Saturday, October 21, 2023

Our Post-Hamas Wreckage - Victor Davis Hanson

 

​ by Victor Davis Hanson

A Middle East policy in ruins.

 


As Hamas goes, so with it go many of the following related Western pretensions.

The Passions of 9/11, Redux

It has been 22 years since we saw crowds throughout the Middle East celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians—and since newspapers had daily “idiot watch” notices of American intellectuals defending radical Islamist mass murderers. And now the madness is back again, and we are witnessing the recrudescence of normalizing radical Islamic terrorists abroad.

I suppose the theory is that no one in America cares much about radical Islamists foaming at the mouth, whether abroad or here. And the result is that they are empowered and their defense of murder is growing—yet its hubris will earn an almost-certain response, an anger slowly but insidiously growing at radical Islam.

A Middle East Policy in Ruins 

The current Biden appeasement of Iran and gift of billions of dollars in aggregate to the West Bank and Gaza are now, by bipartisan consensus, unsustainable. The only supporters of that lethal madness left are the embarrassments of BLM, the Squad, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus crowd.

Their collective hatred of Jews and Israelis was manifested in their delight over the post mortem mutilations of murdered women and children. And why—even before Israel had responded with air attacks—were leftists and Islamists suddenly celebrating the news of the executions of more than 1,200 Jews? It was instinctual, a Pavlovian response.

Even some leftist Democrats were shocked by their own constituents, whom they had created. Biden still might cling to his past destructive Middle East policies (and I expect him to restrict the Israelis within days after they begin to go in full force into Gaza), but the idea of continuing aid to the West Bank and Gaza or of “normalizing” relations with theocratic Iran will now be rightly seen as a suicidal delusion.

Ukraine and Gaza

Most Americans support arms for Ukraine to repel Russian aggressors.

But something is becoming strange about these two respective wars.

Why did the State Department more or less put no restrictions on Ukrainian retaliation, including operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet—but the Secretary of State almost immediately called for a “ceasefire” to prevent Israeli retaliation, a mortal sin if he had dared say that about Ukraine’s similar response to aggression? Would an American diplomat lecture Ukraine about ending the “cycle of violence?”

Why does the U.S. discount any possibility of a strategic response from Russia—which reportedly has some 6,000-7,000 nuclear weapons—to attacks on its homeland, but seems almost terrified about calling Iran to account for its central role in arming and funding terrorists to start a war with Israel by slaughtering 1,200 civilians?

Is the U.S., as professed, really able to fund a $120 billion—and counting—war in Ukraine, and to replenish Israeli stocks (300,000 artillery shells shipped from U.S. depots in Israel to Ukraine, a reportedly mere one-month supply for Kyiv), and to restore depleted existing U.S. munitions (note the billions of dollars of equipment abandoned in Kabul), and to ramp up our forces to deter China (while allowing 8 million illegal aliens to flow across an open border and $33 trillion in national debt) without going on a massive war footing?

There are likely somewhere between 600,000 and 800,000 total wounded and dead in Ukraine, in the most lethal conflict in Europe since 1945. Why is the U.S. so eager to call for a ceasefire after a fraction of those casualties in Gaza, but it is near-taboo to mention a breather amid the historical carnage, with no end in sight, in Ukraine?

The administration always says we can do everything simultaneously, but then we never do. Rhetoric is not the same thing as trebling our arms supply chain, and cutting the budget elsewhere to pay for it, and closing our border.

The Biden Open Border

Given the common denominator of Russian and Gazan invading forces crossing poorly fortified borders, why would we not secure our own—far longer and less secure than either?

The Biden border nihilism is now a losing proposition even for the leftists who helped promote it. Biden is eroding the very base of the Democratic Party, by alienating inner-city and border-district minorities. They are irate at the hordes of people stampeding into the country with the assumption that breaking our laws is their birthright.

Even the daily mendacity of Alejandro Mayorkas and Karine Jean-Pierre cannot hide the brazen contempt for the law. Every day that the border remains open and thousands more pour in unaudited, illegally, without skills, in non-diverse fashion, and with cartel fentanyl—to the cheers of the corrupt socialist President Obrador of Mexico—the more Joe Biden is destroying his own party.

