BREAKING....Thread 9...Israel At War...OPERATION SWORDS OF IRON

[DB]

She believes giving tyrants your land will create peace. She said the same thing when Putin tried to take Ukraine, it was all Ukraine's fault because they wouldn't "negotiate". Surrender their land was the only thing on the table.

In the case of Israel, the only peace being offered is the elimination of Israel. Nothing else will satisfy.

She's a fool.

[Hoodat]

@Right_in_Virginia

Are you suggesting that Israe should l have turned that money over to the PA instead?

No.

Neither does Netanyahu.  Yet you criticize him for holding the same position as you.  Don't you find that hypocritical?

[Right_in_Virginia]

Nah.  You are running a game on us.  But those of us who stand with Israel see you as a pro Hamas stooge.

Israel is more than and better than Benjamin Netanyahu --- and her future security depends on ending his 16 year run as prime minister  @Wingnut   

I'm happy to discuss this with you, in whatever detail you like.  If, however,  you won't engage in a rational discussion, at least stop reacting like an ignorant baboon.

[Wingnut]

Israel is more than and better than Benjamin Netanyahu --- and her future security depends on ending his 16 year run as prime minister  @Wingnut   

I'm happy to discuss this with you, in whatever detail you like.  If, however,  you won't engage in a rational discussion, at least stop reacting like an ignorant baboon.

You have never engaged in rational a discussion on TBR in your life.  You're a hot mess of menopausal hormones gone wild. 

[Right_in_Virginia]

What does "Retiring Netanyahu" mean? Do you mean retiring him in the mafia sense of the term? Or ... what do you mean by that?

Retire as in vote him out of office and the Likud to the comfort and security of his mansion in Caesarea @240B

[Hoodat]

I only hate the damage the quintessential liar, Benjamin Netanyahu, has done to the Israeli people

Considering your propensity for filling these boards with claims and statements that are untrue, I can only ask what are these lies that Netanyahu told.  You accused Cruz of being a liar, but you failed to come up with one single lie.  You accused DeSantis of being a liar, yet again you couldn't come up with a single lie.  Should we expect the same with Netanyahu?

[Right_in_Virginia]

You have never engaged in rational a discussion on TBR in your life.  You're a hot mess of menopausal hormones gone wild.

When I reach menopause, odds are you'll be a memory @Wingnut 

[Hoodat]

Israel is more than and better than Benjamin Netanyahu --- and her future security depends on ending his 16 year run as prime minister  @Wingnut

Netanyahu became prime minister just under a year ago.  Maybe you're thinking of Mahmoud Abbas.  He's been in power almost 19 years.

[Wingnut]

When I reach menopause, odds are you'll be a memory @Wingnut 

Don't sell yourself short. You have a great future ahead of you. No one will remember you either.

[DCPatriot]

Retire as in vote him out of office and the Likud to the comfort and security of his mansion in Caesarea @240B

His living standards mirror those of a conquering Roman General who's on a first name basis with the Emperor.

At this stage of Israel's existence, they need Legends.

@Right_in_Virginia  Are you concerned about Iran targeting Tel Aviv in retaliation.  IMO, it would be fair to say that Bibi Netanyahu sanctioned the fatal air-strike.

  

[Hoodat]

Retire as in vote him out of office and the Likud to the comfort and security of his mansion in Caesarea @240B

Maybe they should bring back Ehud Olmert and put him in power instead.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Netanyahu became prime minister just under a year ago.  Maybe you're thinking of Mahmoud Abbas.  He's been in power almost 19 years.

@Hoodat

Netanyahu has been a power fixture in Israel since becoming Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1984,  followed by James Baker barring him from the State Department.

Without itemizing his stints as UN Ambassador,  Foreign Affairs Minister,  Finance Minister,  Science and Technology Minister, Housing and Construction Minister and Leader of Likud,  here's the guy's resume for the last 27 years --

1996–99:   Prime Minister
2009--21:   Prime Minister
2021--22:   Knesset Opposition Leader (like McConnell in the Senate)
2022 --     :  Prime Minister

[Right_in_Virginia]

At this stage of Israel's existence, they need Legends.

IMO, at this stage Israel deserves and needs leadership that is honest and focused on the future.  Netanyahu is neither. How many times can he lie and strategically fail before it becomes okay to discuss this?  Such a conversation shouldn't offend.   

[Hoodat]

@Hoodat

Netanyahu has been a power fixture in Israel since becoming Israel's ambassador to the UN in 1984,  followed by James Baker barring him from the State Department.

