Originally Posted By Alnen123:
Wtf? They are talking about an "uptick" on drone and rocket attacks of US bases and ships in the area... Are they skipping over the whole kick off of a war, ie being attacked, by acting like it's old news and only an "uptick"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkgtJoLiR8M

Originally Posted By RattleCanAR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlxjtVcN5mQ

Preppers to the core.  A hospital in a parking garage.  Top shelf equipment and what appears to be thoughtful planning.

Originally Posted By RattleCanAR:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlxjtVcN5mQ

Preppers to the core.  A hospital in a parking garage.  Top shelf equipment and what appears to be thoughtful planning.

An asylum seeker bent on avenging deaths in Gaza has carried out a suspected terrorist attack in Britain, The Telegraph can disclose.

MPs said on Friday night that the public had a right to know, amid warnings that demonstrations this weekend could encourage so-called lone-wolf terrorist attacks.

The Telegraph has discovered that just such an alleged attack has already taken place.

The details that can be reported are highly restricted for legal reasons, but the suspect – who is now in custody – said after his arrest that he had done it because Israel had killed children in Gaza.

Senior politicians have questioned why such information has not been made public at a time when the police and security services are on high alert for terrorist attacks motivated by the Israel-Gaza war.

A security source said: “They may be downplaying it so that they don’t have repeat attacks or copycat attacks.”

Israel’s security chiefs had “telltale signs” more than two hours before Hamas’s devastating assault on the morning of Saturday, October 7 that an attack was looming, but believed the danger to be on a much smaller scale than that of the devastating onslaught that occurred, Channel 12 reported Friday.

Without citing sources, the report said the “concrete” indications pointed to a likely coming “day of battle” in which a limited force of terrorists would attempt to infiltrate the border, seize control of one or two communities and attempt kidnappings.

It said the indications were discussed in a previously reported consultation involving senior military and Shin Bet officials, including IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi and Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar.

But the officials allegedly decided the matter could wait till morning, and no alert was issued. The security chiefs did not pass on word of the signs of an imminent attack, did not alert IDF troops at the border, many of whom were killed at their bases and positions, did not move up tanks deployed in the area, and did not alert the local civil defense squads at nearby communities who fought the rampaging terrorists hours later, the report said.

Channel 12 said the only action taken was the Shin Bet dispatching a small operations team to the border area. When the huge infiltration occurred, with Hamas bursting through the border at multiple locations and massacring Israelis at 22 communities and an outdoor music festival, the small Shin Bet team participated in the fighting at one of the kibbutzim that was attacked.

The consultation took place at about 4 a.m., the TV report said; the invasion began at around 6:30 a.m.

The devastating mass Hamas infiltration saw some 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians, as terrorists rampaged across communities in southern Israel, shooting, stabbing, raping and burning victims that included men, women and children. Some 200 others, at least, were taken hostage into Gaza.

During the initial press conference, the forensics team showed images from their investigations. Among the images were those of charred hands with marks that revealed where the victims’ hands were bound behind their backs with metal wire before being burned alive.

Two spinal cords—one belonging to an adult, one to someone young—a parent and child bound together by metal wires in a final embrace before being set alight.

“The proportion of bodies we’ve received who are charred is high,” Kugel explained. “Many have gunshot wounds in their hands, showing they put their hands up to their faces in defense. Many were burned alive in their homes. … We know they were burned alive because there is soot in their trachea, their throats—meaning they were still breathing when set on fire.”

Victims likely died from carbon dioxide, soot inhalation
The single mercy, Kugel said—if there is one to be found—is that the burned victims likely died from carbon dioxide and soot inhalation before the fire killed them.

Kugel also explained that the age range of the victims spans from 3 months to 80 or 90 years old. Many bodies, including those of babies, are without heads.

Asked if they were decapitated, Kugel answered yes. Although he admits that, given the circumstances, it’s difficult to ascertain whether they were decapitated before or after death, as well as how they were beheaded, “whether cut off by knife or blown off by RPG,” he explained.

