Middle East Meltdown: The war dog trap?

Some thoughts to be tested

VST declares itself a neutral observer with literally zero compulsion to declare support for anyone. The support for peace and the condemnation of violence is easy for anyone to declare but the reality of humanity is that peace does not exist and is not pursued as a primary objective ahead of political advantage, and violence (in all its forms) will and possibly must occur because of the nature of humanity’s constructs. Violence, cruelty, death, exploitation, lies and duplicity are literally baked into the human cake; virtue signalling, misplaced idealism, the call of “whataboutism” as a defence of one’s own self-righteous position are all things that VST largely rejects, in favour of recognition of cold, hard truths. People around the world will be killed when it is politically or materially convenient to those whose calculus tells them there is an important enough equation tipped in their favour.

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What might be the game plan on either side of the Israeli Palestine conflict? Such a question does not have to get bogged down in the emotional aspects of specific acts carried out by either side. Rather, with a cold view of events, one can ponder the possible calculus of a conflict.

If Israel harbours the objectives of the overtake of Palestine and its effective destruction, how now can that be achieved?

Israel’s canned “response”

As we have said before, the genesis of an event and the political use to which an event is put are separate but can be conjoined. Think 9/11 or Pearl Harbour, the latter having been instantly cited by Israel and the former being today invoked by some other Israeli voices. Both of those invocations mean more than can be superficially assumed, given what became known about both events.

It’s possible that Israel either pursues or will capitalise on events that give it a pretext for further domination of the Palestinian territory. It would appear that we are seeing this superficially play out in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attacks. Israeli political and military rhetoric has gone to full deflection to the point that what has been said by the military is effectively illegal, namely that Palestinians are “human animals” and that the mass punishment of Palestine shall occur through the cut off of power, food and water, all of which are war crimes. The exactly predictable US and Western response of a binary and unequivocal support of Israel has been triggered, with one or two carrier battle groups steaming towards the Mediterranean “as a deterrent”. Major air attacks on civilian buildings have occurred with zero effective objections, although the UN claims that it has evidence of war crimes by both sides (not that this will ultimately amount to much significant or meaningful UN intervention). From this point, one could reasonably anticipate that Israel might continue to use the Hamas attacks to sustain its destruction of Palestine while claiming that everything it hits is a military target without evidence because it is largely backed by the dominant forces within the UN. Israel now amasses a reserve force of circa 300,000, suggesting a ground assault at worst or siege and border defence at best.

This occurs in a time when Israel and Netanyahu are relatively unstable, and its allies are embroiled in a losing war and collapsing socioeconomic scenarios in each of their countries as the multipolar world reforges itself. In short, the global picture is greatly imbalanced and dynamic.

The kinetic aspects of the war seen so far are largely par for the course. Additionally, the Cognitive Warfare element has been launched as quickly as the kinetic part. All US hegemon members have fallen into lockstep, along with their information, propaganda and stenography machines, exactly as per Ukraine, to the point that it is blatantly obvious (see Atrocity Propaganda, below). Undoubtedly, it works on huge amounts of the population who are trained into binary response switching, a factor used by all sides.

As of today, we would characterise the Israeli and Allied position as entirely predictable. As such, we presently suspect that this predictability is a weakness that may or may not be offset by the scale of force backing Israel. We suggest that this weakness of predictability will be shown to be a key factor in recent events that actually tracks back much further in time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCyvzwBNxMg

Transcript:

“Bibi: Today everyone understands the slogan "The settlements are here". It is everywhere. What's the difference? What do you think Arafat wants? He wants one big settlement that is called Tel Aviv. As far as they are concerned, I think, the territorial waters are also theirs. That they want us to be pushed into the sea, is obvious, but only further away...The main thing is, first of all, to strike them, not once but several times, so painfully that the price they pay will be unbearable. SO far, the price-tag is not unbearable.[I mean] a large-scale attack on the Palestinian Authority, causing them to fear that everything is about to collapse. Fear is what brings them to...

Woman: Hold on, but then again, "the world" will say that we're aggressors.

Bibi: They can say whatever they want

Woman: Aren't you afraid of what they'll say, Bibi?

