Yesterday the Israeli government reportedly “gave the green light” to the IDF command to move into the next phase of the operations against Hamas. Many people believe that means that Israeli ground troops will be moving in, and soon. But, so far, only the air force and artillery have been active there.
The place where things have become a bit more heated is the Lebanese border. Today, Israeli forces took out a squad yesterday there was a small (less than twenty} barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon into Israel. Hamas claimed they were the ones responsible. That’s extremely unlikely. Those rockets came from Hizbullah. Having Hamas take credit is a combination of disinformation and providing Hizbullah with an alibi.
Across the entire Arab world today has been called a “day of rage”. Iran activated proxy forces in Iraq and Yemen to preserve their own alibi for not being directly involved. Those proxies have fired rockets and sent drones to attack AMERICAN installations in Iraq. Today, and American destroyer shot down some 3 missiles launched by Houthi proxy forces in Yemen. These are not necessarily indications that the war is actually widening, but rather posturing between the leaders of Iran and Hizbullah in order to test US resolve. Iran has been talking about sending an army of their revolutionary guards across Syria in order to attack Israel. This is also mostly bravado. But if they think they could actually get away with it, they might try.
The front where the biggest battles are being fought is that of the media. Hamas continues to cry about civilian humanitarian suffering and Israeli ‘war-crimes’. The Western media needs to be reminded that indiscriminate rocket firing aimed at civilian populated areas is a real War Crime. Why don’t we hear that from correspondents in the region? They also haven’t stopped blaming Israel for that so-called hospital attack which has been proven to be false. The humanitarian aid game is still going on at the Egyptian Rafah crossing to Gaza. Egypt is adamant that they will not permit Palestinians to escape into Sinai, and thereby cause Egypt to have a “Palestinian Problem”. Israel is not involved, and has publicly stated that Israeli forces will not interfere with real humanitarian aid via Rafah. Hamas wants to put their hands on any material, especially fuel that might be sent. The donor nations want to ensure the aid goes to Gazan civilians. The UN Secretary-General has gone there, himself, to try to break the impasse. Egypt appears to be ready to cooperate. But Hamas keeps coming up with excuses like damaged roads, or not having Gazans leave because then they would not have a real Palestinian population that they claim to represent.
While on the subject of Gazans suffering (and a lot of them really are) here are couple of things to think about. Hamas controls the media in Gaza and any reports that they release need to be carefully examined. They show lots of pictures and videos with rubble and destroyed buildings, but many other pictures showing refugees headed south on streets where all the houses in the background are completely intact. Statements about civilian casualty figures all come from the Hams controlled government. How many children ae actually injured? Hamas has a history of staging scenes of that nature for the press. Visiting VIPs who came to see are escorted by Hamas ‘minders’. They are taken only to locations that the Hamas leaders want them to see.
Finally, the rhetoric in pro-Palestinian demonstrations needs to be examined. There is NO equivalence between the suffering of Gazan civilians and the cold-blooded slaughter of Israeli civilians, including the elderly and children, which the Hamas terrorists executed when they invaded Israel.
Wetherhorn 