Orientul Mijlociu

The Strategy That Led to the War—and What It Means for the Future

Among the many striking aspects of Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel, one that has received relatively little scrutiny is the location. For much of the past decade, the Gaza Strip no longer appeared to be a major battleground for the Palestinian resistance. Recurring incursions by the Israeli army into Gaza, including the nearly two-month Operation “Protective Edge” in 2014, had locked Hamas into a defensive posture. Meanwhile, Israel’s increasingly sophisticated missile defenses had rendered Hamas’s rocket attacks from the strip largely ineffective, and the blockade of Gaza had cut off the territory from the rest of the world.

The Gaza war has pushed together powerful Iran-backed Shia Muslim paramilitaries with militant Sunni factions in what appears to be closer cooperation between groups that differ in religious ideology but are united by opposition to Israel and the United States.

“We built the tunnels to protect ourselves from airplanes … the refugees, the UN is responsible for protecting them.” The now infamous statement by Musa Abu Marzuk of Hamas, in a television interview of October 2023, illustrates a severe problem that has developed in the interplay between humanitarian aid and militant groups in the Middle East. In even the best cases, the aid allows these groups to evade responsibility for civil affairs while pursuing their agenda of mayhem—but in fact, the terrorist groups often go much farther than this, and actually rely on aid streams to fund and equip the gunmen that commit their atrocities. Humanitarian aid has become a lifeline for these groups, enabling their deadly attacks.

AI is a broad term that refers to the ability of machines or software to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence such as perception, reasoning, learning, decision making and problem solving. AI has many applications and implications for modern warfare, both on and off the battlefield. Here, we will explore how AI helps Israel army select bombing targets in Gaza, and the implications and challenges of using AI in warfare.

On December 4, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas announced the establishment of a new terrorist group in Lebanon….

Hamas, in short, is saying that it is planning a similar invasion of Israel, but this time from Lebanon.

The Yemeni Armed Forces announced that it had launched two direct attacks on Israeli ships in the Bab al-Mandab Strait off Yemen’s coast on December 3.

The spokesperson for the Forces, Brigadier General Yahya Sare’e, confirmed the operation, stating that it was in response to the demands of the Yemeni people and the “free people of our Arab and Islamic nation, to stand fully with the choices of the Palestinian people and their steadfast resistance.”

Democracy is incompatible with class-divided economic systems. Masters rule in slavery, lords in feudalism, and employers in capitalism. Whatever forms of government (including representative-electoral) coexist with class-divided economic systems, the hard reality is that one class rules the other. The revolutionaries who overthrew other systems to establish capitalism sometimes meant and intended to install a real democracy, but that did not happen. Real democracy—one person, one vote, full participation, and majority rule—would have enabled larger employee classes to rule smaller capitalist classes. Instead, capitalist employers used their economic positions (hiring/firing employees, selling outputs, receiving/distributing profits) to preclude real democracy. What democracy did survive was merely formal. In place of real democracy, capitalists used their wealth and power to secure capitalist class rule. They did that first and foremost inside capitalist enterprises where employers functioned as autocrats unaccountable to the mass of their employees. From that base, employers as a class purchased or otherwise dominated politics via electoral or other systems.

Hostilities escalated on Monday on the southern front of Lebanon between Hezbollah and the Israeli army.

A preliminary report said that a Syrian national was injured as a result of Israeli shelling targeting the Al-Wazzani border village. Avichay Adraee, the Israeli army spokesperson, said that “three soldiers were slightly injured” after Hezbollah had targeted the Israeli military outpost of Shtula.

Hanegbi says threat of Lebanese terror group attempting Oct. 7-style massacre of civilians cannot be tolerated; says killing Sinwar in Gaza may expedite war’s end, hostages’ return

National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi indicated on Saturday night that once Hamas is defeated in Gaza, Israel may have to go to war against Hezbollah across the northern border in Lebanon.