Bibi: NO. Especially today, with the US. I know how they are. American is something that you can easily manoeuvre, and move in the right direction. And even if they say something....So then they say something, so what? 80% of Americans support us! It's absurd! We have such support there, and here we're thinking what we should do "if"... Look I wasn't afraid to manoeuvre [the Clinton administration] I wasn't afraid to confront Clinton. I wasn't afraid to go against the UN.

What happened with the Oslo Accords?

Bibi: The Accords, which were ratified by Parliament - I was asked before the (1996) elections: "Will you fulfil them?" I said:"Yes, subject to reciprocity, and minimizing pull-outs" But how can one minimize the [obliged] pull-outs? I gave my own interpretation to the agreements, in such a way-that will allow me to stop the race back towards the 1967 borders. How did we manage to do this? Nobody defined what "military facilities" are. So I also defined them as being security zones. The entire Jordan valley, for me, is a "military Facility". Nobody has...

Woman: Yes. Like the Beit She'an valley Bibi - You see, go figure.

Bibi: But then there was the question of who will define these "Military Facilities"? I received a letter from (Secretary of State, Warren] Christopher to me and to Arafat at the same time saying that Israel, and Israel alone, will define the "military Facilities", their locations and size. Now, they didn't want to give this letter. so I refused to ratify the Hebron Accords (of 1997). I stopped the governmental meeting and I said: "I won't sign". And only when the letter has arrived, during that meeting, to me and to Arafat, I signed the Hebron Accords. Or ratified it, if to be exact, it was already signed. Why is this important. Because at that very moment, in fact, I halted the fulfilment of the Oslo Agreements. It's better to give 2% than 100%. And this is the choice we're facing. You give 2%, but you stopped the withdrawals, rather than 100%. The wisdom is not to be there and break, but rather to be there and pay the minimum.

Settler: Amen, as a Prime Minister”

What might Hamas’ strategy be?

Palestine and Hamas are in a grossly asymmetric military position, which begs the obvious questions of:

• why it did what it did i.e. what are its near and far objectives;

• how it will keep going;

• how it anticipates achieving its objectives?

If Hamas has capability but is legally, strategically, geographically and technologically constrained while it harbours an extreme objective of either the liberation of “greater/historic Palestine” or the complete ejection and even eradication of the Jewish people from Israel and thus Israel’s effective destruction, how could that be done within its heavy constraints?

Hamas just triggered Netanyahu to react entirely predictably. Why did Hamas do something that was guaranteed to lead to the death of thousands of civilians? We suggest that it is because Hamas’ view of what weapons are transcends the conventional and includes death itself and the use of the enemy’s visibility of action and information against itself and among Hamas’ allies. We also suggest that the calculus of Hamas has settled on a full scale view of Palestine as a subset of a regional chessboard, where the Palestinian section contains predominantly pawns whose use is required to set up moves for the Knights, Bishops and Rooks.

Hamas may have simply decided to weaponize the population of Israel and Palestine in a context and time of burgeoning Arab unity in light of the Ukrainian hard reveal of the limitations of Western power and its citizenry’s “support”.

If Israel’s reaction to a large enough attack is utterly predictable i.e. it will hit back hard and possibly grab the chance to annihilate Palestine and Hamas using maximal force in territories that are predominantly civilian, is that a strength or a weakness? The ability and the will to unleash unbridled power can appear to be a strength to those who believe in the overt showcasing and eventual use of hard power i.e. to those who believe in walking loudly and carrying two big sticks, with the occasional will to smash those sticks into anyone’s face. Here is Netanyahu stating their belief in that view of power to attack and overthrow entire regimes using false pretexts. He lied repeatedly to the US Senate in order to compel the USA to invade Iraq, overthrow Saddam Hussein and effect regime change. All of which had no basis in fact or law.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpQdg4D78Jc

The problem with that belief is that it has net effects on sentiments and perceptions of those who get hit or caught in crossfire, and the behaviour can be turned against the bully, and foment eventual catastrophic reactions. This belief is also a deep strategic weakness. Predictability is a weakness. Narrow view and behaviour is a weakness. The will to kill indiscriminately is a weakness. The will to operate outside of any rule of law and norms is a weakness. Hubris is a weakness. A provable willingness to use or ally to a false pretext to kill people is a weakness when that pretext is proven to be false.

All of this, of course, applies to Hamas and its allies as it does to Israel.

