About those Gazan tunnels…
…it’s even worse than you might think:
Using further eyewitness reports, the article describes how Hamas has integrated the tunnel network into the civilian infrastructure of Gaza, constructing entrances in homes and even mosques. “I have not entered one civilian home that did not have weapons, suicide belts, or booby traps in it,” the source told the Post, stressing the lengths to which the IDF goes to protect innocent civilians caught in the crossfire, regardless.
Much more from Powerline:
Hamas was apparently a few months away from conducting a mass attack on Israeli civilians during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana, on September 24. The raid would have been like something out of a movie: hundreds of heavily-armed Hamas fighters would have emerged from over a dozen underground tunnels in the dead of night, jogged 10 minutes to their targets, and then infiltrated a set of lightly-populated and lightly-guarded Israeli communities. Casualties could have reached the thousands, and some of the victims would have been taken back alive as hostages.
The offensive attack tunnels seem to quite literally have been built for this kind of purpose. The IDF recently published a map of how they were dug to spill out on both sides of nearby communities (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BtYjL4mCAAAI6c6.png). Israeli soldiers have been reporting that just inside some of the tunnels were storage units filled with tranquilizers, handcuffs, ropes, and so on…
If the reports are confirmed, there are some immediate adjustments that analysts, journalists, and diplomats will all but certainly make:
(1) A ceasefire without at least the destruction of Hamas’s tunnel network would likely becomes a non-starter. It would be militarily untenable ”“ and probably politically impossible ”“ for Israeli leaders to accept anything less.
(2) The inevitable Israeli investigation into pre-conflict failures ”“ and the Israelis always hold these, no matter how well things go ”“ will have to take into account both how so many tunnels got built and why Israeli intelligence failed to crack the tunnel plot earlier. There’s a lot of focus right now on the former, but a lot of the digging and earth moving happened underground. It’s the latter debate, about sigint and humint, that has the potential to cost people careers.
(3) Confirmation of the plot would raise the stakes in the growing controversy over how human rights groups and diplomatic bodies pressured the Israelis into liberalizing restrictions on cement imports. Kilometers and kilometers of reinforced tunnels were being built deep into Israeli territory while Gaza-based offiicals railed against cement shortages
Given all of this, the objections to the Israeli offensive become more and more absurd. Some people will not rest until Israel is no more, and they would like to intimidate Israel into committing suicide.
I hate to say this but in all probability the people of Gaza would be better off under Israeli rule.
Considering Hamas has had 7 years to improve the lives of the people of Gaza and haven’t because they have invested EVERYTHING in to their war of extermination against Israel then Gaza would be better off as an Israeli district!
Mailman
‘Tis curious, indeed.
The tunnel network of the Hez in southern Lebanon was extensively discussed over at the Belmont Club circa 2006 by the whole gang.
I spent many a post rehashing my Vietnam era solution to endless tunnels — and the way that the Hez had entirely replicated the ‘Cong’s solution.
My solution was to go with hydraulic mining — best remembered in Pale Rider, the movie.
Not intending to mine placer gold, my scheme involved fire hoses and trucks jetting extremely high power and volume water into the soft soils of South Vietnam.
This technology is now in extensive use across America — by the utilities. You, no doubt, have seen these trucks. They have massive spoils holding tanks augmented by a monster vacuum with a monster hose, to boot. They are THE way that sensitive buried utilities are exposed without damage.
For military use the system is designed to cut into and swamp out any tunnels. The opposition has no counter to such an attack.
Hydraulics are also THE way to destroy most mine fields. A jet of high power water can be interrupted — strobed, if you will — to create a flying cylinder of water that hits like a hammer blow. This ALWAYS sets off the mines. The blows can be tuned up and down the power scale to imitate man or tank.
As for the Hez, my solution — of eight-years ago — was to detonate all of the mines and then gouge into the hilltop forts with water… with the occasional satchel charge to blast through rock and concrete. Then the water would pour down the tunnels as if storm drains. The water would ruin most military goods. (electronics, food stuffs, — mud everywhere)
Salt water and open wounds = total demoralization of tunnel rats.
I posited that even larger tunnel warfare lay directly ahead, and that the IDF had better take note.
That they didn’t is an epic failure.
BTW, the water table in and around Gaza is quite high. It should be impossible for the fanatics to tunnel all that deep.
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As for Muslims and tunnelling: revisit the history of the Second Siege of Vienna — lifted 9-11-1683.
