America Must Take The World’s New Axis Of Evil Much More Seriously — Or Else |
| by Niall Ferguson via New York Post When war in Ukraine began, two years ago, I thought the best analogy might be with the Korean War. And: |
By Matt Vespa
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Blinken will do anything to hide the fact that he is a more urbane Bernie Sanders, He is a Jewish anti-Semite where Bernie is a Jewish Communist.
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Secretary Blinken on settlements – vindicated by facts?
Secretary Blinken on settlements – vindicated by facts?
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken represents conventional wisdom when claiming that “It’s been longstanding US policy… that new settlements are… inconsistent with international law.”
However, conventional wisdom is frequently demolished by the march of facts.
For instance:
*According to Prof. Eugene Rostow, who was the co-author of the November 22, 1967 UN Security Council Resolution 242, served as Undersecretary of State and was the Dean of Yale University Law School: “Jews have the same right to settle in the West Bank as they have in Haifa.”
*According to UN Resolution 242, Israel is required to withdraw from territories, not the territories, nor from all the territories, but some of the territories, which included Judea and Samaria (the West Bank), East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. Moreover, according to Prof. Rostow, “resolutions calling for withdrawal from all the territories were defeated in the Security Council and the General Assembly…. Israel was not to be forced back to the fragile and vulnerable [9-15 mile-wide] lines… but to secure and recognized boundaries, agreed to by the parties…. In making peace with Egypt in 1979, Israel withdrew from the entire Sinai… [which amounts to] more than 90% of the territories occupied in 1967….”
*Former President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, stated: “Between Israel, acting defensively in 1948 and 1967 (according to Article 52 of the UN Charter), on the one hand, and her Arab neighbors, acting aggressively in 1948 and 1967, on the other, Israel has better title in the territory of what was [British Mandate] Palestine…. It follows that modifications of the 1949 armistice lines among those States within former Palestinian territory are lawful…. [The 1967] Israeli conquest of territory was defensive rather than aggressive… [as] indicated by Egypt's prior closure of the Straits of Tiran, blockade of the Israeli port of Eilat, and the amassing of [Egyptian] troops in Sinai, coupled with its ejection of the UN Emergency Force…[and] Jordan’s initiated hostilities against Israel…. The 1948 Arab invasion of the nascent State of Israel further demonstrated that Egypt's seizure of the Gaza Strip, and Jordan's seizure and subsequent annexation of the West Bank and the old city of Jerusalem, were unlawful….”
*The legal status of Judea and Samaria is embedded in the following 4 authoritative, binding, internationally-ratified documents, which recognize the area for what it has been: the cradle of Jewish history, culture, language, aspirations and religion.
(I) The November 2, 1917 Balfour Declaration, issued by Britain, calling for “the establishment in Palestine (a synonym to the Land of Israel) of a national home for the Jewish people….”
(II) The April 24, 1920 resolution, by the post-First World War San Remo Peace Conference of the Allied Powers Supreme Council, entrusted both sides of the Jordan River to the British Mandate for Palestine, for the reestablishment of the Jewish Commonwealth: “the Mandatory will be responsible for putting into effect the [Balfour] declaration originally made on November 2, 1917, by the Government of His Britannic Majesty, and adopted by the said Powers, in favor of the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” It was one of over 20 Mandates (trusteeships) established following WW1, responsible for the boundaries of most Arab countries.
(III) The July 24, 1922 Mandate for Palestine was ratified by the Council of the League of Nations, entrusted Britain to establish a Jewish state in the entire area west of the Jordan River, as demonstrated by its 6th article: “[to] encourage… close settlement by Jews on the land, including State lands and waste lands….” The Mandate was dedicated exclusively to Jewish national rights, while guaranteeing the civic rights of all other religious and ethnic groups. On July 23, 1923, the Ottoman Empire signed the Treaty of Lausanne, which included the Mandate for Palestine.
(IV) The October 24, 1945 Article 80 of the UN Charter incorporated the Mandate for Palestine into the UN Charter. Accordingly, the UN or any other entity cannot transfer Jewish rights in Palestine – including immigration and settlement - to any other party.
