Linkage. Experience. IAF Responds. Playing With Fire. Undo It. Knock On Wood. Trash?

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Sausage and train routes need linkage

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Short line railroads are an essential, forgotten link in the supply chain By Salena Zito

DUNCANSVILLE, Pa. — Alan Maples said he knew when he purchased the Everett Railroad Company that the days of prominence and power in the industry were in the past: It was the 80’s; the country was in a recession; the regional unemployment rate hovered near 20%; and all of the forecasting about the future of rail transportation was bleak.

Nonetheless Mr. Maples persisted in his life-long dream — mind you, he was only 21 at the time — of owning and running a railroad. “The previous owners of the railroad, who had had it since 1954, were eager to get rid of it, so I got it for a pretty good price,” Mr. Maples said. “Thankfully, my parents helped me with the purchase by giving me the money that was supposed to be for college fund.”

Mr. Maples laughs, adding that his family also said he was “crazy,” and not to come back for any more money. “The day I got the keys to this old office, I became the youngest railroad owner and president in the history of the industry,” he said.

Short line railroads may sound like relics of the past, but they are one of the most important links in our supply chain — without them, our cupboards would be bare, our electricity would not turn on and essentials from lumber to cars and trucks would never reach our communities.

Chuck Baker, president of the American Short Line and Regional Railroad Association, says there are over 600 short line railroad companies in the United States, providing service for one in every five rail cars you see moving freight across the country. They are all small businesses operating on nearly 50,000 route miles, providing the connection between farmers, manufacturing and other industries — like chemical and energy — and consumers.

“Short line railroads are mostly mom and pop small businesses that are essentially the first mile and last mile of the freight rails system,” said Mr. Baker from the industry’s trade association based in Washington, D.C.

Mr. Baker said the story of short line railroad companies is the story of all American small business success. They generally inherited track that had experienced years of lax maintenance — or no maintenance at all. The grit, personal investment and ingenuity of the owners have created a vibrant small business network that serves a critical role in the movement of freight.

And they are hiding in plain sight. Locally there are several including the Allegheny Valley Railroad — one of three separate short lines that go under the Cargo Express handle — whose offices are in Oakmont but whose operations are run out of Glenwood Yard in Hazelwood, an expansive facility that includes several hundred acres of tracks filled with over 700 cars that operate on 77 miles of track in western Pennsylvania. They carry commodities such as sand, coal, dry bulk resins, food, lumber, ethanol and paper to and from local businesses and farms to “class one” operators.

“What people may not understand is the minimal impact short lines have on our environment: A typical rail car holds about four truckloads of freight, and typically a train moves about 500 tons of freight one mile on a gallon of diesel fuel,” explains Mark Rosner, the president and CEO of the company.

Mr. Rosner said if their railroad disappeared it would have a devastating impact on the environment as well as the roads and bridges trucks use: “If we were gone it would add about 400,000 trucks on local highways.”

Go back a generation or two to the late seventies, and the National Freight Rail System — once an incredible national treasure that was part of the storied history of American exceptionalism, including opening the West — was in horrible shape and on the verge of mass bankruptcy, or even nationalization.

Mr. Baker said while entire books have been written about why that happened, he boils it down to two things: “One would be the incredible competition from the government’s post-World War II trillion-dollar investment into a 4 million mile interstate highway system that goes to the front door of every business and person in America.”

“Railroads, who back to a time when they were the best — and essentially the only — way to move freight and large numbers of people around, struggled to compete with that,” Mr. Baker said.

The other contribution was government. “The collapse was also partially the result of decades of pretty intense regulation of the railroads in a way that didn’t allow them to really act like private businesses and respond to a changing environment, changing business landscape,” he said.

In 1980 — three years before Mr. Maples bought the old Everett Railroad — the railroad industry was partially deregulated through the Staggers Act, which allowed bigger railroads (think Norfolk Southern and CSX) to make private contracts and set their rates more aggressively to respond to the market.

“One of the things it did that’s most relevant for short lines was for their branch lines that were kind of a low-density line — maybe go between two small towns or connect the main line to some small town with just two or three shippers — instead of abandoning them because of their lack of profitably, the Staggers Act allowed the big guys to sell them,” said Mr. Baker.

