tsunami creating Poseidon super torpedo to detonate offshore left of Gaza. Unfair to the fish, sadly.
If you think all Muslims want to kill us you dont know many Muslims. If Muslims wanted to kill us, as a general rule, things would look A LOT different around the world. You have drank the Islamophobic kool-aid.
The Israelis care about the US and the West because we are useful. Once we are no longer useful, they will no longer care. But I am wondering, if “the Muslims” want to kill us all, why dont the Israelis feel the same way? They are busy trying to make peace with all of the Muslims and are now (at least pre-October) traveling all over the Muslim world. Not something people do if “all Muslims” want to kill all non Muslims.
These days Muslims are too disorganized and too weak and too busy screwing over each other and killing each other to be effective against the infidel (that’s you and me – or at least me; not sure about you). This is unlike the good old days of Islam when they were chopping heads, slaving and converting by the sword all the way into Europe and as Far East as Malaysia and India.
Israel tries to make peace with select groups of Muslims because they are more civilized and trying to be the better party.
How does this materialy differ from a dirty radiological bomb attack? Not by much at all. And the UAV components were provided by the West – see M Zakharova in next post at readovkanews.
————————————
https://t.me/readovkanews/68504
A Ukrainian UAV crashed into a nuclear waste warehouse at the Kursk nuclear power plant, damaging its walls, two more fell on the station’s administrative building complex – Russian Foreign Ministry
https://t.me/readovkanews/68505
F&L –
It differs because this is a typical Zakharova cock & bull story concocted in the Kremlin. They are using it to try to cover up their own use of a drone attacking the Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant several days ago.
Surprise surprise.
Photos of the murdered Palestinian farmer shot to pieces by “settlers” while picking grapes at link. It’s beyond comprehension how depraved the settlers are.
https://t.me/c/1598473749/126698
BREAKING: A Palestinian farmer was just shot by armed settler militias in the village of Sawiya, north of the occupied West Bank.
Bilal Saleh, a Palestinian farmer, was picking olives in his farm in the village of Sawiya, north of the West Bank.”
— Quds Network
********************
This woman, victim of Israel’s pitiless bombing in Gaza is at her wits end. Just a woman speaking in Arabic with English subtitles, begging to God for it to end.
https://t.me/c/1598473749/126703
◾ Emotional message of a Palestinian woman to the world:
– We don’t want empty promises… We want a solution! We are exhausted!
◾Follow:
t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses
F&L,
The late Pat Lang pointed out things like that some years ago. It’s a rot at the core of their society.
Fred.
It sure is but it’s eating away at the core of ours in the US too. A large percentage of those settler twirps are from the Williamsburg and nearby sections of Brooklyn NY. I’ve lived here for decades. You wouldn’t believe what absolute, full-out flaming atrocious and delusionally indoctrinated losers they are. Policy decisions at high levels are actually influenced by the carpings and ravings of outright lunatics and murderers. I’m sure you know of Baruch Goldstein who machinegunned scores of Muslims to death while they were at prayer. There’s a monument to him in Israel which is decorated with flowers on a regular basis last I checked.
Any settlers committing murder should be arrested and prosecuted to the greatest extent possible. However, IMO, the Palestinian/Hamas problem would not be impacted on bit by doing so.
The problem is the IDF and the Israeli government run cover for the murderous settlers. Look at the videos. They are often present at these pogroms of theirs, providing security for the settlers. A sort of militia used to do the dirty work for the rest of the society. The IDF and the Israeli government could stop it. The fact is, they dont want to.
Murdering settlers are rare. You try to make it out like it’s a daily event. It isn’t. There are rotten apples in every bushel.
Murdering settlers are far more rare than murdering Palestinians. That said, I am aware that the Israeli government ignores the bad acts of the settlers, including illegal settlements. But don’t try to make a moral equivalence out of this. The leadership of the Palestinians have an official policy of eradication of Jews. The Jews allow Palestinians in Israel to live good lives if they follow the rules of society.
