One thing that has interested me a little since the hostage deal began, is the lack of interest in the freed hostages or the victims such as the Bibas children, among self-defined progressive Jewish circles in the US. I mean groups such as rabbis involved in human rights or academics or social justice activist types and commentators. It's a small, niche group of outspoken people, but symbolic. What I see is a collective silence from them, a decision apparently to never post images of the Bibas children, never post images of women hostages or Hamas parading emaciated male hostages. Basically anything related to hostages who are Jewish and Israeli is considered something they won't discuss or empathize with or post about.

I think it's important to understand that Hamas purposely targeted civilian communities that had been involved in peace because Hamas' goal is one state. Hamas is weakened by peace and two states. Hamas was created and grew in the late 1980s and early 1990s largely in opposition to Oslo and peace. Whenever there was a chance for peace Hamas has come along to destroy it, to create war. When Israel left Gaza there was a chance for Gaza to be governed in a peaceful way and pave the way for two states. Hamas took over to use it as a base to prevent peace.

There is a false comfort in the assertion that Hamas cannot be defeated or that Israel has achieved most of its goals in Gaza. The fallacy rests on assertions that Hamas cannot be eradicated and that similar groups in other places have not been removed. This analysis is It's ahistorical but gives comfort because it means one doesn't ever have to defeat an enemy fully, one can always just "degrade" capabilities and use precision strikes to go after "command and control" and then after X number of things have been destroyed (key leaders, fighters, bunkers, weapon platforms, capabilities etc)...then you have completed your mission.

One of the interesting things about Hamas and the Oct. 7 war is that in the past Hamas was often seen by some/many in the progressive, left, liberal and human rights community as part of the problem, part of the rise of extremists or "far-right" that weakened the Oslo peace process. You'd hear arguments such as "Hamas and the Israeli Right are against peace" which posited that the Israeli center and left and the PA or Fatah were partners for peace. Over time this narrative changed and there was a quiet attempt to infiltrate pro-Hamas messaging throughout the global far-left. This was openly stated by one western intellectual who said Hamas and Hezbollah were part of the global left. The goal was to portray the most fanatic and murderous groups, the armed groups, the ones attacking civilians, blowing up buses and raining rockets down on civilians as "left" and thus "good."

🧵 The Middle East is in a transition phase. This requires Israel to re-think its security policy. For decades Iran was seen as the major threat along with its proxies. Hamas was dismissed as basically not a threat. Oct 7 should be a lesson that this minor the case and the status quo since 2005 need a re-think Iran is weakened today by losing Syria. However the new Syrian government is closely linked to Qatar and Turkey, both of which back Hamas. In the next decade the Abbas government of the PA will leave office and it’s possible Netanyahu will also leave office within the next 20 years. New leaders will face new challenges. Netanyahu was the architect of the policy regarding Hamas in which it grew more powerful. He won’t change that status quo probably

🧵 At some point there is going to need to be a looks back at the 15 months of the Gaza war and a kind of debriefing or analysis of it, what went right, what went wrong for Israel and the IDF . This will need to take a look at different aspects and also look at its phases etc, here are a few thoughts and discussion points First of all a lot went right for the IDF in Gaza in terms of tactical learning curve, medical care for soldiers, use of new tech with the Ghost unit, close fire support, “closing circles”…but a lot of the IDF momentum doctrine seems to have not borne fruit exactly

There is some debate today about whether Hamas has recruited some 10,000 new fighters or not throughout the course of the war. This is based on some US assessments that have been published. We need to understand something about Hamas "numbers" of fighters to begin with to discuss this. Prior to Oct. 6 Hamas was portrayed as deterred, so even if it had 20-30,000 fighters, these were portrayed as not a major threat, just men with AKs basically.

I think this is likely an assessment that reflects the thinking that informs Israel's current policies on Gaza.

However it leads to several tough questions.
1. Once it's acknowledged that returning hostages is basically impossible, one has to wonder why it wasn't an absolute priority throughout the years, leading up to Oct. 7, to prevent hostage taking at all costs. On Oct. 6 there was complete complacency along the border; very few combat soldiers, numerous unarmed soldiers, primarily women, in observations rooms right on the border in posts that were difficult to defend; civilian communities with only a handful of rifles that were secured in an armory in each community, hard to reach quickly.

