Thursday, November 30, 2023

I hope This Is A Bad Joke~!

 

Israeli, US officials discussing expelling Hamas terrorists from Gaza - report

 

The option to expel Hamas terrorists and their families from the Strip aims to make it easier to rebuild Gaza after the war.

Palestinian Hamas militants take part in an anti-Israel rally in Gaza City May 22, 2021 (photo credit: REUTERS/MOHAMMED SALEM)
Palestinian Hamas militants take part in an anti-Israel rally in Gaza City 
 

Israel and US officials have discussed expelling thousands of lower-level Hamas terrorists from the Gaza Strip as a possible option to shorten the war between Israel and Hamas, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.

The proposal rose as part of discussions concerning how Gaza will be run when the war ends and how to prevent a resurgence of Hamas or similar groups.

One proposal which has been developed by the IDF's think tank which was shown to The Wall Street Journal would involve the creation of "Hamas-free safe zones" that would be ruled by a new Gaza-based authority backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The option to expel Hamas terrorists and their families from the Strip aims to provide the terrorists with an exit strategy and make it easier to rebuild Gaza after the war.

The proposal seemingly would not include higher-up Hamas leaders such as Yahya Sinwar or Mohammed Deif. Israeli officials have said that the two, and other Hamas leaders located both in the Gaza Strip and abroad, are "dead men walking."

 

Security forces loyal Hamas stand guard at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, in the southern Gaza Strip, on May 12, 2020. (credit: ABED RAHIM KHATIB/FLASH90)
Security forces loyal Hamas stand guard at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt
 

The proposal was compared to the 1982 deal which had then Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat and about 11,000 Palestinian terrorists leave Lebanon for Tunisia after a two-month siege of Beirut.

Unclear if Hamas terrorists would accept option to leave Gaza

A senior Israeli official told The Wall Street Journal that it is not clear that Hamas terrorists would accept the option to leave Gaza if it was offered.


“I don’t see them as rational as the PLO was,” said the official. “It’s a more religious, jihadistic organization connected to the ideas of Iran.”

The official added that at the moment there is no "practical discussion" about expelling Hamas terrorists, although that option may become available if there is no other choice.

Another proposal being examined by the IDF is the creation of a "Gaza Restoration Authority" backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that would be tasked with rebuilding a Hamas-free Gaza.

https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/article-775814?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=3+murdered+in+Hamas+terror+attack+in+Jerusalem&utm_campaign=November+30%2C+2023

 

Wednesday, November 29, 2023

Israel’s dependence on U.S. weapons makes it impossible for the Netanyahu government to publicly air the strategic threat the administration’s policies pose to its war effort and its long-term ability to survive in the post-Oct. 7 Middle East

 

Biden's (handlers) are (presently) the primary obstacle to Israeli victory

 

Polling shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in this war and want it to destroy Hamas; the overwhelming majority of lawmakers from both parties share that view.

 

Archive photo: President Biden on phone call

(JNS) The time has come to discuss the Biden administration’s relationship with Israel. With each passing day, two things become obvious. First, Israel cannot fight the war without U.S. resupply of the Israel Defense Forces. As a consequence, Israel is beholden to the administration’s directives. And second, if Israel follows the Biden administration’s directives, it will lose the war.

Israel’s dependence on the United States was stated bluntly by retired IDF Maj. General Yitzhak Brick in an interview earlier this week.

“All of our missiles, the ammunition, the precision-guided bombs, all the airplanes and bombs, it’s all from the U.S. The minute they turn off the tap, you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability. … Everyone understands that we can’t fight this war without the United States. Period.”

Brick went on to explain that President Joe Biden’s demand that Israel permit “humanitarian aid” to enter Gaza means that he is demanding that Israel keep Hamas fully supplied with food, water and fuel.

His demand that Israel minimize Palestinian Arab civilian casualties endangers IDF soldiers and renders the expansion of the ground offensive into central and southern Gaza, where the bulk of Hamas’s force is now located, almost impossible to carry out. Brick suggested various forms of long-term tunnel warfare and other suggestions for how the IDF may be able to defeat Hamas over time while operating within the constraints that Biden and his top advisors are dictating.

It is hard to judge whether Brick’s suggestions are workable without access to situational intelligence about conditions on the ground in southern Gaza.

At a minimum, it is clear that Biden’s preference for the lives of civilians in Gaza over the lives of IDF soldiers on the ground ensures that far more soldiers will be killed in the fighting than would otherwise. Three weeks ago, the administration began demanding that Israel limit (or cancel entirely) its pre-ground battle aerial bombings. Consequently, in the week that preceded this week’s “humanitarian pause,” the IDF’s battle losses were overwhelmingly the consequence of sniper fire from Hamas terrorists hiding in buildings that the air force did not destroy before the battles, due to U.S. pressure.

Then there is the issue of the hostages. Israel is duty-bound to the hostages, their families and Israeli society as a whole to rescue them. There are two ways to do this. Israel can bow to Hamas’s demands, as it is presently doing by suspending its offensive, and endangering Israel’s soldiers and civilians by permitting Hamas to rebuild and reorganize its forces, and by releasing terrorists from its prisons and retuning them to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria. Or it can renew its military operation, locate the hostages and rescue them itself. Clearly, the second option is preferable.

Securing aid from America

Until Monday, it appeared the reason that Israel had accepted the deal it is currently operating under owed to its inability to locate the hostages. The London-based Daily Express reported on Monday that the real reason Israel is not rescuing the hostages—and instead agreed to the current deal with all of its tactical and strategic costs—is related to the Biden administration’s directive not to harm Palestinian civilians.

Based on Israeli sources, the British Daily Express reported that Israel knows where many of the hostages are located. It has opted not to rescue them because Hamas is holding the hostages among civilians. Rescuing them would involve collateral damage to those Palestinians and risk U.S. resupply, which Israel cannot fight without.

