The Friday Kaboom

More of the same yesterday. Hamas launched 1050+ rockets the first 36 hours of the war, but has 'only' launched a thousand or so the last 72. Iron Dome remains magnificent. 

Yesterday Hamas attempted several suicide drone strikes. These accomplished precisely nothing.

We've been wondering if the Israelis were just bombing empty buildings and bouncing rubble. Far from it. Operation Guardian of the Walls is showing tangible results.

Last night Israeli troops massed on the border. Tanks and artillery bombarded targets of opportunity. Anticipating an attack, Hamas deployed ground troops. Then 160  IAF aircraft conducted a massive simultaneous strike on Hamas' border tunnel network, the Metro. We suspect the Israelis spent the week gathering intel on the network. It was a dazzling deception. Indeed the Jew is clever.

There were more Arab-Jewish riots in Israel. The Jerusalem Post reports: 'So far, more than 750 rioters have been arrested since the beginning of the violence, and more than 400 have had their remand extended, the police reported on Friday.' This has been long simmering, no? What a disaster.

In a development that stuns this blog, Naftali Bennett has entered negotiations with Bibi to form a government. Says The Times of Israel: 'In a dramatic decision Thursday that remakes Israel’s coalition-building arithmetic, Yamina party leader Naftali Bennett ruled out the option of forming a government with Yesh Atid chief Yair Lapid that would replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, citing the rioting and chaos unfolding throughout Israel as extremist Arab and Jewish mobs vandalize and terrorize numerous cities.' This blog, which was fed up with Bibi, agrees. In a time like this, he's the man you want. He's handled these situations before and he knows how to deal with an intransigent White House.

When fighting Arabs perception is everything. They must be shown that that they have lost. Ironically, given that Israeli spent the first 25 years of its existence frying his lamb kabob, the Arab tends to see survival as victory. You're average Egyptian thinks he won the Yom Kippur War. It is clear that Israel has struck a mighty blow against Hamas. 

Hamas has shown in can manufacture missiles that hit Tel Aviv and the Israelis can't stop them from launching. This is not exactly news. We don't see that Hamas has any tricks left. 

From a couch in New Jersey we'd say Israel is kicking Hamas' ass. At this point Israel's challenge is to show that the campaign seriously hurt Hamas. 

Operation Guardian of the Walls

So it's hit the fan in Israel. Riots in Jerusalem, rocket barrages out of Gaza, and Israeli retaliatory strikes. Readers, we give you Operation Guardian of the Walls. That's surely a biblical reference, the Israelis always have great names for their military ops (See Operation Ten Plagues). Those interested in following the action can do no better than the Times of Israel or the Jerusalem Post. On Twitter, Aurora Intel for up to the minute info. Also, for a primer there's out own, Israel at War, which goes right up to the last Gaza War in 2014.

As of this writing 300 rockets have struck Israel. Iron Dome has shot down dozens of rockets (check this out), 90%  of those aimed at populated areas. The IDF has carried out 100 + airstrikes.

It will be interesting to see in the coming days if the palestinians will riot again in Jerusalem, just to give the Israelis another headache. One should also watch for an increase in stabbing attacks. Question, will the palestinians continue the incendiary balloon offensive? Or will being spotted on the border with balloons be a good way to get your head blown off?

Readers, the only way for the Israelis to stop the rockets is to physically go into Gaza. The Times of Israel reports that the Gaza division is being reinforced by the Golani, the Paratroopers Brigade and 7th Armored Brigades. That's like us sending in the Marines and the 1st Cav. 

By our count this is the fourth conflict with Hamas. These things usually play out till the Israelis feel they've inflicted enough damage on Hamas, regardless of international outcry.  During Operation Protective Edge in 2014, the Israelis hammered Gaza till they were convinced they destroyed every last tunnel.

Israeli has had nearly 7 years to plan for this and so has Hamas. Look out for new Hamas tricks and new Israeli tech.  Also keep an eye out for Israeli naval ops in the Med and even the Red Sea. What don't we know?

Exit question, the Israelis have a half dozen submarines capable of launching missiles, might they employ one against a big target as a test run for you know what? Remember, the Jew is clever.  

We make no predictions.

Below, your Friday Flag (supplemental)

Bibi to Israel: War with Hamas, why not?

The Israeli elections (round-two) are Tuesday.

The polls show the results will be more or less the same as last April, but with Avigdor Liberman and Ysrael Bitenyu making big gains, perhaps going from five to ten seats.

This galls Bibi no end, as Liberman wrecked the collation talks. So this time, it's personal.

Israel Bitenyu is a nationalist party with voters living in Judea/Samaria for the most part.