The ruin in Gaza only reminds Americans that under present policies we will soon see thousands of America-hating, anti-Semitic Gazans seeking to pour into the United States illegally, eager to join the mass demonstrations cheering on Hamas death squads. It seems to take about a month for a radical Middle Eastern refugee, having arrived with gratitude toward his new American hosts, to take to the street on a “Day of Jihad” calling for the end of Israel (and often damning America).

Allies as Enemies

Abroad, we are finally accepting the long-suppressed reality that many of our “allies” are not neutrals but enemies. The U.S. bases in Qatar and Turkey, and our indifference to the pro-Hamas sentiments, if not outright aid, of both, have empowered terrorism.

Ever so slowly, the two anti-American nations are reminding Americans that we need to draw down our forces from these hostile landscapes, which in any global crisis would likely be hostile territory for our own troops.

Everyone knows Erdogan’s Turkey has no business in NATO—and everyone has no idea how to get them out. And so everyone puts an asterisk over Turkey as a NATO member. For now, the alliance’s only Islamist, non-democratic, and anti-Western nation is best simply avoided, since expelling Turkey appears to be more trouble than tolerating its toxic presence.

The Palestinian State Solution 

The Left’s shrill demand for a “two-state” solution, and tolerance of Palestinian tired and serial threats to drive Israel into the sea, are for now over. The glee with which Gazans and West Bankers met the news of mass murder, mutilation, hostage-taking, rape, and the desecration of bodies is proof enough that these dictatorial governments probably do represent the majority of their citizens.

Most Gazans were giddy on hearing of the macabre methods of Hamas, and only wished that there had been more opportunity to spit on hostages, poke captive women, kick corpses, and torment the child and female trophies brought back from Israel. The Gazan delight in the grotesque was reminiscent of some medieval pogrom, or the Roman triumphs of old with their files of enslaved captives. And perhaps the desire to take captives and pass them back through the killing fields to Gaza reminds of the Aztec practice of seeking to capture rather than just kill their enemies, in order to have plenty of bodies for the human sacrifices on Templo Major.

The old idea of Gaza—self-governed since 2005-2006 by “one man, one vote, once” Hamas—as a possible “Singapore” with Hyatt and Four Seasons beaches, flush with hundreds of billions of dollars from the Gulf, Europe, the U.S. and the UN, is finally revealed as the farce it always was. That fantasy was simply antithetical to the Hamas nihilist charter, the logical manifestation of which was the slaughter inside Israel of hundreds of civilians.

BLM

BLM was always a corrupt, disingenuous operation—the craftier successor to the Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton 1980s corporate shake-downs. But it is has finally jumped the shark with its sick support for Hamas murderers (note its recent posters glorifying Hamas’s hang-gliding butchery).

Its pro-death advocacy of Hamas is the pièce de résistance to the corruption and abdication of its leadership, the Kendi-con, and the lethal crime wave it helped spawn in major cities. Its racist agendas may linger for a while. But BLM is going the way of the 1960s Black Panthers—that is, one leading to general disgust, then to irrelevance, and finally to nothingness.

The still-remaining BLM murals in our major downtowns are already embarrassments and eroding reminders of the insanity that swept the country from 2020 to the present.

Campuses

Universities have now crossed the Rubicon in de facto condoning their crazed students cheering on mass death. They made the argument after George Floyd that the country must listen to their pseudo-moral lectures, and now they unashamedly broadcast what they have become—traitors to the idea of an enlightened free society, and kindred spirits to the anti-Semitism, intolerance, and fascism of 1930s German universities.

Degrees from Harvard, Yale, and Stanford will soon become, not resume badges, but either embarrassments or certifications of a mediocre education. Or both.

Universities all rushed to embrace “decolonization”, starting with empty and ahistorical virtue signals and ending up paralyzed, as thousands of their own students showed the world how ecstatic they were over news that babies were murdered and women raped.

In response, their invertebrate administrators and faculty sat frozen for days, calculating how best to issue “on the one hand…on the other hand” mush. The first serious politician who calls for the taxing of the huge incomes of their endowments, for yanking the government out of the student loan business and returning the moral hazard to the universities who impoverish their own students, will win overwhelming support.

