[IMPORTANT] Hamas launches foot assault against settlements.

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This is an aspect of the situation I was unaware of.

So not only did Hamas attack a whole lot of Israeli civilians, but they attacked, primarily, some of the very few Israelis who had any sympathy whatsoever for Palestinians, thereby making any longterm solution even harder to achieve?

If so, that further adds to the horror of the Hamas attack, in my opinion.

But I'm still horrified by Israel's response too.

The Biden administration has told the Israeli government that it wants the country to end its large-scale ground campaign in Gaza and transition to a more targeted phase of its war against Hamas, two U.S. officials familiar with the discussions told NBC News.

The officials stressed that White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan did not specify a timetable for this new phase of the war during his meeting Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

At Thursday’s White House press briefing, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Sullivan spoke with Netanyahu about “the next phase of Israel’s military campaign, and he asked hard questions, as we have been doing, about what all that could look like.”

Kirby said that Sullivan “also discussed efforts Israel’s now undertaking to be more surgical and precise in their targeting and efforts that they are taking to help increase the flow of aid.”

The push comes as the death toll in the Gaza Strip approaches 20,000 — two-thirds of them women and children — according to local health officials.

Sullivan had “a heavy discussion” about civilian protection with Israeli officials during his trip to the region, a senior administration official said Thursday on a call with reporters.

"There was a discussion in these meetings — and also in our prior meetings and in calls between the president and the prime minister — on kind of shifts and emphasis from...high intensity clearance operations, which are ongoing now, to ultimately lower-intensity focus on high-value targets, intelligence-driven raids and those sorts of more-narrow surgical military objectives," the senior administration official said.

sraeli officials have briefed U.S. officials on their "thinking of potential timeframes," the official said.

"I think the Israelis had ideas for the military campaign very early which we found problematic, and I think the president's visit out here very early in the crisis, discussed that in some detail," the official said. "And the ground campaign was adjusted based upon some of our advice, some of our recommendations, with the recognition that this ultimately is not our war."

U.S. officials on Thursday also discussed with Israeli counterparts “the protection of hospitals, even when those hospitals are being used by Hamas,” the senior administration official said.

At an unrelated event on Thursday, Biden was asked whether he wanted Israel to scale back its assault on Gaza. He responded: “I want them to be focused on how to save civilian lives. Not stop going after Hamas — but be more careful.”

Earlier Thursday, before meeting with Sullivan, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the war against Hamas would “last more than several months.”

“That’s consistent with what they’ve been saying since almost the very beginning, that this could take some time,” Kirby said at the White House press briefing. “We’re not dictating terms to the Israelis about how long it has to take.”

U.S. officials acknowledge it will take months for Israel to take out Hamas leaders, an effort that will continue even if the high-intensity phase of the war moves to a more surgical one. The debate over the pace of the war comes after Biden warned earlier this week in a speech to campaign donors that Israel was losing global support because of “indiscriminate bombing.”

Israeli ground forces have damaged or destroyed at least six cemeteries during their advance into the northern Gaza Strip, most of them in recent weeks, according to an analysis of new satellite imagery and video footage by The New York Times.

In Gaza City’s Shajaiye neighborhood, where heavy combat raged in recent days, Israeli forces razed part of the Tunisian cemetery to set up a temporary military position. A satellite image from Sunday shows armored vehicles and earthen fortifications on what were intact graves days earlier.

The Israeli military did not respond to questions by The Times about its reason for razing the cemetery and whether it has taken any precautions to protect religious sites in Gaza. The laws of armed conflict consider the intentional destruction of religious sites without military necessity a possible war crime.

Israeli military vehicles destroyed dozens of graves at a smaller cemetery in early December, next to an existing Israeli position half a mile to the northwest of the Tunisian cemetery. A video published by the Israeli military on Sunday shows soldiers apparently engaged in combat in the area.

On the same day, in the Jabaliya neighborhood of Gaza City, satellite imagery showed new tracks and possible military vehicles at Al-Faluja cemetery. Later video footage shows damage to gravesites but no established military positions.

A possible military position was set up at a cemetery in Beit Hanoun, also in northern Gaza.

This is the first time that I've ever heard of Hamas operating outside of Israel. Why now?

CW: Extreme, murderous, dehumanizing hatred of Jews


It boggles my mind how Netanyahu could have deliberately chosen to strengthen a group like this, just to weaken the PA.

The video posted just now by funeralxempire is Israeli Dissidents EXPOSE Genocidal Language, on the YouTube channel of Owen Jones.

Indeed there has been quite a bit of absolutely chilling genocidal language on the Israeli side too, as well as on the part of groups like Hamas.

This is why I don't think any real solution to the Israel/Palestine problem will be possible until (1) a very strong pro-peace pro-Palestine movement rises here in the U.S.A., as a counterbalance to Christian Zionism, and (2) American religious leaders on all sides, including at least some of the now-extremely-powerful Christian Zionists, become more willing to engage in interfaith dialogue.

Only then will it be possible for the U.S.A., and the West more generally, to take a balanced approach to the Israel/Palestine problem and effectively pressure Israel into a humane and just solution that adequately protects both Israeli Jews and indigenous Palestinians.

It has got to be both Jews and Palestinians not only wanting it but willing to keep at it despite repeated brutal terrorism by opponents.

Again I need to caution against ascribing these sentiments to only extreme right wing Jews and Christian Zionists. I know this is anecdotal but I was speaking to my brother a true blue democrat. He said secular Jewish very liberal people he knows are saying level Gaza. They are not quite as explicit about it but the Israeli journalists I have heard as saying similar things about Israeli public opinion.

The three Israeli hostages mistakenly killed by the Israeli military were shirtless and holding a white flag when they were shot, a military official said Saturday, according to multiple media reports.

