Thread by @akoz33

The war in Gaza shows the limitations of hybrid warfare. Hamas‘s tactics was initially very clever. It managed to completely mislead the Israelis by pretending to have become more “moderate” after the Israelis relaxed restrictions on transfer of funds to Gaza and allowed more

Gazans to travel to and work in Israel (some of these workers provided Hamas with the information it needed to carry out the attack). Hamas also successfully used the old “cry wolf” tactics - by staging 9 or 10 “practice assaults“ before the real one.

Hamas also took advantage of the greater reluctance of Israeli troops to open fire without certainty that the target was armed and dangerous. This is how an Israeli tank, which could have presented an unsurmountable obstacle, was captured and its crew slaughtered.

The extreme brutality of the assault, the rapes, the murder of babies - all was deliberate and carefully planned. The aim was not only to capture hostages but also to make Israel retaliate with fury and cause a maximum number of civilian casualties amomg the Gazans.

This was the key part of the hybrid war strategy. The main operational tool was going to be the Western media and the hundreds of thousands of Islamists planted in the West thought the insane immigration policies and the millions of leftist and left-liberal cretins who are the

the islamist’s “useful idiots”. All of this went as well as Hamas could have hoped and everyone played the assigned role as well as could be expected.

But the next part of the plan is not going well and almost certainly make all the successes futile.

According to the plan, the combined efforts of the Hamas propagandist in Western media, the mass demonstrations, and also the deliberate violent intimidation were going to force Israel to accept a ceasefire, as happened in the past. This would be followed by an exchange of some

surviving hostages for a large number of terrorists held by Israel and finally the ceasefire would turn into an indefinite one - that is, lasting until the next opportunity

And here is where the miscalculation occurred. Hamas did not seriously consider the possibility that this time Israel would yield to pressure, would not accept a ceasefire and would continue the offensive until Hamas’ total destruction. It became clear that Hamas’ plan was not

was not working when the reaction of the US turned out to be very different from the past. After a little hesitation the Biden administration publicly agreed that the complete destruction of Hamas is desirable. It also showed a greater readiness to become directly involved

militarily in case Iran or Hezbollah decided to enter the fray. In fact, he reaction of Hezbollah and Iran has been undoubtedly a great disappointment to Hamas and will become even greater. The point is that Iran is not ready for war but it also does not want to be seen as having

suffered a defeat. Iran’s failure to support Hamas in its hour of need will damage Iran’s standing among the militant anti-Israel forces in the Muslim world, unless Iran can place the blame squarely on Hamas. And, according to reports, this is what Khamenei has been doing.

Reportedly he told Hamas that Iran would not be able to help it because they (Hamas) did not consult Iran before the attack, staged it at the wrong time and will themselves have to bear the consequences.

If Hamas is destroyed, as I am pretty sure will happen, others will also try to disassociate themselves from failure. Erdogan will actually find himself in a more embarrassing position than Iran, because as usual the toughness of his words is not matched by actions.

On the other hand, he has done this many times before and although it often looked like he painted himself into a corner, he somehow managed to get out of it.

Another thing that seems significant to me, and which could be of very great importance, is the completely of of

of character behaviour of Germany, which only has been much tougher and pro-Israel in speech than ever before but also has matched this toughness with action. The German reaction against the antisemitic, pro-Hamas displayed has not only been tougher (im fact, incomparably) than

that of the UK and France, but also than the rest of Europe and even the USA (in the last case, of course, the difference in the legal system is largely responsible for the difference). In fact, as far as Europe is concerned, the reaction of Germany is one of the few

reasons for cautious optimism.