The Gaza of Hamas is going down, but so are a lot of corrupt institutions and ideas that threw in with its lot.

I would recommend against the Nazi reference: the Nazis didn’t deny knowledge of atrocities until *after the war*, making them a bad contrast to current Palestinians.


Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/our-post-hamas-wreckage/

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Hamas, Israel and the Hypocrisy of Arab and Muslim Leaders - Khaled Abu Toameh

 

​ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Now that Hamas has brought down hell on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, perhaps these Arab and Muslim rulers will finally decide whose side are they on. Will they continue to embrace the very Hamas they have targeted for threatening them and their regimes, or will stand with those who -- on their behalf as well -- are defending themselves against Iran and its proxies?

 

  • Notably, some of the Arab and Muslim states and their leaders who are pointing the finger of blame at Israel have not hesitated to take punitive measures against Hamas when they themselves felt threatened... In the eyes of these rulers, it is fine for Arabs to punish Hamas, but it is not fine for Israel to respond to the worst atrocity ever committed against its citizens.

  • The Palestinian Authority (PA)... appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip.

  • This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war.... Abbas has good reason to avoid overt criticism of Hamas. He is aware of the pro-Hamas demonstrations in the West Bank... where demonstrators chanted slogans calling for toppling the Palestinian Authority leadership.

  • The Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians, who are now condemning Israel for targeting Hamas, have not hesitated to confront Hamas when it threatened their national security.

  • In 2014, an Egyptian court declared Hamas, an off-shoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization, a "terrorist organization."

  • In 1999, Jordan, whose leaders have also refrained from denouncing Hamas's October 7 massacre of Israelis, expelled the terror group's political leaders from the country.

  • These rulers now find it awkward to come out against the same terrorists with whom they have been meeting.

  • None of these rulers has ever taken a single step to help the Palestinians get relief from Hamas's human rights violations against the people living under their brutal rule in the Gaza Strip..... When these rulers were unhappy with Hamas, they expelled its leaders, shut their offices and outlawed its armed wing.

  • Now that Hamas has brought down hell on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, perhaps these Arab and Muslim rulers will finally decide whose side are they on. Will they continue to embrace the very Hamas they have targeted for threatening them and their regimes, or will stand with those who -- on their behalf as well -- are defending themselves against Iran and its proxies?

Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip. This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war. Pictured: Abbas addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York City on September 21, 2023. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)

Most of the Arabs who are now condemning Israel for its military strikes against the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in the Gaza Strip have never uttered a word against Hamas's rocket attacks on Israel. These Arabs, who are now weeping over the plight of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, chose to turn a blind eye to Hamas's repressive measures against the residents of the Gaza Strip. They also chose to look the other way as Hamas accumulated an arsenal of weapons and built dozens of offensive tunnels along the border with Israel. Incredibly, most of these Arabs still have not denounced Hamas for initiating the war on October 7, when hundreds of its heavily armed members crossed into Israel and massacred more than 1,400 Israelis, wounded thousands more, and abducted more than 200 hostages who were taken to Gaza.

Notably, some of the Arab and Muslim states and their leaders who are pointing the finger of blame at Israel have not hesitated to take punitive measures against Hamas when they themselves felt threatened or were unhappy with the actions and rhetoric of the group. In the eyes of these rulers, it is fine for Arabs to punish Hamas, but it is not fine for Israel to respond to the worst atrocity ever committed against its citizens.

The Palestinian Authority (PA), whose leaders have been condemning Israel since the beginning of the war, appears to have forgotten about the violent and bloody coup Hamas carried out in the summer of 2007. Then, Hamas killed and injured hundreds of PA loyalists, some of whom were tossed from rooftops of buildings throughout the Gaza Strip. Other Palestinians were dragged into to the street and brutally lynched by Hamas members. In response, PA President Mahmoud Abbas issued a decree outlawing the armed groups of Hamas and said that its members would be prosecuted. Abbas said that he decided to "consider the [Hamas] Executive Unit and the militias of the Hamas movement illegal, due to their military coup against the Palestinian legitimacy and its institutions, and anyone who is involved in any of these groups will be punished in accordance with the law and regulations of the state of emergency."

