Hamas launches war on Israel

[Jimbuna]

Thousands in Gaza have broken into aid depots in a "worrying sign of civil order starting to break down", the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says.

People took flour and other basic supplies after storming several warehouses and distribution centres in the centre and south of the territory on Saturday, according to UNRWA.

Meanwhile, phone lines and internet connections are slowly returning after more than a day of almost total communications blackout.

Connectivity was cut as Israel intensified its bombardment of Gaza, and began a large ground operation involving tanks and troops.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) say more troops entered the territory overnight, while warplanes attacked more than 450 Hamas targets.

[Jimbuna]

Israeli armoured vehicles have been seen on the main road running from north to south of the Gaza Strip, close to Gaza City.

The Israeli military has said they will not comment on the location of their forces.

But it comes as Israel expands its ground offensive in Gaza, with a military spokesman saying troops killed "dozens of terrorists" during clashes overnight.

Meanwhile, "hundreds and hundreds of patients" are stuck in hospitals in the north of Gaza, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says.

Doctors say Israel told staff to evacuate Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City on Sunday but that moving patients - many of whom are in intensive care - is impossible.

[Jimbuna]

[Rockstar]

It’s beyond my understanding why the British state run media can’t call a spade a spade. It’s like they want you to believe Hamas has some noble legitimate cause. Hamas should be called out for what they are, sadistic, murderers, inhuman, terrorists. Not likened to some kind of freedom fighter.

Shani Louk: Woman missing after Hamas attack is dead, says mother
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2 hours ago

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Israel-Gaza war

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67260093

By Kathryn Armstrong
BBC News

The mother of Shani Louk, an Israeli-German woman thought to have been kidnapped by Hamas fighters at a music festival in Israel, says her daughter is dead.

Speaking to German media, Ricarda Louk said she had been told by the Israeli military that a DNA sample taken from part of a skull bone proved to be Shani's.
Her body has not yet been found.

Shani's sister also confirmed the death on social media.
Adi Louk wrote on Instagram on Monday that Shani had been killed in the "massacre at Re'im" - a reference to the attack staged by Hamas in southern Israel, near the Gaza Strip, on 7 October.

But it was not clear from the reports where or when the fragment of her skull had been found.

Israel's foreign ministry wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that it was "devastated" to have to share the news of her death.

The 22-year-old had been attending the festival near the Kibbutz Re'im when gunmen opened fire and sent terrified partygoers fleeing through the desert.
More than 260 people were killed, the Israeli authorities said, while others were taken hostage.

Soon after the attack, a video began circulating widely on social media, showing the body of a young woman being paraded through the streets in the back of a flatbed truck, surrounded by armed fighters and others yelling "Allahu Akbar" (God is Greatest).

The woman was lying face down but Ms Louk's family say they identified her from her dreadlocks and distinctive tattoos.

While there was speculation online and in the media that she was dead, Ms Louk's mother said at the time she believed her daughter was alive.
"We were sent a video in which I could clearly see our daughter unconscious in the car with the Palestinians and them driving around the Gaza Strip," Ricarda Louk said in an appeal for information posted online.
Speaking to the German TV news channel RTL/ntv on Monday, Ricarda Louk said she now assumed her daughter had been dead since 7 October and may have been shot in the head during the Hamas attack. "At least she [Shani] didn't suffer," she said, adding that it was good to have certainty.

More than 1,400 people were killed in the attacks by Hamas, according to the Israeli authorities, but there has been a delay in identifying some people due to the poor condition of some of the bodies.

More than 220 are thought to have been taken hostage and four people have been released.

[Skybird]

Spot on.


https://www-spartanat-com.translate...._x_tr_pto=wapp


His book "Wir Weicheier" in German title in the orginal has the title "Pussycats. Why the rest beats the West and what can be doen about it." I have it, I recommend it.


What its about is what I would call a problem of attitude.

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

Thousands in Gaza have broken into aid depots in a "worrying sign of civil order starting to break down", the UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) says.

People took flour and other basic supplies after storming several warehouses and distribution centres in the centre and south of the territory on Saturday, according to UNRWA.

Maybe it's a good sign considering exactly who is in charge there. Maybe the peeps are beginning to get fed up with Hamas.