For 14 years, Netanyahu's policy was to keep Hamas in power; the pogrom of October 7, 2023, helps the Israeli prime minister preserve his own rule.

h ink has been spilled describing the longtime relationship – rather, alliance – between Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas. And still, the very fact that there has been close cooperation between the Israeli prime minister (with the support of many on the right) and the fundamentalist organization seemingly evaporated from most of the current analyses ..Given this, there is a need not only to review the history of cooperation but also to conclude unequivocally: The pogrom of October 7, 2023, helps Netanyahu, and not for the first time, to preserve his rule, certainly in the short term.

The MO of Netanyahu’s policy since his return to the Prime Minister’s Office in 2009 has and continues to be, on the one hand, bolstering the rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and, on the other, weakening the Palestinian Authority

In practice, since the Cast Lead operation in late 2008 and early 2009, during the Olmert era, Hamas’ rule has not faced any genuine military threat. On the contrary: The group has been supported by the Israeli prime minister, and funded with his assistance. When Netanyahu declared in April 2019, as he has after every other round of fighting, that “we have restored deterrence with Hamas” and that “we have blocked the main supply routes,” he was lying through his teeth.

For over a decade, Netanyahu has lent a hand, in various ways, to the growing military and political power of Hamas. Netanyahu is the one who turned Hamas from a terror organization with few resources into a semi-state body. Releasing Palestinian prisoners, allowing cash transfers, as the Qatari envoy comes and goes to Gaza as he pleases, agreeing to the import of a broad array of goods, construction materials in particular, with the knowledge that much of the material will be designated for terrorism and not for building civilian infrastructure, increasing the number of work permits in Israel for Palestinian workers from Gaza, and more. All these developments created symbiosis between the flowering of fundamentalist terrorism and preservation of Netanyahu’s rule.

It would be a mistake to assume that Netanyahu thought about the well-being of the poor and oppressed Gazans – who are also victims of Hamas – when allowing the transfer of funds (some of which, as noted, didn’t go to building infrastructure but rather military armament). His goal was to hurt Abbas and prevent division of the Land of Israel into two states.

It’s important to remember that without those funds from Qatar (and Iran), Hamas would not have had the money to maintain its reign of terror, and its regime would have been dependent on restraint. In practice, the injection of cash (as opposed to bank deposits, which are far more accountable) from Qatar, a practice that Netanyahu supported and approved, has served to strengthen the military arm of Hamas since 2012. Thus, Netanyahu indirectly funded Hamas after Abbas decided to stop providing it with funds that he knew would end up being used for terrorism against him, his policies and his people. It’s important not to ignore that Hamas used this money to buy the means through which Israelis have been murdered for years.

Originally Posted By BLUEBOY:
Lets just get it on, Missiles, Bombs or nukes and get it over with. Winner take all instead of this bullshit half ass all talk trash and holding of hostages. Write the hostages off and commence the fucking slaughter!

Even more than the atrocities themselves, what was so – yes – unbearable to many of us was the helplessness of our fellow Israelis. Nothing is more antithetical to the Israeli ethos than for Jews to be burned alive with their hands bound behind their backs, with the IDF nowhere in sight.

The support I seek is based on the understanding that Israel faces a genocidal regime on its southern border, that that regime must be destroyed not only for our sake but for the sake of the region, and that the only way to destroy a terrorist infrastructure embedded in a civilian population is the way the IDF is proceeding.

The outpouring of sympathy for Israel was good for our souls, especially in those traumatic first days. But we all knew that much of that sympathy would begin to evaporate with the terrible scenes of devastation in Gaza. And we also knew that, given the choice, we preferred to be condemned than pitied.

