120 individuals remain in Hamas captivity. They have spent the past 257 nights as hostages after being brutally kidnapped to Gaza. Each day, we will be highlighting their stories, until they are all released. Please do your part by sharing THIS POST and in calling for the immediate release of all the hostages. To learn more about the hostages still in captivity and to raise awareness and share their stories, please visit THIS WEBSITE.
None of us are free until each and every one of the hostages is home.
Join us in calling for their immediate and unconditional release. We must #BRINGTHEMHOMENOW. ++++ Searching For Good News By Sherwin Pomerantz
Only 50 out of the remaining 120 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza are believed to still be alive, according to a report citing US officials, appearing in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) on Thursday morning. According to the report, following the recent rescue mission of four Israeli hostages in Gaza, many more were returned to Israel dead, which led to growing concerns regarding the remaining hostages' return home and the government's objective to dismantle Hamas.
At the beginning of the war, the report noted that people were hoping for a phone call from the IDF saying that their loved ones were expected to return safely. However, “what is happening now is that the families have the opposite feeling,” said Gili Roman, whose sister was released from Hamas captivity. Roman has another relative, Carmel Gat, who is among the remaining hostages still held in Gaza. “It’s about who will get a phone call saying the body of your family member has been found or he has been declared dead,” she added.
Of the approximately 250 people Hamas took hostage only 120 are believed to still be held by Hamas in Gaza, some of whom died during captivity. Nonetheless, according to the WSJ mediators in the hostage deal talks and a US official who is familiar with current intelligence they claim that only up to 50 of the remaining hostages are possibly still alive. According to this estimate, there are around 25 more dead being held by Hamas than official Israeli reports account for. Officials from the US and Prime Minister Netanyahu's office declined to comment. Hamas refused to comment as well but has noted to the mediators that it does not know how many of the hostages are still alive
Amos Hochstein, the US’ envoy and mediator for the Israeli-Lebanese conflict, raised the alert level in Israel on Wednesday when he announced that his efforts toward achieving an agreement between Israel and Hezbollah had reached a dead end. Hezbollah insisted throughout the months of fighting that as long as the fighting in the Gaza Strip continues, it will keep attacking the Israeli home front. In a few weeks, the intense fighting in Rafah will end, and the IDF should transition to intelligence-based raids against terrorist activities.
However, the emerging security situation will most likely compel Israel’s government to make decisions about the future of the conflict with Hezbollah. Options include, but are not limited to, waiting for a diplomatic development, escalating the fighting, or launching a full-scale war against the Shiite organization in Lebanon. This arena could see the involvement of Iran, the Houthis from Yemen, and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria. A security official told Walla, "We are now approaching the moment of decision," and officials in Beirut and Jerusalem now understand that the situation could deteriorate significantly.
The situation on the ground heated up in the last two days after Hezbollah terrorists resumed fighting following a two-day pause. Yesterday, two Hezbollah terrorists were killed, and last night, another four were killed. Hezbollah's policy is to carry out their plans despite having more than 350 of their terrorists dead, terrorists who had a high level of familiarity with the region
The focus of the IDF counter units is on Hezbollah's junior command level, which has suffered very painful blows leading to a decrease in the scale of attacks on the Israeli home front. For example, Abu Jaafar Baz, a coastal brigade commander in Hezbollah, was eliminated alongside the head of the brigade's artillery division. Following their elimination, there has been a noted decrease in the volume of rocket launches.
The IDF estimated that due to the pressure exerted by Hezbollah's senior headquarters to carry out more launches and attacks, the Northern Command and the Israel Air Force would have more opportunities to strike in southern Lebanon based on mistakes made on the other side of the border.
There is an understanding that these are the most critical weeks since the fighting in the north began. In closed forums, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told the political leadership that the IDF was ready for war. Halevi emphasized to the field commanders in the North, both in training and operations, that the security situation could change rapidly and that they must maintain a high level of readiness and alertness.
If Israel chooses to act against Hezbollah, it risks having a wider war, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said Wednesday in a speech. Hezbollah has already launched 5,000 rockets, missiles, and drones at Israel since the Gaza war began on October 7. Nasrallah is now threatening to strike all of Israel and muster other members of the Iranian-backed “axis of resistance” against it.
