JERUSALEM STRATEGY EXPERTS IN Israel have called on the Netanyahu Government to ban all religious holidays in the country after Saturday’s attack by Hamas which came between Sukkot and Simchat Torah. “Yom Kippur 1973, the Egyptians attack and we almost go under; and now this, another religious holiday attack, and another devastating assault on the…

FROM GAZA “WHERE DOES NETANYAHU want Gazans to go when he tells them to get out? To hell?” Human rights lawyer Bashir Murphy De Gaulle, based in Vienna, says Israel’s air strikes into, and other punishments of, Gaza, are window dressing, a temper tantrum. “Bombing a guerilla army like Hamas in this way is like…

KYIV “YOU GOTTA BE SHITTIN’ me!” These are said to be the words of a Ukrainian colonel who has already lost two thirds of his command when told he had to give back half the US supplied equipment so that it could be shipped to Israel. The Americans are now so short of military equipment…

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN BEER SHEVA LEAKS FROM ISRAELI military sources in Jerusalem suggest that much of the country’s military and intelligence community responsible for the Gaza Strip may have been attending a desert rave when Hamas launched its latest attack yesterday. The rave itself was the subject of an assault and the ability of…

FROM WIRE SERVICES AFTER UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT Zelenskyy said Israel had a right to defend itself, Hamas sources in Gaza have said that they plan to send an Israeli tank they captured to Ukraine for use by the Russian army. “You would think that Ukraine would see things from our point of view,” said a Hamas…

KYIV NEWS THAT Ukraine has come out in support of Israel in the latter’s time of need has been somewhat smothered by a report that Ukraine’s offer of tactical and strategic know how has been firmly refused by the Netanyahu Government. “Are they out of their fuckin’ minds?” an Israeli general is reported as saying.…

FROM OUR JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT MONTY PYTHON ALL IN ALL it has not been a terrific weekend for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. First of all he presided over his country’s single biggest intelligence failure since Yom Kippur in 1973. Then he declares war on a Palestinian army that has been at war with Israel since…

GAZA AS ISRAELI RETALIATION steps up, a Palestinian Historian says that the Hamas attack against Israel launched from the Gaza Strip has all the hallmarks of a mass jailbreak, and may be as much that as it is a military offensive. “The first thing one notices is the sheer elation of being free that Palestinians…

FROM BRIAN LIFEOF IN JERUSALEM “WHAT IF WE just handed the whole place back to the Romans?” says Moshe, a Monty Python fan from Tel Aviv. “I fear that we are condemned to an endless round of this deep into the century and beyond. And as the Arab population swells, our advantages shrink. You can’t…

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT IN GAZA “THIS IS HOW you launch an offensive,” the Ukrainian officer watching events in Gaza and Israel told me by video-link from Kyiv. “The Israelis will probably win in the end, but at least they will know they have fought an army with a real plan.” Early Palestinian success is likely…