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Terrorists and insurgents have one defensive strategy. When faced with superior force and numbers, they pull back, melt into the civilian population, and wait for a nation-state to exhaust itself and tire of hunting them.
Taking out a terrorist group requires moving fast, being agile, gaining the element of surprise and choking off exits for the terrorists.
After a fairly slow start, Israel showed it had a good handle on speed and agility in ground attacks. It bypassed Hamas kill zones and took key Hamas infrastructure. But the problem is that Hamas is not a conventional military and seizing territory and infrastructure counts for only so much unless it’s used to choke off the movement of terrorists.
And then finish them.
Qatar, a state sponsor of Hamas, has been pushing for a ‘ceasefire’ deal in which some (not all) hostages will be traded for an extended ceasefire of a number of days. Hamas supporters around the world have been frenziedly chanting “ceasefire”.
The goal is the same.
Why does Hamas want a ceasefire? It needs time and space to escape the trap that Israel spent time and blood constructing.
Giving it to them would be a strategic disaster.
The lesson of Al-Shifa hospital is that trying to conduct a humanitarian assault doesn’t work. Certainly if Israel hopes to militarily free hostages, it can’t slowly edge its way toward its goal while offering every possible humanitarian concession. Israel has to strike quickly and unexpectedly. A difficult thing to do in urban ground warfare already.
Hamas bet that it could wait out Israel’s response. It did so in the past. Why not again?
The Biden administration would like a hostage deal and it’s not shy about dealing with terrorists. Qatar is exploiting that. And Israel’s government has internal divisions. Benny Gantz has emphasized that the war will go on until “our sons and daughters come home.” That’s a hostage release scenario. Not Netanyahu’s goal of destroying Hamas.
And we’ve already seen from Al-Shifa hospital that Hamas will kill hostages if it can’t use them as leverage.
The only way to justify this operation is to pin Hamas in place and destroy it. The failure to do that will drag this out until international pressure forces an end to it. Hamas forces will slip away, regroup and relaunch their operations.
And that would amount to at best a stalemate if not a very expensive Hamas victory.
Thanks Daniel! I suspect the intervention into Gaza was too slow to get started. I think the IDF wanted to start earlier. A somewhat rare case when an attack went in later than it should have.
Unconditional surrender of all of the depraved psychopathic murderous Islamic Hamas ss ss wine,
and immediate release of all the hostages.
Nothing less should be Israel’s position.
Also, decapitation of the depraved psychopathic murderous Islamic Iranian regime
and the Hamas billionaire leadership holed up in psychopathic Qatar is also required.
Yes this “cease fire” nonsense is absurd. It’s just pro-terrorist propaganda. Since when has Hamas ceased fire? Never. Netanyahu has to follow through and destroy Hamas and all it’s Ill gotten gains. The only good terrorist is a dead terrorist.
I have no proof, but it is my belief that the reason the Obama people, including his ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, stayed on in Israel during the Trump years was to dig in deep and effect the creation of an anti-Netanyahu party with puppet Gantz as its figurehead. This plan was wildly successfully accomplished. And now that dangerous conduit figurehead is in the strategic planning heart of Israel’s war cabinet, and Lapid the tag-a-long helps promote US policy on the outside.
In this context, as per this article, the administration’s squeeze on Israel via its man-on-the-inside Gantz’s own (?) words, is meant to redirect the world’s perception of the war being only about the hostages. The White House, with this help on the inside, wants to negate the purpose of the war, which is to destroy Hamas completely in Gaza.
Notice how spokesman Kirby is now talking about not really being able to destroy the ideology of Hamas……..so what’s the point of destroying it in Gaza? What’s the point, indeed.
Makes me feel that Obama et al also knew about the impending October 7th massacre, just like those reporters, and have planned accordingly, like clockwork.
And oh, where are you, International Red Cross?
Did you know, too, and are you acting accordingly?
The latest poll that I saw has Gantz defeating Netanyahu in a landslide in the next election. Voters are stupid, but they want change.
polls are a joke and Gantz is a piece of shit. Political polls are designed to influence public opinion, not gauge it.
Past polls all had Gantz ahead of Netanyahu and how did that work out? Netanyahu keeps winning and Gantz cant. Netanyahu should go Putin on Gantz.
Those previous polls didn’t take place after horrific losses, so a different environment altogether. These occurred under the watch of “Mr. Security”. Never mind that he shared the same delusions of those who seek to replace him. Gantz too gave too much credence to the deterrence value of the Gaza security fence which, it turned out, was worthless against a determined assault.
Culpability for the failures of October 7 is widespread, from the lower level commanders who refused to take seriously the warnings of the young female soldiers watching Hamas’ border activities to those at the top who thought they could buy “quiet” with a Hamas using economic benefits – a reflection of the Israeli conviction that “enrichment” would sway Palestinian Arabs towards acceptance of a Jewish state.
Most of hamass terrorists have already mixed in with the “civilian” population.
As a matter of fact most of Gaza Strippers are hamass.
