COMMENTARY / OPINION
MEQ Features Bleak Assessment of Israel’s Oct. 7 Response News from the Middle East Forum
December 5, 2023 – The Winter 2024 issue of Middle East Quarterly features a bleak assessment of Israel’s response to the October 7 Hamas massacre and contributions by other leading specialists on issues of concern.
In “The Rapid Return of Israel’s Disastrous Policy,” Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes argues that the false belief that rejectionist Palestinian leaders can be “bought off or tempered through economic benefits,” which lulled the Israeli political and security establishment into a state of unpreparedness on Oct. 7, made a comeback after a month of consensus on victory.
While the inflamed mood in Israel immediately after Hamas’ murderous rampage appeared to indicate that the conciliatory ethos would be a thing of the past, signs of a return to business-as-usual abound, from the resumption of fuel supplies to Gaza and an increase in Israel work permits for West Bank Palestinians to a hostage deal that disrupted IDF military operations in Gaza and helped ensure the bargaining process for future releases “will continue indefinitely.” Less than two months after October 7, “talk about destroying Hamas had nearly vaporized.”
Why the reversion? Pipes suggests that the Netanyahu government’s failures made it more vulnerable to myopic pressure from the Israeli public and scolding by foreign states. Avoiding future mistakes requires that Israelis “adopt a radically different attitude toward the Palestinians … and seek Israel Victory.”
The CIA is green-lighting assassination TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 5, 2023 – LOOMER: The media is now openly calling for the assassination of President Trump. This article that is openly calling for the assassination of President Trump was written by Robert Kagan. He is the husband of Victoria Nuland. Nuland is currently Biden’s Deputy Secretary of State at the US Department of State.
SUNDANCE: The Washington Post is a well known CIA outlet. This is essentially Victoria Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan, writing about the CIA approval to kill Donald Trump.
[Tierney: BTW, Nuland and Kagan HATE Russia – they want Russia destroyed and blown off the map. It’s personal. They have a vendetta against Russia that has nothing to do with America’s best interests.]
Other left-wing media, like the New York Times, the Daily Mail and the Atlantic, along with Liz Cheney repeated the same message.
Don’t accept terrorism as the new normal Daniel Greenfield
Shock. Horror. And then acceptance. Hamas actually announced it formed a new terror group in Lebanon. Just like that. Opinion
Dec 5, 2023, 9:33 AM (GMT+2) – “Today, millions of Americans mourned and prayed, and tomorrow we go back to work,” President George W. Bush began his address days after 9/11. “Tomorrow the good people of America go back to their shops, their fields, American factories, and go back to work.”
“We cannot let the terrorists achieve the objective of frightening our nation to the point where we don’t — where we don’t conduct business, where people don’t shop,” he urged in a later press conference.
Defeating the terrorists meant going on with business as usual. And we did.
Life changed. Flying became grueling. There were alerts and terror plots and we stopped paying attention to them. A generation was born and came of age who had never known another life.
It’s not so different in most countries where Islamic Jihadis perform their regular rounds of terror. Israel has been the canary in the coal mine in more ways than one. The scenes we’ve come to accept as normal in Boston, Paris or Manchester, dying flowers on streets, tearful women resting their heads on the shoulders of men while a sad song plays, assertions that we are stronger than the terrorists and will not lose our humanity were all field tested out in Israel.
The peace agreement with the PLO took Israel from a place where occasional terrorist attacks happened to a place where they occurred all the time. And when conservative governments isolated them to end the wave of urban bombings, rocket attacks became normal. And when Israel began to neutralize those, the terrorists broke through for an unprecedented massacre.
At each previous juncture, the horror became the new normal. First it was suicide bombs on buses, body parts scraped off the sidewalks outside pizza stores, and strollers full of broken glass. Parents made sure that their children had cell phones so they could immediately check if they were all right after each terrorist attack. Then residents of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv came to accept running to bomb shelters as the new normal. What will the new normal be now?
MUST WATCH: Jonathan Pollard: Court Martial Major Generals Aharon Haliva and Yaron Finkelman [18:19]
Feb 4, 2023
BREAKING: John Kennedy Issues Blunt Warning To Biden On Israel, Rails Against Hamas & Antisemitism [13:37] Forbes Breaking News
Nov 28, 2023
On the Senate floor, Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) offered a full-throated speech in support of Israel, and warned President Biden not to go “wobbly” on support for Israel.
Weimar America By Victor Davis Hanson
We may be headed for a 1930s nightmare
December 4, 2023 – Something eerie, something creepy, is happening in the world—and now in America as well. The dark mood is brought on by elite universities, the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion industry, and massive immigration from illiberal nations and anti-Enlightenment societies.
At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.
The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.
Hundreds of such incidents are now occurring on a daily basis—as the country is leaving its Weimar phase and heading at warp speed into normalizing Jew-hatred and worse. Instructors singled out Jewish students in classes at UC Davis and Stanford. Pro-Hamas students ripped down posters, swarmed public buildings, and disrupted traffic.
A pro-Israeli demonstrator in Los Angeles was hit on the head and killed by a pro-Palestinian university professor.
Jewish students were trapped in a Cooper Union university library surrounded by pro-Hamas demonstrators. At MIT, Jewish students were warned to keep away from particular areas of the campus deemed dangerous for them.
What would happen to a university president who warned black or Latino students to keep clear of areas where she could not guarantee their safety from other students?
