An intelligence failure of the imagination
The Israeli response to the Hamas attack wasn’t just an intelligence failure in terms of acting on information, although it certainly was that. But I think that, more importantly, it was a failure to think outside the box and even imagine the sort of attack that occurred. Much like our intelligence prior to 9/11 – an event that showed a sort of evil creativity on the part of the terrorists to come up with a new approach, one that intelligence in the US simply didn’t anticipate. Whether it was because US intelligence agents underestimated the terrorists or had just became complacent in their thinking, they simply did not even imagine what happened – and in order to prevent something, you have to imagine it first.
I believe the same was true of Israeli intelligence. There were things about this attack that should have easily been imagined, such as the anniversary element, which is often part of terrorist plans. I am not altogether certain why the Israelis were caught flat-footed on that. Many people have postulated they were too distracted by their own internal problems, or even that anti-Netanyahu forces knew something was brewing and let it happen in order to embarrass him, thinking it would be far smaller and more limited than it actually was. Israel has been much safer in recent years than during the Second Intifada, and that probably was part of the reason their guard was let down.
But for decades Hamas seemed to mostly have the same approaches over and over: a limited number of rockets, and small-scale suicide bombers and the taking of a few hostages here and there. There was never anything remotely approaching this scale. And although there was plenty of brutality, there was nothing like this extreme level and scope of sadism, torture, rape, killings of children in front of parents, and glorying in it in ISIS-like fashion.
There was also apparently an over-reliance on the idea that terrorists would communicate online. But did no one ever think that Hamas or the Iranians might figure out that made them vulnerable, and that they would use the old tried-and-true non-internet methods to communicate?
When I got the news of the Hamas massacres, it occurred to me that the hand of Iran was visible not just in the financing but in the concept and the planning. And indeed, this seems to have been the case, although of course Iran denies it:
Iranian officers — as well as reps from Iran-backed militant groups including Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah — refined tactical and strategic plans for the assault during several meetings in Beirut, according to the [Wall Street] Journal, which cited senior members of both terrorist groups. …
“An attack of such scope could only have happened after months of planning and would not have happened without coordination with Iran,” Lina Khatib, director of the SOAS Middle East Institute at the University of London, told the outlet. …
The overall plan is to eventually wage active war with Israel on all fronts to finally close in on it with the help of Hezbollah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the north and Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, the senior Hamas and Hezbollah members and an Iranian official told the Journal.
Why now? That seems obvious, doesn’t it? Not only was it the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, but both the US and Israel are currently torn by internal political factional strife. In addition, Biden is president, and appears visibly weak and feeble. Weakness leads to enemies’ boldness.
Another element in the intelligence failure was a years-long campaign of taqiyyah by Hamas in order to conjure up a false sense in the Israelis of lessening Hamas truculence:
Hamas conducted a years-long campaign to fool Israel into thinking the group did not desire armed conflict and could be placated with economic incentives to maintain relative calm, a source close to the terror organization told the Reuters news agency Monday.
“Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight,” the source told the agency. …
The source said that Hamas convinced Israel that it was more interested in ensuring Gazans had work permits that allowed them to enter Israel, where they earned higher salaries than they would in the enclave.
Sounds as though Hamas relied on a common Western impression that extremists will become less extreme once they are doing better economically. I suppose it sometimes works for non-fanatics. But not for fanatics – or psychopaths. It was an elaborate con on the part of Hamas.
Another tactic that thwarted Israeli security:
The source said that many leaders of the terror group were not told of the planned attack in order to prevent it leaking to Israel. In addition, the approximately 1,000 terrorists involved in the devastating assault were not told exactly what they were training for. …
Former national security adviser Yaakov Amidror told Reuters that some countries allied with the Jewish state had bought into the lie, telling Jerusalem that Hamas was showing “more responsibility.”
Let’s guess which ones those countries might have been.
If you’re interested in some of the details of how security was breached, this is what has been reported (although it’s possible that Israel isn’t telling all it knows – at least, I hope they’re not):
First, a barrage of some 3,000 rockets was fired at Israel.
