““Hamas comes directly out of the Muslim Brotherhood” in Gaza, “not a spinoff or anything like that. It is the Muslim Brotherhood,” Byman said.
For nearly 40 years, the Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, which became Hamas, didn’t have sufficient power to be a threat to Egypt; they didn’t even participate in the First Intifada, or Palestinian uprising, Byman said. But when Hamas gained that power during its takeover of Gaza in 2007, former Egyptian autocrat Hosni Mubarak called the situation a “coup against legitimacy” and supported Israel’s blockade against Gaza. Mubarak was deposed during the Arab Spring, and Egyptians elected Mohammed Morsi, who was affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood and hoped to expand relations with Gaza.
Morsi served only a year and four days before he was deposed by Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Egypt’s current strongman president. Sisi has heavily suppressed the Muslim Brotherhood and has in the past vilified Hamas and its connection with the Brotherhood. But he has also coordinated with the group against an Islamic State insurgency in the Sinai, supported relief efforts in Gaza, and mediated ceasefires between Israel and Hamas in previous rounds of conflict. That mediating role also strengthens the US’s reliance on Egypt and Sisi.
Still, Egypt’s security concerns are not unfounded; Hamas built several multipurpose tunnels connecting Gaza and Egypt. Those tunnels helped Hamas circumvent the blockade and smuggle in vital supplies like food, medicine, fuel, and construction materials. They are also used to store weapons caches and hide Hamas fighters, and they are difficult to target and destroy. Hamas has also used them to smuggle weapons and perpetrate cross-border raids and kidnappings.”
“In the hours after the Hamas attack on Israel began, users subscribed to X Premium — whose accounts show a verified check mark and get boosted engagement in exchange for a monthly fee — spread a number of particularly egregious pieces of misinformation. According to a running tracker by Media Matters, these accounts amplified a fake White House memo claiming the US government was about to send $8 billion in aid to Israel; circulated videos from other conflicts (and in some cases, footage from a video game) while claiming they showed the latest out of Israel and Gaza; falsely claimed that a church in Gaza had been bombed; and impersonated a news outlet. These posts were shared by X users with huge followings and viewed tens of millions of times. The Tech Transparency Project said on Thursday that it had identified X Premium accounts promoting Hamas propaganda videos, which were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.”
“While Ukraine once had the edge in drone superiority, Russia has begun to catch up, producing more sophisticated and numerous drones, as well as ramping up its electronic warfare systems, which defend against Ukraine’s attacks.
Even though they frequently operate from behind the frontlines, the drone controllers often leave an electronic trace if they aren’t careful, which allows the enemy to pinpoint and follow them, The Economist reported this week.
“A lot of people want to become drone pilots because they think the work is further back and safer,” one front-line commander told the outlet. “The reality is that it’s extremely dangerous to be flying battlefield drones.”
“Hummer,” a commander in Ukraine’s 47th brigade operating along the Zaporizhia front, told The Economist the Russians fire with everything they’ve got as soon as they identify a target.
Russia has employed similar strike drones in Ukraine, but also uses high-precision artillery, mines, and glide bombs to take out the enemy, the outlet reported.
Ukraine has had to rely primarily on volunteers and donations to control and supply its drone stock while Russia has easier access to more expensive reconnaissance drones, allowing the country to increasingly attack Ukrainian positions near the front lines in recent months.
The Economist reported that Russian FPV drones have destroyed multiple Bradley Fighting Vehicles and even a Leopard tank. An infantryman fighting between Robotyne and Verbove told the outlet that Ukrainian losses have significantly increased in part, because of Russia’s use of drones.
In addition to making drone pilots sought-after targets, the war’s reliance on drone warfare has also forced both sides to adapt in real time; equipment that can detect and defend against electronic warfare has become a necessity on the battlefield.
“If your cover is poor, then you are likely a dead man,” a drone pilot operating in the Zaporizhia province, told The Economist. “God, not physics, decides if you survive.””
““Now we’re fighting a conventional Russian army, but before Bakhmut fell, the Wagner group was in the area, and they had a particularly terrible approach to this. The group sent forward unarmed men, mostly prisoners, with ammunition for the next group who were experienced mercenaries. They thus used the prisoners as a meat transport machine for ammunition and equipment,” says Mathew, a medic with Ukraine’s Third Assault Brigade. He took The Daily Beast in his ambulance to watch them picking up soldiers like ‘Cossack’ from the front line and delivering them to hospitals for emergency treatment. This approach, they say, was uncomfortably effective. “They had no fear” he says, because the consequences of retreat were “certain death”
Michael Kofman of the Center for Naval Analysis told The Daily Beast: “Wagner troops were better motivated, but in the Stalinist tradition that in Wagner it took more courage to retreat than to attack”—knowing they would be shot at any sign of retreat. He notes that they also had “a significant artillery advantage provided by the Russian military (hence Prigozhin’s endless arguments for more munitions), having their flanks secured by the Russian airborne, and a large supply of expendable fighters from the Russian prison system,” all of which are lacked by the current Russian forces. He also points out that “Wagner had not been used, or set up, as a defensive force in this war and so it is unclear how they would have performed on the defense around Bakhmut’s flanks.”
Since Wagner vanished, Matthew says the quality of the Russian soldiers has declined and the men are more likely to flee or let their lines break under pressure. “The ones we meet don’t even pick up their dead,” he said.”
…
““The counteroffensive is going well,” he says, but what he fears most is a longer war. “Everyone who wanted to fight signed up long ago,” he says from a café in the city of Slovyansk. “If the Russians wanted to, they have millions of men they can mobilize. We are at our total limit.””
“The Iran-backed group has lost 47 fighters to Israeli strikes at Lebanon’s frontier since its Palestinian ally Hamas and Israel went to war on Oct. 7 – about a fifth of the number killed in a full-scale war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.
With most of its fighters killed in Israeli drone strikes, Hezbollah has unveiled its surface-to-air missile capability for the first time, declaring on Sunday it downed an Israeli drone. The missiles are part of an increasingly potent arsenal.
The Israeli military has not commented on Sunday’s reported drone incident. But Israel said on Saturday it had stopped a surface-to-air missile fired from Lebanon at one of its drones and that it responded by striking the launch site.
One of the sources familiar with Hezbollah’s thinking told Reuters that the use of anti-aircraft missiles was one of several steps taken by the Shi’ite Muslim group to curb its losses and counter Israeli drones, which have picked off its fighters in the rocky terrain and olive groves along the border.
Hezbollah had made “arrangements to reduce the number of martyrs”, the source said, without offering further details.”