COMMENTARY / OPINION
The Vladimir Putin Interview [2:00:07]
Tucker interviews Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia. February 6th, 2024.
Published Feb 8, 2024
EPISODE DETAILS
TIMESTAMP HEADLINE
00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:00 Putin gives a history of Russia & Ukraine
00:25:04 NATO Expansion
00:30:40 NATO & Bill Clinton
00:41:10 Ukraine
00:48:30 What triggered this conflict?
01:02:37 A peaceful solution?
01:11:33 Who blew up the Nord Stream pipelines?
01:24:13 Re-establishing communication with the US
01:36:33 How powerful is Zelensky?
01:48:36 Elon Musk & AI
01:51:07 Imprisoned American journalist Evan Gershkovich
Biden and Blinken’s Middle East Powder Keg: Revealing the Explosive Truth [7:19] Mark Levin Show
Blinken’s Bonkers
February 8, 2024 – Joe Biden and Antony Blinken’s foreign policy decisions are crippling Israel. Emboldened terrorists swagger throughout the Middle East while Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons seems increasingly likely. The democratic world order is on the brink.
Conventional Western wisdom vs. Middle East reality Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
February 8, 2024 – Prof. Bernard Lewis, who was a leading authority on Islam and the Middle East, shed light on a cardinal aspect of the frustrating, complicated and inconvenient reality of the Middle East: “If the fighters in the war for Islam are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God…. In the classical Islamic view, the world is divided into two: the House of Islam… and the House of Unbelief, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam…. The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some 14 centuries…. America has become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good… of Islam….”
*Western conventional wisdom has been based on the assumptions that Middle East violence is despair-driven; that radical Middle East dictators can be induced to subordinate their radical ideologies to dramatic financial benefits (“money talks”); and that significant gestures and concessions could motivate rogue Middle East leaders to embrace peaceful coexistence, compliance with agreements, adoption of human rights and democracy, to depart from fanatic ideologies, and to join the “multilateral/cosmopolitan club.”
*In order to advance its well-intentioned assumptions, Western conventional wisdom has consistently overlooked the 1,400-year-old shifty, unpredictable, violent, totalitarian, intolerant, anti-“infidel” (Islam vs. the West), anti-“apostate” (Shiite vs. Sunni), fragmented, volcanic and frustrating nature of Middle East (intra-Arab and intra-Moslem) reality. It has also overlooked the supremacy of fanatical ideologies over financial benefits in shaping the policy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Moslem Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as reflected in their (K-12) school curriculum, mosque sermons and constitutions/charters.
Reliable Sources for Information on The Middle East By Alex Grobman
February 8, 2024 – Part VI
The Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) is a global Jewish human rights organization that confronts antisemitism, hate, stands with Israel, defends the safety of Jews worldwide, and teaches the lessons of the Holocaust for future generations. It is an accredited nongovernmental organization (NGO) at the U.N., UNESCO and the Organization of American States, the Latin American Parliament, and the Council of Europe.
Digital Terrorism and Hate Project
SWC’s research department publishes special reports highlighting a range of topical subjects from antisemitism to online hate to extremism. For over a quarter of a century, as part of its Digital Terrorism and Hate Project, an annual interactive report has been published highlighting the promotion of online extremism, hate and antisemitism. The project explores how the internet is used by extremists to promote their ideologies and recruit individuals, often on the cutting edge of digital advances. Reports are shared with law enforcement, educators and elected officials.
For more information, and to report hate content online, please email ireport@wiesenthal.com. To access the Digital Terrorism and Hate project, please visit www.digitalhate.net.
Moriah Films is the two-time Academy Award-winning film division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. It has produced 17 documentaries that have examined the tragedy of the Holocaust, seminal events in modern Jewish history, the creation of the State of Israel and the lives of epic personalities of the 20th and 21st centuries. Over one billion people around the globe have seen Moriah’s films, including Oscar winners “Genocide” and “The Long Way Home,” in theaters, on cable, and on every major streaming platform, including Netflix, Amazon Prime and Apple TV.
InMotion Magazine, the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s publication which is sent to its members as well as government officials, and members of the media. InMotion details the Center’s vast social action agenda and its programs throughout the world.
StandWithUs is an international, nonpartisan education organization that supports Israel and fights antisemitism. StandWithUs empowers and energizes students and communities with leadership training and educational programs on hundreds of college campuses, high schools and middle schools. StandWithUs informs through social media, print and digital materials, films, weekly newsletters and missions to Israel.
Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Los Angeles, the organization has programs on six continents with chapters and offices throughout the U.S., Israel, the Netherlands, the U.K., Canada, Brazil and South Africa.
StandWithUs is not politically aligned in any country. The organization does not and has never advocated specific policies for Israel. “Our work and respect for Israel’s democratically elected government are not contingent on which parties are in power. Our goal is to counter antisemitism, educate the public about Israel, empower others to educate their communities, and make it possible to have reasonable, informed conversations about Israel’s history, policies and humanitarian aid on campuses and in communities around the world.”
