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There have been two kinds of conspiracy theories circulated by ‘truthers’ after the Hamas massacre of Israelis.
The first kind essentially denies there was an attack or nitpicks the details. Those arguments are made in obvious bad faith by people who simply hate Israel and side with the terrorists. Any evidence presented to them is dismissed as fake.
The second kind of conspiracy theory is of the “inside job” variety most often involving a “stand down” order that allowed Hamas to massacre over 1,000 people without any military intervention. Some of the people pushing this stuff are the usual suspects, alt-righters and anti-semites, some of it’s coming from anti-war leftists and libertarians who treat every war as a vast conspiracy, and some from fringe figures in Israel.
The idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu or top generals would have issued a “stand down” (apart from being horrifying) makes no sense. Before this attack, he was the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. Now he’s been forced to join a unity government and polls show that most Israelis want him to resign. His political career may be over. Likewise that of the top generals. In Israel, they transition into politics. That is a whole lot less likely to happen now.
The Yom Kippur War disaster tanked Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan despite their heroic stature. There’s no political gain to letting the enemy murder over a thousand of your people in a preventable attack.
Finally, Israel is a small country. A whole lot of people know each other and are related or friends with each other. This conspiracy theory requires you to believe that military personnel who had friends and family living in these communities decided to ignore calls for help and sit around playing cards while they were being butchered. Not to mention ignore attacks on their own bases and allow their fellow military personnel to be murdered, tortured, and taken hostage.
But since it is out there, let’s address it.
- Israel is a mighty fortress and its security is second to none, so how could this have happened?
Most forms of this ‘trutherism’ claim that Israel’s security is so great and its intelligence apparatus so solid that there’s no way that the Hamas attack could have happened without some sort of complicity.
Sorry, no.
Libertarians, of all people, should know that governments are incompetent. Israel’s security is pretty compared to the United States because it actually tries to secure things. But it’s a long way from being secure. The best evidence of that is how many times it has failed.
Israel’s intelligence has been hyped a lot, but it’s mostly offensive intelligence. That means it’s pretty good at doing what it does now, learning the locations of enemy targets and taking them out. Its defensive intelligence has been a mixed bag at best. Israel’s track record at preventing terrorist attacks using intelligence is only a little better than ours.
Ask where a particular terrorist is and they stand a good chance of being able to answer, ask where the next terrorist attack is coming from, and the answer is no more useful than our color-coded homeland security alerts. There’s usually ‘chatter’ and some ‘sources’ say something, but ‘other sources’ say something else. Analysts pore over it and then someone higher up settles the debate.
Without having boots on the ground, Israel was relying on passive intelligence collection and on sensors and cameras, rather than on human intelligence sources and people who were actually paying close attention to what was going on.
As I recently wrote, Israel was nearly destroyed 50 years ago during the Yom Kippur War because key intelligence figures refused to believe that an Egyptian attack was coming even though they had plenty of warning. That was a worse and more unjustified intelligence failure than this one.
Intelligence is not the same thing as ‘intelligence’. Information doesn’t come perfectly packaged and wrapped in a bow. Human beings have to look at it and draw conclusions. Sometimes they draw the right ones, often they draw the wrong ones. And for every piece of information they see, there’s a thousand pieces of information that they don’t see.
Does it make sense that Israel missed the Hamas preparations? As much as missing the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor or Israel losing the defense strategy that would have allowed it to hold the Suez Canal.
Israel knew that something was coming. It sent a small security team expecting to intercept maybe 5 or 7 attackers. Instead, it was overwhelmed by a massive assault that no one saw coming because it was unprecedented.
And that’s the real issue.
Yes, Israel had been distracted by months of leftist riots. And it was the last day of the High Holy Days which is usually a major celebration. But most of all no one had anticipated something on this scale taking place.
That takes us to the second point.
2. Why did Israel let Hamas rampage for so long without intervening?
Estimates are still preliminary, but reports are that Hamas sent in 2,500 terrorists into Israel. Israel had not been prepared for an invasion on that scale. It did not have the manpower in place to quickly and decisively respond to it.
