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The damage inflicted by Hamas on innocents is not the least bit collateral — 79 Comments

1. Heartbreaking. Sickening. Infuriating. Never again.

2. I’m sorry. Palestinians are mad dogs, not humans.

   And, TBH, this has long been obvious, but no one wants to face it and Accept the Truth:

   They need to be eradicated, not placated, not tolerated.

   Moreover, I truly would not blame Israel one whit if they nuked the fuckers.

   Seriously.

   Turn them into glass. Not in anger, not in revenge.

   To rid the humanoid gene pool of what are unquestionably among the most anti-civilized animals on the planet.

   They aren’t “barbarians”, they aren’t “misguided”.

   They are flat out mad dogs, **period**.

   SMH.

3. Tipping point?

   All of Gur’s post is worth reading.

   Theories abound about Hamas’s reasons for the assault. Many suggested it was an Iranian-ordered disruption of Israeli-Saudi normalization. Others focused on internal Palestinian politics and suggested Hamas was positioning itself, even at the cost of an inevitable and crushing Israeli retaliation, as the unquestioned leader of the Palestinian struggle after Mahmoud Abbas’s death. Still others said the reasons were simpler: The two Hamas leaders in Gaza who prepared and launched the operation were military chief Muhammad Deif and political head Yihye Sinwar. The first lost his family to an Israeli airstrike aimed at him, the second sat 22 years in an Israeli prison. Neither needed an overwrought geopolitical rationale to piece together such an operation.

   There is probably some truth in all these theories. All make sense. But none are how Hamas itself explained the operation in real-time.

   Here lies a part of Palestinian thinking and discourse that many of Palestine’s Western defenders ignore, both because it’s a hard sell to Western audiences and because they don’t really understand it themselves. Palestinian “resistance,” as conceived by Hamas, is about much more than settlements, occupation or the Green Line. A larger theory of Islamic renewal is at work.

   As he announced the start of Saturday’s attack, Hamas military commander Deif said it was meant to disrupt a planned Israeli demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. And when Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh called on Saturday for “every Muslim everywhere and all the free people of the world to stand in this just battle in defense of Al-Aqsa and the Prophet’s mission,” he meant just that, that the fight was over holy things, over Islam’s redemptive promise.

   This reclamation of Islamic dignity through the ultimate defeat of the Jews occupies a great deal of Hamas’s political thought, permeates its rhetoric and profoundly shapes its thinking about Israeli Jews and its strategy in facing Israel. Israel is more than a mere occupier or oppressor in this narrative, it is a rebellion against God and the divinely-ordained trajectory of history. And by showing Israelis in their weakness, the thinking goes, Israelis are somehow actually made weak. Redemption requires only the faith of its believers to be fulfilled, and seeing is believing.

   The footage from Saturday, the snuff videos shared gleefully by Hamas supporters, including in some Western far-left circles, weren’t an aberration. Hamas gunmen didn’t get “carried away,” as some explained. They were the essence of the whole enterprise. They were Hamas’s basic message to Israelis: That they weren’t being killed and kidnapped just for tactical advantage in the struggle for Palestinian independence, but rather were being humiliated and dehumanized as traitors against God.
   …
   Arab opponents of Israel speak of it often as an artificial, rootless construct doomed to collapse in the face of Palestinian faith and resilience. It is at heart, they say, a colonialist project that for all its outward power lacks the inner authenticity and conviction to survive.

   That interpretation of Israel isn’t just a put-down. It’s a call for action, including and especially the kind of sustained terrorism and cruelty that pushed other colonialist projects out, from the French in Algeria to the British in Kenya. This interpretation of Israel is the basic logic behind Palestinian suicide bombings, rocket fire and the whole slew of terrorist tactics employed by Hamas on Saturday.

   And it always, always fails. Decade after decade, the Jews only grow more numerous.

   Israeli Jews are immune to anticolonial terrorism, not in the sense that they are not traumatized by it — they possess no more courage or conviction than any other people — but in the sense that they cannot respond to it in the way Hamas wants them to. They cannot, as Haniyeh promised on Saturday, choose to leave their homeland. There’s nowhere for them to go.

   Hamas’s threat, then, is double-edged: the raw cruelty of the assault on the one hand and the impossibility of ever satisfying the assailant’s demands on the other.

   And so Israelis are uniting, from left to right, liberal to Haredi. None of the domestic fractures are healed, none of the political problems resolved. But Hamas brought home to Israelis the intolerable weakness of a divided Israel. And this weaker Israel that now faces Hamas, and with it the many allies and murderous ideologues who stand behind it from Lebanon to Iran, believes it has been left no choice but to fight desperately to ensure Saturday’s images never return.

   There are many different kinds of power. There is the power of the confident, safe and strong. But there’s also the very different sort of power of the wounded, weak and desperate. These are psychological states, not objective realities. And pivoting from one to the other changes everything.

   “A wounded tiger,” Arthur Golden wrote in Memoirs of a Geisha, “is a dangerous beast.”
   …
   Hamas is now putting that old adage to the test.

   Some of the early reports:
   https://www.timesofisrael.com/thousands-flee-rocket-and-gunfire-at-all-night-desert-nature-party-dozens-missing/

   https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-colossal-failure-as-gazas-hamas-terrorists-infiltrate-catch-israel-unprepared/

4. Do Israelis who are not in the military, police , etc., allowed to have firearms? And I wonder what percent are armed?

   I think about at my place. If I do not have sufficient warning, I wouldn’t be able to get to my pump shotgun. If I have enough warning, I could mount a defense.

5. When I saw some of the videos of civilians being rounded up and driven to the Gaza Strip I was wishing that they were fake (Hamas and others have been known to fake such videos); but, so many of these videos seem to be real. It is truly horror beyond belief!

   It was always bad when terrorists attacked innocent civilians by bombing them; but this, THIS, kidnapping of civilians to do unspeakable things to them is beyond barbaric.

   For decades these evil terrorists have called for Israel (and Jews) to be wiped off the map; they have now taken action that will/should lead to them being wiped off the map.

   I, for one, feel that Israel truly has no other choice but to totally destroy the Gaza strip. Around 2 million people live there. If those 2 million cannot/will not remove terrorists from their midst then their lives and their territory should now be just a part of history.

   Evil such as this cannot be tolerated – it must be totally destroyed.

6. The premise that Israelis were too confident in their ability to live along side evil and still live a normal life, is an interesting one.
   That feeling is gone forever, and hopefully the idea of co existing with such evil is now done.
   The article by Haviv Rettig Gur is certainly a wake up call, but not just to the Israelis. It is applicable to many countries in the West, especially America.
   We used to feel safe, now we don’t. That is becoming a common theme in the West.
   We are confronted with evil, and like Israel, we have to act.
   The scale and success of this invasion of Israel has shocked them, and the rest of us.
   The response to it will be terrible, but less terrible than trying to lie to ourselves about the reality of living next to evil demented radicals.
   Americans have suffered less certainly, but decades of watching the rule of law fall apart, is beginning to wake us up to the same reality that exists now in Israel.
   We are also in a fight for our existence, and it is time to accept that new reality.
   The silence from the left on all this is telling. It will take a few days for them to get a narrative that will justify what happened today. But we all know they will try, NYT, WaPo et al
   Are we awake yet? Israel had a huge wake up call today. Ours has been on going, in less violent ways.

7. https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hezbollah-says-rockets-and-mortars-fired-at-israel-in-solidarity-with-palestinians/

8. I suspect we are in “sow the wind reap the whirlwind” territory.

9. https://babylonbee.com/news/white-house-issues-condemnation-of-attack-biden-funded

10. I am moved by this like in 9/11 — the horrific realization that evil undeniably exists. And that denying this Truth is diabolical is pleasing self-deception.

