FUCK AROUND AND FIND OUT

Hamas rocket fired from Gaza City

The Hamas surprise attack on Israel this morning is unlike anything since the Egyptian Army crossed the Suez Canal 50 years ago today. The attack did not just involve the usual rockets, or even a larger version of those attacks. Hamas additionally infiltrated a large number of paramilitary units into Israeli towns, mostly but not only those bordering Gaza. Thee commandos lit homes on fire, have killed at least 100 civilians according the most recent report I have read in Ha’Aretz. Hundreds were wounded and some unknown number of civilians and soldiers have been taken hostage, with some taken back into Gaza. There are active hostage situations in those towns. Hamas has claimed the capture of “high level” IDF officers.

This is going to have a major impact on the Middle East. That it comes on the 50th Anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, which also transformed Middle East politics, is not a coincidence.

Destroyed Israeli Merkava main battle tank

Benjamin Netanyahu’s disastrous alliance with the Israeli fascist fundamentalist far Right, bringing Settler Movement terrorists into the government and giving them power over domestic security in the country, which gave the (mostly American) fundamentalists in the West Bank permission to act with impunity with their attacks against the Palestinian population, has resulted in the guy who thinks he’s the smartest guy in the Knesset discovering the meaning of the term “fuck around and find out.”

The latest Settler outrage this past week in their most recent attack on the Al Aqsa Mosque - the third-holiest site in Islam - has resulted in the attacks this morning by Hamas. This attack was obviously planned for quite some time, since it required a lot of coordination to make these attacks from land, sea and air. A year of Settler assaults in the West Bank provided all the provocation necessary to bring various groups on the Palestinian side into such an alliance. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” is a powerful organizing tool.

I hate saying this, but any Israeli who wonders how this could have happened need only think back on who they’ve voted for over the past few years. The chickens, as they say, have come home to roost. With a vengeance, as these kinds of chickens are wont to do.

Israeli attack on Gaza City

Of course, the likelihood of any self-reflection by any Netanyahu supporter is right up there with a Trump MAGAt re-thinking their support of the Orange Menace. Don’t hold your breath here; turning blue and dying doesn’t look good and it’s painful.

Israel has been in a state of political paralysis and stalemate for the better part of a year as Netanyahu has twisted and turned to return to and consolidate power and thus avoid responsibility for his crimes for which he was indicted, tried and found guilty.

Any enemy of Israel would look at the confusion, political division, and social chaos he has created inside the country with his attempt to overthrow Israeli democracy since returning to office as Prime Minister, and see this as an opportunity for payback.

Both leaders of the opposition have offered to join in an emergency national unity government for the duration of the emergency. While some see this as the way forNetnyahu to finally put his political problems behind him through national unity in the face of the attack, other see this as the opposition leaders cravenly surrendering to him rather than take action to hold him accountable for the failure and get rid of him. If there are any moves in that direction, they will have to await to outcome of this emergency.

There is some real value in weaning the Prime Minister away from the lunatic Settlers and the Far Right. who undoubtedly see this as their opportunity to finally ethnically cleanse the West Bank. Yair Lapid made this argument explicitly in explaining why he would join the government.

Result of Hamas rocket attack

Unfortunately, the blithering idiots in the Biden Administration who have been advocating the insane idea of a military alliance with the Seventh Century Camel Fucker Mohammed Bin Salman to protect Saudi Arabia - a country we should be cutting ties with on grounds they haven’t been an ally since 9/11, not making those ties stronger - will now be able to push this through as the Senate runs around like chickens with their heads cut off (assuming most of them ever had heads), making an end-run around the 40 Democratic and Republican senators who have expressed opposition to this crazy idea.

This will also energize the “Christian Zionists” of the Republican Christian Nationalist right, who advocate a closer alliance with the Israeli Right in order to promote the Battle of Armageddon and bring the Second Coming of Robot Jeebus. Watch Trump play this up to reinforce his White Evangelical support in the face of the 91 indictments.

Netanyahu is going to pay a price for this, sooner or later. There is no getting around the fact he was the one minding the shop; this is a catastrophic security failure for Israel that is almost beyond imagining. It ranks with the intelligence failure in the lead-up to the Yom Kippur War.

The management of security reality during the past 15 years in Israel has been a managed security between Hamas and Netanyahu’s various governments. While they are the fiercest of enemies, their power has been symbiotic: You hit us; we hit you back; now we have quiet. This is obviously over.

Netanyahu’s durability and domestic political power has been as the national security leader who keeps the country safe and doesn’t get involved in foreign adventures. Israel’s political future will change with the public perception of the prime minister’s responsibility; his security strategy and policy was based on the belief that something like this was impossible. In fact, this past week he publicly stated that.

The strategic reality until this morning was equilibrium. Or at least its appearance.

This attack changes all that. The Hamas military wing, as presently organized, will be destroyed by an Israeli ground incursion into Gaza that will inflict more pain, more injury, and more blood debts among the people who live there. That will insure that another military movement will rise again, with the only question being how long it takes and how radical it will be in the aftermath of this fight.

Netanyahu’s policy of “ security management” is in ruins; the domestic political impact will be immense. Unfortunately, that does not mean Netanyahu is doomed. There is little likelihood that a meaningful peace policy will emerge - the opposite is more likely, supported by all Israeli parties.

There is a solid likelihood this is ultimately the work of Iran, specifically the Revolutionary Guard, which is the protector and supplier of Hamas.

Given the operation of Israeli intelligence in both the West Bank and Gaza, the big mystery is how Israel was caught so unprepared; as I said above, this is on the level of the intelligence failure in October 1973. An attack like this required a lot of people to be involved in the preparation - if not the operational planning - for the attack. The Mossad has long had a many informants and collaborators - on the ground eyes and ears - in both the West Bank and Gaza, in addition to aerial surveillance and signals intelligence.

And yet the country was caught as flat footed as happened 50 years ago. That they didn’t know that something this audacious was even under consideration is remarkable; the more people are involved in such planning and organization, the greater the likelihood somebody says something, even to brag to a girlfriend. This security around this by Hamas is the kind of operation the Allies mounted to invade Normandy.

That’s a failure of intelligence that is impossible to overstate.

There is a question of why Hamas did this, because the result is going to be near-total destruction of the organization.

Israel’s potential normalization with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states, into security alliance confirmed by the United States, is certainly a reason for Iran to try and break the movement toward normalization since that alliance is aimed at them.

But Iran won’t be attacked for this. Gaza will. And the operation the IDF mounts will give a new and original definition to the word “thorough.” The goal will not be “reestablishing deterrence;” it will be the destruction of Hamas as a military force, with no concern about the “collateral damage” that will come as a result. Most of the key people in the Hamas military chain of command will soon be dead, as will most of the political leadership. And not just in Gaza.

Given Palestinian politics, it is likely the Palestinian Authority will attempt to keep the lid on militant activity in the West Bank in hopes of surviving to become the winner by default in the competition with Hamas. But after the Settler attacks on Palestinian farms, villages and cities in the past year, and the radicalizing influence those events have had on young men in those communities - many of whom are reported to have organized Hamas-adjacent guerilla groups -any action by the Settlers in coming days and weeks will light the fuse of one big explosion there.

The Hamas leaders who decided on and planned this had to know this would be the result. While individual self-sacrifice is the foundation stone of the culture in the organization, organizational suicide has never been apparent before.

There’s a lot more to come.

I do this work for you - can you support it as a paid subscriber?

Comments are for paid subscribers.