Dresden Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders. Gaza civilians are no more innocent than Germans who elected Hitler.

Why I am not moved emotionally by Gazan deaths

 

Dresden after the bombing

Date	13–15 February 1945
Location	Dresden, Germany

13–15 February 1945

Dresden, Germany

Dresden Gaza until Hamas releases the hostages and surrenders. Gaza civilians are no more innocent than Germans who elected Hitler. Opinion.

 

Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

 

I get the daily Washington Post. It is important for me to know what the left is saying, too. That way I avoid the echo chamber. In the past, I got the daily New York Times, but I had to stop because I am Jewish. I could not continue supporting anti-Semitism.

The New York Times is anti-Semitic and has been for a century. They buried Jews by burying the Holocaust. They also collaborated in the murder of millions of Ukrainians, as their Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Walter Duranty, filed glowing reports from the Soviet Union about Stalin while that butcher was starving millions to death during the Holodomor.

Not only could I go on-and-on about New York Times anti-Semitism, but I actually have done so here and elsewhere. You are welcome to read it.

So I now get the Washington Post. They are pretty-much just as bad. Before the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered on October 7 even had all their bodies identified, WaPo had moved from mourning the unsuspecting Jewish dead and turned its focus instead to the “poor innocent dead of Gaza.” And that has been its focus these past six weeks. By contrast, as leftist as Maariv and Yediot are, they do stand for self-preservation. (Haaretz, though, does not even go that far. They are fine with national suicide.) For sanity, I read my favorite Arutz Sheva columnists and Kalman Liebskind in Maariv.

I have not been moved by the headlines about Gazans being killed amid Israel’s attacks on Hamas terrorists and their weapons and tunnels. I don’t care. Although I read WaPo to avoid the echo chamber, I nevertheless now skip the crying, sobbing, weeping articles about the crying, sobbing, weeping Gazan dead. I just don’t read them. I just don’t care. For my two grush (remember agorot?), Israel can Dresden Gaza into rubble until:

(i) Hamas releases the remaining 150+ Jews and non-Jews it kidnaped,

(ii) Hamas unconditionally surrenders to Israel, and

(iii) All remaining Hamas leaders whom Israel has not yet killed submit themselves to a Nuremberg-type War Crimes Trial.

No Hostage release? Then Dresden Gaza.

No unconditional surrender? Then Dresden Gaza.

No submission by Hamas leaders for a War Crimes trial? Then Dresden Gaza

As you may have noticed, I use “Dresden” as a verb. It was good enough for America during World War II. It was good enough for Britain. It works for me. Dresden Gaza.

I know. I know: “But what about the poor innocent people of Gaza? What did they do to deserve this?”

Here’s what they did:

“Palestinians” elected Hamas in 2006 to be their government. Ismail Haniyeh, their leader, became prime minister. “Palestinians” had a free election in 2006. Hamas won. Was the election a legitimate reflection of Arab sentiment among “Palestinians”? A former president of the United States of America, doubling as a Jew hater, went there to observe the election and declared it a legitimate, proper election.

Thank you, Jimmy Carter. We know that your intention in legitimizing the Hamas election was to hurt Israel and Jews by legitimizing the rise of Hamas. But G-d is so good, Mr. President. In His mercy, He has kept you alive just barely long enough to watch your “legitimate” Hamas crushed and destroyed — and so much of Gaza turned to rubble — because you legitimized their election.

So that’s what the civilians of Gaza did in 2006. They elected Hamas. Hamas defeated Fatah, another terror organization, the one that runs the “Palestine Authority” in Judea and Samaria (the so-called “West Bank”), by winning 74 seats to Fatah’s 45. Abu Mazen (known in the West as “Mahmoud Abbas”) heads Fatah. Another terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, came in a distant third. A parliamentary majority required either 67 seats or an armory of bombs, rifles, grenades, bullets, and such. Hamas had more of both.

In Germany, the civilians freely elected Hitler. They knew what he would do because he wrote it in Mein Kampf he would do it, told voters he would do it, and in time he did it. Moreover, they knew what he was doing when he did it, and they said nothing. They were, to use the German (and Yiddish) term, shtum. They allowed Dachau to happen, and Sobibor and Treblinka and Majdanek and Bergen-Belsen and Theresienstadt and, yes, Auschwitz. So, in due measure, those “poor innocent German civilians” got Dresdened.

Good. I hope they lived just long enough to know they had been bombed to death.

And now the time has come for Gaza to be Dresdened. They are lucky. Dresden happened during February 13-15, 1945. Close to 4,000 tons — that is 8 million pounds — of bombs were dropped on them in those three days. Some 25,000 Germans were killed. Much of the city burned down. All in three days. Got a problem with that? Talk to the hand: Hitler was elected March 5, 1933. The people of Dresden enjoyed 12 years’ respite before the Allies Dresdened them. By contrast, Hamas was elected in 2006, and that population got 17 years until their time to be Dresdened. Five extra years to murder Jews.

Was it Obama who told John McCain that “elections have consequences”? At first, the German public did not align with Adolf. In both 1924 and 1928, he got fewer than a million votes. And then his rise began. In 1930 he got 6,409,000. In July 1932 he got 13,745,000. In November 1932 it dropped a bit to 11,737,000. But then he got 17,277,000 in March 1933, enough to form a Nazi-driven coalition.

Dresden them.

And so it has gone for Hamas.

