Quotes of the Day:

"You cannot negotiate peace with somebody who has come to kill you."

- Golda Meir

"With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost."

- William Lloyd Garrison

"Live so that when your children think of fairness, caring, and integrity, they think of you." - H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 11, 2023

2. Iran Update, October 11, 2023

3. IntelBrief: The Regional and Geopolitical Implications of the Hamas Attack

4. Zelensky Reportedly Plans Solidarity Visit to Israel

5. Remarks by President Biden on the Terrorist Attacks in Israel

6. Hamas Invasion Rewrites Rules in Middle East

7. Killing Civilians: The New Normal

8. How does Hamas get its weapons? A mix of improvisation, resourcefulness and a key overseas benefactor

9. Palestinians rush to buy food and struggle under strikes as Israel readies possible ground operation

10.  Rebuilding Ukraine’s Economy Starts Now

11. Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology

12. These are the Challenges Awaiting Israeli Ground Forces in Gaza

13. American arm of Korea's Hanwha has a 10-year plan to become a US land systems prime

14. Paralysis in the Pentagon

15. What Israel Must Do: Disarming Hamas Will Be Costly but Essential for Peace

16. Navy hospital ship begins annual Pacific Partnership tour of island nations

17. Focus on I​srael-Gaza war raises fears of China attack on Taiwan

18. New commander of 25th Infantry Division hits ground running amid Pacific tensions

19. Forget PowerPoint and move faster on planning, Army 2-star says

20. Army at work on a digital ‘blue book’ app, top enlisted soldier says

1. Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 11, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-october-11-2023

Key Takeaways:

• Ongoing localized Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka likely demonstrate the ability of Russian forces ability to learn and apply tactical battlefield lessons in Ukraine. These tactical-level adaptations and successes, however, are unlikely to necessarily translate into wider operational and strategic gains for Russian forces.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front on October 11.
• A large number of NATO member states recently announced aid packages to Ukraine against the backdrop of the 16th Ukraine Defense Group Contact Group meeting in Brussels, Belgium on October 11.
• Russia’s Federation Council Defense and Security Committee voted to replace Senator Viktor Bondarev with Senator Vladimir Bulavin as Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Head on October 10.
• Russian military command continues to celebrate the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) for its service in Ukraine, despite claims that the brigade was defeated and reportedly transferred to the Kherson direction.
• Armenia continues to ostensibly distance itself from Russia after a decades-long security relationship.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 11.
• Russian opposition outlet Sever Realii reported on October 11 that Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) representatives may have recruited over 1,000 convicts to serve in the Russian MoD-affiliated Redut private military company (PMC).
• Russian occupation authorities are suffering staff shortages at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).

RUSSIAN OFFENSIVE CAMPAIGN ASSESSMENT, OCTOBER 11, 2023

Oct 11, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, October 11, 2023

Karolina Hird, Angelica Evans, Christina Harward, Nicole Wolkov, and Mason Clark

October 11, 2023, 6:15pm ET 

Click here to see ISW’s interactive map of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This map is updated daily alongside the static maps present in this report.

Click here to access ISW’s archive of interactive time-lapse maps of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. These maps complement the static control-of-terrain map that ISW produces daily by showing a dynamic frontline. ISW will update this time-lapse map archive monthly.

Note: The data cut-off for this product was 1:30pm ET on October 11. ISW will cover subsequent reports in the October 12 Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment.

NOTE: ISW has added a new section on Russian information operations and narratives to the daily Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, found at the end of the update.

Ongoing localized Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka likely demonstrate the ability of Russian forces to learn and apply tactical battlefield lessons in Ukraine. Russian forces launched localized attacks towards Avdiivka after intensive artillery preparation of the battlefield in the early hours of October 10, and geolocated footage from October 10 and 11 confirms that Russian troops advanced southwest of Avdiivka near Sieverne and northwest of Avdiivka near Stepove and Krasnohorivka.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that a grouping of up to three Russian battalions with tank and armored vehicle support intensified offensive operations near Avdiivka.[2] Ukrainian General Staff Spokesperson Andrii Kovavlev clarified that these battalions are part of three motorized rifle brigades of the Southern Military District’s 8th Combined Arms Army.[3]

Russian sources celebrated Russian advances in this area and outlined several adaptations that suggest that Russian forces are applying lessons learned from operations in southern Ukraine to other sectors of the front.[4] A Russian artillery battalion commander who is reportedly fighting in the area claimed that Russian forces are paying significant attention to counterbattery combat.[5] Another source who also claimed to be fighting in the area reported that Russian forces are using electronic warfare (EW) systems, conducting sound artillery preparation of the battlefield, and are demonstrating “clear interaction” between command headquarters, assault groups, aerial reconnaissance, and artillery elements.[6] The milblogger noted that Russian forces are not employing human wave-style “meat” assaults, and several Russian sources amplified footage of Russian armored vehicles leading a breakthrough along roadways towards Ukrainian positions, followed by infantry columns.[7]

The suggestion that Russian forces are effectively employing EW, counterbattery, artillery preparation, aerial reconnaissance, and inter/intra-unit communication is noteworthy, as Russian sources previously emphasized these tactical adaptations as the strengths of Russia’s defense against Ukrainian counteroffensive operations in southern Ukraine, particularly in June and July.[8] Furthermore, the majority of Russian forces currently fighting in the Avdiivka area are likely elements of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) 1st Army Corps, which the Russian 8th Combined Arms Army predominantly controls.[9] ISW has not observed any 8th Combined Arms Army elements not from DNR formations involved in ongoing attacks, and ISW assesses current Russian offensive efforts in the Avdiivka area are likely primarily comprised of DNR forces. DNR elements have suffered from pervasive issues with abusive command culture, poor discipline, and minimal training; all of which have been exacerbated by wider issues with the integration of the DNR’s more irregular force structure into Russia’s regular military, as ISW has previously reported.[10] Reports by Russian milbloggers that units in this area are displaying effective communication may suggest that DNR forces have somewhat eased their integration into regular Russian forces and have learned lessons from previous ineffective and failed attacks in the Avdiivka area.

These tactical-level adaptations and successes, however, are unlikely to translate into wider operational and strategic gains for Russian forces. Geolocated footage shows that Russian gains around Avdiivka are concentrated to the southwest of Avdiivka, and Russian forces have not completed an operational encirclement of the settlement and will likely struggle to do so if that is their intent. Avdiivka is also a notoriously well-fortified and defended Ukrainian stronghold, which will likely complicate Russian forces’ ability to closely approach or fully capture the settlement. Russian forces additionally already control segments of the critical N20 Donetsk City-Kostyantynivka-Kramatorsk-Slovyansk highway and other routes that run near Avdiivka, so the hypothetical capture of Avdiivka will not open new routes of advance to the rest of Donetsk Oblast. As ISW previously assessed, Russian forces likely intend attacks in the Avdiivka area to fix Ukrainian forces and prevent them from redeploying to other areas of the front. However, Ukrainian officials have already identified the Avdiivka push as a Russian fixing operation, and they are unlikely to unduly commit Ukrainian manpower to this axis.[11]

Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front on October 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces were successful east of Klishchiivka and Andriivka near Bakhmut.[12] The Ukrainian General Staff and Tavriisk Group Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi reported that Ukrainian forces improved their tactical positions west of Robotyne.[13]

A large number of NATO member states recently announced aid packages to Ukraine against the backdrop of the 16th Ukraine Defense Group Contact Group meeting in Brussels, Belgium on October 11. Military and government officials from almost 50 countries met in Brussels, Belgium on October 11 for the beginning of the Contact Group on Defense of Ukraine, and multiple NATO states pledged aid and support to Ukraine.[14] US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin notably announced a new $200 million aid package on October 11, which includes AIM-9 missiles for a surface-to-air defense system that the United States will soon deliver to Ukraine. He stated that “the United States will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes.”[15] German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also announced a €20 million aid package on October 10 that includes 10 Leopard tanks.[16]

Russia’s Federation Council Defense and Security Committee voted to replace Senator Viktor Bondarev with Senator Vladimir Bulavin as Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Head on October 10. Russian Senator Vyacheslav Timchenko claimed on October 10 that Bondarev is resigning as part of the chairperson’s standard rotation and will remain the first deputy chairman of the Defense and Security Committee.[17] Timchenko claimed that he expects the Federation Council to approve Bulavin’s new appointment.[18] Russian insider sources noted Bondarev‘s ties to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), as he previously served as Commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) and speculated that his replacement indicates that the Russian MoD is losing influence in the “most important committee.”[19] The insider sources noted Bulavin’s previous positions in the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and claimed that he has ties to both Russian Security Council Secretary and former FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev and First Deputy Presidential Chief of Staff Sergey Kiriyenko.[20] If the Russian insider sources’ claims are true, Bondarev’s replacement with Bulavin could suggest that the FSB has increased its influence over the Federation Council Defense and Security Committee compared to the Russian MoD.

Russian military command continues to celebrate the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) for its service in Ukraine, despite claims that the brigade was defeated and reportedly transferred to the Kherson direction. Russian Black Sea Fleet (BSF) Deputy Commander Rear Admiral Ildar Akhmerov presented awards to servicemen of the Russian 810th Naval Infantry Brigade on October 11 for repelling Ukrainian attacks in an unspecified sector of the front a week after Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu partially attributed the successful Russian defensive operations around Robotyne to the brigade.[21] Ukrainian Main Military Intelligence Directorate (GUR) Head Lieutenant General Kyrylo Budanov stated on September 22 that Ukrainian forces “completely defeated“ the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade and that Russian command withdrew the brigade from western Zaporizhia Oblast.[22] A Russian milblogger claimed on October 5 that elements of the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade were transferred to the Kherson direction, indicating that the brigade may have been reconstituted or is in the process of reconstituting.[23] ISW has not observed the broader Russian information space discuss the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade’s combat operations since early to mid-September.[24] The Russian MoD is likely interested in amplifying reports of well-known units to create the image of Russian success in the information space.

Armenia continues to ostensibly distance itself from Russia after a decades-long security relationship. Armenian forces are not participating in the week-long Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) “Indestructible Brotherhood-2023” exercises in Kyrgyzstan that started on October 6.[25] The Kyrgyz Presidential administration reported on October 10 that Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov that he is unable to attend the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan on October 13.[26] Pashinyan also stated on October 11 that Russian peacekeepers should return to Russia instead of Russian bases in Armenia if they leave Nagorno-Karabakh.[27]

Key Takeaways:

• Ongoing localized Russian offensive operations near Avdiivka likely demonstrate the ability of Russian forces ability to learn and apply tactical battlefield lessons in Ukraine. These tactical-level adaptations and successes, however, are unlikely to necessarily translate into wider operational and strategic gains for Russian forces.
• Ukrainian forces continued counteroffensive operations near Bakhmut and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and reportedly advanced in both sectors of the front on October 11.
• A large number of NATO member states recently announced aid packages to Ukraine against the backdrop of the 16th Ukraine Defense Group Contact Group meeting in Brussels, Belgium on October 11.
• Russia’s Federation Council Defense and Security Committee voted to replace Senator Viktor Bondarev with Senator Vladimir Bulavin as Federation Council Defense and Security Committee Head on October 10.
• Russian military command continues to celebrate the 810th Naval Infantry Brigade (Black Sea Fleet) for its service in Ukraine, despite claims that the brigade was defeated and reportedly transferred to the Kherson direction.
• Armenia continues to ostensibly distance itself from Russia after a decades-long security relationship.
• Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line, near Bakhmut, along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line, in western Donetsk Oblast, in the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area, and in western Zaporizhia Oblast and advanced in some areas on October 11.
• Russian opposition outlet Sever Realii reported on October 11 that Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) representatives may have recruited over 1,000 convicts to serve in the Russian MoD-affiliated Redut private military company (PMC).
• Russian occupation authorities are suffering staff shortages at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP).

We do not report in detail on Russian war crimes because these activities are well-covered in Western media and do not directly affect the military operations we are assessing and forecasting. We will continue to evaluate and report on the effects of these criminal activities on the Ukrainian military and the Ukrainian population specifically on combat in Ukrainian urban areas. We utterly condemn these Russian violations of the laws of armed conflict, Geneva Conventions, and humanity even though we do not describe them in these reports.

• Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine (comprised of two subordinate main efforts)
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and encircle northern Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast
• Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis
• Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts
• Activities in Russian-occupied areas
• Russian Information Operations and Narratives

Russian Main Effort – Eastern Ukraine

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #1 – Luhansk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the remainder of Luhansk Oblast and push westward into eastern Kharkiv Oblast and northern Donetsk Oblast)

Russian forces conducted offensive operations near Kupyansk and reportedly advanced on October 11. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces, including elements of the Russian 6th Combined Arms Army (CAA) and 1st Tank Army (both of the Western Military District), attacked near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk), Ivanivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk), and Kyslivka (20km southeast of Kupyansk) and advanced near Synkivka (8km northeast of Kupyansk).[28] One prominent Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces attacked along the railway line from Lyman Pershyi (12km northeast of Kupyansk) and advanced one kilometer towards Synkivka.[29] The milblogger also claimed that Russian forces advanced about 1.5 kilometers in the direction of Ivanivka and Kyslivka and that Russian assaults in these areas are proving difficult due to dense Ukrainian mines.[30] A Ukrainian military observer stated that elements of the Russian 25th Separate Motorized Rifle Brigade (6th CAA, Western Military District) attacked near Synkivka and that elements of the Russian 47th Tank Division (Western Military District) attacked in the direction of Yahidne (23km southeast of Kupyansk) and Ivanivka.[31] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces unsuccessfully attacked near Synkivka and Ivanivka.[32] Ukrainian Eastern Group of Forces Spokesperson Captain Ilya Yevlash stated that Russian forces conducted 30 attacks in the Kupyansk and Lyman directions on October 11, are transferring large concentrations of personnel and equipment to the Synkivka and Ivanivka areas, and are attempting to capture Kupyansk and open a land corridor to the Oskil River.[33]

Russian forces conducted offensive operations along the Svatove-Kreminna line on October 11 and reportedly advanced. Russian sources claimed that Russian forces, including elements of the newly formed Russian 25th CAA, advanced near Makiivka (22km northwest of Kreminna) and Nevske (18km northwest of Kreminna).[34] The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces continue to hold Russian forces back near Makiivka and Dibrova (7km southwest of Kreminna).[35]

The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked along the Kupyansk-Svatove-Kreminna line near Synkivka, Ivanivka, Makiivka, and the Serebryanske forest area (10km southwest of Kreminna)on October 11.[36]

Russian Subordinate Main Effort #2 – Donetsk Oblast (Russian objective: Capture the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, the claimed territory of Russia’s proxies in Donbas)

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 11 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Ukrainian forces achieved unspecified success east of Klishchiivka (7km southwest of Bakhmut) and Andriivka (10km southwest of Bakhmut).[37] A Russian milblogger claimed that fighting continues near Kurdyumivka (13km southwest of Bakhmut) and claimed that Ukrainian forces continued attempts to gain a foothold on the railway line east of Andriivka.[38]

Russian forces continued offensive operations near Bakhmut on October 11 but did not make any confirmed advances. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Andriivka and Klishchiivka.[39] A Russian milblogger claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Klishchiivka.[40] A Russian milblogger claimed on October 10 in a since-deleted post that Russian forces counterattacked on Bakhmut’s northern and southern flanks and that Russian forces have the initiative in the Bakhmut direction.[41]

Ukrainian forces did not conduct any claimed or confirmed offensive actions along the Avdiivka-Donetsk City line on October 11.

Russian forces made confirmed advances near Avdiivka on October 11. Geolocated footage published on October 11 indicates that Russian forces advanced south and west of Krasnohorivka (8km northwest of Avdiivka).[42] Additional geolocated footage indicates that Russian forces advanced southeast of Sieverne (6km west of Avdiivka).[43] A Ukrainian source stated that Russian forces attacked from Novoselivka Druha (9km northeast of Avdiivka), Vesele (6km north of Avdiivka), Vodyane (on the northwestern outskirts of Donetsk City), Pisky (8km southwest of Avdiivka), and Krasnohorivka (directly west of Donetsk City) and captured several unspecified positions while taking heavy losses.[44] Russian sources, including the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD), claimed on October 10 and 11 that Russian forces advanced near Berdyachi (10km northwest of Avdiivka), Avdiivka, Sieverne, Vodiane, and Stepne (14km south of Donetsk City) and are attacking near Spartak (4km south of Avdiivka).[45] A Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Russian forces broke through the Ukrainian defense southwest of Krasnohorivka.[46] The milblogger claimed that Russian forces have not yet reached the outskirts of Sieverne or Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka).[47] Ukrainian Tavriisk Group of Forces Spokesperson Colonel Oleksandr Shtupun stated that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks near Ochertyne (15km northwest of Avdiivka), Keramik (14km northwest of Avdiivka), Berdychi, Stepove (8km northwest of Avdiivka), Tonenke (7km northwest of Avdiivka), Avdiivka, Lastochkyne (6km west of Avdiivka), and Pervomaiske (11km southwest of Avdiivka).[48] A Russian source claimed that Russian forces mainly attacked north of Avdiivka near Krasnohorivka and south of Avdiivka from Opytne (3km southwest of Avdiivka) towards Sieverne.[49] Other Russian milbloggers claimed that Russian forces have fire control of the road leading to Avdiivka, cutting off the supply route for Ukrainian forces in the settlement.[50]

Russian forces reportedly conducted unsuccessful attacks near Marinka on October 11. The Ukrainian General Staff reported on October 11 that Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks near Marinka, Pobieda (4km southwest of Marinka), and Novomykhailivka (10km south of Marinka).[51] Russian milbloggers also claimed that Russian forces attacked near Marinka and Novomykhailivka.[52]

Russian Supporting Effort – Southern Axis (Russian objective: Maintain frontline positions and secure rear areas against Ukrainian strikes)

Russian sources claimed that Ukrainian forces conducted unsuccessful ground attacks in the western Donetsk Oblast and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 11. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that Russian forces repelled Ukrainian attacks south of Novomykhailivka (between Donetsk City and Vuhledar and about 50km east of Velyka Novosilka) and northwest of Pryyutne (15km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[53] A Russian milblogger claimed that there are ongoing meeting engagements near Novodonetske (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka).[54]

Russian forces conducted counterattacks in western Donetsk Oblast and the Donetsk-Zaporizhia Oblast border area on October 11 and reportedly advanced in some areas. The Ukrainian General Staff stated that Ukrainian forces repelled Russian attacks southeast of Vuhledar (30km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), near Zolota Nyva (12km southeast of Velyka Novosilka), and near Volodyne (about 15km south of Velyka Novosilka).[55] A Ukrainian military observer reported that elements of the 68th Army Corps (Eastern Military District) are committed in the area between Donetsk City and east of Velyka Novosilka.[56] The military observer reported that elements of the 5th and 49th Combined Arms Armies were partially successful along the Pryyutne-Zavitne Bazhannia line (about 13km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and pushed Ukrainian forces further back from Pryyutne, but then failed to secure further advances to even the frontline and could not advance towards Rivnopil (10km southwest of Velyka Novosilka) and Staromayorske (10km south of Velyka Novosilka).[57] Russian sources, including Zaporizhia Oblast occupation deputy Vladimir Rogov, claimed that Russian forces counterattacked from Pryyutne towards Levadne (4km northwest of Pryyutne and 18km southwest of Velyka Novosilka).[58]

Ukrainian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 11 and reportedly advanced. The Ukrainian General Staff and Tavriisk Group Commander Brigadier General Oleksandr Tarnavskyi reported that Ukrainian forces improved their tactical positions west of Robotyne.[59] Russian milbloggers claimed that Ukrainian forces continued attacks near Robotyne, Novoprokopivka (just south of Robotyne), and Verbove (10km east of Robotyne).[60] Russian sources also claimed that Ukrainian forces unsuccessfully attacked from Robotyne towards Kopani (4km northwest of Robotyne).[61]

Russian forces counterattacked in western Zaporizhia Oblast on October 11 and reportedly made limited gains. The Ukrainian General Staff reported that Russian forces attacked near Inzhenerne (about 23km east of Robotyne) and Verbove.[62] Several Russian sources claimed that Russian forces counterattacked near Kopani and forced Ukrainian troops to retreat back towards the Verbove area.[63] One milblogger claimed that the renewal of Russian attacks in the Zherebyanka-Pyatykhatky sector (about 25km northwest of Robotyne) took Ukrainian forces by surprise and that Russian forces managed to advance “several hundred” meters in this direction over the course of October 10 to 11.[64]

Russian milbloggers continued to voice concern over the potential for Ukrainian counteroffensive operations across the Dnipro River in Kherson Oblast.[65] One prominent Kremlin-affiliated milblogger claimed that Ukrainian forces are preparing for these purported operations by intensifying strikes against Russian rear areas of Kherson Oblast.[66]

Russian Mobilization and Force Generation Efforts (Russian objective: Expand combat power without conducting general mobilization)

Russian opposition outlet Sever Realii reported on October 11 that Russian MoD representatives may have recruited over 1,000 convicts to serve in the Russian MoD-affiliated Redut private military company (PMC).[67] Sever Realii reported that most of the convicts serve in Redut’s “Veterans,” “Lynx,” “Tiger,” “Wolves,” and “North” detachments. Russian MoD representatives reportedly promise convicts amnesty from their crimes after six months of military service but in exchange force them to sign a one-year contract with the MoD. A Russian human rights activist told Sever Realii that the recruitment of prisoners may be more of a burden for Redut than it was for the Wagner Group because most Redut personnel do not understand how to behave around prisoners. The activist also noted that Wagner was able to recruit directly from prisons, while Redut does not have direct access to prisons and is forced to accept the convicts that Russian MoD representatives recruit.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited the Russian United Aircraft Corporation’s Il-Aviastar enterprise on October 11 and inspected the production process of the Il-76MD-90A aircraft and the repair and maintenance of the An-124-100 aircraft.[68] Shoigu stated that the Russian military must maintain its aircraft and increase its fleet capacity and capabilities, noting that the Russian military is currently using military transport aviation more than twice as much as during the “most intense times” of the Soviet period.