This opened the door for entrepreneurs like Mr. Maples.

“A class one railroad just can’t make any money running on those small lines to those small towns and industries: It’s too expensive to maintain the track; it’s too expensive to pay their people. It doesn’t make sense to run to a little town with two or three customers with a giant locomotive. And so, what they would do is sell that to a local short liner — and instead of that now being kind of the unprofitable, unloved branch-line of Norfolk Southern or CSX or something, or non-existent at all, that would become the Buffalo and Pittsburgh Railroad.”

In short, if it wasn’t for your local mom and pop short line — there are dozens in every state in the country — small towns, and the agriculture and manufacturing industries that support them, would wither and die.

Mr. Baker said we should think of these short line owners this way: “So the local entrepreneur would now own that railroad, and their whole life becomes about that railroad: They join the local Chamber of Commerce, talk to every potential customer along their line trying to get one work car load of freight and then market the heck out of their capabilities.”

Keep in mind that Mr. Baker said they do it all on a shoe string: “They are getting hand-me-down locomotives. Maybe the owner owns the railroad, and he operates the train on Tuesday and Thursday, and his wife manages the office and keeps the books, and his cousin maintains the track, and his mechanic friend keeps the locomotive in good shape. That story happens 600 times all over the country every day.”

“All on 50,000 miles of track, servicing thousands of customers directly, and millions indirectly,” he said, “making short lines a really crucial part of the freight rail system because we keep all these small towns and rural communities and small shippers connected to the rail network — and in turn, their commodities are connected to the people who live and work in the cities and suburbs who benefit from the fresh produce they find at Whole Foods or the chlorine their local water treatment plants need to keep their water pure and safe.”

The frustrating thing for the short line railroad companies about the threatened rail strike, Mr. Baker said, is that it had nothing to do with them — and yet if it happened, it would shut them down.

“That would very quickly become extraordinarily problematic for our customers because we’re part of a nationwide and sometimes global supply chain that all works generally in pretty good kind of harmony; there’s a lot of moving parts to getting raw materials to manufacturers and finished goods from manufacturers to warehouses and energy supplies to and from producers and users that just won’t get there because most companies can’t keep massive amount of stuff just sitting around,” Mr. Baker said.

“So, they rely on well-functioning freight-system railroads to keep the economy moving, to keep their businesses functioning. So, it would really be only a couple days of railroads not operating before you had major, massive problems in the global economy,” he said.

The catastrophic scenario would include water systems getting shut down because there’s not enough chlorine; chickens getting killed because there’s not enough feed; harvests getting nixed because there’s not enough fertilizer; construction projects getting delayed because there’s no steel or lumber; road projects getting delayed because there’s no ballast — all of these commodities get to class one railroads from short lines across the nation.

While Congress stepped in to avert the strike at the last second, the episode shines a light on the forgotten importance of America’s railroads — especially the underappreciated short lines that keep the economy moving.

This is the entire story however please click to share on social media and see the amazing photos: https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/insight/2022/12/04/salena-zito-short-line-railroad-allegheny-valley-everett-strike-supply-chain/stories/202212040042 

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There is something to be said for experience and it only comes with age.

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Subject: Fw: Geezer brigade----Not just about politics, its about reality

Grey Haired Brigade --- 

 Here’s Something Worth Thinking About.

The typical U.S. household headed by a person age 65 or older has a net worth 47 times greater than a household headed by someone under 35, according to an analysis of census data released Monday. They like to refer to us as senior citizens, old fogies, geezers, and in some cases dinosaurs. Some of us are "Baby Boomers" getting ready to retire. Others have been retired for some time. We walk a little slower these days, and our eyes and hearing are not what they once were. We worked hard, raised our children, worshiped our God, and have grown old together.

Yes, we are the ones some refer to as being over the hill, and that is probably true. But before writing us off completely, there are a few things that need to be taken into consideration.

