Israel’s Defense Minister Rectified after the Oct. 7, Attack on the Gazan Security Service Observed by the Israeli Intelligence Agency
It was 3 a.m. on Oct. 7, and Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s domestic security service, still could not determine if what he was seeing was just another Hamas military exercise.
Their judgment that night might have been different had they been listening to traffic on the hand-held radios of Hamas militants. But Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, had stopped eavesdropping on those networks a year earlier because they saw it as a waste of effort.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not woken up by the situation until almost the start of the attack according to three Israeli defense officials.
Since gunmen from Hamas — the armed group that rules Gaza — burst through the border fence on Oct. 7, killing around 1,400 people in southern Israel and taking more than 220 more hostage, according to Israeli authorities, Gazans say they have been living inside of a nightmare. The Israeli military cut off electricity, water, and medical supplies as they bombarded the densely populated area after the attacks.
The greatest military force in the Middle East underestimated the magnitude of the attack and failed in its intelligence gathering efforts because of their mistaken assumption that Hamas was not a threat.
The first stage of the war has been a bombing campaign that Palestinians say has killed thousands of people, many of them children. Israel said it was going to hit Hamas fighters and weapons stores. But experts say the majority of the group’s fighters and many of its weapons are underground in a vast network of tunnels, making it difficult for Israel to strike them from the air.
About a thousand Palestinians have died in Gaza since Friday, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health, bringing the overall death toll there to more than 8,000.
What does Israel really do to destroy Hamas? A Comment on Manmohan Singh, Prime Minister of India, and the Mumbai Attacks of September 11
He said he now believed that the decision to concentrate on diplomatic, covert and other means was the right one.
Moreover, Menon wrote, “an Indian attack on Pakistan would have united Pakistan behind the Pakistan Army, which was in increasing domestic disrepute,” and “an attack on Pakistan would also have weakened the civilian government in Pakistan, which had just been elected to power and which sought a much better relationship with India than the Pakistan Army was willing to consider.” He continued, “A war scare, and maybe even a war itself, was exactly what the Pakistan Army wanted to buttress its internal position.”
One of the leaders I admire most is Manmohan Singh, and I am watching the war in Gaza today. He was the India’s prime minister in late November of 2008, when a group of 10 Pakistani radicals belonging to the Lashkara-e-Taiba group, which is rumored to have links to Pakistan’s military intelligence, massacred more than 160 people in Mumbai, including 61 people at What was Singh’s military response to India’s Sept. 11?
In addition, he wrote, “a war, even a successful war, would have imposed costs and set back the progress of the Indian economy just when the world economy in November 2008 was in an unprecedented financial crisis.”
India’s population is 1.5 billion, but Israel is a huge country with 1.4 billion people. The death of over 160 people in Mumbai, some of them tourists, did not make a huge impact on every home and hamlet in India. Pakistan also has nuclear weapons to deter retaliation.
In sum, dear reader, I understand why Israel believes it needs to destroy Hamas and thereby deter others in the neighborhood from ever contemplating such a thing. But the view from Washington is that Israel’s leadership does not have a viable plan to win or a leader who can navigate the stresses and complexity of this crisis. It is not unlimited for America to tolerate huge civilian casualties during an open-ended military operation. We may be approaching the limit soon.
If Israel ousts Hamas from Gaza it will cause the economy to plummet, with 360,000 Reservists called up. It’s already expected to shrink more than 10 percent on an annualized basis for the last three months of the year. This after being ranked by The Economist as the fourth-best-performing economy among O.E.C.D. countries in 2022.
Who will pay for healthcare and education for the 2.2 million people in Gaza? Should we raise our hands if we think the European Union, the Gulf Arab states or the substantial progressive caucus in the Democratic Party in the U.S. will fund an indefinite Israeli oversight of Gaza? The cost of occupying Gaza could overstretch the Israeli military and economy for years to come.
Netanyahu does not have any allies who will support him. He’s asking people to make long-term choices and knowing his prime minister is a low character, he will blame them if anything goes wrong and make all the credit for anything that goes right go to him.
