Join me in trying to make sense of a complicated world.
Senator Robert Menendez must resign after allegedly receiving gifts for using his influence to benefit the Egyptian government.
— Read on www.citizensforethics.org/legal-action/letters/crew-over-25-other-organizations-call-on-senator-menendez-to-resign/
Excerpts
Tuesday 31 October 2023
Morning News Notes
Netanyahu has still not taken the blame for the breach in security that led to the Hamas attack. He maintains this position after reporting in the New York Times that Netanyahu and his administration were repeatedly warned that something important was brewing in the region and that the actions of the Netanyahu government were making Israel more vulnerable.
Netanuahu seems determined not to acknowledge his responsibility even though there’s a reason it’s called the “Netanyahu administration. He is making, and is ultimately responsible for, the decisions.
After refusing publicly in a press conference to take responsibility for the Hamas attack, Netanyahu then felt compelled (at 1 AM) not only to tweet about the situation, but to blame everybody else.
He is receiving praise in some quarters for quickly taking down the post and apologizing, but from what I am reading, he apologized for posting the tweet, not for telling a lie. According to Netanyahu’s statement, the post was inopportune. Well, according to the evidence and according to the fact that he was in charge, it was a lie. He never apologized for lying to the Israeli people.
(Note: How the f..k George Bush was allowed to make himself a hero after 9/11 instead of a pariah as Netanyahu should be, and I suspect is, in Isael, I don’t know. Well, I do know. PR. Teams and teams of “communications” people just like MSNBC Host, Nicolle Wallace, used to be. They turned what was a massive security failure (which by the way did involve warnings) into a major PR victory. Remember Bush swaggering around on the fighter carrier wearing what looked for all the world like a codpiece and announcing, “Mission Accomplished?”) (Note: George Bush has never apologized for lying to the American people about the invasion of Iraq.)
My partner believes that Netanyahu not only knew, or highly suspected, but wanted the attack to happen. He may have been duped about the scale of the attack, but it certainly fits in well with the goals of the right-wing people in his administration (as did 9/11 with the goals of the right-wing Bush administration).
Gaza
People in Gaza are not being allowed to leave the 25 by 7 mile strip. This is thought to include some 600 Americans (although I hate quoting the Nationality of hostages, or victims).
Violence (The President’s Daily Brief with Mike Baker: Podcast)
Dagastan people roaming an airport searching for Jews coming off a plane from Israel. This is a Muslim-dominated region of Russia. There were people even on the runway. They were targeting Jewish individuals. Banners “We are against Jewish refugees” and “There is no place for child killers in Dagastan” were paraded outside the airport.
Putin is claiming that Western spy agencies and Ukraine were responsible for the riot in Dagastan.
One of the best things I’ve read this morning is “I Feel a Human Deterioration.” An interview in the NYT with Etgar Keret.
www.nytimes.com/2023/10/29/world/middleeast/israel-intelligence-hamas-attack.html
Excerpts
The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained.
Despite Israel’s sophisticated technological prowess in espionage, Hamas gunmen had undergone extensive training for the assault, virtually undetected for at least a year. The fighters, who were divided into different units with specific goals, had meticulous information on Israel’s military bases and the layout of kibbutzim.
The country’s once invincible sense of security was shattered.
Israeli security officials spent months trying to warn Mr. Netanyahu that the political turmoil caused by his domestic policies was weakening the country’s security and emboldening Israel’s enemies. The prime minister continued to push those policies. On one day in July he even refused to meet a senior general who came to deliver a threat warning based on classified intelligence, according to Israeli officials.
Overall, arrogance among Israeli political and security officials convinced them that the country’s military and technological superiority to Hamas would keep the terrorist group in check.
“They were able to trick our collection, our analysis, our conclusions and our strategic understanding,” Eyal Hulata, Israel’s national security adviser from 2021 until early this year, said during a discussion last week in Washington sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a think tank.
“I don’t think there was anyone who was involved with affairs with Gaza that shouldn’t ask themselves how and where they were also part of this massive failure,” he added.
Many senior officials have accepted responsibility, but Mr. Netanyahu has not. At 1 a.m. Sunday in Israel, after his office was asked for comment on this article, he posted a message on X, formerly Twitter, that repeated remarks he made to The New York Times and blamed the military and intelligence services for failing to provide him with any warning on Hamas.
“Under no circumstances and at no stage was Prime Minister Netanyahu warned of war intentions on the part of Hamas,” the post read in Hebrew. “On the contrary, the assessment of the entire security echelon, including the head of military intelligence and the head of Shin Bet, was that Hamas was deterred and was seeking an arrangement.”
In the resulting furor, Benny Gantz, a member of his war cabinet, publicly rebuked Mr. Netanyahu, saying that “leadership means displaying responsibility,” and urged the prime minister to retract the post. It was later deleted, and Mr. Netanyahu apologized in a new one.
apple.news/Ao53JMcxnS4up8OTTTZ5JmA
A few hours earlier, facing mounting criticism for the Hamas attacks that killed 1,400 Israelis, he publicly blamed the security failures on Israel’s defense and intelligence services. He hadn’t been warned of Hamas’s intention to start a war, he wrote in a tweet on X, saying that defense and intelligence officials had “assessed that Hamas was deterred.”
Soon after, he deleted the tweet and apologized.
Over 35 years in politics, he has cultivated an image as a security hawk tough on Palestinian violence and ready to face down the threat of a nuclear Iran. That image shattered Oct. 7
Unlike many wartime leaders, Netanyahu is struggling to rally the public to his side. Israelis have blamed him in eulogies for the dead; his ministers have been shouted out of hospitals and pictures have been published of red paint smeared on the headquarters of his Likud party to look like blood.
One senior Likud official said Netanyahu’s fate depends on how the war with Hamas plays out, but he is unlikely to survive as leader of the party, and thus as prime minister.
It is “the end of the game for him,” the official said. “You would find very few people who would say differently.”
Opinion | President Vladimir Putin last visited Ukraine in 2013. Going into his full-scale war on Russia’s neighbor, Russian propagandists’ understanding of the country appeared stuck in that same year.
— Read on www.themoscowtimes.com/
www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/23/ukraine-shoots-down-russian-shahed-drones-odesa-kherson/
Moscow is deploying additional troops to the eastern Avdiivka front after a failed offensive in the region last week that resulted in heavy losses, according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).
The reinforcements are set to arrive after Russian soldiers have become bogged down there in recent weeks, the ISW reported, citing Russian military bloggers.
Moscow’s troops are facing “ongoing challenges with frontal mechanized assaults”, the think-tank said.
Ukrainian sources also report that Russia is deploying additional units to Avdiivka to bolster its offensive there, according to the ISW.
Senior Ukrainian military officials warned last week that Kyiv was facing a new Russian onslaught in the area, which sits within the partially-occupied Donetsk region.
Avdiivka lies just nine miles from the Moscow-held city of Donetsk, the capital of the region of the same name that Russia said it was annexing last September.