Activities in Russian-occupied areas (Russian objective: Consolidate administrative control of annexed areas; forcibly integrate Ukrainian citizens into Russian sociocultural, economic, military, and governance systems)

Russian occupation authorities are suffering staff shortages at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP). Ukrainian Enerhodar Mayor Dmytro Orlov stated in an article published on October 11 that only about 2,000 of the 11,000 total staff who worked at the ZNPP prior to Russia’s occupation of Enerhodar continue to work there.[69] Orlov stated that Russian occupation authorities bring “dozens” of Russian NPP specialists to the ZNPP for up to six months but that the Russian workers want to return to Russia.[70] Orlov also reported that up to 1,000 Russian military personnel are stationed at the ZNPP and that Russian forces placed a “large number“ of explosives at the ZNPP.[71] Orlov stated that Russian authorities continue attempts to coerce Ukrainian ZNPP staff into signing contracts with Russian nuclear energy operator Rosatom and acquiring Russian passports.[72] ISW has previously observed reports of Russian occupation authorities forcing Ukrainian ZNPP employees to obtain Russian passports.[73]

The Ukrainian Center for Combatting Disinformation reported on October 10 that Russian occupation officials plan to hold a briefing for foreign journalists in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast on October 16 in an attempt to justify the forced deportation of Ukrainian children from occupied Ukraine.[74]

Russian Information Operations and Narratives:

NOTE: ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin has and will continue to exploit the Hamas attacks in Israel to advance several Russian information operations about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. However, ISW has notably not observed any evidence – and does not assess – that the Kremlin supported, directed, or is involved in the Hamas attacks.

The Russian government likely has not coordinated its rhetorical stance on the return of Russian citizens who left Russia after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Russian State Duma Chairperson Vyacheslav Volodin stated on October 10 that Russians who left because of the war in Ukraine and supported Ukraine are not welcome to return to Russia.[75] Volodin added that “Magadan is guaranteed” to those who chose to return to Russia, referencing the large system of gulags in Magadan Oblast in the Soviet era. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov clarified Volodin’s statement on October 11 and claimed that Volodin was only referring to Russians who assumed an “anti-Russian” position and supported Ukraine from abroad.[76] Magadan Oblast Governor Sergei Nosov responded to Volodin’s statements claiming that “Kolyma (a geographic area in Russia’s northeast and home to some of the Soviet Union’s most notorious gulags) does not accept traitors” and accused Volodin of amplifying outdated stereotypes of Magadan Oblast.[77] Russian State Duma Deputy Roza Chemeris published footage on October 11 showing Volodin recanting his statement and instead suggesting the prosecution of returning Russians who voiced support for Ukraine on treason charges.[78] Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Presidential Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev responded to Volodin’s comments claiming that Russians who left Russia after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine should return “quietly” and immediately support Russia’s war effort.[79]

Russian security service officials continue to make unfounded claims that Ukrainian forces are threatening nuclear power plants (NPPs) in Russia. Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov claimed on October 11 at a meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) intelligence service heads that Russian authorities shut down the second power unit of the Kursk NPP in August 2022 due to threats from “Ukrainian saboteurs.”[80] Bortnikov claimed that the FSB detained personnel of a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group who planned to sabotage the Smolensk and Kursk NPPs in August 2023.[81] Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergei Naryshkin reiterated boilerplate rhetoric that Western intelligence services are training Ukrainian forces to attack Russian nuclear facilities.[82]

Significant activity in Belarus (Russian efforts to increase its military presence in Belarus and further integrate Belarus into Russian-favorable frameworks and Wagner Group activity in Belarus)

Nothing significant to report.

ISW will continue to report daily observed Russian and Belarusian military activity in Belarus as part of ongoing Kremlin efforts to increase their control over Belarus and other Russian actions in Belarus.

Note: ISW does not receive any classified material from any source, uses only publicly available information, and draws extensively on Russian, Ukrainian, and Western reporting and social media as well as commercially available satellite imagery and other geospatial data as the basis for these reports. References to all sources used are provided in the endnotes of each update.

2. Iran Update, October 11, 2023

Maps/graphics/citations: https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/iran-update-october-11-2023

Key Takeaways

• Incursions by Hamas into southern Israel have slowed since October 9. Palestinian militias in Gaza are using drones and rockets to strike towns in northern and southern Israel.
• The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—mobilized supporters to hold marches and engage in small arms clashes with Israeli security forces. Hamas is calling on its supporters in the West Bank to storm Jerusalem on October 13.
• Lebanese Hezbollah fired missiles, including anti-tank munitions, at Israeli security forces in northern Israel.
• Members of Iran’s Axis of Resistance have articulated the thresholds at which they would intervene in the war against Israel. These threats highlight the risk of the war expanding throughout the region.

IRAN UPDATE, OCTOBER 11, 2023

Oct 11, 2023 - ISW Press

Download the PDF

Iran Update, October 11, 2023

Andie Parry, Ashka Jhaveri, Johanna Moore, Annika Ganzeveld, and Amin Soltani

Information Cutoff: 3:00 pm EST

The Iran Update provides insights into Iranian and Iranian-sponsored activities abroad that undermine regional stability and threaten US forces and interests. It also covers events and trends that affect the stability and decision-making of the Iranian regime. The Critical Threats Project (CTP) at the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) provides these updates daily. For more on developments in Iran and the region, see our interactive map of Iran and the Middle East.

Note: CTP and ISW have refocused the update to cover the war in Israel. The new sections address developments in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as noteworthy activity from Iran’s Axis of Resistance.

Key Takeaways

• Incursions by Hamas into southern Israel have slowed since October 9. Palestinian militias in Gaza are using drones and rockets to strike towns in northern and southern Israel.
• The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—mobilized supporters to hold marches and engage in small arms clashes with Israeli security forces. Hamas is calling on its supporters in the West Bank to storm Jerusalem on October 13.
• Lebanese Hezbollah fired missiles, including anti-tank munitions, at Israeli security forces in northern Israel.
• Members of Iran’s Axis of Resistance have articulated the thresholds at which they would intervene in the war against Israel. These threats highlight the risk of the war expanding throughout the region.

Gaza Strip

Hamas incursions into southern Israel by land and sea have slowed since October 9.[1] Palestinian militant groups are now relying on rocket barrages and attack drones to hit towns in northern and southern Israel.[2] Rocket fire from Gaza extended north to Haifa and multiple barrages have hit Tel Aviv.[3] The Hamas spokesperson warned Israeli civilians to evacuate Ashkelon near the Gaza border before the group launched hundreds of rockets on October 10, claiming the attack was retribution for Israeli airstrikes on Gaza.[4] Hamas warnings have not preceded such rocket barrages previously. Israel conducted strikes in over 1,270 locations in Gaza and killed at least three Hamas leaders over the two-day period.[5] The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson stated early on October 10 that its forces regained control of the Gaza border.[6] Clashes continued in isolated pockets immediately north and east of the Gaza Strip on October 10 and 11, however.[7]

West Bank

The Lions’ Den—a West Bank-based Palestinian militia—mobilized supporters to hold marches and engage in small arms clashes with Israeli security forces. Small arms clashes and marches took place in approximately 19 locations across the West Bank in response to the Lions’ Den call for supporters to take to the street at 10:00 am EST.[8] Hamas released a statement separately from the Lions’ Den calling on its supporters in the West Bank to storm Jerusalem on October 13.[9] These separate calls may indicate that Palestinian militias are struggling to coordinate their mobilization efforts across Gaza and the West Bank.

• Supporters of The Lion’s Den last responded to the group’s calls to demonstrate and conduct attacks on military and civilian targets on October 9, as CTP and ISW previously reported.[10] CTP and ISW reported that leadership from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Fatah, and the Al Quds Brigade were quick to pledge their support to Hamas’s operation and issued various calls for militia members and civilians to take up arms.[11] These groups have refrained from explicitly calling on supporters to conduct acts of violence against Israelis, however.

South Lebanon and the Golan Heights

Lebanese Hezbollah (LH) fired missiles, including anti-tank munitions, at Israeli security forces in northern Israel. LH claimed responsibility for firing anti-tank missiles at IDF positions in northern Israel on October 10 and 11, which prompted Israeli retaliatory attacks into Lebanon.[12] LH said an attack using a guided missile on October 11 was a firm response to the killing of its fighters in an Israeli airstrike on October 9.[13] LH launched an attempted infiltration to capture an Israeli town on its northern border on October 11.[14] Unspecified militants also launched rocket barrages into open areas in northern Israel on October 9 and 10.[15]

The IDF responded to the attacks by conducting airstrikes on LH-affiliated military sites.[16] The IDF announced on October 11 that there was no incursion into Israeli airspace following reports of the Israeli Red Alert sirens sounding in several towns.[17] CTP and ISW previously reported that LH conducted artillery strikes into Israel for the second consecutive day, and at least six PIJ members attempted to cross into Israeli territory from southern Lebanon from October 8-9. CTP and ISW also previously assessed that LH clashes with Israeli security forces in addition to attacks in the West Bank could expand the war into a second front.

Unidentified militants launched rockets into Israeli territory from Syria on October 10.[18] The IDF responded to the launches with artillery and mortar fire into Syria.[19] UK-based opposition media Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a Palestinian group working with LH in Syria territory was responsible for the attack.[20] Palestinian militants in Syria conducted rocket attacks from the Golan Heights into Israel in April 2023 in retaliation for Israeli security forces raiding the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.[21] A pro-regime milblogger reported on October 10 that Syria will target Israeli airbases to reduce the Israeli Air Forces’ ability to operate.[22] A Syrian Arab Army soldier held up a sign praising Palestinians and pledging support.[23] The rocket fire is the first time that militants in Syria have attacked Israel during the war and is consistent with the threat of a multi-front war against Israel.

Pro-Syrian regime forces have deployed to the border between Syria and Israeli territory since October 9. The Syrian Social Nationalist Party’s (SSNP) militant wing, the Eagles of the Whirlwind, deployed forces and promised support on October 9.[24] The SSNP is an ally of LH and has fought alongside LH militants in Beirut during the conflict in 2008.[25] LH personnel left Deir ez Zor Province for Lebanon on October 10 although ISW cannot confirm the intention behind the deployment.[26] The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced on October 11 that it seeks to recruit 1,000 men from Deir ez Zor Province for a 20–30-day training before deploying to Israel.[27] Iran has sought to achieve total hegemony over Deir ez Zor Province since May 2023 and uses its military positioning there to threaten the US force presence in eastern Syria.[28] The deployment to southern Syria suggests Iran is giving priority to amassing forces in southern Syria, which is consistent with the threat of another front opening in the war on Israel.

Iran and Axis of Resistance

Members of Iran’s Axis of Resistance have articulated the thresholds at which they would intervene in the war against Israel. The top leadership from Iranian-backed Iraqi militias Kataib Seyyed ol Shohada, Ashab al Kahf, Asaib Ahl al Haq, Kataib Hezbollah, and the Badr Organization threatened to strike US targets if the United States intervenes in Hamas’ war with Israel.[29]

• Head of the Iranian-backed Badr Organization Hadi al Ameri threatened to attack US forces if the United States intervenes in the war to support Israel. Ameri’s statement came after the United States announced it will send a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean Sea to support Israel and will supply Israeli forces with military equipment and ammunition.[30]
• An Iranian Foreign Affairs Ministry official warned on October 9 that Iran would give a “devastating response” if Israel hit Iranian territory by attacking from Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen—implicitly drawing in actors from Iran’s Axis of Resistance.[31]

Graphic Sources[32]

Iranian officials and media accused Israel of committing war crimes in Gaza, promoted a multi-front offensive against Israel, and emphasized Israel’s military and intelligence failure on October 11. Iranian state media and officials accused Israel of using white phosphorous bombs against Gaza civilians and described Israel’s siege of Gaza as a “genocide” and “massacre.”[33] White phosphorous is an incendiary chemical substance that the IDF used in military operations in Gaza between 2008 and 2009.[34]

• Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian described Israel’s siege as a “systematic war crime against humanity” during a phone call with International Red Cross head Mirjana Spoljaric Egger.[35] Iranian state television also published a video depicting the IRGC, Hamas, LH, and Badr Organization preparing to attack Jerusalem.[36]
• Parliamentary National Security and Foreign Policy Committee member Abbas Golrou stated that the continuation of Israeli strikes on Gaza could drive non-Palestinian Arabs and LH to join the war against Israel.[37] Golrou added that the Syrian people could use the current conflict to try to “liberate” the Golan Heights from Israel.
• IRGC-affiliated media similarly argued that an American intervention would escalate and expand the existing conflict.[38] Iranian officials and media also echoed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s October 10 claim that Israel has suffered an “irreparable” military and intelligence failure.[39]

Iran is messaging the above to advance the following objectives:

• Unravel the Israel-Saudi Arabia normalization process. Western media reported throughout August and September 2023 that Israel and Saudi Arabia may be close to reaching a normalization agreement that would include security cooperation and mutual defense.[40] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei warned regional states on October 3 not to “gamble” their security on normalizing relations with Israel.[41] Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian has furthermore been leading a political effort since October 8 to unify Arab countries in condemning the Israeli attacks on Gaza.[42] Iranian media has similarly saturated the regional media space with articles arguing that an Israeli-Saudi normalization is now impossible given Israel’s military-intelligence failure and the “genocidal” Israeli response in Gaza.[43]
• Portray Israel as weak. Senior Iranian political and military officials, including Supreme Leader Foreign Affairs Adviser Ali Akbar Velayati, Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Armed Forces General Staff Chief Major General Mohammad Bagheri, and IRGC Commander Major General Hossein Salami, have subsequently echoed Khamenei’s warning, arguing that the October 7 Hamas attack demonstrated Israel’s military weakness and therefore its inability to provide security to the states seeking to normalize relations with it.[44]
• Generate momentum for further conflict. Iranian officials and media have since October 8 repeatedly referenced Israel’s military weakness and intelligence failures during the Hamas surprise attack, portraying Israel as vulnerable.[45] These same officials and media have used the Israeli response to the attack to portray Israel as “genocidal.”[46] Several Iranian-backed militant groups and other non-Iranian-backed groups have since expressed interest in joining the conflict with Israel. Western and Israeli officials and media have expressed concern about the potential expansion of the conflict to areas beyond Gaza and to groups other than Hamas.[47] Iranian officials have previously outlined Iran’s long-term strategy to eventually embroil Israel in a multi-front war.[48]

Iranian officials continued to deny on October 10 and 11 Iran's involvement in Hamas’ ground and air attack against Israel. The Wall Street Journal reported on October 8 that Iran had helped plan the Al Aqsa Flood Operation in meetings with representatives from Hamas, LH, and PIJ in Beirut since August 2023.[49] Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei praised Hamas’ attack but denied any Iranian involvement in a speech at the Imam Ali Army Officer University in Tehran on October 10.[50] Khamenei stated that individuals who believe Iran was involved “underestimate” the Palestinians’ ability to conduct attacks on their own. Khamenei stressed that Israel brought the attack upon itself by committing crimes against Palestinians “for many years.” Hardline and reformist officials reiterated Iran’s non-involvement in the conflict on October 11.[51]

3. IntelBrief: The Regional and Geopolitical Implications of the Hamas Attack

IntelBrief: The Regional and Geopolitical Implications of the Hamas Attack - The Soufan Center

thesoufancenter.org · by Michaela Millender · October 12, 2023

October 12, 2023

AP Photo/Erik Marmor

Bottom Line Up Front

• The October 7 Hamas cross-border assault on Israel will upend the geopolitics of the region and prompt a reconsideration of many of the assumptions underpinning U.S. and allied policy toward the Middle East.
• Although Iran’s role in the attack is contested, its role as orchestrator of an “axis of resistance” will further alienate Tehran in the region, and could cause broader conflict if Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, fully enters the battle against Israel in what would be a second, deadlier phase of the conflict.
• The attack demonstrates that U.S., Israeli, and Arab assumptions that the region was headed toward peace and security through normalization agreements and broader de-escalation have proven flawed.
• U.S. leaders are likely to return their focus on the Middle East and counterterrorism that characterized U.S. global policy for a decade after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The October 7 attack on Israel by Hamas militia fighters, accompanied by allied forces from Palestine Islamic Jihad (PIJ), will upend regional and international geopolitics for many years, regardless of whether Israel’s counter-offensive succeeds in removing Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip. The attack has undermined a multitude of assumptions, including the forecast that the Middle East was headed for a new era of stability and peace as more Arab states normalize relations with Israel. This view was reflected in a statement on September 29 by U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, who listed off a string of achievements in the Middle East and asserted that the region is "quieter today than it has been in two decades." The widespread assessment that regional “spoilers” such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and other Iran-backed actors could be deterred - and regional conflicts kept limited - in turn, undergirded U.S. efforts to “pivot” toward countering the “pacing threat” from China’s burgeoning strategic power and from Russian aggression in Ukraine.

Underpinning the broad Arab move to build ties with Israel was the common threat perception from the growing strategic capabilities of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the assessment that relations with Israel could be normalized without demanding extensive concessions from Israel on the Palestinian issue. Many regional and global leaders also assumed, apparently incorrectly, that through aid to the people of Gaza, border controls, and vigorous diplomacy, any clashes between Israel and Hamas could be kept limited and quickly resolved with new informal agreements and understandings. Western and regional leaders also assumed that Hezbollah had become content with playing the role of “kingmaker” in Lebanese politics, while building the capability, aided by Iran, to exert substantial pressure on Israel when necessary. Should Hezbollah open a new front against Israel in full force - beyond the tit-for-tat exchanges of fire observed to date - the assumption that Iran and Hezbollah could be deterred from another major conflict with Israel would have to be reconsidered in the region and globally. After the Hamas attack, the United States moved a carrier strike group to the eastern Mediterranean not necessarily to assist Israel’s counteroffensive – although providing intelligence and other support is part of the carrier group’s mission – but primarily to deter Hezbollah and its main patron, Iran, from joining the conflict. Hezbollah’s leadership has threatened to open up a full assault on Israeli ground forces entering Gaza – a threat that is likely to be tested in the coming days. On Wednesday, there were reports of a drone swarm entering Israel from Lebanon, sending millions into shelters, although the IDF later reported it to be a false alarm, suggesting either human or technical error in the warning. Iran has supplied Hezbollah with an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles of varying ranges and capabilities over the past decade, and the group has the potential capability to overwhelm Israeli missile and rocket defenses such as the Iron Dome system. A decision by Hezbollah’s leaders to fully join the conflict with Israel would represent a failure of U.S. deterrence and would potentially expand the conflict throughout the region, with Iranian proxies prepared to act in various corners of the Middle East. At the very least, Iran’s role in supporting Hamas with reportedly $100 million per year over the past several decades, including providing technology used by Hamas to develop its large rocket and missile arsenal, will give pause to U.S., European, and regional efforts to de-escalate tensions with Iran through negotiations that, in the case of the United States, typically involve a measure of sanctions relief. The Hamas attack is certain to halt, at least for now, any move by U.S. officials to expand a September U.S.-Iran prisoner swap into a broader de-escalation with Tehran or a revival of formal talks to restore full U.S. and Iranian adherence to the 2015 multilateral Iran nuclear agreement (JCPOA).

