Thoughtful synopsis of the things that have plagued all successful societies, and you can bet Rudyard Kipling would have agreed. Too bad it will never be read by the people who need to read it the most.
One more lesson - don't hoist yourself on your own petard: “WHAT DO YOU know about Hamas?
That it’s sworn to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United States and the European Union? That it rules Gaza with an iron fist? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks?
But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.
They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.
In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback.
“When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.” https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
Note the date - this was published 19 February 2018... Also note that this Intercept article from 2018 appears to have been plagiarized from this 2009 Wall Street Journal article - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
OT: Our SPR has half the oil it had under Trump. We're in an undeclared war against US energy independence, and we have less ability to defend ourselves and our interests abroad.
There was a belief among Israeli policy-makers that Hamas was just a bunch of crooks who could be mollified by trade. 17,000-20,000 work permits would have gone a long way to alleviate poverty in Gaza but would also have weakened the reliance on Hamas for resources among the local population.
Even if Hamas were a bunch of crooks only seeking extortion, it was foolish to think trade would have been beneficial to Hamas' business model.
Turns out that the declarations of hate were sincere and the temporary reduction in attack attempts was to lull the Israelis into a false sense of security.
"In hindsight it is easy to second guess the border around Gaza..." It sure is. If that single picture of the Gaza barrier wall in the CDR's article is representative of the whole structure around Gaza it seems to be very inferior to the West Bank barrier wall. That'd be a starting point in a critique. Compare the Gaza barrier to this:
Israeli's have constructed fairly impenetrable walls elsewhere. Just a guess--Israeli intelligence didn't foresee attacks by ultralight to breach the fence for a rapid infantry attack by ATV and foot. Further, it doesn't appear there was any close by military support to protect a very attractive, easily accessible and basically undefended target. Huge intelligence failure, total lack of imagination, essentially inviting attack. None should have been a surprise although hindsight is always 20-20.. In the long run and judging from worldwide response, Israel has lost big time. They will destroy Gaza, capture/kill a few terrorists, worldwide opinion will turn against their "overreaction," creating a "mass humanitarian crisis" among largely "innocent civilians" and the world, basically the US will pay to rebuild Gaza.
As always, CDR Sal us gives more to chew on, ponder and hopefully digest. Israel is falling into the same trap as the rest of the west. The over dependence on newer technologies and less on old well worn principles and disciplines. When I write of Israel, I'm also speaking of the west including CONUS. Do we LISTEN-LISTEN? Do we listen to what is actually being said? But also, do we listen to what is not being said? The difference is much like the words, see, watch and observe, they all enter through the eyes. The main difference is brain involvement. Brain involvement brings an old discipline into play, "Discernment". The Egyptians were warning Israel of odd behavior patterns beginning to happen on the southern tip of Gaza. Here's the importance of how we deal with a "data packet of intel from Egypt", we have two options, we can just throw it on the ground at his feet OR we can actually take it back with us to the planners, then we thank him, for his contribution. Why should we through this trouble? This is all about understanding the most valuable commodity in the Middle East, rich or poor, the saving of face. He is risking his life. Your actions just might be an opening for more intel, just think about it. Many times a solution is not a big thing, just one intel data packet that HQ needs. Solutions are more like a mosaic with many pieces of different size and color.
Regarding the "border wall" and technology. From this NYT article - https://archive.li/CvYkC - it looks like your point about technology was aided by basic failure to implement redundant networking:
> Hamas took advantage of that weakness by sending aerial drones to attack the cellular towers that transmitted signals to and from the surveillance system, according to the officials and also drone footage circulated by Hamas on Saturday and analyzed by The New York Times.
> Without cellular signals, the system was useless. Soldiers stationed in control rooms behind the front lines did not receive alarms that the fence separating Gaza and Israel had been breached, and could not watch video showing them where the Hamas attackers were bulldozing the barricades. In addition, the barrier turned out to be easier to break through than Israeli officials had expected.
end quote.
This is a mind-blowing failure to think things through. Not physically wiring these things up was insanely stupid. The people who made that decision have the blood of their fellow citizens on their hands because (as Hamass noticed) it introduced clear single points of failure into the system. Running wire (fiber) back to local POPs connected to the same internet as connected all the kibbutzim AND having a cellular backup would have removed this. Not saying Hamass couldn't have worked around it but it would have been a lot harder and they probably couldn't have taken almost the entire network offline in one go so there would have been warnings.
