61–70 of 82 posts
Considering Qatar (and thus by proxy Hamas and Iran) has access to global markets it’s not clear to me why the assumption here is that these moves came from Israeli leadership and not the more likely source… those planning the slaughter who also wanted to benefit economically and not just in blood.
For anybody close to the topic and knowing how shocked the Israeli society was on Oct 7th, this paper makes a very strong claim that needs more than just circumstantial evidence (higher short trades). Like any circumstantial evidence, many reasons could trigger unusual trading patterns
As the article goes to great lengths to point out, the trades in EIS weren't random. They represented the second highest spike in short trades in the ETF behind April of this year, when it was predicted that Hamas would attack on the eve of Passover. It's difficult to argue that this surge was merely coincidence or statistical noise. As for the Israeli public at large being informed about these attacks and knowing pr…
Now, I know of no reason why Hamas, Iran, or Russian sources that knew something was about to go off, would not have tried to profit from that (through proxies of one sort or another). But this doesn't quite seem unusual enough to act on. If this kind of spike triggered an alarm, it would have gone off a couple times in the previous 52 weeks alone, and any alarm that has that many false positives will get ignored eventually.
There's a new "conspiracy theory" on the block to explain this and other events (I do admittedly find it plausible): It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack, either Israel's previously famous intelligence service was caught completely off guard (despite the warning by Egypt) - or they let it happen, intentionally, as an excuse to raid Gaza as well as improve the po…
> It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack This is an odd way to decribe things considering Gaza is not a state. Its population is mostly refugees who were ethnically cleansed from nearby villages and functionally it operates as a concentration camp preventing those people from trying to return to those villages which are now occupied by settlers.
For people who don't know, UNRWA says Palestinian refugees are the only ones who are defined as eternal. All children, including adopted (!), of Palestinian refugees are Palestinian refugees, and so on to eternity. [1]
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA#Definition_of_refugee
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is this implying that these kinds of events are politically advantageous to pro-settlement and native-displacement factions in Parliament? Get attacked, retaliate with orders-of-magnitude more force, and drive natives out of their homes and into progressively smaller and more-fragmented reservations?
I have a hard time following the logic here. "Natives" (wut?) start 3 wars with the explicit goal to exterminate an entire nation. They lose all the wars they started (which comes with losing some territory, which is often the case when one loses a war) and that's somehow the fault of the country under attack? So the winning party was supposed to give the losing party extra land for their effort of attempting to exte…
There's a new "conspiracy theory" on the block to explain this and other events (I do admittedly find it plausible): It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack, either Israel's previously famous intelligence service was caught completely off guard (despite the warning by Egypt) - or they let it happen, intentionally, as an excuse to raid Gaza as well as improve the po…
There's no way they let the October 7th that actually happened go off on purpose. They didn't need to take that much of a hit to justify invading a Gaza, and it made them look bad. Which would leave open the possiblity that they "let it happen" thinking the "it" was something much less substantial, but the motive doesn't really make sense to me, because they didn't need to take a hit at all. Just an accusation that H…
There's a new "conspiracy theory" on the block to explain this and other events (I do admittedly find it plausible): It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack, either Israel's previously famous intelligence service was caught completely off guard (despite the warning by Egypt) - or they let it happen, intentionally, as an excuse to raid Gaza as well as improve the po…
Netanyahu has long supported Hamas, both politically and financially. At a Likud meeting in 2019, he said "Those who want to thwart the possibility of a Palestinian state should support the strengthening of Hamas and the transfer of money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy." He was entirely willing to support those who killed Israelis if he thought it was useful to him.
(The story was originally from Haaretz, but that's paywalled.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/22/world/middleeast/peace-ac...
But if he welcomed this attack, it backfired dramatically and predictably. I can't see that anyone could think it would help Netanyahu politically. If the goal were to brutalize the people of Gaza, perhaps, but Israel hasn't generally needed much pretext to brutalize the people of Gaza.
He could just be desperate. He is looking at prison time for corruption, after all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's not like Israel has been, or is, a friend of Gaza. So when Gaza was planning the attack This is an odd way to decribe things considering Gaza is not a state. Its population is mostly refugees who were ethnically cleansed from nearby villages and functionally it operates as a concentration camp preventing those people from trying to return to those villages which are now occupied by settlers.
They're not refugees. They left 70 years ago. If Israel left them back, Israel would devolve into another failed middle eastern state. For people who don't know, UNRWA says Palestinian refugees are the only ones who are defined as eternal. All children, including adopted (!), of Palestinian refugees are Palestinian refugees, and so on to eternity. [1] [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNRWA#Definition_of_refugee
Ignoring the obvious racism here, in what sense is Israel a successful middle eastern state? It regularly attacks its neighbouring countries. It keeps 2.3 million people in a ghetto and millions others in bantustans in the West Bank. It's huge source of instability in that region and is dependent diplomatically, economically and militarily on the US.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As the article goes to great lengths to point out, the trades in EIS weren't random. They represented the second highest spike in short trades in the ETF behind April of this year, when it was predicted that Hamas would attack on the eve of Passover. It's difficult to argue that this surge was merely coincidence or statistical noise. As for the Israeli public at large being informed about these attacks and knowing pr…
It does look interesting, but the fact that it was not even the highest spike in the previous 52 weeks, much less of any longer time period, makes it a lot less impressive than it sounds at first. Now, I know of no reason why Hamas, Iran, or Russian sources that knew something was about to go off, would not have tried to profit from that (through proxies of one sort or another). But this doesn't quite seem unusual en…
All of it combined lends itself to algorithmic early detection systems. The general public should have this security. Not a sure thing, but neither is meteorology.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a hard time following the logic here. "Natives" (wut?) start 3 wars with the explicit goal to exterminate an entire nation. They lose all the wars they started (which comes with losing some territory, which is often the case when one loses a war) and that's somehow the fault of the country under attack? So the winning party was supposed to give the losing party extra land for their effort of attempting to exte…
The logic for some is undermining western liberal capitalism to create either a national socialist or marxist leninist dictatorship in it's ruins.
The criticisms are telling. None of them address the point, they just split hairs about who is and isn't 'native'[1].
[1] When a group of people moves into a land that is already lived in by another group, the first group are settlers, the second group are natives. That group might be settlers vis-a-vis[2] some other relationship in the distant past, but in the present day, they are natives. Just like if a billion people from Asia moved into the United States tomorrow, to displace Americans living in it into reservations, the current residents of Houston, NYC, Miami, etc, would be considered natives.
[2] Strangely enough, most proponents of 'western liberal capitalism' seem to understand this kind of concept when it comes to modern property rights (which tend to prohibit me from stealing land that an ancestor of its current owner stole centuries ago), but many of them become selectively blind to it when applied to on-going colonization.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There was never a plan to decapitate the Ukrainian state. That is utterly absurd when you consider there were Russian intelligence assets in Zelensky’s inner circle for a very long time. Russia could have killed him day 1 if they wanted to (or before). Encircling Kyiv was merely for negotiating pressure. As evidenced by them withdrawing from that position as part of the ceasefire negotiations in Turkey in the Spring…
So they left a strong wartime leader in place for their enemy for their upcoming war? Why? Since you’re so sure about intelligence capabilities, why couldn’t the West have known and taken precautions?