Israel at war – again

The State of Israel once again finds itself at war. This could be the most serious crisis Israel has ever faced, because it shows an appalling lack of preparedness. Almost certainly Israel’s armies will wipe out its opposition – but many of its own civilians will die in the process. Furthermore, this war will have political and economic effects throughout the Middle East, and indeed the world over.

How Israel found itself at war

The Fourth Arab-Israeli War (or the Fifth, or Sixth) began at roughly 6:30 a.m. Israel Daylight Time today. (That corresponds to 11:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time.) The Islamic Resistance Movement (Arabic Harakah al-Muqāwamah al-Islāmiyyah, abbreviated HAMAS) began by launching 5,000 rockets, according to The Daily Caller. Many of these missiles flew as far north as Tel Aviv. After that, teams of gunmen crossed into the Negev, in addition to other teams that infiltrated into Israel for days. Video footage shows the gunmen crossing the border using paragliders.

The Associated Press reports these gunmen kidnapped many Israelis. Commentator Collin Rugg says HAMAS did more than that.

The $6 billion sum was in South Korea, apparently as part of a prisoner exchange.

Other influencers are saying the same:

That might not be the worst of it. This report from Daily Caller News Foundation has details of wholesale kidnapping of civilians in Negev communities.

Reuters confirmed these reports at 2:33 p.m. EDT. In addition, Israel has supposedly confirmed that Tat Aluf Nimrod Eloni, commander of the Depth Corps, is now a prisoner.

The Depth Corps handles long-range operations deep in enemy territory.

Erick-Woods Erickson published a screencap of the Biden administration’s response. The Office of Palestinian Affairs, according to the screencap, said:

We unequivocally condemn the attack of HAMAS terrorists and the loss of life that has incurred. We urge all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.

Influencer Omri Ceren shared that screencap to X, with a scathing rebuke.

The original post is no longer available, because the OPA deleted it.

Reaction

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel formally declared war.

“The enemy will pay an unprecedented price,” he said, promising “return fire of a magnitude the enemy has not known.”

Netanyahu also has formed a wartime unity government, inviting his old rivals, Yair Lapid and Benny Ganz, to take part. Ironically, Yair Lapid, twenty years ago, called for an incursion into Gaza to wipe out terrorist elements there.

Aluf Ghasan Alyan, presumably the theater commander in the Negev, vowed a major escalation.

Most world leaders condemned the surprise attack.

So did President Donald Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and several Members of the House of Representatives.

Laura Loomer gave this brutal assessment in a long-form X post:

Retired Gen. Michael Flynn, in an op-ed at The Western Journal, criticized the “complacency” of the West. He holds – and one can readily see why – that this is an attack also on the U.S. and the West. By that he means that the U.S. has weakened itself, and it shows. But he also charges that many of the “migrants” could as easily start shooting people in south Texas, just as HAMAS gunmen are shooting and snatching people in the Negev. Furthermore, he cites the unfreezing of the $6 billion as evidence that “we either have idiots running our foreign policy, or it is intentional.”

What is the motive of the globalists?

Gen. Flynn also spoke of something else: a leftist elite in Israel itself that thinks it can get along with HAMAS and similar groups. Obviously they are not copacetic with Israel reorienting itself as a civilizational state. But it gives rise to another riddle, one far less pleasant to contemplate.

At least one commentator, while loudly proclaiming to be “America First,” has lately promoted a theory that the globalist cabal now in control in the West is a Jewish cabal. Nicholas J. Fuentes founded something he calls the America First Foundation. He likes to invoke the name of Donald J. Trump to make his pronouncements look respectable. In fact, people like him give Trump a bad name. This profile on Conservapedia probably gives the most objective and carefully documented facts about him. Rumors – which so far have no substantiation – have him denying that the Holocaust ever happened. But in fact he has deliberately “trolled” other conservative events with foolish, often crude questions.

All that to say this. Nicholas J. Fuentes insists that the Israelis let this incursion happen, for the political benefit of the current ruling party.

Seek whom the intel failure would profit?

In a Telegram post – his first in days, seven and a half hours after the attack – he said:

The Palestinian incursion into Israel helps Netanyahu but probably hurts the emergent deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel as well as Biden’s diplomacy with Iran.

No chance for Hamas to achieve a meaningful victory. Even with advanced equipment like drones the Israeli response will be brutal.

Pay attention to what people are saying today because how people react to this conflict will reveal whose side they’re really on.

True enough, Saudi Arabia was in talks with Israel about signing an Abraham-like accord. The “Palestinian Question” was the sticking point. It would benefit HAMAS to launch this attack to put that kingdom on the spot, even in desperation. And desperation it is, because Fuentes correctly holds that Hamas cannot win.

Four minutes later, Fuentes went on:

Lot of talk about the “intelligence failure” that IDF/Mossad were caught off guard by an attack on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and after telegraphing from Ayatollah.

I think this is a little suspicious in light of how the Likud government will benefit politically from this crisis both domestically and internationally.

One more minute after that:

Pay attention to how many times you hear about the “$6 billion in unfrozen Iranian assets.” This will not only give a pretext to retaliate against Palestine but also against Lebanon and Iran.

Dr. Steve Turley in fact said HAMAS would never have acted as they did, without the approval of Hizbullah (Party of Allah) in Lebanon. And they would never have approved, had not Iran approved of that.

On the other hand, another Telegram channel operator, The Aussie Cossack, shared footage of two apartment buildings in Gaza City collapsing as one from Israeli air strikes. (More footage appears here, from another angle.) He repeated without comment the IDF claim that those towers housed HAMAS command and control elements. But what he was disputing was whether the air strikes alone would have destroyed those buildings in absolute synchrony. He raised the question of whether HAMAS demolished those buildings themselves, for show.

Final analysis: why did Israel get caught?

Gen. Flynn correctly identifies the salient weaknesses of Israeli society, especially a left wing that doesn’t understand evil. Your editor saw something else in his visit to Israel, twelve and a half years ago. As his tour guide admitted, the IDF does not understand Western-style military discipline. How else to explain how a general officer could fall prisoner to the enemy so easily? And how does a rag-tag gang manage to double its “territorial” holdings in a single day?

We hear that the repulsion has already begun. But the appalling intelligence failure remains, as does the lack of discipline. However long this war takes to resolve, many officials and officers have a lot of explaining to do.