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When I visited my son, many years ago, he was studying for a Master's Degree at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. We often took walks and passed where UNRWA workers lived in lovely homes with their White Chevrolet Cars out front. Each morning they drove to Ramallah to attend to Palestinian refugees ensconced in refugee camps.
Over the same period, Israel resettled millions of immigrants from Ethiopia, Russia etc. However, the U.N chose to keep Palestinian homeless in refugee camps. Had they U.N resettled them, UNRWA employees would have lost their job, ended their mission and the homeless refugee issue would not have remained an irritant but the anti-Semitic U.N wants to keep the Arab/Muslim community angry and "ticked" at Israel
Had Israelis been allowed to resettle these Palestinians it would have happened and the Palestinian homeless situation would have been resolved.
The issue of Palestinian homeless was the result of their voluntarily vacating their homes when Israel became a nation thinking Israel would be crushed and they could return and enjoy the spoils of the Arab Victory. Israelis pleaded with the Palestinians to remain in their homes but they chose otherwise and self-imposed their refugee status on themselves.
"To the victor belongs the spoils." Palestinians have a history of dumb choices because they are motivated by hatred and a warped sense of humanity.
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This from a dear friend who moved to Atlanta from Israel and is a fellow memo reader.
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For many years I predicted, if there will be another Nazi Germany, it
will happen in the USA.
Obama let enormous amounts of Arabs/Muslims into the Country and they are changing
the face of America.
Remember, Muslims have a long term agenda (see the recruitment in US
jails, as an example or Farrakhan's efforts)
Because far too many Americans are afraid to acknowledge the truth, out of fear of being called racists, losing their jobs, or retribution........................they no longer are willing to be vocal and , even worse, have bought into the Arab/Muslim lies. Witness what is taking place on college campuses, etc.
M--
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Meanwhile:
THE GENIUS OF ISRAEL
How has a small nation of 9 million people, forced to fight for its existence and security since its founding and riven by ethnic, religious, and economic divides, proven resistant to so many of the societal ills plaguing other wealthy democracies?
Why do Israelis have among the world’s highest life expectancies and lowest rates of “deaths of despair” from suicide and substance abuse? Why is Israel’s population young and growing while all other wealthy democracies are aging and shrinking? How can it be that Israel, according to a United Nations ranking, is the fourth happiest nation in the world? Why do Israelis tend to look to the future with determination and purpose while the rest of the West struggles with an epidemic of loneliness, teen depression, and social decline?
Dan Senor and Saul Singer, the writers behind the international bestseller Start-Up Nation, have long been students of the global innovation race. But as they spent time with Israel’s entrepreneurs and political leaders, soldiers and students, scientists and anti-government activists, ultra-Orthodox Jews, Tel Aviv techies, and Israeli Arabs, they realized that they had missed what really sets Israel apart.
Moving from military commanders integrating at-risk youth and people who are neurodiverse into national service, to high-performing companies making space for working parents, from dreamers and innovators launching a duct-taped spacecraft to the moon, to bringing better health and climate solutions to people around the world, The Genius of Israel tells the story of a diverse society built around the values of service, civic engagement, and belonging.
Widely admired for having the world’s highest density of high-tech start-ups, Israel’s greatest innovation may not be a technology at all, but Israeli society itself. Understanding how a country facing so many challenges can be among the happiest provides surprising insights into how we can confront the crisis of community, human connectedness, and purpose in modern life.
Bold, timely, and insightful, Senor and Singer’s latest work shines an important light on the impressive resilience of Israeli society in the face of external and internal challenges—and what other countries can learn.
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I repeat what I wrote in a previous memo. I am no tactician or strategist but Israel has, somewhat, neutralized Hamas. Thus, until Iran's Ayatollahs are decapitated and the IRG destroyed Iranians cannot rise, take to the streets, as I know they will, and retake their nation . Therefore, it is, my unprofessional view, Israel must release Mossad to slay the head of the snake by killing the Ayatollah's, the IAF must destroy the IRG and Iran's nuclear facilities so Hamas and Hezbollah will be denuded of Iranian support.
Then the IDF should finish Hamas and there should also be less Israeli military casualties.
Another take:
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Finally
Does Iran Realize Its Own Growing Danger?
By Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Iran understandably believes it is riding quite high.
It is flush with cash. It hints it almost has the bomb—and might use it soon.
The Iranians are bragging about their new tyrannical allies like Russia and China.
Iran boasts of now being the self-proclaimed leader of jihad on behalf of all Muslims. It gloats that it is feeding the Russian war-machine by exporting its own drones.
Tehran proudly supplied and funded Hamas’s savage murdering of Jewish children in Israel.
It eggs on its other pawn Hezbollah to launch a reputed 100,000-Iranian-supplied missiles into Israel.