At the same time, a cell flew hang gliders across the border and secured the area, allowing an elite terror unit to breach Israel’s fortified security barrier.
The source said explosives were used to breach the barrier and the first terrorists went through on motorbikes. Then bulldozers were brought in to widen the gap, allowing jeeps to drive through.
The source said a “commando unit” of terrorists then attacked the headquarters of the IDF’s southern Gaza division “and jammed its communications, preventing personnel from calling commanders or each other.”
Perhaps that last IDF headquarters attack was primarily a cyberattack.
There was a smaller-than-usual IDF presence there because troops had been moved to the West Bank, where there had been recent violence. Apparently the thin IDF presence at the border where they invaded surprised even the terrorists.
The source added that “The operation exceeded all expectations.” I have little doubt that it did, and that they expected to be met with much more IDF resistance.
I believe we are vulnerable to similar actions, due to the porosity of our borders. The same is true of Western European countries such as Sweden and Germany, and many more. Is the era of relatively small scale terrorist attacks over?
[NOTE: This is a good, if highly depressing, article on the intelligence failures and the entire attack in general. From it, I learned of one more atrocity that I think is emblematic of the Hamas interface between the barbarism of old and the modern world: the terrorists killed a grandmother and uploaded a photo of her dead body onto her Facebook page, where her family saw it and learned that she’d been murdered. I was wondering whether they made her give them her Facebook password before they killed her, and then I realized that they probably just used her cellphone, in which she was almost certainly signed into Facebook.]
[NOTE II: See this article about how there was too much reliance on technological intelligence and defense and not enough on human intelligence and defense. Also this quote from it:
Islamists live in an economy of honor and shame, and they used smartphone cameras and social media to humiliate Israelis. Social-media platforms are full of grotesque images of Israeli hostages suffering mental torment and physical abuse, and haunting video clips showing disgraceful violations of dead bodies. As the Israeli journalist Haviv Rettig Gur has written, these images did not show Hamas supporters getting “carried away”; they were instead “the essence of the whole enterprise.” The humiliation of Jews is the point. Those images attune us to the reality of evil, and the reality of evil obliges us to confront it.]
We here in The West have been lulled into a false sense of security and even worse, have been propagandized and brainwashed into thinking other “cultures” are equal–even superior– to ours in virtue and value, as a result of which we are required to esteem them beyond their actual value. We have been gulled and cowed into believing that somehow we are responsible for all the inequalities extant in the world throughout history and that we must somehow now pay for it. We are required in the name of “equity” to elevate every brown and black face we encounter into a position of superiority, regardless of merit while we pale people must kowtow in obeisance to our dusky hued betters. I for one reject this false notion completely, utterly and joyfully! I refuse to participate in the nonsensical and destructive kabuki dance that has become de rigueur in contemporary society. Bollocks! Henceforth it is time to call out this nonsense and send its proponents packing with their prehensile tails between their legs. Contemporary Israeli society is much like our own in that it has for years seen fit to “make nice” with the Islamic murderers and thieves who live in and around it. And so now it has come to the Eloi and the Morlocks. And please spare me the BS about “no true muslim” wants to participate in jihad–they ALL do, or they are simply not muslims! We Christians and Jews obey the Bible’s imprecation to love our neighbors while muslims obey their koran’s direction to fight every non-muslim, kill or subject them to the jizya and make the entire world come under the umma. If you don’t believe this, read the koran and the hadiths as I have–and as EVERY faithful muslim has. Forewarned is forearmed. And by all means also literally arm yourself in preparation for the inevitable hostilities as soon as all the foreigners, outcasts and offscourings of every other non-Western society manages to clear our borders in sufficient numbers to mount their attack.
Well put, Steve.
In the future please divide your comments into smaller paragraphs. Easier to read that way.
Good one Steve.
Saw reports today tens of thousands of Muslims around the world have or tried to get into the country.