It’s a disaster that emerged from poor planning and worse assumptions.
Here’s a sample of how disastrously this played out in Kibbutz Be’eri where some of the worst killings happened.
Lt.-Col. “B,” commander of the Shaldag elite special forces unit, was at the forefront of the fighting to retake the Gaza Strip periphery communities that were invaded by Hamas from the first moments on Saturday morning.
B said he was awoken at 7 a.m. on Shabbat while at his parents’ house for Simchat Torah and informed about the invasion some 30 minutes after it had started.
Soon after, he and some other units were in helicopters on their way to the Gaza Strip corridor, simultaneously reaching out to more units to head south.
The first Shaldag special forces units, with 12 fighters, arrived at Kibbutz Be’eri at 8:30 a.m., he said, and immediately started to fight to retake the kibbutz.
There was significant fire from Hamas terrorists at the special forces from the start. Some of the special forces personnel were killed or wounded immediately, and the forces realized that the kibbutz was full of terrorists.After reorganizing and five hours of fighting, they had killed 20 Hamas terrorists.
Other accounts suggest that Shaldag was quickly overwhelmed by superior numbers of terrorists, 90 or so, inside. Anyway, the numbers and the chaos speak for themselves.
By 2 a.m. on Sunday, many Shaldag reservists had also shown up, bringing the special forces numbers to 200 – along with much larger numbers of regular troops, paratroopers, and other special forces.
B said about five of his forces were killed and 15 were wounded, including his top deputy.
Many soldiers who were not at a specific spot that they were expected to be at were attacked on their way, B said, adding that some of the top commanders were killed or wounded because they were off duty and jumped right into the fray wherever it was, often without their full complement of forces.
B told a story about one off-duty commander who ran off toward where he thought the fighting was, happened to find a group of soldiers who were being trained to run basic-training sources, and commandeered them to successfully clean Urim of terrorists and save a group of female soldiers who were trapped and surrounded.
This draws as nice a picture as possible, but a really bad one. The IDF was unprepared and caught off guard by the scale of an attack that no one was expecting. It did not have the manpower or organization to quickly respond. (The question is would we do any better if a million armed terrorists showed up at the border?)
Miki Zohar, the Likud’s culture and sports minister, issues an apology on behalf of the government to the residents of the southern communities slaughtered by Hamas on Saturday and to those who paid the ultimate price.
“The preparations were not in place for an attack like this…. The government, the state, was not ready for an attack like this,” Zohar says on Army Radio.
“In the name of the government of Israel, and in the name of the whole State of Israel, we ask your forgiveness for what happened. Because the responsibility is on the government of Israel and the whole State of Israel.”
There’s nothing self-serving here to say that the preparations were not in place. Blame will be spread around. But hell, were we prepared for a bunch of Saudis to hijack planes with box cutters and fly them into buildings?
The errors here were catastrophic, there will be protests and heads will roll. But this wasn’t a conspiracy, it was government incompetence.
Should the attack have been seen coming, should there have been a faster response? Obviously yes.
It’s a catastrophic failure, not just of intelligence, but of strategic planning. It shows the cost of becoming complacent, of playing defense and letting the terrorists learn how you operate, while assuming that they wouldn’t shake up their strategy.
There are lessons here for all of us. In the wake of the attack, some people try to make sense of what doesn’t seem to make sense, by turning to conspiracy theories. And Israel, which spent decades projecting an image of superior competence, brilliant intelligence, and daring operations, was a victim of its own success. But Israel is also the country that operates best when going on the offensive and, like most militaries, becomes stale and unimaginative on the defensive.
Israel is very far from perfect. Its failures and failings are many. This was among the worst. I’ve written at length elsewhere about those failures, but some people need to believe that government is uber-competent and that its failures can only be explained by a conspiracy, not by the reality that governments are innately incompetent.
How many times have Israeli soldiers been thrown into battle, unready and unprepared against superior numbers and firepower, only to turn the tide with heroism and self-sacrifice? Far too often. This was another of those times.