The obligation to defend itself is something that Israel has, but the way it’s done has an effect on humanitarian assistance.
Such a pause could also allow the people of Gaza to take stock of what Hamas’s attack on Israel — and Israel’s totally predictable response — has done to their lives, families, homes and businesses. What exactly did Hamas think it would accomplish by the war in Gaza, many of whom were going to work in Israel every day, and others who were exporting agricultural products across the Gaza-Israel border just a few weeks ago? Hamas has gotten way too much understanding and not enough hard questions.
I want to see Hamas’s leaders come out from their tunnels under hospitals and look their people, and the world’s media, in the eye and tell us all why they thought it was such a great idea to mutilate and kidnap Israeli children and grandmothers and trigger this terrible blowback on the children and grandmothers of their Gaza neighbors — not to mention their own.
I have always believed that you can reduce the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since the early 1900s to one line: conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict, timeout, conflict and timeout. The parties did something during the timeouts.
The Times Observation of Gaza: How the Israeli Ground Operation was pushed into Fourth Day, and the Palestinians Rejoind
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The U.N said that thousands of people broke in to warehouses to take aid as desperation spread after the power went out. Humanitarian efforts to send aid to Gaza will be expanded tomorrow, according to the Israeli military.
The ground operation in Gaza pushed into a fourth day on Monday as part of Israel’s war with the militant group Hamas.
“I felt that I had become blind and deaf, unable to see or hear,” Fathi Sabbah, a journalist based in Gaza, wrote on his Facebook profile on Sunday, after phone and internet service partly returned.
On Friday at sunset, three weeks into Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza — and as Palestinians braced themselves for an impending Israeli ground invasion — the weak phone and internet service that had allowed some semblance of life to continue inside the blockaded enclave was suddenly severed. Two American officials said the United States believed Israel was responsible for the communications loss, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
They had no way to know whether their loved ones were alive or dead. The emergency phone lines stopped working. Striking paramedics tried to save people by driving towards the sound of blasts. Wounded people were left to die in the street.
What Will He Tell His American President in Chicago? The Case for War, Cold War, and Other Challenges for the Advancement of Democracy in the Age of Globalization
Now fast-forward to August 2024, when Biden will speak on his own behalf in Chicago at the next Democratic convention. Is it possible that he will be able to tell the American people that he did his job? Will he be able to make that claim in the face of international crises more consequential than anything either Obama or Donald Trump faced during their presidencies?
While I believed that Romney would do a better job as president than Obama, that sentence affected me so much — not just because it happened to be true but also because it resonated with two of a president’s most vital tasks: preserving prosperity at home and security abroad. A war-weary nation longed for a clear win, and a people still recovering from the Great Recession needed economic stability. The killing of bin Laden was regarded as the greatest victory in the war on terrorism, and the preservation of General GM, which is considered an important national icon, was seen as more important than the number of jobs saved.
Does this mean Biden is doomed to lose voters in his home state of Delaware if he stands with Israel? I don’t think so, and to understand why, it’s important to understand the core responsibilities of an American president.
If Biden can persevere in the face of the chaos and confusion of war abroad and polarization at home, all while preserving a level of economic growth that is astonishing in contrast with the rest of the world, he’ll have his own story to tell in Chicago, one that should trump the adversity of any given moment or the concern generated by any given poll. If Biden can do his job, then he can take the stage in Chicago with his own simple pitch for re-election: The economy thrives and the democracy is alive even in the face of disease, war and inflation.
Consider what he has to confront; a brutal Russian assault on a liberal democracy in Europe, the worst killings of Jews since the Holocaust, and an aggressive China that threatens Taiwan. There are two hot wars and a new cold war, each against a country or entity that offends any meaningful moral standards, violates international law and commits crimes against humanity.
In each conflict abroad — hot or cold — America is indispensable to the defense of democracy and basic humanity. The United States must keep weaponry for the Ukrainian military in order to stave off a yearslong Russian onslaught. The United States is Israel’s close military partner. It depends on our aid and — just as important — our good will for much of its strength and security. And Taiwan is a target of opportunity for China absent the might of the United States Pacific Fleet.