The entire NATO bloc has been shown to be effectively inept under the right political circumstances - indirect military action that avoids Article 5 - to the point that its equipment, leadership and even tactics have been left wanting. This is the equivalent of seeing a master bluffer’s cards. Israel lies outside NATO’s Charter, meaning that support and supply is constrained similarly to Ukraine.

In simple terms, we suspect that Hamas seeks to suck Israel and its allies into a partially formed trap it has to work hard to fully complete. Israel has just shown the world that it is willing to abandon international law and bomb, starve, dehydrate and deprive an entire populace. This is disproportionate to the attacks and totally illegal. That Israel was willing to publicly declare its intent in no uncertain terms is a crime in itself and now colours every aspect of its actions.

The first part of the trap is to trigger a predictable and extremely violent, sustained response from Israel using brutal attacks to force Israel’s position, intent and objectives into the open. Why? To break out from the relative suppression and biased framing of Israel’s general position and behaviour towards Palestine over at least the last 15 years, during what some refer to as the besiegement of Palestine that has turned it into an open air prison or concentration camp.

To draw Israel into that first part of the trap, Hamas may have been willing to invade and conduct what could span terrorist actions against Israeli civilians. How one describes the Hamas attacks depends on one’s point of view and sympathies combined with true information about what Hamas personnel actually did. It is clear that what has been done is not truly known (see Atrocity Propaganda), has been in part propagandised and also possibly in other part withheld from the mainstream. What is known is that civilians have been killed and captured, as well as military and police personnel. To exactly what extent is unclear. We leave it to you to call actions by either side what you want, depending upon your view and sympathies. If you believe that the events of the last few days exist in a vacuum unrelated to the Israeli Palestinian history, that is your prerogative but it would be as lacking as the belief that the war in Ukraine started in February 2022.

The Hamas operation was called Al-Aqsa Flood in reference to Al-Aqsa Mosque, which Israeli “police” are reported to have stormed (again) at least twice in April during Ramadan.

Amnesty International: Israeli forces unleash a second night of horror at al-Aqsa mosque

“A second consecutive night-time attack on Palestinian worshippers at Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque illustrates the sheer brutality of Israel’s apartheid, Amnesty International said today. Israeli security forces stormed the mosque compound at around 10.30 pm last night, shortly after evening prayers. They fired stun grenades and used rifle butts to beat Palestinians who had gathered at the mosque for Ramadan.

During the first attack on Tuesday night, Israeli security forces arrested at least 450 Palestinians, about 50 of whom are still in detention. Many of those who were released were barefoot and visibly battered and bruised when they emerged from Atarot Detention Centre on Wednesday. A lawyer at the scene told Amnesty International that many detainees, including children, were interrogated and beaten while in detention. Amnesty International also heard from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society how, during Tuesday night’s attack, Israeli forces had prevented paramedics from accessing wounded people inside the mosque compound by firing rubber bullets at ambulances.

Israeli forces regularly raid al-Aqsa during the month of Ramadan. An attack in 2021 left at least 170 Palestinians injured and stirred widespread protests. Following the first raid on al-Aqsa, protests broke out in several Palestinian cities and towns inside Israel. Israeli forces carried out air strikes on the Gaza Strip on Wednesday and Thursday, in response to missiles fired into Israel.”

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/04/israel-opt-second-night-of-horror-at-al-aqsa-mosque/

CNN: Israeli police storm al-Aqsa mosque for the second time on Wednesday

“Israeli police stormed the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem, one of Islam’s holiest sites, for the second time on Wednesday, hours after they first raided the compound and arrested hundreds of Palestinians despite condemnations from the Arab and Muslim world.

The clashes, which took place as al-Aqsa sees worshipers offer prayers during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and Jews celebrate Passover on Wednesday evening, sparked retaliatory rocket fire from militants in Gaza.

During the first incident on Wednesday morning, footage shared on social media showed Israeli officers striking screaming people with batons inside the darkened building. Eyewitnesses told CNN that police had smashed doors and windows to enter the mosque and deployed stun grenades and rubber bullets once inside. Video shared by Israeli police show forces holding riot shields up as fireworks were launched back at them, ricocheting off the walls.

The Israeli police said in a statement that “dozens of law-breaking juveniles, some of them masked” had thrown fireworks and stones into the mosque and tried to barricade themselves inside.