You totally ignore that the Palestinians and Arabs ore generally have sought to kill the Jews since the Jews arrived in an undeveloped Palestine and began legally purchasing and developing what was mostly a waste land. Once it was developed, the Muslims tried to take it for themselves, claiming some right to what they sold…. and lost…and lost again …..and again.
No surprise that some Jews occasionally murder Arabs. It doesn’t make it right, but it’s no surprise. Strange that you can’t see any of that, though you offer excuses to the Palestinians by the truck load. Antisemitism – nothing more/nothing less (or Marxist oppressor/oppressed dichotomy story telling nonsense)
Eric Newhill,
Murdering settlers are rare compared to murdering IDF soldiers. Murdering Palestinians are even more rare. Look at the actual numbers. The Palestinians clearly suffer far more deaths and injuries at the hands of Israelis than the other way around. Your understanding of the situation is pure fantasy.
https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties
Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have acknowledged Israels right to exist for years as the Israeli government acknowledged the Palestinians right to a homeland in Palestine. Only Hamas vows to rid their land of Jews.
TTG, “Fatah and the Palestinian Authority have acknowledged Israels right to exist for years”
Taqiyya
This is no longer the Col’s website. To those fellow Committee members who have been here since the beginning, I salute you! It was a great site.
Jstan,
If you don’t appreciate the views expressed here, which run a wide gamut, you don’t have to frequent the site. If you do, you’ll continue to see views expressed that you will cheer on and views that will piss you off. That’s the nature of this committee of correspondence and something that we all accept as somewhat reasonable adults.
Jstan
‘The Pros and Cons of Hitch Hiking’ is not as good as ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ but it is still a damn good album.
Jstan – still is. And that’s due to our host. Thanks, TTG.
But yes, it’s really sad the Colonel’s gone. On a personal level, and right now because this current crisis is one where’d he’d have had an inside knowledge of all the moving parts. Face it, the Arab world is a closed book to most in the US and also to most in the UK. That last is odd. We’ve screwed it up enough in the past and I’d guess are still doing so, so we in the UK ought to know more about the ME than most.
In fact I’m beginning to wonder how much institutional memory there is in the FCDO, and more importantly in State. How much analytical and operational expertise for that matter. The more I see of their various deeds the more I suspect there’s no deep laid plan or cunningly wrought strategy. I suspect the bastards are just winging it.
It’s due to TTG (thanks!) but it’s also due to the community that Colonel Lang built, and the interactions that we’ve had. I frequently disagree with things that are said here, but I value the ability to read and (occasionally) to respond to them immensely.
Listening to the pitiful Jake Sullivan at any podium will prove that.
Found this from The Intercept on its Instagram channel. And sure thing golly jeez batman, Oct 7 caught them unawares. That’s right, boy-wonder, unawares and with their panties down down down.
————
the_intercept:
Two months before Hamas attacked Israel, the Pentagon awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to build U.S. troop facilities for a secret base it maintains deep within Israel’s Negev desert, just 20 miles from Gaza. Code-named “Site 512,” the longstanding U.S. base is a radar facility that monitors the skies for missile attacks on Israel.
On October 7, however, when thousands of Hamas rockets were launched, Site 512 saw nothing — because it is focused on Iran, more than 700 miles away.
The U.S. Army is quietly moving ahead with construction at Site 512, a classified base perched atop Mt. Har Qeren in the Negev, to include what government records describe as a “life support facility”: military speak for barracks-like structures for personnel.
Though President Joe Biden and the White House insist that there are no plans to send U.S. troops to Israel amid its war on Hamas, a secret U.S. military presence in Israel already exists. And the government contracts and budget documents show it is evidently growing.
The $35.8 million U.S. troop facility, not publicly announced or previously reported, was obliquely referenced in an August 2 contract announcement by the Pentagon. Though the Defense Department has taken pains to obscure the site’s true nature — describing it in other records merely as a “classified worldwide” project — budget documents reviewed by The Intercept reveal that it is part of Site 512.
