Looks Like We Need a Guardian for Prosperity Guardian

So let's put this in context again. The Combined Maritime Forces, a loose coalition 39 countries, was formed to combat terrorism and piracy on the high seas. With a specific and explicit mention of protecting major international shipping routes. Responding to the Houthi attacks on shipping headed toward the Red Sea is literally the purpose of the coalition.

The US managed to get 10 other countries (so 11 of 39 including America) to sign up, in part by requiring essentially zero contributions. IOW, nearly 3/4 of countries felt that looking like they were too close to the US/Israel was worse than outright ignoring their commitment to protect international trade from terroris attacks.

Well, the update is that even this farce of a force is at risk. For clarity - France is still part of the operation, but they refuse to follow US command. As for Italy and Spain, Italy says that while t hey are sending a frigate to the region - this was to protect Italy's interests and is not part of Prosperity Guardian. Spain says that they aren't part of any mission that isn't under either EU or NATO leadership.

Clearly these nations recognize the importance of protecting international shipping. From terrorist atatcks. Very obviously the right thing to do. But also apparently, less right than being seen as siding with US/Israel.

Operation Prosperity Blogging - It's Lonely Defending Genocide

A couple weeks ago, Mouin Rabbani had a great Twitter thread about the Houthis and international shipping. Here's the thread reader unroll. Basically, the Houthis in Yemen are attacking international shipping with rockets and drones. While there's been very little actual damage, the cost of these ships is so high that they cannot afford the risk. As a result, boats lining up at the entrance to the Red Sea are having to go around Africa and then through the Mediterranean to eventually make their way to Israel. And they are forced into this because the insurance premiums for transiting the Red Sea are just too high - and this is in comparison to adding weeks to the journey and an ungodly amount of fuel.

Well, turns out that this is exactly right. Since that thread was posted, insurance premiums have increased by an order of magnitude. Shipping companies are in fact making the weeks long detour.

Also, as it turns out, there's a mechanism in place for this. Of course there is - international shipping is so important to the global capitalist system that it would be crazy if there wasn't. That mechanism is the Combined Maritime Forces - "a multi-national naval partnership, which exists to promote security, stability and prosperity across approximately 3.2 million square miles of international waters, which encompass some of the world’s most important shipping lanes." Their mission is to defeat terrorism and prevent piracy. It's like a high seas UN that was created specifically to deal with situations exactly like this one.

So the US went to the CMF to put together Operation Prosperity Guardian. It called on the 38 other member states to pitch in on a mission that exactly matches the mandate. 10 responded. A little better than a quarter of nations agreed to sign up. On a mission to protect international shipping from what are clearly terrorist attacks.

Now some of the CMF countries obviously weren't going to sign up. Yemen is in the CMF! So that's kinda hilarious. But also, there are quite a number of Gulf states (unsurprising considering the importance of shipping crude by boat) that said no. The only Muslim majority country that joined Operation Prosperity Guardian is Bahrain.

IOW, the US and its defense of Israel has become so unpopular that a strong majority of countries are unwilling to be seen with them - even when the US is fighting what are clearly terrorist attacks on international shipping. And make no mistake, this isn't about risking lives and military assets - it's solely about not wanting to be seen as endorsing anything related to the US-Israel military efforts. Participation in  Prosperity Guardian does not require that you pony up a boat. Not even an inflatable life raft. For example, Australia is in with their "six troops, no ships or planes". That's literally twice as much support as Canada is providing. And in order to boost the numbers for the "multi-national force", the Seychelles is in despite the fact that they are sending no one and are providing information sharing only.

Here's another way of looking at it - the UN General Assembly resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire passed with a vote of 153 in favour, 10 against, and 23 abstentions. This was cited as evidence that the US was becoming more isolated - because it absolutely is. But also it's evidence that the US is not just alienating all the assorted random small countries that most Americans have never heard of - it is also alienating its allies.

If you consider only the 31 NATO countries, 2 voted against (Czechia and the US - side note, I was surprised to find that Austria is not a NATO member), 8 abstained (Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and the UK). Fully two thirds of NATO countries voted for the ceasefire and only one voted with the US. Let me reiterate - a strong majority of NATO countries stand in direct opposition to US foreign policy.

