Tag: terrorists
A $2M missile vs. a $2,000 drone: Pentagon worried over cost of Houthi attacks
“As American warships rack up kills against Houthi drones and missiles in the Red Sea, Pentagon officials are increasingly alarmed not just at the threat to U.S. naval forces and international shipping — but at the growing cost of keeping them safe.
U.S. Navy destroyers have shot down 38 drones and multiple missiles in the Red Sea over the past two months, according to a Defense Department official, as the Iran-backed militants have stepped up attacks on commercial vessels moving energy and oil through the world’s most vital shipping lanes. On Saturday alone, the destroyer USS Carney intercepted 14 one-way attack drones.
Houthi leaders have said the attacks are a show of support for the Palestinians, and that they won’t stop until Israel halts its operations in Gaza. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Monday announced a new international maritime coalition to safeguard shipping and counter the attacks.
The cost of using expensive naval missiles — which can run up to $2.1 million a shot — to destroy unsophisticated Houthi drones — estimated at a few thousand dollars each — is a growing concern”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/2m-missile-vs-2-000-190000271.html
As the Israel-Hamas War Governs the World’s Attention, Iran Is Quietly Marching Towards Nuclear Breakout
“Tehran has enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon in only 12 days according to data collected from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran is essentially a nuclear threshold state given their stockpile of uranium, with estimated enrichment levels as high as 84%. For context, 90% is the benchmark for full breakout capability. International sanctions on the regime’s ballistic missile program have also been allowed to expire, giving the regime carte blanche to further develop and proliferate the delivery vehicles necessary for a potential strike with the ability to reach Tel Aviv, Haifa, or even a European capital.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-hamas-war-governs-worlds-163112591.html
German police seize bomb-making material in raids on Hamas suspects
“German police have removed boxes of ice pack gels used to make explosives from properties linked to four men arrested on Thursday night over a Hamas plot to attack Jewish institutions in Europe.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/german-police-seize-bomb-making-121256171.html
Israel moves into southern Gaza after a week-long truce — and its goals are murkier than ever
“The continued, widespread bombing of civilian buildings to get at the tunnels underneath, where Hamas protects fighters and its supplies, has already caused thousands of deaths, but Raphael Cohen, director of the strategy and doctrine program with RAND Project AIR FORCE, told Vox there’s no real alternative.
“Israel’s been seized with the tunnel issue since Operation Protective Edge, so at least since 2014, at least the past decade, and has invested a lot of time and energy into … how you detect these things, but hasn’t figured out a foolproof way of finding them, particularly without being there on the ground,” he said. “There’s no silver bullet to detect them, and once you find them, then you have to destroy the tunnel, and there’s no clean way to do it.”
But an investigation by the Israeli outlets +972 and Local Call this week indicates that in northern Gaza, the IDF was far less precise in its operations than necessary to keep from harming civilians — backing up what Israeli officials have already said about their approach being destructive rather than surgical. According to the investigation, based on interviews with current and former Israeli intelligence operatives, the military “has files on the vast majority of potential targets in Gaza — including homes — which stipulate the number of civilians who are likely to be killed in an attack on a particular target.”
Some of those targets, which the military calls “power targets” are “not distinctly military in nature,” according to the investigation, and “include private residences as well as public buildings, infrastructure, and high-rise blocks.” The investigation found that the military has stepped up its attacks on power targets in the latest conflict, dubbed “Operation Swords of Iron.” That, in turn, has exponentially increased the number of civilian casualties, as has the use of artificial intelligence to generate Hamas targets, according to the report.
“When a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it’s because someone in the army decided it wasn’t a big deal for her to be killed — that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,” one source told the outlet. “We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional. We know exactly how much collateral damage there is in every home.”
The IDF has destroyed much of northern Gaza’s infrastructure — around 98,000 buildings have been demolished or damaged in the north, according to a BBC review of satellite imagery. Throughout the region, about 60 percent of the housing stock has been damaged or destroyed, Al Jazeera reported.”
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/2023/12/2/23985622/israel-goals-southern-gaza-truce-hamas
Gaza & Global Order: A Conversation with Yuval Noah Harari (Episode #341)
The Islamic Roots of Hamas (w/ David Wood)
Netanyahu: Don’t accuse me of boosting Hamas with Qatari money
“Most incriminatingly, Netanyahu himself said in 2019 at a Likud party conference: “Anyone who wants to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state needs to support strengthening Hamas.”