Israel in the Crosshairs, Part 2B: More Forgotten History CHERIE ZASLAWSKY
DEC 5, 2023
A TRAGEDY OF THEIR OWN MAKING: THE ARABS’ REFUSALS
Even though Palestine was never a nation, so Arabs living in Gaza and the West Bank cannot be bereft of a nation that never existed, they are nevertheless in a predicament, and that is true whether we call them Palestinians or Egyptians, Jordanians, or simply Arabs. So how did that predicament come about, and who bears responsibility for it?
As Victor Sharpe reminds us: “…the Arab League, meeting in Khartoum in August 1967, delivered the infamous three no’s: No peace with Israel, no negotiations with Israel, no recognition of Israel. From 1937, Israeli politicians have five times offered the Arabs a state. Five times the Arabs have rejected the Israeli offers. The reason being the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians want no state next to Israel. They want no Jewish state to exist. Period!” (Emphasis mine)
And from Dr. Sergio Simon’s open letter to Queen Rania of Jordan:
Instead of absorbing them [the Palestinian refugees] into the Jordanian society, they were kept under inhumane conditions in concentration camps to pressure Israel and the United Nations. Nobody wanted the Palestine “problem” solved. … there were also the Jewish refugees from the Arab countries as well!
Hundreds of thousands of Jews had to flee Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia, Yemen and Morocco without anything, leaving behind all their belongings and properties… But Israel did not put them in camps. They were readily absorbed in the Israeli society and today…they are lawyers, doctors, teachers, university professors in Israel. There is no more a “Jewish refugee” problem. This could have happened with the poor Palestinians had King Hussein in Jordan, Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and Shukri al-Kwatli and Hafez al-Assad in Syria done the same.
ARAFAT’S GAME OF CAT AND MOUSE
What is the ultimate goal of the Palestinians? Is it possession of their own state?
If so, why did Yassar Arafat agree to the1993 Oslo Accords and then promptly violate virtually all the agreements? And why did he turn down the Camp David II Accords in 2000 proffered under Ehud Barak working alongside President Clinton? That plan would have given the Palestinians 97% of Gaza and the West Bank and a Palestinian Authority (PA) capitol in East Jerusalem. This was everything they’d asked for with a cherry on top! Only 3% shy of the UN’s original plan for a Palestinian state, yet Arafat responded with the Second Intifada.
More telling yet, when Clinton tried making the plan even more appealing to the Arabs, Arafat reportedly admitted in a phone conversation with Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, that it was “the best offer imaginable.” (Meir-Levi: History Upside Down p. 98) Yet Arafat rejected it cold and stepped up the violence. Why?
Subtle Like a Brick Through a Window – CIA Outlet Approves Donald Trump Assassination Sundance
December 4, 2023 – I have stayed away from this subject for eight years; however, everyone in/around U.S. politics knows the Washington Post, owned by Big Tech Amazon, is effectively the PR firm of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). No one inside the DC beltway does not understand this basic truth.
Therefore, when the husband of State Dept official Victoria Nuland, a man named Robert Kagan, writes an op-ed in the CIA newsletter, effectively calling for President Trump to receive the Julius Caesar treatment, the non-subtle message is for the CIA to repeat their Kennedy performance and kill President Trump.
As alarming as this acceptance might sound, there are no intellectually honest people who would deny it.
WaPo/CIA – Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination. In the RealClearPolitics poll average (for the period from Nov. 9 to 20), Trump leads his nearest competitor by 47 points and leads the rest of the field combined by 27 points. The idea that he is unelectable in the general election is nonsense — he is tied or ahead of President Biden in all the latest polls — stripping other Republican challengers of their own stated reasons for existence.
Why the CIA No Longer Works—and How to Fix It Charles S. Faddis
Author, Beyond Repair: The Decline and Fall of the CIA
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 3, 2023, during a conference on “U.S. Intelligence: History and Controversies.”
We need the CIA, but we also need to recognize the uncomfortable reality that the CIA is not performing at the level we require. It is not keeping us safe. It must be repaired, and it must be repaired quickly.
The CIA was created after World War II with one overriding primary mission—to prevent a reoccurrence of what happened at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We were never going to allow an enemy to surprise us on that scale again. We were never going to find ourselves blind regarding a threat of that magnitude and immediacy. We would be forewarned and forearmed.
Then came 9/11. Members of Al Qaeda hijacked four airliners. They crashed three of them into their targets. They were prevented from succeeding with the fourth only by the heroism of the brave American passengers.
Al Qaeda was not some unknown entity. It had been around for years. Osama Bin Laden had threatened to attack us on our own soil for years. Al Qaeda had blown up two of our embassies in East Africa. Al Qaeda had almost sunk the USS Cole in Yemen. Al Qaeda had tried once before to take down the World Trade Center.
Yet we had not a single source inside that organization capable of warning us of the 9/11 attacks that would kill almost 3,000 Americans.
Israel in the Crosshairs, Part 2A: More Forgotten History CHERIE ZASLAWSKY
DEC 4, 2023 – Israel is the only nation on Earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago. – Charles Krauthammer
Most people either don’t know the history behind the formation of Israel and the Arab states, or have forgotten it. Here’s a brief refresher.