The pro-Israel crowd sees this as evidence that the entire world is deeply antisemitic and supporters of terrorism. And to be fair - there are definitely countries that were likely motivated by antisemitism in adopting their positions. But a strong majority of the entire planet? Come on. One of the things about antisemitism is the dehumanization of Jews. They are reduced to some horrible racist stereotype and not seen as human beings, ones with agency - that deserve credit or blame for their choices and actions.

In their defense, it's a complicated situation. Factually - blaming Jews is a huge part of antisemitism and has been used to support all sorts of atrocities for essentially the entirety of recorded human history. So there most definitely is the risk of enabling some of the worst racists that exist. But also factually - there are some horrible people who happen to be Jews. Being Jewish does not mean you are incapable of bad things.

And bad things have been happening. Israel has been committing atrocities now for over two months. It is in the midst of committing genocide - slaughtering civilians by the hundreds. Day in and day out. And the ones that aren't killed are subject to starvation and disease brought about by Israel's blockade and active destruction of infrastructure inside the Gaza Strip. The vast majority of the world does not approve of terrorism, asserting that they do is nonsense. Terrorism is bad - even if the victims are people you don't like. BUT the thing the Zionist crowd does not seem to get is that Israel is behaving like terrorists - only way better equipped and shielded from accountability by the United States of America.

It's a concept that they are incapable of accepting. Yes, we all agree that Hamas is very bad and the attacks of October 7th were monstrous and indefensible. BUT - what Israel has done and is still continuing to do in Gaza is worse. And the US is doing everything in its power to ensure that the killing continues. No wonder it is sliding into isolation.

Update on How Well the Blogging is Going

Beit Hanoun is in the north east corner of the Gaza Strip. Wiki says that 52K people used to live there. It was one of the "Before and After" satellite image cities that showed the devastation being caused in Gaza. This article is from October 21. There's a clearing area at the top of the map and the after picture shows that even the dirt pathways through an open area have been obliterated. Two days ago, the IDF said that they had "full control" over the area. Again, this is the north east corner of the Gaza Strip. It's as close as anything in Gaza is allowed to be to the security fence. There's a Beit Hanoun crossing (that's been closed for ages). They bombed it into dust and it still took two months to gain full control - despite it being the part of Gaza most easily accessible to Israel. This is where the IDF took control of UNRWA schools, cleared them enough so they could plant explosives, and then filmed the senseless and unnecessary destruction while laughing and cheering in the background.

And that's the IDF saying they have "full control" - and as we all should know by now, the IDF lies.  There is fighting in Beit Hanoun right now. Hamas is filming their attacks on IDF positions here. Israel has hit it again with air strikes just a few hours ago. So, I guess that's how the military campaign is going - just "successes" everywhere.

Still Blogging the Death Toll - How Bad is a 2:1 Ratio?

An update to the Death Toll post.

France 24 has a very detailed breakdown of the casualties from the October 7 attacks.

The final death toll from the attack is now thought to be 695 Israeli civilians, including 36 children, as well as 373 security forces and 71 foreigners, giving a total of 1,139.

This excludes five people, among them four Israelis, still listed as missing by the prime minister's office.

695 Israeli civilians, 71 foreigners, and 5 missing people. So, 771 civilians killed. And 373 mebers of the security forces (they give this breakdown too -  305 soldiers, 58 cops, 10 members of Shin Bet - the Israeli Security Agency). My count includes hostages killed by bombings - but I am not going to count the three hostages that escaped and were shot dead by the IDF as they waved a white flag and pleaded for help in Hebrew. There's got to be a line - and while Hamas is responsible for the hostages that die in their custody - and reasonably, hostages who die while making an attempt to escape to safety - these hostages reached "safety" and were killed by IDF soldiers. That's on the IDF. The France 24 article lists 8 hostages confirmed dead and 19 more presumed dead (of which I'm not including 3). So 24 dead hostages where I assign blame to Hamas.

795 civilian casualties caused by Hamas. In an attack that killed 373 members of the security force that holds their territory under military occupation and blockade. I had earlier put the ratio at 3:1 (mostly because I was working off of only 300 security forces killed) but 2:1 is much closer to the actual ratio. So consider this a correction to my earlier incorrect estimate.

So when the IDF says "I’m not saying it’s not bad that we have a ratio of two to one" - they are conceding that they have the essentially the same disregard for civilian life as Hamas. And again - this is based on the IDF definition of Hamas fighter being "any male and military aged Palestinian in Gaza".