One question that might affect the longer-term regional outlook is whether Israel tries and succeeds to topple Hamas from power in the Gaza Strip. That outcome might open up the potential for broader regional alignments by weakening Iran and its axis of resistance. A reunification of the Gaza Strip with the West Bank, presumably under the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, might instill new momentum in long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian talks on a comprehensive solution. But Abbas lacks legitimacy and seems an unlikely figure for Palestinians to rally around, given the sclerotic nature of his tenure. One of the reasons longtime Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has cited for not engaging in consistent talks with the PA is that no solution can be reached with the Palestinians as long as Hamas is in control of Gaza and rejects Israel’s right to exist. The Hamas attack seemingly demonstrates that the group is not willing to moderate its rejectionist position. Hamas’ downfall, even if precipitated by Israeli military force and not by Gaza residents themselves, might presumably remove this obstacle to an Israeli-Palestinian peace. However, even if Hamas is removed as the controlling authority in the Gaza Strip, the support for Hamas and the Palestinian people demonstrated throughout the region and in regional media suggests that a Saudi-Israel normalization deal, and other Israel-Arab normalization agreements, are highly unlikely anytime soon.

The Hamas attack will also cause U.S. leaders to rethink the assessment that the United States can move beyond the post-September 11 “global war on terrorism” to focus intently on great power competition, including countering near peers such as China and Russia. It is in large part because the Middle East’s conflicts appeared stable and manageable that the United States has been able to concentrate, over the past 18 months, on helping Ukraine defeat Russian aggression. The Hamas attack demonstrates that, while the two main global jihadist groups, Al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS), have been set back decisively - although not eliminated – violent organizations are still able to destabilize regional and global politics with little warning. Although Western leaders will not be forced off their efforts to aid Ukraine or to counter China because of the Hamas attack, it is likely that Western intelligence and military agencies will redeploy significant assets toward counterterrorism. However, the focus of the counterterrorism effort will shift from Al Qaeda and ISIS to Iran-backed groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and PIJ. Hezbollah, in particular, is assessed as having “global reach,” carrying out significant terrorist attacks as far afield from the region as Argentina, where it was implicated in deadly terrorist bombings of the Israeli Embassy and a Jewish community center in 1992 and 1994, respectively. And while Hezbollah’s modus operandi has lately been to focus its efforts closer to the region, including in Syria, it is possible that the ongoing conflict, should Hezbollah become fully engaged, could put pressure on the group to revert back to identifying targets outside of the Middle East.

thesoufancenter.org · by Michaela Millender · October 12, 2023

4. Zelensky Reportedly Plans Solidarity Visit to Israel

Excerpts:

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set off for Israel on Oct. 11. The same day, prior to commencing meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, President Zelensky urged the West to rally around the Israeli people as it had for Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion last year, and to show them they are not “alone”.

“I remember the first days of the full-scale war. It started with terrorist attacks from Belarus, then the Russian army advanced. It was a profound tragedy for us, with countless lives lost. Being alone during such times can be devastating. Solidarity can make a real difference, preserving nations, lives, and, above all, human dignity,” Zelensky said.

“Thus, I strongly recommend leaders to visit Israel and stand by the people who have suffered from terrorist attacks and who are enduring immense hardships,” the President added.

Zelensky Reportedly Plans Solidarity Visit to Israel

kyivpost.com

Both Zelensky's and Netanyahu's offices have refrained from providing official comments at this time.

by Kyiv Post | October 12, 2023, 9:59 am

This handout photograph taken and released by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Service shows President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky (L) shaking hands with Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu (R) during a meeting on the sidelines of the 78th session of the UN General Assembly in New York, on September 19, 2023. (Photo by Handout / UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTIAL PRESS SERVICE / AFP)

President Volodymyr Zelensky is understood to be preparing for a visit to Israel in a gesture of solidarity. The planned trip comes amidst the ongoing escalation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Axios media outlet reported citing sources within Ukrainian and Israeli government circles.

Sources familiar with the matter have indicated that Zelensky's office has formally requested to coordinate his visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The negotiations, they stress, are still in the preliminary stages, and no specific date for the visit has been confirmed.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken set off for Israel on Oct. 11. The same day, prior to commencing meetings at NATO headquarters in Brussels, President Zelensky urged the West to rally around the Israeli people as it had for Ukraine in response to Russia’s invasion last year, and to show them they are not “alone”.

“I remember the first days of the full-scale war. It started with terrorist attacks from Belarus, then the Russian army advanced. It was a profound tragedy for us, with countless lives lost. Being alone during such times can be devastating. Solidarity can make a real difference, preserving nations, lives, and, above all, human dignity,” Zelensky said.

“Thus, I strongly recommend leaders to visit Israel and stand by the people who have suffered from terrorist attacks and who are enduring immense hardships,” the President added.

More on this topic

How Israel Dropped the Ball on the Hamas Invasion

The latest Hamas attack caught Netanyahu, the Israeli Defense Forces and the world-famous Mossad intelligence agency off guard. How and why did it happen?

The recent surge in hostilities began on Oct. 7, when Hamas militants launched a barrage of around 3,000 rockets into Israel and broke into the border territories, killing and taking hostages among local residents and military personnel. In response, the Israel Defense Forces initiated widespread strikes on the Gaza Strip.

Based on the latest information, the violence has resulted in over 1,200 casualties among Israeli residents, with the Palestinian side reporting more than 1,100 fatalities from Israeli airstrikes.

kyivpost.com

5. Remarks by President Biden on the Terrorist Attacks in Israel

Pure evil. How could anyone support Hamas?

Remarks by President Biden on the Terrorist Attacks in Israel | The White House

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · October 10, 2023

State Dining Room

2:24 P.M. EDT

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon.

You know, there are moments in this life — and I mean this literally — when the pure, unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world.

The people of Israel lived through one such moment this weekend. The bloody hands of the terrorist organization Hamas — a group whose stated purpose for being is to kill Jews.

This was an act of sheer evil.

More than 1,000 civilians slaughtered — not just killed, slaughtered — in Israel. Among them, at least 14 American citizens killed.

Parents butchered using their bodies to try to protect their children.

Stomach-turning reports of being — babies being killed.

Entire families slain.

Young people massacred while attending a musical festival to celebrate peace — to celebrate peace.

Women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies.

Families hid their fear for hours and hours, desperately trying to keep their children quiet to avoid drawing attention.

And thousands of wounded, alive but carrying with them the bullet holes and the shrapnel wounds and the memory of what they endured.

You all know these traumas never go away.

There are still so many families desperately waiting to hear the fate of their loved ones, not knowing if they’re alive or dead or hostages.

Infants in their mothers’ arms, grandparents in wheelchairs, Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage — hostages whom Hamas has now threatened to execute in violation of every code of human morality.

It’s abhorrent.

The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS.

This is terrorism.

But sadly, for the Jewish people, it’s not new.

This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.

So, in this moment, we must be crystal clear: We stand with Israel. We stand with Israel. And we will make sure Israel has what it needs to take care of its citizens, defend itself, and respond to this attack.

There is no justification for terrorism. There is no excuse.

Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.

They use Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Hamas offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.

The loss of innocent life is heartbreaking.

Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond — indeed has a duty to respond — to these vicious attacks.

I just got off the phone with — the third call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. And I told him if the United States experienced what Israel is experiencing, our response would be swift, decisive, and overwhelming.

We also discussed how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law.

Terrorists purpo- — purposefully target civilians, kill them. We uphold the laws of war — the law of war. It matters. There’s a difference.

Today, Americans across the country are praying for all those families that have been ripped apart. A lot of us know how it feels. It leaves a black hole in your chest when you lose family, feeling like you’re being sucked in. The anger, the pain, the sense of hopelessness.

This is what they mean by a “human tragedy” — an atrocity on an appalling scale.

But we’re going to s- — continue to stand united, supporting the people of Israel who are suffering unspeakable losses and opposing the hatred and violence of terrorism.

My team has been in near constant communication with our Israeli partners and partners all across the region and the world from the moment this crisis began.

We’re surging additional military assistance, including ammunition and interceptors to replenish Iron Dome.

We’re going to make sure that Israel does not run out of these critical assets to defend its cities and its citizens.

My administration has consulted closely with Congress throughout this crisis. And when Congress returns, we’re going to ask them to take urgent action to fund the national security requirements of our critical partners.

This is not about party or politics. This is about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America.

We now know that American citizens are among those being held by Hamas.

I’ve directed my team to share intelligence and deploy additional experts from across the United States government to consult with and advise the Israeli counterparts on hostage recover- — recovery efforts, because as president I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world.

The United States has also enhanced our military force posture in the region to strengthen our deterrence.

The Department of Defense has moved the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group to the Eastern Mediterranean and bolstered our fighter aircraft presence. And we stand ready to move in additional assets as needed.

Let me say again — to any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: Don’t. Don’t.

Our hearts may be broken, but our resolve is clear.

Yesterday, I also spoke with the leaders of

France, Germany, Italy, and the UK to discuss the latest developments with our European allies and coordinate our united response.

This comes on top of days of steady engagement with partners across the region.

We’re also taking steps at home. In cities across the United States of America, police departments have stepped up security around centers for — of Jewish life.

And the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working closely with state and local law enforcement and Jewish community partners to identify and disrupt any domestic threat that could emerge in connection with these horrific attacks.

This is a moment for the United States to come together, to grieve with those who are mourning.

Let’s be real clear: There is no place for hate in America — not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anybody. We reject — we reject — what we reject is terrorism. We condemn the indiscriminate evil, just as we’ve always done.

That’s what America stands for.

You know, just over 50 years ago — I was thinking about it this morning, talking with the Secretary of State, the Vice President in my office and — over 50 years ago, as a young senator, I visited Israel for the first time, as a newly elected senator.

And I had a long, long trip — or meeting with Golda Meir in her office just before the Yom Kippur War. And I guess she could see the consternation on my face as she described what was being faced — they were facing.

We walked outside in that — that sort of hallway outside her office to have some photos. She looked at me and w- — all of a sudden and said, “Would you like to have a photograph?” And so, I got up and followed her out.

We were standing there silent, looking at the press. She could tell, I guess, I was concerned. She leaned over and whispered to me — she said, “Don’t worry, Senator Biden. We have a secret weapon here in Israel” — my word this is what she said — “We have no place else to go.” “We have no place else to go.”

For 75 years, Israel has stood as the ultimate guarantor of security of Jewish people around the world so that the atrocities of the past could never happen again.

And let there be no doubt: The United States has Israel’s back.

We will make sure the Jewish and democratic State of Israel can defend itself today, tomorrow, as we always have. It’s as simple as that.

These atrocities have been sickening.

We’re — we’re with Israel. Let’s make no mistake.

Thank you.

2:34 P.M. EDT

whitehouse.gov · by The White House · October 10, 2023

6. Hamas Invasion Rewrites Rules in Middle East

Hamas Invasion Rewrites Rules in Middle East

Risk of wider war grows as U.S., Israel and its enemies respond to attack

By Yaroslav TrofimovFollow

Oct. 11, 2023 7:43 pm ET

https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/hamas-invasion-rewrites-rules-in-middle-east-1aeabbd4

DUBAI—Saturday’s attack on Israel by Hamas militants, who killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped many others back to the Gaza Strip, has upended fundamental assumptions about the Middle East.

Now, as Israel, its enemies and its main partner, the U.S., respond to these shocking events, the new—and untested—rules of the game risk turning the bloody confrontation between Israel and Hamas into a much wider war.

Israel’s expected land operation against Hamas in Gaza, and the reaction to it by Iran and its group of allied Islamist militias around the region, could determine the new balance of power in the Middle East and the new set of understandings about the region’s future.

“Hamas inflicted this surprise, devastating attack because it wanted to change the equation, not just between Hamas and Israel, but also between Israel and the axis of Iranian supporters and Iranian proxies,” said reserve Brig. Gen. Yossi Kuperwasser, a former head of research for Israeli military intelligence. “Israel now wants to change the equation, too, but in the other direction—if we kick Hamas out of Gaza.”

Should Israel manage to eliminate Hamas as Gaza’s dominant force, it would reverse one critical aspect of the fallout from Saturday’s events: the crumbling of the long-cultivated perception of Israel’s superior military and intelligence prowess. After swiftly breaching costly Israeli border fortifications and overrunning military bases, Hamas gunmen went on a killing spree—causing the worst loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust.

Palestinians stand by a burning Israeli military watch tower in the Gaza Strip on Saturday. PHOTO: HATEM ALI/ASSOCIATED PRESS

More than 1,200 people were killed and many more kidnapped during Saturday’s attack on Israel. PHOTO: APA IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

The attack destroyed another assumption, long cultivated by Hamas’s backers such as Turkey and Qatar, and accepted by many in the West and even inside parts of the Israeli establishment: that the Islamist group had somehow moderated its original ideology, which seeks the elimination of any Jewish presence between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.

Aiming to put a new gloss on its goals, Hamas in 2017 even issued a policy statement that said that its conflict is with “the Zionist project” rather than Jews, and implied acceptance of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza—though still rejecting Israel’s right to exist.

The horrors of the Hamas assault have also punctured the notion, long championed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that Palestinian aspirations could be reduced to a manageable nuisance, and that the occupation could persist, even as Israel pursues new relationships in the Arab world.

“The Netanyahu doctrine that you can ignore the Palestinians without paying a price has been shattered,” said Mairav Zonszein, an expert on Israel and Palestine at the International Crisis Group. “It turns out that, no matter how much economic and military and diplomatic power you have, your entire country can ground to a halt.”

More Israeli citizens were killed Saturday than during the entire Second Intifada of 2000-2005, she said.

The corollary of this new reality is that the U.S. is having to return to the Middle East, reversing the trend of three consecutive administrations that had tried to pivot away and focus on other global challenges such as China and, since last year’s invasion of Ukraine, Russia.

Israel’s response to the attack, and the reaction to it by Iran and its allied Islamist militias, could determine the new balance of power in the Middle East. PHOTO: NASSER ISHTAYEH/SOPA IMAGES/ZUMA PRESS

The Biden administration has already dispatched two carrier groups to the Eastern Mediterranean, as part of an effort to deter Iran and its Lebanese protégé, Hezbollah, from joining the conflict and potentially sparking a regional war that could also involve Iran and nations in the Persian Gulf. Washington is also rushing weapons to Israel.

“It’s a re-engagement. It turns out that our partners in the region are still heavily dependent on the security umbrella that the U.S. continues to provide,” said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “They still look to us as the primary security partner of choice—not at China, and certainly not at Russia. And when a crisis like this emerges, we are on the speed dial.”

Israel’s enemies were celebrating the surprising weakness displayed by the country’s military and intelligence services on Saturday. Israel’s high-tech border surveillance system around Gaza was knocked down with cheap drones, senior officers were killed at captured Israeli military bases and it took several hours for Israeli forces to start driving back Hamas—time that the Palestinian gunmen used to murder or kidnap defenseless civilians.

“The blow of Saturday, Oct. 7, cannot be recovered from. You have brought this calamity upon yourselves,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei addressed Israelis in a gloating Hebrew-language post on X, a social-media platform formerly known as Twitter. To some Arab commentators, Hamas’s success indicated that Israel could indeed be militarily defeated and that the seemingly unrealistic goal of wiping out the Israeli state isn’t that far-fetched.

Israel’s air force started pummeling the Gaza Strip hours after Hamas’s invasion, destroying key infrastructure. PHOTO: ALAA QRAIQEA/ZUMA PRESS

Several hundred residents, including civilians, have been killed since Israel launched airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. PHOTO: ADEL HANA/ASSOCIATED PRESS

But despite Israeli officials describing Saturday’s events as the country’s Pearl Harbor, the damage to Israel’s actual military capabilities was limited. The country’s powerful air force is intact, and within hours started pummeling the Gaza Strip. Several hundred Gaza residents, including civilians, have been killed since then, according to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health, and key infrastructure destroyed.

“It’s clear that the Israelis have underestimated Hamas, but now Hamas, Hezbollah and all the rest of the Iranian proxies stand a great risk of underestimating Israel,” said Colin Clarke, director of research at the Soufan Group intelligence and security consulting firm. “It’s still by far the strongest military in the region, and they’re now especially motivated to seek vengeance against a number of longtime adversaries.”

On Tuesday, President Biden said he expected the Israeli response to be “swift, decisive and overwhelming”—while also upholding the laws of war. Biden also compared Hamas’s actions to the “worst rampages” of Islamic State, in language seen by many in Israel as a green light to do in Gaza what the U.S.-led coalition had done to oust Islamic State from Mosul, Iraq, and Raqqa, Syria, in 2017.

Both cities were heavily damaged in sustained U.S. bombing campaigns and artillery barrages that caused numerous civilian casualties. Unlike Gaza, however, Mosul and Raqqa weren’t blockaded, and many Iraqi and Syrian civilians managed to escape to safety.

Israel’s expected ground campaign to eradicate Hamas, with the potential for the high casualties inherent in urban combat, would test the degree to which Iran and Hezbollah are committed to the Palestinian group—and the Palestinian cause.

It took several hours for Israeli forces to start driving back Hamas on Saturday. PHOTO: ILIA YEFIMOVICH/DPA/ZUMA PRESS

In past conflagrations over Gaza, Hezbollah stayed largely on the sidelines, observing the rules of mutual deterrence agreed after the 2006 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. The Lebanese group possesses an arsenal of Iranian-supplied precision missiles that could inflict significant damage to Israel’s vital infrastructure and military facilities.

“At a very strategic level, Hezbollah and Iran are not very interested, as yet, to jump into this fight,” said Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow for Middle East security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “The fundamental calculus for Iran still holds: Hezbollah is such a unique and powerful instrument of its security policy that it’s not going to waste it on this war. Hezbollah is to be used and deployed when the regime in Iran, its very existence, is threatened.”

So far, Hezbollah has engaged in limited skirmishes along the border. Its fighters hit an Israeli armored personnel carrier with antitank missiles on Wednesday. Such clashes raise the risk of an unintended conflagration, said Nadav Pollak, a former analyst for the Israeli government who is now a lecturer on Middle East affairs at Reichman University in Israel.

“Since 2006, we have never been so close to another war with Hezbollah,” he said. “If God forbid, they fire an antitank missile and kill 10-15 soldiers at the border, Israel will have to reply or even initiate a war.”

A column of Israeli battle tanks is amassed in northern Israel, near the border with Lebanon. PHOTO: JALAA MAREY/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

One significant change since 2006 is Iran’s new doctrine of the “unification of the arenas” which seeks to improve coordination and joint actions of Tehran, Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iranian proxies in Iraq and Yemen, in their confrontation with Israel. An eviction of Hamas from Gaza would be a huge blow to that doctrine—one of the reasons why Tehran may decide to expand the conflict to maintain its regional influence.

“There is a very big risk that a war in Lebanon can morph into a regional conflict. I don’t think that Iran, Israel or Hezbollah want it. But they’ve locked themselves into positions where if one step is taken by one side, then the other side has to take a counter-step,” said Lebanese analyst Michael Young, a senior editor at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut. “There are no real clear offramps for this steady escalation toward the worst option.”

For now, such concerns are unlikely to deter Israel’s leadership. Hardly any voices, in the just-expanded government or in the Israeli opposition, oppose a sustained land operation to defeat Hamas. “The only game in town is getting rid of Hamas, and there is tons of political pressure to do that,” said Zonszein of the International Crisis Group. “The consensus is that Hamas cannot remain intact.”

Questions about who should govern Gaza’s two million people after that, and whether Israel is prepared to once again occupy the area, are for now set aside. “I don’t think anyone is thinking about the day after right now,” said Pollak. “Everyone knows one thing: Hamas has just launched the most horrible terror attacks in Israeli history, and we need to fight back, and, sorry to say, we need to kill as many of Hamas as we can.”

Write to Yaroslav Trofimov at yaroslav.trofimov@wsj.com

Appeared in the October 12, 2023, print edition as 'Assault by Hamas Rewrites The Rules in the Middle East'.

7. Killing Civilians: The New Normal

I am seeing reports challenging these atrocities with "whataboutism" and past propaganda that falsely alleged atrocities. But I think the evidence is pretty strong that these crimes against humanity are occurring. 

Killing Civilians: The New Normal

For Hamas in Israel and Putin in Ukraine, killing the innocent is now part of the plan.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/killing-civilians-is-the-new-normal-hamas-israel-attack-terrorism-russia-ukraine-world-order-343110df?mod=Searchresults_pos5&page=1

By Daniel Henninger

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Oct. 11, 2023 6:02 pm ET

WSJ Opinion: Killing Civilians: The New Normal

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Wonder Land: For Hamas in Israel and Putin in Ukraine, killing the innocent is now part of the plan. Images: AP/Zuma Press Composite: Mark Kelly

The most noted aspect of Hamas’s attack on Israel is that its fighters on the ground explicitly targeted Israeli civilians for killing. Israelis were shot while driving along the street. They were pulled from their homes and killed. Hamas carried out the mass murder of some 260 people at the Tribe of Nova music festival.