Here it is important to note that the number of actual civilians that have died as a result of Israel’s bombings remains unknown. On Oct. 25, Biden acknowledged that the Gaza Health Ministry’s data on civilian casualties lacks credibility in light of the fact that the Health Ministry is simply an organ of Hamas and reports the numbers it is told to report by Hamas’s terror masters. That data counts every dead terrorist as a dead civilian.

Israelis were thrilled with Biden’s statement. But the next day, he apologized for it. According to Fox News, in a meeting with Muslim American leaders on Oct. 26, Biden apologized for telling the truth.

“I’m sorry. I’m disappointed with myself,” he said.

Since Oct. 26, the administration has embraced as fact Hamas’s casualty counts and uses them as the basis for its demand that Israel minimize Palestinian Arab casualties. The administration’s willingness to ignore the fallacies at the heart of those data indicates that its policy is based on something other than concern for Palestinian Arab civilians, and therefore is not a tactical challenge that Israel may be capable of contending with and still win.

To be sure, Biden, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have all expressed their solidarity with Israel, as well as their revulsion at Hamas’s actions and desire to see the genocidal jihadist terror group defeated. And to be sure, Biden has taken steps to resupply Israel—requesting $14.3 billion in military supplies to Israel (although the assistance has yet to be approved by Congress or signed into law by Biden). These positions and at least partial actions lend credence to Brick’s assessment, shared by the IDF and the government, that the challenge the Biden administration’s position on civilian casualties in Gaza is an operational or tactical challenge and not a strategic conundrum.

Dealing with Fatah and the P.A.

But there are additional indications that Biden doesn’t want Israel to win. First, there is the issue of Egypt. Due to the U.S. decision to support Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s determination to prevent Gazans from fleeing to Egypt or to a third country through Egypt, the million or so Gazans who evacuated the northern end of the Strip during the fighting are now concentrated in the south. Among them are the bulk of Hamas’s forces, which Israel must destroy to win the war.

Facing the U.S.-backed Egyptian refusal to permit these civilians to leave Gaza on the one hand and the U.S. directive to keep civilian casualties close to zero on the other, Israel is facing an impossible operational challenge. Brick may be right that a low-key, slow offensive would be capable of achieving the goal. But he may be wrong. Certainly, a more conventional operation would have a much higher chance of succeeding.

To this must be added the Biden administration’s demands for a post-war settlement. Israel’s goal is not only to defeat Hamas now but to prevent it from rebuilding and to prevent other terror groups from emerging in a post-war Gaza. To this end, at a minimum, Israel will be required to take two actions.

First, it must retain permanent military control over all of Gaza.

Second, Israel must seize a buffer zone several kilometers wide on the Gaza side of the border to protect civilian communities and military bases from a repeat of Oct. 7.

Biden and his advisers oppose both of these goals. Not only do they completely oppose Israeli military control over Gaza and the establishment of buffer zones inside Gaza, they demand that in a post-war settlement, Israel end its maritime blockade of the Gaza coast, and permit everything and anything to enter Gaza from the sea. In other words, the U.S. position is to permit terrorist forces whether they call themselves Hamas or anything else—to rebuild their capabilities unfettered in post-war Gaza.

Even worse, the administration’s position is that Gaza must be ruled by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority after the war has ended, and that Gaza be united with Judea and Samaria in a post-war era, and together receive full sovereignty. In other words, the administration’s war goal is to establish a Fatah-dominated Palestinian state in these areas. On its own, this position is antithetical not only to an Israeli victory in the war. It represents an existential threat to Israel’s continued existence.

Fatah—and the P.A. it runs—is a terrorist organization and regime. The P.A.’s U.S.-armed and funded security forces are Hamas’s junior partners in terror. As Eugene Kontorovich and Itamar Marcus reported in The Wall Street Journal this week, P.A.-controlled Fatah terrorists from Fatah’s Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group posted videos of its members in Gaza participating in Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter. Fatah terrorists killed, tortured and kidnapped Israelis, and took videos of their actions.

Unlike Gaza, Judea and Samaria are a stone’s throw from all of Israel’s major population centers, and half a million Israelis live in cities and villages throughout Judea and Samaria. Last Friday night, the threat posed by Palestinian terrorist and paramilitary forces in Judea and Samaria to the lives of millions of Israelis came into sharp relief with the public lynching in the city of Tulkarm of two Palestinian Arabs accused of collaborating with Israeli counter-terror operations. To the roars of a crowd of thousands—secured by P.A. security forces—Hamas publicly hanged the two men from an electricity tower. The two men’s bodies showed signs of brutal torture that preceded their execution. Tulkarm is controlled by the P.A. It is located less than a kilometer from the Cross Israel Highway and a few minutes’ drive to Kfar Yona and Netanya.

Israel’s dependence on U.S. weapons makes it impossible for the Netanyahu government to publicly air the strategic threat the administration’s policies pose to its war effort and its long-term ability to survive in the post-Oct. 7 Middle East. Israel cannot risk additional stress to its position vis-à-vis the Biden administration and wants to avoid exposing the rift to its enemies already emboldened from Gaza to Lebanon, Yemen to Iran.

Congressional lawmakers face no such constraints, however. Moreover, they have an interest in exposing the truth and working to compel a change in the administration’s Hamas-enabling policies. Polling data shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel in this war and want it to destroy Hamas. The overwhelming majority of lawmakers from both parties share their views. To date, the Republican majority in the House has made no effort to exercise oversight over the Biden administration’s policies in relation to Israel’s war with Hamas, largely due to the Israeli government’s unwillingness to air the actual state of relations.

As the humanitarian pause is extended to secure the release of additional hostages and before the Christmas recess, House Republicans and like-minded Democrats should open hearings to compel the administration to explain its policies. Specifically, it should be asked to explain how Israel can defeat Hamas given the constraints the administration is placing on IDF operations.

The administration should also be asked why it supports the P.A., given the P.A.’s involvement, support and defense of Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and the slaughter of its civilians on Oct. 7. Congress should also ensure that the aid package, when passed, contains no conditions on Israel’s use of the weapons it will receive.

