Israeli Ground Forces Get Cold Feet? + Ukraine War Updates
Things continue to both pick up pace and seemingly slow down at the same time.
After making boisterous threats of immediate ground assault into Gaza, the IDF apparently has gotten cold feet and sobered up to the harsh reality that they would face inordinate losses and/or defeat. So now, they’re pretending to gather forces while re-evaluating the situation, and their chances. In the meantime, they’ve resorted to indiscriminately mass bombing civilians from the sky.
But major problems in mobilization have been revealed:
⚠️ The newspaper The Times of Israel announced that reservists who are mobilized into the ranks of the Israeli army face serious problems because they lack adequate uniforms and other equipment (⏺including elements of individual ballistic protection).
▶️It is stated that this problem is being tried to be solved independently in the People's Republic of China (Aliehpress), but also that the USA has announced military aid that will relieve the logistics of the Israeli army.
.
The Israel Defense Forces were not ready for large-scale mobilization of reservists and combat deployment in war conditions. This was reported by the Israeli portal Ynet.
The reservists gathered from all over the country were not provided with food, they did not have the equipment, basic necessities, and personal hygiene.
Volunteers have already announced a nationwide collection of necessary items for reservists who continue to arrive at collection points throughout the wartime state.
Coincidentally, just days ago a major camo shortage was likewise revealed for the U.S. Marine Corps:
A camouflage shortage in the Marine Corps will lead to service members wearing less regulated uniforms in the near future.
In an Instagram video, Commandant Gen. Eric Smith addressed service members’ concerns over an inability to find and purchase woodland-patterned "cammies" in an ongoing manufacturing shortage. He announced that as the problem continues, local members will be allowed to wear alternate uniforms contrary to Marine standards.
"That problem is going to stay with us until the fall of 2024 when the manufacturer can fill the backlog that has been created after COVID. Until that time, local commanders, battalions and squadrons are authorized to use FROG [flame-resistant organizational gear] gear or [desert-colored] cammies to mitigate," Smith said.
I highlight the issue merely to point out the hypocrisy: Russia was widely ridiculed for various shortages in what was an unprecedented mobilization call up not seen in more than half a century. I said at the time that any and every country would have the same issues. Now of course we see it proven true as even Israel is having problems equipping their newly called-up troops.
Beyond that, Bibi has apparently premised the delays under the guise of giving time for Americans and civilians to evacuate Gaza. But this is complicated by several factors, one of them being the fact that Egypt has apparently closed the southern Rafah checkpoint and doesn’t want Palestinians refugees to flood into Egypt.
Why’s that? Because it has long been the secret plan of Israel to push Palestinians out of Gaza and “resettle” them into a new home in the Sinai, and make them “someone else’s problem” so Israel can completely take over Gaza.
🇪🇬🇮🇱🇵🇸Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has long harbored plans to annex the Gaza Strip and move Palestinians to the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt, Iraqi TV channel Al Sumaria reports, citing an audio recording of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in which he spoke about a conversation with Netanyahu.
“Netanyahu once said... that there is a map showing the Gaza Strip and the territory near our borders, and began to consult if the population of the Gaza Strip moved to the Sinai Peninsula,” the TV channel quotes Mubarak as saying. It is reported that the ex-president of Egypt refused Netanyahu’s offer. "Forget it. Neither I nor the one who comes after me will be able to give up our territory," Mubarak said.
Egypt knows this and prefers to keep them where they are but deliver humanitarian aid to them through the southern Rafah checkpoint. Israel likely doesn’t want them to leave through the northern Erez checkpoint as that would mean them flooding into Israel. So Palestinians inadvertently become a pawn in this sort of geopolitical game.
There is an unprecedented amount of information noise right now, with fake after fake streaming out by the minute. Not only about the things happening inside of Israel but the general geopolitical scene revolving around it, with fakes about various countries like Pakistan offering military assistance to Palestine, etc. So we must keep very vigilant in not believing everything and keeping the information sanitary.
In general though there does appear to be a mobilization of various forces and countries, though much of this can be ascribed to precautionary measures. Almost every country will always ‘mobilize’ their forces for protection when there is something brewing nearby—for example, Iran on the border of Azerbaijan in the recent flare-ups there.
