Hamas’s Strategy of Failure | The Lessons Israel Failed to Learn from the Yom Kippur War | The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test, and more

Modi’s Comments on Israel-Gaza War Signal Shift  (Sumit Ganguly and Nicolas Blarel, Foreign Policy)
There is no question that Modi’s government has been more public in its engagement with Israel than any previous governments in New Delhi.
So what explains this seemingly dramatic shift in India’s stance toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? A few factors appear to have shaped its calculations. First, India faces a national election next year. For all practical purposes, the BJP has written off the Muslim vote, leaving it a free hand to take an unequivocal stance on the issue that does not address the concerns of India’s Muslim population. Furthermore, although some Indian Muslims have expressed their sympathy to the Palestinian cause in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, they bear no particular fondness for Hamas.

Why Chile’s Response to the Israel-Hamas War Stands Out  (Catherine Osborn, Foreign Policy)
Chile, for its part, is home to the largest Palestinian diaspora outside of the Middle East. Migration peaked in the early 20th century, and the Palestinian Chilean population is estimated at between 300,000 and 500,000 people. The size of the community has impacted Chilean culture, domestic politics, and foreign policy for years. A first-division soccer club is named Palestino FC, and its logo features the colors of the Palestinian flag. The Chilean legislature boasts a large Palestinian caucus. In 2005, Chile became one of the first non-Arab countries to join the Arab League as an observer.
A smaller Jewish community of some 20,000 people also live in the country, and Chile has deepened its relationship with Israel in recent decades, in part through trade. Chile’s Palestinian and Jewish communities have at times had their public disagreements, often related to contemporary Israeli-Palestinian relations. But for the most part, they have managed to coexist.

Hamas and the Immorality of the “Decolonial” Intellectuals  (Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky, National Interest)
Intellectuals have a deep addiction to terror. From the French revolutionaries of the late 18th century who invoked Jean Jacques Rousseau to the physician ideologues of ISIS like Ayman al-Zawahiri, intellectuals have been at the forefront of justifying and instigating mass violence.
The latest iteration of this intellectual tradition of terror is “decolonization.” The invasion of Israel and the murder of over 1300 Israelis to date have illustrated this mindset at work.

What Was Hamas Thinking?  (James Robbins, National Interest)
9/11 dramatically changed American attitudes regarding how to combat terrorism. The U.S. government was authorized, morally, legally, and politically, to hunt down terrorists by any means necessary. Activities that in previous decades would have been undertaken cautiously, after long internal debate, became mostly routine. Global covert action was unleashed. Extraordinary renditions became ordinary. Americans cheered the assassinations of terror leaders. Such strikes are now so non-controversial that when al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri was droned last July, President Biden barely got any credit.
Israel has now been issued the same type of global hunting license to take out Hamas and any of its co-conspirators. Whether in Gaza or elsewhere, Hamas leaders are in the target group for a “Wrath of God” style response. The expected IDF push into Gaza will eject Hamas from power and end its use of the strip as a launching pad for Iranian rockets.

The Lessons Israel Failed to Learn from the Yom Kippur War  (Keren Yarhi-Milo and Tim Naftali, The Atlantic)
In the surprise attack that took place in Israel this past weekend is arguably worse than the one that launched the Yom Kippur War of 1973. Hamas, a guerrilla organization that controls the Gaza Strip, has already killed many more Israeli civilians in the first days of this war than Egypt and Syria, sovereign nations with national armies, killed during the October war 50 years ago. Hamas struck targets deep inside Israeli towns. The magnitude and sophistication of this past weekend’s attacks—carried out in multiple locations and involving thousands of fighters—implies that this offensive was in the works for several months, if not longer. And intelligence gathering should have been easier in Gaza, where Israel is reputed to have massive surveillance systems, than it was in Egypt and Syria in the early 1970s. How could Israel have missed the planning of this assault?
The first explanations put forth by experts and journalists suggest that the problem was largely a matter of intelligence collection. Perhaps Israel over-relied on signals intelligence and other electronic sources, and Hamas learned to circumvent detection—for example, by using drones to disable systems along the border. Another possibility is that Israel lacked enough, or credible enough, human intelligence sources within the inner circle of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, or access to the plans of its military commander, Mohammed Deif. In 1973, the Israelis had a highly placed human source: the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s son-in-law, Ashraf Marwan, who was also a close adviser to President Anwar Sadat. A third theory is that Israeli intelligence was distracted by a multitude of threats; much of the Israeli military was stationed near the West Bank before this weekend’s attack. Finally, Hamas might have used deception, lulling Jerusalem into assuming the group was willing to live with Israel’s normalization of relations with Arab countries. In 1973, the Egyptians used a regularly scheduled military exercise to cover up their war preparations.

The Progressives Who Flunked the Hamas Test  (Helen Lewis, The Atlantic)
he terror attack on Israel by Hamas has been a divisive—if clarifying—moment for the left. The test that it presented was simple: Can you condemn the slaughter of civilians, in massacres that now appear to have been calculatedly sadistic and outrageous, without equivocation or whataboutism? Can you lay down, for a moment, your legitimate criticisms of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, West Bank settlements, and the conditions in Gaza, and express horror at the mass murder of civilians?
In corners of academia and social-justice activism where the identity of the oppressor and the oppressed are never in doubt, many people failed that test. In response to a fellow progressive who argued that targeting civilians is always wrong, the Yale professor Zareena Grewal replied: “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard.” (She has since locked her X account.) Chicago’s Black Lives Matter chapter posted a picture of a paraglider, referencing the gunmen who descended on civilians at a music festival near the Gaza border from the air. (The chapter said in a statement that “we aren’t proud” of the post, which was later deleted.) Harvard student groups posted a letter stating that its signatories “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” (Several of the named groups have since withdrawn their endorsement.)
The New York branch of the Democratic Socialists of America promoted a rally where protesters chanted “resistance is justified when people are occupied” and one participant displayed a swastika. These actions prompted criticism by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, perhaps the DSA’s most prominent figure, and the resignation of members including the comedian Sarah Silverman. In a statement, the New York City Democratic Socialists regretted the “confusion” that its rhetoric had caused, but added: “We are also concerned that some have chosen to focus on a rally while ignoring the root causes of violence in the region, the far-right Netanyahu government’s escalating human rights violations and explicitly genocidal rhetoric, and the dehumanization of the Palestinian people.”