Want me to beg you to side with Israel? Fuggedaboutit

This is what 'Never Again' means. Get over it.

There is not enough Instagram, TikTok, X, Facebook, email, or WhatsApp to change one mind about which side to support in the Gaza War.

Those who identify with the Islamist cause, the Palestinian Arabs, global socialism, the woke of various hues, and their strange bedfellows, white supremacists – and a not insignificant number of Jewish apostates and quislings – will do everything in their power to save Hamas from destruction.

They will send around dead baby pictures but not a single image of an Islamist launching a rocket or shooting an automatic weapon. They do not want to end Gaza’s suffering by calling on Hamas leaders to crawl out of their million-dollar sewers. Do the honorable thing and give up. Hands up. White flag. Save their people from further suffering. Face the firing squad. Collect their 72 virgins. 

They will not blame Hamas for the humanitarian plight in the Strip. For placing command centers below hospitals, weapons stockpiles in mosques, and only Allah knows what they have hidden in UNWRA buildings. 

In the pro-Hamas narrative, this war began when we hit them back. 

****************************************************************

And then there is us. Much fewer in number. 

Israelis from across the political and religious spectrum, pro-Israel Diaspora Jews, and neo-Jews -unaffiliated types, like liberals and the woke mugged by the reality of the past several weeks. Some folks who never saw themselves as Israel-centric.

Plus, non-Jewish Philo-semites of various hues. And Christian Zionists.

That more or less covers our side. Did I forget somebody?

We need to keep telling each other our message. Because we are swimming in an overwhelmingly anti-Israel, let’s face it, anti-Jewish sea. Our safety is threatened. Attempted pogroms at airports and in business districts. Marchers outside our windows with blood in their eyes and venom in their throats.

We hunker down, awaiting terrorist attacks against our institutions.

In that context, we must remind ourselves that we are in a zero-sum conflict. It is either Israel or Hamas. It is either Israel or Islamic Jihad. Both Islamist groups exist not to build on Palestinian Arab autonomy but to destroy the Jewish state. There is no compromise with Hamas, with Islamic Jihad, with ISIS, with militant Islamism.

Hamas is responsible for the safety of its citizens – Israel is not.

Hamas hides behind Arab civilians. Al Jazeera covers for it. Qatar is the paymaster of both. Both discourage the innocents from leaving danger zones. Hamas controls Gaza’s health authority and hospitals. No one speaks publicly to the media in Gaza without the tacit approval of Hamas.

Hamas carried over 200 Israelis and others into captivity – men, women, and children. 

Hamas butchered hundreds of innocent civilians and first responders.

Since day one of the war, Hamas has never stopped launching rockets at our civilian population, forcing the evacuation of Israeli towns and villages. The upheaval they unleashed has caused terrible internal dislocation in Israel.

Hamas has destroyed our tourism and is intent on devastating our economy, including the high-tech sector.

Behind Hamas stands Iran. Then Russia, China, Turkey, and North Korea. Plus, Pakistan and most of the Muslim and Arab world. Did I mention Qatar?

Western countries are wobbly at best in their support for Israel. Most are hypocritical. They say we have a right to defend ourselves. Yet they know the constraints they place on us make overcoming Hamas impossible. 

Most EU countries either abstained or voted against us at the UN General Assembly this past Saturday. I get it. They don't want the streets of Berlin, London, and Paris to explode.

Under the guise of humanitarian intervention, they want to see Hamas fight another day. Under the guise of a ceasefire, they want to see Hamas fight another day.

During WWII, no one held a stopwatch to Churchill and Roosevelt. No one told them to be mindful that only card-carrying Nazis get hurt. No one warned them not to be disproportionate. Because everyone understood they had to win or the world would be benighted. Collateral damage is unavoidable since the enemy uses its own population as human shields. 

No. At this point, I will not try to convince anyone to side with us. People have made their moral beds. Let them be known forever by which side they chose. 

You are either part of the solution or part of the problem.

“Stop the killing on both sides” is a dribble you say to cover your ass. It's bullshit.

There ain’t no neutral here. There ain’t no crawling into a hole and waiting for the unpleasantness to pass. 

It’s judgment time in the adult leagues.

Meantime, all we can do is give each other strength, support one another, and maybe cut each other a bit of slack.