Israelis deserve a military leadership as good as the men and women who serve on the front lines. And the victims deserved a military leadership that would have planned for this scenario. Sadly, they didn’t get it.
Hopefully, next time they will.
Also, the forces on the frontlines seemed to have to get permission from higher command levels to fire on the terrorists.
Danny, To think there will be a next time?!!!! Hashem better be ready for me when I give Him a piece of my mind. Am Yisrael Chai. Pray you and your family be blessed.
Thank you so much for this, Daniel. 💜 The worst enemy of Israel, imo, is division. This weeks parashat, I’m listening to Rabbi Shaul Youdkovitch, is about this very subject.
this week’s Parshat HaShavua is Noah, in which the word Hamas is used two times,
1.Genesis 6:11 – the earth was filled with Hamas (translated as “violence” or robbery”) and therefore was severely corrupted
2.Genesis 6:13 – God tells Noah that he will flood the world to cleanse it of Hamas.
& Rav Youdkevitch affirms that we must only turn to the Almighty for salvation….the ONLY One to be trusted, NOT the government!
It is indeed. After the division of the waters and heavens, that is the only day of which the Torah does not say it was good. But the division of day and night was good because it is a good thing to divide light from darkness. But not those elements that are naturally together.
Interesting. Bad days and good days. I’ve had those.
I’ve heard both theories lately (and then some, actually) and I must admit that it’s made me see Charlie Kirk differently. I knew he was young, and with youth comes naivete, but I had no idea he was naive enough to believe Israel would issue a stand down order. His credibility has taken a hit and, without retraction, I assume his influence will disappear or appeal only to a fringe element. The Kennedy assassination has truly messed up the conspiracy-minded in America.
I was temporarily stationed in Israel as support staff during the initial ‘Iron Dome’ installation. While as a Christian I’d always wanted to visit Israel, but working alongside members of the IDF, making friends, eating meals in their homes, spending the night, getting “tours” that no church group has ever seen, admiring their incredible but necessary security around an area the size of New Jersey was all amazing and an experience I’ll never forget…but ultimately it was their sense of national family that struck me the most. So much so, it made me long for the same for America.
I wish Charlie Kirk had experienced what I had. Maybe then he’d realize the moronic nature of his “theory”.
Thank you for your comment and sentiments.
I will respond to the Charlie Kirk part of your post
I have been hesitant to name the politically conservative talking heads who are anti-Semites because we, in the US, need to elect a strong leader (I favor Trump) in 24. And I was putting unity, even with strange bedfellows, first.
Kirk was on Bannon’s show, which I do not usually watch, Bannon stated “I’ll say the hard thing” what followed was his endorsement of what he stated was an RFK idea for the US to abandon the middle east and, of course, abandon Israel. Isolationism as a concept has been around for a while. It was more his smug focus on not supporting Israel that was offensive and illogical too. I have heard subtle and direct anti Jew talk from him before (Bannon once expressed outrage that the Jewish people have their own calendar!).
Kirk, just went along with all this. I posted comments on Kirk’s account challenging him about this. And I have been avoiding Kirk since, just as you suggested people will do.. I can guess from whom he got his conspiracy theory.
Agree on all counts. There has always been something spiritually off about Bannon to me. I never watch him. If that’s where Kirk was influenced, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised by the result.
Remember when Bannon said Trump was a traitor? Trump replied that Bannon had, “lost his mind.”
Bannon isn’t stable.
I like Charlie Kirk. He seems like a nice guy to me. I watch his how on RAV.
Whoever down voted me eats dog shit.
There would be no way to keep a stand down order secret. There would be outrage in the officer corps and ranks. Even on the intel side, it would be hard to sit on within the community if they’d gotten any kind of confirmation, or just solid evidence an attack of such scale was in the works.
Like with the 9/11 conspiracies, there are too many holes, too much loss of life and property, and they made themselves look too bad for it to be a plan. If it were a plan, they’d stopped 9/11 terrorists after the first plane hit, at the latest, and made themselves at least look competent.
