300 dead, 1600 injured and still counting

[EndtheMadnessNow]

And so it begins...

Lieutenant General James Glynn, the Former-Commander of U.S. Marine Forces Special Operations Command as well as several other High-Level U.S. Military Officers are reported to have arrived recently in Israel at the order of the Biden Regime, to assist in the Advisory of the Israeli Defense Force during upcoming Operations in the Gaza Strip and throughout the Region.


The consent manufacturers are not sending their best.




War On The Rocks RAND boys:

The Four Questions The U.S. Military Should Be Asking About Operation Swords of Iron

For American military observers of this conflict, this war, much like previous Israeli wars, will likely yield a host of lessons. And while it is still too early to say precisely what those lessons are— much less to what degree, if any, the United States military will internalize them — it is not too early to identify the right questions to be asking as the conflict unfolds. And while there is an almost infinite number of areas one could explore, there are at least four big questions that the U.S. military should be asking itself as it watches this war in Gaza unfold.

What Are the Roots of Strategic Surprise?

As a starting point, perhaps the most fundamental question to be asking is how Hamas was able to pull off an attack of the scale seen on Oct. 7, 2023, seemingly without any Israel gaining advanced warning or much in the way of effective response. The fact that Hamas was able to gain such strategic surprise at all is shocking, given Israel’s many advantages: a state of the art, billion dollar border wall, equipped with a range of sensors; a host of (until now) well-regarded and sophisticated intelligence services; and the inherent advantage the comes from looking at the same small piece of ground, controlled by the same adversary for decades, right next door.

And from their stepsister down under...

Hubris meets nemesis in Israel

Many have expressed surprise that Hamas so easily penetrated Israel’s defences along the border with Gaza. But there were no such defences. When Hamas began slaughtering hundreds of defenceless civilians, Israel’s glorious army was mostly deployed elsewhere. Many were assigned to the West Bank to protect religious settlers in clashes (sometimes initiated by the settlers themselves) with local Palestinians, and in festivals around invented holy shrines. For long hours, desperate men and women cried for help, and the strongest army in the Middle East was nowhere to be seen.

The assumption was always that Gaza was not a vital priority. The underground wall of sensors and fortified concrete that Israel has built around the enclave was supposed to block the tunnels through which Hamas tried in the past to penetrate Israeli border villages. It was of no use. Hamas militias simply stormed the fences on the surface.

There was no intelligence about Hamas’s intentions, either. The ‘start-up nation’, whose sophisticated cyber units can detect the movement of a leaf in a tree in an Iranian base in Syria, knew nothing of Hamas’s plans. Israel’s obsession with Iran’s possible nuclear breakout and its internal security services’ focus on the occupied West Bank partly explain this negligence.

The attack by Hamas was not just a tactical surprise, but also a strategic bombshell.

A 2017 RAND report, "Lessons from Israel's Wars in Gaza" offers important context for today's conflict.

Dealing with Hamas in Gaza puts Israel in a strategic quandary: It needs to exert enough force to deter Hamas from attacking but not so much that it topples the regime.

Iron Dome is a blessing because it buys Israel time, but Israel needs an excuse for why they are killing Palestinians in operations. When Iron Dome works so well and so few Israelis die, Israel loses the justification for the operation.
- Senior Israeli policymaker

Report has maps & diagrams.




Since the Israeli/Hamas war broke out, it seems like so many events are repeating in an eerily similar fashion.