The reaction of any normal person to these scenes, especially because the images are put on screens by the hour, is horror. President Biden called the Hamas attack “sheer evil.” True. But that suggests an event falling outside our daily experience, a rarity. No longer.

The moment has arrived to recognize that for the adversaries of the free world, killing innocent civilians is the new normal.

Vladimir Putin, a purported friend of Israel, has said little, other than blaming a failure of U.S. policy in the Middle East. No surprise there. What Hamas did to the Israelis is what Mr. Putin has been doing to civilians in Ukraine for almost two years.

Since the February 2022 invasion, it is estimated that about 10,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed. Russia has killed hundreds with missiles fired into residential areas of Ukrainian cities and towns. It has targeted schools, hospitals and food markets.

Just last week, a Russian rocket killed more than 50 people attending a funeral in the village of Hroza. The Russian siege of Mariupol last year killed thousands of civilians. Russia has shelled columns of refugees. One of the most infamous atrocities was the massacre of men, women and children by Russian soldiers in Bucha, north of Kyiv.

I want to emphasize: These civilian deaths—by Hamas in Israel and Russia in Ukraine—are not collateral damage from urban warfare. They are part of the war plan, thought out by calm men sitting around a table, in Moscow or Beirut, looking at maps and civilian targets.

In 2015 and into 2016, Mr. Putin—and Hezbollah—helped Syrian President Bashar al-Assad implement the siege of Aleppo in northern Syria, which also targeted schools and hospitals. Some 75% of the fatalities were civilians. Thousands were children.

On Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu likened Hamas’s murders to the “atrocities of ISIS.” The Islamic State perfected the targeting of innocent civilians during the Iraq war, such as the 2016 bombing that killed 200 people on a Baghdad shopping street.

Afghanistan’s Taliban became synonymous with the killing of innocent civilians, culminating in the August 2021 bombing at Kabul’s airport that killed dozens of civilians and 13 U.S. service members.

What few gains Mr. Putin made in eastern Ukraine were facilitated by Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group paramilitaries, including, as The Wall Street Journal reported, the atrocities against civilians in Bucha. The Wagner Group has been linked to hundreds of civilian killings in Mali and the Central African Republic.

Hamas and Hezbollah, whatever their ideological underpinnings, are now essentially Iran’s own Wagner Group. Killing Israelis is what they do, for money.

It is affecting to note there are—or were—international rules, most prominently the Geneva Conventions, against the acts described in this grim catalog (to which add China and the Uyghurs). Such acts are called war crimes or crimes against humanity.

That is increasingly unenforced parchment paper. Crimes against humanity are becoming normalized.

Again, consider Ukraine. After two years, a numbness about Mr. Putin’s civilian atrocities has set in. So much so that some House Republicans, including speaker candidate Jim Jordan, and at least one GOP presidential candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, are open to defunding Ukraine. Gov. Ron DeSantis is ambivalent.

The standard argument against more funding for Ukraine is that there is “no plan.” Israel has a plan: Defeat Hamas. How about this plan for Ukraine: Defeat Russia.

Some, aware of the Ukraine example, are asking how long this week’s outpouring of support for Israel will last. Good question. The Hamas-Iranian strategy may be to drive the Israel Defense Forces to enter Gaza’s dense neighborhoods, ensuring the death of Israeli soldiers from roadside bombs, killing local civilians as well, and, as planned, eroding the world’s morale.

Another question for the we’re-done-with-the-world wing of the Republican Party is how many Americans would they leave on the other side. Hostage-taking, along with civilian killings, is now established in our adversaries’ playbook.

Hamas is holding more than 100 people hostage, including an uncounted number of Americans. Hamas’s paymaster and planner, Iran, just exchanged five American hostages for $6 billion. Mr. Putin, who has abducted hundreds of Ukrainian children into re-education camps inside Russia, is holding Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan.

Our adversaries—Russia, Iran, China and North Korea—will continue the mass killing of civilians and hostage-taking as a strategic policy until the U.S. decisively counters this awful new normal.

That means funding a credible U.S. military deterrent and ensuring that the Israelis and Ukrainians have the means to defeat uncivilized enemies. The likely alternative is another lapse into pre-9/11 complacency. The cost of that, this week has proved again, is too high.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

Appeared in the October 12, 2023, print edition as 'Killing Civilians: The New Normal'.

8. How does Hamas get its weapons? A mix of improvisation, resourcefulness and a key overseas benefactor

No mention of north Kores. These reporters might want to ask this question to get ot the next level of analysis: Where does Iran get these weapons?

This is from today:

North Korea's arms deals with Hamas, Hezbollah pose common threat to South Korea, Israel

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2023/10/103_360986.html

Or they could have found this article from 5 years ago:

North Korea’s Illegal Weapons Trade: The Proliferation Threat From Pyongyang

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-korea/2018-06-06/north-koreas-illegal-weapons-trade

Also this book by Dr. Bruce Bechtol (also from 5 years ago):

North Korean Military Proliferation in the Middle East and Africa: Enabling Violence and Instability

https://www.amazon.com/Korean-Military-Proliferation-Middle-Africa/dp/0813175887

How does Hamas get its weapons? A mix of improvisation, resourcefulness and a key overseas benefactor

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/11/middleeast/hamas-weaponry-gaza-israel-palestine-unrest-intl-hnk-ml/

Analysis by Brad Lendon, CNN

 5 minute read 

Updated 3:34 AM EDT, Thu October 12, 2023

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Hamas official reveals intent behind assault on Israel on Russian TV

02:52 - Source: CNN

CNN — 

The brutal rampage by Islamist militant group Hamas on Israel last weekend involved thousands of rockets and missiles, drones dropping explosives, and untold numbers of small arms and ammunition.

But the attack was launched from the Hamas-ruled enclave of Gaza, a 140-square-mile (360-square-kilometer) strip of Mediterranean coastal land bordered on two sides by Israel and one by Egypt.

It’s a poor, densely populated area, with few resources.

And it has been almost completely cut off from the rest of the world for nearly 17 years, when Hamas seized control, prompting Israel and Egypt to impose a strict siege on the territory, which is ongoing.

Israel also maintains an air and naval blockade on Gaza as well as a vast array of surveillance.

Which begs the question: How did Hamas amass the sheer amount of weaponry that enabled the group to pull off coordinated attacks that have left more than 1,200 people dead in Israel and thousands more injured – while continuing to rain rocket fire down on Israel?

The answer, according to experts, is through a combination of guile, improvisation, tenacity and an important overseas benefactor.

Members of the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, are shown in January 2017.

Said Khatib/AFP/Getty Images/FILE

The Iran factor

“Hamas acquires its weapons through smuggling or local construction and receives some military support from Iran,” the CIA’s World Factbook says.

While the Israeli and US governments have yet to find any direct role by Iran in last weekend’s raids, experts say the Islamic Republic has long been Hamas’ main military supporter, smuggling weapons into the enclave through clandestine cross-border tunnels or boats that have escaped the Mediterranean blockade.

“Hamas’ tunnel infrastructure is still massive despite Israel and Egypt regularly degrading it,” said Bilal Saab, senior fellow and director of the Defense and Security Program at the Middle East Institute (MEI) in Washington.

“Hamas has received arms from Iran smuggled into the (Gaza) Strip via tunnels. This often included longer-range systems,” said Daniel Byman, a senior fellow with the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

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“Iran has also been shipping Hamas its more advanced … ballistic missiles via sea, in components for construction in Gaza,” said Charles Lister, senior fellow at the MEI.

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Retired general explains why he thinks Iran helped support Hamas attacks

01:08 - Source: CNN

But Iran has been a mentor, too, analysts say.

“Iran also helped Hamas with its indigenous manufacturing, enabling Hamas to create its own arsenals,” said Byman at the CSIS.

A senior Hamas official based in Lebanon gave details of the Hamas’ weapons manufacturing in an edited interview with Russia Today’s Arabic-news channel RTArabic published on their website on Sunday.

“We have local factories for everything, for rockets with ranges of 250 km, for 160 km, 80km, and 10 km. We have factories for mortars and their shells. … We have factories for Kalashnikovs (rifles) and their bullets. We’re manufacturing the bullets with permission from the Russians. We’re building it in Gaza,” Ali Baraka, head of Hamas National Relations Abroad, is quoted as saying.

A Palestinian man is lowered into a smuggling tunnel beneath the Gaza-Egypt border, in the southern Gaza Strip, on September 11, 2013.

Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images/FILE

Recycling

For bigger items, the MEI’s Lister said Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the Iranian military that answers directly to the country’s supreme leader, has been giving Hamas engineers weapons training for almost two decades.

“Years of having access to more advanced systems has given Hamas engineers the knowledge necessary to significantly enhance its domestic production capacity,” Lister said.

And Tehran keeps the training of Hamas’ weapons makers current, he added.

“Hamas’ rocket and missile engineers are part of Iran’s regional network, so frequent training and exchange in Iran itself is part and parcel of Iran’s efforts to professionalize its proxy forces across the region,” Lister said.

But how Hamas sources the raw materials for those indigenous weapons also shows the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the group.

Gaza has none of the heavy industry that would support weapons production in most of the world. According to the CIA Factbook, its main industries are textiles, food processing and furniture.

But among its main exports are scrap iron, which can provide material to make weapons in the tunnel network below the enclave.

And that metal in many instances comes from previous destructive fighting in Gaza, according to Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who wrote about it for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy’s Fikra Forum in 2021.

When Gaza infrastructure has been destroyed in Israeli airstrikes, what’s left – sheet metal and metal pipes, rebar, electrical wiring – has found its way into Hamas’ weapon workshops, emerging as rocket tubes or other explosive devices, he wrote.

Recycling unexploded Israel munitions for their explosive material and other parts adds to Hamas’ supply chain, Alkhatib wrote.

“The IDF’s operation indirectly provided Hamas with materials that are otherwise strictly monitored or forbidden altogether in Gaza,” he wrote.

9.  Palestinians rush to buy food and struggle under strikes as Israel readies possible ground operation

This could be a brutal ground operation. I fear the suffering is going to be some of the worst we have seen in this century.

Palestinians rush to buy food and struggle under strikes as Israel readies possible ground operation

AP · October 12, 2023

JERUSALEM (AP) — Palestinians lined up outside bakeries and grocery stores in Gaza on Thursday after spending the night surrounded by the ruins of pulverized neighborhoods darkened by a near-total power outage. Israel launched new airstrikes and said it was preparing for a possible ground invasion.

International aid groups warned that the death toll in Gaza could mount after Israel stopped all deliveries of food, water, fuel and electricity and the tiny enclave’s crossing with Egypt closed. The war — which was ignited by a bloody and wide-ranging assault on Israel by Hamas militants — has already claimed at least 2,500 lives on both sides.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an Israeli military spokesman, told reporters Thursday that forces “are preparing for a ground maneuver if decided,” but that political leaders have not yet ordered one. A ground offensive in Gaza, whose 2.3 million residents are densely packed into a sliver of land only 40 kilometers (25 miles) long, would likely bring even higher casualties on both sides in brutal house-to-house fighting.

As Israel pounds Gaza, Hamas fighters have fired thousands of rockets into Israel since their weekend assault. Militants in the territory are also holding an estimated 150 people taken hostage from Israel.

Already, Palestinians fleeing airstrikes could be seen running through the streets, carrying their belongings and looking for a safe place. Tens of thousands have crowded into U.N.-run schools while others are staying with relatives or even strangers who let them in.

Lines formed outside bakeries and grocery stores during the few hours they dared open, as people tried to stock on food before shelves are emptied. On Wednesday, Gaza’s only power station ran out of fuel and shut down, leaving only lights powered by scattered private generators.

A senior official with the the International Committee of the Red Cross warned that lack of electricity could cripple hospitals.

An Israeli mobile artillery unit fired a shell from southern Israel towards the Gaza Strip, in a position a near the Israel Gaza border, Israel, Wednesday, Oct. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Erik Marmor)

“As Gaza loses power, hospitals lose power, putting newborns in incubators and elderly patients on oxygen at risk. Kidney dialysis stops, and X-rays can’t be taken,” said Fabrizio Carboni, ICRC’s regional director. “Without electricity, hospitals risk turning into morgues.”

Israel’s Energy Minister Israel Katz said nothing would be allowed into Gaza until the captives were released. “Not a single electricity switch will be flipped on, not a single faucet will be turned on, and not a single fuel truck will enter until the Israeli hostages are returned home,” he tweeted.

After Hamas militants stormed through a border fence Saturday and massacred hundreds of Israelis in their homes, on the streets and at an outdoor music festival, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to “crush and destroy” the group, which has governed Gaza since 2007.

“Every Hamas member is a dead man,” Netanyahu said in a televised address late Wednesday.

The Israeli government is under intense public pressure to topple the militant group rather than continuing to try to bottle it up in Gaza after four previous conflicts ended with Hamas still firmly in charge of the territory. Israel has mobilized 360,000 reservists, massed additional forces near Gaza and evacuated tens of thousands of residents from nearby communities.

Netanyahu now has the backing of a new war Cabinet that includes a longtime opposition politician. The U.S. has also pledged unwavering support, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday to meet with Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders. He plans to meet Friday with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Jordan’s King Abdullah II.

The Israeli military said overnight strikes targeted Hamas’ elite Nukhba forces, including command centers used by the fighters who attacked Israel on Saturday, and the home of a senior Hamas naval operative that it said was used to store unspecified weapons.

Another airstrike killed a commander with the Islamic Jihad armed group in his family home in the northern town of Beit Lahia, according to media linked to the group. And a commander from a small, leftist militant group was also killed in a strike, along with some of his relatives, the group’s media said.

“Right now we are focused on taking out their senior leadership,” Hecht, the military spokesman, said. “Not only the military leadership, but also the governmental leadership, all the way up to (top Hamas leader Yehia) Sinwar. They were directly connected.”

The Hamas-run Interior Ministry said Israeli strikes demolished two multistory houses without warning, killing and wounding “a large number” of people, mainly civilians. Hamas has threatened to kill hostages if Israel strikes Palestinian civilians without warning.

While Israel has insisted that it is giving notice of its strikes, it is employing a new tactic of leveling whole neighborhoods, rather than just individual buildings.

Israel’s tone has changed as well. In past conflicts, its military insisted on the precision of strikes in Gaza, trying to ward off criticism over civilian deaths. This time, military briefings emphasize the destruction wrought.

Hecht said Israel was not “doing carpet bombing, though some people would like to see that.” He said targeting decisions were based on intelligence and civilians were warned.

Even with the evacuation warnings, Palestinians say some are unable to escape or have nowhere to go, and that entire families have been crushed under rubble.

Other times, strikes come with no notice, survivors say.

“There was no warning or anything,” said Hashem Abu Manea, 58, who lost his 15-year-old daughter, Joanna, when a strike late Tuesday leveled his home in Gaza City.

The U.N. said late Wednesday the number of people displaced by the airstrikes had soared 30% within 24 hours, to 339,000, two-thirds of them crowding into U.N. schools. Others sought shelter in the shrinking number of safe neighborhoods.

The U.N. humanitarian office said Israeli strikes have leveled 1,000 homes since the retaliation began last Saturday, with another 560 housing units severely damaged and rendered uninhabitable. It said an Israeli cutoff has resulted in dire water shortages for over 650,000 people. Sewage systems have been destroyed, sending fetid wastewater into the streets.

Egypt has engaged in intensive talks with Israel and the United States to allow the delivery of aid and fuel through its Rafah crossing point, which is closed after an airstrike hit nearby earlier this week.

But it has pushed back against proposals to establish corridors out of Gaza, saying an an exodus of Palestinians would have grave consequences for their hopes of one day establishing an independent state. Egypt is also likely concerned about a potential influx of hundreds of thousands of displaced people.

The death toll in Gaza rose to 1,200 early Thursday, including at least 326 children and 171 women, the Palestinian health ministry said.

Ghassan Abu Sitta, a reconstructive surgeon at the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital, said he had 50 patients waiting to go to the operating room.

“We’re already beyond the capacity of the system to cope,” he said. The health system “has the rest of the week before it collapses, not just because of the diesel. All supplies are running short.”

Shock, grief and demands for vengeance against Hamas are running high in Israel.

Netanyahu alleged that the attackers engaged in atrocities, including binding boys and girls and shooting them in the head, burning people alive, raping women and beheading soldiers.

The prime minister’s allegations could not be independently confirmed. Rescue workers and witnesses have described horrifying scenes, including the slaughter of elderly people and finding bloody rooms crowded with massacred civilians.

The Israeli military said more than 1,300 people, including 222 soldiers, have been killed in Israel, a staggering toll unseen since the 1973 war with Egypt and Syria that lasted weeks.

Israel says roughly 1,500 Hamas militants were killed inside Israel, and that hundreds of the dead inside Gaza are Hamas members.

___

Shurafa reported from Gaza City, Gaza Strip. Associated Press writers Amy Teibel and Isabel DeBre in Jerusalem; Sam McNeil in Be’eri, Israel; Jack Jeffrey and Samy Magdy in Cairo; and Kareem Chehayeb in Beirut contributed to this report.

AP · October 12, 2023

10. Rebuilding Ukraine’s Economy Starts Now

Excerpts:

The Time is Now

In the view of some skeptics, the task of restoring and expanding Ukraine’s economy is so daunting as to be a fool’s errand. For others, domestic considerations have made assistance to Ukraine a lightning rod when it comes to funding the U.S. government writ large, causing near paralysis in American political institutions. Despite this dysfunction, major steps have already been taken to shore up Kyiv’s rebuilding efforts. Significantly, the most recent tranche of U.S. aid to Ukraine, announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to Kyiv on Sept. 6, 2023, included substantial humanitarian, rule of law, anti-corruption, and demining funding, all of which relate to rebuilding. Further, the appointment of a U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery represents an important signal that the Biden administration is committed to the rebuilding effort.

Now, new sources of funding should be considered as well, such as more foreign direct investment, Russian asset seizures, the restoration of commodity exports, and much-needed research and development assistance. Addressing these issues will stimulate and expand business activity, helping Ukraine to achieve the degree of economic growth it requires to bolster its military capacity.

Public opinion polling shows that 84 percent of Ukrainians want to continue the war against Russia until all of their occupied territory is retaken. If the demonstrated willingness of Ukrainians to fight, which has been consistently underrated by many Western observers, is any guide for economic recovery, U.S. and allied support can make a vital difference. With just over half of Americans still backing continued aid to Ukraine, raising awareness of the humanitarian and economic dimension is key. Explaining both the scope of the damage, and Ukraine’s success in reversing it, could help to galvanize support for more aid, which in turn will yield real dividends for U.S. and European security.

Rebuilding Ukraine’s Economy Starts Now - War on the Rocks

RALPH CLEM, ERIK HERRON, AND MATTHEW LANTZY

warontherocks.com · by Ralph Clem · October 12, 2023

The debate over the proper extent of U.S. support for Ukraine in its ongoing war against Russian invaders has now spread in spectacular fashion into American congressional and presidential politics. Most of this coverage focuses on military assistance, not unreasonably given the scale and scope of the fighting. But, as we argue here, it is increasingly evident that Ukraine’s ability to sustain that fight is also in large measure a function of its capacity to begin rebuilding and reorienting its economy in the midst of this war. This means that more support for Ukraine’s defense industrial sector and wider business activities is required to ensure its survival, long-term prosperity, and ability to arm itself.

Indeed, Ukrainians view rebuilding now as a national cause, part and parcel of their desire to liberate their country’s territory. Urgent priorities, such as repairing and upgrading damaged metallurgical plants and housing stock, simply cannot wait for the cessation of hostilities. The problem will only get worse unless action is taken now.

Become a Member

Assessing the Problem

The price Ukraine has already paid since Russia first invaded in 2014 is immense in both human and material terms. Following the much larger attacks commencing in February 2022, the country’s gross domestic product dropped by almost 30 percent in what the World Bank characterized as a “staggering contraction.” In a recent article, we showed that this is primarily because six of Ukraine’s 10 most economically important regions are in the eastern and southern parts of the country where the heaviest fighting has taken place. This is confirmed by our analysis of numbers from the Violent Incident Information from Newspaper Articles project that compiles multi-source incident data in near-real time.

War-related incidents and the pre-war (2021) index of economic importance of regions in Ukraine (Map by Timothy Hoheneder using economic data from the State Statistics Service of Ukraine and the Violent Incident Information from News Articles project through Aug. 1, 2023. Russian occupied areas are as of 2021.)