Let us be clear: If the Government of Israel were trying to murder innocent civilians wantonly, just to inflict terror and to horrify them into submission, I would condemn that. No Jew can accept or refrain from criticizing organized institutional efforts to harm civilians wantonly. There has to be a reason, a justification. If Israel were deliberately bombing residential structures just to kill people randomly in their homes and bombing hospitals just to inflict suffering on the ill in the abstract, there might be room for criticism. But that is not Israel nor the Jewish people. We have our ethic, and the Arab Muslims have theirs. We have our religious guidelines and theological authorities, and they have theirs.

Israel will not target innocent civilians knowingly. If they do kill people who should not be killed, it will be by accident.

But, otherwise, Israel in Gaza specifically destroys known military targets: rocket launchers, land mines, IEDs (improvised explosive devices), military drones, RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and their launchers, anti-tank missiles, and other military battlefield materiel — and the people storing and launching them. If such terrorists are operating from specific residential buildings — say, running a rocket factory or storing attack drones in an 8th-floor apartment — then Israel may well bomb the entire building. But they won’t bomb the building next door. They attack with whatever precision is humanly possible. And if the day comes that they make a mistake, they will apologize. That is what America does.

By now, we all know that Hamas men and their weapons hide in and behind women, children, residential apartment buildings, hospitals, mosques, schools, and ambulances. When any or all of these are identified positively for their military threat, Israel will destroy them. And if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) cannot avoid killing civilians alongside, then Dresden entails collateral casualties, and Israel now must Dresden Gaza. Northern Gaza, southern Gaza. Beit Hanoun, Jabaliyah, Deir al-Balah, Khan Younis, Abasan al-Kabera. Dresden one and all until (i) all hostages are freed; (ii) Hamas surrenders; (iii) their remaining leaders submit to War Crimes Trials. Turn them into Bedrock with Fred and Wilma, Barney and Betty, Pebbles and Bam-Bam.

Importantly, Israel has had to fight five previous Gaza wars started by Hamas these past 16 years. Each time, Israel stopped its winning responses, forced by international pressure to cease fire and by a convoluted “Conceptzia” that they could be bought off. Each time, Hamas used the ceasefire to re-arm, build more tunnels, and militarize more of the population. They now have 40,000 terrorists in 300 miles of those 500-800 tunnels. This time, upon having experienced the terror attacks of Shabbat Shmini Atzeret on October 7, Israel has learned the price of stopping halfway through a war. That “Concept” simply left behind the weeds to grow back and fight an even more destructive next war. This time Israel must uproot even the weeds.

When the Washington Post and others present their empathy for the “poor innocent Gaza civilians,” I don’t care. They are poor only because Hamas has used the billions of dollars they have received from Qatar and European — and American — taxpayers to build an underground tunnel system as expansive as the New York City subway system instead of allocating the money to the public by building a beautiful country. Believe it or not, with all that money that has poured in — more than $8 billion — they have not even built a water or electricity infrastructure in their 16 years.

“Humanitarian” nothing. They crossed the border by the hundreds with Hamas fighters to pillage and murder. They spat upon, beat and cursed the hostages. An UNRWA teacher starved a hostage in his home. So did a doctor.

They should get no food, no water, no meds, no fuel. Let them drink and eat their tunnels. That would set that murderous civilian population against their Hamas masters, just as ravenously starving attack dogs will consume their owners if desperately hungry enough. General Ulysses S. Grant was the King of Sieges. He laid siege to Vicksburg, Mississippi and presented it as an Independence Day gift to President Lincoln on July 4, 1863, the same day Gen. Meade partially won Gettysburg. But Meade “mowed the lawn” and allowed Robert E. Lee to escape back south to Virginia with his Confederate army. So Lincoln fired Meade despite his winning at Gettysburg. Lincoln had no patience for generals “mowing the lawn.” He finally selected Grant and, in time, Grant laid siege to Richmond. It is said that the initials in “U.S. Grant” stood for “Unconditional Surrender.”

The Gaza civilians are no more “innocent” than were the Germans who elected Hitler. Perhaps Israel needs a Chief of Staff with the initials K.L.T. — K’ni’ah L’lo T’nai.

So I am not moved emotionally — at all – by the news or sight of Gazans trekking now from north to south Gaza, or from one part of the south to the next where Israel is not presently attacking. They brought this on themselves. They celebrated too many mowings. If a country did this to America, the United States would Dresden them, or we would Hiroshima/Nagasaki them. So let Israel Dresden Gaza. No need to Hiroshima them. The breeze sometimes blows north. Dresden will do.

Adapted by the writer for Arutz Sheva from a version of this article that first appeared here in The American Spectator.

To receive Rav Fischer’s Weekly Extensive Torah Commentaries or to attend any or all of Rav Fischer’s weekly 60-minute live Zoom classes on the Weekly Torah Portion, the Biblical Prophets, the Mishnah, Rambam Mishneh Torah, or Advanced Judaic Texts, send an email to: shulstuff@yioc.org

Rav Fischer’s memorable two televised debates with a national leader of CAIR, the leading anti-Semitic Arab Muslim body in the United States, can be found here and here.

His latest deeply moving series of three informational and inspirational programs on the Hamas Gaza War may be found here, here, and here on YouTube. Because of some sensitive subject matter and viewing content relating to Hamas terror, YouTube is restricting the programs to viewers 18 and up.

‘Israeli female soldiers shot in crotch, vagina, breasts on October 7

“It was often impossible for families to be shown faces – and it seems as if mutilation of these women’s faces was an objective in their murders."

Blood in houses when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Kibbutz Be'eri, and 30 other nearby communities in Southern Israel on October 7, killing more than 1400 people, and taking more than 200 hostages into Gaza, near the Israeli-Gaza border.