In 2018, Abbas directly accused Hamas of carrying out a bomb attack targeting former PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah in the Gaza Strip. A roadside bomb exploded as Hamdallah's convoy entered Gaza. Hamdallah was unhurt, while six of his bodyguards were lightly wounded. At a meeting of the Palestinian Authority leadership shortly after the assassination attempt, Abbas said:

"We do not want them [Hamas] to investigate, we do not want information from them, we do not want anything from them because we know exactly that they, the Hamas movement, were the ones who committed this incident."

The same year, Abbas, in an effort to undermine Hamas, implemented a number of punitive measures against the Gaza Strip. They included withholding salaries to thousands of civil servants and refusing to pay for the electricity Israel supplied to the Gaza Strip. Abbas later went as far as accusing Hamas of being a "spy" for Israel after the terror group arrested dozens of his supporters in Gaza.

This is the same Abbas who is now afraid, or unwilling, to hold Hamas responsible for the outbreak of the war. On October 15, the PA's official news agency, Wafa, published comments by Abbas that criticized Hamas for its assault on Israel. The agency, however, later removed references to the terror group without providing an explanation. The original Wafa report included the line: "The president [Abbas] also stressed that Hamas's policies and actions do not represent the Palestinian people, and the policies." Several hours later, the phrase was adjusted to exclude Hamas.

The new version reads:

"President Abbas also stressed that the policies, programs and decisions of the PLO are what represent the Palestinian people as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and not the policies of any other organization."

Abbas has good reason to avoid overt criticism of Hamas. He is aware of the pro-Hamas demonstrations in the West Bank, including the de facto capital of the Palestinians, Ramallah, where demonstrators chanted slogans calling for toppling the Palestinian Authority leadership.

The Egyptians, Jordanians and Syrians, who are now condemning Israel for targeting Hamas, have not hesitated to confront Hamas when it threatened their national security.

In 2014, an Egyptian court declared Hamas, an off-shoot of the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood organization, a "terrorist organization." Egyptian prosecutors told Cairo's Court of Urgent Matters:

"Hamas is a terrorist organization whose involvement in terrorist attacks killing Egyptian soldiers and officers from the armed forces and interior ministry has been proven."

The Egyptian military, in addition, claims that over the past decade it has destroyed most of the tunnels that had been used to smuggle weapons from Egypt to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. Tamer al-Refai, an Egyptian military spokesman, announced in 2020 that Egypt had destroyed more than 3,000 tunnels leading into the Gaza Strip since 2015. The tunnels were as long as three kilometers; some ran as deep as 30 meters into the ground, al-Refaid said.

In 2015, Egypt's state-run newspaper Al-Ahram accused Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood of conspiring to overthrow the Egyptian regime within the next few years. The newspaper quoted "informed sources" who accused Hamas's military wing of coordinating plans with the Muslim Brotherhood to hit Egyptian military targets and vital installations and distribute footage of the attacks to undermine national morale.

The same year, the Cairo Criminal Court sentenced ousted Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi to life in prison over charges of collaborating with Hamas and Iran's Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah. It is worth noting that Hamas leaders have since been permitted to visit Egypt without any restrictions. True, there is no love affair between Egypt and Hamas, but once you invite the leaders of the terror group to regular meetings with senior government officials in Cairo, you are giving legitimacy to Hamas and signaling to other countries that there is no reason why they too should not do so.

In 1999, Jordan, whose leaders have also refrained from denouncing Hamas's October 7 massacre of Israelis, expelled the terror group's political leaders from the country. Jordan's King Abdullah, apparently fearing that the activities of Hamas and its local allies would jeopardize peace negotiations between the Palestinian Authority and Israel, accused Hamas of engaging in illegitimate activities within Jordan. Earlier, Jordanian authorities had arrested several Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Ibrahim Ghosheh, upon their return from a visit to Iran, and charged them with membership in an illegal organization, storing weapons, conducting military exercises and using Jordan as a training base.