The Lebanese terrorist leader also threatened Cyprus. Hezbollah threatened Cyprus against letting Israel use its airports. It was not clear why this is an issue that Hezbollah has suddenly focused on. Israel has conducted joint military training with Cyprus in the past.
Hezbollah has threatened other countries in the past through the use of terrorism as well as sending agents abroad to Europe, South America, and West Africa. But this was a direct threat to a European country in the Eastern Mediterranean. This shows how strong Hezbollah perceives itself to be.
The United States is expected to lift its hold on the shipment of ammunition and weapons designated for the IDF, the Prime Minister’s Office said on Tuesday, just one day after Netanyahu mysteriously accused the Biden administration of preventing the delivery of those arms. “US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew told Prime Minister Netanyahu yesterday that the ammunition and weapons that the PM referred to are in the process of being delivered to Israel,” the PMO wrote in an English language post on X. Netanyahu “said he expects this to happen and instructed Israeli teams to work with their American counterparts to that end. Just one day earlier,” the PMO said.
The Defense Ministry said that Netanyahu's speech attacking the US regarding disputes over the pace of weapons transfers took the entire defense establishment by surprise. The United States on both Tuesday and Wednesday denied that arms had been withheld, save for one highly publicized shipment of arms designated for Gaza that had been suspended, there was no hold on arms for Israel. White House Press Secretary Kathrine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “We genuinely do not know what he is talking about.” It is unclear what motivated the Prime Minister to make these accusations.
This whole episode between the US and Israel is strange to see given the incredible support that the US has provided Israel since the war began. One would expect that if a misunderstanding develops between two allies with such a long history of cooperation, that it would be settled through diplomatic channels and not in the media. Even more so given the existential threats that we faced with here in Israel….we certainly don’t need to get our best friends angry. ++++ Not by mistake - by being cunning. +++ Biden’s Immigration Policy: Disaster By Design, Not By Accident Posted By Ruth King
Joe Biden is very clearly in the running to be the worst U.S. president ever. To understand why that’s true, you need only look at the Democrat’s refusal to protect the integrity of our borders. It’s almost as if he wants America to disappear.
As we’ve noted here before, we do not oppose immigration. But, as with everything else, immigration is governed by laws, rules and principles. Unfortunately, when it comes to immigration, Biden simply ignores the law and instead uses presidential command in its place.
The result: chaos on our border and, increasingly, on our streets as city after city suffers from rising illegal immigrant crime. And it’s going to get worse.
Already, an estimated 7.4 million illegal immigrants have made their way into the U.S. during Biden’s presidency. That doesn’t include the nearly 2 million “gotaways” who were spotted by border officials crossing the border, but didn’t get nabbed.
“These numbers are further proof of President Biden and (Department of Homeland Security) Secretary Mayorkas’ radical commitment to open borders, and the secretary’s high crimes and misdemeanors committed to make them a reality,” House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green said in a statement on Monday.
Among the “gotaways” this month making crime news were a 24-year-old Guatemalan male who allegedly raped a minor in Massachusetts and another from El Salvador charged with rape and murder a mother of five in Maryland. A 24-year-old Ecuadorian arrested for raping a 13-year-old girl in New York was caught crossing the border but released into the U.S.
Open-border advocates claim this proves nothing. But that’s not true. None of those crimes would have taken place if our border controls had been enforced.
And an even greater threat, sooner or later, will be terrorists with ties to ISIS, such as those who earlier this month were arrested, and cartel members like those that, as NBC News put it in a story three years ago, “capture, extort and torture” those trying to cross the border.
It’s getting uglier by the minute. Britain’s Daily Mail recently ran a map purportedly showing “America’s Migrant Gang Invasion,” including cartel members, gang-bangers, ISIS followers, sex traffickers and other unsavory types. All from Biden’s open border.
With the unprecedented flow of undocumented people crossing our borders, we’ll be getting more of this — lots more of this. Crime, poverty, higher spending.
Americans, of course, are furious. It shows up in polls. In our own April I&I/TIPP Poll, 58% of voters supported building a wall along our southern border and “rigidly” enforcing all border laws.
This is no outlier.
