JobSecurity said:

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I still don't get it. They planned that for two years... To what end? Yeah they killed over a thousand Israelis but their little invasion lasted less than 48 hours and now they will lose Gaza. What was the intended outcome of that operation??

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It's the Michael Jackson effect where you tell someone they are special over and over and over and it is bad for them. Palestinians have been one of the lefts favorite victims for two generations and they have been allowed to kill and murder indiscriminately and the Israelis were always blamed.

The left causes damage wherever they become involved. It is far, far past time to marginalize the evil scum left.

I believe the hostages are already dead. You have heard nothing pertaining to proof of life.

The US might try to negotiate for the Americans release (provided my previous statement is not true), but Israel is not going to negotiate. They have said as much. If they did, after what they have said and they way they have acted, it would really enable the terrorists in the future. Perhaps more so than ever.

With that being said, I just cannot see Bibi not finishing what he started and backing up what he says.

Count me in as another who believes the hostages are dead.

You gotta hand it to the Israelis. You don't wanna mess with them.
And if you do, then you have hell to pay.

I wish all other countries had the balls that ISR has.

The Fife said:

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JobSecurity said:

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I still don't get it. They planned that for two years... To what end? Yeah they killed over a thousand Israelis but their little invasion lasted less than 48 hours and now they will lose Gaza. What was the intended outcome of that operation??

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My thought is that they assumed they would be offered something in exchange for peace just like what's happened in the past. It's been an endless cycle of acting out for years, only this time the other side isn't coming to the negotiating table.

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I think had Hamas attacked only IDF positions an taken mostly soldiers and maybe a scattering of civilians it probably would have played out that way. When they went full ISIS and started mutilating corpses, mowing down concert goers and killing children then that went out the window.

aggiehawg said:

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Agthatbuilds said:

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I thinks there's probably hope for clearly non Israeli hostages. Ie- they found a bunch of alive Thai workers that were kidnapped.

Those that are Jewish or Israeli I think are probably dead.

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Which again raises the question of what was the rationale for taking hostages back into Gaza in the first place? Human shields? Cannon fodder?

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They were trophies.

The video of the vehicle returning to Gaza with hostages on a street packed full of Palestinians cheering, spitting, hitting, and photographing them as they parted the sea of human scum is all you need to see for understanding of who the regular people are.

If I could find it I would repost.

Moderator said:

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This thread has largely been a source of information about the unfolding events in Israel and Gaza in regards to the attack inside of Israel by Hamas this past weekend. Sprinkled into information that provides a picture of what happened and how Israel is responding has been posts about the various responses from around the world from nations, news orgs, activist groups, etc etc. Some supportive of Israel and some supportive of Hamas/Gaza.

This is all mostly inbounds, there are probably a few things that should have been taken down, but we aren't going to go back 40 pages at this point and clear things off.

What this thread should not become is a constant barrage of your hot take on one political party/leader response presently or historically or another to the Arab-Israeli Conflict. All of those discussions can be had, they should be had on threads about those subjects. Posting "zingers" about the current administration, etc. is allowed on this forum, but it's not what THIS THREAD was created for or what is had been predominately discussed over the last 81 pages.

You can post information about the unfolding events in Israel and news/commentary and have a discussion about them on this thread.

Please leave the other random commentary about various political parties/politicians to other threads on those topics.

Also, please tread carefully in how you discuss Hamas as an organization that the U.S. officially considers a terrorist oganization and what they carried out over the weekend versus how you talk about an entire ethnic or religious group of people. Be specific in talking about organizations like terrorist oganizations, be specific about talking about Nations and their leadership, presently and historically. This is the case for all sides of this conflict. Be specific when you talk about things related to national/organizational/individual actors involved in these conflicts. Creating posts that paint with a broad brush about entire ethnic groups could lead to deleted posts and time off from posting depending upon the nature and context of the post.

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Why are we tiptoeing around that the majority of Palestinians support violence against Israelis? 59% of them to be exact. We haven't had an election that one sided in over 50 years.

Yep. These hostages/dead bodies were no different than someone taking a picture on the dock with their catch after a fishing charter. They are animals in every sense of the word.

aTmAg said:

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Do morons really think that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are supplying Hamas weapons?

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By way of Afganistan?

aTmAg said:

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Do morons really think that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon are supplying Hamas weapons?

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Why would anyone need to supply them weapons? I'm sure they have all they need from what was left in Afghanistan.

This feels like the elephant in the room to me. This is from a newsletter I subscribe to…

TLDR warning

" Like most people, I've been closely following what's been going on in Israel and Gaza since Saturday's attack.

Most of our readers know that I'm a former intelligence officer; while it seems like a lifetime ago, those instincts never leave. And as I'm shaking my head in disgust at what's happened, I also can't help but notice a number of peculiarities that just don't add up.

First, it's bizarre… almost suspicious… just how poorly trained the Hamas fighters are. As I watch videos of the gunmen, they demonstrate a distinct lack of even basic firearms proficiency.

They have limited trigger discipline. They wave their weapons around like children playing with toy guns. They shoot one-handed as if they learned marksmanship from watching Rambo.

Plus their small unit tactics are pitiful; they don't know how to move and fight as a unit or how to clear buildings. They don't even know basic hand and arm signals.