So we now hear of potential mass call-ups of Syrian forces, with rumors of Greek mobilizations, etc.
The entire empire is mobilizing; British fighter jet arrive at the UK's Akrotiri base in Cyprus. A squadron of NATO fighter jets from the Netherlands has landed in Israel. The US aircraft carrier has been deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. In just a few days USA retreated from Ukraine like it did from Kabul
Reports of Jordan as well:
Reports indicate Jordanian armored vehicles have moved up to the Jordanian border with the West Bank and convoys of women and children are beginning to evacuate the area. Jordanian intentions are unclear. Securing their border against any spillover effects from the current conflict is, in my view, the most likely explanation barring additional information.
With U.S. now allegedly sending its second aircraft carrier group to the region, things are bound to be at a hair-trigger. The official stance, articulated by John Kirby today, is that these aircraft carriers are for ‘deterrence purposes’, to make anyone think twice who may consider entering the conflict.
A mass Hezbollah incursion was announced earlier in the day, but it again turned out to be fake news or a psyop, some believing that perhaps Hezbollah hacked or spoofed Israeli early warning systems in the north.
Meanwhile, President Raisi of Iran reportedly spoke to bin Salman of KSA on the phone regarding support for Palestine. There’s a sense of coalitions being formed behind the scenes for something much larger, but there’s still no certain indication that the big Black Swan some people expect will occur.
Some however do see parallels to other powder keg eras:
This was exacerbated earlier in the day by a reported gas pipeline explosion between Estonia and Finland, which was promptly blamed on Russia. Naturally, Stoltenberg already “threatened” Russia with a response as well:
More and more, such incidents leave one with the feeling that some hidden hand is trying to stoke a major conflict behind the scenes. And as we spoke about last time, it’s obvious what the reason for it would be. The U.S./West’s disastrous Ukrainian campaign has completely jumped off the rails and threatens to sink the entire West with it—as the Polish president implied when he described Ukraine as a sinking man threatening to pull everyone under along with him.
Riding that wave of growing tension are the increasing—and very eerily ‘coordinated’—warnings about some type of mass global terror attack set to take place on Friday:
It follows what is claimed to be the cofounder of Hamas calling for a ‘day of rage’ at that time, and for people to take to the streets and carry out “jihad”.
Lindsey Graham, meanwhile, called for his own jihad in invoking a “religious war” on live television:
Considering that more and more evidence continues to pour out that Netanyahu advocated directly funding Hamas, you can put two and two together:
As mentioned last time, there’s potential for some mass coordinated falseflag to really set things off, once U.S. strategic assets are in place around the region. One can easily imagine a scenario where U.S. carrier groups are positioned in the east Mediterranean and “Hamas” or some “Iranian backed group” carries out some major “provocations” or “terror attack” in major cities, causing the U.S. to gleefully carry out a bombing campaign to cripple Syria, Iran, etc.
One thing that’s interesting to note is that MSM now reports that Iran did not know about the Hamas attack, and therefore was likely not involved.
It brings up questions on whether there’s some disagreement within the deepstate as to how to proceed and how much to escalate this.
There’s more and more indication that this was in fact some sort of Netanyahu/Likud ploy to consolidate power. For instance, the revelation that Egyptian intelligence forces warned Netanyahu’s government that “something big” was about to happen, which was completely ignored.
For the record, Israel has officially denied that this happened. But it’s difficult to believe anything they say.
Meanwhile some of Israel’s top publications continue to turn against Netanyahu, blaming him for the fallout:
I’ve seen some MidEast experts even remark that Netanyahu’s regime won’t survive this conflict no matter who wins. Whether that’s true or not, he certainly needs a perception of major decisive victory after everything that’s happened.
One of the problems is that no matter how this ends, even if it goes the way of the mildest predictions for escalation, this will reshape the region forever. For instance, let’s say Israel flattens Gaza and beats Hamas and brings about a swift end. From this point on, Israel will have a new chip on its shoulder and feel a newfound justification for striking anything or anyone. That will mean that no matter how this ends, the tensions revolving around Syria and Iran will likely go up no matter what.
