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Israel confirms Hamas No. 3 killed in March 9 airstrike++++
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From Israel: Perversity on Steroids!!
Arlene-from-Israel-banner-final
David Cameron, the British Foreign Minister, informed Israel last week that if we did not permit the Red Cross to visit the Nukhba force terrorists we are holding in prison, then Britain would stop supplying arms to Israel and would support an arms embargo across Europe.
Let us be clear about what the Nukhba force is. These are the sub-humans who committed atrocities on October 7. The ones who raped and beheaded innocent Israelis and set people on fire.
Is he so tenderhearted that he cannot bear to think that they perhaps are not “properly” attended to? (They are receiving minimal care – food, a mattress, etc.) I find his professed concern for them to be perverse. Over the top. Not reasonable. (Or an excuse to hammer us.)
He says denying them visitation is against international law.
But wait! It is also against international law to deny the Israeli hostages visits from the Red Cross, and yet Hamas is doing precisely that. And those who are being denied Red Cross visitations in Gaza are innocents. Why is Cameron – who is not making an issue of the deprivation of the hostages’ rights – unable, or unwilling, to see the connection: Hamas denies the hostages visitations, and thus has no right to expect visitations for their members who have been apprehended.
In the course of a National Security Council meeting headed by Tzachi Hanegbi and attended by all security agencies, there was disagreement as to how to respond to this demand. The feeling was unanimous that there should be no visitations permitted. One senior security official declared, "The British mandate ended in 1948; we can manage without Britain's weapons. There will be no visits to terrorists."
The disagreement was with regard to providing basic written information, such as the prisoners' names and their condition, in an attempt to resolve the crisis with Britain.
Minister of National Security Itamar Ben Gvir was adamant that this information should not be provided until there was reciprocity and Hamas provided information on the condition of the hostages. To the best of my knowledge, Hamas has never even honored Netanyahu’s request for information on which hostages are alive.
It is not clear to me how this will be resolved (or whether Ben Gvir’s word stands). But as to Cameron, who is supposed to be a friend. You know what they say, “With friends like these…”
Unfortunately, infuriatingly, this is hardly the only instance of perversity we are facing now.
In a phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday, French President Emanuel Macron said that forced movement of population out of Rafah would constitute a “war crime.” This is, of course, against the background of Biden insisting we must move the civilians out of harm’s way in Gaza before there is an operation in Rafah. We can assume that Macron had the Geneva Accords in mind, but the Accords are not concerned with movement for the sake of the safety of the population. It is very likely the civilians would go very willingly, in any event, and not be forced at all.
This statement is hostile and makes the head spin. But Macron is hostile.
Last week, the US brought a resolution for a ceasefire and hostage release for a vote in the Security Council; it was vetoed by China and Russia.
Yesterday, a new resolution was brought for a vote at the Security Council. This one called for a ceasefire and release of hostages, but did not link the two – that is, it did not say there should only be a ceasefire if there was a release of hostages.
The US, breaking with tradition on this issue, abstained rather than veto it. The resolution passed. It is non-binding and so we carry on. But it carries weight in the international community and gives further credence to the Hamas demand for a ceasefire (more on this follows).
Was this action by the Biden administration, which admitted it was not altogether pleased with the resolution, not also a perversity? The resolution did not condemn Hamas.
Prime Minister Netanyahu was greatly displeased with this vote. Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi had been scheduled to arrive in Washington today for meetings, at the request of the Biden administration. The US, clearly, sought to dissuade Israel from a major operation in Rafah. The Israeli delegation hoped to convince the US of the need for this operation.
But Netanyahu decided that “in light of the change in the American position,” the delegation would not depart. I salute him for his strength.
John Kirby, White House national security communications advisor, yesterday expressed deep disappointment with this decision. “We’re very disappointed that they won’t be coming to Washington, D.C., to allow us to have a fulsome conversation with them about viable alternatives to going in on the ground in Rafah,” he told reporters.
Please note, he did not indicate a readiness to hear what the Israeli delegation would have said regarding the need to do a ground operation in Rafah. Originally it was understood that the US was prepared to consider a “credible plan” by Israel for going in if one should be presented to them.
https://www.jns.org/white-house-disappointed-israel-cancels-delegation-to-washington/
Kirby maintained that nothing about the US position had changed, but I do not believe this is the case. “We still want to see a ceasefire, we still want to get the hostages out,” he insisted.