    This evening at dinner I found that Zerohedge had an excellent roundup of the videos posted online. Yet I could not view them then.

    Two hours later, my smartphone replaced by my iPad, I go to see the ghoulish truth — and I’m deprived of this formerly excellent roundup and assembly, replaced by a different account and something anodyne.

    Why censor the ugly Truth? Perhaps because the Jue-haters out in the comments? Bellowing “False Flag!! Because “The Mossad” always knows all!
    We’re told.

    Ugliness. I counter-fact checked, then rebuked, then deployed sarcasm against this mostly domestic horde of hate.

    Then I turned to Powerline blog via Instapundit, and then to the London Daily Mail. One story updates the running carnage tally this way:

    “A sudden invasion by the Hamas group has already left at least 482 people dead and another 3,200 injured – in less than one day. Dozens more are said to have been kidnapped and driven across the border into the Gaza Strip.”

    But the header link bar news at Powerline led me to this moving account and lucky escape when the Rave in The Desert was first under attack. “I Was at a Music Festival When the Terror Began; We hid in a grove of banana plants and made a t-shirt tourniquet for a friend who was shot by terrorists.”
    By Arad Fruchter: https://www.thefp.com/p/i-was-at-a-music-festival-when-the

    I can recommend this first-hand account of the murderous mayhem. A fortunate and harrowing escape.

    Hard Truths from the rudest and crudest part in the World — replete with intruding nightmares upon our daily waking dreams.

11. That was quick.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_2023_Gaza%E2%88%92Israel_conflict

    Some background I hadn’t seen yet – but Israel hasn’t been in the trendy US news lately.

    The attack followed three weeks of violence at the Israel–Gaza separation fence. Hamas and Israel had recently negotiated a truce, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the United Nations, on 29 September.

    I haven’t seen any reports about an alleged “planned Israeli demolition of the Al-Aqsa Mosque” claimed by Hamas, just the previous raids from April.
    https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/04/israel-al-aqsa-mosque-attack-palestine/

12. The opinion piece by Gur seems exactly right; timelessly true. For Israel it is also bitterly ironic —50 years to the day since its last total intelligence failure. This is a 9/11 scale event for Israel; for its self-conception. It is being forced to re-examine, literally overnight and with no margin for error, its existential strategies, its basic assumptions and priorities.

    As Gur says, a measured or humane response is now a luxury that Israel can no longer afford. But neither should it rush to burn its own limited resources in a quest for vengeance. So a ground war in Gaza seems like a bad idea. Instead, just cut the utilities. A week without water tends to concentrate the mind wonderfully. Two weeks would trigger an exodus. It also puts pressure on Hamas in its capacity (?) as civil authority to keep its subjects supplied with modern conveniences. They want to get medieval? That’s easily arranged.

13. Noah Pollak’s post, also headlined at Powerline:
    https://www.thefp.com/p/today-is-israels-911

    I am going to describe the images coming out of Israel over the last 12 hours. I don’t want to believe any of them are real, because they are horrifying, among the most gruesome scenes of mutilation, murder, and abduction imaginable. But there is now going to be a war between Israel and Hamas—and possibly a broader regional war. Israel will invade Gaza. As we speak, Israelis my age are being called up to war. Some of them are my friends.

    Within two or three days, the media narrative will change, as it does every time, and the grisly invasion that started the war quickly will be minimized into a half sentence of euphemistic dishonesty in press accounts (“an incursion by Gaza-based militants”) so that the focus can turn to prosecuting Israel.

    This is part of why everyone needs to know about the images—the ones you won’t see if you turn on MSNBC or the BBC today. Because so much of the media and Western foreign policy officialdom do not want to embarrass the Palestinians by showing the sadistic brutality of Hamas. They do not want to undermine the coming effort to pressure Israel to stop fighting. They do not want people to notice the Iranian role in the war and how it is fueled by an appallingly dangerous Biden administration policy toward the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

    So that is why you need to know.

    RTWT

14. More from The Free Press – first-hand accounts.
    https://www.thefp.com/p/from-joy-to-terror-a-postcard-from

    https://www.thefp.com/p/i-was-at-a-music-festival-when-the

    Bari Weiss’s reactions as well – no doubt we will hear more from the heretic Democrats at Substack.
    https://www.thefp.com/p/today-is-israels-911-db6

15. An important podcast:
    https://www.thefp.com/p/war-in-israel-michael-oren-explains-db5

16. A couple things come to mind from the comments above:

    From jon baker (above:)
    “I think about at my place. If I do not have sufficient warning, I wouldn’t be able to get to my pump shotgun. If I have enough warning, I could mount a defense.”

    13 years ago I walked out to my back porch one Saturday morning to discover the neighbor’s German Shepherd had dug under the fence separating our yards; I turned to walk back inside and made four steps before he sunk his teeth into my thigh. Apparently he decided my yard was his and I was an intruder.

    And, from Jim (above):
    “The premise that Israelis were too confident in their ability to live along side evil and still live a normal life, is an interesting one.”

    Working for a law enforcement agency I routinely was armed; until that Saturday morning I did not think I needed to be armed in my securely fenced backyard; I was wrong. Since them I have not opened a door to the outside without being armed. For those who claim “paranoia” the same dog dug under the same fence 3 years later and bit the 9-year old daughter of the people who bought my house the following year when I retired and moved; all the bureaucratic machinations, fines and governmental legal actions from my attack did nothing to ensure her safety; one bullet from my handgun would have, and for such defense to be successful one must have weapons ready to hand; Mr. Baker will almost certainly not have time to retrieve his shotgun should evil arrive without warning; no weapon of any kind stored inside would have offered any protection whatsoever when I was attacked, one on my hip would have.

    Jim (above) acknowledges that we – Americans – like Israel, also live alongside evil; no one who is aware of the rampant crime, alien invasion and economic depradation we currently suffer can reasonably deny that assessment.

    So, do we accept that evil, less it interrupt American Idol, weekend football or Susie’s soccer practice, or do we confront it and deal with it?

    I suspect Israel is about to give the world a lesson in just how one deals with evil. We should pay attention.

17. Reports of an Egyptian police man who shot at Israeli tourists, wounding and killing at least one.
    Hezbollah in the north is attacking, not in force as yet. Artillery and missile duals taking place.
    Referring back to that article by Haviv Rettig Gur,- years of leftist ‘tolerance’ for violence and bigotry is showing everyone that nothing has changed.Israel, or the West, have taken tolerance of evil as far as it goes.
    rather than deal with it immediately, we now suffer the consequences for trying to be understanding of evil.
    American ability to influence world affairs is at an all time low, this could get crazy very quickly. Our current leadership, is not up to dealing with it- throwing money at terrorists, allowing mass immigration, will fail, again.
    It will be a fight we should have had a decade, or more, ago.
    Like it or not, in Israel and in the West, we are going to pay the piper, like it or not.

18. One might say–might–that killing and desecrating the body of a young woman is one thing. But the slavering applause of the crowd is another.
    In the first case, one could make the case, it was some disturbed subhumans.
    But, in the second case, the cheers make a different case.
    This is who they are. It’s what they do. It’s what they want to do.
    They will not stop until stopped.
    When people show you who they are, believe them.

