WATCH: Greg Stoker, US war veteran, explains why the IDF is losing so many officers (& little to no soldiers).
Officers are sent first to the front lines, to deal with situations, but then they get sniped out easily by the resistance. And having 19-year-old officers shows the incompetence of the Israeli army.
by Thierry Meyssan via Voltairenet
Contrary to the way Qatar is portrayed, the emirate is not a neutral negotiator in the case of the Al-Aqsa Flood hostages. A blunder by its minister, Lolwah Al-Khater, who came to follow the negotiations in Tel Aviv, shows, on the contrary, that Doha exercises authority over Hamas. The new members of Israel’s war cabinet were surprised to discover that Qatar had taken part in Benjamin Netanyahu’s plot to attack Israel on October 7, 2023.
Lolwah Al-Khater
This article follows “What lies behind Benjamin Netanyahu’s lies and Hamas’s dodges“, by Thierry Meyssan, November 28, 2023.
Lolwah Al-Khater, Qatari Minister for International Cooperation, visited Tel Aviv on November 25, 2023. It was the first time a Qatari official had visited Israel. She was received by the War Cabinet to resolve problems with the implementation of the hostage exchange agreement. She also visited Gaza.
Accustomed to discussions with Mossad director David Barnea, she didn’t seem to grasp that the war cabinet included not only loyalists of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In order to gain time, she made decisions in the name of Hamas, without referring to it.
Members of the former opposition who joined the emergency cabinet and witnessed this discussion were shocked to see her step out of her role as mediator and reveal her links of authority over Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.
After the meeting, Joshua Zarka, Deputy Director General for Strategic Affairs at the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, declared that Israel would “settle accounts with Qatar” as soon as it had completed its role as mediator. Indeed, if Qatar can give orders to Hamas, it can no longer conceal its responsibility for the October 7 attack. Not only is it not a mediator, it is an enemy of the Israelis.
Let’s return for a moment to Qatar’s identity.
Qatar only became independent from the British Empire in 1971. Its first emir, Khalifa ben Hamad Al Thani, turned to France. He developed his country, wary of easy revenues from hydrocarbons. But in 1995, he was overthrown by his son, Hamad ben Khalifa Al Thani. The new Emir signed gas and oil agreements, mainly with Anglo-Saxon companies (Exxon Mobil, Chevron Phillips, Shell, Centrica), French companies (Total), Chinese companies (China National Offshore Oil, CNOOC, Petrochina), Indian, South Korean and Japanese companies. The money is now flowing.
In 1996, in the wake of the Oslo Accords, Qatar teamed up with French-Canadian Jews David and Jean Frydman, friends of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, to set up Al-Jazeera, a pan-Arab television channel to confront Arab and Israeli viewpoints. It was an immediate success. However, the channel, which was intellectually involved in the Israeli peace movement, became the bête noire of the United States during its wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
In 2002, the United States signed a military agreement with Qatar. They set up their Middle East command headquarters, CentCom, on the gigantic Al-Udeid base. It houses 11,000 soldiers and around 100 aircraft. To this end, they withdrew their men from Saudi Arabia.
The Pentagon then reminded the Emir that he was in no position to defy it: one morning, he was awakened by Special Forces in his bedroom. A US officer assured him that they have just protected him from an imaginary coup. The Emir understood the message and complied with the demands of his protectors.
In 2005, Al-Jazeera’s shareholder base was shaken by the boycott of Saudi advertisers. The Frydman brothers withdrew from the channel. It is completely reformatted by the JTrack consulting firm. JTrack placed Brother Wadah Khanfar at its head [1]. Gradually, he censored all criticism of “American imperialism” and even withdrew certain images showing US crimes in Iraq. Al-Jazeera, several of whose journalists were killed by US forces and one of whose contributors was taken prisoner and tortured at Guantánamo, became the mouthpiece of the Anglo-Saxon powers, giving a voice to Sunni Islamism. In 2009, Wadah Khanfar visited the United States, where he was received by all those who count among the ruling elite.
In 2008, the Emir enthroned a new president in Lebanon, in violation of the Constitution, in place of the outgoing president.
In 2011, the head of JTrack, Brother Mahmoud Jibril, suddenly became the leader of the opposition to the regime, of which he was a minister. Palestinian Brother Wadah Khanfar left Al-Jazeera to head a Turkish think tank, Al-Sharq Forum. The channel is taken over by the Prime Minister, Sheikh Hamad ben Jassem ben Jaber Al Thani. It instantly became NATO’s main propaganda tool in the Arab world. It gave a one-sided view of the conflicts in Libya and Syria, transforming itself into the channel of the Muslim Brotherhood. Imam Youssef al-Qaradawi became the channel’s official preacher. He explained to his listeners that Mohammed would undoubtedly be on NATO’s side today.
