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The Washington Post spins US involvement as deterring wider Mideast conflict. Certainly true in the sense that at this point it’s a “don’t do anything or else” message to Iran or any other external antagonist.
But as this settles out, with US citizens among those mudered and direct Iranian involvement, what are the chances that the way this plays out is that we hit Iran, perhaps even with the endorsement of other ME nations?
I can’t see how Iran’s alleged involvement can be ignored. Someone supplied Hamas with rockets and artillery.
Where are the Hamas training camps?
I would say that any endorsement would be “off the record” at this point - coupled with ‘wink-and-a-nod’ public condemnations of American interference in a regional matter.
According to the BBC’s expert commentators, most of the missiles are now made in Gaza itself. So we may be talking more about rocket components, rather than assembled rockets.
On a different note, is the stunning success rate of Iron Dome (90%+ by most reports during ‘normal’ attacks) a testament to ID’s fantastic design/implementation or due to the relative primitiveness of the inbound rockets, or a combination of both?
I’d say it’s a combination of both. The paths of the rockets used by Hamas are generally ballistic. That said, it does seem to have a pretty good track record of knowing what to target.
I’ve wondered, if Hamas could get accuracy within, say, 10 meters, if they could overwhelm an Iron Dome system by simply targeting that system alone with more rockets than the system can stop (assuming no other interlocking Iron Domes could assist) and just pepper that system alone. So you’d get at least a dozen rockets or so landing within a 10-meter circle of the Iron Dome main system itself.
Dear God it must suck to be an ordinary Gazan right now.
I would expect the Hamas have stockpiled plenty of supplies for themselves. So is the Israeli policy (backed by the U.S. and the American Jewish community) that the Hamas will surrender after tens of thousands of non-fighting Gaza residents have died of starvation or disease [Gaza is not self-sufficient in food]?
Stop slandering the American Jewish community. Many of us strongly oppose the Occupation and Israeli war crimes.
But yes, that does look like it’s the Israeli plan.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant:
“I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.”
I’ve seen other quotes which translate as “barbarians” instead of “human animals”, so I’m hoping he didn’t literally dehumanize the enemy. But either way, it certainly seems like he’s openly announcing the intent to ignore international law and commit a bunch of atrocities against civilians.
It also seems to me that almost any comment at this time can be interpreted or misinterpreted as speaking specifically about Hamas terrorists or about all Palestinians, according to preferred narrative.
What is the siege intending to accomplish - collective punishment? I mean, does the IDF expect ordinary Gazans to eventually start turning over Hamas members to the Israeli authorities, once they get hungry enough?
This is always the problem in these cases. Every outrage justifies the next.
This.
Kindly DO NOT conflate “American Jews” (which are a diverse group of many opinions and political viewpoints) with Israel.
Also:
^ This.
A “complete siege” of Gaza means killing thousands of civilians who have no control over what’s happening. Rest assured, the senior Hamas operatives have safe places to hide or means to escape. The freakin’ leaders of Hamas aren’t even in Gaza, they’re supposedly in a very nice hotel in Qatar where they are perfectly safe while they watch their rank-and-file, along with bystanders, bleed and die for their cause. That is absolutely vile and appalling.
It is also vile and appalling that the current Israeli government is planning not only bomb Gaza level but also murder by lack of water, food, and medicine.
According to on-line folks I know who understand Hebrew… he actually did say “human animals” or a term that could be translated “vermin”. I can’t independently confirm or deny that. I can’t be sure, but I suspect he did, in fact, de-humanize folks.
Netanyahu have vowed a mighty vengeance - so… it’s for revenge. Probably of the sort where “you kill one of ours, we kill 10 (or 100) of yours”. Which just throws more fuel on the fire. When Netanyahu said that it’s clear he doesn’t want peace, he wants an excuse for more war and bloodshed.
I would assume that every human language has a set of expressions of degrading insults, that “works” for their native speakers and may or may not accurately map idiomatically to languages of a different origin. And that may or may not have been subject to the sort of “sensitivity” adjustments that, e.g., English has in the last 40 years. So it lends itself to being translated idiomatically in the worst hateful way or in the most euphemistic way.
Mind you, while there’s an active shooting battle going on down the street, you can say “it’s too soon” to call you on the carpet on how come we were caught with our pants down on your watch.
I thought about that. If they kill a hostage, kill ten imprisoned terrorists. I would not be good at this.
It only required one thoughtful Palestinian to realize Hamas was going to bring a crap load of misery to Gaza. Make a phone call to authorities and prevent the attack.
Although Israeli intelligence should have figured this out weeks ago. They should have informants in the West Bank and Gaza.
The Israelis are being criticized for having bad intel. I would think that being an informant on Hamas would be a very, very dangerous occupation.
Here is my CT type conjecture. Let me emphasize that I have absolutely no evidence for it.
Remember 9/11? Bush had been warned of something, but he (or maybe Cheney) decided that it was just ravings of the deep state and chose to ignore it. The Yahoo also has reason to distrust the deep state since they were opposed to his fascist tendencies. Suppose, just suppose, that they had intimations of the attack and the Yahoo chose to ignore it as the ravings of the deep state.
As I said pure conjecture, no evidence. But I do find it hard to believe there were no intimations.