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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 23

These three paragraphs incapsulate the whole Gaza war and Hamas genocidal dictatorship there. Numerous hostages said they were held at a hospital, as part of the Hamas illegal massacre. “Medical officials” deny this…clearly because there is an omertà among them to never mention Hamas or its criminal use and exploitation of medical facilitators. The genocidal group, which is backed Iran and western allies, systematically used hospitals to move hostages…and no one “saw” anything. The Hamas regime is empowered and supported by international organizations and their omertà

Notice none of the medical people say “we saw Hamas moving hostages into the hospital but it’s our duty to provide care”…which would have been a normal excuse. Imagine if a cartel moved hostages to a hospital in Sinaloa…you could imagine that medical professionals might explain it that way. But Hamas has such control that the medical people will never mention their presence due to non-disclosure agreements that clearly have been agreed with these medical folk. They treated hostages but have an omertà with the authoritarian regime that the west empowered and cemented in control.

What did western countries know and when did they know it about October 7? What do they know via their contacts in Gaza about the location of hostages? How much of the Hamas holding of hostages in hospitals was known by western NGOs? Did western doctors in Gaza treat hostages and help Hamas? How much is Hamas empowered by the west and its allies and covered for by them? Hostages don’t get taken to hospitals in Gaza and no one sees anything. They knew. And they didn’t do anything. It’s like that movie Spotlight. They knew.

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Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 19

Emma is heroic here. It is a shame on the audience they are not applauding here but rather trying to hide. There was a time when people would stand up and applaud and demand the release of Tsurkov who is illegally kidnapped in Iraq. What a shame. A shame on the audience. It speaks volumes about the amorality of today. The lack of heroism and ethics and decency and humanity.

This is shame. Instead of standing up and supporting the kidnapped Tsurkov. Why is it so hard to support a researcher illegally held by this vile regime. Stand up and applaud. Stand up and be counted.

Remember when people talked about “speaking truth to power.” Here it is. A woman speaking truth to power while men squirm in their chairs afraid of a woman’s voice demanding the release of her sister by this chauvinist regime.

Shame. Shame. Shame.

Read 8 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 17

This may seem an unlikelt conclusion, but my sense is that the Hezbollah "Radwan" force and Hamas "battalions" are sort of symptoms of the same problem in analyzing the conflicts. In both cases Israel has focused a lot of attention on these entities, as if defeating them is a measurement of achievement.
Here is why this is problematic.

Hamas didn't used to have "battalions." It used to be a much smaller terror group. It grew into a terror army with "battalions" primarily because it was allowed to. Israel's numerous wars in Gaza each ended with Israel claiming achievements against the Hamas "metro" or something else. And in each case Hamas rapidly recovered and expanded.

The 24 "battalions" are thus an example of the whole problem of managing the conflict with Hamas. It became exponentially stronger. And when the war began after the Hamas attack, I think a lot of battalions dispersed and went to ground...so the "defeat" of the battalions was only partial and partly on paper.

Read 12 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 16

There should be a kind of "alternate history" article(s) on how Iran and its proxies were empowered to grow exponentially in the region and it should include Israel's policies, which were ostensibly against Iran and the proxies...but explain how this ended up with Iran in an unprecedented and strong position on Israel's borders.

What I mean is the aphorism, when everyone is thinking the same thing, someone isn't thinking. It requires a critical reading of the history to explain the policies that enabled Hamas to become exponentially more powerful than it was 20 years ago.

And it requires some explanation why Israel's conception of strategy decided that having an increasingly powerful Hezbollah on the northern border, especially after the challenges of 2006...became "this is fine." Even as it became clear that Hezbollah was not deterred, but rather Israel was becoming deterred.

Read 19 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 15

I just realized that one outcome of Iran launching such a massive unprecedented attack using drones and missiles is that it wanted to create a new bar for such attacks in the future so it can attack Israel with fewer projectiles directly and then have it portrayed as normal and acceptable

You see all the people who already went to bat for this narrative claiming this was just a symbolic attack not meant to succeed…so they now define 350 missiles as acceptable. And so if Iran launches 20 missiles they will have redefined that as fine

The whole narrative when it comes to Israel is always to define things that are unacceptable in any other context, such as attacks on civilians, as basically normal and acceptable “retaliation” or “resistance” and thus make any Israeli response “escalation”

Read 4 tweets

Seth Frantzman

@sfrantzman

Apr 15

The worst takes on the Iranian attack of April 13-14 are those who call it “symbolic”. This was a massive, unprecedented attack of historic proportions. Never before in history were so many drones, ballistic, missiles and cruise missiles (350 in total) used at the same time in an attack, and from several different fronts and directions, including attacks from Hezbollah in Lebanon and from the direction of Yemen and over Iraq and Jordan, and almost all of it timed to arrive within around ten minutes of eachother…

Those who think it was “symbolic” or designed not to succeed either know nothing about the weapons involved, the complexity of planning this, know nothing about history, know nothing about the complexity of the air defenses involved and billions of investment it took over four decades to meet this attack, or are simply being purposely disingenuous (more likely).

I suspect most of those making the comment aren’t purposely ignorant, they know firing 350 drones and missiles that require different times to arrive and targeting different areas of Israel with precision from four directions is incredibly complex and was not designed to fail…they need to downplay it for some reason. Because by their logic if 350 is symbolic then what would 1,000 missiles be?

If Iran wanted a symbolic attack it would have launched a dozen missiles. Does anyone say the attack on Asad base was “symbolic” and it involved two dozen missiles right?

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