The history of the U.S.–Israel relationship may be behind the failure to acknowledge the base, said an expert on overseas U.S. military bases.
“My speculation is that the secrecy is a holdover from when U.S. presidential administrations tried to offer a pretense of not siding with Israel in the Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli-Arab conflicts,” David Vine, a professor of anthropology at American University, told The Intercept. “The announcement of U.S. military bases in Israel in recent years likely reflects the dropping of that pretense and a desire to more publicly proclaim support for Israel.”
F&L,
A radar site in the Negev looking at Iran is not something to get overly excited about. I find it somewhat reassuring that it wasn’t looking at Gaza. That’s an internal Israeli security problem. They’re the ones that screwed that pooch. One of our largest war reserve stockpiles has also been maintained in Israel since the 90s.
There’s also reports of USAF refueling tankers on the scene there and landed very recently – I can find a link if necessary. Meaning for attacks on Eye Ran by fighter jets, presumably Israeli, which haven’t sufficient range for return flights. IMO, TTG, we’re being lied to and deceived as usual about upcoming attacks which have been in the works for a long time. We could have a long drawn out discussion of it’s merits and demerits as a matter of wise and intelligent military strategy & foreign policy or not and if it jumps off we very well might, but I’ll put it out there that one factor which was used by interested parties to sway the US leadership into it will have been American leader’s concerns regarding China. Meaning that pulverizing Iran will significantly diminish availability of Iranian oil for the PRC state and its industry and commerce. Yes, you can argue that attacks can be so surgical as to not do that but that’s handwaving imo. Because if in fact your goal is indeed to f over the People’s Republic, and you prefer not to say so, you can do so anyway by saying “well, that’s war, it got a bit out of hand, we were not going after oil production .. and what we were really pursuing was the noble goal of protecting Israel from nukes.”
F&L,
We also have massive military infrastructure in Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. I don’t think the USG and especially CENTCOM have any desire to reduce or eliminate that footprint. We’ve had a hard on against Iran ever since they took over our embassy. Obama made an effort to change that, but Trump vigorously stroked that hard on back into life. And here are.
TTG, now this statement of yours, “Trump vigorously stroked that hard on back into life.” is a real witticism.
Touche!
1) I heard an interview with a military who-ever, he said the US was sending in a team of fighters that had been spending their whole careers practicing to fight north-korea as they are said to have the very been tunnel systems in the world.
2) opinion, Israel will not allow food, electricity or any of that compassionate stuff in!!! AND, they will go after the tunnels until they are done. AND as for the rest of the world, they’ve already bombed Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, the West Bank and Gaza! Biden will obviously be fighting Iran soon! Too many neo-cons want this, Trump tried to get Iran to respond when he assassinated Iran’s most popular General, just hoping for a chance to me a military-president!
3) Most IMPORTANT, to understand Israeli Planning/Thinking, I stumbled across this:
“Israeli Disengagement from Gaza” in 2005
The intellectual author of this plan was interviewed May 2004
ONE on ONE, It’s the Demography, Stupid
An interview with geographer/demographer Arnon Soffer by Ruthie Blum
LINK: https://www.larevuedesressources.org/IMG/pdf/One_on_One.pdf
EXCERPTS:
Blum: How will the region look the day after unilateral separation?
Soffer: The Palestinians will bombard us with artillery fire – and we will have to retaliate. But at least the war will be at the fence – not in kindergartens in Tel Aviv and Haifa.
Blum: Will Israel be prepared to fight this war?
Soffer: First of all, the fence is not built like the Berlin Wall. It’s a fence that we will be guarding on either side. Instead of entering Gaza, the way we did last week, we will tell the Palestinians that if a single missile is fired over the fence, we will fire 10 in response. And women and children will be killed, and houses will be destroyed. After the fifth such incident, Palestinian mothers won’t allow their husbands to shoot Kassams, because they will know what’s waiting for them.