Aside from being completely disarmed, and all known members killed, they must remain under full control of Israel. That will provide safety for Israel, but will also provide endless lies and propaganda for the islamic terrorist supporters worldwide to claim victim status.
What most people still don’t realize yet is that all of islam must be revealed for what it really is, a blood thirsty genocidal world domination oppressive ideology. It must be banned worldwide, or it must be destroyed worldwide. There is no way around it if non-muslims want to survive. Otherwise the islamists will destroy every nation from inside bit by bit like a cancer they are.
All true, especially about the cancer of Islam.
And every member of Hamas is a civilian. And every civilian in Gaza wants Israel destroyed and all the Jews murdered.
Sadly the fate of the hostages is grim and any notion they can be saved from these monsters is unrealistic. That many have already been raped, tortured and murdered is a fact. War is hell, get it over with. Win.
Theres been little mainstream news coverage of the recent find of bodies of hostages and their condition that gives an idea how they were harmed before being killed. Its awful but it clarifies who Israel is dealing with.
I’m hearing a ceasefire is on or isn’t. 3 days cease fire for 50 or 100 people, women and children. There was a supposed Hamas statement that they don’t have all of the hostages because 60 are being held by……..wait for it….those innocent palestinian civilians we are all supposed to cry over. And 30 more are with another terror group.
I also hear that Blinken and his boss want a larger terror state reconstituted. Sounds like a deadly idea for Israel created by the anti-Semites in the US government.
Thanks Cat! A ceasefire for 50 hostages is an absurdity. For one thing that still leaves Hamas with a large number of hostages as a bargaining chip. For another the whole negotiation is a con, designed to humiliate Israel and paralyze the military operation, while Hamas loses nothing.
They reported those mutilated hostage Bodies found by the IDF on Newsmax and Real America’s Voice. It’s awful.
Unfortunately, Newsmax has become a streaming service so it has to be paid for and removed its service from my TV. Now I have Newsmax 2, or whatever it’s called. Newsmax light, if you ask me. Still, I can’t complain about free stuff. All I had to pay for is my Samsung TV. Along with my Toyota Camry, it’s the best investment I ever made. Well, and my apartment, I guess.
I do miss the original Newsmax and its hosts, though. When I try to watch pirated versions of the shows online, they’re just partial episodes. I don’t know why somebody would pirate only partial episodes but I’d like to punch them.
I feel terrible for the fates of those dead, former hostages. I pray for them.
The Gordian Knot of psychopathic murderous Islamic depravity
will only be sliced open by a crushing defeat of Islam itself in war and its final vanquish.
They will never surrender themselves nor the hostages! It’s just not in their “interests” since they would most assuredly be in prison for the rest of their unnatural lives or face the death penalty as ENEMY TERRORISTS! No, if the hostages can be rescued then great, but only a release of ALL hostages should buy them more than a couple of days and that’s just the bombing – the shooting will continue!
What Daniel did not mention is this: the proposed ceasefire deal includes trading ~70 women and children hostages, Jews and foreigners, for ~150-200 Palestinian women and older teenaged security prisoners, e.g. people convicted of violent offenses.
The optics will destroy Israel publically and make Palestinians look as if they were simply doing what they had to do. American Jews trying to defend Israel will not recover from this PR debacle. Bibi is being forced by the political left in Israel to walk right into this.
We are Jews, and Israel is the nation of the Jewish people. We cannot deny our nature. We believe that every soul is an entire universe and that the redemption of hostages is one of the greatest marks of righteous behavior. So our sages teach us.
No other country would make a deal like this. We do, and we are proud of it.
Our beloved soldiers, our sons and daughters, who we cherish, realize as we do that the pause will put them at greater risk, and may result in more casualties in the field. They accept this decision because they are Jews too. We honor them for this sacrifice and trust that God will protect them the more for it.
It is a Biblical decision. Whether we are religious or secular, Torah values beat in our hearts and drive our actions.
I want to add: shame on those who attack our Hareidim, for they are the guardians of our Torah and our values. Every Yeshiva student is as expensive as an Iron Dome missile but is worth as much or more. The religious honor and cherish the Hareidim, and so should the secular. Israel, the Jewish people, would be nothing without them. We would be Hollywood Jews.
We are Jews, and Israel is the nation of the Jewish people. We cannot deny our nature. We believe that every soul is an entire universe and that the redemption of hostages is one of the greatest marks of righteous behavior. So our sages teach us.
No other country would make a deal like this. We do, and we are proud of it.
Our beloved soldiers, our sons and daughters, who we cherish, realize as we do that the pause will put them at greater risk, and may result in more casualties in the field. They accept this decision because they are Jews too. We honor them for this sacrifice and trust that God will protect them the more for it.
It is a Biblical decision. Whether we are religious or secular, Torah values beat in our hearts and drive our actions.
I want to add:
Shame on those who attack our Hareidim, for they are the guardians of our Torah and our values. Every Yeshiva student is as expensive as an Iron Dome missile but he is worth as much or more. The religious honor and cherish the Hareidim, and so should the secular. Israel, the Jewish people, would be nothing without them. We would be Hollywood Jews.