Coop Scoop: Emergency War Edition on How Biden Gets Played by Netanyahu

Hosting guest writer William F. Bradley

Note to readers. I am turning over this emergency edition to my long time friend Bill Bradley. Bill is a veteran of Naval Intelligence, a long time liberal Democratic advisor including to Governor Jerry Brown and to former presidents. Bill is also a specialist in warfare. This is a spectacular analysis.

April 15, 2024

By William F Bradley

Oh, please, Mr. Netanyahu! We’ll help defend you against the evil Iranians but please don’t spin up an even bigger war!

That's the word from the Biden administration and much of the media now as the ruinous Gaza War drags on. (And as the silly Trump trial begins in New York, where the governor dispatched National Guard troops to deter actual crime.)

Are folks focused on the discovery of mass graves in Gaza left behind by, we're told, temporarily withdrawn Israeli troops?

No.

Focused on the failure of the IDF to achieve its announced objectives after more than six months of siege in Gaza as it killed 29 times as many children as the ruthless Russians have in the entire Ukraine War?

No.

Focused on the unintentionally amusing excuses for the supposedly game changing attack on the World Central Kitchen convoy that left its celebrity chef leader (and supposed Biden friend) calling Israel's actions in Gaza "a war against humanity"?

Most definitely no.

In case you're wondering why Israel would suddenly escalate its long bubbling conflict with Iran by bombing its embassy compound in Damascus, triggering a dramatic Iranian counterattack, here is the answer.

The ever wily Bibi Netanyahu has — with worldwide opinion closing in on his bird's nest in a rain spout — flipped the script. At least for a time. And played Joe Biden once again.

Of course, Bibi plays Biden so often it is hard not to conclude that Biden wants to be played.

So, playing along, where are we now?

No sooner had the all clear been given in Israel following the slow-moving Iranian attack on Saturday, the professional spinners were doing their thing.

As is not infrequently the case, I don’t concur with the assessment of the BBC and other erstwhile mainstream media outlets that this was a much bigger Iranian attack, or actually counterattack, than expected.

While there are widely varying reports about the composition of the Iranian attack, the read here is that this was a largely telegraphed Iranian attack that served more as a demonstration and probe (important note!) than an attempt to deliver widespread devastation to Israel. The Iranians targeted only military sites.

Not incidentally, here's an important fact, courtesy of an Israeli source. It cost Israel more than 10 times as much — some $1.5 billion — to defend against the attack as it cost Iran to mount it. And that does not include the American cost in actively defending Israel.

Slow-moving drones were clearly the vast bulk of the attack.

Iran claims to have hit multiple Israeli targets, heavily damaging an air base in the Negev.

Israel claims to have shot most everything down — in reality, US and to a lesser extent UK aircraft shot down many drones — and suffered virtually no damage.

Whichever side is right, no Israelis appear to have been killed. 

Iran cited the UN Charter right of self defense for attacks on sovereign territory as justification for the attack.

It also declared the matter now closed.

Israel says the matter is not closed.

But it also requested a UN Security Council meeting, which took place to little effect on Sunday afternoon and evening. 

Which was ironic, considering Israel’s war with the UN. And intriguing, in that diplomatic talk is not the blue-and-white style and the UNSC would certainly not concur with another Israeli attack on Iran.

Clearly the Biden administration has no desire for still more war in the Middle East.

But will Netanyahu hold off? Or press on for some sort of attack on the all too real Iranian nuclear program?

My guess is he’s not that reckless. But he will do something, though the Israeli war cabinet is reportedly still split on precisely what.

The more chaos the motley crew Netanyahu government creates, the more it must be placated to prevent further chaos.

And so US forces enter further into a deadly and damaging Middle East conflict.

US forces are already directly involved in the Gaza War through largely unsuccessful strikes to suppress Houthi attacks on arguably Israeli-related shipping.

It is all very dramatic, of course. And it involves many players with very dirty hands.

So… are there real changes in Israeli behavior in Gaza in the wake of its three deadly missile strikes on the World Central Kitchen convoy?

Was the Israeli destruction of a celebrity chef’s aid convoy staffed by white people the game changer it appeared to be?

Well, despite dramatic promises, Israel has not opened up its nearby port for the provision of humanitarian aid.

Nor has it opened up a promised aid crossing.

And its claims of greatly increased aid being allowed into Gaza also prove to be illusory.

So the answer is no. How surprising.

Maybe Antony Blinken should perform his patented handwringing routine for the eleventeenth time. He might, if Netanyahu hadn't flipped the script. Instead he gets to play his preferred role as champion of Israel, like his grandfather and step-father before him.

The U.S.-empowered Israeli siege of the Gaza Strip continues apace.

Israel denies the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, claiming that in any event it is now surging aid into the blockaded strip. Which of course does not explain its strangling behavior since 10/7.

But the UN says that aid trucks allowed in by the IDF are only half full. And at the end of the week the IDF fired on a UNICEF convoy trying to move into central Gaza. A vehicle containing the UNICEF spokeswoman was hit by three rounds, which she did not find at all amusing. Fortunately no one was killed or wounded.

More than a dozen Palestinians who died when the IDF hit a popular re-opened grocery store weren’t so fortunate. The Palestinian death toll in Gaza is closing in on 34,000.

The long promised Israeli ground invasion of Rafah has still not emerged.  Nor has any Israeli plan to move the already dispersed people there out of harm’s way.