Are the United States And Europe Are Hell Bent On Sparking World War III? By Larry Johnson
Feb. 8, 2024 7:00 am – The U.S. and Europe — the Brits in particular — are out of control and flouting international law as they carry out military strikes in Yemen, Syria and Iraq. The West claims it is an act of self-defense, but instead of killing or arresting specific individuals responsible for attacks, it is engaged in collective punishment. I think we are coming to a point where anger against the West is going to boil over and the U.S. and Europe may get a taste of their own medicine. All of this was avoidable, but the U.S. and Britain have convinced their citizens that attacks on foreign countries without the backing of the UN is entirely appropriate. It is not. These actions shred international support for the U.S.-proclaimed “rules-based international order.”
The latest incident to spark outrage is a hellfire missile strike in Baghdad.
According to CENTCOM, Abu al-Saadi was the only target of the assassination in Baghdad. Acording to them, he was responsible for attacks against American bases.
According to a pro-resistance source close to the PMU, al-Saadi was assassinated alone in a car without any other companions being assassinated, contrary to the initial reports of a second person.
[Other] Reports state that the targeted assassination hit the vehicles of Kataib Hezbollah commanders, namely Abu Baqir al-Saadi and Hajj Arkan al-Alaywi.
The United States ostensibly has friendly relations with the Government of Iraq. The normal procedure under the “rules-based international order” requires the United States to issue an indictment against the alleged perpetrators of Tower 22 bombing and then present that to the Government of Iraq and request arrest and extradition. Rather than follow a diplomatic route, the United States carried out an act of war on the sovereign territory of Iraq. This act gives Iraq — again under the “rules-based international order” proclaimed as sacrosanct by the United States — the right to strike back against U.S. targets.
In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, Iraqis took to the streets of Baghdad chanting ,”God is Great, America is the Great Satan”.
Israel Should Stop Sending Aid to its Enemies BY HUGH FITZGERALD
FEB 7, 2024 10:00 AM – Israel not only helps its friends. It also has a long record of helping its enemies, sending humanitarian aid, medical personnel, and search-and-rescue teams, to these countries in the wake of natural disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis. This practice has not lessened the recipients’ enmity. Israel should cease the practice, and direct its aid only to its friends, and to those who need it most, which right now includes Israel’s own people, for the war in Gaza, and Hezbollah rockets, have forced 280,000 Israelis to be internally displaced, having had to leave their communities on the Gaza and Lebanese borders. More on Israel’s aid policy, and why it should be changed, can be found here: “Israel is wrong to give aid to antisemitic countries – opinion,” by Sheila Nazarian, Jerusalem Post, February 1, 2024:
Biden goes after ‘settlers’ as Hamas war rages on [32:24] ALEX TRAIMAN
“Jerusalem Minute,” Ep. 6
(February 7, 2024 / JNS) – “Jerusalem Minute” is back with JNS CEO and Jerusalem bureau chief Alex Traiman talking with Middle East correspondent Josh Hasten about this week’s news in Israel.
They delve into an update on IDF operations and the war in Gaza; the sanctioning of four Israeli “settlers” by the Biden administration; the push for a two-state solution by the United States and the international community; the situation with Hezbollah on Israel’s northern border; and the Houthis and other Iranian terrorist proxies.
All this and more on “Jerusalem Minute”—the place to get all the news and analysis on what’s happening in Israel
[Ed.: This is one of the very best discussions I’ve seen about the current state of affairs in Israel. BTW, the people speaking (Hasten and Traiman) are “SETTLERS”!!)
The Biden Administration is a danger to Israel [7:39] Avi Abelow
Honestly, it is absolutely insane when you hear it all explained, but do not despair! We are living in an alternate reality, where good is evil and evil is good. Just listen to this blood libel, issued as an executive order in the name of President Biden himself. Op-ed.
Feb 7, 2024, 7:16 AM (GMT+2) – Last week I made a video on how the Biden administration is rewarding Hamas by threatening to recognize a Palestinian state. I called it:
The Biden Administration is a Danger to Israel
Now, the Biden administration is publicizing a horrific blood libel against Jews!
And this after we just experienced the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust!
We are living in an alternate reality, where good is evil and evil is good.
Just listen to this blood libel, issued as an executive order in the name of President Biden himself.
Here we go, I’m now quoting word for word from the White House website, and I quote:
“By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America etc etc etc,
“I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, find that the situation in the West Bank — in particular high levels of extremist settler violence, forced displacement of people and villages, and property destruction — has reached intolerable levels and constitutes a serious threat to the peace, security, and stability of the West Bank and Gaza, Israel, and the broader Middle East region. These actions undermine the foreign policy objectives of the United States, including the viability of a two-state solution and ensuring Israelis and Palestinians can attain equal measures of security, prosperity, and freedom. They also undermine the security of Israel and have the potential to lead to broader regional destabilization across the Middle East, threatening United States personnel and interests. For these reasons, these actions constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States. I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat. Accordingly, I hereby order….”
And then the executive order lists all the stipulations on punishing Jews.
And their first act of punishment was to force an Israeli bank to freeze all bank accounts and credit cards of four Israeli farmers in the hills of Judea and Samaria who have had to defend themselves from the Arab Muslim neighbors who attack them and try steal their property. (They have never been accused of violence or brought to court. The information probably came from a leftist anti-Israel organization.)