[Jimbuna]

Originally Posted by em2nought

Maybe it's a good sign considering exactly who is in charge there. Maybe the peeps are beginning to get fed up with Hamas.

I most certainly hope so

[Jimbuna]

The Israeli military says it has rescued a female soldier in Gaza who was taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October.

They say Private Ori Megidish was freed during overnight ground operations and is "doing well"; it's the first known rescue of a hostage since the conflict began.

Separately, Hamas has released a video, which the BBC isn't showing, of three hostages held in Gaza. Israel's PM Benjamin Netanyahu describes it as "cruel psychological propaganda"

Speaking in Tel Aviv, Netanyahu rejects calls for a ceasefire, saying it would amount to a "surrender to Hamas" and now is "a time for war"

Earlier, Israeli armoured vehicles were seen on Gaza's main north-south road, close to Gaza City, as Israel continues expanding its ground offensive.

Meanwhile, "hundreds and hundreds" of patients are stuck in hospitals in northern Gaza where an Israeli evacuation order is place, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees says.

[Skybird]

https://m-focus-de.translate.goog/po..._x_tr_pto=wapp

[Jimbuna]

Israel says there were "large exchanges" with Hamas in Gaza overnight as its ground offensive continues.

The IDF says its forces were attacked by "terrorists" with anti-tank missiles and machine gun fire.

Air strikes on the Gaza Strip also continued overnight - Israel says more than 300 targets were hit in total.

Israel says it's focusing on northern Gaza but continues to strike "all parts of the Strip"

Hamas says it ambushed three Israeli vehicles with anti-tank missiles and attacked ground troops with shells in southern Gaza.

On Monday night, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, saying "this is a time for war"

[Jimbuna]

[Rockstar]

Great article by James Sherr, thought it deserved its own thread so it wouldn’t get lost in the spam.

COMMENTARY OCTOBER 30, 2023
Putin’s Gaza front

https://icds.ee/en/putins-gaza-front/


Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take part in a wreath laying ceremony in Moscow on May 9, 2018. In 2011, Putin went so far as to describe Israel as a practically a Russian-speaking country’, and only seven years ago, he called it an ‘unconditional ally against international terrorism’. Yet Putin offered no condolences to Netanyahu after Hamas’s attack.

Russians have long understood that to win a war, you must utilise an enemy’s forces as skilfully as you use your own. As the Gaza conflict demonstrates, these forces can be far afield of the war one is trying to win. The joint attack by Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Israel on 7 October has shifted global attention away from Russia’s war against Ukraine. But it has not altered Russia’s determination to dismantle that country and cripple its so-called sponsors in the ‘collective West’.

On 13 October in Kyrgyzstan’s capital Bishkek, Putin claimed that ‘no one suspects [Russia] wishes to play around’ with the Gaza conflict because of its strong and good relations with each of the protagonists. But the historical record belies this assurance. Even in Soviet times, when Moscow took the ideological offensive against ‘US imperialism’ and ‘Israeli aggression’, it sought to create synergies between the region’s endemic contradictions and hostilities. Under Putin’s watch, it has cooperated ‘pragmatically’ with every country and its worst enemy. It has ‘played around’ with pre-meditation and purpose, deepening relations with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Hamas and Israel simultaneously.

In itself, the Putin-Netanyahu relationship emerged from a balance of fears no less than a balance of forces, to which one must add the respect of each party for the tenacity and calculated ruthlessness of the other. But it also was a product of permissive circumstances: President Obama’s ‘pivot to Asia’ and the diminution of America’s presence and influence in the Middle East.

Over a good fifteen years, the relationship brought tangible benefits to both sides. On the one hand, Russia looked the other way whilst Israel struck targets inside Lebanon and Syria. In turn, Israel refused to join the Western sanctions regimes of 2014 and 2022 against Russia, and despite US entreaties, has not supplied air defence systems or other lethal weapons to Ukraine either, at least overtly. In 2011, Putin went so far as to describe Israel as ‘a special state to us…practically a Russian-speaking country’, and only seven years ago, he called it an ‘unconditional ally against international terrorism’. Yet Putin offered no condolences to Netanyahu after Hamas’s attack.

