[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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Does it offend your sensibilities that other people have different opinions ???

Or you do not like the implications of what ,that lack of genuine activity on a singular races part might just very well be true .?? Other than throwing mega money at various forms of media ?Or have you been personally to these rallies ? To support Israel ?

Yourself ! or any protest ever , ( in Person) .

Immigration isn’t easy if you don’t find an income(s) source that can cover the cost of living of your destination.
My current income can barely cover Dubai for instance.
As you may know, bank savings in Lebanon are now just digits on screen.

Maybe I shall become a nutjob jihadist with an ugly long beard and 2 burqa’ed wives; I heard the UK gov loves to house those scums for some reason.

I know you meant the second paragraph in jest, but that last part sounded so bizarre I decided to google "uk government housing jihadists" to see what came up. I found news stories here and here, about a controversial 2017 proposal to house U.K. citizens, born in the U.K., who had gone overseas to participate in extremist groups and then came back to the U.K., but without having committed any crimes prosecutable under U.K. law. So, no, growing an ugly long beard won't help you if you aren't already a U.K. citizen.

On a more serious note: Which religion do you belong to (at least by heritage, if not by actual current belief)?

Amongst the numerous security failures by Israel that otherwise could've prevented the October 7 massacre, one aspect of Israel's security that hasn't been discussed at length is the Israeli Air Force.

Only a pair of combat helicopters were on standby that fateful day and were only located in the Ramat David kibbutz in northern Israel, according to Walla. The commander stationed didn't participate in that nightly consultation.

Some of the first IAF craft to arrive in the Gaza area and its surrounding communities were at around 7:30 a.m. when UAVs were sent to the scene. However, there were only a few and estimates state that about 3,500 terrorists were attacking the communities bordering Gaza, so the small amount of IAF aircraft did not have a big influence in the beginning. The helicopters were also extremely limited in their armament.

What about the fighter jets?
The only thing missing was Israeli fighter jets arriving at the scene. The Air Force has hundreds of fighter jets. The first combat formation of planes was not launched until half past six in October. They flew to the strip, patrolled over it, circled over the sea, and returned to base when they ran out of fuel. They did not understand what was happening and did not know what to do, the report said. No one in the IDF's chain of command knew how to ask them for help, direct them to action, establish contact with them, and direct them.

It turned out that the IAF did not have an action plan for a large-scale incident such as what happened on October 7. Unlike Israel's ground forces, which are used to operating in chaos and do not need precise activation. No one on the ground was able to properly communicate with the Air Force.

Allnthe IDF soldiers belonging to special units and the infantry who were in their homes on Saturday morning took the initiative, put on uniforms, grabbed their weapons and vests, and went south toward the Hamas massacre. The Air Force does not have such a practice.

Immigration isn’t easy if you don’t find an income(s) source that can cover the cost of living of your destination.
My current income can barely cover Dubai for instance.
As you may know, bank savings in Lebanon are now just digits on screen.

Maybe I shall become a nutjob jihadist with an ugly long beard and 2 burqa’ed wives; I heard the UK gov loves to house those scums for some reason.

I've gotta ask, how much civil disruption would it take for you leave your homeland, friends and everything you've ever known?

Would you leave at the first signs, or would you endure some amount of it because you're emotionally (and otherwise) invested in your country and community?

Dunno; I do not and have never lived in a combat zone. We only have economic refugees fleeing here because $$$$ - but I am largely insulated from that due to my ability to reside inexpensively in the house my father paid for before prices went crazy.

If bombs start dropping I'll let ya know.

It was more of a rhetorical question than one that needed an answer. The real intention was to get you to place yourself in the shoes of someone facing the real possibility of ending up in a war zone in case you might be able to answer your own question.

So, they're not really same ideologically the same anymore?

(That's what I was trying to ask about, I understand they've been split by nationality since the mid ~60s or so.)

At Egypt’s Rafah border crossing, lines of hundreds of trucks carrying aid wait for weeks to enter Gaza, and a warehouse is full of goods rejected by Israeli inspectors, everything from water testing equipment to medical kits for delivering babies, two U.S. senators said Saturday after a visit to the border.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen and Jeff Merkley pointed to a cumbersome process that is slowing relief to the Palestinian population in the besieged territory — largely due to Israeli inspections of aid cargos, with seemingly arbitrary rejections of vital humanitarian equipment. The system to ensure that aid deliveries within Gaza don’t get hit by Israeli forces is “totally broken,” they said.

“What struck me yesterday was the miles of backed-up trucks. We couldn’t count, but there were hundreds,” Merkley said in a briefing with Van Hollen to a group of reporters in Cairo.

This week, an average of around 120 trucks a day entered through Rafah and Kerem Shalom, according to U.N. figures, far below the 500 trucks of goods going in daily before the war and far below what aid groups say is needed.