And keep in mind, Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact. Americans are still dealing with the consequences of inflation and aren’t optimistic about the economic future despite the American economy being the envy of the world.
The challenges are even more difficult now that Biden is under fire. The populist, Trumpist right is threatening to cut off aid to Ukraine to make it harder for the country to survive, hoping that this would lead to the greatest victory for European autocrats since Hitler and Stalin.
I agree with the progressive call for a cease-fire in Israel and the right-wing opposition to aid to the country of Ukraine. Ukrainians need a lot of American support in the war that has been going on for years. It is easier to get the people of the West to agree on something. It’s much harder to sustain American support in the face of grinding trench warfare, the kind of warfare that consumes men and material at a terrifying pace.
The Crisis of the American Public Interest: How Hamas Is Done Right Now and Why Israel Is Right Now, and What Happens When We Do It
Leadership is difficult due to the combination of tragedy, confusion and cost. A good leader can’t overreact to any given news cycle. Any report from the battlefield can’t be overreacted to. And a good leader certainly can’t overreact to a negative poll.
I’ve long thought that politicians’ moment-by-moment reaction to activists, to members of the media and to polls is partly responsible for the decline in trust in American politicians. In the aggregate is the evidence of instability that can feel responsive. The desperate desire to win each and every news cycle leads to short-term thinking. Politicians make changes to their policies in response to angry activists on social media. The activists and critics in the media have a right to outrage, but what the body politic really needs is a deliberate strategy and determination to see it through.
The administration isn’t perfect. Americans should object, for example, to the slow pace of approving each new weapons system for Ukraine. Biden’s policies are sound in each theater. We should support Ukraine as long as it’s necessary to preserve Ukrainian independence from Russian assault. We should support Israel’s response to mass murder and to a lawful offensive into the heart of Gaza. Our allies should be strengthened in the Pacific to share the burden of defense and to enhance their military capabilities.
We should express a moral vision that sustains our actions. John Kirby was the National Security Council’s liaison to strategic communication. He spoke about the plight of the Gazan civilians in an interview with “Morning Joe”. He made it clear that the US is doing everything they can to save civilian life.
The Biden administration is getting a correct moral equation according to word and deed. There should be greater pressure on Hamas to release hostages and relinquish control of Gaza than there should be pressure on Israel to stop its offensive. Hamas had no legal or moral right to launch its deliberate attack on Israeli civilians. It has no legal or moral right to embed itself in the civilian population to hide from Israeli attacks. Israel, by contrast, has every right to destroy Hamas in a manner consistent with the laws of war.
Progressive Democrats like Ms. Lee have other constituents to consider, including progressive Jews who remain by her side. The Tree of Life attack led to the conclusion that Jewish safety depended on the security of vulnerable communities, especially those that were targeted by white supremacists. She said that she was able to work towards the election of Ms. Lee due to the events in Israel.
In the northern suburbs of New York, George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, is contemplating a challenge to Representative Jamaal Bowman, who defeated pro-Israel chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2020.
There are organizations that are girding for challenges to Representatives Cori Bush of Missouri and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who are funded by pro-Israel groups.
“They spent a historic amount of money to intervene, and try and buy primaries in 2022,” said Usamah Andrabi, spokesman for Justice Democrats, the liberal insurgent group that helped elect many of the progressives now on the primary target list. I think we will see doubling and tripling down, because nobody in the Democratic leadership is trying to stop them.
Marshall Wittmann said that there was a time for political action, but that their priority was to build and sustain congressional support for Israel.
But the jabs have begun. The lobbying group called Mr. Bowman’s resolution a transparent ploy to paint Israel as the aggressor and allow Hamas to control Gaza. As a result of hitting Ms. Lee, there is an inscription on X by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that states: “Emboldening a group that massacres Israelis and uses Palestinians as human shields will never achieve peace.”
There are political consequences if you do not line up for the cause of war in a post-9-11 environment, as happened in 2002, he said.