So the Biden administration created an executive order to punish Jews! For what? For defending themselves against Arabs who use violence against them!
TUCKER: Why I’m Interviewing Russian President Putin [4:28] By CDM Staff
February 6, 2024 – Tucker: “First, because it’s our job. We’re in journalism. Our duty is to inform people. Two years into a war that’s reshaping the entire world, most Americans are not informed. They have no real idea what’s happening in this region, here in Russia or 600 miles away in Ukraine.”
Tucker: “At the same time, our politicians and media outlets have been doing this, promoting [Ukrainian President Zelensky] like he’s a new consumer brand, not a single Western journalist has bothered to interview the president of the other country involved in this conflict, Vladimir Putin. Most Americans have no idea why Putin invaded Ukraine, or what his goals are now. They’ve never heard his voice. That’s wrong. Americans have a right to know all they can about a war they’re implicated in, and we have the right to tell them about it because we are Americans, too. Freedom of speech is our birthright.”
Tucker: “We are not here because we love Vladimir Putin. We are here because we love the United States. And we want it to remain prosperous and free. We paid for this trip ourselves. We took no money from any government or group, nor are we charging people to see the interview. It is not behind a paywall. Anyone can watch the entire thing shot live to tape and unedited on our website, TuckerCarlson.com. Elon Musk, to his great credit, has promised not to suppress or block this interview once we post it on his platform X, and we’re grateful for that.”
BREAKING: PUTIN CONFIRMS TO TUCKER CARLSON PRESIDENT BIDEN IS NOT RUNNING THE UNITED STATES By CDM Staff
February 6, 2024 – This story is developing…
Today in Moscow, Tucker Carlson asked Russian President Putin who actually runs the U.S. This was his answer:
“The same forces which have always run it. You may change presidents but you do not change those in real power. That is who we have to deal with. Joe Biden is just a facade for this power structure.”
When asked about a possible second term for President Trump, Putin replied:
“For one thing he never insulted us. He has a great respect for Russia. We would start from a position of friendship and trust – then all problems are solvable. We could get it done. Trust me.”
The US Has Lost All Moral Authority L Todd Wood
February 6, 2024 – We know they’re lying. They know we know they are lying. The world knows they are lying.
The OBiden regime is attempting to put its chief political opponent in jail for 700 years, and is trying to destroy his business.
The OBiden regime is starting, and enabling wars all over the planet.
The OBiden regime is blowing up the infrastructure of our allies.
The OBiden regime is attempting to start WWIII with the Russian Federation and Iran.
The OBiden regime has imprisoned hundreds of political activists, and is torturing them.
The OBiden regime is stealing massive amounts of American wealth and treasure.
The United States has lost all moral authority.
This is planned of course, as the destruction of Western civilization continues, and most Americans are on the golf course, or watching Tik Tok.
The United States government can no longer criticize other tyrannical nations for their behavior.
It’s time to take the stick out of our own eye.
I’ve never been so ashamed of my country.
Time for Trump. Make it happen.
- LIVE 7pm EST: Pacific SitRep – China Cyber Pearl Harbor?
- It’s Time To Charge U.S. Military Commanders With Murder
When You Realize You’ve Been Had JOHN LEAKE
On understanding that you have been deceived
FEB 6, 2024- In Dante’s Inferno, the 9th and final circle of hell, “the lowest, blackest, and farthest from heaven,” is reserved those guilty of treachery against those in whom they have cultivated a bond of trust.
I often thought about this in 2013, when I was living in Menlo Park, California and became friends with a man of who was a benefactor of the VA hospitals in Menlo Park and in Palo Alto. He was especially concerned about young soldiers who’d suffered traumatic brain injuries in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On a few occasions we made the rounds and visited patients who’d sustained this kind of injury. The strangest were those who had retained motor skills and seemed to recognize us, but who also seemed completely indifferent to us. Some had suffered from speech impairment and seemed frightened of us. A nurse told me that it was common for this kind of patient to have developed a passionate interest in Facebook and to spend most of his waking hours scrolling through it.
In 2013, it was hard for me to fathom that hundreds of thousands of young men in the United States—many with wives and small children—had sustained Traumatic Brain Injuries. Many could still function in their day to day lives, but suffered irritability, frequent headaches, and a feeling of disconnection from their family and friends. On the extreme end of the scale were the completely disabled, doomed to spend the rest of their lives in VA hospitals.
In 2017, Lindquist, Love, et al. published Traumatic Brain Injury in Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans: New Results from a National Random Sample Study. As the opening of the report states:
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has been called a “signature injury” of Iraq and Afghanistan Conflicts. The Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) reports nearly 350,000 incident diagnoses of TBI in the U.S. military since 2000. Among those deployed, estimated rates of probable TBI range from 11–23%.
I thought it notable that the U.S. military was, apparently, completely unprepared for roadside bombs constructed to focus the blast on particular sections of road as a convey is passing by. It wasn’t some much shrapnel and other missiles striking the head as the supersonic, explosive shockwave that does the brain damage. The click on the video below to see an example of a large roadside bomb blasting a U.S. convoy.
VDH: Hamas and Hezbollah think the U.S. will not help Israel [53:03] Caroline Glick
WILL THE U.S. DESERT ISRAEL?
