conflict
Middle East War Shows No Signs Of Stopping One Year After Oct. 7 — And No Clear Path To Exit
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jake Smith
The chaos of Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel is still being felt one year later as the broader region grapples with a conflict that has shown no signs of stopping.
Hamas Oct. 7 terrorist attacks caught Israel by surprise and resulted in the murder of approximately 1,200 people and the kidnapping of hundreds of others, including American citizens. Israel retaliated and launched a war against Hamas in Gaza, which a year later has not ended but instead spilled into the broader Middle East and drawn in other bad actors such as Hezbollah and Iran.
“We’re still stuck in Oct. 7, 2023, in one unending day of terror, of fear, of anger, of despair,” Yuval Baron, an Israeli citizen whose father-in-law is still being held by Hamas in Gaza, told Reuters.
Israeli forces have largely occupied Gaza and killed thousands of Hamas operatives, largely crippling the terrorist group’s capabilities, although it has come at great humanitarian cost to the enclave, according to Reuters. The conflict has displaced millions of Palestinians and wreaked havoc across Gaza, leaving many areas uninhabitable, Bloomberg reported.
The effort to build Gaza after the fighting ends — whenever that may be — will likely be an incredibly costly venture that could take years and require joint cooperation between several Arab states, according to Bloomberg. Millions of tons of debris will have to be cleared from the enclave while buildings are repaired or replaced.
“We thought it would be two months [of fighting] — at most,” Mohammed Shakib Hassan, a Palestinian civil servant who fled his home after Israeli forces entered Gaza last year, told The New York Times. “Twelve months have passed in front of our eyes.”
Israel, with the help of the U.S., has on several occasions made offers for a ceasefire in Gaza conditioned on the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas and the surrender of the terrorist group, but these proposals have been rejectedmultiple times. Yayha Sinwar, the leader of Hamas who has been hiding underground in Gaza, reportedly believes that he is not going to survive the war and has zero intention of reaching a ceasefire deal with Israel at this point in the conflict, according to U.S. intelligence assessments reviewed by The New York Times.
The Biden-Harris administration has spent months brokering negotiations between Israel and Hamas and working with regional mediators to try to reach a deal, but these efforts have largely been fruitless. Though President Biden has on several occasions predicted that a ceasefire could be reached in short order, his own officials now privately believe it will be near impossible to get a deal done between now and January, the end of Biden’s term.
“They’re probably not going to get one before the election, or before January either. But that’s not on them, per se. It speaks to the difficulty of how far apart [Israel and Hamas] are,” former State Department official Gabriel Noronha told the Daily Caller News Foundation in September.
There have been various roadblocks to getting a deal done. Specifically, Israel wants to leave troops along the Gaza-Egyptian border, arguing that it would stonewall Hamas from trafficking in weapons, but Hamas has rejected this term.
Though the prospects of a deal are unlikely at this point, Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has largely come to a close as the terrorist group’s capabilities have been vastly diminished.
“Hamas is a shadow of its former self. Israel is going to continue to try to eradicate them, but it’s sort of a guerilla campaign. Hamas is being starved and smoked out. I suspect that you’re going to see Hamas go underground somewhat — more figuratively than literally at this point,” Noronha told the DCNF last month.
Instead, Israel has shifted much of its forces and focus away from Gaza and toward Lebanon, which houses the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah. Hezbollah is Iran’s largest terrorist group in the Middle East and has engaged in cross-fire skirmishes with Israel since last October out of support for Hamas, displacing thousands of civilians near the Israel-Lebanon border, according to NPR.
Hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah have reached a boiling point in recent weeks, as Israel has launched sweeping airstrikes against the terrorist group in southern Lebanon and killed the group’s leader in an airstrike in late September, according to The Washington Post. Israeli forces have begun ground raids against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon, in what could be the prelude to a much larger ground invasion.
The Biden-Harris Administration, along with other allies, also put forward on Sep. 26 a separate ceasefire proposal for Israel and Hezbollah, although it was seemingly ignored by both parties.