Qatar has become the main go-between in the Middle East. It negotiates peace agreements between Arabs wherever the United States asks, in Western Sahara, in inter-Palestinian rivalries, in Darfur, Eritrea and Yemen. But it can also use its power to restart wars. In 2012, for example, it gave Brother Omar al-Bashir’s Sudan $2 billion to recall his special envoy, General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi [2]. General Mustafa al-Dabi, who until then had been widely appreciated for his peaceful role in Darfur, had been appointed President of the Arab League’s International Mission in Syria. He and his colleagues had access to everything they wanted to see. In a preliminary report, he concluded that the Western media were lying and that there was no revolution in Syria.
In 2013, the Emir abdicated in favor of his son, Tamim ben Hamad Al Thani.
From June 2017 to January 2021, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a blockade of Qatar, paralyzing the Gulf Cooperation Council. This Cold War has been misinterpreted. According to the Financial Times, it was linked to a murky story of ransom payments, and according to others to a declaration by the Emir, Sheikh Tamim ben Hamad al-Thani, in favor of the political use of Islam as practiced by both the Muslim Brotherhood and Iran.
In fact, the President of the Arab Republic of Egypt, Abdel Fattah al-Sissi, had managed to obtain documents from the secret society that had ruled his country for a year, the Muslim Brotherhood. A former director of military intelligence, he had studied them. After US President Donald Trump’s speech in Riyadh against Muslim Brotherhood terrorism (May 21, 2017), he understood the use he could make of them. So he had sent the king the evidence in his possession hoping to gain his support in his fight against the Brotherhood. They contained evidence of a plot by the Brotherhood and Qatar to overthrow the King of Arabia, Salmane ben Abdelaziz Al Saoud. For the king and his son, it was a shock: not only was the Brotherhood, which the Kingdom had pampered for years, granting it a military budget larger than that of its own army, taking the liberty of supporting Daesh, but it was also attacking the monarch.
On June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain, followed by the Yemeni government of Abdrabbo Mansour Hadi, the Libyan government in Tobruk, Mauritania, the Maldives and the Comoros broke off diplomatic relations with Qatar. These countries closed their land, air and sea borders to the emirate, suddenly strangling it. US President Donald Trump took sides, accusing Qatar of funding “religious extremism”. The Emirate was supported by Turkey, Morocco, Hamas, Iran and Germany, where the Brotherhood’s National Guide, Ibrahim el-Zayat, has a seat at the Foreign Ministry. Niger and Chad supported Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain issued a 13-point ultimatum to Qatar [3]. The ultimatum was to break with political Islam and its supporters: Turkey and Iran.
The crisis was only resolved when US President Donald Trump attempted to reconcile Arab countries with each other and with Israel. He organized the rapprochement between Morocco and Israel, followed by the Gulf crisis. The controversy surrounding political Islam is muted.
The Brotherhood (Ikwan) pursues the goal set by its founder, the Egyptian Hassan El-Banna, at the end of the First World War: to re-establish the Caliphate [4]. In a letter to the Egyptian Prime Minister of the time, he describes his three objectives:
• “a reform of legislation and the union of all courts under Sharia law ;
• recruitment into the armed forces by instituting voluntary service under the banner of jihad;
• connecting Muslim countries and preparing for the restoration of the Caliphate, in application of the unity demanded by Islam”.
The Ikwan is a secret society organized on the model of the United Grand Lodge of England. As such, we only know about its activities from the testimonies of its former members, or from documents seized during its defeats.
As soon as it was created, the Brotherhood set up militias to assassinate its opponents. It developed first in Egypt, then throughout the Arab world and in Pakistan. The United Kingdom and the United States were quick to use its politicians (such as Brother Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan or Brother Mahmoud Jibril in Libya) and its militias, such as al-Qaeda, Daesh and the League for the Protection of the Tunisian Revolution. As soon as he arrived at the White House, President Barack Obama appointed a member of the Brotherhood, Mehdi K. Alhassani, to his National Security Council, in order to establish a permanent link with it [5].