Second of all, when 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it’s going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today, with the aid of an insane fundamentalist Islam. The pressure at the border will be awful. It’s going to be a terrible war. So, if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.
Blum: What will the end result of all this killing be?
Soffer: The Palestinians will be forced to realize that demography is no longer significant, because we’re here and they’re there. And then they will begin to ask for “conflict management” talks – not that dirty word “peace.” Peace is a word for believers, and I have no tolerance for believers – neither those who wear yarmulkes nor those who pray to the God of peace. There are those who make pilgrimages to the Baba Sali and the tombs in Hebron, and those who make pilgrimages to Kikar Rabin in Tel Aviv. Both are dangerous.
Unilateral separation doesn’t guarantee “peace” – it guarantees a Zionist-Jewish state with an overwhelming majority of Jews; it guarantees the kind of safety that will return tourists to the country; and it guarantees one other important thing. Between 1948 and 1967, the fence was a fence, and 400,000 people left the West Bank voluntarily. This is what will happen after separation. If a Palestinian cannot come into Tel Aviv for work, he will look in Iraq, or Kuwait, or London. I believe there will be movement out of the area.
Blum: Some say that the aftermath of a post-separation war will be occupation all over again.
Soffer: We won’t occupy them again. We will enter on punishment missions. As I’ve said, the minute a missile flies, we will destroy the area.
Israel and the US are committing war crimes. Also in Syria. US has no right to be there. And spare me whatever reasoning. I served 20 years in the military in combat units. Half enlisted half an officer. I know what war crimes are. We are going to pay in full for all of it. No idea what you are dealing with. Retribution is being baked in big batches.
Most of you boomers won’t be around to see it or have to deal with it on a personal level. I will. You are all idiots. Enjoy watching FOX and CNN and whatever west think tank crap you read. The era of bombing the s*&^ out of everyone is over. Gonna pay this time. I guarantee it.
I agree with you. The jackals who make the decisions though are not going to listen to your advice though because they firmly believe that due to their vast wealth and power, though retribution may one day come it will not harm them in their mansions and hideaways. And if those castles and moats with legions of soldiers don’t do the trick then they will simply open the remaining seals of the apocalypse … Meaning nukes, chemicals, biologicals etc along with complete pauperization through blocades of resources, interest rates, layoffs and all the economic warfare. Yes, all that and one other thing — they are jackals.
Those aren’t “mansions and hideaways.” Those are “targets.”
This writer on Ru Telegram speaks to your observations. It’s really sickening isn’t it? They literally control all the wealth on the planet.
——————————
https://t.me/nonetutto/1300
Translation pasted:
Despite all the loud statements of R. Erdogan and the quiet discontent of the Arab-Muslim world, no one is seriously helping Palestine.
All humanitarian aid comes from the USA and Egypt; other countries are not allowed to use the humanitarian corridor.
Militarily, Hamas and Hezbollah remain without support.
Today, it can be noted that there are no prerequisites for uniting the Islamic world against the ethnic destruction being carried out in Palestine. The price is too high. The UAE and Saudi Arabia, as well as Qatar and Bahrain, warned the leaders of the Islamic world that their capital could be frozen and seized by decision of the US Government at any time.
A number of odious characters from the CIS countries were also notified about this.
Gone are the days of chests of gold in Ali Baba’s caves. All gold is now under supervision.
Dear: babelthuap, Most of you boomers won’t be around to see it or have to deal with it on a personal level. I will. You are all idiots.
I empathize with you entirely, a correction, Biden, Trump and most of congress are in fact from the Silent Generation: Born 1928-1945
And they are DEPLORABLE, to borrow a phrase from Hilary.