In recent days, I’ve received messages from friends abroad, warning me that Israel is about to repeat the mistakes America made in Afghanistan and Iraq. You are walking into a trap, they say, there is no quick fix; Hamas is an idea, not just a movement. You need an end-game, a vision for Gaza the morning after, a vision for peace with the Palestinians.

I fear they may be right. But those concerns are irrelevant to Israel’s most urgent need, which is the immediate restoration of our shattered deterrence.

At no time in Israeli history, including the first catastrophic days of the Yom Kippur War, has our military credibility been so undermined. Hamas’s blow was devastating precisely because it was the weakest of our enemies – and because the army failed so miserably, not only to preempt the attack at the border but to stop the atrocities as they were happening, effectively abandoning the towns and kibbutzim to their fate.

To lose deterrence is to invite aggression on our other besieged borders. It is to convey to our enemies that Israel has lost its edge and no longer has what it takes to survive as the only non-Arab and non-Muslim state in one of the world’s most dangerous regions. That is what makes this an existential war for Israel – not in the short-term, but not necessarily the long-term either.

Those who caution against invading Gaza rarely offer Israel an alternative. (Would they prefer that we bomb Iran?) Not to react decisively carries potentially greater danger for Israel than military miscalculation. If this war ends in another Hamas-Israeli stalemate, the Iranian front along our borders will become far more emboldened.

This is a war against the Iranian axis.

This has never been the “Israeli-Palestinian” conflict alone. For most of the last 75 years of Israel’s existence, it was the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In recent years, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been supplanted by the radical Shiite-Israeli conflict. Like the Arab world a generation ago, the radical Shiite axis is committed to Israel’s destruction. To focus only on the fighting in Gaza is to misunderstand what is happening there. This is war with Iran by proxy.

In what may once have been a marriage of convenience, Hamas, the only Sunni component of the Iranian alliance, has embraced the theological agenda of the Iranian Revolution and its quest for regional hegemony.

Iran has already won two historic victories against Israel. Despite a decades-long Israeli campaign, Iran is now on the nuclear threshold. And it threatens us on three of our borders – Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

The massacre marks a turning point in our war with the radical Shiite axis. For now, Iran is winning.

On October 7, Israel became the most dangerous country in the world for Jews. Many Israelis are now quietly asking themselves whether they can raise families here. In the early 1950s, when Israel was experiencing a wave of terror attacks and the IDF seemed incapable of effective response, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion declared that the state has an obligation to reassure Jewish immigrants coming from around the world that they didn’t make a mistake in trusting the promise of Zionism to protect them.

Destroying Hamas is a crucial step in restoring that broken promise.

Originally Posted By Prime:
Statement From Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III on Steps to Increase Force Posture

Following detailed discussions with President Biden on recent escalations by Iran and its proxy forces across the Middle East Region, today I directed a series of additional steps to further strengthen the Department of Defense posture in the region. These steps will bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.

First, I redirected the movement of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the Central Command area of responsibility. This carrier strike group is in addition to the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which is currently operating in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It will further increase our force posture and strengthen our capabilities and ability to respond to a range of contingencies.

I have also activated the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the region to increase force protection for U.S. forces.

Finally, I have placed an additional number of forces on prepare to deploy orders as part of prudent contingency planning, to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required.

I will continue to assess our force posture requirements in the region and consider deploying additional capabilities as necessary.
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/3564874/statement-from-secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-on-steps-to-increase-for/

Manuals discovered on the bodies of dead Hamas terrorists shows how they were ordered to execute “problematic” hostages with babies designated as specific targets during their surprise attack on Israel.

The Islamist terror group took more than 200 hostages back to Gaza after a murderous rampage through communities in southern Israel, killing around 1,400 people, mostly civilians.

A copy of one guide, obtained by The Telegraph, revealed how Hamas planned to take hostages to use as human shields in firefights with Israel’s armed forces and kill any who posed a threat to their terror attack.

“Kill the problematic and those who post a threat,” the document reads in Arabic.