When the United States began the Syrian episode of the “Endless War”, it asked Hamas to move its office from Damascus to Doha. When Saudi Arabia definitively broke with the Brotherhood in 2014, Qatar spontaneously took its place. Without having the same resources as its powerful neighbor, the emirate became the big money-maker with the approval of the United States. In 2018, Qatar is paying the salaries of Hamas officials in Gaza. With the agreement of Benjamin Netanyahu, its ambassador travels there with suitcases full of $15 million in small bills. The operation will be repeated every month.
In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden elevated Qatar to the rank of Major Non-NATO Ally, an honor reserved for only a dozen countries worldwide.
Lolwah Al-Khater’s blunder shows that Qatar is more than that. It exercises authority over Hamas’s political and military strategy.
Translation
Roger Lagassé
Outside of Kiev, there is a ravine named Babyn Yar. For most of it’s existence, it was nothing more than an unremarkable hole in the ground. That all changed on September 29, 1941 when Ukrainian collaborators working alongside the Nazi Einsatzgruppe C under the command of Otto Rasch carried out one of the most savage massacres of the war.
Ukrainian collaborators went door to door hunting down their former neighbors to be loaded into trucks, driven to Babyn Yar, stripped naked, forced to kneel at the edge of the ravine and shot. Their bodies were kicked into the pit, and the next group was brought in. So many people were executed that later prisoners were forced to kneel on the half-dead bodies of those who came before.
Working in small groups, the Einsatzkommandos operated with an almost mechanical efficiency. By now, they were seasoned killers and had already “cleansed” dozens of cities and towns of “undesirables.” In this way, over 100,000 people, including Jews, Romani, Red Army POWs, Communists and anyone else who fit into one of the many groups the Nazis considered “useless eaters” were murdered over the next 48 hours.
After they were exterminated, SS soldiers rummaged through the belongings of the dead, looking both for trophies and for valuables to be sent back to the capitalists in Berlin who sought to profit from Generalplan Ost. Everything of value was to be ruthlessly exploited to build up the Greater German Reich at the expense of the people of the Soviet Union.
This was so widespread that Treblinka’s commandant, Franz Stangl wrote about stepping “knee-deep into money” and “wading in notes, currency, precious stones, jewelry, clothes” in his diary. Despite this admission, Stangl escaped justice for his crimes, he was smuggled out of Germany by the Vatican and the CIA’s proxy Reinhard Gehlen, the future head of West German intelligence. Stangl died before he could be tried.
It is important to remember that despite the focus on sites like Babyn Yar, this was not an isolated incident. Rather, this sort of operation was the very reason why groups like the Einsatzgruppen existed. Babyn Yar was nothing more than the culimnation of an intentional policy, exhaustively planned and documented down to the last penny and the last bullet. The depopulation and economic exploitation of the Soviet Union was always the point of the invasion. While the concentration and extermination camps operated by the Nazis are well known, they were never the main method of extermination.
Everywhere the fascists went, you will find massacres similar to this. The land of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia is riddled with the sites of atrocities differing only in size and scale to Babyn Yar. It was through this, the “Holocaust of bullets” that the Nazis and their collaborators exterminated the majority of Soviet Jews.
There are no ravines outside Beit Lahia in Gaza. Zionist forces had to dig their own ravine using heavy machinery. The IOF maintains a force of hundreds of armored American bulldozers which they use to physically destroy Palestinians and their settlements all throughout the occupied land. They have already destroyed so many Palestinians with these machines that their drivers simply stop counting, viewing them simply as more work to do, a refrain eerily similar to that of their ancestors in the 1940s.
Now with a Babyn Yar of their own, the Zionist forces needed some prisoners to fill it. The solution to this problem was simple. Much like their ancestors in the 1940s, the fascists went door to door arresting anyone who dared to oppose their regime, even if their only crime was being born a Palestinian. The IOF initially claimed the victims were “terrorists” captured near Khan Younis, much as their ideological ancestors had. The Nazis used the euphemism Bandenbekämpfung, meaning “security warfare” or “anti-partisan operations” to justify their arrest and execution of millions in the USSR.
Sadly, the IOF does not even need that thanks to their total support from the US, NATO, and their collaborators in the western media.
By the end of the day, their own allies in Turkey had already debunked the IOF’s statements. Before long, the IOF dropped the charade, openly admitting that they were arresting civilians en masse in Beit Lahia. Much like Franz Stangl before them, the perpetrators of this massacre are systematically protected by US and NATO intelligence and operate with complete impunity.