I am so upset I’m thinking of leaving the country, where? Not many countries that denounce this insanity. I was at my liqour store speaking with an Iraqi, he was in Iraq and for six years indured bombing!!! He was finally able to get to the US with his family. I asked him where I should go, Colombia perhaps, it is the only country in the America’s that has spoken up against the genocide of Gaza? He thought about it and said, the only safe place in here, in the US!
So… my sympathy, my rage, my sorrow regarding the idiocy of US policy in the Middle East!!!
What a pity.site has been redirected.
mcohen –
pity dot site.
itydot.
mcohen are you having trouble spelling “idiot?” The d comes immediately after the i, not after the y.
F&L
You finally got.it.
Brilliant.
F. M. Dostoevsky prize for Most respected
Four brief but pithy summaries of ideas presented by a Visiting Professor of Defense Studies at Kings College London Michael Clarke on the Russia – Ukraine war. Highly recommended. Someone summarized them like this …
➡️The Times: Russia most likely will not be able to carry out a full-fledged strategic offensive in Ukraine before the spring of 2025. This is already a war of attrition , the likes of which the Western powers have not seen since the world wars of the last century.⬅️
… but you really need to read them individually, because there’s more to it.
https://t.me/briefsmi/13367
https://t.me/briefsmi/13368
https://t.me/briefsmi/13369
https://t.me/briefsmi/13370
F&L,
Interesting he’s already thinking beyond 2024. I agree neither side has come close to total exhaustion or depletion of manpower. I don’t see any evidence of Russia’s missile war restarting. Seems Hamas and Israel could put a hell of a lot more firepower on target than Russia. Russia couldn’t shut down Ukraine’s grid last winter. I’d be very surprised if they could do better this year.
Timely update to TTG’s article above. Lots of info. Btw, this Briefly Telegram channel is a great savings on all the subs you’d need. And they tag their sources so you can decide better what to think.
————————–
https://t.me/briefsmi/13374
The Economist: On October 27, night fell over the Gaza Strip and Palestinian mobile phone networks stopped working. Rumors soon spread that Israel had launched a ground invasion of the territory. The Army’s brief statement confirmed that ground operations were “expanding” but gave no other details. Dawn brought some clarity. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) did enter Gaza from two points: around the city of Beit Hanoun in the north and Bureija, located at the narrow midpoint of the 45-kilometer strip. Continuous air and artillery strikes covered dozens of tanks and other armored vehicles transporting infantry and engineer units. The invasion appeared to be larger than the raids of the previous two nights, which were small and lasted only a few hours before the troops returned to Israeli territory. This time they stayed inside and created temporary strongholds on Gaza’s borders. In interviews over the past few days, IDF officials have said the war’s goals remain unchanged: to isolate and destroy Hamas’s military infrastructure, particularly its network of underground tunnels, and remove it from control of the Gaza government. However, the army’s tactics are no longer what they were supposed to be in the days after the massacre. The two places Israel entered on October 27 – north and south of Gaza City – indicate a gradual plan to encircle it. One senior officer describes the ground offensive as a campaign that will take several months, perhaps a year. A slower campaign would essentially rely on siege tactics. In the labyrinth of tunnels, Hamas stores fuel, food and other essential supplies. However, at some point the supply will run out: no fuel for the generators means no fresh air and light underground, which will force Hamas to come to the surface in a way it doesn’t expect. “He expects a ground invasion within three to six weeks,” says former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. The limited scope of the ground campaign is an attempt to balance competing priorities: showing that Israel is prepared to attack while leaving room for a deal to return the hostages, one Israeli official said. Another limiting factor is the presence of a large Palestinian civilian population. On October 13, the IDF ordered the residents of the northern part of Gaza, which is more than 1 million people, to flee to the south. It is believed that about two-thirds of the civilian population complied with this order, but large numbers of people remain encircled by Israel. Interruptions in mobile communications during the October 27 bombing made it impossible to call ambulances. Eyewitnesses in Gaza say people brought the dead and wounded to hospitals in tuk-tuks. #Израиль
Another red herring from the baker’s wife.the idf are presently nowhere Gaza and have relocated to naby lis
My man itzik on site told me to ignore all videos and info on the net.The Indian Bollywood companies were contracted to turn out short videos for consumption
In the hallowed halls all eyes are on Saudi Arabia.If they do not step up and settle they will swim the red sea.to ethopia.to Somalia.walk to Sudan.to Malha wells.to the waters and purify themselves.