I’m not exactly sure what there was in my comment that was worthy of a down vote unless you’re a huge Charlie Kirk fan or a conspiracy theorist but, be that as it may, through a conservative magazine subscription, I somehow got on Kirk’s Turning Point USA mailing list. I’ve always liked what he had to say (until recently) and understanding the importance of being college student focused, my wife and I have made several sizable contributions to the cause. We get a piece of mail from the group at least monthly.
The next one will return without a check, only a note stating that Charlie either publicly recants his “inside job” theory or to stop sending us handout mail. Mark my word, he will do so or Turning Point USA will go the way of Project Veritas and the Dodo bird. I believe, once he understands which side his bread is buttered on, he’ll make the right decision.
Bret Weinstein has his own peculiar spin on it with talk of Israeli “colonizers”. Conspiracy theories of this sort are usually a form of denial and they have much to deny.
Conspiracy theories tend to trend when people know very little about something and it’s all over the news, they become instant experts on it.
There’s two vectors for this stuff.
1. The people who want to be talking about another issue, e.g. border, vaccines, are angry that the subject was changed on them, and view it as a conspiracy.
But it’s not Israel’s fault that it was attacked at that time.
2. People who instead of trying to make an argument for why the U.S. shouldn’t be involved with Israel, directly and honestly., start pushing conspiracy theories.
3. Fringe in Israel. :Leftists and fringes on the right, keep pushing this stuff to attack Netanyahu.
3. Fringe in Israel. :Leftists and fringes on the right, keep pushing this stuff to attack Netanyahu.
With that scum bag, former Foreign Minister Shlomo Ben Ami, now pushing his way to the forefront. Of course, he was “educated” at Oxford, so what else would he be except for Israels’ enemy.
Totally agree Daniel…but I gotta tell ya, every time Israel comes up in the news, I see more excuses for antisemitism. It has bloomed like a flowering weed within my lifetime. As a Christian, it’s like watching a zombie movie where only a choice few are edible. Just within this last week, I’ve had to say goodbye to a formerly good friend because of his new stance. For me, it’s all spiritual and easily explainable for the times in which we live. I can’t understand how everyone else rationalizes it’s rampant growth.
Some people maybe don’t understand this isn’t Vietnam and Israel can’t just pick up its ball and go home. Also having the moral high ground is worthless if you’re dead.
I hope that lightweights like Charlie Kirk disappear but that is not the general trend. This is part of the price to pay for that anti-war Isolationist nonsense that propagates. That has been encouraged by some leaders I won’t mention who think that you can just paper over the cracks with money.
If you look at the areas of tepid support for Israel amongst conservative influencers it’s a common thread. From PJ Wastson to Kirk all the way and up and down.
Boot Hill is not a place to call High Moral Ground.
It’s quite common for attacks to come as a surprise.
Especially surprise attacks. They probably didn’t even have to use their tunnels to move 2500 of them forward to their jumping off points, in 24 company sized formations, along about a 30 mile front
Their jumping off points abutted the border fence so, like the Viet Cong in the run-up to Tet, they simply mustered quickly over a few days, unnoticed by the Israelis. The targets were all within four miles of the fence. There were two attacking forces: motorized commandos, with jeeps, motorcycles and ultralights. When the order to attack was given they closed with their targets very rapidly–so rapidly the few defenders that there were didn’t have time to react properly. While the defenders were fighting the first wave, the main attack force of several thousand moved in on foot and by lorry, overwhelming the few surviving defenders and then commenced the massacres and kidnappings. The operation was successful and now Israel is at war.
As to Daniels main thrust, he’s 100% on the mark.
Thank you. Really important points.
Was the map I saw correct in that they assaulted Ofakim? That seems to be their furthest advance, at around 10 miles. I can’t find that map now.
Actually, yes, 2 pick-up trucks of Hamas made it about 10 miles to Ofakim, which turned out to be the outlier of the operation.
Yes, think of Pearl Harbor. Imperial Japan had made hostile overtures and wasn’t happy about the American embargo on fuel but the attack still came as a surprise.
And I don’t think Custer was expecting those Indians to come swarming out of those depressions in the Black Hills, either.
