A grave mistake

[EA01]

No doubt a harsh etaliation is in store for Hamas.....

Yom Kippur stared Oct 6th 1973, todays festivities 7th Oct 2023....Hamas will have a lot of blood on their hands, how exactly did they think the reaction to 5000 rockets would be, and crossing into Israel.

[OneHungLow]

The Yehudis have a lot to answer for too I am afraid. The current fascist government in Israel and Israeli religious' fundamentalists are also, along with Hamas, an impediment to any form of peace in that region.

[Boac]

how exactly did they think the reaction to 5000 rockets would be, and crossing into Israel.

I would hazard a guess that they probably expected what happened?

[OneHungLow]

how exactly did they think the reaction to 5000 rockets would be, and crossing into Israel.

I would hazard a guess that they probably expected what happened?

+1

Both Hamas and Netanyahu rely on these outrages one way or the other.

[EA01]

I would hazard a guess that they probably expected what happened?

And so it goes.....in days from now we'll hear bleeding heart stories of Palestinian kids killed in counter attacks...the operative word being 'counter'......don't lob 5000 rockets at a massively armed enemy & then hide behind women & children

[OneHungLow]

On the face of it this surprise attack is a major Israeli intelligence failure. On the political front it is a huge boon to Netanyahu and his ilk. Go figure.

Hamas’s stealth attack will be remembered as Israeli intelligence failure for the ages
Peter Beaumont
Israel’s advanced surveillance of Palestinians makes scenes of Hamas gunmen moving through its streets all the more astounding

Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel, on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, will be remembered as an intelligence failure for the ages.

In the space of several hours, dozens of Gaza militants broke through the border fence into southern Israel, surprising local military positions.

Gunmen kidnapped and murdered Israelis in the southern border communities, filming their assault as they advanced in numerous locations. In one instance, a Gaza television journalist delivered a stand-up report about one attack from inside Israel, an almost unthinkable moment.

While the images of several thousand rockets sectoring the sky has become familiar over the years during the periodic upticks in fighting around Gaza, the footage of Hamas assault teams moving through the streets in communities such as Sderot, blowing the gates of a kibbutz and firing on passing cars and pedestrians, showed scenes not witnessed by most Israelis, for whom short-lived attacks in cities have become a fact of life.

If it is surprising it is because Israel’s surveillance of Palestinian society is both highly sophisticated and highly invasive, with monitoring of Hamas’s activity in particular one of the most important tasks for the security establishment.

As whistleblowers from the Israeli defence forces cyber warfare 8200 Unit revealed to the Guardian and other media in 2014, the net for developing sources is almost all-encompassing in their task to identify potential informers in the occupied Palestinian territories.

They were told to seek individuals with financial and health problems, those vulnerable because of sexual impropriety, efforts duplicated in entry and exit interviews for those Palestinians allowed to leave the coastal strip.

Members of militant groups inside Israeli prisons have also historically been targeted for intelligence efforts, all of which makes Israel’s being unsighted on the planned Hamas attack all the more surprising.

Israel’s surveillance technology industry, as evidenced by the Pegasus spyware scandal, is among the most advanced in the world. Despite all of this, Hamas’s preparations were missed.

It is true that Hamas, while always determined and capable of long-term planning, has become much more skilful at adapting to the military challenges it faces, often expending large amounts of effort in its planning and in its identification of Israeli vulnerabilities, a fact very well-known to Israel’s defence forces.

While it is known from previous rounds of fighting in Gaza that Hamas has worked to develop independent and redundant military communication networks, including their own battlefield rebroadcast systems, this suggests two things.

The first is that this was planned with a level of operational security, not just within Hamas but also rival Gaza factions, unprecedented in previous rounds of fighting where at least the broad shape if not the extent of Hamas’s building-up of stockpiles has been identified and broadcast by Israel.

Military analysts have already been quick to suggest that Hamas is likely to have employed significant deception as well as the shock of attacks from multiple domains – including rocket and infiltration – to create maximum chaos.

What is clear is that at several points in the build-up, potential preparations were missed: planning, stockpiling, but most crucially, in the immediate run-up to the Hamas offensive when its fighters were mustering and approaching border areas overseen by regular patrols, cameras, ground motion sensors and remote-controlled mini-cannon in places which in the past have proved effective against attempts to storm the border fence.

All of which suggests an operation which – like previous Hamas surprise infiltration attacks including those involving tunnels into Israel – required a huge amount of preparation.

Perhaps significant is the fact – as Israeli media has pointed out – that incidents involving Hamas in recent months were not identified by the Israeli defence forces and intelligence agencies as part of a build-up to war.

Even as firefights continued with Hamas infiltrators in Israeli communities in southern Israel, the Israeli media was asking the inevitable question: how this could have been allowed to happen on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, itself regarded as a colossal intelligence failure when Israel was attacked by an Aran coalition.

“All of Israel is asking itself: Where is the IDF, where is the police, where is the security?” asked Eli Maron, the former head of the Israeli navy, on live television. “It’s a colossal failure; the hierarchies have simply failed, with vast consequences.”

On social media and elsewhere, Israeli leaders – including the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, – were being openly castigated for hours from officials as the attack unfolded, a silence that was only broken by the appearance of the defence minister, Yoav Gallant.

One thing is clear, however: this attack takes place in the midst of a period of profound social dislocation for Israel. Netanyahu’s far-right government, peopled with individuals in cabinet roles who should not hold public office, such as Itamar Ben Gvir, the minister for national security, have spent their time pouring petrol on what was an already highly combustible situation in the occupied territories.