Other than the trickle of aid through the crossings, Israel has barred the entry of supplies since its assault on Gaza began three months ago, aiming to destroy Hamas after its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

Almost the entire population depends on the trucks coming across the border for their survival. One in four Palestinians in Gaza is starving, and the rest face crisis levels of hunger, according to the U.N. More than 85% of Gaza’s people have been driven from their homes by Israeli bombardment and ground offensives. Most live in U.N. shelters crowded many times beyond their capacity, in tent camps that have sprung up or on the streets. The few functioning hospitals are overwhelmed with wounded and patients amid outbreaks of disease, as sanitation systems have collapsed.

Trucks carrying aid cargos can wait for weeks at the border for their turn to be processed, they said they were told by aid officials. They enter the Egyptian side of the border, drive along no-man’s land to the Israeli facility at Nitzana for inspection by the military, then return to Rafah to cross into Gaza — or go to Kerem Shalom for inspection and entry there.

Kerem Shalom operates eight hours a day, and both it and Nitzana close part of Friday and all Saturday. “This, in a 24-hour-a day” humanitarian crisis, Van Hollen said.

Israel says the inspections are necessary to prevent items of military use from reaching Hamas.

During the process, cargos are unloaded and reloaded several times. If inspectors reject a single item in a truck, it must return with its entire cargo to be re-packaged, starting the weeks-long process all over again, said Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland.

The reasons for rejection are often “very vague, and they are conveyed informally. Sometimes they were very unreasonable,” said Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon.

The two senators said they saw a warehouse in Rafah filled with material that had been rejected in inspection. It included oxygen cylinders, gas-powered generators, tents and medical kits used in delivering babies.

Aid workers told the senators the tents were refused because they included metal poles, and the medical kits because they included scalpels. Most solar-powered equipment appears to be barred — though it is vital in Gaza, where central electricity has collapsed and fuel for generators is in short supply.

“The warehouse was a testament to the arbitrariness” of the process, Van Hollen said.

There is a process for pre-approving cargos, but it can take weeks, they said, and even items that obtained prior approval are sometimes rejected during inspection. After inspection, trucks are considered “sanitized” and their drivers are not allowed to interact with anyone; the senators said they were told one truck driver was turned back after someone brought him a cup of coffee, violating the rule.

The process is “completely incompatible” with a humanitarian crisis of this extent, Merkley said. “There has to be a simplified process” that honors Israel’s concerns over potential military uses of goods but also addresses the scale of the situation, he said.

The senators, who both sit on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said they were drawing up recommendations for changes.

Speaking to reporters in Jerusalem this week, Col. Elad Goren, a senior official in the Israeli military body overseeing Palestinian civilian affairs known as COGAT, admitted that Israeli security checks could be hampering rapid aid delivery but largely blamed the bottlenecks on international agencies and the United Nations.

Asked about certain forms of medical equipment not being allowed in, he said, “I want to make it clear we are not refusing anything that is underneath four headlines … Food, water, medical supplies and shelters.”

White House officials are concerned that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could initiate a full-blown war against the Hezbollah terror group in Lebanon in order to save his own political career, according to a Sunday report.

“If the Gaza war ends tomorrow, Netanyahu’s political career will end with it, incentivizing him to broaden the conflict,” anonymous US officials told The Washington Post.

Netanyahu has dipped sharply in opinion polls since the war with Hamas began, with the public evidently attributing to him a significant portion of the blame for the failures that enabled the terror group’s October 7 massacres.

Multiple senior Israeli leaders have repeatedly said Hezbollah must be driven away from the Israel-Lebanon border, in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 1701 from 2006, vowing that if this isn’t achieved via diplomacy it will be done militarily.

The powerful Iran-backed Shiite militia has been waging a limited but escalating conflict with the IDF over the Israel-Lebanon border since October 7. It fired dozens of rockets at an Israeli Air Force base on Mount Meron in northern Israel on Saturday in what it said was “an initial response” to the alleged Israeli killing of Hamas terror chief Saleh al-Arouri in an airstrike in Lebanon last week.

The Post cited over a dozen unnamed Biden administration officials and diplomats in its report.

The outlet reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency assesses that the IDF would struggle to fight Hezbollah while it battles Hamas in Gaza, as its forces would be spread too thin.

Preventing a major escalation in the north is a top priority for the Biden administration, which believes the conflict would spread to Iran and ultimately bring the US in as well.

It deployed special envoy Amos Hochstein to Lebanon and Israel last week, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is due in Israel this week in order to push a diplomatic arrangement to head off a war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Before flying to Jordan on Sunday, Blinken said there is “real concern” around the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah.

On Sunday, war cabinet minister Benny Gantz appeared to defend Netanyahu in the wake of the Washington Post report.

In a statement released on X in Hebrew and English, Gantz said, “The only consideration here is Israel’s security, and nothing else. That is our duty to our country and our citizens.”

