Middle East War Briefing

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The bombing of a hospital in Gaza that reportedly killed 500 Palestinians — doctors and nurses and patients — quickly made the headlines in the United States. The New York Times slowly walked back the story over the course of three different headlines. Video from the scene the next day showed the hospital still standing — what had been hit was a parking lot a couple of blocks away, leading to the conclusion that the parking lot was struck by an errant missile fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad. That didn't stop Rep. Rashida Tlaib from grabbing a microphone and repeating the lie that 500 were killed by an Israeli airstrike on a hospital.

We're learning today that Hamas has issued a statement condemning Human Rights Watch for blaming an errant rocket on the explosion.

















 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Blinken to Israelis: 'I Don't Think You Have the Credit' to Fight Hamas to Finish




That leads to Blinken’s most arrogant declaration in the transcript … assuming he actually said this. Defense minister Yoav Gallant essentially told Blinken to pound sand, and Blinken got the message loud and clear (emphasis mine):

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant: The entire Israeli society is united behind the goal of dismantling Hamas, even if it takes months.
Blinken: I don’t think you have the credit for that.

Oh, really? Credit with whom, exactly? Biden? Biden and Blinken seem perfectly ready to extend an unlimited amount of credit to Hamas these days, and this is a perfect example. Blinken apparently doesn’t even bother to credit the Israelis for taking clear steps to provide aid, corridors for civilians to retreat, and using surgical operations rather than bunker-busters to destroy Hamas infrastructure co-located in civilian buildings. After five weeks of careful operations, Blinken essentially blames Israel for all civilian deaths in Gaza rather than the terrorist quasi-government that is actually violating all of the norms of armed conflict and hiding behind those civilians.

This is the deadly double standard employed by the West that has allowed Hamas to survive in Gaza through seventeen years of warmaking. That warmaking includes, by the by, a near-constant shelling of Israeli civilians that continues even during US-brokered “cease fires.” Israel has given the US a credit line to follow this strategy on the notion that Hamas would eventually tame itself or be tamed through billions of dollars in international aid, an American strategy that backfired horrifically on October 7.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Israel Knew About Hamas' Attack Plan a Year in Advance But Didn't Take It Seriously



In retrospect, the whole thing comes down to a failure of imagination and also a too firm belief among senior leaders that Hamas was not interested in attacking. Apparently they were convinced by the fact that Hamas had negotiated for the right to cross the border to work jobs in Israel that they were no longer a threat. In fact, they may have been using this access to gather information for the attack.

The story doesn’t put it this way exactly but the bottom line is that Israel simultaneously thought too little of Hamas’ capabilities and too much of their good intentions. It’s a dramatic failure which the article compares directly to the US failure to predict 9/11.

Comments on this article are disappointingly dumb. Mostly just a bunch of progressives demanding Netanyahu go to prison (The Times says it’s unclear if Netanyahu knew about the plan). But there were a few sensible comments like this one.

Even if you felt the plan was aspirational, beyond their capability, wouldn’t you at the very least review every element of the plan and ask yourself if your defenses were sufficient to thwart each facet of the plan?

Hard to imagine in retrospect. Even if you don’t believe it will happen why not use the info to challenge your own systems and see if there are in fact vulnerabilities?
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

MUST-SEE VIDEO about Israeli intelligence failures is a warning for America

By Andrea Widburg


Ever since October 7, people have been struggling to understand how Israel—a nation that’s been on the front lines since its creation (whether in the Bronze Age or 1948), that has a famed intelligence service, and that’s supposed to be bristling like a porcupine against all comers—could have been so vulnerable. Theories have ranged from sexism to a global conspiracy of the elites to Netanyahu being betrayed by leftists within his government to complacency. It turns out that the last two theories probably hit the mark.

