The Gazan informants
I hope this is true, and I hope it means that at least a few Gazans are, as Golda Meir used to say, beginning to love their children more than they hate Israelis:
A senior 504 [Israeli intelligence Unit] official added: “We received thousands of phone calls from Gazans on a scale never seen before in the unit. It is evident that the residents of the Gaza Strip are not satisfied with the barbaric conduct of Hamas. The ordinary civilian understands that Hamas is bringing disaster to the residents of Gaza that will be difficult for them to recover from.”
It’s certainly possible that – as a recent poll indicated – 75% of Gazans support Hamas. If so, then up to 25% don’t – although they may support another terrorist group. Then again, why would any Gazan feel free to disagree with terrorist aims, given the total control the terrorists have had until now, as well as their propensity for violence against Palestinians who don’t toe the line?
So maybe quite a few of those 25% have decided to tell what they know about the tunnel entrance down the street. And maybe, as Hamas is seen as weakened over time – if Israel does what it says it will – the number of Palestinians fed up with Hamas’ violent and tyrannical rule will increase.
A person can hope, anyway. Do I believe it’s what will happen? Not really. But I believe it to be possible.
I wrote about the recent West Bank lynching of two men accused of collaborating with Israel. Whether they really were helping Israel is impossible to know, of course. Someone merely may have wanted them destroyed for other reasons. However, the public lynching and the reason given for it is an indication that the jihadis certainly want to send a very strong message against assisting Israel. They must be at least a little bit worried about the phenomenon.
What was it that Georgians said after Sherman burned a path to the sea? Something like “go burn South Carolina, they started the war”.
Gazans have no choice but to express support for Hamas and against Israel, so long as they wish to live.
There was a short bit I read a week or two ago. A Hamas ground commander who was commanding his troops against the IDF invasion was pissed off about his higher-ups. The supreme leadership was safe in Qatar. The guy who runs the Hamas special forces who conducted the attacks is hiding in a bunker somewhere in Gaza, uninvolved in defending his country. It’s the Gazan regulars who have to suffer the burnt of the IDF’s fury, and they resent that.
It doesn’t mean that the Gazan troops don’t want to see Israel wiped out. But they resent that they’re the ones bleeding and dying for the actions of a different branch of Hamas (and that branch will be the ones feted and honored if Hamas survives this war).
I suspect that some of the Gazan informants might have similar thoughts.
I hope some Gazans are providing sincere information. I suspect at least a few are.
The rest of the article is good news on the military front:
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Some 10 out of 24 Hamas battalions ‘significantly damaged’
IDF official: The terrorists’ field command level sustaining massive damage; terror army struggling to implement commands from Sinwar.
“More than 10 out of these 24 battalions damaged significantly. In some battalions, we eliminated hundreds of Hamas terrorists,” said the source, who estimated that thousands of terrorists have been killed. Most of the battalions in question are in the northern Gaza Strip.
A very high number of Hamas commanders have been killed, he said, with some battalions seeing more than 50% of their commanders slain. “This can’t be replaced in a war,” said the officer.
https://www.jns.org/over-10-of-24-hamas-battalions-significantly-damaged/
“So maybe quite a few of those 25% have decided to tell what they know about the tunnel entrance down the street.”
It would be rare indeed in any population, even Gaza, for all its members to be in lockstep with the reigning regime.
To quote Osama bin Laden, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.” (IDF?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strong_Horse
Or, as Ayn Rand pointed out in We the Living, in a low-trust society, neighbors are often quite willing to inform on someone else if they start to believe they can reap benefits from doing so. That’s not to say they do so with integrity.
To quote Osama bin Laden, “When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature, they will like the strong horse.”
Bill K:
Basic primate psychology. We want a strong leader to lead the pack.
It’s my main problem believing Biden really won in 2020.
On the Gaza casualties, of course we’re not being told how many of them were Hamas operatives. They’d like us to believe it was mostly civilians, but I doubt that.
Kate – or the numbers to begin with. All made up by Hamas so bound to be greatly exaggerated.
As for the topic, all the more reason for Israel to pursue the fight vigorously, in line with the “strong horse” theory.