That ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip is proof that, when serious and earnest minds make it essential to have something done to stop the misery, they can, in fact, stop the misery.
But make no mistake. Nothing like that has happened here. Not in this case.
Yes, there’s a “ceasefire,” or what they refer to as one, but honestly there’s been no “cease” to the “fire,” and that’s something that lay squarely at the feet of the Israelis.
Israel has emerged as the undisputed “victor’ in its campaign against Hamas in Gaza, pretty much levelling the place and breaking untold numbers of rules and conventions that are stated as being important to the international community, the same community that looks the other way as Israel launches as new offensive in Gaza in complete violation of the “agreed-to” ceasefire. Over the past 48 hours, over 90 Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, many of whom were sheltering in “humanitarian” zones that were designated by Israel itself as “safe havens” for innocent “non-combatants.”
The use of italics and that many quotation marks is an indicator of how slippery the slope is here, and how one side’s interpretation of facts on the ground differs from another.
Israel says they’ve resumed the pounding because Hamas has been reticent, or untrustworthy, in the release of the last remaining hostages taken by Hamas during that October 7, 2023 raid into Israel that cost over 2000 Israeli lives and started this whole thing, or at least had it explode into what it is right now.
On its face, Israel is not wrong. Hamas is untrustworthy, and has little regard for the casualties piling up among the Palestinian citizenry, something that’s actually starting to come back and bite them. Palestinians grow weary of dying to atone for Iran-sponsored Hamas’ military campaign against an Israel that enjoys an overwhelming military superiority and is not held in check by any moral considerations as to when and how to use it.
There is absolutely nothing new here. And there is no ceasefire, at least not in the way that you and I might understand it. Innocent people are dying, in their hundreds, but we, as in everyone else not living in the area, are preoccupied by cartoon characters in the U.S. administration and their tech billionaire backers. It’s tariffs everyone is talking about, not Gaza. Gaza has run out of rope as a place the world wants to pay attention to.
And the Israelis know this.
In fact, this article will bear this out on a local level. Despite being one of the longer articles on my site, and despite the effort put into it, this will likely be my least-read article for the entire week, and perhaps one of the least-read for the entire month. Perhaps it’s because t’s released on a Sunday. or perhaps people getting murdered in a place like Gaza doesn’t trump the personal convenience of people in a place like Renfrew.
But I wrote it anyways, and I posted it anyways, if for no other reason than it’s important for me to call this out, whether it’s ignored or not. Because, aside from the indifference of others, what’s happening to people in faraway places is important to me. And if people don’t want to read about it, well, groddy for them. Enjoy your Sunday knowing that no warplanes or missiles will come out of the sky and end you and/or your loved ones. Enjoy your time attending your church and making your lunch plans while you stand, sing, pray, kneel, and otherwise devote yourself to a God that stands for things that you don’t seem terribly concerned about carrying into your week.
Of course, if you happen to be reading this, then I guess I’m not talking to you.
Back to the issue at hand.
Israel is riding high these days.
They pounded Hamas into oblivion over the course of a many-months campaign, killing tens of thousands of Palestinians, the large majority of them innocent non-combatants. That other Iranian-sponsored terror group Hezbollah, up in Lebanon, started to lob some rockets into northern Israel to demonstrate their solidarity with Hamas and to draw Israeli military attention away fro Hamas in the south.
Sadly for Hezbollah, they were successful, in that they did get the attention of the Israelis, not that Israel took their eye off them for a second anyways. You don’t have an existential threat like Hezbollah setting up shop right across your border firing rockets at you to get the attention of the Israelis, who always have a war plan vis a vis Hezbollah. Only this time, the Israelis put it into action, brilliantly.
One day, all across the Middle East, pagers used by Hezbollah operatives and leadership began blowing up in the ears of their users, wiping out an entire level of command and control in the terror group. This was sort of replay of an earlier time when Israel pulled off the same trick, only with exploding cell phones, which is why Hezbollah went with pagers as a response. I don’t know how to say “oops” in Arabic, but this was a major oops, or whatever the appropriate word might be.
Then the Israelis targeted Hezbollah’s top leadership in their top-secret hideaways, which were evidently not as top-secret as they might have wished they were. In a stroke, Israel took out the entire leadership of Hezbollah.
Then, as the piece de la resistance, Israel flat-out invaded Southern Lebanon and drove Hezbollah from their positions, chasing them north as the terror group fled ass-over-tea-kettle in an attempt to get away from the onslaught. They were unsuccessful.
What remained of Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ leadership, those who weren’t killed in the military sphere, were targeted in the civilian sphere, assassinated as they attended weddings and funerals by an assortment of Israeli special forces “dirty-tricks,” like AI and remote-controlled machine guns and sniper rifles. You’ve really got to hand it to the Israelis when it comes to killing their enemies, as nobody is more innovative. They are, quite simply, the best.
