Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You come for women, youโ€™re gonna get your ass kicked.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

It is not hopeless, and we are not helpless.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but itโ€™s not funny to me.

These days, even the boring Republicans are nuts.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Polls are now a reliable indicator of what corporate Republicans want us to think.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Come on, man.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Everybody saw this coming.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

This fight is for everything.

A democracy canโ€™t function when people canโ€™t distinguish facts from lies.

Fundamental belief of white supremacy: white people are presumed innocent, minorities are presumed guilty.

Hey Washington Post, โ€œDemocracy Dies in Darknessโ€ was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The Israel-Hamas War of October 2023: Monday 9 October Update

The Israel-Hamas War of October 2023: Monday 9 October Update

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Just a brief update on what is going on.

First, the Israelis have mobilized 300,000 reservists.

That’s a lot of personnel, but remember a lot of those reservists will be tail, not tooth. They’ll be working logistics, maneuver support, medical, all the things that have to be done so the combat arms folks can actually be effective. That said, the majority of Israel’s premier special operations unit – the Sayeret Matkal – are reservists. About 200 of them threatened to resign if Bibi pushed his reforms through in late July/early August. I expect they’re all back now.

Before the jump I want to focus on one self mobilized retiree: Major General Yair Golan.

If you don’t live in Israel or consume Israeli media, you don’t know who Yair Golan is. He is a 61-year-old retired Major General in the Israel army and a former parliament MP. Spend a minute to read this story.

Yesterday, when IDF and the police were in complete chaos, Golan put on his old uniform, took his weapon, and drove into the war zone multiple times to rescue civilians under fire. He rescued two young adults hiding under a bush after 260 of their friends were murdered at an outdoor party. He answered a call from a journalist that his son was hiding under fire and simply said, “Give me his location, and I will bring him back home.” An hour later, the son called his father from Golan’s car.

Golan collected a small crew and went in and out of the war zone, rescuing dozens of people while exchanging fire with Hamas terrorists. He is 61, he could have stayed home, but he chose to risk his life for people he does not know.

Golan is one of the strongest voices from the Israeli left and was constantly attacked by the right wing in Israel. But when the time came, he was first fighting the barbaric attack. The same brain wiring that supports peace, is often the same wiring that drives people to do the right thing.

A true hero.

Golan has been consistently vilified by Bibi, his supporters, and everyone else on the far right in Israeli politics for well over a decade. All because he has a different vision for Israel politics, society, relations with the Palestinians, and has opposed Bibi and his even more extreme coalition partners. Every insult you can imagine has been sent his way from being an internal fifth columnist to selling out and betraying Israelis and Jews. Golan, unlike Bibi, unlike the convicted terrorist Ben Gvir, unlike the Kahane protege Smotrich ran to the sounds of gunfire to help all while his detractors continue to try to cover their self exposed tuchases and shift the blame on to Israelis like Golan.

The frantic tweets of Nir Gontarz, the journalist whose son Golan rescued after the jump.

Tweets, as this wasn’t threaded, first followed by a machine translation:

My son is under fire in the south. I drove there at 180 Kamesh and red lights. I was completely blocked by the army and the police 15 km from it. Moked 100 Keres. Police and army at the checkpoints are not ready to listen. There is no one to transfer their location to

My son is currently surrounded by Arabic speaking squads and shooting. There is no one to talk to in the army and the police

There is no army and no police. I am begging someone from the security forces; Give me a weapon, he’s surrounded by terrorists. Let me take them out alone

Contact with Amir was cut off. I am begging the army to give me a long weapon, and for my part they will conscript me for a reserve day. If you know someone there – help me. I looked at the maps. I can rescue him

The month of the relationship for a moment. They only see the vans of the terrorists. No Israeli force is in their vicinity and has not reached them, even though the NAT has been passed on to everyone possible. The IDF finally refuses to recruit me and give me weapons.

About 35 years ago I called @YairGolan1 and asked for help (we have no prior acquaintance). He asked for a location and said: I’m going to bring it to you. Now they are already in Yair’s car, on the way out. wow My heart goes out to all the besieged and their families

Report from the field: Yair Golan has been entering and leaving the field for several hours, extracting more and more young people from it.

Second, Israel has sealed off Gaza.

Gaza is basically an extended municipality turned into a prison. Think what would happen if you took the greater San Diego area, built a wall around the sides that are landlocked and then set up a permanent naval interdiction on the Pacific side. And then put the most ruthless and violent people in charge. Most of whom don’t actually live within Gaza as they live and operate out of Doha, Istanbul, Cairo, and other cities in the region. Now imagine what happens when you turn off the power and prevent any food, water, fuel, medical supplies, etc in. Getting the prisoners that Hamas has taken back to Gaza out, whether they’re Israelis or Israeli-American dual nationals, or Israeli and any other nationality dual nationals, is going to require scalpel like efficiency. Bibi and his coalition partners are going to go with the sledgehammer.

As I just wrote:

It is important to remember that Israel does NOT have a professional non-commissioned officer (NCO) corps like the US does. As a result, you have junior officers largely left without mentoring from more experience senior enlisted advisors. This is what has led to the war crimes allegations against young, Israeli company commanders in past operations in Gaza. The lack of a professional NCO corps will have a major impact on the upcoming operations.

Hamas’s response:

Mansour Abbas, however, is a much wiser and more practical man than Bibi:

Barak Ravid is reporting that Bibi told President Biden this morning that Israel has to go into Gaza.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu toldย President Bidenย on Sunday that Israel does not have any choice but to unleash a ground operationย in Gaza. “We have to go in,” the Israeli leader said, according to three Israeli and U.S. sources briefed on the call.

Why it matters:ย Netanyahu’s messagesignals what his country’s response toย Hamas’ attackย will look like in the days and weeks ahead in what theย Israeli prime ministerย has said will be a “long and difficult war.”

Driving the news:ย The Israeli military announced on Monday it has mobilized 300,000 reserve soldiers โ€” the largest number of reservists called to duty in decades โ€” as part of preparations for a possible ground offensive in Gaza.

Behind the scenes:ย During his call with Netanyahu, Biden raised the issue of Israeli hostages in Gaza, according to the three sources.

  • “We have to go in. We can’t negotiate now,” Netanyahu said.
  • The White House and the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment.
  • Netanyahu told Biden that Israel had no other choice but to respond with force because a country can’t show weakness in the Middle East.
  • “We need to restore deterrence,” Netanyahu told Biden, according to the three sources.
  • Biden did not try to press Netanyahu or convince him not to go through with a ground operation.

More at the link!

Third, the head of Egyptian intelligence is widely and publicly telling everyone that he personally warned Bibi ten days before the attacks!

A senior Egyptian intelligence official tells AP that Egypt has repeatedly warned the Israelis of “something big”, in the context of Gaza. According to him, Israeli officials focused on the situation in IOS and downplayed the threat from Gaza: “We warned them about the explosion of the situation and that it was very close and it would be something big. But they disregarded these warnings.”

Egypt is going to work very, very hard to make sure Israel’s intelligence and security failures don’t get on them. Especially if it can be used to weaken Bibi.

Bibi’s response:

Fourth, the Israeli government appears to be covering up the extent of the damage caused by Hamas’s attacks into southern Israel.

I’m not surprised by this at all. Israel has a military censor and given what we now know, that Bibi’s government redeployed somewhere between 1/2 and 2/3rds of the IDF from the south to the West Bank to protect his coalition partner’s base in the settlements and their priorities and that Bibi ignored repeated warnings from Israelis and others that Hamas was planning something, all efforts will be made to cover Bibi’s tuchas.

Which is why they’re afraid to show their faces:

Fifth, apparently the Israeli government has decided to forego a professional, planned strategic communications response:

Sixth, both The Arab News and Reuters have significant, detailed reporting about how Israel’s security and intelligence failure occurred and how Hamas planned and executed this operation without tipping off the Israelis.

Fromย The Arab News: (emphasis mine)

JERUSALEM: The devastating failure of the Israeli intelligence services to predict the deadly Hamas incursion stemmed from a total misunderstanding of the militant group, experts have said.

Israel was taken by complete surprise early on Saturday morning as Hamas fired thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip at the country, while more than a thousand fighters gunned down hundreds of people and took at least 100 hostages.

Israeli soldiers embarked on fierce battles with the militants holed up in southern communities, as the air force began striking strategic targets in Gaza.

By Monday morning, official estimates put the number of Israeli civilians and soldiers killed at over 700, a huge toll for a country of less than 10 million people.

โ€œItโ€™s a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south,โ€ said retired military general Yaakov Amidror, who served as Israelโ€™s national security adviser in 2011-2013.

But beyond the operational failure of Israelโ€™s vaunted intelligence services to detect the well-organized attack and the armyโ€™s inability to block it, Israelโ€™s broader take on Hamas was entirely flawed, Amidror said.

โ€œWe made a huge mistake, including me, in believing a terror organization can change its DNA,โ€ he told journalists.

โ€œWe heard from our friends around the world that theyโ€™re behaving more responsibly, and we believed it in our stupidity,โ€ said Amidror, currently a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.

In an attempt to win some peace, Israel had recently increased work and trade permits for Gazans, with about 18,500 laborers providing significant income to the densely-populated coastal enclave where around half of the population is unemployed.

Israel believed that economic incentives, wedded with the implicit threat of military force, had made Hamas lose its appetite for violence.

Earlier this month, Israelโ€™s national security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said that for the past two years Hamas has not initiated any rocket launches, as part of its decision to curb its violence in an โ€œunprecedentedโ€ manner.

โ€œHamas is very restrained, and understands the meaning of further defiance,โ€ he said in an interview with army radio on October 1.

To Michael Milshtein, head of the Palestinian Studies Forum at the Tel Aviv universityโ€™s Dayan Center, such remarks show โ€œwe totally misunderstood Hamas.โ€

โ€œThe notion of economic incentives that would diminish Hamasโ€™ motivation for terror and even cause the public to go against it totally collapsed,โ€ he told AFP.

โ€œYouโ€™re dealing with a radical, ideological organization. Do you really think you can buy their ideology out? Bend it? This is a total misunderstanding, and probably included wishful thinking.

โ€œWhile we believed that a radical body that takes power gradually becomes moderate, they were gaining strength and preparing the next stage of their war.โ€

Milshtein, a retired intelligence officer who was an adviser to COGAT, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said the Hamas leadership had been publicly professing its intention to carry out an attack just like Saturdayโ€™s.

