This is news from at least 36 hours earlier, but...
Israel Declares State of War After Hamas Launches Unprecedented Surprise Attack
'We are at war,' Israeli Prime Minister declares following the infiltration of dozens of terrorists and rocket fire into Israel.
Israel has declared a state of war after terrorists infiltrated Israeli borders, attacking homes and civilians, and Hamas claimed responsibility for launching thousands of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, in an unprecedented, unprovoked surprise attack.
Hamas on Saturday morning took credit for the extensive rocket attacks that triggered sirens in dozens of locations across southern and central Israel, including Jerusalem.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) initially declared a “state of alert for war" in a statement around 8:25 a.m. local time. It said the Hamas terrorist organization over the past hour had "begun a massive shooting of rockets from the Gaza Strip into Israeli territory, and terrorists infiltrated into Israeli territory in a number of different locations."
By 10:40 a.m., the IDF reported that terrorists had infiltrated from the sea, the air, and the ground. It said at 11:00 a.m. that about 2,500 rockets had been fired toward Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu later declared "we are at war" and promised that "the enemy will pay unprecedented price" after he convened an emergency meeting of security officials, while Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant approved the mobilization of reservists.
Following that meeting at the Israeli military headquarters in Tel Aviv, Mr. Gallant warned that Hamas “made a grave mistake” by mounting its attack. “The state of Israel will win this war,” he said.
This could be all the excuse Israel needs to finally clean up in that region. Everyone will deplore Israel's actions, but maybe the end result will be a lot of dead terrorists. I never bought into the boo-hoo theatrics of Palestine supporters who said that Israel has always been the aggressor, and Palestinians are armed only with rocks. If you read around, and not just the usual mainstream-media bullshit, you learn pretty quickly that Hamas (1) has in its charter the destruction of Israel and (2) stores plenty of rockets, bombs, etc. underneath schools and hospitals, using its own fellow citizens as human shields. I have no sympathy for these animals, and if Israel decides to mow them all down, I won't lose any sleep over that. Does all of this mean the end of the Abraham Accords (which Biden has done nothing to support)? I guess we'll see. Israel will certainly be spending most of its diplomatic capital.
This is certainly going to be bloody (and Palestinian civilians, not Hamas, will probably take the brunt of it), but I doubt that Israel will wipe out Hamas. Not because they can't, mind you--they certainly could. It's more of a devil-you-know thing, I think. Wiping out Hamas would leave a power vacuum that could end up being occupied by an entity even worse than Hamas (Hezbollah?).
ReplyDeleteI've seen some arguments saying that, if Israel takes the notion of war seriously and goes through with whatever it plans to do, it will lose the diplomatic capital it has and become a pariah state. The counterargument is that, among the Muslim nations, Israel is already a pariah state, so not much will change.
ReplyDeleteIn his saner days, Sam Harris noted that the moral difference between Israel and Hamas is that, given the power, Hamas would destroy Israel. Meanwhile Israel has the power to destroy Hamas but has not done so. Up to now. And you're probably right that Israel won't do so now. If nothing else, there's the law of remainders: you can never get them all even if you try.
More cynically, Israel apparently has internal leftist factions that essentially side with Hamas and other Muslim powers.
Meanwhile, over at Instapundit, a big debate is raging in the comments section about "intelligence failures" by Mossad and the CIA (who seemingly failed to anticipate this attack), and whether they really are failures or more of an FDR-style attempt to drag Israel into war.
Then there's the matter of the supposed German and US hostages purportedly dragged off by Hamas...
It'd be nice if the entire region just decided to let go of the conflict mindset, but that's about as realistic as Donald Trump eating a medium-rare steak.