The killing of the three Israeli hostages by the IDF really does hammer this point home. Sure there have been numerous reports of the IDF opening fire on people surrendering - but those reports have been ignored since the people killed were Palestinians. "Maybe they were Hamas!" argue the IDF defenders. But they cannot make the argument here. They will just ignore it because they cannot concede that the IDF kills people who try to surrender despite the obvious evidence that this is true.

It's actually quite breathtaking how the IDF and their supporters keep stepping on rakes. Their hostage killing happened just one week after they did a media blitz of "Hamas fighters" stripped to their underwear and made to kneel on the ground with their hands bound behind their backs. Apparently the IDF campaign was so "successful" that hundreds of "Hamas fighters" surrendered. And that the IDF not only did not shoot them dead, like they do when they aren't filming the interaction, but let them keep their assault rifles so they could turn them over in front of the Israeli media team.

One more note about the death toll. Not all of the Israeli civilians killed on October 7 were killed by Hamas. Some were killed by the IDF. How many? We will never know:

Casualties fell as a result of friendly fire on October 7, but the IDF believes that beyond the operational investigations of the events, it would not be morally sound to investigate these incidents due to the immense and complex quantity of them that took place in the kibbutzim and southern Israeli communities due to the challenging situations the soldiers were in at the time. 

When Israel kills Israelis, that's fine. So fine in fact that it would be morally unsound to even investigate. That's the type of value the IDF and the Israeli government place civilian lives.

Only Our Cows are Sacred, Yours Should be Fed to The Machine

you are morally obligated to vote for hitler but 1% less bad

Now to be clear -  Biden is much much better than "99% as bad as Trump". Trump is way worse. And even if Trump isn't the candidate because he needs to spend more time with his criminal defense attorneys, all of the remaining GOP candidates are much worse than Biden. DeSantis and Ramaswamy are possibly worse than Trump - Haley and Christie are not really that much better.

So I agree that "not supporting Joe means you are indirectly supporting something much worse" is accurate and true. In fact, I am actually happy to say that - aside from enabling genocide - Joe Biden has done a great job as president. He far exceeded my expectations, and has arguably done more good in three years than even the good presidents have in two terms. I would personally place the IRA as being as significant as the ACA. The stewardship of the economy and navigating the pandemic have produced results better than anyone could have imagined. I believe this is the first presidential administration this century where the Gini coefficient has gone down. So even despite the billionaires extending their gap from the 0.1%, Joe's Administration has uplifted the bottom by enough that this gets smudged out. That's impressive.

So Biden has done a great job. Not merely clearing the low bar of "better than you could expect from a GOP president" - but actually great. A return to big government funded infrastructure projects. Real money being directed towards carbon and climate change. A reduction in inequality (or at least a slowing of the increase in inequality). Labour unions have reversed their plummet into irrelevance and are stronger now than they have been for as long as I can remember. Biden has restored at least some power to the people.

But I don't blame those who can no longer support him.

People have lines that they cannot cross. And for them, supporting a regime that enables, funds, and arms genocidaires is just too much. And this seems entirely reasonable to me. Genocide is their dealbreaker - and no amount of strategic voting cajoling will change their minds - and that should be seen as reasonable. It's fucking genocide we're talking about!

But the tut-tutters are out in force. "Don't you know that the genocide will be worse with Trump in the Oval Office?" I mean - maybe. Trump is worse on almost everything, except competence. At least with Trump in charge, there's a chance that Israel doesn't get as many bombs simply because Trump and the people he would put into his administration - are mostly incompetent boobs. But sure - this is a reasonable thing to suggest, that "Trump will be worse". However, I still agree that this is not enough to get someone to go against their principle of "no genocide".

Anywho - the example I go to as a dealbreaker issue is abortion. I've asked people to consider - what if Biden did an about face on abortion and pushed for a nation-wide 15 week ban? There are certainly GOPpers who have a worse position on it than this - so voting for hypotehtical forced birther Biden would still be voting for "hitler but 1% less bad" even only considering the issue of abortion. Would that be a valid reason to not go to the polls in November 2024?

The only answer to this is "well Biden would never." And this is also very probably true - but it does give the game away. Some cows are sacred, but others are not. Women having bodily autonomy is non-negotiable, but providing the weapons to keep a genocide continuing is just a bargaining chip.

Biden's now done an about face on immigration. He's looking to bring back Trump's worst immigration policies and possibly juice them up. So the belief that "Biden would never" might be misplaced. Immigrants are now just another bargaining chip.

