October 7, 2023

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 'we are at war, and we will win it'..."

"... as the country’s air force began striking Hamas targets in Gaza on Saturday, in response to a surprise assault on the 50th anniversary of the start of the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Hamas militants infiltrated Israeli territory from the Gaza Strip — including by paraglider and over the sea — and launched more than 2,200 rockets, Israeli military leaders said...."

65 comments:

gspencer said...

No question "We're at war."

And the aggressors are Muslims advancing their Islam. This is a 1400-year old war.

Islam v. the world. The barbarian v. the civilized. It would be helpful if the West and its "leaders" would it that way.

Humperdink said...

Phone calls that will not be made: Netanyahu will not be calling Biden/ Blinken/ Gen. Milley for advice on how to respond.

EdwdLny said...

The religion of "peace" strikes again. Apparently all those billions to Iran have been quickly put to work. Joey bidet and the rest of the turd bucket left have even more blood on their hands. Well Israel, turn Gaza into a waste land and kill every hamas shithead everywhere.

Dave Begley said...

Another international crisis thanks to Biden.

Dave Begley said...

“Weakness is provocative.” Donald Rumsfeld.

As if there was any doubt before, it is now clear that Biden is our worst president.

Rusty said...

The world burns. The left laughs and then blames Trump. You Biden voters understand that the world is the way it is now because of how you voted. You're the fuck ups we were warned about.

hawkeyedjb said...

Keep a wary eye. There is something big cooking over there. Yes, if Joe gets involved he will fuck it up more, but there is a very large batch of bad news brewing up. For Israel, every battle is an existential one because it is always part of a plan of extermination.

Jon Burack said...

I agree with Daniel Pipes, among others. This will end only when the Palestinian rulers (and people) experience absolute defeat and know they have. As with Germany and Japan in World War II, it took their unconditional surrender to begin the process of turning their nations around. Defeat was at that point the best thing that could happen to them. The same is so for the Palestinians. Only then will their fortunes turn around.

James K said...

Israel is still paying the price for the naive Oslo Accords that ultimately led to ceding complete control of Gaza to the Palestinians, who then elected Hamas. Hopefully under Netanyahu Israel will destroy Hamas and reoccupy Gaza.

The Crack Emcee said...

"Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said 'we are at war, and we will win it'..."

Enjoy yourselves.

hawkeyedjb said...

Our useless Department of State (Office of Palestinian Affairs), in a statement reeking of equivalence, says "We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing."

Naive or deliberately blind, it matters little. The simple fact remains that violence, properly applied, solves a lot of things. It may solve the problem of Hamas. Let us hope so.

Sheridan said...

Send General Milley over to Israel. He'll show the Israelis how to run away and still declare victory. That will resolve the crisis! And if not, Israel can always ask Red China for help.

Tom T. said...

Interesting that the Althouse comments section is adamant that protecting the Ukraine is not a US interest but seems to think that protecting Israel is.

JAORE said...

Lesson of the day:
$6 billion buys a lot of military hardware.

At some time Israel will take out large segments of the Gaza Strip. And they won't care about the tears shed by CNN hosts.

Me? I'd announce artillery, guided missels and smart bombs will rain on the spot where missel launches are identified. So if you see Hamas bringing missels to a hospital, you'd better evacuate the hospital.

If you see a smoke trail coming from the hospital, it's too damn late.

EdwdLny said...

" Interesting that the Althouse... " How odd, I don't see a single commenter above advocating for U.S. intervention as you implied. Do better.

traditionalguy said...

Those pesky Jews enforcing their borders again. No wonder Biden hates them so much that he carefully sent Iran ( the supplier of Hamas with weapons and money) the impounded 6 billion dollars just in time not to look so horribly bad.

Now how did he know about the surprise attack’s date?? Oh yeah, the real master mind behind Obama and Biden has always been the Iranians who called the shots from inside the Obama White House then and Obama’s DC headquarters home now.


Yancey Ward said...

"Interesting that the Althouse comments section is adamant that protecting the Ukraine is not a US interest but seems to think that protecting Israel is."

Which comments would that be? I read them all, and none are advocating sending aid to Israel. I think most of us realize the Israelis can defend themselves, and I have long advocated for not giving them monetary aid of any kind- let them market purchase our weapons if they want and need them.

hawkeyedjb said...

Tom T. said...
"Interesting that the Althouse comments section is adamant that protecting the Ukraine is not a US interest but seems to think that protecting Israel is."

I haven't seen a word about the US protecting Israel; the comments seem to be about Israel protecting itself. Or are you against that too?

hombre said...

Of course the QuidProJoe regime will react as they have to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You know, they will condemn the Hamas attack and support Israel with funds and weapons.

