Some Israeeli spokespeople have been referring to HamAss as “worse than ISIS”. This may sound hyperbolic, but what I’ve seen documented of the atrocities they committed — and particularly the wanton cruelty on proud display — reminds me of the Rape of Nanking, of the pro-Nazi Ustasha militia in WW II-era Yugoslavia, or the Dirlewanger Brigade. Or of scenes from the Thirty-Year War.
In a first, as far as I know, a Ḥouthi drone on course for Eilat from Yemen was intercepted by an Arrow missile [our medium-range rocket interceptor — Iron Dome is for short-range].
Some good background reading:
Insty on his substack applauds UC Berkeley Dean Erwin Chemerinsky making a stand against judeophobia, but wonders where he’s been all this time while the Instapundit blog has been documenting this for two decades.
another law professor, Jonathan Turley, lays out the case why Ham-Ass is also legally speaking a terrorist organization
Historian Andrew Roberts considers the “Palestinian refugee problem”, and places it in the context of the much larger forced migrations post-WW II (including millions of ethnic Germans from the Sudetenland and from East of the Oder-Neisse line; some 15 million people in the former British Raj; and, not the largest but the most directly relevant, some 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab countries who resettled in Israel). He concludes that all these groups have moved on and built new lives in their new countries of settlement — and that “Palestinians” in Gaza and the West Bank won’t be able to do the same until they give up the dream of destroying Israel and bringing its lands into Dar al-Islam
Hamas and Hasbara [=public diplomacy]: the challenges of making Israel’s case in a hostile, tendentious media landscape. The interviewee points out the general population is much more understanding than the media “elite”.
And US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says a “revitalized Palestinian Authority” should take over Gaza after the war (as it initially did, until the 2007 power grab by HamAss and the subsequent ouster and defenestration of the PA).
(a) Insty keeps riffing on how just three years ago ‘all the best people’ on the left were calling on people to punch Nazis, and now they are acting as apologists for real [Islamist] National Socialists. In fact, somebody in my social media circle remarked that what he’d seen in the pathology reports of the October 7 dead — concerning the unspeakable acts performed on them — reminded him of the infamous Oskar Dirlewanger y”sh, commander of the eponymous “Dirlewanger Brigade” of the Waffen SS, which disgusted even hardcore Nazis.
And today I saw, via LinkedIn, a statement by some faculty at Columbia University, (the 2nd name on the letter is, who else, Rashid Khalidi) with a lot of mealy-mouthed BS about ‘recontextualizing’ the ‘military operation of October 7, and decrying any sort of consequences for students for protesting in favor of HamAss. [More in the New York Post.] Yes, the same kind of people who would like to cancel you or call you a fascist for using the wrong pronoun find nothing wrong in marching in support of actual sadistic mass murderers in cold blood. Es ist zum Kotzen/it;s enough to make one vomit.
The supremacist ideology of 1933 also enjoyed disproportionate support inside Germany’s academia (well in excess of the general population). The supremacists of 2023 have lots and lots in common with the ones of 1933, except that they differ about who is to be the Herrenvolk/master race (German Aryans vs. Arab radical Islamists).
(b) Thanks to MEMRI, I get my daily dose of translations from the Arabic- and Farsi-language media. It is depressing that two articles they quote are actually more level-headed than the Western media and the HamAsshats in Western academia. Note that I harbor no illusions that either writer is a friend of Israel or Jews — they are clearly written from a pro-Arab perspective, and (a) from a “pro-Palestinian” one.
(c) Powerline’s John Hinderaker, himself a Harvard alumnus, reports that Harvard promises to do better on antisemitism. He quotes an atypically fortright statement by the Harvard president:
Here in the U.S., we are witnessing a surge in anti-Jewish incidents and rhetoric across the nation — and on our own campus. The ancient specter of antisemitism, that persistent and corrosive hatred, has returned with renewed force.
A recent ADL report found that incidents of antisemitism had almost tripled over the past six years nationally. Here at Harvard, I’ve heard story after story of Jewish students feeling increasingly uneasy or even threatened on campus.
As we grapple with this resurgence of bigotry, I want to make one thing absolutely clear: Antisemitism has no place at Harvard.
For years, this university has done too little to confront its continuing presence. No longer.
I am committed to tackling this pernicious hatred with the urgency it demands.
He goes on to describe the Harvard of his youth as a very friendly place that had comprehensively left behind its prewar reputation for judeophobia.
It was the great age of non-discrimination against Jews–which is to say, the great age of meritocracy.
What changed? Harvard, like most other academic institutions, became obsessed with two demographics: international students and students of color. The last people Harvard was interested in were white Americans, the least likely group to be anti-Semitic.