Back to where they came from
I have wondered
“Just what motivated Hamas to launch their suicidal attack on October 7, 2023?”
I have found two sources that give plausible, to me at least, explanations:
Various writings of the Englishman Jonathan Cook
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Cook
at his site:
https://www.jonathan-cook.net/
See especially his two posts from just after the attack.
Second, and most poignantly, this anguished video from Norman Finkelstein:
“The Palestinians had NO OTHER OPTIONS”
https://youtu.be/G12Z0td-Nqo
Finkelstein’ is in such anguish, it is painful to listen to what he has to say.
Keith swoops and pulls out cook and anguished fink.
What have they to say about the rave party.About the attempt by young Israeli’s,both arab and jew to grow a better society.
Justice is on its way.For sure.
I for one don’t know what Cook or Finkelstein have to say about the rave party, but to my mind dancing your cares away just down the road from a concentration camp is at best in monumental bad taste.
And at worse an indication that more than a few Israeli youth are perfectly capable of flaunting their sociopathic tendencies.
But, hey, that’s just me.
Jimmy barnes? “But, hey, that’s just me”
It was a peace rave on a Friday night (Sabbath)attended by non religious Jews and Arabs.
Concentration camp?
Check out the pics of the mansions hamas leaders lived in.
Have you noticed how quickly all the news about the rave has been swamped by Arab propaganda and pro Arab marches
Typical Israeli move. A rave “for peace” next to a concentration camp of those they are wanting to “free”. It is like the museum for tolerance the Israelis built and put it on an old Palestinian cemetery they tore up.
The rave was next to gaza because people from gaza were invited to attend.The security on the fence was relaxed to let them through.Remember this was in the spirit of the Saudi peace iniative.
Instead they used it as an opportunity to attack Israel.The people at the rave were mostly secular young idealistic Jews and Arabs who were trying to create hope for a better society.
Yeah, Right,
There’s a concentration camp down the road from the rave site? Who runs that place. What’s it called and how big is it?
Fred –
It’s called:
Got Any Zyklon Antibodies (?)
How big? – 22 letters plus 3 spaces.
But it goes by the initials of first letter of each word, which shortens it to 4 letters. G A Z A
It’s usually referred to as the Gaza Strip because in the friendly vegetarian Heinrich Himmler rest and recuperating resorts in WW2 eastern Europe, after they asked the vacationers the four word question above, they’d politely say “strip!”
The Kapos that the Israelis helped create run the concentration camp that the Israelis set up.
Stefan,
Israel created them! See, Gazans removed from all agency over running the place in any year prior to NOW because, well, you know who ‘really’ runs Hamas. Does that work on other blogs?
Fred,
The Israeli government long ago lost any control of Hamas that they thought they had, but they do control life in Gaza. Between the Israeli government and Hamas, the Palestinians in Gaza truly are between a rock and a hard place.
TTG,
They could give it back to the Egyptians.
Fred,
I doubt Egypt wants Gaza or the Palestinians.
Imagine that. Maybe Qatar, since they are comfortable with Hamas’ leader. Turkey could take a few, Erdogan has proclaimed how much he cares about them so couple hundred thousand ought to be perfectly acceptable.
The whole “give Palestinians back to the Arabs” works on the very faulty narrative that all Arabs are the same, which anyone who has spent any time in the region knows they are not. This is pure ignorance/Zionist talking points. In the case of Egypt, they are not even Arabs. They are Arabic speaking non Arabs. Check modern DNA results for Egyptians and they have relatively little Arabic DNA. So double stupid to use this in regards to the Egyptians.
