It’s been six months and a couple of days since the barbaric attack on southern Israel by Hamas terrorists. I’ve avoided writing much about the war despite it taking up a lot of my personal bandwidth. But there have been some newsworthy events in the last few days that I feel I need to cover.
First up is the Hamas Gaza ministry of health death toll. The MSM has been happily parroting the numbers from Hamas with a completely uncritical eye. You’ll have seen 33,000 dead, mostly women and children, bandied about with little to no pushback. This despite the fact that the numbers provided were statistically impossible.
Well, the Hamas run Ministry of health was forced to admit the death toll numbers they’ve been happily providing are false. And not just a little bit false. They were off by more than a third. The Ministry now says it has ‘incomplete data’ on more than 11,000 or the 33,000 deaths they claim.
Not for nothing, I doubt the ~22,000 they now claim. Remember, if you will, the incident at the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in northern Gaza. Hamas initially claimed Israeli airstrike hit the hospital itself and killed more than 500 people. Well, it turned out none of those claims were true. It was a PiJ (Palestinian Islamic Jihad) rocket that misfired and hit a parking area on hospital grounds and killed around 100 people.
Hamas has good reason to lie about the death toll and the causes. They need the collective west, and particularly the US, to believe that lots of civilians are being killed. Joe Truzman, a senior researcher at FDD estimates that around 10,000 of those killed are Hamas/PIJ fighters. If he’s correct, and I have no reason to doubt him, the combattant/non-combattant casualty ratio is 1:1. That low of a ratio is something that no army has ever done in urban warfare.
The IDF has moved most of its combat forces out of Gaza. The single brigade left in Gaza, the Nahal brigade, is securing the ‘Netzarim Corridor’, which crosses Gaza from the Be’eri area in southern Israel to the Strip’s coast. This force is being used as a screening force, preventing Hamas from re-entering the northern part of the strip.
Despite what you might have heard, this withdrawal was not done due to any pressure from the US. After 6 months of intense urban combat, those troops need time to rest and refit. As of this writing, the plans to take Rafah are still a go. The only question is when the op will kick off.
Last week, Israel sent Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC, to Allah in a strike on an Iranian consulate annex building in Damascus Syria. The Ayatollahs went on their usual tear, and have been screeching about a response ever since. They went so far as to say they would attack US assets if the US interfered in any way. They have since walked that back that claim some.
Last night, the Iranians seized an Israeli owned container ship off the coast of the UAE. Whether or not this is part of the response or not is unclear. Iran has been attacking Israeli owned shipping since at least 2018.
On a related note, Israeli FM Israel Katz has just postponed a diplomatic trip to Europe due to the security situation. He was to hold talks with the President of Hungary, the Chancellor of Austria and the Foreign Ministers of Hungary and Austria.
Buckle up folks, the next few days is gonna get real interesting.
Addendum: As I was about to publish this piece, something interesting crossed the transom. President Stability Shoes is coming back from Delaware early to confer with the NSC about the happenings in the Middle East.