Which is why Bibi is talking about formal annexation of Israeli towns there and  war with Hamas:

“There probably won’t be a choice but to launch an operation, a war with the terror forces in Gaza,” the prime minister said in a radio interview with the Kan public broadcaster, kicking off a media blitz five days before the national elections. “There probably won’t be a choice but to topple the Hamas regime. Hamas doesn’t exert its sovereignty in the Strip and doesn’t prevent attacks.”

This strikes us as a tad disengenous and phony. Also, might it scare some voters into voting for Ganz and the Blue and Whites?

We'll know Tuesday, won't we?

Kushner's Peace

Or the Peace of the Jew.

Via Breitbart, Jared Kushner envisions a yuge economic incentive for Palestinian peace:

Indeed, the goal of the plan is to end Palestinian reliance on donor aid entirely and create a thriving business sector that will help develop their economy from the ground up. Of the more than $50 billion, $26 billion would be from low-interest loans, $13.5 billion would be from grants, and $11.5 billion would be from private capital.

The plan would fund projects to improve nearly every aspect of life for Palestinians, such as a $5 billion transportation corridor to connect the West Bank and Gaza. The plan includes 179 infrastructure and business projects. It envisions creating a million jobs over tehn years in the West Bank and Gaza, reducing the unemployment rate from 30% to single digits, reducing their poverty rate by half, and doubling their GDP.

The Jew tries to buyoff the Palestinian - heh. At least that's how some will see it. For after all, the Jew is clever. 

This is a good idea, actually. Right now Gaza is mostly a giant welfare public/council housing project, as are large swaths of Judea and Samaria. Some of these so-called refugee camps aren't refugee camps at all but 70 year old concrete cities.

The first step toward peace could be putting these people to work. If peace is good for business might not business be good for peace?

This blog says keep the Palestinians busy. Jew hatred is nice, but when you have to be on the construction site at 7 AM and are meeting your girlfriend's parents that evening, you just don't have time for killing the Jew.

We hope this is funded by Gulf Oil money. It's about time those guys did something useful.

Kabuki Intel

The flare-up in Gaza feel like Kabuki.

Hamas attacks, Israel retaliates, kills a Hamas operative, and then releases foreign funds.

As we've long maintained the real war is up north in Lebanon, which is hauntingly quiet, and Syria, which the Israelis have hit with impunity.

But what if the Gaza Kabuki is cover for Iranian intel ops?

We suspect every time Iron Dome goes into action Iran watches closely.

Gaza Redux, Redux, Redux...

After 600 plus rockets and hundreds of Israeli air strikes a ceasefire takes hold in Gaza.

We remain skeptical of the effectiveness of heavy air strikes against Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

We're also skeptical that the Gaza campaign is in anyway important.

The whole damn thing looks like Kabuki to us.

Still, at what point does a nation say 'enough'?

Exit question: can the Israelis topple Hamas and install the PA?

Hamas Victorious

Nine days till the Israeli election and this article on Ynet is probably right:

I am sorry to say that even as the election campaign enters its home stretch, none of the candidates has the courage to speak the truth about the Gaza Strip: Hamas cannot be defeated.

This terrorist organization is far behind us in every military aspect and there is no room for comparison. The IDF is equipped with the most modern technology: forces from the air, land and sea could precisely hit and destroy any target in the Gaza Strip from miles away. Yet Hamas is invincible, and that is the truth

The author goes on to badly misunderstand the Vietnam War, but that's not really important.

Israel has fought three wars against Hamas in the last decade. While Israel has established without a doubt that Hamas action will lead to a disproportionate reaction, Hamas has established that short of all-out war, Israel cannot defeat them.

So we have stalemate.

That said one day we think we'll probably write that the Israelis were smart for biding their time against Hamas until after their victory over Iran in the Syria War.

The Gaza Gordian

For years the Israelis have told Hamas in Gaza that calm will be met with calm.

Here's an interesting article on how that policy has failed, arguing that deterrence lets Hamas dictate the pace of play in the conflict.

This weekend Israel expects a massive border march to mark the one year anniversary of the March of Return. One can expect tens of thousands of marchers, burning tires and incendiary kites.

Israel can either live with Hamas or topple Hamas. If they chose the latter action they'll have to run the strip themselves (preposterous) or turn it over the PA. While Hamas does face some internal dissent does anyone think the Gazans would accept and Israel backed PA regime?

Don't tell people living in the Israeli south, but Gaza is still just a secondary problem while the quasi war against Iran in Syria intensifies.
  

Tuesday Tally

Reasons to topple Hamas:

-They'll never stop hating Israel.
-The region's terror organizations need to understand that Israel is unbeatable.
-The people of South need to be safe.
-The Israelis haven't launched a ground incursion in a decade.
-The IDF needs to hone it's urban fighting skills for the inevitable conflict with Hezbollah.

Operation Re-Elect Bibi

As we write this the Israelis are maybe an hour away from launching a major offensive in Gaza.