In school we studied English, history, math, and science, which enabled us to lead America into the technological age. Most of us remember what outhouses were, many of us with firsthand experience. We remember the days of telephone party-lines, 25 cent gasoline, and milk and ice being delivered to our homes. For those of you who don't know what an icebox is, today they are electric and referred to as refrigerators. A few even remember when cars were started with a crank. Yes, we lived those days.

We are probably considered old fashioned and outdated by many. But there are a few things you need to remember before completely writing us off. We won World War II, fought in Korea and Viet Nam. We can quote The Pledge of Allegiance and know where to place our hand while doing so. We wore the uniform of our country with pride and lost many friends on the battlefield.

We didn't fight for the Socialist States of America; we fought for the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave." We wore different uniforms but carried the same flag.  We know the words to the Star Spangled Banner, and America the Beautiful by heart, and you may even see some tears running down our cheeks as we sing. We have lived what many of you have only read in history books, and we feel no obligation to apologize to anyone for America.

Yes, we are old and slow these days but rest assured, we have at least one good fight left in us. We have loved this country, fought for it, and died for it, and now we are going to save it. It is our country, and nobody is going to take it away from us. We took oaths to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that is an oath we plan to keep. There are those who want to destroy this land we love but, like our founders, there is no way we are going to remain silent. 

It was mostly the young people of this nation who elected Obama, and now Biden, and the Democratic Congress. You fell for the "Hope and Change" which in reality was nothing but "Hype and Lies." You youngsters have tasted socialism and seen evil face to face and have found you don't like it after all. You make a lot of noise, but most are all too interested in their careers or "Climbing the Social Ladder" to be involved in such mundane things as patriotism and voting. Many of those who fell for the "Great Lie" in 2008 and 2020 are now having buyer's remorse. With all the education we gave you, you didn't have sense enough to see through the lies and instead drank the 'Kool-Aid.' Now you're paying the price and complaining about it; no jobs, lost mortgages, higher gasoline prices, higher taxes, inflation, shortages, and less freedom.

This is what you voted for, and this is what you got. We entrusted you with the Torch of Liberty, and you traded it for a paycheck and a fancy house.

Well, don't worry youngsters, the Grey-Haired Brigade is here, and in the mid-term 2022 and in 2024 elections we are going to take back our nation. We may drive a little slower than you would like, but we get where we're going, and in 2022 and 2024 we're going to the polls by the millions.

This land does not belong to the man in the White House nor to the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Adam Schiff, etc. It belongs to "We the People," and "We the People" plan to reclaim our land and our freedom. We hope this time you will do a better job of preserving it and passing it along to our grandchildren.

So, the next time you have the chance to say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand up, put your hand over your heart, honor our country, and thank God for the old geezers of the "Gray-Haired Brigade.”

Footnote: This is spot on. I am another Gray-Haired Geezer signing on. I will circulate this to other Gray-Haired Geezers all over this once great country.

Can you feel the ground shaking? It's not an earthquake, it is a STAMPEDE!

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Can Walker pull it off? I believe he can and will.

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“A new poll this week shows Georgia’s Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker tied with his Democratic opponent Sen. Raphael Warnock in the runoff election next week,” Townhall recently reported.

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For some reason the world community always needs someone, some nation, something to huddle round so it can hate. Since 1947, and many thousands of years before that, Jews have been the object of the world's derision.  I believe , in part, it is because Jews were arrogant enough to claim they were God's people and this caused jealousy and animosity.  It was a great Madison Avenue Coup for which they have paid a very heavy price.

From nothing, from defeats, from concentration camps Jews have earned their stripes and now that they have a nation of their own they have excelled and been a positive force for mankind.

Iran, Obama and Biden, among an assortment of radicals, want Iran to rise and destroy Israel.  It is my opinion and hope Bibi will act accordingly and rid the world of this scourge of a nation ruled by a group of fanatical religious creeps .  Most everyone else seems to want to engage in commerce with these animals because they have oil. They are playing with fire which will ultimately consume  them.

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A House of Lies

Israel has a ‘natural and historic’ right to exist, the UN recognized in 1947,.before it made itself world center for antisemitism. 

Op-ed.