Israel will use what happened here as justification to respond disproportionately to even the slightest perceived provocation. That means mass strikes on Iranian targets in Syria will follow for a long time after this.
Another important thing to note is that, while it’s fashionable to now predict a big ‘Arab trap’, and a movie-like ending to things where Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, etc., all happen to swoop in and destroy Israel together, the truth is that there are some indications of repeat mistakes which could end with nothing more than Gaza’s destruction.
For example: it was a well-known Arab tactic dating back to the Yom Kippur war to spur a conflict and exaggerate the aims of it in order to try and compel or coerce other allies into joining. Egypt famously lied to Syria in 1973 about how far they were going to ingress into the Sinai in order to get Syria to commit to attacking the Golan Heights.
Similarly one can see a potential scenario where instead of some highly coordinated resistance sphere ‘white hat’ campaign, it was merely a desperate hail mary from Hamas to try and get other regional actors to join in based on the perceived boldness of the attack. But there are some indications that Iran and Hezbollah really want no part of another large conflict.
Of course this may be moot if the West/U.S. plan to co-opt the attacks and use them to their advantage with some incendiary escalation that would force Iran to respond. But for now, there’s no actual indication that will happen or that Iran plans to get involved in an overt way.
With that said, a growing amount of experts believe that the “red line” for other countries is Israel breaching into or attempting to occupy Gaza:
And it’s possible that this is one of the causes for Israel suddenly vacillating at the Gaza border, rather than charging ahead like they so boldly threatened to do in the conflict’s first hours.
But one thing that continues to be made evident is that U.S. is using the conflict to push Ukraine out. Republican Senator Hawley:
John Kirby just spoke the devastating quiet part aloud in today’s press conference, admitting that they’re at the “end of the rope”:
Listen to what he says again. On one hand, rumors suggested Biden intended to write a giant one-and-done check for $100B to wash his hands of Ukraine, but Kirby now very plainly states that: “You don’t want to be trying to bake in long term support when you’re at the end of the rope.”
This is quite an eye-opening statement. This may represent the very first time the administration has so overtly admitted to there not only being no plans for “long term support” of Ukraine, but that all support in general is already nearing its end.
☄️☄️☄️☝️The ability to help Kiev is decreasing over time due to limited resources, the conflict is reaching a point where its solution through military action is impossible, said Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto☄️☄️☄️
The fact that the timing coincides with the start of this Israeli conflict clearly appears to be an intentional bit of messaging to condition the public that Project Ukraine is being wrapped up. Sky News even reported that Zelensky may suddenly be open to negotiations if Western aid truly runs out:
With that said, that’s likely just their own speculation, as the official line is still that Ukraine is holding strong. For instance, it was said that Ukraine intends to continue waging offensives even throughout winter with no remit.
Concern is growing within the Pentagon over the potential need to stretch its increasingly scarce ammunition stockpiles to support Ukraine and Israel in two separate wars, according to multiple US defense officials.
At the moment Ukraine and Israel require different weapons: Ukraine wants massive amounts of artillery ammunition while Israel has requested precision guided aerial munitions and Iron Dome interceptors.
But if Israel launches a ground incursion into Gaza, the Israeli military will create a new and entirely unexpected demand for 155mm artillery ammunition and other weapons at a time when the US and its allies and partners have been stretched thin from more than 18 months of fighting in Ukraine."
CNN
And as for the above, it’s said that Israel has already been running low on a variety of advanced munitions, including Iron Dome interceptors, and is now begging U.S. for replenishments. Though Israel is the manufacturer of Iron Dome, Raytheon helps manufacture some of the missiles as well.
They’ve also begun running low on Small Diameter Bombs and other guided munitions, now reportedly resorting to using old ‘dumb bombs’ like the M117 from 1950 pictured here from today:
Captain Raz Peretz is the name inscribed on the bomb here. He recently died in the fighting, and this may indicate that the IAF is also utilizing its stocks of 750-pound M117 unguided bombs in the ongoing strikes.