“The reason we abstained is because this resolution text did not condemn Hamas.” Ah! If the resolution did not condemn Hamas the US should have vetoed it. All the more is this the case because there was no linkage between release of hostages and a ceasefire. The US was giving Hamas a leg up.
John Kirby errs if he takes us for gullible.
Keep reading below for Ron Dermer’s comment on the matter.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant did go to Washington on Monday – this was planned separately from the delegation with Dermer that was cancelled – at the invitation of Gallant’s counterpart, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
Gallant declared that Israel has “no moral right to stop the war while there are still hostages held in Gaza.”
He also warned that failure to achieve a decisive victory in Gaza could bring Israel closer to a war against Hezbollah – a point of considerable significance: When we speak of the existential concerns regarding this war, we must factor in Hezbollah at our north. They are watching us carefully. If we cave and allow Hamas to stand, they will be more motivated to take us on. Make no mistake about this.
And here I turn to yet another perverse situation – arguably the most serious of all.
Very early Friday morning there was a terror attack in Gush Talmon in Binyamin – in an area between the communities of Dolev and Talmon. A terrorist with a rifle attacked a bus carrying soldiers. It took hours for the situation to be resolved: he was hiding in the woods near the point of attack and was apparently difficult to take out. Ultimately, he was taken down by a strike from an IDF helicopter. But before he was eliminated, one soldier – Sgt. 1st Class Ilay David Garfinkel, a member of the IDF’s elite Duvdevan commando unit – was killed and six other soldiers were wounded.
It turns out that the terrorist, from a PA village outside of Ramallah, had been trained as a sharpshooter in Jordan by US forces seeking to strengthen the PA; he was a member of the presidential guard of Mansour Abbas at the time he received this training.
https://www.jewishpress.com/news/eye-on-palestine/palestinian-authority/arab-sharpshooter-who-killed-1-wounded-6-in-binyamin-was-us-trained/2024/03/25/
He was able to elude the IDF for as long as he did because of this training: he “established four fortified positions – as his American sharpshooting instructors had taught him” – before he began shooting, and bounced from one to the other.
He was armed with an M1 Garand semiautomatic rifle with a scope that had been supplied by the US government to the PA
US training of PA forces is not a new phenomenon, but – after a hiatus during the Trump administration – it has intensified of late because of US goals to prepare the PA for statehood.
“On March 5, The Washington Post reported the establishment and operation of a new US-funded training center outside Jericho, where the next generation of Palestinian Authority security forces are being trained and groomed in a collection of metal trailers.”
This is one aspect of Biden’s “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, which he envisions taking over in Gaza
According to Joe Truzman, Senior Research Analyst at Foundation for the Defense of Democracies:
“An unsettling trend has surfaced amidst the more than two-year-long uptick of violence in the West Bank: the participation of former and current members of the Palestinian Authority security forces in violent attacks on Israelis. Though still relatively small, the number of officers implicated in these incidents is rising…”
And so, here you have perversity on steroids. No word from the Biden administration expressing concern about this situation. They will just sail on with their plans.
My friends in the US: I call upon you to scream bloody murder about this. Put this out wherever you can. Demand accountability from your elected officials.
Now let me share what Ron Dermer, Minister of Strategic Affairs, had to say about US reluctance to sanction our operation in Rafah (emphasis added):
“We’re gonna go in and finish this job, and anybody who doesn’t understand that doesn’t understand that the nerve of the Jews, that existential nerve, was touched” [by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7, which sparked the Gaza war].
[The Rafah operation is] “going to happen, and it will happen, even if Israel is forced to fight alone, even if the entire world turns on Israel, including the United States.”
We have just completed the celebration of Purim, which tells the story of an existential threat to the Jewish people that was averted at the last moment.
God is not mentioned even once in the story told in the Purim Megillah. But we are taught that while God’s face may have been hidden, he was operating, nonetheless. The rescue of the Jews in the Purim story did not involve something overt such as the splitting of the sea, but God’s hand was behind the events that culminated in salvation.