Abba Eban, Israel’s first permanent representative to the UN, once called the UN, “the world center for anti-Semitism.” Attacks against Israel were so strident during his tenure [1949-1959], he said that “If Algeria introduced a resolution declaring that the earth was flat and that Israel had flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 164 to 13 with 26 abstentions.” [1] Gilad Erdan, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, added “Why must the UN constantly serve as a house of lies?" [2]

On November 30, 2022, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution to commemorate the Nakba (the so-called Palestinian Catastrophe), aka the establishment of the Jewish State, at “a high-level event at the General Assembly Hall” on May 15, 2023.

During the debate about the resolution, the Permanent UN Observer for the State of Palestine declared the resolution as having righted a wrong against the Arabs: “Today the Assembly will finally acknowledge the historical injustice that befell the Palestinian people, adopting a resolution that decides to commemorate in the Assembly Hall the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Nakba.” [3]

Ambassador Erdan responded that the “sole purpose” of this and other resolutions aimed at Israel “is to blame everything in the Middle East solely on Israel while absolving the Palestinian Arabs of their responsibility for their situation.

Year after year, all such distorted resolutions pass, ensuring that the conflict never ends. This does not help the Palestinian Arabs, but it does turn the United Nations and Member States into accomplices in a Palestinian Arab jihad war that destroys any chances for reconciliation.” [4]

Israel’s Call for Peace

It is important to recall that when Israel proclaimed its independence on May 15, 1948 in accordance with the UN decision, the armies of Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon attacked Israel with the goal to destroy the nascent state.

Israeli prime minister David Ben Gurion asserted “The State of Israel emphasized its sincere desire for peace and cooperation with the Arabs. In two important paragraphs,” the proclamation declared: “Even amidst the violent attacks launched against us for months past, we call upon the sons of the Arab people dwelling in Israel to keep the peace and to play their part in building the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its institutions, provisional and permanent."

"We extend the hand of peace and good neighbourliness to all the states around us and to their peoples, and we call upon them to cooperate in mutual helpfulness with the independent Jewish nation in its Land. The State of Israel is prepared to make its contribution in a concerted effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.” [5]

Arab Response

The fear that the Arabs would invade Israel once the Jews announced their state prompted the American consul in Cairo to send his secretary to Damascus to ascertain Arab views on a new American proposal: an unofficial truce accord and a ten-day cease-fire. When he asked Azzam Bey, the head of the Arab League, if the Arabs had “considered the grave responsibilities which they were assuming before the world in invading Palestine when the matter was before the UN,” Bey responded the Arabs had very earnestly taken into account all of the consequences and concluded they had no option but to dispatch armed forces to Palestine on May 15, 1948 after Israel was declared a state.

If they abandoned the idea to attack, he said it would result in “dissatisfaction and mutual recriminations” among the Arabs themselves, which would lead to comparatively moderate individuals in the Arab League, including Azzam Bey himself being ousted and threaten the unity of the Arab League. He also feared that some Arab governments might be toppled because of “rising passions among the Arab population.” [6]

The UN in Perspective

Israel’s formal acceptance as the 59th UN Member State on May 11, 1949 was consistent with the UN’s original core beliefs. The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in Paris on December 10, 1948 by the UN General Assembly, was issued in response to the “disregard and contempt for human rights” that resulted in the “barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind” called the Holocaust—the attempt to annihilate the Jews of Europe by the Nazis. [7] Thus the Jewish state and the human rights revolution “were as one in 1948… . There is a clear symbolic—if not symbiotic—relationship between Israel and human rights… and Israel was born of that commitment.” [8]

“On May 14, 1948, Israel’s founders wanted to emphasize to the world that while the Jewish people had been born in Eretz-Israel [ארץ ישראל, the land of Israel], its state was the adopted child of the United Nations” noted historian Martin Kramer. “Israel had a ‘natural and historic’ right to exist,” he said, “and that right had been recognized by the world. Nothing made this point more clearly than the crucial passage of the declaration: “By virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, we hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel.” [9]

“Does this suggest that the United Nations ‘created’ the state of Israel?” asked Kramer. “Hardly; if it were within the power of the UN to create states, an Arab state would have arisen in 1948 alongside Israel. After all, the Arabs of Palestine possessed exactly the same recognition of their rights and the same license to act as did the Jews (although not the historiical connection to the land, ed). The difference, to revert to the term invoked by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP), was that the Arabs didn’t constitute a “state within a state….absent a Jewish army, Israel wouldn’t have arisen in any borders, and certainly not in the expanded borders of 1949.”[10]

A Final Note

From their initial UN deliberations, the permanent representatives of the UN understood the gravity of the problems they confronted and how their decisions would affect the future of the world. In hindsight, their remarks were prescient.