Without itemizing his stints as UN Ambassador,  Foreign Affairs Minister,  Finance Minister,  Science and Technology Minister, Housing and Construction Minister and Leader of Likud,  here's the guy's resume for the last 27 years --

1996–99:   Prime Minister
2009--21:   Prime Minister
2021--22:   Knesset Opposition Leader (like McConnell in the Senate)
2022 --     :  Prime Minister

@Right_in_Virginia

I know his resume.  You specifically stated that "[Israel's] future security depends on ending [Netanjahu's] 16 year run as prime minister".  Yet his current run began less than a year ago.  Please stop posting lies on this forum.

[Right_in_Virginia]

@Right_in_Virginia

I know his resume.  You specifically stated that "[Israel's] future security depends on ending [Netanjahu's] 16 year run as prime minister".  Yet his current run began less than a year ago.  Please stop posting lies on this forum.

@Hoodat

Netanyahu is the Prime Minister who set Oct 7 in motion and then ignored  the massive attack as it became the reality he predicted in 2017.  This is all on him.

1996–99:   Prime Minister
2009--21:   Prime Minister
2021--22:   Knesset Opposition Leader (like McConnell in the Senate)
2022 --     :  Prime Minister

[Hoodat]

@Right_in_Virginia

Again, you specifically stated that "[Israel's] future security depends on ending [Netanjahu's] 16 year run as prime minister".  Yet his current run began less than a year ago.  Please stop posting lies on this forum.

Also, you criticize Netanyahu for holding the exact same position as your self.   Please stop being a hypocrite, too.

[Right_in_Virginia]

@Right_in_Virginia

Again, you specifically stated that "[Israel's] future security depends on ending [Netanjahu's] 16 year run as prime minister".  Yet his current run began less than a year ago.  Please stop posting lies on this forum.

Also, you criticize Netanyahu for holding the exact same position as your self.   Please stop being a hypocrite, too.

@Hoodat

Netanyahu is the Prime Minister who set Oct 7 in motion and then ignored  the massive attack as it became the reality he predicted in 2017.  This is all on him.

1996–99:   Prime Minister
2009--21:   Prime Minister
2021--22:   Knesset Opposition Leader (like McConnell in the Senate)
2022 --     :  Prime Minister

[Hoodat]

@Hoodat

Netanyahu is the Prime Minister who set Oct 7 in motion and then ignored  the massive attack

Again, please stop posting lies on this forum.

[Right_in_Virginia]

Netanyahu is the Prime Minister who set Oct 7 in motion and then ignored  the massive attack as it became the reality he predicted in 2017.

Again, please stop posting lies on this forum.

@Hoodat

1996–99:   Prime Minister
2009--21:   Prime Minister
2021--22:   Knesset Opposition Leader (like McConnell in the Senate)
2022 --     :  Prime Minister

For Mr. Security, a bit of war was a political asset ---- perhaps his greatest.  Mowing the grass in Gaza while authorizing and facilitating transfers of US dollars in payments estimated in the billions from Qatar to Hamas was a recipe for disaster from the start.

Netanyahu knew about the tunnels, his governments, his security agencies knew and he was forced to admit they knew when the tunnels became common knowledge during the war in 2014.  Not only didn't Netanyahu destroy them then, he didn't attempt to stop their expansion in the years since. 

Neither did Netanyahu question where the money from Qatar was going.

Netanyahu ignored warnings of an imminent and massive attack from the IDF, as well as from Egypt.  Just days before the Oct 7 attack two IDF commando companies were diverted from the Gaza region to the West Bank to help with unrest there ---- leaving Israelis in the South unprotected for 20 hours. FWIW,  the settlers in the West Bank are part of the political glue holding Netanyahu's tenuous government together.

Yet, by his own admission, Netanyahu knew an attack of this scale was coming since 2017.

For years, Netanyahu propped up Hamas. Now it’s blown up in our face
Times of Israel, Oct 8, 2023

For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

[...]

Additionally, since 2014, Netanyahu-led governments have practically turned a blind eye to the incendiary balloons and rocket fire from Gaza.

Meanwhile, Israel has allowed suitcases holding millions in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings since 2018, in order to maintain its fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.

Most of the time, Israeli policy was to treat the Palestinian Authority as a burden and Hamas as an asset. Far-right MK Bezalel Smotrich, now the finance minister in the hardline government and leader of the Religious Zionism party, said so himself in 2015.