Harvard, like most other universities, admitted large numbers of international students [who typically pay the full hefty tuition without discounts — N.A.], including from the Islamic world. They set up centers for these students, as well as degree programs and similar types of centers for the various categories of “BIPOC” students. These programs and centers became hotbeds of radicalism and grievance. The universities sacrificed not only their prior meritocratic standards, but also their commitment to liberal principles, on the altar of diversity.
So if you look at pictures of a pro-genocide rally at Harvard or any other school, what do you see? Mostly, a lot of Middle Eastern students and far-left minorities. Did Harvard seriously not understand that Jew-hatred is rampant among these student groups and is fostered by the programs and institutions that purport to serve them? Or did it just not care?
So, can President Gay succeed in her professed desire to rid Harvard of anti-Semitism? She can if she really wants to, but no doubt she would find the prescription painful.
Meanwhile, a 2016 top-secret memo by then-defense minister Avigdor Liberman (head of the Russian immigrant party Israel Our Home) issued warnings about a future HamAss attack that were probably dismissed as ‘alarmist’ at the time, but now seem remarkably prescient.
“Hamas intends to take the conflict into Israeli territory by sending a significant number of well-trained forces (like the Nukhba [commandos] for example) into Israel to try and capture an Israeli community (or maybe even several communities) on the Gaza border and take hostages. Beyond the physical harm to the people, this will also lead to significant harm to the morale and feelings of the citizens of Israel.”
The report said the document was presented to both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot with a call to carry out a surprise attack on Hamas to foil its plans.
[…]
Liberman cited decisions made by the Hamas political bureau at a meeting held in Qatar in September 2016, in which it noted that time was needed to regroup before launching an assault with the aim of wiping out Israel by 2022.
His document noted Hamas’s intentions to build a force of 40,000 fighters and develop capabilities to attack Israel from the sea and land, acquire drone technologies and use electronic warfare countermeasures. It also noted that Hamas had significantly stepped up its financial requests from Iran.
Liberman also warned against an overreliance on the Gaza security barrier.
“The defensive barrier being built around Gaza with its variety of systems and capabilities is indeed an important component of the current security strategy in confronting Gaza, but it cannot constitute a strategy in itself. Modern history and past precedents (the Maginot Line, the Mannerheim Line, and the Bar Lev Line) have proven that fences and fortifications do not prevent war and do not constitute a guarantee for peace and security,” he wrote. […]
“Failure to launch an Israeli initiative by mid-2017 will be a grave mistake that could bring Israel to a serious strategic point,” Liberman warned. “It could lead to an unplanned deterioration in which under such a scenario Israel can no longer target the Hamas military leadership, or worse than this, Hamas will launch a conflict at a time convenient for it.
“I am convinced that the consequences of such an assault from Hamas would be far-reaching and in some ways even worse than the results of the Yom Kippur War,” he wrote.
[…]
Also Monday, a New York Times analysis [cached copy here https://archive.fo/Y2aPJ – N.A.] of the failings revealed that the military’s vaunted 8200 signal intelligence unit stopped listening in to the handheld radios of Hamas operatives in Gaza a year ago because it was seen as a “waste of effort.”
In an extensive report on the intelligence failures that enabled the October 7 massacre, the paper also said that US spy agencies had largely stopped collecting information on Hamas in recent years, believing that Israel had contained the threat from the terror group.
Speak of being trapped in a ‘konzeptsiya’.
And (via Powerline) we’re living in some bizarre hell-world where Hillary Clinton is an occasional voice of sanity:
Hillary Clinton: “People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas; that is not possible. It would be such a gift to Hamas because they would spend whatever time there was a ceasefire in effect rebuilding their armaments, creating stronger positions to be able to fend off an eventual assault by the Israelis.”
In a conversation with @NorahODonnell, Secretary Hillary Clinton on those calling for a ceasefire:
“People who are calling for a ceasefire now do not understand Hamas, that is not possible. It would be such a gift to Hamas because they would spend whatever time there was a… pic.twitter.com/cCcL1JusCU
Yoseph Haddad (or Yusuf Hadad in Arabic) is an Arab Israeli — and in fact one of Israel’s most effective social media spokesmen, in English and in Arabic. Channel 12 has a very nice profile of him, in Hebrew (plus some Arabic with Hebrew subtitles), so I’ll give the main points in English.
He was born in Haifa and grew up in Nazareth — his childhood dream was to become a soccer star. In part through junior league games and joint practice, he had a number of Jewish and Druze friends as well as Arab ones. When the Jews and Druze got their IDF call-up notices (Arab Israelis are exempt from the draft), Yusuf volunteered for service (Arab Israelis are normally exempt). He fought in the Second Lebanon War and was seriously wounded when a rocket hit his position.
Struck by both the utter hypocrisy of the international lamestream media and the ineffectuality of Israel’s official hasbara (literally “explanation”) efforts, he decided to jump into the fray —- specifically in the then-emerging social media arena, in both English and Arabic.
He frequently travels to London and Toronto to lecture.
