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Tom Sime's avatar

"Hamas is 'effectively back in control in Gaza,' at least according to a Tuesday headline in The Wall Street Journal"... for a story co-written by Omar Abdel-Baqui, the Journal's jihadist-adjacent foreign correspondent. The one who wrote the June 2024 puff piece about disenchanted Palestinian youth, complete with fashion spread and exculpatory narrative. ("As the U.S. and some Arab nations try to persuade Israel to work toward resolving its conflicts with Palestinians for good, young Palestinians increasingly say they don’t see an independent state as viable given Israel’s deep footprint in the West Bank and Gaza.") He's a stain on the Journal. I've complained to him and to the Journal about him many times. So I'm regarding this skeptically. I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult for Hamas to amass a Potemkin village of "fighters" driving around in balaclavas for the sympathetic press. We'll see how deep the ranks really are very soon.

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Allisall's avatar

Read a piece yesterday by Amichai Magen, a Visiting Professor and Fellow in Israeli Studies at Stanford, who lays out his speculation that this deal cannot be the deal. Too damaging to Israel. He sees two possibilities: that Netanyahu does not intend to go beyond the first phase. That it’s a breather meant to get back as many hostages as possible, give the troops a break, and replenish ammo while waiting for Hamas to put a toenail wrong. Or, two, part of a larger regional deal involving the US, the Saudis and Israel that would rejigger relations in the whole region and put this deal in a completely different context. That this temporary deal is the price Israel is paying for the Trump administration’s good graces and support.

I sure hope this guy is right. It would make a nonsensical seeming deal make sense.

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Philip Carl Salzman's avatar

I've seen reports that many new Hamas recruits are ill trained, inexperienced, and some underage, and would unlikely be an effecting fighting force. But they are good to scare hostages and fool the compliant press.

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Steven Brizel's avatar

Trump also ended the arms embargo as to D 9 armored bulldozers 2,000 pound bombs and attack helicopters that Biden imposed on Israel

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

Do you have a reference for that?

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Not so young anymore.'s avatar

Thx. I saw the ICC stuff and ending sanctions on some people from judea and Samaria but nothing on weapons!

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Steven Brizel's avatar

See the link above

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Suzie's avatar

Dear Lord God!

There has got to, got to, got to be a way in which those staffers of the Biden administration can be held to account, and suffer the severest of consequences for having taken it upon themselves -unconstitutionally and illegally - to run this country (into the ground) using a demented senior citizen as their prop and decoy.

Dear Lord let it be so!!

Amen ♥️

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Richard Kronenfeld's avatar

Make no mistake, Tucker Carlson is as much an anti-Semite as Candace Owens.

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Matt L.'s avatar

Hey there smear-merchant! Am I also an anti-Semite if I listen to Tucker?

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Incognito's avatar

The only credible, long-term option is for Israel is to expel the Arabs from Gaza, but that will require both (a) full US support; and (b) a provocation by Hamas as a trigger to implement the plan. The current ceasefire plan is probably necessary to release as many hostages as possible, and to give Hamas metaphorical rope with which to hang themselves.

I'm surprised that total expulsion from Gaza isn't more widely discussed, hence sharing the notes which I wrote last year, below. Please feel free to ignore it, or share as you see fit.

--

For over 75 years, Gaza’s Arabs had the option to accept Israelis' right to live in peace. The brutal 7 October pogrom/einsatzgruppen attack confirmed that they reject any peaceful coexistence, even murdering left-wing kibbutzim who once supported peace. Israel's enemies desire no settlement short of Israel’s destruction. Their expulsion would be an act of legitimate self-defence.

Sri Lanka's 2009 defeat of the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) shows how to deal with persistent threats. Known for suicide bombings, assassinations, and guerrilla tactics, the LTTE was crushed when Sri Lanka’s government launched an all-out offensive in 2006, using media blackouts and denying international oversight. By 2009, they had captured LTTE territory, killed its leaders, and ended a 26-year conflict. Civilian casualties were high, but it delivered long-term security.

Israel should do similarly: relocate Arabs to the Sinai, imposing a 50km+ buffer zone. With US support, Egypt could be compelled to accept the plan, yielding security gains, a cessation of attacks, and freedom to pursue economic stability.

Here is an outline concept of operations:

- Prepare. Israel and the US coordinate military and diplomatic steps.

- Mobilise. IDF reserves are readied; US assets move to the region.

- Blackout. Enforce a Gaza communications blackout to limit resistance.

- Pressure Egypt. US threatens aid cuts or sanctions (and, if necessary, kinetic options) if Egypt resists.

- Neutralise. If needed, target Egyptian defences in Sinai.

- Gaza expulsion. IDF advances south, dismantling resistance.

- Transport. Move Gazans with military protection.

- Quarantine. Create a secure 50km buffer with surveillance.

- Refugee camps. ‘Temporary’ camps in Sinai, with aid incentives to Egypt.

- Enforce buffer. Fortify with drones, radar, and defence systems.

- Secure Sinai. Conduct counter-terror operations in buffer zone.