According to various reports, Netanyahu made a similar point at a Likud faction meeting in early 2019, when he was quoted as saying that those who oppose a Palestinian state should support the transfer of funds to Gaza, because maintaining the separation between the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza would prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

While Netanyahu does not make these kind of statements publicly or officially, his words are in line with the policy that he implemented.

The same messaging was repeated by right-wing commentators, who may have received briefings on the matter or talked to Likud higher-ups and understood the message.

Bolstered by this policy, Hamas grew stronger and stronger until Saturday, Israel’s “Pearl Harbor,” the bloodiest day in its history — when terrorists crossed the border, slaughtered hundreds of Israelis and kidnapped an unknown number under the cover of thousands of rockets fired at towns throughout the country’s south and center.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/

'Buying Quiet’: Inside the Israeli Plan That Propped Up Hamas
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gambled that a strong Hamas (but not too strong) would keep the peace and reduce pressure for a Palestinian state.
NY Times, Dec 10, 2023

Just weeks before Hamas launched the deadly Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, the head of Mossad arrived in Doha, Qatar, for a meeting with Qatari officials.

For years, the Qatari government had been sending millions of dollars a month into the Gaza Strip — money that helped prop up the Hamas government there. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel not only tolerated those payments, he had encouraged them.

During his meetings in September with the Qatari officials, according to several people familiar with the secret discussions, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, was asked a question that had not been on the agenda: Did Israel want the payments to continue?

Mr. Netanyahu’s government had recently decided to continue the policy, so Mr. Barnea said yes. The Israeli government still welcomed the money from Doha.

Allowing the payments — billions of dollars over roughly a decade — was a gamble by Mr. Netanyahu that a steady flow of money would maintain peace in Gaza, the eventual launching point of the Oct. 7 attacks, and keep Hamas focused on governing, not fighting

In interviews with more than two dozen current and former Israeli, American and Qatari officials, and officials from other Middle Eastern governments, The New York Times unearthed new details about the origins of the policy, the controversies that erupted inside the Israeli government and the lengths that Mr. Netanyahu went to in order to shield the Qataris from criticism and keep the money flowing.

The payments were part of a string of decisions by Israeli political leaders, military officers and intelligence officials — all based on the fundamentally flawed assessment that Hamas was neither interested in nor capable of a large-scale attack


More:
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/10/world/middleeast/israel-qatar-money-prop-up-hamas.html

'Frogmen, hang gliders, kidnapped Israelis’: Netanyahu described Hamas’s plans in 2017
Times of Israel, Dec 22, 2023

Footage of Knesset hearing on 2014 Gaza war shows PM claiming he’d deterred terror group; premier lays out Hamas’s murderous plans, which came to fruition on Oct. 7, in eerie detail

In 2017, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described an onslaught by the Hamas terror group that would prove to be a prescient description of the horrifying events of October 7, but said at the time that his policies had deterred the terror group.

Hebrew-language media published footage on Thursday from a 2017 Knesset meeting in which Netanyahu described the terror group’s plans in eerie detail.

“Hamas has an operational plan for a multi-pronged attack, including thousands of missiles on Israeli cities, naval commando raids, hang gliders and incursions from dozens of tunnels, some of which come up in [Israeli] territory,” Netanyahu said during a hearing held by the parliament’s State Control Committee to discuss a report on the 2014 Gaza war against Hamas.

During the emotionally fraught three-and-a-half hour discussion, Netanyahu described the “special forces” that Hamas was training in order to murder and kidnap Israelis, a reference to the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing.

“They’ve assessed that if they can surprise us, they can put the plan into action,” Netanyahu said.

The scenario the prime minister described was similar to the events some six years later on October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas terrorists burst across the border into Israel from the Gaza Strip by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing over 240 hostages of all ages — mostly civilians — under the cover of a deluge of thousands of rockets fired at Israeli towns and cities.

In 2017, Netanyahu said that the Hamas leadership had begun planning a massive onslaught years earlier.

“At any given moment they could have put that plan into action, but contrary to popular opinion, we don’t control our opponent’s decisions — at most, we can influence their ability to carry them out,” he said.

While he claimed that Hamas was “deterred,” Netanyahu made it clear that he was under “no illusions .. that the terror group would abandon its plan.”

“When I thought about an infiltration of thousands of gunmen or more, seizing a town, capturing hostages, what a blow that would be, I flagged it,” Netanyahu added.