(Warning: this story describes deeply disturbing events and testimonials in graphic detail.)

Expressions of agony survived their deaths, army reservist Shari Mendes said as she described what experts saw when they identified and prepared for the burial the female bodies of Hamas’s October 7 massacre.

“These women arrived with their eyes opened, their mouths in grimaces, their fists clenched,” said Mendes, whose IDF rabbinical unit worked with the bodies, all of which were brought to the IDF's Shura base.

“The soldiers that we dealt with had expressions of agony on their faces still,” said Mendes. "I remember one young woman whose arm was broken in so many places it was difficult for us to lay her arm in the burial shroud, her leg too. In her case the entire left side of her body was shredded, torn apart, most likely by a grenade."

Gender-based violence

She spoke Monday at a sidebar event at the United Nations in New York organized by Israel’s mission to the world body. “Hear Our Voices: Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in the October 7 Hamas terror attack,” was held to highlight stories of Hamas rapes and gender mutilation during the attack, which have been largely swept under the rug by the international community, including the UN itself.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN Women issued condemnations of such acts only last week.

The destruction caused by Hamas terrorists in Kibbutz Kissufim on October 7, 2023, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, November 1, 2023

At Monday’s event, Mandes said that many of the bodies of young females arrived at Shura “in bloody shredded rags or just in underwear—and their underwear was often very bloody.”

“Our team commander saw several female soldiers who were shot in the crotch—intimate parts/vagina—or shot in the breast. This seemed to be a systematic genital mutilation of a group of victims,” Mendes said.

In a filmed testimonial played at the event, a survivor said she watched a terrorist that morning cut off a woman’s breasts and then play with them—after he had raped her.

“Our unit has seen bodies that were beheaded or had limbs cut off, mutilated," Mendes said. "One young woman came in with no legs: they had been cut off. We saw several severed heads, one with a large kitchen knife still embedded in the neck.”

“Charred remains arrived and had to be identified and prepared for burial. These bodies were burned beyond recognition, often without arms or legs; they did not resemble anything human,” Mendes said.

“Sometimes we sifted through piles of ash that disintegrated as we touched them. These soldiers were burnt alive at very high temperatures.”

Terrible disfiguring 

Among those bodies that were not burned, the heads were often badly disfigured, she described.

“Heads and faces were covered in blood, they were shot in the eyes, face, and skull,” Mendes said.

“It was often impossible for families to be shown faces—and it seems as if mutilation of these women’s faces was an objective in their murders.

For some of them, their "heads were bashed in so badly that their brains were spilling out,” Mendes described.

“Some were shot in the heads so many times at close range that their heads were almost blown off,” she said.

“In some cases, this was done after death, just out of cruelty,” she said, explaining that the absence of blood in the wounds showed that none was left in the body to drain out.

Shura base personnel's grim work

Mendes arrived at Shura on October 8, the day after the Hamas attack in which the terror group killed over 1,200 people including hundreds of soldiers stationed on the southern border.

The scene that greeted her that morning was “unimaginable in scale,” she said.  

“Body bags were piled to the ceiling, lining the corridors in every room. Refrigerator trucks were waiting outside, also full.

“Body bags just kept coming in all shapes and sizes. Many were oozing liquids and the floors were wet. The smell of death was already unbearable. It is impossible to overemphasize the number of bodies we were dealing with; the sense of shock and despair,” she said.

Teams have worked to identify bodies at Shura around the clock since that day, Mendes said.

Hamas “did not show these women any honor in life, but it was important to us and our teams, groups of women, that we show them deep love and gentleness as we prepared them for burial.”

Female IDF teams who prepared the bodies for burial are often the last to see the bodies.

“We held them in our hearts even just for a moment, as if they were our daughters, we really loved them.”

As a child of a Holocaust survivor, Mendes said, “I understand the importance of bearing of witness.. I am here to be the voice of those who cannot testify.”

Sheryl Sandberg: We can all agree—nothing justifies rape

Among those who spoke at the event about the importance of condemning the use of rape as an act of war, were former Facebook chief operations officer Sheryl Sandberg and former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton, with the latter sending a taped message.

Sandberg said that rape was recognized as an act of war only 30 years ago, but not enough has been done. “That is why this moment is so critical. We have come so far in establishing that rape is a crime against humanity and we have come so far in believing survivors of sexual assault in so many situations," she said.

“That is why the silence on these war crimes is dangerous. It threatens to undo decades of progress, to undo an entire movement. The world has to decide who to believe. Do we believe the Hamas spokesperson that rape is forbidden and that therefore it could not have possibly happened on October 7?

“Or do we believe the women whose bodies tell us how they spent the last moments of their lives?”

Sandberg said that victims of those rapes could tell their own story if only they had been allowed to live. In their names, the principle that rape should never be used as an act of war should be recognized.

“This truth must be upheld despite the politics of our time. No matter what marches you are attending, what flag you are flying, what religions you are practicing... there is one thing we can all agree on. There is no circumstance that justifies rape.”

Clinton said that as a global community “we must respond to weaponized sexual violence wherever it happens, with absolute condemnation. There can be no justifications and no excuses. Rape as a weapon of war is a crime against humanity.”

“Organizations, governments and individuals who are committed to a better future for women and girls have a responsibility to condemn all violence against women,” she said.

‘It is outrageous that some who claim to stand for justice are closing their eyes and their hearts to the victims of Hamas.” 

 

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-776654?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Israel-Hamas+war%3A+IDF+penetrates+heart+of+southern+Gaza&utm_campaign=December+5%2C+2023+2

How else to explain the mindboggling lack of outrage with beheadings of Israeli infants and gang rapes of Jewish teenage girls?

