The night after the attack, he was excluded from the conversation between the generals and the Chief of Staff, and was only updated afterwards.

By Amir Bohbot/Walla!, JPOST  29 Nov 2023

IDF Military Intelligence commander Aharon Haliva in Tel Aviv, November 4, 2022

IDF Military Intelligence Directorate Chief Aharon Haliva believed that following the events of October 7, his tenure in office was on borrowed time.

“Already that morning I understood that it was over,” he told his associates: “After the war is over I will have to go.”

Now, all that remains for Haliva is to figure out when he intends to retire, whether it be after Israel officially announces the end of the war, or before there is any sort of permanent ceasefire and the army switches to a method of raid operations only.
Read more…

i24NEWS November 28, 2023 at 03:21 AM

Peloni: More details surrounding what was included in the warnings about an attack by Hamas which were so strongly rebuked that threats of court martial were made if these concerns were raised again.

See also: Military Intelligence Directorate head to resign due to Oct. 7 massacre, takes responsibility

Officer who reviewed intelligence considered risk of big attack ‘an imaginary scenario’, leak suggests

By Peter Beaumont, THE GUARDIAN     Tue 28 Nov 2023 09.11 EST

Israel’s military and intelligence officials were given a highly detailed warning that Hamas was actively training to take over kibbutzim on the Gaza border and overrun military posts with the aim of inflicting substantial fatalities, according to reports in the Israeli media.

The claim made by Israel’s Channel 12 on Monday evening was based on leaked emails from the Israeli military’s 8200 cyber-intelligence unit discussing the warnings.

Those emails revealed that a senior officer who reviewed the intelligence considered the danger of a massive surprise attack by Hamas across the Gaza border to be “an imaginary scenario”.

Read more…

A book written before October 7 charts the way for Israel after October 7

by Bret Stephens, COMMENTARY

My COMMENTARY review of The Genius of Israel, Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s fascinating and compulsively readable follow-up to their 2009 international bestseller Start-Up Nation, was written, edited, and ready for publication when the catastrophe of October 7 put it on hold. I had given the book a glowing write-up. It offered, I thought, a timely and compelling antidote to the gloom that had beset so many Israelis and Diaspora Jews amid their bitter divisions over Benjamin Netanyahu’s judicial-reform bills. And it showed why Israel was likely to continue to be an outperformer among nations.

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T. Belman. I recently said that the War was having this effect.

While a very small minority in the US and in the EU is marching in support of Hamas, the vast majority of the people are turning against Muslims in both the US and in the EU.

By Dick Morris

Then it all changed and Trump took control. Between October 27th and November 20, Trump led in 16 of 21 surveys, Biden only led in three and two were tied.

Why was the invasion of Israel so decisive?

In the short term, it reminded us all of the dangerous world in which we live as the threat of a wider war loomed increasingly large.

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The @CIA director is in Qatar to negotiate a “comprehensive” deal with Hamas, which will secure the release of all hostages in exchange for the safe exit of Hamas leaders and their families from the Gaza Strip and the handing over of power to “a joint local council of non-Hamas…

— Mudar Adnan Zahran ???????? ????? (@Mudar_Zahran) November 28, 2023

T. Belman. Biden is not counselling us on how to win a war but demanding that we lose the war.

It is evil to sacrifice our boys’ lives to a fake morality that does not exist, “global morality” that is neither global nor moral. 

Hamas is offering all the hostages in exchange for a full ceasefire. In other words, if Israel agrees to lose the war, and accept Hamas’s survival, it will give us the hostages.
If Israel takes this deal, we will be on the fast track to national destruction.

— Caroline Glick (@CarolineGlick) November 28, 2023

Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party is no better than Hamas. It has celebrated the Oct. 7 attacks.

By Eugene Kontorovich  and  Itamar Marcus, WSJ    Nov. 26, 2023

T. Belman. Why does the US treat the Gazans with kid gloves and didn’t give a shit about the Syrian refugees.

Also they keep putting new impediments in our way.

The Biden administration has “reinforced in very clear language” that renewed fighting must not “produce significant further displacement of persons.”

Israeli troops operating in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, Nov. 22, 2023. Credit: IDF.

The White House says it has made clear to the Israeli government that its military campaign in Gaza’s south must differ substantially from its operations in the strip’s north in the opening weeks of its war against Hamas.

A senior administration official, briefing reporters on Tuesday, said U.S. President Joe Biden and others in his government have “reinforced in very clear language with the government of Israel” that the “conduct of the Israeli campaign, when it moves to the south, must be done in a way that is to a maximum extent not designed to produce significant further displacement of persons.”

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Peloni: Michael Doran and Gadi Taub provide a thoughtful analysis on the following topics:

• Will the war continue
• Costs of the pause
• The ongoing war against Bibi’s govt
• Is the consensus of Israelis with or against the hostage deal
• Ending national funding for Haaretz
• much more…

Click on photo for video

November 27, 2023

The hostage deal has moved forward with a tense pause in the fighting. Michael Doran and Gadi Taub discuss how this can now play out, what pressures will be brought to bear by Israel, the US, Hamas and Iran.

Read more…

BY DAVID HARSANYI, FEDERALIST  NOV 28, 2023

Sure, the Israel-Gaza situation is bad right now. But that is no reason to make it worse.

“Ultimately,” contends Sen. Chris Murphy, the next Israeli government “is going to have to put us back on a path to have a Palestinian state. That’s not easy, but it is the only way forward for Israel, is the only way forward for long-term peace.”

Read more…

The Shin Bet interrogated dozens of senior Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 slaughter of Israelis in the South.

By YONAH JEREMY BOB, JPOST > NOVEMBER 22, 2023 12:53

Israeli soldier around the destruction caused by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, October 30, 2023.

The Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) has obtained intelligence regarding the most intimate and sensitive issues related to Hamas operations, their forces’ thinking, and internal dealings, The Jerusalem Post has learned.

Further, the agency has interrogated dozens of the more senior Hamas terrorists who participated in the October 7 slaughter of Israelis in the South.

Read more…

The time has come to discuss the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel. With each passing day, two things become obvious. First, Israel cannot fight the war without U.S. resupply of the Israel Defense Forces. As a consequence, Israel is beholden to the administration’s directives. And second, if Israel follows the Biden administration’s directives, it will lose the war.

Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.

Read more…

T. Belman. Blumenthal is also an antisemite.  Why did Haarets not say so?

Was there really a massacre at Bucha?

The Grayzone editor has a history of denying war crimes, so it’s no surprise he provided a piece that very selectively uses facts, includes purposely edited quotes to change their meaning and grossly plays down the atrocities against Israelis

By Michal Perach, HAARETZ      Nov 27, 2023 12:43 pm IST

Personal belonging left at the location where the Nova festival massacre took place on October 7.Credit: RONEN ZVULUN/Reuters

Max Blumenthal, the editor of The Grayzone website, wrote a piece on October 27 that can only be described as a master class in manipulation. His article provided the basis for the now widespread conspiracy theory denying that Hamas murdered hundreds of Israeli civilians.

No one who knows Blumenthal or The Grayzone was surprised by this: They have a history of denying war crimes committed by Russia, China and the Assad regime in Syria, so this new episode was almost unavoidable. The Grayzone denied the March 2022 massacre by Russian soldiers in Bucha, Ukraine, and accused the Syrian aid group the White Helmets of war crimes that were actually committed by the Assad regime.