“The police forces prevented the lawbreakers from closing the doors and from barricading themselves (inside), and helped the worshipers leave the Mosque,” Israeli police said.

One eyewitness, cameraman Rami Khatib, told CNN that after moving worshippers out of the mosque, the Israeli police had stationed officers at each doorway and prevented people from entering.

Growing condemnation

Wednesday morning’s incident drew condemnation from across the Arab and Muslim world. Jordan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemned the Israeli police actions “in the strongest terms,” and called on Israel to immediately remove its forces from the mosque. Jordan has also called for an extraordinary meeting of the Arab League to discuss the development.

Egypt’s Foreign Ministry meanwhile condemned the “storming” of the mosque by police, saying it had caused “numerous injuries among worshipers and devotees” and was “in violation of all international laws and customs.”

The US Office of Palestinian Affairs called for restraint following Wednesday morning’s raid, saying on Twitter: “Violence has no place in a holy site and during a holy season. Alarmed by the shocking scenes in Al Aqsa Mosque and rockets launched from Gaza toward Israel. We call for restraint and de-escalation to allow peaceful worship and to protect the sanctity of the holy sites.””
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/05/middleeast/israel-al-aqsa-mosque-clash-intl-hnk/index.html

The cost of this first part of the trap is the expended Hamas force, moral ground lost, the civilians killed in both Hamas’ attack and the initial subsequent Israeli response.

The second part of the trap is political and can sustain through any conflict for the price of Palestinian lives. The Israeli’s verbal and physical response will be used to galvanise wider Arabic unity and response against Israel and the West. Up to now, as a result of the multipolar swing exacerbated by the Ukraine conflict, peace of sorts was beginning to break out in the Middle East. Arabic nations were aligning and re-normalising relations in ways unseen for decades. Syria was brought back into the Arab League, Iran and Iraq had reopened dialogue, Saudi Arabia had refused to operate in line with American instructions, Turkey had fairly deftly played effective politics with NATO and Russia, and the Middle East’s relationship with Eastern actors had changed. All while NATO, the EU, UK and USA set themselves on a self-destructive course that was highlighted by the biggest act of inter-ally self sabotage (Nord Stream) ever seen. Hamas may have determined that now is the time when more of the Arab world than ever can be sufficiently united to wage a multi-factor war against Israel and its allies, at acceptable cost, taking into account the dynamics of credible nuclear threats. That calculus would likely include what Russia would determine to be existential threats to its interests, which are likely to grow beyond its own physical borders as its allies and commitments expand through BRICS+, the Belt and Road Initiative, the Ukraine war and other mechanisms, such that should Israel or the USA threaten nuclear strikes against non-nuclear Arab nations, Russia (or possibly China) may step in as nuclear counterbalances to neutralise those threats. All of this takes intense political work to pull off and there’s no clear indication of whether its capable of doing so or has already made significant in roads to such ends. But this work is aided now by the clear intent of the US hegemony to sponsor war crimes in favour of Israel, as confirmed by the Whitehouse Spox, and the EU. We speculate. Time and events will prove or disprove our speculation and suspicions.

“Russia’s attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes. Cutting off men, women, children of water, electricity and heating with winter coming - these are acts of pure terror. And we have to call it as such.” - Ursula Von Der Leyen

https://x.com/vonderleyen/status/1582630271287021570

The third part of the trap is military, psychological and legal again paid for in blood. If Israel launches a ground war, it will be pitted against Hamas inside focused arenas full of civilians who have literally nowhere to go. Hezbollah has engaged in skirmishes and stated it will enter a ground war. Egypt has not opened its border to Palestinian refugees and the only crossing point there was bombed by Israel in contradiction of its instruction to Palestinians to leave. The kind of fighting involved in such a theatre is difficult to fully comprehend but may come to resemble Syria on crack, combined with Grozny. Hamas may have calculated that its odds of ground fighting effectively increase under such circumstances, where “fighting” goes beyond direct kinetic combat to include the information and propaganda war. In that environment, air power is guaranteed to kill more civilians than military targets. This is the human shield phenomenon that the West and its Al-Qaida and ISIS proxies employed in Syria, which caused major problems for the Syrians and Russians, and which makes high civilian casualties a fact of such war. Palestinian casualties will be used to psychologically and legally trap Israel and its allies. Hamas may have coldly written off the civilians within a view that any form of fight for Palestine or wider Arab interests comes with a near term cost of up to 2.1 million lives for a pay off of the long term redrawing of power and maps for the next 75+ years, around the Holy Land, in some form of “war to end all wars” in that region.