 

The folly of ceasefire 

 

Soon after Israel began its counteroffensive, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. It declined to make any statement condemning Hamas.

 

Pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters gather in front of the Colorado Convention Center, the site of the opening plenary of the Jewish National Fund-USA annual conference, Nov. 30, 2023.

 

 

In the clamor for a ceasefire in Gaza, there sure is a lot of ceasing on demand. A multitude of ultimatums, public outcries and violent actions during protests that require arrest.

Nothing is too sacred to disrupt: “Gas the Jews!” abhorrently shouted at the Sydney Opera House; Armistice Day in the United Kingdom overrun with mobs of antisemites parading through Central London; the lighting of the Christmas Tree in Rockefeller Center enflamed by un-peaceful protests reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

This worldwide onslaught, undertaken mostly by Muslims and their “progressive” acolytes (and useful idiots: See Susan Sarandon), carried signs and chanted slogans calling for the end of a variety of Israeli cruelties: “occupation,” “apartheid,” “genocide,” “blockade” and “open air prison.” That’s a lot of ceasing, but it can be distilled to a single objective, what’s truly motivating the protestors: “Cease Jews!”

There is madness and nihilism among us—infecting minds, poisoning hearts, revealing truths. We have given radical Muslims license to forcibly hijack our streets and call for the death of Jews—wherever they may be found. The irony, of course, is that with each of these grotesque hate-fests, Jew haters are making the case for a Jewish homeland, for why the existence of Israel has, aside from the Holocaust, never before been this essential.

Such a marked contrast from the somber assemblies that Jews undertake in support of Israel. No hoarse shouting; no “death” chants and flag burnings. A tale of two communities. Which do you prefer as neighbors and fellow citizens? So stark are the side-by-side comparisons that people choosing the pro-Hamas camp can only mean one thing: antisemitism is alive and well, with practitioners shamelessly availing themselves of this permissive moment of unabashed hatred.

How else to explain the mindboggling lack of outrage with beheadings of Israeli infants and gang rapes of Jewish teenage girls? The victims on Oct. 7 were not enemy combatants. Just like Hamas’s launching of indiscriminate rocket fire at Israel since 2007, Jews need not wear an IDF uniform to be targeted for death. The savagery of Oct. 7, and the refusal of so many to condemn the actions of Hamas, suggests that so long as it is directed against Jews, violence is excusable, crimes are comeuppance, terrorism will go unnamed and Hamas will be treated like heroes.

Soon after Israel began its counteroffensive, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire. It declined to make any statement condemning Hamas.

The U.N. Women’s organization, with its specific mandate to protect women from sexual violence, demanded a ceasefire without mentioning Hamas or including a single word of disgust for the unspeakable violations against Jewish women that took place on Oct. 7. Those words only recently arrived, but tepidly stated and silent about who was to blame. The U.N. General Secretary also was inexcusably late in mentioning that Hamas broke a ceasefire on Oct. 7 by breaking every known rule of armed conflict.

It’s far worse than withholding outrage. There is also an obscene denial of the horrors that took place. Apparently, Israel fabricated the whole thing. The Jewish state staged its own massacre. The home movies taken by Hamas and treated like a Hollywood premier on social media must be fake, too. Gazans are so predisposed to being used as human shields, they actually believe that the rest of the world is as depraved as they are.

People are actually saying such things, and far too many are believing it. We are facing a pernicious strain of antisemitism never before seen. The evidence left behind is not DNA, but AI—a combination of pure ignorance and diseased malice. The alliances Jews once believed they could rely upon have disappeared into the fog of the culture wars. Jewish Lives Don’t Matter and Believe Survivors unless they’re Jews.

This is the reason why the Squad, progressives in Congress, university faculty and their mindless students have been so begrudging and dismissive when it comes to condemning Hamas. For them, this particular breed of terrorists are, in actuality, freedom fighters engaged in acceptable acts of resistance. In their twisted moral logic, the fact that Hamas is a terrorist organization is what makes its trademark Jew-hatred so attractive.

This is why they can’t stoop to reproaching Hamas. In the vocabulary of the West, “terrorism” is a negative. But for Hamas apologists, being called a terrorist is not an insult, but an allure. After all, Hamas achieves what casual, cocktail party antisemitism can never accomplish: a demonstrated capacity to rid themselves of Jews, murdering them—even the infants.

We should tragically presume that those who remain silent must regard Hamas as antisemitic rock stars, deserving not of just deserts, but everlasting praise.

As for the rest of us—Jews and non-Jews alike—surrounded by such anti-American animus and agitprop, we should prepare ourselves to accept that our cherished liberal values are under attack, that civilization itself is in jeopardy. Criminality and mass rioting is being normalized—whether it is smash-and-grab at the Apple Store or the disruption of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in the Big Apple.

Tolerate moral relativism too long, capitulate to the new order of woke-fueled protocols, and you end up with moral rot, confusion and mediocrity.

You don’t have to look very far. A high school in Queens turned into a lynch mob for a teacher who stood up for Israel. Firebombs were thrown at a Jewish Center in Montreal. As many as 15 synagogues in New York City received bomb threats this past Shabbat.

Much of this was taking place during Israel’s four-day ceasefire. So, is this really about the killing of Palestinian civilians? No protests erupted to denounce the 100,000 civilians killed in Ukraine. Are Palestinian lives more worthy than other civilians?