To understand why, one needs to appreciate just how radically the Ukraine war has restructured Russia’s priorities. Prior to February 2022, the 50-year special relationship with Germany was at least as important as the Russia-Israel relationship, but it was sacrificed on the altar of Russia’s ‘special military operation’. Russia has now made the same calculation with respect to Israel.

Five interests now take precedence: the rupturing of the West, the war in Ukraine, ties with Iran (which the war has made an indispensable ally of Russia), sabotaging the US-sponsored Saudi-Israel entente, and driving as many wedges as possible between the ‘collective West’ and the ‘global South’. In short, the specific conditions that spawned the Russia-Israel relationship fifteen years ago have given way to new ones.

These new conditions are at least as advantageous to Russia as the old. Today, we need to face four unpalatable truths.

First, Russia views Israel as the Achilles heel of the United States. Washington might claim that it will support Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’, but it knows that Israel cannot be allowed to fail. If Congress is forced to debate the relative priority of Ukraine and Israel, there is no debate. Israel wins.

Second, Israel’s greatest weakness is that it is predictable. History has taught its people that turning the other cheek is a recipe for extinction. The attack of 7 October was not merely, in the words of Israel’s ambassador to Germany, ‘the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust’, it was a stunning exercise in ‘reflexive control’: the defeat of an adversary by its own actions. Israel’s survival is more at risk today than at any time since 1948.

Third, the fates of Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan are intertwined. What links them is the commitment and credibility of the United States. The Kremlin believes that their removal from the political map would mean the end of the West as such. Possibly, it is right.

Fourth, whether or not Russia was complicit in Hamas’s attack, it had every reason to be. Its 17-year relationship with Hamas goes well beyond courtesy calls. The visits of the Hamas leadership and the head of its Politburo to Moscow in March and September this year were almost certainly about consultation rather than courtesy. If, as ‘informed sources’ claim, Hamas and Iran began planning the operation one year ago, it is most unlikely that Russia was kept in the dark.

Françoise Thom recently wrote: ‘Putin understands nothing about Western civilization. On the other hand, he has an unerring instinct for what can destroy it’. Maybe.

Over the years, Putin has proved himself to be less a master strategist than an engineer of lose-lose outcomes. He might come to regret some of these. US military power is now returning to the Middle East in earnest. It takes little effort to grasp that an Israel-Iran, not to say US-Iran war could bring a swift halt to Iran’s lifeline of military supplies to Russia. Moreover, it would swiftly expose Russia’s limitations. In such a war, Russia would have no spare military power to offer. Instead of making Russia indispensable, it might show the world that it has no clothes. In the end, Russia might pay a horrendous price for the harm it has wrought. But the end could be far away. Meanwhile, Russia’s capacity to confound, subvert and damage is likely to remain unrivalled.

This article is a revised version of the one published in Postimees on 26 October.

Hat tip: G.B.H.

[Aktungbby]

You're too late; I already referenced "Putins war by distraction" in the Hamas attacks Israel thread. That was on 10/8; 18 days before Jame Sherr's editorial was published (10/26)!

Originally Posted by me

You"re a pussy! We need to completely nuke the Gaza strip, while simultaneously dropping one on Teheran and Cairo(Mr Atta who masterminded the 9/11 attack was Egyptian-I have a long memory...) and serve notice to Putin's global 'intent by distraction'. The bombs dropped at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 by WWI artillery captain Harry Truman were not intended for Hirohito as much as they were for Stalin and the post 'cold war...so every 80 years we need to repeat the message particularly to the aggravating communist factions. With MIT predicting the end of civilization by 2040, I mark it :17 years and speeding up. Too bad we don't have a detonation-rocket to turn the sun into a red giant and just end the farce over who's God is better; if one exists at all...moreover, at age 72. I don't give a rat's ass

ATTN Moderator: please merge this thread with the hamas attacks Israel thread .

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

BREAKING:

Dozens of people are reported killed after a blast at the Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza.

The Hamas-run health ministry and a hospital director say at least 50 people were killed.

The health ministry blames Israeli air strikes - the Israeli military are yet comment.

The camp is in northern Gaza - an area where Israel has told people to leave for their safety.

================================================== ========

Israel's military has confirmed that Israeli fighter jets carried out the attack on the Jabalia refugee camp in Gaza.

The IDF says the strike killed a senior Hamas commander and caused the collapse of Hamas's underground infrastructure.