As we celebrated and came together these past days, a great number of us discussed this at considerable length – it was a primary topic of conversation.
And for great many of us faith is strong. We believe that all will be well in the end.
One final news note here (with much saved for my next posting): Hamas has rejected the Israeli offer for a deal on release of hostages. Israel was not giving enough to satisfy them. They held out for an end to the war, and release of more high-level terrorists with blood on their hands than we were prepared to release. Some 700-800 terrorists released in exchange for 40 hostages was not enough for them.
We have called home our negotiating team and I doubt there will be further negotiations, but who knows.
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Trump’s Trials Are a Political Gift to His Campaign
The Democrats’ lawfare strategy appears to be backfiring as swing voters turn against Joe Biden.
By Gerard Baker
As Donald Trump works to untangle himself from the latest legal knots his opponents have tied for him, a critical question for the presidential election is this: Are Americans who say they plan to vote for the former president doing so in spite or because of the sustained lawfare campaign he faces up to (and possibly beyond) Election Day?
There’s always been a solid core of Mr. Trump’s voters for whom every legal arrow fired his way is an additional incentive to support him against overzealous opponents. But for President Biden to prevail, there has to be a significant number of voters for whom the alleged wrongs and the doubts they raise about Mr. Trump’s suitability for office will eventually supersede whatever reasons they have now for voting for the Republican nominee.
The bleak news for the Democrats is that the polling evidence seems to suggest that the answer is, in fact, both—different sets of voters are ready to vote for the Republican in spite and because of his legal woes. The aggressive efforts by prosecutors to confiscate his money and send him to prison are only bolstering his standing with, and improving likely turnout among, Republicans. But crucially, at least for now, those efforts are failing to convince independent voters to elevate the doubts they have about him over the many reasons they have for supporting him.
Despite a solid dissenting minority in the Republican primaries, polling data suggest Mr. Trump is still on course to sweep up all but a tiny number of Republican voters in November. A Grinnell College survey last week, helmed by the widely respected pollster Ann Selzer, showed Mr. Trump winning 83% of registered Republicans—almost identical to the proportion of Democrats saying they will vote for Mr. Biden. When you remove the don’t knows, both candidates’ support among their own voters rises to more than 90%.
The multipronged lawfare effort against Mr. Trump seems to be strengthening Republican determination to back him. And the sequence in which the cases are unfolding also looks likely to benefit Mr. Trump. While we await the outcome of a Supreme Court decision in one of the cases brought by Jack Smith, the federal special counsel, the trio of dubious cases brought by Democratic state prosecutors are playing out in ways that are doing nothing for the reputations of Letitia James, Alvin Bragg and Fani Willis.
For zealots, nothing exceeds like excess. Mr. Trump’s many enemies may love the sight of him scrambling to avoid the seizure of his assets by Ms. James, but I suspect to a wider audience the spectacle of a Democratic attorney general in a Democratic state executing an order from a Democratic judge to appropriate hundreds of millions of dollars belonging to the Republican presidential candidate is an unwholesome one. Mr. Bragg’s novel use of state law to prosecute a federal crime and Ms. Willis’s very visible personal entanglements only reinforce the sense among Republicans that this is all unequal justice.
A Politico/Ipsos poll last week found that if Mr. Trump were convicted in Mr. Bragg’s criminal trial, due to start next month, almost four times as many Republicans said it would make them more likely to support him than less likely.
But what about independent voters? There’s certainly evidence that they don’t see Mr. Trump as the innocent victim he and his supporters claim. That same Politico/Ipsos poll found four times as many independents said a conviction would make them less likely than more likely to vote for Mr. Trump. But there’s plenty of reason to think that their doubts about the Republican pale when they are asked to think about their other concerns about the country.
These voters seem to be prepared to look past Mr. Trump’s potentially blotted legal record if he can set the country on a better path as president. The Grinnell poll showed him leading Mr. Biden 43% to 27% among independent voters. Other polls explain why. An Economist/YouGov survey indicated that only 12% of independents think the country is on the right track, only 23% approve of the job Mr. Biden is doing, and large majorities disapprove of his performance on the key issues—66% on immigration; 64% on inflation; 59% on jobs and the economy and 57% on crime.