19. The savagery of these “Palestinians” is only matched by their stupidity. Did they not see that Israeli society was in the throes of an internal existential conflict? Had they waited and bided their time, they likely would have seen the country dissolve and then been enabled take territory gradually, largely with the help of “enlightened” Western powers in Europe and the USA, continuing the Pollyannaish “land for peace” delusion. Now, by their barbaric attacks on civilians they have galvanized Israeli resolve across the political spectrum. Now that Israelis from the far left and right have been put on notice that their survival depends on their militant resolve and willingness to ignore all the importunings to moderate their response, they may very well decide to once again claim Gaza as a protected territory, as it largely was prior to Sharon’s misguided decision to withdraw from it in 1965. As was said before in another context, there is nothing like the prospect of being hanged in the morning to concentrate the mind. I am sure that the minds of all Israelis have now been powerfully concentrated. Of course, the savage mind is not generally prone to reflection; it insists on lashing out, just like the POC’s who are terrorizing our major cities have been allowed–encouraged– to do. We here in the USA would do well to consider what happens when you allow your enemies and Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen (TWANLOC’s for those of you who are familiar with Richard Fernandez) to infiltrate and live among you. It may not be too far in the future that we here in this complacent nation are faced with a similar situation, when a critical mass of our enemies, including as well mere aliens and strangers has been allowed to enter and become established. We can already see the result of allowing the anti-American left to obtain political control of our institutions and government. If we allow it to continue, open war may be upon us as well. Semper Paratus.

20. The intel issue is concerning. As with the Yom Kippur War, the preparations were complex and necessarily took time. In the former case, large military formations–conventional, not some kind of invisible spec ops thingy–had to be trained, assigned, and moved to jump-off points. This cannot have been missed. Must have been a mistake in judging intentions.

    While the current atrocity is different, assembling sufficient motorcycles–and, for the love of all, training paraglider operators is not something done in the dark–pickup trucks, and armed men, cannot be missed. Maybe failure to judge intent.

    Perhaps the issue is that the intel community was too invested in trying to get rid of Trump–I mean Netanyahu–to be paying attention to external cues.

21. “American ability to influence world affairs is at an all time low…”

    Actually, given that “Biden”, from 2009-2016 and from 2021 to now, has been—for all intents and purposes—allied to Iran and a good friend to the Palestinians, it would appear that it is currently at an ALL TIME HIGH.

    Or if not “all time” then at least high up there…
    For now….
    (…And as we see—from the day’s attack on Israeli tourists in Egypt (see Jim @5:51 am), —“everyone loves a winner”…)

    One wonders whether THIS is the “Russians at the gates of Berlin” moment for Liberal American Jews…or whether the Democratic Party’s extraordinarily successful demonization of Donald Trump and ALL his supporters, Jews included, is SIMPLY TOO STRONG even for that…

22. It will take a few days for them to get a narrative that will justify what happened today.

    Sadly spot on.

    And responding to a previous post here, neo’s observation that, Nobody seems to like the Palestinians except Iran and western intellectuals was met with examples of celebrations, mostly from migrants, in Europe.

    Perhaps they don’t like them either. Maybe they just hate Jews.

23. If Israel is forced to wreak havoc in Gaza AND Lebanon, then it would appear that the strategy—not terribly surprising, mind you—is for Iran to simply “CLEAN UP”, to “FINISH OFF” what they might surmise is a thoroughly weary and weakened Zionist Entity.
    (To be sure, Israel might still have a few surprises up its torn and bedraggled sleeve. Perhaps…)

    To be sure, the crucial issue of depleted Israeli munitions (not to mention fighters) will be paramount here.

    “Biden” cannot be counted on to assist here, though for reasons of “optics”, “he” will certainly talk as though “he” is ‘doing “his” oh-so-very best”.

    Or maybe “he” will step up?
    Or somehow BE FORCED TO step up (though if so, by whom?)…

    Or possibly, during and/or after the carnage runs its “natural” course, “Biden” will declare that there MUST be a cease-fire—PEACE NOW!!—so that Palestine can be created in ALL areas lost by the Arabs in June 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital—so that “JUSTICE CAN FINALLY BE ACHIEVED”!!!

    (Given Obama’s tour-de-force performance at the UN in January 2017—AKA UN Resolution 2334—the current particularly “ingeniously”-planned gambit may provide an explanation for the fun and games we are now witnessing…)

    OTOH, if THAT point is reached—IF—then the fun and games will then REALLY begin….

24. RE: Israel and Intelligence failures

    First.

    Anyone who has any familiarity with the history of Islam and its eternal Jihad against all “unbelievers,” i.e. the West (sadly, formerly known as Christendom), and particularly with Muslim terrorists, knows that they are very much aware of key dates in the millennia old, ongoing war between Islam and the West, and tend to stage attacks on these anniversary dates.*

    That is why, for instance, 9/11 was staged on the day it was, because on September 11th–

    In 1565 Muslim forces were finally defeated at the Siege of Malta.

    In 1609 this was the day the Expulsion of Muslims from Spain was announced.

    On this date in 1683 Christian forces broke the Muslim’s Siege of Vienna.**

    In 1697 this was the date of the little remembered decisive defeat of Muslim forces at the consequential Battle of Zenta.

    Why were Israeli military forces not on particularly high alert on September 11th?

    This was just plain bad soldiering.

    Second.

    There is the major intelligence failure of not apparently detecting all of the preperatory activities which have had to have taken place to put together such a widespread missile, land, and sea attack.

    *See https://onepeterfive.com/the-top-4-reasons-september-11th-is-significant-to-islam/

    ** See https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/raymond-ibrahim/2018/09/12/when-vienna-stood-against-jihad-on-9-11-1683-n100628

25. P.S. I note most MSM reporting refers to the Hamas terrorists not as “terrorists” but as merely “militants.”

26. Jim @ 5:51: “…It will be a fight we should have had a decade, or more, ago…”

    Yes. But who was President then? The Lightbringer. No way was he going to spoil humanity’s enlightened progress toward peace and love. And so it went on.

    The road to Hell is wide and easy. At first. And by the time it isn’t? Well, you’re so far along, it’s almost impossible to slow, let alone reverse, your course.

27. My mistake above at 8:25.

    I meant to say why weren’t Israeli forces particularly alert on the date of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War?*

    * See https://spectator.org/hamas-attacks-israel-on-the-50th-anniversary-of-the-october-1973-war/

28. Related:
    Getting murkier and murkier….
    “Analyst: ‘Hamas published the plan weeks in advance’;
    “A military analyst displays a video published by Hamas that shows practicing for the current invasion of Israel weeks before it happened.”—
    https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/378087

    Might one wonder what one dare not? What, for decency’s sake, the mind must automatically reject? For sanity’s sake?
    IOW whether the seemingly perfected concept of “Color Revolution” has just taken an even more ominous and sinister turn.

    File under: “When you have eliminated all which is impossible then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”???

29. Today has been a great day to tell who is who. When people f**king tell you who they are, it’s time to believe them. Listen to all the leftist talking heads, the upper class white women, their feminist husbands.
    They are too weak and stupid to admit evil exists. They hope they will be over looked. they are miserable cowards. and it is past time to call them out.
    Hamas and Hezbollah are the true heirs to nazi germany. Today, in Israel, Einsatzgruppen rounded up Jews, murdered them, mutilated them, and celebrated doing so….
    If you can not, or will not admit this is evil, and should be eradicated, there is simply nothing I care to say to you. May you suffer the consequences of your own cowardice.
    time to pick a side. We are way way past the ‘intellectual’ BS trying to rationalize extermination.

30. The damage inflicted by Hamas on innocents is not the least bit collateral

    Truer words have never been written.
    May God show no mercy on anyone who was part of this–including the people who gave six billion dollars to Iran.

    There are MULTIPLE demonstrations planned today across the country, in D cities, in support of the Palestinians.
    Do NOT deny the message being sent by that.

    Collated here, with Tweet documentation:

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/10/code-pink-endorses-hamas-attacks-israel-anti-war/

    (not my favorite source to share, but a very reliable one of late)

31. While I completely understand the outrage over “the six billion dollars” in grates on me every time I read it. It is small potatoes compared to what came before!

