apple.news/AOK02GGOQQXyu3Zgsm7zWxQ
-
www.nytimes.com/2023/11/08/world/middleeast/hamas-israel-gaza-war.html
Hamas leaders in Gaza were flooded with images of Israeli settlers attacking Palestinians in the West Bank, Jews openly praying at a contested site customarily reserved for Muslims, and the Israeli police storming the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, a touchstone for Palestinian claims to the holy city. The prospect of Israel’s normalizing ties with Saudi Arabia, long a deep-pocketed patron of the Palestinian cause, appeared closer than ever.
Mr. Sinwar took the helm of Hamas in Gaza in 2017. A tough, unsmiling man with closely cropped white hair and a trim beard, he hailed from the first generation of Hamas, an armed group founded during the first Palestinian intifada, or uprising, in the late 1980s and ultimately classified as a terrorist organization by the United States and many other nations.
In 2011, Mr. Sinwar was released in a prisoner swap that Hamas took as a signature lesson: Israel was willing to pay a high price for its captives.
Many in Israel’s security establishment also came to believe that its complex border defenses to shoot down rockets and prevent infiltrations from Gaza were enough to keep Hamas contained.
-
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/11/05/netanyahu-suspends-israel-minister-nuke-gaza/
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, has indefinitely suspended a far-Right minister from the cabinet after he raised the option of “nuking” Gaza.
The country’s heritage minister Amichai Eliyahu, a member of the far-Right Otzma Yehudit party, told a local radio station that dropping a nuclear bomb on the Gaza Strip “is one of the possibilities” the government is considering.
He added that those who raise the Palestinian or Hamas flag “shouldn’t continue living on the face of the earth”, and that “there is no such thing as uninvolved civilians in Gaza”.
“Amichai Eliyahu’s words are detached from reality,” said the Mr Netanyahu’s office in an initial statement on social media on Sunday morning
The Israeli prime minister then added that Mr Eliyahu would be suspended from cabinet meetings indefinitely, although how meaningful that is while a separate war cabinet is running the country is unclear.
-
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-al-franken-podcast/id1462195742
An essential for understanding israel
-
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/11/04/ukraine-has-blown-its-best-chance-to-defeat-putin/
the hard truth is that the counter offensive could have succeeded if the US and European countries had stepped up to the plate. They failed to do so, providing only enough military aid to keep Ukraine fighting but nowhere near enough to secure victory against such a powerful enemy. Every step has been marked by procrastination and heel-dragging reluctance to give Ukraine the tools it needed to finish the job.
-
This war is unlike any other—and must begin at home.
— Read on www.foreignaffairs.com/israel/end-israels-gaza-illusionsFirst, it is crucial to understand that this is not just another round of conflict in Gaza. To be successful, the country must countenance a war of exceptional scope and difficulty that could last for many months.
The second insight is that the horrific massacre of at least 1,200 Israelis by Hamasdeath squads marked a catastrophic collapse of Israel’s existing security strategy. The failure of Israeli intelligence and security forces and of their overseers in the government cannot be overstated
In this regard, Israel’s political and security leadership has much to answer for. Although the full details have yet to be uncovered, stark findings have already come to light. Potential warning signs were ignored, dismissed, or downplayed, and misguided security priorities may have made the attack more deadly. In addition to a comprehensive postwar inquiry about what went wrong, the Israeli public will demand a full accounting from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about his own role in the debacle.
Despite Hamas’s growing capabilities, these failures convinced Israel that its defense strategy was working: Hamas was unable to effectively strike Israel’s population; and it faced significant retribution for attempting such strikes and could be rewarded with material support for keeping calm. Israeli officials also concluded that trying to destroy Hamas’s forces outright would be too costly and might create dangerous new problems. That assumption was widely shared by Western officials: toppling Hamas, they feared, would result in a power vacuum that Israel would have to fill by directly ruling Gaza—a prospect that Israel has long shunned.
Thus, in the weeks before the October massacre, there were again large gatherings of people near the border fence. Six Gazans died when an explosive device blew up on September 13 in what was very likely part of the preparations for the attack. Also in the weeks before the October 7, tractors were brought to the border area under the pretext of agricultural work and to prepare for the border protests. Later, these tractors would be used to tear down the fence and open the way for Hamas’s death squads
Almost instantly, the concepts, policies, and beliefs that had for so long governed Israeli security doctrine came crashing down. Among them were the assumptions that the Palestinian conflict could be contained, that Hamas had put its own governance and the economic well-being of the Gaza Strip ahead of its jihadi ideology and its genocidal plans for Israel, and that simply having a far stronger military than Hamas’s was sufficient. It had become almost axiomatic that simply employing advanced ground and air defense technologies, such as the border fence and Iron Dome, with occasional recourse to airstrikes from the outside, could prevent major attacks, allowing Israelis to contain Hamas with moderate costs and relatively limited manpower.
-
Friday 3 November 2023
- Blinken (headed to Israel) is expected to urge “humanitarian pauses” in Hamas war.
- The humanitarian situation in Gaza increasingly deteriorates.
- Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, will give a speech which is hoped to give indications about whether Hezbollah intends to escalate the war. Reports are that the speech (now having occurred) represented Hezbollah “blinking.”
- Hezbollah is committed to the destruction of Israel.
- Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, championed the October 7 attacks on Israeli civilians. He promised future assaults with the goal of annihilating Israel. “…there will be a second, a third, a fourth” he told a Lebanese television channel aired on October 24, 2023 and was later put online.