According to Article 80 of the UN Charter and the Mandate for Palestine, the 1967 war of self-defense returned Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria to its legal owner, the Jewish state. Legally and geo-strategically the rules of “belligerent occupation” do not apply Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria, since they are not “foreign territory,” and Jordan did not have a legitimate title over the West Bank. Moreover, the rules of “belligerent occupation” do not apply in view of the 1994 Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty. The 1950-67 Jordanian occupation of Judea and Samaria violated international law and was recognized only by Britain and Pakistan.
*The 1949 4th Geneva Convention prohibits the forced transfer of populations to areas previously occupied by a legitimate sovereign power. However, Israel has not forced Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria, and Jordan’s sovereignty there was never legal.
*The November 29, 1947 UN General Assembly Partition Resolution 181 was a recommendation, lacking legal stature, superseded by the Mandate for Palestine. The 1949 Armistice (non-peace) Agreements between Israel and its neighbors delineated “non-territorial boundaries.”
*The term “Palestine” was a Greek and then a Roman attempt (following the 135 CE Jewish rebellion) to eradicate Jews and Judaism from human memory. It substituted “Israel, Judea and Samaria” with “Palaestina,” a derivative of the Philistines, an arch enemy of the Jewish people, whose origin was not in Arabia, but in the Greek Aegian islands.
*The aforementioned march of facts demonstrates that Secretary Blinken’s conventional wisdom on the Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria is based on gross misperceptions and misrepresentations, which fuels infidelity to law, undermining the pursuit of peace.
*More on the legality of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria in this article by George Mason University Law School Prof. Eugene Kontrovich.
Yoram will be available for speaking engagements in the US in May and September 2024: The impact of Israel-Hamas war on US-Israel relations and the peace process; US policy toward Iran - repeating or avoiding critical mistakes? Would a Palestinian state advance US interests? Israel's contributions to the US economy & defense outweigh US foreign aid to Israel; 400-year-old roots of the US-Israel nexus; Myth of Arab demographic time bomb; President Biden's Middle East policy; US pressure - testing US realism and Israeli leadership; Arab talk vs. Arab walk on Palestinians; Is the Palestinian issue the crux of the Arab-Israeli conflict and a core cause of regional turbulence? Islamic terrorists bite the hands that feed them; Middle East reality vs. Western conventional wisdom, etc.
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The Arab/Muslim world, along with radicals hate Jews because we are like people only more so.
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$1 Billion Donation Will Provide Free Tuition at a Bronx Medical School
Dr. Ruth Gottesman, a longtime professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, is making free tuition available to all students going forward.
Dr. Ruth Gottesman’s donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough.David Dee Delgado for The New York Times
The 93-year-old widow of a Wall Street financier has donated $1 billion to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, with instructions that the gift be used to cover tuition for all students going forward.
The donor, Dr. Ruth Gottesman, is a former professor at Einstein, where she studied learning disabilities, developed a screening test and ran literacy programs. It is one of the largest charitable donations to an educational institution in the United States and most likely the largest to a medical school.
The fortune came from her late husband, David Gottesman, known as Sandy, who was a protégé of Warren Buffett and had made an early investment in Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate Mr. Buffett built.
The donation is notable not only for its staggering size, but also because it is going to a medical institution in the Bronx, the city’s poorest borough. The Bronx has a high rate of premature deaths and ranks as the unhealthiest county in New York. Over the past generation, a number of billionaires have given hundreds of millions of dollars to better-known medical schools and hospitals in Manhattan, the city’s wealthiest borough.
While her husband ran an investment firm, First Manhattan, Dr. Gottesman had a long career at Einstein, a well-regarded medical school, starting in 1968, when she took a job as director of psychoeducational services. She has long been on Einstein’s board of trustees and is currently the chair.
In recent years, she has become close friends with Dr. Philip Ozuah, the pediatrician who oversees the medical college and its affiliated hospital, Montefiore Medical Center, as the chief executive officer of the health system. That friendship and trust loomed large as she contemplated what to do with the money her husband had left her.
In an interview on Friday at the Einstein campus in the Morris Park neighborhood, Dr. Ozuah and Dr. Gottesman spoke about the donation, how it came together and what it would mean for Einstein medical students.
