Read this – on why Israel’s crusade against Hamas may be pointless
Between bombardments: this is northern Gaza. It looks terrible – but it seems Israel has failed to cause significant damage to Hamas.
This fascinating ‘X’ thread sheds a lot of interesting light on Israel’s tactics and behaviour in its war against Gaza, that was set to restart on November 27.
Read the thread and let This Writer know if you agree with its conclusions.
stated that he had given Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, Mossad, orders to assassinate all Hamas leaders residing in exile.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
and 2) Israel has additionally failed to significantly degrade either Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
and today exists wherever Palestinian communities are to be found. So even if Israel succeeded in eradicating Hamas from the Gaza Strip – or, more accurately, driving it underground – the organization will survive in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan, and elsewhere.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Previous campaigns to eradicate Palestinian movements have not only generally failed, but as a rule enhanced their stature. The scale of the current onslaught has catapulted Hamas’s stature to unprecedented levels among Palestinians, and indeed among Arabs and
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Israel’s extraordinary self-regard and capacity for self-glorification notwithstanding, the elimination of Hamas is a non-starter, least of all at the hands of the thoroughly mediocre Israeli military and intelligence capabilities revealed on 7 October.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
King Hussein threatened to publicly execute the James Bond wannabes, and Israel (in the person of none other than Netanyahu) was forced to deliver to Jordan not only the antidote that saved Mashal’s life but also imprisoned Hamas founder/leader Shaikh Ahmad Yassin.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
and all ended up on Interpol’s wanted list. Their amateurish use of foreign passports additionally strained relations with key international allies, like Israel acolyte Stephen Harper of Canada.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
the Israeli foreign intelligence agency is not your go-to outfit for a campaign of high-profile foreign assassinations against an organization on high alert. I suspect American and European intelligence agencies are slowly reaching similar conclusions.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
and it hadn’t a clue. While Israel was busy “mowing the lawn” in the belief it was keeping Gaza’s armed groups in check, the Palestinians constructed an entire rainforest in plain sight.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Its successful assassination of Hizballah leader Abbas in Mussawi in 1992 produced Hassan Nasrallah, Israel’s worst nightmare. In 2006, a daring midnight wartime raid in the Bekaa Valley finally captured Hassan Nasrallah.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Similarly, Israel’s assassination campaign against Iranian nuclear scientists has been – to put it mildly – ineffective. Even the 2004 assassination of Yassir Arafat was counterproductive,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
But I digress. How significantly has Israel weakened Hamas since 7 October? If you listen to Daniel Hagari (the tunnel meme celebrity), Defense Minister Yoav Gallant (who looks like death warmed over when delivering good news), or Netanyahu,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
who seem to prefer receiving news after it has been vetted by the Israeli military censor, appear similarly confident.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Or to continue firing coordinated rocket barrages until moments before. Or to record, edit, and centrally broadcast video footage of its military operations from multiple locations on a nearly daily basis.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
The most important functions of any military organization – command and control, communications, logistics, reconnaissance, PR, and last but not least the ability and will to fight, appear intact and at best marginally affected.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
It's inconceivable that Hamas has not been weakened and degraded during the past 50 days, or not lost important cadres and commanders, or depleted a significant proportion of its arsenal.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Wars are not won by slaughtering children by the thousands, or turning Gaza City into rubble and depriving an entire society of basic necessities. The Germans tried this in the Soviet Union, and the Americans in Iraq, and it didn’t end well for either of them.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
it should repurpose as a municipal engineering corps and can no longer be considered a serious fighting force.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
and to accept most Hamas’s conditions for the agreement reached several days ago.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Several additional months on the scale of what we have witnessed this past month or even greater, as Gallant and Hagari keep promising, now seems increasingly unlikely.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
it suggests the conventional military is having difficulty succeeding. Given its overwhelming power Israel can of course inflict very severe damage on not only Palestinian society but also Hamas.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Its US and European sponsors also appear to be reaching a point where they would prefer to gradually wind this down before it gets completely out of hand and Israeli conduct ends up damaging rather than promoting their interests in the region.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
In addition to being motivated by a lust for revenge and desire to achieve a body count many time higher than that inflicted by the Palestinians on 7 October, such campaigns,
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
that superior military force is unable to eliminate. The British after all pioneered the concentration camp during the Boer War for this objective, decades before the Nazis repurposed it for mass extermination.