Here's another point I need to be clear about. If someone has "I will never support a forced birther" as one of their principles - I think that's entirely reasonable too. If someone decides to sit out an election because they think none of the candidates are strong enough on women's health - that seems like a valid position to me. I agree that your cow is sacred. Abortion access keeps women from dying and also greatly improves their freedom and quality of life. Knowing that they have the option allows women to make better and more choices with their lives. That's hugely important - and disturbingly relevant right now.

But so is Palestine. Hundreds of people are violently killed every day. Millions are starving even though aid trucks are lined up at the border. 90% of the population of the Gaza Strip has been displaced from their homes. Shit is really fucked up over there - and it is ONLY possible because of Joe's unconditional support of the most right-wing and fascist government that Israel has ever had. It is reasonable for this to be a dealbreaker.

Look at How Well the Blogging is Going

The UN General Assembly voted on Tuesday to call for an immediate ceasefire. That resolution passed 153 in favour versus 10 against. That day, Joe Biden said that Israel "risked losing international support". I mean I don't get it. The international community voted 153 -10 against Israel, what "international support" does it have to lose?

For a point of reference, the previous vote on October 26 for "humanitarian pauses" passed 120 - 14. Among the countries that abstained in October and voted for peace this time around are Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - who issued a joint statement earlier that day. India, Japan, the Philippines, Poland, Greece, Finland, Sweden, and Iceland are also amongst the group that moved from abstention in October to supporting a ceasefire this week. So - what does Biden mean that Israel "risks losing international support"?

The stated goal of Israel includes the destruction of Hamas. The humiliation videos and pictures of men stripped to their underwear is part of Israel's narrative spinning here. Israeli ministers and IDF officials have been telling a story of Hamas fighters surrendering - evidence that "Israel is winning" and that Hamas is broken. Yesterday, the "broken" Hamas fighters executed a complex multi phase ambush - where they attacked a patrol and trapped them in a cluster of three buildings, held them there and waited for reinforcements to arrive, trapped the reinforcements in the same area, and then set off IEDs which dropped the buildings onto the soldiers. This happened in Gaza City, in the neighbourhood of Shejaiya where the IDF had claimed that they had secured and where they had largely disrupted the command and control of the fighters.

The Times of Israel article has a lot of details about what happened. Notable in the list of killed IDF soldiers are their ranks: a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, 3 majors, a captain, and 3 sergeants. Maybe Israel just gives out officer commissions like candy at Halloween, I dunno. Still, this looks pretty bad to me. And it does really put a question mark on how "broken" Hamas is. Maybe it was just really bad luck that resulted in an ambush that killed 6 officers including a colonel and lieutenant colonel, and no one below the rank of sergeant.

The losses to the IDF also raise another point about how much Israel is "winning" this war. 115 soldiers killed (although technically, 20 of them were killed by friendly fire and not Hamas) is bad, but still pretty low considering how much fighting has been going on. But adding to this toll is in the number wounded, which is not small. As of December 10, the IDF was acknowledging 1,593 wounded (892 minor injuries) - which is bad, but doesn't seem terrible. But as we know, the IDF lies. Haaretz looked at hospital numbers and they think it's over 3,000.

Yes, this is quite minor relative to the scale of destruction inflicted on Gaza - a campaign based almost entirely on air strikes will look like that. But I'm pretty sure that this is not a price that Israel was expecting to pay. And what have they gotten for all those dead and broken bodies? Hamas is still as functional and capable as they were before. The flag of Palestine and the keffiyeh have become global symbols of resistance to occupation. Sure doesn't seem like this war is going according to plan.

One more thing to add to the pile. The Israeli government is dead set against a Palestinian state. Much of Netanyahu's strategy for decades has been to weaken the Palestinian Authority (by supporting Hamas) to break any solidarity between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Palestinians in the West Bank. They were actually very successful at this and PA President Abbas is one of the very few leaders in the region that is less popular than Netanyahu. But this too is vanishing - only instead of Israel's nightmare of the PA becoming the voice of all of Palestine, it looks like it is Hamas that's taking the role. The sympathy for Gaza is only a minor part - that Israel has stepped up it's violent terrorist activities in the West Bank, that's won it no friends. And it has unsurprisingly pushed the people of the West Bank towards Hamas. So that seems counterproductive too.

