Lone Candle
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More than six months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, Israel is still fighting the militants in Gaza.
The IDF has managed to kill some of Hamas’ top commanders, but it continues to hunt down others.
These individuals are likely hiding underground, a top White House official said last month.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-struggling-kill-top-hamas-114502763.html
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More than six months after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, Israel is still fighting the militants in Gaza.
The IDF has managed to kill some of Hamas’ top commanders, but it continues to hunt down others.
These individuals are likely hiding underground, a top White House official said last month.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-struggling-kill-top-hamas-114502763.html
Israel-Palestine Debate: Finkelstein, Destiny, M. Rabbani & Benny Morris | Lex Fridman Podcast #418
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X_KdkoGxSs
“This gives us a minimum number of civilian war deaths of approximately 15,700. Based on 29,000 airstrikes, this leads to an average of 54 civilians killed per 100 attacks.
How does this compare to other operations? A roughly comparable operation where we have similar data is urban operations in Raqqa, Syria, against the Islamic State. In the Raqqa operation, according to DOD reporting, there were 178 civilian deaths and 10,663 airstrikes—an average of 1.7 civilian deaths per 100 attacks. This number for Raqqa was not considered to be good—never mind a gold standard. In fact, there was so much concern about the levels of civilian harm and destruction in Raqqa that DOD conducted an independent assessment of civilian harm (disclaimer: I was a member of the team that authored the report). The findings of this assessment contributed to the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan (CHMR-AP) directed by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. In the report, we also mention that this DoD estimate is likely low. For example, our study team considered the Airwars estimate of 744 civilian deaths to be more realistic. This yields a higher average of 7.0 civilian deaths per 100 attacks.
Despite the alarm over the high rate of civilian deaths in Raqqa, one finds the minimum equivalent in Gaza—54 civilians killed in 100 attacks—is eight times greater than the Airwars-based estimate and 32 times greater than the DOD estimate. And recall that 54 is a lower bound for the Gaza ratio; it is likely far higher than this. Just as miners in California could see the appearance of iron pyrite—fool’s gold—and think they had struck the real thing, it is possible to look at the IDF’s precautionary measures and at first glance think they are practicing civilian harm mitigation. But whether evaluating the IDF’s performance on its process or its results, it fails to qualify as a gold standard.”
https://www.justsecurity.org/93105/israeli-civilian-harm-mitigation-in-gaza-gold-standard-or-fools-gold/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47r1fZS77G0
“Earlier this month, the top U.S. general in the Middle East said ISIS-K could attack U.S. and Western interests outside of Afghanistan “in as little as six months and with little to no warning.””
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“While the attack by ISIS-K in Russia on Friday was a dramatic escalation, experts said the group has opposed Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent years.
“ISIS-K has been fixated on Russia for the past two years, frequently criticizing Putin in its propaganda,” said Colin Clarke of Soufan Center, a New York-based research group.
Michael Kugelman of the Washington-based Wilson Center said that ISIS-K “sees Russia as being complicit in activities that regularly oppress Muslims.”
He added that the group also counts as members a number of Central Asian militants with their own grievances against Moscow.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/explainer-why-did-isis-k-011615857.html
“Assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group’s branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.”
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“the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”
In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of former Soviet Union.
On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.”
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“Friday’s attack followed a statement earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged Americans to avoid crowded places in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in the Russian capital, including concerts. The warning was repeated by several other Western embassies.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gunmen-combat-fatigues-open-fire-174053657.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5njQUiMsAY0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1y4FScVth_0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssZOYP2C6FU