    Richard Epstein writing for the Hoover Institution at the time:

    The black mark against this agreement is that it virtually guarantees immediate removal of the full set of economic sanctions against Iran, which will lead to an infusion of cash, perhaps in excess of $150 billion, into the country, some fraction of which will promptly flow to affiliate groups that cause mayhem around the world. But what does the President say about this substantial negative? Nothing. He just ignores it.

32. SoP: P.S. I note most MSM reporting refers to the Hamas terrorists not as “terrorists” but as merely “militants.”

    Because it would be too confusing, having already declared the people who don’t vote D, who attend Lain Mass, who speak at school board meetings deplorable domestic terrorists.
    Who need re-education as they are cultists, per the woman who led the Ds in 2016.

    —–

    This is not just “an Israeli intelligence failure,” is it?
    How about us, the UK? All Five Eyes.
    NOBODY saw this highly coordinated attack coming?

33. What makes anyone here think that our CIA would have alerted Israel to Hamas plans, if they saw them?

    And, it is a mistake to call Hamas and Hezbollah “the true heirs of Nazism.” Islamists hung out with Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s because they had Jew-hating in common. You only have to read about the foundational Islamic documents and traditions to know that Jew-hating is essential to radical Islam.

    This Israeli 9-11 comes from the same source as ours: radical Islam.

34. With gloom I point out something no one else has mentioned yet: the delight in carnage which the Palestinians are exhibiting and which appalls us has been perfectly normal human behavior for much or most of history. The literature of antiquity is full of it. The Bible has a lot of it. To conquer your enemies and kill or enslave every last one of them was not just permitted, it was good. It was celebrated with great joy and no guilt whatsoever. Maybe we are the anomaly.

35. Historically speaking, I mean.

36. No doubt…except that the Bible (OT) does say, “Do not rejoice at your enemy’s downfall”.
    This goes for personal enemies as well as tribal/national.
    (Just a small inconvenient detail, I guess.)
    There are other laws with regard to how to deal with enemy tribes/nations.
    And, yes, there are certain instances of those enemies being so evil that they deserve extermination—which is difficult for us, at least some of us, to understand, isn’t it…?

    But it does raise the question, what is the line between exultation of victory and what we’ve been witnessing (and not for the first time)…

37. Related (unfortunately)….
    https://nypost.com/2023/10/08/kylie-jenner-deletes-instagram-post-supporting-israel-after-backlash/
    https://nypost.com/2023/10/08/democratic-socialists-of-america-cheer-murder-and-kidnapping-of-israelis/
    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/10/07/why-there-is-never-peace-between-israel-and-the-palestinians-n1733146

38. Lee @ 9:11: “… This is not just “an Israeli intelligence failure,” is it?
    How about us, the UK? All Five Eyes.
    NOBODY saw this highly coordinated attack coming?”

    That’s the big question. I suspect a lot of people in a lot of agencies have been on mental vacay for a while now. Maybe even paid vacay. The current $6B is not the first infusion of buying power for our enemies (such a harsh word; but the right one).

    Vigilance is wearisome. People get bored, stale, old. The kind of creative what-if paranoid brilliance of the “legendary Mossad” or “the real CIA” is by definition rare and expensive, and the organizations tend to become colonized by time-servers and mediocrities. They’re only human. And in the case of creatures like John Brennan —now a highly-paid “intelligence anchor” for some network (CNN?)— we can see the collapse of intellectual and moral fiber. He was commenting last night on how badly the intel community had missed this onslaught —but he failed to acknowledge that the failure happened ON HIS WATCH. While he and too many others were absorbed in palace intrigues against the former President.

39. I want to highlight and amplify neo’s comment about Mongols and Iroquois. That’s an important point that can’t be emphasized enough.

    For the overwhelming majority of human history, what Hamas just did was more or less how war was done. How often do we read about historic battles where the population of a conquered city was “put to the sword?” Hamas has some modern implements that weren’t around back that, but “put to the sword” probably looked a lot like the videos that we’ve all seen out of Israel over the past 24 hours or so.

    I’m reminded of John Kerry’s remarks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 – likening it to a “19th century” move. I thought, no its not a 19th century move, it is a “human” move. Hamas, and Putin are the norm. 21st century western man is the anomoly.

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41. I would not be surprised if part of the ” intelligence failure” was due to ” noise”. When there are constant reports coming in that do not ever pan out to being the real thing, it is easy to miss/ dismiss the picture that is being painted.
    Is this what China is doing to Taiwan? Multiple false movements towards Taiwan and then the real one comes?

42. With gloom I point out something no one else has mentioned yet: the delight in carnage which the Palestinians are exhibiting and which appalls us has been perfectly normal human behavior for much or most of history. The literature of antiquity is full of it.
    ==
    Maybe you show your work in the steps between ‘literature of antiquity’ and ‘delight in carnage’.

43. Ceterum censeo Persia esse delendum….

44. there was a widespread rebellion among the military and intelligence community, that has been going on for years, like here, there has been a deconstruction of Israel’s founding like the 1619 project,

    the lslamic resistance movement’s battle cry is khaybar, referring to the liquidation of the last jewish settlement in Arabia, not so called Palestine,

45. Our Sec State, Blinken the Idjt, said that the US sees no Iranian involvement in the attack by Hamas. That is our leadership.
    Russia has said now is the time for the West to forget Ukraine and focus on the ME.
    Demos by pro palestinian (spell check wants me to capitalize and I will not) in cities in the US and elsewhere.
    These do not bode well for civilization.
    Will the terrorist attack us again, soon?
    As it has been said – this will spiral out of control.

46. sadly so, the first (actually 5th intifada) preceded 9-11 by a year, and the border was nowhere as ragged as it is now,

47. From the Jordan
    To the sea
    Palestenians RIP

    Sew the wind
    Reap the whirlwind

48. We here in the U.S. and a lot of us in the West are so far removed from our past history–history which has often been forgotten, and almost routinely been airbrushed, sanitized, and prettified–that we are aghast at the barbarity displayed by the Hamas terrorists, and the joy that many supposed “Palestinians” take in it.

    But, back aways, when our country was being settled, the settlers not only had to contend with disease, accident, starvation, attacks by wild animals–and sometimes by their fellow settlers–they were also often attacked, kidnapped, scalped, raped, tortured, and killed by the natives, and some of those native tribes took particular pride in devising ever more painful methods of torture.

    We’ve forgotten all that, thus, wonder at, and cannot understand the harshness with which our government and military usually dealt with the Indians.

    Hamas’ conduct takes us back to those days.

49. I note many comments about “how did we miss this?”

    I suspect we didn’t miss it at all, but the terrorists have enough people in place in the Deep State, here and elsewhere, to establish an attitude of complacency, mockery of preparedness, and victimization of evil-doers to ensure that all such evidence was suppressed and ignored.

    What have the leftist forces of Israel and America been focused on for the last decades… destruction of the exemplars of America-first and Israel-first, Trump and Bibi!

    Let’s waterboard perpetual traitor John F’n Kerry and find out what he knew!

50. Task and Purpose has a video recap of the military aspect up this morning. His info is about 24 hours old with an ongoing fluid situation, but nonetheless informative. It also shows the scale and sophisticated planning that went into this attack.