02/06/2024 – On this week’s episode of “The Caroline Glick Show,” my guest was noted American classicist, military historian and political commentator Victor Davis Hanson from the Hoover Institute at Stanford. Prof. Hanson and I talked about the state of American politics and culture, and how it will affect the Middle East and Israel. Will the progressive takeover of American educational, political and military institutions continue to erode U.S. support for Israel? Should Israel supporters just wait in the hopes that a pro-Israel president like Donald Trump will win the presidency? How should Israel react to American foreign policy?
Don’t miss this discussion.
‘Stealth Invasion’ of America goes mainstream: But does anybody care? LEO HOHMANN
National leaders the world over are warning their people to prepare for war, but where are the warnings from American politicians, pastors, business leaders?
FEB 5, 2024 – You know we are in the final stages of an invasion when even the corporate media is reporting on the thousands of Chinese nationals streaming across the U.S. southern border.
CBS’s 60 Minutes reports that the Chinese-owned social media platform TikTok is being used to aid and abet the invasion of America.
If you watch the above linked video, they kinda, sorta, almost told the truth.
Notice how almost all the Chinese illegals in the video were men, most of them of military age. The folks at 60 Minutes conveniently forgot to report that part.
Many in the alternative media started reporting about the Chinese communists exploiting Joe Biden’s open borders almost right after Biden was installed in the White House. But if you depend on CBS for your news, you’re just now hearing about it for the first time, and then, you are only getting a very filtered version of a much bigger story.
You will not hear the words “border invasion” in that report by 60 Minutes. But that’s exactly what it is. And it’s not just Chinese, either. These men are coming from the Middle East, parts of Africa, and many other regions not known for their love and affection for America or its people.
Prepare now for war on U.S. soil. The army has been assembled. The barbarians are inside the gates. All that needs to happen is for them to be given orders to start attacking and the final plan to take down America will be in play. All it will take is a false flag attack on the right group by the right type of attacker (someone decked out in MAGA gear?). Then you will start to see stories about civil unrest and a spate of reprisal attacks. They will be mostly peaceful attacks, I’m sure.
These attacks, and the timing of them, should come as no surprise. America’s enemies have been busy building up a stealth army for three years running and, even before that, thousands of bad actors were allowed into the country under Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton. As I documented in my book, Stealth Invasion, they came from Bosnia, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq and Syria, among other places. For every new war that Washington’s neocons got us involved in, there was a new wave of refugees imported from the war zone to cities and towns across America. For every ally of Washington that wanted to get rid of its violent criminals and terrorists, Washington was eager to take them in. Just wait, we will soon get tens of thousands of potential terrorists delivered to American cities, compliments of our Israeli friends, who wish to be rid of their Palestinian problem. The problem won’t be solved, it will just be shifted from Gaza to America.
And America will welcome them.
Ten Reasons MAGA Americans Should Care About What Taylor Swift Does (Audio 1:46) CAPT. SETH KESHEL
FEB 5, 2024
The Illegal, Feckless U.S. Bombing Campaign [28:39] Larry Johnson
February 4, 2024
Israel’s War on Hamas is the Least Deadly War in the Region by Daniel Greenfield
February 4, 2024 at 4:30 am
- The moral calculus between the Allies and the Nazis in WWII did not change based on how many German civilians were killed in the bombings and artillery shelling on the road to Berlin. The morality of the American Civil War was not measured in civilian deaths, and neither is any other.
- A nation is actively evil when it sets out to exterminate a civilian population. Whether it is WWII or the Hamas war: only one of the two sides was engaged in a total war of extermination.
- On October 7 and in the months since, Hamas has engaged in the deliberate killings of civilians. Israel has not. The number games are meant to be a distraction from that simple fact.
- Morality is defined by intent, not statistics.
The Associated Press recently made headlines by falsely claiming that the Israeli campaign against Hamas “sits among the deadliest and most destructive in recent history” and was even worse than “the Allied bombing of Germany in World War II”.
The Washington Post argued that “Israel has waged one of this century’s most destructive wars in Gaza” while The Wall Street Journal contended that it was “generating destruction comparable in scale to the most devastating urban warfare in the modern record.”
That’s all the more impressive since, even accepting the Hamas casualty figures (tainted and inflated numbers in which there are no terrorists, only civilians, and fighting age men are really children) as the media does, this is still probably one of the least violent conflicts in the region.
Mengele’s final murder? The mysterious death of an Israeli Nazi hunter in Argentina By Itai Amikam
02-02-2024 14:08 – In March 1961, the body of a woman was found in a forest near the picturesque town of Bariloche in Argentina. Her name was Nurit Eldad, a 59-year-old Israeli who had joined a group of young Jewish hikers on a trip. More than 60 years later, the mystery still surrounds the circumstances of her death: Was it an accident, as the authorities claimed, or was she on a covert mission to track down the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele? New information has recently transpired.
4:31 PM · Feb 3, 2024 – A few other things you probably don’t know: illegals in America can get bank loans, mortgages, insurance, driver’s licenses, free healthcare (California & New York) and in-state college tuition.
What’s the point of being a citizen if an illegal gets all the benefits, but doesn’t pay taxes or do jury duty?