As Mr. Biden’s approval numbers continue to flirt with historic lows, as the clock ticks down to Election Day, and as wave after wave of civil and criminal proceedings wash over the Trump campaign, Mr. Biden seems to believe that presenting Mr. Trump as the enemy of democracy is his route to victory.
But there is—at least for now, ahead of any conclusions to the various cases against Mr. Trump—a vast disconnect between the way the political class and most of the media think about this election and the way the voters do. This unprecedented lawfare campaign seems to be only energizing the Trump-friendly and doing very little to persuade the Trump-skeptical.
And:
Biden Abstains on Israel and Hamas
The U.S. refuses to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution the terror group welcomes.
By The Editorial Board
In his State of the Union address, President Biden made a promise to the families of U.S. hostages held by Hamas: “We will not rest until we bring their loved ones home.” At the United Nations on Monday, he undermined that pledge.
The Massacre in Moscow and the Return of ISIS
The U.S. withheld its veto and abstained as the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution that demanded a cease-fire in Gaza but didn’t make the cease-fire contingent on Hamas releasing its 134 hostages. That condition, on which the U.S. had previously insisted, has been dropped.
Instead, the resolution’s two demands—“an immediate cease-fire for the month of Ramadan . . . leading to a lasting sustainable cease-fire” and “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages”—each stand on their own. To Hamas, the diplomatic pressure will be meaningless. To Israel, it can be perilous, as Mr. Biden well knows. His fence-sitting opens up Israel to more pressure to end the war while Hamas still reigns in part of Gaza.
White House spokesman John Kirby says, “Nothing has changed about our policy—nothing.” He explains that the U.S. abstained because the Security Council resisted a last-minute amendment condemning Hamas. Yet the U.S. had previously vetoed resolutions that wouldn’t condemn Hamas for Oct. 7. The moral arbiters at the U.N. still won’t do that.
The reactions to the resolution tell the real story: Hamas welcomed it and Russia, China and Algeria voted for it, while Israel called it “a clear departure from the consistent U.S. position,” adding that it “gives Hamas hope that international pressure will force Israel to accept a cease-fire without the release of our hostages.” Israel also canceled some high-level meetings.
Biden officials push the line that the resolution is nonbinding and Israel is overreacting. Yet this is how Mr. Biden has turned against Israel: one half-step at a time.
The President’s initial support for a “pause” to free hostages morphed over time into Friday’s U.S. resolution for an “immediate, sustained cease-fire.” The new resolution uses Ramadan as a fig leaf to sneak in a “lasting” cease-fire that would let Hamas survive.
Mr. Biden’s initial support for destroying Hamas has faded, such that Vice President Kamala Harris now refuses to rule out “consequences” should Israel invade Hamas’s last stronghold of Rafah. Administration leaks about international isolation and weapons embargoes drive home the point.
If Mr. Biden thinks his escalating fight with Israel is risk-free, think again. The March Harvard CAPS Harris poll finds that 63% of voters support a cease-fire only after Hamas releases the hostages and is removed from power. Two-thirds say Israel is trying to avoid civilian casualties in Gaza.
Americans don’t want to see Hamas survive to repeat Oct. 7. The President can’t become Obstacle No. 1 to an Israeli victory without endangering his own in November.
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Finally:
The Bitter Choices in Fighting Terrorism
Leaders must measure the demands of compassion against the needs of strategy.
By Walter Russell Mead
President Biden’s churchgoing appears to be paying off. The first big international terror attack planned in the newly strengthened terrorist haven of Afghanistan struck Russia, not the U.S. Let’s hope Mr. Biden’s luck holds. A similarly audacious attack on America that was orchestrated in Afghanistan and involved operatives who entered through America’s chaotic southern border would hit the Biden administration like a nuclear bomb.
For now, it is Vladimir Putin who must manage the attack’s political aftermath. So far he is doing all he can to blame Ukraine and the U.S. for ISIS-Khorasan’s raid Friday on a concert hall near Moscow. This is neither surprising nor particularly effective. But what Mr. Putin must now face is a problem for everyone.
Between the American withdrawal from Afghanistan, the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, the global backlash against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, a string of jihadi successes in Africa, the failure to clear the Red Sea of Houthi attacks, and now a daring strike in the heart of Mr. Putin’s police state, the terrorists are crushing it.
