“I heard about the attacks in the South. I called my mum to make sure she was ok… I heard Arabic men’s voices in the room with her. I hung up. I did not want to hear my mother being murdered.”
 
This about the Israeli hostages. It is also about their families.
 
🧵 1/ I will avoid direct reference to names except where I have explicit permission. Likewise, the photos are hostage posters I have mostly chosen at random. I will report only facts and my own observations.

2/

The best way to understand somewhere is firsthand. I went to Israel.
 
This is the first of a few threads. Everything I post is from primary sources and independently verified wherever possible. All photos & videos my own.
 
To begin: 7 October 2023.
 
Warning: violence.

🧵 1/ On 7 October, Hamas crossed the Gaza border in divisional strength. I’m going to use military jargon as this was not a rag-tag rabble. The numbers of trained and organised Hamas fighters were more than double the number of personnel the British sent to retake the Falklands in 1982.

They had detailed plans. Hamas had conducted reconnaissance of the kibbutzes near the border, possibly through some of the 18,000 Gazans with day work permits to enter Israel. Plans found on dead Hamas fighters showed an incredible level of detail on each house in Be’eri: “Man, woman, two children. Man has a gun. Dog does not bite”.

Hamas first attacked the houses of those Israelis known to be armed.

2/

Really important thread by @Doron_Kadosh that gives a counterpoint to some of the hysteria about Israeli withdrawal in Gaza. I’ll post the translation and drop the original at the end.

Five comments on the end of the maneuver in the southern Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of the forces from Khan Yunis:

1/ First of all - it was expected. The IDF said from the beginning of the war that the ground maneuver in its expanded format would last a few months, and then for about another year there would be a shift to the format of raids and targeted operations. Furthermore, the maneuver in Khan Yunis lasted 4 whole months, much longer than the maneuver in the northern Gaza Strip - less than two months The IDF delayed fighting in Khan Yunis for a longer period of time than expected, mainly due to the complexity of underground fighting that was discovered in Khan Yunis on a huge scale >> 2/ In the 98th Division that left Khan Yunis, there are brigades that have been fighting continuously for many months almost non-stop - the Givati ​​Brigade is the most prominent of them, which has been in Gaza since the first day of the maneuver, but the 7th Brigade and the Commando Brigade have hardly had a rest either. Fighting manpower is not a never-ending and inexhaustible resource, and this is of course also true of the heavy armored vehicles - tanks and APCs that have not stopped the caterpillars for 5 months in a row, and they also need a few days of care and maintenance >>

Allow me to introduce you to Captain Robert Barclay Allardyce of Ury, of the Royal Welch Fusiliers (23rd Foot).

In June 1809, this Scotsman walked a mile per hour, every hour, for 1000 consecutive hours, for the enormous wager of 1000 guineas. His epic walk took place between 1 June and 12 July in Newmarket, Suffolk, on a course marked by gas lamps every 100 yards. Every hour, he walked half a mile out, and half a mile back. He would generally do two miles back-to-back at the top of the hour, to maximise rest time.

You may have noticed @ClarkeMicah and I having an extended discussion (well, a quote tweet marathon - really sorry about that, but he doesn’t understand how the reply button works).

He’s been demanding a response all afternoon but I haven’t had time, so here it is.

A thread. 1 Here’s the article I objected to initially:

hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/02/lemmin…

His thesis is, in short, that Eastern European countries never needed to join NATO, and NATO’s expansion has therefore provoked Russia into invading Ukraine.

2/