How Israel was duped by Hamas......

[swordfish]

A perfect example what comes of trusting Islamic terrorists enough to incentivise peace and human rights concessions by Israel and the West.  Iran and Islamic radicals do not want peace, money or land.  They were given that and now have squandered the opportunity by utilizing it all to indiscriminately kill Jews.  This is another skirmish in a war that has been waging since BC against the Jews.

Amidror, chairman of the National Security Council from April 2011-November 2013 and now senior fellow with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said some of Israel's allies had been saying that Hamas had acquired "more responsibility."

"We stupidly began to believe that it was true," he said. "So, we made a mistake. We are not going to make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely."

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-767474

How Israel was duped as Hamas planned devastating assault

"This is our 9/11," said a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces. "They got us."

By REUTERS OCTOBER 10, 2023 01:10 Updated: OCTOBER 10, 2023 02:20

A careful campaign of deception ensured Israel was caught off guard when Hamas launched its devastating attack, enabling a force using bulldozers, hang gliders and motorbikes to take on the Middle East's most powerful army.

 

Saturday's assault, the worst breach in Israel's defenses since Arab armies waged war in 1973, followed two years of subterfuge by Hamas that involved keeping its military plans under wraps and convincing Israel it did not want a fight.

 

While Israel was led to believe it was containing a war-weary Hamas by providing economic incentives to Gazan workers, the group's fighters were being trained and drilled, often in plain sight, a source close to Hamas said.

 

 

 

This source provided many of the details for the account of the attack and its buildup that has been pieced together by Reuters. Three sources within Israel's security establishment, who like others asked not to be identified, also contributed to this account.

 

"Hamas gave Israel the impression that it was not ready for a fight," said the source close to Hamas, describing plans for the most startling assault since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago when Egypt and Syria surprised Israel and made it fight for its survival.

 

"Hamas used an unprecedented intelligence tactic to mislead Israel over the last months, by giving a public impression that it was not willing to go into a fight or confrontation with Israel while preparing for this massive operation," the source said.

 

Israel concedes it was caught off guard by an attack timed to coincide with the Jewish Sabbath and a religious holiday. Hamas fighters stormed into Israeli towns, killing at least 900 Israelis and abducting dozens. Israel has killed more than 400 Palestinians in its retaliation on Gaza since then.

"This is our 9/11," said Major Nir Dinar, spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces. "They got us."

 

"They surprised us and they came fast from many spots - both from the air and the ground and the sea."

 

Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, told Reuters the attack showed Palestinians had the will to achieve their goals "regardless of Israel's military power and capabilities."

 

'They ran riot'

In one of the most striking elements of their preparations, Hamas constructed a mock Israeli settlement in Gaza where they practiced a military landing and trained to storm it, the source close to Hamas said, adding they even made videos of the maneuvers.

 

"Israel surely saw them but they were convinced that Hamas wasn't keen on getting into a confrontation," the source said.

 

Meanwhile, Hamas sought to convince Israel it cared more about ensuring that workers in Gaza, a narrow strip of land with more than two million residents, had access to jobs across the border and had no interest in starting a new war.

 

"Hamas was able to build a whole image that it was not ready for a military adventure against Israel," the source said.

 

Since a 2021 war with Hamas, Israel has sought to provide a basic level of economic stability in Gaza by offering incentives including thousands of permits so Gazans can work in Israel or the West Bank, where salaries in construction, agriculture or service jobs can be 10 times the level of pay in Gaza.

"We believed that the fact that they were coming in to work and bringing money into Gaza would create a certain level of calm. We were wrong," another Israeli army spokesperson said.

 

An Israeli security source acknowledged Israel's security services were duped by Hamas. "They caused us to think they wanted money," the source said. "And all the time they were involved in exercises/drills until they ran riot."

 

As part of its subterfuge in the past two years, Hamas refrained from military operations against Israel, even as another Gaza-based Islamist armed group known as Islamic Jihad launched a series of its own assaults or rocket attacks.

 

No inkling

The restraint shown by Hamas drew public criticism from some supporters, again aimed at building an impression that Hamas had economic concerns not a new war on its mind, the source said.

 

In the West Bank, controlled by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah group, there were those who mocked Hamas for going quiet. In one Fatah statement published in June 2022, the group accused Hamas leaders of fleeing to Arab capitals to live in "luxurious hotels and villas" leaving their people to poverty in Gaza.