Blogging the Death Toll - Evidence of Genocide Part 18,000 and Counting

A few days ago, the IDF was saying that it had killed 5,000 Hamas fighters. This was back when the official death toll from the "Hamas-run" Gaza Ministry of Health was 15,000 - so 10,000 civilians. At the time I was mocking how their estimate was ludicrously high - in this best case scenario where the thousands still trapped under the rubble, some of them for over a month, will somehow survive. And even then, Israel is saying they have killed twice as many civilians as Hamas fighters.

Some context before we get into why this statement is further proof of Israel's intent to commit genocide.

The initial death toll from October 7th was pegged at 1,407. This was revised down to "around 1,200" because some of those killed were Hamas fighters. The current death toll of Israelis on October 7th is 1,147. I think it's reasonable to add at least three for hostages that died in the airstrikes. Yes they were killed by US bombs dropped from Israeli warplanes, but they were in Hamas custody at the time - so these deaths are Hamas' responsibility. So at least 1,150 - but less than 1,200. Of these, 300 were IDF. So the Hamas civilian to military kill ratio is 3:1. Meaning that Israel cannot concede any worse than 2:1 or they will be admitting that they target civilians more than Hamas does. To be clear - we already know that this is true, the IDF targets civilians more than Hamas does. But it would be impossible for Israel to admit this.

This is by the official numbers. We know of course that the actual death toll in Gaza is way higher than is being reported. There are more than 5,000 people under the rubble. In the initial days, I was going by scaling the UNRWA death toll - there are roughly 200 UNRWA workers for every Gazan. The UNRWA toll is now 133 - implying a Gaza death toll of around 26K and an Israeli kill ratio of over 4 civilians per Hamas fighter.

So just taking the numbers as presented - Israel does in fact target civilians over military targets more than Hamas does. A result that would be surprising to the IDF fanbois if they could be made to actually engage with it - but one that is actually sadly expected and unsurprising when you look at the scale and nature of the devastation across the Gaza Strip.

This is pretty damning. It's godawful actually. But the story is much worse. These ratios are based on Israel's estimate of 5,000 killed - which seemed impossibly high to me. And it is. 6,000 of those killed are children. In fact, the UN estimates that 2/3 of Gazans killed by Israel are women and children. That's how they got the 2:1 ratio.

IOW, here is how the IDF determines if someone they killed was a "Hamas fighter". Are they a "male and military aged"? That's is. The entirety of the question - are they male and military aged. There is no possibility for someone being male and military aged and not Hamas. Meaning that the IDF literally believes that all Gazans are Hamas. When they say they are going to "destroy Hamas" this is in fact an open call to genocide.

To be clear - quite obviously not all Gazans are Hamas. That's stupid. But it certainly appears to be what the Israelis believe - such as when President Herzog pushed back on the idea that there could be innocent Gazan civilians. He literally suggested that this was impossible and that such people did not exist. So when Israel says they are going to "destroy Hamas" you have to remember that they also believe that all Gazans are Hamas.

The Humanitarian Pause was a Bad Idea

I hinted at this a month ago.

I think it's pretty clear where I stand on war. My profile pic is so old that those museums are no longer named as indicated on the sign. So saying negative things about a deal to stop fighting - even temporarily - is very difficult for me. And a lot of good things came out of the truce - a crapton of humanitarian aid got delivered, hospitals were given an opportunity to treat their patients without hundreds more being admitted every day. For the first time in a month and a half, Gazans got the opportunity to sleep through the night without the sounds of military jets flying by or of bombs going off.

But the problem with a temporary truce is that it's temporary. I had tried to assuage my fears about the truce by believing that maybe it could be made into something more lasting - but this was naive and ignorant on my part. Driven by the fear of what would happen when the bombing started again.

What I said a month ago was that it would "break our hearts". That's all I could allow myself to concede at the time. But what I was really worried about was what this would do to the people of Gaza.

The siege had been going on for six weeks before the truce. One of the most intense bombing campaigns ever - including WW II. And Gaza can't really fight back. They have no interceptor jets. They have no anti-aircraft guns. The only method Gaza has of stopping the bombing is by dying in enough numbers that the world finally forces Israel to stop. The resilience you see in other populations under siege is one of holding out to survive through to the end of it. To make it out the other side when the people responsible for defending you have achieved their victory. Gaza doesn't have that. There are no nations or militaries defending Gaza, and many countries are trying to make it illegal for individuals to defend Gaza.