And where was the worldwide demand to return the Israeli and American hostages? Instead of blaming Israel for defending itself, Bernie Sanders, Barack Obama, Tony Blair and the U.N. secretary general should have traveled to Egypt, and standing at the border with Gaza, demanded through loudspeakers: “Let the Jewish people go!”

Latent antisemitism is a thing of the past. Jew-hatred has returned, openly, and it is raging. After thousands of years, emanating in fits and starts, what is finally long overdue is the ceasing not of fire, but antisemitism.

 

https://www.jns.org/the-folly-of-ceasefire/

This Is not about Land, This Is About Islam! The killers relate their conquest to Islam. They were killing in the name of Allah, yelling “Allahu Akbar” — Allah is the greatest — while standing over the corpses of dead Jews.

 

I watched the footage of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel — this isn’t war, this is genocide  

Screenings happen in Hollywood every day, but there has never been a screening in Los Angeles anywhere close to “Bearing Witness,” the uncensored collection of video clips of the Oct. 7 massacre of 1,400 civilians in Israel. 

Before leaving my West Hollywood home to attend the screening, I paused. Did I really want to see the murder of innocent people on the silver screen? Was it ethical to watch people butchered in broad daylight? I reluctantly left, grabbing a black yarmulke on the way out, not sure if I was attending a film or a funeral. 

The auditorium slowly filled with studio execs, producers and invited members of the public. I was surprised how chatty people were. I also noticed the aisle seats nearest the exits were occupied first. The lights dimmed, and over 200 people fell deathly silent. What unfolded over the next 43 minutes were the last moments of 138 innocent civilians, mainly Jews. 

Video sources were clearly identified. Much of the footage was taken from Hamas body cameras, a sure sign the killers thought they were murdering in impunity. CCTV cameras and victims’ phones provided time-stamped evidence too. 

I am a dedicated Jew, a lover of Israel, and a teacher of the Holocaust. Notwithstanding, the emotional investment I have, the only version of me that showed up to watch, was the genocide scholar in me. I wanted to know what I could verify. 

Here is what I can tell you: 

The terrorists were well organized. There is a chain of command as evidenced by radio communications, uniforms, weaponry and personnel dispersion. It was a pre-planned and managed massacre. 

The terrorists were not well-trained. Some went about their murderous work precisely. Most appear to be amateurs, conducting mass murder in a haphazard manner. They will not fare well against the Israel Defense Forces. 

Civilians were the principal target. We see killers going house to house in search of unarmed civilians. Many of the victims were still in pajamas when they were hunted down. Killings are carried out in close quarters, victims executed one by one in their kitchens, bathrooms and bomb shelters. 

Corpses were mutilated. There are missing limbs, with punctures to the chest, broken bones, some burned beyond recognition. Mutilation appears to be coordinated. One radio intercept to Gaza reveals an instruction to bring back the dead body of an IDF soldier and posthumously crucify him. 

Victims were terrified. This was evidenced by many who kept their social media feeds live until the moment of death. The fear in their eyes as their killers approach is captured in their last posts. 

The killers relate their conquest to Islam. They were killing in the name of Allah, yelling “Allahu Akbar” — Allah is the greatest — while standing over the corpses of dead Jews. 

Murdering Jews is socially acceptable. One terrorist called his parents from a dead victim’s phone. “Mom, I killed 10 Jews!”, he says with great pride. In the streets of Gaza, civilians rushed to praise the terrorists when they returned with hostages and corpses. 

The killing of children and sexual assault were not shown in the reel, to protect the victims, but are implied. 

At times members of the audience whimpered as an impending murder was anticipated. Several people left the auditorium. It was too much for some to confront. Once seen, the images cannot be unseen. They are permanently etched in my mind’s eye. 

Two young boys are being protected by their father. As they run for safety to their shelter, the terrorists throw a grenade. The father defends his children and takes the full force of the grenade. He is killed instantly. His body protects his own children. The two boys emerge unscathed and return to the kitchen. There they discuss their father’s death. A terrorist enters the kitchen to raid their refrigerator. After he leaves, one young boy, who moments earlier had been sleeping peacefully on a tranquil Saturday morning, is heard screaming on the security camera, “I wish I was not alive!” 

A first-responder arrives at the scene of the Supernova music festival. We hear him counting corpses by the makeshift bar. His voice is horrified when he reaches four, then five corpses. He then turns to look behind the bar. His camera scans the scene, of bodies sprawled lifeless on the floor. He stops counting. There are too many corpses to count. “Hello, can anyone show a sign of life?” he asks over and over. There is no response. 

As the killers depart, they take their prey: hostages, maimed and sexually assaulted, thrown into flatbeds. The scene they leave behind is an Armageddon of destruction. Corpses hang out of their cars; people are left for dead under their kitchen table; there are charred remains; twisted broken limbs; a decapitated soldier. 

I have studied genocide in Rwanda, Cambodia, Guatemala, Armenia and the Holocaust. I have rarely seen such carnage carried out with such fervor in such short a period of time. 

As the last frame ended, there was silence. I bolted for the closest exit. I now knew I was not attending a film screening or a funeral. I was there to bear witness to the evidence of genocide. 

 

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4307298-i-watched-the-footage-of-the-oct-7-attack-in-gaza-this-isnt-war-this-is-genocide/

Stephen D. Smith is emeritus executive director at the USC Shoah Foundation and CEO and co-founder of StoryFile, which recently produced “Tell Me, Inge,” an immersive Holocaust education experience in partnership with Meta, the World Jewish Congress, UNESCO and Claims Conference. He was the inaugural UNESCO chair on Genocide Education, the editor of the “Routledge Handbook of Religion, Mass Atrocity, and Genocide,” and the founder of the Kigali Genocide Memorial, Rwanda. 