Meanwhile, the IDF has moved a brigade back into Gaza, so now they are back up to two brigades, along with a few battalions also moved back into the area.

These units are carrying out some raids but largely appear to be used to control movement between sectors. 

A recently built road cutting across Gaza from Israel to the nearby Mediterranean is, as anticipated, being used as a demarcation between the largely destroyed north and the rest of Gaza.

The second brigade is also trying to control Palestinian movement along an east-west axis, albeit one that is less clearly defined.

Does all this add up to Netanyahu’s claim that he’s close to destroying Hamas but just needs more time?

Well, the IDF claims to have killed 12,000 Palestinian fighters. Which, given the quality of IDF claims examined here, I rather doubt.

But let’s say they are telling the truth.

That would only be 30% of pre-war Hamas strength. And there are other armed groups.

Plus there is the obvious recruitment value of Israel’s blunderbuss tactics.

The IDF claims to have killed just one major Hamas military leader. That’s it. 

It’s obviously easier to kill the three sons of the Hamas civilian leader, along with four grandchildren, as they visited relatives at a refugee camp on the beach to celebrate the end of the Ramadan fasting period than it is to kill Hamas military leaders.

Or to rescue Israeli hostages, only two of whom have been freed by the IDF.  (And even that required a massive air strike killing dozens of civilians.) Which is one fewer than the number we know that the IDF gunned down while they waved a white flag. 

So, no. 

Israel has failed to take down Hamas, to rescue its hostages… or to keep up its good name.

Before the current Iran-Israel melodrama, the long running, halting negotiations on a Gaza truce — which the UN Security Council finally demanded — suffered a major blow with those Israeli assassinations.

It’s almost as though the Israeli government isn’t really interested in ending the siege of Gaza.

But that can’t be, can it? 

Killing Ismail Haniyeh’s sons and grandchildren may be an attempt to pressure Hamas leadership to do… what?

It’s not at all uncommon for Israel to kill the family members of various oppositional leaders. But it’s a dubious practice that often as not accomplishes nothing.

Unless deepening longstanding enmity is a goal.

Some Israeli assassinations have been more effective, at least in the past.

For example, the assassinations by Zionist terror groups (including a couple future Israeli prime ministers) of the British minister for the Middle East, a close friend of Churchill, and the UN Security Council coordinator for Palestine did further the agenda for the foundation of Israel.

Which of course is not in the Disney movie version. But let's move on.

The reality is that things were going badly heading into Easter weekend — just prior to the Israeli bombing of the Iranian embassy compound — and they have not, on balance, improved. If anything they are more chaotic.

The Biden administration had just engaged in its latest round of humanitarian handwringing, only to turn around and quietly reveal on the holiday weekend that it would send billions more in weapons and money to further the Israeli siege of Gaza. At the same time, Trump sent out a mean picture about Biden. You know which violent move much of the US media focused on.

But there was about to be a change, when the Israelis killed a group of white aid workers in three separate missile strikes destroying the World Central Kitchen convoy. As these victims are white and worked for a celebrity chef who is friendly with Biden and owns restaurants liked by Beltway types, this was a different matter.

Well, supposedly.

Before continuing on with the new melodrama, here's what the IDF finally said and did about its World Central Kitchen attack.

It fired two "senior officers" and acknowledged a "grave mistake."

Let’s start with that “senior officer” business. 

The IDF fired two officers from their posts. One, the brigade fire control director, is a major in the regular army. The other, the brigade chief of staff, is a colonel in the reserves.

I went through the actual IDF statement, which revealed the two ranks in question. 

A major is not a senior officer. That is a field grade rank.

A colonel is a senior officer in some views, but is a rank below the lowest-ranking general, which is what civilians tend to think of as a senior officer. And as a reservist, he suffers no impact on a military career.

Neither officer is charged with any crime.

Because it’s all just a “mistake.”

What is the IDF rationale for the three separate missile strikes on the WCF convoy?

Well, this reveals more than they think. And gets us to questions of profiling and algorithms used for IDF strikes in Gaza.

A surveillance drone picked up something identified as a weapon with one of the men. It may in retrospect have been a bag. But so what if it was a weapon? Shouldn’t the three security contractors with the convoy be armed? Isn’t the Israeli line that problems with aid distribution in Gaza are down to unruly Palestinians?

Moving on, the IDF doctrine for Gaza turns out to that a male with a gun is profiled as a “gunman.” And a “gunman” in Gaza is profiled as a Hamas terrorist. 

Since one, or maybe it was two, men with the convoy were identified as “gunmen,” each vehicle and all their occupants were viewed as legitimate targets for missile strikes. 

In other words, kill them all.

Now, I’m pretty sure that few if any IDF folks have backpacked through North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia, as I have. I can’t tell you how many times I was around young civilian guys with guns, usually the ubiquitous AK-47. Were they terrorists? Most probably not. Could I have been casually shot at any time… pop, pop — by some nut, or just another rando who doesn’t like white people — and rolled into a ditch? Sure. You learn to relax.

That was decades ago, of course. But things have gotten even more tense and insecure since then. Guns are everywhere.

Simply identifying a guy with a gun as a “Hamas terrorist” is absurd. Or monstrous. Take your pick.

And using that absurdity to justify killing everyone in a car is even worse.

So it goes. +++

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