Just a day after the rebel group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) had seized Damascus, and Bashar Assad had fled to Moscow, Assad’s army crumbled into dust, with soldiers ripping off their uniforms so as to avoid being killed by vengeful, and now triumphant, rebels. Those soldiers left largely unattended huge quantities of weaponry. The IDF […]
October 7 jihad massacre happened because IDF misread Hamas for years, left southern Israel vulnerable
The IDF decided that Sinwar was a pragmatist because they didn’t take seriously Hamas’ own description of its motives and goals in its charter. That document is quite plain about the movement’s Islamic character and its determination to destroy Israel utterly. But the IDF, like innumerable Western politicians, was sure that “moderate” tendencies would win […]
Historical Precedent and Trump’s Plan for Gaza
President Trump has expressed his hope to improve the lives of the Palestinians in Gaza, once the rubble has been removed and the infrastructure rebuilt, with the money for both that rubble removal and that rebuilding coming from the rich Arab states of the Gulf. He envisions turning the Strip, with its long beachfront of […]
Hamas’ ‘Victory Narrative’ as a Recruitment Tool
Hamas has been battered by the IDF over the past fifteen months of war in Gaza. Twenty thousand of its operatives, about half its prewar numbers, have been killed. Tens of thousands more have been wounded, many so severely that they will never be able to engage in combat again. The IDF has destroyed or […]
The Soft Bigotry of Impossibly High Expectations
The “exploding pagers” and other Mossad and IDF deeds of derring-do, including the targeted killings of Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, have given some people the idea that Israel’s intelligence agencies should be able, by themselves, to defeat the Jewish state’s enemies, without the need for a full-scale ground war. More […]
How the IDF Prepared for War with Hezbollah
The military intelligence unit of the IDF has for a long time been preparing for a war against Hezbollah, figuring out exactly what kinds and numbers of weapons the Lebanese Shi’a terror group possessed, and where they were being hidden, and how to locate them even when they were. being moved from place to place. […]
Five Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives posing as journalists killed in airstrike
The pose was easy. The jihadis just had to do what they always did, and they blended right in with the actual journalists. “IDF: 5 Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives killed in Gaza strike were ‘posing as journalists,’” by Emanuel Fabian, Times of Israel, December 26, 2024: The IDF details the positions of five Palestinian Islamic […]
What the IDF Has Done to Hezbollah Since September
As of just three months ago, the Lebanese Shi’a group Hezbollah seemed to the world a formidable threat to Israel, for the terror group was known to have 150,000 missiles and rockets in its Iran-supplied arsenal. It had hidden weapons in residences all over southern Lebanon and Beirut. But since mid-September, when the IDF unleashed […]
IDF Top Brass Favor an Attack on Iran Very Soon
Everyone now knows that Iran is rushing pell-mell to enrich enough uranium to the 60% level of purity, just one step below weapons-grade, to be able to produce several nuclear weapons.. Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently confirmed it. The Americans know that Iran, having seen its Axis of Resistance crumble […]
An Embargo on Arms for Israel Will Cause More Civilian Deaths in Gaza
John Spencer spent 25 years in the U.S. Army, and now is a professor of urban warfare at West Point, one of the acknowledged leaders in the field. He has been mightily impressed with the way the IDF has conducted its campaign in Gaza, especially its tremendous effort to minimize civilian casualties by warning Gazans […]