“Gather some of the hostages in the area and use them as cannon fodder, ensuring they are clearly visible,” it adds.

Israeli officials say the manuals are a sign of the high level of planning by Hamas in the months leading up to the attack on October 7.

“It shows they were very, very task orientated,” Lt Col Peter Lerner, an IDF spokesman, told The Telegraph.

“It wasn’t just haphazardly ‘let’s cross over and kill whoever we walk into’ but rather that we go in, we take, we attack, we abduct, we tie them up… there’s a whole list of things to do.”

The hostage-taking manual recommended gathering the victims in “pre-determined” locations on maps when each of the terrorist squads had finished “cleansing their operating areas”.

Civilian targets
Maps found on the terrorists showed the locations of nurseries, shops and other civilian targets.

The attackers were expected to “kill anyone that may pose a threat or cause a distraction or disturbance”, and blindfold and tie up the others by their wrists and ankles.

Further killings were advocated only as a “last resort”, with the terrorists told to use “firearms, smoke and stun grenades, indirect threats, electric shocks, violence and terrorism” to maintain order.

It said men should be separated from women and babies, confirming that Hamas had long planned to target infants as part of its brutal raid across the border into southern Israel.

Versions of the guide, which was marked “confidential”, were found on the bodies of dead Hamas terrorists, as well as in vehicles abandoned by the group when Israeli forces fought back.

In Israel there is a sense that the attack may have been more devastating than the terror group had thought possible.

Officials believe each Hamas squad was meant to have brought just one or two hostages back with them across the border into Gaza, with a maximum of 30 taken into captivity.

Hundreds of victims
Instead, hundreds of victims were loaded onto the back of pick-up trucks, motorcycles and golf carts as the terrorists caught Israel’s armed forces flat-footed.

And Israeli officials fear the true number of victims taken to Gaza could yet grow beyond the 210 officially announced.

They say there are still 100 people left unaccounted for, with intelligence pointing towards them being alive and held hostage by Hamas.

The terrorists’ guide set out how the expected number of victims taken back across the borders could have been significantly lower.

It appears that Hamas had initially planned for a protracted battle over control of the kibbutzim, with recommendations to “collect as much food and drinks as possible”.

“Do not use your own supplies to feed the hostages, except in emergency situations,” the manual added.

In expectation of an armed stand-off between Hamas and Israeli forces, the terrorists were given orders on how to conduct negotiations.

Only the most senior commanders were allowed to “communicate with the enemy” and were told to stay in close contact throughout with leaders in Gaza.

“Do not engage in negotiations in the field if possible,” the document added, suggesting the ultimate aim was to return to Gaza with captives.

Why IDF, gov’t reasons to delay invasion not holding water - analysis

By YONAH JEREMY BOB  

There were strong arguments for Israel starting its counter-invasion of Gaza as early as a few days after Hamas’ October 7 invasion of the South as well as delaying it to around a week after that event, but those same reasons being cited now are quickly becoming obsolete.

Many IDF commanders would have liked to invade Gaza already in the early days of the war, but there were definitely top IDF commanders at the time who were with the government's political echelon’s desire to delay.

A variety of reasons were cited when the Gaza invasion was delayed into at least the second week of the war. Three that are still being flagged have lost or are speedily losing their logic.

The most obvious one was that in the first week of the war not all of the 360,000 IDF reservists were in the right places, with the right gear, and they were not all fully updated and trained for their disparate missions.

This is no longer true. Yes, troops can always improve their readiness, but like in many sports, there is also a crossover point where waiting and training too long without acting creates skittishness, uneasiness, and negatively impacts morale.

IDF Artillery Corps seen at a staging area near the southern Israeli border with Gaza, October 15, 2023.  (credit: TOMER NEUBERG/FLASH90)
IDF Artillery Corps seen at a staging area near the southern Israeli border with Gaza, October 15, 2023. (credit: TOMER NEUBERG/FLASH90)
Although on Sunday the IDF was still citing more training as being a justifiable reason for delaying the invasion through the second week of the war and now into the third week, an honest look would reveal that more time to train is likely neutral and even potentially negative at this point.