Lawmakers must understand the source of the Israeli government’s fulsome praise for Biden. They should then take action to prevent the administration from maintaining its policy of paying lip service to an Israeli victory while preventing Israel from achieving one.

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381051?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl

Tuesday, November 28, 2023

Finish the job!


While the last group of 11 hostages are returned home the total number of Israeli hostages released over the four days of the ceasefire rises to 51. The question now is what happens next?

 

 IDF armored and infantry reserve units in military training in Golan Heights before heading South to the Gaza Strip, northern Golan Heights on October 8, 2023 (photo credit: MICHAEL GILADI/FLASH90)
IDF armored and infantry reserve units in military training in Golan Heights before heading South to the Gaza Strip, northern Golan Heights
 

This editorial is being written on the fourth day of the temporary pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas that is meant to facilitate the release of Israeli hostages being held by the Palestinian terrorist group in Gaza.

Reports throughout the day indicated that Israel had identified “an issue” with the list of women and children Hamas has offered to release Monday evening – potentially, Israeli media reported, a violation of the understanding that children would not be separated from their mothers as part of the process. Qatari and Egyptian mediators worked throughout the day to resolve the issue and prevent a delay in the hostages’ release.

 

 Thomas Hand embraces his daughter Emily after being reunited. (credit: Maariv Online)
Thomas Hand embraces his daughter Emily after being reunited
 

This last group of 11 brings the total number of Israeli hostages released over the four days of the pause to 51.

Now the question is what happens next.

What happens next?

Hamas announced on Sunday that it would like to extend the pause for additional days. Israel, for its part, would only contemplate such an extension if it received assurances that Hamas will free additional hostages – reportedly ten per day.

In exchange, Israel will presumably release additional Palestinian security prisoners from Israeli jails, by the established ratio of three to one, and will allow additional aid trucks into Gaza. It will also, of course, hold off on its military campaign against Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made his government’s position clear in a call with US President Joe Biden on Sunday.

“We brought back another group of hostages this evening – women and children, and we are moved from the depths of our hearts, the entire nation, when we see this reuniting of families. It simply stirs the soul,” he said in a statement that evening.

“I have just spoken with President Biden with great emotion, also over little Avigail [Idan], of course. What a joy it is to see her with us, But, on the other hand, how sad it is that she is returning to a reality in which she has no parents. She has no parents – but she has an entire nation that embraces her, and we will take care of all her needs,” he said.

“Beyond this, I would like to say that there is also an outline that says that it is possible to release an additional ten [hostages] each day. That would be welcome.”

Late Monday evening, Qatari and US officials announced that the sides had agreed to extend the pause by a further two days. Hamas will now reportedly release another 20 hostages. It has also notably announced its willingness to negotiate the release of abducted Israeli soldiers.

While there are questions about how many hostages Hamas can actually produce – dozens, if not more, are reportedly being held by other terrorist groups and perhaps even private individuals in Gaza – so long as the group is indeed able to hand over hostages, Israel should keep this arrangement going, provided it does not impair the IDF’s ability to continue the military campaign once the pause ends.

Israel launched this campaign with two stated goals: toppling Hamas and bringing the hostages home. Military leaders had been supportive of the initial four-day pause in hostilities, saying that not only would it not undermine the army’s ability to continue its efforts against Hamas – it would actually facilitate them. This appears to hold true for the additional two days, as well.

Israel must finish the job

In Israel’s understanding, its two goals are mutually reinforcing: it is the military campaign against Hamas that applied the pressure necessary to force the group to start freeing the hostages – and it is the release of the hostages and the transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza in the context of the deal that will enable the campaign against Hamas to continue once the pause concludes.

Our message is simple: Israel should finish the job: Both jobs.

Israel should continue to do whatever is necessary – and within the bounds of what its military leaders determine is bearable – to free the hostages so long as the pause continues, and it should be prepared to immediately relaunch its military effort to eradicate Hamas’s capacity to carry out a massacre like October 7 ever again.

In so doing, Israel’s leaders will fulfill their commitment to the people of the Jewish state and bring this painful episode to its natural conclusion.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-775423?_ga=2.31791038.1212826870.1700815543-1969581575.1579377799&utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Did+Hamas+hold+Israeli+women+in+cages%3F&utm_campaign=November+28%2C+2023+day


Monday, November 27, 2023

Herein lies the major problem --- “I’ve encouraged the prime minister to focus on trying to reduce the number of casualties while he is attempting to eliminate Hamas, which is a legitimate objective he has,” said President Biden. “ Read --- Put Israeli soldiers at risk by going door to door, rather than bombing targets from the air - PM

 

 "Hamas is widely expected to seek to string out the current pause in fighting, under a four-day deal for 50 hostages that can be extended an extra day for every 10 more hostages that it releases. The longer the pause, the more complicated for the IDF to resume the ground offensive — especially if Hamas can encourage and force large numbers of northern Gazan evacuees to return to that part of the war zone — and the greater the international pressure for a full ceasefire."

 

Hamas’s hostage manipulations show how much control it continues to hold over Gaza

 

The amoral, barbaric terror-government plays cynical games with the families, with Israel, and even forces Biden to get involved. Of course it does. And it must be dismantled

 


Hila Rotem, 13, is embraced by her uncle as they reunite, in the early hours of November 26, 2023, after she was freed by Hamas. Her mother Raya is still held hostage in Gaza. (Israel Defense Forces)
Hila Rotem, 13, is embraced by her uncle as they reunite, in the early hours of November 26, 2023, after she was freed by Hamas. Her mother Raya is still held hostage in Gaza. (Israel Defense Forces)
 

The trouble with trying to do deals with an amoral, savage terrorist regime that has just slaughtered over 1,000 of your people, abducted over 200 to its underground hell, and is trying to destroy your country, is, well, precisely that you are dealing with an amoral, savage terrorist regime that has just slaughtered over 1,000 of your people, abducted over 200 to its underground hell, and is trying to destroy your country.

