Good news if true, even it appears to be offered as an alternative to killing the last four Hamas brigades in Gaza. That certainly beats the ludicrous suggestion earlier this week from Joe Biden and his administration that the IDF could secure the Egypt-Gaza border to starve Hamas out of Rafah … while the US airdrops food and medicine into the city.
But is this on the level? The Jerusalem Post reported it this afternoon, based on an earlier NBC News story:
American officials have seemingly greenlighted and supported the Israeli assassination campaign in Gaza and abroad, according to a report on NBC on Thursday, citing unnamed American and Israeli officials.
The report cites claims from American Congressional figures that seizures of intelligence were behind the assassination of Hamas number 3, Marwan Issa, last week.
The unnamed officials, both former and current, claimed that the US had stepped up intelligence-gathering operations in Gaza.
Is that what NBC News reported? If so, they have changed it since this morning. Their current report does note that the US has shared critical intelligence with the Israelis, although much of their operational intel came from their own operations in Gaza since the war. As of now, though, NBC’s report says nothing about assassinations, either inside or outside of Gaza, although a comment from Jake Sullivan might allude to direct action by Israeli intelligence:
The intelligence seized in raids of Hamas command centers helped inform Israel’s accusations that 12 staff members of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNWRA, took part in the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, according to current and former officials and an Israel official.
As it tries to track Hamas’ leaders and weapons stockpiles, Israel is also receiving assistance from U.S. intelligence agencies.
“The rest of the top [Hamas] leaders are in hiding, likely deep in the Hamas tunnel network, and justice will come for them, too,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday. “We are helping to ensure that.”
Either the JPost misread this report or NBC revised the report without notice since this morning. However, it does appear that the former may be the case, as the JPost offers more details and another source of the claim about Americans greenlighting an assassination campaign. The “unnamed American official” framed it as the Biden administration’s offer for an “alternative strateg[y]” to a full-scale invasion of Rafah:
On Wednesday, an unnamed American official told the Saudi newspaper al-Hadath that the US does not oppose the continued assassination of Hamas leaders “in Rafah or anywhere else” but that they did oppose a major ground invasion of Rafah.
The same officials said that there remained only four Hamas brigades in Rafah and that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu had exaggerated the importance of eliminating them.
However, the officials stressed that they were only presenting Israel with alternative strategies for fighting Hamas in Rafah and were not telling Israel that it could not invade Rafah.
The first rule of Global Assassination Campaign Club is that you don’t talk about Global Assassination Campaign Club. The second rule of Global Assassination Campaign Club is that you don’t talk about Global Assassination Campaign Club.
Unless, of course, you think it helps you out to be seen as a member of Global Assassination Campaign Club for your own political purposes. If so, you start spreading it around on the QT where you know it will eventually let all the right people see it.
It certainly sounds as though Biden admin officials are trying to get the word out on this green light. They may be under some domestic pressure to show that they are trying to work with Israel rather restrain Israel, perhaps cognizant of the political mess they are creating among the 80% or so of American voters who support Israel over Hamas. Or maybe they’re hoping to do some damage control with the Israelis, whom Biden and Chuck Schumer have angered with ham-fisted attempts to target Benjamin Netanyahu for political damage in the middle of their war of survival.
If that’s the case, it doesn’t appear to be helping much. The Israelis don’t need US approval to conduct assassinations of Hamas leaders, nor do they appear inclined to see this as an either/or choice. Strategic Affairs minister Ron Dermer bluntly declared today that Israel will seize Rafah, one way or the other, and they don’t give a damn what Biden and Schumer think about it:
Israel will take control of Rafah even if it causes a rift with the United States, a senior Israeli official said on Thursday, describing the Gazan city packed with evacuees as a final Hamas bastion harboring a quarter of the terror group’s fighters. …
“We’re quite confident that we can do this in a way that would be effective — not only militarily, but also on the humanitarian side. And they have less confidence that we can do it,” one of those Israeli envoys, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, told the podcast “Call Me Back with Dan Senor.”
Dermer, a former ambassador to the United States, said Israel would hear out American ideas for Rafah, but that the city on Gaza’s border with Egypt would be taken whether or not the allies reach agreement:
“It will happen even if Israel is forced to fight alone. Even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States, we’re going to fight until the battle’s won.”
In other words: Embrace the power of “and.” Israel plans to win this war rather than help Joe Biden win Michigan, and that means the utter destruction of Hamas in Gaza — as well as the Palestinian “river to the sea” fantasy. And ever since Schumer and Biden began interfering in their internal electoral politics, the unity government seems a lot less interested in providing Biden with any kind of diplomatic fig leaf about it, too.
Biden and his team can head off an invasion of Rafah by convincing Hamas and the city to capitulate to the IDF, of course. Hamas and the Gazans started this war, and now they can end it by surrendering. If not … game on, it seems, and not just in Rafah. It might soon be game on in Doha, too.
Addendum: Israel’s allies complained about the renewed operations at al-Shifa hospital too, but that appears to be paying off handsomely. If this report is accurate, Hamas got caught with its pants down:
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says there are additional “very significant” senior Hamas commanders who were captured by troops at Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital.
He does not detail their identities due to their ongoing interrogations.
I doubt that Yahya Sinwar is among them, but stay tuned. Assuming the characterization of the captured commanders is accurate, it may be that Hamas really has very few places left to hide, and just assumed that the IDF would not target a hospital again over concerns of international criticism. They’re still fighting the last war, and from the idiocy coming out of the US, they’re not alone.
Read the full article here