Meanwhile, college students and their profs will demonstrate against Israelis for defending themselves.

hombre said...

Tom T: "Interesting that the Althouse comments section is adamant that protecting the Ukraine is not a US interest but seems to think that protecting Israel is."

Interesting, but not surprising, that you miss the point. Briefly and obviously, Israel doesn't need protecting. That's why the anti-Semites hate her.

Wince said...

"Hamas militants infiltrated Israeli territory..."

Wow, who knew the word "infiltrated" was still in the WaPo stylebook as applied to a national border?

Jon Burack said...

Sent to my rep, here in Michigan, Elissa Slotkin:

It is absolutely imperative that you call for an immediate end to ALL U.S. funding of Palestinian entities, both direct and indirect, including any that goes through the UN and via other routes. It is also imperative that you denounce openly and forcefully the Biden administration's appeasement of Iran via what we now know to be Iran-infiltrated and influenced U.S. diplomatic efforts and call for the immediate reimposition of sanctions against Iran and an end to all negotiations (which have already failed in any case) dealing with Iran's drive to get a nuclear weapon.

rhhardin said...

Everything will proceed as both sides expected. The theater is the thing for Palestinians, and the Israeli response by two successive rules, military and then religious. The religious one keeps the Palestinians in the game for the next theater.

Lyle Smith said...

Israel has every right to treat Hamas like we treated Nazi Germany. Hamas has to go.

Oligonicella said...

Note to Hamas: Don't sucker punch the black belt.

BillieBob Thorton said...

How long before Israel bombs Iran's nuc sites in retaliation for the Hamas invasion?
Then we have all out war in the Middle East.
Followed by soaring energy prices, even higher inflation another surge at our southern border.
What a shit show this administration has unleashed.

Birches said...

I'm sick right now. Biden is responsible for this. They knew what releasing the money to Iran would do.

Narr said...

Some people here talk as if Israel is not, at base, as dependent on the US as Ukraine is; as if we're not neck deep in those sandy shitholes already.

Slavic and Semitic in-fighting over turf . . . break out the NBC Warfare manuals.

Tom T. said...

The US provides a ton of military and other aid to Israel, to protect it against invasion, just as it does with Ukraine. When it's Putin doing the invading, US military aid is bad. When it's Hamas invading, US military aid is fine, and a bunch of people feign confusion and try to fall back on "I only oppose US intervention." So is that your position on Ukraine now too? You don't oppose military aid, only intervention? (I take Yancey's point that he opposes US aid to both and just hadn't gotten around to saying so as to Israel yet. This new war is still very young.)

For the record, I'm in the middle. I don't support a blank check or a cutoff for either. I'm just curious why US military aid to oppose Putin hits some people as viscerally wrong, while US military aid to oppose Hamas doesn't even register.

William said...

At the end of WWII, some ten million Germans were forecfully evacuated from their home in Eastern and Central Europe. They were nearly all old people, women, and children. They were, I suppose, glad to enjoy German privileges under Nazi occupation, but they weren't Nazis or war criminals. About 5% of them died during these evacuations. These aren't Auschwitz statistics, but the evacuation produced quite a lot of dead children and old women....All this happened at about the same time the Palestinians were becoming refugees. As I understand it, the German refugees made the best of it and are no longer refugees. There are no organized revanchists seeking to recover their lost homes in Konigsberg or Bohemia.....I don't suppose the Palestinians think there's any useful lesson to be learned from this. The Germans present two examples: the bitter losers after WWI and the "it's over" losers of WWII. The Palestinians will keep fighting until they have their "it's over" battle.

D.D. Driver said...

Weird. I keep hearing that the Abraham Accords ushered in an era of Peace in the Middle East.

Quelle surprise.

pious agnostic said...

Right now my biggest fear is that this indicates that Iran has completed its nuclear program and has already armed their proxies.

loudogblog said...

Remember all those protests in Israel about a month ago about the Supreme Court changes? I remember reading that a lot of military people in Israel resigned. I wonder if this helped to open the door for this attack?

hawkeyedjb said...

D.D. Driver said...
"Weird. I keep hearing that the Abraham Accords ushered in an era of Peace in the Middle East."

It has done so, among the parties to that accord. The gangsters who dream of killing all the Jews denounced them.

The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...

Another item to add to the bulging “Things That Wouldn’t Be Happening If Trump Was President” folder.

Anna Keppa said...

JAORE said:
"So if you see Hamas bringing missels to a hospital, you'd better evacuate the hospital."
*********

Missels drizzled with melted garlic butter are delectable.

Birches said...