“It’s clear that Israel is determined to rid Lebanon of Hezbollah,” senior fellow at the Strauss Center and former Pentagon official Simone Ledeen told the DCNF. “They need Hezbollah to lay down their arms and surrender… the Israelis [are] really focused on getting to that objective.”
The multi-front Middle East conflict extends also to Iran, which — though it has helped orchestrate and fund the various terror attacks against Israel — made an unprecedented move in April and launched a sweeping missile strike against Israel from directly within Iran’s borders, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Iran launched a similar attack against Israel last week in the form of roughly 180 missiles, most of which were intercepted by U.S. and Israeli forces.
Israel is expected to respond with an attack directly against Iran, although the timing and nature of the move is publicly unknown. The Biden-Harris administration is helping coordinate the attack with Israel, though it wants Israel to avoidgoing after the country’s nuclear facilities.
“The launch of over 180 ballistic missiles by Tehran requires a decisive reaction to prevent future attacks,” Israeli intelligence agent Avi Melamed said in a statement on Monday. “Currently, it seems that Israel is finalizing its operational plans while the U.S. prepares munitions to defensively counter any potential Iranian counterstrike.”
The conflict extends even further into Iraq, Syria and Yemen, all hotspots for other various Iranian-backed terrorist groups that have attacked U.S. and Israeli forces in the region since last October, according to Axios. Israeli forces have launched a series in those regions, too, in recent months.
Until the current Middle East conflict comes to an end, the possibility of regional peace may be too far out of reach, even as that remains a goal for other key Arab states and Western nations. Iran’s “axis of resistance” has taken severe blows since last October, according to Axios.
But Israeli forces are stretched across multiple fronts in a conflict with no clear end game, and the Israeli people seem to be growing more and more weary of the conflict; 23% of Israelis considered leaving the country in the last year, according to a recent poll cited by Axios.
“This war won’t end because nobody is willing to blink,” Thomas Nides, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, told the Times. “In the meantime, everyone is losing — hostages and their families, innocent Palestinians, Israelis displaced from northern Israel, Lebanese civilians. And it’s truly tragic.”
conflict
Russia has sent the West a message: Don’t provoke us into escalating the war
From LifeSiteNews
The U.S., U.K., and NATO war alliance is desperate to provoke Vladimir Putin into expanded engagement prior to Donald Trump taking office. NATO members, sans Biden, met after the U.S. election to organize a strategy to Trump-proof their efforts.
Despite the diminutive Ukranian President Volodymyr Zelensky jumping around and shouting about Russians firing an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) Thursday, they didn’t. Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin decided his response to the U.S-led NATO group firing missiles into the Russian Federation would be to send a message with a multi-warhead intermediate range hypersonic missile. (Click here for background information.)
President Vladimir Putin said “one of the newest Russian medium-range missile systems was tested in combat conditions, in this case with a ballistic missile in non-nuclear hypersonic edition.” The missile has a range of approximately 3,500 kilometers, below the threshold for the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) – that’s a reach throughout western Europe, and the hypersonic message is likely, “You have no iron dome system that can prevent this.”
From Reuters:
Russia fired a hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile at the city of Dnipro on Thursday in response to the U.S. and UK allowing Kyiv to strike Russian territory with advanced Western weapons, in a further escalation of the 33-month-old war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a televised address, said Moscow struck a Ukrainian military facility with a new ballistic missile known as ‘Oreshnik’ (the hazel) and warned that more could follow.
‘A regional conflict in Ukraine previously provoked by the West has acquired elements of a global character,’ Putin said in an address to the nation carried by state television after 8 pm Moscow time (1700 GMT).
A U.S. official said that Washington was pre-notified by Russia shortly before its strike, while another said they had briefed Kyiv and other close allies in recent days to prepare for the possible use of such a weapon.
Regardless of its classification, the latest strike highlighted rapidly rising tensions in the past several days.
Ukraine fired U.S. and British missiles at targets inside Russia this week despite warnings by Moscow that it would see such action as a major escalation.
The U.S., U.K., and NATO war alliance is desperate to provoke Vladimir Putin into expanded engagement prior to President-elect Donald Trump taking office. The NATO members, sans Biden, previously met in Brussels after the U.S. election to organize a strategy to Trump-proof their efforts.