So Gazans ran their own little statelet and the Israelis had nothing to do with it. It’s like setting up your own little version of Lord of the Flies and blaming it on the boys.
Gaza operates in the same fashion as many 3rd world prison camps. The prison authorities remove themselves from the day to day running of the prison camp, only getting involved when those inside the camp cause issues for the prison authorities or try to escape. Otherwise they are allowed to regulate themselves. But this doesn’t mean they are free or have any real self agency. A prison camp is a prison camp.
Stefan,
The third world is just prison camps run by outsiders. The marxism is strong today. If only those post colonial movements hadn’t been run by the colonialists!
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12685697/Heavy-fighting-northern-Gaza-Israeli-forces-Hamas-terrorists-IDF-troops-tanks-border-ground-invasion.html
What one does not read at all these days is that Hamas was backed and funded by Israel as a counter-weight to Arafat. Hamas’s hardcore Islamist ideology was a feature that Israel liked compared to the more secular Arafat.
Sometimes, chickens come home to roost. Israel can kill many Palestinians in their pursuit of Hamas. However, even if they kill most Hamas leadership and fighters, the ideology that has been spun can’t be pushed back in the bottle.
Sam,
“Hamas’s hardcore Islamist ideology was a feature that Israel liked compared to the more secular Arafat”
Ha ha ha No.
Fred and Sam,
I have to agree with Fred on this. Israel wanted somebody in the new Palestinian Authority to dilute Arafat, but I doubt they were looking for a group of hardcore Islamist ideologues. Like damned near every politician, they just didn’t think it through.
or didn’t think it further than, “let’s try buying them off – it’s more peaceful than fighting all the time… see what happens.”
Actually, I agree with Sam on this.
If the long-term desire of Zionism is to eject all the Palestinians from the occupied territories then the last thing they want is a Palestinian body-politic that is both secular and pragmatic.
Much better to have hardcore Islamist ideologues on the other side of the security fence precisely because you don’t have to compromise on your core aims even as you blame your recalcitrance on the ideologues that are opposing you.
What’s not to like?
Sure, every now and again they’ll spring a surprise and your own side will shed some blood, but from your PoV all in a good cause and, who knows, maybe you can use that as an excuse to push, push, push out a little bit more.
And I agree with you and Sam. The roots of the Zionists of today are Jabotinsky, who was an outright fascist in the truest sense of the word – a direct admirer and contemporary of Mussolini. Netanyahu is a direct descendant only 1 generation removed and he has dismantled rule of law, republicanism, representative democracy and judicial oversight and substituted one man rule by himself and a Sanhedrin Lynch mob of ultra right religious fanatic ethnic exclusionists. The blueprints for this decades long ethnic cleansing and genocide were laid down ages ago, before 1948 in fact and the sources are available.
mcohen – you’re told not to watch videos because the atrocities are being recorded and not by Bollywood. There are films of shattered, bleeding 7 and 8 year old children with compound fractured leg bones protruding through their knees, writhing and screaming in filth and blood on clinic floors -whole groups of children like that. Those of them that survive will grow up to be people you wish you never tried to murder.
Simply because tech for making fakes exists doesn’t mean those videos are – they are not fake. In fact the months-long media prologues regarding dangers of AI and deepfakes are an element of this whole operation, their purpose was to provide publics with lazy lame excuses for ignoring reality and to provide fodder for foolish pseudo-analysts to say that the Oct 7 “intelligence failure” was due to over-reliance on AI. The fakes were the ones by Zionists of burnt chickens passed off as beheaded Israeli infants.
This is another case of Israeli arrogance. They helped the fledgling Hamas, they probably thought they could therefor control it. Law of unintended consequences. The Israelis are not the best at everything, despite what they sell the world. The problem is they have come to believe their own hype. When you think you are the best at everything it also means you tend to underestimate everyone and everything else.