The Gaza Strip is in crisis: UNRWA’s top official says the violence is breaking down and that it is destroying civilian order in the coming days
The fighting in the north of the Gaza Strip continues and expands, Daniel Hagari said this morning.
The corridors of hospitals in the north of Gaza have become crowded with Palestinians seeking refuge from the airstrikes and beds are full with injured people. At least a third of hospitals in Gaza have been forced to shut down due to a lack of fuel to operate generators, the U.N. says.
“Since this morning, there has been raids 50 meters away from the hospital,” it added in a statement on Facebook. Israel refused to comment on the claims.
An official from Israel said they are aiming for an increase in aid to Gaza in the coming days and called on Palestinian civilians to leave the territory.
Benjamin Netanyahu was forced to remove an online statement that he didn’t know about the attack.
“This is a worrying sign that civil order is starting to break down after three weeks of war and a tight siege on Gaza. People are scared, frustrated and desperate,” said Thomas White, UNRWA’s top official for Gaza, in a statement Saturday.
On Saturday, thousands of people broke into several warehouses operated by UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, to steal wheat flour and other survival supplies.
The Israeli Response to the Hamas-Israel War and the U.S.-Israel Interaction During the Oct. 7 Blackout
In this next stage, the ground war, troops are expected to face bloody urban combat. Hamas is likely to booby-trap apartments and fire at Israelis from rooftops. Gaza’s densely packed streets are difficult to attack with tanks, which could help Hamas despite Israel’s stronger military.
The blackout made it difficult to evacuate. For more than two weeks, Israel has been calling on Gazans to move south, closer to the border with Egypt, an order that has pushed hundreds of thousands to leave their homes.
An Israeli soldier was killed overnight when a tank overturned in Gaza, the military said Monday. In total, 312 Israeli soldiers have been killed, most of them on Oct. 7.
The man who killed 18 people in Lewiston, Maine was paranoid and made threats against his base, prompting an alert to state police.
Administration officials said the shift in tone and substance was the result of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, where the health ministry says more than 8,000 people have been killed, provoking outrage in the United States and around the world.
He mentioned that they talk to the Israelis about this on a daily basis. He then noted that hospitals were not legitimate military targets just as Israel was warning that another major hospital in Gaza had to be emptied out before the next round of bombing.
Three days after Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,400 people, President Biden assured Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that he supported his vow to “avenge this black day” and to turn Gaza “into a ruin” from the air and on the ground.
“I told him if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive and overwhelming,” Mr. Biden recalled saying during a call between the two leaders on Oct. 10.
The president shifted his message over the past three weeks, when he emphatically joined the mourning in Israel. While he continues to declare unambiguous support for Israel, Mr. Biden and his top military and diplomatic officials have become more critical of Israel’s response to the terrorist attacks and the unfolding humanitarian crisis.
But in the short run, American officials have grown more strident in reminding the Israelis that even if Hamas terrorists are deliberately intermingling with civilians, operations must be tailored to avoid nonmilitary casualties. Israel has rejected the idea of humanitarian pauses being considered because it was said last week by the Secretary of State.
On Sunday, just a day after Israeli military leaders said Hamas terrorists were using a hospital in Gaza as a command center, Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, was more blunt. Mr. Sullivan said on CBS that the use of human shields by Hamas creates an additional burden on the Israeli Defense Force.
Palestinian communications came back on Sunday after two nights of internet and phone service disruptions. Across Gaza and beyond, Palestinians expressed relief as families were able to reach loved ones.
At Ah-Ahli Arab Hospital, hospital officials have evacuated displaced people, but staff are still treating patients, said Dr. Fadel Naim, an orthopedic surgeon working there. At least 100 people died in a deadly explosion in the hospital on October 17th.
Israel presses into Gaza as pro-palestinian protests spread worldwide: A Palestinian family member in Gaza and whose family is staying with their family
Food in Gaza has been difficult to come by. Electricity and fuel for generators have put many food suppliers out of business. Palestinians living in Gaza have told NPR about fruitless searches for open vendors or waiting in line for hours for a days’ worth of bread for their family.
