RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20048/hamas-israel-what-next

They [the Israelis] ignored one of the advice of the Florentine clerk that “Don’t wound a deadly enemy and let him live to recover. Either turn him into a friend or kill him!”

Israeli leaders tried to apply to Hamas the strategy they had used against hostile Arab neighbors since 1948: “Taking them to the dentist every 10 years to defang them.”

The error the Israelis made was not to see the difference between classical state structures that have to run a country and respond to the minimum needs of their society and a non-state actor that has little concern about the people under its rule.

Hamas has been in a position to totally ignore the needs of people living in the enclave. Essential needs as food, education and health care are covered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), over 100 NGOs from some 30 countries and frequent donations from countries wishing to show solidarity with Palestinians. In some cases foreign, donors even pay the salaries of the personnel in the local administration.

Thanks to “gifts” from “certain friendly powers”, Hamas and its junior partner, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, even don’t have to buy their arms.

Hamas, as its charter clearly states, is not in the business of nation-building: what it seeks is the elimination of Israel, something that Israelis are unlikely to offer.

The threat of executing hostages, that include citizens of several countries other than Israel, could sap much of the sympathy that there is for the Palestinian “cause” especially in the West.

The current showdown also shows the inability or unwillingness of the Biden administration to discard then President Barack Obama’s disastrous Middle East policy of cold-shouldering friends in the hope of getting warmth from foes.

https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/10/after-the-hamas-deluge/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

On 7 October Hamas jihadis launched Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge, entering Israel to kill over 1,000 people, and take more than a hundred captives, many of them women and children, as well as an unknown number of male IDF soldiers.

In scenes reminiscent of Isis atrocities, one video shows a room full of young Jewish women being held captive. Another displays the semi-naked body of a young woman – a German citizen, identified from her tattoos by her relatives – being paraded through the streets of Gaza, and spat upon by passers-by, to cries of ‘Allahu Akbar’. Another video shows a jihadi hacking a man’s head off using a hoe. Yet another video shows a young Jewish boy, around five years old, who had been taken captive to Gaza, being tormented by Muslim children. Israeli soldiers have reported horrific scenes in the villages where the attacks took place; young families slaughtered, babies beheaded and mutilated corpses.

Hamas has called on Muslims all over the world to come out in support, and in the light of all this horror, it is disturbing just how many voices have been raised in support of the 7 October attacks, including in Australia.

Support can take many forms, ranging from direct praise, through to indirect assertions of Palestinians’ right to ‘resistance’, and objections that too much is being made of Jewish victimhood.

Al-Azhar University in Cairo is considered the premier Sunni center of learning in the world. Its head, Sheikh Al-Tayyeb, was quick to issue a statement to celebrate the attacks: ‘The honorable Al-Azhar salutes with utmost pride the resistance efforts of the Palestinian people.’

At a Muslim street rally held in western Sydney on Sunday night after the attacks, Imam Ibrahim Dadoun, a prominent Australian-born preacher affiliated with the United Muslims of Australia, was shouting with joy, his phrases punctuated by roars of ‘Allahu Akbar’ from the enthusiastic crowd around him: ‘I’m smiling and I’m happy. I’m elated. It’s a day of courage. It’s a day of happiness. It’s a day of pride. It’s a day of victory! This is the day we’ve been waiting for!’

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-israel-will-attack/

There is an old saying, that professional militaries tend to fight the last war.

But Israel has learned its lesson, in particular, the lessons of the failed 2006 war against Hezbollah. This time there will be no pinprick attacks. Israeli will go big and hard and heavy. This will be Fallujah on steroids.

I reported on the 2006 war along the border zone for Newsmax and NBC News. After nearly two weeks of air strikes in response to thousands of Hezbollah rockets smashing into Israeli towns and villages, then Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ordered elite IDF units to launch small probing cross-border strikes, in the hope of disrupting Hezbollah supply lines.

One of those units was Battalion 51 of the famed Golani brigade, which was ordered to take Bint Jbeil, a Hezbollah stronghold and the birthplace of fabled Hezbollah terror mastermind, Imad Fayez Mugniyeh.

The operation had been a total michal, or fawda, Israeli terms which have many unprintable equivalents in U.S. military slang. This is how I described the survivors in an forthcoming book, The Iran House:

The Golani troops carried enough food, water and ammo for a forty-eight-hour mission – and wound up staying five and a half days.

They humped fifteen kilometers in the dead of night to the outskirts of the village, then in the pre-dawn hours received the order to move into the town itself. And that’s where everything fell apart. They entered a narrow alleyway between houses when Hezbollah fighters appeared on all sides and opened fire. Eight soldiers were killed in less than a minute, and twenty-two more were wounded. Even more would have died, one of the survivors told me, if the deputy commander of their unit, Major Ro’i Klein, hadn’t spotted a grenade rolling toward them and jumped on it.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/10/13/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-israeli-occupation-that-is-everything-the-left-wont-tell-you-n1734997

” The idea that Israel is occupying Palestinian land was furthered in the 1990s by the Oslo Accords, to which Israel unwisely acceded, and in which it agreed to work toward the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, which would only become a new base for more jihad attacks against a diminished Jewish state. But a Palestinian state, if it is ever created, would be the first-ever such entity in the history of the world. There is actually no Israeli occupation at all. The Squad, and the left in general, is either ignorant or malicious. Or, of course, both.”