What Grozny showed the world was that an asymmetric Muslim force can do massive damage inside an urban environment to a superior military force equipped with conventional and heavy equipment, to the point that morale of those forces can be quickly broken. The IDF has not been engaged in full blown warfare in such an environment on a large scale for extended duration. It is unwise to bet on the performance of the IDF, especially when what it will really face remains unknown. Grozny saw Russian forces roll tanks, armour and heavy gear into the city, manned by largely conscripted troops of mixed experience. They were attacked from above and around the urban environment and sustained heavy losses that were disproportionate. The city was smashed to pieces. CQB fighting is recorded as being utterly atrocious and featured the torture and mutilation of captives on both sides, including the castration and beheading of captives. 6 Russian troops’ mutilation and torture were recorded by Chechens and the tape later formed the evidential basis for prosecution, but not before it had long circulated (The Dagestan Tape/Tukhchar massacre). Russian troops also adopted these kinds of behaviours and they feature in Arkady Babchenko’s first hand account, One Soldier’s War.

Russian conscripts have been criticised in Ukraine and previous wars because they are conscripts, although actual performance in Ukraine has clearly put that criticism to bed i.e. it’s been good enough so far. Israel’s forces are largely conscripted and no one knows how good they really are yet. Hamas is reputed to be relatively experienced, with degrees of battle hardening and massive motivation. These factors must play out on the battlefield to be anything more than theoretical criticisms or deserved reputation. What Israel might show as well is the combat effectiveness of its small amount of female infantry in extreme conditions and whether their presence has an overall effect (expectedly negative by most research) on Israeli male infantry.

In Palestine, what the Israeli’s face may be an extremely uncomfortable reality: try to kill Hamas knowing that for every Hamas soldier eliminated, multiple civilians will be killed as well. Such ratios will provide an endless stream of propaganda that can be paraded against Israel while also challenging its troops’ mettle. Clearly, Israeli pilots appear willing to level some civilian blocks but the question of how many and for how long is unanswered. Beyond Israeli resolve is the tolerance of the international audience on both sides. To reduce that effect there will be a formal information blackout and massive mobilisation of Western propaganda that can only be partially offset by Arabic and alt media channels, which will be shut down inside the West, as Russian channels have been during the Ukraine war.

Essentially, ground warfare inside Palestine will be a public relations nightmare for Israel because every combat action it takes there will fuel anti-Israeli propaganda that draws in more Arab support and eventually undermines Western support, in the context of humanitarian and legal perspectives. If you thought Ukraine was the most propagandised war in history, think again.

One tactic Israel could employ is the forced evacuation of parts of Palestine that it attempts to fight through, but this presents a problem of where and how. It cannot let Palestinian refugees into Israel for obvious reasons. It is therefore dependent upon evacuation from Gaza via the sea to other nations who may not be willing to accept them, post Ukraine. It then depends upon other Arab nations, notably Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. In the case of Gaza, Egypt is the only directly connected territory. Egypt might well continue to declare neutrality while taking the partisan step of refusing to open the border for any reason it cares to cite, with the express objective of aiding Hamas by forcing Israel to engage in a civilian rich environment. That would be an extremely brutal way of contributing to such conflict in support of Hamas. This could also apply to any other bordering Arab nation, forcing the refugee flow Westwards to stress Israel’s allies and prosecute another form of warfare against them. What those border closures would entail is the Arab will to use force to keep the borders sealed, which could result in Arab-on-Arab violence. At scale, this is hard to countenance, even for some greater good. However, this scenario hinges around subscription to a view in which civilians have been weaponised en masse as causalities in an extreme kinetic and information war.

The above could be significant in swinging the odds in favour of 40,000 Hamas fighters pitted against 300,000 Israelis with air power, for long enough to see either Hezbollah and then other Arab forces enter the theatre, or an otherwise unthinkable political outcome to occur - the collapse of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and his permanent removal from power.

Is Bibi Hamas’ real target?

