Retired US general says Hamas attack on Israel was ‘much worse than 9/11’

Retired US general David Petraeus, who led the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, says last week’s Hamas attack on Israel was “far worse than 9/11”.

Petraeus, who also served as CIA director, said Sunday that the Palestinian terrorist attack that killed more than 1,300 Israelis was proportionately larger than the terrorist attacks in the United States that claimed thousands of lives on Sept. 11, 2001.

“This is the equivalent of the United States experiencing more than 40,000 losses, instead of the terrible 3,000 losses we suffered in the 9/11 attacks,” Petraeus told CBS News, comparing the populations of the two countries.

The military expert also warned Israel to think carefully about its next actions as it plans to invade Gaza, once again invoking 9/11 and the subsequent US “war on terrorism” that engulfed the United States for decades.

“There should be a warning from our experiences after the 9/11 attack,” Petraeus said. “Some of the actions we take now we see differently. And there will come a time when some of the actions Israel will take will also be seen differently.

Retired US general David Petraeus said the Hamas attack on Israel surpassed the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States in terms of deaths. The CBS Hamas attack against Israel left more than 1,300 dead last week. REUTERS

“In fact, I think there is awareness of this in Jerusalem,” he added.

Petraeus said Israel has a “very, very tough fight” ahead against Hamas, stating that the terrorist organization clearly had a much more sophisticated intelligence network than the Jewish nation and the United States once believed.

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“This is a very important operation and its planning alone would have been very considerable; then the training, equipping and positioning of the forces, and then the actual conduct of them,” Petraeus said. “That all of that could happen and not trigger much greater military preparedness is really surprising.”

The terrorist attacks of September 11, including the Twin Towers in Manhattan, killed nearly 3,000 people and injured more than 6,000. AFP/Getty Images The destruction caused by rocket fire has overwhelmed the Israeli city of Sderot. ZUMAPRESS.com

The former intelligence commander attributed the success of the Hamas attack to a “dramatic improvement” in the way the group operates, along with its ability to prevent and eliminate Israel’s own intelligence-gathering operation.

Petraeus also posed to Israeli officials the question of what will happen next if their invasion of Gaza is successful, given that the densely populated territory is home to more than 2 million Palestinians.

“If the mission of the Israeli army is to destroy Hamas, if all the headquarters must be destroyed, if most of the leaders must be captured or killed, if the same must be done with most of these terrorist fighters, The question then is what to do with Gaza once they retake it,” Petraeus said. “You can’t walk away from Gaza.”

Petraeus said he was surprised that Israel and the United States were unaware of the devastating Hamas attack last week, when the terrorist group coordinated a series of rocket and shooting attacks on communities across the Gaza border.

Petraeus warned Israel to think carefully about its strategy in Gaza, highlighting controversial US action in the Middle East after 9/11. Getty Images

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Petraeus is not the first authority to draw comparisons between 9/11 and the unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.

A day after the devastation, Israeli ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan called the act of terrorism “our 9/11” while describing it as a worse attack.

“We have already suffered 250 fatalities, [which is] “It’s like having 7,500 deaths here,” Erdan said of the initial estimates. “We already have 1,500 victims. “There are like 50,000 victims here in the United States.”

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Source: vtt.edu.vn

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