Like any number of high security prisons, Gaza like any prison' can and are on occasion overcome. Human error, over reliance and malfunctioning of monitoring systems are Also part and parcel to these incidents.
Always difficult to know what is really going on, because of propaganda and fog of war. It seems the attack started around 6 am but airforce planes did not get involved until noon and helicopters, best able to counterattack, until 6 pm. Maybe this info will turn out to not be correct, but do you know more and what to make of it if true? Likewise what about the report that Egyptian authorities warned Israel that something big was coming? Or that anyone who comes close to the border is shot right away. Some 18 hundreds times just in 2018 for instance, why not this time?
I come across this from two days ago in Haaretz https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711329340804186619 Netanyahu thinking seems pretty clear, he needs terror action by Palestinians to prevent a Palestinian state, a goal of his and of the Likud, so maybe there was an intelligence failure but maybe Efrat Fenigson is onto something.
We have said in other articles, the genesis of an event and how it is used politically are separate but often conjoined. Bibi is on record talking about manipulation and his beliefs and objectives regarding America, Palestine and so on. His and Israel's political situation has changed over the last decade plus, along with the accelerating changes across the ME. One should put nothing past Bibi and the Israeli government, but for people to snap into binary responses about who they back, why and what should happen tells you that it's business as usual for the human race.
Fenigson may well be right and Ritter may be right as well. In which case, political opportunism that capitalises on a failure or an induced failure would be something we're seen before. 9/11 has elements of all of this, as does Pearl Harbour.
It is likely that this shall be known as the ME 9/11 moment but not for the superficial headline reasons.
There's a problem with information availability that is worsening. Relying on any reports from the mainstream means you are looking at one version of propaganda that comes largely straight from state level actors, which would imply it is untrustworthy. To counterbalance that, one looks elsewhere and seeks to cross reference over time. Ukraine is the epitome of this. We are now forced to trawl many informal and unknown "quality" sources and do work to verify and assess and build trust, else go to the mainstream or ignore everything. The situation is really that bad. Therefore, we try to treat all information with contempt until there's a reason to do otherwise.
What this means re Israel is that we are reluctant, at this stage, to believe most of the detailed reports of what has happened. Why? Because the trustworthiness of the information is low.
What can be said is that Hamas fighters entered using a variety of means that one would expect to have usually been detected and thwarted, under the cover of overwhelming rocket barrages that swamped air defences. Once in, they proceeded to conduct assault operations on a variety of targets that appear to have included non-military locations and personnel. Hostages have been taken and political rhetoric around them has been released. The Israeli's have declared war, immediately launched full force, mostly aerial retaliations on civilian buildings that they claim hold Hamas personnel, but no proof has been provided to back those claims. The official statements issued by the Israeli government includes language that constitutes war crimes. The UN claims it has potential evidence of war crimes conducted by both sides. Israel's actions regarding Gaza now also break international law.
Beyond this, we would suggest that literally nothing else can be said with certainty. Two headline items illustrate the point. The claims of beheaded babies doesn't stand up and has apparently been walked back by the "journalist" who made the claim based on what she heard soldiers say they believed. So far, there is no evidence of the claim, yet it was instantly published globally, repeated lockstep in political circles and by POTUS. Claims of rape have been made with possibly as little as zero evidence, from the very beginning. A specific woman, Shani Louk, was put up as being a German civilian who was raped, killed and paraded following an attack on a music/rave event, with the claim that the body was stripped by Hamas personnel. Since then, there are other claims that her family have confirmed she is alive in a Palestinian hospital, with other contradictory elements.
As to the detail of initial responses, á la 9/11, at this point it is likely impossible to know because if there were failings or deliberate weaknesses/flaws, those details are unlikely to ever be released truthfully. Therefore, all we can go on is that by the fact that the assault was "successfully" executed we have questions about how and why.
Fenigson may be an interesting person to watch if she is a credible sceptical Israeli observer.
As we said, "her questions may be valid".
Re Egyptians, that information is interesting and could speak to an intelligence failure or tolerance/orchestration. Only time and agendas will tell.
Most wars start with false flag operations. I think Scott Ritter's interpretation is naive. The war managers just made it look that way, as an excuse for letting alleged enemies in.
Psychological operations go deeper than people realize. I have experience in NATO scripted exercises. I think those are in essence psychological operations. Deception is everywhere.
Maybe. Ritter is a distant outsider who admits it but is likely to have solid experience of a lot of operational aspects, although dated. The extent of his active network of sources is unknown, but one would never expect someone in his position to give away that much. He claims to do most of his own thinking and therefore stands the chance of being wrong on detailed intelligence matters.
In our opinion, Ritter's Ukraine analysis is up there with some of the best on the military and the political fronts. He would never be put next to any conventional journalist as he would destroy them, see our references to Telegraph and FT propaganda articles.
It is very possible that there are at least two levels of operations going on here. One from Israel, who thinks they are furthering their goals 9/11 style, and the other from Hamas who are taking a leaf out of Bibi's book, while combining Sun Tzu's basics in the context of a changing ME and Israeli picture. Conjecture on our part that we might put down in an article shortly, to serve as a back test.