Netanyahu on Tuesday, however, dismissed those charges, claiming he only allowed Qatari money to flow into Gaza to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe, not to strengthen the arm of the administration there.
“We wanted to avoid a civilian humanitarian collapse — disease, rampant hunger and other things that would have created an impossible humanitarian situation,” he said. “That’s why successive Israeli governments allowed this money to go in, not in order to strengthen Hamas. We didn’t want to strengthen Hamas at all. We wanted to weaken it and degrade its capabilities as far as we could.””
https://www.politico.eu/article/benjamin-netanyahu-hamas-qatar-money-war-israel-gaza-palestine/
‘It Feels Like the New McCarthyism’: How the Israel-Hamas War Is Redefining the Limits of Free Speech
“So far, most of the firings appear to have been for expressing pro-Palestinian views — the U.S.-based advocacy organization Palestine Legal reports that they’ve responded to over 260 cases of people’s “livelihoods or careers” being targeted. But the fact that these firings have been due in large part to social media posts and the widespread broadcasting of personal political beliefs means that the trend may not stay on one issue or one side of a dispute for long; Lakier says that we are watching the relationship between free expression and employment shift in real time.
Currently, regulations concerning speech and private employment oscillate wildly from state to state — about half of states have no protections for private employees who express political beliefs, while others have laws that vary in terms of scope. Many of the employment laws that do exist find their roots in the 19th century and are little use in navigating the 21st century workplace. Meanwhile, ideas about protected speech are constantly shifting in the culture: After 9/11, for example, the war on terror brought with it new examinations into what kind of speech promulgates terrorism. More recently, debates over “cancel culture” on campuses and in the workplace have brought up similar questions of what speech is permissible — and when consequences are justified.
“The First Amendment has always had exceptions, but those exceptions can expand under pressure,” Lakier told me. Since the Israel-Hamas war began, “people are interpreting the category of hate speech or the incitement of violent speech very, very broadly to include speech that in my view is totally legitimate, often pro-peace speech.””
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/11/04/israel-hamas-cease-fire-free-speech-00125333
India bars protests that support the Palestinians. Analysts say a pro-Israel shift helps at home
“From Western capitals to Muslim states, protest rallies over the Israel-Hamas war have made headlines. But one place known for its vocal pro-Palestinian stance has been conspicuously quiet: Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Indian authorities have barred any solidarity protest in Muslim-majority Kashmir and asked Muslim preachers not to mention the conflict in their sermons, residents and religious leaders told The Associated Press.
The restrictions are part of India’s efforts to curb any form of protest that could turn into demands for ending New Delhi’s rule in the disputed region. They also reflect a shift in India’s foreign policy under populist Prime Minister Narendra Modi away from its long-held support for the Palestinians, analysts say.
India has long walked a tightrope between the warring sides, with historically close ties to both. While India strongly condemned the Oct. 7 attack by the militant group Hamas and expressed solidarity with Israel, it urged that international humanitarian law be upheld in Gaza amid rising civilian deaths.”
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“Kashmiris have long shown strong solidarity with the Palestinians and often staged large anti-Israel protests during previous fighting in Gaza. Those protests often turned into street clashes, with demands for an end of India’s rule and dozens of casualties.”
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“India “views Israel’s assault on Gaza as a counterterrorism operation meant to eliminate Hamas and not directly target Palestinian civilians, exactly the way Israel views the conflict,” Kugelman said. He added that from New Delhi’s perspective, “such operations don’t pause for humanitarian truces.”
India’s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, sought to justify India’s abstention.
“It is not just a government view. If you ask any average Indian, terrorism is an issue which is very close to people’s heart, because very few countries and societies have suffered terrorism as much as we have,” he told a media event in New Delhi on Saturday.
Even though Modi’s government has sent humanitarian assistance for Gaza’s besieged residents, many observers viewed its ideological alignment with Israel as potentially rewarding at a time when the ruling party in New Delhi is preparing for multiple state elections this month and crucial national polls next year.
The government’s shift aligns with widespread support for Israel among India’s Hindu nationalists who form a core vote bank for Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party. It also resonates with the coverage by Indian TV channels of the war from Israel. The reportage has been seen as largely in line with commentary used by Hindu nationalists on social media to stoke anti-Muslim sentiment that in the past helped the ascendance of Modi’s party.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/india-bars-protests-support-palestinians-050240589.html