Tags Gaza Hamas Israel “Bearing Witness”

President Harry Truman - "cry-baby scientist." never wanted to see that son of a bitch in this office again". How the A-Bomb Saved the Lives of 32 Million People !

 

When President Truman met Oppenheimer 

Remembering Oppenheimer's meeting with President Truman: , he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, 'Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?'”

The meeting between Oppenheimer and Truman did not go well. It was then that Oppenheimer famously told Truman that "I feel I have blood on my hands", which was unacceptable to Truman, who immediately replied that that was no concern of Oppenheimer's, and that if anyone had bloody hands, it was the president. Oppenheimer felt as though the future was in the balance, and that the American government was using/would use the bomb as a political tool against the Soviets.

Truman had very little use for Oppenheimer then--little use for his "hand wringing", for his high moral acceptance of question in the use of the bomb, for his second-guessing the decision. Cold must have descended in the meeting, as Truman later told David Lillenthal of Oppenheimer that he "never wanted to see that son of a bitch in this office again". Truman would retell the story in different ways, but with generally the same result, waxing about how he dismissed the "cry-baby scientist."

Although President Harry Truman, the man who made the final decision to drop the world’s first atomic weapon on Hiroshima, appears for only a few minutes in “Oppenheimer,” his scene is a memorable one. (Minor spoilers ahead, if you want to go into “Oppenheimer” completely blind.)

In it, Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer meets with Truman in the Oval Office after the bomb is dropped. Truman, played by Gary Oldman, is initially excited to meet the man in charge of the Manhattan Project, but his delight soon turns to anger when a nervous Oppenheimer says he feels he has “blood on my hands.” The meeting ends with Truman coldly offering his handkerchief and calling Oppenheimer a “crybaby” as they part ways.

But is that what actually happened when Oppenheimer met the president?

Remarkably, it really did go that poorly. In the weeks after Hiroshima, the reality of how the world had changed weighed heavily on Oppenheimer. On the recommendation of an acquaintance, Oppenheimer asked for a meeting with Truman. On Oct. 25, 1945, Truman was introduced for the very first time to the man who had headed the Manhattan Project. 

The meeting was convivial at first, but the tone shifted when Truman asked Oppenheimer when he thought the Soviet Union would have its first nuclear weapon. Oppenheimer replied that he didn’t know. “Never!” Truman boisterously responded.

This did not go over well with Oppenheimer, who was sure that scientists in other countries could certainly figure out what the Americans had. (Neither Oppenheimer nor Truman yet knew that spies at Los Alamos had already given the Soviets the critical information they needed for their nuclear weapons program.) Flustered, Oppenheimer then made a mistake.

“Mr. President,” he said, “I feel I have blood on my hands.”

Oppenheimer’s biographers in “American Prometheus” recounted how Truman would later retell the incident: “Over the years, Truman embellished the story. By one account, he replied, 'Never mind, it’ll all come out in the wash.' In yet another version, he pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket and offered it to Oppenheimer, saying, 'Well, here, would you like to wipe your hands?'”

Ultimately, “American Prometheus” posits the most likely response Truman gave to Oppenheimer was a bit less dramatic. “I told him the blood was on my hands — to let me worry about that,” Truman allegedly said to a colleague. 

However it went down, the exchange destroyed any collegiality the men might have formed. Truman stood up to signal the meeting was over, and Oppie walked out defeated. “Blood on his hands, dammit, he hasn’t half as much blood on his hands as I have,” Truman was overheard saying afterward. “You just don’t go around bellyaching about it.”

“I don’t want to see that son of a bitch in this office ever again,” Truman reportedly told Secretary of State Dean Acheson. In a letter to Acheson the next year, Truman referred to Oppenheimer as a “cry-baby scientist.”

The failure was not just an interpersonal one. Oppenheimer “had the opportunity to impress the one man who possessed the power to help him return the nuclear genie to the bottle,” wrote Oppenheimer’s biographers, “and he had utterly failed."

Instead, Truman and the presidents to come would rely on the advice of Ernest Lawrence and Edward Teller (played by Josh Hartnett and Benny Safdie in “Oppenheimer,” respectively). Unlike Oppenheimer, who came to believe the government should stay out of scientific study, these two Manhattan Project physicists believed in the union of government and nuclear weapons research. In partnership with the Truman administration, Lawrence and Teller continued nuclear weapons development under the oversight of the U.S. government.

While Oppenheimer cautioned against the creation of the H-bomb, Teller went on to become the so-called “father of the hydrogen bomb,” a weapon far more destructive than the ones dropped on Japan. 

Atomic Salvation: How the A-Bomb Saved the Lives of 32 Million People

• 
  

Atomic Salvation: How the A-Bomb Saved the Lives of 32 Million People by Tom Lewis. Casemate Publishers, 2020, 351pp.

Does the United States deserve to be condemned for the atomic bombing of Japan? In Atomic Salvation, Dr. Tom Lewis—an independent historian, former high school teacher, and Australian intelligence analyst who served in the Middle East—seeks to reexamine the decision, consider the military and operational factors involved, and project how the war might have proceeded if the atomic bomb had not been used.

The question has never been merely of dispassionate academic interest. The common presumption of the efficacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was offered as a final proof of how airpower—particularly against mass civilian populations—transformed the nature of war and justified the development of American strategic doctrine and the resources devoted to the construction of the nuclear stockpile and its associated delivery systems.