    My personal opinion, like others here, is Israel should level the Gaza, but the geopolitical situation will not allow that I’m afraid.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXiW6hhC6Bs

51. https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/why-iran-deal-matters

52. I suppose it’s asking too much for the Biden administration to go after Iran, but it is time to do that. Not kinetically, as we would just invite world condemnation and that serves to alienate us from our friends in Europe and the Middle East. What I’m thinking of is increasing pressure on their exports of oil, which have been going on under the radar, and against sanctions, for years. A lot of it is going to China of course, which is another reason to interdict it. And I would openly target the armed speedboats that patrol the Persian Gulf and selectively target tankers headed for the Straits of Hormuz. Finally, we need to get a House Speaker so we can get the Congress working again — as if they were working before. But at least they could meet and conduct business. Right now they cannot.

53. It turned out after Vietnam, that several key members of the South Vietnamese government were Viet Cong or North Vietnamese officers. Wonder how many Hamas operatives we have in our government and military? More than a few, I bet, especially with the DIE initiatives being embraced there.

54. 50th anniversary of the last intelligence disaster in Israel, too. That time, the government tried to blame Mossad but then had to admit they were warned and chose to ignore the warning.

55. If the horrors of the 20th century and the on-again-off-again nature of Islamist regime and terrorist actions haven’t been able to make a dent in the West’s (and Israel’s) grasp of human nature yet, I’m not sure why we would expect anything to change now. No one is ready to rock any boats in any significant way, as has been demonstrated again and again over the past 50 years.

    There will be much wailing and some small scale repercussions over this and then things will go back to ‘normal’ after a few weeks like they always have. Past is prologue.

56. Ray Van Dune: In my estimation, we don’t need a reason to waterboard John Kerry, nor do we need to find out anything as a result. Let’s do it +pour encourager les autres+.

57. The Mossad did not see the plans for the war because they were too busy organizing protests against the Netanyahu government
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-leaked-documents-israel-mossad-protests-netanyahu-reforms

    Pentagon leaks: Documents claim Israel's Mossad backed protests against Netanyahu

    Israel's spy body Mossad secretly encouraged people to join protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's proposed judicial overhaul, according to a purported leak of US intelligence documents.
    The documents, dating back to "early to mid-February", state that Mossad's leadership had "advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli government's proposed judicial reforms including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli government".

58. “Is this what China is doing to Taiwan? Multiple false movements…”

    Right out of the Soviet playbook.
    It’s what NATO had to watch out for during the Soviet era, when the Eastern Bloc conducted its military maneuvers and exercises.
    (And it’s what the Soviets—paranoid projectionists, extraordinaire—feared, or claimed they feared, that NATO was planning to do to them whenever NATO conducted ITS military exercises—and see China’s behavior, in the current period.)
    It’s what enabled Egypt and Syria to lull Israel into catastrophic complacency during their two-pronged, Soviet-planned attack almost exactly 50 years ago.
    And Sun Tzu (and no doubt others) had a few things to say about it as well…

    It calls for constant vigilance! (But for how long can a Western democracy—er, former democracy?—remain vigilant?…which is precisely the problem, and the point someone already made above…)

59. Long-time analyst Edward Luttwak on Hamas’s brilliant strategy:
    “Israel’s Intelligence Failure;
    “A tragic political misjudgment about Hamas’ intentions”—
    https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-intelligence-failure-hamas-edward-luttwak
    H/T Powerline blog.
    Opening grafs:
    “In recent months Hamas refused to join the much smaller Islamic Jihad in launching rockets against Israel, which seems to have convinced Israeli leaders that, at long last, the leading terror group in Gaza had decided to prioritize the welfare of its subjects over more futile rocket attacks.
    “Israel promptly reciprocated the de facto Hamas ceasefire by allowing thousands of Gazans to work in Israel—first 17,000, then 20,000, with the potential for many more. Their earnings were changing the lives of 100,000 family members with the possibility of even wider benefits. What was happening on the ground seemed to open a path toward tranquility for Israel and a degree of prosperity for Gaza.
    “Evidently it was all a delusion….”

    + Bonus:
    https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/10/israels-pearl-harbor.php

60. Charles @1:46 AM-
    You said it well, and I agree more than 100%.
    There are civilian casualties in every modern war, and it is “too bad” that none of the Arabic countries will accept the Palestinian refugees. Not Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, or Turkey. Maybe they could find their separate ways to repopulate Libya.
    So the firestorm must be visited upon them, justly.

61. In certain military circles there have long been whisperings to the effect that Israeli intel organizations knew about Arab plans and dispositions in advance of the Yom Kippur war, and that this knowledge was suppressed and not acted upon because Israel was fearful of being accused of “starting” another war in the ME.

    I don’t believe it. But I don’t know. I’m supposed to know, but I don’t.

62. @ All

    • Exactly.

    • This is a topic that I find myself in complete agreement with the original post, and the subsequent comments.

    @ Mike Plaiss

    “Perhaps they don’t like them either. Maybe they just hate Jews.”

    • Exactly.

    • Have had the good fortune to travel on 6 continents for extended periods of time – 3-6 months – and there are two groups that face worldwide prejudice. The Jews are at the top of that list. Everywhere.

    • I’ll add that when I travel, what is jarring to me – based on standards of ‘right & wrong’ in the USA – does not cause anyone from the country I am visiting to ‘blink-an-eye’, even though they absolutely consider themselves to be intelligent, civilized people. From their perspective, they have not ‘crossed-the-line’; they are just following the norms practiced by intelligent, civilized people.

    @ Snow on Pine

    • Always appreciate your historical/ researched perspective.

    • I’ll add that of all the League of Nations mandates ^^ established after WWI – former German and Ottoman Empire territory in the Middle East, Africa and Oceania – only the territory that became Israel is subject to the level of “scrutiny” and “standards” that Israel is subjected to.

    • None of the former African or Oceania mandates have ever been called illegitimate, or are still struggling to have their authority and borders accepted.

    • Tanzania is not described as illegitimate. Samoa’ authority to govern their nation is not challenged. Namibia has not been consistently pressured to concede territory and alter their borders. All are former League of Nations mandates too.

    • Most of the former League of Nations mandates are also comprised of multiple ethnic groups too.

    • And many of the people who identify as Palestinian also believe that territory that became part of Jordon belongs to them too.

    • However, Jordon has not had to defend itself from coordinated military attacks by it’ neighbors, is not routinely “punished” by groups founded to support all nations, does not have it’ economy subject to BDS movements, or have to defend its citizens from terrorist groups funded by Western nations.

    • And the sole reason that Jordon is not subject to the same “scrutiny & standards” is because it is not a Jewish state.

    • Lastly, the fact is there was never a Palestine nation or government that was overthrown by the WWI allies, the British, the Israelis, or the Jordanians. It was the German and Ottoman empires that were defeated; yet only the former League of Nations mandate governed by Jews is expected to suffer the consequences of the Palestinian dream/ mirage.

    *****
    ^^ = Mandate, an authorization granted by the League of Nations to a member nation to govern a former German or Turkish colony. The territory was called a mandated territory, or mandate.

    Following the defeat of Germany and Ottoman Turkey in World War I, their Asian and African possessions, which were judged not yet ready to govern themselves, were distributed among the victorious Allied powers under the authority of Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations (itself an Allied creation).

    The mandate system was a compromise between the Allies’ wish to retain the former German and Turkish colonies and their pre-Armistice declaration (November 5, 1918) that annexation of territory was not their aim in the war.

    The mandates were divided into three groups on the basis of their location and their level of political and economic development and were then assigned to individual Allied victors (mandatory powers, or mandatories).

    • Class A mandates consisted of the former Turkish provinces of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine **. These territories were considered sufficiently advanced that their provisional independence was recognized, though they were still subject to Allied administrative control until they were fully able to stand alone. Iraq and Palestine (including modern Jordan and Israel) were assigned to Great Britain, while Turkish-ruled Syria and Lebanon went to France. All Class A mandates reached full independence by 1949.

