Q&A: How did Israel “ignore” the invasion? What's going on inside Hamas? Is Iran involved? What about Ukraine?

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The main beneficiary of the setback in the normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is Iran .

The majority of the region's inhabitants are Arab first and Sunni second, while the majority of Iran's inhabitants are Persian first and Shia second, a distinct minority.

If Saudi Arabia (the most powerful country in the Arab world) forges ties with Israel (the region's largest military power), other Arab countries will follow suit. For Iran, this means isolation and imminent geopolitical demise.

2

What is the difference between Sunni and Shia?

Putting aside the labyrinth of Islamic theology , to put it simply, Sunni Muslims value the community and its say in the selection of its leader (the caliph), while Shia Muslims believe in the succession of spiritual leaders (the Imams) who are considered Descendants of the Prophet Muhammad. This affected the nature of their institutions.

Most Muslim countries, including Egypt , Turkey and Saudi Arabia , are Sunni. Shia countries include Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan and Bahrain. There are also large Shia communities in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Pakistan.

A central nerve line in the Sunni-Shiite struggle is between the Saudis and Iranians.

Emphasis: Hamas is mainly composed of Sunni Arabs and is not an agent of Iran. To Persian Shiite Iran, the Palestinians are negligible beasts - and if this is a good deal, then they can be ignored. For now, however, it is advantageous to side with Hamas, doing so simply to annoy the Saudis and try to maintain their own position in the region.

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Hamas does not rule Palestine . Hamas runs the Gaza Strip, while the West Bank is run by the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority, where the situation is calmer.

Gaza gets all its water, electricity and food from outside. Hamas, which distributes these benefits, is entirely dependent on the outside world,

Therefore, it is neither a fully autonomous nor a complete political force.

There are many factions within Hamas, each working in their own way. The civilian wing of Hamas does not have the conventional means to control the military wing. It is not a traditional political party. It is a rebellious power structure born of captivity and the chaos it brings.

This structural confusion partly explains why Israeli intelligence agencies , considered “one of the best in the world,” “botched” attacks on Israel. They all had a folder on their desk with a report tucked inside that said an "attack was unlikely" because the timing was not favorable for Hamas. That such an attack occurred indicates a coup within Hamas.

What we are seeing is a new faction, a new Hamas that is particularly violent and ready to take extreme measures. This is not surprising, since the brutal siege of Gaza was very conducive to this mutation . However, many experts point out that in the history of this "conflict" there has never been such violent resistance on such a scale and with such radicality.

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On the Israeli side, things are also unfolding for the worst. Apart from the apartheid militaristic regime at home , approximately 1 million Israeli citizens are devoted to Torah study. They are exempt from military service and pay almost no taxes. All this drives their fertility rates up, leading to a growing population of conservatives who have no interest in building a secular society, but instead vote for right-wing conservatives, religious fundamentalists, and colonial thugs.

Since Israel missed the attack, they had no idea who was behind it or who to hit. So they flooded Gaza with bombs, essentially committing ethnic cleansing. When the Israeli army launched a ground operation in the most densely populated area in the world (more than 2 million people), sweeping block by block and house by house in search of the invisible enemy, an endless nightmare began. , no one can escape this nightmare.

The normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel is a U.S. project in which Saudi Arabia recognizes the state of Israel, establishes diplomatic relations with Israel, increases oil production, and receives U.S. military aid in return. The Hamas invasion disrupted those plans.

So what is the point of normalizing relations?

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At the regional level, the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel has weakened Saudi Arabia's main rival Iran, strengthened Saudi Arabia's power, and opened the Arab world to Israel. So why does the United States do this?

Saudi Arabia is one of the world's three largest oil producers, along with the United States and Russia. Each supplier country affects the price of oil.

RestrictingRussian oil imports will cause oil shortages and increase oil prices. If Saudi Arabia agrees to increase oil production, it will lower oil prices, weaken Russia (and its warfighting capabilities), hitChina (a major oil importer and considered an ally of Russia and an enemy of the United States), and strengthen the United States (higher oil prices increase inflation expansion).

Support for Biden and the Democratic Party is directly related to the price of gasoline: as gas prices rise, Democratic support falls, and vice versa - as gas prices fall, Democratic support rises. So for Biden, it's not so much a question of foreign policy as it is a question of his own survival in the upcoming election. As we emphasized at the outset : the collapse of the Saudi-Israeli deal plays into the hands of Republicans and increases their chances of victory.

2

Oil is the lifeblood of the modern world. Everything depends on oil: the phone in your hand, the pipes in your home, the diapers on your children, the vehicle you commute to... but most importantly, the transportation of all goods around the world depends on oil.