โ€œThe operation was planned for nearly a year, which is amazing because this is a year in which Israel kept on increasing the amount of labor permits and concessions,โ€ he said.

โ€œThe Israeli conception was that Hamas doesnโ€™t want an escalation,โ€ Milshtein said.

โ€œThe writing was on the wall. They just didnโ€™t want to believe it was true.โ€

Israelโ€™s leadership was swift to indicate that the penny has dropped.

On Saturday, Israelโ€™s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that when he was head of the militaryโ€™s southern command in 2009, he wanted to โ€œbreak the neckโ€ of Hamas but was stopped by the political echelon.

Now, as the man who along with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu determines the course of the war, Gallant was no longer subject to restraints.

โ€œWe will change the reality on the ground in Gaza,โ€ he vowed.

โ€œWhat was before, will be no more.โ€

Reuters:ย (emphasis mine)

Oct 9 (Reuters) – A careful campaign of deception ensured Israel was caught off guard when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched its devastating attack, enabling a force using bulldozers, hang gliders and motorbikes to take on the Middle East’s most powerful army.

Saturday’s assault, the worst breach in Israel’s defences since Arab armies waged war in 1973, followed two years of subterfuge by Hamas that involved keeping its military plans under wraps and convincing Israel it did not want a fight.

While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group’s fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, a source close to Hamas said.

This source provided many of the details for the account of the attack and its buildup that has been pieced together by Reuters. Three sources within Israel’s security establishment, who like others asked not to be identified, also contributed to this account.

“Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight,” said the source close to Hamas, describing plans for the most startling assault since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel and made it fight for its survival.

“Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation,” the source said.

Israel concedes it was caught off guard by an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday. Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns, killing 700 Israelis and abducting dozens. Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians in its retaliation on Gaza since then.

“This is our 9/11,” said Major Nir Dinar, spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces. “They got us.”

“They surprised us and they came fast from many spots – both from the air and the ground and the sea.”

Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, told Reuters the attack showed Palestinians had the will to achieve their goals “regardless of Israel’s military power and capabilities.”

In one of the most striking elements of their preparations, Hamas constructed a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza where they practiced a military landing and trained to storm it, the source close to Hamas said, adding they even made videos of the manoeuvres.

“Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn’t keen on getting into a confrontation,” the source said.

Meanwhile, Hamas sought to convince Israel it cared more about ensuring that workers in Gaza, a narrow strip of land with more than two million residents, had access to jobs across the border and had no interest in starting a new war.

“Hamas was able to build a whole image that it was not ready for a military adventure against Israel,” the source said.

Since a 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has sought to provide a basic level of economic stability in Gaza by offering incentives including thousands of permits so Gazans can work in Israel or the West Bank, where salaries in construction, agriculture or service jobs can be 10 times the level of pay in Gaza.

“We believed that the fact that they were coming in to work and bringing money into Gaza would create a certain level of calm. We were wrong,” another Israeli army spokesperson said.

An Israeli security source acknowledged Israel’s security services were duped by Hamas. “They caused us to think they wanted money,” the source said. “And all the time they were involved in exercises/drills until they ran riot.”

As part of its subterfuge in the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel, even as another Gaza-based Islamist armed group known as Islamic Jihad launched a series of its own assaults or rocket attacks.

The restraint shown by Hamas drew public criticism from some supporters, again aimed at building an impression that Hamas had economic concerns not a new war on its mind, the source said.

In the West Bank, controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group, there were those who mocked Hamas for going quiet. In one Fatah statement published in June 2022, the group accused Hamas leaders of fleeing to Arab capitals to live in “luxurious hotels and villas” leaving their people to poverty in Gaza.

A second Israeli security source said there was a period when Israel believed the movement’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, was preoccupied with managing Gaza “rather than killing Jews”. At the same time, Israel turned its focus away from Hamas as it pushed for a deal to normalise relations withย Saudi Arabia, he added.

Israel has long prided itself on its ability to infiltrate and monitor Islamist groups. As a consequence, the source close to Hamas said, a crucial part of the plan was to avoid leaks.

Many Hamas leaders were unaware of the plans and, while training, the 1,000 fighters deployed in the assault had no inkling of the exact purpose of the exercises, the source added.

When the day came, the operation was divided into four parts, the Hamas source said, describing the various elements.

The first move was a barrage of 3,000 rockets fired from Gaza that coincided with incursions by fighters who flew hang gliders over the border, the source said. Israel has previously said 2,500 rockets were fired at first.

Once the fighters on hang-gliders were on the ground, they secured the terrain so an elite commando unit could storm the fortified electronic and cement wall that divides Gaza from the settlements and which was built by Israel to prevent infiltration.

The fighters used explosives to breach the barriers and then sped across on motorbikes. Bulldozers widened the gaps and more fighters entered in four-wheel drives, scenes that witnesses described.

A commando unit attacked the Israeli army’s southern Gaza headquarters and jammed its communications, preventing personnel from calling commanders or each other, the source said.

The final part involved moving hostages to Gaza, mostly achieved early in the attack, the source close to Hamas said.

In one well-publicised hostage taking, fighters abducted party-goers fleeing aย raveย near the kibbutz of Re’im near Gaza. Social media footage showed dozens of people running through fields and on a road as gunshots were heard.

“How could this party happen this close (to Gaza)?” the Israeli security source said.

The Israeli security source said Israeli troops were below full strength in the south near Gaza because some had been redeployed to the West Bank to protect Israeli settlers following a surge of violence between them and Palestinian militants.

“They (Hamas) exploited that,” the source said.

Retired General Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told reporters on Sunday the assault represented “a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south.”

More at the link!

This may be the most effective military deception (MILDEC) operation in modern history!

And, of course, asย Reuters,ย The Arab News,ย Haaretz, and others have reported, Israel paid for as part of Bibi’s 20 plus year old strategy to build up Hamas as a foil to Fatah and the Palestinian Authority to prevent a two state peace agreement.

Seventh, for anyone who thinks this is going to actually bring about Bibi’s downfall, while it is possible, he has been here before.

 

Eighth, this is what happens when you put religious fanatics in charge of logistics:

Ninth, here is more on yesterday’sย Wall Street Journal reporting that Iran was directly involved in planning the attack and ongoing operations:

My two (or more) cents about Iran’s involvement in recent developments in Southern Israel. In my opinion, two crucial distinctions are required. First, it is necessary to distinguish between Iranian support to Hamas, as well as the ongoing coordination between IRGC, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (the “Resistance Front”) and between the initiative, organization, and execution of the Hamas operation. While there is no doubt about the military cooperation between Iran and Hamas and Iran’s increasing involvement in the Palestinian arena, including the West Bank, in recent years, I highly doubt whether Iran was significantly involved in Hamas’s latest action. This is a Palestinian story. Did Hamas use Iranian aid? Definitely yes. Did Iran have an interest in this action? Yes.
Does Hamas need Iranian permission to operate? No. Was there early coordination between Hamas, Iran, and Hezbollah? It’s possible. But, in the end, it is an action by Hamas based on it own interests arising from the Palestinian reality. My assessment is also supported by the recent statement of the IDF spokesman who said, “Iran is a significant player, but we cannot say that it planned the operation or trained for it.”
A second important distinction that is between the involvement of Iran (and Hezbollah) until the Hamas operation and what will happen from now on. In recent years, I shared the assessment that Iran has no interest in expanding the conflict between Israel and Hamas to other arenas through active participation (by itself and mainly through Hezbollah) during the occasional rounds of warfare between Israel and the Palestinians. I still believe that the concept according to which Iran has no interest in involving Hezbollah (which is considered by Tehran as a strategic tool to respond to a potential Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities) is still relevant. However, we have recently witnessed at least three developments that may challenge the validity of this assessment:
A. The Hamas operation is a reality-changing event in the Middle East that may oblige Iran to move from the phase of ongoing support and coordination to a more direct involvement, especially if the Israeli response poses a significant challenge to Hamas.
B. In recent years, it has become increasingly clear to Iran that, with all due respect to the nuclear issue, a significant part of Israeli activity has been aimed at undermining the regional order and not only Iran’s nuclear program. Therefore, Iran has been more committed to increase its involvement around Israeli borders (and even inside Israel) and perhaps is also prepared to pay a higher price for a possible confrontation with Israel, not only in the nuclear context.
C. Iran has practically positioned itself on the nuclear threshold and, at this stage, is not concerned with the possibility of Israeli military action except in the scenario (which does not seem likely at this stage) of a decision to break out to nuclear weapon. Therefore, Tehran may assess that using Hezbollah is no longer considered a “waste of capabilities” but a justified way to advance its strategic vision at the most convenient time. And so, in the bottom line, even assuming (as I do) that Iranian involvement in the implementation of the Hamas operation was not significant, I believe that the danger of escalating into an event involving Iran and Hezbollah has increased significantly.

I think at this point the WSJ reporting is an interesting data point, but we need much more information with good sourcing before we can have a definitive answer to whether Iran was or was not heavily involved in the planning.

Especially as it is being knocked down by everyone:

Here’s the difference between the importance of Israel versus Ukraine in the US Congress as a result of the convergence of US domestic politics and religion:

Specifically, that the primary base of Israel supporters in the US is no longer Jewish Americans. Rather, it is white evangelicals who adhere to the made in America apocalyptic doctrine of dispensational premillennialism. This concept asserts that for Jesus to return that the Jews must first return to Israel where they vast majority will be killed in the battle of Armageddon. The few who convert to Christianity will be saved and survive. This doctrine is both antisemitic and genocidal. It requires the complete destruction of all Jews as part of white evangelicals apocalyptic fever dreams. However, since white evangelicals are the base of the Republican Party and have been courted and manipulated by Bibi for decades, you get unanimousย  Republican and conservative movement support for Israel, which is reflected in the Congressional support. Democratic support for Israel is largely based on the fact that over 75% of Jewish Americans vote Democratic and are either members of the Democratic Party or are Independents that align with and vote Democratic.

The Biden administration is also, effectively, pushing back on the GOP and conservative movement talking points:

Hopefully, despite there being US citizens/American-Israeli dual nationals reported among Hamas’s prisoners, the Biden administration will resist the calls that will come from inside the US military to send in our own Tier 1 special operations forces to Gaza. No good will come of them trying to do their thing while Israeli conventional and special operations forces are engaged with Hamas in perhaps the worst urban combat environment imaginable.

The EU, however, is as unified as ever:

That’s it for now.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

191Comments

  2. 2.