Moe Finn, a Norwegian politician, who was a member of the UN Security Council from 1948 to 1949, viewed the UN’s attempt to find a solution as being “very well a test case,” since it “may be decisive for the future of the United Nations.” [11]

Addressing the Special Session of the General Assembly held between April 28 and May 5, 1947, Mr. Quo Tai-chi, Chinese representative to the Security Council, prophetically warned that unless Arabs and Jews “learn to love their neighbors as themselves.” there will be no peace in the Holy Land, or indeed, in any land.” Historical and legal procedures, political and economic considerations will never provide a solution for peace. Until Jews and Christians “return to the teachings of the prophets and the saints of the Holy Land … no parliament of man, no statement, no legal formula, no historical equation, no political and economic programme can singly or together themselves solve the problem.” [12]

For Asaf Ali, Indian ambassador to the United States in 1947, Palestine had “become the acid test of human conscience. The United Nations will find that upon their decision will depend [on] the future of humanity, whether humanity is going to proceed by peaceful means or whether humanity is going to be torn to pieces. If a wrong decision flows from this august Assembly…the world shall be cut in twain and there shall be no peace on earth.” [13]

Footnotes

[1] Silvan Shalom, “A fence built for peace,” The Guardian (February 2, 2004).

[2] Elad Benari, “UN General Assembly approves event honoring 'Nakba Day' parallel to Independence Day Israel,” Israel National News (December1, 2022).

[3] UN Meetings Coverage and Press Releases (November 30, 2022) GA/12475).

[4] Ibid.

[5] David Ben-Gurion, My Talks With Arab Leaders (Jerusalem, Keter Books, 1972); 266-267; Martin Kramer, “The May 1948 Vote that Made the State of Israel,” Mosaic (April 2, 2018).

[6] Ronald Radosh, Allis Radosh, A Safe Haven Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (New York: HarperCollins, 2009),317-318); Maurice Hirsch, “What happened to the 1947 UN Partition Plan?” Palestinian Media Watch (November 29, 2022).

[7] Universal Declaration of Human Rights (December 10, 1948).

[8] Irwin Cotler, “Human Rights at 50,” The Jerusalem Post (December 29, 1998).

[9]Martin Kramer, “Did the UN Create Israel?” Mosaic (August 10, 2010).

[10] Ibid; Martin Kramer, “How Israel’s Declaration of Independence Became Its Constitution,” Mosaic (November 1, 2021); UNSCOP was established on May 15, 1947 UNSCOP’s mission was to investigate the cause of the conflict in Palestine, and, if possible, formulate a solution.

[11] Jacob Robinson, Palestine and the United Nations: Prelude to Solution (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1947), 200.

[12] Ibid. 199.

[13] Ibid.201.

Dr. Alex Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society, a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, and on the advisory board of The National Christian Leadership Conference of Israel (NCLCI). He has an MA and PhD in contemporary Jewish history from The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

And:

Biden adopts the Palestinian cause

The president's team is intent on undoing everything Trump did -- no matter how good it was

By Jed Babbin

President Biden inherited a Middle East that posed the greatest opportunities for stability, if not peace, in almost six decades. Former President Donald Trump’s 2018 revocation of the Obama nuclear weapons deal with Iran and imposition of severe economic sanctions on it backfooted the terrorist state. The Arab nations, terrified by the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran, saw Mr. Trump’s Abraham Accords as the best chance to align themselves with the U.S. and Israel, the only regional power able to face up to Iran.

As this column has pointed out before, Mr. Biden and his team are intent on undoing everything Mr. Trump did, no matter how good it was. Mr. Biden’s attempt to negotiate a new version of the 2015 Iran deal has returned the Arab states to skepticism about our reliability as an ally. Mr. Biden’s new embrace of the Palestinians is a clear message to the Arabs that he is backing away from the Abraham Accords.