US conduct in Gaza war ‘would be completely different’ under Trump, Ben-Gvir tells WSJ [4:05]
Minister Benny Gantz calls Ben-Gvir’s interview “a direct attack on Israel’s international status” and urges Netanyahu “to restrain him.”
02-04-2024 10:54 – National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir gave his first foreign media interview since the governing coalition came together in late 2022, during which he made contentious remarks on the war in Gaza and US support.
The backdrop of the interview was a ceasefire and hostage return deal, following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack in which over 1,200 Israelis died and over 240 were abducted back to Gaza, but Ben-Gvir thinks the negotiations put Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “at a crossroads.”
Allies and Arab countries involved in the negotiations want to end the war that erupted after Oct. 7, with some pushing the creation of a Palestinian state as a solution to the multifaceted crisis. Ben-Gvir, on the other hand, suggested repopulating Gaza with Israeli settlements and said Netanyahu “has to choose in what direction he’ll go.”
The far-right minister, who gained popularity in Israel since the Oct. 7 attack, repeatedly voiced opposition to ending the war before Hamas was fully defeated and incapable of carrying out such massacres again, as well as being against freeing thousands of Palestinians imprisoned for terrorism in exchange for the return of Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Instead, Ben-Gvir suggested a plan to “encourage Gazans to voluntarily emigrate to places around the world” by offering cash incentives, which would be “the real humanitarian” option, based on his own discussions with Palestinians in the West Bank and “intelligence material.”
He also expressed rare public criticism of a sitting US president, “Instead of giving us his full backing, Biden is busy with giving humanitarian aid and fuel [to Gaza], which goes to Hamas.”
“If Trump was in power, the US conduct would be completely different,” Ben-Gvir said, referring to the former president Donald Trump who is currently seeking a second term as the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 elections.
Israel’s crippling dependence By Gidon Ben-Zvi
Instead of destroying the terrorist threat faced by over nine million Israeli citizens, and freeing the hostages, Israel’s strategy now is to fight a limited war until Washington, Doha, Cairo, and Hamas iron out a final ceasefire agreement that will end the latest round of violence and prevent it from spreading across the region.
02-02-2024 09:01 – How addicted is Jerusalem to Washington’s military aid? Israel’s planned preemptive strike against Hezbollah on October 11 was narrowly averted after President Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stand down, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal.
While Netanyahu dismissed this claim, members of his own Likud party are increasingly speaking out against what appears to be the outsourcing of Israel’s security to wider US geopolitical interests. Economy Minister Nir Barkat stated in a recent cabinet meeting that “The number of air force bombardments has fallen dramatically. Soldiers are being sent to booby-trapped buildings like [sitting] ducks.”
Netanyahu’s reaction to Barkat’s accusation is revealing: “There are countries [whose positions] we have to take into account. If we don’t do that, eventually there’ll be a UN decision to impose a blockade on us. The whole world will be against us.”
The United States rapidly supplied Israel with over 3,000 tons of weapons and munitions in the days following Hamas’s invasion on October 7, when the terrorist organization killed around 1,200 people, and took another 240 hostages into Gaza.
But this assistance has come with serious strings attached. Barkat’s statement was in response to the fact that since the weeklong ceasefire with Hamas ended on November 30, there has been a noticeable drop in the amount and scope of Israeli Air Force strikes in southern Gaza.
Instead of destroying the terrorist threat faced by over nine million Israeli citizens, and freeing the hostages, Israel’s strategy now is to fight a limited war until Washington, Doha, Cairo, and Hamas iron out a final ceasefire agreement that will end the latest round of violence and prevent it from spreading across the region.
This shift in Israeli operational tactics came mere days after Biden had warned that Israel was losing international support because of its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. Washington continues to regard a two-state solution as “the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people.” Israel’s sustained military response to Hamas is viewed by the Biden Administration as an obstacle to this proposed framework becoming a reality.
But Washington’s push for a two-state solution is in open contradiction to Jerusalem’s post-war plans. While Netanyahu insists that Israel would permit neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority to rule Gaza, the Biden Administration continues to bank on the PA as a viable alternative to Hamas rule. This is even though the Palestinian Authority has little support from either West Bank Palestinians or Gazans. Since the October 7 massacre, Hamas’s popularity among people ruled by the PA in the West Bank has soared.
Dennis Ross is blaming Israel again By Moshe Phillips
This former US State Department official is treated as if his past involvement in Mideast diplomacy makes him an expert on how to make peace today.
02-04-2024 08:23 – Former US Middle East envoy Dennis Ross just can’t stop blaming Israel.
Speaking via Zoom for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy on Jan. 31, Ross offered some expected, perfunctory criticism of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah. But again and again, he managed to bring in one-sided and unfair criticism of Israel.
Referring to Israel’s counter-terrorism actions in Judea and Samaria, Ross said: “West Bank violence [by Arabs] is not disconnected from Israel’s policies in the West Bank.”
That’s just absurd. The terrorists are not responding to Israeli policies. They were murdering Jews long before there were any settlements or so-called occupied territories. They oppose Israel’s existence, not its borders. It’s these terrorists who are the aggressors, and Israelis must respond to them.