- PR management. Launch a US-Israel campaign to justify the operation.

Concurrently, the destruction of the Iranian regime's military, port, oil, power, water and nuclear facilities would be ideal, to send Iran back to the stone age, thereby mitigating the threat therein to both the US and Israel.

Needless to say, the above would cause outrage among the worldwide brainwashed pro-Hamas crowd, and it would require full US support. The only way to implement it therefore would be once Trump is in power, and once Hamas inevitably overreach themselves and attempt further attacks.

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Holly Hart's avatar

Why would it be better to have Gazans in the Sinai Peninsula?

The border between Israel and the Sinai is much longer and the Sinai’s coast is much longer than the Gazan coast, so wouldn’t it be harder to prevent military assets from

being smuggled into the Sinai than into Gaza?

Apologies for my ignorance and lack of imagination. I just don’t get it.

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Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka's avatar

I would prefer they be elsewhere and that Sinai would be Israel's again but specifically moving them out of Gaza to establish the borders of Israel as intended without hostile pricks nearby would be optimal and as he stipulated temporary camps. I don't think there's any receptivity in the world for it to occur as much as I'd like for it to occur.

There's never been a more malignant malevolent people.

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Brenda Newman's avatar

Nah. Send the Palestinians from Judea and Samaria to Gaza, build an Egyptian-style wall around the Israel-Gaza border, and sit back. Give them the billions of dollars Hamas leaders stole. Maybe they’ll build the paradise vacation destination so many hoped for. Maybe not.

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michael cholden-brown's avatar

It is extraordinary – in a terrible fashion- that Tablet regards the pardoning of all the 1,500 January 6 Rioters as Good, due what it calls “no angels’ or “every last grandmother who “obstructed an official proceeding” by entering the Capitol grounds” when that includes “Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio (sentenced to 22 years) and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes (sentenced to 18 years)”. These two insurrectionists in themselves represent a very Bad threat and to have them running free and organizing their thugs and armed gangs is a far greater threat than those who have been identified in the “racial justice rioters during 2020 and the virtually nonexistent federal law-enforcement response to anti-Israel rioters in 2024”, as you put it in your alarmist statement. But then perhaps you really do regard Seig Heil arm gestures as inherently innocent.

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Suzie's avatar

While there is much to be excited about with the new and improved Trump administration at the helm, I am feeling the old saying, “a Mom is only ever as happy as her saddest child.”

The ceasefire deal has cast a long shadow over my elation wirh the new administration and their full steam ahead approach to righting so many wrongs of the past, and setting a new path forward.

But until it is clear that Israel is fully back in the driver’s seat as they were at the pinnacle of their massively successful campaigns in the war for their very existence, my happiness is greatly diminished.

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Marshall Brass's avatar

Your classification of the pardoning of the J6 criminals under "The Good" is truly disgraceful. That their convictions were "a monument to two-tiered justice" is shameful. Oh, I forgot, J6 was a "day of love" (Trump) and with just a few exceptions, "an ordinary tourist visit (Andrew Clyde).

Congressman and Senators hiding and running for their lives. Yeh, all that's "The Good"

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Matt L.'s avatar

Trump kept a campaign promise by pardoning J6’s. He did what he said he’d do. The Scroll take on J6 pardons is absolutely correct. You can go read Bari Weiss take (which aligns with your) over at The Free Press, or any other similar neocon raglike MSM outlet.

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Marshall Brass's avatar

So, he kept an outrageous promise. How admirable. The Scroll take on pardoning « political hostages » who were attempting an insurrection is preposterous. Beating and injuring law enforcement is now acceptable while claiming that « no one has been a bigger defender of the blue than me » is equally preposterous.

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Suzie's avatar

Stay tuned. What you will learn in the coming months of what truly transpired that day will shock you to your core.

The caption will read: The government were by no means the “good guys”.

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Matt L.'s avatar

Spare me the false outrage, please. The only insurrection was a complete and utter overreach by the DOJ on about 90% of J6’s, turning them into political prisoners. And when same DOJ makes DJT into the same target and then dude crushes it at the ballot box, yeah, everyone goes free. Your pearl clutching here cracks me up 😂

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Geran Kostecki's avatar

Nothing on Elon's nazi salute?

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Alan, aka DudeInMinnetonka's avatar

I don't take it as more than a spaz having a spaz moment.

Do you?

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Matt L.'s avatar

Geran, this isn’t Reddit. Funny to see the Left pause on the ‘Death to Israel’ chants thou, and instead pivot to calling Elon Musk a Nazi.

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Justin Fouranno's avatar

I think what this is measuring is an increase in terrible immigration of antisemites into western countries and their influence. The students and leftists are on board too, but kick out the terrorists and cut off the Qatari & Iranian money and you can wipe out the majority of this I think.

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Udi's avatar

"Allegedly violent settlers"? I've got some news for you.

(I did my MA thesis on violent settlers. I spent a decent amount of time in the ideological settlements, interviewing, chatting and praying with violent ideological settlers)

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