Thus we arrive at the crux of our suspicion. What if Hamas’ near term political target is Bibi and his administration, rather than direct territorial gains? The trap outlined above could spell the end of Bibi at his people’s own hands. Bibi has already crossed the line of legality, no matter what his myriad supporters say. The US is literally greenlighting genocide and human rights violations and so is every one of Israel’s supporters, given what Israel has said on the public stage. That level of hypocrisy can run, but for how long? Israelis have been protesting its own government’s corruption and brutality for some time, and Bibi is as corrupt and hard-line as they come, if the accusations are to be believed. By his own words, he believes he can easily manipulate America and has done so. He is also able to employ nuclear blackmail and issue nuclear threats to enemies and allies alike.

If Bibi can be forcibly removed as a result of Hamas’ will to use Palestine in extreme ways and trap him and his administration in a military, PR and legal nightmare, what could happen next may be the long term achievement of Arab political objectives - the fuller renegotiation of life in the region and the possible creation of a sovereign Palestinian state.

The US as Kingmaker/breaker

The above does not deal with the question of exactly what role US force would play. All attacks will inherently involve striking civilian targets within Palestine while claiming they are military, which will be impossible to fully prove, or they will involve striking other Arab targets outside Palestine, which grows the war. It is likely that the bias within the UN and the size of the Israeli alliance will drown out demands for true accountability under international law, which weakens Hamas’ leverage on the international stage, but could further galvanise and unify the Arab world as the compensatory or counterbalancing force in lieu of international law.

The USA is capable of unleashing and sustain massive destructive power provided that its logistics can be maintained and its carrier groups remain out of strike range. This presents two key issues: the range of air power and the duration of a carrier’s air campaign; the scale of the battlefield as it relates to the number of targets versus a battle group’s entire arsenal. Carrier battle groups need resupply and logistics support at some point. Where this comes from, when and at what scale are critical factors. The obvious likelihood is that Europe and Israel will be able to provide that support comfortably to the Mediterranean theatre. As long as that occurs, a battle group’s effectiveness will be at maximum - air-to-air refuelling, fuel and arms replenishment and additional air and sea defence will be available.

The ability for an adversary to willingly soak up attacks as well as the presentation of so many targets that the battle group cannot discern targets well enough to deliver decisive strikes could also be a factor that comes into play in a growing conflict involving US carrier power set against a growing Arabian consortium. That weapons that can kill a battle group exist and could potentially find their way into a theatre should be cause for concern for everyone. The circumstances and corollary of that happening is another potential moving part in the puzzle i.e. if hypersonic missiles are “sold” to Arabian actors for use against US carrier groups, the dynamics and escalation of conflict takes another turn. That would be an inversion of Ukraine in that Russia or China would be “sponsoring” allies via weapon supply. The US is guaranteed to react to that far more extremely than Russia has reacted to the US and NATO equivalent in Ukraine. Even without Kinzhals, a nation’s ability to kill a US carrier using other weapons has not been seen yet, but it is not impossible. If one were able to overwhelm its defence network with enough munitions, a carrier could be hit with conventional, supersonic and even subsonic weapons. It is likely that the sinking of a carrier could trigger a nuclear response from the USA against a non-nuclear Arabian actor because an immediate nuclear response from the victim wouldn’t be possible.

The US will be sponsoring two full blown wars simultaneously, both of which are much more complex and threatening than anything it’s fought in the last 30 years. Ukraine is collapsing and diversion of resources from Ukraine will hasten that collapse. Russia is already advancing and assaulting, and as indicated the intent to take Odessa and the oblasts that lie inside what it presently occupies. This is in line with our prediction of Odessa, DPR, LPR plus a circa 150km deep buffer zone of territory. If the full attention of the US has led to this state of affairs and level of Ukrainian corruption (that has helped arm other adversaries including maybe Hamas) then the US having split focus will only exacerbate Ukraine’s fall and further leakage of weapons, and Russia’s victory. This may be why Hamas has stepped up to the plate now, knowing the USA is guaranteed to enter the theatre. This would make timing essential to Hamas’ view of the battlefield and possibly explain why it began Al-Aqsa Flood’s planning and preparations when it did.

