Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part X, Declarations

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.

Matthew, Chapter 24.

The flags of Israel, apparently Hamas, and the crest of the Palestinian Authority.

We'll first bring this edition up to date with some entries from the last one:

October 7, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Hamas launched a large scale offensive against Israel yesterday, sending both ground forces and rockets across the border.  Israel has termed it a war and has called up reservists.

October 8, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Russia bizarrely called for a ceasefire between the warring parties.

Civilian casualties are about equal so far, each standing at about 250 persons.  Hamas took hostages back into Israel.

October 9, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

In something, we just don't see occur anymore, but which we really should, Israel has actually issued a Declaration of War, of course against Hamas.

Declarations are a formal legal document and really without one, at least legally, a state of war does not exist.  This is, therefore, not only a throwback (which it shouldn't be) to an earlier era, but an important legal step.

Israeli ground troops have not yet entered Gaza (we anticipate that it will) but Israel has placed Gaza under siege.  Nothing is coming in or out.

The US has moved ships closer to the region.

In acts of supreme stupidity, some members of Congress or others who are simply opponents of Joe Biden are blaming him for Hamas' actions.  Truly, that's really off the wall.  Look to see for some of those who rally to Israel's defense to be the same parties who are opposed to Ukraine's, and look for cries of US support to Israel from some of the same who would dump support for Ukraine, even though Ukraine is a democratic country, like Israel, also fighting for its existence.

Worth noting, one of the Hamas targets was a "rave" party, perhaps accidentally, in support of peace at which young Israeli's were gathered. Reports indicate that not only were attendees gunned down in cold blood, but at least two young women were raped next to the dead bodies of their friends and then viciously murdered.

This gives us two recent examples, which should not be forgotten, of armies using rape and murder as weapons against civilians, one being Putin's Russian army in Ukraine, and now Hamas, which claims Islam as part of its founding principles, in Israel.  Any army doing that loses all claims to legitimacy.

Hamas controls 74 seats out of the Palestinian's 132 in their parliament, giving them the majority.  How this war plays out is yet to be seen, but it has to call into grave question the land for peace strategy that Israel followed starting at the time of the Camp David Accords.

It is worth noting that Hamas' funding comes from donations, Gaza in particular being economically unviable.  Presently, a large percentage of that comes from Iran, which is somewhat ironic due to the traditional hostility between Sunni and Shia Islam. Hamas is primarily Sunni.  Other regional Sunni states are major economic donors as well.  Iran is also a backer of forces opposed to the US in Syria.

cont:

Israel has called up 300,000 reservists.

October 10, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Hamas operations in southern Israel expanded yesterday, and the IDF fought Hamas in thirteen locations on the West Bank. Hezbollah crossed Israel's northern border in a rocket supported raid.

This is all contrary to news reports, which have largely failed to mention that guerilla operations are expanding.

Hamas has called for a general mobilization for Friday.  This is unlikely to occur.

cont:

I think people will not believe the reports of what happened in Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Beeri. Even though Hamas posted photos and videos on their own Telegram channel. Because these are ISIS tactics. Beheaded babies and burned corpses. Yes, I saw the photos.

Lisa Goldman, Canadian journalist. 

This assertion is hotly disputed by Palestinians.

October 11, 2023

Russia v. Ukraine

Russia lost a bid, not surprisingly, to regain a seat on the UN Human Rights Council.  Its obtaining a seat would have rendered the Council a complete joke. 

It was suspended last year.

The Ukrainian offensive is back down to proceeding at a snail's pace.  There's really no way to put a happy spin on this.

October 11, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

US advanced weaponry has begun to arrive in Israel.

There are additional reports today that Hamas killed children and infants.

cont:

Liz Cheney has repeated the item about Hamas murdering 40 babies.  I note this, as Cheney has been a source that I trust, and whom certainly turned out to be correct about other foreign policy matters.

cont:

U.S. intelligence indicates that Iran, just like Israel (and the U.S.) was surprised by he Hamas assault on Israel.

That's likely because they would have tried to call it off, knowing that the falling chips would lead to a disastrous Hamas result in the end.

