October 13: A week of war in Israel

In which, Israel’s war exposes moral fault lines in America, the presidential race gets a new wrinkle, and we take another look at recession rumors.

A week of war in Israel

If you haven’t caught my special report this past Monday on Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel, then you might want to read that first before jumping in here. 

It was a busy week on the Israel front, so to bring you up to speed:

After the initial Hamas attack was absorbed and Israel declared war, there’s been a mass call up of reservists, ground has been retaken in Israel, the IDF has been pounding targets inside Gaza, and Israel has told Gazans to leave the northern area by today. Political differences appear to have been put aside in Jerusalem as Benjamin Netanyahu formed a unity government with the main opposition party led by Benny Gantz. Israel appears to be dead serious about finishing off Hamas.

The ground war is about to begin and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are fleeing southward towards the Gaza-Egypt border, which Egypt has been reluctant to open. Israel and the US have been working with Egypt to set up a safe passage corridor to get foreign nationals out, but I suspect any agreement reached there will be used to push for the broader inclusion of Palestinian refugees, but that will be a very tough sell to the Egyptians. America is about to find out that some countries really care about having a secure border.

With phase one of its attack on Israel done, Hamas appears to be moving into a second phase: absorbing an Israeli attack and making it into as big a humanitarian crisis as possible in an effort to isolate Israel and solidify grassroots support in the region. Remember, the twin objectives for Hamas are leading the Palestinian cause and destroying Israel. To those ends, Hamas has issued a global call to likeminded militants to rise up against Israel and its backers today (October 13). An attack has already been reported in France where a ban on pro-Palestinian demonstrations is in place, and the Palestinian Fatah group appears to be readying its own move.

The anticipated northern front with Hezbollah may be a third phase of this operation, but it remains relatively quiet, all things considered, though Israel has carried out strikes on Syrian airfields, likely to interrupt Iranian supplies flowing to Hezbollah and Hamas, and Israelis are leaving border villages.