The Friendship
In early 2020, the two sat next to each other on a 6 a.m. flight to West Palm Beach, Fla. It was the first time they had spent hours together.
They spoke about their childhoods — hers in Baltimore, his, some 30 years later, in Nigeria — and what they had in common. Both had doctorates in education and had spent their careers at the same institution in the Bronx, helping children and families in need.
Dr. Ozuah described moving to New York, not knowing a single person in the state, and spending years as a community doctor in the South Bronx before ascending to the top of the medical school.
Leaving the airport, Dr. Ozuah offered his arm to Dr. Gottesman, then not quite 90, as they approached the curb. She waved him off and told him to “watch your own step,” he recalled with a chuckle.
Within a few weeks, the coronavirus brought the world to a grinding halt. Dr. Gottesman’s husband, in his 90s, became ill with the new pathogen, and she had a mild case. Dr. Ozuah sent an ambulance to the Gottesman home in Rye, N.Y., to bring them to Montefiore, the Bronx’s largest hospital.
In the weeks that followed, Dr. Ozuah began making daily house calls — in full protective gear — to check in on the couple as Mr. Gottesman recovered. “That’s how the friendship evolved,” he said. “I spent probably every day for about three weeks, visiting them in Rye.”
About three years ago, Dr. Ozuah asked Dr. Gottesman to head the medical school’s board of trustees. She had done the job before, but given her age, she was surprised. The gesture reminded her of the fable about the lion and the mouse, she told Dr. Ozuah at the time, explaining that when the lion spares the mouse’s life, the mouse tells him, “Maybe someday I’ll be helpful to you.”
In the story, the lion laughs haughtily. “But Phil didn’t go ‘ha, ha, ha,’” she noted with a smile.
The Money
Dr. Gottesman’s husband died in 2022 at age 96. “He left me, unbeknownst to me, a whole portfolio of Berkshire Hathaway stock,” she recalled. The instructions were simple: “Do whatever you think is right with it,” she recalled.
It was overwhelming to think about, so at first she didn’t. But her children encouraged her not to wait too long.
When she focused on the bequest, she realized immediately what she wanted to do, she recalled. “I wanted to fund students at Einstein so that they would receive free tuition,” she said. There was enough money to do that in perpetuity, she said.
Over the years, she had interviewed dozens of prospective Einstein medical students. Tuition is more than $59,000 a year, and many graduated with crushing medical school debt, often more than $200,000.
Not only would future students be able to embark on their careers without the debt burden, but she hoped that her donation would also enable a wider pool of aspiring doctors to apply to medical school. “We have terrific medical students, but this will open it up for many other students whose economic status is such that they wouldn’t even think about going to medical school,” she said.
“That’s what makes me very happy about this gift,” she added. “I have the opportunity not just to help Phil, but to help Montefiore and Einstein in a transformative way — and I’m just so proud and so humbled — both — that I could do it.”
Dr. Gottesman went to see Dr. Ozuah in December to tell him that she would be making a major gift. She reminded him of the lion and mouse story. This, she explained, was the mouse’s moment.
“If someone said, ‘I’ll give you a transformative gift for the medical school,’ what would you do?” she asked.
There were probably three things, Dr. Ozuah said.
“One,” he began, “you could have education be free —”
“That’s what I want to do,” she said. He never mentioned the other ideas.
Dr. Gottesman sometimes wonders what her late husband would have thought of her decision.
“I hope he’s smiling and not frowning,” she said with a chuckle. “But he gave me the opportunity to do this, and I think he would be happy — I hope so.”
Einstein will not be the first medical school to eliminate tuition.
In 2018, New York University announced it would begin offering free tuition to medical students and saw a surge in applications.
The Name
Dr. Gottesman was reluctant to attach her name to her donation. “Nobody needs to know,” Dr. Ozuah recalled her saying at first. But Dr. Ozuah insisted that others might find her life inspiring. “Here’s somebody who is totally dedicated to the welfare of others and wants no accolades, no recognition,” Dr. Ozuah said.