Increasingly it looks like Great Britain will lead the provocation effort, with full support of the U.S. war machine. We previously said to watch Moldova closely, because that strategic position would be the most likely place of Western political influence to provoke Russia.
Indeed, as things are starting to unfold with increased urgency stimulated by the U.S. election outcome, now we see the U.K. entering a new agreement for military defense of Moldova being pre-positioned. From a U.K. government press release:
A new UK-Moldova Defence and Security Partnership has also been launched today, building on extensive cooperation between the two countries and strengthening Moldovan resilience against external threats. This partnership will bolster support for the sovereignty, security and stability of Ukraine, helping to strengthen national security at home in the face of increasing Russian aggression.
…
Foreign Secretary David Lammy said:
‘Moldova is a vital security partner for the UK, which is why to reinforce their resilience against Russian aggression and to keep British streets safe, I am deepening cooperation on irregular migration and launching a new Defence and Security Partnership.
‘With Ukraine next door, Moldovans are constantly reminded of Russia’s oppression, imperialism and aggression.[‘]
As the design of the strategy appears to be unfolding, Great Britain, with U.S. covert operational support, will position themselves inside Moldova. NATO troops are already on the ground there, much to the anxiety of the average Moldovan.
The intellectually honest people of Moldova, using the reference point of prior activity by the U.S. in Ukraine, clearly see themselves being set up as cannon fodder for Western military usefulness. The Great Britain/CIA/NATO team appears likely to use the geography of Moldova to provoke Russia into some form of response.
The U.K. can then declare their troops under attack, and NATO can respond with mutual defense of the U.K. pact, via Moldova.
The baseline for the continued need to avoid any cessation of hostilities in Ukraine is financial. BlackRock and JPMorgan have exclusive rights to the “rebuilding” of Ukraine, with access to all the resources therein. Thus there is an alignment of interests between BlackRock, JPMorgan, NATO, the U.S. State Department, and the internal operatives of the Biden administration.
At the same time, the Deep State (those who control Biden), the Intelligence Community, in combination with the anti-Trump DOJ-NSD (National Security Division), are using the increased hostility to bait President-elect Trump into saying something contradictory about current U.S.-NATO policy – a Logan Act violation.
So far President Trump has remained quiet, as the provocation against our peaceful interests are ongoing. For his part, Vladimir Putin has remained reserved and careful in his response; however, as U.S./NATO missiles continue to land inside the Russian Federation, there is concern that Putin’s restrained responses may indeed escalate.
We hope there are backchannels between Moscow and Mar-a-Lago; however, without any doubt the Intelligence Community is looking to intercept any communication that might possibly be taking place. Everyone in and around the orbit of President Trump likely has national security surveillance on them.
The industrial war machine is attempting to defend itself against any peace effort.
“Troublesome” is an understatement.
Reprinted with permission from Conservative Treehouse.
conflict
Colonel Macgregor warns of world war, urges Trump to ‘tell the truth’ about Ukraine, Israel
From LifeSiteNews
By Frank Wright
Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned that Biden’s authorization of long-range missile attacks by Ukraine has resulted in ‘the highest state of nuclear alert’ in Russia and that the U.S. faces ‘the storm of the century’ in the Middle East.
In a powerful, sobering appraisal of the escalating danger of world war, Colonel Douglas Macgregor has warned that Biden’s authorization of long-range missile attacks by Ukraine has already resulted in “the highest state of nuclear alert” in Russia, and that the U.S. faces “the storm of the century” in a direct conflict with Iran.
Following months of pressure by the U.K. government to permit the firing of NATO-guided and supplied missiles “deep into Russian territory,” outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden green-lit the strikes on Monday.
The following day, the U.S.-guided and supplied ATACMS missiles were fired 70 miles into Russia. Following this, despite U.K. government ambiguity on the issue, U.K.-supplied Storm Shadow cruise missiles were also launched into pre-2014 Russian territory for the first time.