It was infested with tunnel warfare — with the Muslims doing all of the tunnelling.
%%%
Barry’s open borders jihad is a tunnelling into our demographics.
The border is now scar tissue.
$$$
Expect the PLO to adopt massive tunnelling, too.
The current conflict is an existential crisis for Jerusalem. Don’t you doubt it.
IMHO, Gaza needs to be entirely cleared — and the population sent off to Egypt — say to a new location not currently occupied — the West will fund such an exodus.
This mega construction project should permit solvency for the Egyptian government and plenty of work for those unemployed.
The Gazan ‘body count’ is trivial compared to the size of Egypt and its population.
Another solution would be to ship the Gazans all the way to Libya. Birds of a feather, and all that. They could still be vacationing on the Med.
Rocket warfare means that Gaza is no longer a viable proposition for Israel. It HAS TO GO.
Here’s a video of ten terrorists who craweled out of a tunnel in Israel and then, after being shot to ribbons, tried to crawl back.
They did not make it,
http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART2/598/992.html?hp=1&cat=875&loc=1
Related….
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/55285
Some people will not rest until Israel is no more
And they’ve made a lot of headway thus far. Note the July 22 and 23 Gallup poll that found Americans under age 30 oppose Israel on the Gaza conflict by a two-to-one margin.
Then, of course, there was Jon Stewart last week making jokes about the “asymmetrical” nature of the conflict and Israel’s “bomb-better war,” doing his bit as the go-to news guy for the under-30s.
Sounds like they need to clean house. Too many Zero and European allies in their ranks, possibly to fairly high levels of the government. Israel simply doesn’t have enough room to ‘get lucky’. While it would seem that such a raid would help Israel, in the court of public opinion, public opinion is useless with the leaders the world is saddled with at this time. World leaders, if mass murder and hostage taking had occurred, would merely push Israel to concessions.
I hope they remove the right ones in their own ranks, or they won’t stand long.
Hit that Jew, kill him. If he strikes back, we’ll protect you.
If the Palis had no weapons, there would be no war. If the Israelis had no weapons, there would be no Israel.
I saw this video late last night. I don’t remember where I found it. I had it open in a tab for hours before I got around to watching it.
It’s about 10 minutes long, and later in it she talks about the tunnels. The Palis were going to emerge from them like cockroaches and wreak havoc inside Israeli communities.
This makes me hate the evil, treasonous, criminal media all the more. One day I hope to see them pay in blood for their crimes. There is no way they can redeem themselves now.
I would not be surprised if the target planning date for such an operation would have been to coincide with the announcement of an operational Iranian nuclear weapon. Under those circumstances, Jerusalem would have a hard time undertaking a ground operation or any kind of sustained operation.
“Some people will not rest until Israel is no more, and they would like to intimidate Israel into committing suicide.”
“Some” being exactly equal to 90% of the population of Liberals, even Jewish Liberals.
The difference between suicide and murder is what exactly…?
And all that concrete was to be used for humanitarian purposes…as I understand it.
!.8 million Gazans and rising. All those people do is screw and hate and hate and screw, and we financially support them. International welfare, with the same results as right here in the USA. A little biologic warfare seems called for, to get ’em to hump it to Egypt, fleeing a plague. We send Egypt a couple billion $ each year.
Many people (millions) will not rest until Israel is no more, and their goal is to either force Israel into committing suicide or to forcibly wipe it from the earth.
I am particularly disturbed by the Gallup poll Ann brings to our attention that found Americans under age 30 oppose Israel on the Gaza conflict by a two-to-one margin.
Leftist indoctrination is proceeding as planned.
But what is preventing Israel from decisively dealing with Hamas are two internal flaws in discernment.
Since the 1973 Yom Kipper War, Israeli’s have believed that Israel cannot survive without America’s support. But America’s political correctness and our sensitivity to “world opinion” will not allow Israel to fight its wars to a decisive victory.
Ironically, it is Obama, the most antisemitic President ever, who is disabusing Israel of that mistaken belief.
Secondly, neither Israel nor America will officially identify our enemy, which is Islam itself. As long as Islam and its foremost agents, its Imams and Mullahs suffer no retribution and consequence, they will follow their theological imperative and throw their cannon fodder (Hamas, Hezbollah, al Qaeda, ISIS, etc) at Israel and the West for another 1400 years if necessary.