Regarding Gaza, Ross said: “The Israelis haven’t done everything they could to spare civilians in Gaza.” Is he kidding? The Israelis have refrained from striking terrorist targets where there are civilians. They have personally warned civilians to evacuate, again and again, through leaflets and phone calls and public announcements. They have risked the lives of their own soldiers by going house to house, instead of just bombing from the air. What else can they possibly do?
Ross also commented on the recent ruling by the International Court of Justice – the ruling that failed to condemn Hamas and demanded that Israel give more aid to Palestinians in Gaza. He said the ruling was “not irresponsible” and that it was provoked by “extreme statements by Israeli politicians.” That’s simply nonsense. The statement that the court cited most prominently was made by Israel’s left-leaning president, Isaac Herzog, who said that many ordinary Gazans supported the Hamas massacre, which was a perfectly reasonable statement of fact.
The practice of saying a few perfunctory crucial words about terrorists and then “balancing” it with criticism of Israel is typical of the grotesque “even-handedness” that Ross and his colleagues pushed during his many years at the US State Department.
That approach was wrong then, and it’s wrong now. There can be no “balance” between good and evil. Israel and the Palestinian Authority are not on the same moral level. Israel is America’s loyal, reliable, democratic ally. The PA is a terror-sponsoring, hate-mongering dictatorship.
Pity the Palestinian Arabs? Gimme a break! Barry Shaw
Gaza is a potential paradise that Gazans turned into a deadly terrorist hell. And now they find themselves suffering the results of their own deeds. Op-ed
Feb 3, 2024, 6:54 PM (GMT+2) – Here is my horrible un-Progressive thought of the day for those who continue to champion the Palestinian Arab cause, and those who accuse Israel of being cruel to poor suffering Palestinians:
-If they are suffering, it is because they chose the wrong leaders and the wrong direction.
-If they are suffering, it is because not one said or did anything to protest while they helped these leaders prepare for the invasion of Israel.
And all that is born out of their medieval attitude to Jews, their primitive envy of Jews who advance as individuals and as a society while they remain rooted in poverty and envy.
Poverty of thought. Poverty of positive personal advancement in education and individual skills.
Poverty of morality and humanity.
Instead, they constantly lapse into envy, resentment and violence, taking out their feeble condition on the Jew, not themselves, not their life forming bad decisions, not their poor choice of leadership.
This has been the fate of the Jew for centuries. Suffering the rage of their raging, impotent, neighbors.
Why should this age be any different?
The cry “Palestine will be free” demands of them to question why they refuse to turn the areas they govern into the prosperous paradise it could have been with the multi billion dollars that’s been pumped into their miserable societies for decades?
Gaza is a perfect example of the point I am making.
A potential paradise. Now a deadly hell.
All you Palestinian Gazans could have been living prosperous middle class lives today. (IDF soldiers in Khan Yunis and Gaza City were surprised to reveal that many of the homes there are spacious and well furnished, that even in “refugee” camps, the homes are presentable. They were built by using donated funds – and instead of developing industry, farming and exports with the rest so as to become an independently successful country, they invested in terror tunnels.)
Gaza could have been an agricultural and tourism paradise. But you screwed up big time with your hatred of us and envy of what we are achieving with our constructive advanced lives.
My anger comes not only from 7 October and what these Palestinians did to us, but from the news I received that the parents of 19 year-old, Adir Tahar, who just buried their son for a second time.
The first time, his body was returned from Gaza by our IDF who found it, but without his head.
Then, weeks later, another unit of our army found Adir’s head in a freezer in an ice cream parlor in Gaza where the Palestinian Arab owner had been trying to sell it for $10,000.
That’s Palestinian enterprise for you, 2024 style.
Why do so many young Americans hate Israel? Jeff Dunetz
Too many young people choose to base their views on misleading Instagram photos, biased college professors, and radical ideologies that falsely paint Israel as a “white supremacist” state. it is not the first time. Op-ed.
Feb 3, 2024, 11:15 PM (GMT+2) – Young Americans are turning against Israel, and that’s Israel’s fault, says New York Times columnist Ezra Klein. Is he right?
In a significant January 27 op-ed, Klein pointed to a recent poll showing only 27% of Americans aged 18 to 29—known as “Gen Z”—are more sympathetic to Israel than to the Palestinian Arabs, as compared to 63% of Americans who are 65 or older. According to Klein, that’s because of the policies of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu since young Americans “know only Netanyahu’s Israel.”
Does that mean all Gen Zers were pro-Israel when the left-of-center Yair Lapid was prime minister fourteen months ago? Hardly.
The real reason for hostility toward Israel among that age bracket is their ignorance of the history and facts of the Arab-Israeli conflict, not the specific policies of a particular prime minister. Israel is not to blame if many young people choose to base their views on misleading Instagram photos, biased college professors, and radical ideologies that falsely paint Israel as a “white supremacist” state.
[Ed.: It’s not only that age bracket – Americans of all age brackets that hate Israel is also ignorance.]