And we must – each in our way – fight on. Fight on until Hamas and Islamic Jihad are wiped out.

This is what Never Again means.

 

Sunday - October 29 - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary

Netanyahu: No Apology. No Responsibility

 

Better baptism.

Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones, chief woke officer at The New York Times, has been positively kvelling on X (formerly Twitter) over the number of marchers for “Palestine” in London and New York City who are of Jewish ancestry.  Ms. Wells, let me explain. When baptism isn’t an option, and neither is embracing Islam, the next best thing for apostate Jews and quislings is marching for “Palestine.” You can think of them as queers for conversion therapy or chickens for Colonel Sanders or Jewish Voice for Peace @jvplive or @IfNotNowOrg. 

While on the subject of the Times, I can report that the paper’s op-ed pages, at least in the international edition, are back to being Palestinian-occupied territory. There is a comfort in the familiar, I suppose. 

Londonstan 2023

Ramallah beckons

Hamas director of ecumenical and interfaith relations Ismail Haniyeh has a special message to his Jewish supporters concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza.

Here is the link (or copy and paste) 

https://x.com/IsraelinUSA/status/1718021899056210213?s=20

For all the talk of solidarity and high-level visits right after Black Saturday by Germany’s Olaf Scholz, the UK’s Rishi Sunak, and France’s Emmanuel Macron, when push comes to shove, Germany and the UK ‘abstained’ from backing Israel at the UN GA. France voted outright against Israel. So, let's do the math: 120 countries are maliciously anti-Israel; 14 stood with Israel, including the US, and 45 have no backbone and abstained... like people who see and hear a street mugging but roll down their Venetian blinds.

UK and Germany Abstain. France against Israel.

"I'm with them."

Last night saw the first news conference since Binyamin Netanyahu took office in December 2022. As anticipated, he changed the subject in response to the six or seven questions from Israeli reporters in Hebrew. In perhaps his only direct reply, he falsely asserted that it had never been his policy to boost Hamas to the detriment of the PLO. And he refused to apologize or take direct responsibility for Black Saturday. The wizard of bollocks had hoped that appearing with his nemesis DM Yoav Gallant and the well-meaning Blue and White Party leader Benny Gantz would inure him from looking guilty. It didn't. Meanwhile, Gallant and Ganz looked desperate for the entire charade to be over.

Portentously, Bibi glossed over the fact that he had freed practically the entire current Hamas leadership in Gaza, Turkey, and Qatar (link to list) in the Schalit deal. 

Now, I fear that under comparable public pressure, our weakest ever prime minister, encouraged by his overbearing wife, appears to be mulling freeing every Palestinian Arab convict in Israeli prisons with blood on their hands – up to and including the butchers who carried out the Black Saturday massacres - in return for most of the captives Hamas took. 

That would be a mistake of catastrophic proportions. 

Yet Bibi might try to ascribe the original Schalit deal to Ahad Ha'am, Ben-Gurion, or Yair Lapid, and say their mistakes forced him to do the latest prisoner exchange. 

You never know what a spineless serial liar will say. But you can be sure many of his bespelled followers will believe him.

Erev Shabbat, 27 October - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary

Netanyahu believes he can blame the IDF and Shin Bet for Black Saturday.

Senior Saudi Journalist Tariq Al-Homayed In Message To Yahyah Sinwar: 'Would You Leave Gaza To Prevent Further Bloodshed[?]'

Want to help Gaza? Gaza does not need fuel which will only wind up in the hands of Islamic Jihad and Hamas. 

Get this message out from a leading Saudi journalist: 

Tell Hamas leaders to leave the Strip now.  

Recall that it was the Reagan administration that saved Arafat’s life when he fled Lebanon, but once Sinwar was out, he’d be a walking dead. There is always time to kill him and the rest of his politburo. 

The Be’eri Printing Press: Israel’s Print Shop

Last night Hamas Gaza launched rockets at Be’eri.

 

Can the Palestinian Authority control Gaza if Hamas is ousted?

It may be lucky to keep control of the West Bank by the end of this war

The Palestinian Arabs are incapable of running their own affairs. They need the help of the UN Trusteeship Council to help them develop political institutions and a political culture that would make self-government viable.