    Gin & Tonic

    If youโ€™re going to be doing two war updates a day, we should lobby Cole to double your pay.

  3. 3.

    Alison Rose

    Has Bibi or his minions explained WHY Egypt would lie about warning them? To be clear, I do not believe Bibi’s bullshit here. But if he’s going to insist it’s a lie and they weren’t warned, shouldn’t he have to explain what reason Egypt would have for doing so? Maybe I’m dense but I don’t see what good it would do Egypt or anyone to do so. I mean, I don’t think anyone looked at this situation and then wagged their finger in the general direction of Cairo like “you naughty boys!” or something

    Also, thank you for reminding everyone why GOP goyim are so obsessed with Israel. So many times in my life, I’ve had people insist Republicans aren’t antisemitic because they support Israel, and I’m like “bro you do not know how wrong you are”.

  5. 5.

    Princess

    If I had family and friends held hostage in Gaza and I learned ( as we have learned) that Israel plans to shut off food, electricity and water to Gaza, I would be apoplectic because I would know that my loved ones were certainly not going to get and food or water. It feels like Israel (the government) sees the hostages as dead already. I would be beside myself. I am beside myself.

  6. 6.

    mrmoshpotato

    Gaza is basically an extended municipality turned into a prison. Think what would happen if you took the greater San Diego area, built a wall around the sides that are landlocked and then set up a permanent naval interdiction on the Pacific side. And then put the most ruthless and violent people in charge. Most of whom donโ€™t actually live within Gaza as they live and operate out of Doha, Istanbul, Cairo, and other cities in the region. Now imagine what happens when you turn off the power and prevent any food, water, fuel, medical supplies, etc in. Getting the prisoners that Hamas has taken back to Gaza out, whether theyโ€™re Israelis or Israeli-American dual nationals, or Israeli and any other nationality dual nationals, is going to require scalpel like efficiency. Bibi and his coalition partners are going to go with the sledgehammer.

    Makes me think of the Soviet blockage of West Berlin.

  7. 7.

    Lobo

    Please discuss the use of low tech gear in this invasion, e.g., hang gliders, motorbikes, bulldozers, etc. How do you war game this?

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Two times zero still equals zero!

    Perhaps it’s time for a Patreon. Because between the two I’m spending up to five or six hours a day putting these together. Fortunately, right now, I’m doing consulting and not on a full time equivalent assignment, so I have the time and flexibility to do both. How long that last remains to be seen.

  9. 9.

    Devore

    I assume youโ€™ll be talking more about how the situation in Israel will affect the war in Ukraine

  10. 10.

    Chief Oshkosh

    From Reuters newsfeed:

    Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant warned that the price Gaza would pay “will change reality for generations” and Israel was imposing a total blockade with a ban on food and fuel imports as part of a battle against “human animals”.

    That last quotation sounds vaguely familiar.

  11. 11.

    Rusty

    Adam, thank you for these updates.ย  The context is extremely helpful.ย  The media is doing a decent job of what is going on, but there is much less why and the context.ย  Thank you.

  12. 12.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Alison Rose:

    Has Bibi or his minions explained WHY Egypt would lie about warning them?

    โ€œThey are Arabs and want to make Israel look bad.โ€ ย I havenโ€™t heard an answer to your question, but I guarantee it is that. ย It is a gut reaction for way too many Jews. ย I say that from my experience raised as a Jew and living in an Orthodox community in the US. ย For Netanyahu and his supporters, that Egypt speaks in bad faith is a basic assumption.

  13. 13.

    coin operated

    @Alison Rose:

    Also, thank you for reminding everyone why GOP goyim are so obsessed with Israel. So many times in my life, Iโ€™ve had people insist Republicans arenโ€™t antisemitic because they support Israel, and Iโ€™m like โ€œbro you do not know how wrong you areโ€.

    Hope this works…obligatory clip from The Brink
    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p1mKSe7g0-A

  14. 14.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Devore: Like that would ever happen.//

    More seriously, I expect that the House GOP caucus, as well as the Republicans running for president and the anti-Ukraine GOP senators, will use this to block further aid to Ukraine. The argument will be we can’t afford to support Israel, which we have to do because of formal agreements, and Ukraine at the same time. And since we don’t have a bilateral security agreement with Ukraine, well it’s just an unfortunate reality that the US is not made out of money.

  17. 17.

    JML

    from a pure US politics POV, it’s going to be interesting to see how Rep. Omar and other members of the progressive caucus respond during this. Ilhan has been pretty anti-Israel, to the point of trading in anti-Semitic tropes over the years, while her district has a fairly substantial Jewish population (for MN) it’s also got a growing Muslim population as well.

    This is going to get very ugly I’m afraid. Feels like the shady Israeli PM is intent on using this as a way of positioning himself so that the crisis wipes all the stink off him in a wave of nationalism, and he’s going to have little to no restraint in acting. (plus, he needs to cover his apparent incompetence)

    ooof.

  18. 18.

    Anyway

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    or Netanyahu and his supporters, that Egypt speaks in bad faith is a basic assumption.

    Egyptian governments are historically wary of Islamic groups and have a history of putting them down and the intelligence services are used to working with their Israeli counterparts

    ETA – The US gives a lot of money to Egypt to ensure this

  19. 19.

    NutmegAgain

    Adam thank you for the summary and informed commentary. But sweet jumping jimmies, I hope you are not feeling pressure to do a daily abstract of 2 horrible wars…

  21. 21.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JML: Congresswoman Omar gave a very good and very unequivocal statement yesterday while still calling for cooler heads to prevail and deescalation. As did Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez. Congresswoman Tlaib’s was quite problematic, which I think can be forgiven as she has close relatives who still live in the West Bank. Not sure if she has family in Gaza. I don’t agree with how her statement was framed, but I’m willing to be empathetic given the personal familial stakes for her.

  22. 22.

    tobie

    I think it’s possible to be opposed to Netanyahu and feel sick to your stomach that he is in command of the government in Israel while at the same time abhorring Hamas and wondering why Gazans voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006 after Fatah was able to score a major diplomatic victory with the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza in Sep 2005.

    I don’t see any possibility for a negotiated settlement right now I hope I am proved wrong. But hearing every leftwinger claim that responsibility for the current conflict resides exclusively with Israel and that whatever the Palestinians do, they do so because they have no agency and their action is always caused fills me with dread and disgust.

    Hamas could get the power, water and food turned back on. It would have to offer to free the hostages and would have a right then to demand multiple international guarantees. It’s chosen a different path, a murder a day of hostages. They own this situation as much as the Israeli hard right.

  23. 23.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    If it lasts long enough, it will be interesting to see if this conflict increases pressure to prevent the permanent military service exemption the Haredi want from getting enacted.

  25. 25.

    jackmac

    Yair Golan is a righteous man. In a weekend filled with death and horror, he stepped when help was needed.

    Thank you Adam for doing double duty.

  27. 27.

    Paul in KY

    Gen. Golan needs to have some security protecting him. If he becomes a valid challenger to the Likud Party, he will have the same thing that happened to Gen. Rabin happen to him, IMO.

  28. 28.

    Villago Delenda Est

    “We have to go into Gaza.”

    Pretty much the same way the SS had to go into the Warsaw Ghetto.

  30. 30.

    lollipopguild

    @Villago Delenda Est: “Real Men” go to Bagdad. No they do not. Real men understand that a short term solution can morph into a long term problem. Also “if you are going to take Moscow, take Moscow.” Napoleon took Moscow and kept it for months, he also lost his entire army by doing so.

  33. 33.

    New Deal democrat

    The situation in a nutshell:

    Hamas: โ€œWe just took 200 Israeli hostages, and are going to start killing them gruesomely.โ€

    Bibi: โ€œWe just took 2,000,000 Gazans hostage, and are going to start killing them slowly.โ€

    American Evangelical GOPers: ย โ€œOh goody! Armageddon!!!โ€

    Putin: [smiles enigmatically, biding his time]

  34. 34.

    oldster

    Thanks for the update, Adam.

    However, I just wanted to call your attention to a small oversight in your coverage.

    You forgot to include any good news.

    I reached out to an Israeli-American colleague at work yesterday to see how he was doing. He said his daughter’s family live in Tel Aviv and he is urging them to get out for the time being.

    I cannot do anything for him, but I wanted him to know that many Americans — nearly all Americans — support him and are saddened and sickened by this event.

  35. 35.

    Devore

    @Adam L Silverman: ย  ย Thanks. ย And makes sense that this is also bad news for Ukraine. ย Sounds like itโ€™s close to times up. ย  ย I wonder if there will be โ€˜leaksโ€™ about upcoming peace talks between Ukraine and Russia in the near future.

  36. 36.

    tobie

    @trollhattan: Second truth: Fatah sucessfully negotiates Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in Sep 2005 and Gazans respond by voting overwhelmingly for the eliminationist group Hamas in 2006. It changed the region irrevocably.

  39. 39.

    eversor

    @Alison Rose:

    He touched on part of it.ย  Evangelicals do make up the majority of the GOP base.ย  There’s also a good portion of their Catholic base that is straight up anti-semetic for all the good old reasons and don’t buy into the End of Times stuff.

    That’s leaving out the “Jews For Jesus” nonsense that goes on with the GOP.

  40. 40.

    Adam L Silverman

    @trollhattan: And the stochastic terrorist who set the conditions for that assassination is the current Prime Minister of Israel and has been for the better part of the past 20 years.

  41. 41.

    Roger Moore

    @JML:ย โ€‹
    All of this is made a lot more difficult because neither side has clean hands. The war is not something that just happened out of the blue; it’s the result of a whole series of escalations made by both sides. It’s very hard to talk about the situation with anything like the nuance it deserves in the nice, short soundbites our media thrives on.

  44. 44.

    Cacti

    @tobie: Yes, poor Israel. Ever the victim. Why can’t the oppressed just be a little more sanguine about 70 years of land theft, rights violations, and IDF and settler violence against them?

    Truly a mystery.

  45. 45.

    tobie

    @trollhattan: Hamas’s choice, not Israel’s. I suspect any referendum after 2006 would have had Hamas winning even more votes. Gazans don’t want a negotiated settlement. They want to eliminate Israel. And they may well succeed.

  46. 46.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … AlJazeera.com:

    The Lebanese armed group Hezbollah has fired a barrage of rockets into Israel after at least three of its members were killed during an Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon amid soaring tensions on Israelโ€™s northern border.