Most worryingly, Zionist forces arrested the staff of the UN World Refugee Administration who was operating from a school in nearby Jabala. The UN confirmed the arrest of it’s employees four days ago, and their current whereabouts are unknown. Given what happened next, it is not difficult to connect the dots.
Much like the first time, the fascists exhaustively planned and documented their crimes. Much like the first time, they are proud of what they have done, and spend a great deal of time and effort bragging about their massacres for the benefit of an audience baying for more blood. It is therefore quite easy to ascertain what happened using their own photos and statements.
The IOF still maintains some aspects of damage control. Their propagandists claim that the “military age males” of Gaza are being arrested to check if they are Hamas members, an interesting thing to do in the middle of a freshly dug pit as opposed to a prison or processing center. In all probability, the “checks” are carried out with the same rigor as they were in the 1940s. The victims were declared guilty by the fascist state the moment they were born and they will pay for the accident of their birth with their lives.
While the Zionist propagandists carry out their damage control, the IOF thugs handle the situation with the same aplomb as their ancestors did in the 1940s. Social media is rife with videos of IOF bandits rummaging through the shattered remains of Palestinian homes and businesses, laughing and joking as they crush, steal, and mock what remains of the human beings they have just exterminated. The marauders even destroy Palestinian homes as birthday presents for their children and brag about it on Youtube.
This is, once again, nothing new. All the photos and footage from Babyn Yar and all the thousands of other places like it were taken by Nazi officers who were proud of what they had done and wanted to prove that they had participated in the long planned extermination of “undesirables.” Their ideological descendants in “Israel” carry on a proud tradition.
Just as before, the systematic extermination of the people is done for economic reasons. Zionism, much like Generalplan Ost, is explicitly colonial in nature. The Zionists are not exterminating the Palestinian people for their personal gratification, or even in revenge for any attacks, but rather because it is enormously profitable to do so. The depopulation of Gaza will open new land for Zionist settlement, a policy so lucrative that from 2000 to 2020, settlements contributed $628 billion to the budget of the Zionist entity.
Of course, it is not just the Zionist entity which benefits from endless war and extermination of the Palestinian people. Their patrons in the west have also made out like the bandits that they are. Lockheed-Martin reversed a month long stock dip only days after Operation Al-Aqsa Flood commenced on October 7th. In fact, most of the Zionist entity’s weapons come from America. Most notably, their entire air force is US made. Every bomb dropped on Gaza is an American bomb, dropped from an American airplane and targeted by an American satellite.
Now, as the Zionist colonial war enters the phase of outright extermination, we cannot forget who pulls the strings. The rabid dog in the White House has proposed an unprescedented aid package of 14 billion to the Zionist entity, on top of their already unlimited access to American arms stocks, to aid them in a campaign which is as much his creation as their own.
Once again, we can use his own words to find the truth. In a famous speech given in 1986, then senator Joe Biden told us outright why Gaza bleeds and why the media remains silent in the face of Israel’s crimes.
Even with the blood of over 4 million innocent people in the Middle East already drained into the coffers of his paymasters, the rabid dog in the White House demands more. The ravenous appetites of this capitalist system, be it American, Israeli or Nazi German, can only be sated with death. The Zionist entity is nothing more than the triggerman of America’s foreign policy, an elaborate system of alchemy which turns the blood of the poor and downtrodden into gold for the arms dealers and their lackeys in Washington.
New Zealand Covid-19 vaccination database admin turns whistleblower and reveals how many people died after taking bad batches of the Pfizer vaccine. This must be investigated. If this data of mass vaccine casualties is real there must be accountability. pic.twitter.com/2QjkmRGJca
— Kim Dotcom (@KimDotcom) November 30, 2023
Kudos to Max Blumenthal! He and Aaron Maté are a few of the rare handful of independent reporters we have left in America. Journalism in the US has become consolidated in the hands of a few powerful media companies whose main purpose is disinforming the public. Hard hitting journalism has been restricted to only pushing the uniparty agenda of Washington.
by John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Not even in revolutionary times have Russian elections been waged on the issue President Vladimir Putin proposed a few days ago of what it means, what it costs, what it risks for Russia to lead the national liberation of the world.
Nor has Putin revealed after two days of intensive talks with Emirati, Saudi, and Iranian leaders, and then a telephone call with the Egyptian President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, what plan of action for the Gaza war they discussed. “Russia is thinking about an initiative on Gaza,” Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has announced after the talks concluded.