A slight increase in oil demand or a decrease in supply can have a sharp and disproportionate impact: On average, a 10% change in demand can increase oil prices by 75%; a 1% fluctuation can immediately hit consumers.

Oils are also not exactly the same; the loss of one oil in the system does not mean it can be immediately replaced by another oil because refineries are built for a specific type of crude product. Realigning supply chains is lengthy and expensive.

Overall, oil is one of the key material factors in global politics, so everything related to oil is of fundamental importance.

As originally stated , Hamas invaded Israel and the agreement between Saudi Arabia and Israel was destroyed, which was good for Russia, Iran and China and bad for the United States and Europe.

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This is bad for Ukraine, but not because weapons that the Ukrainians might have gotten will now go to Israel. Israel is not Ukraine. Israel is a nuclear/military power and it has no need for retired Hornet fighter jets and broken Leopard 1 tanks. Israel has already accumulated sufficient resources to solve its military problems in the region.

Yes, things are evolving and any turn is possible. But for now, any talk that the West is "forced" to withdraw aid from Ukraine is driven by political considerations rather than genuine material shortages.

The failure of a deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would be bad for Ukraine, primarily because it would maintain the status quo in Russia and strengthen domestic opposition in the United States.

In addition, the new war in the Middle East is creating a favorable cover under which to perfect the situation in Ukraine, with all its attendant consequences.

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Public speech online has so little impact on the situation that it doesn't matter how people express it. However, the situation has important implications for all of us, although perhaps not in the same way. For Chinese dissidents, these three issues are very important .

Repost——

How were Israel's defenses breached?

The fortifications consisted of two barbed wire fences, one of which had a concrete wall underneath it designed to prevent excavation. In front of the wall is a restricted area. Behind the wall is an Israeli watchtower. Israel relies on a system of cameras and sensors (above and underground) to provide early warning of attacks.

The Israelis rely on these high technologies. It is this system that Hamas attacks first.

First, drones attacked mobile phone towers deep inside Israeli territory and began bombing surveillance towers near the separation wall. It just blinds the system. When the system was blinded, some flew gliders over the wall, others used explosives to blow holes in the wall, rode motorcycles into the wall, and finally bulldozers were brought in to clear passages for heavy equipment.

The wall was breached in 29 places. At the same time, hundreds of rockets were fired towards Israel. What happened next? The whole world has seen pictures of kibbutzim. Dozens of senior IDF officers were also killed, many of them from special forces and other elite units. Some were arrested without any pants on.

Such a coordinated attack requires extensive preparation and high-quality intelligence . How many times do you need to practice landing a glider? This would be a series of very large-scale preparations. How could the Israelites not know about it is really puzzling (especially since the Egyptians had given warning in advance). As a result, various conspiracy theories emerged, such as deliberately allowing Pearl Harbor to happen and so on.

But I think this explanation is redundant. There is a military slang in the United States called "SNAFU/situation normal: all fucked up". State behavior can be explained by the "SNAFU" principle: responsibility shirking, political games, complacency and other bureaucratic diseases.

As for the affected kibbutz, there is now a story circulating: "A girl armed her neighbors, and together they repelled an attack and killed more than twenty terrorists... This girl is a hero." Well, where the holes in the organization need to be plugged, heroism can only be used. This kibbutz is a settlement of thousands of people located next to Gaza where Hamas is stationed. It was once home to many Palestinian refugees. Didn't these settlers have an early warning system? Not having any territorial defense system or anything like that? Or do they, but none of them work? … There are so many questions.

Now everyone wants to vent their emotions and engage in moral criticism. But it’s also helpful to take a sober look at the technical aspects. Ironically, in the battle between David and Goliath, Israel now plays the latter role. According to a well-known hypothesis, Goliath suffered from gigantism, one of its symptoms being blindness. Israel is blind right now - the blindness of destroyed communication towers, the blindness of its intelligence services, and the general political blindness. With the current level of technological development, organizing a guerrilla war or something is not as difficult as imagined...

It’s just that there are too many keyboard warriors sitting on couches in air-conditioned rooms who think any other option short of immediate massive military action is “kidding you.” You can't explain to them why going to war in a densely populated area is so inhumane. But there is one thing that even they themselves should think about. The IDF is now screaming for "righteous retaliatory attacks" when just a week ago they were as blind as moles. The question is: Is there something else they haven't seen? Where is the ambush? How many kilometers long are underground tunnels? How many tons of mines are hidden there? And the traps... The moles have been through here once, and there's no reason to think it won't happen again. Maybe that was the plan: to lure the Israelis into launching an attack without restraint, so they could see thousands of Jewish corpses on Iwo Jima? (Of course there will be more Palestinian bodies, but they won’t care…)

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