    Hezbollah in a statement on Monday said it had fired rockets and mortars on two Israeli military posts in the Galilee. The Israeli military said it identified a number of โ€œlaunchesโ€ from Lebanon into Israel, without any injuries. It said it was responding with artillery fire onto Lebanon.

    Hezbollah, the most formidable member of a regional network of armed groups supported by Iran, confirmed in statements on Monday that Israeli shelling had killed at least three of its members.

    The Associated Press news agency identified those killed as Hussam Mohammad Ibrahim, Ali Raef Ftouni, and Ali Hassan Hodroj.

    Hezbollah said that those killed had been โ€œmartyred as a result of the Zionist aggression on south Lebanon Monday afternoonโ€.

    The Israeli military began shelling southern Lebanon on Monday after a cross-border raid claimed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) armed group.

    The Israeli army said soldiers backed by helicopters killed at least two gunmen who crossed the frontier.

    Questions continue to loom about whether Hezbollah, a sophisticated fighting force with an arsenal of long-range missiles, will enter the war between Israel and the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, which governs the besieged Gaza Strip. Doing so would elevate the current conflict into a two-front war for Israel, long considered a nightmare scenario by the countryโ€™s military establishment.

    […]

    The Drive’s “The War Zone” has been covering the Hezbollah aspects – here’s today’s update.

    Hezbollah, as we noted yesterday, has a tremendous array of long-range weapons at its disposal. From our report:

    “The Iranian backed militant group is sitting on a absolutely massive arsenal made up of increasingly capable weaponry โ€” suicide drones, long-range rockets, and cruise missiles โ€” as well as tens of thousands of artillery rockets. Its capabilities have metastasized to the point that if they were to fully activate, the damage they could do to Israeli population centers is of grave concern. Israel has the most advanced and deeply-layered integrated air defense system (IADS) on the planet, but it would be deeply overwhelmed if Hezbollah were to unleash in full force.”

    I don’t know how much of that is fear-mongering by Howard Altman and Tyler Rogoway, but it looks to me like the situation could quickly get much worse.

    Thank the FSM that the Orange Menace is no longer in the White House…

    Thanks, Adam.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  48. 48.

    JaySinWA

    Adam has remarked on the importance of NCO structure to the US (and I believe NATO) and the lack in Russia. I am surprised to hear the IDF doesn’t have this structure. What guides the decision for armed forces to have a core NCO base or not?

    Are there notable armed forces that do or don’t have an NCO base?

  49. 49.

    tobie

    @Cacti: I didn’t say that. You did. My point was that if you hold the Manichean view that one side in this conflict exhibits exclusively active aggression and the other side merely passive causation, you will never achieve any kind of political settlement, which requires negotiation with groups that have some measure of agency. Hamas has agency. So does the Israeli govt, of course.

    What does Hamas want to achieve? If it’s the elimination of Israel, and I suspect it is, than there’s really nothing to discuss. If it’s increased autonomy for Gaza, that can be negotiated. Both sides will have to be able to demonstrate that they’re capable of making concessions.

  50. 50.

    eversor

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    Egyptians are not Arabs!ย  Islamic does not equal Arab.ย  Egyptions are not viewed as Arabs by Arabs, Persians, Jews, Turks, or any of the other groups in the area.

    The Egyptians may also have an autocratic and theocratic government but they are pretty reliable when push comes to shove and they are not down with the entire Pan-Arab sentiment because of obvious reasons.

    While I’m sure you know this keep in mind we upperate a lot here under the assumption that the average person in a region is as ignorant of it’s history as an American is of that place.ย  ย You aren’t going to convince a bunch of Israeli Jews that the Egyptians are Arabs as a political stunt over there because these religious and ethnic gripes go back thousands of years and all the players know who’s doing what.

  51. 51.

    Dan B

    To my mind the most dangerous person for Jews worldwide is Bibi.ย  The second most dangerous is Hamas.ย  At the moment the world is on the side of Israel.ย  As soon as the bloodbath in Gaza is underway that will evaporate.ย  It will be very complicated if Hamas begins executing hostages.

  53. 53.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Perhaps itโ€™s time for a Patreon.

    Not sure how serious that comment is, but I suspect I’m not the only regular reader who’d be willing and able to contribute.

  54. 54.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: I’ve got the pdf of GEN (ret) McCaffrey’s 2012 assessment for NBC of how the Iranians could sink a US carrier in the Persian golf.

    I think the threat is low, but credible. I think the bigger concern is whether either Iran directly or Hezbullah has provided any of these to Hamas.

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JaySinWA: Israel and Russia do not. The US, Canada, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and many, but not all of our NATO allies do.

    One of the reason Israel does not is the nature of their 3 years for males/2 years for females mandatory service (unless you’re ultradevout) followed by a long period of reserve status. I think the belief has always been that the older experienced reservists will serve the senior mentor role for the active duty junior officers. I don’t think it has actually worked that way for Israel, but I think that is the theory.

  57. 57.

    trucmat

    @tobie:

    You believe you know what all Gazan’s want enough to speak for all of them? Now that I have an expert on the Gazan mind let me ask … could there be an error in the assumption that none of them care about their own families more than revenge? Because that assumption is monstrous.

  59. 59.

    Adam L Silverman

    @eversor: Egyptians are Arabs. Do they also have a long civilizational/ethno-cultural history that is separate from both other Arab societies and Islam? Definitely. But that doesn’t make them not Arabs. The Iraqis and the Lebanese have the same type of socio-cultural and historical dynamics and they are still Arabs.

  60. 60.

    oldster

    @Roger Moore:

    PORTIA.
    That light we see is burning in my hall.
    How far that little candle throws his beams!
    So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

  61. 61.

    Old School

    @Roger Moore:

    The stuff about Gen. Golan seems like it should count as good news.

    I guess it’ll have to do until there are some cute dog or cat tweets to end with.

  62. 62.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: Semi. On one hand I spend a lot of time and effort on just the Ukraine updates. On the other we ask everyone here to contribute to people in real need – from charities to help Ukrainians to readers/commenters/lurkers in crisis to pet blegs – and I’d hate to ask anyone here to spend more.

    I need to think about it.

  63. 63.

    tobie

    @trucmat: I’m going by election results. I’ve seen no outrage here when BJers say, “There are no innocent Israelis” (karen marie last night); or there can be no peace as long as Israelis always see themselves as victims (momsense last night) or “Israelis voted for Netanyahu, so they own this” (cactus today).

    What I said in my comment is that Hamas won overwhelmingly in the 2006 elections. No one had any allusions even then about what the party stood for. I consider an electoral victory as large as the one Hamas enjoyed to be a hearty endorsement by the public.

    The preliminary count put Hamas on 76 seats to Fatah’s 43 in the 132 seat chamber. The result could complicate hopes of a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. George Bush said the United States would not deal with a Hamas-led government unless the party recognised Israel’s right to exist.
    As the scale of the Fatah defeat became apparent, its officials conceded defeat and the Palestinian prime minister, Ahmed Qureia, and his cabinet submitted their resignations. “This is the choice of the people. It should be respected,” Mr Qureia told reporters.

  64. 64.

    TooTallTom

    I may have watched too many fictional TV shows, but I feel like there is a non-zero chance that intelligence in Israel knew that “something” was going to happen, but Bibi decided not to do anything about it ahead of time, because he thought that the impact would be small, but that it would benefit Bibi in the long term.ย  Call me paranoid, if you wish.

  66. 66.

    jonas

    I know Adam’s been writing on this extensively over the past 24 hours, so apologies if I missed it somewhere in your analysis, but what’s Hamas’s end game here? They’ve basically roped the Israelis into completely leveling the Gaza Strip. It’s going to be a moonscape when they’re done with it. Hundreds of thousands will be dead and/or displaced. Is this an attempt to outrage the rest of the Muslim world and basically slam the brakes on any kind of rapprochement between Israel, the Saudis and other ME regimes?

  68. 68.

    oldster

    @Gin & Tonic:

    Absolutely. I have a monthly contribution set up for BJ as a whole. If there were an Add-On Adam Addendum, then I’d kick into that, too.

    However, I worry that we’d just be rewarding him for having started the invasions of Ukraine and Israel, and incentivizing him to start more wars elsewhere.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    It’s half past nine in the evening now, two hours ago I came back from abroad. I’m already in uniform and armed, on my way south to the reserves. I’m going to fulfill my duties as a general officer of the brigade responsible for protecting the border with Jordan and Egypt. Like everyone else, I have no idea how long I will be recruited and what day will be born. As with all the countless times I served in the reserves, this time too, as long as I’m in uniform I won’t write my personal opinions here.
    But just before I silence myself, I would like to write here some of my thoughts.
    1. There is nothing in the world that can justify the massacre of hundreds of innocent people. The hundreds of drownings are subhumans of the lowest kind. The same goes for those who support and justify them.

    2. Now is a time of war, the first thing right now is to protect the home, the country.
    Let’s not get confused, this is not a “war without choice”, it could have been prevented, but now it is too late. Now there is no choice but to take up arms and defend the citizens of Israel.

    3. I am going to defend my country from our enemies. Our enemies are murderous terrorist organizations controlled by Islamic extremists. The massacre of innocent Israelis must not be answered by the massacre of innocent Palestinians.
    It is important to remember, the Palestinian people are not our enemy. Millions of Palestinians who live here with us between the sea and Jordan, are not our enemy. Just like most Israelis, so do most Palestinians, they just want to live their lives in peace and dignity.
    The two peoples who live here, the Jewish people and the Palestinian people, have been held captive for decades by a violent religious minority. On both sides, a violent religious minority drags the conflict into appalling violence. Yes, I compare the leaders of Hamas with the leaders of religious Zionism. On both sides, an extreme religious view dictates violent behavior.

    3. This war will end sooner or later. At the end, both nations will have to reckon with the leaders. We must wake up and not let the extremists rule here. The Palestinians and the Israelis will have to denounce the fundamentalists. The Israelis will have to oust Ben Gabir, Smotrich and their gang from power, and the Palestinians will have to oust the heads of Hamas from power.

    4. At the moment of the greatest rupture in Israeli society, the truth is revealed. The true lovers of the country are revealed, those who do. In contrast, the nakedness of the wretched Twitter tiktok is exposed, a bunch of zeros who, apart from slandering and inciting, contribute nothing to the State of Israel. This is the hour of the doers, the defenders of Israel. At the end of the war we will come to account with the zeros, the heroes of the keyboard.