This goes to show something I’ve argued since the beginning: that no NATO military is prepared for a modern kinetic conflict. All the guided bombs being flung by Israel may look impressive on video but they can only do that for a few days before running out and begging mommy U.S. for more. No country can do what Russia is currently doing, waging a near 2 year conflict with massive indigenous industrial production supplying the entire armed forces with unprecedented sustainment.
But getting back to Ukraine, Russia has immediately taken advantage of developments by swinging into action with a major offensive on Avdeevka. In fact, Ukrainians claim it’s an offensive across every frontline, including that of Kupyansk.
⚡️⚡️⚡️The Krasnolimansky Front thunders. I don't remember anything like this here from the whole year that I worked here closely, writes war correspondent Igor Zhdanov.
The daily consumption of bullets on just one gun is about a hundred. On mortars there is literally an order of magnitude more. Extrapolating across the entire line of contact, that's hundreds of artillery gun volleys and thousands of mines fired. Per day.
Just north of Kremennaya, infantry wedged themselves 600 m into the defense of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on a site 1 km along the front.
But today’s most notable advances have been made in Avdeevka sector. Unfortunately many sources were premature in announcing big victories like the capture of Berdychi, which turned out not to be true. That typically happens when an advance scout team briefly approaches a settlement, which is subsequently listed as “captured” even though that scout team quickly retreats back.
In reality, the advance was only a few hundred meters, as per Ukrainian sources—200-500m depending on the place, since there were advances both from the southern pincer and the northern one.
Here you can see the scale of the assault, large columns of armored vehicles moving:
But they did start taking losses, as viewed from Ukrainian drones:
However the losses are being greatly exaggerated as well, with Ukraine now claiming “an entire brigade was wiped out” with “125 tanks destroyed.” In actuality there seems to have been a couple damaged BMPs and tanks thus far. Ukrainian commanders say it’s the most powerful offensive in that direction since the start of the SMO:
Ukrainian troops were seen abandoning positions and running for their lives:
And even Russian aviation was very active in the form of Mi-28s firing guided missiles, which some believed to be the new TV-guided Iz. 305E LMURs:
But it’s still too early to say how successful it will be, only that we can see it’s very difficult to advance for either side as the drone and ATGM fire-control and oversight is just too powerful for modern maneuver warfare.
Columns have to move slowly because of the mass amounts of mines, and yet they become sitting ducks to ATGMs hiding in forest clearings or patches of woodland, etc.
That being said, I believe this is mostly the DPR forces advancing here as this area is controlled by 1st Army Corps which are DPR units, with the DPR 114th Motorized being the ones who took the waste heap. The southern flank of the pincer has Sparta and Somali battalions, amongst other famed DPR units, as well as DPR’s Kalmius artillery brigade, which can be seen here working on Avdeevka with their 2S7M Malkas.
The most significant capture was said to be the big ‘waste heap’ just south of Krasnogorovka:
This is a big deal as it represents the dominant height of the area allowing Russian forces to put the outlying territory under fire control, which may precipitate into further large gains soon.
Here’s one writeup that explains why Avdeevka is so impregnable.
It remains to be seen how seriously planned of an offensive this is. If it’s truly the beginning of a full-scale, all fall-winter push then it would be a major deal to liberate Avdeevka as that entire area represents one of the chief regions from which Ukraine shells northern and central Donetsk. However, some Ukrainian sources believe it’s merely meant to draw reinforcements away from the Zaporozhye region to give Russian forces there breathing room. That’s doubtful, of course, but we’ll have to wait and see.
***
A few sundry items.
A stark comparison of Ursula von der Leyen’s harsh words aimed at Russia vis a vis the Ukrainian conflict:
So it appears that “the international community”—or the wonderful ‘rule of law’ people—openly admit that destroying water, electricity, etc., are acts of terror. Thanks for admitting the Israeli regime is a terrorist regime, Ursula. Your words can now be admitted as evidence in the future war crimes tribunals. After all, here’s Knesset member Limor Son Har-Melech openly saying: “There are no innocents in Gaza.”
Given that she’s an official member of the Israeli government this represents official sanction.
