"In short, let's wait patiently" the colonel wrote............this after several sustained and very insistent written warnings to Israeli senior intelligence staff that Hamas/Isis/Al Qaeda - the labels are now interchangeable - was preparing a "Jericho Wall" assault on an Israeli military base near the Gaza boundary and kibbutzim in southern Israel.
Terror and destruction were Hamas' aims, vetted up and down their obscure, deadly commanders, who were not distracted as the Israelis were. Hamas' combined terrorist clans are reputed to consist of 35,000 radicalized Muslim and Palestinian men with recruits from around the Middle East and beyond. Remember Wagner? Initial orders are carefully veiled, senior leaders moving freely, often undetected in European society and beyond to control both financing and timing of Hamas' blitzkrieg. Capture-and-kill or kidnap and torture as many Jewish persons as possible, civilian or military, with lightning-quick strikes using deadly hardware to "seriously disrupt and destroy selected ground targets." This was their unified aim. They did. It worked.
Foreign nationals visiting family in Israel were swept up in the horror of explosions, firebursts and screams, then hustled into cars, on the back of motorcycles over the border to Gaza. This was an extremely efficient, bloody and atrocity-filled operation. Then the tortures began. 1300+ Israelis were murdered in their homes or on streets, including one boy whose arm was shattered, hand completely blown off. Parents of little children hid their babies in a cupboard; the sound of terrified crying was heard by terrorists who shot repeatedly through the door until the crying stopped. If you see a similarity with intential mass murders in the U.S. you are correct. Evil loves a high body count.
Hamas' deadly work of October 7 and beyond has achieved their aims to inflict utter horror on innocent people of all ages and the total destruction of Israel and Israelis remains their goal. Hamas has vowed to destroy every person in that country, making the Israelis determined to utterly irradicate Hamas and all its tentacles. A tall order, but Israel has little choice, other than awaiting other attacks. There is no nation on earth which has suffered destruction and persecution more than these children of Abraham and Sarah; for thousands of years, joy has often been fleeting for Jewish sojourners in their own land and in others across eastern and western Europe and north Africa. Afflicted by pogroms (ethnic cleansing), forced into narrow ghettos which became their tombs or points of shipping in boxcars to Hitlers poisoned gas chambers and the constant smoke from crematory furnaces. Some were thrown into these alive, including children, if the gas ran low.
If it does not disturb us to read of these genocides or to acknowledge them as fact, we risk becoming like the beleagued presidents of several major eastern universities, including the clearly deer-in-the-headlights stammer of one of these ladies before Congress, which was her swan song to a credible academic career.
All the smarts in the world cannot give you courage, the sad lack of which has now been seen on every major news network - and of course, by Hamas - Many major donors - into the millions - to academia are highly successful Jewish families including alumnae who can authorize - or retract- huge monetary gifts. They have earned the right to honest profit and contribute greatly to good quality of American life. If they are concerned, should we not be also?
Funding for Hamas comes from usual bad-state-actor sources: Iran, Russia of course and at least one presumably friendly Middle Eastern state. President Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO member (!) supports Hamas' assaults with vocal and public sympathy and a wide corridor of smuggled arms into Gaza: street warfare isn't cheap, and weapons of war cost money - a lot!
Midlevel officers of Israeli Intelligence sensed danger months ago, but were dismissed by senior intel ranked staff and ignored. Early alerts were from female officers. Mysogyny extracts a high price. The womens' correct analysis of an inevitable fanatical strike from Gaza went to the "non-emergency" file. Colonels near top command in the Israeli army counseled "patience" out of the fatal hubris of a hard-bought country which believes none would dare attack it any more.
Beni Netanyahu, the most senior political leader, was never shown what his juniors considered unlikely because "Hamas has not the capacity any more" "We have them contained", etc. Jerusalem no longer questions "how could it happen here.....?." It has........these are horrid, inescapable facts of suffering and death, and the Israeli government dismissed their probability. We read newspapers in America; we see on Internet/TV news the fragmented, incredible images of body counts and bloody, looted homes. These real-time sights are dangerous for us to ignore. They happen NOW. Can we ignore them also? Are there any western parallels, or are we like the respected university president whose desire to stay neutral and keep her job far outweighed even academic integrity? Courage is always a definitive noun. Vacillation is not.
Linda Berry is a Northsider.