Hamas openly trained to attack and take hostages, and yet the assessment was that it was deterred, there wasn't even a skeptical voice saying "what if they are not, then this will be catastrophe." Second, once the assessment is that it's basically impossible to return hostages from Gaza, one has to ask if there is an updated policy on hostage taking that prioritizes preventing it? A year and two months after Oct. 7 what would be done differently? Are there any procedures in place?

There is one brutal enduring fact about the war in Gaza.

Hamas sees the entire war as a success and if it could go back to October 6 it would do it again. More jarring is that most of the NGOs and UN orgs that work in Gaza would like the war to end and have Hamas continue to rule Gaza. They don’t see the Hamas attack as a disaster for Gaza. They see Israel’s response as bad, but they think Hamas is a good steward of Gaza. They have partnered with Hamas and profited immensely off its rule. They want to perpetuate Hamas rule and they feed off the disasters and suffering it brings.

As there are remembrances of former President Jimmy Carter, with differing views on his legacy; I'd like to draw attention to his 2009 trip to the Middle East which symbolizes his approach. He met with Assad, and reported only on Assad's complaints about the US but didn't mention anything about the Assad regime abuses. Now let's compare that with his meetings with the Palestinian Authority where he pressed them on police policies and abuses. He mentioned prisoners who were detained for political reasons. So in Syria he couldn't mention political prisoners or police abuses, but he could complain to the Palestinian Authority, a much smaller and weaker polity about abuses?

Worrying trend in this sub-head "forces strggle to find purpose in their current mision." It's easy to go into these types of situations, it can be harder to leave. The multi-front war has a lot of diminishing returns and lack of clarity as to "what next" on almost every front is embodied in headlines like In Gaza the IDF is fighting in northern Gaza, but there is no clear path forward regarding central Gaza where Hamas continues to run a kind of mini-state and hold 100 hostages. There's no clear way to defeat Hamas or remove it or return the hostages (and there's no urgency in their return despite recent harrowing reports)

This list should have been provided a year ago. The fact that Israel was willing to sit down for a year of useless talks and that Israel’s partners such as the U.S. who also sat down in these rooms, did this without even a list is really unconscionable. It should have been the first thing delivered, even if it was provided to a neutral third party. These hostage talks have never been serious and media reports and leaks have provided false hopes for a year and it is unconscionable. A disgrace that this was allowed to happen. It also shows Hamas was never under pressure and they think they are winning and their hosts and backers such as Doha told them not to produce a list. I don’t see why these talks ever took place without one. It’s vile Israel also got played this way during the first hostage release. It’s unclear why this method was ever agreed to. Israel is the one with the powerful military ostensibly applying pressure so it should be dictating terms.

This is interesting. It turns out the "genocide" claim about Israel's actions in Gaza began just days after the Hamas attack on Israel. Hamas murdered 1,000 people in a day, in an attack that was actually genocidal in its attempts to kill every person Hamas encountered.

However, it appears that very quickly, maybe within hours of the Hamas massacre beginning, people began to try to create a false narrative that Israel was the one committing "genocide." Israel hadn't even identified the huge number of dead and missing, but already scholars and others were mobilizing to accuse Israel of "genocide."

This is the origin of this claim and it is fascinating that it is laid out below in such chronology. On October 15, 2023, while Israel was still identifying the remains of the Hamas genocide of Israelis and others at Nova festival, including foreign workers; scholars warned of "potential" genocide in Gaza. Israel hadn't even begun its offensive in Gaza and this narrative was already created. This is key to understanding how the story was written with the conclusion already. Note also that none of these scholars or experts or “consensus” seemed to care about the Hamas attack, they didn’t first investigate that attack on Oct 15 or war about Hamas genocidal attacks, they immediately moved to create a narrative of “genocide” in Gaza.

This is fascinating, and I think probably rare in history that the victims are ignored so completely and the aggressor is immediately turned into the victim. It’s like reading about the Rwandan genocide of Tutsi and being told that the real fear is of a genocide of Hutus, without even first discussing the Tutsi victims. It’s like ignoring the Darfur genocide and claiming the real fear of for people in Khartoum.

The experts didn’t even bother to investigate and condemn the Hamas crimes; they immediately claimed genocide was happening in Gaza before Israel even entered Gaza. Hamas was parading hostages around and dragging bodies through the streets and the “scholars” didn’t even notice the victims like Shani Louk, they didn’t even bother demanding the hostages including the baby and toddler Bibas brothers be returned; they ignored all the victims.

