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Home » Is Hamas becoming a weak horse?

Is Hamas becoming a weak horse?

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember what Osama bin Laden said:

“When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.”

That is especially true in the Middle East. The Biden administration has been perceived as a very weak horse, particularly after the ignominious Afghanistan withdrawal. Biden would like to make Israel into a weak horse as well, but Israel is having none of that so far.

Since October 7th, I have found the group in this video to have some of the best and most insightful commentary, with details unavailable elsewhere. They may not be the most charismatic crew, but they are knowledgeable. Here’s an excerpt that is even – dare I say the word? – a mite encouraging, and that is relevant to the strong/weak horse dynamic:

Hamas may be increasingly perceived as a weak horse by the Palestinians. That doesn’t mean they are dropping their hatred of Israel. But over time – perhaps a great deal of time – there is at least a possibility that they will see support for terrorism as a losing game that only leads to their own suffering.

Comments

Is Hamas becoming a weak horse? — 53 Comments

  2. neo – From your keyboard to God’s inbox.

    There is precedent. The Arab states finally got tired of getting their rear ends handed to them by the IDF and stopped provoking wars with Israel. The Arab governments had more incentive to be realistic than the “Arab street” does now, however. It’ll be a tougher nut. The politics are more difficult too, especially with Biden in the White House. But to the extent that people are actually serious about stopping the “cycle of violence,” I believe this is the only way to do it.

  3. Now we have a little information on Houthi rebel ships firing anti-ship missiles at ships flagged by developed western nations.

    Secretary Austin made a vague statement that they (Houthi’s) will pay a price. Fox News played a clip of Leon Panetta, of all people, who stated that we must ensure that they understand that if they fire such a missile, they will die.

    Weak horse, versus strong horse. Or someone posturing as a strong horse. It is just words after all.

  4. they may have hit their yamamoto moment*, of course it’s still early yet like the first months of the last intifada, most of their front line commanders have been taken out of the fight,

  5. I mean, things probably weren’t exactly wonderful in Gaza pre-October 7th, but at least it was relatively stable, they had food, electricity, and shelter and most of the free standing structures were not reduced to a smoldering crater in the ground. A person with perhaps the slightest ability to reason may conclude that the October 7th attacks were *perhaps* not the smartest idea in the world on the part of Hamas. But who can say?

  8. IMHO Palestinians in the Middle East accept their suffering as the price of martyrdom in the fight to eradicate the Jews. How else to explain Palestinian mothers being proud to have sons killed in the fight against the Jews? Generations of indoctrination cannot be undone easily or quickly.

  9. The knackers won’t be taking the corpses. It’s why they can’t have nice things.

    Palestinians – Amelekites, part duex?

  11. I thought Israel made the best of this ceasefire. All of it seemed like a bad idea at first. Everyone knows Hamas will rearm during the ceasefire. Everyone knows Israel won’t get all the hostages. Most can see it as ludicrous that Israel gets back 1 civilian hostage for every 3 or so criminal terrorists released.

    What I see is Israel got back more hostages than I thought they would otherwise be able to free. Releasing the criminals isn’t a problem, because they can now be executed on the battlefield rather than housed on prisoners. And Israel allowed several breaches of the ceasefire (rocket barrages, failure to deliver hostages, and the bus stop attack) before resuming hostilities on their end.

    For all those that demanded Israel allow a ceasefire, they did, and Hamas broke it. Israel now has some hostages back, but they have fewer inhibitions in doing what they set out to do, destroy Hamas. Hamas, if they still have any alive hostages, still have all the previous reasons to keep those hostages alive as bargaining chips. Hamas is weaker after the ceasefire, and Israel has ever more resolve and additional evidence of Hamas treachery.

  12. The other day, my idiot Sister-in-Law tried the “Gaza is an open-air prison” trope on me.

    I told her “Tragically, you’re absolutely right. And like most prisons, it’s full of criminals who are guilty of repeated antisocial attitudes and behavior.”

    “But even worse, there is almost no hope of their rehabilitation, because virtually all of them grew up glorying in hate and violence.”

    It was another short conversation.

  13. @Sdferr

    Your link:

    “The attacks claimed the lives of more than 1,194 individuals, of which 843 of the identified bodies are civilian”

    I had to reread this a couple of times in order to make sure I understood the implication.

    From that and other indications, it seems that possibly 300 or more Israeli military or paramilitary service personel were wiped out; caught in some instances, in their underwear sleeping, and/or were otherwise overwhelmed in humiliating circumstances.

    In fact an important military base seems to have been overrun.

    At a glance then, it seems that something more widespread than the malicious arrogance and destructive undermining of social cohesion and alertness by a leftist run intelligence service, was at work here.

    I wonder if these border troops even had arms ready to hand across the board.