They are not coming for the weather, or jobs.
When you live in an Islamic sh*thole, anywhere else is a step up, even being surrounded by infidels because even though they are infidels their land hasn’t been sh*tholed by your culture. A challenge and opportunity for early Islamic migrants; get in early.
Caroline Glick’s update on the current situation in Israel: her title (“Order of the Day: Retake Gaza”) is a good summary. Among other news, the IDF has launched a campaign called Swords of Iron.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsKLUmyVi0U&ab_channel=JNSTV
I suppose Israel is left with a riff on the last line of Heinrich von Kleist’s Prinz von Homburg: In Staub mit allen Feinden Brandenburgs!
We have stopped believing in ourselves, as a country and a culture. Western Civ hasn’t been taught in 50 years. we have produced people who are so ignorant of their own history and traditions that they actually believe, as Steve said above, that all cultures are equal.
We are out of time. We either prevail, or we fall. Decades have been spent trying to get the muslims to become part of western culture, to blend in.. it has failed, it will never work.
The Saudis I knew at University in the 70’s were exactly the same. they knew they would take over the west, which they viewed as weak and decadent. that was before millions of muslims invaded the west, as refugees.
there are more than enough radical muslims here now, as well as Chinese communists, to begin a brutal phase of terrorism.
buy guns, ammo. learn to shoot.train.
Ok, another comment disappeared into the ether. Well, the abridged version.
I can’t speak to the situation in Israel but this appears to be a failure at the top levels of the Biden administration. I’ve worked for people who just didn’t want to hear what intel was trying to tell them.
Biden was the target of an Iranian influence operation.
“…A week ago Semafor broke a major story about a secret effort by the Iranian government “to bolster Tehran’s image and positions on global security issues — particularly its nuclear program — by building ties with a network of influential overseas academics and researchers.” One of the people recruited into this group was Robert Malley, Joe Biden’s special envoy for Iran. Malley brought Ariane Tabatabai into government. Tabatabai ended up as chief of staff to Christopher Maier, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict, the Defense Department’s top counterterrorism official. Tabatabai remains on the job even though we have emails from her checking in with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials about what her views should be on various subjects…”
Naturally the Biden admin responded to questions along the lines of, “What the hell? The IRGC has a direct conduit to the WH and is effectively helping to shape the Biden administrations Iran policy?” with all the nuance we’ve come to expect from Democrat administrations. Anybody who wants to know why we have pro-Iranian regime influencers in positions of authority is racist. Which of course it isn’t. Anti-regime Iranians are just as Iranian and I’m all in favor of those.
Was there really an intelligence failure or are Biden and his top intel/national security advisers simply listening to their preferred narratives. For instance, last week Jake Sullivan publicly bragged, “The Middle East Region Is Quieter Today Than It Has Been in Two Decades” (actual Atlantic headline). It seems that boast is now OBE (Overcome By Events).
Of note, Jake Sullivan is an attorney by profession, not an intelligence professional. Yet he’s Biden’s national security adviser. Like Biden’s DNI, Avril Haines (also an attorney), he can best be described as “intelligence adjacent” or “national security adjacent.” For instance, Avril Haines always had job titles such as “Deputy legal counsel to…” She was Deputy Legal Counsel to the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee when Joe Biden was Chairman. In the Obama White House she worked in the Office of Legal Counsel as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs. She eventually was appointed to and was confirmed as Deputy Director of the CIA and then Deputy NSA, but even in those positions she worked on legal issues. Should anyone at CIA be punished for their role in the use of torture in interrogations? Should anyone at NSA be punished for their role in hacking into Senate computers? Important jobs perhaps, but not central to the mission of those agencies.
She like Jake Sullivan completely missed the Gazan version of the Tet offensive that was building up right under their noses. Just like the IRGC officials those Iranian influencers in the Biden admin were really working for hoped they would. Was there really an intelligence failure? Was nobody in the IC saying anything different? And these lawyers just didn’t have the experience to assess the quality of the intelligence, since while they had worked at intelligence agencies it was as lawyers for those agencies. Not as analysts.