October 12, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Israel hit the Aleppo and Damascus airports in airstrikes, one just before an Iranian diplomat was set to land. His plane turned around back to Iran.  The plane apparently also contained members of the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Russia v. Ukraine

Ukraine is apparently working on port arrangements with Romania in order to ship grain from that country.

cont:

Hamas has called for a global day of jihad to take place tomorrow.

cont:

The Royal Navy, like the U.S. Navy, has now deployed in assistance to Israel.

October 14, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Israel notified the United Nations early today that the 1.1 million Palestinians in Gaza should relocate to the enclave's southern 12 miles within the next 24 hours.

This points out what I've stated elsewhere, but which very little of the media seems to be grasping. By the Palestinians giving their allegiance to Hamas, they're effectively doing the same thing that the Germans did by having given their allegiance to the Nazis.  They've invited destruction to rain down upon them.

There will be comments that the Israeli counteroffensive is disproportionate to what occured, but that misses the point.  It's not what should happen, it's what will happen.  Israel will go into Gaza and 1.1 million Palestinians will not be able to relocate. There will be numerous civilian deaths.  Palestinians, who excel at playing the wrongfully aggrieved party, will howl with remorse in the way common to Middle Easter people, but the end of Gaza as an effective entity is probable, and it's very likely that the end of Hamas will occur.

Things are going to get much worse, no matter how you look at it, before they get better.

North Korea v. South Korea

North Korea complained about a U.S. aircraft carrier being in South Korea.

Russia v. Ukraine

Russia has launched an offensive in the north, around Avidiivka.

Ukrainian offensive actions continue on elsewhere, but are slow.  As noted elsewhere, the Ukrainian offensive never really advanced at a significant rate and while it recently gained significant ground, it's bogged down again.  There are those trying to put a happy face on it, but what has been demonstrated is that the Ukrainian military, at present, is incapable, or unwilling to sustain the massive losses it would require, to advance at a rate that will bring it victory.

The Russians, for their part, are incapable of the same.

We're entering a World War One style stalemate.

Russian authorities are forcing dioceses of the Kremlin-affiliated Ukrainian Orthodox Church Moscow Patriarchate. to join the Russian Orthodox Church.

cont:

The Jerusalem Post can now confirm based on verified photos of the bodies that the reports of babies being burnt and decapitated in Hamas's assault on Kfar Aza are correct.

May their memory be a blessing.

The Jerusalem Post. 

cont:

Right in the middle of this map is a brown strip called the Gaza Wadi.  Everyone north of that line, which is everyone in Gaza city proper, has been told to evacuate by tomorrow.

It likely cannot happen, but the fact that the instruction has been given is telling.

Also telling are some of the facts and figures on this map, including the 46% unemployment rate and the 60% poverty rate.  Obviously, the entire Gaza Strip is untenable. It can't, and never will be able to be, anything more than sort of a welfare state.  Israel has not wanted it. Egypt, whose border with it is closed (something other countries seem to have no problem doing) tells us all we need to know about Egypt's view about Gaza.

A situation in which the Palestinians are impoverished welfare clients of the world, and more particularly of the Arab world, armed in order to give Israel grief by the Muslim nations of the Middle East, can't go on forever.  They will not overcome Israel and this situation cannot go on.  None of the options are comfortable, but they should be discussed.

Of note, over 6,000,000 non-Saudi nationals are employed in that country.

600,000 non nationals work in Bahrain.

4.9 million non nationals work in Dubai.

The entire Palestinian population of Gaza could be taken in by Arab states that need workers.  Yes, they may not want to go there either.  But to remain, they'll have to live how to accommodate themselves to reality, or this will go on and on. They should not be removed, of course, by force, but that may be just about to happen.

October 15, 2023

Hamas v. Israel

Republican Brooklyn Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish, was arrested Friday for carrying a firearm at a pro-Palestinian rally on Thursday.  There have been calls for her removal from office as a result.  

Frankly, her carrying a handgun at the event, which she was observing, was perfectly rational and fits exactly within the Second Amendment.

Egypt has completed a concrete barrier to block Palestinian entrants from Gaza.  Their border is very small, so they will be able to enforce it.

Qatar has refused to take Palestinian refugees.

Russia v. Ukraine

Russia has not conducted an airstrike against Ukraine since September 21, indicating that they are likely storing missiles for a winter offensive.