Dr. Ozuah noted that the going price for getting your name on a medical school or hospital was perhaps a fifth of Dr. Gottesman’s donation. Cornell Medical College and New York Hospital now include the surname of Sanford Weill, the former head of Citigroup. New York University’s medical center was renamed for Ken Langone, a co-founder of Home Depot. Both men donated hundreds of millions of dollars.
But it is a condition of Dr. Gottesman’s gift that the Einstein College of Medicine not change its name. Albert Einstein, the physicist who developed the theory of relativity, agreed to confer his name on the medical school, which opened in 1955.
The name, she noted, could not be beat. “We’ve got the gosh darn name — we’ve got Albert Einstein.”
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I ran my essay by a dear friend, who has served at the highest levels of our government, and he disagreed. His rebuttal is that except for UNWRA and a few other agencies, The U N does many positive things.
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THETIME HAS COME:
This essay is intended to be purposely radical in it's message and controversial in nature.
The time has come for America and Israel to withdraw from the U.N.
Like the failed League of Nations, whose severe punishment of Germany led to the rise in crippling inflation followed by Hitler and The Holocaust, the goal of the U.N was to provide members a forum for discussion so wars could be avoided. That goal has failed as well.
Certain nations were given veto powers and America, as in the case of NATO, was disproportionate in its share of U.N funding. I also believe, because we had veto power over U.N decisions, we were less focused on the organization's accomplishments and its various agencies, etc. We continued funding notwithstanding our unwillingness to measure the various U.N Agencies' success rate.
Thus, many Agencies came under the control of radical Islamist nations. The most egregious failed agency is UNWRA, which, over time, became a conduit for failed Palestinian leadership's ability to constantly bash Israel. The U.N has blamed Israel for virtually every occurrence regarding the self induced plight of Palestinian refugees.
UNWRA's initial mission was to resolve the Palestinian Refugee issue rather than perpetuate it but UNWRA has become a permanent employment agency for U.N personnel. I walked the street where UNWRA members live in lovely homes near the entrance of Hebrew University in Jerusalem with washed shiny Chevrolet cars parked outside as they go back and forth to Ramallah. Why solve a problem when unemployment is the alternative?
Meanwhile, during UNWRA's continued existence, Israel has absorbed and relocated millions of refugees and integrated an overwhelming portion of them into their society and culture, including Arabs, who have become members of Israel's Knesset etc.
Trump was the first president to measure our UNWRA support versus their failures and chose to totally defund UNWRA only to later reinstitute our contributions. Recently, even Biden chose to diminish UNRWA funding after 12 of it's employees allegedly admitted participating in Hamas' unprovoked invasion of Israel. UNWRA facilities also became shelters for Hamas terrorists.
The U.N has become an anti-Semitic toothless organization when it comes to carrying out various critical missions. They withdrew troops stationed in the Sinai when Egypt demanded such thus, permitting Egypt's sneak Yom Kippur attack. U.N forces withdrew from Lebanon's neutral corridor abutting Israel which is now occupied by Hezbollah forces. This occupation has resulted in hundreds of thousands of Israeli's having to vacate their homes which are in range of rocket attacks.
The U.N has been impotent regarding China's attacks on their own Muslim population and Russia's War against Ukraine. Nevertheless, while it's list of failures is endless, attacks on Israel, as a Zionist entity, persist. Why? Because U.N leadership has mostly been anti-Semitic in nature, it's various agency leadership has been captured by radical Islamist nations who have engaged in egregious activities "sans" condemnation. Meanwhile, America's funding continues as a message of indifference at best and acceptance at worst.
America's funding of tax payer dollars has reached a level of arrogance, which for me, is beyond tolerance. The U.N. has failed it's mission and it's continuance as a "righteous" organization is both laughable and a blight on our own nation's morality and fiscal integrity.
There comes a time when enough is enough and that time has past.
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If you think Biden is our worst president, Michelle would excel in challenging his failures. Her election, as president, would demonstrate what little respect we have left for the type of "clown" to occupy the Oval Office.
It is as if the office can be filed by those with the least talent and qualifications because they accommodate the mass media's need for supposed charisma. Michelle is Kamala without the inane giggle.
Democrats seem not to give a damn about the nation's survival only winning at all cost.