Israel’s political leaders gradually internalized that doing everything possible to achieve the return of as many of those hostages as possible was the most urgent priority of its fightback against Hamas after October 7. They realized that there could be no victory, no matter how successful the IDF’s assault on Hamas, without the return of all of the hostages or at least without the government being recognized by the people of Israel as having done everything in its power to get all the hostages back. Otherwise, even the demolition of Hamas and the deterring of Israel’s other enemies would not be sufficient to restore public faith in the political and military leadership that so failed them on October 7 by ignoring Hamas’s open preparations for its monstrous assault on our people.

But as expected, Hamas is exploiting Israelis’ love of life to extract every possible advantage from the current four-day lull in the IDF’s war on its Gaza killing machine. The first day’s scheduled release of hostages, on Thursday, didn’t happen at all. Postponed to Friday, it only went ahead amid further delays. Saturday’s phase two was an exercise in orchestrated psychological terror, with Hamas first stating that it had transferred the hostages to the Red Cross, immediately saying it hadn’t, and then issuing spurious accusations against Israel for not supplying as much fuel and humanitarian aid as promised and releasing the wrong Palestinian security prisoners.

Toying not just with Israel, and especially the families of those who had been told to expect their loved ones’ releases, Hamas also made fools of the Qatari and Egyptian interlocutors, and even compelled the leader of the free world to get directly involved, with US President Joe Biden working the phones to get the process back on track. With Israel reportedly threatening to resume the ground offensive if the hostages were not in Israeli hands by midnight, Hamas deigned to go through with Saturday’s phase, while breaching a reported commitment not to release hostage children without their hostage mothers.

Not halfway done

For now, it would seem, seven weeks into the Israeli effort to tear it apart, Hamas seems to be holding together quite effectively. The best estimate is that perhaps 4,000-5,000 of its gunmen are dead; that leaves another 20,000-25,000 who are not.

Israel controls much of northern Gaza, and has destroyed much of Hamas’s infrastructure there, but most of the Hamas tunnel network in the north may well still be intact. According to former generals including Amos Yadlin, Yisrael Ziv and Giora Eiland, the ground operation is certainly not even half-completed, with central and southern Gaza yet to be tackled, notably including Hamas strongholds such as Khan Younis. And the logistics of fighting in southern Gaza, now unprecedentedly populated with its own residents and hundreds of thousands of evacuees from the north, will present immense challenges to the IDF, even as almost all of the international community steps up pressure for a permanent ceasefire.

Yahya Sinwar, the presumed orchestrator of both October 7 and Hamas’s viciously cynical self-preservation tactics since — including the sacrifice of any and all Gazan noncombatants to the cause of his Jew-killing, Israel-destroying, Islamist death cult — would appear to remain in highly effective control of much of the Strip. And if it’s not him, then it’s others in the leadership.

Since the truce went into effect, and as of this writing, it has been near-impeccably maintained — by Hamas and every other terrorist outfit in the Strip — belying widely cited assessments in Israel that Hamas might prove unable to impose the halt in fighting on all the armed Israel-haters in Gaza.

Saturday night’s grim theatrics also suggested a leadership managing events, pushing psychological terror to the limits, and knowing when to climb down.

And the mechanics of the deal itself show tactical and strategic cunning. There is an emphasis on fuel entering the Strip — fuel that Israel knows will be subverted for the Hamas war machine — as part of a wider humanitarian aid influx that the US has been pressuring Israel to allow throughout the war.

Meanwhile, the daily releases of West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinian security prisoners — albeit not convicted murderers, but many would-be murderers, several of them notorious figures — have seen scenes of celebration that point to rising popularity for Hamas, at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, as the liberator of freedom fighters.

IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari stands next to what he says are weapons left behind by Hamas inside Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City

Unfathomably, unconscionably and catastrophically surprised by Hamas on October 7, the IDF says it has held the upper hand in every confrontation with the terrorist army since the ground operation began, and appears to have anticipated at least some of Hamas’s planned deadly surprises.

Troops have been astounded by the sheer quantity of deadly weaponry used and prepared for use against them — the endless rows of booby-trapped homes, the huge quantities of anti-tank rockets, the vast tunnel network — but they have tackled it resolutely.

The ruins left behind as they have proceeded through the north of the Strip will take years to rebuild, the IDF acknowledges. Given the high stakes — the imperative to dismantle a terrorist army that fully intends to regroup and massacre Israelis again and again if allowed to — the military is ordering airstrikes in circumstances it would not have done in the past, with consequent noncombatant casualties, while insisting it is acting within the laws of war and the framework of proportionality.

Back to the war

Hamas is widely expected to seek to string out the current pause in fighting, under a four-day deal for 50 hostages that can be extended an extra day for every 10 more hostages that it releases. The longer the pause, the more complicated for the IDF to resume the ground offensive — especially if Hamas can encourage and force large numbers of northern Gazan evacuees to return to that part of the war zone — and the greater the international pressure for a full ceasefire.

Protesters hold flags and placards as they take part in a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstration in Trafalgar Square in London, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023

Israelis are not united behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but they are near universally supportive of the war’s mission to dismantle Hamas and get back the hostages. That certainly remains the plan: As IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said on Saturday, “We will return immediately, at the end of the ceasefire, to attacking Gaza, to maneuver in Gaza. We will do it to dismantle Hamas and also to create great pressure to return as quickly as possible and as many hostages as possible, down to the last one of them… We have an obligation to fight and also to risk our lives so that [Israeli citizens] can return to live in safety.”