A second reason cited last week, at which time it arguably made sense, and which the IDF is still citing (unclear how many commanders really believe this or if just military officials talking to the media are taking this line to be seen supporting the government) is to give more time to civilians to evacuate.

Around the end of the first week of fighting, around 500,000 Palestinians, or around 50%, had evacuated northern Gaza following warnings from the IDF.

By the start of this third week, the number was up to above 700,000 and close to 70-75%.

That is a big improvement and it could be argued leaving more time for those additional civilians to leave was worth the delay.

Those left will not leave
Whether Hamas is forcing them to be human shields, they are afraid to move, they are non-violent Hamas supporters voluntary human shields, or elderly persons who have not figured out how to make the move, is mostly now inapposite.

The IDF is going to be stuck fighting an urban battle against Hamas with many civilians around. It was always going to be this way, and further delay now is not going to change the percentages a huge amount.

And yet the third reason is probably the most decisive for the government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and is probably the reason which most sinks further delay as an unprofessional military move.

Basically, the IDF is saying that the more air force attacks there are, the fewer IDF soldiers will be lost once the ground invasion begins because the remaining Hamas forces will be degraded.

Once again, this was true for delaying from week one to week two, but it has been almost impossible to decode any new progress by the Air Force in the last several days, other than hitting a higher quantity of targets.

After each additional day of hundreds of strikes, the fact is that Hamas has thousands and thousands of more rockets to keep firing, some tens of thousands of fighters, a majority of whom will not be killed or arrested without troops on the ground, and Hamas’ ability to maintain some level of fighting will not stop without a long ground invasion.

Once the ground invasion starts, a large number of IDF soldiers will die, larger than in the rounds of conflict we have seen in recent decades. There simply is no other way to subdue Hamas.

Aerial bombing absolutely can pave the way for an earlier invasion, but it does not eliminate risk or ground troops's losses.

So whether we are talking here about political fear or authentic concerns of guilt about ordering a significant number of young troops to their deaths, the concern cannot justify a further delay of the invasion from a professional military perspective.

It just delays the inevitable, reduces morale, and reduces the amount of time the world will probably “allow” Israel to spend in Gaza to topple Hamas.

As Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” No one should rush into such a scenario, but Israel and the IDF are long past the point of rushing, and into the stage of dwindling returns.

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A soldier was killed and three others were hurt on Sunday, after Hamas attacked troops carrying out an operation on the western side of the Gaza border fence, near the southern community of Kissufim.

The operation was part of the military’s searches for bodies of missing Israelis, and to clear the area for Israel’s upcoming ground offensive.

The Israel Defense Forces said an anti-tank guided missile was fired at an Israeli tank and engineering vehicle, and troops responded by shelling the terror cell. Terror group Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack.

Meanwhile, Israeli forces were still finding Palestinian terrorists in southern Israel, having infiltrated during the Hamas terror group’s murderous invasion on October 7.

On Saturday evening, a member of Hamas’s Nukhba commando forces was captured by Israeli forces while attempting to return to the Gaza Strip. He was described by the military as being “exhausted” after spending more than two weeks hiding in Israel.

The Nukhba unit led the October 7 assault on southern Israel.

The IDF said Sunday morning that it had killed two Nukhba members in an airstrike near the Gaza border fence the previous evening. The military said other Hamas terrorists were also killed in the same strike, but did not elaborate further.

Israel said to form unit tasked with killing Hamas commandos behind Oct. 7 assault

The Mossad and Shin Bet have reportedly formed a special operations center tasked with tracking down and killing members of the Hamas commando unit that led the Gaza-ruling terror group’s deadly onslaught in southern Israel on October 7.