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Nearly half of Dems want to boot Biden off ticket — with Michelle Obama his leading favorite replacement:
By Victor Nava
Almost half of Democrats want someone besides President Biden at the top of their party’s 2024 ticket — and former first lady Michelle Obama is the leading choice to replace him, according to a new poll.
About 48% of the Democratic voters polled said they approve of the party “finding another candidate to replace Joe Biden before the election in November,” compared to 38% who disapprove, said the Rasmussen Reports survey released Monday.
But only 33% of Democrats believe a ballot shakeup is likely to happen, believing President Biden should be replaced at the top of the party’s 2024 election ticket, a new Shutterstock poll shows.
The pollster found little consensus among likely Democratic voters as to who should replace Biden, 81, on the ballot this fall in the event he doesn’t seek re-election.
But Obama, 60, led the group, receiving 20% support among a list of options that also included Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, “none of the above” and “not sure.”
Most Democrats – 27% – selected “none of the above,” the poll found.
Coming in behind the former first lady was the vice president, with 15% of Democrats indicating they would back Harris rising to the top of the ticket.
Twelve percent of Democrats would like to see a possible rematch of the 2016 presidential election, backing Clinton, 76, to replace Biden.
Newsom, 56, who has already been accused of running a “shadow campaign” for the presidency, in case Biden has to exit the contest for health reasons, received 11% support.
Whitmer, 52, is the youngest of the bunch, and she was the preferred choice of 9% of likely Democratic voters.
Six percent responded that they were “unsure.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) argued in September ,Obama could be “parachuted in” at the Democratic National Convention, which will be in the former first lady’s hometown of Chicago, and named the party’s nominee for president in place of Biden.
Obama has repeatedly expressed her desire to avoid politics.
Biden, the oldest president in US history, trails former President Donald Trump, 77 – the GOP front-runner for the nomination – in several polls of key battleground states but hasn’t given any indication he plans to step aside and allow a different Democrat to run in his stead.
Biden would be 86 by the end of a second term in office, and his allegedly fading cognitive capabilities were noted in special counsel Robert Hur’s scathing report regarding the president’s classified documents scandal.
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Recently, I had the opportunity to sit with a relative who had access to Hamas' torturous activities which included placing a live infant in an oven, raping parent's children in front of them and other barbaric atrocities. Honoring these inhumane activities are so called American brainless and thuggish students parading on University Campuses supporting these Islamist animals. The behaviour of these student hyena's signifies the level to which American education has sunk.
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Palestinian Incitement Is Central to Hamas’s Sadistic Wars
By Seth Mandel
I don’t know I ever made my way through something as hard to read as the comprehensive report released last week by the Association of Rape Crisis Centers in Israel. Titled “Silent Cry: Sexual Crimes in the October 7 War,” the report lays out in gruesome detail what we know—not what is theorized or assumed, but what is known—about Hamas’s depravity on and after October 7.
People who still doubt and deny these atrocities aren’t searching for evidence, and it’s clear they never were. Despite that, the value in documenting Hamas’s barbarousness for posterity is obvious. In addition, the report was delivered to the United Nations, which has a special obligation to read it and act on it because it has a unique level of culpability in the crimes.
I don’t mean simply the fact that UN employees participated in the attacks, though that is certainly part of the picture. The report reveals something truly catastrophic about the society over which the UN has presided as its primary steward.
Palestinians in Gaza have been brainwashed beyond hatred to the point of sadistic reprogramming, and it is incumbent on the world to intervene.
The report is available online here, and readers can decide for themselves the level of detail they are prepared to handle. But one quote in particular has haunted me ever since I first read the report. An emergency responder on the scene described the mutilation of the victims this way: “There’s almost no body they were satisfied with (just) shooting.”
There is abundant eyewitness testimony, but the Gazans who carried out those crimes went to great lengths to leave no doubt. Victims—both men and women, but mostly women—were found with nails, grenades, knives, iron bars, and gunshot wounds in their genitals. There was, in fact, an overriding obsession with sexual torture and mutilation along with rape, and often with family members forced to watch. It is all consistent with the many videos Hamas took themselves of terrorists dragging mostly naked women through the streets as onlookers cheer. Internal organs were mutilated as well, and some victims were beheaded.
