The hostages are not going to be released en mass. They'll be prioritized for value and traded, in a best case, for Hamas prisoners and other Hamas (and their Patrons) priorities. Some may be retained for months as ongoing bargaining chips.

By mid week we may see some shocking displays of cruelty against selected hostages in an attempt to get Israel to stand down or use as a demo of what could happen to other hostages.

quote:

You have to understand first the Israeli people are a peaceful and welcoming people. Look at the number of Arabs living in Israel and allowed to be a part of the The Knesset. Imagine if almost 10% of our Congress was people hellbent on US destruction.

Ummm, pretty sure we have at least 10%.

But yes, I know what you meant.

It has been 51 years ago, but after the 1972 Munich attack on the Olympic athletes, the Israelis mounted a no holds barred covert operation to target those responsible for the massacre. There is a great mini-series about the operation: Sword of Gideon.
I can only hope Israel has the resolve to carry out a similar operation on those who have now attacked them.

Thank God Netanyahu is in charge again. The Israeli response is going to be longer than most think.

Yes, it seems to me that Hamas was thinking that this was business as usual; every so often, they attack Israel, Israel responds, it goes on for a while, then things cool down.

It shows how wrapped up in themselves they are. I don't think they really understand what they've done. They feel completely justified in their savagery and they think most of the world sympathizes with them. These are not bright people.

Interesting article with observations of the “players”.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/de...china-russia-us.html

MARK ALMOND: The savagery displayed by Hamas will change the world more than 9/11 did. Now China and Russia will move to seize the advantage

Mark Almond

Beyond the immediate devastation, the shockwaves from the barbaric assault by Hamas on Israel are now reverberating across the world.

Monstrous in its scale, pitiless in its savagery, this unprecedented attack has ramifications that may be felt far beyond the Middle East — and for decades to come.

It is no exaggeration to argue that the primitive savagery displayed by Hamas at the weekend has sparked a geopolitical earthquake.

The sudden shifting of global tectonic plates means that not only Israel's local rivals, such as Iran, but the West's rivals, China and Russia, may well now move to take advantage of the immediate focus on the Middle East.

The Israelis' retaliating bombardment will whip up the Palestinian cause, encouraging fundamentalism and thereby weakening moderate Arab governments like that of Egypt. Pictured, a missile explodes in Gaza City during an Israeli air strike
The element of surprise and the harrowing death toll have inevitably led to comparisons between Hamas's blood-soaked offensive and 9/11 in New York.

In fact, Al Qaeda then posed no risk of starting a world war and Bin Laden had no plans what to do after his atrocity.

In contrast, Hamas's indiscriminate attack on Israel could well change the world order.

As has been reported, Hamas is bankrolled by Iran. The terror group's weaponry, including the missiles that rained down on Israel at the weekend, were designed and paid for by Tehran.

Ayatollahs have very specific aims in employing Hamas against Israel.

A key goal is to undo the thawing of relations between the Jewish state and other Middle Eastern nations — Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan — that occurred between September 2020 and January 2021 with the signing of the Abraham Accords during the Presidency of Donald Trump (who, in contrast to his fiery, war-mongering image, was actually an advocate of peace and co-operation in the Middle East).

Tehran loathes this reconciliatory process. The ayatollahs deny that the State of Israel has any right to exist, and insist it should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Any peace process ending Israel's isolation would push Iran further into the cold.

Provoking Israel also enables Hamas and Iran to stir up sympathy for the Palestinian cause across the Middle East.

Contrary to most Western reporting, the terrorists' cynical slaughter of defenceless civilians, raping women and kidnapping others, gets little mention in the Arab media.

Rather, images of the 'victims' of Israeli retaliation are the ones shown on television stations throughout the Middle East.

In the heart of this maelstrom, Arab leaders now face pressure from below to pick a side. Saudi Arabia has already cancelled any plans to deal with Israel and appears to blame Israel for the violence inflicted on it.

