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So what's new?
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Austin to press Jerusalem to scale back war against Hamas
The U.S. defense secretary arrived in Israel to discuss shifting to a more targeted approach in Gaza.
And:
How Jews Escaped Their Dismal Fate - WSJ
Finally:
Just gets worse and worse.
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The Curious Case of the Biden Administration and Hamas
by Bassam Tawil
Hamas is currently fighting to keep on ruling Gaza and the opportunity to regroup, rearm and destroy Israel -- which is why it is pleading for a ceasefire. Hamas's eyes are now set on the Biden administration and the United Nations, which they hope will prevent Israel from stopping the Hamas reign of abuse. Pictured: Hamas terrorists on a pickup truck "escort" trucks carrying humanitarian aid that they intend to loot, near the Rafah border crossing with Egypt in the southern Gaza Strip on December 10, 2023. (Photo by Mohammed Abed/AFP via Getty Images)
As Israel is waging war on the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group, whose members murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 240 others to the Gaza Strip on October 7, the Biden administration appears to be doing its utmost to sabotage Israel's efforts to defend itself against terrorism.
Iran and its proxies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, can only be ecstatic about the Biden administration's new restrictions, especially the pressure it is reportedly exerting on Israel to end the war in the coming weeks.
Hamas is currently fighting to keep on ruling Gaza and the opportunity to regroup, rearm and destroy Israel -- which is why it is pleading for a ceasefire. Hamas's eyes are now set on the Biden administration and the United Nations, which they hope will prevent Israel from stopping the Hamas reign of abuse.
US President Joe Biden's latest bizarre statements, in which he warned that Israel was losing international support because of its "indiscriminate bombing" of the Gaza Strip, are the best gift he could have given to Hamas and its patrons in Iran. By accusing Israel -- falsely -- of "indiscriminate bombing," Biden is actually parroting the bogus accusations made by Israel's fiercest enemies around the world, such as Hamas and Iran's mullahs, who are trying to stop Israel from defeating a terrorist organization akin to ISIS and Al-Qaeda. Did anyone call for a ceasefire when the US was routing ISIS in Syria and Iraq, or demanded that the US end its military campaign by a certain date?
"Israel's security can rest on the United States, but right now it has more than the United States. It has the European Union, it has the Europe, it has most of the world supporting them," Biden said during a fundraiser on December 12. "They're starting to lose that support by indiscriminate bombing that takes place."
Biden went on say of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
"I think he has to change his government. His government in Israel is making it very difficult."
According to AP:
"Biden specifically called out Itamar Ben-Gvir, the leader of a far-right Israeli party and the minister of national security in Netanyahu's governing coalition..."
Ben-Gvir, who has no authority over Israel's military, is not a member of the three-person war cabinet.
Biden's remarks were quickly and jubilantly picked up by Hamas's media outlets. The Palestinian Information Center, which serves as a mouthpiece for Hamas, was so pleased with the Biden statements that they wrote:
"The US administration attacks the extremism of the Netanyahu government and the dispute [between Israel and the US] over Gaza explodes into the open."
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official based in Lebanon, also rushed to express deep satisfaction over Biden's statements:
"The Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip have prompted US President Joe Biden to realize the madness of the Israeli military operation."
The Hamas official is saying, in fact, that Palestinian terrorism pays -- even the US administration is turning against Israel.
By accusing Israel of "indiscriminate bombing" of the Gaza Strip, Biden is intentionally ignoring that Israel's aerial assaults have meticulously targeted only military sites.
Hamas, however, in keeping with one of its favorite war crimes, has continued to use its own citizens as human shields precisely because it hopes that whenever Israel targets a military site, Hamas's own Gazan civilians will be killed.
The international community can then fall for the trick and do exactly what Biden did: tell Israel to stop because of civilian casualties. The grotesque irony, of course, is that -- no matter how careful Israel is to avoid civilian casualties -- the more the West blames Israel for civilian deaths, and the more Hamas will place civilians in the line of fire in order to keep the international community blaming Israel.
The Biden administration should be telling Hamas, not Israel, to minimize the number of civilian casualties. The real cause of these casualties, besides Hamas, is therefore actually the Biden administration, the United Nations and the international community: they incentivize Hamas to place their own people in harm's way to be killed -- the more the better -- so that everyone can then accuse Israel. The act of blaming Israel for the casualties that were orchestrated by Hamas is, in fact, what is causing them. Hamas can only be looking around and saying to themselves, "Hey, it's working! So let's keep on doing it!"