To put it in the starkest terms, Israelis know this country has no future if the fighting ends with Hamas still a threat, Sinwar still standing, Hezbollah laughing from across the northern border with 10 times the military muscle, and Iran arming, training and inspiring its proxies while proceeding toward the bomb.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi speaks with troops in the Gaza Strip, November 21, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

“Dismantling” Hamas, to Halevi, is understood to include neutralizing as many of those gunmen as possible, neutralizing Hamas’s commanders, and destroying Hamas’s weaponry, control systems and infrastructure. It is no small task, and even if achieved, is not the end of the challenge.

Support for the antisemitic, anti-infidel ideology predates Israel, and will not be destroyed even if Hamas is defanged as a fighting force. But a post-war Gaza would be one in which terror groups do not rule and cannot rearm — as Hamas was able to do these past years with truckloads of weapons from across the Egyptian border — and in which those many regional players who detest Hamas and fear Iran should be encouraged to play a role.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, there’s a lull in fighting that Hamas is determined to exploit. An Israel yearning for its hostages to be home —  with the families whose loved ones have not been freed, and may not be for a long time, showing astounding nobility and solidarity. International pressure for a permanent ceasefire. A wide, essential determination in Israel to ensure the campaign indeed demolishes Hamas. And a key figure, amid pressures of his own, providing moral clarity and support.

In his remarks on Friday, Biden said he saw a “real chance” that the current pause could be extended — not into a long-term ceasefire but to enable more hostages to be released. He was explicit in supporting Israel’s effort, under Netanyahu, to destroy Hamas: “I’ve encouraged the prime minister to focus on trying to reduce the number of casualties while he is attempting to eliminate Hamas, which is a legitimate objective he has,” said the president. “That’s a difficult task, and I don’t know how long it will take.”

 

https://www.timesofisrael.com/hamass-hostage-manipulations-show-how-much-control-it-continues-to-hold-over-gaza/?utm_campaign=daily-edition-2023-11-26&utm_medium=email&utm_source=The+Daily+Edition

Friday, November 24, 2023

Every Israeli “hostage deal” makes it worse for the next time. It means more Jews will be slaughtered later in return for fewer hostages now. The price is too high.


 

Exasperated

 

I oppose any pause. Hamas will use the pause to resupply tunnels with food, water, and fuel

 

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380799?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl


Thursday, November 23, 2023

The other point of view - with much merit, I add hesitantly!

 

Bibi Capitulates to Organized Pressure on Partial Hostage Release, Hamas Wins


Photo Credit: Noam Revkin Fenton/FLASH90
Israelis watch PM Benjamin Netanyahu on TV
 

At the end of a six-hour debate, PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s government early Wednesday morning approved a deal with Hamas to release at least 50 hostages from captivity in Gaza over four days, during which there will be a lull in the fighting.

According to the approved outline, 30 children, eight mothers, and 12 elderly women will be released. The release of every ten additional hostages would result in an additional day of respite for the Hamas Nazis, who will use it to reorganize, replenish their resources, and resume the fighting better prepared.




The cabinet ministers were told that the first group of hostages would be released on Thursday.

According to a Channel 14 report, to make sure that Hamas does not drag out the deal, the government limited its entire duration to only 10 days, presumably starting Thursday. Assuming that Hamas brings more hostages, it will be rewarded with an additional day of respite for every 10 Israelis it releases, within a ten-day window. At the end of the ten days, the deal is void and a new government decision would be required for a new deal.

This clause convinced the Religious Zionism ministers to change their minds and support the deal. However, the three Otzma Yehudit ministers held on to their original objection to the deal.

According to the same report, Likud Minister Miki Zohar taunted Itamar Ben Gvir, asking: Why did you hold an “in-depth” discussion of your faction before you heard all the details? To which Ben Gvir replied: Because everything we heard here now, we saw before in the media, so it’s very good that we held the meeting. At which point Likud Minister Gila Gamliel preached to Ben Gvir: We need to be united in the decision! 

And Ben Gvir responded: But we are not united. This is a decision that will damage generations. It will hurt us badly.

Yes, it will. Prime Minister Netanyahu, not for the first time, capitulated to public pressure and ordered the interruption of a stellar IDF attack on the Nazi enemy so his enemies on the left would love him. He did it in 2011 when he capitulated before the same crowd and released more than a thousand terrorists with Jewish blood on their hands in exchange for a single IDF corporal named Gilad Shalit. Needless to say, those same murderers revisited the Jewish State on October 7, in an operation that was masterminded by Yahya Sinwar who, you guessed it, was part of that 2011 prisoner exchange.

From this point on, we can count on Bibi to be a crowd-pleaser and not a leader. He does not have that one essential quality of a leader that shone throughout PM David Ben Gurion’s tenure: the ability to give the people not what they wanted but what he believed they needed.

HAMAS WINS

Head of the Political Bureau of Hamas Ismail Haniyeh on a rare visit to the Gaza Strip
 

A rejuvenated Hamas issued a statement after the deal had been approved by Israel, saying: “Following difficult and complicated negotiations which lasted many days, we announce that a humanitarian ceasefire has been reached for four days, through the frantic efforts of Egypt and Qatar.”

According to the Nazi group, the deal includes a ceasefire on both sides, the cessation of all Israeli military operations throughout Gaza including the movement of military vehicles, the entry of hundreds of trucks with humanitarian aid, medical aid, and fuel, the cessation of Israeli aircraft traffic over southern Gaza for four days, the cessation of Israeli aircraft traffic over northern Gaza every day between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM, and freedom of movement for Gazans from north to south on the Philadelphi route.

Hamas also stated that Israel committed to not inflict harm or detain anyone throughout the entire Gaza Strip during the ceasefire. And they warned: “Our finger will be on the trigger.”

What can Hamas achieve under the Ceasefire?

1. Move the Gaza population back north with no one stopping them.
2. Move around terrorists using ambulances, tunnels, and thinly disguised as civilians
3. Reset the timers on hidden rocket launchers
4. Map the location of all IDF soldiers and units
5. Import more weapons via Rafah smuggling tunnels
6. Move hostages to new locations
7. Transfer “humanitarian aid” and fuel to Hamas units
8. Build up international pressure to keep the ceasefire going.
9. Build up international pressure to force the IDF out of Gaza.
10. Play psychological games with Israel using the hostages.