It's a different kind of resilience we see in Gaza. The Gazans know they are going to die. They know that Israel is going to kill them. This is simultaneously irrational and the right perspective. It's irrational because Israel will not be allowed to kill 2 million. Even if we double the official death toll, this works out to less than 2% of the population - as horrific as the killing has been, most Gazans will survive it. But it's also the right perspective because the killing is sudden and unpredictable. Death just rains down from the skies every day. Every day, hundreds are killed - from all parts of Gaza. The aid agencies have been telling us for weeks that "there is no safe place in Gaza". There is no precaution that Palestinians in Gaza can take to protect themselves. They just die in the hundreds every single day. And for a long time, that's how it looked like it was going to go on for an indefinite period of time.

There's a video of Younma El Sayed from last month that hammered this home for me. This is what she tells her children every day:

Don't worry, we're together. We're sticking together. If we die, we will die together.

And then the bombs stopped. For one fragile week, the bombs stopped. People were allowed to believe again - they were allowed to hope - to think they might live.

And then the week was over and the truce ended.

What does that do to people?

There's another point I have been trying to get noticed for at least a month now. The people of Gaza have resisted this attack better than anyone could possibly have hoped for. The conditions they are under are incomprehensibly bad - and yet there is no breakdown of public order. They are still banding together, rallying to dig survivors out of the rubble. To bring the wounded to where they can receive care. They are acting together in solidarity with one another despite the conditions they are subjected to.

The Director of UNRWA says that this too is now on the verge of breaking.

Before the war, Gaza was described as "an open air prison". It's completely enclosed by the sea on one side, and a heavily fortified and guarded fence on all the others. The only way in or out is with Israeli approval. And it is incredibly densely packed. Over 2 million people in a very tight area. The Wash Post had a good description:

The Gaza Strip has almost exactly the same land area as Las Vegas but more than three times the population. Its largest city, Gaza City, is more tightly packed than New York City, with more than 650,000 people living within its 18 square miles.

A lot of those people have moved into Khan Younis and Rafah. Less than half the area. And Israel is bombing there now too with greater intensity than before the truce. The conditions are ripe for rioting to break out - honestly, the conditions have been such for over a month already.

So - we're closing in on yet another "it gets worse" point. The conditions in Gaza right now are such that the relief agencies cannot function effectively and the psychic damage from the ending of the truce is eroding the solidarity and humanity of the people of Gaza. It is quite possibly going to get really bad, really soon.

Will Blogging Manage to Destroy Hamas?

Israel's stated goal in this genocide is to "destroy Hamas". Let's see how that's going.

The IDF claims to have killed 5,000 Hamas fighters. They did this while also admitting that the "Hamas run" Gaza Ministry of Health death toll is accurate and conceding that they are killing two civilians for every Hamas fighter. Firstly, as with anything the IDF says, we have to take into account that the IDF lies.  The vast majority of those killed were killed in airstrikes - which were indiscriminate in the pre-truce portion of the war, and indiscriminate now as well. No one looking at the carnage wrought by Israel  can believe that the efforts were |targeted" without lying to themselves. Secondly, we also know that the "Hamas run" Ministry of Health death count is an  undercount. Two civilians killed for every actual target is Israel's best case scenario and it is almost certainly a lot worse than that.

But even accepting it as "only" 2:1, this is horrific. Try to imagine if this were anything else - "we stopped the murderer but had to kill a pair of innocent people to do it". This actually paints Israel in a much better light than the actual situation. The October 7 attack killed fewer than a tenth of what Israel has inflicted on Gaza.

What does this have to do with Hamas' strength? It's the outrage at Israel which fuels Hamas. The death toll, the absolute destruction of entire towns and large fractions of cities - this creates the animosity and desire for vengeance that results in more Hamas fighters. Will Hamas be able to replace the lost 5,000 (and again - it is almost certainly a lot less than that)? Easily. 

That's in Gaza. What about the West Bank, where Israel is stealing land and disappearing thousands of Palestinians into "administrative detention"? Where released prisoners have been telling their stories of the torture they endured in Israeli jails. Pretty sure that Hamas' standing in the West Bank has improved and the feelings towards Israel - a state imposing apartheid rules on them - have actually gotten worse.

So quite clearly - Hamas is in a stronger position than they were on October 6. They will be able to recruit new fighters to replace their losses. And their stated goal of eradicating the state of Israel has more support than ever before.