It constantly provokes the U.S.—mostly by veiled threats to unleash anti-American terrorists in the Middle East and perhaps inside America itself.
But above all, Iran is giddy over the appeasing Biden administration.
Biden resurrected the unhinged Obama administration plan of empowering a “Shiite crescent”—of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, including Hamas.
This American idea of a radical bloc would supposedly birth “creative tension” and thus on autopilot balance the dominance of our friends in Israel and the Gulf regimes with our new Iranian clients. Yet the logical result of such madness was the massacre we saw in Israel.
Biden put pro-Iranian envoy Robert Malley—now under FBI investigation—in charge of begging Iran to restart the disastrous Iran Deal.
The anemic Biden administration has reportedly replied only four times to some 83 Iranian attacks on Americans.
Biden lifted sanctions allowing Iran to garner tens of billions of dollars in new oil sales—to be routed to all of Israel’s terrorist enemies.
He sought to pay ransom to Iran to get back five American hostages—at a cost of $1.2 billion per captive and a green-light for Tehran to take more.
The Biden administration restored in aggregate $1 billion in aid to the West Bank and Gaza, despite the long history of radical Palestinian terrorism.
This mollification of Iran also led its appendages Hamas and Hezbollah to believe that if any of them started a war against Israel, then Iran would guarantee their victory, the U.S. would do nothing— and likely force Israel to do the same nothing.
Yet a delusional Iran still is not fully aware how its loud bragging about and support for its client Hamas’s barbaric killing of Jewish civilians have put it into an unprecedented dangerous predicament.
For the first time in decades, there is no nation that can restrain Israel from destroying Iran’s pawn Hamas—not after it butchered 1,000 Jewish citizens while radical Palestinians in Gaza keep celebrating the slaughter and promising more such savage mass murdering.
Iran’s other proxy Hezbollah still issues blood-curdling threats to launch missiles. But it privately knows if it hits Israel with them, Beirut will resemble something far worse than its rubble of 2006 during the last Middle East war.
The world despises Iran, and now finally accepts it cannot be appeased. Arab nations neither want Gazan refugees anywhere near them nor their terrorists whom Gazans one-time voted into power.
Even Europe abhors Hamas’s pre-civilizational butchery of Israeli civilians.
Russia, Iran’s new patron, will be of little help to it—bogged down in Ukraine and hemorrhaging under sanctions and global ostracism. Nor has Moscow forgotten its own long violent history with Islam.
China cares only about the delivery of Middle East oil, calm seas lanes—and injuring the U.S.
Otherwise Beijing has no desire to risk its economy by pushing an Iranian theater war—especially when China has jailed a million Uyghur Muslims in forced labor camps.
If the two huge American carrier groups parked in the Eastern Mediterranean are attacked by either Iranian or Hezbollah missiles, public opinion will force even Biden to retaliate. And the response will not be street-fighting block to block in Tehran or Beirut.
Instead, it will be a medieval rain of destruction on either or both from the air.
After the Afghanistan humiliation, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese flagrant spy balloon mission over the American heartland, eight-million illegal aliens waved in across the southern border, and woke hysterias, Americans may have finally woken up that they dangerously—almost fatally—have squandered prior hard-won deterrence and must reboot.
To play its global jihadist role, Iran must always keep upping its terrorist ante and constantly louder threats.
It assumes the Middle East is business as usual—when it is insidiously becoming just the opposite. An appeasing Biden is not driving events but being driven by them, whether he knows it or not.
The Iranians have little clue that that they and their vassals are one stupid missile volley, or one reckless intervention away from a devastating Western response that would not necessarily be “proportionate.”
And such a retaliation would be welcomed by Iran’s numerous enemies, privately applauded by its small number of supposed “friends,” and largely shrugged off by its even fewer allies.
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Israel’s 13th Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
The death toll for the October 7th Simchat Torah Massacre has now risen past 1,400 Israelis and foreign nationals, with over 4,200 wounded and at least 200 still held captive in Gaza.
US President Biden was in Israel for a brief, 6-hour visit on Wednesday. He made it clear America is behind Israel, full stop. In addition to meetings with government officials, he also met with families of the 200+ hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza and those whose losses of family members were among the 1,400 killed on October 7th with 31 of those being Americans.
He was received warmly and was able to convince the Israeli government to permit limited humanitarian aid into Gaza via Egypt through the Rafah crossing. The initial agreement was for 20 truckloads of goods that will be strictly monitored so that they are used for the purposes intended and that the trucks do not contain military material. It is not exactly clear how that will be done but that was the announced plan and the first set of trucks are due to move into Gaza on Friday.