And a bonus point:

11. Give the Kaplan anarchists additional time to undermine Israeli unity and put more pressure on Bibi to end the war.

RON DERMER’S AUSCHWITZ FIB

Ron Dermer / Ron Dermer’s Facebook page

Now, if you thought Minister Ron Dermer was a thinker, even an intellectual, I must confess that I’ve changed my mind on that one. Minister Dermer told the cabinet ministers: “Even though the deal is difficult, I don’t think any of you cannot go for it.” And then, so help me, he said: “In the Holocaust, Jews wanted to bomb the tracks leading to Auschwitz. The State Department refused and claimed that it was not one of the goals of the war. For us, it is the goal. We have a country, we have the ability, it’s about saving lives. Grab it with both hands, to save many lives.”

Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer’s official job is to represent the Israeli side to the world media, a job that on occasion requires some fibbing. So, he fibbed on the Auschwitz thing, too.

As the US Department of War kept refusing to bomb the railroad tracks leading to the death camps, even on missions that targeted areas very nearby, by 1944 Jews began to demand the bombing of the Auschwitz-Birkenau complex itself, complete with the thousands of Jewish inmates in it.

The first proposal to bomb Auschwitz was made on May 16, 1944, by Slovak Rabbi Michael Dov Weissmandl, the leader of a Jewish underground. At about the same time, two officials of the Jewish Agency in Palestine made similar suggestions – Yitzhak Gruenbaum to the US Consul-General in Jerusalem Lowell C. Pinkerton, and Moshe Shertok (later Sharet) to George Hall, the British under-secretary of state for foreign affairs.

On June 19, 1944, the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem received the reports summary of the industrial death operations in the Nazi camps, and David Ben-Gurion and the Jewish Agency, immediately upon learning that Auschwitz was indeed a death camp, urged President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to bomb the camp and the train tracks leading to the camp.

Despite the certainty that thousands of Jews may die, these Jewish leaders did not dream of asking the Allied forces to stop the war effort for a single day to negotiate for their release, because you don’t negotiate with Nazis, you kill them, and kill them, until you force them down to their knees.

Israel’s mainstream media ignore a considerable contingency of families of hostages who demand that all the hostages would be set free, or no deal. They argue that no one Jewish soul is more important than another. Moreover, those families argue the national value of eliminating Hamas is higher than the personal value of releasing their loved ones. Also: among the kidnapped soldiers, if they are still alive, there are many wounded whose condition may be worse than that of the children, the mothers, and the elderly slated to go free.

Against their clarity of mind and heart, Netanyahu’s failure as a leader appears even more staggering. To those who still compare him to Ben Gurion, I must paraphrase the 1988 United States vice-presidential Democratic candidate Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s response to Republican candidate Senator Dan Quayle: “I knew Ben Gurion. Bibi, you’re no Ben Gurion.”

https://www.jewishpress.com/news/terrorism-news/bibi-capitulates-to-organized-pressure-on-partial-hostage-release-hamas-wins/2023/11/22/

Wednesday, November 22, 2023

We support the Israeli government in its painful decision, taken with the knowledge that the October 7th massacre was planned and executed by Yahya Sinwar, yemach shemo vezichro, a beast who was freed from an Israeli jail in a previous prisoner swap.

Douglas Murray Is Speaking To All The Bearded Jews With Black Hats Who Somehow Think They Are More Jewish Than Any Other Jew! Listen To His Every Word! And NO --- He Never Learned Daf Yomi! PM
 


We Support and We Hold Responsible


Today, the Government of Israel made one of the most morally and strategically complex and difficult decisions any group of elected officials can confront, making painful concessions to free hostages from the hands of their evil captors.

We support their decision. This support is consistent with the Orthodox Union’s long-standing policy to support the Israeli government’s positions on national security issues. We recognize and respect that this decision is based upon the primacy that the Government of Israel, the People of Israel, and the Torah of Israel place upon the infinite value of human life, a value that our enemies have not begun to embrace.

But even as we support the decision of the Government of Israel, we and all civilized people must hold responsible the many who made this terribly difficult decision necessary.

We hold responsible the Qataris whose ongoing hosting and support of the Hamas terrorists enabled them to massacre, rape, behead, and kidnap hundreds of innocents. The Qataris are part of the problem and not part of the solution.

We hold responsible the United Nations who have yet to find within themselves to unequivocally condemn the brutal massacre of October 7th, offering instead lame and ignorant presentations of context to excuse the inexcusable. The UN was created to prevent another Holocaust and has chosen instead to be its greatest promoter.

We hold responsible the politicians and NGO’s who choose to focus their concern for humanitarian behavior on the world’s most humane army as it fights a war it did not start and never wanted, instead of shining the spotlight of moral and compassionate scrutiny consistently and completely on the brutal and monstrous murderers and kidnappers of Hamas.

We hold responsible the so-called progressives who will stand up for any victim if he is not a Jew, who will prosecute rapists as long as their victims are not Israelis, who forget the friendship and allyship of the Jewish community that has stood by their side in their every struggle, and who now oppose the Jewish people’s right to defend themselves.

We hold responsible the leadership of universities who have allowed their sacred spaces of learning to become places where Jews live in fear and where there is no room on their walls and bulletin boards to display compassion for the plight of hostages taken and held in unambiguous and undebatable violation of every law of war.

We hold responsible the biased media who fan the flames of hatred and antisemitism by their hopelessly imbalanced reporting, briefly telling the story of the hostages before turning their focus to the tragic plight of a population that – while certainly including thousands of innocents – is dominated by a majority whose values reflect those of Hamas in poll after poll, who elected the terrorist government it deserves, celebrated the massacre of Israelis, seeks one judenrein state from the river to the sea, whose so-called moderate leaders continue to play to slay, and who educate their children that Jews have no place on this earth.