    • Class B mandates consisted of the former German-ruled African colonies of Tanganyika, parts of Togoland and the Cameroons, and Ruanda-Urundi. The Allied powers were directly responsible for the administration of these mandates but were subject to certain controls intended to protect the rights of the mandates’ native peoples. Tanganyika (which is now part of Tanzania) was assigned to Britain, while most of the Cameroons and Togoland were assigned to France, and Ruanda-Urundi (now Rwanda and Burundi) went to Belgium.

    • Class C mandates consisted of various former German-held territories that mandatories subsequently administered as integral parts of their territory: South West Africa (now Namibia, assigned to South Africa), New Guinea (assigned to Australia), Western Samoa (now Samoa, assigned to New Zealand), the islands north of the Equator in the western Pacific (Japan), and Nauru (Australia, with Britain and New Zealand).

    Theoretically, exercise of the mandates was supervised by the League’s Permanent Mandates Commission, but the commission had no real way to enforce its will on any of the mandatory powers. The mandate system was replaced by the UN trusteeship system in 1946.

    ** = Terrestrial/ World Globes that predate WWI will show the territory as part of the Ottoman/ Turkish Empire. After WWI it is common to see the territory labeled Syria, Palestine and Trans Jordon – Lebanon had not been created.

    • I’ll add that I have nothing to add to scholarly, historical research. But do notice from a “messaging/ optics” standpoint that changing the name of the Palestine territory to Israel allowed the Arabs that wanted to claim that territory to retain the name (i.e., describe themselves as Palestinians).

    • Jordan avoided that – same Arabs want to claim Trans Jordon territory too – by retaining the name Jordan. Words/ Descriptions have power.

63. The 9-11 attack on the WTC was an intelligence failure by the US (non) “intelligence” agencies.
    The Oklahoma City bombing was an intelligence failure too.
    In Northern Ireland during the time of “the troubles,” the IRA knew how to plan their bombing attacks without being discovered.
    It is impossible to prevent all terrorist attacks.

    HAMAS, like all terrorist groups, learns by experience. They obviously knew what to do to prevent the Israelis from learning about their plans.

    The Jewish demonkrats in the House have issued a statement condemning the HAMAS attacks. IIRC, they issued no condemnation statements or objections when their party leader, joke bidet commenced sending foreign aid to the palestinians or a few billion $$$$ to Iran.
    Recall that Trump has halted any US funds going to the Palestinians.

    The house demokrat / socialist hate – America-firsters, “The SQUAD,” in the privacy of their homes, must be celebrating the slaughter of Israeli citizens. They must be besides themselves with glee.

    It is the demonkrats – led first by Obama and now joke bidet – that have jumped thru their asses to aid and abet Iran and HAMAS (and probably the PLO and Hezbollah – either directly or indirectly).

    The ONLY difference betwixt THE SQUAD and other demonkrats is that the former are more vocal about their hatred of Israel and their support of Palestinian terrorists.

    Perhaps, though I really, really doubt it, Jewish voters here in the USA will
    re-consider their unquestioned, irrevocable, automatic support for demonkrats.

    Maybe the horrible events unfolding in Israel will wake them up from their
    multi-generational stupor.

64. that guy:

    Interesting information about the different levels of mandate.

    When I think of the establishment of Israel, I sometimes think about how in the eyes of the world Pakistan seems to have a right to exist. Of course, that wasn’t a UN thing but a dissolution-of-the-British-Empire thing, and there was a lot of bloodshed at the time (same year as the partition of Palestine). But while the areas that were involved are not exactly friendly to each other today, there is nothing approaching the situation regarding the Palestinians and Israel.

65. John Tyler:

    “Jewish voters” in the US can be divided between the religious and the non-religious. Many of the non-religious are of Jewish ancestry but could not care less about Israel. Some supposedly care but they are politically left, and dislike Netanyahu and believe in all that “cycle of violence” stuff. Therefore you cannot expect them to vote for the GOP. In addition, most American Jews live in deep blue urban centers, where they vote more or less like their fellow residents. It’s not like they’re out of step in some way. Nor do Jews vote for Democrats in anything like the numbers that black people do; it’s usually somewhere in the 70-percent ranges.

66. “ We’ve forgotten all that, thus, wonder at, and cannot understand the harshness with which our government and military usually dealt with the Indians.”

    In the post Civil War period, I was surprised by the statistical summaries from the army that they didn’t kill all that many Native Americans. Most of them surrendered including almost all the famous war chiefs.

67. Related (Mossad, Yom Kippur War):
    “Israel: Mossad reveals its Egyptian spy warned of Yom Kippur war ‘tomorrow’;
    “Israel declassifies more information about the role its Egyptian agent Ashraf Marwan played in the Yom Kippur war”—
    https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/israel-egypt-mossad-reveals-agent-warned-yom-kippur-war-tomorrow

    Note that in a previous version of the above article (for some reason removed from the current version), Marwan told his handlers, about four months before the October War that Egypt and Syria would launch an attack.
    That this attack did not take place at that time would likely have damaged Marwan’s credibility so that although he was right about the attack in October, his handlers were skeptical based on the previous wrong call.
    The Israeli who, based on a variety of sources, DID believe there was an attack imminent in October and who begged the political echelons (Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan) to at least call a partial call-up of the reserves was David (“Dado”) Elazar, the Chief of Staff.
    It was due to Elazar’s inspiring nerves of steel and heroic efforts that the Syrian breakthrough—deemed an emergency far more serious than the Egyptian—was ultimately stymied and thrown back by the heroism of the limited number of Israeli soldiers and tankists on the Golan. Following that, the Egyptian attack was dealt with, but not before they advance (IIRC) about a dozen kilometers into the Sinai Peninsula, which, as it turns out, was their initial objective.
    Ironically and in a tremendous travesty of justice, Elazar was blamed for the overall military failure by the Agranat Commission, which ultimately investigated the failure and absolved the political echelon of any major responsibility.

68. Shocking to some, although not really surprising I think, sentiments in Europe and the U.S. are already divided. I firmly expect that if Israel mounts an offensive, the preponderance of sentiment will turn on them.

    Considering the role that Shia Iran is playing by using Sunni populations as surrogates; and Sunni populations willingness to be used, it is clear that those divisions are not as deep as one might think. “The enemy of my enemy ….”

    Apparently, despite their own antipathy for Iran and lack of respect for Palestinians, the Saudis are ambivalent. Can you imagine if they use their oil as a weapon against anyone who supports Israel? The sound of dominoes falling across the world would be deafening.

    News reports are that the USN is sending a Carrier Battle Group to the Eastern Med. (I was there as part of one during Yom Kippur, but that was to keep the Russians honest.) I assume that this is an empty gesture.

    Our acceptance of weak leadership will undoubtedly prove costly.

    This is the moment to be bold rather than timid. For the Eagle to remind the world of its claws. People worry about this escalating; perhaps if Hezbollah attacks from the North. How about–strictly as a peace keeping measure– the U.S. deployed the 82nd Airborne, the 1st MarDiv or anyone else considered necessary, to sit between Israel and Hezbollah? The Hezbollah, incidentally, that has American blood up to their elbows. While they are there, maybe Hezbollah would make a self destructive miscalculation. Or show weakness. I know, the whole idea is a fantasy.

69. RE: Hamas attack on the Rave

    Lots of young people attending a “Rave” at a desert location, and there is a video on Youtube showing the initially small dots of the Hamas terrorists coming ever closer to the area on their Paragliders, as the dancers–some of them–started to spot them, then, a shot of hundreds of these young people running out into the desert, trying to escape the terrorists, but, it looked like this flat desert area had no trees or bushes, which could perhaps have provided cover or places to hide.