One thing is for sure. We’ll never know (although I have my strong suspicions given I’ve seen this movie before). Our unofficial motto in Naval intelligence was, “if we couldn’t take the blame, they wouldn’t keep us around.”
You’re missing context. In the run up there was the mass attack by settlers on the al-Aqsa mosque (800 or more), the settler rampage through East Jerusalem that attacked both Muslims and Christians, and the settler attack on Huwara, in which at least one Palestinian was killed. Netanyahu’s government is hostage to extreme Jewish nationalists whose goal is the expulsion of all Muslims and Christians from the whole of Israel/Palestine.
If something like this happens here and now, I truly fear for any mid Easterners here unless they immediately, loudly and forcibly reject the attackers and by forcibly I mean join in the elimination of them.
Drink that Pali kool-aid bob, that’s the ticket!
ICYMI on the open thread (h/t crasey):
Greenfield makes the case that we’re witnessing a war between civilization and savagery.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/savages/
bob sykes did not surprise me in the least, I was pretty damned sure his coment would blame the Jews for Palestinian barbarity and atrocities even before reading it. And low (that he is) and behold, his hate comes through.
@ bob sykes: I have a vague recollection of the incidents you noted, but you are missing the context of your context — note that I write to explain, not to condone, the actions of the settlers.
There are indeed factions of Israelis who are fed up with their government (even under Netanyahu, sometimes) relentlessly supporting the Palestinians against the Jews through the medium of continually yielding to “world opinion” driven by Leftist and Islamic institutions, organizations, and activist individuals.
There are ample warning signs in the US that there are also factions here that are analogous to the Israeli “settlers” (whoever that might designate), in the person of the MAGA Deplorables, who are now to be rounded up and forcibly re-educated per Queen Hillary.
The only surprise is that there are not MORE violent incidents from the victims of Leftist hate, calumny, violence, and official persecution in both countries.
Neo’s readers are moderate and generally not inclined that direction (we’re all too old, for one reason!), but there are cauldrons of seething resentment that will eventually erupt under the Democrats’ provocation, which appears to many people to be the Left’s intended game plan.
(Fedsurrections Anonymous, anyone?)
“In the run up” also includes decades of attacks on Israel that were not responses to any actions by any Jews anywhere, other than just existing.
There can be no “but both sides” to this current act of war, even if Hamas didn’t expect to have everything break their way as easily as it did.
“We were shocked that the IDF was not waiting for us,” — TOI post.
bob sykes:
From the river
to the sea
What of Gaza?
It ceased to be.
Can’t happen too soon, bob.
Neo,
Should that be “Second Intifada”? I understand the mistake, but am surprised nobody else has pointed it out.
bob sykes:
You seem to be so very devoted to context, so I’ll add some:
The rampage in Huwara “followed shortly after the deadly shooting by a Palestinian gunman [in Huwara] of two Israeli settlers from Har Brakha, an Israeli settlement near Huwara, earlier the same day.” That happened back in February; one Palestinian was killed under unclear circumstances, and the Israeli government condemned the violence – unlike Hamas, which launches the violence. This is the general pattern of the relatively small incidents you mention – it is you who fail to provide the context for them. But are you really suggesting that those sorts of things justify, explain, excuse, or are at all proportional to what Hamas did this weekend?
And we all missed the context where Jews gunned down hundreds of teenagers at a Gaza music festival for peace, gang-raped women in Gaza, murdered hundreds of other people including children in their homes (up close and personal), and took hundreds of hostages (some of whom they shot in the legs so they couldn’t run away). Oh, and didn’t those awful Jews also get rid of the 2 milliion Arabs who live in Israel, about one/fifth of the population? No? Odd.
You probably know zero about the history of how the Palestinians were offered a state over and over again and refused it, or how they could have also settled in any Arab country with their brethren (Palestinians are actually Jordanians, originally) except that they destablized those countries whenever they entered and now the Arabs hate them as well and keep them in camps instead of integrating them into their countries.