We support the Israeli government in its painful decision, taken with the knowledge that the October 7th massacre was planned and executed by Yahya Sinwar, yemach shemo vezichro, a beast who was freed from an Israeli jail in a previous prisoner swap.

We support the Israeli government and urge them to not let this pause in the fire provide an opportunity for Hamas to reorganize and rearm.

We support the Israeli government in this painful decision, and we hold the world responsible for their complicity in their having to make it. You have failed those men, women and children held captive and you must not allow this travesty to continue. You must not rest until each and every hostage from this conflict and from previous conflicts are returned home. You must support the Israeli army as it finishes the job of completely and totally destroying Hamas and does what is needed to ensure that the next plan for Gaza will not allow that territory to again breed the evil that the withdrawal of 2005 did.

We pray to God with all our heart that each and every one of the hostages return home safely, that they and their families find healing, and that they find their place in a welcoming world that has learned from its terrible mistakes and misjudgments and embraces a genuine love of both truth and peace, where Jews may live without fear.

 https://www.ou.org/we-support-and-we-hold-responsible/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Weekly%20Israel%20Week%20of%20November%2021%20copy%20(1)&utm_content=&spMailingID=35231479&spUserID=Mzc0Njg4NTUwNDk0S0&spJobID=2543971845&spReportId=MjU0Mzk3MTg0NQS2

Tuesday, November 21, 2023

The Ranting of an Incoherent Fool~!


FOR ONLY $2500 FOR A STANDARD ROOM YOU CAN HEAR MUCH MORE OF THIS HORRIBLE IDIOCY!


 

Monday, November 20, 2023

On "Moderate" Muslims Before Israel Was A Sovereign State.... A 2 State Dissolution Of The Jews Must Be Forever OFF the Table...

 

A taste of the myth of peaceful Muslim-Jewish coexistence

 

 

A letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on the bloody history of Muslim-Jewish 'coexistence' in countries with Muslim populations.


Dear Secretary of State, Antony Blinken,

Eight days after the October 7th Hamas massacre, you met with Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi. During the course of this meeting, he stated:

“You said that you are a Jewish person and I am an Egyptian person who grew up next to Jews in Egypt. They have never been subjected to any form of oppression or targeting and it has never happened in our region that Jews were targeted in recent or old history.”

You appeared taken aback by his statement and did not counter its veracity, merely responding with “I come as a human being.”

Unfortunately, el-Sisi was propagating an old myth. Indeed, there were periods of fruitful Muslim-Jewish coexistence - the most impressive being the so-called Spanish Golden Age, which tragically ended with the massacre of approximately 4,000 Jews in Granada in 1066 - but to ignore the long-history of “oppression” and “targeting” is a vile form of revisionist history. Notably, this revisionist history is also propagated by the Hamas charter itself (Article 31).

To counter El-Sisi’s claim, let me start with a quote from Maimonides, who, ironically enough, wrote the following from Egypt in 1173:

“Remember, my co-religionists, that on account of the vast number of our sins, God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us… Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase and hate us as much as they…All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.” (Epistle to Yemen).

Muslim killings of civilian Jews from 622-2023:

I have surveyed the available historical record of Muslim killings of civilian Jews from 622-2023. I have identified over 90 incidents between 622-1896, which was prior to the First Zionist Congress, an additional 30 incidents between 1897-1947, prior to the establishment of the State of Israel, and 37 incidents between 1948-1966, prior to the so-called “occupation” of Judea, Samaria and Gaza. These fatal attacks throughout the generations have occurred in over 30 countries.

Notably, this tally does not include attempted killings, brutal woundings, rapes, lootings, forced conversions, Dhimmi-status religious discrimination and financial oppression, and numerous expulsions. For example, regarding attempted killings, while there were over 400 terrorist attacks by Muslims against Jewish civilians, in over 40 different countries (not including Israel), from the year 1968-2003, most did not result in deaths. Similarly, there have been over 1,500 terrorist attacks in Israel from 1948-2023, with many “merely” wounding civilians and not resulting in deaths.

Yet, numbers do not tell the story of these brutal and savage attacks. To give you a glimpse into the horror, below are four accounts of massacres.

In a letter from 1884, J. Matalon described the massacre in the small-town of Demnat, Morocco:

“Within the last hour, a letter has come from Demnat saying that, following the Governer’s receipt of a letter from the Sultan, he has redoubled his cruelty. Shops have been looted, the doors of houses battered in, women raped, children butchered, the Chief Rabbi Joseph Elmaleh, an old man over 80, has been beaten to death by the Governor. In fact, the only men left in Demnat are in prison, all the rest have fled.” (Quoted in Jews under Muslim Rule in the late Nineteenth Century, David Littman, p. 73).

Sir Martin Gilbert, the esteemed historian, described the blood libel of Shiraz, Iran, in 1910:

“On 21 May 1910, four years after equality of religious worship was established in Persia, Jews in the city of Shiraz were confronted with an outburst of anti-Jewish sentiment that was harsh even by the standards of the time. An eyewitness, Nissani Macchallah, a young Jewish teacher at the Alliance school, saw a sayyid - a Muslim dignitary - beating two elderly Jewish men with chains. When he intervened and remonstrated with the sayyid, the Muslim stabbed Macchallah to death.

"As a result of protests from the European Powers, the sayyid was sentenced to three months in prison, and an order was promulgated that called for respect for Jewish lives. To avenge the sayyid’s imprisonment, his followers falsely accused the Jews of killing a young Muslim girl near the Jewish cemetery. They also arranged for copies of the Koran to be thrown into the sewage of the Jewish Quarter in an attempt to provoke an anti-Jewish riot.