Put it this way: You know something is truly demonic when phrases like “just murdered” or “just raped” appear in a report.
Where would multiple generations of a society imbibe justifications for such maniacal behavior? In part, from school textbooks paid for by the U.S. taxpayer, as this chilling report compiled by IMPACT-se, an educational NGO, shows in detail.
A teacher’s guide to Palestinian history books instructs teachers that, after a lesson on the 1948 war, they should dock students’ grades if they don’t explicitly connect “Zionist massacres” to “Jewish religious thought.” Students should be asked “Why do the Jews commit massacres?” (There’s something almost refreshing about the fact that these schools dispense with the usual word games around “Zionists” and “Jews.”)
On October 7, one terrorist carried with him a paper with a quote from an early Islamic figure who encouraged his people to behead and to tear out the internal organs of Jews. This particular figure is lionized in a section of “heroes” in fifth-grade textbooks. Students learn in classrooms adorned with posters of murderous terrorists. Schoolbooks talk about Israeli soldiers’ body parts littering the ground of battle.
And there all the usual hits: praise of martyrdom, the identification of all Jews as targets no matter where they live, and the rest.
Obviously, UN schools aren’t the only ones who teach such filth. The EU Parliament has been complaining for years about the EU-funded hate books used in Palestinian Authority schools as well. Last year, the Times of Israel reported, “an EU resolution directly linked the content of PA textbooks with funds for Palestinian terrorism, and in particular attacks by young people, it said. The resolution also acknowledged that there is antisemitism in the textbooks and demanded that it be removed.” The parliament threatened to cut EU funding for the Palestinian Authority unless the books were cleaned up.
EU officials have begun to understand that Palestinian schools are a system of incitement and conditioning, and that this is a central fact in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than a distraction or a minor detail. The combination of hate-programming and Hamas’s governance produces what we saw on October 7 and what is contained in the report on sexual violence in the current war. Those horrors stand apart in their viciousness. War is hell, but Hamas has turned it into something much worse. It would be unforgivable to put one more generation of Palestinians through this brainwashing and one more generation of Israelis through the sadistic consequences of that brainwashing. It is an experiment in barbarity using human subjects, and we’re paying the price.
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Israel’s 144th Day of War
By Sherwin Pomerantz
In this 144th day of the war when Israel also participated in municipal elections throughout the country (including in Gaza where so many of our troops are fighting right now) we heard that an Israeli military base in northern Israel was targeted by a massive rocket barrage Monday afternoon, as tensions on the Lebanon-Israel border continue to escalate. Dozens of rockets were fired from southern Lebanon towards the Golan Heights Monday, the IDF said. Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense network intercepted some of the incoming projectiles, though it is unclear how many. There have been no reports of damage or injuries thus far.
The rocket attacks come hours after Hezbollah terrorists operating in Lebanon claimed they shot down an Israeli unmanned aircraft. Hezbollah said that its operatives downed a drone aircraft over the Nabatieh region of southern Lebanon Monday, using a surface-to-air missile. The Iran-backed terror group uploaded footage to social media showing a drone aircraft being shot down. Israel later confirmed that it had lost an unmanned aircraft which had been operating in Lebanese airspace.
Regarding the potential of attacj by Iran, the Israel Air Force under commander Maj.-Gen. Tomer Bar has officially established an Iran department in response to Tehran's growing threats against Israel. This department will handle all military preparations for potential future attacks by Iran, and is mainly set to combat the Iranian Nuclear Program. The decision to establish an Iran department has been in the works for a long time, but it only recently received official recognition in an IDF announcement. Official sources within the security establishment stated that this move is intended to send a warning not only to Iran, but also to the United States, which has been criticized by some for its poor handling of the Iranian nuclear program, as well as the funding of Iran's terrorist influence in the Middle East.
Following up a headline from yesterday, the entire Palestinian Authority government, including Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, officially submitted their resignations to PA President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday, paving the way for a new Palestinian entity to potentially rule the post-war Gaza Strip. In a statement to the Palestinian Authority-controlled news outlet Wafa, Shtayyeh said that the new PA government would seek to form a government with the Hamas terror group and would continue its ongoing anti-Israel policies, presumably including pay-for-slay stipends for Palestinians convicted of perpetrating terror attacks against Jews.