THE BRITISH MUCK THINGS UP
After WWI and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations gave the British control of what was called Mandatory Palestine. This consisted of quite a large block of land, and the plan, as stated in the 1917 Balfour Declaration, expressed the British commitment to carve out a national homeland in the Holy Land for the Jews—a plan supported by the Allies as well, including President Woodrow Wilson. France was very much on board. Here’s an excerpt from a letter from the French Secretary-General of the Foreign Ministry Jules Cambon:
…it would be a deed of justice and of reparation to assist, by the protection of the Allied Powers, in the renaissance of the Jewish nationality [nationalité juive] in that land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago.
US-MideastIsrael-Hamas war: a US wake up call! Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
December 4, 2023
“Those who experience wake up calls usually discover, in hindsight, that they had received plenty of warning before the poop hit the propeller, but they chose to disregard it…. Whether a wake up call becomes a boon, or a bane, depends on what you’re willing to learn from it, and whether you’re willing to be moved by experience.” (Greg Levoy, a psychologist and an author).
The US-Israel mutual threat of Islamic terrorism
Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas is a wakeup call, highlighting the shared US-Israel war against Islamic terrorism. The latter considers Israel a US geo-strategic beachhead in the Middle East, that should be uprooted as a critical step toward the defeat of the Western “infidel.”
For example:
*Hezbollah and Hamas are critical proxies of Iran, which funds, trains and supplies advanced ballistic and engineering hardware, aiming to realize its 1,400-year-old vision of toppling all “apostate” (Sunni) regimes, export the Islamic Shiite Revolution globally, and bring “the Great American Satan” to submission.
*Hamas was established in 1988 by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been dedicated since 1928 to the toppling of all national Islamic regimes, replacing them with a universal Islamic society, establishing Islam as the only, divinely-ordained, legitimate religion on earth, defeating the “infidel” Western culture and bringing down “the Great American Satan.”
*Securing a boon, rather than a bane, requires the uprooting of Hamas’ terroristic, political and educational infrastructure, which would deter anti-US Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, the survival of Hamas would adrenalize the veins of anti-US Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and beyond, afflicting the US with a bane.
Israel’s war highlights Iran’s terrorist nature
*Heeding the October 7, 2023 wakeup call should trigger a US reassessment of its 44-year-old diplomatic option toward Iran, which has facilitated Iran’s lead role – operationally and financially – in the transformation of Hezbollah and Hamas (as well as a multitude of additional Islamic and non-Islamic terror organizations) into a most effective anti-US global terrorist network. The US diplomatic option has also bolstered the evolution of Iran into the leading regional and global epicenter of anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and proliferation of advanced military systems.
*An effective wake up call, requires experience-based rather than wishful thinking-based policy making, reassessing the impact of lifted sanctions – especially Iranian oil export – on the supply of advanced Iranian missiles and other military systems to Hezbollah and Hamas. Thus, Iranian oil exports surged from 500,000 barrels per day (under the sanctions) to 2.5-3 million barrels per day, which has provided the Ayatollahs with some $100bn in additional income, that was dedicated, mostly, to anti-US rogue activities in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East, North, East and Central Africa and Latin America.
*Heeding the wakeup call should alert the US to the 40-year-old collaboration of Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah with the drug cartels of Mexico, Columbia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Brazil, Latin American terror organizations, and every anti-US government in South and Central America (up to the US-Mexico border), which is the US’ geo-strategic soft underbelly. This collaboration includes the training of terrorists and the supply of predator unmanned aerial vehicles and tunnel construction equipment.
The Palestinian wake up call
*The October 7 wake up call should lead to a reassessment of the US State Department policy on the Palestinian issue, subordinating conventional wisdom to the march of facts. Hence, while the State Department has been eager to establish a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), pro-US Arabs have showered the Palestinians with embracing talk, but indifferent-to-negative walk, refraining from tangible steps toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Are we Living the Gog U’Magog War? ELIE MISCHEL
“and you will advance upon My people Yisrael, like a cloud covering the earth. This shall happen on that distant day: I will bring you to My land, that the nations may know Me when, before their eyes, I manifest My holiness through you, O Gog!” – EZEKIEL 38:16 (THE ISRAEL BIBLE)
DECEMBER 4, 2023 – This is not business as usual.
Though Israel has fought many small wars against Hamas, everyone understands that the current war is different. After Hamas slaughtered 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7, nations throughout the world immediately felt the reverberations. This is a war with global implications, pitting Jews and Christians, the people of the Bible, against Muslims and secular progressives, who reject the Bible and all that it stands for.
Could this finally be the war of Gog and Magog, the great war of the end of days?
In chapters 38 and 39 of the Book of Ezekiel, the prophet describes a great war that will take place at the end of days. Gog of the land of Magog from the north will lead a host of nations in battle against Israel and God, a war that will bring about the final redemption. God’s wrath will come down upon the invaders, who will die in a series of supernatural plagues.
“Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal… And you will come from your place, from the utmost north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding horses; a great assembly and a mighty army. And you will ascend upon My people Israel like a cloud to cover the earth; at the end of days it will be, and I shall bring you upon My land in order that the nations recognize Me when I am sanctified through you before their eyes, O Gog” (Ezekiel 38:1, 15-16).
For thousands of years, rabbis, pastors and Bible scholars have made confident claims about the identity of Gog and Magog, assuming that the great wars of their generation must be the fulfillment of this prophecy. But with the passage of time and the stubborn refusal of the final redemption to arrive, their speculations fell flat. That said, the current war aligns with the Gog and Magog prophecies in ways that are truly eye opening. Though we cannot make predictions with any certainty, the connections are hard to ignore.
