He's been PM 16 yrs, how long before we started recognizing Putin as the dictator that he is? Israel has been having their Orban moment for a few yrs now but the US is too pussy to call it out.
‘Sponge bombs’: Israel’s new secret weapon for inside Hamas tunnels By Dominic Nicholls October 27, 2023 https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle...for-inside-hamas-tunnels-20231026-p5ef3q.html London: Israel is preparing to use novel “sponge bombs” in its fight against Hamas through the network of tunnels under Gaza. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has been testing the chemical bombs, which contain no explosives but are used to seal off gaps or tunnel entrances from which fighters may emerge. The IDF has not commented on the use of the so-called “sponge bombs”, which create a sudden explosion of foam that rapidly expands and then hardens. An Israeli soldier stands on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza, near the opening of a tunnel, that Israel says was dug by the Islamic Jihad militant group, leading from Gaza into Israel.Credit: AP Its soldiers were seen deploying the devices during exercises in 2021. The army has set up a mock tunnel system at the Tze’Elim army base near the border with Gaza. Troops face a bloody battle through the tunnels known as the “Gaza Metro” when they launch their expected ground invasion. The network is thought to be hundreds of kilometres long and dense with traps. It is where Hamas has taken many of the more than 200 hostages and where its leaders will hope to survive the coming war. One of the less sophisticated Hamas tunnels, as seen in 2004.Credit: AP The “sponge bomb” would prevent soldiers being ambushed as they move further into the network, sealing off gaps through which Hamas could attack. Contained in a sturdy plastic vessel, the specialist devices have a metal partition in the middle separating two liquids. Once this barrier is extracted, the compounds mix as the soldier positions the “bomb” or throws it further ahead. Specialised teams in the engineering corps have been grouped into tunnel reconnaissance units and equipped with ground and aerial sensors, ground penetrating radar and special drilling systems to locate tunnels. Hamas has integrated underground warfare into its overall military strategy.Credit: AP They have also been issued with special equipment to see when underground. Standard issue night vision goggles need an element of ambient light to work effectively, but with all natural light blocked out when moving underground, troops will rely on thermal technology to see in the total darkness. Novel radios, optimised for working in the extreme conditions experienced underground, have also been developed. There are potential complications with the underground arsenal, however. The “sponge bomb” – technically a liquid emulsion – is hazardous to work with, and some Israeli soldiers have lost their sight through mishandling the mixture. An opening of a tunnel is visible on the Israeli side of the border with Gaza.Credit: AP Israel may also use robots and drones to help soldiers navigate the tunnels – but so far, there have been difficulties operating these underground. Some of the robots will be controlled by wires spooling out of the rear of the device. Others will rely on standard radio waves, but will need a series of repeater nodes to be dropped off en route as radio signals degrade quickly underground. Micro-drones for reconnaissance, capable of being held in the palm of a hand, may also be used but will similarly suffer as the radio signal weakens. The Israel-based Roboteam technology company has developed IRIS, a small, throwable drone that can be driven on large wheels via remote control. Known by special forces as a “throwbot”, it relays images back to a controller, operating the device from a position of safety. Some devices can have weapons attached so that if enemy combatants are seen, the controller can detonate explosives. Alongside the IRIS, it has developed the MTGR, a “micro tactical ground robot” that can climb stairs and is designed to be operated by soldiers in buildings and caves. John Spencer, a former US major who chairs urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point, says subterranean fighting is “more like fighting underwater than fighting in buildings”. “Nothing that is used on the surface works in the same way or with the same efficiency underground. “Specialised equipment is needed to see, to breathe, to navigate, to map the space, to communicate and to deploy lethal means.” Risking civilian lives Hamas, a designated terrorist organisation in Australia and the US, has integrated underground warfare into its overall military strategy. Related Article Tunnels, some started decades ago, are no longer just places of refuge or concealment, but are integral parts of a wider plan to prepare the ground for ambushing Israeli forces above. Many stretch under civilian structures, with entry and exit points in dwellings and other non-military buildings, making it extremely difficult for Israel to attack them without inviting international condemnation. A “standard” tunnel is about two metres high and one metre wide, which enables them to be built quickly. They are sometimes reinforced with concrete and metal but are not especially sophisticated. Others however, have power, water and ventilation and are used for command centres and rest stations, weapons storage, infiltration into Israel and routes to secret rocket launching sites. In some parts there is even thought to be a small rail system for the transportation of weapons and building equipment. The last major attempt to destroy the system was in 2014’s Operation Protective Edge, but the network has been rebuilt since. Military commanders in the IDF must decide if they want to render the structures useless, by pouring in concrete for example, as they did with the tunnels dug by Hezbollah in the north of the country. Alternatively, they may need to keep the structures intact, clearing out Hamas fighters as they move through the system searching for the estimated hostages. The “normal” military responses to tunnels, of using explosives to destroy them or flooding to render them useless, is probably not practical. Dominic Nicholls served for 23 years in the British Army with operational deployments in Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans and Northern Ireland. The Telegraph, London
Putin invites Hamas in Moscow. It's interesting how far provocation will go. Looks like Israel made quite a mistake supporting ukrainian nazis Putin might decide to support democracy in Palestine by some anti air craft systems
Israel have a lukewarm approach toward supporting Ukraine's war against Russia even though many Jews live there, neither does Israel exactly condemn Russia.