In Ukraine, the US has had to control and oversee a Nazi regime that has been willing to commit false flags and conduct acts of terror outside its borders (if NS accusations are to be believed) as well as the willingness to use a dirty bomb or attack a nuclear power station. Those risks remain while the conflict continues and Ukraine’s desperation increases. With Israel, the US will have to actively restrain an ally from actually using its own nuclear weapons under circumstances it will claim constitutes an existential threat. The present US administration is not fully competent and we doubt it has the skill to use Israel as a proxy at all. It will simply be trying to leash a wild animal who, if some accounts are true, knows how to manipulate and threaten its pseudo master.

The cost of sponsoring two wars is claimed by some as unaffordable by the US, but this is unlikely to be completely straightforward. There is unalloyed political backing for Israel and what the US population thinks is neither here nor there. The only thing that matters is what the US population does. This, again, may have factored into Hamas’ thinking.

If, as a result of rapidly increasing military costs, the overall economic situation in the West significantly worsens, significant civil unrest could break out in the US and pockets of the EU or Five Eyes. Increasing inflation and a financial crash could be sped up and brought forward (it’s already happening and is inevitable). If all of this coincides with protracted and brutal conflict in Palestine, in which the USA is firing weapons, while Ukraine is openly lost to Russia, there could be serious hell to pay by people who just don’t have the skill to face actual uprisings. Triggering such events across the West could be one of the top objectives of Hamas and the wider Arab world because that would largely guarantee furtherance of Arab interests and the multipolar interests of BRICS+, and contribute to victory of sorts in the Palestinian theatre.

Atrocity Propaganda

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvPStUzxisY

“there are other functions however some of them more legitimate than others one is to run Secret Wars another thing is to disseminate propaganda to influence people's minds and this is a major function of the CIA and uh unfortunately of course it overlaps into the Gathering of information you you have contact with a journalist you will give him true story you'll get information from him you'll also give him false story you also work on their human vulnerabilities to recruit them in a classic scent to make them your agent so that you can control what they do so you don't have to set them up sort of you know by by putting one over on them so you can say here plant this one next Tuesday can you do this with responsible reporters yes the church committee brought it out in 1975 and then Woodward and Bernstein put an article in Rolling Stone a couple of years later uh 400 journalists cooperating with the CIA uh including some of the biggest names in the business to consciously introduce the stories into the Press.

for example in my my War the Angola war that I helped to manage uh onethird of my staff was propaganda I had propagandists all over the world World principally in London, Kinshasa and Zambia we were we would take stories which we would write and put them in the Zambia times and then pull them out and send them to a a journalist on our payroll in Europe but his cover story you see would be that he would he had gotten them from his Stringer in luaka who had gotten them from the Zambia times but after that point the journalists uh Reuters and AFP uh the management was not witting of it now our contact man in Europe was and we pumped just just dozens of stories about Cuban atrocities Cuban rapists we didn't know of one single atrocity committed by the Cubans it was pure raw false propaganda to create a an illusion of Communists you know eating babies for breakfast.” - John Stockwell - CIA Officer, 1978

There are at least two audiences - the Arab world and the non-Arab world - who are watching events. The Western press is primarily for a Western audience. The purpose of our media is to legitimise the actions of our leaders and suppress opposition and accountability. It is not primarily for our enemies, who do their calculus and control their populations in reference to their own intelligence and media. That is not to say that the transmission of Western propaganda into enemy or unallied spaces is of no value, but it is a secondary purpose. This is admitted by Bibi himself as a means to defeat Iran in the long term by fomenting dissent among the Iranian youth through feeding them a diet of Melrose Place (see Bibi congressional testimony on Iraq, above).

What Israel is now transmitting to the whole world is footage of the decimation of civilians. The body count has likely exceeded that of Hamas’ attacks. Even that count is subject to wide margin. Sources put Israeli casualties up to 1000, with more wounded and missing. It is quite obvious that there is massive propaganda around the attacks. The claims that 40 babies were beheaded are likely false and have already been questioned and walked back by the “journalist” as being based upon what some Israeli soldiers told her they believed.

iNEWS ENGLISH: “'About 40 babies were taken out on gurneys... Cribs overturned, strollers left behind, doors left wide open' Our correspondent @Nicole_Zedek continues to survey the horror scenes left behind in Kibbutz Kfar Aza where Hamas invaded and murdered dozens of Israelis in their homes”

NICHOLE ZEDEK: “Soldiers told me they believe 40 babies/children were killed. The exact death toll is still unknown as the military continues to go house to house and find more Israeli casualties.”