Caroline Glick, a political analyst in Israel, has posted an important video explaining what happened. She lays the blame primarily on two generals, focusing on both their conduct before and after the October 7 attack, but the video really is an indictment of the Israeli left, as well as a warning for Americans:
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
It feeds into everything that’s been reported about Israel’s Arab neighbors and why they don’t want Palestinian refugees roaming wild in their country: they bring trouble. The late King Hussein had to declare war on them and successfully drove them out. The problem is the Palestinian Liberation Organization set up shop in Lebanon, where they caused problems for the government while also attacking Israel from the southern part of the country. Israel had to invade in 1982 and remained in Southern Lebanon until 2000. Egypt has closed its border with the Gaza Strip in Rafah due to terrorism concerns.

In the days after the brutal October 7 attacks executed by Hamas, Egypt knew what was going to happen. They deployed tanks to the border while their prime minister vowed that his country would sacrifice millions to keep their borders safe. He was not referring to Israel. So, what’s the latest? Well, Haaretz is reporting that Israel’s Arab neighbors are telling Jerusalem privately that they shouldn’t stop military operations until Hamas has been annihilated. They view them as a domestic threat:









 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
The U.N. is trash. This is obvious to anyone who pays even mild attention to the issue. While the U.N. has seemed to be a useful organization in the past (maybe), we can’t recall any time in our adult life where the U.N. has shown itself to be useful or, indeed, anything but a craven club for dictators.

With that context in mind, the UNRWA is big mad that someone has called them out for it. UNRWA is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian refugees in the Near East, and they got very foot stompy on Twitter/X earlier:













U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees Gets Dragged, Community Noted Over Alleged Hamass Ties

 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
🚀 Late yesterday the AP ran a remarkable story headlined, “3 commercial ships hit by missiles in Houthi attack in Red Sea, US warship downs 3 drones.

image 2.png

Yesterday, the Yemenese Houthis — a group nobody ever heard of before, from a country only one percent of college kids could find on a map — launched a barrage of missiles and drones at a flotilla of large commercial ships and a United States Destroyer, the U.S.S. Carney, an Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer.

The Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah (Arabic for 'Supporters of God'), are a Shia muslim ‘political and military organization’ widely known to be supported by Iran (also Shia). In 2021, citing “humanitarianism,” Joe Biden promptly un-designated the Houthis as terrorists. One man’s terrorist and so forth. Instead, the Biden regime ‘sanctioned’ the group to try to get them to behave, but in light of current events, sanctions do not seem to be working. I’m only saying.

Also in 2021, team Biden stopped supporting the official Yemenese government (Sunnis), with whom the Houthis are allegedly fighting.

The USS Carney knocked down the Houthi missiles and drones and then launched a Hellfire missile racing straight back, blowing all the former terrorists into Kingdom Come.

Wait. Sorry. Scratch that. I just assumed we fired back. I should have said: the Carney knocked down the missiles and drones … and then did buck all. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.

Wait, wait. I still got it wrong. I should have said the Carney knocked down A MISSILE and A DRONE and then three more Houthi missiles blew into the three large commercial carriers the Carney was supposed to be protecting: the Unity Explorer, the Number 9, and the Sophie II.

And we just took it.

I’m almost there, but I suppose it still a smidge inaccurate to say we just took it. We did something. We promised to think about responding, which counts as doing something in the map rooms our woke, high-heeled admirals infest. Per the Associated Press:

The U.S. vowed to “consider all appropriate responses” in the wake of the attack, specifically calling out Iran, after tensions have been high for years now over Tehran’s rapidly advancing nuclear program.​


See? We’re carefully considering an appropriate response. What could that be? Well, first of all, not launching missiles back at the Houthis, dummy. That would be an inappropriate response, which is obviously the opposite of an appropriate response. I mean, when has violence ever solved anything? Apart from Slavery, Nazism, Communism, and two World Wars. But other than those ones, I mean?And, don’t you agree we wouldn’t want to respond inappropriately? That’s how inappropriate Russians like VLADIMIR PUTIN act, and just look at how things turned out for Putin. He’s died of cancer six times now. So.