And Hamas is dedicated to the absolute destruction of Israel, and always has been. It has never wavered from that.
Dwaz:
Yes, will fix.
I’m intrigued by that “source close to the terror organization” who spilled the beans to Reuters, but not to the Israelis when it would have helped.
Bragging about his homeys?
Plus, even with old-time spook tech, there were a lots of people doing lots of things. Even with misguided intel agents being misdirected for months, there is a lot more to this failure than “we just got lucky.”
What is the good of analyzing similar failures in the past (Pearl Harbor, 9/11, you name it) if you don’t learn anything?
PS to Steve57: one thing that apparently wasn’t learned is “listen to the experts who you hired to tell you the things you need to know.”
Because the people in charge don’t want to know.
I am not sure why it is always considered a failure of intelligence when the enemy pulls off a successful operation; in particular when it is one that is virtually inconceivable to a rational person.
But, the reporting seems to have lost perspective. Not widely reported, but I read this evening, that Israel has found the bodies of 1,500 Hamas within their borders. So, they were not quite so unprepared and helpless as we are led to believe. The barbarians have a lot of new Martyrs. That’s the best kind of barbarian.
BTW, it appears that most of the carnage was in the “Rave”, conveniently organized in a remote area along the border. Since it was a “concert for peace” they probably eschewed military protection. Isolated and defenseless Kibbutz’s also paid a heavy price.
I don’t know whether the ability to launch a rocket barrage of that scope was a surprise. Nor do we really know at this point how successful the Iron Dome proved to be against such a massive attack. It does not take too many rockets impacting heavily populated areas to escalate the casualty count..
IMO Israel has enough to deal with at the moment. They do not need second guessing. Plenty of time for that.
I did have the misconception that the Israeli populace was extensively armed and that a fairly highly percentage were trained as a reserve force or militia. Guess they started following the U.S. playbook of disarming law abiding citizens. There are reports that in one Kibbutz, a handful of armed former and current soldiers held off a large force of Hamas for six hours until the Army arrived. Perhaps Israel will relearn old lessons.
AesopFan; Oldflyer:
The consensus right now is that the reliance on technological protection was a change, and a big mistake, and that they need to go back to the older approach which was more effective. I will probably post on that tomorrow; I was just reading an article about it.
Oldflyer:
About a quarter of the deaths were at the concert. So a great many deaths were house by house, mostly in kibbutzim I believe. In one kibbutz of 1000 people, 100 were killed.
The over reliance on electronic intelligence gathering as opposed to older methods reflects the over reliance on bombing rather than artillery use that was demonstrated during the Yom Kippur War when Soviet supplied SAMs proved more capable than expected.
“Oct 10, 2023 Not The Bee
Peter Heck is here to explain why unregulated social media is so important in the fight for truth, even in the midst of tragedy. Citizen journalism cuts through the narratives and special interests of corporate media.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK8KdEpJHug
His contention is supported by these stories.
You probably won’t see this on MSNBC.
https://notthebee.com/article/arabs-take-to-the-streets-of-sydney-australia-chanting-gas-the-jews
On the internet, things are forever.
https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/blm-chicago-under-fire-for-pro-palestine-post-featuring-paragliding-terrorist/
You might have seen this: what does it say about the journalist’s expectations for the interview?
https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/israeli-mom-whose-kids-were-abducted-by-hamas-snaps-at-msnbcs-andrea-mitchell/
Competing stories: who should we believe?
https://notthebee.com/article/report-40-babies-slaughtered-by-hamas-found-in-nursery-in-israeli-farming-community
“LA Times “journalist” downplays report that Hamas slaughtered, decapitated 40 babies in Israeli farming community”
https://nypost.com/2023/10/10/hamas-kills-40-babies-and-children-beheading-some-of-them-at-israeli-kibbutz-report/
“It is a horror, a massacre. For those asking for the source. They are multiple: Israeli army, internal intelligence service and atrocious images which reached me and which I was able to cross-check,” she said. “But the best source remains this: courageous journalists from the foreign press who were able to see / agreed to see with their own eyes the bodies in Kfar Aza.”