    The report I just saw said that the Israeli army had removed 260 bodies from the site of the Rave.

70. It’s my hope that none of Neo’s regulars have any close relatives in the directly affected areas; or if they do have, that those involved emerged unscathed.

    This attack was apparently even more substantial than the first news reports indicated, [ sorry if repeating someone else] with a military base being overrrun and a police station and some 20 officers being reportedly wiped out as well.

    I guess I was under the false impression that all Israeli families – more or less – had one active or former reservist among them, with a military grade small arm handy.

    What good that might do against a squad of suicidal jihadists who have appeared out of nowhere and surrounded your suburban home or family sedan, is I suppose debateable.

    God help them; and by extension, us all. Because no one knows how this will ripple and resolve.

71. @ Neo

    A) “When I think of the establishment of Israel, I sometimes think about how in the eyes of the world Pakistan seems to have a right to exist.”

    • 100% agree.

    • I’ll add that like the Hindu & Muslim independence movements in the Indian Subcontinent, the Jewish & Muslim “independence movements” ^^ in the Middle East were also trying to gain control of territory controlled by the British.

    ^^ = Palestine was not a British colony – but was still controlled/ governed by the British – and both groups wanted the British to leave and to control that territory once they left – which is why I think of it as two independence movements.

    • Strikes me that the key difference is that both of the Indian Subcontinent independence movements were willing to take what they could from the British – even the ‘dogs’ breakfast’ of a Pakistan split by India (see E & W Pakistan). Which does not mean that there have not been territorial conflicts since 1947 – or ethnic friction in each new country – or another independence movement (see E. Pakistan/ Bangladesh). But both parties could build new nations because “wiser heads” prevailed.

    • And a year later only the Jewish Middle East “independence movement” received territory – Israel – but only because the Muslim Middle East “independence movement” refused to accept only part of the British mandate territory. In other words, the Jewish Middle East “independence movement” accepted what they could get from the British – while the Muslim Middle East “independence movement” did not. Yet the narrative is the Jews took territory from the Muslims. Of course, the prejudice against the Jews is a big reason why the failure of “wiser heads” in the Muslim Middle East “independence movement” is not blamed for their condition – then and now.

    • I’ll also add that it strikes me that from a “messaging/ optics” standpoint changing the name of the British mandate territory – Palestine – to Israel allowed the ethnic Arab group that wanted to claim that territory to claim a favorable “mantle” (i.e., describe themselves as Palestinians). And Jordan avoided that – same ethnic Arab group wanted to claim British mandate Trans Jordon territory too – by retaining the name Jordan (i.e., they are Jordanians). The “Palestinian” messaging is easier to understand – Palestine belongs to the Palestinians – even though it is inaccurate/ misleading (see Philistines, Canaanites, Canaanite- Phoenicians, Israelites, etc.). Words/ Descriptions have power.

    B) “Interesting information about the different levels of mandate.”

    • 100% agree.

    • Like many I learned about the League of Nations in HS, then did not think about that topic afterward. It isn’t until I started to collect antique terrestrial globes ^^ and noticed some countries in post WWI globes had notations unknown to me e.g., (Fr), (Br).

    ^^ = combines my interest in History, Geography and Art.

    • That led me to research those annotations, and then to take a deeper dive into the history of the League of Nations, WWI, Middle East, Empires, etc.

    Thank you for the reply.

72. Say, who are these African-looking guys that I’m seeing in some of the video clips with the hostages? Has Hamas brought in mercs from Sudan or Nigeria or something?

73. Israeli can take care of itself and I look forword to their mighty vengeance. But what I worry about is here in the US, and how no one here will learn from the horror.

    No matter the horror, the vast majority of American Jews will still overwhelmingly vote the party of Omar and Talib in the next election, enthusiastically endorse gun control, and condemn anyone who wants border control. Sort of hard to feel sorry for anyone who votes for their own self destruction.

74. Mark Steyn in re those who vote for their own self destruction (at the end of his impassioned essay about the reactions lauding the Palestinian attack).

    https://www.steynonline.com/13818/proportionate-about-gang-rape

75. Much the same news as everyone else, but with his trademark flair.
    https://www.steynonline.com/13816/we-are-at-war
    Day One

    It would seem to me improbable that Hamas could pull off anything as strategically calculated as this on their own. The unprecedented scenes are also a catastrophic Israeli humiliation of even greater improbability: it represents a total failure of intelligence and perhaps something worse, if critical Israeli agencies have fallen to the same enervation and loss of purpose as their American equivalents. The fiftieth anniversary of the Yom Kippur War was surely a date to which one would have expected the Israeli authorities to have been alert.

    Even to type that merely underlines its unlikelihood: you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to regard the intelligence failure as the most striking aspect of the day’s events. A central premise of the tiny Jewish state surrounded by merciless enemies is that it’s not as other nations – it’s sharp enough to know what’s coming its way before it arrives. That reputation has just taken a profound hit. If you’re one of those mullahs itching to nuke the Jews, today was a very good day.
    …
    So these guys are doing all the things – targeting civilians, especially women and children – that the US and EU argue justifies the toppling of Vladimir Putin. Fortunately for them, the Palestinians enjoy a much better press. The Government of the United States reacted to the unprovoked invasion from a neighboring state by immediately urging Israel “to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing” – which is in striking contrast to its general approach in Ukraine:

    Team Biden made a Day 1 decision to pour millions of dollars into Hamas areas. Internal emails show them saying it would boost Hamas terrorism, but they did it anyway.

    Then Hamas launched an invasion of Israel.

    Team Biden’s immediate response was to tell Israel to roll with it. pic.twitter.com/PopoiBo3oM

    — Omri Ceren (@omriceren) October 7, 2023

    When whoever does the weekend shift at the White House woke up, he/she/zhe evidently felt that was going a bit far even for the Biden Administration and ordered the advice deleted.

    For his part, Netanyahu has said simply: “We are at war.” And, when you’re at war, listening to Joe Biden is a luxury you can’t afford. The alleged President supposedly telephoned the Israeli Prime Minister. That’s not a call I would have bothered to take. One assumes that Joe has been given a notecard instructing him to remind the PM of the need for “restraint”. In our comments section, Chris Hall writes:

    I’m afraid that the gloves will have to come off this time. Israel never gets any credit for being nice, so they might as well end this endless war, permanently.

    Indeed. How “restrained” is Israel? So restrained that it supplies the invaders’ electricity. From the BBC:

    Israel’s energy and infrastructure minister Israel Katz said that Israel will cut off its electricity supply to Gaza Strip.

    “I have signed an order instructing Israel’s electric company to stop the electricity supply to Gaza,” Katz said in a statement.

    So Israel provides the electricity for the Hamas war-room – and now that they’ve turned it off, the self-same BBC’s commentators will be denouncing its lack of “restraint”. Have they had Layla Moran on yet? Or Toronto mayor Olivia Chow? Or the Irish foreign minister Micheal Martin? Or the Archbishop of York, who has already issued a “Statement on the Violence in Israel and Gaza”? There’ll be enough moral equivalence to choke on in another hour or two.

    Meanwhile, the Taliban have apparently asked Iran, Iraq and Jordan for safe passage through their territory so they can join the fight and “conquer Jerusalem”:
    …
    If they bring even a tenth of the weaponry Thoroughly Modern Milley and the US military gifted them, that could be a significant escalation.