Described as sign that “the West wants escalation” by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, the strikes were followed by the use of a novel Russian hypersonic missile known as “Oreshnik” (“Hazelnut”). The previously unseen weapon delivered multiple warheads on its Ukrainian target and “cannot be countered” – as Russian President Vladimir Putin explained.
Putin has repeatedly warned that Russia will strike any military installation from which strikes on its territory originate, promising a “mirror-like” response to future attacks.
Putin also updated Russian nuclear doctrine following the Biden authorization. The revised doctrine now includes the use of nuclear weapons in response to an attack on Russia by a non-nuclear power – but “backed by a nuclear power” – like Ukraine.
Macgregor said the moves by the U.S. were reckless and had resulted in the “highest state of nuclear alert” in the Russian military. He condemned a statement made by U.S. Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, which claimed the U.S. was prepared to fight – and even win – a nuclear war with Russia.
Such remarks “convince the Russians we are preparing for nuclear war,” said Macgregor, stressing that this U.S. officer could not have made this irresponsible and dangerous remark if his senior officer did not support it.
Macgregor said that this must be swiftly followed by the rear admiral’s immediate removal, and also by that of his commander.
“Generals do not make policy,” he said, as he bemoaned the absence of visible leadership in the U.S. at a time of mounting crisis. “Who is in charge?” he asked, arguing that the Department of State – whose brief includes foreign and war policy – appears to be itself being led by “generals who act like Caesars.”
With NATO faced with a drawdown of U.S. commitments to European security under Donald Trump, moves towards war hysteria is one means of securing its future.
The entire liberal-global order faces a hard reckoning following defeat in Ukraine, as this promises to reveal the deep corruption, money laundering, human trafficking, and immense damage to the European economy partnered with the “hundreds of thousands of dead Ukrainians,” which Macgregor says the media is simply refusing to report.
“The media have never told the truth,” Macgregor said angrily.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on November 11 that “corporate media is a propaganda vessel for Big Pharma and the war machine,” summarizing his long-held position that the Ukraine war is a vast “money laundering scheme” involving the military industrial complex – and companies like BlackRock.
“The big military contractors want to expand NATO. Why? Because nations have to conform their military purchases to NATO,” he said.
Kennedy recalls Senator Mitch McConnell’s stunning response to the question of whether the U.S. can afford sending “$113 billion to Ukraine.” Kennedy explained, “He said, ‘Don’t worry,’” and then showed McConnell saying, “It’s going to American defense manufacturers.”
Kennedy’s claim that the media runs advertisements for the war machine is not a “conspiracy theory.” It is a matter of congressional record.
Kennedy has also stated that the United States blew up the Nordstream pipelines, destroying German gas supplies – and resulting in the destruction of the economy of the former powerhouse of Europe.
He said in March 2024, “It’s amazing how some refuse to admit that we sabotaged Nordstream even after Biden stated on camera that if Russia invades Ukraine, ‘there will no longer be a Nordstream 2. We will bring an end to it.’ This is a matter of public record.”
“There is indeed propaganda at play here. But it isn’t Russian and it isn’t coming from me. It’s the war propaganda of our own government and their collaborators in the media.”
This propaganda machine is now pushing the West towards a war with Russia which cannot be won. A nuclear exchange, as Putin, Macgregor, and Trump have said, would produce no winners. Conventionally, European nations have spent so little on defense that they have no effective counter-force to a Russian land invasion – which Macgregor says the Russians “have no intention” of launching anyway.
Dr. Sumantra Maitra, the author of the “dormant NATO” policy behind Trump’s move to scale down U.S. commitments, yesterday said the result is “a very, very risky moment,” saying “Putin argues that the line of ‘strict or qualified neutrality’ is now blurred” by the authorized NATO weapon strikes.
President Putin announced on November 21st that “we reserve the right to use our weapons against the military facilities of those countries that allow their weapons to be used against our facilities.”
“In the event of escalating aggression, we will deliver a decisive mirror-like response.”
Why is the regime escalating to a “blurred” line between proxy conflict and nuclear war?