Sorry, Ukraine and Israel is a false equivalence. Putin isn't trying to wipe a country or an ethnicity off the map. If the US wasn't sending arms to Ukraine, Ukraine would still exist as a Russian client state. Hamas isn't interested in a client state or Jewish people existing.

Gahrie said...

Remember all those protests in Israel about a month ago about the Supreme Court changes? I remember reading that a lot of military people in Israel resigned. I wonder if this helped to open the door for this attack?

Friday was the 50-year anniversary of the beginning of the Yom Kippur war.

Gahrie said...

Weird. I keep hearing that the Abraham Accords ushered in an era of Peace in the Middle East.

The Palestinians did not sign the Abraham Accords.

Joe Smith said...

'And the aggressors are Muslims advancing their Islam. This is a 1400-year old war.'

Make the Crusades Great Again®

You don't think Iran isn't funneling some of those Biden Bucks to the Palestinians?

Gahrie said...

I don't suppose the Palestinians think there's any useful lesson to be learned from this.

The Palestinian refugees are subsidized by the U.N. and rich Arab nations to remain as refugees.

Secondly, according to their religion once an area has become Muslim, it can never go back to being non-Muslim. Muslims still consider Spain to be occupied territory stolen from them.

Islam has been at war with Western Civilization for 1,400 years. The Israeli conflict is just a small part of that.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"BillieBob Thorton said...
How long before Israel bombs Iran's nuc sites in retaliation for the Hamas invasion?"

They really have no other choice. The only reason -- the only reason -- Hamas didn't nuke Israel yesterday is because Hamas has no nukes.

Free Manure While You Wait! said...

"When it's Putin doing the invading, US military aid is bad."

What a stupid thing to write. There are literally MILLIONS of Americans who support military aid to Ukraine. Millions.

Quick civics lesson: In America, people hold differing opinions on every issue. So when you write "When it's Putin doing the invading, US military aid is bad" you are essentially attempting to gaslight us, like any good anti-Semite would.

Jim at said...

Interesting that the Althouse comments section is adamant that protecting the Ukraine is not a US interest but seems to think that protecting Israel is.

Interesting that you're such a simpleton you can't see the difference between a fight over two nation's borders and Islam's 1,400-year war on the West.

mikee said...

I recall Arafat being included in the Nobel Peace Prize award for 1994, and look forward to that sort of categorical mistake being unavailable to make, by those who consider a Peace Prize for the wartime leaders of the two sides. How well protected are the Hamas leadership in Qatar?

Jon Burack said...

Narr and Tom T,

Your attempt to equate our aid and our relationship to Israel with Ukraine is absurd and in a way reprehensible. US aid to Israel is tiny compared with the aid going to Ukraine, especially if one factors in the enormous aid we give NATO which is embroiled in this battle. What we "give" Israel is as much in our national interest as Israel's, perhaps more. I have often thought it might be better for Israel to forgo it just to undercut the false excuses it allows detractors of Israel to make. Israel is a powerful military force in its own right, one that so far has restrained its use of force to a very great degree, in part due to unjustified double standard pressure on it from the US (especially under Biden and Obama) and other Western powers. It is time now for it to unleash its full fury, or whatever fury it takes to defeat Hamas and extirpate it from Gaza entirely. If it does, it will be owed thanks from an ungrateful world, but most of all from the Palestinian people of Gaza who are in this prison of Hamas's making, not Israel's.

Richard Dolan said...

An operation this sophisticted must have originated with the Iranian IRGC. While the Israelis will undoubtedly level every operational aspect of Hamas they can find, they will never solve the problem until they eliminate its source. It's not as if the mullahs have been all the shy about making known their objective of wiping Israel off the map and driving all those pesky Iraelis into the sea. So, now we will see whether the IRGC tries to open a second front from Lebanaon using Hetbollah. There's been lots of aggressive activity from Hezbollah in recent weeks along Israel's norther border, but whether it's a prelude or just a divertimento is anyone's guess. The Israeli intelligence service missed the first act of this drama -- pressure will surely be on to determine whether act 2 is yet to follow. No idea how Netanyahu will maneuver through all of that, but his first move was to say that Israel is at war (so, not just a skirmish to be met with a one-off response), second move was to call for a unity government, and third move will necessarily be to shore up support for the scope of whatever military response he has in mind.

Clyde said...

Here's hoping that the Israelis open up the giant industrial-sized container of "Find Out" for the Palestinians.

Candide said...

Reports started to come in that Palestinians have taken hundreds of civilian Israelis hostage and transported them into Gaza territories. Palestinians claim they now have enough hostages to exchange for all the Palestinians held in Israeli jails. That would put the number around 7,000.

The Vault Dweller said...