The Kyiv School of Economics assessed direct monetary damage to material assets from February 2022 to June 2023 at $150.5 billion. That number is much higher now. Russia’s breaching of the Kakhovka dam and hydroelectric power station in southern Ukraine in June created flooding and devastation along the lower reaches of the Dnipro River. Beginning in July of this year, Russia struck grain exporting facilities on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. Demining vast areas, especially along Russian defensive lines in the southeast, will be a massive undertaking crucial to restoring Ukraine’s huge agricultural sector. But the compounding effects of attacks and resulting destruction on the country going forward are even more problematic in economic terms, as supplier and consumer networks are disrupted, physical plants destroyed, and workers displaced and unhoused.

As has been widely discussed, the challenges involved in remediating war damage are considerable in political, financial, and physical terms. This was already evident after parts of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine and Crimea were occupied by Russia going back to the 2014 invasion, with the resulting loss of productivity for the national economy. The World Bank now estimates that some $411 billion will be needed over the next 10 years to restore and reconstruct the country’s economy, and that number is growing as fighting continues.

Making matters even worse, social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, and clinics have been targeted by the Russian military, with effects especially significant on housing stock in the hardest-hit areas. Millions of Ukrainians have been internally displaced and millions more have taken refuge abroad. Despite heroic efforts on the part of Ukraine’s infrastructure workers, civil defense personnel, and ordinary civilians to maintain some sense of normalcy, the country’s economy has been seriously degraded by such attacks. Factories, mines, refineries, and storage facilities have been wrecked, including some of the country’s largest industrial complexes, some of which, especially metallurgy plants, are critical to Ukraine’s war-fighting capability.

Building While Fighting

Even amidst the horrors of this war, Ukrainians have managed to stabilize their gross domestic product, re-start previously damaged factories, and adopt innovative practices from construction to food processing to information technology. The number of newly registered small and medium-sized businesses is up dramatically over the last six months, with most of the new firms located in the more secure central and western regions of the country.

Major problems remain that will impede the rebuilding process, especially the challenge of maintaining power supplies. But there are indications that significant gains are already being made. Audrey Kurth Cronin makes clear that Ukraine has a domestic technology base and “public competency in key skills are vital to the war effort.” Ukraine’s defense industry has been proven very capable of repairing damaged equipment and returning tanks and other armed vehicles to the front. Ukrainian drone attacks deep inside Russia illustrate the ability of defense firms to innovate, construct, and employ technologically sophisticated weaponry.

Western foreign direct investment, although still at a relatively small scale, is already having an impact across a wide range of industries such as modular construction panels and specialized concrete for housing, innovative nuclear energy plants, and renewable power production. European defense companies have already announced plans to open manufacturing facilities in Ukraine despite explicit threats from Russia to attack them.

The degree to which reconstruction is successful will also determine the viability of Ukraine’s pending bids to join the European Union and will have a pronounced effect on European economies themselves. Indeed, Ukraine’s large size and strategic location mean that recovery and future growth outcomes will profoundly shape the geopolitical landscape of Europe and the national defense strategies of the United States and its allies going forward, especially vis-à-vis Russia.

The Time is Now

In the view of some skeptics, the task of restoring and expanding Ukraine’s economy is so daunting as to be a fool’s errand. For others, domestic considerations have made assistance to Ukraine a lightning rod when it comes to funding the U.S. government writ large, causing near paralysis in American political institutions. Despite this dysfunction, major steps have already been taken to shore up Kyiv’s rebuilding efforts. Significantly, the most recent tranche of U.S. aid to Ukraine, announced by Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his visit to Kyiv on Sept. 6, 2023, included substantial humanitarian, rule of law, anti-corruption, and demining funding, all of which relate to rebuilding. Further, the appointment of a U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine’s Economic Recovery represents an important signal that the Biden administration is committed to the rebuilding effort.

Now, new sources of funding should be considered as well, such as more foreign direct investment, Russian asset seizures, the restoration of commodity exports, and much-needed research and development assistance. Addressing these issues will stimulate and expand business activity, helping Ukraine to achieve the degree of economic growth it requires to bolster its military capacity.

Public opinion polling shows that 84 percent of Ukrainians want to continue the war against Russia until all of their occupied territory is retaken. If the demonstrated willingness of Ukrainians to fight, which has been consistently underrated by many Western observers, is any guide for economic recovery, U.S. and allied support can make a vital difference. With just over half of Americans still backing continued aid to Ukraine, raising awareness of the humanitarian and economic dimension is key. Explaining both the scope of the damage, and Ukraine’s success in reversing it, could help to galvanize support for more aid, which in turn will yield real dividends for U.S. and European security.

Become a Member

The authors wish to acknowledge support from the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative and the Office of Naval Research. Opinions expressed here are solely those of the authors.

Ralph Clem is Senior Fellow and Emeritus Professor of Political Geography in the Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs at Florida International University.

Erik Herron is the Eberly Family Distinguished Professor of Political Science at West Virginia University.

Matthew Lantzy is a senior construction project leader specializing in the design and execution of complex industrial facilities both in the United States and abroad.

Commentary

warontherocks.com · by Ralph Clem · October 12, 2023

11. Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology

By one of our nation's foremost terroism scholars who was recently told that his study of terrorism was no longer in vogue because terrorism is on the decline. Go figure.

As an aside I am reminded of Professor Hoffman's definition of terroism in his seminal work, Inside Terrorism. It may be useful to reflect on this:

  We may therefore now attempt to define terrorism as the deliberate creation and exploitation of fear through violence or the threat of violence in the pursuit of political change. All terrorist acts involve violence or the threat of violence. Terrorism is specifically designed to have far-reaching psychological effects beyond the immediate victim(s) or object of the terrorist attack. It is meant to instill fear within, and thereby intimidate, a wider `target audience' that might include a rival ethnic or religious group, an entire country, a national government or political party, or public opinion in general. Terrorism is designed to create power where there is none or to consolidate power where there is very little. Through the publicity generated by their violence, terrorists seek to obtain the leverage, influence and power they otherwise lack to effect political change on either a local or an international scale.

Excerpt:

Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose

In the British historian Richard J. Evan’s magisterial account of the Third Reich, he recounts the reflections of a young German woman who’d read Mein Kampf in 1933: “Like many of her upper-middle-class friends, she discounted the violence and antisemitism of the National Socialists as passing excesses which would soon disappear.” Until October 7, 2023, many in Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere may similarly have dismissed or discounted the acuity of Hamas’s aims and ambitions, its true objectives, and its as-yet-unfulfilled master plan as stated in both the 1988 and 2017 documents. Few are as ignorant or uncomprehending now.

Understanding Hamas’s Genocidal Ideology

A close read of Hamas’s founding documents clearly shows its intentions.

By Bruce Hoffman

The Atlantic · by Bruce Hoffman · October 10, 2023

“Not every German who bought a copy of Mein Kampf necessarily read it … But it might be argued that had more non-Nazi Germans read it before 1933 and had the foreign statesmen of the world perused it carefully while there was still time, both Germany and the world might have been saved from catastrophe.”

— William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich

How many Israelis, or Jews, or anyone else for that matter, have read the 1988 Hamas Covenant or the revised charter that was issued in 2017? With 36 articles of only a few paragraphs’ length each in the former, and 42 concise statements of general principles and objectives in the latter, both are considerably shorter and more digestible than the 782-page original German-language edition of Mein Kampf. Moreover, unlike Hitler’s seminal work, which was not published in English until March 1939, excellent English translations of both the original Hamas Covenant and its successor can easily be found on the internet.

Read: What would Hamas do if it could do whatever it wanted?

Released on August 18, 1988, the original covenant spells out clearly Hamas’s genocidal intentions. Accordingly, what happened in Israel on Saturday is completely in keeping with Hamas’s explicit aims and stated objectives. It was in fact the inchoate realization of Hamas’s true ambitions.

The most relevant of the document’s 36 articles can be summarized as falling within four main themes:

1. The complete destruction of Israel as an essential condition for the liberation of Palestine and the establishment of a theocratic state based on Islamic law (Sharia),
2. The need for both unrestrained and unceasing holy war (jihad) to attain the above objective,
3. The deliberate disdain for, and dismissal of, any negotiated resolution or political settlement of Jewish and Muslim claims to the Holy Land, and
4. The reinforcement of historical anti-Semitic tropes and calumnies married to sinister conspiracy theories.

Thus, as fighting rages in Israel and Gaza, and may yet escalate and spread, pleas for moderation, restraint, negotiation, and the building of pathways to peace are destined to find no purchase with Hamas. The covenant makes clear that holy war, divinely ordained and scripturally sanctioned, is in Hamas’s DNA.

Israel’s Complete and Utter Destruction

The covenant opens with a message that precisely encapsulates Hamas’s master plan. Quoting Hassan al-Banna, the Egyptian founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a constituent member (Article 2), the document proclaims, “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.”

Lest there be any doubt about Hamas’s sanguinary aims toward Israel and the Jewish people, the introduction goes on to explain:

This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious … It is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps.

After some general explanatory language about Hamas’s religious foundation and noble intentions, the covenant comes to the Islamic Resistance Movement’s raison d’être: the slaughter of Jews. “The Day of Judgement will not come about,” it proclaims, “until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”

Article 11 spells out why this annihilation of Jews is required. Palestine is described as an “Islamic Waqf”—an endowment predicated on Muslim religious, education, or charitable principles and therefore inviolate to any other peoples or religions. Accordingly, the territory that now encompasses Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank is

consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up … This Waqf remains as long as earth and heaven remain. Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.

In sum, any compromise over this land, including the moribund two-state solution, much less coexistence among faiths and peoples, is forbidden.

Holy War

Article 12 links the exclusive Muslim right to the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River with the religious obligation incumbent upon all Muslims to wage a war of religious purification. “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy becomes the individual duty of every Moslem [sic], male or female”—a point later reiterated in Articles 14 and 15.

Read: Hamas’s attack confounds Middle East experts

Article 15, moreover, highlights the importance of inculcating this mindset in children. “It is important that basic changes be made in the school curriculum, to cleanse it of the traces of ideological invasion that affected it as a result of the orientalists and missionaries who infiltrated the region following the defeat of the Crusaders at the hands of Salah el-Din (Saladin).” Along these lines, Article 30 also points out that jihad is not confined to the carrying of arms and the confrontation of the enemy: “Writers, intellectuals, media people, orators, educaters [sic]” are called upon “fulfill their duty, because of the ferocity of the Zionist offensive and the Zionist influence in many countries exercised through financial and media control, as well as the consequences that all this lead to in the greater part of the world.”

Nothing is negotiable

Article 13 rejects any kind of negotiations for, or peaceful resolution of, Jewish and Palestinian territorial claims to the land. On this point, the covenant is completely transparent: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors.” Nor are these words historical artifacts. Hamas “military” communiqués heralding the triumphs of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood end with the words “It is a jihad of victory or martyrdom.”

Indeed, this part of the covenant stresses that:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight.

The covenant further says of international negotiations that the “Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”

Base Anti-Semitism

The covenant is especially noteworthy for its trafficking in odious calumnies and conspiracies about the Jewish people and the alleged superhuman influence and power that they exercise over all mankind. “In their Nazi treatment [of other peoples], the Jews made no exception for women or children,” Article 20 begins. “Their policy of striking fear in the heart is meant for all. They attack people where their breadwinning is concerned, extorting their money and threatening their honor. They deal with people as if they were the worst war criminals.”

Article 22 advances this theme. Channeling the fantastical arguments of the infamous Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (which is discussed in Article 32), Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and the Ku Klux Klan, it elaborates on the depth and breadth of Jewish perfidy. The language of this article is so unhinged that it is worth quoting in full:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realization of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

Article 28 continues this theme and again cites various civic organizations and fraternal orders as the malign vessels through which the Jewish people relentlessly pursue their goal of global domination. Alcoholism and drug addiction are integral tools of the Jews’ nefarious plot:

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

After Palestine, Article 32 explains, “the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion,’ and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying.” Standing against this overwhelming force is Hamas—“the spearhead of the circle of struggle with world Zionism and a step on the road.”

Tucked into Article 31, toward the end of the delineation of its three dozen guiding principles, Hamas claims that all faiths can “coexist in peace and quiet with each other” under its unique “wing of Islam.” But lest anyone be lulled into believing the promise of this paradise on Earth, Hamas demands as the price of entry full allegiance and unquestioning compliance with its rule: “It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror.”

A Kinder, Gentler Charter?

On May 1, 2017, Hamas issued a revised charter. Gone were the “vague religious rhetoric and outlandish utopian pronouncements” of the earlier document, according to analysis prepared for the Institute of Palestine Studies. Instead, the new charter was redolent of “straightforward and mostly pragmatic political language” that had “shifted the movement’s positions and policies further toward the spheres of pragmatism and nationalism as opposed to dogma and Islamism.” Nonetheless, the analyst was struck by “the movement’s adherence to its founding principles” alongside newly crafted, “carefully worded” language suggesting moderation and flexibility.

Israel immediately dismissed the group’s effort to promote a kinder, gentler image of its once avowedly bloodthirsty agenda. “Hamas is attempting to fool the world, but it will not succeed,” a spokesperson from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office predicted.

In fact, the new document differs little from its predecessor. Much like the original, the new document asserts Hamas’s long-standing goal of establishing a sovereign, Islamist Palestinian state that extends, according to Article 2, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea and from the Lebanese border to the Israeli city of Eilat—in other words, through the entirety of Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. And it is similarly unequivocal about “the right of return” of all Palestinian refugees displaced as a result of the 1948 and 1967 wars (Article 12)—which is portrayed as “a natural right, both individual and collective,” divinely ordained and “inalienable.” That right, therefore “cannot be dispensed with by any party, whether Palestinian, Arab or international,” thus again rendering negotiations or efforts to achieve any kind of political settlement between Israel and the Palestinians irrelevant, void, or both. Article 27 forcefully reinforces this point: “There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital.”

The most striking departure from the 1988 charter is that the 2017 statement of principles and objectives now claims that Hamas is not anti-Jewish but anti-Zionist and, accordingly, sees “Zionists” and not “Jews” as the preeminent enemy and target of its opprobrium. The revised document therefore modulates the blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric of its predecessor but once again decries Zionism as central to a dark, conspiratorial plot of global dimensions.

For centuries, Jews have been blamed for causing the anti-Semitism directed against them. The new Hamas charter perpetuates this libel, arguing, “It is the Zionists who constantly identify Judaism and the Jews with their own colonial project and illegal entity” and who are therefore responsible for the conflation of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

The Zionist project, according to Article 14, is a “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist project based on seizing the properties of others; it is hostile to the Palestinian people and to their aspiration for freedom, liberation, return and self-determination. The Israeli entity is the plaything of the Zionist project and its base of aggression.” Article 15 goes on to claim that Zionism is the enemy not just of the Palestinian people but of all Muslims, and that it poses “a danger to international security and peace and to mankind and its interests and stability.” The following article then attempts to thread the needle between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism: “Hamas affirms that its conflict is with the Zionist project not with the Jews because of their religion.”

Although the new charter lacks the febrile denunciations of “initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences” of its predecessor, it makes Hamas’s position on Israel’s existence abundantly clear. “The establishment of ‘Israel’ is entirely illegal and contravenes the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people,” Article 18 states, “and goes against their will and the will of the Ummah.” Driving home this point, the new Article 19 proclaims, “There shall be no recognition of the legitimacy of the Zionist entity. Whatever has befallen the land of Palestine in terms of occupation, settlement building, judaisation [sic] or changes to its features or falsification of facts is illegitimate. Rights never lapse.”

As for the promise of peace between Israel and Palestine expressed in the 1993 Oslo Accords, Article 21 is explicit in stating Hamas’s rejection of that landmark agreement: “Hamas affirms that the Oslo Accords and their addenda contravene the governing rules of international law in that they generate commitments that violate the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people. Therefore, the Movement rejects these agreements and all that flows from them.”

Hamas affirms, instead, its commitment to liberating Palestine by force. “Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws,” the document states. “At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.”

Read: There are no rules

Perhaps the most astonishing statement in the entire new document—issued by a terrorist group that has forbade elections in Gaza since 2007—is the fatuous claim in Article 29 that “Hamas believes in, and adheres to, managing its Palestinian relations on the basis of pluralism, democracy, national partnership, acceptance of the other and the adoption of dialogue.”

Plus Ça Change, Plus C'est La Même Chose

In the British historian Richard J. Evan’s magisterial account of the Third Reich, he recounts the reflections of a young German woman who’d read Mein Kampf in 1933: “Like many of her upper-middle-class friends, she discounted the violence and antisemitism of the National Socialists as passing excesses which would soon disappear.” Until October 7, 2023, many in Palestine, Israel, and elsewhere may similarly have dismissed or discounted the acuity of Hamas’s aims and ambitions, its true objectives, and its as-yet-unfulfilled master plan as stated in both the 1988 and 2017 documents. Few are as ignorant or uncomprehending now.

Bruce Hoffman is a professor at Georgetown University. He is also the Shelby Cullom & Katharine W. Davis Senior Fellow for Counterterrorism and Homeland Security at the Council on Foreign Relations and the George H. Gilmore Senior Fellow at the U.S. Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center.

The Atlantic · by Bruce Hoffman · October 10, 2023

12. These are the Challenges Awaiting Israeli Ground Forces in Gaza

Excerpts:

Israel is very aware of the political and military challenge of time. It has fought almost every war of its history in a race against time, seeking to achieve its goals before international pressure forces it to stop operations. This is why Israel has developed a number of best practices to maintain legitimacy and reduce collateral damage in urban warfare. These range from messaging civilians to leave combat areas to “roof knocking” (dropping low-yield explosives on top of roofs in targeted areas to give civilians time to leave before an attack commences) to placing legal advisers at tactical commands and directly involving them in targeting processes.

Ultimately, the outcome of any battle in Gaza will be heavily shaped by the combination of these challenges, a complex set of variables that are entirely incalculable in advance. But it will also be determined by how well IDF forces adapt to meet the challenges, and whether they have the time needed to do so.

These are the Challenges Awaiting Israeli Ground Forces in Gaza - Modern War Institute

mwi.westpoint.edu · by John Spencer · October 11, 2023

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Shortly after a Hamas assault that produced the deadliest day Israel has suffered in decades, Israel declared war. The full range of specific actions such a war declaration will entail was not immediately clear, but when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated that operations against Hamas forces that had entered Israeli territory would be followed by an “offensive formation,” this was interpreted by many as an indication that ground forces would be sent into Gaza. That possibility looks increasingly likely after Netanyahu told President Joe Biden that Israel must go into Gaza—presumably with the mission of destroying Hamas military capability. To conduct a possible ground assault, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have called up over three hundred thousand reservists and continue to mobilize a large force in southern Israel.

If Israel is indeed planning an assault by ground forces into Gaza, these forces will confront a range of challenges—some that will match those of other recent urban battles and others that stem from the unique characteristics of the urban terrain and enemy situation in Gaza. But what will they look like, specifically? Both recent cases of urban warfare and Israel’s previous experience in Gaza yield clues.

It is important to note that while the Gaza Strip’s 140 square miles contain multiple highly dense cities—including Gaza City, Deir al-Balah, Khan Yunis, and Rafah—and are home to over two million residents, the area is not “one of the most densely populated territories on Earth,” as some reports have described it. The densest portion of Gaza, Gaza City, holds over nine thousand residents per square kilometer, but this does not even put it in the top fifty most densely populated cities in the world. A series of recent urban battles have been fought in cities with comparable population densities—like Baghdad in 2003, Fallujah 2004, Mosul and Marawi in 2017, and Kyiv and Mariupol in 2022. But as the lessons of these battles make clear, urban warfare need not take place in “one of the most densely populated territories on Earth” for it to present major difficulties for military forces.

Israel does have experience conducting ground operations in Gaza and against Hamas. The last time Israel sent ground forces into Gaza was during the fifty-day-long Operation Protective Edge in 2014. In that operation, Israel—which had mobilized seventy-five thousand reservists for it—conducted a joint air, land, and sea campaign to support three IDF divisions that moved into Gaza.

Based on both previous Israeli operations against Hamas in the urban areas of Gaza and modern urban battles that took place on comparably dense terrain, several specific challenges are likely to present themselves.

Tactical Challenges Awaiting Ground Forces in Gaza

Combat in dense urban terrain is the most complex and difficult type of warfare a military can be directed to conduct because of the unique interaction of challenges—the dense physical terrain, the presence of noncombatants, restraints on the use of force required by laws of war, and the ubiquitous and real-time global attention on the conduct of a battle.