    5. In the midst of the terrible pain and the enormous brokenness, I try to look for shards of hope. Shortly after the terrible Yom Kippur War, a peace agreement was signed between Israel and Egypt. We must realize that there is no greater security asset than peace. Even the strongest army cannot protect the country the way peace protects. The path of peace will forever be better than the path of war, the one we have been walking on for too long.
    At the end of the war, after thousands of dead Israelis and Palestinians have been buried, after we have finished washing away the rivers of blood, we will have to understand that there is no choice but to follow the path of peace, that is where the real victory lies.

    That’s it, now it’s quiet, I’m leaving cyberspace. I will soon arrive at the base and make my contribution to the defense of the citizens of the State of Israel. The torn heart with the families of the murdered and missing.
    We’ll meet here or over a cold beer at six after the war, we’ll do everything to make this the last war.

  71. 71.

    eversor

    @JaySinWA:

    Well, the Israeli’s to start with.

    To me it’s always seemed like a decision not to use them rather than to use them.

    The kicker is NCOs typically come from the middle class are upper middle class.ย  They didn’t have to join the military, they wanted to.ย  Tons of working class ones as well.ย  But this wasn’t a “get out of shithole” move.ย  But the beauty of this and volunteer nature of it is you have a slew of hard charging, over qualified, often over educated, and reliable people staffing these positions.ย  So they can give orders, argue back with seniors, take the iniative, make decisions, and conduct things how they see fit to work.

    To us that makes sense.ย  To an autocratic nation that’s putting dangerous ideas into the handes of the non elite.ย  They might come back from a war thinking things are stupid, the people at the top have no clue, someone else could do a better job, and also the entire social order is bullshit.

    So the decision is socio cultural.ย  Even in more open societies like ours an NCO corps is a potent agent for change.ย  See the results of our military vets pressing for things like wages, benefits, and blowing up desegregation or the impact of the end of DADT.

    If you’re scared of change at home NCOs are often dangerous.

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jonas: They stopped the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia. They’ve got double, if not triple digits worth of hostages to trade for their own prisoners being held in Israeli prisons.

  73. 73.

    Gin & Tonic

    @oldster:

    However, I worry that weโ€™d just be rewarding him for having started the invasions of Ukraine and Israel, and incentivizing him to start more wars elsewhere.

    You raise a real concern.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    @Frankensteinbeck:ย  @eversor:ย @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m old enough to remember (later) attempts at Pan-Arabism:

    Although pan-Arabism began at the time of World War I, Egypt (the most populous and arguably most important Arab country) was not interested in pan-Arabism prior to the 1950s. Thus, in the 1930s and 1940s, Egyptian nationalism โ€“ not pan-Arabism โ€“ was the dominant mode of expression of Egyptian political activists. James Jankowski wrote about Egypt at the time,

    What is most significant is the absence of an Arab component in early Egyptian nationalism. The thrust of Egyptian political, economic, and cultural development throughout the nineteenth century worked against, rather than for, an ‘Arab’ orientation. … This situationโ€”that of divergent political trajectories for Egyptians and Arabsโ€”if anything increased after 1900.[10]

    Attempts at Arab union

    It was not until Gamal Abdel Nasser that Arab nationalism (in addition to Arab socialism) became a state policy and a means with which to define Egypt’s position in the Middle East and the world,[11][12] usually articulated vis-ร -vis Zionism in the neighbouring state of Israel.

    […]

    FWIW.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @eversor: The US NCO cohort is definitely not upper middle class or from the upper middle class. Most aren’t, upon ascension into the military as junior enlisted, even from the middle class. If you make it through 20 years and retire, then the last functioning socio-economic escalator in the US, the US military, will have deposited you in the middle to upper middle class. But that’s a different discussion.

  76. 76.

    Adam L Silverman

    I’m going to go get a workout in and then some dinner before doing the Ukraine update.

    Perhaps we could try something nice and low key instead of these two wars. Like the US Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands challenge each other to a shuffle board competition for control of both.

  77. 77.

    Geminid

    @tobie: Gazans may have voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006, but alternative was universally despised. I’m not sure there have been free elections in Gaza since then.

    There is no way of knowing whether Gazans support Hamas’s strategy or tactics. No one there would dare protest this operation. They would be lucky to only have their bones broken.

  78. 78.

    Timill

    @TooTallTom: I think one could reasonably read the IDF’s recent redeployments as indicating that they were expecting a blowup, but that it would happen of the West Bank.

    Why they made this error is another question – successful Palestinian deception or senior Govt partners wanting their pet projects protected?

  79. 79.

    Roger Moore

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I just wanted to highlight this part of your quote:

    The massacre of innocent Israelis must not be answered by the massacre of innocent Palestinians.

    This seems like best soundbite response to the situation I’ve heard.ย  It just needs an equally pithy soundbite about who really is responsible.ย  He does a good job of saying that in more detail, but it would be great if we could compact it into something equally concise.

  80. 80.

    JaySinWA

    @tobie: As I recall a lot of 2006 election analysis points to Hamas providing essential services in the years prior amid rampant corruption in Fatah. So much of that vote was for local reasons. Surprise, people voting in their own perceived interests and not worrying about stuff they might not believe could happen.

    I suspect a similar rationale in voting for Republicans, thinking you get lower taxes and they were never going to get Roe overturned.

    ETA

    https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas

    Hamas has been the de facto authority in Gaza since shortly after Israel withdrew from the territory in 2005. The following year, Hamas won a majority of seats in the PAโ€™s legislature and formed a government. It earned votes for the social services it provided and as a rejection of the incumbent Fatah, which many voters perceived as having grown corrupt at the helm of the PLO and delivering little to Palestinians through its negotiations with Israel. The outcome wasย unacceptable to Fatahย and its Western backers, and the party ousted Hamas from power in the West Bank. In Gaza, Hamas routed Fatahโ€™s militias in a week of fighting, resulting in a political schism between the two Palestinian territories. Palestinians have not voted for a legislature since 2006, nor a president since 2008.

  82. 82.

    CaseyL

    @Gin & Tonic: Depending on how overt Iranian assistance to Hamas was, and how deeply involved in the operation Russia was (is), it has occurred to me this could be part of an organized plan to ignite armed conflict among as many US/Western allies as possible.ย  With the clear goal being to exhaust our military resources – not personnel, but materiel.

    It made me think of how the West drained the USSR and then Russia in the 1980s-1990s, first with an arms race and then with US “consultants” setting up a post-USSR economy that favored the existing (but not yet paramountly powerful) kleptocracy.

    I would not be shocked if Russia had decided on doing something similar, as a follow-up to spending the last two decades infiltrating and destabilizing the politics in Western nations.ย  ย (And not just Russia, to be sure: the member countries of BRICS have interests in this as well.)

  83. 83.

    tobie

    @Geminid: We heard plenty at the time that the reason Fatah suffered a resounding defeat is that the party was corrupt whereas Hamas provided social services and the like. I never found that explanation entirely convincing, and I suspect Hamas’ popularity at the time had as much to do with the care it provided to the public as with its proud and defiant rhetoric. The irony of all this is that the negotiated settlement to have Israel withdraw from Gaza was likely the last diplomatic achievement in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. It’s fair to say that major players on both sides worked day and night to make sure there would never be a diplomatic achievement again.

  84. 84.

    way2blue

    Is blocking food, water & power to civilians residing in Gaza considered a war crime? ย All I can find with a superficial search are statements such as this one:

    In any armed conflict, the right of the parties to the conflict to choose methods and means of warfare is not unlimited.Thus, starvation of civilians as a method of warfare/combat is expressly prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflict. This prohibition is violated not only when a lack of food or denial of access to it causes death, but also when the population is caused to suffer hunger because of deprivation of food sources or supplies.

    https://www.icrc.org/en/doc/assets/files/other/irrc-844-pejic.pdf

  86. 86.

    Alison Rose

    @tobie: “no innocent Israelis” sounds pretty close to how certain groups spoke about Americans in the wake of 9/11. I guess that person thinks toddlers are to blame for the government’s actions? Interesting.

  89. 89.

    oldster

    @Adam L Silverman:

    As long as shuffleboard is within your area of expertise, I’ll pay for the coverage and updates.

    (And if it isn’t yet, then you can always do some quick trainings and put together a slide-deck.)

  92. 92.

    Adam L Silverman

    @jonas: No we are not. We are not sure how much or how little real involvement beyond being Hamas’s primary benefactor for several years.

  93. 93.

    Baud

    We’re used to right wing vs. left wing conflicts in the US. Middle East conflicts are all right wing vs. right wing conflicts. Many American liberals tend to struggle with that, especially when they try to fit it within right vs. left paradigms.

  94. 94.

    Randal Sexton

    I have dear friend who was visiting her mom in a town near beer sheva when this started. I have been getting pretty harrowing updates from her.ย  This morning she got on a plane at Ben Gurion, and now its about to land at AMS.ย  I will be so happy to get a text from her that says she is ok, hopefully within the hour.

  96. 96.

    eversor

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This is if course going vary wildly by unit but I grew up upper middle class/rich and I knew a lot of my cohort that all enlisted and all left in the E-5 to E-9 range.ย  Most of those ranks that I served with had families that typically had a college education history, often they got one while in the military as well.

    But you also touched on one my points.ย  Which is that the NCO class is a class barrier shredder.

  98. 98.

    Geminid

    @cain: Bush did a lot to screw up the Middle East. The negative consequences of his stupid Iraq war are still being worked out.

  100. 100.

    JMG

    Hamas planned this catastrophe carefully over a period of years. Much of it rested on an astute appraisal of Netanyahu. Therefore it must have anticipated his reaction would be bloodthirsty to the max. IMO, that’s another step towards its ultimate objective, creating facts on the ground that make it impossible for the other Arab states to do anything but support maximum hostility towards Israel, including wider war.If a few hundred thousand of their fellow Gazans have to die for that to come to pass, well, lucky martyrs are they. Very easy to enact the martyrdom of others.

  101. 101.

    Geminid

    @Baud: Now that Meretz is out of the Knesset, politics in Israel is basically a Center vs. Right conflict, at least among the predominately Jewish parties.

    Israeli’s Arab parties have stayed aloof for the most part, and many Arabs do not vote at all. One promising development tecently was the participation of Mansour Abbas’s Ra’am party in the Bennett/Lapid coalition that governed from June, 2021 until last December (the last six months as a caretaker government). Ra’am actually gained one seat in the last election, bringing them to 5 MK’s.

  102. 102.