Hamas commits further war crimes for which Israel also gets unfairly blamed. There is clear, abundant evidence that Hamas terrorists deliberately place their weapons and ammunition in schools, kindergartens, hospitals and mosques, which, under international law, are "protected zones," and they use these sites to fire rockets at Israel and ambush Israeli soldiers.
Under international law, however, once combatants use "protected zones" for military purposes, including for storing weapons, these protected zones lose their protected status. As US Senator Tim Cotton said:
"If Hamas uses schools, and kindergartens, and mosques for military purposes, Israel has every right under the laws of war to strike back.... It is Hamas that is committing war crimes by using those civilians...."
There is also evidence that Hamas fires rockets at Israel from protected safe zones, designated by Israel in southern Gaza specifically for Palestinian civilians who have fled their homes in the north, as Israel requested them to do, to protect them from getting caught in the fighting. It was Hamas who were shooting at their own citizens to try to keep them from leaving, and it was the Israelis who stood guard along Gaza's main road south to prevent Hamas from shooting them.
Israel's airstrikes in the Gaza Strip have, in reality, been astonishingly precise, not in the least "indiscriminate." Israel has, for instance, been able to take out a specific apartment on the 2nd floor where terrorists were hiding, while leaving the rest of the building, including the 3rd floor, untouched.
Biden appears to have gotten it the other way round: It is Hamas that is firing rockets indiscriminately at civilians in Israeli cities -- the same Hamas that, on October 7, sent thousands of heavily armed terrorists to butcher Jews, Muslims and Christians; Israelis, Americans, French, Filipinos, Nepalis and Thais. The Hamas terrorists that invaded in Israel did not even try to differentiate between one person and another. They were on a murder spree to slaughter, full stop.
Israel's war is not directed against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip. This is a war, the main purpose of which is to release the approximately 130 of the 240 Israeli hostages who Hamas has not yet exchanged or murdered. If Israel were engaged in "indiscriminate bombing," it would not have asked Palestinian civilians to move to safe zones. If this were a war against the Palestinian population, Israel would have bombed the Gaza Strip only from the air, without risking the lives of its soldiers. More than 100 Israeli soldiers have been killed in action in Gaza, and hundreds more wounded.
The current makeup of Israel's coalition government is -- contrary to defamatory swipes -- entirely irrelevant to the war. Israel's war cabinet consists of Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and former Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Other Israeli cabinet ministers, including Ben-Gvir, have virtually no say in the war effort. It is out of place in the extreme that US officials believe they have the right to decide for Israeli voters who their representatives in their government should be. Ironically, the Biden administration seems to have more influence on Israel's war cabinet than Ben-Gvir and other members of Israel's government. Both Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken have personally attended meetings of the war cabinet – a privilege denied to Ben-Gvir and other Israeli ministers.
By calling for a change in the makeup of the Israeli government in the midst of the war, Biden is giving hope to Hamas and the rest of Israel's enemies that the US is on their side. The message Biden is sending to the terrorists is: Hold on, we are with you and we want to remove Netanyahu and his government from power.
How would a cabinet reshuffle in Israel contribute to the war on Hamas? Is it appropriate for a foreign leader to demand that the Israeli prime minister replace his democratically-elected coalition partners while Israel is in the midst of a war, or even if it were not? Has Biden ever demanded from any Arab leader, including Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, to make changes in his cabinet?
Biden has shifted the talk from the need to eliminate Hamas and remove it from power, to the need undemocratically to change the Israeli government.
Not only Hamas but also the Palestinian Authority, whose leaders have yet to condemn Hamas's October 7 massacre, are also pleased with Biden's anti-Israel rhetoric. Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority's No. 2, commented:
"US President Biden's statements yesterday must transform into actions, starting with calling for an immediate ceasefire and putting forward a comprehensive political plan based on international legitimacy and international law... and establishing an independent Palestinian state."
Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have every reason to be satisfied with Biden. As far they are concerned, the mounting pressure by the Biden administration on Israel to end the war is a sign that the US does not want to see Hamas destroyed. Hamas is undoubtedly hoping to be rewarded for their October 7 carnage with an independent, Iran-backed Islamist Palestinian state right next to their "mark," Israel.
Biden's statements make Hamas and the Palestinian Authority think that they are close to achieving their goals.
"Biden's comments only feed the antisemitic rhetoric that Joe Biden himself claims to find so disgusting," remarked former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman. "These are really unfortunate comments."