In 2006, the Jordanians have also accused Hamas members of smuggling missiles and other weapons into the country. A Jordanian official told Associated Press at that time that "missiles, explosives and automatic weapons were seized in the last couple of days." Hamas activists had managed to smuggle "such dangerous weapons into the country" and store them, the official revealed. Despite a crackdown, Jordan's King Abdullah received a senior Hamas delegation in Amman in 2012. Such meetings benefit Hamas and legitimize it in the eyes of Arabs and Muslims.

Syrian, for its part, has also targeted Hamas. In 2012, Syria's state-run media unleashed a scathing attack on Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, accusing him of turning his back on Syrian President Bashar Assad and describing Mashaal as ungrateful and traitorous. Earlier, Syrian authorities closed Hamas's offices in Damascus after the terror group failed to support Assad at the beginning of the Syrian civil war in Syria. Last year, however, Assad, like Jordan's King Abdullah and the Egyptians, lifted the ban and met with a senior Hamas delegation in Damascus.

These rulers now find it awkward to come out against the same terrorists with whom they have been meeting.

In the past decade, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has also been seeking rapprochement with Hamas. He has repeatedly met with Hamas leaders and discussed with them ways of achieving national unity. The last meeting was held in late July in Ankara, where Abbas and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh were jointly received by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Despite their disputes with Hamas, the rulers of the PA, Egypt, Jordan and Syria have been working to improve their relations with the terror group. By doing so, they have strengthened Hamas and turned it into a significant player in the Middle East.

None of these rulers has ever taken a single step to help the Palestinians get relief from Hamas's human rights violations against the people living under their brutal rule in the Gaza Strip. Those violations have included the arrest and murder of political rivals and crackdowns on journalists and human rights advocates. None of these rulers has ever called out Hamas for transforming the Gaza Strip into a terror base for Iran. When these rulers were unhappy with Hamas, they expelled its leaders, shut their offices and outlawed its armed wing.

Now that Hamas has brought down hell on two million Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, perhaps these Arab and Muslim rulers will finally decide whose side are they on. Will they continue to embrace the very Hamas they have targeted for threatening them and their regimes, or will stand with those who -- on their behalf as well -- are defending themselves against Iran and its proxies?


Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20067/hamas-hypocrisy-arab-muslim-leaders

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Intelligence Failures - Again - Pete Hoekstra

 

​ by Pete Hoekstra

A little more than a week prior to the Hamas attack, Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East... "the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."

 

  • The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components: 1) It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics. 2) It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection. 3) It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.

  • There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump's entire time in office.

  • Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan's government when U.S. troops were withdrawn.

  • A little more than a week prior to the Hamas attack, Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East... "the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."

  • He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive...

  • The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats -- often spurious -- while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known "gotaways" and an unknown number of unknown "gotaways."

  • The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.

  • To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.

  • Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community... and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today.

(Image source: iStock)

In light of the devastating and deadly terrorist attack executed by Hamas against Israel on October 7, many are correctly calling the failure to intercept and prevent the assault an "intelligence failure." Many are especially surprised given the vaunted, basically legendary, status almost universally accorded Israel's national security apparatus.

This, however, is not the only recent intelligence failure, or failure by political leaders to anticipate emerging threats. According to a Brookings report examining the U.S. intelligence failure and reorganization following the 9/11 terrorist attacks against America:

"In the aftermath of 9/11 everyone, from elected officials and national security experts to ordinary citizens had one question: how could this happen to a nation with such an enormous and expensive military and intelligence architecture?"

Despite warnings from the U.S. Intelligence Community, the Biden administration failed to anticipate or plan for the dramatic and quick collapse of Afghanistan's government when U.S. troops were withdrawn. And while the Intelligence Community correctly and publicly warned of Russia's impending invasion of Ukraine, it failed to predict the tenacity of Ukrainian fighters defending their homeland and instead forecast an almost Afghanistan-style collapse in a matter of days. General Mark Milley, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, even warned lawmakers that "a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine could result in the fall of Kyiv within 72-hours and could come at a cost of 15,000 Ukrainian troop deaths and 4,000 Russian troop deaths," according to lawmakers he briefed behind closed-doors.

These misses once again have citizens asking if our intelligence agencies and political leaders are capable of keeping them safe. The short answer, unfortunately, is no. Terrorists and our enemies only have to be right once, while our intelligence services need to be correct 100% of the time. Just look at Pearl Harbor.

