Here’s a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the new conflict between Hamas and Israel. Unfortunately, YouTube is deleting any footage of Hamas, including the drone training video I shared previously. So screenshots will have to do for now. I’ll also be covering a widely-circulating conspiracy theory about Hamas.
First off, it appears that training and rehearsals of the Hamas attack started months ago, and Israel ignored them. Hamas practiced excellent operational security and effective compartmentalization to prevent the enemy from catching wind of what they were planning to do. I have seen a popular conspiracy theory shared by many people on social media claiming that there is no way the IDF and Mossad could have been caught so off guard and this was a deliberate conspiracy by far-right zionists to establish a casus belli for leveling Gaza. An interesting theory, but I don’t buy it. This was the single largest defeat in Israeli history and not a good look. Israel’s security is almost entirely dependent on their reputation of military might, and that alone. Israel’s reputation of being invincible is their single greatest weapon, even greater than nukes. Nukes just aren’t that helpful because Israel can’t nuke itself, and can’t nuke its neighbors without also nuking itself. There is no casus belli in the world worth making your own military look weak and pathetic. I can buy the idea that Israel was deliberately provoking Hamas and anticipating an attack, but wildly underestimated what Hamas is capable of.
By all accounts, Hamas has retreated back into the Gaza ghettos, with the possible exception of some infiltrators left behind in the Israeli settlements. Note that this took at least 48 hours to happen, and it is quite obvious that the IDF made this claim long before it was actually true. In fact, it took much closer to 72 hours for them to clear out Hamas. For comparison, remember that Ukrainian raid into Belgorod I wrote about last May? Russia’s FSB and armed forces had that mess cleaned up in roughly six hours. It took Israel more than ten times as long to clear out roughly the same number of Hamas fighters, despite those fighters having no heavy support or NATO assistance like the Ukrainians.
Yesterday I made the over-confident assertion that Hamas was gunning to reconnect Gaza and the West Bank. Maybe that was their plan, or maybe they were hoping to encourage some sort of response from people in the West Bank, but it didn’t happen. Or more likely, this was the idea from the beginning; kill and capture as many IDF soldiers as possible then retreat back home before the enemy could cobble together an effective response. Regardless, I have to admire the Palestinians’ ability to stick to a plan and not suffer from mission creep. They evacuated prisoners and themselves in mostly one piece and left the Israelis swinging at thin air.
Furthermore, I have seen a video that sheds some light on how Hamas succeeded in killing so many IDF soldiers so easily. The video starts with Hamas soldiers approaching an IDF base in broad daylight and completely unopposed.
Directly outside and even inside the perimeter there are rows and rows of tanks and armored vehicles, all empty.
From the amount of hardware I saw, this could have been a full company of soldiers, maybe even a battalion. But nobody was shooting from the watch towers or the barricades. Where were they?
Later on we find out:
Here’s the theory: IDF soldiers have been at these positions for months or even years. They’re used to routine indirect fire attacks and don’t associate them with any other threat. So IDF forces developed a habit of always responding to incoming alerts the same way: leave their posts and seek cover. Nobody imagined this incoming alert would be different. Hamas attackers waltzed into the compound and shot all the IDF soldiers who had conveniently gathered themselves all in one place.
Almost every killed Israeli soldier I’ve seen video or photos of didn’t have a weapon anywhere close to him. This could mean Hamas collects all the weapons before the footage is taken, but it could also mean that IDF soldiers have gotten so lazy and complacent they left their personal weapons in the barracks or the armory.
Here’s another thing I found peculiar. Shortly after the IDF clearing operations began yesterday, which were a messy blood bath of course, they released a list of names of killed Israeli soldiers. 26 in total. If I’m understanding the gendering of these names correctly, four of them were women. That’s… a lot. Now it’s possible that Hamas hit a medical detachment or some other unit that typically has a lot of women, but it still seems strange to me that the IDF would be this heavily dependent on woman soldiers for frontline duty. Perhaps I’m mistaken but I can’t think of even one case from the War on Terror of four female service members being killed all at once. I’m not aware of such a thing happening on either side of the current Ukraine conflict either. Israel is heavily militarized and virtually every adult of an adequate age is reserve status – does this mean they’re just tossing men and women indiscriminately headfirst into the fight? I guess so.