 

What Palestinians Really Think of Hamas

Before the War, Gaza’s Leaders Were Deeply Unpopular—but an Israeli Crackdown Could Change That

Methinks this is a misleading and tendentious use of polling. For one, it obscures what the 2 state solution connotes for Palestinians educated in UNWRA schools dedicated to the right of return.

 

Iran's foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said the Mullahs are "willing" to Take Custody of the Israeli Captives in Gaza

Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is off his meds.

 

Al-Monitor/Premise poll: 82% of Americans wary of US intervention in Israel-Hamas war

As the Israel-Hamas war rages on and threatens to spill into a wider regional conflict, Americans are either unsure of or reject a US military intervention in the region, according to a new Al-Monitor/Premise poll.

Like anything else from this anti-Zionist publication, this poll needs to be parsed with care. But Al-Monitor, like The Economist and The New York Times, is worth reading – if you know how to read between the lines and are “woke” to their agenda.

UN chief’s Brownnosing of Hamas ‘didn’t happen in a vacuum’

¿Quién paga mi salario? ¿Quién cuidará de mí cuando me jubile?

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s offered some "context" to explain the beheadings, butchery, raping, pillaging, and kidnapping of Israeli civilians and foreign workers such as those from Nepal and Thailand:

 “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum. The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.”

Guterres’ brownnosing of Hamas “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”  

He’s done his arithmetic. 

Fifty-six (of the 57) members of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation are also UN members. Of these, 22 are correspondingly member states of the Arab League. 

Add in assorted shithole countries like North Korea. Then factor in Russia, China, and their satellites. 

Further, consider the wobbly serial abstainers or appeasers of Western Europe, those with a wildly fluctuating moral compass, such as France and the UK. 

Yes, Emmanuel Macron and Rishi Sunak talk the talk. 

And I am glad that the UK delegate did not join in Arab efforts on October 24 at the UN/SC to save Hamas by calling for an immediate ceasefire. Let's see how long that lasts and how Sunak instructs his ambassador to vote at the UN when the time comes (there was no vote yesterday).

Despite Macron's solidarity visit to Israel, France's Catherine Colonna made clangors about championing a truce "leading to" a ceasefire. Whatever.

Anyway, Guterres can count how many anti-Zionist countries there are at the UN, and those who when push comes to shove, will look the other way as Israel is pilloried.

He knows there's always been an automatic UN General Assembly majority for any and every anti-Israel resolution.

Guterres well knows where his lachuch is buttered. He also knows there is no way he's gonna win the Oberleutnant Kurt Waldheim Award for International Service if he sides with the lone Jewish state at the world body. 

He's done the math. 

So, Guterres’s brownnosing of Hamas “didn’t happen in a vacuum.”

Tuesday, 24 October - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary

 

Gaza, October 2023. What did you think “Never Again” meant? 

I hear there is uncertainty about Israel’s approach to toppling Hamas and “the day after.”

It seems to me our mission is to remove Hamas as a military threat from alongside our border with Gaza, Palestine. 

A multitude of strategies are available to us. We can continue our bombing campaign, send in commandoes, launch a broader operation to flush out the Hamas leadership or give them the option of surrendering to be summarily executed. We might even think about allowing them to retreat behind a white flag via Egypt and then – in the fullness of time – hunt them down and kill them one by one, as we did the PLO men who attacked our Olympic team in Munich. 

Once the Hamas leaders are gone, Gaza is the problem of the UN (time to turn on the lights at the Trusteeship Council?), the Arab League, and the Palestinian Authority. Israel should have no trade or economic relations with the strip until the Palestinian Authority recognizes the Jewish people’s right to a national homeland. Electricity, water, and employment are problems the Gazans must solve with the help of their stakeholders.

The responsibility for the population of Gaza (which has strongly supported Hamas at the ballot – President Biden is wrong that the “Palestinians are not Hamas”) falls foremost to the Gazans and their partners. 

Humanitarian concerns are a two-way street – when Gaza shows humanitarian concern for Israeli civilians (releases Israeli hostages and the remains of our dead, stops airborne attacks and cross-border incursions), we should show reciprocal (but no more) humanitarian concern for them.

Once our military deterrence is reestablished and our Persian, Arab, and Turkish neighbors understand we are the strong horse in this region, it will be time to try diplomacy again -- based on reciprocity.