DAN COHEN: “There it is: The reporter who broke the “40 beheaded babies” story admits her source is Israeli soldiers who “believe” it happened. They’re not even claiming to be sure. She has no evidence. This smells like a hasbara operation.”
https://x.com/dancohen3000/status/1711778571528626394

This makes the claim untrue and unverified, yet it has dominated media and been peddled by the degenerate POTUS and his corrupt administration. This is an exact replay of the Iraqi incubator claim, and people still fall for it.

There were also instantaneous claims around the killing and alleged rape of Shani Louk. Her mother has been reported as saying she has been confirmed alive in hospital. If the video footage of a body in the back of a pick up was of her, she was not naked but actually dressed in the kind of fairly scanty outfits worn by others in her own images and in the video of the music festival, which contradicts claims that she was stripped naked by anyone. What these two instantaneous claims prove is the total falsity of information being reported to the masses for the purpose of “forcing the human binary”, to coin a phrase.

Where is the evidence of rape being used as a tool of terrorism or war in the Hamas attacks, beyond the assertions peddled across outlets? What happened to the claims that Russians were mass raping Ukrainians? Those allegations were admitted by the source to have been lies

As cold as it sounds, VST is largely uninterested in these kinds of reports which are totally untrustworthy and designed to manipulate people. They come from all directions and they work on the masses, some of whom seem to have little ability to control themselves and what they think, which is a key a factor in warfare, both general and cognitive. Now, it is easy to find the human binary on display in pro-Israeli, pro-Palestinian and anti-either outpourings, to the point that there are open calls for the genocide of the Palestinian population, which is a hate crime in the US and the UK, and Israel has openly adopted genocidal rhetoric and is now likely to put that into practise with the approval of its allies.

Grayzone Video Report: Pro-Israel demonstrators call for genocide in New York City

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHqUO5J2L6M&embeds_referring_euri=https%3A%2F%2Fveryslowthinking.substack.com%2F

What is a fact is that war is not clean, nice, surgical, honourable or uplifting. It goes without saying that it is the brutal descent to the lowest levels of human existence that is permanently paraded as being something better for the greater or a greatest good. War simply involves killing, maiming, scaring and overwhelming other people, whether they are civilian adults or children, military, or other labels, to the point that a political objective is achieved. The way that’s done might change, but the dirty work still gets done in order to prosecute war. Rape is no stranger to warfare and conflict - just ask UN peacekeeping forces - but truth remains the deliberate first casualty of war. Look around for historic accounts of rape used by fighting forces. Israel is somewhere on that list.

This is not some denial of Hamas’ attack, or assertions about its brutality. Here’s an Israeli’s appeal to not fall into the trap of rejecting all anti-Hamas claims just because you don’t trust your own government and its propaganda outlets.

None of this is “whataboutism”. It is recognition of a fact of human history - information is a weapon and your mind is utterly pliable. Trying to take the moral high ground using a deliberately constrained view of history is pointless unless the people you are tying to dupe are that dumb. Here are people within the US government and Presidential race literally calling for genocide of Palestinians.

War is here and increasing. Atrocity is its bedfellow. You, as a mere citizen, have been shut out of this process for decades and unless you act rather than talk, all you are is a spectator blowing off through a keyboard. VST is no different.

So, following major Hamas attacks, the entire machine of war has been shifted up yet another gear in the Middle East in initially entirely predictable ways across the military and information arenas. What is unpredictable is what is about to come. But, like Ukraine, it’s not like the Arabs haven’t been warning about and threatening to kick of if the thumbscrews kept being turned against the Palestinians. Here’ a Palestinian diplomatic representative to the UK doing a good job of standing up to and pushing back on the ever toxic CNN stenographer, Christiane Amanpour.

Whether the future will look like the above on the calculus we have spitballed remains to be seen, but we float it for your consideration and as a test of our thinking.

Why this situation has occurred i.e. by way of intelligence failure or by orchestration or political capitalisation, is now irrelevant, until people attempt to negotiate. The dogs of war have been loosed yet again. Are they running into battle or into a cage?

O, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth,
That I am meek and gentle with these butchers!
Thou art the ruins of the noblest man
That ever livèd in the tide of times.
Woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men.
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy.
Blood and destruction shall be so in use,
And dreadful objects so familiar,
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quartered with the hands of war,
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds,
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.