Or when Crassus got fucked up by the Parthians. He was even more of a fool than Custer. Fight horsemen on a open field with infantry? Dumb as FUCK.
Our society has become enamored of fanciful explanations of conspiracies to explain common occurrence (like attacks on Israeli civilians by lslamic terrorists). This has been supercharged by the revelation of actual high level conspiracies like the efforts to smear Donald Trump as a Russian agent or to cover up the lab origins of Covid. Yet, intelligence failures and the attendant lack of military preparedness are well know to history. Stalin was warned of German invasion plans by Soviet master spy Richard Sorge but chose to disbelieve the warnings and millions paid with their lives for this error. To think that Israeli leaders knew of and deliberately allowed for the October 7, massacre is insane, disgusting, and despicable. A country that frees over 1,000 convicted terrorists, many with blood on their hands, to obtain the release of a single captured soldier does not murder 1,300 of its citizens for some political purpose.
“A country that frees over 1,000 convicted terrorists, many with blood on their hands, to obtain the release of a single captured soldier does not murder 1,300 of its citizens for some political purpose.”
Not directly. Not intentionally. Read Daniel Greenfield’s blog entry, “Hamas Massacre Was Led by Terrorist Previously Released in Gilad Shalit Hostage Deal”
Yes. History is full of such things.
Stalin wanted to believe that he had Hitler where he wanted him. The U.S. thought Japan would surrender to our embargo. Israel thought that it had Hamas contained.
The inability to anticipate and think out of the box is fatal. And intelligence is useless if it doesn’t fit your preconceptions of reality.
“How many times have Israeli soldiers been thrown into battle, unready and unprepared against superior numbers and firepower, only to turn the tide with heroism and self-sacrifice?”
Fighting for your freedom and the freedom of those you love is not an act of self-sacrifice but an act of selfish, self-preservation. And that kind of selfishness, rational selfishness, is a VIRTUE.
“If a man dies fighting for his own freedom, it is not a sacrifice: he is not willing to live as a slave; but it is a sacrifice to the kind of man who’s willing.” – Ayn Rand
It could only be an act of self-preservation in the collective sense THX. A selfish act of self-preservation would be taking the soonest available flight to some safe place like Oslo where one could pretend this was all some nasty aberration like most of Europe.
This is what ideology does to your brain. “Objectivist” ideology is no exception.
The restraint of Israel that prevented victory for numerous decades is the root of whatever “surprise” element the attack had. Territorial proximity, unlimited time, and advancing technology made an attack inevitable. Whatever time was chosen is always the natural advantage the offense has. Every attack that is settled without defeating the enemy just resets the perpetual clock for the next “surprise.”
Israel’s military may be succumbing to the same amoral woke poisonous rot as the US armed forces is. Maybe the rot is not as advanced as it is in the US, but I would bet that it is there to some extent because what goes around comes around and it sure is going around. Gay and lesbian or multi gender generals, officers and support planners and commanders don’t exist in Israel?? Such Godless wokeness is death to a country if it exists to a bad enough degree. Maybe don’t rule out corruption just because you’ve got incompetence working. Something really bad happened here. Hopefully the same mistake won’t be made in the wider war.
25 hundred jihadis on a 30 mile front bulldoze gaps in the border fence equipped with surveillance cameras on a thirty mile front and ride into Israel on noisy motorcycles, jeeps, and trucks and motorized paragliders and machine gun slaughters 1500 people for 7 hours and none of the few dozen military and police and thousands of citizens on site couldn’t call in immediate help and nobody in the military notices or is responsible???. Sorry, but that seems impossible and unbelievable.
Help is called in, the military is overwhelmed because it had prepped for small insertions, not an invading force of over 2,000.
What would we do if a hundred thousand armed men showed up on the border, pushed on to border towns and began killing everyone?
How effectively would we respond?
The anti gun laws in Israel left the people helpless and unable to defend themselves against the AK 47s used by the Hamas jihadis. Some sick leftist wokie politicians are responsible for that.