An initial inquiry into the incident by the Israeli military determined that the soldiers violated the rules of engagement by firing on the group.

According to a senior Israeli military official, a single Israeli soldier opened fire on the three hostages when they exited a building near an Israeli base and began walking towards the base.
The soldier believed the hostages proved a threat and fired on them, killing two and forcing the third to flee into the building, according to the official.

“They’re all without shirts and they have a stick with a white cloth on it,” the official said, according to Reuters. “The soldier feels threatened and opens fire. He declares that they’re terrorists, they (forces) open fire, two are killed immediately.”

The third hostage then called for help in Hebrew, causing the soldiers to believe the man was a Hamas militant luring the group into a trap, the official said. The soldiers then entered the building and killed the hostage.

“This was against our rules of engagement,” The official said.

Markings on the men’s bodies raised suspicions that they may be Israeli, the official said, and they were later transported to Israel and confirmed to be among the hostages held by Hamas.

Two days earlier, soldiers noted a building in the area with the writing “SOS” and “help, three hostages” written on the outside walls, Haaretz reported. The Israeli military believed the building could be a trap.

The hostages were identified as Yotam Haim, Samer Talalka and Alon Shamriz.

The hostages’ killings sparked a wave of protests in Israel. Hundreds took to the streets of Tel Aviv on Friday to protest the Israeli government over its military operations in Gaza.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has faced increasing opposition from both in Israel and abroad over his response to the Oct. 7 attacks, which sparked the war.
Netanyahu called the incident an “unbearable tragedy.”

“Together with the entire people of Israel, I bow my head in deep sorrow and mourn the death of three of our dear sons who were kidnapped,” he said. “My heart goes out to the grieving families in their difficult time.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spent the past several weeks maneuvering to maintain power and shore up public support amid attacks from political rivals, pressure from the Biden administration, and growing international criticism of his handling of the war with Hamas.

In an apparent effort to play to his right-wing base, Netanyahu publicly broke this week with President Joe Biden and rejected any talk of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

He called the Oslo peace agreement, which established the Palestinian Authority in 1994 and gave it the power to govern the West Bank and Gaza, a “mistake” that should not be repeated. The statement was a blunt rebuke of Biden, who has called for a “revamped” Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza after Hamas is defeated.

Netanyahu’s move follows a long-running pattern of the Israeli leader making hard-line statements for his own political gain, according to current and former Israeli officials, who asked not to be named. Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, has repeatedly fended off removal attempts in recent years by striking alliances with right-wing political parties.

U.S. and Israeli officials told NBC News that they fear Netanyahu has adopted some positions in the war against Hamas to prolong his own political survival.

Given his weak political position and the widespread expectation that he could be sidelined once the fighting ends in Gaza, they said, Netanyahu has a strong motive to prolong the military offensive.

“He has every incentive to keep the war going, to ensure his political survival,” one U.S. lawmaker who asked not to be named told NBC News.

At the same time, Israel is increasingly isolated internationally as the Palestinian death toll in the conflict has reached 18,700, with 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry. The vast majority of the territory's 2.2 million people are displaced, and half of them are estimated to face starvation, according to the U.N.

A current Israeli official said that Netanyahu is pivoting to the right as the domestic political cost of his government’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 attack looms.

After the surprise assault, Netanyahu formed a unity wartime government made up of five senior Israeli officials.

Six weeks later, centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid became the first major Israeli political figure to call for Netanyahu to resign, criticizing him for his handling of the war.

“Netanyahu needs to go now during the fighting,” Lapid said on Israel’s Channel 12 news. “The country is going to a bad place.”

Retired general and center-left politician Amos Yadlin has put much of the blame for Israel’s intelligence failure leading up to Oct. 7 on the chaos that resulted from the Netanyahu government’s proposed judicial reform.

“Netanyahu got all the warnings — from his defense minister, from the chief of staff, from the head of intelligence, from the head of Shin Bet and from independent writers like me, like others — that this is weakening Israel deterrence and endangering Israeli national security,” Yadlin told Politico three weeks after the attack.

Eisenkot, a member of the unity government whose son and nephew were recently killed in fighting in Gaza, has also been cited as a potential political rival to Netanyahu. Eisenkot, a former senior military leader, opposed Netanyahu’s judicial reforms.

Some analysts contend that Netanyahu’s pivot to the right makes sense for a politician seeking to strengthen domestic support before worrying about global public opinion. They also noted that some of Netanyahu’s positions are not outside the political norm in Israel post-Oct. 7.

While Biden has expressed support for a two-state solution, Israeli leaders across the political spectrum have said they are not ready to talk about establishing a Palestinian state after the massacre.

“Maybe it seems logical to the world right now, but it doesn’t make sense,” said Israeli columnist and commentator Nadav Eyal.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a member of the left-wing Labor Party, told The Associated Press this week that he is urging allies not to jump immediately to talk of a two-state solution. “There is an emotional chapter here that must be dealt with,” Herzog said. “My nation is bereaving. My nation is in trauma.”

Michael Singh, a former senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council during the George W. Bush Administration, predicted that it will take time for a post-Oct. 7 realignment to occur in Israeli politics. He said it's not clear whether opposition leaders and public opinion will unify against Netanyahu, or the fractured politics that he has used to remain in power will continue.

“Once the dust settles in Gaza, you are going to have a really difficult process of accountability for Oct. 7 and potentially a resurfacing of the preexisting divisions,” he said. “It’ll really be all-consuming for Israeli society. We have to be patient and let this play out.”

Singh, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, cautioned that the removal of a figure who has dominated Israeli politics for decades is not preordained. “Bibi has a very tough road to hoe here if you look at his approval ratings,” Singh said. “But you can never count him out.”