“We will remain in confrontation with the occupation [Israel], and the Palestinian Authority will continue to struggle to establish the state on the lands of Palestine,” Shtayyeh told Wafa. “I see that the next stage and its challenges require new governmental and political arrangements that take into account the emerging reality in the Gaza Strip, the national unity talks [with Hamas], and the urgent need for an inter-Palestinian consensus based on a national basis, broad participation, unity of ranks, and the extension of the Palestinian Authority’s sovereignty over the entire land of Palestine.”
On the issue of the hostages, there are positive signs coming out of the discussions going on now in Qatar in which Israel is participating. Clearly at this point in time every additional day reduces the probability of getting the over 130 hostages still be held by Hamas back to Israel alive and well. Hopefully the negotiators understand that time is not on the side of the hostages at this point. Let’s pray that they are successful.
Future Leadership
Today I am going in a different direction and asking who among our present political leadership should remain in the new government that will be built after the war ends? To me the person who would be number one on my list is Gadi Eizenkot, a member o the war cabinet He is also a former IDF Chief of Staff, who lost a son and a nephew in this war, and is perhaps the main reason Israelis have faith in the war cabinet. You can get to know him better today, thanks to the extraordinary work of Ilana Dayan in her interview with him which you can view here……
http://tinyurl.com/2dwjsrm2
I would urge you to do so. It is emotional, disturbing and distressing but at the same time gives hope for the future that there really are people already in government (not enough I might add) who understand why we are here and what their responsibility is as leaders of this country. The video speaks for itself and anything else that I would add would simply ne superfluous. I hope you find in inspiring as well and that he will agree to remain as part of our post war new leadership.
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The Media-Savvy Murderers of Hamas
They live-streamed their attacks on Israel and now exploit the civilians of Gaza.
By
Daniel Hagari
In an era when terrorists live-stream their atrocities, the Hamas massacre of Oct. 7 is arguably the most well-documented attack in history. The meticulously choreographed spectacle of savagery and sadism saw Hamas mercilessly murder, butcher, rape and burn Israeli families alive—documenting their crimes with GoPros and cellphones. The terrorists even live-streamed their atrocities on their victims’ social-media accounts.
That was only the first phase of Hamas’s media strategy. When the fighting shifted to Gaza, Hamas went from massacring Israeli civilians to hiding behind Gazan civilians. For the past 16 years, Hamas has systematically embedded its terror infrastructure inside and under civilian areas in Gaza as part of its human-shield strategy. IDF troops discovered that most homes in Gaza have terror tunnels underneath or weapon caches inside, and the majority of schools, mosques, hospitals and international institutions have been used by Hamas for their military operations.
Hamas has forced Gazans to stay in active combat zones by blocking their attempts to move out of harm’s way. When civilians manage to reach the safer areas to which we guide them, Hamas then moves to those areas, turning humanitarian zones into staging areas for further attacks.
By embedding itself among civilians, Hamas conceals itself from the cameras covering the conflict. By instructing terrorists to dress in civilian clothes, Hamas camouflages its terrorists as innocents. By waging war from inside and underneath hospitals, Hamas hopes that international law and public sympathy will provide a shield for their military activities.
The Israel Defense Forces, by contrast, conducts its operations with caution, transparency and in accordance with international law. Hamas wants the world to believe that the IDF is at war with all of Gaza. In reality, our war is against Hamas, not against the people of Gaza, which is why we take extensive measures to minimize harm to the civilians Hamas puts in the crossfire. We are fighting this war with a heavy heart, aware of the tragic loss of civilian lives on both sides.
Our mission is to dismantle Hamas and bring our hostages home—not to destroy Gaza or displace its people. Hamas’s strategy may shift from massacring Israeli civilians to hiding behind Gazan civilians, but our strategy remains consistent and clear: Ensure that Oct. 7 never happens again. We will continue fulfilling this mission while upholding our values and exposing the true face of Hamas to the world.
Rear Adm. Hagari is chief spokesman of the Israel Defense Forces.