Still not convinced? Gosh, you’re like a dog with a bone with this missile idea. Okay, smarty-pants, where are we supposed to get missiles to fire back at the Houthis? The Carney? Are you kidding? We’re saving those missiles for attacks. Please. Don’t try to be a Navy admiral. It’s very, very complicated.

Only slightly more seriously, the U.S. Central Command did actually respond to the attacks with a media statement. The CentCom statement did nothing militarily, but arguably raised the stakes diplomatically, hauling Iran partly into the spotlight with a hyper-careful bit of diplomatic word-salad: “We also have every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran.”

So exactly when does considering options stop and using options begin? I suppose the good news is that, despite how frustrating it is to watch, cooler heads are in charge of things over there in the spicy Middle East and are not responding to obvious attempts to provoke a wider conflict.



 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Sky News Host Abruptly Ends Interview After IDF Spokesman Clocks Him




“Just wanted to ask you very quickly about that digital map. You’re telling people where is going to be targeted next. People don’t have power to power up their mobile phones; they haven’t got Wi-Fi.”

Spielman replied, “All of your viewers saw our hostages being paraded through the streets as they were released to Israel over those seven nights and hundreds of Gazans holding their phones videoing them. So clearly, there’s enough power to power their phones when they’re parading our hostages throughout Gaza. Now that same power to their phones will be to get the maps, download the maps, look at the flyers.”

Before he could fully complete his answer, the Sky News host interjected. “Major Spielman, I’m so sorry. We’re out of time,” Samuels said, terminating the interview.









 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Traders Informed of Hamas Attack Profited Millions by Short-Selling Israeli Stocks, Study Suggests



In a draft paper released on Monday, law professors Robert Jackson Jr. of New York University and Joshua Mitts of Columbia University said they identified a "sharp and unusual" spike in trading in "risky short-dated options" on Israeli companies in the days leading up to the deadly Hamas invasion of Israel.

Short-sellers bet against companies whose shares they expect to fall in price. They pay a fee to borrow shares in those companies and then sell them for the current market price, hoping to make a profit by buying them back for less before the shares have to be returned.

"Our findings suggest that traders informed about the coming attacks profited from these tragic events," the professors wrote in the paper entitled "Trading on Terror?"

"Days before the attack, traders appeared to anticipate the events to come," they explained, noting that short interest in the MSCI Israel Exchange Traded Fund (EIS), which tracks the performance of a basket of Israeli securities, "suddenly and significantly spiked" on Oct. 2, five days before Hamas terrorists attacked Israel and reignited the Middle East war.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

WHAT INNOCENT CIVILIANS?


The Biden administration is demanding that Israel take even more extraordinary measures to avoid harming “innocent civilians” as it tries to eradicate Hamas. Around the world, politicians and others express dismay at the alleged number of innocent civilians who have been killed by Israeli bombardments, even while admitting that Hamas’s casualty numbers include its own terrorists, people killed by terrorists’ awol missiles, and so on.

But my complaint is more fundamental. Watching videos of Israeli captives being paraded through Gaza, and seeing “civilians” spitting on them, hitting them, joyously celebrating their capture, I have asked: where are these innocent civilians we keep hearing about?
In the Times of Israel, Avigdor Liberman makes the point in a column titled “Innocents in Gaza? Don’t be naive.”


[T]here is no shadow of a doubt that among those who took part in the attack on southern Israel, provided the intelligence on the homes of the residents, and led the mob in the second wave of looting and destruction were Gazans who worked in the kibbutz communities they invaded. They earned a living and ate in the homes of the massacred residents, some of whom were the very residents who helped Gazans and their families when they were sick, and took care of transporting them from Gaza to Israel for life-saving treatments in Israeli hospitals.


