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.

I’m at the Defense Tech Summit at Tel Aviv University today where a lot of the future of defense tech is being discussed, with a focus on the Israel ecosystem and also start-ups here and Israel’s large defense sector It’s a full auditorium here with clearly a lot of interest in this field of innovation that combines hi-tech and defense; a lot of talk of AI and also recent operational successes of the tech

israel's minor incursion into a buffer zone on the Golan, where no people live, is being portrayed as a major story; while Ankara attacking Tal Rifaat, Manbij and Kobani and killing civilians and displacing tens of thousands of people, primarily Kurds, is not even covered.

Manbij was the site of a long tough battle against ISIS by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. Yet, now it has been handed over to Ankara-backed extremists who have a long track record of massacring people, kidnapping and extrajudicial murders, especially targeting women and minorities.

There has been a lot of comments about how Sinwar's October 7 attack led to the defeat of Hezbollah and fall of Assad and thus the weakening or defeat of the "axis of resistance." This is one way to look at linear string of events, but it may not tell us enough about the future. The Hamas attack on October 7 took place in the backing Hamas received from Iran and also Doha; it was hosted in Doha not Iran and it enjoyed support from two western allies; Qatar and Turkey. This is important because it framed the context in which Hamas thought it could get away with Oct. 7.

Things to watch as the Syrian regime collapses. While there is a lot of positive feelings and celebrations by those taking back cities that the regime destroyed or held for years. There are a lot of things that could shift due to various issues and agendas. Turkey pushing for a new invasion of Syria or attack on the SDF. Ever since HTS took Aleppo, the Ankara-backed SNA have not helped topple Assad, but have instead solely focused on attacking Kurds. This is because their masters in Ankara only care about fighting the SDF, and haven't cared about toppling Assad since 2015. This could lead to a new conflict in Syria, just as Syrians are having such success toppling the regime without much of a fight. Ankara could seek to create a new war and new movements of IDPs as it already has in Tal Rifaat.

Last night I went out with IDF forces for a series of raids to detain suspects in neighborhoods of Bethlehem. The IDF characterized this as an operation in which security forces made arrests of wanted individuals, interrogated dozens of suspects, and searched and found weapons and incitement materials. A thread of my photos and how it went down. The soldiers prepared for the operation prior to midnight at a base in Gush Etzion. The forces involved in the operation operated as part of the Etzion brigade. These currently also include members of the Tavor battalion of the Search and Rescue Brigade. The operation was accompanied by IDF reservists from the 8208th Infantry Battalion.

Key factors to watch in Syria amid the rapid developments.

1. HTS advances: HTS is heading south toward Damascus along the road that links major cities such as Hama and Homs. If it continues on this route that is important. Others factors may try to divert its advance HTS manpower: HTS has put in the field what appears to be a well trained force that waited for this for years. As it takes over swaths of Syria this could be strained