The last time that Israeli forces entered Gaza was in 2014, which means that Hamas and other combatant groups have had nearly a decade to prepare the defense of Gaza’s cities. Here is a list of the most likely challenges the IDF will face:

Rockets. Hamas has a substantial arsenal of rockets and mortars in Gaza. In 2014, the group fired an estimated six thousands rockets—long-, mid-, and short-range—during the fifty-day battle. It fired over 4,500 rockets in just three days beginning with its barrage on Saturday morning. A 2021 report assessed that Hamas had over eight thousand rockets, meaning that even if it has not increased its stockpiles over the past two years, it has thousands at its disposal with which to target assaulting IDF ground forces. In the 2003 battle for Baghdad, an Iraqi short-range missile destroyed the command post of a US Army brigade in the city. The brigade was conducting the now famous second “Thunder Run,” which would prove critical to the success of the entire battle. Yet such a critical strike by a rocket had the potential to change that outcome.

Drones. One challenge that will be markedly more severe than Israel has faced in its past urban warfare experience is the use of a full spectrum of drones—from military grade suicide drones to commercial, off-the-shelf quadcopters modified to drop munitions. Hamas released video of its forces using drones during its recent attack and showing larger drones in its inventory that are similar to Iranian ones used by Russian forces in Ukraine. As a rapidly growing feature of warfare, recent urban battles have incorporated drones more to a much greater degree than anything the IDF has faced before. During the 2022 Battle of Kyiv, for example, Ukrainian forces employed drones to surprise many observers by defeating the Russian military. They used drones ranging from the Turkish Bayraktar TB2 to made-from-scratch quadcopters to strike targets, call for indirect fire, and anticipate the movement of the Russian forces.

Tunnels. Based on intelligence gained during previous operations to combat Gaza’s tunnels,—including the 2021 Operation Guardian of the Wall, during which Israel reportedly destroyed sixty miles of tunnels in Gaza—there are hundreds of tunnels in Gaza. There is likely what amounts to an entire city of tunnels and bunkers under Gaza’s surface. As it did in 2014, Hamas should be expected to use tunnels offensively to maneuver attackers underground, keeping them both hidden and protected, to conduct surprise attacks. The group will also use them defensively to move between fighting positions to avoid IDF firepower and ground forces. In the 2017 Battle of Mosul, ISIS spent two years digging tunnels, which they used to move between buildings and fighting positions. This greatly contributed the fact that it took over one hundred thousand Iraqi security forces nine months and required destroying most of the city to clear it of enemy forces.

Antiarmor attacks. To enter a contested urban environment, military forces must lead with heavily protected engineer vehicles and tanks—and these must be survivable against the antiarmor weapons of urban defenders. In 2014, IDF vehicles faced Hamas firing a wide range of antitank guided missiles, such as Malyutkas, Konkurs, Fagots, and Kornets, as well as direct-fire rocket propelled grenades, including RPG-7s and the modern and capable RPG-29s. Both these types and other, modern versions of man-portable but effective weapons are easy to transport and conceal in the narrow and confined fighting positions of urban terrain. In the 2004 Second Battle of Fallujah, a single US battalion involved in penetrating the enemy defenses lost six M1A2 Abrams tanks (mostly mobility kills) to RPG volley fire. In the 2022 Battle of Mariupol, just a few thousand defenders used Kornets, NLAWs, Javelin, rocket-propelled grenades, and other antitank guided missiles to destroy many Russian vehicles, hold down over twelve thousands Russians soldiers, and ultimately hold their city for over eighty days.

Strongpoints and snipers. Hamas will seek to use a defense relying on close combat, strongpoints (heavy buildings made of concrete and steel and often with basements and tunnels), and snipers. In 2014, Hamas deployed between 2,500 and 3,500 fighters to defend Gaza using rockets, mortars, antitank guided missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, machine guns, and small arms mostly from protected strongpoints. In urban warfare history, a single building as a strongpoint can take days, weeks, or months to clear. In the 1942 Battle of Stalingrad a four-story building, known as Pavlov’s House, took a division of Germans over fifty-eight days to clear. In the more recent 2017 Battle of Marawi, multiple single buildings took the Philippine military days and in some cases weeks to clear. The IDF should expect to face both strongpoints and snipers once again—both of which have historically been major challenges for attacking militaries.

Human shields. It is well known that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. By doing so, the group is effectively engaging in what scholars have called lawfare, using the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law—specifically their provisions on the protection of noncombatants—to restrict the actions an attacking military force can take in operations. And while Hamas has cynically used Palestinian residents of Gaza for this purpose in the past—establishing weapons caches and rocket firing points in densely populated areas—it is likely that it will also seek to use the 150 noncombatants kidnapped during the initial attacks over the weekend.

Other Challenges

Of course, urban warfare presents challenges that extend well beyond the tactical level. On top of these are several that will challenge Israel’s efforts at the operational and even strategic level.

Casualties. In 2014, the IDF lost sixty-six soldiers. Given the scale of the attacks Hamas has launched in recent days, Israeli objectives are likely to be even more comprehensive than they were nine years ago. As such, a ground operation into Gaza that aims not only to clear portions of dense urban terrain but to destroy Hamas military capability could lead to significant numbers of IDF casualties.

Ammunition. Urban warfare can require four times as much ammunition, or even more, as combat in other environments. To overcome the tactical challenges described above, the IDF will require an abundance of ammunition—not only small arms ammunition, but also interceptors for air defenses across Israel, precision-guided munitions, active protection system rounds on vehicles, rockets, artillery, mortars, tank rounds and much more.

Unknowns. Finally, there is only so much that the IDF’s prior experience and the modern history of urban warfare can illuminate with respect to the challenges a ground force on Gaza will face. There are also many unknows. As an example, one of them is air defense. Hamas has previously claimed to have several types of man-portable air defense systems, such as the SA-7, SA-18, and SA-24. The presence of these and other air defense weapons would pose a significant challenge to Israeli airpower, with serious implications for the ground forces who are dependent on having cover from above.

The Strategic Context: Will and Time

There should be no mistaking the severity of these challenges. But it is important to acknowledge that they will emerge against a backdrop formed by a fundamental reality: war is a contest of wills. That includes the will of individual soldiers to fight, of politicians to continue a military operation, and of populations to support the political decision to continue fighting.

Moreover, will is not static, but changes over time. More specifically, it becomes difficult to maintain will the longer an operation takes. And in urban warfare, time is a critical component. It takes time to minimize harm to noncombatants. And it takes time to plan, prepare, and execute a city attack in a way that maximizes the likelihood of success. Once an urban battle commences, history makes clear that with each passing day, as civilian casualties and collateral damage mount, international pressure to cease fighting increases. In order to fully achieve the objective of destroying Hamas military capability in Gaza, ground forces will require weeks, if not months. This is the unavoidable nature of clearing urban terrain.

Israel is very aware of the political and military challenge of time. It has fought almost every war of its history in a race against time, seeking to achieve its goals before international pressure forces it to stop operations. This is why Israel has developed a number of best practices to maintain legitimacy and reduce collateral damage in urban warfare. These range from messaging civilians to leave combat areas to “roof knocking” (dropping low-yield explosives on top of roofs in targeted areas to give civilians time to leave before an attack commences) to placing legal advisers at tactical commands and directly involving them in targeting processes.

Ultimately, the outcome of any battle in Gaza will be heavily shaped by the combination of these challenges, a complex set of variables that are entirely incalculable in advance. But it will also be determined by how well IDF forces adapt to meet the challenges, and whether they have the time needed to do so.

John Spencer is chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute, codirector of MWI’s Urban Warfare Project, and host of the Urban Warfare Project Podcast. He served twenty-five years as an infantry soldier, which included two combat tours in Iraq. In June 2022, he and Liam Collins traveled independently to Ukraine to research the defense of Kyiv. He is the author of the book Connected Soldiers: Life, Leadership, and Social Connection in Modern War and coauthor of Understanding Urban Warfare.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Military Academy, Department of the Army, or Department of Defense.

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mwi.westpoint.edu · by John Spencer · October 11, 2023

13. American arm of Korea's Hanwha has a 10-year plan to become a US land systems prime

American arm of Korea's Hanwha has a 10-year plan to become a US land systems prime - Breaking Defense

Hanwha Defense USA's strategy is "very much about being a prime contractor that can compete with the other peers that are here. And how do you get there? It's about partnerships. It's about organic growth. It's about M&A type of capability,” CEO John Kelly told Breaking Defense.

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · October 11, 2023

The South Korean defense contractor Hanwha brought out the big guns for AUSA 2023. (Brendon Smith / Breaking Defense)

AUSA 2023 — The US-based subsidiary of South Korea’s largest defense contractor is laying the groundwork to become a prime supplier for land systems in the US by the end of the decade, and “all options are on the table” for the company to achieve its goal, Hanwha Defense USA Chief Executive Officer John Kelly told Breaking Defense.

The company’s planning predates the war in Ukraine, but the demand for weapons and ammunition is now outstripping supply throughout much of the West as the fight drags on, leading major military powers like the US searching for new sources, Kelly said.

The American supply chain, like those of other countries, “tends to be quite well protected. And it makes it difficult for a foreign-owned business to break in,” Kelly said Tuesday in an interview on the sidelines of the Association of the United States Army convention in Washington. “I think you’ve seen that paradigm stretch now, because there is just literally not enough supply going around.”

Hanwha has invested in some facilities to get the ball rolling on its US ambitions, opening a headquarters in McLean, Va. as well as an engineering design center in Detroit, Mich. But it’ll need a major new development to fully realize its plans, with Kelly raising the prospect of moves like partnerships or mergers and acquisitions.

The company’s strategy is “very much about being a prime contractor that can compete with the other peers that are here. And how do you get there? It’s about partnerships. It’s about organic growth. It’s about M&A type of capability,” Kelly said, adding that “all options are on the table at the moment” while preserving “a bit of agility to be able to move between them.”

Once “things progress” for the company, Kelly said Hanwha would then “look at transferring manufactur[ing]” into the US. The company has been working for two years to clear regulatory hurdles for foreign-owned businesses, according to Kelly, and is “almost there.”

Hanwha’s ultimately unsuccessful bid with Oshkosh on the Army’s Joint Light Tactical Vehicle program is a leading example of the company’s approach, Kelly said. Along those lines, he said Hanwha is interested in unmanned ground vehicle contests and is preparing to announce a new partnership to compete for a potential second iteration of the Army’s Small Multipurpose Equipment Transport (S-MET) program, though a competition has not been formally announced by the service.

Although current focus on Ukraine has led to high demand for artillery, attention turning toward the Indo-Pacific threatens to diminish some of that demand. Hanwha doesn’t make artillery shells that have been used extensively in the European conflict, though the company does supply energetics that propel them. (South Korean export controls prevent Hanwha-made weapons from being used in the war, which are instead only being purchased to replenish Western inventories.)

“We’ve done a lot of work on this, because that’s a concern of ours,” Kelly said. “Munitions, energetics tends to be the bill payer. When things are going down, that’s what you buy less of.”

But even if the war in Ukraine halted tomorrow, Western stocks would still need to be replenished and probably kept at a “much higher” level, Kelly reasoned. And, lessons learned about the lack of capacity could result in “a more sustainable base that can pivot up to meet a surge in the way that we struggled to meet so far.”

Walking around a full-sized K9 Thunder self-propelled howitzer on display at the show, Kelly said that the company’s South Korean pedigree can lend itself to some of the Army’s key initiatives. For example, he said the thinking behind K9’s automatic ammunition resupply vehicle was in part driven by manpower limitations in South Korea — which could be an advantage for a US Army trying to be lighter itself under contested logistics. As the Army weighs possible alternatives for its Extended Range Cannon Artillery (ERCA) initiative, Kelly also said the K9 would be a “good candidate.”

Alongside its inroads into the US, parent company Hanwha’s global reach is expanding through other countries, with nations like Poland signing big orders for weapon systems like the K9. The firm’s continued rise, which helped drive a record year for South Korean defense sales in 2022, is evidence of not just the strength of Hanwha, but the South Korean defense industry as a whole, according to Kelly.

“What you’re seeing in general with the South Korean defense business is its coming of age,” he said.

breakingdefense.com · by Michael Marrow · October 11, 2023

14. Paralysis in the Pentagon

Excerpts:

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

To reduce real and perceived risks to democratic civil-military norms and military readiness, Congress should reform federal vacancies laws and eliminate blanket holds on military promotions and civilian nominations. In their current form, vacancies laws are too easy for lawmakers to exploit, creating tempting pathways for elected officials to obstruct the appointments process without suffering the political fallout that a more comprehensive disruption of government functions would bring. Instead, departments muddle through with disempowered acting officials at the helm.

Straightforward changes to the Vacancies Act can ensure steadiness in the Pentagon while nominees for top posts await Senate confirmation. First, Congress should narrow the pool of candidates eligible to become acting officials in top Defense Department jobs. Rather than allow the president to designate Senate-confirmed appointees from any federal agency to serve in this capacity, the choices should be limited to Senate-confirmed deputies and first assistants who already work in the Pentagon. If those offices are also vacant, the president should be required to follow the Defense Department’s order of succession and elevate the next-highest-ranking Senate-confirmed official to the post. Only after exhausting this list should the president be permitted to bring in an acting official from another part of the government. With these rules in place, temporary civilian leaders will possess Senate endorsement to serve in the Pentagon, reinforcing their authority over the uniformed services during periods of leadership transition.

This reform will also improve compliance with other laws Congress has put in place to bolster civilian control of the military. To be confirmed as secretary of defense, a nominee with previous military service must be either seven or ten years removed from active duty, at a minimum, depending on the rank at which they retired. A seven-year “cooling off” period also applies to the deputy secretary of defense, the secretaries of military service departments, and the six undersecretaries of defense. This requirement helps ensure that civilian officials are fully extricated from the military hierarchy and service cultures before assuming oversight roles. To provide the same assurance during leadership transitions, Congress should explicitly require that all acting civilian officials also be at least seven years removed from military service.

Furthermore, Congress should prohibit individual senators from placing blanket holds on military promotions and civilian nominations in the Department of Defense. Lawmakers will no doubt be concerned about the consequences of removing this source of procedural leverage currently available to the Senate’s minority party. But senators would still have the opportunity to vote against nominations and object to individual military promotions on a case-by-case basis. For example, former Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, used such a mechanism in 2013 to block the promotion of an air force lieutenant general who had granted clemency to a subordinate convicted of sexual assault. Ending blanket holds would keep the Senate’s constitutional authority intact while minimizing disruption to the routine functions of U.S. national defense.

Allowing Pentagon appointments to languish has a corrosive effect on civil-military relations. By implementing reforms, Congress will preserve the military’s nonpartisan ethos and restrain lawmakers from misusing federal vacancies laws. It will safeguard its own advice-and-consent role in confirming presidential appointments. And it will ensure that qualified leaders are properly in place to exercise effective civilian control over the armed forces that serve the United States.

Paralysis in the Pentagon

How a Standoff in the Senate Is Undermining Civilian Control of the Military

By Theo Milonopoulos

October 12, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Theo Milonopoulos · October 12, 2023

Hamas’s surprise attacks on Israel over the weekend have launched a new round of violence that, beyond the current crisis, underscores the danger of escalation in any number of regional conflicts. The United States’ military forces in the Middle East are supposed to be able to respond if the need arises—but right now, politics at home are complicating the Pentagon’s long-term contingency planning. For months, the nominations of several top U.S. military officers slated to take command over forces in the Middle East have been left in limbo. President Joe Biden’s choices for the next deputy commander of U.S. Central Command (which oversees U.S. military operations in the region) and the next commander of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet (which is responsible for the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, and the North Arabian Sea) have been stalled in the U.S. Senate because of a standoff between the administration and a lone Republican senator, Tommy Tuberville.

Since February, the Alabama senator has imposed a blanket hold on Senate consideration of senior Defense Department nominations in protest of a Pentagon policy that covers leave and travel costs for service members seeking reproductive health care outside of states where they are stationed. The standoff has halted more than 300 military promotions and civilian nominations, creating vacancies throughout the Department of Defense. The U.S. Navy and Air Force currently lack Senate-confirmed service chiefs, leaving a quarter of Joint Chiefs of Staff positions in the hands of acting officers. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has described Tuberville’s hold as “unprecedented in its scale and scope” and warned in May that it could stall up to 650 Senate confirmations by the end of the year.

The Senate can bypass Tuberville’s hold on a case-by-case basis, as it did last month by holding individual votes to confirm the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the top military leaders of the army and Marine Corps. But this process requires granting valuable floor time to military promotions that are usually confirmed in large batches. And although filling a handful of top positions was a welcome development for U.S. national security, it does not change the fact that hundreds of other nominations remain stalled. Nor does it address the outsized power of a single senator to block routine promotions.

Senators from both parties have tried to break the impasse, but they have failed to persuade Tuberville to back down. He claims that his hold does not compromise military readiness because the unconfirmed positions “are being fulfilled by acting officials.” This argument misses the point. It minimizes the ramifications of politicizing military promotions and of relying on acting officials to shoulder critical national security responsibilities. The deputies who step into these vacancies often lack the rank or qualifications required to fill the roles permanently. Some of them are effectively forced to do two jobs at once. And in cases where deputies have in fact been nominated for the more senior position, they often end up assuming the duties of the higher office before they are confirmed, which undermines the Senate’s power of advice and consent.

These holdups would disrupt any government agency, but they are especially pernicious at the Pentagon. A growing reliance on acting officials erodes civilian control of the military, and delays in the confirmation process put the futures of uniformed officers at the mercy of partisan agendas. Defense officials who lack the imprimatur of Senate confirmation find the legitimacy of their actions questioned by colleagues, lawmakers, and foreign counterparts. As temporary custodians of vacant offices, they may be reluctant to initiate the kinds of reform programs that would enhance U.S. national security. And in the absence of firmly installed civilian leaders who can speak with authority on security policy, active generals may be pressured to wade more deeply into the realm of politics.

Congress can prevent these prolonged interregnums during periods of personnel turnover. It can start by amending laws on how federal vacancies are filled and revising Senate procedures to limit individual lawmakers’ capacity for obstructionism. Reforming the way the Congress confirms presidential appointees and fills temporary vacancies will bolster confidence in the Pentagon’s civilian leadership and help insulate the military promotions process from partisan politics. It will preserve the United States’ effectiveness on the battlefield and secure the vital democratic principle of civilian control of the military.

EMPTY CHAIRS

Across the U.S. government, elected leaders exercise their legal prerogative to fill federal vacancies. The principal legislation guiding this process today is the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which Congress passed in 1998 to give presidents some flexibility in designating acting officials to fill vacant offices temporarily. The purpose of the law was to provide an interim fix to ensure continuity of government during presidential transitions, national emergencies, and routine personnel turnover. But protracted vacancies have become increasingly common—and Congress and the president are both to blame. According to the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization, the average Senate confirmation process today takes twice as long as it did in the 1980s. Lengthy confirmation battles leave critical functions to be performed by acting officials, sometimes for years at a time.

Presidents, for their part, confronted with a drawn out confirmation process, have strategically used acting officials to impose the administration’s political priorities on executive departments and agencies without the consent usually conferred by Congress. Sometimes, presidents have intentionally left offices vacant, seemingly to weaken the authority of a particular department. Both President Barack Obama and President Donald Trump dragged their feet in nominating replacements for the six members of the Federal Election Commission, for example. The commission was unable to meet during part of the 2020 election cycle because three of its seats remained vacant.

For some offices, such as those at the Department of Homeland Security, the president’s latitude to designate acting officials under the Vacancies Act has been circumscribed by additional statutes and regulations. The resulting ambiguity of acting officials’ authority can make it possible for courts to strike down their policies. In November 2020, for instance, a federal judge invalidated a memorandum issued by Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf that imposed limits on the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program for young undocumented immigrants. The court concluded that Wolf had not been serving legally as acting secretary according to department regulations.

Protracted vacancies have become increasingly common—and Congress and the president are both to blame.

Even when the legality of acting officials’ status is undisputed, the staff of the departments and agencies they lead may question the legitimacy of their authority. Researchers at the Partnership for Public Service have likened acting officials to substitute teachers, who may have plenty to offer students but are not seen as having much influence over those students’ long-term progress. “To effectively lead an agency, you need as much authority and gravitas as you can muster,” Robert Bonner, the former head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told The Wall Street Journal in 2019. “If you’re not a confirmed head of an agency, you’re not going to be able to command as much respect and attention from your own people and from other agencies.”

The problem of lengthy vacancies was particularly acute under Trump. The Defense Department was hit particularly hard, operating without a Senate-confirmed secretary for more than six months in 2019. Other high-level positions in the Pentagon cycled through temporary officeholders. The offices of the undersecretary of defense for policy and the comptroller, for example, were each open for almost two years in total. The office of the undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness sat vacant for nearly three years. And acting officials performed the duties of the army, navy, and air force service secretaries for months at a time.