I dont think they intended Hamas to become what they are. I think they were sure they would be able to control the situation, which they couldnt.
Given the PLO’s focus, it was reasonable to try to dilute its influence. Hamas taking up the PLO missions has proven that all Palestinians are rotten.
Israelis aren’t the best at everything? Who is? Maybe bone head Muslims/Arabs shouldn’t start wars they can’t finish. Pathetic how they whine like babies over what they lost as a result of their screw-ups in 1948 and later bellicose ventures, like the West Bank and Golan. The Arabs are basket cases and they argue like bitches. Start a war, if we win, we keep what we take and kill the Jews. If we fail in combat, we want the lost territory back and to be treated like good neighbors.
Lol. Yeah sure. Like that’s a reasonable game for Israel to play.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” Netanyahu told his Likud party’s Knesset members in March 2019. “This is part of our strategy”
Bibi was boasting about funding Hamas – in 2019!
https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711329340804186619
Some Jewish old boys, in their own words…
https://x.com/propandco/status/1716970010009116809?s=20
Burnt chickens And rubber tires.Stompie kan nie winnie
In my infinite wisdom I have prayed for sector 31 in Sudan to be designated the city of refugee.Malha wells
Prof. John Mearsheimer spoke last night here on the strategic situation. His take:
1. China is the main threat.
2. We took a catastrophic decision circa 2008 to invite Ukraine into NATO. with predictable results.
3. We failed to force Israel into a two state solution.
Results:
1. We drove Russia into Chinas arms. Ukraine will lose and we will be stuck in eastern europe for decades shoring up the remains>
2. The middle east – unsolvable now. The two state solution is dead. We are stuck with the mess.
3. Net result? We can’t “pivot to Asia” effectively to confront the Chinese because of our dumb and stupid policies towards Russia and Israel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62FCVJycwSA
Mike Johnson, new House Speaker of the United States is facing an Axis of Evil. Where have we heard this before? All of a sudden the US is talking about the “New” Axis of Evil. Mitch McConnell, Blinken, Biden, all calling out the New Axis of Evil: Russia, China, Iran & North Korea. We’re back in 2002, 2003, where it was Iran, Iraq and North Korea, BACK TO THE FUTURE!. Pre-Iraq invasion. In 2003 Al-qaeda became Iraq. It looks like Hamas is going to morph into Iran.
The coalition of the willing going up against that new axis of evil!!!
Democrats and Republicans UNITE. Trump speaking to a Republican Jewish Coalition, said, “Every single life that is lost in this conflict is at the feet of Hamas! And you have to add in Iran to that as well.”
Stefan,
Thanks for your response. So you must know something about Yemen. I hope we get a chance to talk about Yemen, perhaps at length on a more appropriate thread. It is true, is it not, that MBS has been trying to split off the Mahra governate, the province right over the border from Oman? He wants the capital there, Al Ghaydah, as a Saudi oil shipment outlet to the Indian Ocean? They are actually trying to partition Yemen? Or has that changed? And what about the oil storage ship Safer that has been moored off of Al Hudayah, dangerously close to sinking? I was able to find out that at least there had been some pumping of oil from the Safer into a tanker that had tied up alongside, but is that accurate? Have they (Houthis and the UN) finally gotten this very dangerous situation defused? Do you know? Also, what about the recent news that the wet bulb temperature in the Al Hudayah region will be critical–potentially deadly– for most of the year now? Which was on my mind with regard to MBS’s new city of Neom. This alarming, rapidly developing climate change could be an indicator that the wet bulb temperature will soon roll right up the Red Sea. (As it will.) Neom needs to be underground! They have a climate emergency on their hands and so do we.
If I were in Bibi’s shoes, I would be focused on how I exit. I will be out very soon. My “half life” in the prime-ministership is maybe 2 months? Must make sure I don’t end up in prison.
Exclamation mark imminent.zero three hundred. I petitioned.