שחרור החטופים ומלחמת המידע בוויקיפדיה | פרשנות על התפתחויות האחרונות במלחמה של ישראל נגד החמאס

Now here to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East is Javed Ali. He's the former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. Javed Ali, thank you so much for joining us here today. Hamas has yet to respond militarily to these strikes. Do they no longer have the capacity, and does that mean that Israel has succeeded in eliminating the threat from Hamas? That's a good question, Jack. One would have to imagine that there is some residual Hamas military capability. I mean, they probably had about 15,000, 20,000 fighters pre-October 7th, perhaps more. Israel has said they've killed or captured thousands. They probably have some capability left, but they're probably holding that back too, because if they start to emerge on the ground, they are just going to be hit by the Israelis beyond the degree to which Israel's been hitting in the past 24, 48 hours. So they're in a very precarious moment as an organization. Right now, Hamas is believed to have about 24 living hostages and the bodies of 35 others. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said that the latest strikes were necessary for freeing these hostages. How much hope do you have for the hostages? This is another really tough aspect of where things stand in the conflict, that if the ceasefire actually does break down and Israel does full-blown resume military operations much the way they did from post-October 7th, 2023 up until December 2024, that the status of the hostages who are still alive, that's going to be difficult to determine where they are. Can Israel mount rescue operations much like what happened last June with a rescue operation that recovered three hostages? Hostage recovery missions and operations from a counterterrorism perspective are amongst the most difficult to pull off very surgically and precisely. And I would have to imagine that even of the remaining hostages who are alive, they're probably in multiple locations, either below ground or above ground and are being moved on a daily basis, if perhaps a little less frequently. So if Israel's intent on resuming military operations, but still trying to find the remaining hostages, this is going to be very, very difficult. Now, another aspect of this in the war with Hamas is the information war and how the rest of the world perceives the conflict. Now, the Anti-Defamation League is reporting that more than two dozen Wikipedia editors colluded to put anti-Semitic narratives, anti-Israel bias and misleading information, their words, in relevant articles. How significant is this allegation and how much of an impact could this have had? Yeah, interesting aspect to the propaganda war and information wars that have been going on since October 7th. I haven't seen any of those Wikipedia sites, but it wouldn't surprise me to see that that kind of activity is happening. And again, this is another unfortunate aspect of what's transpired after October 7th is the rise in anti-Semitic crimes and speech and how that's affecting dynamics here in the United States and other parts of the world. But it's not surprising to hear that that's happening on Wikipedia and probably other social media sites as well.