Like any number of high security prisons, Gaza like any prison' can and are on occasion overcome. Human error, over reliance and malfunctioning of monitoring systems are Also part and parcel to these incidents.
Always difficult to know what is really going on, because of propaganda and fog of war. It seems the attack started around 6 am but airforce planes did not get involved until noon and helicopters, best able to counterattack, until 6 pm. Maybe this info will turn out to not be correct, but do you know more and what to make of it if true? Likewise what about the report that Egyptian authorities warned Israel that something big was coming? Or that anyone who comes close to the border is shot right away. Some 18 hundreds times just in 2018 for instance, why not this time?
I come across this from two days ago in Haaretz https://twitter.com/haaretzcom/status/1711329340804186619 Netanyahu thinking seems pretty clear, he needs terror action by Palestinians to prevent a Palestinian state, a goal of his and of the Likud, so maybe there was an intelligence failure but maybe Efrat Fenigson is onto something.
We have said in other articles, the genesis of an event and how it is used politically are separate but often conjoined. Bibi is on record talking about manipulation and his beliefs and objectives regarding America, Palestine and so on. His and Israel's political situation has changed over the last decade plus, along with the accelerating changes across the ME. One should put nothing past Bibi and the Israeli government, but for people to snap into binary responses about who they back, why and what should happen tells you that it's business as usual for the human race.
Fenigson may well be right and Ritter may be right as well. In which case, political opportunism that capitalises on a failure or an induced failure would be something we're seen before. 9/11 has elements of all of this, as does Pearl Harbour.
It is likely that this shall be known as the ME 9/11 moment but not for the superficial headline reasons.
There's a problem with information availability that is worsening. Relying on any reports from the mainstream means you are looking at one version of propaganda that comes largely straight from state level actors, which would imply it is untrustworthy. To counterbalance that, one looks elsewhere and seeks to cross reference over time. Ukraine is the epitome of this. We are now forced to trawl many informal and unknown "quality" sources and do work to verify and assess and build trust, else go to the mainstream or ignore everything. The situation is really that bad. Therefore, we try to treat all information with contempt until there's a reason to do otherwise.
What this means re Israel is that we are reluctant, at this stage, to believe most of the detailed reports of what has happened. Why? Because the trustworthiness of the information is low.
What can be said is that Hamas fighters entered using a variety of means that one would expect to have usually been detected and thwarted, under the cover of overwhelming rocket barrages that swamped air defences. Once in, they proceeded to conduct assault operations on a variety of targets that appear to have included non-military locations and personnel. Hostages have been taken and political rhetoric around them has been released. The Israeli's have declared war, immediately launched full force, mostly aerial retaliations on civilian buildings that they claim hold Hamas personnel, but no proof has been provided to back those claims. The official statements issued by the Israeli government includes language that constitutes war crimes. The UN claims it has potential evidence of war crimes conducted by both sides. Israel's actions regarding Gaza now also break international law.
Beyond this, we would suggest that literally nothing else can be said with certainty. Two headline items illustrate the point. The claims of beheaded babies doesn't stand up and has apparently been walked back by the "journalist" who made the claim based on what she heard soldiers say they believed. So far, there is no evidence of the claim, yet it was instantly published globally, repeated lockstep in political circles and by POTUS. Claims of rape have been made with possibly as little as zero evidence, from the very beginning. A specific woman, Shani Louk, was put up as being a German civilian who was raped, killed and paraded following an attack on a music/rave event, with the claim that the body was stripped by Hamas personnel. Since then, there are other claims that her family have confirmed she is alive in a Palestinian hospital, with other contradictory elements.
As to the detail of initial responses, á la 9/11, at this point it is likely impossible to know because if there were failings or deliberate weaknesses/flaws, those details are unlikely to ever be released truthfully. Therefore, all we can go on is that by the fact that the assault was "successfully" executed we have questions about how and why.
Fenigson may be an interesting person to watch if she is a credible sceptical Israeli observer.
As we said, "her questions may be valid".
Re Egyptians, that information is interesting and could speak to an intelligence failure or tolerance/orchestration. Only time and agendas will tell.
Most wars start with false flag operations. I think Scott Ritter's interpretation is naive. The war managers just made it look that way, as an excuse for letting alleged enemies in.
Psychological operations go deeper than people realize. I have experience in NATO scripted exercises. I think those are in essence psychological operations. Deception is everywhere.
Maybe. Ritter is a distant outsider who admits it but is likely to have solid experience of a lot of operational aspects, although dated. The extent of his active network of sources is unknown, but one would never expect someone in his position to give away that much. He claims to do most of his own thinking and therefore stands the chance of being wrong on detailed intelligence matters.
In our opinion, Ritter's Ukraine analysis is up there with some of the best on the military and the political fronts. He would never be put next to any conventional journalist as he would destroy them, see our references to Telegraph and FT propaganda articles.
It is very possible that there are at least two levels of operations going on here. One from Israel, who thinks they are furthering their goals 9/11 style, and the other from Hamas who are taking a leaf out of Bibi's book, while combining Sun Tzu's basics in the context of a changing ME and Israeli picture. Conjecture on our part that we might put down in an article shortly, to serve as a back test.