Apparently the Taliban has put out a statement saying that if Muslim countries gave them right of free passage they would conquer Jerusalem.

Sebastian said...

Obviously, Israeli intelligence failed and military preparedness was less than expected. How many Israeli lefties in the relevant services spent more time recently bitching about the legal reforms than about doing their actual job well?

Unless Israel destroys the Palestinian leadership and infrastructure and massively kills its enemies, nothing will change. It will forfeit world support if it does what needs to be done, so it will hold back, only to be vilified and attacked again later.

Douglas B. Levene said...

Noah Smith just write a thoughtful column on Substack about what the Pax Americana was and what its end means. “ The world is starting to revert into a jungle, where the strong prey upon the weak, and where there is a concomitant requirement that every country build up its own strength; if your neighbor is a tiger, you should probably grow some claws of your own. Old scores that had to wait can now be settled. Disputed bits of territory can now be retaken. Natural resources can now be seized. There are many reasons for countries to fight each other, and now one of the biggest reasons not to fight has been removed.” Russia’s war on Ukraine, China’s seizure of the South China Sea, Iran’s proxy war on Israel — maybe these would have happened anyway when the U.S. was the world’s policeman with unquestioned strength and will, but probably not. The neo-isolationists in the GOP utterly fail to see this.

Yancey Ward said...

Douglas,

Pax Americana has bankrupted the country. Take note that we can't even produce enough armaments for Ukraine to fight with. The end started when we shipped most of the key industries and mining to Asia, Australia, and South America starting in the 1980s.

The U.S. can no longer be the world's policeman- face up to those facts.

Gahrie said...

Here's hoping that the Israelis open up the giant industrial-sized container of "Find Out" for the Palestinians.

We won't let them.

Eva Marie said...

This may be too soon but I have always wondered why the Palestinians didn’t open a casino in the Gaza Strip. Gambling is prohibited in the Muslim faith but operating a casino is not gambling, it’s just raking in the money. They could exact their revenge on Christians and Jews, have enough money to pay off their own corrupt officials, and still have enough for first class schools, roads, houses.

Rich said...

Unprecedented failure of Israeli intelligence—the most important component of the country’s national security.

Temujin said...

Agree with Jon Burack all the way down today.
What's happening over there is cowardice at an extreme level. Making war on unsuspecting civilians, on a holiday, killing them or dragging them back to your streets and tunnels, to hide behind the live ones when your card is called.

These people are lower than whaleshit. The world- the entire world, including those who think they have no skin in this game, have been attacked or affected by these 5th century fanatics. If they'd spend half as much time learning to be productive and grow their own communities, they could have had a life, they could have had a country, they could have had willing and helpful neighbors.

But they are what they are. Nothing has changed in centuries. It's time to end Hamas, Hezbollah. It's time for actual Palestinians to decide if they want to join the civilized world or keep partying like it's 499. Israel, I am sure, is done waiting.

Narr said...

Whatever the real and important differences between our two clients states and their situations, they are still US client states and to some degree dependent on the US--and the longer their conflicts go on the more dependent they will be.

Regardless of rhetoric, the US is now too poor and weak a country to sustain more military challenges of a less-than-existential nature for us.

Pax Americana and the Zionist experiment are drawing to a close together. The only question is how much it'll hurt.

Original Mike said...

Peter Zeihan writes on what the world is going to look like as the US withdraws from the peace keeping role we have played since the end of WWII. His take: the World is not going to like it.

Eva Marie said...

BTW, I wonder who the Palestinians could get to negotiate the Greatest Casino Deal ever? Yeah, that guy.

Barry Dauphin said...

“This is a distraction from Ukraine.“: James Clapper, speaking to Jake Tapper on CNN.

Josephbleau said...

The nude body of a 30 year old German woman visiting Israel for a peace music festival was displayed by video by Palestinians in the back of a pick up truck. To me, this means that all debts owed to the Palestinians are paid in full. Rape and Murder has consequences. They were not doing "peaceful protest (tm)." Israel need not give them "Room to Destroy (tm)."

To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt all hostages alive or Ismail Haniya dead.

Josephbleau said...

"Unprecedented failure of Israeli intelligence—the most important component of the country’s national security."

Unprecedented? The sneak attack 50 years ago by the Arabs was not a failure of Israeli intelligence? Sneak attacks are what the Palestinians do, You can't live as a nation and constantly have all your reserves on the line. Israel will have to take the hit and apply deterrence.

This time, perhaps, Iran is going to pop a nuke and bring on the 12th Imam or whatever.

Oligonicella said...

This is why I draw Muhammad.

mikee said...

This season of The Mideast has been written by a madman.