The wolf at the door
Yesterday, I wrote that something terrible was coming — and it was.
Of course, I was talking about the growing American crisis that is swirling, growling and menacing our freedom. Over and over again, I have warned about the cost and inevitable consequences of chaos and division in American society. I have warned about the danger posed by the insanity that is witnessed by our enemies. In fact, just days ago, I warned that there is a danger that they will confuse the character of the American people for so many of our political leaders, and make a deadly miscalculation.
What is it that Hamas saw in Israel over the last year? What did the Iranians see? Why did they pick this moment? Why now?
They saw division and chaos caused by the ego of one man, Benjamin Netanyahu. They saw the statements by the senior military, intelligence and government officials who decried Bibi’s attempts to cripple Israels’s democracy by neutering its independent judiciary. They saw the protests that began in January 2023, and have continued since, where an enormous percentage of Israeli society has taken to the streets to fight for democracy. They saw a society unnecessarily divided by its leader, whose selfishness and desire for power came before his duty to the nation.
What they saw was weakness and opportunity. They struck.
The surprise attack against the state of Israel by the terror group Hamas was unprecedented, savage and sophisticated. It is the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history, but also a staggering failure of US and allied intelligence agencies, which were caught completely flat-footed. Twenty-three years after the 9/11 attacks, two failed wars and trillions of dollars in spending, the American intelligence community has failed again, utterly.
Israel was caught by surprise — unprepared, unready and unable to see the wolf at the door. It is the greatest failure of competence in the history of the Israeli state, and now there is war.
The coming war will not be between Israel and Hamas. It will be between Israel and Iran, which controls Hamas. There was rejoicing in Tehran tonight as Iranians celebrated the terror attacks in the street.
Iran, of course, is the principal state sponsor of global terrorism, and effectively controls Hezbollah in Lebanon, Islamic Jihad and Hamas. No attack of this scale took place without direct Iranian participation.
They are also part of the Russian axis of power, and the supplier of thousands of drones to Putin’s criminal army in Ukraine.
The Chinese will be watching closely as well. Will they see an opportunity to move in the South China Sea? Will they assess this moment during which they are driven by domestic economic weakness to strike militarily?
There are military tensions in the Balkans, and a very unstable situation between Serbia and Kosovo and Azerbaijan and Armenia in the Nagorno-Karabakh region.
The world can ignite in this moment. Israel was sleeping and caught asleep at 6:30 am yesterday.
The world has turned again. Things are not as they were before, and a new age is here — whether we are ready for it or not. America will not escape Israel’s Pearl Harbor. None of us will.
Evil has asserted itself. Barbarism has revealed itself against the Jews again. This war will spread. The 21st century has fully begun.
Yesterday, I quoted Churchill from his 1938 speech talking about the boundary line between the end of appeasement and the abyss it had wrought. These were his words. They should be heeded because they are as relevant today as they were then:
Our loyal, brave people... should know the truth. They should know that there has been gross neglect and deficiency in our defenses; they should know that we have sustained a defeat without a war, the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road; they should know that we have passed an awful milestone in our history, when the whole equilibrium of Europe has been deranged, and that the terrible words have for the time being been pronounced against the Western democracies:
Thou art weighed in the balance and found wanting.
And do not suppose that this is the end. This is only the beginning of the reckoning.
Hamas must be destroyed, and when Israel does the necessary and righteous work, the world will turn against the Jews. It always does, and always has. It is then that America will be tested. We will stand by Israel. Though we are broken, we are not yet completely bankrupt. The Jewish State will not be extinguished. Ever.
“The surprise attack against the state of Israel by the terror group Hamas was unprecedented, savage and sophisticated. It is the greatest intelligence failure in Israeli history, but also a staggering failure of US and allied intelligence agencies, which were caught completely flat-footed. Twenty-three years after the 9/11 attacks, two failed wars and trillions of dollars in spending, the American intelligence community has failed again, utterly.”---Steve Schmidt
Sorry Steve, you have a bit of selective memory. American intelligence didn’t fail us on 9/11. The CIA and NSA were banging on the Whitehouse door for almost nine months, and couldn’t get any meetings prior to late August; two weeks before 9/11.
The Cheney/Rumsfeld administration refused to consider the possibility of an attack on the homeland. Yet, Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, has stated unequivocally that war plans for Iraq were being discussed in Bush’s first cabinet meeting in February 2001. Coincidence, I think not!
Additionally, the FBI had two of the terrorists under surveillance for over a year while they were in the US. Furthermore, Moussaoui was caught trying to learn to fly, but not land a plane and FBI headquarters refused to allow the Minneapolis agents to view his computer; the decision came straight from the top.
And sorry, I refuse to believe that the Hama attack caught Israel’s intelligence service flat-footed. The warning signs were there. Hamas even said after the Al Aqsa Mosque violence by Israeli settlers, that they would respond in kind.
Additionally, Israel just happened to reposition troops from the South to the north one week before the invasion? Seriously? And we’re to believe that Israel, with all its high tech couldn’t see fighters on hang gliders entering Israeli territory? This makes no sense.
Netanyahu and his right-wing cabinet are as much responsible as Hamas. Hamas is a terror organization and should be annihilated, but Netanyahu only adds fuel to the fire. Their draconian policies in the West Bank and the stranglehold they have on Gaza makes life uninhabitable.
As Einstein once said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.
Regardless of the outcome, policies need to change. Israel and the Palestinians can’t continue on this trajectory; it’s unsustainable, and every skirmish becomes even more brutal, especially for the civilians.
The only winner is Bibi. He gets rid of the whack jobs on the right and installs a war cabinet and solidifies his hardcore credibility with the right. The losers are the Israeli and Palestinian people; absent the settlers who continue to expand in the West Bank and make peace impossible.
Excellent writing. I cannot, however, shake the feeling that I wonder what $2 billion dollars to Jared Kushner bought .... what intelligence? what top secret information? and what dabbling in Middle Eastern affairs created?. And it is astounding to me that our House of Representatives will NOT investigate any of this but remains focused on impeaching a duly elected president for no reason and Hunter’s laptop. Power and Greed, not only in America, but everywhere it seems.