He stressed that “the reality where the citizens of Northern Israel cannot return to their homes – requires an urgent solution. The world must remember that it was the terrorist organisation Hezbollah that initiated the escalation. Israel is interested in a diplomatic solution, but if one cannot be found – Israel and the IDF will remove the threat. All of the War Cabinet’s members share this view.”

Tensions are rising between Netanyahu and Gantz, who is the leading candidate to replace the prime minister in a potential election.

A man driving a car with Israeli license plates was fatally shot at a busy intersection in the West Bank on Sunday, hours after a violent confrontation elsewhere in the Israeli-occupied territory left seven Palestinians and a member of Israel's paramilitary border police dead.

The victim in the drive-by shooting was later identified as a Palestinian resident of Jerusalem. The assailants presumably mistook him for an Israeli because of the license plates. Palestinian militants have carried out scores of shooting attacks against Israelis in the West Bank over the years, and the military described Sunday's shooting as such an incident.

The Magen David Adom rescue service said the attackers fired through the victim's front windshield. It said paramedics arriving at the scene in the central West Bank found the man unresponsive in his car.

The Israeli army said security forces were searching the area for the shooter. Israeli media reported that security forces found an abandoned car that was likely used to carry out the attack, and the suspect fled on foot.

Hours earlier, a deadly confrontation erupted when Israeli security forces were on patrol to search for roadside bombs in Jenni, a town and adjacent refugee camp by the same name in the northern West Bank.

Set aside the Hamas tunnel network in Gaza for a moment, which is well documented. Let’s pan out.

In 2019, the IDF uncovered and sealed off tunnels running from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory. As Reuters reported regarding one of those tunnels, which the IDF showed to the public: “The tunnel was rigged with electrical wiring, fuse boxes and communications equipment. An army spokesman said it began almost a kilometer (mile) away inside Lebanon and reached depths of some 80 meters (265 feet)—about the height of a 22-storey building—as it crossed into Israel, near the town of Zarit.”

the Times of Israel published an interview with Tal Beeri, a veteran of IDF intelligence units and currently head of a security-research organization focusing on Israel’s north. According to Beeri, the Zarit passage is a tactical tunnel, one of four kinds of tunnels in south Lebanon: “They are intended for people only to move around in, and in extreme circumstances, maybe a motorcycle. Tactical tunnels are close to villages, and they enable terrorists to fight from underground—to fire from tunnel shafts and duck back in, to rearm from weapons stores inside, to rest, and emerge again.”

Israelis have also identified attack tunnels under Lebanon, which are large enough to fit cars and some trucks and can be used in direct raids. Third are proximate tunnels, which enable movement to, from and around the border underneath Lebanon without crossing into Israel. Fourth, explosives tunnels, which are exactly what they sound like: long tracts of ground rigged to explode under IDF soldiers’ feet during an invasion.

Another deeply concerning development was revealed last month when IDF troops in Jenin found “two tunnel shafts and three bomb-making labs,” according to reporter Emanuel Fabian.

These tunnels aren’t dug with plastic shovels and pails. The Lebanon tunnels were constructed with the help of North Korea and maintained by Iranian proxy militias. The existence of such infrastructure in the West Bank is indicative of a threat far greater than smuggled weapons, as Oct. 7 showed.

Those aren’t the only tunnel-fronts that Israel has to worry about. As our own Jonathan Schanzer explained here last week: “the Gaza-Sinai border has become a major zone for Hamas smuggling activity. Weapons and cash move all too freely beneath what is known as the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Sinai border. In recent years, these tunnels have also enabled Hamas leaders and fighters to come and go as they please. Once we understand that, we begin to understand how Hamas was able to re-arm and replenish after multiple rounds of fighting over the years. We can also begin to understand how Hamas leaders and fighters have been able to get training and advice from the outside.”

During the British Mandate period (from 1923 to 1947) and the early years of the state of Israel, the need for “defensible borders” was a constant source of tension in negotiations. Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War in 1967 gave the country the bare minimum of breathing room to prepare for an Arab invasion over land. But the advent of the rocket war by Israel’s enemies in the 2000s closed the distance between borders. So Israel and the U.S. developed the Iron Dome defensive system to shield its population from most of the rockets. Then Israel’s enemies dug tunnel systems to close the gap back up.

All of this is about making parts of a country the size of New Jersey unlivable, with the Palestinian threat closing like a vise around the Jewish state’s throat. And that is why so much of the discussion of this war is divorced from reality. This is not a punitive war to make Gazans pay, although reestablishing deterrence from terror groups is both legitimate and essential. The ground above must be cleared of fighters and held by the IDF so that the threat below can be neutralized.

As Ron Ben Yishai explains, in past wars, tunnel systems were largely for hiding troops and materiel. But Hamas built an underground city to live and fight in. The presence of hostages underground also means that this second level has to be cleared and held all over again. The IDF is fighting a double war in each theater. The extent of the underground part of that war is unprecedented. And Israel’s enemies will attempt to replicate it from every direction.