Trump went so far as to reshuffle officials from other parts of the government in an effort to stack top posts with White House loyalists. In the waning days of his administration, he purged the Pentagon of much of its Senate-confirmed civilian leadership, starting with Secretary of Defense Mark Esper. Then, he used authorities consistent with the Vacancies Act to bypass the Defense Department’s order of succession, installing political allies over the sitting deputy secretary of defense and other Senate-confirmed Pentagon officials. This tumultuous turnover raised doubts about the reliability of the Pentagon leadership and contributed to a breakdown in standard operating procedures. “There was a feeling of unsteadiness in the building for a period of time because of all these moves,” then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley recalled in 2021, referring to the staffing changes. “My phone was burning up. I was getting calls from not only overseas but all kinds of senators and congressmen about the steadiness of the building, the Pentagon.”

Gutting the Pentagon’s civilian leadership had the uncomfortable effect of casting the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and other military leaders as rare symbols of stability amid a turbulent presidential transition, which culminated in the violent assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The contrast between military leaders’ steadfastness and newly elevated civilian officials’ perceived fecklessness in the midst of chaos strained democratic civil-military norms, which emphasize a responsible, accountable civilian leadership to oversee the armed forces. “You’ve got a series of guys in the Department of Defense, which is the biggest bureaucracy in the nation . . . with incredibly powerful capabilities that stretch all over the world, and everybody’s acting,” Milley recalled about this period. “None of them are Senate-confirmed. That should cause people pause right off the bat.”

THE DAMAGE TO DEFENSE

Now, Tuberville’s hold is introducing a similar kind of precarity to the military. To fulfill its advice-and-consent role as outlined in the U.S. Constitution, the Senate confirms the promotion of every commissioned officer to ranks above captain and its equivalent grades in the regular and reserve forces. Before these cases are put before the Senate, military selection boards subject all officers up for promotion to competitive, merit-based evaluations. This screening allows the Senate to approve hundreds of promotions at once as long as all senators present give unanimous consent. But a single objection turns this streamlined process into a time-consuming task. If promotions cannot be approved by unanimous consent, senators are forced to debate and vote on each promotion individually.

Because Senate floor time is a limited resource, Tuberville’s objections effectively impose a blanket hold on pending senior military promotions. The Pentagon has had no choice but to keep some officers in their current positions until their designated successors can assume their jobs, delaying deployments, reassignments, and retirements in ways that have cascading, long-term consequences across the armed forces. In cases where military leaders have reached statutory time limits in their current assignments, deputies or first assistants are called on to perform the duties of vacant offices alongside their current responsibilities.

Top military posts that are critical to U.S. national security have remained vacant or have been filled by acting officers standing in for higher-ranked generals and admirals. The office of the U.S. military representative to NATO has been empty since May, for example, even as the war in Ukraine rages. A protracted vacancy in such an important role impedes Washington’s ability to carry out its foreign policy objectives. When foreign officials are forced to engage with acting officers whose authority is limited and who may not even hold a sufficiently senior rank, their confidence in their American interlocutors diminishes, damaging long-term relations. As one U.S. Marine official told CNN, it is not “a good look for a key ally to be meeting with a one-star.”

The current standoff also threatens to politicize the military promotion process.

Beyond the damage to the United States’ image and effectiveness abroad, Tuberville’s blanket hold also undermines long-standing political norms at home. Because of the paralysis in the confirmation process, some presidential appointees began serving in the positions to which they were nominated before being confirmed. Biden’s nominees to lead the army, navy, air force, and Marine Corps have all been forced to assume the roles of acting service chiefs while awaiting Senate confirmation; in fact, two of these deputies are still performing the duties of the top jobs while their nominations are pending. This reverse sequencing—an extremely rare occurrence before this year—risks rendering the Senate’s advice-and-consent role obsolete. It sends a clear message that confirmation is not a prerequisite for performing the duties of high office.

The current standoff also threatens to politicize the military promotion process in ways that could erode professional military norms and weaken democratic civilian control over the armed forces. Although senators from both parties have blocked promotions in the past, few efforts have been as sweeping or protracted. Tuberville’s hold sets a dangerous precedent. As the months drag on, delaying deployments, pay raises, and retirements, military officers have waded deeper into political advocacy on behalf of their personnel. In July, for instance, the deputy commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa pleaded with a group of visiting senators to break Tuberville’s hold, later calling the impasse “reprehensible, irresponsible, and dangerous.” Democratic civil-military norms generally discourage active-duty officers from making such politically charged statements.

Perhaps just as dangerous is the potential for division within the armed services as military brass are pitted against the rank and file. Tuberville has argued that his hold affects only a small number of high-level officers whose ranks, in his view, are already inflated, whereas “the people who actually fight are not affected at all.” The Senate has indeed continued to promote officers to positions below one-star ranks. But this rank-based cutoff and the ill will it generates only reinforce artificial divisions within the officer corps. And, contrary to Tuberville’s claims, many officers whose promotions he obstructs have served on multiple combat tours over the last two decades. By echoing disparaging comments made by other Republican politicians about the senior officer corps, Tuberville may also exacerbate partisan divisions over support for the military among lawmakers and the general public.

BREAKING THE BLOCKADE

To reduce real and perceived risks to democratic civil-military norms and military readiness, Congress should reform federal vacancies laws and eliminate blanket holds on military promotions and civilian nominations. In their current form, vacancies laws are too easy for lawmakers to exploit, creating tempting pathways for elected officials to obstruct the appointments process without suffering the political fallout that a more comprehensive disruption of government functions would bring. Instead, departments muddle through with disempowered acting officials at the helm.

Straightforward changes to the Vacancies Act can ensure steadiness in the Pentagon while nominees for top posts await Senate confirmation. First, Congress should narrow the pool of candidates eligible to become acting officials in top Defense Department jobs. Rather than allow the president to designate Senate-confirmed appointees from any federal agency to serve in this capacity, the choices should be limited to Senate-confirmed deputies and first assistants who already work in the Pentagon. If those offices are also vacant, the president should be required to follow the Defense Department’s order of succession and elevate the next-highest-ranking Senate-confirmed official to the post. Only after exhausting this list should the president be permitted to bring in an acting official from another part of the government. With these rules in place, temporary civilian leaders will possess Senate endorsement to serve in the Pentagon, reinforcing their authority over the uniformed services during periods of leadership transition.

This reform will also improve compliance with other laws Congress has put in place to bolster civilian control of the military. To be confirmed as secretary of defense, a nominee with previous military service must be either seven or ten years removed from active duty, at a minimum, depending on the rank at which they retired. A seven-year “cooling off” period also applies to the deputy secretary of defense, the secretaries of military service departments, and the six undersecretaries of defense. This requirement helps ensure that civilian officials are fully extricated from the military hierarchy and service cultures before assuming oversight roles. To provide the same assurance during leadership transitions, Congress should explicitly require that all acting civilian officials also be at least seven years removed from military service.

Furthermore, Congress should prohibit individual senators from placing blanket holds on military promotions and civilian nominations in the Department of Defense. Lawmakers will no doubt be concerned about the consequences of removing this source of procedural leverage currently available to the Senate’s minority party. But senators would still have the opportunity to vote against nominations and object to individual military promotions on a case-by-case basis. For example, former Senator Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, used such a mechanism in 2013 to block the promotion of an air force lieutenant general who had granted clemency to a subordinate convicted of sexual assault. Ending blanket holds would keep the Senate’s constitutional authority intact while minimizing disruption to the routine functions of U.S. national defense.

Allowing Pentagon appointments to languish has a corrosive effect on civil-military relations. By implementing reforms, Congress will preserve the military’s nonpartisan ethos and restrain lawmakers from misusing federal vacancies laws. It will safeguard its own advice-and-consent role in confirming presidential appointments. And it will ensure that qualified leaders are properly in place to exercise effective civilian control over the armed forces that serve the United States.

• THEO MILONOPOULOS is Assistant Professor of National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. The views expressed here are his own.

Foreign Affairs · by Theo Milonopoulos · October 12, 2023

15.  What Israel Must Do: Disarming Hamas Will Be Costly but Essential for Peace

Excerpts:

Of course, it is possible that at high cost, Israel might succeed in rooting out the Hamas leadership, decapitating it, and destroying much of its military infrastructure. Should it accomplish those tasks, Israel will not want to stay in Gaza, and will look to turn over governance of the territory to a transitional authority under an international umbrella. Who would form such an authority? What role would the UN play? Is there some combination of regional and non-regional actors who could assume responsibilities?

These are difficult questions. The Palestinian Authority will not want it to seem that it returned to the strip on the back of Israeli tanks, but if asked by the UN to play a role it might do so—and would also seek some Arab cover. Arab governments could provide that cover, and contribute to international pressure to help manage that transition, with Egypt’s proximity making it a natural partner along with some credible European governments that have experience in reconstruction and enforcement efforts.

There are more questions than answers for what would follow the displacement of Hamas from Gaza, assuming that is possible. But these questions remind us that at some point this war will end, and that there will be a day after, and that ultimately a better future must be built for the ordinary Palestinians of Gaza themselves, who have suffered so long under Hamas control. The Biden administration and its international partners would be wise to formulate plans for different possible outcomes. But there must be one proviso: that Hamas is not in a position to threaten Israel ever again.

What Israel Must Do

Disarming Hamas Will Be Costly but Essential for Peace

By Dennis Ross

October 11, 2023

Foreign Affairs · by Dennis Ross · October 11, 2023

In launching its unprovoked, heinous attack on Israelis on October 7, Hamas created the bloodiest day that Israel has seen in more than five decades. The vast majority of the more than 900 killed were civilians—gunned down in their homes or burned to death as their houses were set on fire. Scores of hostages were taken, including grandmothers and mothers with young children, in an act of deliberate terror and brutality. This unprecedented assault has left Israel in a state of shock but also with the resolve to end Hamas’s ability to threaten Israel again, and it will inevitably produce an extraordinary response. In setting off what will by necessity be an overwhelming onslaught on the Gaza Strip, Hamas has brought to a new level the punishment of Palestinians that it has inflicted over and over for nearly two decades.

This situation could have been different. In September 2005, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon ordered the withdrawal of all Israeli soldiers and settlers from the Gaza Strip. The historic decision to leave meant that Palestinians could finally determine the fate of Gaza. It was a hopeful moment. For decades, Gaza’s destiny had been shaped by others; now Gazans themselves were in charge. It seemed possible to imagine a future in which Gazan leaders transformed the strip from an incubator of terrorism into a prototype for a peaceful, modernizing, and stable Palestinian state.

But Hamas rejected that path. Despite the departure of Israeli troops and settlers, Hamas kept up its attacks on Israel, hitting the Gaza-Israel crossing points multiple times in the first six months after withdrawal. These crossing points were vital for the flow of goods and people into and out of Gaza, and they benefited Palestinians, not Israelis. Yet Hamas’s attacks led Israel to reduce the number of crossing points from six to two. The Palestinians of Gaza were paying the price for Hamas’s actions.

Despite Hamas’s attacks at the crossings, Israel did not impose a blockade on Gaza until Hamas’s de facto takeover of the strip in 2007. A year earlier, Hamas had defeated its Palestinian rival Fatah in an election, but because it refused to accept the conditions of the Quartet (the European Union, Russia, the United Nations, and the United States) for recognition—renouncing violence, accepting the Oslo agreements, and recognizing Israel—Washington and most European countries refused to deal with Hamas or provide it assistance. Then, in June 2007, Hamas ousted the Palestinian Authority and Fatah in a military coup, seizing Gaza’s governing institutions and causing Israel to close border crossings as well as air and sea access to the strip. Once more, Palestinians suffered.

Hamas seems to specialize in making Palestinians pay. Since taking power in Gaza, it has provoked conflicts with Israel in 2008–9, 2012, 2014, and 2021—with more limited skirmishes with the Israelis in the years between. Aside from consolidating its control, Hamas’s main agenda for Gaza is building its own military infrastructure and arsenal. It has constructed dozens of miles of underground tunnels—not to provide shelters for the people of Gaza but to protect its own fighters and weapons. The cement, steel, copper, wood, and electrical wiring that has been lavished on this vast subterranean network could have been used above ground, to serve and develop one of the poorest and most densely populated areas in the world. But Hamas’s priority is destroying Israel, not building Gaza. Hamas’s ideological aims are negative, not positive ones that might help Palestinians.

Now Israel must contemplate difficult and far-reaching steps. It can no longer be satisfied with a punishing response, followed by a return to the status quo. The assumption that Israel could live with Hamas and manage periodic conflicts with it has been shattered. It is determined that Hamas will never again be able to threaten the Israeli people. Israelis across the political spectrum now believe that Hamas must be destroyed as a military power and that Gaza must be demilitarized. Israel will no longer accept a truce with Hamas.

NO MORE CEASE-FIRES

Each conflict that Hamas has provoked with Israel has left Gaza worse off. Hamas has regarded every cease-fire negotiated with Israel as an opportunity to buy time to rebuild its arsenal and get ready for the next round. Hamas is not a partner for peace; it is an agent of war and destruction. Talk of a Marshall Plan for Gaza has never been credible because international donors and investors know that whatever is built is likely to be destroyed the next time Hamas decides to trigger a new conflict with the Israelis.

If there were any doubts about Hamas’s intentions in the past, its October 7 attack has permanently laid them to rest. The Israeli political and military establishment believed that Hamas’s interest in preserving an economic floor—and the need for Gazans to work in Israel—gave them a stake in preserving relative calm with Israel and avoiding major conflicts. That assumption proved to be wrong. Carrying out a brutal massacre of hundreds of unarmed civilians, Hamas has shown that it is governed by violence alone and has no vision of the future.

Over and over, Hamas has made Palestinians suffer.

Hamas is a terrorist group. It has no positive agenda. It will not produce a Palestinian state. It imposes a terrible life on Gazans and now it has subjected them to a devastating Israeli onslaught. Notwithstanding the Israeli government’s calls for Gazans to leave certain parts of the strip and go to designated safe areas, the population density—and Hamas’s conscious effort to embed itself in population centers—all but guarantees that innocent Gazans will be killed. That is a tragedy, but not for Hamas. It actively seeks such casualties to stigmatize Israel and to bring international pressure on Tel Aviv, to try to delegitimize Israel’s right to defend itself and to keep it on the defensive.

But Hamas has gravely miscalculated this time. Israel’s leaders are now contemplating options that they have not been prepared to consider since the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. Hamas has taken as many as 130 Israeli hostages to Gaza—and no doubt intense efforts have already begun to locate and rescue them. But Israel is unlikely to consider trades at this time, and it will certainly not pursue early cease-fires that could only benefit Hamas. Israel’s 10/7 is going to produce a response similar to the United States’ after 9/11. Decapitating Hamas’s leadership, destroying its military infrastructure, killing a large number of its fighters, and even occupying Gaza again are very real objectives.

These goals are far greater than those of previous antiterrorism campaigns and will be enormously difficult to achieve. But repeating the old approach to Hamas’s attacks—enacting retribution and then entering cease-fire agreements—will only lead to future violence. Israel will not countenance that. Moreover, Israel’s leaders also understand that their readiness to pay a high price is necessary for them to reestablish their deterrence of Iran and its proxies. The tragic reality is that for the Israeli military to root out Hamas’s military infrastructure and leadership the cost will be high both for Palestinians in Gaza and for Israeli soldiers. Having adopted the tactics of al Qaeda, Hamas bears the responsibility for the deaths of Palestinians and Israelis alike—and it is critically important that the result helps to ensure that such a difficult operation is never required again.

A WAR FOR THE FUTURE

The Biden administration has pledged to support Israel and affirmed its right to self-defense. But the longer the conflict continues, Israel will face growing pressure to end it. As the toll in Gaza mounts, some Western and Arab leaders will likely argue that Israeli military action is disproportionate. It is fair to ask what is proportional when confronting a group that deliberately kills the innocent, takes women and children hostage, and uses every cease-fire to prepare for the next set of attacks. If Hamas retains any ability to threaten Israel, it will present itself as the victor, and that will be a tremendous boost to radical and destabilizing forces across the region that embrace violence and reject peace.

Israel should permit food and medicine to go to the safe areas it has already designated for Gazans. It has no interest in creating more Palestinian refugees or essentially driving them into Egypt, and it can show the world that it is fighting a war of necessity to disarm Hamas and not seeking to punish Palestinian civilians. Western and Arab leaders have a responsibility to support Israel’s campaign against Hamas even as they frame essential objectives for during and after the fighting: unconditional release of the hostages and an end to Hamas rockets, mortars, and weapons- and bomb-making facilities. Aid for reconstruction of Gaza must be tied to demilitarization of the strip. For Israel this is the minimum, and its military onslaught may well succeed in largely destroying all or most of Hamas’s military infrastructure. Certainly, Israel is not likely to stop until Hamas has been largely disarmed and there are mechanisms in place to ensure that it cannot rearm. Israel’s endgame is making sure that Hamas cannot threaten it again.

Aid for rebuilding Gaza must be tied to demilitarization of the strip.

The unconditional release of hostages and the demilitarization of Gaza could produce that outcome and avoid yet further devastation. Yes, Hamas and its backers in Tehran will resist these steps, but Western governments and the United Nations, and especially Arab states that have a direct stake in Gaza’s future, should exert strong pressure for them. Indeed, as the fate of the strip becomes increasingly grim, Arab leaders in particular could embrace demilitarization as a way to save the Palestinians of Gaza.

Of course, it is possible that at high cost, Israel might succeed in rooting out the Hamas leadership, decapitating it, and destroying much of its military infrastructure. Should it accomplish those tasks, Israel will not want to stay in Gaza, and will look to turn over governance of the territory to a transitional authority under an international umbrella. Who would form such an authority? What role would the UN play? Is there some combination of regional and non-regional actors who could assume responsibilities?

These are difficult questions. The Palestinian Authority will not want it to seem that it returned to the strip on the back of Israeli tanks, but if asked by the UN to play a role it might do so—and would also seek some Arab cover. Arab governments could provide that cover, and contribute to international pressure to help manage that transition, with Egypt’s proximity making it a natural partner along with some credible European governments that have experience in reconstruction and enforcement efforts.

There are more questions than answers for what would follow the displacement of Hamas from Gaza, assuming that is possible. But these questions remind us that at some point this war will end, and that there will be a day after, and that ultimately a better future must be built for the ordinary Palestinians of Gaza themselves, who have suffered so long under Hamas control. The Biden administration and its international partners would be wise to formulate plans for different possible outcomes. But there must be one proviso: that Hamas is not in a position to threaten Israel ever again.

• DENNIS ROSS is Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East. He served in senior national security positions in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations.

Foreign Affairs · by Dennis Ross · October 11, 2023

16. Navy hospital ship begins annual Pacific Partnership tour of island nations

I remember a conversation I had with Admiral Keating when he was the PACOM commander. We discussed this deployment (and the off year deployment of the USS Peleliu to replace it) to conduct humanitarian missions. He was told by a chief of defense in the region that while conducting medical civic action programs (MEDCAPs) on the scale of the USNS Mercy is a nice gesture and makes us feel good, we may also be sending the unintended but very real message to the people of an nation that their own government cannot provide sufficient medical for its people. We expected the same "bump" in pro-US sentiment after aid to the Tsunami victims in 2004 by replicating the medical care not in times of disaster. Did we ever ask ourselves what effect we were trying to achieve and is the USNS Mercy the right tool for achieving those effects? Or can we conduct the mission in such a way as to help the legitimacy of the government we are trying to support?

Navy hospital ship begins annual Pacific Partnership tour of island nations

Stars and Stripes · by Alex Wilson · October 12, 2023

The hospital ship USNS Mercy departs Naval Base San Diego to kick off Pacific Partnership 2024, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (David Negron/U.S. Navy)

A U.S. Navy hospital ship steamed out of San Diego Bay this week and began making its way across the Pacific, where it plans to stop at island nations as part of an annual disaster preparedness mission.

The USNS Mercy leads Pacific Partnership 2024. Equipped with 1,000 hospital beds and a crew of 800 civilian and military personnel, including doctors and dentists, the ship will host symposiums and training events throughout the region, the Navy said in a Wednesday news release.

The Mercy plans stops in the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Palau and Micronesia during the multi-month mission, which aims to improve “disaster response preparedness, resiliency and capacity” and strengthen international relationships, according to the release.

“This mission reflects the continued commitment to the region and dedication to disaster-response-readiness from the United States, our partners and allies, and the host nations,” U.S. Navy Capt. Brian Quin, the mission commander, said in the release.

In August 2022, the Solomon Islands government welcomed the Mercy on its Pacific Partnership tour, but the same day denied entry to the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry and British patrol vessel HMS Spey.

