Thanks. A rocket fell not far my home in Givatayim not long ago. We’re fine.
This is a major clusterfuck. It is only the start of something awful. As ye sow shall you reap. The sowing and reaping has to end.
That’s boilerplate. You can expect them all to offer a condemnation of Israel. The key will be their actions. Do they take real steps to threaten Israel if they retaliate, or do they bluster and look the other way?
Why now?
Is it possible that Hamas launched the attack to detail a Saudi Israeli peace deal that has been rumored to be close?
Is it paranoid to speculate that Israel’s deepest level of intelligence did know an attack was upcoming? That the political decision was made to allow it so that the hardliners could say to both domestic and foreign moderates “See? Hamas still wants to commit genocide against the Jewish people and annihilate Israel”? And especially if they can then reveal previously classified intelligence that Iran was behind it and call for open attacks against Iran.
I’d assume that the 50th anniversary timing was the prime trigger. But this is an interesting question. Saudis have to do more than blame Israel. Biden has to put pressure on them to live up to the behind scenes comments they’ve made on the way to an agreement. Otherwise why would anybody trust them for anything again?
Probably paranoid, yes. Not that I think this would be beyond the thinking of some, but like all conspiracy theories it requires a lot of people keeping secrets to pull it off. Considering the scale of the damage I don’t think you’d be able to round up enough members of the Israeli intelligence community to a.) go along with it in the first place or b.) keep quiet in the aftermath. If this were some deliberate ‘wag the dog’ scenario it would probably come out very soon and heads would more than roll. But it’s pretty unlikely - Occam’s razor argues strongly against it. Even the best intelligence agencies can be fooled/miss something and that is almost certainly what happened here.
Best to you Alessan and any of our other Israeli posters that may still be hanging around the board - I know we’ve had several in past years. Stay as safe as you can.
I’m going to guess - totally without evidence or basis - that the Israeli intelligence agencies failed because of some sort of boy-cried-wolf syndrome. They must be inundated with warnings or info at all time that they can’t practically act on each time (if they did, it would lead to exhausting overreaction) so they have to, out of necessity, treat much of it as background noise or “not worth doing something about” - just like the FBI, apparently, only acts on about 2% of the leads or tips that it receives.
This brought a chill.
Sometimes, horrors seem anonymous, generic, and a bit unfathomable. I guess it’s an inherent defense mechanism.
But you made me think: was it closer to the mall? To Wal-Mart? To my work? To where Mike lives? Or is it more in the area of my favorite seafood restaurant or drive-thru coffee joint?
I can’t imagine missiles hitting sites within a bike ride’s distance from me – places I know well.
And – in some places – they virtually can’t imagine it not happening.
Yeah, @Alessan . You and everybody else … stay safe.
From a friend of a family member who lives in Israel:
Hi Yes literally terrifying today Woke up to sirens from rockets being shot at Tel Aviv and had to run to a bomb shelter But then Hamas infiltrated on the ground and there were rumors that they were coming to Tel Aviv so Oren and I drove to his uncles house an hour north and now we’re at the bomb shelter here It’s Shabbat today and sukkot so the army was low staffed today it’s so scary Literally my coworkers are sending videos in the company group chat of Hamas killing their neighbors All my guy friends are getting called to reserve duties to go to the front lines and fight it’s legit ww3 vibes It’s 10x worse than what the news is covering, theyve captured entire kibbutzim and holding 300+ Israelis hostage
Probably. The Palestinians are in very great danger of being made irrelevant. Peace is in danger of breaking out. They are fighting now to ensure that there can be no peace without their approval.
The Abraham accords worked because they were explicitly not tied to a resolution of the Palestinian issue before anything could be done as most agreements have required in the past. This takes the Palestinians off the stage and reduces their leverage dramatically. Maybe this is a response to that - an attempt to put the Palestinians back at the center of mideast negotiations.
The Israelis aren’t going to negotiate, and they aren’t just going to leave the hostages there to be tortured. I don’t see any way this proceeds other than with ground forces going into Gaza hard, most of the hostages and thousands of Palestinians dead.
Best wishes to Alessan and also to a shitload of other people.
Why would Hamas do this? I mean, I understand the history between them and Israel (at least in a broad sense) and there is no love lost there but they have to know Israel will respond with great force to this. This is not a half dozen rockets. This gives Israel the casus belli it needs to steamroll Gaza. I can’t imagine how Hamas thinks this will be to their benefit in the end.
If I were Israel I’d use this as cause to methodically push the whole Gaza population out and into Egypt and then bulldoze the whole place into the ground. Re-sell the land and re-build whatever on it. Nice seaside property, probably valuable.
Also, best wishes to @Alessan. Stay safe and thanks for all the updates!
Why do terrorists commit acts of terrorism?
That would be ethnic cleansing and a crime against humanity.
Read the next sentence after the bit you quoted.
They are not killing them (necessarily) and I see no reason why one group must live with a gun to their head. If the house next to you keeps shooting into your house I think it is justified to try to stop them and no amount of “ethnic cleansing” works in that case.
You are contradicting yourself.
I’ve never understood this. If you’re going to wage war then do it right. Declare war and take Gaza.
It seems Israel is declaring war:
Also:
- Pentagon says it will support Israel after Netanyahu declares war (website doesn’t link right like WSJ above so did it this way)
As @DavidNRockies mentioned above, Israel is calling reservists back to duty which sounds like a military mobilization.