This is clearly an example of how this entire “genocide” claim was manufactured from Oct 7 onwards. With the flick of a switch the usual suspects set in motion this claim. Not based on any evidence or actions, it was a pre-determined conclusion. It’s possible that already on Oct 7 documents were written or being written and distributed to accuse Israel of genocide, not even mentioning the Hamas attack. Maybe this was coordinated at the highest levels among “human rights” groups and Doha and other perdue actors. The signal to prepare the libel was the Hamas attack.

That’s why they ignored the attack, because this was maybe pre-planned so the talking points were there. That’s why these “scholars” never seemed to even notice the victims of the Nova festival. That’s why these reports often don’t even mention the Hamas crimes.

Here is a question. Medical charities that work in Gaza and NGOs such as the ICRC should have all asked for access to the hostages. It's likely that through international mediation they could have gotten access to the hostages. But have you noticed that none of the NGOs or the intl community ever even tried to do this? There was no loss to Hamas to permit access to the hostages by NGOs or the ICRC. It wouldn't change the terms of any deal. In fact it might have strengthened Hamas hand by showing that some of the hostages are healthy.

Overnight the Houthis launched a missile at central Israel and Israel responded with airstrikes. Here is how it unfolded At 2:28am sirens sounded across central Israel

What is the “pro-Palestinian front”? I would think being pro-Palestinian would mean helping build universities and improving infrastructure while working toward two states. What does this have to do with Assad and backing Iran and Hezbollah, who have done nothing but use Palestinians, usually facilitating arms transfers and encouraging them to fight so they lose chances at statehood I think we have to analyze, unpack and challenge the theory about the “pro-Palestinian” crowd in the west, many of whom only cheer on Palestinian “resistance” which brings disasters. They never cheer on Palestinians who build a university or build something. But if they fight and a building is destroyed in the battle then some westerners living comfortable lives will cheer

Some people see Oct 7 as primarily linked to the Iran-backed axis. However, in my view it’s much more closely linked to the long-term goal of Ankara and Doha. Both host Hamas and backed Oct 7. Both are western allies which gives Hamas much more clout than Hezbollah or the Assad regime had Iran’s goal in backing Hamas was to exploit the Israel-Palestinian conflict to have a “foot” within what it believed was a popular Arab and “Sunni” cause. It already had PIJ as a proxy, it wanted to grow outside this narrow niche. To do that it promised to knit Hamas into its network of proxies

The Al-Hol test is going to be an interesting one. There are a lot of people who used to be very critical of the SDF detention of ISIS members there. These types of people usually were sympathizers either with Ankara or HTS. Now HTS is in power. So logically they should want Al-Hol handed over to Damascus. But I bet they will think twice about this. Let's review the backstory here. In 2019 ISIS was defeated by the SDF in Syria east of the Euphrates. ISIS didn't fight to the end, it knew the US-led Coalition won't massacre the last ISIS members, so they actually surrendered in masses. Thousands of them, including many foreign fighters and their families.

The Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D) at the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) "announces today (Monday) the completion of a series of cumulative deals with Elbit Systems for the supply of advanced communication systems to the IDF, totaling approximately $130 million (about half a billion shekels)."

Photo Credit: Elbit Systems "The Directorate of Defense Research & Development (DDR&D) at the Israel Ministry of Defense (IMOD) announces today (Monday) the completion of a series of cumulative deals with Elbit Systems for the supply of advanced communication systems to the IDF, totaling approximately $130 million (about half a billion shekels)."-IMOD

I'm going to be contrarian here. There is a lot of talk about how the fall of the Assad regime is a major blow to the Iranian "axis" and thus Israel is in a stronger position in the region. Temporarily this may be true, but something will fill the vacuum left by Iran and its possible that Doha-Ankara will do so, and they back Hamas and Hamas did Oct. 7. Some of this discussion asserts that the Hamas attack on October 7 set in motion Israel's war on Hezbollah from Sept. 23-Nov. 27 and weakened Hezbollah and this helped lead to the end of the Assad regime.

One of the missed opportunities in US policy in the region in the last decade was the failure to take into account the successful model of the SDF in Syria and try to find a way to build on that success. The problem was that the SDF was primarily the initiative of the anti-ISIS coalition and therefore a military "by, with and through" approach. However when it came to US diplomacy and State the SDF was always kept at arm's length, as a "non-state" actor.