El-Sisi was so negative about this, the Kremlin record of his Saturday morning telephone call reveals no more than that he and Putin talked over “a number of issues related to Russian-Egyptian cooperation, which has been developing very successfully. Both parties expressed their interest in further expanding cooperation in various areas in a traditionally friendly manner based on the principles of strategic partnership.” The two presidents then wished each other good luck for their re-elections.
The Egyptian presidential vote is running for three days from Sunday with the result to be declared on December 18; the Russian poll will be held on March 15-17. The outcome is certain for both.
Two hours after Putin put down the phone with el-Sisi, he picked it up again to call Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Kremlin communiqué has omitted to report what Netanyahu said.
Instead, Putin gave the Israeli his personal assurance there will be no Russian participation in a Gaza blockade-busting plan to deliver humanitarian aid to the Palestinians by sea, or across the Egyptian land border. Nor will the Russian military intervene to threaten Israeli aircraft if they commence bombing Beirut and southern Lebanese targets in the war against Hezbollah.
A Russian source on military strategy believes the Russian objective is to protract the Palestine war on all fronts simultaneously, and exhaust the US and Israel by threatening Israeli ports and shipping, Israel’s offshore gas supplies, and the economy’s principal sources of income. Exhausting the US in the Middle East helps exhaust the US and NATO in the Ukraine, the source adds.
Tactically, the source said, this should mean an international humanitarian operation to break the Israeli blockade of Gaza in order to deliver as much aid as the besieged Palestinians need; action at the international level to deter the Israelis using uranium radiation warheads, poison gas, and other weapons to attack the Hamas tunnel network; and a no-fly zone to cover Lebanon and Syria from Israeli bombing and missile attacks. Military action, the source cautions, should be indirect and confined to proxy forces like Hezbollah on the northern front; Iraqi groups in the east; the Houthis in the south; and support for the Palestinians fighting in the West Bank.
Hezbollah forces flying the Hezbollah and Syrian flags in Syrian operations to support President Bashar Assad.
The Israeli reaction – “what we can do in Gaza we can do in Beirut” — is to deter Russia, Iran, and the Arab states from allowing their “initiative” to adopt any of these tactics; and to deter an expanded operation by Hezbollah. “If Hezbollah chooses to start an all-out war,” Netanyahu declared publicly just before he spoke to Putin, “then it will, by its own hand, turn Beirut and southern Lebanon, not far from here, into Gaza and Khan Younis.”
Russian sources acknowledge the blackout on debate of these options in the Russian media, including the military bloggers who have become the most outspoken journalists in the country. “One war at a time, one election at a time”, according to one source. “That’s how Putin is thinking right now. How can the General Staff argue with that?”
The official Russian record on Hezbollah is almost empty; Russian officials are reluctant to pronounce the name in public. In 2005, asked what Russian policy was towards Hezbollah, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said: “It is necessary to implement UN Security Council Resolution 1559 in all its aspects. Like all the other decisions on the Middle East, they cannot be implemented just by one half or one third. This concerns matters related to Hezbollah and the Palestinians. As to the role of Hezbollah, I think that it is in the interest of Lebanon and the entire Middle East that the political role of Hezbollah should be taken into consideration and that the party receive a possibility to represent its interests through the elections for the power structures to be formed in Lebanon. Russia can help by being in contact with the Lebanese friends and the Syrian friends, the US, the Europeans, and the countries of the region and by advocating a well-balanced, comprehensive and just implementation of UNSCR 1559 and that in its implementation no one would pursue aims which do not relate to it.”
Source: http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/1559
A year later, Lavrov’s ministry attempted “well-balance” between the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah. “The Russian MFA resolutely condemns the abduction of the [IDF] servicemen, and the firing of rockets at Israeli territory. At the same time we regard the military actions launched by Israel as a disproportionate and inadequate use of force, endangering the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon and peace and security across the region…We urge Israel to cease incursions into Lebanon and the destruction of civilian infrastructure in the country and lift the blockade of its territories…In its turn, the Hezbollah movement should give up anti-Israeli actions that endanger the interests of its own country as well, release the kidnapped Israeli servicemen, cease firing into Israeli territory and respect the UN Blue Line.”
The same balancing act is being attempted now, as Lavrov told Al-Jazeera on Sunday in answer to questions on Russia’s policy towards Hamas. “Hamas committed a terrorist attack on the 7th of October, which we condemned immediately. Hamas has a political branch which operates in Doha, and we have relations with this political branch. We immediately got in touch with the people in Doha to negotiate the fate of the people taken hostages, Russian citizens (but not only Russian citizens), Israeli citizens, and citizens of the neighbouring countries to Russia, and some others. We managed to reach a deal which, as far as I can say, Israelis understand and even appreciate it as far as their citizens are concerned.”