But maybe Israel is still somehow safer despite Hamas gaining support? The loss of 5,000 fighters (lol) must have at least reduced Hamas' current capabilities. Right? No, it hasn't. Before the truce was signed, Hamas fired one of their largest volleys of rockets into Israel (they say as retaliation for the IDF raids on hospitals). And after the truce ended, Hamas fired rockets into Israel - setting off alarms in settlements further north than they have ever reached before.

Moreover, the IDF still does not have control of northern Gaza. Some of those rockets were fired from areas the IDF had already rolled through. Rockets were launched from Gaza City despite the pounding it has received in the past two months. So all evidence says that Hamas has not been slowed down or hampered by its losses.

So "destroying Hamas" as a goal - seems pretty much completely out of Israel's ability. On the plus side for Israel though, this is the better outcome for them. If they did manage to "destroy Hamas" through just massive bombing and psychotic levels of collateral damage - the anger towards Israel would be immense and completely unguided. In the power vacuum to follow - someone will harness that rage and create a new group sedeking revenge against Israel. Like when the US spent twenty years and some trillion dollars trying to dismantle Al Qaeda and as a result created an opening for ISIS to rise to prominence.

The final piece of why this whole thing is so stupid - the attack of October 7th was only as successful as it was because Israel's response to it was farcically bad. We may never know how many Israelis were killed by IDF "friendly fire" that day - but it's starting to look more and more like it is a lot. And this is despite the fact that Israel should have known the attack was coming. Israel had copies of the actual Hamas battle plan for that day - a plan which Hamas basically followed exactly. They knew that Hamas had been doing dry runs in the months before the attack. Again, referencing the battle plan that Israel had copies of. They even should have been able to guess the time of the attack - on the 50th anniversary of the attack which kicked off the Yom Kippur War. It's frankly mind blowing how badly Israeli intelligence failed here. The terrorist attack of October 7 - it wasn't prevented despite Israel knowing that it was coming and having over a year to thwart it. In fact, Israel's actions in that time was to shift forces away from Gaza and to the West Bank. They made themselves less capable of responding to it.

This is really the only hope that Israel has of emerging "safer" from all of this. If at least they fixed their intelligence agencies and their military decision making. If they eradicate whatever it was in their decision making levels that resulted in such bone-headed mistakes as this was.

They haven't. The attack of October 7 was as bad as it was (and it was indeed horrific with hundreds of civilians killed and hundreds more violently kidnapped) - because the guys running Israeli defense and intelligence had decided that Gaza was "under control" and then ignored everything that contradicted that opinion. They ignored reality so that they could continue believing that their theory was solid and that they are never wrong. Those guys are still in charge. And the actual plan that Israel is going with - of mass destruction and killing in the hopes that maybe you get some bad guys too, they have doubled down on. Here's the fucking staggering thing - even though October 7th happened, <b>those stupid fuckers still think they are right</b>.

They Ran, They Ran So Far - Holy Crap

 I don't follow ultra-running very closely - there's really only one race that catches my attention, and I usually end up looking at the results only weeks after it finished. That race is Big Dog's Backyard Ultra which is run in October - and holy crap, what the actual fuck?

So this race is different than your normal race. It's not a fixed distance, it's an endurance race. But it's not a fixed time either. It's a fixed speed- a single loop that's a bit more than 4 miles long - and you get an hour to finish it. Sounds pretty easy, and everyone who starts it finishes that lap no problem.

Here's the catch - it's an endurance race. You have to do it again in the next hour. And you keep doing it until you stop. The person who completes the last loop in under an hour (technically - you just got to be in the starting corral for the next loop at the start of the hour) - that person "wins". There's no finish line - it's an open ended endurance race, where you keep running until no one else can run with you anymore. It's about pushing the limits of human endurance in a sick and demented fashion.

About seven years ago, there was this shift in ultrarunning. The previous record was 49 loops - 204-ish miles. Two runners quit after completing the first lap of the third day. Just crazy. Imagine going 49 hours straight where you get woken every hour on the hour - that's hard enough on it's own without having to push out four miles between every wake-up call. For two full days. Crazy.

Then in 2017 someone ran 59 hours. And then 68 hours the year after. And in 2021, Harvey Lewis broke into Day 4 by completing loop number 85. Over 350 miles. Three and a half days of running over four miles in each and every hour. It stopped making sense to me before it got to this point - but the maniacs kept running.