(Note it is entirely possible that the NYT is wrong about this and I'm doing the planners a disservice, but IF the article is correct in general thrust, even if it is wrong on some details, this is just astounding )
Perhaps Millenium Challenger 2002 redux??? Complacency is like the inertia of a heavy object in motion. It's really a bear to alter the object's trajectory. An attitude of complacency is really convenient when circumstances have all appearance of being in a predictable, steady state condition. And it just seems to to take for granted that conventional wisdom and underlying assumptions still hold true... up till the point tragedy strikes.
Cdr Sal…. Thank You!! Superb series. Brilliant summary w #4 here. Excellent commentary by so many other usual suspects. We are all in your debt. Bravo Zulu.
Thank you Sal! This series has been excellent and some challenging food for thought.
Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. All of those settlements should have been hardened:
- anti-vehicle ditch around a perimeter
- blockhouse at entry roads
- arms room with more than 16 rifles. e.g. rifles, gpmg, grenades, m203, LAWS, mortar with he and flares
- better drills
- mortar pit
- redundant commo
learn from the way the Romans recruited retired legionnaires to border settlements
btw: "If you can run a bulldozer through a wall, it isn’t a wall" it wasn't a dozer, it was a bucket loader.
Thoughtful synopsis of the things that have plagued all successful societies, and you can bet Rudyard Kipling would have agreed. Too bad it will never be read by the people who need to read it the most.
One more lesson - don't hoist yourself on your own petard: “WHAT DO YOU know about Hamas?
That it’s sworn to destroy Israel? That it’s a terrorist group, proscribed both by the United States and the European Union? That it rules Gaza with an iron fist? That it’s killed hundreds of innocent Israelis with rocket, mortar, and suicide attacks?
But did you also know that Hamas — which is an Arabic acronym for “Islamic Resistance Movement” — would probably not exist today were it not for the Jewish state? That the Israelis helped turn a bunch of fringe Palestinian Islamists in the late 1970s into one of the world’s most notorious militant groups? That Hamas is blowback?
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. Listen to former Israeli officials such as Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, who was the Israeli military governor in Gaza in the early 1980s. Segev later told a New York Times reporter that he had helped finance the Palestinian Islamist movement as a “counterweight” to the secularists and leftists of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Fatah party, led by Yasser Arafat (who himself referred to Hamas as “a creature of Israel.”)
“The Israeli government gave me a budget,” the retired brigadier general confessed, “and the military government gives to the mosques.”
“Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation,” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza for more than two decades, told the Wall Street Journal in 2009. Back in the mid-1980s, Cohen even wrote an official report to his superiors warning them not to play divide-and-rule in the Occupied Territories, by backing Palestinian Islamists against Palestinian secularists. “I … suggest focusing our efforts on finding ways to break up this monster before this reality jumps in our face,” he wrote.
They didn’t listen to him. And Hamas, as I explain in the fifth installment of my short film series for The Intercept on blowback, was the result. To be clear: First, the Israelis helped build up a militant strain of Palestinian political Islam, in the form of Hamas and its Muslim Brotherhood precursors; then, the Israelis switched tack and tried to bomb, besiege, and blockade it out of existence.
In the past decade alone, Israel has gone to war with Hamas three times — in 2009, 2012, and 2014 — killing around 2,500 Palestinian civilians in Gaza in the process. Meanwhile, Hamas has killed far more Israeli civilians than any secular Palestinian militant group. This is the human cost of blowback.
“When I look back at the chain of events, I think we made a mistake,” David Hacham, a former Arab affairs expert in the Israeli military who was based in Gaza in the 1980s, later remarked. “But at the time, nobody thought about the possible results.” https://theintercept.com/2018/02/19/hamas-israel-palestine-conflict/
Note the date - this was published 19 February 2018... Also note that this Intercept article from 2018 appears to have been plagiarized from this 2009 Wall Street Journal article - https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123275572295011847
OT: Our SPR has half the oil it had under Trump. We're in an undeclared war against US energy independence, and we have less ability to defend ourselves and our interests abroad.
It's like our energy policy is written in Tehran
"...look at those nations Israel relies on that also host cells of hatred for Jews and Israel."
Hell, the US has one of those "cells of hatred" in the Congress.
There was a belief among Israeli policy-makers that Hamas was just a bunch of crooks who could be mollified by trade. 17,000-20,000 work permits would have gone a long way to alleviate poverty in Gaza but would also have weakened the reliance on Hamas for resources among the local population.
Even if Hamas were a bunch of crooks only seeking extortion, it was foolish to think trade would have been beneficial to Hamas' business model.
Turns out that the declarations of hate were sincere and the temporary reduction in attack attempts was to lull the Israelis into a false sense of security.