While enroute to Israel the rocket attack on the hospital in Gaza was reported. After serious intel work by both the US and Israeli authorities it was determined the attack came from an errant rocket sent up by Islamic Jihad forces in Gaza, not Hamas. Israel also has a record of a conversation that took place between Islamic Jihad members on the launch team admitting that the rocket did not have sufficient arc to get to Israel and would land within Gaza. Even with that the Arab world has rioted against Israel, and in Beirut and Amnan against the US as well, as the leadership in Gaza continues to insist it was an Israeli rocket that killed hundreds of people in the complex.
It was also reported that the United States is pushing Israel to develop a strategy for what happens the day after Hamas's rule is toppled, urging Israel to do so to avoid becoming bogged down in Gaza. There are reports the White House has discussed a U.S. military response if Hezbollah and Iran attack Israel from a second front. Two U.S. aircraft carriers are currently stationed in the Eastern Mediterranean, including the Gerald Ford, America’s largest carrier.
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak arrived in Israel today for a short solidarity visit. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was also in Israel for that purpose on Tuesday.
The northern border of Israel remains active with skirmishes occurring regularly. In an unprecedented move Israel has evacuated all communities within 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) of the Lebanese border. This in addition to the communities in the south near the Gaza border who have already been evacuated. Estimates of the number of currently displaced Israelis are as high as 500,000.
Hamas has fired over 6,500 rockets at Israel since the fighting began. They are thought to have had 15,000 stockpiled and, if so, they have plenty left in reserve. While the level of rocket fire has been reduced, there are still regular periods of launch with alarms sounding as far away as Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and even a bit north of those cities.
The UN Security Council debated a resolution on Wednesday that called for a humanitarian pause in the fighting. Twelve countries voted in favor (two abstained) but the US vetoed the resolution because it made no mention of the actions against Israel that began on October 7th. The veto successfully killed the initiative which, by omitting the reference to the actions against Israel by Hamas, prejudiced the resolution against Israel.
On the southern border with Gaza, Israeli troops remain on alert and ready to move in, although many people here seem to feel that the longer Israel delays the move the more the likelihood that there will not be a ground invasion. Time will tell how this shakes out. But even the IDF has indicated that the next stage of the conflict may not be a ground offensive into Gaza after all. Visiting Israel, former CIA Director David Petraeus compared an assault on Gaza to the final stages of the War with ISIS, the liberation of Mosul.
In times of stress people of faith look to the Torah, our source of faith, for guidance and solace. Our rabbis tell us that the Torah spoke in the language of the time, but it has meaning for every generation. Perhaps the story of Noah which will be read this shabbat in synagogues worldwide is a case in point. God says of Noah's generation "the land was filled with Hamas". The commentaries translate the Hebrew word Hamas in a number of ways. Onkeles (35-120 CE), one of the prime commentators on the Hebrew bible, provided a translation for our time.
He says Hamas means “kidnappers.” People of the time were on such a low level, had so much hatred in them that they had no qualms kidnapping children for money or for other nefarious purposes. What was God's solution to all this Hamas? Wipe them out. The disease had spread too far, the hatred was endemic, the land had to be washed and cleaned and made ready for a “better generation.”
An interesting biblical take with application to our current world. Let’s hope our enemies can find a way to raise a “better generation.”
Sherwin Pomerantz has lived in Israel for 40 years, is CEO of Atid EDI Ltd., a international business development consultancy. He is also the Founder and Chair of the American State Offices Association, former National President of the Association of Americans and Canadians in Israel and a past Chairperson of the Board of the Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies.
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Our government is totally out of control. If these two links are factual we are being penetrated by or enemies at the highest and most sensitive level.
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And:
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Israel Reshuffles the U.S. Presidential Election Deck
The Hamas crisis is a sudden opportunity for Nikki Haley and Mike Pence.
By Daniel Henninger
Suddenly in the aftermath of the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7, we have a presidential election about national security. And that could shuffle the U.S. presidential-candidate deck.
The foreign-policy debate on the Republican side—China, Ukraine, the open border—had become rote. No longer. Hamas’s killing of civilians and seizing of hostages, including presumably Americans, has forced the world’s troubles to the top of the presidential agenda.
Joe Biden flew to the Israeli war zone and gave a worthy speech of commitment to the U.S. ally.
Support for Rep. Jim Jordan as House speaker depended in large part on the imperative to pass aid bills for Israel and Ukraine.
After Donald Trump, days after the massacre, reflexively posted statements of derision about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and admiration for Hezbollah as “smart,” he spent the week refocusing attention on his foreign-policy accomplishments
After one weekend in October, the table has filled with national-security crises: an existential threat to Israel, Iran exploiting the Middle East cauldron, what comes next for Taiwan, and Russia’s war against Ukraine, on the border of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The U.S. southern border sits as an open, bleeding wound.
Let’s cut to the chase. Actually two chases.
One, which presidential candidate is up to—or qualified for—this new challenge?