“We tried to avoid war in any way possible. We’re facing a hard and cruel enemy. To avoid escalation against an enemy like that is no mean feat. There are 30,000 [Hamas fighters in Gaza], wishing for our destruction and preparing all the time and building the means with which to kill us, to infiltrate, to attack us. People who are committed to the annihilation of Israel; it’s what they live for,” he said.

Netanyahu also highlighted his role in the policy of containment: “One of the reasons that [Hamas] is deterred is because I have a policy, that I’m not willing to tolerate droplets [of violence], and there’s always a strong reaction, usually very fast, on every such droplet.”

One of the most damning allegations in the 2017 report contended that better decision-making practices could have obviated the need for a military operation entirely.

The state comptroller report debated by the committee in 2017 was centered around the management of the security cabinet by Netanyahu and then-defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, specifically the cabinet’s alleged failure to set concrete, strategic goals for the military in the campaign. It also noted intelligence gaps and tactical mistakes by the Israel Defense Forces, then led by Lt. Gen. (res.) Benny Gantz, notably its unpreparedness for the threat of Hamas tunnels.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/frogmen-hang-gliders-kidnapped-israelis-netanyahu-described-hamass-plans-in-2017/

[mystery-ak]

Israel-Hamas war will go on 'for many months,' IDF chief says

Israel's military chief said Tuesday that the war against Hamas in Gaza is expected to continue on "for many months."

"The war will go on for many months and we will employ different methods to maintain our achievements for a long time," Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi said in a televised statement, according to Reuters.

"There are no magic solutions, there are no short cuts in dismantling a terrorist organization, only determined and persistent fighting," he reportedly added. "We will reach Hamas' leadership too, whether it takes a week or if it takes months."

"Ultimately, will we be able to say that there is no enemy surrounding the state of Israel? I think that's too ambitious, but we will create a new security situation," Halevi also said.
Posted by Greg Norman

[mystery-ak]

3 more Israeli soldiers die in Gaza Strip fighting

The Israel Defense Forces said Wednesday that three more of its soldiers have died in fighting in the Gaza Strip.

They were identified as Lt. Yaron Eliezer Chitiz, 23, Sgt. Itay Buton, 20, and Sgt. Efraim Yachman, 21.

All three of the soldiers were killed in fighting in the northern Gaza Strip, according to the IDF.

The deaths bring its overall troop losses in the Gaza ground operation to 164, The Times of Israel reports.
Posted by Greg Norman

[mystery-ak]

Israeli Air Force releases video of strike eliminating Hamas terrorists

https://twitter.com/IAFsite/status/1739905896493261132


The Israeli Air Force on Wednesday has released a video of an airstrike it says it carried out against Hamas fighters running in between buildings in the Shejaiya area of Gaza City.

"About 200 terrorist targets were attacked in the last day from the air, sea and land: Air Force aircraft, in cooperation with the fire and intelligence complex, attacked and eliminated terrorists passing between buildings," it said in a post on X.

A video shared by the Israeli Air Force appears to show individuals running in between buildings before an explosion occurs.

The Israeli Air Force also said Wednesday that one of its fighter jets attacked a military site belonging to Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Posted by Greg Norman

[mystery-ak]

US Navy Destroyer and Fighters Engage 17 Houthi Missiles and Drones
By streiff | 9:22 PM on December 26, 2023

A US Navy destroyer and several F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters shot down a total of 17 Houthi drones and missiles during a tense 10-hour engagement over the southern Red Sea.

Details of the engagement are sparse, but the Arleigh Burke-class Aegis destroyer USS Laboon (DDG-58), a member of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower carrier strike group (CSG), as well as several F/A-18 launched from the Eisenhower shot down 12 attack drones, three-antiship missiles and two land attack missiles. The engagement began at 6:30 a.m. local time Tuesday and continued for 10 hours. None of the attacking weapons hit a target.

This is the general location of the engagement. The USS Laboon is the blue dot to the left of the USNS Supply icon...next to the two Iranian ships.



more
https://redstate.com/streiff/2023/12/26/us-navy-destroyer-and-fighters-engage-17-houthi-missiles-and-drones-n2167993

[mountaineer]

UN Aid bags being used to reinforce Hamas tunnels

https://twitter.com/OliLondonTV/status/1740050563302322254

[Bigun]

I would guess that our friend @Right_in_Virginia is employed at the Department of State.