“’Son of man, set your face toward Gog, of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him, and say: Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal… Persia, Cush, and Put are with them; all of them with buckler and helmet. Gomer and all its wings, the house of Togarmah, the utmost parts of the north and all its wings, many peoples with you.” (Ezekiel 38:2-3, 5-6)
What is the identity of the land of Magog? And who are these other nations that are destined to participate in this monumental war against Israel?
What We Must Tell Blinken by Victor Rosenthal
December 4, 2023 – With the resumption of fighting in the Gaza Strip, American Secretary of State Blinken has informed Israel of the restrictions under which the US will permit her to operate. No displacement of the civilian population, and fewer civilian casualties (although there are no numbers except those that come directly from Hamas). No bombing hospitals or schools, even when they are in fact sanctuaries for Hamas troops. No cutting off the supply of fuel, which Hamas uses to keep its tunnels lighted and ventilated. Nevertheless, we are told to finish up the war quickly, because our “credit” is running out. And just in case anyone thought that it should someday be possible for Israeli children to sleep peacefully in the communities of the Western Negev, no security zone on the Gazan side of the border, and no Israeli security control of Gaza. The implied threat is that if Israel goes “off the reservation,” the US will not supply her with essential ammunition and spare parts for our American weapons systems, nor veto hostile resolutions in the UN Security Council.
I don’t know how Israel has responded to these demands, made to our war cabinet where Mr. Blinken apparently has the right to sit. But I know how I think we should answer. And so I submit the following:
Dear Secretary Blinken,
We appreciate the support we receive from America in our war against the genocidal Hamas. We appreciate that you seem to understand that these monsters must be removed from power in Gaza, from which they have promised to repeat again and again the atrocities they committed against our people on 7 October, atrocities that were proportionally twenty times greater than those perpetrated against the US on 9/11. But despite your understanding, you insist on placing restrictions on how we may fight; indeed, on micromanaging the war for us.
Let us speak frankly: you are asking us, in the short term, to trade the lives of our soldiers for those of Gazan civilians, and you are measuring our performance in meeting this demand with numbers supplied by Hamas! You are asking us to fight in a way that at best will only partially defeat Hamas. You say you want Hamas removed from power, but the likely outcome of following your instructions will not accomplish that. You are asking us to fight in a way that Americans never have and never would. This is not how you fought in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In the longer term, you are asking us to give up the entire Western Negev, which will become uninhabitable by Jews unless we retain security control of Gaza and unless we can establish a buffer zone between it and our population. You even aspire to create a unified, sovereign Palestinian state in all of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, something that would shortly bring about the end of the Jewish state.
We do not accept your restrictions and micromanagement of the war, and we will not trade the lives of our soldiers for anyone, not Gazans (who overwhelmingly support murderous violence against Jews, whether by Hamas or other groups), and not the electoral fortunes of the Obama-Biden faction of the Democratic Party.
[Ed.: Threats and blackmail is a game that two can play. We have here a double-edged sword. If the US were to cut off (Israel’s purchase of) military equipment and munitions, Israel would then cut off military intelligence and technology to the US; leaving them to their lipstick and trans-shows while they float their boats in the middle east. (Good luck with that!) US threats are actually a blessing in disguise, because Israel is already forced to manufacture our own munitions and not be dependent on false friends for our defense. On the other hand, the US is cutting off its nose to spite its ugly face by blackmailing and threatening its most important ally in a time when the US has alienated most of the rest of the world!]
Immensely powerful monologue by Lucy Aharish, Muslim Arabic TV presenter in Israel. [5:25]
Jonathan Pollard on Henry Kissinger: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly [34:40] Machon Shilo
December 3, 2023
[Ed.: Kisssinger: Yimach shmo.]
December 3, 2023 – by Jerry Gordon and Brig. General (US Army Retired) John Adams
Jerry Gordon, a Senior Editor of The New English Review, invited retired US Army Brig. General John Adams to discuss Israel Defense Force military doctrine and strategic options in the conduct of the Jewish state’s civilizational war with Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. He addresses the conflict given his extensive background as a 30-year veteran of combat, staff and international military diplomatic assignments and post-service informal analysis and discussions with former Senior IDF commanders.
Watch the YouTube interview with Brig. Gen. (US Army retired) John Adams here.
“The killing of George Floyd” was a gigantic lie that actually killed Minneapolis, while helping keep us all at one another’s throats (MUST-SEE) MARK CRISPIN MILLER
This powerful documentary demands that we all take a deeper look into that propaganda masterpiece (along with all the others that have put us where we are today)
DEC 3, 2023 – My thanks to Celia Farber for her post last night, about The Fall of Minneapolis, a must-see documentary on the George Floyd moment, and for her prior post of Maryam Henein’s in-depth report on the recent prison stabbing of Derek Chauvin by an FBI informant.
I put that last phrase in italics to accentuate the federal aspect of that catastrophic moment—a crucial aspect that this documentary treats passingly, as it deals mainly with the disgraceful role played by (a) the Democratic politicians and officials who immediately demonized the Minneapolis police, and variously ran the show trial afterward, and (b) the “journalists” who baldly misreported everything from Floyd’s arrest to the jury’s guilty verdicts.