While all this was going on, Iran was losing face because its two major anti-Israeli proxy groups had been humbled and humiliated by the overwhelming and sometimes surgical Israeli response. So to save some of that lost face, Iran lobbed a couple of hundred ballistic and cruise missiles, and a bunch of drones at Israel proper, but first telegraphing that they were going to do so, so that the Israelis could defend against it. What Iran didn’t want to do was provoke Israel into making an all-out military response against Iran. They just wanted to “show” everyone in the Middle East that they were going to respond to Israel’s targeting of its proxies.
It worked. No Iranian bombs of any sort posed a threat to Israel, who shot most of them down with the assistance of the Americans, British, and French. Israeli launched a retaliation attack, but it was muted and designed simply to demonstrate that Israel would strike back.
But then the Iranians did it again, after the crippling strikes against Hezbollah’s leadership and the assassinations, sending more missiles and drones towards Israel, also to be shot down.
While the Israelis were being restrained by U.S. president Joe Biden throughout this back and forth, there’s only so much the Israelis are going to take, so they hit back, only this time they took out a whole whack of Iranian air defence systems with their F-35Is, leaving the clear message that, if you attack us again, we’re going to come back and bomb the Moses out you without you having any ability to defend against it.
That’s been about it for Iran, now a shell of its former self in terms of any prestige they might have had in the region.
But at least they still had the Houthis in Yemen, right?
Um, yes and no.
The Houthis are still in operation, busily throwing missiles at anyone and everyone, including a missile strike on Israel that totally obliterated a hotel room balcony in Tel Aviv. That effort earned them a response from the Israeli Air Force, who visited the Houthis back in Yemen with an attack of their own, one that blew up more things and caused more fire and ruin than the Houthis can really absorb. Add to this the fact that the Americans have plunked two aircraft carriers into the Red Sea and the northwestern Indian Ocean from where they can strike the Houthis at will, something they’ve been doing for the past ten days or so.
It’s a tough time to be a Houthi, is all I can say.
Added to this is the American military build-up in the region at large, and in addition to the two carriers. A squadron of six American B2 bombers has been deployed to the remote Indian Ocean Island of Diego Garcia where they’re more than in range for an attack on the Houthis, or possibly even Iran itself. Nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines lurk under the surface, their number and locations classified, unless the Secretary of Defence initiates another chat on the now-famous Signal app. Destroyers and cruisers bristling with missiles of all sorts accompany the carriers, who between them are home to close to 200 of the most advanced fighter aircraft in the world, and that’s not mentioning all the other American air power in the region, in places like Jordan, Bahrain, and Qatar. And then this past week, “several” A-10 Warthogs were sent to the region. The A-10 is a formidable ground attack aircraft made famous by its burping, rapid-fire 30 mm auto- cannon that scares the willies out of everyone except American infantrymen, who usually cheer as it shows up, probably because the bad guys are going to get hurt real bad and shot-up real good.
As I mentioned, these military assets are more than likely intended for the Houthis in Yemen, but we live in the World of Trump where anything can happen, the more improbable becoming the more likely. Which means that Iran itself may be in line for a pasting, particularly if they don’t start talking to the Americans about scaling back their nuclear program.
So, back to Gaza.
With the world the way it is, with their enemies defeated and in disarray, and with the implicit and explicit backing of Donald Trump and the United States, Israel has absolute carte-blanche to do whatever they want, to whomever they want, and nobody can say squat.
Trump and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu are both criminals that had to win office to stay out of jail. But with Israel “at war,” and with Netanyahu viewed as a war leader, the justice system seems to be a long way away from bringing the Israeli prime minister to account, just like the U.S. judicial system is doing for Trump after he stacked the Supreme Court with his nominees during his last presidency.
Two criminals, each beyond the reach of justice, with one being accused of being a war criminal for what’s happening in Gaza, and the other willing to support him to the hilt, and not above becoming a war criminal in his own right, if he’s not already.
So, if you’re a Palestinian, get your freaking head down and keep it down, because it appears that the world has moved on from your plight, just like Ukraine kind of lost the attention of the “free world” itself. In fact, it was the attack on Israel by Hamas, and the Israeli response, that pushed Ukraine off the front page. Now Gaza itself is suffering the same fate.
So, dig in Palestine, the world doles’t care about you any more. They’ve all moved on to tariffs, and the Israelis are more that ready to use this fact as cover for their re-invigorated assault upon the citizens of Gaza.
For the record, I’m fully in support of Israel’s right to exist and its right to defend itself from enemies in a hostile part of the world. Israeli lives are important to me.
So are Palestinian.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 