According to the Ynet news site, the unit will be named after the World War I-era Jewish underground organization “Nili,” an acronym for a Hebrew phrase which translates as “the Eternal One of Israel will not lie.”

The report said the command center’s goal will be to take out all the Nukbha gunmen who were involved in the surprise assault two weeks ago, when some 2,500 terrorists burst into Israel by land, sea, and air under a massive rocket barrage, killing around 1,400 people, the vast majority of them civilians. Terrorists also took at least 210 hostages of all ages into Gaza and are holding them captive.

The Israel Defense Forces has already announced the death of several Nukbha commanders in strikes since the Hamas-led attack two weeks ago, including Billal al-Qedra, who headed the unit’s southern Khan Younis battalion, and Ali Qadhi, a company commander.

On Wednesday, the military said it killed over 10 Nukhba members while targeting top terror figures in the Gaza Strip.

With a likely ground offensive looming, Israel has warned that every Hamas member faces death but two accused masterminds of the October 7 attacks are at the top of its hit list: Hamas military commander Muhammad Deif and political leader Yahya Sinwar.

Israel has said that Sinwar is “a dead man walking” and the hunt for the two most senior Hamas leaders in Gaza is expected to be fierce.

“Hamas terrorists have two options: Be killed or surrender unconditionally. There is no third option,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on Tuesday.

Hamas spokesmen have responded that the Palestinian Islamist terror group is “not scared.”

Security sources outside Gaza say Deif and Sinwar are now embedded in a network of tunnels built to resist the bombing campaign launched after the brutal attacks on communities and military bases near the border shook Israel to its core.

But the pair have spent years operating in the shadows.

Israel has singled out the 61-year-old Sinwar, who was elected Hamas leader in Gaza in 2017 after Ismail Haniyeh became the Iran-backed organization’s supreme leader. Military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht called Sinwar the “face of evil” and declared him a “dead man walking.”

Sinwar was a founding member of Hamas in 1987 during the First Intifada or uprising and rose through the ranks as a fierce advocate of armed struggle.

A graduate of the Islamic University in Gaza, he learned Hebrew during 23 years in Israeli jails.

Sinwar was serving four life terms for the killing of two Israeli soldiers when in 2011 he became the most senior of 1,100 Palestinian security prisoners released in exchange for French-Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.

Sinwar and Deif were both born in the Khan Younis refugee camp in Gaza and added to the United States’ list of most wanted international terrorists in 2015.

Much less is known about Deif, Israel’s number one public enemy for the past two decades, during which he has been accused of organizing suicide attacks, kidnappings and other raids.

There is only one known full-face photo of the commander of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing. It is at least 20 years old. The others show him either in a mask or standing in the shadows to avoid identification.

An audio message from Deif was transmitted by Hamas media on the morning of the attacks dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Deluge. “The rage of our people and our nation is exploding,” he said.

Deif was born Mohammed Diab al-Masri in 1965. His assumed name means “Guest” in Arabic and he reportedly never spends more than one night in the same place. Enemies have dubbed him the “cat with nine lives” as he has survived at least six attempts to kill him.

Deif’s wife and at least one child were killed in an Israeli airstrike during the 2014 Gaza war. Deif has reportedly lost one eye and been left disabled by the attempts on his life but it has not weakened his influence.

He has been involved with Hamas since the 1980s and was arrested at the start of the Second Intifada but escaped, or was released, from a Palestinian Authority prison in 2000. He became head of the Hamas military wing in 2002 and has been Israel’s bete noire ever since.

Israel has sent repeated warnings to the Hamas leadership since October 7.

“Every member of Hamas is a dead man,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said days after the October 7 massacres.

But experts say that eliminating Sinwar and Deif would severely weaken but not crush Hamas, which is Israel’s declared aim.

“Sinwar and Deif are clearly first priority leadership, the loss of which would damage Hamas, but one presumes that the group has contingencies about their loss,” said H.A. Hellyer, an international security specialist at the Royal United Institute