Gun laws are a bad idea. In Israel they’re meant to keep terrorists from getting weapons, but in reality they do more to stop people from defending themselves.
The current (or previous gov) tried to reform gun laws.
My nephew is not an antisemite. He serves in Zahal and may be called i[ amd killed in any fighting in southern Lebanon. He thinks the Left wanted this to happen because they were afraid of judicial reform. And what are dead Jewish bodies to the Left anyway? From “H’saison” to the Altalena. And the Left accomplished their mission of derailing judicial reform with this useless unity government.
Did you see what my nephew said about this…”conspiracy theory? I find it plausible and the Collectivist left in Israel cares nothing about Jewish lives. Did the late Rabin say the “Jews” cost the Maapai the election?
Some of my nephew’s… “conspiracy theories”; https://rumble.com/v3ow9qr-nephew-gives-theories-about-why-the-gaza-border-was-breached..html
I know the history quite well, including the Altalena. The problem with that line of argument is that the targets here were disproportionately of the Left.
It wasn’t settlers or right-wingers partying at Nova. These were the kids of leftists. Some of them prominent.
So to believe that, you have to believe that the Left sacrificed its own kids to be raped and murdered by Hamas to stop judicial reform, which was being shut down anyway.
The Israeli Left can and does shrug off the deaths of a dozen Haredim, Mizrahi, settlers, etc. Not their own kids.
A thought provoking reply. The closest I can think of the Left eating its own is the Kirov assassination and the subsequent “Great Purge.”
My nice is married to a Mizrahi, buw…. He looks like an Arab. He is a smart and a good guy.
Correction: It was the late Shimon Peres who said “call them the Jews.”
The Soviet Commies were all about eating their own. The Israeli Left was more of a corrupt oligarchy. A giant family business.
There are two air bases within twenty miles of Gaza. The IDF have Apache and Cobra helicopter gunships. Even, EVEN if a colossal intelligence failure, camera failure and automated machine gun failure allowed Hamas terrorists to breach the fence, why were there not dozens of helicopter gunships in the area ten hours later?
There is clearly something very strange here. Daniel states it would be impossible to keep such a thing a secret. Why? Fauci, the CDC, FDA and the Deep State managed to convince America the Covid-19 virus was lethal and the vaccines safe and effective.
99% of all health care experts know none of this was true, but it happened – and continues even now. The World Economic Forum seems to control western politicians. The WEF has a chilling agenda. Netenyahu is firmly entrenched within the WEF.
I greatly admire and respect Daniel, but I’m not sure he is capable of fully understanding how vast the agenda is, nor how evil the genuinely psychopathic people running it are.
By the time there was an air response, the Hamas terrorists were fighting soldiers, police and civilians in close proximity in small communities.
Choppers were used to quickly move special forces units to communities under attack.
Had Israel picked up on the invasion and responded quickly, yes, air power would have easily smashed the attack before it got off the ground. Once the attackers were inside communities, Apaches were no longer a solution.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-768702
Apaches could have been there within minutes, Certainly less than an hour. But they never showed up.
The video showing Hamas terrorists in a kibbutz with babies and toddlers suggests they were pretty relaxed about being in enemy territory carrying out atrocities. In point of fact, it suggests they had no concerns whatsoever about the IDF.
The scale of IDF uselessness is so colossal as to be simply unbelievable. And it is unbelievable because it really is unbelievable.
The terrorists were away for hours and STILL went back into Gaza through the holes in the fence with hostages. Are you really expecting me to accept this happened with no IDF resistance? By the time they got anywhere near the fence after their prolonged killing spree there should have been dozens of gunship choppers overhead and hundreds/thousands of IDF boys stopping them getting back in.
None of this believable.
The Hamas terrorists came to seize control of bases and towns. They were ‘relaxed’ because they had encountered little resistance and had come to occupy, not a hit and run operation.
There was IDF resistance, but the army was not prepared for an attack on this scale.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-768702
“The commanders on this frontline faced a long sector to defend. It was divided into two pieces, the northern and southern sectors under the Gaza division, anchored at fortified areas along the line such as Kissufim and Nahal Oz.