 

A second Israeli security source said there was a period when Israel believed the movement's leader in Gaza, Yahya Al-Sinwar, was preoccupied with managing Gaza "rather than killing Jews." At the same time, Israel turned its focus away from Hamas as it pushed for a deal to normalize relations with Saudi Arabia, he added.

 

Israel has long prided itself on its ability to infiltrate and monitor Islamist groups. As a consequence, the source close to Hamas said, a crucial part of the plan was to avoid leaks.

 

Many Hamas leaders were unaware of the plans and, while training, the 1,000 fighters deployed in the assault had no inkling of the exact purpose of the exercises, the source added.

 

When the day came, the operation was divided into four parts, the Hamas source said, describing the various elements.

 

The first move was a barrage of 3,000 rockets fired from Gaza that coincided with incursions by fighters who flew hang gliders, or motorized paragliders, over the border, the source said. Israel has previously said 2,500 rockets were fired at first.

 

Once the fighters on hang-gliders were on the ground, they secured the terrain so an elite commando unit could storm the fortified electronic and cement wall built by Israel to prevent infiltration.

 

The fighters used explosives to breach the barriers and then sped across on motorbikes. Bulldozers widened the gaps and more fighters entered in four-wheel drives, scenes that witnesses described.

 

'Huge failure'

A commando unit attacked the Israeli army's southern Gaza headquarters and jammed its communications, preventing personnel from calling commanders or each other, the source said.

 

The final part involved moving hostages to Gaza, mostly achieved early in the attack, the source close to Hamas said.

 

In one well-publicized hostage taking, fighters abducted party-goers fleeing a rave near the kibbutz of Re'im near Gaza. Social media footage showed dozens of people running through fields and on a road as gunshots were heard.

 

"How could this party happen this close (to Gaza)?" the Israeli security source said.

 

The Israeli security source said Israeli troops were below full strength in the south near Gaza because some had been redeployed to the West Bank to protect Israeli settlers following a surge of violence between them and Palestinian militants.

 

"They (Hamas) exploited that," the source said.

 

Dennis Ross, a former Middle East negotiator who is now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Israel had been distracted by violence in the West Bank, leading to a "thin, under-prepared presence in the south."

 

"Hamas probably succeeded beyond their expectation. Now they will have to deal with an Israel determined to decimate them," he said.

 

Retired General Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told reporters on Sunday the assault represented "a huge failure of the intelligence system and the military apparatus in the south."

 

Amidror, chairman of the National Security Council from April 2011-November 2013 and now senior fellow with the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, said some of Israel's allies had been saying that Hamas had acquired "more responsibility."

 

"We stupidly began to believe that it was true," he said. "So, we made a mistake. We are not going to make this mistake again and we will destroy Hamas, slowly but surely."

 

 

[Muda69]

Get the US Out of the Middle East: https://mises.org/wire/get-us-out-middle-east

Quote

The ongoing conflict between the state of Israel and Hamas escalated considerably on Saturday. A group of armed fighters—presumably of Hamas—broke through the Gaza-Israel border barrier and launched what is sure to be a short-lived invasion of southwestern Israel. 

At least 700 Israeli citizens—most of them apparently civilians—were killed, and more than one hundred were taken hostage. The Israeli state quickly retaliated with widespread bombing of neighborhoods in Gaza producing hundreds killed, and possibly hundreds of thousands displaced. 

Within hours of the initial invasion, images of Hamas kidnappings and killings quickly flooded social media provoking calls for further retaliation by the Israeli state. On the other side, images of Israeli bombings of civilian neighborhoods has brought calls for additional action against Israel. Saturday's escalation has also revived hostilities between Hezbollah and Israel along Lebanon's southern border.

This has all happened in spite of decades of US intervention and spending in favor of Tel Aviv. Yet, this ongoing conflict has nothing at all to do with the safety and security of the United States itself, and Saturday's bloodshed should be an indication that the United States government is already far too involved in the region and ought to get out. 

It is already clear, however, that the invasion will be used to push the US regime toward more military spending, more war, and more global interventionism. The war party will use the same playbook that we saw for Ukraine: "look at the horrible atrocities committed by these barbarians. Surely, we must go to war to defeat this evil—regardless of whether it has anything to do with defending our own country." It's a grift Washington has been using for more than a century even though "humanitarian" wars are a myth. 

