TAT bi-annual journal: Israel, Gaza, Hezbollah and the Middle East

October 2024

Oct 11, 2024

Iran’s Ayatollah in Tehran moves terrorist organizations around a geopolitical board.

TAT readers,

Today is a continuation of my efforts to produce my intended, bi-annual journals on selected topics prior to the election next month. Afterwards, these journals will be for paid subscribers only. The quantity of mis and disinformation we are seeing in the Trump era is staggering. It’s not as if both major parties are not guilty of such efforts, but believing that they are equally culpable, is the most ridiculous conspiracy theory yet. The Trump/ MAGA/ GOP is fully sustained on conspiracy theories, generated by a combination of Russian influence operations, immoral domestic influencers like Brad Parscale and immoral marketers acting as hitmen, for a traitorous former president and his MAGA minions.

With all of the legitimate challenges facing the nation and the world, often leaning on American democratic leadership, for safety and stability, we cannot afford another term of Trump’s willingness to sell out America to Putin, the Axis of Evil, Oligarchy and the highest bidders, such as the Gulf States.

Political cartoon U.S. Trump intelligence leaks national security parade

If we don’t elect leaders based on facts, truth, experience and sound reasoning, we can neither sustain our constitutional republic, nor protect our nation and allies from extremist nations, nearly all operating for more than a decade on a wave of far-right extremism. One of the reasons I began writing these TAT essays that are filled with links and citations to the most credible of sources, is that MAGA followers and the GOP’s MAGA agenda is based on conspiracy theories that promote the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse: Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and violent extremism.

Before I wrap up this short introduction, I must leave everyone with a short story on the topic of facts and truth.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published

My definition of truth:

All known facts presented objectively and in context

- Cobaugh

The story

As I prepared to retire from the Army in 2015, I did like most retiring troops, I created an account on LinkedIn to begin investigating the possibilities in the world outside of my daily deployments as a specialist in the counterterrorism and influence world. Within weeks, I began to recognize mutually reinforcing Russian and GOP influence operations in support of Trump. As I found a handful of accounts with my same reaction to these operations, we began fighting back online, telling the truth where none existed in the GOP/ Russian content.

Before long, LinkedIn began censoring me and my colleagues, eventually leading to permanent bans of several of my colleagues and also, physical and personal threats to all of us. There was even an attack on a colleague in Rome and a dear friend in the UK whose national security experience was similar to mine was targeted in a pub in London. All of this is detailed in an excellent expose’ by the GOAT of all national security and intelligence reporting, Jeff Stein, then working for Newsweek. Jeff is also famous for his project, SpyTalk, here on Substack. I am mentioned but briefly in the article due to the fact that at the time, I still held a high security clearance and could only provide, “background.”

*How Russia Is Using LinkedIn as a Tool of War Against Its U.S. Enemies - Newsweek Aug 03, 2017 at 7:00 AM EDT*

During those precarious months, I and my colleagues fighting for truth, regularly challenged the trolls, fake accounts of the IRA or commonly known as the troll factory in St. Petersburg, Russia, to provide credible sources for their outrageous conspiracy theories. I have continued this to this day, regardless of which social media platform I am on at the time. The bottom line is that in nine years of asking MAGA adherents, Russians, Chinese, Iranian or similar accounts to provide credible sources, not once in those years has a single respondent provided credible sources. Let that sink in… not once in nine years.

That last sentence told me that I had an obligation based on my oath of military service to; “protect and defend the constitution from all enemies, both foreign and domestic,” to defend truth. I don’t defend political parties but our extraordinary founding principles. As we can see in Project 2025 and the 2024 GOP Platform, the MAGA GOP represents overturning those principles and the constitution that defines and protects them. As they say, “not on my watch.”

Although Jeff’s article was published in 2017, LinkedIn is still a hotbed of political and national security censure. I have been suspended countless times due to modern tactics employed by MAGA and Russia, even occasionally due to Iranian efforts. My posts, including these TAT essays are daily shadow banned, throttled and algorithmically silenced. Most days, my closest connections and even my publisher, The Athina Press cannot see my profile, let alone my posts. Their accounts, for no other reason than being connected to me, receive similar treatment. While that LinkedIn always has some official answer regarding technology, it oddly doesn’t seem to affect most MAGA and foreign adversarial influencers, nearly the same as it does to truth-tellers.

Facebook is even worse and likely unforgiveable due to their role in helping Russia and MAGA efforts to elect Trump in 2016. No social media platform is credibly safe but some, like LinkedIn and Facebook, are particularly a threat.

The point of this short story about social media threats and the absence of credible facts from everything MAGA, is that I remind readers, that I do my very best to include the best of sources. I do this so that you can feel reassured that my efforts are not to tell anyone what to think or believe, but to offer insights based on my long career in national security, so that readers, can make informed decisions.

Now, as this evening approaches, we must remember that in the case of Israel, it is Yom Kippur, the holiest day in Judaism. It was in 1973 that most Arab states launched a surprise attack on Israel that nearly succeeded. Last year’s October 7th attack came just after Yom Kippur. The backstory on the seemingly endless attacks on Israel by her neighbors, would require a volume of books to explain. The entire Palestinian issue is the outgrowth of such an attack one minute past midnight, on the day Israel achieved statehood. Then there are the historical and biblical references.

Political Cartoon World Iran Saudi Arabia drone attack oil | The Week

There is much to know in order to understand just the basics of what is occurring in Gaza, against Hezbollah and against Iran. The following essays I hope to be helpful to understanding the basics. I began writing in-depth essays on Oct. 9th last year and they now number over twenty. That is what you will find in this journal. The essays below are in chronological order with the oldest first all the way through the newest on August 8th this year.

My best to all for the weekend.

Paul

Israel - by Paul Cobaugh - Truth About Threats