Why Israel Is Acting This Way
In 2006, Israel essentially responded to Hezbollah: “You think you can just do crazy stuff like kidnap our people and we will treat this as a little border dispute. We may look Western, but the modern Jewish state has survived as ‘a villa in the jungle’” — which is how the former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak described it — “because if push comes to shove, we are willing to play by the local rules. Have no illusions about that. You will not outcrazy us out of this neighborhood.”
Yes, if you think Israel is now crazy, it is because Hamas punched it in the face, humiliated it and then poked out one eye. So now Israel believes it must restore its deterrence by proving that it can outcrazy Hamas’s latest craziness.
Israel has suffered a staggering blow and is now forced into a morally impossible war to outcrazy Hamas and deter Iran and Hezbollah at the same time. I weep for the terrible deaths that now await so many good Israelis and Palestinians. And I also worry deeply about the Israeli war plan. It is one thing to deter Hezbollah and deter Hamas. It is quite another to replace Hamas and leave behind something more stable and decent.
The U.S. Is Giving Israel Permission For War Crimes
Tom Dannenbaum, an expert on siege law at Tufts University, affirmed this assessment, describing Israel’s policy as an abnormally clear-cut instance of starving civilians as a means of war, an unambiguous violation of human rights.
Israel’s aerial bombardment of Gaza also appears to flout international law’s prohibition of the disproportionate killing of civilians. The Israeli Air Force has dropped more than 6,000 bombs on a stretch of land roughly the size of Queens. Its targets have included hospitals and schools. By its own account, Israel has not been firing “warning strikes” to encourage civilians to exit a given building before incinerating it. As of this writing, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry, Israel’s airstrikes have killed more than 1,799 people, including 583 children. According to the ministry, 60 percent of all the injured are women or children.
Five hundred and eighty-three children.
So far.
Live: Watch the Gaza skyline
A live stream seems a little macabre, a little distasteful, a little too ‘normal’ for the circumstances, but I’ve been holding my breath for a week. I have friends in Gaza.
Israel’s War on Hamas Has Turned Gaza ‘Into a Black Box’
The day of the attack in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Palestinians in Gaza to “get out now” to avoid being hit in the retaliatory strikes against Hamas. But there is nowhere to go. Since Hamas took over the territory by force in 2007, Israel has almost completely banned Palestinians from leaving Gaza through Israel or the Mediterranean Sea. On Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, the Rafah gate — the lone entry point into the Sinai — has been shut down by Cairo, fearing a mass exodus into its territory. Negotiations were underway this week between Israel and Egypt to establish a safe corridor to bring in supplies and get foreign nationals out, but for now the Egyptian president said on Thursday that the residents in Gaza must “stay steadfast and remain on their land.” Israeli officials have also retracted Netanyahu’s earlier advice to “get out,” with an Israeli Defense Forces spokesman acknowledging on Tuesday that there is, in fact, no way out.
The Hamas Holocaust
While it’s too early to judge the long-term consequences of Saturday’s traumatic events—and there is no doubt they will reverberate for decades to come—what is becoming clear is that many Israelis are experiencing a new feeling, one we have never known before, and more importantly, that we were never supposed to know: that of victimhood. And unlike Jews outside Israel, that feeling is now compounded and worsened by the fear that we have become not merely victims, but victims in our own land.
Emphasis mine.
Deliberate Explosion Inside Ukraine Dam Most Likely Caused Collapse, Experts Say
Ukrainian officials said the Russians wanted to create an emergency at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, which uses river water for cooling, to stall an expected Ukrainian offensive.
Huh.
Putin deep fake video is broadcast in parts of Russia
The broadcast, which also claimed there was an ongoing Ukrainian incursion into Russia, was aired in Belgorod, Voronezh, and Rostov, cities in close proximity to Ukraine’s border.
Buckle up.