Two, which party is willing to pay to do what is necessary for the U.S. to meet the challenge?
The second question answers itself. The Democratic foreign-policy establishment isn’t as far left as the party’s dominant wing. But the party of the Squad, Bernie Sanders, anti-Israel demonstrators and cash-starved progressive city governments controls the Democrats’ limitless domestic spending priorities, which simply no longer include a robust national defense. Any Democratic president with control of one congressional chamber will keep inflation-adjusted defense spending flat at best. After Oct. 7, flat puts us at risk
The U.S. has fallen below an adequate level of readiness in almost every area—weapons systems and inventories, troop levels and recruitment, ships and airplanes, training rotations, the aging of the nuclear deterrent.
These dilemmas consume hours of pondering and planning by Pentagon analysts. The Israel-Hamas war makes clear the pondering is over among our adversaries. It would be naive to think that Tehran, Beijing, Moscow and possibly Pyongyang aren’t right now comparing notes on how to exploit the U.S. security nightmares Iran has just created in the Middle East
That the U.S. needs real leadership in its next president is a cliché because it’s true and needs repeating. A Republican presidential contest that had become desultory has been rebooted by events in the Middle East.
The Democrats’ legal assault on Mr. Trump looked as if it had handed him the nomination. But it’s by no means clear that the former president is the right person to lead the country through what lies ahead.
Mr. Trump produced a largely credible foreign policy, but he has since become impossibly variable. His criticism of Mr. Netanyahu over a 2020 incident hours after the massacre was an incomprehensibly wrong note. Mr. Trump’s head currently is in too many disparate places, and that won’t get better. It has become a risk factor.
The candidates for whom the Israeli crisis and its broader implications create an opening are Nikki Haley and Mike Pence. They are the only two other GOP contenders with credible foreign-policy experience.
Ron DeSantis’s remarks on foreign policy always seem targeted at some constituency. He spent this week bogged down in a marginal argument with Ms. Haley over refugees from the Middle East. He looks determined to hold onto the Trump-Ramaswamy isolationist faction in the party. But as in 1941, events have isolated the isolationists.
Chris Christie and Doug Burgum have been running on their state experience, and Tim Scott’s appeal is domestic and cultural issues.
The tectonic plates of global politics have shifted beneath this campaign. The next U.S. president should be able to explain in detail the country’s national-security needs, including the trade-offs, such as the reality that long-term entitlement spending has to be on the table.
Ms. Haley has shown she can do that. If former Vice President Pence is ever going to play to his proven strength and make the case for a Reaganite foreign policy, the time is now.
An ABC/Ipsos poll taken after the Hamas massacre put public support for Mr. Biden’s handling of the crisis at a startling 41%. The public simply has lost faith in his competence. We’ll find out soon enough how much this crisis alters the Biden pattern.
In a national-security crisis, what a nation needs from its leaders is experience, focus and stamina. Former chess champion Garry Kasparov recently floated in these pages the idea of Mr. Biden’s ceding the Democratic nomination to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, a retired four-star Army general.
However improbable, as of Oct. 7 an Austin candidacy would be a problem for Republicans. There’s still time for GOP voters to figure out what their party, and the country, is going to need in a president, now and for a very long time.
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Migrant Apprehensions Skyrocket in One Border Area
Since the 46th president of the United States Joe Biden entered the oval office in January of 2021, the American public has dealt with a plethora of problems. Indeed, in nearly every regard, the state of American politics on both the domestic and international levels has deteriorated. Inflation has soared out of control over the last several years and was at least partially caused by President Bidens reckless and exorbitant spending agenda. The national debt hovers above 30 trillion, more than doubling in size over the last ten years. Some 60% of Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck, and the middle class, which has been struggling for decades, is continuing to shrink and decline. Wages have largely stagnated, and the power of the dollar has declined.
Internationally, enemies of America and the western world have gone rogue. China has continued to threaten American dominance in the pacific, and recently flew an aerial maneuver over the island of Taiwan. Hamas invaded Israel and murdered over 1,000 innocent civilians, including 22 American citizens, bringing more chaos into the affairs of the middle east. In eastern Europe, Russia remains mired in a bloody conflict in Ukraine. Biden, in contrast, botched the American withdrawal from Afghanistan in the summer of 2021.
Perhaps the most alarming immediate threat to national security are the millions of illegal migrants which have crossed the southern border since 2021. But while the crisis near Mexico is historic, it appears that even the northern border into the United States is porous. In September, a report emerged that over 6,700 illegal crossings into America from Canada occurred in less than a year. This number, while miniscule in comparison to the thousands coming in daily near Mexico, was a higher number than in 11 years combined in the northern sector. 49% of these individuals were Mexican nationals who had attempted to enter the country into New York, Vermont or New Hampshire.
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