In September, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was committed to “advancing and expanding” those accords. But actions and statements by himself and Mr. Biden, before and since, demonstrate commitment to the opposite policy.

It must take ingenuity to be as precisely wrong as Mr. Blinken often is. For example, he said in March that the Abraham Accords, through which four Arab states establish ties with Israel, are “not a substitute” for progress on resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

But the Abraham Accords were precisely that. Since at least 1974, when Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly wearing a pistol belt, the Palestinians have been — loudly and proudly — one of the principal obstacles to any Middle East peace. The Arab nations used them as a political pawn, insisting that the “Palestinian issue” be resolved before they would address Israel’s right to exist while, at the same time, funding Palestinian terrorism.

The Abraham Accords, engineered in 2020 by outgoing President Trump, provided a vehicle through which Israel established normal relations with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Sudan. Those accords angered the Palestinians because they proved the Palestinians irrelevant to peace.

The 1993 and 1995 Oslo Accords, agreed to by Israel and the Palestinians, set forth the idea of a trade of land for peace. Israel would surrender lands it had seized in the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 to create a Palestinian state; in turn, the Palestinians would agree to recognize Israel’s right to exist and end their terrorism against it.

Israel has offered peace on those terms at least three times. In 2000, Israel offered a plan that would have established a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well as East Jerusalem. Arafat walked out of the negotiations and launched his “Second Intifada” terror campaign.

In 2005, the Israelis dismantled all Jewish settlements in Gaza and pulled back to their pre-1967 borders. In response, the Palestinians launched a rain of missiles from Gaza and elected the Hamas terrorist network to govern Gaza.

In 2008, Israel proposed a detailed map of a Palestinian state made up of almost 100% of the West Bank, all of Gaza and a formally divided Jerusalem. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas promised to study the map and return to the negotiations. He broke that promise.

The Oslo Accords failed for two reasons: The Arab nations, whose proxies the Palestinians are, were not parties to the agreements and thus had duty to follow them; and second, “land for peace” never ends a war; it only delays an end until one side is defeated. (The same holds true with respect to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Any such deal will delay, not deter or defeat Russia’s desire to conquer Ukraine.)

Nevertheless, Mr. Biden has long been committed to the “land for peace” theory. He restated that commitment in his September U.N. speech, saying, “A negotiated two-state solution remains in our view the best way to ensure Israel’s security and prosperity … and give the Palestinians a state to which they are entitled.” He has promised to reopen the U.S. Consulate in Palestinian East Jerusalem that was closed by Mr. Trump.

Mr. Trump cut aid to the Palestinians, but Mr. Biden renewed financial aid in April 2021, saying he would send them about $235 million.

On Nov. 22, less than a day after a bombing by Palestinian terrorists had killed one man and left 20 others injured, Hady Amr — who had served as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Israeli and Palestinian affairs -— was promoted to special envoy for Palestinian affairs.

Mr. Amr’s promotion, which was accompanied by further funding for the Palestinian Authority, amounts to an elevation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the failed “land for peace” policy over the Abraham Accords.

Mr. Biden has done nothing to encourage more Arab nations to join the Abraham Accords. Were he to do so, and were he to give up on the idea of renewing the Obama nuclear deal with Iran, he could help incoming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gain an Abraham Accords agreement with Saudi Arabia and other reluctant Arab nations.

You can take it to the bank that Mr. Biden will take neither of those steps.

• Jed Babbin is a national security and foreign affairs columnist for The Washington Times and contributing editor for The American Spectator.

And:

Hamas fires at Israeli jets as air force hits terror group following rocket attack

Al-Qassam Brigades armed wing confirms shooting missiles at Israeli jets, which targeted rocket manufacturing center, tunnel in overnight sortie, possibly heating up tensions

By Emanuel Fabian and TOI staffToday

Israeli warplanes carried out retaliatory strikes against Hamas early Sunday and rocket alarms sounded near communities inside Israel as the terror group said it launched missiles at Israeli aircraft, in the latest tit-for-tat that threatened to send the region spiraling into another round of conflict.