American Military Expert John Spencer on the IDF BY HUGH FITZGERALD
FEB 2, 2024 2:00 PM – We have often heard from British Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, who has explained in detail why he considers the IDF to be “the most moral army in the world.” Now John Spencer, an American military expert who teaches at West Point, recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) his own observations on the IDF in Gaza that offer further support for Colonel Kemp’s conclusion. His remarks deserve wide dissemination. More on John Spencer’s observations can be found here: “Israel minimizes civilian casualties more than anyone in history – expert,” [Emphasis added] Jerusalem Post, January 30, 2024:
“Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in Gaza than any other known army in the world has, John Spencer, who is both chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and a retired US military officer, argued in an extensive thread posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Tuesday.
In the thread, Spencer provided multiple examples of precautions that the IDF takes that he argued other armies do not, at least not to the same extent, or even at all. One of the most well-recognized instances of this that he mentioned is the way in which the IDF implements various methods of warning before commencing with an assault against Hamas.
He referred to this in his numerous replies to commentators on his thread. “In some cases, the IDF will call, text, and drop small munitions on the roof of a building,” [the “knock-on-the-roof technique] he explained.
He even addressed some measures that the IDF took at the cost of its tactical advantage to save lives. The army will “provide [a] warning and evacuate urban areas/cities before the full combined air and ground attack begins. While the tactic does alert the enemy defender and provide them the military advantage to prepare further, it is one of the best ways to prevent civilian casualties,” he said.
The thread addresses common criticisms of the IDF’s methodology
Spencer then wrote about the unique complexities of warfare in the Gaza Strip, saying, “No military in modern history has faced 30,000 defenders embedded in more than seven cities, using human shields and hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites while holding hundreds of hostages and launching over 12,000 rockets at the attacking military’s civilians’ areas.”…
Spencer concluded his post with the following statement: “Again, Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war. While some have argued Israel could have waited longer, used different munitions, or not conducted the war at all – [they] all [failed] to acknowledge the context of Israel’s war… [they are overlooking] the hostages, rockets, tunnels, existential threat of Hamas, and more.”…
British Colonel Kemp has been studying the IDF’s performance for years, and has been in Israel, and Gaza, since just after October 7. He reiterates, based on this recent experience, his previous conclusion that the IDF is “the most moral army in the world.”
Now the American John Spencer, a former military officer and now the chair of the department for the study of urban warfare at the Modern War Institute at West Point, explains that “Israel has implemented more measures to prevent civilian casualties than any other military in the history of war.” Who should we believe better comprehends the IDF’s remarkable performance in Gaza — Rashida Tlaib, Bernie Sanders, and Antonio Guterres, or Colonel Richard Kemp and Professor John Spencer?
Did Iranian Agent Serving as Pentagon Chief of Staff Cause Death of 3 Soldiers? by Daniel Greenfield
How were terrorists able to perfectly time their drone attack without inside information?
February 2, 2024 – In September 2023, Pentagon Chief of Staff Ariane Tabatabai, an Iranian immigrant, was accused of having worked as an agent of the Tehran regime. Dissident media outlets produced emails that allegedly showed that Tabatabai had joined an initiative by the Iranian Foreign Ministry to coordinate operations and that she had even run her congressional testimony on Iran’s nuclear program past the head of an Iranian Foreign Ministry think tank.
The David Horowitz Freedom Center and Front Page Magazine had been among those to take the lead in warning about the potential danger posed by her and enemy agents in the Pentagon.
Tabatabai had served under Robert Malley, Biden’s Iran Envoy, who had been suspended from the Obama campaign for his backchannel contacts with Hamas, and has been under investigation for mishandling classified documents. But the emails appeared to show that she had personally worked for Iran and its influence operations aimed at the U.S. government.
Despite that she continued to be promoted until she is now the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict (SO/LIC).
In January 2024, Iranian-backed terrorists launched their most successful single attack against an American base to date. The target was the living quarters where U.S military personnel were stationed on an obscure support base in the Jordanian desert known as Tower 22.
While the drone attack would normally have been intercepted, the Iranian-backed terrorists had precisely timed the arrival of their drone to match that of an American drone returning home.
In the confusion, the Islamic terrorist drone was not intercepted and 3 American military personnel were killed and over 30 more were wounded. And it could have been worse.
[Ed.: Diversity and inclusion includes putting our enemies in charge of our military now-a-days...]
The Real War in Israel Hasn’t Even Started By Paul Schnee
February 1, 2024 – I wish I could say that I’m surprised by the content of this article.
It is clear that Israel is in a fight for her very existence of which the war in Gaza is just a part. She stands alone. No other power is going to send its troops to help her overwhelm a determined enemy even if its apocalyptic ideology really threatens us all. The Biden government, if it can be called that, does not even have the political will to maintain law and order in America’s cities or repel a massive invasion of illegal aliens.
This chilling and sinking realization must compel Israel to kill and crush the enemy without compunction and destroy its military as a fighting force. Left undone, life in Israel will not be worth living and the rest of us will be left wondering where and when the terrorists will strike at us. Any agreements with them are worth less than the paper upon which they are written.
The Iranian regime from whence a cascading fountain of unending lethal aggression flows must be removed from power if an enduring peace is ever to be established. This must be accomplished BEFORE the grisly ayatollahs get their blood-drenched hands on a nuclear weapon. Once done, this will derange all the calculations of every terrorist organization they finance and control as well as their calcified belief that they are in possession of a celestial warrant to terrorize, subjugate and kill the rest of us simply because we do not subscribe to the preposterous tenets of Islam with all of its ferocious hatreds as convincingly demonstrated on October 7th.