“Those who oppose the mullahs oppose Islam itself; eliminate the mullahs and Islam shall disappear in fifty years. It is only the mullahs who can bring the people into the streets and make them die for Islam– begging to have their blood shed for Islam.” -Ayatollah Khomeini
Newton’s Laws of Motion apply here; An object at rest will remain at rest until acted upon by an outside force. An object in motion will remain in motion until acted upon by an outside force.
So too will the war Israel has been fighting since 1948 (with lulls between battles) continue until an outside force intervenes. That outside force is Iran and its pursuit of nuclear weapons capability.
Religious fanatics with a death wish and nukes is, by any measure… a game changer.
I wonder what the world would look like if we abruptly ended welfare.
Simply stop subsidizing criminals, terrorists, and parasites. Make them work or starve to death. The problem would soon sort itself out.
I hope I live long enough to see such a world.
rickl,
It’s competition. Remember, an unofficial but effective purpose of welfare is to make sure some groups are beholden and dependent on other groups. Whether you’re a US politician looking inward or outward, the problem sorting itself out might mean gained advantage for competitors.
Which isn’t to say we ought not to explore more effective means to compete than international welfare. But we can’t lose sight of the basic competition while doing so.
In the narrative contest of the activist game, truth is just another competing narrative and narrative is elective truth.
Eric,
Find a ten story building. Go to the roof. Jump off and all the way down, tell us how truth is ‘elective’ and just another ‘competing narrative’. Reality will, as you know, bring an abrupt end to your ‘narrative’.
Now I don’t really want you to jump off a ten story roof and only wish you the best but… ‘truth’ while often relative is never another ‘competing narrative’.
I just can’t get myself to agree that emulating the lying, cheating and all the other unethical behavior by the left is the way to go.
That activist leftists employ their deceitful activism ‘to win’ is what in the end will defeat them. In time, evil always defeats itself. The leftist elite can lie all it wishes and may appear to ‘win’ but it will not be a lasting victory because they cannot deliver what they promise.
They promise utopia and can only deliver misery.
And, while “by their fruit, shall ye know them” it takes time for the fruit to appear and be recognized for what it is, so to do “Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” Abraham Lincoln
“Political ideas that have dominated the public mind for decades cannot be refuted through rational arguments. They must run their course in life and cannot collapse otherwise than in great catastrophe…” Ludwig von Mises
Geoffrey Britain,
That’s the dilemma, right? Because the Left is winning the activist game, which is the only social political game there is, that means they’re dominating our society. Which means when they jump off the roof, it ain’t just them jumping. Our whole society, along with the world order predicated on strong American leadership, is hitting that ground with them and all of us.
If you don’t want the Left to take all of us down with them, their dominance of our society needs to be defeated. They need to be displaced from all the influential social cultural nodes they now largely control, not just elected office, then contained and marginalized where the harm they bring to themselves won’t harm everyone else.
The only way to do that is to win the activist game with a full-spectrum social movement. It can be done. I’ve done it, albeit on a local level only. Activism is a method, not an ideology.
Here is a great article by Andrew McCarthy on the recent fumbling (or is it deliberate??) by Obama in the Middle East.
Will Obama Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory?
Astonishingly, much of the Arab world is more sympathetic to Israel than the administration is.
Maybe Israel’s problem is that their counterattacks never leave any permanent consequences. The Palestinian women just spit out a new generation of terrorists to regenerate the losses, indoctrinate them, and begin again.
How about Israel permanently annexes 5% of Gaza for every instance of rocket attacks? Eventually, the Palestinians would be pushed off if they continued.
This isn’t so different than what followed in the aftermath of the previous Arab-Israeli wars.
Punish aggression with loss of land, and the ability to stage attacks.
Nobody could say that the Palestinians weren’t warned of what would happen.
Incidentally, wouldn’t this have resonance in light of what Putin did to Ukraine?
What’s Russia gonna do, denounce Israel for doing the same thing it just got done doing?
Matt_SE,
Isn’t that essentially what Israel has been doing with the settlements? Then there’s the political perception angle, much of the world accepts the lie that the Israeli’s stole the land from the Palestinians. So from their POV, taking more and more just rubs salt in the wound, bringing ever more condemnation.
Eric has a point perfectly illustrated by Israel and the Palestinians, the truth which utterly favors the Israelis is meaningless, when the lie is accepted as truth. That is meaningless from the standpoint of propaganda and world opinion. When that false viewpoint is translated into lessened support for Israel, a denial of Israel’s right to self-defense and the International sanctions and even economic embargo’s that the left has in store for Israel, propaganda becomes reality.