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This is a must read Op Ed:
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Europe Has More to Fear Than Trump
Decades of complacency have left the Continent vulnerable and dependent on American protection
By Jakub Grygiel
Europeans fear Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and who can blame them after he said he’d “encourage” the Russians to “do whatever the hell they want” to allies who don’t pay enough for their defense? Yet that comment should wake up those in Europe who think that U.S. reservoirs of resources and will are infinite. Mr. Trump reflects a growing American frustration with many allies that refuse to face the harsh international reality: that rivals are arming rapidly, and the only guarantee of security remains a large, and perhaps unsustainable, U.S. military expenditure.
Europe has enjoyed a decadeslong vacation from the obligation of any polity: security. The benign international conditions of the 1990s and early 2000s seemed to be a prelude to a peaceful global community. Now it’s clear that progress toward global harmony isn’t happening, and nourishing such illusions is dangerous.
Some, especially on Europe’s eastern front line, have fully awakened to the reality of competition and war. But others, such as Germany and Italy, spend well below 2% of gross domestic product on defense—with the bulk of that money going toward personnel rather than weapons. If European politicians think that Russia is a serious threat, they should push for massive spending on defense and a mobilization of their societies including some form of conscription, regardless of what a U.S. presidential candidate says. Those in Europe who fret that the Continent is in danger but then ask the U.S. to protect it at high cost are covering up their unwillingness to make hard choices.
The solution isn’t the European Union. Much of the rhetoric in Europe pre-emptively condemning a future Trump presidency is a useful cover for those in love with the idea of European strategic autonomy. If Mr. Trump will abandon Europe, then the only salvation, they think, is a reinvigorated EU with not only a common coin and market but also a common army, centralized weapons procurement, shared defense industry and an EU-level military command.
There is a reason this hasn’t happened. Europe’s nations don’t want it. Portugal doesn’t care about Poland’s border. Estonia isn’t preoccupied with Sicily. Berlin would rather do business with Moscow than fight for Suwałki, Poland. Paris or Rome won’t place their aspirations of grandeur or their business interests in the hands of a Central European leader, even one domesticated by EU ambitions. There is no feasible alternative for European states other than to shore up their own national forces.
Europe should fear its enemies. An aggressive Russia pushing westward won’t stop even after Vladimir Putin is out of power. Over the past 10 years, Russia has increased its defense spending by 300%, while EU countries have increased theirs by only 20%. The quality of Western weapons may be better, but the war in Ukraine shows that quantity also matters. Russia is producing 20 to 30 new tanks a month, while Germany will get 18 new Leopard tanks in 2025. The U.K. has around 40 tanks that are ready to be deployed.
Add to this grim picture the instability of Europe’s southern frontier, likely to become worse as demographic pressures in Africa and Asia exacerbate the northward migration flow. This is a problem that won’t be solved by international development organizations. It requires an investment in security, from maritime interdiction to stabilization of North Africa, all of which involve men, ships, planes and ammunition.
Finally, Europe should be afraid of a weak U.S. president. Joe Biden has 11 months left in his administration. If we take the past three years as an indication of what he may do, Europe faces serious risks. So far the Biden administration has abandoned Afghanistan to the Taliban, has willfully dragged on the war in Ukraine by spoon-feeding Kyiv with enough arms not to be overwhelmed by Russia but not enough to defeat it, and has entered into a war with Iran and its proxies without a clear vision of victory.
All this bodes ill for Europe. Mr. Biden wants to avoid a presidential election in the shadow of wars. He has a strong interest to strike a deal with Russia, regardless of what this may mean for Ukraine. The inability of Congress to agree to fund the next batch of weapons for Ukraine—caused in part by the Democrats’ insistence on ignoring the crises on the U.S. southern border—is helpful for Mr. Biden as it reduces American exposure to the war and prepares the conditions for freezing the conflict. Ukraine—and, with it, European security—is at risk of being sacrificed well before Inauguration Day 2025.
Europeans should be afraid. But the primary object of their fear is more immediate. They should arm themselves regardless of what a U.S. president, or a presidential candidate, says.
Mr. Grygiel is a professor at the Catholic University of America, a senior advisor at the Marathon Initiative and a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution.
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