While all those puny players surely did their part to put across that mammoth lie, the role played by the FBI in Minneapolis, and by the institutions that immediately turned Floyd’s “murder” into a global story, must also be investigated and exposed; for that whole episode, exploding roughly four months after the traumatic rollout of “the virus,” served clearly to advance the same agenda that began with “COVID”—that is, to divide the people, deal a (second) mortal blow to the economy, “defund the police” and otherwise destroy our cities, all in preparation for the global order dictated by the likes of Klaus Schwab and Bill Gates. That the propaganda jamboree over Floyd’s “murder” fit so tidily into the larger “COVID” narrative (to be followed, just as neatly, by the propaganda jamborees over Biden/Harris’s “election,” and then “January 6”) makes it imperative that we pull back and take a larger view of the events that ruined Minneapolis, while also wreaking havoc elsewhere coast to coast.
As for such urban havoc outside Minnesota, I vividly remember watching vandals running riot in Manhattan, and the NYPD clearly standing down, while folks in other cities told like stories of mob violence unchecked by the police, and even (as in Boston) of cops placing piles of bricks near protest sites. Also as in Minneapolis, the violence in cities nationwide was baldly—some might say “psychotically”—misdescribed by “our free press” as “peaceful protests.” That such anomalies around those “protests” were noted, and recorded, far and wide makes it seem more than likely that Floyd’s “murder” was an op devised and managed outside Minneapolis, or Minnesota.
A message from Doris Wise, President, Jews Can Shoot
December 3, 2023 – I am sharing an email (edited by me to avoid identification) – one of so many – I received about the difficulty Israelis have arming and defending themselves. I also received many communications expressing shock to learn about Israel’s draconian gun laws.
Hi Doris,
Hope this message finds you well.
I recently came across several posts of yours regarding the current situation in Israel which really resonated with me.
I grew up in New York and moved to Israel in 2015 at the age of 20 … pursue my dream of building a life in Israel. My pursuit has exceeded my wildest dreams — I’ve been blessed to find my wife, have children, begin a strong career … and find a like-minded community to live in in this beautiful land.
Unfortunately, October 7th was a stark shift in my perception of the security situation in Israel …
Several months ago, I saw an article with the now-famous Aluf Brick, who warned about the lack of security on the borders and a potential multi-pronged attack. I took it rather seriously, though I thought there was quite some time until something could transpire. My, how I was wrong. In any event, after watching that video, I spoke with my wife and concluded that we needed a gun in the house. That kicked off the most convoluted (and expensive) bureaucratic process I have endured to date. I still haven’t managed to receive a weapon and my application is in an appeal process (and recently disappeared completely from the government’s website). We were very torn about how to react to October 7th, but decided that the continuous rockets / sirens / tense energy was not affecting us or our kids well at all, so we decided to return to the United States to get a bit of a reprieve and benefit from our families’ support. We are still very torn; we love Israel, we feel like aliens here despite our families offering a strong support system, and part of us feels like we turned our back on our country and are giving up all the hard work we have invested to build a strong foundation for a life in Israel. But I feel like the fact that there is no way to own a gun and make our best effort to protect ourselves makes living in Israel a very dangerous reality.
We are currently in Florida, where gun restrictions are relatively loose, and within my first week of being here, I have taken a firearms training course and purchased my first firearm. I’m religious and believe in G-d, but also believe that humans need to do their best effort to provide the physical vessel for G-d’s blessing to manifest (so to speak). And unfortunately, with what happened in Israel and the restrictive gun laws that continue to be in place, I do not feel like I am doing that by being there.
Anyways, sorry for this whole megillah, but like I wrote above, your perspective really resonated with me.
There have been several posts that Israel has relaxed their gun laws granting more Israelis the right ability to own weapons and ammunition to protect themselves, their families, their homes. I have yet to become aware of anything significant. October 7 proved that too many Israeli citizens were not only their first line of defense but their only line of defense. [Emphasis added]
What should Americans learn from October 7? How fortunate we are to have a Second Amendment. I’m talking to you, American Jews.
Courage is contagious! TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 3, 2023 – So many people believe there is no hope. Wrong. With God all things are possible. The tide is turning and many people are standing up and speaking out against the Globalist atheist demons who wish to control us! Courage is contagious. Here are just a few examples:
Dana White said he refuses to do the bidding of his sponsors!
DANA WHITE: This happened to me. I posted a video for Trump. Right on my personal social media. And one of our big sponsors called and said “take that down.”
You know, I said “Go f**k yourself.”
Yeah, you vote for whoever you want to vote for and I’ll vote for whoever I want to. That’s how this works. I don’t even care who you vote for. It’s none of my f***ing business. But f**k you. Don’t ever call me and tell me who to vote for.
A lot of people live in fear these days that if they don’t vote for certain people that they’re going to lose their jobs. Hollywood, for example. How crazy is that? It’s insane.
It’ll keep happening unless more people stand up for themselves.
https://x.com/burackbobby_/status/1724488488907587884
Elon Musk said he refuses to do the bidding of his advertisers!
ELON MUSK: If someone is going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f**k yourself. Go f**k yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is. What I see all over the place is people who care about looking good, while doing evil. F**k them.
https://x.com/simonateba/status/1730076897571221921
President Trump shared this video on his Truth Social page. His support among minority voters is skyrocketing as they wake up to the Commie destructive policies of Obama-Biden.
Locksmith: “America”
America is slowly dying, of a self-inflicted wound from a weapon that we’re supplying
The past seeds of hatred that race in our bloodstream, we can’t agree to disagree on the most basic of things
What’s a man? What’s a woman? What’s the shape of the Earth?
When does human life begin? At conception or during birth?