The Biden administration, which has been seeking to appease the Iranian regime, doubtless understands that statements such as Biden's are likely to sabotage the war on terrorism. When Iran and Hamas terrorists hear Biden criticizing Israel during a war, it simply encourages them to escalate their attacks. For the terrorists, these attacks on Israel are proving to be effective: even the president of the US appears to be close to throwing Israel under the bus.
The Biden administration also doubtless understands that the war on Hamas cannot be conducted with a stop-watch or a certain timeline. The war to destroy Hamas and remove its threat to Israel could take additional weeks or months. As with routing ISIS or Al-Qaeda, the timing should not be a consideration at all. The Biden administration might please stop meddling in the war effort.
Instead of issuing deadlines for ending the war, the Biden administration should be voicing full support for Israel's war on Iran's terrorist proxies. Israel is fighting to defeat terrorism and preserve freedom for all of us in the free world. Israel is sacrificing its heroic citizens so that we will not have to. Instead of hampering Israel, we should be thanking it and doing all we can to help.
Contrary to what Biden believes, Israel should not be worried about global reactions to the war on Hamas. Most countries, and the United Nations, would probably denounce Israel because that is what they always do, no matter what Israel does. In the manner of the boy who cried wolf, they have thrown at Israel so much defamatory sewage, so unjustly, for so long, that it no longer carries any credibility.
Many apparently believe that Israel has no right to defend itself -- or even exist. Yet it was not Israel's perennial virtue-signaling critics -- the international community -- who were slaughtered on October 7. It was Israeli civilians, men, women and children, which is why Israel has an absolute obligation to defend itself against murderous Jihadis to make sure they will never try it again. There should be no negotiations and no ceasefires.
Sadly, Israel is dealing with bloodthirsty Islamists who never honor their commitments, anyway (here, here and here). Hamas already recently broke two ceasefires in two months; there is no reason to think they would not break a third, fourth and fifth. As they keep openly admitting, their chief goal is to murder Jews and wipe Israel off the map (here, here and here). How is it, one wonders, that Hamas has the right to pursue its declared aim of destroying Israel while Israel is not entitled to battle those who seek its destruction?
Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.
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America may turn and become increasingly anti-Semitic until such time as the growing Muslim population turn their machetes on white Christians and then the potential for another civil war could begin because they would have a reason to use their guns.
Is the American Jewish success story ending?
The Editorial Board
It’s not just a passing campus trend – data shows that the US may be turning into a dangerous place for Jews
The earthquake that shook the Western Negev on October 7th, Israel’s Black Shabbat, gave rise to a tsunami of antisemitism that is flooding parts of the United States.
A US congressional hearing was held on December 5th to examine how universities have responded to the antisemitism directed at Jewish students on American campuses. The presidents of three of the most prestigious institutions – Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania – testified under oath about the situation. They were asked point blank whether calling for the genocide of Jews violates the codes of conduct at their respective universities.
The three twisted in embarrassment as they spun their lawyerly answers: “it depends on the context,” or it is only a violation if it “rises to the level of incitement to violence.” Apparently, in their view, blatantly anti-Semitic calls for the murder of Jews are allowed as long as Jews aren’t actually murdered. The moral depths to which these university presidents have sunk are beyond description.
Together in Hell Keep Watching
If, to paraphrase the Talmudic saying, the cedars of Boston have been set ablaze, is it surprising that the dry hyssops also burn? In other words, the anti-Semitic wildfire unleashed in the Ivy League might influence many other American campuses.
American Jewry is a dazzling success story. The descendants of European immigrants who arrived destitute in the “golden land” positioned themselves as one of the most prosperous ethnic groups in the world’s most powerful country. Although they constitute only two percent of the population, American Jews stand out for their high levels of education (around a third of American Nobel Prize laureates and a quarter of the students on Ivy League campuses are Jews), their wealth (Jews are the religious group with the highest average income), their influence (the percentage of Jews in Congress – 6% of the House and 9% in the Senate – is many times greater than their share of the population), their cultural contributions (in literature, cinema, and art), and their social contributions (massive philanthropy, civil-society organizations, as leading voices in the human rights discourse, among many others).
It is a fact that the children of three US presidents – Clinton, Trump, and Biden – chose to marry Jews.
This success is no accident and it stands on two solid legs. One is the Jewish community’s unique mix of talent, ambition, and community values. The other is American democracy: the principle of the separation between religion and state; defining American nationhood on a civil rather than ethnic basis; the American self-perception as a country of immigrants. All of these made it possible for US Jews to be accepted as equals.