"On 31 October 1910 the director of the Alliance School in Shiraz, Tunisian-born Elie Nataf, sent a full account of what followed to his head office in Paris. A ‘frenzied mob’ headed for the Jewish Quarter, he wrote. It arrived at the same time as the soldiers who had been sent by the military governor to protect the Jews. But, ‘as if they were obeying orders,’ the soldiers were ‘the first to break into the Jewish houses, thereby giving the signal to plunder.’ Nataf continued: ‘The carnage and destruction which then occurred for six to seven hours is beyond the capacity of any pen to describe.’...Not one of the 260 houses in the Jewish Quarter was spared…The mob - these ‘fanatics’ - then turned against the Jews themselves…twelve Jews were killed and fifteen seriously injured…

"The riot was a devastating blow to the Jewish community. Five or six thousand Jews had lost everything…This occurred in the same decade as the pogroms in the Christian empire of the Russian Tsars - pogroms that were similar in so many of their details, and that were sending millions of Jews to seek refuge in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. ” (In Ishmael’s House, pp. 129-131).

Describing the pogrom of Safed, British Palestine, in 1929, David Hacohen writes:

"We set out on Saturday morning. … I could not believe my eyes. … I met some of the town's Jewish elders, who fell on my neck weeping bitterly. We went down alleys and steps to the old town. Inside the houses I saw the mutilated and burned bodies of the victims of the massacre, and the burned body of a woman tied to the grille of a window. Going from house to house, I counted ten bodies that had not yet been collected. I saw the destruction and the signs of fire. Even in my grimmest thoughts I had not imagined that this was how I would find Safed where "calm prevailed."

The local Jews gave me a detailed description of how the tragedy had started. The pogrom began on the afternoon of Thursday, August 29, and was carried out by Arabs from Safed and from the nearby villages, armed with weapons and tins of kerosene. Advancing on the street of the Sefardi Jews from Kfar Meron and Ein Zeitim, they looted and set fire to houses, urging each other on to continue with the killing. They slaughtered the schoolteacher, Aphriat, together with his wife and mother, and cut the lawyer, Toledano, to pieces with their knives.

Bursting into the orphanages, they smashed the children's heads and cut off their hands. I myself saw the victims. Yitshak Mammon, a native of Safed who lived with an Arab family, was murdered with indescribable brutality: he was stabbed again and again, until his body became a bloody sieve, and then he was trampled to death. Throughout the whole pogrom the police did not fire a single shot.” (Quoted from Time to Tell: An Israeli Life, 1898-1984, by David Hacohen)

Finally, the infamous “Farhud” of Bagdad in 1941:

This is where the the evils of Nazism met Muslim anti-Semitism, and an estimated 180-600 Jews were killed:

“Bands of enemies were wandering inside the Jewish quarters and were killing and looting. Such events lasted until midnight, and many were killed. Heads of children were cut off like sheep, old men were killed, while women were disgraced…This was how the night passed. In the morning the Jews did not know what had happened to their brothers during the night, and they went out for work as usual, but it was only a short interval given by the killers, after which they resumed their terrorism under the management of policemen and ex-soldiers.

"They began at 9:30 a.m., completing their program of the night before...Killing and looting lasted until 11 a.m. that day…Bodies of the dead were thrown on pavements on both sides of the street…Every Jewish home sustained the loss of one of its members, or it had at least had one of them wounded. The remaining people lived in terror.” (Quoted in The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism, by AG Bostom, p. 663-664).

Unfortunately, these accounts are chillingly similar to what occurred on October 7th, 2023. Hamas’s hideous massacre is part of a long history of Muslim antisemitism and terrorism that goes back centuries.

Secretary Blinken, next time you see el-Sisi, please do not be afraid or ashamed to “come as a Jew” and correct him on his revisionist history.

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/380535?utm_source=activetrail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl


Sunday, November 19, 2023

Check With Your Local Anti-Vax Rabbi If You Should Let Your Kid Die Or Kill Other Kids By Not Getting Vaccinated!

 

Salomon, Kotler, Kamenetsky

Measles Cases Surge Worldwide, Killing 136,000 Last Year


News Picture: Measles Cases Surge Worldwide, Killing 136,000 Last Year

Measles deaths are surging worldwide, prompted by a wave of infections among unvaccinated children, public health experts say.

Deaths from measles increased by 43% globally in 2022 compared to the year before, resulting from an 18% increase in measles cases, the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say in a new report published Thursday.

The estimated number of measles cases stands at 9 million and deaths at 136,000 for 2022, mostly among children, the report published Nov. 17 in the CDC publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

“The increase in measles outbreaks and deaths is staggering, but unfortunately, not unexpected given the declining vaccination rates we've seen in the past few years,” John Vertefeuille, director of CDC's Global Immunization Division, said in a CDC news release. “Measles cases anywhere pose a risk to all countries and communities where people are under-vaccinated. Urgent, targeted efforts are critical to prevent measles disease and deaths.”   

In 2022, 37 countries experienced large or disruptive measles outbreaks, compared with 22 countries the year before, the report noted.

There were 26 African nations that experienced a measles outbreak in 2022, along with six in the Eastern Mediterranean, two in Southwest Asia and one in Europe.

Measles is preventable through a two-dose vaccination, but there were still 33 million children who missed a measles vaccine dose -- nearly 22 million missed their first dose and another 11 million missed their second.

The global vaccine coverage rate stands at 83% for the first dose and 74% for the second, well under the 95% two-dose coverage that creates herd immunity and protects communities from outbreaks.

Low-income countries continue to have the lowest vaccination rates, at 66%.

Of the 22 million children who missed their first dose of measles vaccine, more than half live in just 10 countries: Angola, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nigeria, Pakistan and Philippines.

“The lack of recovery in measles vaccine coverage in low-income countries following the pandemic is an alarm bell for action.  Measles is called the inequity virus for good reason. It is the disease that will find and attack those who aren't protected,” said Kate O'Brien, WHO director for Immunization, Vaccine and Biologicals. “Children everywhere have the right to be protected by the lifesaving measles vaccine, no matter where they live.“

https://www.medicinenet.com/measles_cases_surge_worldwide_killing_136k_people/news.htm?ecd=mnl_day_111723