Sitting on a powder keg, holding a stick of dynamite, fuse smouldering.

Hamas intentionally doomed the city of Gaza. Doing so served Tehran's purpose of making it hard for Saudi Arabia to enter into trade agreements with Israel while also making it harder for Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to continue relations with Israel. Hamas (an Iranian Satrap (aka puppet)) launched the attack with the intent Israel would immediately attack the Palestinians that live inside Gaza City.

The attack was both well planned and very well done. A true sucker punch. However, like 9/11 it lacked follow-up knock-out blows and was therefore suicidal on it's face. Tehran doesn't care about that. Neither does Putin. Hamas is expendable in Iran's eyes. So too are the Palestinians living in Gaza.

The media is spending a lot of money keeping reporters and camera crews on the edges of the front. They want to see a ground offensive launched 5 days ago. It would increase the station / channel's ratings to have some good fight footage. Of course Israel doesn't give two figs about the viewer ratings of FOX/CNN/CBS/India 1, et al.

Every day the media asks when will the ground offensive begin, what is taking so long? LoL

From a military point of view, launching a ground offensive while the enemy holds the high ground guarantees high casualties. So a lot of those tall buildings (which make perfect observation points and sniper nests) need to be made a lot shorter. That work has been underway for several days now. There were many intelligence failures on Israel's part. But there were also some successes. Obtaining home address locations for many Hamas fighters could be classified as one of them. If the guy in the apartment above or below yours was a Hamas supervisor, don't be home when the GPS guided missile with a 240 lb warhead flies in his bedroom window at 2am.

There is other stuff going on too. Some of the Hamas guys that invaded took cell phone pictures of the things their teams did and put it on Telegram. Then they went home. Telegram like all websites collects the IPN of anything connecting to it. Israel got ahold of those IPNs and very quietly 'pinged' those cell phones to establish their GPS locations. Very stupidly a lot of those Hamas people were still carrying the phone they had brought into Israel. By last count over 75 of those cell phones have received large doses of high explosive and are no longer functional. Civilians in Gaza have been warned to move southward. We should anticipate more urban renewal is about to commence.

I would not assume a ground offensive will occur right away. I would expect when the Northern project is completed, the civilians in the area will be told to head North so an urban renewal of the South can commence. I don't consider the Special Forces Recon teams to be the main body of an offensive. That's just intel collection. I think while there may be some hostages still in Gaza, the important ones are someplace else. Yes, everyone is important, but some more so than others. Rich hostages by definition are worth more than poor ones, etc.

Hizballah and the Palestinian Front seem to be content to let their more suicidal members go to the border and attack Israel's artillery and claymore mines. There is no need for a full scale war just because Iran wants them to blindlyu follow the Hamas puppets into self immolation. The Revolutionary Guard does not represent Palestine and should therefore not become the last one standing. It will not be. Hexballah and the P. Front will wait for a time of their choosing.

It still remains possible the purpose of the attack by Hamas was to sucker US war ships within range of naval drones. Submerged ones with electric motors laying in wait (perhaps with compressed air tanks for bursts of speed and an AI that can tell the difference between the sound of a destroyer engine and that of an aircraft carrier within operating range of the drone, would be a tough nut to crack. Hamas would gain great prestige if something nasty happened and Iran would do much gloating over that. But that is a what if scenario...

I think we should go back further to the time of 'Lawrence of Arabia.' and how he randomly picked different tribes and carved up the middle East.

Thinking for oneself is paramount. There's so many different elements at play here - religious, ethnic, energy resources, world financial situation (in decline). Cui bono (who benefits - from any particular outcome)? Propaganda is everywhere. The fog is thick, particularly the fog of war. One thing I've learned in recent years is the extent of WESTERN propaganda. Of course other nations have their propaganda (Russia and China are two that obviously come to mind), but here in The West we are ourselves being propagandized to an absolutely enormous degree. Google, Wikipedia - that subtly but deliberately manipulate information. The social media companies such as Meta and Twitter and the massive influence of U.S intelligence agencies in particular, interfering and pressuring to get certain content and certain views banned, whether it's to do with Covid, elections, or War. We are being HIGHLY manipulated. Then we have the more recent 'censorship industrial complex' - which refers to a wide array of organizations - which claim to deal with so-called 'misinformation' and 'disinformation' - but in reality serve to manipulate information to the benefit of richest and most powerful. Many of these organizations operate within universities, and generally receive funding from the government of from rich donors (billionaires like Pierre Omidyar or George Soros).

God knows what will happen next. We should pray. Pray for calm hearts and cooler heads. Pray for a way forward.

P.S. one interesting viewpoint I've heard which has been little discussed is looking at this situation from the broader viewpoint of energy policy and the desire to benefit from energy resources. Iran in particular has enormous energy resources, and let's just say there's probably a lot of people who would like a piece of that particular pie. @MikeBenzCyber on X (Twitter) has opined on this - a lot of what he says makes sense I'd recommend checking him out for anyone who has an account there.

Whatever happened eith Kitty?

Mike Benz' thoughts on the situation as pertains to energy policy/incentives

All religious teachings are quite mad, there is not even the slightest chance of a one god a one creator.
No chance what so ever; ourselves are the creators of our tomorrows as well as, our tomorrows created by collective energy. As you sow so shall we reap, quite simple actually negative energy has negative outcomes, positive energy positive out come.
Our true nature is energy not something else. Our physical shit doesn't get stored in a non existent heaven, nor our bones, nor wealth, it is just utter rubbish to think or propose, that people constantly engaged in violence in the name of some god or prick like Netanyahu, Biden, Albanese or any other lunatic who feeds the cycle of sufferings by actively promoting violence, violence can only leads to more violence.
Uncontrolled self cherishing minds e.g. big egos, will of course ague other, while the same self cherishing minds are to lazy to check up, always propose they know better.
The cycles of suffering energies have been built on since beginnings time and is without end. Positive energy produce positive out comes.

Health officials in Gaza report that about 1/3 of the dead and injured there are children and toddlers. Explosions do that sort of stuff if no one puts the children someplace safe.
Hamas has bragged they have about 300 miles of tunnels under the Gaza strip. I do not know why they don't open up their deep tunnels as shelters for the people of Gaza they claim to be defending.

Hamas pledged decades ago that they would annihilate Israel and they don't care who gets destroyed in the process.