The Atlantic underestimates the Middle East Axis plan to end Israel.

[ancianita]

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/10/hamas-strategy-israel-gaza-war/675618/

Hamas May Not Have a Step Two

A day that started under control, with a coordinated surprise attack by literally thousands of armed men, does not appear to have ended that way.

By Graeme Wood


...Hamas fighters recorded their own crimes against civilians, letting their literal and figurative masks slip. Twitter sleuths have already identified suspects who may someday be tried for their crimes. On CNN, the non-Hamas Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti tried to deny that those crimes took place. Without the videos, some might have believed him...

The hostages, now human shields, seem to have been brought into Gaza in the most disorganized manner. Some were transported in golf carts, others on motorbikes. Some were filmed, and others not. The footage leaked in real time. Those who celebrated the day’s events noted that Israeli hostages (including small children) are valuable in trade for Palestinians in Israeli prisons. Hamas announced that it intends to execute hostages—who include, it bears repeating, small children and the elderly—on camera if Israel “targets civilian homes without advance warning” in its anticipated operation.

If human shields and the flesh trade were the strategic purpose of the raids, it is again noteworthy that instead of spiriting the hostages as covertly as possible into a carefully prepared network of dungeons, Hamas seems to have delivered them onto city streets before jeering mobs. Many more hostages, it appears, were taken off-camera than on. But a day that started under control, with a coordinated surprise attack by literally thousands of armed men, does not appear to have ended that way.

Step One was to infiltrate Israel and commit crimes against humanity. Step Two—well, it’s not clear what Step Two is, and even Step One is looking half-baked. Terrorists gonna terrorize. On one hand, this would be, oddly, good news for Israel in the short term. An enemy incapable of discipline and coordinated strategic thought is a weaker enemy. On the other hand, an enemy without moral boundaries, who will kill unarmed old people, but not before commandeering their cellphones to stream their murder for their grandchildren, is not a promising partner in any kind of peace process. And an absence of strategic logic is little comfort when the undisciplined psychos are still at large, holding guns to the heads of children, and hiding out among 2 million vulnerable civilians just across the border."



The Atlantic underestimates the regional plan to end Israel.
Going forward, the Middle East Axis of Evil has shown the West who it is.
It is never a mistake to err on the side of an abundance of caution and readiness when it comes to "death to Israel" enemies on Israel's border and beyond.

Hamas' Step Two is Hezbollah, with its hundred thousand of missiles buried in all of southern Lebanon. Hezbollah's trigger will be from Hamas, just as Israel is destroying it. Then the defending UK Royal Navy, and U.S. missiles off the coast will draw the U.S. in.
Step Three: draw the West and U.S. into a two-front, full time war footing.


Further Maps and Information about Hezbollah from the Jewish Virtual Library. (Anything up to the minute is probably classified or unavailable for obvious reasons.)

https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/operation-protective-edge-map-of-gaza-tunnels



https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/map-of-hezbollah-rocket-capabilities

[Karadeniz]

1. Yikes!

[prodigitalson]

3. "according to reports,

Hezbollah was warned that any shenanigans would be answered with the leveling of Damascus."