“Strict inspections, slow processes, supplies that do not match requirements, and the ongoing ban on fuel are all a recipe for a failed system,” he said.
Israel agreed to resume water supplies to the central Gaza area and allow the Palestinian Water Authority to make repairs to damaged pipes in the conflict. The U.N. reported that water supply in southern Gaza had experienced “significant improvement” in recent days as its agencies have delivered small amounts of fuel to desalination plants and pumping stations.
“We have been taking extreme measures to reserve whatever water we had left. For instance, showers are something of the past,” said Abood Okal, a Palestinian-American and Massachusetts resident who was visiting family in Gaza when the war began and has since been stranded.
He and his wife and son are in southern Gaza with about 40 other people. The household members have been walking to the station every day to fill up their jugs.
The Event that Killed a Protest at an Airport: Israel’s Killing of the Hamas Leader, Yahya Sinwar
Last Thursday, that filtration station ran out of diesel to operate its generators, Okal said Thursday evening. “We are almost out of drinking water today. I think we have just enough to last us through tonight, then tomorrow we’ll be basically out,” he said.
In cities around the world, tens of thousands of people took part in a pro-Palestinian protest, calling for a cease-fire.
The airport in Russia’s Muslim-majority region of Dagestan closed after pro-Palestinian protesters disrupted a flight to Tel Aviv.
The video was posted on social media and shows a crowd on the tarmac at the Makhachkala airport.
Thesuffering of victims of the actions of unrighteous people and politicians should be a cause of concern for all of us. The incident at the airport was “outrageous” and should be looked into by law enforcement agencies, stated the head of the Dagestan Republic.
Among Israel’s targets is Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said at a Sunday night news conference. Israelis say Sinwar was the chief architect of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that left 1,400 dead.
Israel is given money to buy weapons. Palestinians are given money to pay for the damage done by those weapons. The violence just gets worse, even though we keep doing the same things.
Game Theoretical Approach to the Cease-Fire Problem and Its Possible Theorems Against Its Oscillations
And here we are, watching the cycle spin around again, pretending to think it might have a different result this time. Like it’s all just a game with improbable but not impossible odds.
I’ve Been Under Bombardment. There Must Be a Cease-Fire in Gaza. An Embarrassing Case
An editor tried to convince me that it was not a good idea. The editor said that he liked to choose pretty words. In Jerusalem you can’t use pretty words. You have to use the careful words.” The editor was correct. Writing about Israel is very careless and careful. We keep looking until no reader can read what we are saying. Now we say the death tolls are not true. How do we know? What are things happening? We could find out with a cease-fire, but they say we can’t ask for a cease-fire.
I can still feel the rage in my people who were around me and within my mind, against a strong nation that was not close to me.
I’ve eaten there, slept there, and seen the sea there. I don’t think I can match the strange depictions of an irreal and unCivilized place I see on the news.
As Americans, we should have been taught this lesson many times. All the military might of the United States could not defeat the ragtag bands of Taliban or force a nation of conquered Iraqis to accept a U.S. occupation. Maybe we don’t want to understand.
The Israeli Defense Forces: Defending Hamas and killing Hezbollah in a Gazan Violations of the Fourth Amendment
It is a fear that many people have; the sense that death hangs over your head until it is too late, and maybe it will hit you. Maybe this is the moment. Or this. Or this. Every heartbeat hammering through your skull.
I watched the U.S. attack Afghanistan, barely escaped a Russian strike on Georgia, and lived for weeks under relentless Israeli bombardment in Lebanon.
White House officials have said a cease-fire only benefits Hamas; that even to ask for the bombing to stop is “disgraceful” and “repugnant.” Had these officials ever experienced shelling or bombardment, they would not have been able to defend the attack on Gaza.
“You wanted hell, you will get hell,” Maj. Gen. Ghassan Alian of the Israeli Defense Forces warned the residents of Gaza, whom he referred to as “human beasts.”
Israel is aware of this. Israel has bombed Gaza pitilessly before, but Hamas is still there. Israel turned parts of southern Lebanon to rubble, but Hezbollah is still there.