But it turns out that this is far from being enough. The unbelievable is happening before our eyes when open, blatant antisemitism gains legitimacy in America’s sanctuaries of the intellect. According to a survey by the Anti-Defamation League, 73% of American Jewish college students have personally experienced or witnessed anti-Semitic behavior on their campuses in recent months. Only 39% feel “very” comfortable with fellow students knowing they are Jewish, and just 45% feel “very” safe on campus.
In light of the data, it can be said that it is now safer and more comfortable to be an Israeli Arab citizen at an Israeli university than an American Jewish citizen at an American university.
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It is a long time from the 2024 election. Were it to happen today Biden would lose. Unless something radically positive occurs between now and election time, I believe Trump will win.
However, for Trump to be successful in his second term, it is imperative he has strong support in Congress. This means he must win big and bring along a lot of Republicans in both The House as well as The Senate. Without enough votes to support him, the Democrats will continue disruptive and block whatever he tries.
What Trump has going for him is; the border crisis, even receding inflation and interest rates, weak response on Biden's part to challenges from adversaries, Biden's obvious physical and mental decline, Hunter Biden's criminal achievements, his father's lies about no involvement and significant shifts in black, Hispanic, Jewish and Muslim voting.
The election could also be impacted by nefarious efforts on the part of Democrats and outside parties causing doubts about the election or actual voting count results. When it comes to retention of power, I put nothing aside pertaining to Democrats because they generally place winning above country. Patriotism escaped them ever since FDR. As for Republicans, they generally wimp out when toughness dictates.
It is Trump's to lose, and he still can, should he resort to allowing discontent over 2016's results dictate his campaigning. He must tell, in a convincing manner, what he intends to do and explain same in a rational and convincing style.
As for Biden, his inability to find his way off the stage might play to Trump's advantage but that is not enough to win overwhelmingly.
Time will tell. It always does
Hunter's Decision: Biden Might Be In BIG Trouble |
Fox News contributor Jonathan Turley made an appearance on “Hannity” on Friday. He addressed Hunter Biden’... |
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Hamas is dastardly - was the hostage escape a set up?
The shooting of three hostages sure feels like a cynical set up. And Hamas has no red lines, as we know. Opinion.
By Douglas Altabef
We were given a powerful reminder of the truth of the aphorism that “War is Hell,” when the crushing news came in with last Shabbat that an IDF soldier or soldiers had inadvertently shot and killed three hostages.
As horrifying as the fact was, it was worsened with the ensuing news that at least one of the hostages was bare chested and waving a white cloth of some sort. Plus, we have were shown a sheet with SOS in English and Save Us in Hebrew, scrawled in red, attached to the building that presumably the hostages were holed up in and from which they ran out.
The IDF Chief of Staff appropriately took full responsibility for the incident, and of course it is being investigated closely. How could we not take responsibility if one or more of our soldiers pulled the trigger or triggers that ended up killing three of those who we have been so intent on finding and rescuing?
But as any Sherlock Holmes buff knows, the superficial story is never the whole story, and is often a diversion from the real crime.
Let’s use a word that has come into disrepute of late to look more closely at the occurrence: context. Here the context is intense fighting, building to building, close up.
Hamas has been holding three hostages.
-Did the hostages escape in the heat of the fight?
-Were they expelled?
-How would they have a stick and a cloth if those items were not given them?
-How would they have known about the protocol of being shirtless – something that has been widely broadcast with reference to terrorists surrendering – but would not have been known to hostages who have been cut off from all contact since their abduction?
-And what about the banner? Even assuming that the hostages made the banner themselves, how was it affixed and then left there?
-If the hostages were able to affix the banner, wouldn’t it be likely that they were outside? Could they have escaped?
-Or were they assisted by the terrorists in putting the banner up? In other words, might the terrorists have wanted the world to know that there were hostages inside?
-Might this whole thing have been done for media consumption?
If one adopts the mindset of Hamas, plausible answers start to emerge. These hostages are going to be difficult to maintain while we are under attack. Sure, we can kill them, as we have been doing frequently. But why not try to hit the jackpot: release them in the midst of the fighting, and maybe, the hated IDF will do our dirty work for us? And what a blow that will be!