It is an insane gamble to prevent the U.S. from drawing down from NATO in Europe, and to prolong a war whose end would reveal the deep corruption in and around the proxy war in Ukraine. Peace would spell doom for the liberal-global order.
Nuclear war for Israel?
Hopes for another payday for the war machine are still alive, however, in the strong U.S. backing of Israel.
In his November 21 appearance on “Judging Freedom,” Macgregor describes continuing U.S. support for a nation whose leaders are now named in arrest warrants linked to genocide as a “tragedy,” saying of the announcement of arrest warrants by the International Criminal Court for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant, “It’s a sad and tragic day for Israel and I think for the United States because we are complicit” in the charges made against both men.
Israel is another example of a leadership whose tenure can only be secured if the wars never end. Benjamin Netanyahu is accused by many, including his fellow Israelis, of keeping the wars going to avoid jail. Even Joe Biden agreed with this assessment.
With Netanyahu urging the U.S. into a war with Iran that Israel cannot win alone, Macgregor asks “four questions on Iran,” namely how such a disastrous war could ever be argued to be serving the interests of the United States.
It would, Macgregor said, see the “U.S. sleepwalking into disaster” so colossal as to be “the storm of the century” – and all to keep a criminal out of prison.
Macgregor has stated that all Trump has to do to stop the war in Ukraine is “tell the truth” about the corruption, lies, and reckless escalation which have sold this war to the West. On the grave matter of human losses, he said:
“We don’t know how many have died. The media have never told the truth. It’s 600,000, 700,000 dead Ukrainians at least and hundreds of thousands more wounded who will never recover. No one is telling the truth. It’s time for the truth. If President Trump does anything he’s got to tell the truth – and throw out anyone who doesn’t provide him with the truth.”
The same can be said of Netanyahu himself. If Trump were to tell even some of the truth about this man, neither Americans nor anyone else outside his influence would be willing to stand with him.
Netanyahu has urged all of the “regime change” wars which have driven mass migration into the West. The war in Iraq killed “a million historic Christians,” as J.D. Vance has said, adding that if Americans had been told this instead of WMD lies, they would never have supported Netanyahu’s call for the U.S. to go to war in Iraq.
Netanyahu has pushed the false line of Iraqi WMDs since 1990. He called for the overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi, whose demise smashed open the floodgates of African mass migration.
Regime change is the business model of neocons whom Trump vowed in February 2023 to remove from the U.S. government, and Netanyahu is the man who has urged regime change on the U.S. for at least 20 years. Trump made this statement almost two years ago in a video recently recirculated as if it were current news. It is to be hoped that Trump’s resolve on clearing out the “Deep State neocons …who seek confrontation” has not weakened.
Regime change has ruined the West, changing regimes at home into a permanent state of emergency governed by censorship and lawfare against critics of godless liberal-globalism. As a result, we are now morally and financially bankrupt, our isolation sealed by steadfast support of a nation whose leadership is now credibly accused of obvious war crimes.
At home, Netanyahu is accused of having backed Hamas for years, of ignoring precise warnings of the October 7 attacks, of relentlessly blocking every hostage deal – to prolong the wars which keep him in office.
His former defense minister Avigdor Lieberman also warned that “Israel will not exist in 2026” if Netanyahu remains in power, saying in June that the Netanyahu government is “only concerned with its political survival.”
Israelis themselves recognize that Netanyahu cannot survive the outbreak of peace, and “has never wanted peace,” as Donald Trump said of him in 2021. Netanyahu’s entire career is based on permanent war. He now wishes to drag Americans – and the rest of the world – into another.
To tell this shocking truth to Americans could not only save Israel from a coalition the former head of Mossad warned in 2022 was “leading Israel to self-destruction” – but also save us all from a devastating global conflict, which Macgregor says would be sparked by attacking Iran.
The U.S. faces a stark choice between oblivion and restoration. It cannot have both, as others have pointed out. So far, Trump has remained silent on Israel while Putin has signaled he is open to Trump’s peace plan for Ukraine.
With war being the lifeline of the Deep State that Trump has vowed to defeat, is he willing to tell Americans the truth to keep their dreams – and themselves – alive?
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