"In hindsight it is easy to second guess the border around Gaza..." It sure is. If that single picture of the Gaza barrier wall in the CDR's article is representative of the whole structure around Gaza it seems to be very inferior to the West Bank barrier wall. That'd be a starting point in a critique. Compare the Gaza barrier to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_West_Bank_barrier
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fosu-wams-blogs-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fblogs.dir%2F126%2Ffiles%2F2009%2F03%2Fimg_2800.jpg&f=1&nofb=1&ipt=8ea59438ab896b60095a175b1cada5592a3553b9647349bdac3a01be4d00ea7c&ipo=images
Israeli's have constructed fairly impenetrable walls elsewhere. Just a guess--Israeli intelligence didn't foresee attacks by ultralight to breach the fence for a rapid infantry attack by ATV and foot. Further, it doesn't appear there was any close by military support to protect a very attractive, easily accessible and basically undefended target. Huge intelligence failure, total lack of imagination, essentially inviting attack. None should have been a surprise although hindsight is always 20-20.. In the long run and judging from worldwide response, Israel has lost big time. They will destroy Gaza, capture/kill a few terrorists, worldwide opinion will turn against their "overreaction," creating a "mass humanitarian crisis" among largely "innocent civilians" and the world, basically the US will pay to rebuild Gaza.
As always, CDR Sal us gives more to chew on, ponder and hopefully digest. Israel is falling into the same trap as the rest of the west. The over dependence on newer technologies and less on old well worn principles and disciplines. When I write of Israel, I'm also speaking of the west including CONUS. Do we LISTEN-LISTEN? Do we listen to what is actually being said? But also, do we listen to what is not being said? The difference is much like the words, see, watch and observe, they all enter through the eyes. The main difference is brain involvement. Brain involvement brings an old discipline into play, "Discernment". The Egyptians were warning Israel of odd behavior patterns beginning to happen on the southern tip of Gaza. Here's the importance of how we deal with a "data packet of intel from Egypt", we have two options, we can just throw it on the ground at his feet OR we can actually take it back with us to the planners, then we thank him, for his contribution. Why should we through this trouble? This is all about understanding the most valuable commodity in the Middle East, rich or poor, the saving of face. He is risking his life. Your actions just might be an opening for more intel, just think about it. Many times a solution is not a big thing, just one intel data packet that HQ needs. Solutions are more like a mosaic with many pieces of different size and color.
Regarding the "border wall" and technology. From this NYT article - https://archive.li/CvYkC - it looks like your point about technology was aided by basic failure to implement redundant networking:
> Hamas took advantage of that weakness by sending aerial drones to attack the cellular towers that transmitted signals to and from the surveillance system, according to the officials and also drone footage circulated by Hamas on Saturday and analyzed by The New York Times.
> Without cellular signals, the system was useless. Soldiers stationed in control rooms behind the front lines did not receive alarms that the fence separating Gaza and Israel had been breached, and could not watch video showing them where the Hamas attackers were bulldozing the barricades. In addition, the barrier turned out to be easier to break through than Israeli officials had expected.
end quote.
This is a mind-blowing failure to think things through. Not physically wiring these things up was insanely stupid. The people who made that decision have the blood of their fellow citizens on their hands because (as Hamass noticed) it introduced clear single points of failure into the system. Running wire (fiber) back to local POPs connected to the same internet as connected all the kibbutzim AND having a cellular backup would have removed this. Not saying Hamass couldn't have worked around it but it would have been a lot harder and they probably couldn't have taken almost the entire network offline in one go so there would have been warnings.
(Note it is entirely possible that the NYT is wrong about this and I'm doing the planners a disservice, but IF the article is correct in general thrust, even if it is wrong on some details, this is just astounding )
We're just going to have to add this one to the Cdr Sal hall-of-fame edition.
Perhaps Millenium Challenger 2002 redux??? Complacency is like the inertia of a heavy object in motion. It's really a bear to alter the object's trajectory. An attitude of complacency is really convenient when circumstances have all appearance of being in a predictable, steady state condition. And it just seems to to take for granted that conventional wisdom and underlying assumptions still hold true... up till the point tragedy strikes.
Cdr Sal…. Thank You!! Superb series. Brilliant summary w #4 here. Excellent commentary by so many other usual suspects. We are all in your debt. Bravo Zulu.
Excellent conclusion to an excellent series.
> Israel is one of the richest, most educated and advanced societies on the planet.
>Doomsday Cults Sometimes Take Over Entire Cultures
"Trust me, there is an inferior culture of one ethnicity which must be destroyed in order to save the superior culture of another ethnicity"
LOL