In-depth material with videos and photos conclusively proves the rocket which hit the hospital was launched by Hamas. A barrage and a midair explosion: What visual evidence shows about the Gaza hospital blast Videos analyzed by The Post reveal that rockets were launched from Gaza in the direction of the hospital 44 seconds before an explosion there https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/10/26/gaza-hospital-blast-evidence-israel-hamas/
Will unconditional US support for Israel harm its ties with the Arab world? The US’ unwavering support for Israel has exposed both double standards and strategic short-sightedness, observers say. United States President Joe Biden is greeted by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after arriving in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, October18 [Evan Vucci/AP Photo] By Paul Adrian Raymond Published On 27 Oct 2023 https://www.aljazeera.com/features/...ch-to-gaza-damaging-ties-with-its-arab-allies The United States’ public support for Israel’s all-out assault on Gaza is undermining its relationships with its Arab allies and risks doing long-term damage to its standing in the region, analysts say. Perennial US allies such as Jordan have openly criticised what they see as Washington’s green light for Israel to do as it sees fit in Gaza after more than 1,405 people were killed following an attack by the armed wing of the Palestinian group Hamas, and fighters took some 200 people captive, according to Israeli officials. Israel has responded by pounding the Palestinian enclave of Gaza with air raids that have already killed more than 7,028 Palestinians. It is widely expected to launch a ground invasion. For its part, the US is “increasingly pushing behind the scenes for better Israeli decision-making, but it’s also providing weapons to Israel carte blanche”, said Josh Paul, a former senior official at the Department of State who publicly quit his post last week in protest at the strategy. “Washington is giving unambiguous and unquestioned military support to Israel despite what many in the region see as a deep injustice. We have tried to frame ourselves as an honest broker, but we’re removing what little credibility we had left in that role,” he told Al Jazeera. When US President Joe Biden visited Israel last week, he pledged the US’s full support, although he also negotiated a trickle of aid into Gaza and warned Israelis not to be “consumed” by rage. He also backed Israel’s claim that Palestinian fighters were to blame for a deadly blast at a hospital in Gaza, although the main video evidence for that has been debunked and controversy is still raging over who was responsible. Biden on Friday made a speech from the White House saying he had asked Congress for even more military assistance to Israel, barely mentioning the spiralling Palestinian death toll except to accuse Hamas of using “Palestinian civilians as human shields”. ‘Double standards’ In an impassioned speech at a Cairo summit on Saturday to discuss de-escalation, Jordan’s King Abdullah II said the message Arabs were hearing from the West was “loud and clear”. “Palestinian lives matter less than Israeli ones. Our lives matter less than other lives. The application of international law is optional. And human rights have boundaries – they stop at borders, they stop at races, and they stop at religions,” he said. His remarks, delivered in English as a message to Western leaders, echoed the feelings of many in the region where blanket US support for an occupying power is seen as particularly troublesome given Washington’s backing of Ukraine since Russia invaded it early last year. Omar Rahman, a fellow at the Middle East Council on Global Affairs research institution, told Al Jazeera that “the level of double standards and hypocrisy coming out of the West is hitting home at a more fundamental level than before. “There has always been a double standard when it came to Israel, but in the last two years, it has become a lot starker in light of the Ukraine conflict. That contrast has been particularly obvious over the past two weeks.” Even before the Cairo peace summit, Jordan had cancelled a planned meeting with Biden and the Egyptian and Palestinian Authority leaders to discuss Gaza until the parties could agree to end the “war and the massacres against Palestinians”, blaming Israel for pushing the region to “the brink of the abyss”. Speaking at a press conference at the United Nations on Tuesday, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry also slammed Western “double standards” over Israel’s actions, saying that the suffering it is causing