    Frankly it looks like a policy fiasco on the frontline as well as back at HQ

  15. DNW; sdferr:

    I heard someone describe what happened at the base. I think it may have been Caroline Glick, in a podcast. I’ll have to look it up and see if I can find the source, but the gist of it was that the military bigwigs got warnings at 4 AM of some sort of unusual activity in Gaza, but it didn’t alarm them overly and they decided not to activate the troops at the base. It turned out to be huge activity – the base was attacked by an enormous number of Hamas soldiers (not just the run-of-the-mill thugs), the usual guards killed, and the troops – who were asleep, because it was about 6 AM – tortured and murdered. I think there were about 270 troops there, and I think quite a few were women. I might write a post about it, after I find the podcast.

  16. DNW – Yes, from what I understand, at least one base was taken. I know of another (the local HQ, IIRC) that only survived because a group of IDF Bedouin scouts happened to be present, and fought off the Palestinians.

  17. Ray Van Dune:

    You might add that it’s a “prison” with beautiful beaches, luxury hotels, and tons of money pouring in from the world. Oh, and that Egypt is keeping the Gazans in prison – now, why might that be?

  18. Surrounding Arab nations want Hamas eliminated, because Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood on steroids, and it threatens the stability of their regimes. Once Hamas is defeated, under Israeli administration, the UNWRA needs to be kicked out and all of these people forced to begin taking care of themselves like normal humans. Deprogramming will take a while, but it can be done.

  19. “…270…”
    The kicker being that—if I have my information correct—it was from this base, AND THESE WOMEN, that many of the—IGNORED—warnings were coming from….

    You couldn’t make this up if you wanted to.
    Heads gonna roll.
    Not quite yet, though.

  20. Barry Meislin, I am haunted by the photo of one of those young soldiers, her pants showing heavy bleeding, being loaded into a jeep to go to Gaza, probably to her death.

  21. Muslims may hate one another, but the Arab states’ mechanisms are intrinsically designed to hate Israel with an abiding hatred.

    Islam is just going to Islam… and until that is contained… well Israel better keep shooting.

  22. A TV drama series broadcast last year on Hamas TV that featured terrorists infiltrating Israel, was publicly hailed by Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as “an inseparable part of what we are preparing,” Channel 12 news shows.

    Hamas TV broadcast the series during Ramadan in late spring 2022, the Israeli TV report says. It dramatized an attack on Israel featuring the use of white pickup trucks, the disabling of Israeli communications, and targets including kibbutzim and IDF bases — including the Re’im base where the IDF Gaza Division is located. It also showed soldiers being kidnapped, and the raising of a Palestinian base at an IDF base.

    https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/sinwar-last-year-publicly-hailed-tv-dramatization-of-attack-on-israel-as-what-we-are-preparing/

  23. I’m sure that Islamic peace with Israel can only come when the leaders view Israel as the strong horse.
    By Islamic standards.
    Which includes the willingness to kill non-guilty folk in order to kill the enemy.

    Israelis aren’t quite willing to go that far, but continuing to fight until Hamas surrenders, or is absent/ runs away from Gaza seems the most likely way to dominate Gaza.

    Only an Israeli occupied Gaza will be a non-Jew killing Gaza.

  24. I dunno Kate, yer a stronger woman than me.
    (I.e., so far I’ve resisted looking at that pornography footage. Just reading about it’s bad enough…
    Sometimes it’s unavoidable, to be sure, for example, still photos on news sites, or unless you get blindsided with photos of burned, charred bodies, which happened once and I was not pleased, no I was not.
    But actively seeking out the raw footage? WHY? It’s essentially snuff films. Even the heroic stuff filmed by Hamas GoPros of victims fighting back.
    YMMV.)

  27. I saw the photo on a news site, Barry. Like you, I cannot bear to see the snuff videos, or the photos of the aftermath. People who have done so are really sickened.

  29. Regarding sdferr at 5:36, as cruel as it sounds, with less pressure for “aid”, stories like that would have occurred three weeks ago, and thus we’d be three weeks closer to this being over.

  32. I was watching mr jones about the reporter who covered the holomodor the way duranty lied about it, even lloyd george told jones to tone it down he did get published in a hearst paper

  33. It suggested that jones gave orwell the idea for animal farm after initially believing duranty

  34. Kate:

    Her name is Naama Levy. She is 19 and supposedly is still alive, although who knows? See this.

    I believe she is either already dead or will be soon. But at any rate, they will not release her because she could tell what they did to her. It is horrific, unconscionable.

  36. Weak horse/strong horse. Pfft. Netanyahu MUST make them a dead horse. If he fails there will be very tough times ahead for Israel.

  37. I’m glad to see that The Jerusalem Center gets it.

    38:19 in the video, “People believe, they truly believe this is in essence a territorial conflict which it is not. It is a civilizational war, it is a global jihad, it always has been a religious war. I want to emphasize this point.”