Lavrov attempted to distinguish between national liberation as a political strategy which the Kremlin supports, and Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthi operations which amount to “terrorism” the Kremlin condemns.
Listen to the exchange on “terrorism” from Min 13:40 to 16:14.
“I don’t believe I am hypocritical or Russia is hypocritical,” Lavrov said. “We never have been hiding the operations which we conducted in the Republic of Chechnya. We never have been hiding what we have been doing in Syria at the request of the legitimate government, member of the United Nations, fighting ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and other organizations which have popped up after the American interventions in Iraq when Al-Qaeda was created, then in Libya, Jabhat al-Nusra, and you know this story. And we will continue to fight terrorism. Exactly with the rules.”
One of the “rules” to which Lavrov refers is that Russian military engagement in the Middle East must be requested by a government for the security of its territory. In August 2019, when then- Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri requested Russian intervention after the IDF flew drones over Beirut, the response from the Foreign Ministry in Moscow was: “The Russian side reaffirmed its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and stability of friendly Lebanon and underscored the need for unfailing compliance by all sides with international law.”
There is no reliable evidence that Russian air defence missile systems have been supplied to the Lebanese government. Hezbollah is better equipped, but there is also no reliable evidence for Israeli and US propaganda claiming Russian deliveries of the Pantsir system to Hezbollah since the Gaza War began.
The evidence is much clearer that there has been no Lebanese government request for Russian air cover, nor even a Lebanese government conversation with the Russians since November 2021.
Last official communication between Lebanon and Russia – November 22, 2021.
“If the Egyptians won’t agree to request Russian backing for a blockade-busting operation,” comments a Moscow source, “and the Lebanese government will not request Russian military support for its airspace, what can the Kremlin do, let alone the General Staff? Considering the Russian attitude towards Hezbollah, and the position in Syria leaving gaping holes in their air defence against Israeli attack, I think we should expect nothing. I do not see the Arabs, Russians, and Chinese forming an alliance of any military consequence for now.”
How long is now?
A veteran of NATO military operations in Afghanistan observes: “The Ukrainian lines are breaking up all along the front. The push is on and that’s where Putin will put his effort to keep his credibility at home. If [Chief of the General Staff General Valery] Gerasimov can keep destroying the fascists riding NATO junk at the current rate of a battalion per day and gain ground doing it, everyone is happy — for now. As for the Arabs, no one in the region will directly take Israel on. The Lebanese Government is petrified of Israel — and they know better than to ask for Russian help. Sisi, with the most capable military, is a coward. The rest will make noise while clandestinely helping the Palestinian resistance, and causing trouble for the US in the neighbourhood. The Iranians know how to fight and won’t stop. The Israelis should and do see them as threat number-one.”
“The only way I see a direct intervention is if China takes the lead on, or announces support for, one. But [President] Xi [Jinping] has some trouble at home, and nothing I’m reading shows Chinese popular support for intervening. If anything, they’re indifferent.”
In wars for national liberation and in civil wars, the terrorism label is one side’s propaganda against the other – this is the consensus of the Russian sources, unspoken and unpublished for the time being. Russian public policy has yet to resolve the contradiction between Russian support for Palestine’s national liberation and opposition to Hamas’s “terrorism” – this can’t happen, the sources say, before the presidential election in March, and the success of the Russian military offensive in the Ukraine by then too.
“There’s nothing new here. Putin is following the old Soviet line on exercising ‘the greatest possible caution’ towards the ‘frightful collisions’ which Stalin’s famous speech on revolution and tactics spelled out a century ago.”
IDF casualties in context
1956
172 killed
817 wounded
1 captured
1967
776–983 killed
4,517 wounded
15 captured
1973
2,521–2,800 dead
7,250–8,800 wounded
293 captured
via @FotrosResistance
— Al-Qassam Brigades:
(Partially) destroyed 2 Merkava tanks in various battlefield axes inside the Gaza Strip.
Targeted a special Zionist force inside a building in Beit Lahia with “TBG” explosives.
Shelled military positions in the station area in Khan Yunis with mortars.
Shelled military concentrations inside a field command center in the Zanna area east of Khan Yunis with mortars.
Shelled military infiltrated positions in the eastern and northern axes of Khan Yunis with mortars.