The Israel Defense Forces said in a short statement just after 1 a.m. Sunday that it was attacking Gaza in retaliation for a Saturday evening missile strike, which had broken a month of relative calm. It said a central rocket-making site used by Hamas was among the facilities targeted.

Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades armed wing said a short time later that it had had targeted the Israeli planes with anti-aircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles.

A rocket alert was issued for open areas near the small farming communities of Shlomit and Bnei Betzarim, which sit near the Egyptian border and opposite Gaza’s Rafah, the IDF said.

There was no confirmation of any missile strike inside Israel.

The Israeli sorties came hours after a projectile launched out of Gaza landed in an open field near the communities of Nahal Oz and Kfar Aza Saturday evening. There were no reports of injuries or damage.

????العدوان الإسرائيلي المتواصل على قطاع غزة الآن????????#غزة_تحت_القصف #غزة #فلسطين #القدس #نابلس pic.twitter.com/8nti9uqrq2

— Karim Kassem (@quranka62959257) December 3, 2022

The military said fighter jets targeted a weapons workshop and tunnel used by the Hamas, which de facto rules the Strip.

“The workshop is used as a main site for making most of the group’s rockets in the Strip,” the IDF said in a statement.

“The strike overnight continues the progress to impede the force build-up” of Hamas, it added.

The IDF said later that it targeted a Hamas military post in retaliation for the anti-aircraft fire. It tweeted a video showing the strikes.

בתגובה לירי לעבר מטוסי הקרב, צה"ל תקף עמדה צבאית של ארגון הטרור חמאס.

בנוסף, הלילה נתקף אתר מרכזי לייצור רקטות של ארגון הטרור חמאס בדרום רצועת עזה וכן הותקפה מנהרת טרור בדרום הרצועה pic.twitter.com/zcrUJoLzgA

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) December 4, 2022

There were no reports of injuries inside Gaza, according to Palestinian medical sources.

On social media, Gazans reported hearing several rounds of air strikes near Khan Younis and Rafah in the south of the Strip.

Unconfirmed video footage appeared to show several large explosions.

غارات اسرائيلية على موقع للمقاومة غرب خانيونس pic.twitter.com/7zWeVRQcp1

— وكالة شهاب للأنباء (@ShehabAgency) December 3, 2022

Hamas’s decision to confront Israel could serve to ramp up tensions. The terror group pointedly stayed on the sidelines during the last major flare-up in August, which saw Israel mainly fighting the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.

Israel says it holds Hamas responsible for all violence emanating from the Strip and generally responds to rocket fire with airstrikes against the group regardless of the who launched the attack.

There was no claim of responsibility for the Saturday night rocket launch, which came after Israeli officials reportedly expressed concerns over the weekend about potential retaliation, including in the form of rocket fire from Gaza, over the deaths of two Palestinian Islamic Jihad members.

Both PIJ and Hamas threatened to hit back over the deaths of the pair, who were killed Thursday during a military raid in the West Bank.

Over the past year, the PIJ has launched rockets at Israel in response to members being killed or arrested in the West Bank.

The last time rockets were fired from the coastal enclave toward Israel was on November 3, apparently in response to the death of a PIJ member during a West Bank raid.

Agencies contributed to this report.

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I have heard this before.  

DC is a big pit and generally nothing ever comes of what smacks of righteous indignation. Knock on Wood.

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DNC Has Lawsuits Coming to Them After Elon Musk Reveals Tweets: 'I Am Not Afraid'

By Sarah Arnold

 

After Elon Musk released a series of bombshell revelations explaining how Twitter interfered with the 2020 election by suppressing the Hunter Biden story, conservative actor James Woods vowed to sue the Democratic National Committee. 

Via investigative reporter, Matt Taibbi, the tweets revealed that the DNC demanded Twitter censor and block the account of Woods and other people who openly disagreed with the Left’s radical agenda. 

When the New York Post published its October 14, 2020 findings of the Hunter Biden laptop story, Woods joined in on exposing him. 