Iran enjoys several other benefits from inflaming this proxy war. One is to establish its Shia brand of Islam as the prime enemy of Israel, eclipsing the influence of Saudi Arabia, which upholds the alternative Sunni creed.

Tehran can trumpet the ideological purity of the Shia code to the Muslim world in contrast to Riyadh, whose Sunni regime they'll portray as fatally compromised by attempts at rapprochement with Israel.

The Israelis' retaliating bombardment will whip up the Palestinian cause, encouraging fundamentalism and thereby weakening moderate Arab governments like that of Egypt — which will be destabilised even further by huge refugee flows from Gaza.

Elsewhere, Iran will now benefit (as, too, will Russia) from the inevitable surge in oil prices as the dangers of a wider Middle Eastern war rise. Meanwhile, the Western economies, already stuttering, face a 1973-style oil-price shock which could cause rifts as each country tries to save its own industry.

Then there are the military implications of this conflict.

An emboldened Iran will extend the export of its missile and drone technology, which is already playing an important role for Russia in its campaign against Ukraine.

Indeed Moscow, though it has had good relations with Israel, has much to gain from a new Middle Eastern conflict.

The U.S. is likely to feel pressure to strengthen Israel's defences against Hamas rockets with weapons like the highly effective Patriot surface-to-air anti-missile system.

America does not have a big stockpile of these Patriots, and Israel will receive priority, meaning there will be far fewer for President Zelensky's government.

So Moscow and Tehran stand to gain plenty from a long conflict which draws in Israel's neighbours.

For us in the West, things will be much worse than they were after the Yom Kippur War exactly half a century ago, which generated the 1973 shock.

Our national grid is already having difficulty coping with high demand, but we could be heading back to power cuts and the three-day week.

Then, Britain was the basket case, but tomorrow a hike in oil prices could cause mayhem across a fragile global economy.

Above all it would be the West — Europe, America and Japan — who will take the economic hit, not Russia or China.

Just at a time when the West needs resolution from the very top, the White House's elderly incumbent is a figure whose mental faculties and grasp of policy fail to inspire any confidence.

The sense of weakness that President Joe Biden exudes was embodied in his ludicrously unbalanced deal with Tehran last month, in which the U.S. paid a ransom of $6 billion in return for the release of just five prisoners held in Iran.

It equalled a direct incentive to hostage-taking, which might explain why Hamas has taken to this tactic in its most recent assault.

American distraction in the Middle East will also be welcomed by China and North Korea, who will feel that they have greater scope to fulfil their territorial and nuclear ambitions in the Pacific.

Amid a deepening Cold War in the Far East, China has adopted a stance of escalating menace towards Taiwan and even the Philippines, and such threats will only be encouraged by the deployment of the biggest American aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald Ford, to the Eastern Mediterranean to bolster Israel this week.

At the same time, the North Korean dictatorship, which already has strong military relations with Tehran, could use the current atmosphere of turmoil to threaten Japan or South Korea.

Suspicions that Kim Jong Un and the ayatollahs have shared nuclear know-how for years could now to turn to Pyongyang slipping a weapon of mass destruction or two to Iran. That would spark a crisis of Armageddon proportions with Israel and the West.

And if this wasn't enough, the fallout from Hamas's attack could re-ignite the tinderbox of civil war in Syria.

President Assad's government has been moving soldiers to the Israeli border, leaving space for ISIS to re-emerge.

Meanwhile Turkey, a strong supporter of Hamas, feels increasingly emboldened to launch an assault on the restive Kurds there.

Next door in Lebanon, the powerful Shiite Islamist group Hezbollah might decide to use its vast Iran-supplied missile arsenal against Israel to show its 'solidarity' with Palestine.

Might there be a time, once this has played out, when we look back on the post-9/11 world order with nostalgia?

The prophecy of the great Irish poet W.B. Yeats seems all too appropriate as circles of crisis overlap and worsen each other.

'Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.'