I am starting to feel Old Testament.
I can’t do anything being 77, but I certainly can cheer from the sidelines. This will spiral out of control.
My best friend and by very good neighbor both expect something to happen here in the US, as I do.
We also expect that Israel will present a calling card to Iran.
Moving a Carrier Group near to the Eastern Med is fine, but without clearcut and good Rules of Engagement it is meaningless. ( I mean by good rules – shoot to kill, often)
bob sykes, others have already set you straight. I will only add that this pogrom was in planning for an entire year, in coordination with Iran and other interested parties. It seems that something has gone missing from your own context. You might try looking for it where the sun don’t shine.
As I said Neo. Over 250 of the deaths were at the concert. In addition, isolated Kibbutzim (learned a new construct) also paid a heavy price. To the best of my knowledge they did not successfully penetrate any large populated areas, and they certainly did not hold ground.
In return they left 1,500 bodies behind, if the reporting I read is correct, and that is always subject to question, especially in a chaotic situation.
In more ways than one this was a suicide mission.
The point is that the operation was not as seamless, nor the conflict as one sided as we are led to believe. The horror has masked some facts.
Nothing I have said, or will say, excuses this atrocity. I am fully on board with Israel doing whatever is necessary to ensure that there is never again a threat from Gaza. I trust that they will make Hamas-Gaza an object lesson for anyone else with violent aspirations against them. I hope so..
I am also on board with the United States sending the bastards in Hezbollah to hell if they intervene. We owe them; and it could be beneficial for the world to get a glimpse of the Eagle’s talons at this time of perceived weakness and confusion. (But no nation building in Syria or Lebanon please.)
Off topic. The Grandson of my preflight roommate, squadron mate and dearest friend is in the Gerald Ford Air Wing standing by for orders. As always, I pray that he will fly under God’s protective shield. I also pray for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and all who are threatened by evil. And that God will have mercy on the United States of America.
AesopFan:
Neo’s readers are moderate and generally not inclined that direction (we’re all too old, for one reason!),
Here’s my perspective on that:
I was visiting my daughter in FL during that knock-out crap. I told them if something like that happened while we were in a parking lot (like happened in Ohio), mom and kids were to head to the car, Jeff was to trail behind them and I would trail behind him.
“You think you’re that good?”
“No. I’m old and expendable. You’re my grandkid’s dad so you’re not.”
Much the same with this.
To add further “context” for Bob’s sake – Israel will, and has, arrested Israelis who commit violent acts against others.
Just one small, relatively minor, example of “context.” I cannot find the article now; but a few weeks ago I read an account where Orthodox Jews were caught on video spitting at Christian nuns standing outside a church in Jerusalem. While no one was actually harmed (the spit didn’t even hit the nuns as it was more a spitting AT their feet, not spitting ON them) it was still rude behavior.
Those spitters were arrested. What punishment they faced the article didn’t say; but they were arrested.
So, to further fill out the “context” – these vermin who committed violent acts against innocent civilians are NOT arrested by the “Palestinian” authorities; no, instead they are hailed as heroes. They were celebrated by other Gazans as they paraded mangled dead bodies through the streets of Gaza like those bodies were the Stanley Cup or some other sports trophy.
So, yea context is important – but, make sure you get ALL of the context. and when you do maybe you will see what a sick depraved culture has been cultivated by the likes of the PLO, Hamas, Hezbollah, etc.
Sitting at my keyboard, in the comfort and safety of suburban US, as a soon to be retired old man who is not fighting fit, I feel the only thing that I can do is hope that soon, although not soon enough, these vermin will go into the dust bin of history like Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and other evil re-incarnate.
@bob sykes
Oh joy’ one of the “Context Kings.” How I have never, ever dealt with those before.
