Is Raf OK? -- Installment #76
2024-02-09 -- Jerusalem
Tags: More Dr. Einat Wilf; 4 Min Read; Very Short Videos
From Gaza, photos and video continues to surface on Arabic social media of Hamas militants beating and shooting at Gazans. Chasing them away from food aid and shelter.
In Jerusalem it is sunny with a light breeze. The moods of many are lifted because their children and siblings have been pulled out of Gaza. The focus shifts back to normal life: Work, Hostages and the Political Crisis.
A friend wears this, every day. The tape is the number of days (I notice the number of days and the number of hostages are converging).
On the train here yesterday, saw this:
I thought: Hmm, that’s funny, it’s English written like a Semitic language (without vowels). I don’t know those abbreviations… Maybe I’ll ask my kids… Oh…. it is Fuck Hamas. Which brings us to…
Tunnels...
The IDF made it into tunnels that were part of the HQ complex of Hamas. An aspect of this is that since the beginning of the war, many laptops and other sources of intelligence (including captured Hamas officers) provide extensive data about the inner workings of Hamas. This includes rosters of officers and soldiers and financial information.
In these videos, we see the discovery of 20 million shekels (about US$5.5 million) in cash. This was in the complex that served as Sinwar's HQ. (One minute, English subtitles by Raf)
Haaretz on Tunnels
Esther Solomon, Editor-in-chief, Haaretz English, summarizing reporting on tunnels (emphasis Raf’s):
Above ground in Gaza, there is fierce fighting, catastrophic loss of life, homes and infrastructure. But as the Israel-Hamas war stretches past 110 days, and as debate about the 'day after' gathers pace, the key military and strategic battleground is tens of meters underground, in what is now estimated as over 400 miles of tunnels built by Hamas over the last decade and a half.
Our senior correspondent and columnist Anshel Pfeffer and our senior defense analyst Amos Harel have written extensively on a subterranean labyrinth that bears some similarities with the Viet Cong's jungle tunnels of the 1960s (and some see parallels with 2000-year-old tunnels built by Jews in ancient Judea) but which may well turn out to be the largest, and most sophisticated, tunnel network of its kind in the world.
These tunnels function as military headquarters, weapons warehouses and ambush hideouts for Hamas - as well as prison cells, complete with iron-barred doors, for an unknown number of the 134 Israeli hostages still kept captive in Gaza.
The shelter they provide for Hamas operatives and officials is not afforded to Palestinian civilians, exposed to massive Israeli bombardment and effectively forced to act as a giant human shield for the tunnels dug under their homes. But the tunnels present a formidable challenge to the IDF, commonly considered the most powerful army in the Middle East.
The IDF has used robots, drones, dogs, engineers, explosives, flooding and now its own soldiers underground to locate, disarm and disable them. But, Anshel Pfeffer warns, at some point soon Israel's security echelons will admit that destroying the Hamas tunnels under Gaza, a network the size of London's tube, just can't be done.
That means these tunnels have serious repercussions for Israel's war aims of a post-Hamas Gaza, for the survival of hostages and for the completely new security paradigm that the Netanyahu government has promised for its own citizens.
Ideology...
I stumbled on a recent interview with Dr. Einat Wilf (who was just in #75). As a reminder she is a left/center Israeli politician, who has researched UNRWA for decades. This is a two minute clip of her talking about October 7 (in English).
Relief Area
Alef
Modern counterpoint…
Bet
Gimmel
Dalet: A Grammy is won by a Hasidic Jew!
Yeah, there is less black about-the-war humor to be found. The war is a grind for all involved. (Egypt just finished building a tall wall behind the fence for a 2nd layer, and is reportedly doing intensive helicopter patrols of their segment of the Gaza border.)
The “read behind the read” seems to be: If the Hamas tunnel network is, for practical purposes indestructible, and a siege isn’t possible (because of all the human-shield civilians on the ground), then what? As mentioned much (much) earlier, the Israeli right supported Hamas because the goals of Hamas align with their own: No to two states. Israel, for its many (many) strengths is not amazing at self governance. (A condition affecting a number of Western states.). So where does that land?
Here is to "...an acceptance of the impossibility of making sense of the events." (c.f. #72)
Stay well,
Raf
(Thank you A.K.)