— Al-Quds Brigades:
In a joint operation with Al-Qassam Brigades, they managed to inflict casualties, including fatalities & injuries, on a Zionist force inside a building in the Falouja area.
Completely destroyed a military vehicle with a powerful barrel bomb in the Shuja’iya axis, east of Gaza, resulting in the death and injury of those inside the vehicle.
Shelled military positions at the “Kerem Abu Salem” IDF site with Badr-1 IRAM rockets.
(Partially) destroyed 3 Zionist tanks, 1 military vehicle & 1 APC in various battlefield axes in the Gaza Strip.
Shelled military positions around the Al-Zalal Mosque in the eastern Khan Yunis axis with mortars.
Shelled military gatherings in the Juhar al-Dik area with heavy-caliber mortars.
Shelled military gatherings in Street 5, northeast of Khan Yunis, with a barrage of 60mm regular mortars.
Eliminated 2 Zionist soldiers at point-blank range during an engagement with a Zionist infantry force in the Shuja’iya axis, east of Gaza.
Detonated a building where a Zionist force was entrenched, causing casualties between dead & wounded in the Shuja’iya axis, east of Gaza.
Shelled IDF military formations and military vehicles in the eastern axis of Khan Yunis with mortars.
— Martyr Omar Al-Qassem Forces:
Ambushed an IDF infantry patrol with explosives & bullets, killing and wounding all of its members. The resistance fighters withdrew safely.
Ambushed an IDF mechanized patrol unit, destroying the military vehicle & finishing off the soldiers inside of it, leaving them dead or wounded, in Jabalia.
Clashed with IDF military vehicles attempting to invade east of Bureji camp in Khan Yunis, forcing the forces to retreat after dealing big blows.
— Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade:
Shelled military gatherings in the Khan Yunis axis with heavy caliber mortars.
— Mujahideen Brigades:
Targeted a military vehicle with a sticky IED (at point-blank range), blowing up the vehicle with killing and wounding its crew, in the Jabalia axis.
Clashed with IDF forces in the axis of Shujaiya & shelled military concentrations east of Al-Zaytoun
— Hezbollah:
Targeted a group of Israeli soldiers near Al-Samaqa IDF site with suitable weapons.
Targeted Branit IDF military site with artillery shells.
Targeted Al-Rahib IDF military site with Burkan IRAM rockets.
Targeted Hadb Al-Bustan IDF military site with suitable weapons.
Targeted a group of soldiers & vehicles in Al-Baghdadi IDF military site with artillery.
Targeted an Israeli infantry group in the Shtula Forest with suitable weapons.
Destroyed 2 buildings housing Israeli forces in the Metulla settlement with rockets.
— Islamic Resistance in Iraq:
Targeted the American base in Shaddadi, south of the Syrian city of Al-Hasakah, with a large missile barrage.
Targeted the American “Ain al-Assad” base in western Iraq in 2 separate operations with each a suicide drone.
This list did not include rockets fired from Gaza towards settlements.
Plus:
A vessel that was heading towards Israel’s Eilat port was targeted with a projectile by Yemen, setting part of the vessel on fire.
via Moon of Alabama
The Israeli army is slowly recognizing and acknowledging that its enemies are serious fighters:
In Gaza itself, the military is amazed at the scale of Hamas’ strength in the region, building a de facto terror army stationed 50 minutes away from Tel Aviv over the past 14 years, including hundreds of thousands of weapons ranging from various types of RPGs that constitute the main weapon in targeting soldiers, advanced rocket launchers, strike drones and strike drones modeled to counter Israeli ones.This also includes mortar shells, AK-47 rifles, Dragunov sniper rifles, communication devices, operational telephone lines and explosive charges in various sizes.
The resistance is stubborn. It doesn’t give up even in areas the Israeli Occupation Forces have claimed to have cleaned:
In Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, located just yards away from Sderot, the IDF has been operating from the early days of the operation, achieving tactical successes. However, the risks still remain. Last week, Hamas terrorists came out of a mosque in the town, and new weapon caches were also discovered.The IDF is targeting Hamas commanders, and most of these terrorist cells are local and small, but as Beit Hanoun can testify, it will take months to completely clear it of enemy forces- and this isn’t the location in which Hamas is at its strongest.