With Hamas back on their own turf, Israel is presented with a huge problem. They’ve talked really big and tough, which was probably a terrible idea. A wise man knows to under-promise and over-deliver. Israel did the opposite. They talked so big they basically set themselves up to under-deliver. Israelis can bomb Gaza and murder as many civilians as they can, but I’m sure Hamas has taken care to make sure their stockpiles are safely underground where it’s near-impossible to destroy. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has pledged to destroy the “human animals” (I expected him to sieg heil after saying that), and Israel has cut off Gaza from food, water, and electricity. But like I said yesterday, Gaza shares a border with Egypt. So as long as their “Arab brothers” aren’t all talk and willing to help, Gaza can withstand a siege, at least for a while.
Hamas has threatened to start executing hostages in retaliation for any more unannounced air strikes, which frankly, was an obvious response and the IDF must be really stupid if they didn’t anticipate that.
I don’t see any other option at this point. The IDF must attempt a ground assault, and have mobilized 300,000 reservists, maybe for that exact purpose. But there are many problems with such an idea. Reservists, even good ones, need months of training before they’re ready for combat, and I say that as someone who was a reservist for 10 years. Prior to a combat deployment, American reservists typically get years of monthly training and at least 60-90 days of intense daily training. After all their tough talk, Israel doesn’t have months. They need to do something now. Those lightly trained reservists are going to get slaughtered in appalling numbers.
On top of that, the West Bank might heat up. Hezbollah might decide to do something. Iran, Egypt, or someone else might decide to openly support Hamas. Israelis outnumber Palestinians, but not by a lot. Not like how Russia’s manpower reserves outnumber Ukraine’s by 10 to 1. Considering the fact that the Israeli average age is 29 and the Palestinian average age is 20.8, Israel might not have a manpower advantage at all. Of course, Hamas can recruit 15 year old boys to fight, while that’s not really an option for the IDF. If Israel mobilizes too many people for too long, they’ll collapse their economy.
Then there’s the question of munitions. The glorious “Iron Dome” is a lot less effective than what was hoped, with many Hamas attacks getting through. At the end of Day 3, Israel’s stockpile of anti-air missiles and artillery shells has sunk so low they’re requesting more from the USA. Though by now with what we’ve seen from Ukraine, that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been paying attention. There isn’t a country on earth that can fire off thousands of state-of-the-art missiles every day without running low within a month.
I stick by my original assessment that this will blow over within a couple of weeks, maybe a month at most. If it goes longer than that, I’ll be very surprised. If Israel actually succeeds in toppling Hamas, I’ll be equally surprised. If Israel accepts anything less than total victory, they will look weak. Fatally weak. This will be the beginning of the end of the zionist state.
On the bright side, some of the memes from all this were really funny. Sultan Zelensky was playing 4-dimensional chess all along. His plan was to arm his Muslim brothers and commence the global Jihad against the infidels and zionist pigs!
Ian Kummer
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UPDATE: I deleted the section about the Saint Porphyrius Orthodox Church because this might be fake news. If substantiated, I’ll mention it.
I agree that this will blow over soon*. I give it a week. Zionistanis are big at talking but even during the Yom Kippur war they were bigger talkers than doers. Now all they really have are big mouths.
I stand by my assertion yesterday: this was a revolt by concentration camp inmates against the guards in the watchtowers. Having eliminated the Totenkopfverbände on the walls, the inmates are trying to lure the Waffen SS reinforcements into the ghettos where they have the advantage of numbers and familiarity with the territory.
*However, this will have an outsize effect on Ukranazistan. Given a choice between its zionist masters and its Ukranazi puppets, with the inability to arm and finance both, America will make the obvious choice. Also, watch all the American politicians who were only four days ago saying “America first! No more funds to Ukraine!” compete with each other to bend over backwards to send money and weapons to the zionist entity.
Mossad’s legendary abilities are actually legendary, as in, they’re mythical. Just like zionistan’s military prowess.
What’s funny about Mossad’s legendary status is that there is no evidence for it except that’s what Mossad themselves say
I’d say this. Israel has been caught off guard before. They triumphed in 1967 when they preemtively attacked the coalition in the Six Day War. Then in 1973, they were caught off-guard and it was a near run thing.
The simple fact is, it is extremely difficult to prevent all surprises. The attacker has the potential to spring an unexpected surprise. What is interesting here is that there have been incursions by Hamas. Very small scale stuff. It was the scale, sophistication, and scope that is surprising. Of course, it would appear the Israelis allowed themselves to be initially bested by greatly underestimating any risk. That whole complexes were caught by surprise is shocking.
Israel is responding as I write. Anger and revenge are leading to barbarities on both sides. It’s ugly. It’s appauling.