The only peace those bastards will understand is a Carthaginian peace. They really are demonic.
And Churchill’s comparison of islam to rabies is spot-on. Has the same effect on its votaries, as he noted.
GB,
I think the settlements were on land disputed from previous wars. I was talking about taking a new 5% of Gaza each time.
But your point is taken. Israel can’t retreat for obvious reasons, but can’t advance because the Palestinians are shielded by the world’s leftists.
Either Israel will have to do something that upsets a big portion of the world, or this will continue forever. Personally, I say FTW.
Imagine what they can do in the Mexican desert. Has Hussein shifted enough billions to fund ME terrorist cells yet?
I suppose Israel is too damned humane to pump poison gas into the tunnels, eh? Letting it seep through all the access points and kill off any living thing nearby would take care of any tunnel-dwelling and/or tunnel-accessing vermin. (They could SAY they were targeting rats and be entirely honest, you know.)
If not, how about FLAMMABLE gas, then toss a lit match in afterward?
Because those tunnels simply ***MUST*** be eliminated. “With extreme prejudice” is fine with me.
A single tunnel left after this would be one too many. Israel should not stop until every single tunnel is destroyed.
I guess it is no longer genocide if the whole world collaborates in doing it to Israel. It becomes “normative.”
I sure hope that in its last gasps, Israel nukes Tehran, Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Ankara,Istanbul, Gaza, the West Bank, Islamabad….and the list goes on. A Gotterdammerung.
Don’t destroy them. Just booby trap them the way AQ did the houses in Iraq.
Easy killing field. Israel, as usual, will reduce casualties to the enemy.
The correct solution is to flood the water table with ocean water.
Raise the water table by pumping in the Med.
This makes any future tunnel work no simple proposition.
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Barry’s daze are stopping the proper resolution: relocate the Arabs — Egyptian by blood (mostly) to the coast of eastern Libya. (Cyrenaica)
Further, split the fake Libyan state into its two parts: Cyrenaica should return to Egypt. In all ancient times, it was a part of Egypt. It’s missing from most maps because even in Pharoanic times its population was extremely low, oriented towards mining, burials and a garrisoned frontier. (Tiny)
The central coastal core of Libya is almost bereft of potable water. The Duck of Death hailed from the tribe that lived in the no-mans-land with the dinkiest water hole. (Sirte, IIRC)
In the ancient era, Tripoli was a mere adjunct to Carthage/ Tunis, etc. The sole and only reason for the Tunisian border is the colonial split between France and Italy. (Tunisia and Libya, respectively.) That is, it’s a European conceived border.
For the Arabs, the border never made any sense. It split communities right in half. Aren’t colonial splits grand?
Once you realize that the center of Libya is a human-free zone, and that the east and west hate each other — then you realize that Libya, per se, is a solution that IS the problem.
It’s also convenient that both the east and west have their own entirely split oil field infrastructures. Both are massive.
If the east were folded back into Egypt and the west into Tunisia every manner of problem would be solved — starting with the absolute chaos that is today’s Libya.
All of which is a preamble to the need to bring the Gazans from the east of Egypt (Gaza) to the west of Egypt. (Cyrenaica)
Since the current dust up is largely trashing Gaza, on the economics, it’s cheaper and better all of the way around to put the Gazan’s in a vacation resort newly constructed in Cyrenaica.
The Israelis have solved the water supply solution. (desalination) Plus, deep fresh water is available all across Cyrenaica. (Oil exploration has established that a huge lens of fresh water is trapped under most every square meter of Libya. )
Once in Cyrenaica, the Gazans would no longer be trapped by Hamas — and Hamas would be free to bunk down in Benghazi. They’d love that.
It’s a win-win-win-win all the way around.
Not humane. Israel would never live down/get out from underneath the ironic propaganda that would be hurled its way. What poison gas should Israel use, Zyklon B?
The optics of Israel using poison gas would be horrendous.
Now the tunnels are known to exist, the Gazans have lost their “surprise.” The tunnels cant be deep, maybe 40-50feet, can be easily found by seismics, can be drilled in one day on the Israeli side, and a kablooey dropped in each one.
It should be pretty easy for Israel to monitor for new tunnel construction. It cannot be done silently.
If you can’t use ocean water … then go with un-reclaimed ‘black water.’
And throw in some pork sausages, to boot.
Turn the perimeter into a septic field.
Offal warfare.
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Gaza already stinks like a sty — as does Cairo.
Most Muslim budgets fall short on waste water treatment.
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