The occupation forces have relatively high losses, much higher than they admit. Via Haaretz:
IDF Reports 1,593 Wounded Since October 7, but Hospital Data Is Much Higher (archived)
Making its first such announcement since Hamas attacked on October 7, Israel stated on Sunday that 1,593 Israeli soldiers have been wounded during this period.The military noted that 255 soldiers had suffered serious injuries, 446 moderate injuries and 892 minor injuries. The army released the information on the numbers of wounded soldiers and their condition after Haaretz reported two weeks ago that it had been refusing to do so.
…
As of Sunday, the number of fallen soldiers in the war that Israel had dubbed “Swords of Iron” stands at 425 (97 of whom have been killed since the launch of the ground operation. An examination conducted by Haaretz with the hospitals where the wounded soldiers have been and are treated shows a considerable and unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals. The hospitals’ data shows that the number of wounded soldiers to be twice as high as the army’s numbers.For example, Barzilai Medical Center in Ashkelon alone reports treating 1,949 soldiers hurt in the war since October 7 (out of 3,117 injured people treated there during the war), whereas the army reports a total of 1,593 wounded soldiers. Assuta Ashdod reportedly treated 178 patients, Ichilov (Tel Aviv) 148, Rambam (Haifa) 181, Hadassah (Jerusalem) 209 and Sha’arei Tzedek (Jerusalem) 139.
In addition, another 1,000 or so soldiers were treated at Be’er Sheva’s Soroka Medical Center, while another 650 were treated at Sheba Medical Center in Tel-Hashomer. This is a partial list, as the data does not include soldiers currently in rehab wards who have already been counted as wounded upon arrival at emergency wards and inpatient wards.
The Health Ministry has counted over 10,000 wounded.
There are likely also more dead soldiers than the occupation forces admit. Some special units, which are generally small, have taken serious hits:
Verum Reports @VerumReports – 13:25 UTC · Oct 14, 2023Israel Special forces have taken heavy losses:
Unit 5101 Shaldag: 5 KIA, 3 officers/NCOs
Shayetet 13: 2 officer/NCOs KIAs
Yahalom: 1 officer KIA
Yamam: 8 KIA
LOTAR: 5 KIA (3 officers)
Sayeret Matkal (Israel’s elite SOF): 11 KIA (10 officers/NCOs)
Within a somewhat small but open community it is difficult to hide the real numbers.
How many will there have to be to make the Zionist less bloodthirsty?
Confirmed: 85%-90% of the men stripped to their underwear, blindfolded and paraded around in the world’s media as “Hamas terrorists” by Israel were in fact civilians.
That’s according to “Israeli security officials” as quoted in Haaretz.
IDF captures Palestinian men en masse in Gaza, indiscriminately.
All men are stripped down to their underwear, searched, blindfolded, and then loaded onto transport to be sent to filtration camps, where prisoners are checked for connections with Hamas.
Jordan’s foreign minister has claimed Israel cannot achieve military victory in Gaza and has already suffered a strategic defeat by alienating the entire region.
Speaking on Sunday at the Doha Forum – an annual gathering of diplomats in the Qatari capital – Ayman Safadi said the goal of Israel’s operation against Hamas is to oust the Palestinian population rather than to defeat the militant group.
The destruction in Gaza over the past two months “is an indication of an Israeli policy that seems determined to expel the residents” of the enclave, he said, adding that top Israeli officials, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, have been quite candid about that intention.
Safadi brought up the Friday vote at the UN Security Council, in which the US vetoed a proposal by Arab nations urging for a humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. It was the only vote against, with the UK, a key American ally, being the only member of the 15-strong body to abstain.
The top Jordanian diplomat noted that despite the veto, Washington was publicly calling on Israel to change its military tactics.
“Simply put, Israel is defying everyone – its allies, international law, and the United Nations,” he said. “Israel has created an amount of hatred that will haunt this region, and that will define future generations. It harms its people as much as it affects everyone in the region.”
This is a war Israel cannot win. Israel has already suffered a strategic defeat.
The minister blamed Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories and systematic obstruction to the creation of a Palestinian state as the root cause of the hostilities.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who attended the event in Qatar via video link, remarked that the US has blocked several proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza at the UN. He called the unresolved status of Palestinian statehood the “single most dangerous factor igniting extremism in the Middle East.”
READ MORE: Russia explains relationship with Hamas
Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza after Hamas fighters broke through the border wall on October 7 and raided several settlements and military bases in southern Israel. Israeli officials said over 1,200 people were killed as a result.
The death toll in Gaza stood at more than 17,700 as of Sunday, as updated by the local health ministry. Around two-thirds of the Palestinians killed were women and children, the report noted.