[Ed.:
Why have ‘experts’ forgotten the 1982 lesson? By Moshe Phillips
Appearing on “Watch the Beat with Ari Melber,” on November 21, Dennis Ross said that “the way to end the war in Gaza” would be for Israel to allow the Hamas leadership to leave the territory in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. Ross said he hopes the Biden Administration will promote such a proposal.
11-28-2023 11:36 – Former US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross has a plan to rescue Hamas from destruction, and he unveiled it on MSNBC just as announcements were being made that Israel and Hamas agreed to a temporary ceasefire.
Appearing on “Watch the Beat with Ari Melber,” on November 21, Ross said that “the way to end the war in Gaza” would be for Israel to allow the Hamas leadership to leave the territory in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. Ross said he hopes the Biden Administration will promote such a proposal.
Ross cited a precedent: Israel’s decision in 1982, under US pressure, to allow Yasser Arafat and the rest of the PLO leadership to leave besieged Beirut.
Ross forgot to mention what happened after Arafat left Lebanon. He didn’t ride off into the sunset of some quiet retirement. He sailed to nearby Tunis, set up PLO terrorist headquarters there, and embarked on twenty more years of terrorism. Shootings and stabbings. Bus bombings and intifadas. Thousands of Israelis murdered or maimed.
And now Ross wants Israel to repeat that tragic mistake. Once again, he wants to see terrorist leaders rescued, which would leave them free to orchestrate more October 7-style massacres.
But then again, Ambassador Ross has never been very good about learning the lessons – including the lessons from his own actions.
This is, after all, the same Dennis Ross who has publicly admitted – on the op-ed page of the Washington Post – that he pressured Israel to let Hamas import concrete. Ross insisted the concrete would be used to build houses. Israel was afraid it would be used to build terror tunnels. But under Ross’s pressure, the Israelis gave in, despite the danger.
Years later, when the damage was already done, Ross admitted that the Israelis were right to be worried.
Today, it is Israeli families that are paying the price for Ross’s mistake. Hundreds of innocent Israelis, and other foreign nationals including American citizens, are being held hostage in those terrorist tunnels, which were built with the concrete that Ross helped bring into Gaza.
Former American diplomats often lead a charmed life. Ross and the other ex-Middle East envoys – Daniel Kurtzer, Martin Indyk, Aaron Miller, Richard Haas, David Makovsky – have comfortable paid positions in various think tanks and universities. Perched in those ivory towers, they dish out unsolicited advice on how Israel should conduct itself.
They are quoted regularly in the New York Times, and appear frequently on television shows where hosts such as Ari Melber ask them softball questions. They are treated as if the fact that they were involved in past Middle East diplomacy somehow makes them experts on how to bring peace to that part of the world today.
Nobody seems to notice that all their diplomatic efforts, ranging over three decades, were complete failures. Not only did they not achieve anything remotely resembling peace – they actually made things worse. Much worse.
They pressured Israel to make one-sided concessions that were never reciprocated. They intimidated Israel into setting free hundreds of terrorists in worthless “gestures.” They emboldened Palestinian Arab extremism by covering up the Palestinian Authority’s constant violations of the Oslo Accords. And they helped turn world public opinion against Israel, by constantly blaming Israel as the main obstacle to peace.
And after all that, now they have the gall to show up on op-ed pages and talk shows, posing as neutral experts, trotting out new proposals that are supposed to magically succeed where every previous proposal of theirs has failed.
Ex-diplomats never have to deal with the consequences of their bad advice. After their diplomatic efforts flop, they return to comfortable jobs and the warmth of friendly television shows. They continue to enjoy the feeling of importance that derives from being quoted in the news and they are deluged with prestigious speaking invitations. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away, Israeli women and children have to face the snipers, stabbers, and bombers whom those diplomats helped set free.
The Rapid Return of Israel’s Disastrous Policy by Daniel Pipes
Middle East Quarterly | Winter 2024
“Judging by the way Netanyahu has managed Gaza in the last 13 years, it is not certain that there will be a clear policy going forward.” — Tal Schneider, Times of Israel
“Everything changed” in Israel on Oct. 7. But did it? Understanding the mistakes that led up to the Hamas massacre provides a basis to evaluate Israel’s long-term response to that day. Contrary to general opinion, I shall argue that the presumptions behind those mistakes remain in place and will not change unless Israelis adopt a radically different attitude toward the Palestinians.
The Road to Oct. 7
Israeli military planners coined a Hebrew term, conceptzia, “the concept,” in the late 1960s. It held that Egypt’s Anwar el-Sadat would not go to war until 1974, when his military had acquired advanced Soviet fighter jets that permitted it to take on the Jewish state’s air force. Israel’s Agranat Commission, which investigated how the Egyptians and Syrians surprised Israel in the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, largely blamed the conceptzia for a blindness to the preparations taking place before its very eyes.
The future commission inevitably analyzing Israel’s unpreparedness on Oct. 7, 2023, will surely blame that surprise on a second erroneous conceptzia. It held that, David Makovsky of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy explains,
under the heavy burden of governing the Gaza Strip, Hamas would feel the need to prove itself through economic performance. Specifically, economic inducements towards Hamas would moderate its foundational belief that Israel is an illegitimate entity whose very existence must be extinguished and its citizens killed. This Israeli conceptzia was driven by many factors, but at its core, it was based on the idea that Hamas was undergoing an organizational evolution in which it would now value even modest increases in living standards in Gaza. Economic advancement would bring calm, as it gave Hamas something to lose.