    Baud

    @Geminid:

    The right has been in charge there for at least two decades. Not even the US has suffered under right wing rule for that long.

  103. 103.

    CarolPW

    @tobie: And then of course everyone at Balloon Juice took up the comment and ran with it, right? High-fives, lots of upvotes!

    One person was a shit, and you have no idea why or what perhaps awful thing might have prompted that response. Things are fucked, and I’m sorry, but BJ has done too much good to tar everyone here with that paintbrush.

  106. 106.

    Subsole

    @Baud:

    I cannot wrap my brain around a tenure that long.ย There are high schoolers who have never known a world without Bibi in charge.

    Maybe it’s just because I am used to a fairly regular level of churn here in the US, but the idea of over two decades of the same President is just profoundlyย unsettling to me.

  109. 109.

    tobie

    @CarolPW: Perhaps you should check what Allison Rose was responding to. I cited 3 comments as examples. I could have cited many more.

    Furthermore, BJ does not have upvotes. The community can only express disapproval of a post by responding to it. Not responding indicates tacit approval.

  110. 110.

    Baud

    @tobie:

    Not responding indicates tacit approval.

     
    That part isn’t true. Oftentimes people ignore comments they don’t agree with or think go too far.

  111. 111.

    tobie

    @Baud: True enough. On the other hand not responding to outrageous comments expands the scope of what’s considered acceptable discourse. You can say in response to a comment like,”There are no innocent Israelis. Cry harder,” by saying you’re pie-ing someone. We do it with rightwing trolls all the time.

  112. 112.

    Another Scott

    @tobie:

    Not responding indicates tacit approval.

    Disagree.

    We have the Pie Filter here for a reason.

    Online discussion turns into a mud-pit if everyone responds to everything they disagree with. Workable online discussion does not work that way.

    Thankfully.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  113. 113.

    Rachel Bakes

    Nothing to add except heartfelt thanks to Adam (and other knowledgeable commenters) for keeping us informed. On two international crises now.

  115. 115.

    Princess

    @tobie: I was honestly relieved that no one picked up on that despicable post (โ€œCry moreโ€). I felt it was seeking attention and starving it if that was the right approach. But I hear you and I appreciate your own posts on this terrible tragedy.

  116. 116.

    Adam L Silverman

    @tobie: Notย responding means Iโ€™ve gone to bed, am doing something else, and/or decided to not feed the troll.

  118. 118.

    CarolPW

    @tobie:ย โ€‹
     I read them all, but you particularly referred her to one particular comment – the one I addressed. Of course there are no fucking up-votes. “Not responding indicates tacit approval.” “Don’t fed the trolls.” OK, which is it?

  119. 119.

    tobie

    @Princess: Thank you Princess for acknowledging the rancid post. UT wasn’t just that one but the unvarnished hate for Israel in that remark was pretty stunning.

  122. 122.

    Trucmat

    @tobie:

    You found 2 comments that could use pushback. You pushed back on cacti today so that leaves 1. I won’t even count the comment from momsense because that was reasonable.

    The full quote was:

    “I remember talking with someone who was part of negotiations sponsored by Harvardโ€™s Negotiation Project (Roger Fisherโ€™s outfit). She said as long as Israel identifies only as victim and not also oppressor โ€“ there will never be peace.”

    I agree with that statement. A one-sided view of the conflict blinds Israel to less violent solutions. Thinking that all Palestinians want to destroy Israel more than they want peace of course leads to the view that if you can’t bargain with them you must destroy them.

    What is on the site of course is a more nuanced view that these events have multiple historical causes. You aren’t seeing bloodthirstiness towards Palestinians or any kind of permission to collectively punish them because by what they’ve written most people here believe that’s wrong. Hopefully you’re good on that point.

  123. 123.

    Geminid

    @Baud: There have been more centrist governments in Israel during the last two decades. It just seems like Netanyahu has been PM forever

    I thought the last government was pretty good. But it was an 8-party* coalition that started with a 61 member Knesset majority and that quickly dropped to 60. Neyanyahu engineered its fallย  in June of 2022, after 11 months in office. Then Israel had its 5th election in four years.

    * Three of those parties are now out of the Knesset. Naftali Bennett’s party collapsed, Gideon Saar’s New Hope combined with Benny Gantz’s National Unity, and Meretz missed the 3.35% threshold by a tenth of a per cent in last November’s election.

  124. 124.

    greenergood

    @Adam L Silverman:ย โ€‹
      Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousef, married to Palestinian Nadia El-Hakla, said today that his in-laws were trapped in Gaza visiting their very elderly parents. His statement, despite the family stress, was also quite measured: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-67057367 (sorry, don’t know how to do links), but:
    ‘Mr Yousaf told the BBC he strongly condemned the “unjustifiable” actions of Hamas.

    “There can be no equivocation about that condemnation, and the Scottish government is strong in its condemnation, ” he said.

    “What we have unfortunately seen is many innocent people lose their lives in the course of the last 48 and 72 hours.

    “The lives of an innocent Israeli are to me equal to the lives of an innocent Palestinian.

    “Many innocent people on both sides are losing their lives and that cannot be justified in any way, shape or form.”

    The first minister said many Jewish families in Scotland would be worried about family members that they have not heard from.’

  125. 125.

    lowtechcyclist

    @tobie: wondering why Gazans voted overwhelmingly for Hamas in 2006

    Why does the ‘why’ matter, 17 years later? I’m confused about this. Hamas is in power in Gaza now, that’s the ‘what’ that matters.ย  This is the second time you’ve brought this up, so I’m curious as to what you’re getting at.

  126. 126.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Correction Israel’s electoral threshold is 3.25, not 3.35%. A party passing the trlhreshold is awarded 5 MKs, but Meretz missed it with 3.25% snd was blanked.

    Under Israel’s proportional electoral system, parties run slates of candidates nationwide. If a party wins 10% of the vote, the top 12 people on its slate become MKs in the 120-member Knesset. ,

  127. 127.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Correction: Israel’s electoral threshold is 3.25%, not 3.35%. A party passing the threshold is awarded 4 MKs, but Meretz missed it with 3.15% snd was blanked.

    Under Israel’s proportional electoral system, parties run slates of candidates nationwide. If a party wins 10% of the vote, the top 12 people on its slate become MKs in the 120-member Knesset. ,

  128. 128.

    lowtechcyclist

    @eversor:ย โ€‹

    Egyptians are not Arabs! Islamic does not equal Arab. Egyptions are not viewed as Arabs by Arabs, Persians, Jews, Turks, or any of the other groups in the area.

    Ever hear of the U.A.R.?

  129. 129.

    Frank Wilhoit

    @trucmat:ย โ€‹
      What people care about is a function of how much stress you put them under — a chaotic function. This, if anything, is the pragmatic argument against sadism; but pragmatism is the first casualty of stress.

  130. 130.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Semi. On one hand I spend a lot of time and effort on just the Ukraine updates. On the other we ask everyone here to contribute to people in real need โ€“ from charities to help Ukrainians to readers/commenters/lurkers in crisis to pet blegs โ€“ and Iโ€™d hate to ask anyone here to spend more.

    I need to think about it.

    I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, Adam, but maybe it’s time to go to maybe every other day for the Ukraine updates, absent major breaking news.ย  Most days, the situation there just doesn’t change very much from one day to the next.ย  I know these updates are a lot of work, and perhaps this would ease the burden.

    There came a point when Anne Laurie didn’t do Covid updates every day, and maybe it’s your turn.

  131. 131.

    tobie

    @Trucmat: I’m capable of nuance. MomSense’s comment last night struck me as predictable, simplistic, and offensive on a day when the scope of the attack on Israel was becoming clear. Civilians were targeted. Children were killed. People with disabilities were taken hostage. Corpses were paraded as trophies on pick up trucks. All this is harrowing and everything that will follow is harrowing and placing full blame on one side and consistently excusing another does not count as nuanced analysis in my book.

    I’ve avoided comparing anyone in this conflict to Nazis but have seen that done several times today.

    I was struck by the tweets from the reservist Adam posted. He made it clear that revenge on civilians is unacceptable. No ifs, ands or buts. If a Hamas supporter makes a similar post, please let me know. It would lift me from the depths of my despair about the possibility of a negotiated settlement.

  132. 132.

    Bill Arnold

    @way2blue:
    May be referring to this:
    Article 14 – Protection of objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population

    Starvation of civilians as a method of combat is prohibited. It is therefore prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless, for that purpose, objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works.

  133. 133.

    Geminid

    @lowtechcyclist: These are questions of ethnicity vs. language and culture vs. self-identification. For instance, Algerians could be called Arabs because they speak an Arabic dialect, but ethnically they differ from Saudis. Most of the people we call Turks are not neccesarily ethnically Turkic but are Galations, Phrygians etc. who were “Turkified” under Ottoman rule and have Turkish names and speak Turkish. Kurdish people, on the other hand, speak Kurdish, which is an Indo-European language.

    Turkiye has Kurdish citizens who do not identify as Turkish and some who probably identify as Turks and also Kurds, for instance Turkiye’s Vice President and its Finance Minister.

    Hakan Fidan, the Turkish Foreign Minister, is Kurdish on his father’s side. I mention Fidan because he may be a key player negotiating the ceasefire that halts this war

    Fun Fidan fact: In the1990s,while Hakan Fidan was posted in Germany on Nato’s Rapid Reaction Force staff, he earned a Oolitical Science degree fom the University of Maryland’s Global Campus.

  134. 134.

    Bill Arnold

    @tobie:
    I didn’t respond to that last night because my draft responses kept on being too harsh. Like ban-stick harsh.,

  135. 135.

    unctuous

    @New Deal democrat: I wonder what role putler played in this. It is all to his advantage especially in Ukraine as far as I can see. A better 2nd front in the war on Ukraine is hard to imagine. Hits a US ally and gives Russiaโ€™s ally, the GOP, something to shift the focus (and aid) off Ukraine. And it throws them a bone, helping to bury their own house idiocy in the latest news cycles.

  136. 136.

    charon

    @Geminid:

    I have long been under the impression “Arab” is a linguistic, not an ethnic category.ย  I.e., people whose native language is Arabic are Arabs.

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @tobie: Not responding indicates tacit approval.

    Just so that you don’t think I tacitly approve of this, I’ll say bullshit.

  139. 139.

    Bill Arnold

    @tobie:

    Not responding indicates tacit approval.

    Somebody should have responded, I agree. I did not respond because my drafts were too strong.

  140. 140.