Not that the terrorists are all on the same side. From the government of Iran to the militias it has spawned across the Middle East, the Shiite terrorsphere hates the Sunni terrorsphere almost as much as they both hate Western civilization. The Sunnis are divided among themselves. ISIS hates al Qaeda and they both hate the Shiites. But none of that stops Shiite Iran from arming, training and funding Sunni Hamas to murder Jews, nor will it stop other forms of tactical cooperation when it comes to slaughtering Americans, Russians, Europeans or Indians.
We oversimplify when we characterize these movements as “terrorist.” Fear is only one of the emotions these groups hope to spark as they wage war against the rest of the human race. Their goal is to manipulate a range of feelings through atrocity, hostage-taking and propaganda.
The widespread publicity about ISIS’s atrocities and slave markets wasn’t intended only to terrify enemies. It was intended to inspire potential recruits and supporters. We are winners, their recruiters say to disaffected youth around the world. Join us to kill your enemies and take their women as slaves even as you serve and please Almighty God.
Victories raise the spirits of current fighters and make it easier to recruit new ones. When the Americans left Afghanistan in disorderly haste, when fanatical Hamas paragliders raped their way through a music festival in Israel and uploaded their exploits to the internet, and when ISIS-K murdered more than 130 people in the heart of Mr. Putin’s Russia, morale in both terrorspheres soared.
Beyond fear and hope, our enemies also seek to use compassion as a weapon to divide us and ultimately paralyze our response. Even in hawkish Israel, the resolve to fight Hamas is pitted against the desire to free the hostages. Distraught friends, relatives and sympathetic members of the public agitate for something, anything, to free the hostages in Gaza at almost any cost. This is understandable and even commendable. But public safety requires that leaders measure the demands of compassion against the requirements of strategy. Hard, bitter choices are part of the job.
Israelis taken on Oct. 7 are only a small minority of the civilians Hamas holds hostage. As Hamas fighters lurk in and beneath schools, hospitals and civilian homes, looting aid shipments and murdering dissidents, Gaza’s civilian population has become a human shield. While some of the worldwide sympathy for Palestinian civilians caught up in the horrors of the Gaza war reflects pure hatred of Israel, many of those protesting Israel’s campaign are driven by natural human sympathy for innocent people ensnared in the horror of war.
Israel and all others fighting depraved terrorists must exercise great care to avoid civilian deaths. But ultimately these criminal organizations have to be destroyed. Had Franklin D. Roosevelt let concern for civilians in Germany and Japan paralyze his war strategy, the Allies would have lost World War II and many more innocent people would have died.
The fight against the re-energized forces of fanaticism won’t be easy. We must deny them the victories that inspire potential recruits. We must be steadfast against the fear they provoke, neither cowering and appeasing nor lashing out blindly to fight on their terms. And while never giving up on the compassion that is part of what makes us human, we must not let concern for their captives stand in the way of breaking the power of the guilty. To do anything else concedes the ultimate power over our world to hate-maddened killers and thugs.
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Chapter 9, In Seamus Bruner's: "Controligarchs." is entitled "The Dystopian Present" and is devoted mostly to Zukerberg (Zuck) the topic of Metaverse is front and center. The metaverse world augments reality, It is a world where technology transports one into a world that many describe as the 4th Industrial Revolution. It is a world Klaus Schwab asserts will lead to a "fusion of our physical, our digital and our biological identities."
Many companies are busy creating equipment and software which will carry us into this "Transhuman" world and at present Zuck's Facebook (now Metaverse) and Microsoft seem to have the lead with the latter offering a vision product that still allows you to recognize the current one and thus, is less disruptive and dangerous.
Eventually the medical world will devise brain conversions and inserts that will allow humans to step into the metaverse world and engage in commerce.
Meanwhile, initial experiments on animals, according to the author's research, suggests Peta is failing to investigate the tragic pain and tragic suffering induced by the experiments being conducted. The goal of the billionaire's financing Metaverse , again according to the author and Schwab, is to transfer wealth to impoverished and eliminate the middle class
Total control is their ultimate goal. It will be accomplished by transferring America's wealth to China under the guise of some strain of communism.
Welcome to the new world and disconcerting future.
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