God forbid a fairly brief blog post addressing intelligence failures and Hamas strategy leave out context, especially for a conflict that goes back to at least 1936!
I have reached the point where I do not give a shit, because this is obviously offered in bad faith to excuse the literally indefensible.
Because even if what you describe actually happened (which I am not at all prepared to accept without citation) I can predict what Israeli government policy and response to those will be, especially for al-Aqsa. That they intervened to protect the Mosque and forced the “settlers” away. Likewise with other rampages. So blaming Israel as a body for this is not merely stupid and dishonest but Utterly Fucking Evil.
In any case, while we are on the subject of “Context”, oh Bob, how about we talk about deep context?
Both Hamas and Fatah trace their ideological lineage to genocidal Islamist militants active in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Amin Al-Husseini and the Husseini clan. The Husseinis were remorseless genocidaires and Nazi collaborators who tried to exterminate Jews and Christians from the Mandate, and when thwarted there they went abroad. In particular they and their Iraqi colleagues helped inaugurate one of the odd chapters of the Holocaust almost completely independent of the Nazi state infrastructure and without any involvement from the SS with the Farhud, the genocidal attempt to exterminate the Jews of Baghdad in 1941, when I note they were peaceful and well assimilated. After being kicked out there he proceeded to go to Bosnia and Germany where he recruited SS units and made propaganda broadcasts before evading capture, sneaking back into the Mandate with the advantage of the violent breakdown of the Anglo-Jewish alliance that beat him, and helped usher in genocidal communal violence that culminated with the extermination of the Jews of the Old City of Jerusalem in 1948, the old continuously Jewish place in history.
Hamas, Fatah, and PIJ do not repudiate this man’s legacy. They still use the flag and slogans he pioneered. That tells me plenty. Attempts to punt blame onto “settlers” for what was obviously a premeditated campaign aimed at mass murder and extermination.
This is in spite of the generally scrupulous behavior of Israel to Muslim holy sites and the “peace process”, as well as the OBVIOUS fact that there was no al-Aqsa or the like in Baghdad in 1941.
This is, and pardon my French Neo and others, UTTER BULLSHIT BLOOD LIBEL. Israel has thriving Christian communities. I know, I have worked with them. They have thrived and even grown while from Bethlehem to the Bekaa Valkey ancient Christian settlements on the Levant Coast going back to the time of Jesus himself face Dhimmitude, totalitarian control, and ultimate demographic extinction. And on the off chance any “extreme Jewish nationalists” truly did wish to ultimately wipe out even Israeli Christians, they are obviously so outnumbered and unpopular as to make this unlikely, especially with the older and more powerful enemy.
As for “Christians” among the Falestinians, do not get me started. The cowardice, dishonesty, violence, craveneness, and Dhimmitude they have shown to the likes of Hamas and Fatah is beyond disgusting. And while as a Christian I do not claim to have anything like perfect knowledge of The Lord’s will or mind, I humbly submit a great many “Falestinian Christians” by their actions show themselves to be astray if not rotten. That without remedy, many of them will find that Christ knew them not.
I would also encourage them to be reminded of how those that lead young ones astray face a fate that will make being crushed and drowned in the sea with a lodestone look enviable in comparison. And frankly I would suggest you study the same, because I regard claptrap like this as evil propaganda little different from Der Stütmer in essence even if not in form, and also nakedly hypocritical and cowardly to boot.
To protect against every imaginable threat at the same time is expensive.
So you cover for the most likely on the outer perimeter and prepare to absorb whatever comes. Then respond to the threat which had identified itself.
Not the best, but other claims on resources become louder the longer nothing happens.
Mark Hemingway, The Federalist Mag: The Specter Of Barack Obama’s Deeply Held Anti-Israel Ideology Hovers Over Israeli Attacks
Concluding paragraph:
https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/10/the-specter-of-barack-obamas-deeply-held-anti-israel-ideology-hovers-over-israeli-attacks/
Tablet Mag (youtube channel), video roundtable held Oct. 9th, participants — host Liel Leibovitz, Gadi Taub, Michael Doran, Tony Badran, Lee Smith. 53 mins
https://youtu.be/7Yz9AK5OPZk?si=n2N9ov_49UvffdZU
@Neo
We’ve got a spam bot here, “Barbara”.