Note the words “something to lose”: this phrase summarizes the new conceptzia, a belief that Hamas could be bought off or tempered through economic benefits. A headline published days before Oct. 7 captured the depth of this misunderstanding: “IDF and Shin Bet call on government to continue economic activities with Gaza. Senior security officials ask political echelon to increase work permits for Gazans to maintain calm on the border.”[1] Maintain calm. As Col. (res.) Eran Lerman explained just ahead of Oct. 7:
The ruling center-right in Israel takes a “conflict management” approach to the Palestinian issue. They prefer to leave open the prospect that resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may yet be possible one day, as the region changes and new leaders emerge. But until then, they believe, what Israel should do is ease tensions and improve living conditions for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, while reserving the right to hit back at terrorist activity in a selective and intelligence-driven manner.
Is Jonathan Pollard a Zionist? Discussion between Jonathan Pollard and Rabbi David Bar-Hayim [39:40]
Defeating an enemy that doesn’t care about dying Avraham Shusteris
Jews should not have qualms about taking land from an enemy that tried to conquer and destroy our country. Opinion.
Dec 2, 2023, 10:31 PM (GMT+2) – Many have wondered, how can Israel possibly force a military defeat on a brutal enemy that cares neither about the death nor for the life and welfare of its own civilians. While Israel has flattened half of Gaza and created a considerable death toll, the spirit in Gaza and around the Arab world remains fairly euphoric after the Oct 7th Massacre.
The Palestinian Arabs and their cause has never been as popular throughout the world. As nations push for a permanent ceasefire, the Palestinian Arabs are poised to claim victory no matter how many Gazan buildings are flattened, and how many terrorists killed. Unless the Palestinian Arabs feel defeated after this war, Israel will not have gained any deterrence value, and all of its soldiers and civilians will have died in vain. Given these circumstances, how can Israel possibly win? The answer lies in understanding how the Arabs perceive victory and loss.
Unlike Westerners, Arabs don’t care much about lives or buildings, if they did Hamas would not use its civilians as human shields. If they cared, they would provide their civilians with shelters or at least protect them in their tunnels. They did neither.
From the Arab perspective, the most important commodity is honor, and the Arab’s land is their honor. By conquering an Arab’s land, you rob him of his honor, which is more precious than life itself. This is why the 1948 War was called “The Nakhba” or the “the catastrophe” since Arabs were displaced from their land. While Arabs lost many lives and buildings in many of the future wars and conflicts with Israel, none of them were a true catastrophe for the Arab, only the conflict in which they saw “their land” conquered and taken by the Jewish state.
Israel cannot win this war unless the Palestinian Arabs lose land. Only then will they feel defeated and deterred. Only then will they bow their heads in defeat. Until that point, even if Israel wipes out a million Gazans and flattens all of the buildings in Gaza, it won’t deflate the Arab, it will only galvanize and embolden them to plan further massacres until they achieve their ultimate goal of the complete destruction of the Jewish state. Only defeat on their own terms will put an end to their national aspirations of liberating the entire land between river to the sea.
But what will the Americans say?
It’s a fair question, so lets give it some thought. Israel is not in its nature a warrior nation. Despite its small size, it isn’t interested in conquering its neighbors or expanding its boundaries. Israel is simply a nation that wants to be left alone to live in peace. That is why the concept of conquering land provokes an innate repulsive response for most Jews, and rightly so. It’s not Israel’s business conquering the land of other nations. However, in this case, we are not talking about conquering foreign land.
The Bible clearly states (Genesis 15:18) that G-d has given the entire land between the Euphrates and the Nile to the Jewish people. This isn’t a right wing conspiracy theory, it’s written in black and white in the Bible. The entire land between Euphrates and the Nile is promised to the Jewish people, those are the boundaries of the true Jewish state. The Jewish people have no right or authority to renounce this claim.
Israel has never been allowed to win a war! Dr. Michael Wise
Israel must destroy Hamas for its own sake and to preserve its credibility as ally of Sunni states in their conflict with Iran. Op-ed.
Dec 1, 2023, 12:06 PM (GMT+2) – Victory in a war requires either a peace treaty, unconditional surrender, or totally neutralizing the enemy. The World heretofore has not permitted an Israel victory. The fact that Israel has been prevented from ever winning a war has encouraged its enemies to try try and try again! Ending wars with armistices, ceasefires and pauses guarantees that the next war will be around the corner.
The 1947-48 War of Independence ended in series of ceasefire agreements with Egypt (Rhodes, February 1949), Lebanon (Rosh ha-Nikrah, March 1949), Jordan (Rhodes, April 1949), and Syria (Maḥanayim, July 1949). No Peace Agreements, no recognition of Israeli victory, just Green Lines, Blue Lines, and No lines.
Israel success in the Sinai campaign of 1956 ended when the United States and the Soviet Union forced Israel and the IDF to evacuate the Sinai Peninsula and the Gaza Strip. Troops of the United Nations Emergency Force were posted on the Egyptian side of the frontier and at Sharm el-Sheikh to guarantee free passage of Israeli shipping through the Straits of Tiran. No victory.
The Six-day War in 1967 ended when a United Nations-brokered ceasefire took effect before Israel was allowed to complete its spectacular victory and was rewarded with the three No’s of Khartoum and the UN branding of Disputed Territories.