The U.S. at the time suspected the Solomons’ warming ties with China lay behind the denial.

The Navy and Coast Guard stepped up outreach efforts to Pacific island nations partly to offset China’s campaign to extend its influence in the region.

This year, the 2024 mission overlaps the 2023 visits, which kicked off Aug. 9 in Phu Yen, Vietnam, according to a Pacific Partnership press release that day. The overlap is a first in the mission’s 18-year history, according to Ensign Madison Kwok, spokeswoman for Pacific Partnership.

More than 1,500 personnel are traveling aboard the dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor and the littoral combat ship USS Jackson, Kwok said in an email Thursday.

They come from Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, United Kingdom and the United States.

Participants have also visited Palau, Malaysia and the Philippines, according to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.

Personnel are visiting Papua New Guinea this week, where they are slated to host several seminars and repair a local schoolhouse, the Navy said in a news release Tuesday.

First developed in response to the December 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of South and Southeast Asia after a 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s coast, Pacific Partnership has evolved to focus more on building relationships between nations rather than providing direct medical care, according to the Navy.

Alex Wilson

Alex Wilson

Alex Wilson covers the U.S. Navy and other services from Yokosuka Naval Base, Japan. Originally from Knoxville, Tenn., he holds a journalism degree from the University of North Florida. He previously covered crime and the military in Key West, Fla., and business in Jacksonville, Fla.

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Stars and Stripes · by Alex Wilson · October 12, 2023

17. Focus on I​srael-Gaza war raises fears of China attack on Taiwan

A conspiracy theorist might say these are all interconnected. but a prudent planner might ask what are the most likely enemy courses of action and what are the most dangerous enemy courses of action and plan appropriately

Focus on I​srael-Gaza war raises fears of China attack on Taiwan

washingtontimes.com · by Bill Gertz

By - The Washington Times - Wednesday, October 11, 2023

The emergence of a second conflict outside the Asia-Pacific region is fueling more concerns that China will exploit the distraction of the West to launch an anticipated military operation against Taiwan, according to two congressional leaders and security analysts.

Tensions remain high across the Taiwan Strait, and China has vowed to take over the democratic-ruled island in the coming years.

Several members of Congress had already voiced worries that U.S. arms shipments to Ukraine are depleting weapons stockpiles needed to deter China from a Taiwan attack. U.S. military commanders say China could be ready to undertake an assault in as little as four years.

Now, a second conflict has erupted, this time in the Middle East, that will require additional U.S. weapons, assets and military aid to a key U.S. ally, as Israeli forces prepare for a ground assault against Hamas in Gaza.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Texas Republican, said bolstering Taiwan’s defenses with U.S. weapons is critical to deterring China in the multisided great power competition.

“As [Chinese President Xi Jinping] readies his military for a potential invasion of Taiwan, getting the people of Taiwan the weapons they need — and have paid for — is critical to peace and deterrence,” Mr. McCaul said in a statement.

SEE ALSO: ‘Nightmare’: American in Israel says 5 family members taken captive by Hamas

Navy Capt. Kyle Raines, a spokesman for the Indo-Pacific Command, said the command continually assesses risks as part of its deterrence strategy and efforts to keep the region free and open. “Our assessment of the theater has not changed, and we remain vigilant in concert with allies and partners,” he said in an email.

Congress has been pressing the Biden administration to speed up weapons shipments to Taiwan, including some $20 billion in backlogged arms purchases.

Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said Monday that the Army will seek additional funding from Congress to support Pentagon munitions production and arms acquisitions needed for Israel and Ukraine. Many House Republican conservatives have balked at another round of aid to Kyiv.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, said the U.S. government adopted “naive assumptions” during the early stages of the Ukraine crisis, such as believing Russia would not invade and attempting to deter Moscow solely with soft power. Iran is now an additional adversary distracting U.S. attention in the Middle East, he said.

He said all that argues for a strong commitment of aid and resources to Taipei in the face of growing Chinese aggression.

“We risk repeating the same mistake when it comes to the Indo-Pacific if we don’t surge hard power west of the international date line,” Mr. Gallagher said.

A broader picture reveals an axis of authoritarian powers arrayed against the United States, he said, with China the dominant player, Russian President Vladimir Putin a junior partner and the Iranian regime an increasing part of the adversarial alliance.

“And the goal is simple: to destroy global American leadership and sever our alliances and partnerships,” Mr. Gallagher said.

Mr. McCaul said China, Russia, Iran and North Korea are acting in concert to redraw sovereign borders in the global strategic competition.

“You cannot bifurcate these world powers — along with Iran-backed terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah — in [their] geopolitical fight against freedom and democracy,” he said.

The Pentagon is rapidly boosting its support for the Israeli military by sending air defenses, munitions and other military goods, a senior defense official told reporters.

Warships of the aircraft carrier strike group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford arrived in the eastern Mediterranean on Tuesday to be ready if Iran intervenes directly in the conflict. The forces include the carrier’s eight squadrons of attack and support aircraft, a guided missile cruiser and four guided missile destroyers.

The forces and arms are meant as “a deterrent signal to Iran,” the official said.

Chinese military precedent

China has precedent for using its military during a crisis distracting the rest of the world.

On Oct. 20, 1962, Chinese military forces escalated a clash with India by launching an attack across a disputed border against Indian forces.

Days earlier, the United States and Soviet Union became engaged in the Cuban missile crisis, one of the most dangerous nuclear showdowns of the Cold War.

Security experts say U.S. military support for Ukraine and Israel will complicate efforts to deter any Chinese attack on Taiwan.

Retired Navy Capt. Jim Fanell, a former Pacific Fleet intelligence director and specialist on China’s military, said Beijing is watching the increased need for weapons after the Hamas attack, combined with two years of demands on the U.S. armament supply chain from the war on Ukraine.

“This is data the Chinese Communist Party will be processing in their system of comprehensive national power,” Capt. Fanell said. “Given America, the ‘arsenal of democracy,’ has not kept pace with these demands will likely be interpreted by CCP analysts as another unambiguous factor of why an invasion of Taiwan will succeed,” he said.

Miles Yu, a former State Department policymaker on China, said the Biden administration should not be distracted from China’s strategic threat.

Mr. Yu, now director of the Hudson Institute China Center, cited the Cuban crisis and noted that the Berlin airlift of 1948-1949 diminished a U.S. focus as Mao Zedong’s forces came to power in China’s civil war. The airlift, he said, was a “severe strategic distraction.”

“Now with the Taiwan crisis, the Chinese Communist Party is the most important factor. So we have to really focus on the most important threat and do not get distracted by other challenges in Europe, in the Middle East and elsewhere,” Mr. Yu said.

Grant Newsham, a retired Marine Corps colonel involved in intelligence work with extensive experience in Asia, said China must like what it sees from the Israel-Gaza conflict.

U.S. support for the Ukraine war is a drain on U.S. military resources. Now a conflict involving Israel and Hamas, and perhaps Hezbollah and Iran, will further strain weapons and focus, he said.

“This drains off U.S. military resources and attention big time,” said Mr. Newsham, author of the book “When China Attacks.”

The new Middle East conflict will complicate Pentagon efforts to bolster U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific region despite U.S. military commanders asking the Pentagon to move faster in strengthening the force posture there, he said.

Mr. Newsham said the Biden administration may not be capable of focusing on the potential for a Taiwan attack because of the combined policy focus on Ukraine and Israel.

Also, Americans’ political support is greater for Israel than for Taiwan, and Chinese leaders may calculate that an attack on Taiwan will not garner similar support from the United States.

“China might fairly think, ‘If you’ll fall over yourself to placate the Iranians after what they’ve done to you and your interests for decades, well, the sky’s the limit in what you’ll do for us after we take Taiwan,’” Mr. Newsham said.

• Bill Gertz can be reached at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.

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18. New commander of 25th Infantry Division hits ground running amid Pacific tensions

New commander of 25th Infantry Division hits ground running amid Pacific tensions

Stars and Stripes · by Kevin Knodell · October 11, 2023

U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans gives a speech at the division change of command ceremony at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Aug. 25, 2023. (Mariah Aguilar/U.S. Army)

HONOLULU (Tribune News Service) — The new commander of the Army’s 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks has been busy from Day 1 of his new assignment after taking command in August.

Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, who came to Hawaii to lead the 25th after serving as chief of staff at U.S. Special Operations Command, took over as soldiers from the division were preparing for a massive exercise in Indonesia while others were on the ground on Maui supporting wildfire relief efforts.

“It’s been an incredible honor to serve in this organization, particularly coming in at this time,“ Evans said.

He has been frequently on and off of planes as he takes on his role as leader of the Army’s “Tropic Lightning“ division as its troops deploy for training and missions across the region. In September he traveled to Indonesia as his soldiers took part in Exercise Super Garuda Shield with the Indonesian military and troops from five other countries.

The Pentagon considers the Pacific to be its top-priority area of operations amid tensions with China. After two decades of focusing on hunting insurgents and terrorists in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and other countries, the military is now trying to train troops for potential large-scale combat operations against “near peer“ military forces that could fight back with missiles, ships, aircraft and tanks.

Evans said that at the 25th he’s focusing on transforming the force, which he describes “a continuous effort really to deliver war-fighting advantages.”

The Army has been gradually stepping up training deployments around Asia through Operation Pathways, but it also faces challenges operating across vast distances as it hauls troops, weapons and supplies across the Pacific. Evans said that a big emphasis in the region will be how “we sustain ourselves based on what we deploy with indefinitely.”

He said that big focuses are trying to better utilize water locally rather than shipping it in, as well as creatively looking for ways to ensure they don’t blow through fuel and batteries they need to operate.

“None of that can be done without our partners and allies in the region,“ Evans said. In exercises around the Pacific, he said, one of the biggest takeaways is that commanders need close relationships with foreign militaries who have the local knowledge and connections to keep American forces supplied and operating safely.

Many countries in the region have been seeking closer military ties with the U.S. as tensions flare, particularly in the South China Sea. Beijing considers the South China Sea, a critical waterway that more than a third of international trade moves through, to be its exclusive sovereign territory, over the objections of neighboring countries that also rely on it for trade and fishing.

The U.S. Navy has been sending forces to the region for near-constant “freedom of navigation“ operations. The Marine Corps has lately been reorganizing its forces to focus increasingly on amphibious operations, returning to its roots as a naval service, and has also stepped up training in the region.

With much of the tensions centered around maritime territorial and navigation rights, there has been debate in military circles about what role the Army can — or should — play in the Pacific. But Evans insists his division, and the Army more broadly, is absolutely critical to Pacific operations.

During World War II in the Pacific, the Japanese and the U.S. militaries fought “island hopping“ campaigns to control islands to resupply ships and aircraft.

“The land domain is one of the domains that will always be decisive in any conflict,“ said Evans. “History has shown us, particularly here in the Pacific, that eventually everything will have to come back to the land domain for resupply, for some level of security.”

Today in the South China Sea, Beijing has seized disputed islands and atolls — and even built artificial islands in disputed waters—and built bases on them. Several host anti-ship and anti-­aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets.

“Our ability to fight and gain ground and hold ground, and project force from that into other domains—whether it’s the air, maritime, cyber or space domain — will remain absolutely critical and decisive for a potential future conflict,“ said Evans.

In November the 25th Infantry Division will conduct its annual rotation of Joint Pacific Multinational Readiness Center training at sites on Oahu and Hawaii island, joined by troops from New Zealand, Indonesia, Thailand and the United Kingdom. Evans said the exercise seeks to implement lessons from observing the course of the conflict in Ukraine.

The bloody fighting in Ukraine, which began when Russian forces that invaded eastern Ukraine in 2014 pushed into western Ukraine in 2022 in a failed attempt to seize the capital, Kyiv, has offered a harrowing look at what large-scale fighting in the Pacific could look like. Thousands of fighters and civilians alike have died as the two armies pummel each other with artillery, missiles and airstrikes.

Evans said that in Ukraine, fighting formations “have had to adjust and get smaller and be able to hide in plain sight to counter the autonomous, remotely controlled systems that can sense further ... so that is a lesson learned that we’re trying to take on here in the Pacific.”

During two decades of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, U.S. military commanders got used to operating from large, developed and well ­-defended bases while taking largely for granted that they would have superior firepower. In a fight with China in the Pacific, that wouldn’t necessarily be the case.

Evans said that with that in mind, the shift in training is “challenging every one of our formations to be smaller, less observable, and able to move as quickly as possible, while still sustaining mission command of their forces.”

As they look to the Pacific, many military leaders have expressed an eagerness to put the long, bloody and costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in their rearview mirror. In 2021 the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan, and a victorious Taliban returned to power, prompting thousand of Afghans to flee the country to escape the theocratic militant group’s rule. For many it marked a symbolic end to the post-9/11 era.

But some analysts believe that in its eagerness to “not fight the last war,“ the U.S. military risks forgetting the lessons of those conflicts.

“I think our challenge going forward is to be thoughtful and reflective and capturing the lessons from the previous 20 years understanding which ones and under what conditions apply to the next 20 years or in a (large-scale combat operations) environment here in the Pacific,“ said Evans.

He said that in thinking about experiences in the Middle East, as well as when observing the fighting in Ukraine, it’s important for military leaders in the Pacific to think about “which things are directly transferable, which ones can be used as a reference point and which ones do not apply.”

“We’re going to continue to advance here in the 25th, and that is just a relentless focus on war-fighting readiness — it’s our No. 1 focus,“ said Evans. “And that partnership that we hold so dear with the local community is integral to that process. We realize it’s an honor and a privilege to live in this beautiful community.”

Evans’ tenure at Schofield begins as the Army is preparing for a potential fight to hold onto Hawaii training areas it considers vital. Several of the Hawaii ranges the military uses for JPMRC belong to the state, and the Army’s leases expire in 2029.

Conversations about lease negotiations are taking place as many Hawaii residents and officials rethink their relationship with the military in the aftermath of the 2021 contamination of the Navy’s Oahu water system by fuel from its underground Red Hill fuel storage facility.

But while relations between the military and local communities have become more strained, Evans said so far he’s felt welcome across the island, whether it’s at the beach or exploring Oahu’s diverse food offerings.

“People are just so kind and friendly and welcoming,“ he said. “I’ve enjoyed getting out on the water, sitting on a board and looking up at a mountain range that runs into the sea, and then trying to catch a small wave with a surf instructor keeping me straight.”

(c)2023 The Honolulu Star-Advertiser

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Stars and Stripes · by Kevin Knodell · October 11, 2023

19. Forget PowerPoint and move faster on planning, Army 2-star says

Forget PowerPoint and move faster on planning, Army 2-star says

armytimes.com · by Todd South · October 11, 2023

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The days of units organizing their operations around a 24-hour cycle, with a short list of targets and procedures, and walking through each at a comfortable pace are over.

“Right now, the way we organize ourselves is in a 24-hour battle rhythm, and that has to change,” said Maj. Gen. Charles Costanza, special assistant to the commanding general of Army Forces Command.

“[Large-Scale Combat Operations] are not going to let you do that,” he said.

The two-star explained this during an Oct. 11 panel on intelligence modernization here at the annual Association of the U.S. Army Meeting and Exposition.

The former commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, who conducted four Division Warfighter exercises while leading the unit has seen a lot of how the Army will fight in 2030. His team ran through an entire exercise in which his force simulated such a battle with all the tools and formations the Army expects to have in its arsenal in the next decade.

The rapid pace of battle and enemy movement in those scenarios meant that a division intelligence officer could come into the command center, which radically changed the day’s plan and targeting list.

Or, because of more advanced systems, in a single day, a unit might run through a 72-hour “kill contract,” a list of targets to destroy.

In that instance, the commander’s job would be to direct his intelligence team to find more targets in the battlespace, Costanza said.

Those scenarios are a driving force behind why the Army has revised how it gathers operational intelligence as it moves to keep pace with the modern battlefield.

Part of that plan is for the intel side to take the initiative on gathering information, what the Army refers to as “fighting for intelligence,” officials said.

“Bottom line, in today’s and tomorrow’s battlefield we’re not only under constant observation but our ISR will be contested in all domains and all three dimensions, which will make it extremely important for how we go about doing intelligence collection and information operations,” said Brig. Gen. Richard Appelhans, commandant of the Army’s Intelligence Center of Excellence.

Sometimes that’ll mean a quick and dirty brief, with rapidly acquired intelligence that must be expediently vetted through a host of networks and databases.

“I don’t have time for you to put together a nice PowerPoint slide to come bring me and show me that ‘hey the enemy’s situation has changed and now we have a new challenge or risk or potentially we have an opportunity we need to exploit,’” Costanza said.

Commanders paired with their intelligence experts must be “able to change operations” on the fly and not be so deliberative, he said.

To make that a reality, Costanza advised that intelligence officers need to understand the targeting process almost as well as the targeting teams do.

Helping those sped-up efforts along is a list of technology that the Army is pursuing or fielding that officials hope will help gather, verify and disseminate information more accurately and quickly than they’re able to now.

That includes Terrestrial Layer Systems for both the brigade combat team and for echelons above brigade, the Multi-Domain Sensing System, the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node, the High Altitude Platform Deep Sensing Annex, High Efficiency Radio Frequency Monitoring and Exploitation System and Aerial Geo-Intelligence System, Lt. Gen. Laura Potter, deputy chief of staff for Army G-2, shared in a presentation slide.

Those systems gather much of what’s happening out there. But to decipher that information, the intel field will lean on artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics and cloud-based systems, she said.

The effects that equipment had highlighted another key need — a better, quicker way to conduct battle damage assessments. Inaccurate or lagging reports caused “tremendous problems,” Costanza said.

The unit was moving more quickly than their assessments could manage, meaning after an initial barrage, units were going after targets that were no longer there or looking in the wrong places, he said.

Many of these changes and improvements reside with the man or woman in charge and how well they communicate with their intelligence team.

“Intel drives operations which means commanders own intel,” Costanza said.

About Todd South

Todd South has written about crime, courts, government and the military for multiple publications since 2004 and was named a 2014 Pulitzer finalist for a co-written project on witness intimidation. Todd is a Marine veteran of the Iraq War.

20.  Army at work on a digital ‘blue book’ app, top enlisted soldier says

Excerpt:

According to Weimer, the blue book app will be a one-stop shop for Army enlisted leaders who want to know “what right looks like.” It will include Army and unit history information, philosophical references like values and creeds, up-to-date information on standards and discipline, clearly defined leader responsibilities, and a digital library containing the service’s most commonly referenced regulations and other publications.

Army at work on a digital ‘blue book’ app, top enlisted soldier says

armytimes.com · by Davis Winkie · October 11, 2023

WASHINGTON — Noncommissioned officers across the Army will gain a new leadership reference tool next year, Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Weimer announced Wednesday afternoon at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.

The “Army Blue Book and Digital Library,” as the program is tentatively named, is under development with the Army Software Factory and Training and Doctrine Command, Weimer added. He said their goal is to begin beta testing the platform in fall 2024.

According to Weimer, the blue book app will be a one-stop shop for Army enlisted leaders who want to know “what right looks like.” It will include Army and unit history information, philosophical references like values and creeds, up-to-date information on standards and discipline, clearly defined leader responsibilities, and a digital library containing the service’s most commonly referenced regulations and other publications.

In an interview after the announcement, Weimer explained that he intends for the app to clearly communicate authoritative standards, which he argued will in turn empower noncommissioned officers to raise the community’s baseline level of discipline.

Where things currently stand, “there’s fear to enforce the standards,” for junior noncommissioned officers sometimes, Weimer acknowledged.

Training and Doctrine Command officials said that the blue book is intended to supplement existing programs like the MySquad application developed during now-retired Sergeant Major of the Army Michael Grinston’s tenure.

The Army also plans to include a feedback mechanism in the application that will allow soldiers to suggest ideas to service senior leaders. The feature will not be anonymous, however.

Weimer’s blue book announcement wasn’t the only application announced at the conference. Installation Management Command is developing a My Army Post application — also in conjunction with the Army Software Factory — that will offer real-time information about installation resources like gate hours, gym facilities, chow halls and more.

About Davis Winkie

Davis Winkie is a senior reporter covering the Army. He focuses on investigations, personnel concerns and military justice. Davis, also a Guard veteran, was a finalist in the 2023 Livingston Awards for his work with The Texas Tribune investigating the National Guard's border missions. He studied history at Vanderbilt and UNC-Chapel Hill.

De Oppresso Liber,

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Vice President, Center for Asia Pacific Strategy

Senior Fellow, Global Peace Foundation

Editor, Small Wars Journal

Twitter: @davidmaxwell161

Phone: 202-573-8647

email: david.maxwell161@gmail.com