Iron Dome has been deployed. 

Public shelters are open.

Train and bus service is halted.

Two brigades deploying south.

Reserves are called up.

Terrorist group pro-tip: Never launch a rocket attack on Israel during an election.

Gaza had been a festering pustule of trouble for Bibi since he took office a decade ago. He better get this right, the stakes are enormous for him.

And we were about to fly our German state flags too...

I want my Bibi, my Bibi, my Bibi, my Bibi...

We expected to wake up this morning to news that Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition of 67 seats in the 120 seat Knesset has collapsed, but as of this writing it appears Bibi will survive.

Bibi runs a coalition of right leaning parties with his own Likud which holds 30 seats. His partners include hardcore West Bank settlers, modern secularists, modern orthodox*, Haredi**, and a million or so Russians.*** The coalition partners are all pissed about last week's Gaza fighting, Hamas's kite offensive and the weekly assaults on the border.

We've been skeptical here about another offensive's ability to do anything but 'mow the lawn' as they say. The Israelis will just end up doing it again in a few years.

But maybe it's time to invade Gaza, topple Hamas and re-install Fatah, no?
 

*Like Joe Liberman, remember him?
** The guys in the black suits with the prayer curls.
*** If you're wondering why Israel has become so much more bellicose over the years, there's one of your answers. These people may be Jews, but they are still Russian. Aerial Sharon was Russian. Aerial Sharon's nickname was 'The Bulldozer'.

Wither Peace

As of this writing the ceasefire in Gaza holds.

Some in Israel are not pleased:

Yisrael Beytenu chairman Avigdor Liberman announced Wednesday that he would be resigning as defense minister and called for the government to be dismantled and for new elections to be set. “I am here to announce my resignation from the government,” he said at a hastily organized press conference at the Knesset after a Yisrael Beytenu party meeting, during which he told MKs of his decision. “What happened yesterday, the ceasefire, together with the deal with Hamas, is a capitulation to terror. There is no other way of explaining it,” he told reporters on Wednesday.“What we are doing right now is buying quiet for a heavy price with no long-term plan to reduce violence toward us,” he said of the deal, which wasn’t officially confirmed by Israeli officials. He also slammed the military’s response to the rocket fire. “To put it lightly, our response was drastically lacking to the 500 rockets fired at us,” he said.

Liberman's move is political but also understandable. People in southern Israel are no doubt wondering how long they're going to have to put up with the threat of Hamas rocket fire.

As we have asked before, what is the end result of another war? With that question asked it seems large swaths of the Israeli public actually want a war. 

This is the end result of the Oslo process. Twenty-five years after the agreement with the PLO, Israel finds itself with two terrorist groups on its border and a looming existential conflict with Iran.

Also Israel has imported a million Russians in the last generation, so no wonder the best solution to problem seems to be to take problem and crush it beneath treads of tanks.

Forget the Jew being clever. The Jew is bellicose.

Gaza Peace, but not in our Time.

The incomparable Zev Chaffets writes:

Hamas is too weak to be anything but a military annoyance. And Netanyahu is focused on the threat posed by Iran and its proxies in Lebanon and Syria. He doesn’t want the IDF tied down in Gaza, even for a brief period. He needs the military budgets and personnel for the northern war.

As we have been saying, Israel has nothing to gain from a fourth Gaza War. The Israelis have used Gaza to test and show off Iron Dome and fortify the southern border. The Israelis even developed a kind of tunnel detecting technology which they're being decidedly coy about.

The Jew is, after all, clever.

Gaza can, should and must languish. The real threat lies to the north.

As we've asked before, what would victory look like, anyway?

Bounce the Rubble with a Star of David

Israel has been threatening war with Hamas over the phony-baloney 'March of Return' protest/riots/breaching ops.

We've written before about the IDF having to 'mow the lawn'  every four or five years. After 2014's Operation Protective Edge, it seems the yard's gotten overgrown and weedy.

To be honest we're bored with the whole thing. Another month or so of the Israelis pummeling Gaza from the air....yaaaaawnnnnn.

Innovation has been the most interesting aspect of these wars. Iron Dome is a technological miracle. The Israelis have also developed some sort of tunnel detecting technology after the last war uncovered 30+ tunnels under the border.

Indeed the Jew is clever.

After some morons fired a rocket into Israel this week, the IAF hit more than a dozen targets in Gaza. This all seemed very pro-forma. 

We're skeptical of another war being able to do more than stoke outrage and bounce rubble. That said, when we went to the Times of Israel in prep for this post we found this:

One of the main organizers of the “March of Return” protests along the Gaza border called on participants on Thursday night to behave nonviolently in the demonstration planned for the next day, following a flareup between Israel and the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group that threatened to spark all-out war.