The Yom Kippur War ended 25 October 1973, with a ceasefire imposed by the international community. Again, as soon as Israel completed its encirclement of the Egyptian Third Army and Suez City, bringing them within 100 kilometres (62 miles) of Cairo, Israel was denied a Victory!
The world cannot allow the Jewish State to be victorious.
Inside the Oct. 7 military catastrophe [38:24] Caroline Glick
December 1, 2023 – The Israeli government is going to have to make some changes in the IDF General Staff if we want to win this war.
The West is also going to have to make some changes in the way that it does things if it wants to survive. I discuss in In Focus.To watch the show, click here or on the photo above.
Aharon Haliva has got to go. Now. Caroline Glick
Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Directorate Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva
December 1, 2023 – Immediately after the blackest day in Israeli history, a consensus formed that we must wait until after the war to investigate how Hamas was able to invade the country, slaughter 1,200 innocents and get away with 240 hostages. There’s a lot to recommend this position.
We’re at war. Now is not the time for action, not recrimination and trials for failed generals, security chiefs and politicians. Good or bad, you go to war with the army and leaders you have. People have jobs to do, and our job is to let them do theirs.
While reasonable on its face, there is a problem with delaying a reckoning. At least in some cases, it seems clear that the people whose failures enabled the Hamas attack are not capable of bringing us victory.
Case in point: Israel Defense Forces Intelligence Directorate Chief Maj. Gen. Aharon Haliva. [Emphasis added] In the weeks since Oct. 7, more and more information has come out about why Hamas was able to pull it off. All of the information points to Haliva and his close subordinates.
The Field Observers unit at Nahal Oz base suffered the greatest losses there during Hamas’s assault. The unit, comprising female soldiers, is responsible for monitoring the footage from security cameras along the Gaza border around the clock and alerting forces on the ground and in the intelligence community to anything suspicious.
Seventeen observers were killed on Oct. 7. Seven were taken hostage. One, Naama Levy, was videoed barefoot, being dragged from the trunk of a vehicle by her hair and pushed into the back seat. Her hands were zip-tied behind her back. The seat of her sweatpants was stained with blood, indicating she had been raped violently.
One observer, Ori Megidish, was rescued by the IDF in early November. Another, Noa Marciano, was filmed in a hostage video, first alive, and then dead. Her body was later recovered by IDF forces.
Days after their friends were slaughtered, raped and kidnapped, the two surviving members of the unit and a number of former members started coming forward to tell their story. In interviews with Channel 11, two women related that in the months before the invasion, they were warning it was in the works. The women saw Hamas terrorists training to take over kibbutzim and IDF bases. They watched terrorists practicing taking hostages and blowing up tanks. They saw terror commanders watching the drills. They saw spies probing the fence for weaknesses. They saw it all and reported it all.
Rather than giving them medals, unnamed top-level officers in the intelligence corps ordered them to stop. When they continued reporting, the observers were warned that they would be disciplined and removed from the unit if they kept raising their concerns.
The observers weren’t the only ones silenced. Rafael Hayun, a civilian hacker who monitors open intelligence networks, worked for the IDF for years. The IDF provided Hayun with equipment to monitor Hamas’s internal communications. In late 2019, Hayun began reporting on Hamas training exercises involving invading Israel, penetrating the security fence at multiple points, taking over communities, committing mass murder and kidnapping. Over time, the training became more intense and detailed. Hayun alerted the units he was working with about Hamas’s activities in real time.
Five months before the assault, his colleagues in the IDF were ordered to seize all of his equipment and stop working with him. Around the same time, the IDF’s Intelligence Directorate Unit 8200 signals intelligence unit also stopped monitoring Hamas’s communications.
Hayun said that his military colleagues told him the order to cut him off came from “senior leadership,” and they had no explanation for the decision. Hayun told reporters he is convinced that if he had been listening in the weeks before Oct. 7, the invasion would have been prevented.
Hayun and the observers weren’t the only ones who recognized what Hamas was doing. As Channels 11, 12 and Haaretz all reported, a tactical intelligence NCO and Hamas expert in Unit 8200 with 20 years of experience began providing detailed reports on Hamas’s preparations for the invasion in May 2022.
In a series of three, increasingly detailed and urgent reports over succeeding months, the NCO set out in granular detail how Hamas was preparing a broad invasion of Israel that included the invasion of IDF bases, border towns and kibbutzim. Her reports included all aspects of the invasion that took place on Oct. 7, including Hamas’s use of paragliders, pick-up trucks and motorcycles. She detailed Hamas’s plans to massacre and kidnap civilians and soldiers. She warned that their intention was to use provocations along the security fence in the weeks leading up to the operation to get the IDF used to breaches and so lull its commanders into complacency. She even secured Hamas’s own training manual for the operation. She was able to get the information in front of Unit 8200’s commander and a top officer in the Southern Command. They apparently did nothing.
Convinced by his subordinate’s reporting, her commander, an NCO with 30 years’ experience, canceled a family vacation because he heard Haliva would be visiting their base. He waylaid Haliva, and he and his subordinate presented her reports. Haliva dismissed their warnings and detailed information as hot air. Hamas, he insisted, was just pretending, to make an impression on its followers. He did not communicate her report to either the head of Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) or the IDF Chief of General Staff.
[Ed.: For his treason, the death penalty would be (minimally) appropriate.]
Biden is the primary obstacle to Israeli victory Caroline Glick
December 1, 2023 – 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.
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. [Emphasis added]
[Ed.: Every Gazan citizen actually is a terrorist!]