    Paul in KY

    @Another Scott: IDF will squash them like bugs, if it comes to it. That’s why, for ‘Likud Israel’ the elimination of Saddam’s Iraq was so wished for/connived after. Saddam had the only Arabic nation capable of taking the fight to Israel in any truly militarily significant manner.

    We did their dirty work for free…

  141. 141.

    Geminid

    @charon: I think these questions of definition are more complex than that, but they are often not very relevant to the issues at hand and thus are not worth arguing about too much.

  142. 142.

    tobie

    @Omnes Omnibus: Thanks for the sucker punch. If someone says, “Death to the Jews,” and no one responds, would that raise an eyebrow for you? That’s what the comment in question said to me.

  144. 144.

    lowtechcyclist

    Julia Davis, who views and reads Russian news and propaganda so we don’t have to:

    Another piece explained that the carnage in Israel is very beneficial for Moscow and Russia’s influence on Iran could be used as leverage. The writer says that the attack by Hamas was so awesome for Moscow, it could be considered a Birthday gift for Putin.

    https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1711517142498103335

    Maybe it’s time for Israel to stop bothsidesing Russia’s genocidal invasion of Ukraine?

  146. 146.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Geminid:ย โ€‹
     

    I think these questions of definition are more complex than that, but they are often not very relevant to the issues at hand and thus are not worth arguing about too much.

    Yeah, I was just trying to poke a quick hole in eversore’s characterization and leave it at that.

  148. 148.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: Israel’s not going to squash Hezbollah like a bug. Hezbollah is a very hard target.

    Supporters of Israel often exaggerate its military prowess, but it’s detractors often do as well.

  149. 149.

    tobie

    @Baud: I do. “No innocent Israelis” mean all are legit targets.

    ETA: in the context of last night, it also meant that all killed or injured in the assault deserved it.

    I consider that a horrifying comment.

  152. 152.

    Baud

    @tobie:

    I’m not going to argue with you about how you read it.ย  I disagree with that comment just like I disagree with people who thought America deserved 9/11. But the rhetoric itself is not unusually harsh for Internet political discourse, and I think it’s a strech to call it advocacy for genocide.

  153. 153.

    Geminid

     

     

    @tobie: I have found it best to hold back on these threads. But I think I am better able to be detached than you.

  154. 154.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @tobie: You have fixated on aย  handful of comments out of hundreds that have been made on the subject of this weekend’s attack.ย  They are outliers from what I can see.ย  Not everyone reads every comment in detail.ย  You have had people tell you that they did not respond because they were concerned that they would say something ban-worthy.ย  Do you really think that this blog is anti-Semitic based on this limited data?ย  Would it make any difference to you if the person who made the comment you most object to was Jewish (IIRC she is)?

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @Paul in KY: Times have changed since 1967.

    That war created the legend of Israeli military invincibility. It’s a good thing the IDF’s commanders know better. Many of its most ardent supporters and its more bitter detractors do not.

    The 1973 October War and Israel’s failed invasion of Lebanon in the 1980’s are more realistic measures of Israel’s military prowess.

  156. 156.

    tobie

    @Omnes Omnibus: I’ve had enough. You win. I could compile a comprehensive list of anti-Israel comments in lieu of pointing to a few examples but I’m tired at this point. Have a good night.

  157. 157.

    FelonyGovt

    My friend’s 21-year old Israeli cousin who was stationed near the Gaza border was killed between Friday and early Saturday morning. I’m quite sure he wasn’t responsible for Israel’s repellent policies, any more than any of us were responsible for Trump’s actions during his reign of error here.

  158. 158.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @tobie: Anti-Israeli government, anti-Israel, or anti-Semitic?ย  Those are, or should be, three different things.

  164. 164.

    Geminid

    @FelonyGovt: The former head of the Israeli peace group Bet’selem(sp?) is missing and thought to be a hostage. She lived on a kibbutz near Gaza and is in her 80s. Its pretty hard to say she deserves this but some people (not here) will say she does.

  165. 165.

    db11

    @tobie:

    I was shocked by the same comments that you were: by the naked hatred they expressed and the total lack of both nuance and compassion. They were especially offensive to me when the reports had just been released of 260 young people at a music rave (for peace!) that were brutally and indiscriminately slaughtered by Hamas fighters.

    I didn’t respond because I mostly lurk (I’m at Balloon Juice pretty much every day, but comment infrequently) and I didn’t want to give them attention and oxygen.

    I have some complex feelings about the situation, as a non-jew โ€” that lived in Ashkelon for a time over 40 years ago and still feels that connection โ€” who has long been distressed by the damage done both to Israel’s larger interests and to Palestinian human rights by too many years of far-right government and their pandering to religious extremists and ultra-nationalist settlers.

    Adam’s post at #69 of Nir Cohen’s twitter thread expresses well my thoughts on the current moral calculus.

    But moral clarity also requires fully acknowledging the barbarity of the Hamas action and grieving the innocents destroyed by it โ€” without equivocation.

  167. 167.

    Geminid

    @Geminid: Correction: Vivian Silver, the Israeli peace activist thoight to be kidnapped by Hamas, is 74. She was a former leader of the group B’Tselem.

    Theย Middle East Eye* has a recent article about her titled “Prominent Israeli peace activist missing after attack.”

    The subtitle reads, “Vivian Silver was a board member of top human rights group B’Tselem and has most recently been leading anti-occupation group Women Wage Peace.”

    According toย The Canadian Jewish Press,ย Silver emigrated from Winnipeg to Israel in 1974 with her husband and two children. Silver’s son Yonaton says he was told his mother has been seen in pictures among other captives but has not been able to confirm this.

    * Middle East Eye is a good source for reporting on this war, I think.

  168. 168.

    Bill Arnold

    @db11:

    But moral clarity requires fully acknowledging the barbarity of the Hamas action and grieving the innocents destroyed by it โ€” without equivocation.

    Yes.
    I also agree that the thread that Adam linked at #69 (Cohen) is a decent guide. In it, he talks, as a Israeli patriot, about what (violence) must be done by Israel, what must not be done by Israel, and also places clear shared blame on religious Zionists and their enablers; as Geminid said in a previous thread, “Netanyahu let political arsonists Smotrich and Ben-Gvir start fires that are now out of control.”

  169. 169.

    db11

    @Bill Arnold:

    In it, he talks, as a Israeli patriot, about what (violence) must be done by Israel, what must not be done by Israel. 

    Exactly this.

    That quote from (I think) the defence minister that included the phrase ‘human animals’ doesn’t give me hope that Bibi’s response will be calibrated in any way, nor executed with humanitarian concern for Palestinian civilians โ€” who will inevitably bear the brunt of the Israeli response.

  170. 170.

    strange visitor (from another planet)

    @Omnes Omnibus: yeah. hi, mr straw-man! you know who else is a fellow red-sea pedestrian? that fucking wanna-be-kapo, stephen miller. you wanna try to argue HE’S not a hate-filled, anti-Semiticalย  fascist?

    please. “cry harder?” she can go fuck herself.

    the brave, heroic arabs didn’t try to get reparations for past iniquities. they didn’t try to hit the knesset, they didn’t focus their fire on IDF bases, their FIRST fucking move once past the perimeter, was to attack, rape, murder and PARADE AROUND WITH THE CORPSES of KIDS.

    yeah. the tough motherfuckers, shooting up aย  bunch of wasted teenagers.

    fuck that shit

    @FelonyGovt: oh hell. i’m so sorry. this shit is just gonna spiral WAY out of hand.

  171. 171.

    Anyway

    @FelonyGovt:

    Damn, how sad. I’m so sorry.

    I had an anxious time Saturday.ย  My Israeli friend’s US-born 13-yr-old daughter was in Israel last week visiting family. She’s safe and was out of range of the rockets but it was nerve wracking following events. Can’t imagine how terrible it is for families caught up in it.

  172. 172.

    YY_Sima Qian

    So, the current Israeli government will respond to Hamas atrocities w/ atrocities of their own, & the bloody cycle continues. Cutting power & water supply to the civilian population is a war crime, but one that Israel has not hesitated from in the past. Then again, the Gaza blockade & settlement/eviction program in the West Bank are ongoing crimes against humanity.

    Reading the comment from members of the Israeli political/security establishment, it seems there is an extraordinary lack of empathy toward Gazans, as a matter of analysis, that helped to blind them to the building threat from Hamas. This is far beyond Bibi & his extremist coalition partners, but across the spectrum. Why would any Gazan feel gratitude toward Israeli for issuing < 20K daily work permits to bring a trickle of money into the Gazan economy, when there is ~ 50% unemployment among the 2M residents, 90% don’t have access to clean water, power is only available for several hours a day? When the IDF gives warning for residents of a building to leave before they drop it, where can they go? Why would any captive be grateful to their captors for loosening the noose ever so slightly? If the shoe was on the other foot, would any of the members of the Israeli security establishment think any differently?

    Hamas may have dictatorial control over the daily lives of the Gazans, but Israel has decisive control over their future, & Israel has given them zero prospect for any future, they feel they have nothing to lose (only to realize that, when the overwhelming Israeli retaliations come, they do have things to lose: their family members & their decrepit dwellings). They look at the more accommodationist/collaborationist Fatah in the West Bank, & see continued oppression by the settlers & the Israeli security services, the continued encroachment of settlements, & the slow motion ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their traditional settlements (all advocated openly by parts of the Israeli governing coalitions past & present), what incentive do they have to overthrow Hamas & establish a more accommodationist/collaborationist government? That leaves aside the question of whether they are capable of overthrowing Hamas in the short term. People who have no future & nothing to lose can carry out unspeakable acts & support other people who advocate unspeakable acts.

    In the current conflagration, & all that has led to it, the Israeli government & Hamas both have agency & culpability, & the Israeli & Gazan peoples also have agency (much more limited at the individual level) & culpability.

    Perhaps the bloodletting this time around will jolt people on both sides to pursue a different path.

  173. 173.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Adam L Silverman:ย 

    One of the reason Israel does not is the nature of their 3 years for males/2 years for females mandatory service (unless youโ€™re ultradevout) followed by a long period of reserve status.

    What Adam said. The long-term active reserve (as opposed to inactive reserve, where people who once served are subject to recall but not periodically called up for refresher training) is the reason that the tactical institutional memory of the IDF is not preserved through an NCO corps. Essentially the entire nation is under arms at extremely short notice (compared to just about any other force, except perhaps Switzerland), and that tactical knowledge is supposed to be preserved in the whole.