Of course, I am not privy to all the facts and the circumstantial details. But there is more here than meets the superficial review. For example, might there have been Hamas fighters who deliberately went shirtless themselves in order to create a sense that to be shirtless carried no significance of surrender?
In other words, might the hostages have been a useful tool to try to confuse and confound IDF soldiers into knowing who to shoot and not shoot at?
We don’t know, but the banner with the Hebrew and English seems a bit too clever, too well orchestrated to be anything other than part of a set up.
Once again, I fear, Hamas set a trap, and once again, we ended up falling into it. It is an occupational hazard of this conflict, one replete with human shields, and terrorists hiding in schools, mosques, under hospitals, in a child's room.
We certainly know that no IDF soldier would have ever done this deliberately. We also know that in the heat of battle, split second judgments must be made and can be influenced by factors hard to even recall after the fact.
And we know that whoever pulled the trigger will be reliving those moments for the rest of his or their lives. Their punishment, tragically, is already imposed, and it is self-imposed.
The fighting in South Gaza is of an intensity, of a proximity, far greater than experienced in the North. Yes, there are protocols, but there are also contingencies, not all of which can be anticipated nor planned for.
It would be perfectly consistent with the Hamas playbook for this to have been a set up. Hamas has earned, and honestly, the moniker that once upon a time, in books and in films was used to describe the most fiendish, villainous, conniving and no good bad guy: Hamas is dastardly.
Douglas Altabef is Chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a Director of The Israel Independence Fund.
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They would not last in a free market.
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With large, tax-insulated endowments, Ivy League schools act like companies without market pressure.
By Allysia Finley
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Israel and Bibi under pressure to negotiate but no one penalizes Hamas for breaking their word. Why does the criminal win at the expense of the attacked losing?
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Report: Israel to agree to new ceasefire and hostage release
Egyptian security sources say Israel and Hamas are both open to renewed ceasefire and hostage release.
Two Egyptian security sources told Reuters on Sunday that Israel and Hamas are both open to a renewed ceasefire and hostage release, although disagreements remain on how it would be implemented.
Hamas is insisting on setting the list of hostages to be released unilaterally, and demanding that Israeli forces withdraw behind pre-determined lines, the sources told Reuters.
Israel has agreed on Hamas setting the list, the sources said, but refuses to withdraw and has asked for a timeline and to see the list in order to set the time and duration of the ceasefire.
There have been rumblings in recent days of another “ceasefire for hostages” agreement between Israel and Hamas, but on Saturday night, Hamas toughened its position on such a deal.
Osama Hamdan, one of the senior members of the Hamas terrorist organization, stated that that the return of abducted soldiers will only be achieved after a complete cessation of the "aggression" on the part of Israel.
The Islamic Jihad, which is holding several hostages as well, stressed that the organization will agree to a new prisoner swap only in exchange for ending the war.
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President Biden’s new demand that Israel ease up in its war on Hamas is a perilous and nonsensical cave to the growing anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party.
Nonsensical, because it endorses the utterly false notion that Israel’s being callous about the lives of ordinary Gazans.
Perilous, because the pressure to switch now to a “lower intensity” phase (as National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan put it last week) in fact is a push to give up on destroying Hamas and allow it to regroup and gather strength.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in his trip to Jerusalem this week, made it sound better: Israel “has every right to defend itself” but “protecting Palestinian civilians in Gaza is both a moral duty and a strategic imperative.”
Hel-lo: Israel has been doing just that since the counterattack to Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities began.
The IDF warns Gazans of the areas it will be hitting, and provides ample evacuation time — even as Hamas does its level best to make sure that civilians stay in place, the better to maximize casualties.
Israel’s forces have engaged in surgically precise maneuvers like the entry into al-Shifa hospital, where soldiers went in with translators and medical teams and cleared the medical facility/Hamas operational base one hallway at a time.
Even their bombing is done to minimize civilian casualties.
That’s despite the best efforts of the media to paint it as the opposite.
Witness CNN, claiming in a recent story that the “unguided munitions” Israel is using “are typically less precise and can pose a greater threat to civilians, especially in such a densely populated area like Gaza” — before admitting, way down in the same article, that Israel in fact (and per the US government) is using these weapons carefully, with results “similarly precise to a guided munition.”
That slander lines up neatly with Biden’s recent “indiscriminate bombing” slur, debuted at a donor dinner, in which he threatened Israel in the same breath with loss of support.
It’s becoming painfully clear that the president is bending to the anti-Israel prejudices of his party’s left, even as the Jewish state fights for its survival.
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