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
Yet it is also true that the dustbin of history is littered with just causes. In the case of Israel and the Palestinians, and despite the colossal imbalance of power, it appears that Israel is increasingly losing the plot. END
— Mouin Rabbani (@MouinRabbani) November 27, 2023
So: not only has Israel’s campaign against Hamas failed to achieve any of its objectives, but it has actually enhanced that organisation’s reputation, both domestically and abroad.
So: Mossad is probably the worst intelligence agency in the developed world. This confirms a warning I gave to my buddies down the pub – that if Mossad agents were standing directly behind me, trying to assassinate me, everybody in front of me would be dead before I was.
So: Mossad’s domestic counterpart, Shin Bet, failed to detect what Hamas was doing under its nose; unsurprising, if it managed to confuse the head of Hezbollah (Hizballah?) with a greengrocer.
So: After 50 days, none of Hamas’s most important functions have been significantly degraded. Israel’s lack of effectiveness is demonstrated by a minister’s comment that it may use a nuclear weapon there.
So: Israel has attacked civil society in order to pressurise Hamas.
So: Israel’s strategy of slaughtering children and depriving an entire society of its basic necessities has not worked, and may result in disaster for that country, as it did for Nazi Germany in Russia, for example.
So: Israel has killed more UN staff, journalists and medical personnel than Hamas.
So: Israel’s sponsors in the United States and Europe are getting increasingly cold feet, realising that Israel’s conduct is damaging their interests in the Middle East.
Allegedly!
Do you think the facts fit the thesis above?
Let us know.
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Hamas carry the soul of every Palestinian, Israel can not destroy Hamas without the genocide of every Palestinian, that is their only option, and their aim.
I don’t agree.
Israel could put an end to Hamas very easily – by adopting a two-state solution and restoring the 1967 borders; in other words, withdrawing from the occupied Palestinian territories. Give Palestine back to Palestine and Hamas has no reason to fight.
This is all true BUT Netenyahu is ONLY playing to the gallery of the Israeli voting public. He promised to ‘bring the hostages home’ as well and this is something that now looks achievable. If he brings them home and doesn’t restart hostilities he has achieved that aim and will, no doubt, claim that most of the 20,000 dead were actually Hamas. It doesn’t need to be true, what Israeli paper would dare disagree? Netanyahu has more reasons than most to wish to remain in office after all.
If hostilities DO end now then the US, EU, UK etc can all turn their backs again having us believe that it’s ended due to ‘behind the scenes pressure’ without acknowledging the war crimes committed. The more the deaths pile up the harder it gets to pretend this isn’t happening. ITV News tonight had an interview with a doctor who saw white phosphorous burns on Palestinians first hand and called it out as a War Crime. For this interview to be aired is a massive sea change in the attitudes of UK broadcasters..
I honestly believe Mouin Rabbani’s intelligent opinion as well as your summary and conclusion, although I do agree with many Journalists who say Hammas is an “Ideal” not an actual Organisation, so how can it be destoyed?
(I have also avoided posting any WW2 comparisons, even though many are patently obvious.)
Consider those Palestinians returning home during the “CEASEFIRE” for warmer clothing etc.. discovering that their whole neighbourhood has been reduced to brick dust and charcoal – do you honestly believe that they will think “Ah Well, never mind, it’s just one of those things” ?
Also seeing the happy troops returning to Israel smiling for the cameras using the “Peace” gesture with both hands, that says a lot about how THEY feel……
A lesson from History –
Palestinians had very little before and have even less now… “Your most dangerous, Fiercest Enemy is one who has nothing left to lose….”
I’ll say this upfront before I’m accused, as many others have been, of something that is absolutely untrue. I am not anti-semitic or being anti-semitic. I fully support a Jewish homeland. I also fully support a Palestinian homeland. Either there is a functioning peaceful two state solution, or there is a very real danger of a no state solution.
The madness has to end. Israel has become a rogue nation with Netanyahu at the helm. This insane attempt at genocide may well be what finally destroys it. For every “terrorist” they kill another two pop up, for every civilian they kill another ten terrorists are created, for every child they murder a hundred more terrorists are born. Israel has always been an unwanted neighbour for almost all of the Arab nations. They may have a (fragile) relationship with some of them, the longer this goes the bigger a problem it will be for those states. Their own citizens many of whom don’t approve of Israel as it is, will make life difficult for their own governments. A couple of regime changes, a few incursions into Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan, or even Saudi, or (more) beligerant Iran and it won’t just be Gaza that is burning. When it comes down to those oil producing Arab states will have the US literally over a barrel.