Mark Almond is Director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford

quote:

It is no exaggeration to argue that the primitive savagery displayed by Hamas at the weekend has sparked a geopolitical earthquake.

I agree that it's not an exaggeration, and I think history has demonstrated that this slow-motion domino effect is the kind of thing that leads to catastrophe.

Israel finds itself in an untenable position: respond weakly and face further - and more lethal attacks. Respond in full and destroy their enemies, and face condemnation from the Jew-hating globalist assholes at the UN and risk all-out attacks from Iran, which might compel Israel to employ nuclear weapons and then, it'll be Saturday night in Sioux City.

If these Islamists think they can control this conflict, then they have no understanding of what will happen when they back a small, nuclear-armed nation into a corner.

And count on the ridiculous ass-clowns in the Biden administration to make the wrong moves, every step of the way.

It is a horrible thought, but part of me is thinking that the "human shield" thing may have to be ignored to exact revenge.

If I were a hostage, I would pray that a 500 lbs. bomb landed on me and ended me quickly and mercifully.

I cannot believe that the hostages are being treated humanely based on what I saw in some of those videos.

Call me what you want, but that may be the best ending for a lot of those people that have been taken.

God help them all...

The hostages can only delay for a short time the whirlwind which is going to tear these terrorists to shreds. Forgive me for belaboring the point, but, really, they have no idea what they have done.

That is a very sobering article that 2Bob posted just above.

Stateside- once the realization of what is going on seeps down into our culture- I anticipate an uptick in gun sales, increased ammunition prices and decreased availability, and a growing interest in prepping.

All those people who have been called whackos because they've amassed a 12 year supply of food will become visionaries almost overnight.

I doubt we'll get pulled into what is to come, but China is the wildcard, and self-preservation is an innate human behavior.

The key will be if Israel is compelled to use nuclear weapons against Iran. If that happens, I anticipate things going badly PDQ.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:
All those people who have been called whackos because they've amassed a 12 year supply of food will become visionaries almost overnight.

An expired can of baked beans may sound pretty tasty.

Even if things do not go too horribly sideways people are going to realize pdq that FJB's knee-capping of our energy independence, which IS 'national security' in so many ways, puts a knife at the neck of almost every household in this country.

I am sure that PDJT will continue to hammer away at this fact on every campaign stop, speech and press-conference that he delivers / holds.

With the SPR at record lows (according to what I have read, which may or may not be accurate) the country does not have a lot of 'emergency' back-up in a close to worst-case scenario.

Call them 'animals' but they are not.

Survival instinct motivates animals, not taught & learned hatred.

They're not animals. They are pure evil.

You're correct- this is not the behavior of animals.

savage săv′ĭj

Not domesticated or cultivated; wild.

Not civilized; barbaric.

Vicious or merciless; brutal.

"I think he (Joe Biden) has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades,” - former Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

I suspect that Joe Biden's record of near 100% failure and error will remain intact when this is over.

quote:

Originally posted by PeteF:

quote:

Originally posted by Mars_Attacks:
Every time they murder a hostage, one random square mile of gaza gets flattened, civilians and all. DOn't stop until every hostage is returned. Repeat until they comply.

Then flatten a square mile for each victim regardless as reparations.

Then erase that ugly wart off the temple mount.

Make sure those square miles are around the "Hamas Leaders" houses.

Watch how fast the Snackbar closes.

Funny how the "leaders" are never the suicide bombers.

Fuckin A Pete!

There may be some live-and-let-live Palestinians. Maybe. So just in case, give them 12 hours notice to evacuate and then napalm their entire territory. Ruin their land in every way possible such that it is impossible to re-inhabit. Periodically reapply napalm like pesticide. This will provide a barrier of desolation. Simultaneously send out assassins to exterminate those leaders and bad actors wherever they may be. Political leaders, terrorist/jihad leaders, Iranian officials, drop them one by one like mafia hits. Whe a replacement surfaces, grease him too. This response cannot stop at breaking their will. It must be biblical. Leave nothing alive in their territory.