Israel Revving up the Lawn Mower

Well, Hamas and Israel are at it again:

Throughout the day on Saturday and the early morning hours of Sunday, Israel struck a wide range of terrorist targets in the Gaza strip responding to incessant rocket and mortar fire emanating from the coastal enclave over the weekend, the IDF spokesperson reported.

Among the targets on Saturday were the headquarters of Hamas's Beit Lahiya Battalion, with jets striking urban warfare training facilities, weapon storage warehouses, training compounds, command centers and offices as well as a high-rise building in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza city.

Boys will be boys.

Since the massacre a few months ago, in which 52 Palestinians were killed trying to breach the fence, Hamas has turned to incendiary kites, which has a low tech genius, actually. Remember the 9/11 airliners were hijacked with boxcutters and threats. These kites are as hard to stop as missile launches.

They're a major nuisance.

So what to do? How many times can the Israelis 'mow the lawn'. Some pundits complain that efforts like Operation Cast Lead or Operation Protective Edge make the Israelis look bad in the eyes of the world. But Israel is going to look bad no matter what.

The Israelis are dangling economic incentives in front of Hamas, including a seaport, but Hamas isn't interested in economics. Maybe the Gazans will listen.

I dunno. Those kids look like they're having a great time.

Proportion? What Proportion?

Arutz Sheva tells us that the IDF hit 65 targets in Gaza yesterday:

The target strikes included sheds of drones used for terror purposes, a rocket manufacturing workshop, advanced naval weaponry, military compounds, training facilities, and a munitions manufacturing site.

As with Syria and Iran, once again we see the Israelis will retaliate bigly.

Disproportionate Force they call it.

We say good.

We also see that once more the Israelis knew exactly where to hit Hamas. 

The Jew is indeed clever.

Zombies of Gaza

Via The Times of Israel, we learn Hamas had big plans last week:

The terror group disseminated detailed directives via social media ahead of Monday’s violent clashes at the border, the TV report said. These directives went so far as to inform protesters in which Israeli community each terrorist leader would be delivering victory speeches after the protests had achieved their stated goal of breaching the border.

Hamas didn't really believe they were going to take Israeli towns. But they told the rioters this anyway. Hence 62 people were killed last Monday, 52 of them were Hamas operatives. Colonel Kobi Hellar, IDF said of the day, “You had thousands of riled up protesters. Someone riled them up. Someone got them to get up as one and charge at the soldiers along the fence.'

It sounds almost exactly like the Jerusalem scene in World War Z.

If Hamas really wanted to flood the border they'd stage these riots at night. Hamas conducts these riots during the day becuase they're trying to create mass-casualty events. Mission accomplished.

The Arab is often delusional. Conspiracy theories run rampant in their world. The entire Middle East is controlled by Mossad or American Jews. They celebrate the Holocaust while denying it ever happened. We've met Egyptians who think they won the Yom Kippur War. Hamas tells the poor saps of Gaza that victory is near. 

If the Jew is so Clever...

...Then explain Senator Diane Feinstein.

The Times of Israel tells us that Feinstein is mad. At Israel

Senator Dianne Feinstein said she was “deeply disappointed” in Nikki Haley, the US ambassador to the United Nations, for stopping the UN Security Council from investigating Israeli actions on the border with the Gaza Strip.

“I’m deeply disappointed in Ambassador Haley’s decision to block a UN inquiry into yesterday’s events,” Feinstein, who is Jewish, said Tuesday in a statement. “Without question there should be an independent investigation when the lives of so many are lost.”

Feinstein faces a primary challenge from the left so she tacks left. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders shows us he is a socialist before he is a Jew:

Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, in a video posted on social media, also juxtaposed the embassy opening with the violence on the Gaza border. “The embassy move brought tensions to a boiling point,” the Sanders video said. 

Which is wrong but fine. However:

The video described the protesters as “demanding an end to the ten-year blockade” Israel imposed on the Strip after a season of intensive rocket fire on Israel, “an end to the occupation, and the right to return to their former homes inside Israel.”

Which is just meshuga. Again, 18 year Mohamed bin Suliman Mohamed al Mohamed has no more right to his great grandfather's house in Haifa than William Stroock has to William Eisman's house in Westphalia. This so called 'right of return'* was cooked up by Yasser Arafat** as a way to scupper the 2000 peace negotiations becuase Ehud Barrack was about to cave in and give the PLO everything it demanded.

[Run on a lot?-Ed]

Ok, ok, we admit it. This has less to do with intelligence, heck, were willing to chalk it up to 84 year old Diane Feintein's dementia***, and more to do with the Democrat Party.

In 2018, these are the Democrats, siding with Hamas and the UN over Israel.

*See how I got in 'so called' and scare quotes?

**Homosexual leader of the PLO who died of AIDS.

***Unconfirmed.