A CBS/YouGov Poll found 62% of Americans, including Democrats, support deporting “all” undocumented immigrants. All of them. Even Hispanics don’t back uncontrolled immigration, with 53% saying they would support mass deportations, versus 47% who said they would oppose it.
With voter anger growing and the 2024 election looming, Biden has repeatedly vowed to do something, with his spokespeople touting a Biden “executive order” to regain control of the border.
So what was his big executive order? A plan that really doesn’t crack down on illegal immigration at all, but grants amnesty or “parole in place” for hundreds of thousands of people — half a million by the White House’s own estimate.
The “Keeping American Families Together” plan isn’t new. This is just an expansion of current law, with fewer hard rules. In short, it’s an amnesty plan that will encourage more, not less, illegal immigration. But it’s in addition to the “temporary amnesty” program, already in place, that protects 860,000 illegals from being deported.
All this generosity has turned the U.S. into an illegal immigration magnet.
According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Biden’s border surge that he verbally encouraged will bring in 8.7 million more immigrants between 2021 and 2026. The border crisis, according to congressional estimates, is already costing the U.S. $451 billion a year.
How much more will you be willing to spend?
We hate to be cynical, but why would a major political party commit itself to such a disastrous course unless it expected a payoff down the road? Like millions more grateful voters, all heavily dependent on government aid to get by? So, OK, call us cynical. But that’s sure the way it looks.
Biden and his Democratic supporters have chosen unassailable political power over the integrity of their nation’s borders, its Constitution, and the clearly expressed will of the American people, as reflected in numerous polls. More than anything, this is why the 2024 election is crucial. ++++
Let his words reach God's ears. +++ Fmr. commander of the Navy: 'Israel will destroy Lebanon' Vice Admiral (Res.) Eliezer Marom predicted that Israel would soon move its focus from the south to the north. By Vice Admiral (Res.) Eliezer Marom,
The former commanding officer of the Israeli Navy, Vice Admiral (Res.) Eliezer Marom, predicts that in the coming weeks, the intense fighting in the south will come to a close, and troops will be moved to the northern front.
"We understand a few things; in the south, the intense fighting will end soon, two or three weeks, something like that," Marom told Galei Israel Radio.
He predicted that "in the beginning of July we'll be in the position that we could move to the north and declare the northern front as the primary one and the southern front as the secondary one. Then we'll find ourselves in a situation where we could start a war, since in my opinion, we won't be able to reach a deal without a war."
"Combat in the north is different," Marom said regarding a faceoff with Hezbollah in Lebanon. "It's not urban warfare, but rather combat in the field. In my opinion, the IDF has enough forces for it, but both sides will get hit hard in the war.
"The IDF's firepower is 100 times stronger than Hezbollah's, the IDF will destroy Lebanon. There's no point in starting a limited campaign in Lebanon, if we start a campaign that includes ground maneuvers that are deep enough, we'll have to attack targets in Beirut as well," he concluded.
This week the Northern Command Commander, Major General Uri Gordin, and the Head of the Operations Directorate, Major General Oded Basiuk, conducted a joint plans approval and situation assessment in the Northern Command.
As part of the situation assessment, operational plans for an attack in Lebanon were presented and approved, and decisions were made to further accelerate the preparations by ground forces. ++++ For sure. When you tell a people state, you cannot have your own nation on land you have occupied for eons because you have been attacked constantly etc. then yes you are a hating anti-Semite. +++ Is anti-Zionism anti-Semitism? The debate in Toronto gripped, appalled and surprised By MELANIE PHILLIPS
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism debate, Toronto
Two days ago, a gripping debate took place in Toronto. The latest in the Munk Debates on major policy issues run by a Canadian charitable foundation, Monday evening’s event advanced the motion “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism”. It was proposed by the writer Douglas Murray and international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff, and opposed by the Guardian journalist Mehdi Hasan and Israeli anti-Zionist Ha’aretz writer Gideon Levy.
In an audience vote before the start of the debate, 61 per cent supported the proposition with 39 per cent opposed. In the final vote, the proposition had 66 per cent support with 34 per cent opposed. You can watch the whole debate here.
I watched this encounter with more than usual interest. In 2019, I took part in an Intelligence Squared debate in London on an identically worded motion. On my side was Einat Wilf, an Israeli former member of the Knesset for the Labour and Independence parties, and our opponents were Mehdi Hasan and the Israeli anti-Zionist academic Ilan Pappé. You can watch that debate here.