Of course, immediately after the events, American opinion was almost unanimous that the two atomic attacks, while horrific, were defensible by the millions of American and Japanese lives saved when the shocks of the attacks broke the will of the Japanese to continue and compelled them to surrender. In the years following, a wave of revisionist histories emerged condemning the use of the atomic bombs as illegal and/or unjustifiable. The debate between conventional, revisionist, and post-revisionist historians reflects the politics of the years when they were written as well as the changes in evidence available.

The author does an admirable job of summing up the operational conditions for the Japanese and American militaries until August 1945 and the strength of the resolve of the military and the Japanese people to fight to the bitter end. If the choices were to end the war with atomic weapons or invade the Japanese home islands, it is clear that the invasion would have cost millions of lives on both sides. Even if the Americans had decided to maintain the blockade and continue mass aerial bombardment, there is good reason to believe that an invasion force would eventually have to be launched and that any invasion would have been opposed by the military and civilian populations at enormous cost. In the meantime, a policy of imposed starvation—of food, as well as materiel—would have weakened Japanese capabilities without reducing their resolve.

Lewis estimates that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the extent that it induced Japanese surrender, saved the lives of roughly 30 million people. His calculations are detailed, and his argument is persuasive. If the atomic bombs were the final straw that pushed the emperor to step out of his traditional role and side with civilians willing to negotiate surrender, then his case is persuasive. But are those the only alternatives? Were there other factors at play?

For example, up until the end there was a hope among the Japanese leadership that, with the Soviet Union playing the role of a neutral intermediary, it would be possible to enter negotiations with the active allies and avoid the “unconditional surrender” required of them by the Potsdam Declaration. In June, a month prior to Potsdam, the Supreme War Council had already decided to pursue a negotiated peace. Despite the extreme objections of the Army, by the second week of July, work had begun to develop the language of a peace proposal.

The bombing of Hiroshima occurred on the morning of Monday, 6 August 1945. News of the destructive force of a single bomb was transmitted to Tokyo that afternoon, but details were uncertain and their implications unclear. On Tuesday, an Army communiqué noted the use of a “new type of bomb.” On Wednesday morning, the Japanese were officially notified that the Soviet Union would enter the war against them the next day. The emperor told the foreign minister that the war should be ended without delay. Yet an emergency meeting of the Supreme War Council was postponed.

The author is certainly right to point out the importance of the military realities as well as the probable casualties to be expected if an American invasion of the Japanese home islands were to have taken place. However, his error lies in assuming that all Americans and all Japanese saw those military realities in the same way and that the political realities were secondary. The decision to end a war, like the decision to enter one, is at its root political. Political realities are perceived very differently by different decision-makers. Obvious questions are left unaddressed by Lewis, largely due to failing to consult Japanese primary documents. Although many were destroyed, some of these documents exist. For example, notes of the emperor’s meetings with his war cabinet before and after Hiroshima are instructive. They are not what one would expect from the conventional narrative. Immediately after Hiroshima, the attack did not warrant mention in the meeting of the Supreme War Council. Its effects were swamped by the much larger destruction already inflicted, and still being inflicted, by the strategic bombing campaign as well as the changing status of the Soviet Union.

The immediate shock effect of the atomic bombing was relatively minor and only appreciated by different actors over time. Most Japanese did not learn much about the bombing until after the war. Those few in the position to influence decisions realized that the strategic bombing of Japanese cities had already reduced them to rubble. Cities of over one million people before the war had already lost two-thirds of their population; cities of over 100,000 had lost nearly 60 percent of their populace. Civilians had already tolerated unspeakable horrors without complaint. As Lewis observes, mass civilian morale remained unaffected. Some civilian officials saw the prospect of continued atomic attack as reason to abandon the war while some Army and Navy representatives denied that anything of significance had occurred. It was not until 10 August, after the decision had been made to surrender, that the attacks were confirmed to be atomic. Even then, some in the Army were convinced that sufficient losses could be inflicted on invaders to compel the Americans to negotiate a settlement. However, the Soviet Union had already demonstrated that it was willing to suffer whatever casualties were necessary to achieve its goals, and the 9 August invasion of Manchuria quickly punctured Japanese lines and pushed deep into the rear.

Timing is everything. It was unprecedented for the emperor to take a role in breaking a deadlock in the Supreme War Council. Even after he did, he faced rebellion among leaders and troops of his own military, including an attempted coup d’état on 14 August. Was it only the atomic bomb that compelled his action?

It is more likely that the use of nuclear weapons was important but not sufficient. The nuclear attack combined with the Soviets opening a new front created the catalytic crisis that compelled the emperor to act. Certainly, games of “what if” are endless. But downplaying the Soviet role, while it may have helped American strategic policy to confirm strategic bombing as the decisive factor in ending the war, is not supported by the evidence. Lewis is correct to note that Soviet forces would have suffered enormous casualties in any operation on the Japanese home islands. He is incorrect to assume that, first, those casualties would be as hard on Stalin as they would have been for Truman and, second, that the Japanese believed the Soviets to be as casualty adverse as they hoped the Americans to be. In particular, the Japanese would already have had a sense of the differences between how the Western Allies and the Soviets treated occupied territories in Germany and Eastern Europe. They may well have concluded that it was better to lose to and suffer occupation by the Americans than to do so to the Soviets. To this day, Japanese territory seized and held by the Soviet Union remains a point of contention with Russia.