A long time ago, several years after 9-11, I was US Navy Reservist, enlisted, E-5, Petty Officer 2nd Class, Electronics Technician 2. I was coming back from South Korea on a plane in which I had participated in a war game. I sat next to a US Navy Captain, Officer, 06, one level below when you become an Admiral from my reserve unit. I told him that I am proud of our history on our Southern border, but it’s became a massive security risk. He looked at me blankly and did not say a word. That’s an indication that the person is trying to be nice, but has completely opposite views.
Today, it’s even more of a security risk and our federal government does not care. It didn’t really care under W and definitely under Obama. Under Biden, it’s a flat out goal.
Neo:
years-long campaign of taqiyyah
MollyG:
this pogrom was in planning for an entire year,
—-
Bingo. The Muslim ummah is playing a long – eternal – game of conquest that precedes the Crusades. The combination of patience, religious motivation, and willingness to lie in the service of faith are incomprehensible to secular Westerners, who have developed short attention spans and jettisoned the long-term loyalty and committment that came with family and community.
The brainiacs who sowed the seeds of disaster with Oslo missed, ignored, or poo-poohed these real differences in culture and motivation.
The only thing westerners and other non-muslims do to “cause” this is exist…
The parallels with the Thousand Year Reich and Marxist intolerance are obvious… No accident the Arabs allied with the Nazis.
The religious Jewish population of Israel yearns for the Messiah, but has repeatedly condemned and arrested hotheads trying to violently bring salvation. The Muslim world cheers such brutes.
Ben David, your post here means you are alive; I hope all your loved ones are, also. May God assist the defense of your country.
Muslims hung out with Nazis because they shared their Jew-hatred. It wasn’t new to Muslims; it’s 1400 years old. I was disappointed to learn, in my short tenure in the Middle East, that many Arabic-speaking Christians share the Muslim disdain for Jews; certainly this is true in Egypt. I suppose it comes from the common language, a sort of Stockholm syndrome.
Turtler:
I got rid of Barbara the bot. Thanks for the heads up.
The Gaza strip needs to be flattened and depopulated. The actions of Arabs after Israel evacuated it were a prediction that has been ignored. The actions of the Obama/Biden regime in ending US energy independence was treason. There will probably be a response by the millions of military age men allowed into the country since 2021. “Black Lives Matter”now has announced its support for Hamas and the massacre. We are still early in the “Good Times Make Weak Men” cycle. I feel for my grandchildren.
Tom Clancy predicted something like 9-11 in ‘Debt of Honor’. A very unhappy Japanese pilot flies a 747 into a joint session of Congress.
It really doesn’t take much imagination to put oneself in the shoes of the bad guy.
I am tempted to go through my scriptures and annotate the far-too-many chapters that are “ripped from the headlines.”
The many parallels and prophecies in the Book of Mormon aren’t familiar to most readers here, but to Latter-day Saints they are (or should be) obvious and frightening.
However, as Sarah Hoyt’s mantra says: In the end, we win, they lose; but it will be a long hard road to get there.
David:
Yes, I recall that. On the other hand, Clancy has an especially good imagination.
I would imagine that our intelligence was at least aware of his book and somewhat aware of the possibility. I doubt they took it seriously enough to do something effective about it.
By the way, there has long been a report that when the 9/11 hijackers took flying lessons in the US they had made it clear they weren’t interested in landing planes, which should have been a red flag. I later read that that report is untrue and that they had never indicated that.
Clancy imagined a bio attack, as well.
executive decision in ’97, had a similar plot, they had david suchet as the terriorist leader al tal (meaning vengeance)
Texas Dude. Maybe your near-Admiral thought so, too, but knew he couldn’t say so…?