    Given all that, underneath the kidnappings and murder of civilians, what’s going on? As I said, it’s not credible that Hamas could have pulled off anything this coherent unaided. For what it’s worth, Obama and Biden’s indulgence of Iran’s nuclear ambitions destabilised the balance of power in the Middle East. That helped spur the Abraham Accords, under which Israel and the Sunni Arabs became new best friends. The Jerusalem-Riyadh axis is regarded as a threat by Tehran to its own hegemony. Did they decide to act on that threat and try to prise the besties apart? At least one western government thinks so:

    The British government believes that Iran is linked to the Hamas attack on Israel and that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is likely to have played a role in training and the supply of weapons (Dipesh Gadher writes).

    A Whitehall source said: “The Revolutionary Guards have their fingerprints all over this multifaceted attack. Hamas is just another tool in Iran’s campaign against the West.”

    Those thousands of rockets don’t come cheap, but, thanks to Obama and Biden’s pallets of cash, that’s no problem – they got another six bil from Biden just last month.

    UPDATE! From Hamas and Iran:

    A Hamas spokesperson earlier told the BBC that the militant group had backing from its ally, Iran, for its surprise attacks on Israel, saying it was a source of pride.

    Ghazi Hamad told the World Service’s Newshour programme that other countries had also helped Hamas, but he did not name them.

    Earlier, a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed the Islamic Republic supported the attacks, but did not go into any details.

    Hmm…

    So what happens next? When the Israelis are retaliating against Gaza, how many of those Gulf regimes will stick with the Abraham deal? And, aside from those newfound chums in Saudi, Israel has far fewer friends around the world than it did fifty years ago. Just contrast the coverage of this unprovoked invasion with that of Ukraine – same time-zone, different rules.

    It will be interesting to see whose fingerprints are on this as the facts emerge.

76. Did they not see that Israeli society was in the throes of an internal existential conflict?

    It would have been in Hamas’s interest to let that internal conflict develop, but factional disputes within Palestinian society also play a role. Hamas may have started the war to take support away from other parties.

    Tanzania is not described as illegitimate.

    The other mandates and trusteeships were colonial situations where power could be transfered to the native population. Where there are two populations contending for the land the situation is much more difficult. The UN would still be taking an interest in Tanzania if a resolution of the trusteeship that different Tanzanian factions could agree to couldn’t be found. If the UN were to stop taking a particularly strong interest in Israel and Palestine it would do so on its own terms, not simply by endorsing the status quo or one side’s plan for resolving the situation.

77. In my previous remarks I mentioned the presumed possession of either militia or private arms by the Israeli public at large.

    The impressions left by Newsweek or TIME cover photos over the years notwithstanding, that is apparently not the case.

    Permits are rare, the number of firearms limited to one, and each cartridge, in sum toatal 50, must be accounted for. At least that is what the sources I have accessed have claimed.

    Israelis trust their government to keep them safe, seemed to be a recurrent theme.

    Whatever it was that Israeli intelligence was occupying itself with in the months prior to the raid, it is apparent that even the police and military on station and site, could not do so. Though, many of the latter may have lost their lives trying to with the drawn down forces available to them.

    The shock of the unexpected certainly played a role. And according to news reports, many months of deliberately lulling the Israelis was a strategic part of the operation.

    The massacred ravers for example, just stared as 15 or so, by my count in one video, paraglider assault troops landed among them and set up to fire.

    What happened at the garrisoned outposts, is, apart from a few circulated jihadist video clips, anyone’s guess at the moment.

    Again, condolences to any who have folks in Israel.

78. Various and assorted MANDATES, continued.

    Yes, it’s all rather curious, isn’t it?
    Until one understands, comprehends, internalizes, FULLY RECOGNIZES that Israel HAS NO RIGHT TO EXIST.
    (It’s not all THAT hard to do, is IT?)

    …Though…if anyone does have a bit of trouble with the conception, the formulation, the idea…the GOAL, then let’s by all means get some clarification! Let’s hear it DIRECTLY from the horse’s mouth—from Obama/”Biden”‘s pal in Teheran.
    DIRECTLY….
    “The Ayatollah’s Plan for Israel and Palestine”—
    https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20032/khamenei-plan-israel

79. @ Abraxas

    A) “The UN would still be taking an interest in Tanzania if a resolution of the trusteeship that different Tanzanian factions could agree to couldn’t be found. ”

    • Not 100% with you on this point.

    • Tanganyika did many things right ^^; however, there was some form of conflict between Tanganyika and Zanzibar – and there still is some form of conflict between Tanzania and Zanzibar (see dominance of 1 political party).

    • And my key point was that the only former mandate that is described as illegitimate. or has it’ authority to govern their nation challenged. or has been consistently pressured to concede territory and alter their borders, – by other democracies – is Israel, the only Jewish state. That is not a coincidence (see worldwide prejudice). Others may see it differently.

    B) “Where there are two populations contending for the land the situation is much more difficult. ”

    • 100% agree.

    • For Middle East examples, see: 1) ‘[French] Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon’ > Syria & Lebanon, or 2) Lebanon > Muslim & Christian, or 3) Syria > Sunni, Alawis & Druze.

    • For Africa examples, see: 4) ‘Belgian Mandate for East Africa’ > Rwanda & Burundi, or 5) Rwanda > Tutsi & Hutu, or 6) Burundi >Tutsi & Hutu.

    • For Oceania examples, see: 7) ‘[Australia] Administrative Union of the Territory of Papua and the Territory of New Guinea > PNG & Bougainville.

    C) “The … power could be transfered to the native population. ”

    • 100% agree.

    • I’ll add that in most cases it was the ‘Allied and Associated Powers’ that decided which “native population” the power was transferred too; which was not always what ALL the “native population” wanted (see B above, Palestine Mandate). Or what the ‘Allied and Associated Powers’ wanted (see Japan, South Africa).

    D) “The other mandates and trusteeships were colonial situations … ”

    • Not 100% with you on this point – the importance of “colonial”.

    • For me the key difference between “German Empire Colony” and “Ottoman Empire Eyalet/ Province” territory – from a post-WWI/ Mandates perspective – is that the territory lost by the German Empire was not contiguous, while the territory lost by the Ottoman Empire was contiguous.

    • They all had “native populations” in their Colonies/ Eyalets different than the Empire ruling class (tribal, ethnic, etc.). And many of those Mandates – both former German Empire & Ottoman Empire – experienced conflict over territory/ power once the ‘Allied and Associated Powers’ relinquished territory/ power.

    • However, the mandates formed from the “German Empire Colony” territory could follow established boundaries, while the mandates formed by the “Ottoman Empire Eyalet/ Province” territory could not. And the creation of those mandate boundaries often contributed to future conflict. The former “German Empire Colony” mandates had that advantage.

    E) If the UN were to stop taking a particularly strong interest in Israel and Palestine it would do so on its own terms, not simply by endorsing the status quo or one side’s plan for resolving the situation.”

    • 100% agree.

    • I’ll add that the UN organization members are not neutral, are often rabidly antisemitic, and provide moral & financial support for the organizations that attack Israel, that attack the Jews – but you already knew that.

    Thank you for the input.

    *****

    ^^ = I liked the Tanzanian guide that I hired for Mt Meru, so I hired him for Mt Kilimanjaro too. I was hanging out with Desdari and his brother during a rest day before our Kili trek, and we discussed all kinds of topics.

    They spoke very highly of Tanzania’ first President, in the same way we would speak of Washington. And as they listed his accomplishments, they would also tell me why that was important to Tanzania’ success.

    They were proud of the fact that Tanzania had not been embroiled in any of the wars that constantly broke out over the continent. They pointed out that Westerners thought of nations and politics, but Africans thought of tribes. And it was always various tribes fighting each other.

    Now each tribe has it’s own language, which helps to reinforce the differences between them and keep them separated. Their first President declared Swahili as the national language, so that all of the tribes would have a common language to unite them. Brilliant.

    BTW – The importance of a common language is not just important in Africa.

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