Netanyahu’s pointless and self-serving conflict with large parts of Israeli society over his much-criticised plans to undermine the country’s supreme court, even as he is in the midst of legal proceedings for allegations of corruption, has overwhelmed public debate, prompting large numbers of reservists to threaten to withhold their service.

Even when Netanyahu did finally speak, it was to reflect an Israeli political and security establishment profoundly shaken. This was not an “operation” or a “round” of fighting he stated, but a state of war.

With Hamas unable to sustain its incursion for any length of time, it seems horribly clear that it will end with maximum horror. Shock was and is the point.

The major question is the scope of Israel’s response. Already framed as a war, Hamas’s attack will put pressure on Netanyahu from a far right that has long pushed for a definitive attack on Gaza, perhaps ending in full reoccupation. Messages from friends in Gaza and Israel show the fear over what comes next is overwhelming.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/ ... r-the-ages

[OneHungLow]

Any government that harbours bastards like this right wing lunatic has no right to be called reasonable or even democratic...

Whenever the far-right politician Meir Kahane got up to speak in the Knesset after winning his Kach party’s only ever seat, in 1984, the rest of the plenum would walk out. Even the hardline prime minister at the time, Yitzhak Shamir, called the rabbi’s anti-Arab movement “negative, dangerous and damaging”. Kach was banned from politics a few years later for inciting racism.

Four decades on, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is still raging, and Israel’s political sphere is more rightwing than ever before. The country will hold its fifth election in less than four years next week. Kahane’s disciple Itamar Ben-Gvir is on course to become a powerful mainstream force.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... r-ben-gvir

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Pomeranian grenadier

[OneHungLow]

Pomeranian grenadier

"Der ganze Balkan ist nicht die gesunden Knochen eines einzigen pommerschen Grenadiers wert."

The Middle East could be a good substitute for the Balkans...

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Let's not forget the current hoo-ha in the North Caucasus.
There's another eternal 15-way battle.
I'm surprised the Renewable Energy crowd aren't looking into power plants fuelled by the hatred in these areas..might as well get something useful out of there.

[Dushan]

I would hazard a guess that they probably expected what happened?

And so it goes.....in days from now we'll hear bleeding heart stories of Palestinian kids killed in counter attacks...the operative word being 'counter'......don't lob 5000 rockets at a massively armed enemy & then hide behind women & children

AP pulling stock pictures and footage of multiple rockets going from Israel towards the “civilian” population and bloodied faces of children. Photoshop work at its best.

[Fox3WheresMyBanana]

Taking hundreds of grandmothers and children hostage is the stupidest thing any terrorist organisation has ever done.
I doubt Iran will escape the wrath of Israel either.

[EA01]

Just saw an image of the Israeli flag super imposed on the Brandenberg gate......who in 1942 Berlin could ever imagine it!

[EA01]

From the comments section local paper.....

Khaled
19 hours ago
May Allah be with Palestine

Gnocchi
9 hours ago
@Khaled Yes mate. They’ll be seeing Allah very soon.

[OneHungLow]

Netanyahu and his right wing cabal couldn't have concocted a better excuse to invade Gaza. I suspect to a large degree they were aware of this invasion and see it as a larger opportunity to divert the Israeli people from what they, i.e Netanyahu et al are doing to civil society, democracy etc. In Israel itself

As for terrorism, one could argue that what the Israeli state and the settlers have been doing is tantamount to terrorism too. The state of Israel arose from terrorism, ask the ancestors of the British armed forces who were murdered in that vale of tears and extremism.

As for lights and candles lit for Israel, bollocks to all of that.

A plague on all their houses I say.

[Alisoncc]

Any government that harbours bastards like this right wing lunatic has no right to be called reasonable or even democratic...

+1000

[EA01]

Netanyahu and his right wing cabal couldn't have concocted a better excuse to invade Gaza. I suspect to a large degree they were aware of this invasion

Yeah..maybe, but the very notion also kinda becomes a little 'conspiracy theory' as well ... no?

And IF they knew it, the US would have to.....and what is there to be gained??

The taking hostage of Jewish Grandmothers & their Grandchildren is stupidity writ large....

[1DC]

Hamas et al were probably very worried the way Israel were cosying up to the Arabs and this new treaty cum agreement with Saudi Arabia was probably too much to stomach. This lot will probably put a stop to it. It will suit Netanyahu too. The poor souls at. the bottom of the heap in both Israel and Gaza don't have a say or are even considered.

[OneHungLow]

Hamas et al were probably very worried the way Israel were cosying up to the Arabs and this new treaty cum agreement with Saudi Arabia was probably too much to stomach. This lot will probably put a stop to it. It will suit Netanyahu too. The poor souls at. the bottom of the heap in both Israel and Gaza don't have a say or are even considered.

You make some good points here.

Hamas are playing to the bigger Middle Eastern gallery as you say, but I can't believe for a moment that the Israeli intelligence services had not caught wind of some of what Hamas were planning, although they clearly underestimated it, and that Netanyahu and his inner circle sat on this information for their own devious ends, not least as a good distraction for the Israeli public ref. his government's attack on the courts and other democratic institutions, while he is under investigation for corruption, and an excuse to invade Gaza thus pleasing the right wing upon which his government is reliant. I mean what populace will impeach their leader at a time of war? Hamas and the current Israeli cabal are as bad as each other, and it will be the innocent who suffer most as you say.

[Dushan]

Poor Justin, doesn't know what too or say.
If he condemns the attack on Israel he is bound to lose his already waning support by Muslim Canadians.
If he does not condemn the attack he will face the wrath of Jewish vote who typically vote Liberal.

Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Oh, and Jagmeet wants "pharmacere" by end of year. Sounds to me like Justin's second marriage to Jagmeet is on the rocks too. What a shame...