Meanwhile, scenes within Gaza paint a sickening picture:


Some will say Gazans are afraid of Hamas and that is why we have not heard any condemnation from them, but the scenes we witnessed every evening when our kidnapped were being transferred to the Red Cross and the testimonies of those who have returned from captivity suggest otherwise. It’s clear that Hamas has massive support in Gaza: The frenzied crowd jeering and spitting on the abductees, the testimonies of Israeli children who say they were beaten by Gazans of all ages, and the demonstrations of joy and support for terrorists throughout Gaza testify to the cruelty of a populace that educates its children to hate Israel and is raising a new generation of terrorists and supporters of terrorism whose goal is the destruction of the State of Israel and all its citizens.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member
Heard Recently ....

Israelis are White, Palestinians are Brown so a response to Oct 7th is racist oppression



Excusing atrocities by Palestinians because they have dark skin is wrong and racist



Let’s never mind all that, and instead say hypothetically for a moment that the Palestinians are correct that they are the rightful owners of the land from the river to the sea, and Israel is wrong. Would that justify the murders, the rapes, the beheadings, the torture and the hostage-taking?

Here is where the Hamas sympathizers start to squirm and equivocate, at least the ones who are not psychopathic killers to the same degree as Hamas itself. They point to the low education levels of the Palestinians, their poverty, their status as oppressed people.

In other words, they point to their skin color.

Woke American college kids – and their woke professors and administrators and the other cool kids with whom the professors and administrators want to pal – reflexively and group-thinkingly side with people with dark skin. The Palestinians have it, and most Israelis don’t (though many do, and many are Arabs).

History doesn’t matter to these sympathizers, and atrocities don’t matter. All that matters is skin color.

I submit that this condescension to excuse horrific acts is not only wrong, it’s racist. It rests on the notion that people with dark skin living in poverty are unable to distinguish between right and wrong. They lack the intelligence to live in a civilized society. They are barbarians. They are savages.

But they’re not. The Palestinians have televisions, internet and schools, and they can read and write. They know right from wrong.They are ordinary people but have a grievance.

Lots of other people have grievances. I’m still smarting over the genocidal clearances of the Scottish Highlands. Japanese-Americans still grieve the incarceration of their ancestors in camps in California in WWII. Black Americans still grieve the enslavement of their ancestors a few hundred years ago and Jim Crow laws in the 20th century. Tibetans grieve the present-day occupation of their ancestral lands by the Chinese. For that matter, Jews still grieve the Holocaust, understandably.

But none of them think their grievances justify terrorism against civilian men, women and children.
 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Israel's IDF flushes Hamas's tunnels with sea water -- and sends terrorists scurrying out like rats


By Monica Showalter


Hear that flushing noise?

Amid all the screeching of the anti-Semitic global elites, the haze of pro-Hamas global protests, and the Biden administration's efforts to micromanage how Israel conducts its war against avowed terrorists, Israel's Defense Forces have been quietly takin' care of business.
AT's editor, Andrea Widburg has written about the mass surrenders which is happy news indeed, here.

But how they did it is fascinating.









 

GURPS

INGSOC
PREMO Member

Hamas ‘beginning to break’ as tense video shows IDF facing off with terrorists in ruins of Gaza City school



Members of the elite LOTAR Unit, along with the 188th Armored Brigadee’s 74th Battalion, encountered a Hamas cell in the remains of a school building in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood, the Times of Israel reported.

IDF fighters appeared to pursue the terrorists through the building in a tense, bullet-ridden standoff, the IDF clips showed.

“The terrorists tried to draw the forces into an ambush, with gunfire and explosives, and were eliminated by the troops of the LOTAR Unit and tank fire of the 74th Battalion,” the IDF said of the incident.

The troops later searched the school and discovered a tunnel shaft in one of the classrooms, the Times of Israel added, citing the IDF.

The tunnel — which connected to a nearby mosque — was allegedly used by Hamas operatives.



 
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