Conservatives for Middle Eastern Wars

Surprisingly, however, many Trump supporters didn't fall for it in the case of Ukraine. But now we're hearing calls from MAGA country to expand US military action in the Middle East as a result of the Hamas invasion. Victor Davis Hanson—a Trump supporter and one of the most fanatical pushers of the failed US war in Iraq—demanded on Saturday that the US regime "undertake a 1973-like massive arms lift of key munitions to Israel" and should "warn Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and others in the Middle East not to intervene or else." To include that "or else," of course, is to commit the US to yet another series of wars. Some other Trump supporters also see an opportunity here to revive aggressive measures toward Iran. Former Trump advisor Stephen Miller wants more sanctions against Iran, and condemns the Biden Administration for being slow to pull the trigger on aggressive new measures. Anti-Trump conservatives, unsurprisingly, are using the Hamas invasion to push their own variety of international aggression as well. Mike Pence now says the Hamas attack occurred because Trump was not belligerent enough in his foreign policy. Nikki Haley clearly thinks there is never too much foreign intervention by Washington and she suggested that the Hamas attack shows Iran may attempt to attack the United States from Mexico.

The pro-Israel center-left wants in on the action as well. "United Against Nuclear Iran," a group led by former US Senator Joseph Lieberman, calls for full-blown war against Iran, stating “We call on our government in Washington, together with Israel, and our allies around the world to launch strikes against military and intelligence targets in Iran, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sites, and missile and drone bases." 

Saturday's escalation is in many ways a godsend to advocates of the American warfare state. Hamas's invasion provides new opportunities to convince Americans that the US needs to expand its many foreign policy commitments in the name of "democracy" or human rights. The war in Ukraine may not have captured the support of many American conservatives and Republicans, but experience suggests that such people can be far more easily whipped into a frenzy against the regime's official Islamic enemies. 

Never mind, of course, the fact that neither Hamas nor Hezbollah present any significant threat to the United States at all. In fact, Israel doesn't face any existential threat from Hamas or Hezbollah, either. Israel has an air force with the most advanced technology. Hamas has no air force at all. Israel has one of the best-trained, best-armed militaries in the world—much of it paid for by US tax dollars. Israel, of course, has a nuclear arsenal, and probably even a nuclear triad. Moreover, even if Iran were able to acquire nuclear arms, the realities of mutually assured destruction would still apply. Israel's nuclear delivery systems are far superior to anything Iran can hope to field. 

Hamas' Saturday invasion is likely to leave Gaza and Hamas devastated and in a far worse position than they were in on Saturday morning. By the time Israel is done with Gaza, casualties—civilian and otherwise—are likely to number in the tens of thousands. Gaza's housing and infrastructure will be all but destroyed. The success of Hamas' Saturday invasion doesn't illustrate any sizable strength on the part of Hamas. The success of the invasion only suggests incompetence on the part of Israeli intelligence—in a manner reminiscent of the CIA's abject failure on 9/11. 

And yet, we're being told that the United States must inject itself even more into this conflict and court open warfare with Iran, a country that also poses no threat to the United States. 

Decades of US Meddling 

Unfortunately, the US has no plans to leave the region, and it is absurd to claim—as Pence does—that the United States has somehow "withdrawn." The US recently renewed a commitment to provide Israel with military aid—totaling more than forty billion over the next five years. The US has been in some state of conflict with Iran since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The US has informally provided defense guarantees to Saudi Arabia in an effort to safeguard the petrodollar and counterbalance Saudi Arabia's traditional regional enemy Iran. US military bases dot the Middle Eastern landscape across Jordan, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, and others. 

None of these bases serve to protect America's borders from attack. If anything, the heavy-handed American presence in the region serves to motivate militants and terrorists to attack Americans who come to be viewed as occupiers and collaborators with various hated regimes in the region. The bases may be a boon for the military industrial complex, but they provide no benefit for the average taxpayer who must foot the bill—and who becomes a potential target as a result of US meddling in the region. 

If the safety, security, and property of Americans were actually a priority of American policymakers, Washington would be working to make Mike Pence's worst nightmare come true: getting the US out of the Middle East.

Agreed.  The U.S. needs to get out, really out, of the Middle East.

 

[swordfish]

Truthfully, the US and the rest of the world just needs to GTFO of the way of Israel.  Let them handle their terrorist enemies in their own way.   If this were the US and these sick bastards did this - beheaded babies - I would expect the US to nuke em till they glow and shoot em in the dark.  This wasn't war.