Assuming a willingness by the Palestinian Authority to accept a demilitarized state, an abandonment of the “right of return” to Israel proper, a spirit of genuine magnanimity for how to share the Holy Basin, and explicit recognition of the Jewish people’s right to a national homeland, Israel should make a clear commitment to seek a two-state solution and dismantle settlements that have no strategic value. 

But, first things first: the Hamas leaders must be killed and their physical manifestations pulverized.

Sunday 22 October - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary

Gaza, October 2023. What did you think “Never Again” meant? 

Here are some stories that have caught my eye over the weekend.

Synagogue Leader Is Killed in Detroit, but Motive Is Not Known, Authorities Say

Samantha Woll, 40, the president of a synagogue downtown, was lauded as a dynamic figure in the community.

 

Here is a link to a talk given by A. Mark Clarfield MD Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics on the situation for the medical community.

 

Vivian Bercovici: The Trudeau Liberals' deafening silence in the face of Hamas horrors

Jews in Canada and elsewhere fear for their safety, and the muted response from the federal government is far from reassuring.

 

David Horovitz of The Times of Israel captures the mood of the country

Day 14 of the war: As the IDF prepares to enter Hamastan, Israel holds its breath

We all know that the mission must succeed. Because we have to be able to live in security in our small patch of land, and, as of October 7, we’re not sure that we can do that

New Global Divisions on View as Biden Goes to Israel and Putin to China

Washington’s strong support for Israel against Hamas is contrasted with Russian and Chinese efforts to align with the Palestinian struggle.

The NYT op-ed and editorial pages are returning to form: bothsiderism / moral relativism/ anti-Israelism. Yada. Yada. Yada.  

However, there are still some pieces I endorse. Here is one:

Netanyahu Led Us to Catastrophe. He Must Go. By Gershom Gorenberg

Thursday 19 October - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary (live)

 Gaza, October 2023. What did you think “Never Again” meant? 

Thank you, Mr. President. 

No US president is “pro-Israel” in the sense that they place the interests of Israel above the perceived interests of the US. And the interests of the two countries do not always coincide.  

In that context, I consider Joe Biden's Shiva visit yesterday to a traumatized Israel with gratefulness. 

As protected as he is, coming here entailed putting his life on the line. He is 80 years old. His steps are halting. His is the raspy voice of an elderly man. He has to squint to read the teleprompter and knows he sometimes repeats himself. 

But as things stand on October 19, 2023, Joe Biden is, in my book, the most pro-Israel president in the 70-plus bumpy years of US-Israel relations. 

I expect he will be the last pro-Israel Democratic president. Of the next one, it will be said, Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. (EXODUS 1:8).

In advance of his arrival, he sent a battle group led by the USS Gerald R. Ford. Some of you will appreciate the irony because Ford was one of the most anti-Israel presidents in the relationship. 

And behind it will come (another irony) a battle group led by the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

Hamevin Yavin.

In two brief statements and in meetings with family members of Israelis taken captive by the monsters of Gaza, he gave comfort and encouragement.

Unprecedentedly, he participated in Israel's war cabinet (as had his Secretary of State Tony Blinkin earlier). 

In doing all this, the Biden administration is signaling Iran and Hezbollah not to launch a preemptive all-out war on Israel. Iran is a nuclear power in all but name. It is controlled by believers in an apocalyptic form of Shi'ism. Hezbollah is exponentially more lethal than Hamas. Biden says that if they attack, the US will intervene on Israel's side. A war with Iran is the last thing ordinary Americans want, so don't tell me Biden is doing this for domestic political popularity.

He mobilized a rearmament airlift to Israel from day one of the war. US intelligence is helping us watch Iran and Syria. He is arranging with Congress to provide us with another $10 billion, mainly in military assistance.

America's unstinting wartime support for Israel is riling the Arab street so much so that Abdullah II of Jordan, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt, and the PLO's Mahmoud Abbas (despite being US clients) were afraid they would be overthrown yesterday had they been seen meeting with him as scheduled in Amman. 

Al Jazeera and pro-Islamist social media influencers have fueled a region-wide Arab, Persian, and Turkish frenzy against Israel.

Biden had to beg El-Sisi to allow 20 trucks of humanitarian aid for the Palestinians into Gaza against Hamas's wishes because it wants to exacerbate the humanitarian crisis in the hopes of staving off an IDF invasion.