It is not unreasonable to expect that Israeli or US intelligence should have been able to detect the 10/7 attacks on Israel ahead of time, especially so close to the 50th anniversary of the surprise Yom Kippur War in 1973. What, then, led to the failure? While Israel will certainly review its intelligence posture to determine its shortcomings, we already know some of the challenges the Intelligence Community faces on the U.S. side.

The Middle East, Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah are all high on the Intelligence Community's radar, given the volatility of the restive region. All the same, Washington's leadership also was not expecting the 10/7 attacks. A little more than a week prior, Biden's National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, was talking-up successes in the Middle East, allowing the U.S. to focus on other areas regions of the world. The bold conclusion made by Sullivan at the time was that "the Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades."

He could not have been more wrong. Boiling just under the surface was a terrorist attack that would result in more than 1,400 Israelis killed, at least 31 Americans killed, atrocities against Israeli civilians that include beheaded babies and babies burned alive, as well as scores of Israeli and international hostages whom Hamas terrorists forcibly abducted from Israel to Gaza, presumably being held in tunnels.

The failure of the U.S. intelligence community has three components:

  1. It has become politically charged and lost focus on its mission protecting Americans, instead engaging in partisan politics.
  2. It continues to focus on technological intelligence collection rather than the difficult and risky world of human intelligence collection.
  3. It continues to suffer from a lack of creativity in anticipating and understanding the new threats being developed by our enemies.

There is little doubt that the Intelligence Community has become seriously politicized. In 2016-2017, its leaders and the FBI undermined the incoming President Donald Trump by raising the specter of Russian influence over Trump. The disproven Russia hoax would go on to shadow and undermine Trump's entire time in office.

When Hunter Biden's now infamous laptop was revealed, it was the FBI and former Intelligence Community leaders who actively tried to cover it up and pass it off as a Russian disinformation campaign.

The Intelligence Community also shifted some of its focus from international threats to domestic threats -- often spurious -- while ignoring the real ticking time bomb of 5.6 million migrants flooding onto the United States through the southern border, in addition to at least 1.5 million known "gotaways" and an unknown number of unknown "gotaways."

We have also witnessed information that was accurate but which the FBI worked with social media companies to suppress, and even outright fabrications about what they claimed was disinformation, such as the Russia hoax or the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop; that Catholics who attend mass in Latin are "extremists," and that parents questioning what their children learn in public schools are "domestic terrorists." What really happened on January 6, 2021 is still unknown.

These efforts by the Intelligence Community all seem to target Republicans or to benefit Democrats politically -- a situation that has left many conservatives rightly worried about the political weaponization of the government.

Unfortunately, this political corruption shows no signs of abating, with the entire deep state apparently still determined to turn the Constitution on its head to "get Trump," and with former officials such as Michael Hayden, who was head of the National Security Agency and the CIA, suggesting that Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville should be removed from the human race.

A second major shortcoming, that was identified after 9/11 was, as mentioned, a U.S. over-reliance on the technological collection of information, such as satellites, cyber, and wiretapping. The Intelligence Community knew how to do these things and knew how to do them well. It was difficult and sophisticated work but carried far fewer risks than human espionage or developing spy networks.

While the intelligence may have been there, our ability to fully understand it, and our analyses, missed having insights into the humans, and their way of thinking, who were behind those "zeros and ones."

Hamas may have exploited the reliance Western security services have on technological collection. We already know that Osama bin Laden refused to use electronic communications and relied on human couriers to convey messages. They used our confidence in technological collection to their benefit. The after-action intelligence review to determine how Hamas hid its operation will undoubtedly look into this, but it appears that electronic communication on the plot was limited and coded, with the few people actually knowing the full details kept to a handful to further limit communications.

Just as the U.S. Intelligence Community did not imagine terrorists hijacking airplanes to use as missiles, it is likely the Israelis never contemplated Hamas pulling off a multipronged attack by sea, land, and air -- including the use of paragliders. But that is exactly what they did. They used low-tech bulldozers and explosives to breach Israel's border fence and then drive through the openings with trucks, motorcycles, and other equipment loaded with terrorists and weapons. Hamas fired thousands of rockets, in barrages of hundreds at a time, to overwhelm Israel's highly touted Iron Dome counter-rocket system and, having learned lessons about the effective use of drones from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, used drone-dropped munitions to take out guard towers and surveillance cameras.