A battalion of men, several hundred fighters, held each sector.
This spread the soldiers thin. It was Simchat Torah and Shabbat a weekend that was supposed to be quiet. The 51st battalion of the Golani had a Seyeret or recon unit at Kerem Shalom as well, near the Egyptian border. There was another unit at the Yiftach base near Zikim. The Home Front has a base at Zikim as well.
The Golani soldiers witnessed the rocket fire that awakened the border at 6:30. The battalions were dispersed. One unit, for instance, had to hold an area behind which were five kibbutzim, such as Kissufim, Ein HaShlosha, Magen, Nirim, and Nir Oz.
The soldiers had several tanks in each area along the border and they brought the tanks up to their berms to be able to confront attackers. The company commanders of the battalion summoned their fighters to try to control the damage. But there were black holes of information. Units were overrun, and areas such as Nir Oz lost touch with their commanders. The Gaza division camp at Reim was attacked.
It took time for each sector commander to understand the extent of the attack. Israel has trained and prepared for infiltrations. However, the belief was that each infiltration point was the major point of contact, not that the enemy had hit 29 places at the same time.”
Choppers were in the air, but weren’t of all that much use especially when there are hostages and close fighting. In some cases they frightened off the terrorists and helped hostages escape.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-768815
“They continued to drive with us in the back, toward Gaza, when an IDF helicopter appeared above us. At some point the helicopter shot at the terrorists, the driver, and the others. There was screaming in the tuktuk.
All the terrorists were dead and we were alive, except for one of the women with us. She had died in the arms of her daughter, who had come to the kibbutz to visit and now would not leave her mother. I took one of the little girls in my arms, another friend took a second little girl and we started running towards the fields.”
I see. So there were hundreds of IDF soldiers, tanks, helicopter gunships and they were overrun by an enemy on motorbikes, pick-up trucks and tuk-tuks who all exited Gaza through holes in the fence whilst the surveillance teams were asleep and the machine gun posts taken out by grenade drones. Come on, Daniel.
I have seen one video of a machine gun tower/post being droned. It’s retractable protective dome was open. Seriously? Come on, Daniel. Was EVERY armoured dome left open? I also note the grenade drone is operating in daylight, so presumably shortly after dawn. There was no cloud cover when the sun rose that morning. A tower would cast a very long shadow as a result. There is no shadow.
Excerpts from the MSM stories you linked to (not that I believe a word from the MSM since their blanket, organised lies post March 2020) state the following:
“The first pair of attack helicopters, on immediate standby for the Gaza region, arrived in the area from a base in the north, roughly an hour or so after the terror attack began. This was even though the Apache choppers’ main squadron was stationed closer to the Gaza Strip, at the Ramon Airbase.”
Ridiculous. Unbelievable. Followed by yet more unbelievable guff:
“At Ramon personnel sensed quickly that something extraordinary was unfolding. They acted promptly, but a combat helicopter only reached the conflict zone at 8:32 AM.”
All. Simply. Unbelievable.
Thankyou for taking the time to persuade me otherwise, Daniel. Keep up your wonderful work on all matters other than this particular one.
Kindest Regards
Paul Weston. Strong supporter of Israel and twice a guest speaker at JDL events in Canada.
Hundreds against thousands. Coming through different points along the border.
Consider it Hamas’ version of the Tet offensive. Somewhat more successfully executed.
Was the IDF sloppy and caught off guard? Obviously.
Is it unbelievable? Was it unbelievable that western forces armed with rifles were overrun by natives wielding spears? The Battle of Isandlwana comes to mind.
Technology isn’t magic. You have to have a plan, be prepared and utilize it well.
Some more on what was going on with the choppers. I’m not going to post on excerpts of this but the bottom line is it was a complete mess.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hkanmp5w6#autoplay
The short version is that the pilots concentrated on the terrace coming through the border fence, and like how are people that have to get approval to fire on figures on the ground that weren’t obviously terrorists
“A significant portion of fire coordination and the identification of targets came to the pilots from the ground forces in phone calls or WhatsApp images”