Israel Bombed Gaza, Bombed Its Exits, And Is Bombing Those Fleeing

Israel told a million Gazans that they had to flee to the south within 24 or be bombed.

Now Israel has bombed those fleeing.

Corporate media is barely reporting this, so it is up to us to get the word out. pic.twitter.com/myXfLqwWLg

— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) October 13, 2023

IndianPunchline |  The US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s press conference on Thursday concluding his visit to Israel conveyed three things. One, the Biden Administration will be seen as backing Israel to the hilt by way of meeting its security needs but Washington will not be drawn into the forthcoming Gaza operations except to arrange exit routes in the south for hapless civilians fleeing the conflict zone. 

Two, Washington’s top priority at the moment is on engaging with the regional states who wield influence with Hamas to negotiate the hostage issue. Fourteen US citizens in Israel remain unaccounted for. (White House confirmed that the death toll in the fighting now includes at least 27 Americans.) 

Three, the US will coordinate with the regional states to prevent any escalation in the situation to widen the conflict on the part of Hezbollah. Although the US cannot and will not stop Israeli leadership on its tracks apropos the imminent Gaza operation, it remains unconvinced.

Blinken was non-committal about any direct US military involvement, and the chances are slim as things stand. Most important, even as  Blinken could hear the war drums, he also cast his eye on a future for Israel (and the region) where it will be at peace with itself, would integrate into the region and concentrate on creating economic prosperity — metaphorically put, beating its swords into plowshares in a Biblical Messianic intent. 

That is to say, despite the massive show of force off the waters of Israel, with the deployment of two aircraft carriers along with destroyers and other naval assets and fighter jets off the waters of Israel, the Biden Administration is profoundly uneasy about any escalation of the conflict into a wider war. If the US senses that this is a catastrophe that Israel allowed to happen, that remains a strictly private thought.

Even as Blinken was heading for Tel Aviv, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters in Washington on Wednesday following a closed-door intelligence briefing that “We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen. I don’t want to get too much into classified, but a warning was given. I think the question was at what level.”

Shortly after McCaul spoke to reporters in Washington, an anonymous Egyptian official confirmed to the Times of Israel that Cairo’s agents did warn their Israeli counterparts about a planned Hamas attack, but that this warning may not have made it to Netanyahu’s office. 

These disclosures would embarrass the Israeli government, as Saturday’s surprise attack can be viewed as a catastrophic failure for Israel’s intelligence services. In a brutally frank statement on Thursday, the Chief of General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces General Herzi Halevi admitted, “The IDF is responsible for the security of our nation and its citizens, and we failed to do so on Saturday morning. We will look into it, we will investigate, but now it is time for war.”    

This failure will impact the decision-making in Tel Aviv. Gen. Halevi described Hamas as “animals” and “merciless terrorists who have committed unimaginable acts” against men, women and children. He said that the IDF “understands the magnitude of this time, and the magnitude of the mission that lays on our shoulders.”

“Yahya Sinwar, the ruler of the Gaza Strip, decided on this horrible attack, and therefore he and the entire system under him are dead men,” the general added, vowing to “attack them and dismantle them and their organisation” and that “Gaza will not look the same” afterward.