Matti Friedman: What If the Real War in Israel Hasn’t Even Started? By Matti Friedman,
Take the current war with Hamas and multiply it by ten. That’s what war with Hezbollah would look like. And Israelis are not asking if it will begin, but when.
January 28, 2024 – SHLOMI, Israel — The undercurrents of Israeli life at this moment are darker than I’ve ever seen them: the daily photos of smiling young people, taken at some happy moment before their deaths in combat; glimpses of Israeli girls buried alive in Palestinian tunnels, a short drive from our border and utterly out of reach; a geriatric Israeli leadership uninspiring at best, deceitful at worst; devastation in Gaza; a wall of hate in the Middle East and in growing parts of the West.
But a central part of the dread in Israel is the possibility that the real war hasn’t even started.
Since October 7, most eyes have been on Israel’s south, but as the prophecy from the Book of Jeremiah reads, “the evil will come from the north.” The north means Lebanon, a beautiful, tragic shell of a country under the sway of Hezbollah, the “Party of God,” a fanatic Shia army funded and trained by Iran. This is the northern link of the Iranian encirclement of Israel, a strategy that often escapes Western news consumers accustomed to the fiction that the conflict here is “Israeli-Palestinian.”
When I spoke to one veteran military observer of the northern front, he used the term 10X—by which he meant that to imagine an all-out war with Hezbollah, take the current war with Hamas and multiply it by ten.
The Hezbollah strike force, known as Radwan, is bigger, better trained, and better equipped than the Hamas equivalent, the Nukhba, which was responsible for the carnage of October 7. If the Palestinians have fired 9,000 rockets since the beginning of the war, Hezbollah is thought to have an arsenal of 140,000—not including drones and mortars—with all of Israel in range. The army expects more than 4,000 launches a day, a scale Israeli civilians have never experienced. While this is going on, much of Lebanon will be laid waste by our air force and artillery. “If people truly understood what the war with Hezbollah will mean,” one officer told me this week, “everyone would be doing every possible thing in their power to find a diplomatic solution.”
Hezbollah has already lost more than 170 men in cross-border fighting since October 7, compared to 15 fatalities on the Israeli side. But what Hezbollah has already achieved, even without a full-scale war, becomes clear if you drive up to the border.
There’s more, much more, go, read the whole thing…..
It’s Biden who’s playing politics with the Gaza war, not Bibi Jonathan S. Tobin
Netanyahu is trying to defeat Hamas. The administration’s efforts—and its fictional “doctrine”—seek to depose the Israeli prime minister and re-elect the president.
(February 2, 2024 / JNS) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reputation as a master political schemer and a cynical seeker of power is so deeply embedded in the public consciousness that there is literally nothing he can do without being accused of acting only to seek some sort of advantage over his opponents. Yet in the current crisis as he seeks to lead his wobbly unity government to achieve what may well be two mutually exclusive objectives—the elimination of Hamas and the freeing of the remaining hostages still being kept captive in Gaza—while being besieged by criticism at home and abroad, it may be that Netanyahu is not the one who is really playing politics.
While no one should ever underestimate the prime minister’s capacity for maneuvering even at a time when, after the Oct. 7 disaster, the end of his career would seem to be in sight, it’s not he who is cynically using the hostage negotiations or the talk about what would follow the end of the war in Gaza to score political points. Whatever one may think of Netanyahu’s character or policies, or whether he should be forced out of office because of the catastrophe that occurred on his watch, the person who is playing politics with the security of Israel and the fate of its citizens is President Joe Biden.
[Ed.: With friends like the US, who needs enemies?
US’ Middle East policy defied by Middle East reality Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
February 2, 2024 – *For the last 45 years, the US has attempted to pacify the anti-US Iran’s Ayatollahs, via dramatic financial and diplomatic gestures, to advance the cause of human rights and democracy in Iran, and to promote peaceful coexistence between Iran and its Sunni Arab neighbors. In fact, the 45-year-old US diplomatic option toward the Ayatollahs, has downplayed the centrality of the Ayatollahs’ ideology and their track record, assuming that “money talks.” The US expected that dramatic financial and diplomatic gestures would induce the Ayatollahs to abandon their 1,400-year-old fanatical vision and become a constructive member of the global community.
However, as expected, Iran’s Ayatollahs would not allow financial and diplomatic temptations to transcend their imperialistic violent ideology. Moreover, they have leveraged the lavish US gestures, intensifying domestic oppression and persecution, and boosting their determination to humiliate and defeat “the Great American Satan,” expanding anti-US global terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and the proliferation of advanced weaponry, increasingly in Latin America from Chile’ to the US-Mexico border.
Furthermore, the US’ eagerness to conclude another agreement with the anti-US Iran, the courting of the anti-US Moslem Brotherhood (the largest Sunni terror organization), and delisting the anti-US Houthis from the terror list, while pressuring the pro-US Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, has pushed these countries closer to China and Russia, militarily and commercially.
