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Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Jan 15

Since Hamas are now celebrating their “great victory” over Israel, let's review their many achievements over the last 15 months in the light of their initial goals:

1. They failed to conquer Jerusalem.
2. They failed to drive the Jews into the sea.
3. They failed to split Israeli society—instead they united them.
4. They failed to isolate Israel internationally—even the Abraham Accords remain intact.
5. They failed to harm Israel’s economy, which continues to grow.
6. They failed to prove Israel was fragile—if anything, they demonstrated the opposite.
7. They failed to make the Jews “flee back to Europe,” as Israel’s population has increased by 2.5%.
8. They failed to crash Israel’s currency, which is now stronger.
9. They destroyed their own “axis of resistance.”
10. They derailed the geopolitical plans of their backers, Iran, leaving them completely exposed.
11. Their once-fertile land is now devastated, requiring a generation to rebuild.
12. Most of their homes, booby-trapped and used as weapon caches, are destroyed. Clearing the rubble alone will take decades.
13. Their tunnel network is gone.
14. They have alienated almost all their own people.
15. They have lost 99% of their rockets and have no means to rearm.
16. Their leaders are either in hell or in Qatar—or both.
17. Most of their fighters are dead.
18. Over 5,000 of their men will face trial for war crimes.
19. They lost their fighters at a 50:1 ratio compared to Israeli troops.
20. More than 10% of their population has fled, and perhaps another million have lost everything.
21. They caused destruction and losses among their allies in Lebanon.
22. They are now boxed in by the IDF, with no hope of resupply and no means of harming Israelis.
23. They tarnished the reputation of their UNRWA allies.
24. Israel has established a presence in their territory and will maintain constant surveillance.
25. They are being extirpated from the West Bank by their own Palestinian brothers.

What other “great Hamas victories” can you think of?

Happy Unvictory Day to Hamas!

The mad hatter appears to be wearing a hat saying 10/6. Hamas will dream of 10/6 forever. It was their last day.

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Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Jan 11

It's not a miracle. It's called "concrete."

To be honest, I don't really understand why people build beautiful new homes with timber adjacent to forests that combust at regular intervals. Concrete houses will still often get destroyed in fires, but not nearly as often. Particularly if the glazing holds up.

It can't really be to save money? On some of the most expensive building plots on the planet?

This is the before picture from about a year ago. The house on the left of the survivor might also not be wood, but as we can see, the survivor is brand new construction, while the one on the left is 25 years old plus. It's a matter a luck too.

Read 7 tweets

Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Dec 30, 2024

The final months of 2024 will be looked back on as a turning point. It was when the Western secured another few centuries.

A 3-pronged war—relics of the Cold War—has failed: Turning its values into weapons, deleting its softest parts (Israel first), & building up rivals. (1/13)

It is all connected:

When living standards in the West made a proletarian uprising an unlikely vehicle for overturning the established world order and ushering in a New World, the focus turned to sowing social discord—turning every group against each other until the West, the USA first, fell apart at the seams. It nearly worked—until in November, it didn’t.

Even if Harris had won by a whisker instead of losing by one, it would have failed because of this graph: every group, including all those which were meant to be the tip of the spear of identity politics, moved in the wrong direction. (2/13)

Turns out that identity politics is doomed to fail in a First Past the Post system—as in the USA—particularly when, in the internet age, you have a completely transparent battlefield of ideas. Harris found this out when she tried to bribe Black males in Georgia with “loans, crypto n’ weed.” For every Black male she won in Georgia, she lost two white men in the Rust Belt. (3/13)

Read 14 tweets

Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Dec 22, 2024

How can Israeli intel be so brilliant and yet so stupid at once?

How did they carry out the most successful and consequential covert operation in living memory but be unable to recognize the obvious signs leading up to Oct 7 or make the right calls re. Hezbollah? (1/6)

To understand why Israeli intel has had such epic wins on the tactical level but the worst failures possible on the strategic level, recall that the people doing all the clever practical stuff are in no way related to the to the upper echelons that interface with decision makers.

Parts of the old Israeli elite establishment, noting their marginalisation on the political level, have nevertheless maintained their grip on some of the reins of power within the IDF, and particularly the intel community. (2/6)

Promotion to the top of the Israeli intelligence apparatus is largely filtered by an old boy's network, and it is a political and strategic thinking monoculture.

This is reinforced by post-career appointments to lucrative think tank non-jobs (e.g. at the INSS) and education programmes at Harvard to ensure that future leading lights of the military have the 'right' views. (3/6)

Read 6 tweets

Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Dec 16, 2024

Imagine being Irish and accusing others of being "settler colonialists"?

But this explains why Ireland, with only 2,000 Jews, has nevertheless become a primary exporter of Jew-hate. If your brightest 50% escape every generation, for 10 generations, you are left with Ireland.

There are 10 times more Irish people (people with predominantly Irish heritage) in North America than in Ireland.

There are more Irish people in Sydney than in Dublin.

They displaced the natives. They are settlers.

So effective have the Irish been at their colonial enterprise that the presidents of both the USA and Israel have Irish heritage.

Read 6 tweets

Saul Sadka

@Saul_Sadka

Dec 5, 2024

If the reports that Assad's forces have retreated from Hama, handing it the rebels, are true, they will be retreating to mount a last stand at Homs.

If the rebels capture the Homs area, it is all over for Assad. His Alawite coastal heartland and all the ports (circled in pink) will be cut off from the capital Damascus.

Iran would lose access to all but two border crossings into Lebanon (mountain passes that Israel can, and routinely does, control via airstrikes.

The Kurds are also pushing into Deir Az Zor (circled in yellow), and if they succeed, Iran will lose its primary supply route to Hezbollah (they will be forced to run the gauntlet across the Syrian desert, within easy reach of US bases).

The best case for Assad is that his poorly paid troops can hold Homs, allowing him to keep a rump state (the blue circled area). If he can't, expect huge bloodletting as the hated Alawites reap the whirlwind of their 50 years of oppression of all the other groups.

The future of Hezbollah, Lebanon, and Assad depend on what happens in Homs.

For Israel the safest result is probably that Assad holds the blue circled area in his hugely weakened state, while the Kurds take enough strongpoints in the desert to cut the Iran-Lebanon routes, or to funnel them such they become easy pickings and unsustainable.

As for Iran, there is really no best case scenario for them. They have lost most of their ability to sustain or resupply their militias in Syria and Lebanon en masse, even if things stay as they are.

This map explains why capturing Homs is the end for Assad: The large lake that extends from Homs to the edge of the Anti-Lebanon mountains means that the coastal Alawite zone will be connected extremely tenuously to Damascus.

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