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.