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As the IDF ground operation continues into Gaza, the objective will be to weaken Hamas to a point where they will be willing to negotiate with reasonable terms towards a long term end of hostilities.
At present, the offensive’s main objective is to find and destroy the tunnels that Hamas has so successfully been able to bore into the ground towards Israel. An ancient wartime technique that almost proved fatal to a kibbutz on the Israeli side of the border on Thursday. This subterranean threat, very unlike the rocket threat which the Iron Dome can largely thwart, is a difficult challenge. Some of these tunnels take more than a year to build. They are reinforced with concrete sides and are equipped with oxygen. Others are less sophisticated, but it is estimated there are well over a dozen tunnels from Gaza into southern Israel. As of this morning, 13 have been destroyed. I suppose this is where our humanitarian aid is going.
“We have no advantage in the underground realm,” said Brig. Gen. (res) Moshe Sheli, the former commander of the IDF’s combat engineering corps. On the ground, in the air, in the sea, he continued, technology offers the Israeli army a distinct edge. Underground, Israel employs a variety of means “but they don’t give us a dramatic advantage, and that’s why this is such a hard challenge to crack,” he said.
Maj. Gen. (res) Israel Ziv, a former commander of the Gaza division and an officer who has argued against the re-occupation of Gaza, said Thursday that operating on the ground on the Gazan side of the border allows access to the entrance of a tunnel. “Around it there is a whole system,” he said. “Energy, oxygen, logistics – once you control the ground, you can fight in a more efficient way.”
A ground offensive will give the IDF the advantage they will need to find not only the rockets and launchers, but also the tunnels. The Gazans know it is the Israelis that provide the medical assistance they receive. They know the trucks that come to the border with food and supplies are from the Israeli people, not from Hamas. Gathering intel might be tricky, but the IDF will find those tunnels.
Meanwhile, Hamas intends to control the narrative on this war. They issued a statement to all Gazans that when they speak to the press or go onto any social media, they need to refer to those who have died as “innocent civilians.” To be clear, Hamas puts “innocent civilians” in harm’s way, so as the casualty numbers increase it is the “innocent civilians”, not the Hamas cowards. Then when talking about said casualties, Hamas wants to make sure that Israel looks like the murderer of “innocent civilians.” Got it. You camel-dung scum sucking wart faces.
From the Hamas Interior Ministry
The guidelines are aimed at ensuring preservation of the line of Hamas and other Palestinian organizations; preventing the leaking of information that would be of military value to Israel; bolstering Hamas’s propaganda efforts outside the Gaza Strip, in both the Arab world and the West; and preventing damage to Hamas’s image. Hamas particularly seeks to cement the perceptions that its actions are a response to Israeli aggression and that all Gaza casualties are “innocent civilians,” and to ensure that there is no evidence of rockets being fired from Gaza population centers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yuh-_fKDxlg
The video speaks a thousand words, and clear evidence of rockets being fired from Gaza population centers with “innocent civilian children” in harm’s way. Had that rocket exploded right there, I’m sure Hamas would have taken pictures and blamed Israel.
From The Tower on July 17 2014, an interview with Bill Clinton.
Hamas was perfectly well aware of what would happen if they started raining rockets into Israel. They fired one thousand and they have a strategy designed to force Israel to kill their own civilians so that the rest of the world will condemn them.
They (Israel) know when Hamas attacks them that Hamas has set up a situation which politically it can’t lose, because they (Israelis) can say ‘well if I attack them back they always hide behind civilians and I’ll kill civilians, and if I don’t we’ll look like fools letting somebody shoot a thousand rockets at us and not responding.’
In the short and medium term Hamas can inflict terrible public relations damage by forcing (Israel) to kill Palestinian civilians to counter Hamas. But it’s a crass strategy that takes all of our eyes off the real objective which is a peace that gets Israel security and recognition and a peace that gets the Palestinians their state.
Sorry, Hamas, you are not going to win this war.
Yet another slap in the face to Israel from the Obama Administration.
http://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=64385
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Audio: President Obama set limit of 1,000 dead Gazans
Audio: President Obama set limit of 1,000 dead Gazans
http://youtu.be/TydMuBQPSOM
“A senior source in the American Administration says that if the number of
dead among the Palestinians in Gaza reaches 1,000 President Obama will
demand that Israel immediately ceases fire- in a conversation with our
correspondent Oren Nahari.” Israel Radio News bulletin 14:00 19 July 2014
Dr. Aaron Lerner – IMRA:
The good news: we are far from this figure so far.
The bad news: this arbitrary figure is another illustration that when the
Obama Administration says “it has Israel’s back” that the thing in their
hand may turn out to be a knife. The issue is not how many human shields
Hamas sacrifices in the Gaza Strip. The issue is addressing the festering
cancerous security challenge. Stopping this operation with the tunnels
intact, for example, means leaving open Israel’s population to the threat of
huge bloody terror attacks at any moment.
Xavier says: Another red line. Bibi don’t play that game.
Anonymous says: This will keep happening every few years until one of two things happens:
the Israelis tire of the constant propaganda, economic, and cultural full-court-press war waged against them by the West, give up on the idea of having a state and a homeland of their own, and go back to a Europe that despises them and doesn’t want them. This is what the Progs want: yet another ally of the West that fought successfully on our side during the Protracted Struggle smashed and shamed, just like South Vietnam, South Africa, Rhodesia, and on and on.
or
the Israelis tire of digging the broken bodies of their children out of schools that the Arab terrorists bomb and shell, and decide, “no more.” Ground offensives on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, presumably preceded with leaflet drops, TV and radio broadcasts, and all other due warning, are followed up by a ground offensive that goes house to house and destroys every structure, burns everything that will burn, leaves no two stones standing together, and drives the “Palestinians” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip into Jordan and Egypt respectively. The Egyptians and Jordanians at that point can do whatever they want–integrate the refugees, or shake their fists impotently at Tel Aviv, round them up and put them in camps, or round them up and ship them all one-way to Timbuktu.
Obviously, as an outside observer, I prefer the first option, but as an outside observer I have no dog in this fight. On the other hand, if I’m sick of the whole thing now, imagine how sick of it the Israelis must be.
I know that if terrorists in Mexico started shelling Brownsville, and killing innocents by the hundreds, I’d want my government to find the point of origin of the attacks and turn it to a self-illuminating glass parking lot and make sure it never happened again. I would not stand for excuses and expensive, half-assed, kid-gloves little expeditions to chase bandits every few years, that would have to be repeated over and over for eternity, while the world newsmedia displayed phony pictures of American troops eating babies.
If your children are being stung by hornets you don’t negotiate. You don’t have “cease-fires” or a “peace process.” You burn the nest. If your enemies will label you as the Devil whatever you do, get used to it and sharpen up your horns.
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