Marco Rubio has also outdone himself, by the way. Listen below:
Next:
A very thought-provoking video which explains how the Israeli Iron Dome air defense system may in fact be a complete and total hoax. There is apparently no real evidence it has ever intercepted anything, and appears to be nothing more than a fireworks generator which shoots self-destructing rockets into the air to create the simulation of tension—another multi-billion dollar boondoggle for the MIC:
The narrator makes many good points. Iron Dome’s “interceptions” never seem to appear like real interceptions we’ve seen, for instance in Ukraine. Like this one:
Note the falling pieces and catastrophic explosion.
Iron Dome on the other hand just self destructs in the air with nary a single piece of debris visible anywhere:
Granted, most missile systems are programmed to self destruct if they lose tracking. And because Iron Dome is designed to be a much higher saturation style system, there’s of course going to be far more missiles which lose track and explode. It’s meant to be more of a quantity over quality sort of thing, at least as I understand it.
However, even given that understanding, it is still a little strange now that the narrator mentions it, and it may be much more of an actual boondoggle than I imagined.
With that said, I’m not convinced that Hamas rockets are entirely a “hoax” and nothing more than smoke bombs. The truth is, the Qassam rockets are much smaller than people think—they’re launched from what basically amount to mortar tubes:
Secondly, their warhead size is relatively tiny: from 5kg to 10kg. For anyone that knows, that’s the equivalent of warheads that some Russian FPV drones carry. It’s nothing even approaching Russia’s weakest rocket systems like 122mm Grads, which have 20-30kg warheads. On top of this, explosives are not equal. Russian and American weaponry uses highly refined military explosives which pack far bigger punches, pound for pound, than anything that can be hand made. A Palestinian 10kg explosive warhead may only be equivalent to something like 3-5kg of Russian military grade or American IMX-101, Composition B, etc.
So that’s to say, one can’t really expect a big bang from them. Good explosives are fairly expensive materials. This is why one of the theories was that Hamas would use its cheap rockets merely to deplete Iron Dome after which Hezbollah would come in with the real stuff—Iranian SRBMs, Fatah Scuds, etc.
But I do think there’s a very high chance that much of the video is accurate, and Iron Dome is in fact mostly a simulation. It’s likely the reason why Israel rejected allowing the U.S. to send Iron Dome to Ukraine a while back:
From the above:
“To be clear, we are not asking Israel to transfer its own Iron Dome systems which are critical to their own security, but simply to allow the United States to transfer our own batteries to help the people of Ukraine,” they wrote.
So as you can see, they weren’t even asking Israel to give their own, but rather allow the U.S. to transfer the batteries it has, which I believe it was stationing in Guam. Israel likely didn’t want the Iron Dome to be “exposed” in a real setting where actual munitions are fired at it, because that would crash years worth of ‘strategy of tension’ simulations.
Further, this conflict has already exposed several such lies. For instance the Trophy APS (Active Protection System) on Merkava tanks, which has proven completely useless and hasn’t worked once, failing to stop Russian RPG-7s with tandem warheads as seen here.
Unfortunately for the U.S., Trophy is the official system chosen for the latest Abrams tanks and is the only APS system in use by them (M1A2 SEPv2+ as well as the new Abrams X demonstrator platform).
As a last update, it appears now that Scalise has been chosen as the main House Speaker candidate, but tonight has failed to achieve the needed number of Republican votes. They will have to vote again next time after discussions.
Unfortunately, Scalise is the pro-Ukrainian one, while Jordan was against further Ukraine aid. That means if they manage to get Scalise in, there could be a chance that he’ll at least allow some kind of aid package vote to be held in the future, though that’s still not an assurance that it would pass.
If Kirby’s “end of the rope” line is any indication, I’m not sure how much further aid sympathy can be drummed up for Ukraine now that Israel is in far more dire ‘need’. And with Zelensky now planning to visit Israel to “show solidarity”, things are bound to get very interesting over the coming weeks.
If you enjoyed the read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to a monthly/yearly pledge to support my work, so that I may continue providing you with detailed, incisive reports like this one.
Alternatively, you can tip here: Tip Jar
I was just thinking I need some Simplicius!
Sorry Ukraine America's old girlfriend is back and she needs the stuff the USA had gotten you now. Byeeee