Afghani Civil War

A bomb outside a mosque killed fifteen people in the country yesterday.

Last Prior Edition:

Wars and Rumors of War, 2023, Part IX, Late Summer.

Related Threads:

Governor Gordon Orders Flags Be Flown at Half-Staff Statewide Until Sunset on Friday, October 13 in Honor of Lives Lost in Terror Attack on Israel

Hamas v. Israel. Some observations, and How did we get here?

And a further note.

Some additional observations on the Hamas v. Israel War

And a further note.

 It's through actions like these:

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Palestinian terrorists recording a video with a kidnapped Israeli boy they are holding hostage in Gaza, letting young local Palestinian kids abuse him. To keep the conflicting going, they wan't spread the hatred to the next generation.

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that the Palestinians have made it almost impossible to sympathize with them.

Yes, they lost their land in 1948, but then they also threw in with an effort that promised to conduct mass expulsion if not genocide in part.  And by electing Hamas, they've elected a group that is genocidal and brutal in its ideology.  It'd be childish if not so murderous.  

This is why, although we'll deal with it in another post, that this war promises to probably result in the ultimate tragedy for the Palestinians, or at least the greatest one since 1948.  Israeli occupation of Gaza, which is coming, is likely to be transformational, and probably put to an end Palestinian aspirations in that quarter. That may be lacking in justice itself, but in an age of easy video access, the well will be dry for sympathy with the Palestinians, and frankly the other Arab nations are not going to shed any but crocodile tears for them.

Hamas v. Israel. Some observations, and How did we get here?

Lex Anteinternet: Some additional observations on the Hamas v. Israe...: 1.  "Was this an American intelligence failure?" Why does the press keep asking this really stupid question?  Hamas didn't att...

Some additional observations, yet again.

It was inevitable that the war in Israel would spill over to the United States in terms of internal politics.  That this makes it different from every war since the Anglo Irish War, which also did, makes it unique. North America does have a fairly large Ukrainian ex pat population, and a fairly large population of descendants of Ukrainians, but they're largely out of view, and therefore out of mind. Because of that, people like Matt Gaetz can choose to suggest that we leave Ukrainians to the tender mercies of the Russians, but he can't say the same thing about Israel.

But we now also have a large immigrant Palestinian population in the US, and a significant one in Australia as well.  Other Palestinian populations are in Europe. This has given us the shocking, to most people, example of people demonstrating either for Palestine or against Israel, depending upon how you think of it.

Which leads me to this:

I think people will not believe the reports of what happened in Kfar Aza and Kibbutz Beeri. Even though Hamas posted photos and videos on their own Telegram channel. Because these are ISIS tactics. Beheaded babies and burned corpses. Yes, I saw the photos.

I don't care if you are of Palestinian extraction or not, although I frankly feel that this adds fuel to the fire that the further away from the prevailing culture an immigrant population is, the harder it is for the "melting pot" (the antithesis of the currently popular but demonstratively false concept of "diversity is strength" ethos) to work.  It can, but it's harder.  At any rate, people had no sympathy at all with German immigrants and German Americans who were in support of the Nazis during the Second World War, and Hamas deserves no sympathy either.  It doesn't matter if you are of Palestinian extraction or not.

I'd also note that one member of Congress of Middle Eastern extraction keeps a Palestinian flag outside of her door, and as of yesterday, still was.  Frankly, no Congressman should keep any flag other than that of the U.S. or perhaps their state outside their door.  

None.

This causes me to recall my father, who never liked people using hyphens in their name to identify themselves as something other than American.  Half German and half Irish by descent, he didn't like, for example, when people called themselves "Irish Americans", a trait he shared with Theodore Roosevelt.

This also says something about preserving old fights, something many cultures and peoples do.