    Couldn’t say whether NCO corps works better, but what the IDF have is a hell of a lot better suited to purpose than what the Russians have.

  175. 175.

    wjca

    @Adam L Silverman: One of the reason Israel does not is the nature of their 3 years for males/2 years for females mandatory service (unless youโ€™re ultradevout) followed by a long period of reserve status. [Emphasis added]

    The “ultradevout” have a great gig.ย  Lots of political cloutย  used to get Israel into fights.ย  Plus no need to take the risks that would come with actually doing the resulting fighting themselves.

  177. 177.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Baud:ย 

    Weโ€™re used to right wing vs. left wing conflicts in the US. Middle East conflicts are all right wing vs. right wing conflicts. Many American liberals tend to struggle with that, especially when they try to fit it within right vs. left paradigms.

    Can I just say, could we please just ditch the Marxist Left-versus-Right framing of every political conflict ever? It doesn’t actually describe any relevant political dynamic any more. If we want a single-axis along which to plot political tendencies, then perhaps “Urban-vs-Rural” would be more generally globally applicable than Marx’s social class struggles. In the Middle East, a religious-tribal multi-chotomy would be helpful (as it would in the US for that matter).

    Just the fact that you are describing a conflict as “right-wing vs. right-wing” should alert you to the fact that something has gone wrong with your framework.

  180. 180.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dimmsdale: Thank you for the kind words. You are most welcome.

    If we’re going to do two wars at a time, could we maybe pick something nice and low key. Like the US Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands challenge each other to a shuffle board competition. Winner gets control of both.
  181. 181.

    Adam L Silverman

    If you all don’t knock it off I’m going to have to start a third set of update posts entitled “War in the Comments Day # Update…”

  182. 182.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Just looking at the operational aspects of the Hamas assault, it is an incredible feat for a regular military, let alone a semi-regular proto-state actor. There were joint sea-land-air components, there were combined arms. The hang glider insertions were more than for distraction & TikTok selfies, but critical contributors to breaching the border defenses. They suppressed Israeli C4ISR. They prepared the battlefield (expansively defined) with a years long Maskirovka campaign. I read these accounts & they feel like a successful IDF operation. I still can’t quite wrap my head around the role reversal. Even w/ the depleted garrisons down south, what happened to all of the sophisticated Israeli surveillance along the border wall & the highly capable reconnaissance & SIGINT into the Gaza Strip?! How was there no immediate warning before Hamas had already breach the border wall?

    If Hamas (& their PIJ partners) could have refrained from massacring civilians & brutalizing their captives, they would have gained immeasurable respect & credibility not just in the region, but around the world. Hamas & the PIJ could have concentrated almost all of their forces against IDF & police outposts & bases, instead of scattering them to terrorize dozens of civilian settlements. IDF soldiers & police officers as POWs are just as valuable, if not more so, than civilian hostages. But then, they would not be Hamas or the PIJ.

  184. 184.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @YY_Sima Qian: Just to be clear, even the most conscientious Israeli response will result in a lot of civilian casualties in Gaza. It is far too densely populated, it is standard Hamas & PIJ practice to hide among civilians & in civilian infrastructure, & maximizing civilian casualties is part of their strategy to blunt the effectiveness of any Israeli response. I don’t necessarily criticize Israel for the inevitable collateral damage. However, when the Israeli DM utters the words he did, & we have regularly seen such rhetoric from members of the Israeli governments or security services during past conflagrations (even when centrist governments have been in charge), then it is clear that Israel does not plan to act conscientiously in retaliation, proven by past Israeli actions.

  185. 185.

    YY_Sima Qian

    I have seen a Twitter post that states “Israel should do a Xinjiang in Gaza”, & it gets reposted w/o irony.

    Well, there are ironies on multiple levels:

    1. If one believes that the CPC regime is conducting a physical genocide of the Uyghurs (of which there is no evidence), then such “supporter” of Israel is advocating a physical genocide of a neighboring people, carried out by descendants of survivors of a genocide in the not so distant past
    2. If one believes that the CPC regime is guilty of crimes against humanity in Xinjiang (of which there is substantial & strong circumstantial evidence, even judged by the regime’s own propaganda), then such “supporter” of Israel is encouraging a self-described liberal democracy to enthusiastically carry out crimes against humanity (though Israel has been committing crimes against humanity in Gaza & the West Bank for decades)
    3. If one looks at the actual instrumentalist policies of the CPC regime in Xinjiang (& likely not what was on the Twitter poster’s mind), as cynical/amoral/immoral/brutal as they are, as devoid of empathy/humanitarianism as they are toward the members of ethnic minorities that these policies target, Israel might actually have a better chance at a more durable equilibrium: on the one hand, the CPC regime cracks down on any suspected signs of separatism/Salafism/militancy w/o mercy & little constraint, ruthlessly suppresses any development of high minority culture, extra-legally detained more than a million people for weeks to months in ’16 – ’19 & sentenced tens of thousands to very long prison terms (including many among the Uyghur intellectual elite), birth limits strictly enforced (whereas they previously were largely unenforced for Uyghurs & other Turkic minorities, especially in the countryside), & keeps the minority populations under extremely intrusive surveillance; on the other hand, the CPC regime couples the iron fist w/ massive investment into infrastructure, public health & poverty alleviation, to promote Xinjiang’s trade w/ rest of China & other parts of the Silk Road Economic Belt, to promote economic growth & opportunities for material advancement, minorities enjoy quotas in government bureaucracy & state owned enterprises (at least those deemed non-threats), lower threshold scores for the all important college entrance exams, & while Han Chinese (& Hui Muslims) disproportionally benefit from industrial & infrastructure investment & resource extraction, Uyghurs & other ethnic minorities do disproportionally benefit from the boom in tourism & agricultural sectors (result of the investment in public infrastructure & poverty alleviation)

    So, the CPC regime offers Uyghurs a choice for their futures, at the individual level: stay away from separatism/Salafism/militancy & seize the opportunities for advancement in the daily material life, or become target for the overwhelming state machinery for oppression; resign to slow multigenerational assimilation into the larger Chinese identity (which in theory comprises all of China’s 56 ethnic groups, but in reality is & will be dominated by features associated w/ the Han identity) & accept curtailed expressions of one’s unique ethnic identity & its commoditization for the tourism industry & reap the material benefits, or become target for the overwhelming state machinery for oppression. There may well still be a reckoning down the line to these policies, but at least it is more sustainable than Israeli policy in Gaza & the West Bank.

    As I said, the CPC policies are cynical/amoral/immoral/inhumane, but at least there is a theory for success, as defined by the CPC. Right now, & has been for a decade & a half, Israeli policies toward the Palestinians have not had a theory for success under any terms. IMHO, Israel is currently on a dead end path, & that dead end is no longer in the far off distant future, but coming into view.

  186. 186.

    YY_Sima Qian

    WRT the EU decision to halt all aid to “the Palestinians”, is this just to Gaza Strip or does it include the West Bank. If the latter, how is such a decision sensible or constructive?

  187. 187.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I honestly don’t know how Adam Silverman does it. This long and detailed report on the state of affairs in the Israel Palestinian War of )ct 2023 so far surpasses anything I have seen in the mainstream media. He should be praised for his willingness to keep us Jackals informed so in depth and thoroughly.

  188. 188.

    Sasha

    โ€œYouโ€™re dealing with a radical, ideological organization. Do you really think you can buy their ideology out? Bend it? This is a total misunderstanding, and probably included wishful thinking.

    โ€œWhile we believed that a radical body that takes power gradually becomes moderate, they were gaining strength and preparing the next stage of their war.โ€

    …

    โ€œThe Israeli conception was that Hamas doesnโ€™t want an escalation,โ€ Milshtein said.

    โ€œThe writing was on the wall. They just didnโ€™t want to believe it was true.โ€

    This, curiously, also applies to MAGA. They aren’t ever going to be mollified.

  190. 190.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Paul in KY: There is no taking the fanaticism & brutality out of the Hamas & the PIJ. Had they targeted IDF, police & government facilities, there may be much more space & oxygen for voices w/in Israel to seek lasting peace, as opposed to being dominated by fear & thirst for vengeance. However, Hamas is not interested in peace w/ Israel or peaceful coexistence, it is not even interested in the material well being of the Gazans.

    The existential challenge for Israel (as a democratic Jewish state) is not whether Hamas can be mollified (it cannot be) or destroyed (it can be at enormous cost), but what comes after Hamas is deeply degraded or destroyed (w/ an enormous toll to the IDF & Gazan & Israeli civilians). Will Israel ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip of Palestinians & seize the territory for ultraorthodox settlers? Will Israel drive the Palestinians to the sea? Will Israel drive the Palestinians into the Sinai, likely destabilizing Egypt & collapse the Egypt-Israeli dรฉtente? Will Israel reoccupy Gaza, & again suffer the daily hemorrhaging that caused it to unilaterally withdraw in the 1st place? Will it acquiesce/facilitate another Palestinian faction (not sure the Gazans will accept the Fatah back) to emerge & overtake Hamasโ€™ administrative role, while continuing the blockade of the territory as before, or lift the blockade but continue to dominate & brutalize the Palestinian population as they have in the West Bank? All so that this experience can be repeated a decade down the line?

    This is before we get to the possibility of the conflict expanding into a regional war as the IDF tries to dismantle Hamas & the PIJ, causing massive civilian casualties & dislocation in the process. Would the PA lose control in the WB & the Palestinians there explode into insurrection in the form of the 3rd Intifada? Would the Hezbollah open a 2nd front in the north to alleviate the pressure on Hamas? Would Iran get more actively involved? Would the Sunni monarchies that have sought rapprochement w/ Israel really shed a tear if the Jews, the Persians & the Muslim Brotherhood destroy each other? How would Israel retain the sympathy of even much of the West as collateral damage rise exponentially?

    As one of the former Israeli officials referenced by Adam in yesterdayโ€™s post, Israel is by far the strongest party in the conflict & the one holding most of the cards, so Israel has a lot of agency in shaping the final outcome, but for decades there has been a total lack of strategic & long term vision as to attaining lasting security for Israel & its population. Instead, the Israeli establishment, across the spectrum, deluded themselves into thinking the Palestinian issue can be โ€œmanagedโ€ indefinitely. Clearly many in Israel are fully aware of the dangers & have indeed thought deeply about how to achieve lasting peace w/ the Palestinians, but in terms of policy making there has not been much oxygen for anything other than treading water, whether the government has been centrist or right wing.

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