There would be peace in the Middle East if Israel just ended its occupation, right?

That’s what the Squad wants you to think, anyway. The statements of the three primary members of this winsome leftist House coalition on the Hamas massacres in Israel had the distinct odor of canned talking points. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Make Mine A Double) issued a statement that said, “I condemn Hamas’ attack in the strongest possible terms.” That was a good start, but she then turned on a dime to blame it all on Israel: “No child and family should ever endure this kind of violence and fear, and this violence will not solve the ongoing oppression and occupation in the region.” Ongoing oppression and occupation, see? If Israel would just ease up on the poor Palestinians, Hamas jihadis would all open restaurants and shops, and peace would dawn upon the region.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-israeli-victory-would-look-like-hamas-war-b5a2ee80?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

“Mr. Falk says, “I truly hope, and I actually expect, that the civilized world will support us not only when we’re the victims, but also when we’re the victors here.” Victory might also save the prospects for a peace agreement with Saudi Arabia. “In this neighborhood, the strong survive,” Mr. Falk says. “The main reason that prior peace agreements were reached was because we’re strong.”

“I’m driving south to the Gaza corridor, the place Hamas invaded on Saturday,” Yonah Jeremy Bob says in our first phone conversation. “But it’s a straight drive, so let’s talk.” Mr. Bob is an expert on the Israeli shadow war with Iran, the subject of his new book, “Target Tehran,” and he covers the Israeli intelligence agencies and military for the Jerusalem Post. He’s busy tracking down answers to the questions every Israeli wants answered: How could this have happened? What’s the plan? Who will pay?

https://www.nysun.com/article/americas-lloyd-austin-who-stared-evil-in-the-eye-while-commanding-gis-against-isis-emerges-as-a-powerful-ally-

When, even as Israeli special forces are entering Gaza in preparation for a massive invasion,  a top official says that Hamas is worse than ISIS, what jumps out is the identity of the speaker: In this case it’s the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, who has devised much of America’s war on ISIS, and he knows the pitfalls of battling terrorism. 

“In countering ISIS, I felt that we were staring evil in the eye. What we are seeing with Hamas is taking that evil to another level,” Mr. Austin said Friday during a Tel Aviv press conference alongside his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.

The retired four-star general’s clarity could go a long way toward muzzling the growing international criticism of Israel, which on Thursday urged northern Gaza civilians to evacuate and move farther south. On the Strip’s roads, long lines of cars were seen traveling away from Gaza City, where Israel is expected to concentrate its complex operation to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities.

On Friday afternoon, special IDF units entered northern Gaza as the air force  constantly pummeled buildings at Shujaiyeh, Gaza City’s home to top Hamas leaders. The special forces reportedly discovered several bodies of abducted Israelis. 

Self-described international human rights bodies are complaining that 1.1 million Gazans living in the city and north of it have no place to go. Some accuse Israel of committing a war crime. The United Nations “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” its spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said. 

“All who can influence Israel must push for this madness to stop and the order to evacuate reversed,” a former UN official and current leader of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, wrote on X. Even as similar organizations have, at best, weakly condemned the Hamas atrocities that launched the war, they are now urging America to muzzle Israel.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-late-great-hamas-finally-got-its-wish/

Ever since Hamas was “elected” to run Gaza and then followed the usual “one election/one time” Middle East formula, it has bragged nonstop that its agenda is to erase Israel off the face of the earth (cf. the wall map in the office of our Rep. Rashida Tlaib).

Its unabashed nihilist boasts resonated throughout the Palestinian “movement.” Its fiery threats delighted the Arab street.

Indeed, Hamas was soon celebrated as the most “authentic” of the radical Palestinian terrorist movements.

Which cadre of thugs could top its end-of-days rhetoric, its assured and steady supply of money and weapons from Iran, its satanic eagerness to mutilate and dismember, and the sanctuary and financial wherewithal offered to it by our “ally” Qatar?

None.

Since Hamas was viewed as the most “volatile” and creepy of the Palestinian factions, and the most useful to Iran, the Obama and Biden administrations appeased the murderers. Was it not part of their hare-brained grand strategy of empowering theocratic Iran and its Syrian, Hezbollah and Hamas hirelings?

Their campaign (remember the “they literally know nothing” media and the Obama “echo chamber” created by a boastful Ben Rhodes?) was to forge these disparate Islamists into a crescent of resistance to Israel and any “moderate” Arab regime (recall the Obama-Biden transitory hatred of the Gulf sheikdoms).

The result would be “creative tension”—as well as payback for the Israeli election of Netanyahu.

Through this formula, Obama believed he could always pressure Israel to grant concessions to radical Palestinians thanks to the looming threat of an ever-menacing (and soon-to-be nuclear) Iran with help from Obama’s other friends—the then-Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and Obama’s pal the neo-Ottomanist and antisemite Erdogan of Turkey, Obama’s self-described personal liaison to the Islamic world.

Yes, this was sheer madness—if perhaps characteristic of Obama’s well-known orneriness.

Perhaps someday soon, a few disinterested historians might even record that the current nightmare in Israel is the logical end result of what Barack Obama, John Kerry (remember his Trump-era Paris reconnaissance with the Iranians?), Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Malley, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and a host of other incompetent but otherwise haughty and dangerous people once conjured up.