Palestinians are upset, in part, about something that took place running from the late 19th Century to the mid 20th Century, that being the return of Jews to what is now Israel, as well as the history that followed.  The spreading of Jews around the ancient world started as long ago as 586 BC but it got rolling in the modern era in the 60s and of course we can famously date it to 70, the year of the destruction of the Temple.  The Zionist movement began the return starting in 1897 with the creation of a modern Jewish state an expressed goal.  Palestine, part of the Arab world, but in a region that already had a Jewish and Greek population, was the old Israel, territory wise.  Its population was also not uniformly Islamic, having an Arab Christian population, which it still does, and which is hated by Hamas along with the Jewish Israeli population.  The Jewish population of the country doesn't necessarily get along that well with the Christian population either.  The Palestinian identity itself is hard to define, as the region was so mixed up to the point of Israeli independence.  The term apparently wasn't used in modern times, ironically, until 1898, although some argue that Palestinian nationalism was around as early as an 1834 rebellion against Egypt.  Like other regions of the coast Middle East during the Ottoman period, the region was inhabited by nomadic Bedouins, still not identified as Palestinians, and then more urban and agricultural people, something true of Lebanon and Syria as well.

For this reason It's occasionally suggested that the Palestinians are not a real people at all, and to some slight extent, and it would be slight, that would have been almost sort of true at one time.  Having said that, the people who inhabit Lebanon historically are a different ethnicity.  So the Palestinians are a real people, or came to be, and certainly are now.

Palestine, like the entire Middle East, east of Egypt, was an Ottoman possession prior to World War One. For that matter, things west of Palestine technically were as well, although the oddities of colonialism and international politics meant that the British controlled Egypt and the Ottomans really controlled nothing, at that point, further east.  World War One brought Palestine under British rule, as a League of Nation's mandate, and brought Syria and Lebanon under French rule the same way.  Jordan came to be administered by the British as well, through the Hashemite ruling family, as did Iraq.

Allenby entering Jerusalem.

Palestine always proved to be problematic for the British and between the wars there was increasing tension between its Jewish and Arab populations, in part brought about by the fact that the British had made promises in the Balfour Agreement which supported, more or less, the concept of Palestine becoming the home for a future Jewish state.

At the time of Balfour's declaration, the Jewish population, even with two decades if immigration, was pretty small and the declaration wasn't really very specific.  From a British prospective, they were really dealing with a sparsely populated land. At the same time, however, they made promises to Arabs through their leaders to support outright Arab independence in the Middle East.  The two sets of promises were not necessarily irrconcilable, but they weren't necessary easy to deal with on the ground.

The additional problem really was that the land was not the United Kingdom's to give and indeed, in 1917, when made, it was still an Ottoman possession.

Between World War One and World War Two the British had to live with this, which wasn't easy.

By the 1930s Palestinian populations were getting seriously agitated with the direction in which things seemed to be going.  In 1936 this lead to a revolt against the British in which the Palestinians demanded independence and an end to open ended Jewish immigration.  To an extent, because of the involvement of the local populations, this may be regarded as the first Arab Isreali War, or perhaps a proto war, a sign of things to come.  Interestingly, Bernard Law Montgomery had a signficant role in putting it down.

Perhaps because of this, during World War Two, while the British did have armed Arab formations, they were reluctant to really use them.  Also during World War Two, the Grand Mufti of Jersusalem came down on the side of the Germans.  The nature of the conflict as an ethnic one was clearly drawn.

World War Two created the drive towards an independent Jewish Israel as an unstoppable one, with refugees flooding ino the coutnry. The British saw the handwriting on the wall and looked for a way out of the region, which they succeeded in doing in 1948.  Before that, an attempt at imposing a sort of two state solution was made.

Israel delcared independence in 1948 and the Arabs opposed it. In spite of an advantage of arms on part of the Arab armies, and in spite of having established military units of some standing, and in the case of the Arab Legion, partial European leadership, Israel won the war.  The war had huge demographic consequences as 700,000 or more Palestinians became refugees and were later unable to return to the lands they'd abandoned or been forced out of. That's the root of the Palestinian discontent today.

The ultimate cause of Palestinian dispersal is mixed, some of it being due to fear, some of it being due to force, and some of it being Israel preventing their return by operation of law.  I'm not claiming it was just.  But an added factor to it was that the neighboring Arab states did not accommodate a permanent resettlement of the displaced, hoping instead to see Israel defeated in a series of subsequent wars. By the early 1960s the population was radicalizing and in 1964 the Palestinian Liberation Organization formed.  The PLO ended up going to war with one of its host nations, Jordan, in 1970 in a war which looked as if the PLO might overthrow the Hashemite kingdom and claim it for its own. Jordan prevailed in the Black September war and the PLO relocated to troubled Lebanon.  In 1982, it was driven out of that country, which had been created in the first place as a separate political entity for Christian Syrians, and it relocated to Tunis.  Ultimately the PLO came around to the political solution that's in place to day, with the Palestinian authority being a quasi independent Palestinian satellite territory, of which Gaza is part.