Palestinian civilians is not “self-defence”. Meanwhile, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud told the Security Council that the world must take “a firm stand to end the military operations”. People protest in support of Palestinians in Gaza in Sanaa, Yemen on October 20, 2023 [Khaled Abdullah/Reuters] Protests Rahman said Arab governments needed to maintain ties with the US but also avoid being seen as complicit with an onslaught that has brought tens of thousands of protesters onto the streets from Iraq to Morocco. “Arab leaders also have an eye to their own publics, who are visibly angry and voicing discontent on the streets,” Rahman said. “People are fed up with this [American] support in the face of what Israel’s doing now,” he said. “It’s not only a threat to Palestinian lives en masse but also a threat to regional stability.” The potential for unrest could be seen in Egypt on Friday when the administration of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi organised rallies at Cairo’s iconic Tahrir Square in solidarity with Gaza. Some protesters were filmed shouting slogans from the Arab Spring protests that led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak in 2011. The anger is not only in Arab capitals. Over the weekend, HuffPost reported that a “mutiny” was brewing at the State Department where staff were preparing a rare “dissent cable” of internal criticism delivered to senior officials at moments of crisis. That report came days after Paul resigned over what he called an “impulsive” and “immensely disappointing” policy, warning against “blind support for one side”. A woman holds her three-year-old son, Ekrem Salih Abu Shemale, who was killed by an Israeli air raid in Gaza City on October 26 [Abed Zagout/Anadolu via Getty Images] Side-stepping the conflict Speaking to Al Jazeera this week, Paul said the Biden administration’s attempt to side-step the Palestinian issue even prior to the latest conflict is counterproductive. Since taking office, Biden has sought to roll back US engagement with the Middle East, while working to broker a deal with Saudi Arabia similar to the Abraham Accords that the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed in 2020 normalising ties with Israel. The drive for such a deal, which Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in September would “need to solve” the Palestinian issue, is now firmly on ice. “The strategy it has been pursuing, building on the Trump administration’s Abraham Accords, is misguided,” Paul said. It “assumes one can build on them without having to worry about the Palestinian question. But we’ve seen that there’s no way of avoiding the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the civil and human rights of the Palestinian people,” he said. “The current path will simply lead to more suffering, death and insecurity for both Palestinians and Israelis.” James Ryan, director of research and the Middle East Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), said that the US strategy was “short-termist”. “There can be no stable normalisation without a political solution to the Palestinian question, so when this conflict reared its head, it showed the short-sightedness and superficiality of that strategy,” he said. In an analysis from last year, Ryan noted that Biden’s national security strategy, which involves normalisation efforts in the Middle East, emphasises “stability, however authoritarian, rather than rights.” And while previous wars in Gaza have stirred similar levels of anger, Rahman noted that this time there was a “fundamental difference” in terms of the effect on US standing in the region. “The standing of the US as the world’s sole superpower is in decline, and with that its allies are acting more autonomously, taking more assertive postures and balancing their ties with other rising powers like China,” he said. “We’re at a reckoning. That doesn’t mean the US is ‘just another country’ – obviously, it’s still one of most powerful – but there’s a challenge to that.” Source: Al Jazeera
Unconditional support is harming US ties with the rest of the world anyway. Who outside the US sees their support as anything but a product of decades of lobbying so you can't easily fundraise without touting Israel. Religous extremist Amercian freaks and Jews together. A quick and simple why modern Israelis can't make the bible descendants claim. But for a very few, they are are not or too fractionally those people. They are from the caucases. The semetic people were a lot of cultures and faiths from around the area. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Semitic_religion