The IDF is drafting 10,000s as operation 'Gideon's Chariots'. It's a long time since Gaza posed a strategic threat, but it still exists as a festering sore, holding 24 hostages & 35 bodies. So what will the endgame be? Divide and conquer: (1/12)
The likely reason Israel has been slow walking things lately might be emerging:
Jews: we gather together tonight for Seder this Pesach at an extraordinary moment in Jewish history. Our grandparents could not have believed it, let alone the ancestors before them for 100 generations. This year is a Passover of gratitude and wonder. (1/6)
Never since the Maccabees have Jews managed to stand up against the beasts trying to kill us, pillage us, and push us around. This is a new thing.
We are the luckiest Jews to have ever lived, and it’s not even close. There are new rules, and we set them: Israel eliminated the IRGC thugs, who dedicated their lives to building nukes to murder eight million Jews, was a sort of “Nuremberg in advance,” and with guns. That's how it works from now on. (2/6)
What Jews are asked to do once a year is to sit down with their families, the unit that ties us 100 generations into the past but also the far future, and understand where we are. It’s never looked better than this year. Can you beleive it?
All the enemies arrayed against us have been pushed back, and never again will any enemy be allowed to build themselves up on our borders. Khameini should have read more Isaiah: “No weapon formed against you will succeed; and you will condemn every tongue that accuses you in judgment.”
Those that took up weapons are dead, and those who ran their propoganda for them will be repudiated too. (3/6)
It’s starting to look like this hunch was correct and that the IRGC, in a desperate attempt to set the region on fire and rally jihadists behind them, is trying to blow up the Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount. This cluster munition flew directly over Al-Aqsa and landed just 200 meters away. This shell would have destroyed the domes. This seems to be their plan. It is the only possibile reason they are repeatedly targeting the Old City of Jerusalem. There are no military targets there, and most of the population is Muslim.
This shows exactly how close they came to destroying the Al Aqsa mosque on Temple Mount. Alarming.
This is the damage that the cluster shell did to a roadway. Al-Aqsa Mosque would have been destroyed. The shell landed about 200 meters west; it was fired from directly east, and so whistled over the roof of the dome, which is just out of sight behind the police vehicles.
“...it’s just a shame the world couldn’t know Larijani as I knew him... Larry—as his friends called him—once he’d wiped the blood of tens of thousands of protesters off his jackboots and ended a long day of signing execution orders for suspected homosexuals, was the kind of chap who’d have been an asset at any dinner party—full of witty repartee and hilarious anecdotes about why the world would be so much better without immodest women.”
Thoughts and prayers with John Simpson and all Larijani’s other friends at the BBC. 🙏
The thing about the kind of people who run the BBC, like John Simpson here, is that they imagine themselves to be a cut above the rest of us mere mortals. They can’t help but brag that they know, on a personal level, the people the rest of us simply vilify from afar. It's a sort of wierd, patrician attitude. They imagine themselves as saviours, well menaing T.E. Lawrence types who truly understand the put upon people of the world.
Anyway, can you imagine Simpson saying of say, Netanyahu that he was "clever and reasonable"? Looks who's clever and reaosnable now.
The Qatari pivot towards Israel & the Abraham Accords was probable since Trump’s election, inevitable once Iran was exposed as a paper tiger in June, and now that the IRGC is exiting the realm of geopolitical relevance, Qatar’s pivot is actually happening. Poor Medhi & Tucker.🧵
Qatar's Machiavellian schemes have reached a dead end. Can it make a U-turn?🧵
Nobody did more to support Hamas than Qatar—money, propaganda—so when this video of Qataris running from Iranian missiles in terror was shared in a Hamas group, what was the universal reaction? Laughter & joy. (2/8)
Qatar’s strategy was so clever. Whoever thought it up and implemented it is some true genius—or perhaps a very sharp team of Western consultants. They picked every point of influence in the West and made them their dependents.
It's almost as if they read "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", believed it was real, and decided it to try it themselves. Who knows? That might actually be true, since The Protocols is a bestseller across the Arab world. (3/8)
While the Israeli successes in the Middle East over the last 2 years are astonishing, how has Israel done meeting its war goals in the Gaza Strip?
1. Destroy and disarm Hamas 2. Free the hostages 3. Ensure Gaza no longer threatens Israel
What will be happening in Gaza? (1/8)
1. Destroy and disarm Hamas (≈90% achieved)
Hamas has lost around 55% of its territory and about 90% of its initial trained fighting force of 35,000 through death, capture, or defection. While they may have recruited some new men, these recruits are low-quality, and the real bottleneck is arms. They have been hermetically sealed off from resupply for two years. They have lost almost all their heavy weapons and are reduced to IEDs and light arms, using ammunition very sparingly.
Their only real weapons are the Gazan people—more on that below. (2/8)
2. Free the hostages (≈99% achieved)
These are the only three hostages still held in Gaza, and all are confirmed dead: Dror Or, Ran Gvili, and Sudthisak Rinthalak. On October 6, 2023—and for many years prior—there were four Israelis held in Gaza, two of them alive. Israel did not go to war for the four; it will not go to war for the three.
So if Israel lacks sufficient motivation to disarm the dregs of Hamas, and the oppressed population lacks the ability, who will? Answer: nobody. So what’s the plan? (3/8)
Trump doesn’t get Europe. Trillions spent on windmills that need subsidies, raise electricity prices for everyone, and place an undue burden on the poorest—that’s money well spent, as it allows Europe to restore the landscapes that inspired so many artists like Constable… (1/6)
Sicne they also only provide occasional power, you still need all the coal plants, sitting and waiting to be used. But Van Gogh's classic, The Starry Night, is so much better in the original, with the turbines. (2/6)
People say that these windmills—sorry, turbines—are hideous and pointless, but who can argue that Da Vinci's masterpiece isn't improved by them? What could possibly make Tuscany more beautiful than more of these? (3/6)