Harvey Lewis' wining distance this year was 108. 108 loops. 450 miles. Four and a half days. Just get up at the top of the hour and run four and a bit miles, and then do it again - 107 more times.

Also too - the winner is the person who is the only one to complete the last loop. Meaning that someone ran 107 loops to come in second (they call it the "assist"). This year, the person who came in third did 103 loops. 429 miles of running and finishing third.

I don't really have a point here. As I mentioned earlier - it stopped making sense to me when they were running a hundred miles less.  I guess I just find it really interesting.

Intelligence Failure

I've seen a new theory of why the Israeli Intelligence community got everything so unbelievably wrong. It's actually pretty convincing, and if it's right then the prospects for Israel's plan to "destroy Hamas" are even worse than they look when you assume that the entire Israeli War Machine is just a pile of stupid fucking morons that couldn't tell their asses from their elbows even with Post-it notes on their arms saying "not here".

Anyways, let's consider the facts (as we know them) that need to be explained.

1. Israel Intelligence got a hold of the Hamas battle plan in 2022. This is described as a 40-page document which describes how Hamas was going to attack Israel and the basic strategy described is exactly what Hamas did on October 7. So Israel had a hold of Hamas' actual playbook.

2. The battle plan apparently contained sensitive Israeli military information. It's sounds like it's information along the lines of the locations and strength of the Israeli defenses along the Gaza fence.

3. The Israeli intelligence community dismissed this as being "aspirational". That there's no way that Hamas could pull of the attack as planned. Note that this is the assessment despite the plan containing Israeli military secrets.

4. Israel absolutely acted like they thought the battle plan was a joke. Even after watching Hamas fighters do a day long dry run training session. During this period they continued to relocate military forceds away from the Gaza fence and to the West Bank to support the terrorist campaign being conducted by Israeli settlers.

Okay, now some other facts (as we know them) 

5. Some fraction of Hamas is known to Israel and those members are under constant and extreme surveillance. And have been surveilled for a long time.

6. The October 7 attack was aa big and complex project - at least a year in planning and engaging hundreds of terrorist gunmen and whatever supports those guys needed to do their mass murder.

7. I mean, Israel had a copy of the actual battle plan. This was a big enough terror project and the surveillance of Hamas was intensive enough that Israel literally had a copy of the plan a year in advance. And also, Hamas could reasonably expected that this would be the case.

Okay - here's the theory. Israel didn't fuck up because they are stupid chuckleheads with the brainpower of a wet fart. The theory is that Israel got played. Hamas, knowing that they were under surveillance, acted in such a way to make the Israeli intelligence community go 100% groupthink on a bunch of carefully cultivated ideas. Hamas used Israeli surveillance to make Israel think that Hamas was both incapable of this type of attack and also that they didn't really want to attack either. And then Hamas used this cover to prepare and train for it, knowing that Israel was going to act like the battle plan was fake regardless of what evidence they saw to the contrary.

There's some things about this that seem sketchy. If Hamas knew that Israel was going to get access to the battle plan, why did they put the sensitive military information in there? This endangers their sources and it should have been a huge red flag for Israel that they were grossly underestimating Hamas' capabilities. This was a risk of blowing up the whole plan and they could have avoided that just by leaving the info out of the plan. Still, that's the biggest flaw I see in it. Otherwise, it explains everything perfectly.

As low an opinion as I have of the IDF, it's not credible to believe that literally everyone in it is a stupid idiot. There stories about the Intelligence Failure centre one Unit 8200 analyst who correctly determined that Hamas was way more capable than they were assessed at. But even that analyst was swayed by the argument that "Hamas doesn't want a war". This is after knowing that they were doing dry runs.

The description of what happened are that they knew the attack was being planned and practiced - but they didn't think Hamas was going to go through with it. And they believed this so hard that despite the consequences of being wrong, they acted like Gaza was never going to cause any trouble ever again. Something must have made them thing this - and it makes sense for Hamas to try to bluff out Israel this way.

But what does that mean going forward? It's super-bad. If this theory is correct, it means that Hamas is capable of fooling the Israeli intelligence community (and the US one for that matter) like virtuoso masters. Of playing them like a fiddle. And the Israeli intelligence community is in full on cover your ass mode - and the Israeli government is deeply vested in not criticizing their spies. So it's hard to see how this changes.