- Yesterday it seemed the Israeli government was warning its citizens that the invasion of the Gaza Strip would proceed more slowly than initially indicated.
- More foreigners were allowed to evacuate from Gaza to Egypt. Included in the number were aid workers and critically wounded patients.
- There are surging attacks in the West Bank by Israeli forces and settlers on Palestinians.
- In her book, “How Terrorism Ends,” Audrey Kurth Cronin examined 460 terrorist groups to see what caused their collapse. Rarely did pure repression work and requires an “unthinkable level of sustained and indiscriminate violence.” Democracies are not particularly good at this pure repression. There must be a “political outreach” to demonstrate to the Palestinians that Israel is a reliable partner and that there is a peaceful way to a better life. (Note: Really?) Hamas is antisemitic and dedicated to wiping Israel off the map.
- Regime change in Gaza is unlikely to be successful. While many Palestinians have problems with Hamas, few view Israel as anything but pure evil.
- Hamas was trying to provoke an “overreaction.”
Voices
- “Two things are true: Israel must do something, and what it’s doing now is indefensible.” Zack Beauchamp, Correspondent Vox.
- “We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.” Defense Minister Yoav Gaillant.
- “If you’re going to become the monster you fight, what’s the point of fighting the monster?” Bradley Strawser, former US Air Force captain.
ISRAEL
- Daniel Kurtzer, Former US Ambassador to Israel and Egypt. CNN. There are concerns that the war will spill over to other countries. Jordan has withdrawn an ambassador from Israel. Diplomatic time is running out for Israel. Article in Foreign Relations. Little attention being paid to what happens after the attack. The reconstruction of Gaza, will get us back to the status quo, nothing more. Even if Israel deals Hamas a severe blow, it does no solve the problem. West Bank, ministers punishing the PA by withholding funds,
- Leader of Hezbollah to speak for first time since attack. (Note: The speech was ambiguous but praised the Gaza attack.
- Slotkin, MSNBC, is cautioning an “end-game” don’t create more terrorists.
- There is beginning to be a discussion of the survivability of the Netanyahu government.
“What Israel Should Do Now.”
https://www.vox.com/2023/10/20/23919946/israel-hamas-war-gaza-palestine-ground-invasion-strategy
- Under Netanyahu, the repeated bombing of Gaza as a plan (“mowing the grass), basically left the foundations of Hamas rule in place, even at times propping them up to “maintain the status quo of a divided Palestinian leadership that closed off the possibility of a two-state solution.
- There was, then, a long standing “false security” on the Israel-Gaza border. Military force alone will not provide security.
- Israel must change its approach to the West Bank. The Palestinian Authority (PA) and the moderate Fatah party is “sclerotic, corrupt, and authoritarian.”
- Increasingly the two are seen as quisling governments, leading to calls for Mahmoud Abbas to resign.
- Under Netanyahu, Israeli settlements have expanded and the violence of settlers increased.
- Current Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich maintains the notion that Israel can eliminate Palestinian resistance by destroying the hope for a state. In a 2017 paper, he wrote: “Terrorism derives from hope – a hope to weaken us.”
- The effect runs in the other direction. The more Israel represses Palestinians, the weaker its moderate leadership becomes. Smotrich’s approach has failed morally and also strategically. “Smotrich’s approach has not only failed morally, but it has failed strategically: the single worst terrorist attack in Israeli history happened under his watch, as he used his powers to implement his desired policy in the West Bank.”
- “To actually stop terrorism, Israel needs to reverse moves toward de facto annexation of the West Bank. It needs to cease settlement expansion, take steps to improve the West Bank economy, crack down on settler violence, and scale back the network of checkpoints that currently make life extremely difficult for ordinary West Bank citizens.”
- “After the Second Intifada and Hamas takeover of Gaza in the 2000s discredited the peace camp, the Israeli polity seemed to be shifting ever-rightward. Political scientists found that terrorist attacks specifically played a major role in increasing support for right-wing parties.”
- And even though you would think the October terrorist attack would have moved public opinion rightward, the reverse has happened. Polls demonstrate that elections now would see Netanyahu’s Likud party losing 40 percent of its seats in parliament and the governing majority. People see that the government fore either “great” or “very great” responsibility for the attack.
- A centrist government would be far more likely to unwind the right-wing policies that got us where we are.
- “There is, in short, a chance that the right’s utter failure to provide for Israeli security creates an opening for a new political approach: one premised not on repressing the Palestinians through sheer might, but by fighting terrorism and building up a peaceful Palestinian alternative at the same time.”
- “…ordinary Israelis, thankfully, do not appear to be acting like Americans did after 9/11: they have shown themselves remarkably willing to criticize their own government’s approach and blame it for allowing the catastrophic Hamas violence to happen. They should hold on to this instinct: followed to its logical conclusion, it might actually lead to a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
-
www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/03/hezbollah-leader-threatens-escalation-in-fighting-with-israel
Nasrallah made clear that Hezbollah’s intention was to tie down Israeli troops that could otherwise be deployed in Gaza, warning that further escalation in the north was a “realistic possibility”.
Nasrallah’s speech had been anticipated throughout the region as a sign of whether the Israel-Hamas conflict could spiral into a regional war, after daily exchanges across Israel’s northern border between Israel and Hezbollah and other factions in southern Lebanon.
Law, Power, and Justice 