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