There also don't seem to be any tactical or strategic objectives. In warfare, opposing sides seek to achieve clear goals-- destroy high value targets, disrupt lines of communication, neutralize enemy units, secure key terrain, etc.

But there's been none of that so far from Hamas.

This weekend's attack had obviously been in the works for several months, with significant external support from Iran.

Yet it appears that all of the meticulous planning went into logistics, finance, smuggling, and cross-border coordination. Zero planning went into figuring out the actual mission… let alone training the fighters for combat.

It's as if Hamas and their allies in Iran thought about every tiny detail about the attack… except for the attack itself. Instead they just rounded up a bunch of angry teenagers, put weapons in their hands, and told them to go murder civilians while screaming "Allahu Akbar".

Now, it's not unusual for terrorists to be poorly trained. When I was in the military, we saw so many reports of bomb makers accidentally blowing themselves up, or fighters literally shooting themselves in the foot, that my colleagues and I euphemistically referred to them as "stupid terrorists".

It's also not unusual for a terrorist group to lack achievable objectives; some people just want the world to burn, and anyone attracted to such a vocation is typically lacking in intellect and strategic vision.

But this isn't an ordinary terrorist organization. This attack was essentially from a sovereign government. And it's frankly strange that they would take such a big swing without thinking through the basics.

Another point that doesn't add up is America's role.

Much has already been written about the Biden administration's culpability in this attack, including the humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan that weakened America's standing in the world, as well as abandoning tens of billions of dollars in military equipment to the Taliban.

Then of course there was that small matter of releasing $6 billion to Iran in exchange for five US hostages (at least three of whom were also Iranian nationals).

Well, Mr. Biden himself announced that at least 14 US citizens have been killed by Hamas. At least 20 US citizens are missing in Israel and suspected to have been kidnapped by Hamas.

So where is their $6 billion? What was so special about those Iranian-Americans that the United States government (which laughably insists they 'do not negotiate with terrorists') allowed Iran to pocket $6 billion in frozen cash to release them?

Don't misunderstand-- I'm not advocating for paying Hamas to get the American hostages out. Quite the opposite. In my mind, you don't negotiate with terrorists. You neutralize them. Especially when said terrorists are sloppy, emotional, poorly-trained cowards.

But that's not the point. I'm just trying to understand the logic. Why pay $6 billion for some Americans, but nothing for other Americans? For that matter, why do a costly, one-sided prisoner exchange with Russia for a WNBA player, but don't do the same to secure the release of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich (who has been unjustly held in Russia for more than six months)?

What is the President's logic?

Sorry I almost threw up in my mouth a little bit. I apologize for suggesting the man has any logic at all.

Bizarrely, the Pentagon-- presumably under the President's direction-- went to the trouble to announce that a rescue mission "is not off the table". What does that even mean? If you're going to rescue people, you go and do it. You don't say you might do it. Or that doing it "is not off the table". You just go and do it, while you still have the initiative and element of surprise.

Saying you might send your Special Operations Forces on a rescue mission either tips off the enemy, or proves you are full of hot air… thus weakening your position even further. Talk about a bonehead move.

(In completely unrelated news, the Pentagon also recently announced that it was slashing its Special Operations Forces. But hey, at least the Navy has plenty of drag queens now.)

A final point that doesn't add up is what the media is calling an "intelligence failure" on the part of the Israelis. Come on. That's a colossal understatement at best.

Mossad (Israeli intelligence) has agents and operatives all over the world. They have countless resources in Gaza. They have people in Iran. They have assets at luxury hotels in key cities like Beirut, Cairo, and Dubai, all to keep tabs on high profile guests and meetings that take place.

So it's hard to believe that they were caught off-guard and had no idea that this attack was being planned for months.

They completely missed the smuggling operation that brought an arsenal of weaponry into Gaza. They missed the multiple meetings that took place over the past few months in Beirut between Hamas leaders and senior Iranian officials.

And these weren't even secret meetings; they took place in broad daylight and included some of Iran's top military commanders and even the country's foreign minister.

It's not just Mossad; plenty of nations' intelligence agencies (including in the United States) keep close tabs on Hamas and Iran. The CIA has a whole division dedicated to Iran. Yet apparently everyone missed it.

Additionally, it's worth noting that, despite the mountain of bureaucracy and compliance now required in the global banking system, everyone also missed the river of money that funded Hamas's operation.

This is mind boggling; laws like FATCA, CRS, and the USA PATRIOT Act were supposedly passed, at least in part, to cut off terrorist groups from the global financial system.

Banking has become so cumbersome that the rest of us ordinary, law-abiding citizens have to suffer ridiculous paperwork and compliance just to conduct routine financial transactions.

Your bank will treat you like a criminal if you withdraw $5,000 in physical cash.

Yet Iran-- a nation that has been blacklisted by the global financial system-- has been able to send hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas-- a blacklisted terrorist organization.

This is not a simple 'intelligence failure'. The 'experts' missed it. And the systems they designed failed miserably.

At best, this was a catastrophic breakdown of an entire system that was put in place worldwide to prevent the very thing that just happened this weekend.

Simon Black"