While many of these tactics are not new -- Hamas had fired tens of thousands of missiles into Israel before, attacked civilians and soldiers on the streets, and crossed the border in multiple ways -- the novelty of this approach was to do all of these things at once and on a massive scale.

The biggest U.S. intelligence failure of all so far, unfortunately, has been strenuously pretending not to know that Iran, Qatar and Turkey are the kingpins behind the current attacks by Hamas on Israel. If Iran, Qatar and Turkey are to be discouraged from continuing their malign actions destabilizing the region, the price they pay needs to be steep. Hamas. Iran, Qatar and Turkey must not be let off the hook. In addition, the US must move its military assets from Al Udeid Airbase in Qatar to the United Arab Emirates as soon as it can.

The Qataris, instead of being grateful that a state-of-the-art airbase is on its soil protecting it, instead might think that they are doing the US a favor letting the airbase be there.

To go just after Hamas is like targeting crime syndicate, but ignoring Al Capone. Hamas needs to be dealt with first – along with the realization that any humanitarian aid allowed into Gaza supplies Hamas, not the people for whom it was well-meaningly intended. As the journalist Caroline Glick points out, the trucks are not inspected. They might be bringing in food and water – or weapons. Sadly, even if the contents are food and water, Hamas keeps them, then sparingly doles them out to whomever they want.

Moving forward, we once again need to examine how we do intelligence across the West. Perhaps Congress or a special commission can be established to identify the exact strengths and weaknesses of our intelligence community. It will have the old rallying cry of "never again," just as after Pearl Harbor, the 1973 Yom Kippur War, 9/11, and now the attacks of 10/7. The Intelligence Community needs to keep its eye on actual foreign threats, develop and use all forms of intelligence collection to build a robust intelligence capability, respect the ability and creativity of our adversaries, and to discard the biased and flawed analytical tradecraft standards that have led us to where we are today. Unless these changes take place, we will remain vulnerable, uncertain of our safety and security, and stuck with the knowledge the world is a much more dangerous place than we had thought.


Pete Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20070/intelligence-failures

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

Iran: Behind Hamas' Planned Genocide - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

Iran's radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world via its military and terror groups, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement.

 

  • In 1930s, Britain pursued a policy of appeasing Hitler and Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding a war. To the contrary, as we know, by empowering the Nazis to invade and attempt to take over other nations, this policy of appeasement led to World War ll.

  • [T]he Obama administration imagined, it seems, that enabling the expansionist, revolutionary regime of Iran, which is designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism, to possess nuclear weapons, would somehow magically transform it into peaceful, collegial member of the family of nations. President Barack Obama appeased the ruling mullahs of Iran by lifting sanctions and inventing the 2015 "nuclear deal."

  • What was actually the result? The international community witnessed even more rockets launched by Yemen's Houthis at civilian targets, the deployment of Lebanese Hezbollah soldiers in Syria, and increasing attacks by the Iranian-funded Hamas on Israel and the United States. With billions of dollars of revenue pouring into the pockets of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran did not change its behavior for the better. Instead, Iran became even more empowered and emboldened... as well as to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. Iran became, in fact, according to the US State Department, "the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism."

  • At the peak of these appeasement policies towards the mullahs, Iran was emboldened to publicly harass the US Navy, detain US sailors, imprison American citizens, and threaten to assassinate former US officials on US soil for a $1 million bounty. Khamenei also repeatedly vowed "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" and to "raze the Zionist regime in less than 8 minutes."

  • Iran's radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world via its military and terror groups, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement.

  • The Biden administration and the European Union have pursued this dangerous policy -- not just of appeasement, but also of financing terrorists; of supporting a regime that chants "Death to America," "Death to Israel"; that plots to push the US out of the Middle East; that is committed to uprooting and replacing Israel; that has zealously been targeting American citizens and American assets, and that is one of only four state sponsors of terrorism, as well as a leading violator of human rights. It is high time to put Iran's regime out of business.