    So many people are scared shitless to call this a religious war. But per Orwell, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”

  40. Thanks, Neo, for Naama’s name. Absent immediate medical care, blood loss and internal injury probably took her life soon after, but we can always hope, until we know.

  41. Irish.
    Nice to see you up, so to speak.

    Flooding probably won’t destroy the tunnels. But it will kill the tunnel dwellers, or run them out. The various amenities….power, ventilation, supplies, will all be ruined and have to be replaced, a chore which necessarily will be visible.

  42. “But over time – perhaps a great deal of time – there is at least a possibility that they will see support for terrorism as a losing game that only leads to their own suffering.”

    A possibility? Sure but only a temporary possibility. Muhammed set the precedent and with a Jewish tribe. ‘Peace’ for 10 years while he built up his forces, once he was strong enough Mohammed broke the treaty and slaughtered them.

    Israel doesn’t want war. Israel doesn’t want to kill Muslims. So if they finally get their ‘peace’ they’ll breath a sigh of relief and, once again over time get complacent. While Islam sharpens its swords and lustfully dreams of the day when it can resume the slaughter.

    Religious, i.e. ideological fanatics inherently have but two reactions; doubling down or biding their time.

  44. Hot Air is reading the right resources.

    https://hotair.com/headlines/2023/12/04/is-hamas-becoming-a-weak-horse-n596675

    [I included this short observation because it gets to a point I’ve been making the last several weeks. Until this war, the US and other Western countries have shielded Hamas, Gaza, and the Palestinians generally from the price of starting wars. Not only does this remove the disincentives for such provocations, it bolstered Hamas’ standing as a manipulator of the powerful on the world stage among Gazans and Palestinians in the West Bank. The only way to separate Gazans from Hamas after nearly two decades of this incentive structure is to utterly demolish it. And even then, it will not go away easily, but the alternative is to keep bolstering Hamas’ standing. — Ed]

  45. @ sdferr on December 4, 2023 at 4:58 pm said:
    “A TV drama series broadcast last year on Hamas TV that featured terrorists infiltrating Israel, was publicly hailed by Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar as “an inseparable part of what we are preparing,” Channel 12 news shows.”

    Per Glick’s recent report that the intelligence “failures” were the results of deliberate choices by the intel leadership, whoever suppressed reports on this show, dismissed it as “fantasy,” or possibly even shut down surveillance of Hamas TV should be busted to private and sent to the front lines.

    No authority without responsibility for the consequences.

    https://www.jns.org/aharon-haliva-has-got-to-go-now/
    (h/t sdferr 11/30)

    I’ve heard (but can’t substantiate) that the British Navy of the wooden-ship centuries charged the cost of lost vessels to their commanders, which is one reason for the proverbial “captain going down with his ship.”

    https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi1.kym-cdn.com%2Fphotos%2Fimages%2Fnewsfeed%2F000%2F907%2F394%2Fa0a.gif&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=d50be381171f29364f0cd60be1ad6c50a99f7e25be29e2d0f676f564a2f3cc26&ipo=images

  47. IrishOtter49, you’re right but flooding the tunnels does not need to be a permanent solution. All it needs to do is bring the drowning rats to the surface where they can be eliminated.

    But I despair of a permanent solution. Yes, the IDF and Mossad can eliminate every last Hamasnik. But they can’t eliminate Islamic ideology, and even if Israel keeps the PA away from the reins of power, the Palestinians are going to nurse grievances, because most are Muslim, and that’s how Islam rolls. Mighty hard to change their religion, and again I repeat, this is a religious war in which Jews are the victims and will remain so.

    Best we can hope for is fear and trembling from the Muslim side.

    Now the non-Muslim Palestinians, that’s another matter. There’s some hope for them.

  50. Bill K
    Now the non-Muslim Palestinians, that’s another matter. There’s some hope for them.

    Maybe. Recall that Sirhan Sirhan is a Christian. I knew a Palestinian Christian family, some of whose members immigrated to the US in the 1950s. The generation born in the 1930s and 1940s were fairly moderate. A younger member, born in the 1950s, grew up in the West Bank and spent over a decade of his childhood and young adulthood under Israeli occupation. He got his STEM graduate degrees in the US, and spent about 2 decades working in the US. Brilliant. He was much more radical than his aunts and uncles in the US, and spent a lot of his free time in the US on activism. He is now back in the West Bank.

    Though I doubt he is as hard core as Hamas. There was some scuttlebutt when he was in the US that his daughter had a Jewish boyfriend. One of his cousins in the West Bank has spoken out against Muslim oppression of Christians.

  52. “We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the source said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”

    Gazan soil and sub-soil being what it is (sand and sand-ish, to be brief) the IDF isn’t certain the tunnels will fill much faster than they drain. And then of course, the salt! So, caution is warranted.

    https://www.jns.org/israel-weighing-pumping-seawater-into-hamas-tunnels/

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