The First Casualty of War is Truth; What is (the) Truth? By Paul Walker
There is now considerable debate on various internet sites about some of the claims made regarding the nature and extent of the Hamas massacres, such as the claims relating to the beheaded babies and the babies burnt to death. While the mainstream media has not shown these photos because of the graphic content, I have seen them, and the photos look authentic to me, and I see no evidence to doubt their authenticity, but that is just my opinion and I am nobody:
There is also debate about whether or not Israel was warned of the impending attacks by Egypt, which has been used to say that there is a 9/11 event being played out here:
https://nypost.com/2023/10/12/us-confirms-egypt-warned-israel-days-before-hamas-attack/
My position here is that even if such a warning was made, Israel is probably getting warnings all the time being in a hyper-dangerous situation, so information overload is likely. And as well, there are plausible accounts of how the Israeli defence systems could be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of attack:
As for “who benefits,” I think a convincing case can be made that Iran is the one who benefits from the Hamas attack, even if Hamas is destroyed (El Gato Malo writes with no capitalisation):
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/hamas-me-no-questions-ill-tell-you
“hamas just threw palestine under the bus in brutal fashion by committing atrocities sure to generate the most severe of reprisals. and it was not done to protect or promote palestinians. it was done to cause them instant, deadly harm because that is in the best interests of iran, the paymaster who has been calling the tune. and those interests diverge greatly from those of the palestinian people.
and we need our “intelligencia” to stop being such dupes.
as is so often the case, the truly useful question is “cui bono?”
let’s look.
many have asked incredulous questions about “why would palestine do this?” as the attacks were so obviously intended to inflame. they were spectacular (in the literal sense of creating a spectacle) using rockets and paragliders and attacking a music festival and parading rape and murder in the streets. it was obviously going to instantly evoke the most draconian responses imaginable as the IDF bombs gaza to gravel. and surely palestine must have known that.
there is another line of reasoning that this just shows that “the palestinians are stupid/evil people who cannot be trusted. look at what they just did!” and it seems to hold water if one accepts the premise that “they” are somehow monolithic and “did this” but i find that explanation to be unsatisfying. from the perspective of most of the palestinian people and perhaps even most of their leaders, they did not do this.
it was done to them.
hamas is not palestine and palestine is not hamas any more than BLM is america and american is BLM and we should all be culpable for their burning of cities. sometimes factions with agendas of their own get loose and do things that very few people actually wanted, often to some ulterior aim. and i suspect that’s what we’re seeing here.
hamas has tried in vain to win the palestinian presidency for decades. they have not come close. they have managed some parliamentary wins and control it now, but as any american can attest, a 56% legislative majority in a split government (president is fatah) is hardly a mandate to speak for all.
hamas are funded and often armed and trained by iran. their leadership is dependent on this and therefore dances to the tune called by the ayatollahs. and this is where this whole imbroglio gets sinister: because if there is one thing that iran does not want, it’s israeli-saudi détente/alliance and a path to a two state system where the palestinians get an actual sovereign homeland instead of being the evergreen regional flashpoint. iran does not want this issue settled. they want it to be an issue.
so pause to consider for a moment:
what if this attack was not to help the palestinians but rather to throw them to the wolves to break up any potential deals and shore up power for iran?
because that sure seems like the odds on bet to me.
you’d have to be a special kind of stupid to engage in this sort of extreme provocation and expect “no punchbacks.” the israelis are famous for instant and severe retaliation. it’s arguably the only reason there is still an israel and the provocation here was not just extreme, but calculated to be extreme.
that is not the act of a group looking to serve the people upon whom the reprisals will fall.
but it’s exactly what one would do if the goal were to play the wrecker to regional rapprochement. bahrain and the UAE had moved to normalize relations with israel. the saudis were in talks to follow suit. this is obviously going to place all of that in jeopardy as extreme times make for extreme tribalism and it’s awfully hard for prince MBS to keep favoring israel when the TV is full of images of them blowing up palestinian buildings.
it’s bad for israel, bad for saudi, and difficult for the US. but it’s great for iran who benefits from this sort of regional instability both politically and economically.
it creates a calamitous flashpoint for the palestinians who got ganked out front as the sacrificial pawn though…
they are going to get creamed and this is why i think it’s important to see the distinction here between the people of the west bank and gaza and hamas and why this knee jerk of “supporting hamas is supporting palestine” is not only just plain wrong but outright dangerous. it loses the real villain and the real villainy and heaps the blame on the doorstep of many who did not deserve or want this.
so how about we stop this “hamas are noble freedom fighters” cr*p? this was an act of savagery calculated to induce more savagery and to harm the very people the jingoists are mistaking for the prime mover here. people are getting “robin-hoodwinked” by this phony “outlaw of the people.”
the fact is that this was an attack on the every day palestinians as well as the israelis.
in this case, hamas are not palestine’s protectors, they are their assailants.
worth keeping that in one’s calculus.
many US politicos have incentive to feed this facile trend around the false flag of “palestine did this” because they have some nasty culpability in funding/appeasing iran who in turn funded and trained hamas as well as the huge afghan weapons giveaway that filtered through to these attackers as well.
iran smells the weakness brought on by the US suppressing global oil over ukraine and running down the strategic petroleum reserve to worryingly low levels. they know the current regime cannot really push or sanction them right now for fear of exploding the already high pump prices that lose elections. europe is pinned as winter approaches and perhaps they will not be as lucky as last year with the weather. it’s why tehran feels impunity to move and to press. hell, we just paid them $6bn to release 5 prisoners. this is not a sign our position is strong.
the department of “MOAR WAR” seems anxious to turn this fact pattern into “so let’s bomb iran/kill their leaders/fund a coup/etc” but this seems dangerously short sighted and stupid to me. the price is always high, it never fricking works, and in the end, we wind up arming some group we’re going to fight 15 years from now. this is not “america, world cop” it’s “america world clown” setting up the next pratfall. we’ll just wind up unifying a fractious iranian populace and garnering them more regional allies and bigger profits from more expensive oil.
if you want to take power away from the ayatollahs, it’s best to do it at home. wanna solve this and defang them? drill baby, drill. an awful lot of the current global instability were seeing is around energy prices and availability as the green grift collides with geopolitics and winds up empowering folks like russia, iran, and iraq. you wanna hurt them? frack till the price of oil drops to $40/bbl. then let’s see how much cash they have to buy friends and influence people.
it’s a massively positive sum scenario, but so long as we treat drilling for oil and gas like some sort of pariah practice, pariah states will profit. the naïve green geopolitics of physics denial is a profound source of geopolitical instability. it impoverishes and hamstrings those who adopt it and cedes power to the states they profess to abhor.
this is not a basis for policy, foreign or domestic.
it’s self-harm rooted in dogmatism and ignorance.
and it’s time it stopped.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clPszjSnbzs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYCbBKDFVzw
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/11/beheaded-israeli-babies-settler-wipe-out-palestinian/
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