The big difference was that, while the Toronto audience was mostly sympathetic to Israel, the London audience was mostly hostile. The vote taken before the London debate showed only 15 per cent in favour of the proposition with 59 per cent against. At the end, 19 per cent supported the motion with 76 per cent against.
On Monday evening, as usually happens at such events, Zionism was misleadingly reframed by the anti-Zionist opposition. For Gideon Levy, who seems to think that the self-determination of a people gets cancelled when Levy decides he disapproves of the people, Zionism was apparently transformed from a heroic escape route for Jewish victims into a diabolical creed of Jewish oppressors when Israel started doing things Levy didn’t like. Thus Israel’s alleged behaviour was conflated with the right of the Jewish people to have their own country at all.
And as also usually happens at such events, these two anti-Zionists promulgated distortions, falsehoods and blood libels to demonise Israel and its supporters.
Two of these examples were particularly breathtaking. Levy actually described Israel as “the most brutal regime in the world”. So to Levy, the sole democracy in the Middle East (which he denies is a democracy) is more brutal than the murderous tyrannies of Iran, Russia, China, North Korea, Syria and Hamas. How can such an individual be taken seriously by anyone with a functioning brain?
But it was Hasan who came most spectacularly to grief over an absolute whopper. In his opening statement, he purported to quote Lord Balfour, author of the eponymous 1917 Balfour Declaration in which Britain committed itself to creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Hasan quoted Balfour as “a man who referred to Jews as an 'alien and hostile' people”. But Hausdorff then read out what Balfour had actually said — that Zionism would “mitigate the age-long miseries created for western civilisation by the presence in its midst of a body which it too long regarded as alien and even hostile but which it was equally unable to expel or absorb”.
So Hasan had cherry-picked the quote in order falsely to paint Balfour, who had expressed the belief that Zionism would rescue the Jews from antisemites, as an antisemite. After Hausdorff so devastatingly exposed this whopper for all to hear, how could anyone believe anything else Hasan would say?
In outstanding performances, Hausdorff and Murray effectively rebutted the lies, libels and other nonsense produced by Hasan and Levy and mounted a magnificent case for Zionism and Israel. Nevertheless, some canards behind Hasan and Levy’s remarks need further unpacking than was possible within the procedural and time constraints of that debate.
In particular, the reason anti-Zionism is an expression of antisemitism, and why it gives rise to attacks on Jews as Jews, can only be understood if antisemitism itself is understood for the unique phenomenon that it is.
Antisemitism is the delusional hatred and fear of Jews, Judaism or the Jewish people. Unlike other prejudices, it has unique characteristics applied to no other group, people or cause. It’s an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies about the Jewish people; it accuses them of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; it holds them to impossible standards expected of no-one else; it depicts them as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power; and it invests them with diabolical influence over the entire world in order to serve their own interests at the expense of others.
Anti-Zionism has exactly the same characteristics. While criticism of Israel’s policies is entirely legitimate, anti-Zionism treats Israel and Jewish national self-determination differently from any other country, people or cause. Israel is demonised, dehumanised and delegitimised in order to bring about its destruction. Israelis are accused of crimes of which they are not only innocent but the victims; they are held to impossible standards expected of no other people, country or cause; Zionism is depicted as a global conspiracy of unique malice and power; and Zionists and Israelis are invested with diabolical influence.
This is an obsessional and unhinged narrative based entirely on lies about Israel:
· The lie that Israel’s an apartheid state, when Israeli Arabs have equal civil and religious rights;
· The lie of ethnic cleansing, when the Arab population in Gaza and the disputed territories has more than quadrupled since Israel’s rebirth in 1948;
· The lie that the Israelis are wilful child-killers, when in fact they go to unique lengths to avoid killing civilians in their entirely defensive wars, resulting in a ratio of civilians to combatants killed that’s vastly lower than any other country has ever achieved in warfare;
· The lie of Israel’s human rights violations, when it’s the only country in the Middle East where Arab Muslims and Christians, women and gay people can live in freedom and safety;
· The lie that the Jews seized and occupied another people’s land, whereas the Jews are the only extant indigenous people of the land and the only people for whom it was ever their national kingdom more than 3000 years ago.
