Andrew Moses

Two predictions about this war that have not played out so far: 1. Everyone said a ground op into Gaza would greatly increase the casualties on both sides, but the opposite has happened – far less innocent Gazans have died from ground forces in the last few days than they did when the air force was busy preparing the battlefield. Most of the people dying now are Hamas. Just as important, far less @IDF soldiers have died than anyone expected, notwithstanding the tragic few we’ve already lost. They've also been able to safely evacuate 200,000 more Gazans from the northern strip – Gazans that Hamas was shooting at in order to get them to stay and die as human shields. The slow and steady strategy seems to be working well for everyone (except Hamas). Again, this is only true at this point, but the larger point is Americans forgot that Gaza isn’t Fallujah while Europeans forgot that Israelis aren’t blithering cowards. All of which goes to show why @Israel should continue to ignore the naysayers and stick to the business of eradicating Hamas, haters be damned. 2. Everyone said Israel would ruin its ties with the Arab world, but not a single friendly Arab country has chosen to do so. In fact, Saudi Arabia said it intends to continue pursuing relations with Israel. It also called for the hostages to be released at the Arab League/OIC summit this weekend. Additionally, Egypt, Jordan, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, Morocco, Mauritania, Djibouti and Saudi Arabia all voted against a proposal that wanted to: cut ties, disrupt oil supplies to Israel and its allies, prevent the transfer of US equipment to Israel from bases in Arab countries, prevent flights to and from Israel using Arab countries’ air space, and form a joint mission to put pressure on Western nations for a ceasefire. Numerous Arab countries rejected all of that. Just as we should reject all of the NGOs, government quacks, armchair quarterbacks and keyboard commandos who don’t know the first thing about how to survive in the Middle East.