After the War of Independence.

What was never foreseen is that Hamas, which is more radical than the PLO and its political expression Fatah, would become the dominant political entity in the Palestinian parliament.  It is.  Backed by money brought in from the outside, and notably Iran, it thrives on the fantasy of driving the Jews out of what had been Palestine.

Israel has been independent for seventy-five years now.  Almost everyone who fought for or against its independence is now dead.  The youngest displaced Palestinians are 75 years old.  The land that they were displaced from has been in other hands for 75 years.  The legacy of this however goes on and on with both sides focusing on a narrow aspect of the history.  Israelis, and the country's supporters around the world, imagine an early Israeli history like that glamorized by Leon Uris which ignored the realities of Palestinian displacement. Palestinians remain bitter about being displaced, a bitterness which is aided by their untenable situation in some parts of the Palestinian Authority but fail to appreciate that they made a bad bargain in 1948 by insisting on taking all of the country. Part of that bad bargain is that there is no reason to believe that had the Arabs won in 1948, the result would have been murderous and certainly would have resulted in the expulsion of the Jews from Palestine, just as Europeans were expelled from Algeria (and their Berber allies murdered) and the Europeans from Libya. For much of the post 1948 period, and for Hams to this day, Arab goals have been been to expel the Jewish population rather than to live with it, although over time, Egypt and Jordan have relented. Hamas also fails to appreciate that they're as boxed in by the Arab neighbors who claim to support them as they are by Israel.

Impacting the entire matter, both sides, now 75 years into this, rely upon economic aid from the outside.  Israel, while often gaining the admiration of Americans for such things as "making the desert bloom" has consistenly relied on US aid from its independence, something that frankly does not make a great deal of sense in an era when US ecnomic fortunes have declined and there is no good reason why a capable foeign nation of this vintage is receiving US aid.  Ireland, for instance, was simply independent when it became independent.  Included in the aid is military aid, even though Israel is itself an arms manufacuturer.  The close economic link to the US makes the US a participant in the Middle East in a way that it would not otherwise be, which in turn has an impact on domestic politics.

Hamas depends entirely on aid from donors and regional states, with Iran being a signficant one.  Oddly enough, the relocation of Palestinians to the US is beginning to also have an impact on domestic U.S. politics.

Seventy-five years is not a long time in historical terms, but the reality of this is that Hamas is a murderous terrorist organization that is fighting for a fantasy against living people who are innocent of any wrongdoing, for the most part, against the Palestinians.  The murderous fantasy is helping to keep a real solution, if there is one, from occurring.  No sane people would enter into a bargain with a group whose goals are essentially genocidal. Also helping to prevent it from occurring is the fact that the Arabs are a group of people, not one people, and the other Arab nations really don't want the Palestinians on their land.  Egypt is not going to open up the border with Gaza and let them in. Jordan was happy to take the West Bank early on, but it's not clamoring for it back now.  Israel, by having the Palestinians within some sort of border, neatly keeps them from being within other Arab borders.

People have talked about a two-state solution for a long time, but no such solution can come about when one party will not think of it.  Hamas won't, and now surely Israel will not either.

So now what?

That's hard to say, but what seems certain is that Israel will go into Gaza and will be unwilling to let the enclave repeat this recent murderous history.  Hamas will cause the Palestinians to suffer for holding on to a pipe dream and allowing murder to be perpetrated in their name.  The Palestinians will be seemingly unable to grasp this and howl in rage and despair, rather than taking the example of other 20th Century displaced persons, such as the Germans and Poles, and build new lives in their new situation.  Of course, unlike the Germans and the Poles, there isn't much for them to build with, but by the same token, there was never much of a Palestine in the first place.  Other Arab nations that import labor, such as Saudi Arabia, are unlikely for their part to take in the Palestinian displaced population, even though they share, albeit more remotely than we might suppose, an ethnicity.