Moreover, the Palestinian cause that’s supported by the anti-Zionists itself doesn’t pretend that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. On the contrary:
· Palestinian incitement explicitly urges its people to murder every Jew;
· Mahmoud Abbas hero-worships the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the thirties, Haj Amin al Husseini, who made a pact with Hitler to exterminate every Jew in the entire Middle East;
· The Palestinian Authority produces Nazi-style antisemitism, such as the PA sermon claiming Jews were “the fabricators of history, who dance and live on the body parts of others, and on the blood of others…there is no global corruption that their rabbis did not allow…”;
· The Palestinians regularly claim that the Jews were behind 9/11 and that the Jews control the world’s media, finance and US foreign policy;
· The head of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said: “If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice I do not say ‘the Israeli’.”
The next canard, promulgated repeatedly by Mehdi Hasan on Monday evening, was that there are anti-Zionist Jews and Jews can’t be antisemites. The first part of that is true; the second most certainly is not.
There have always been anti-Zionist Jews. But there’s a great difference between those who argued against Zionism as a theoretical prospect before the horrors of the Holocaust, before the establishment of the State of Israel and before the full extent of the exterminatory Arab and Muslim hostility to the Jewish homeland became known, and those who denounce it today in full knowledge of all those things — and who want to exterminate an existing country.
Yes, a small fringe of ultra-orthodox Jews campaigns against the State of Israel. But they nevertheless pray every day that the Jews should return to live in Zion free of foreign rule. Their beef with the State of Israel is that they think the return is premature and should happen under different conditions. So their issue is basically just a matter of timing. What they do not believe is the core doctrine of anti-Zionism, that the Jews have no right to the land of Israel.
Moreover, some of the worst antisemites in history have been Jews. Karl Marx, to name but one, wrote that Judaism was “huckstering” and that “the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism”.
The final canard from Hasan was that, since the whole world hates Israel, the whole world can’t be wrong. But the whole world does not hate Israel. Most ordinary people have no view one way or the other.
It’s the western liberal elites that hate Israel. It’s the anti-western armies of liberal universalists and trans-national institutions and human rights lawyers, the corrupted and amoral world of the UN and its satellites the UN Human Rights Council and the International Court of Justice and UNICEF and UNESCO, and the NGOs and the international humanitarian establishment — the entire bubble of self-righteous Kumbaya fantasists and lawfare-waging “human rights” oligarchs and anti-western “anti-colonialists” and the Israel-bashing global south with their hangers-on and “feminists” who deny the rape and mutilation of Israeli women and “humanitarians” who have no human sympathy for Jewish victims, only for their Palestinian attackers — it’s these people who all want Israel gone.
“Who boos Oxfam?” cried Mehdi Hasan — after the Toronto audience did just that — as if that clinched the argument that Israel’s supporters were beyond the pale. Really? Really? Would that be the Oxfam that allegedly covered up claims that senior staff in Haiti, working after the 2010 earthquake, engaged with prostitutes some of whom were under-age? Would that be the Oxfam whose staff claimed that “colleagues in positions of power” in its Congo office threatened to poison them if they reported their complaints?
Would that be the Oxfam whose funding the UK government stopped in 2021 over further claims of sexual exploitation of the charity’s vulnerable clients? Would that be the Oxfam that systematically excuses, sanitises or ignores Palestinian terrorism and instead lays all blame for Palestinian suffering at the door of its Israeli victims? Would that be the Oxfam that has called on the UK government to stop sending arms to Israel so that it can no longer defend itself against the further genocide of the Jews that’s openly threatened by its enemies?
Can the whole world really be wrong about Israel? sneered Mehdi Hasan. With that question, he undermined his whole position in this debate. For antisemites have always asked exactly the same question about the Jews. “Since the whole world hates them”, cry the antisemites, “doesn’t that prove they must be guilty of what they’re accused of doing”?
No. What it actually proves is that antisemitism is a unique global derangement. And the current auto-da-fé targeted at Israel, Zionism and the Jewish people — which Mehdi Hasan and Gideon Levy tried further to weaponise in Toronto — is, as they unwittingly demonstrated, precisely the same thing. ++++
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