It is unfortunate that, despite extensive endnotes, this book has no index. Therefore, the attention given to some of the alternative explanations and evidence must remain subjective. However, some things are clear. First, the author limits himself to English-language sources, the vast majority of which are secondary works. The few primary documents cited, such as the United States Strategic Bombing Survey interrogations of Japanese officials and the postwar occupation reports of General MacArthur, lend little perspective on the process of American decision-making and next to none on the internal debates of Japanese leaders preceding and following the strikes. More useful volumes place the military facts within the political context of the decision of the decision are Ian Toll’s Twilight of the Gods and Marc Gallicchio’s Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II. In the end, Lewis’s Atomic Salvation is useful but not entirely persuasive.

Dr. Daniel McIntosh
Associate Professor Emeritus
Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania

https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/oppenheimer-truman-disastrous-meeting-18230557.php

https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/AUPress/Book-Reviews/Display/Article/2462838/atomic-salvation-how-the-a-bomb-saved-the-lives-of-32-million-people/

In the end, Israel will almost certainly have to decide whether to destroy the terrorists completely or save the remaining hostages – to choose, once again, between our national body and soul.

 

Israel’s choice: Body or soul 

 

Israel will almost certainly have to decide whether to destroy Hamas completely or save the remaining hostages

 

Because everything about this war defies reason, it’s lately had me thinking about Sophie’s Choice. Yes, William Styron’s 1979 novel, the National Book Award winner that was later made into a critically acclaimed movie starring Meryl Streep and even an opera. Sophie’s Choice is a Holocaust story written by a non-Jew who was later accused of dejudaizing the Holocaust by focusing on a Polish Catholic survivor of Auschwitz. Yet it was not only Styron’s heroine that some critics found objectionable but also the prurient nature of her choice. Entering the death camp with her son and daughter, Sophie is forced to choose which of them will go to the gas chamber.

Israel, I’ve been thinking, is now confronted with the same choice. Not between our sons and daughters, but between the two halves of our raison d’être. The war with Hamas is forcing us to decide between Israel’s body and our nation’s soul.

Israel was created with a double identity, Jewish and democratic. Yet that duality was mirrored by Israel’s twin missions: to guarantee our fundamental security and sanctify our citizens’ lives. The state would defend itself while promising that those who we send off to defend it will never be left behind. Israel pledged to ensure both our physical and moral existence, our body as well as our soul.

The IDF, accordingly, sent commandoes to rescue the hostages at Entebbe in 1976 and, five years later, fighter jets to blow up the Iraqi nuclear reactor. The same Israel that launched a pre-emptive strike against gathering Arab armies in 1967 airlifted Ethiopian Jews in the 1980s and 90s. For 75 years, Israel succeeded in pursuing both of its founding goals: safeguarding the land as well as its people, without contradiction.

Then, just as the state was struggling to reconcile its Jewish and democratic identities, came the onslaught of October 7. Hamas did far more than catch us off-guard. It struck us directly between the state’s two objectives – literally between our I’s.

If Hamas had only butchered, burnt, and raped 1,200 Israelis and not taken any of them hostage, then Israel could have invaded Gaza and crushed the terrorists without hesitation, flooding their tunnels with seawater. Conversely, if Hamas had killed no Israelis but only taken hostages, Israel could have exchanged them for all the terrorists in Israeli jails. But Hamas, savagely, did both, wholesale murder and mass abduction.

“Forget the military victory,” my daughter exclaimed. “Israel’s only goal must be to free the hostages. If the state won’t do everything to rescue my children should they someday fall prisoner, how can I send them to the army?” To which my son replied, “Without an Israel, you won’t have an army to send them to.” Between my daughter’s position and my son’s, which was I to choose?

This is our fundamental, nightmarish, dilemma. Either we give priority to restoring our deterrence power and returning the more than 200,000 displaced Israelis to their homes, or we focus primarily on securing the hostages’ freedom. Either we convince Iran and its proxies never to attack us again and persuade additional Arab countries to make peace with an indomitable Jewish state, or we fulfill Israel’s oath to never abandon our fellow Israelis. Either we accept an Israel that may well be rendered defenseless or an Israel that our citizens may no longer be willing to defend.

Body or soul, we had to decide, and yet Israel refused to choose either. Instead, we declared a twofold target of destroying Hamas and rescuing the hostages, as though they were not mutually exclusive. And yet, by sheer perseverance and the determination of our troops, we succeeded in pursuing both goals simultaneously. Downgraded and surrounded by the IDF, Hamas opted for a deal. In exchange for a 5-day ceasefire, it agreed to free 50 Israeli hostages.

With that agreement now in effect, Israel has offered to extend it. For every ten hostages released, the IDF will hold its fire for one additional day. If accepted, this deal means that Israel will once again give precedence to saving Israelis over saving the state itself. The choice will once again be delayed.

But for how long? 

Ultimately, Hamas will not release all the hostages, knowing full well what the IDF will do to it once the last of them is freed. In the end, Israel will almost certainly have to decide whether to destroy the terrorists completely or save the remaining hostages – to choose, once again, between our national body and soul.

Yet a third option exists. There is still time to reframe the goal of the war from annihilating Hamas to securing Hamas’s unconditional surrender. There is still time to offer Hamas free passage from Gaza – recall the PLO’s evacuation from Beirut in 1982 – in return for ALL the hostages’ release. The terrorists can sail off to Algeria, Libya, or Iran. Our captives will be united with their families.

In the novel, Sophie has to make the most unthinkable of all choices, but Israel can be spared that fate. By maintaining the military pressure on Hamas and keeping the door open to further negotiations, we can defend our state and redeem its defenders. Our dual purpose, our body and soul, can be preserved. 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-choice-body-or-soul/

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 

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

(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