Tweeting an image of Biden seemingly smoking illicit drugs while engaging in blurred-out sexual acts, Woods said “I’m On Team Toe! Feet’s don't fail me now!" which was about the then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign slogan “I’m On Team Joe!” 

Woods has been banned from Twitter for two years at the expense of the DNC not liking his mean tweets toward Democrats. 

During an interview on Fox News, Woods said he was “shocked the way any other American would be if he were a target of a presidential candidate and a major political party… They have destroyed my career. They have destroyed my livelihood. They have destroyed my faith in a country that my family has defended in the military since the Revolutionary War.”

Woods then reaffirmed that he will be taking legal action against the DNC for violating First Amendment rights.

“I can guarantee you one thing, more than anything else you'll ever hear in your life: I will be getting a lawyer. I will be suing the Democratic National Committee no matter what,” Woods said, adding that he will stand up for every American “win or lose.” 

Woods hopes that others will take legal action against the DNC, saying that he won’t give up the fight. 

“I am not going to take this sitting down. I think these people are vermin for doing this to other people,” Woods said, adding “If you scratch a liberal, you will find a fascist every time,” Woods added.

And:

The missed opportunity in Ken Burns' "The U.S. and the Holocaust"

This week on our Substack, Gabriel Brown writes about Ken Burns’ three-part documentary on PBS, The U.S. and the Holocaust.

A huge part of the civil rights movement’s success came from its nonviolent and compassionate resistance to hatred and injustice, and its insistence that through moral courage and leading by example, individuals could be taught to recognize and overcome their capacity for hatred. When we can no longer recognize the humanity of others—including even those who hate us—we quickly fall into the trap of hating them back. We dehumanize and vilify them by convincing ourselves that some people, through their own actions or beliefs, can be stripped of their inherent worth as human beings.  

The missed opportunity in The U.S. and the Holocaust is that it seems to take Eisenhower’s statement at face value. Rather than engage in the complexity and nuance required to discover what was being—and should be—fought for, the documentary decided to end by highlighting once again what—and who—should be fought against. The focus was on human evil rather than humanity; vanquishing monsters rather than converting or preventing them; getting rid of problems instead of focusing on solutions.

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Trash?

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Dear Fellow American,  

 

“The Constitution is kind of trash.” 

 

That’s what a guest—with an Ivy League degree—said recently on a highly-rated daytime talk show.  

 

You’ve likely seen how “progressives” in the media, Big Tech, and politics are amplifying attacks on our nation’s principles of limited government and personal liberty with outrageous statements like “The Constitution is kind of trash.” 

And like that television pundit I mentioned, they are pushing a narrative that our Constitution is flawed, outdated, and incapable of dealing with the challenges of our time.

Thankfully, a few early champions of the Constitution—Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison—gave you and me the perfect guide to understanding its timeless principles: The Federalist Papers.

Written between October 1787 and August 1788 under the pen name Publius, The Federalist Papers were originally published as newspaper editorials intended to explain the merits of the Constitution.

Thomas Jefferson described them as “the best commentary on the principles of government which ever was written.”

And these documents are just as relevant today as they were back then. If we’re serious about solving the current issues in our country, we shouldn’t run from them. We should embrace them.

That’s why I want to send you our entire 10-lesson course, "The Federalist Papers," on DVD today when you make a tax-deductible donation of $100 or more to Hillsdale College.

I'm an image

“The Federalist Papers” course comes in a beautiful DVD box set for viewing in your home or a small group. 

 

You might also find it useful for a homeschool curriculum or personal study. Hillsdale’s faculty teach the course, and it will deepen your understanding of this incredibly relevant document even more.

 

These DVDs also make a great gift for someone unfamiliar with our nation’s founding principles—maybe even a friend or family member.

But supplies are limited. So, be sure to get this special edition of “The Federalist Papers” on DVD today. More than 200,000 people have already taken this course, so this DVD box set won’t last long.

 

You can use this secure link to receive your copy of “The Federalist Papers” right now: 

 

https://secured.hillsdale.edu/hillsdale/support-federalist-papers

 

Warm regards,

Bill Gray, ’01, Vice President

National Donor Outreach

Hillsdale College

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