Iran's radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world via its military and terror groups, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement. Pictured: A senior Hamas delegation, headed by military leader Saleh Arouri, meets with Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on July 22, 2019. (Image source: khamenei.ir)

In 1930s, Britain pursued a policy of appeasing Hitler and Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding a war. To the contrary, as we know, by empowering the Nazis to invade and attempt to take over other nations, this policy of appeasement led to World War ll.

Unfortunately, the European Union and the Biden administration have long been pursuing policies of appeasement with Hamas's paymaster, the Iranian regime. This policy has only emboldened and empowered Iran's ruling mullahs and their terrorist proxies, such as Hamas, to an extent that that on October 7, they launched one of the most barbaric attacks of our generation against Israel and Jews. Iran is now threatening to join the war against Israel, and may well be hoping that this is the moment they have effectively been planning since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

History, as we know, has repeatedly shown that appeasing terrorists only empowers them. Even in recent history, the Obama administration imagined, it seems, that enabling the expansionist, revolutionary regime of Iran, which is designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism, to possess nuclear weapons, would somehow magically transform it into peaceful, collegial member of the family of nations.

President Barack Obama appeased the ruling mullahs of Iran by lifting sanctions and inventing the 2015 "nuclear deal." He claimed he was "confident" that it would "meet the national security needs of the United States and our allies." Outlined in the nuclear deal's preamble is that all parties "anticipate that full implementation of this JCPOA will positively contribute to regional and international peace and security."

What was actually the result? The international community witnessed even more rockets launched by Yemen's Houthis at civilian targets, the deployment of Lebanese Hezbollah soldiers in Syria, and increasing attacks by the Iranian-funded Hamas on Israel and the United States. With billions of dollars of revenue pouring into the pockets of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran did not change its behavior for the better. Instead, Iran became even more empowered and emboldened to pursue its revolutionary ideals of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism, as well as to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. Iran became, in fact, according to the US State Department, "the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism."

At the peak of these appeasement policies towards the mullahs, Iran was emboldened to publicly harass the US Navy, detain US sailors, imprison American citizens, and threaten to assassinate former US officials on US soil for a $1 million bounty. Khamenei also repeatedly vowed "Death to America!" and "Death to Israel!" and to "raze the Zionist regime in less than 8 minutes."

The Biden administration, however has looked the other way Iran violated sanction after sanction, enabling it enabling it to build a war chest for its own Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its terrorist proxies abroad -- including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis (who attack Saudi Arabia and the UAE from Yemen) -- of close to "$60 billion."

Sadly, in spite of sanctions, some of Iran's major trading partners are, in fact, member states of the European Union. According to Iran's state-controlled Mehr News Agency:

"Iran and the European Union's 27 member states traded €4.36 billion worth of goods during the first 10 months of 2022, registering a 14.28% rise compared with last year's corresponding period... Germany was the top trading partner of Iran in the EU region during the period, as the two countries exchanged over €1.6 billion worth of goods, 15.44% more than in a similar period of the year before. Italy came next with €555.39 million worth of trade with Iran to register an 11.14% year-on-year rise.... the Netherlands with €351.94 million (down 10.76%) and Spain with €296.06 million (up 13.12%) were Iran's other major European trade partners."

So, Germany, which preaches about human rights, has actually increased its trade with Iran.

Iran's radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world via its military and terror groups, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement.

The Biden administration and the European Union have pursued this dangerous policy -- not just of appeasement, but also of financing terrorists; of supporting a regime that chants "Death to America," "Death to Israel"; that plots to push the US out of the Middle East; that is committed to uprooting and replacing Israel; that has zealously been targeting American citizens and American assets, and that is one of only four state sponsors of terrorism, as well as a leading violator of human rights. It is high time to put Iran's regime out of business.

 
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20069/iran-hamas-planned-genocide

Follow Middle East and Terrorism on Twitter

The Temperature Plummets in the New Cold War: Hamas’ Terrorist Attack on Israel - Thaddeus G. McCotter

 

​ by Thaddeus G. McCotter

The resolve of the Free World to defend Israel and all free peoples must not bend or break