Meanwhile on the International front....

Israel's military campaign in Gaza seen as among the most destructive in recent history, experts say

 

And how are they going to get there, exactly?

 

Ferried there by Somali pirates? Bold talk from the oppressed minority of the most impoverished nation on earth.

 

Via Tahoe?

 

Israeli campaign to kill Hamas leaders likely to backfire, say earlier assassination targets

A worldwide campaign of assassinations of Hamas leaders announced by senior Israel officials is likely to be counterproductive, impractical and ineffective, targets of previous such efforts have suggested.

Benjamin Netanyahu first announced the new strategy two weeks after the 7 October attacks launched by Hamas into southern Israel which killed 1,200 people.

Officials in Israel have briefed journalists that a new operation called Nili, an acronym for a biblical phrase in Hebrew meaning “the eternal one of Israel will not lie”, would target senior leaders of the militant Islamist organisation.

Last month Netanyahu told a press conference that he had instructed Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, to “assassinate all the leaders of Hamas wherever they are”. In early December a leaked recording revealed Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security agency, telling Israeli parliamentarians that Hamas leaders would be killed “in Gaza, in the West Bank, in Lebanon, in Turkey, in Qatar, everywhere … It will take a few years, but we will be there in order to do it.”

 

Houthi Militia in Yemen Presents a Special Challenge for U.S.

The Houthis have launched missiles and drones at vessels in the Red Sea and seized an Israeli-linked ship during more than two months of war between Israel and Hamas.

Hamas and the Houthis are both backed by Iran.

A Houthi military spokesman, Yahya Sarea, said the attacks would continue “until the Israeli aggression against our steadfast brothers in the Gaza Strip stops.”

The U.S.S. Carney, a naval guided-missile destroyer deployed to the region to deter such attacks, has been busy. On one morning last weekend, the ship shot down 14 attack drones that the Houthis had launched at ships in the Red Sea.

 

Israeli Economy Reels From Gaza Conflict as Labor Pool Shrinks

Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip is transforming its economy and that of the West Bank.

The decision to bar more than 100,000 Palestinian workers from entering Israel has shrunk the pool of low-cost labor in a country of roughly nine million people that is known for relatively high wages and strict immigration laws that make it harder for non-Jews to live in Israel.

At the same time, the Israeli military has called up roughly 400,000 reservists and officials estimate that 250,000 Israelis have been relocated at least temporarily from their homes, particularly from areas seen as potentially vulnerable to attack, preventing many from going to work.

 

New York college students who support Palestine fear post-9/11-style retaliation

For Muslim and Arab students at the City University of New York, which Brooklyn College is part of, and especially students who have organized to protest the suffering and mass killing of Palestinians, the tensions have led to renewed fears that their speech is being intensely policed and that they are witnessing the start of a campaign of targeted campus surveillance.

They worry that online attacks by often-anonymous private actors; efforts by their schools and local leaders they say amount to censorship of their speech and events; and conflation of their pro-Palestinian activism with antisemitism will create a climate akin to that on campuses following 9/11, when Muslim students were closely surveilled. While fears of surveillance and mass targeting are remnants of the post-9/11 era, the tools often leveraged by law enforcement and individuals have become vastly more sophisticated and potentially much more invasive in the years since then.

Their institution’s failure to reckon with that history, they say, contributes to their lack of faith in the administration to safeguard their safety now.

CUNY spokesperson Noah Gardy said CUNY’s priority is to protect “the members of our institutions while creating spaces for them to learn more about their differences”.

 

https://www.reuters.com/world/middl...entedly-long-war-with-some-doubts-2023-12-22/

JERUSALEM, Dec 22 (Reuters) - As the war in Gaza enters an 11th week, Israelis appear resigned to a long road before the military achieves its stated aim of destroying Hamas and bringing more than 100 hostages back home.
For days, in the face of growing international pressure to halt the fighting and increase the flow of aid into the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued video statements reiterating his determination to win the war.

"Anyone who thinks we're going to stop is detached from reality," he said this week.

His own popularity has been badly battered by the security failures that allowed thousands of Hamas gunmen to pour into southern Israel on Oct. 7 but a large majority of Israelis back the military campaign.

"We're not seeing an erosion of support," said Tamar Hermann, a senior research fellow with the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), which has been carrying out regular surveys of wartime sentiment.

"The great majority believes the job needs to get done. But what does that mean? No one knows exactly."

 

Is Israel’s offensive against Hamas in Gaza succeeding?

Israel’s military offensive in Gaza has inflicted significant damage on Hamas but it appears a long way from delivering the death blow to the Palestinian militants that Israeli leaders vowed when the assault began 11 weeks ago.

In slow-moving, street-to-street fighting backed up by relentless bombing raids, Israel says it has scored battlefield gains against Hamas and begun to dismantle its military infrastructure. But experts and former U.S. military officers say that the progress is temporary and that there is no sign the militants are on the verge of a strategic defeat.


“I wouldn’t call it impossible, but I think the likelihood is becoming increasingly small that they will achieve the strategic goal of eliminating Hamas as a threat,” said retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Michael Nagata, who oversaw special operations forces in the Middle East.

The limited success against Hamas has come at a high price, in civilian lives and international political outrage directed at Israel’s government. On Wednesday, the rising death toll for Palestinian civilians reached a grim milestone of 20,000, according to Gaza health authorities.

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamas...less-fighting-in-gaza-stops-israel-no-chance/

Israel on Thursday firmly rejected a Hamas demand to permanently halt fighting before releasing any more hostages being held by terrorists in Gaza, as talks in Cairo for a truce deal appeared to make little progress.

A Hamas official told AFP that “a total ceasefire and a retreat of the Israeli occupation army from the Gaza Strip are a precondition for any serious negotiation” on a hostage-prisoner swap.

Israel has repeatedly rejected any such proposition, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated on Thursday the longstanding position in no uncertain terms: “We are fighting until victory. We will not stop the war until we achieve all its goals — completing the destruction of Hamas, and releasing all of our hostages.”

Netanyahu added that he was giving Hamas a “very simple choice: surrender or die. They do not have and will not have any other option.”

 

The military operation will eventually "succeed", The harder part for Israel will be what to do with Gaza Strip after it gains control.