Egypt would like you to forget it has placed its own lock hold on Gaza, even as it has been looking the other way as Hamas imports weapons and contraband through tunnels connecting Sinai to Gaza.

The explosion at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City - set off by an errant rocket fired by Islamic Jihad - was a Godsend to El-Sisi, whose restive population can now have their anger turned against the Jews, not his regime. He has given the tightly controlled media the green light to blame the Jews, just like in the old days.

 Today's Al-Youm Al-Sabea 

Some of Biden's decisions are mistaken but excusable. He seems to think that the Palestinians "are not Hamas." Yeah, they are. 

On the West Bank and in Gaza, they went for Hamas the last time the population had a chance to vote. Polls taken before 10/7 showed Hamas would again be victorious in free Palestinian elections.

He also is pouring more aid money down the Palestinian drain—another $100 million in emergency assistance to help civilians in Gaza and the West Bank. The Americans and Europeans have emptied so much money into perennially corrupt Palestinian Authority coffers since 1993 with so little to show for it – in terms of institution building and a willingness among Palestinian elites to inculcate democratic values and coexistence – that it is achingly painful to behold.

And this doesn't even speak to financing UNWRA, whose perverse raison d'etre is to maintain the Palestinians as refugees in perpetuity. 

But good-hearted Westerners need the illusion of momentum. They need to believe that the Palestinians want to help themselves more than they want to destroy Israel. It is an unshakeable delusional disorder. Any criticism on our part will further stress them and may worsen their symptoms. While not encouraging them, an understanding approach is indicated.

Biden's subtle nudging that we do not get carried away by rage frustrates some Israelis. But he's right. Our mission is to defang the Islamist monster's military capacity. To kill its military, political, and Sharia council members. We cannot obliterate the genocidal idea behind Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Resistance Committees, or the PLO. Given these circumstances, we have to be disciplined not to take out our wrath against the civilian population; and not to behave in a frenetic way; we are not murderers, despite what the Palestinians and their fellow travelers say. 

And Biden is right, too, that we need an exit strategy before the IDF launches its anticipated land offensive.

 

 

Wednesday 18 October - Gaza War - Aggregation & Commentary (live)

 Gaza, October 2023. What did you think “Never Again” meant? 

Within moments of the explosion last night at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza, the Palestinian narrative – here I mean not just the Islamists, Al Jazeera, but also the PLO in Ramallah along with their enablers in the media and on social media – portrayed Israel as having purposefully bombed the hospital to kill the patients and medical staff.

Knee-jerk headline. The New York Times has a long history of anti-Israelism 

If that is what you still believe, you are an enemy of Israel but get in the back of the line. 

In front of you stands Assad of Syria, who said we had committed the “bloodiest massacre against humanity” in the modern era. Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey called “on all humanity to take action to stop Israel’s unprecedented brutality in Gaza.” 

Days before the hospital explosion, North Korean state media blamed Israel for causing “constant criminal acts against the Palestinian people.” 

Putin’s Kremlin denounced Israel for its “felonious…crime …[its] act of dehumanization.” 

So, here is what really happened: Islamic Jihad was shooting at Israeli civilians, maybe at one of our hospitals, and there was a mishap. One of their rockets fell on a compound near Al-Ahli Hospital, apparently detonating an unlawful arsenal stored between the hospital and an adjacent cemetery.

Here are two Hamas operatives talking about the explosion in real-time:

https://x.com/idfonline/status/1714549126799482925?s=20

(cut and paste into your browser)

Here is Channel 12 Arab affairs reporter Ohad Hemo אוהד חמו setting out in Arabic how the calamity happened.

https://x.com/N12News/status/1714585332228702459?s=20 

And here is footage from around the hospital before and after

https://x.com/LtColRichard/status/1714587192511599022?s=20

For a detailed report, see IDF provides evidence hospital blast was a misfired Islamic Jihad rocket

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari shares drone footage and a recording proving Israel was not behind the attack on the hospital (link)   

In the final analysis, Hamas is responsible for the safety and security of Gazans. They started this war. It is true that a majority of Gazans, indeed of all Palestinians, voted for Hamas in the past election, but that does not give Hamas the right to use them as human shields. 

Which side are you on?

Back in New York, enemies of Israel continue to scapegoat random Jews and Jewish businesses and institutions. (h/t AS)