I’m just viewing another video of him, appearing on the right-leaning Channel 14. He is actually right now calling for something almost no Jewish Israeli has any stomach for: temporary re-occupation of the Gaza Strip.
Here is an interview in English by Rita Panahi of Sky News Australia.
And here is one of his short clips (I don’t do Instagram or TikTok) posted to YouTube:
ADDENDUM: not from his channel, but this is a good one, delving into the strange (?) alliance between the hard left and Islamist fascists.
LATE PM UPDATES: central Israel got heavy rocket barrages; 2nd of 3 water pipes into Gaza reopened; cell phone service reportedly restored; ground operation continues in force.
Shin Bet head Ronen Bar warns that out-of-control rampages by Itamar the Kachsucker Ben-Gvir’s buddies risk setting the West Bank ablaze at this delicate time.
And Maj.-Gen. (Ret.) Noam Tibon, a grandfather who became a local hero when he raced with his wife and a soldier picked up along the way to the aid of his son (Haaretz correspondent Amir Tibon) and his family in Kibbutz Nachal Oz, calls on Netanyahu to resign effective immediately.
“There are people who are to blame for the failures: the chief of staff has already taken responsibility, and I have no doubt that at the end of the campaign, he and all those in the IDF responsible for this failure will go home. The head of the Shin Bet has already taken responsibility and I’m sure there’ll be a similar process there.
“The only one who has not taken responsibility is Benjamin Netanyahu, and now he is shooting from inside the APC,” Tibon says, referring to Netanyahu’s tweet overnight, later deleted, in which the prime minister blamed intelligence chiefs for the failure to prevent Hamas’s October 7 onslaught.
Tibon estimated that 80 percent of Israelis do not believe Netanyahu will lead Israel to a decisive victory over Hamas, and that 90% of Israelis do not believe Netanyahu will protect their families and children.
“People have lost their entire sense of security in the past three weeks,” says Tibon. “And therefore I say directly to Netanyahu: Take responsibility. Resign now. It will help the campaign.”
Tibon adds: “The people need to feel security — they need to be sure that we are going to be victorious. I don’t think he can lead us to victory.”
He then indicates that members of Knesset should remove Netanyahu if he does not step down. “The British in World War II replaced Chamberlain with Churchill,” he says. “We have to win. That is more important than Netanyahu.”
Presumably, his replacement would be Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief of the general staff as well as a former defense minister.
Meanwhile in the US: if you want more confirmation that US campuses have become centers of woke indoctrination rather than education, check this out:
A poll of American voters conducted by Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies (CAPS) and The Harris Poll on October 19 – less than two weeks after the pogrom – found strong overall sympathy for Israel and support for its defensive measures against Hamas, but significant and deeply disturbing variation between age groups.While more than eight out of every ten respondents (86%) said that the Hamas massacre was a terror attack, that number plunged to 64% among respondents between the ages of 18 and 24, with more than a third – 36% – saying it wasn’t.
While approximately eight in ten respondents (79%) said Hamas fighters are terrorists, that dropped to 59% among those between 18 and 24, with 41% saying they’re militants.Perhaps the most shocking data points are these:
While more than eight in ten American voters (84%) said they side with Israel in the current conflict, that figure dropped to a stunning 52% among respondents between the ages of 18 and 24, with 48% saying they side with Hamas – a statistical tie.
While three-quarters of respondents (76%) said the Hamas massacre cannot be justified by Palestinian grievances, 51% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 said they can.While 61% of voters said there is no moral equivalence between Hamas’s murderous terrorism and Israel’s actions, that figure plunged to 36% among respondents between the ages of 18 and 24, with roughly two thirds – 64% – saying Hamas and Israel have equally just causes.
This is what people pay $60K/year for, so Junior can become an ignorant self-righteous poseur howling along with the supremacists of 2023. It bears remembering that the supremacists of 1933 too, in Germany, had more support among university students (and faculty!) than among the general population.
Meanwhile (via Insty), this shows you how much the HamISIS mafia leadership really “cares” about its own population,
(a) So the ground operation appears to have started on Shabbat, not quite as a mass ‘invasion’, but as a pretty bit incursion that is clearly different from the preceding “hit and run raids”. Cellular communications and internet are out across Gaza: Elon Musk is offering Starlink access to “recognized humanitarian organizations”.
It has been explicitly stated that hostage rescue is a primary objective, not a secondary one.
Netanyahu is calling it “the second War of Independence”. I’m not sure I would have called it that, given that the first was Israel’s bloodiest by far as a proportion of population. (Tellingly, he still does not join the long line of current and past ministers and security officials who have done a mea culpa for the worst intelligence disaster in our nation’s history. First we win a war — but then some high-ups will have to be held accountable — including the very top.)
G-dspeed to the troops. The extensive tunnel complex will be quite a challenge to deal with. Here is a videogiving a glimpse how the IDF has been preparing for this:
Several military specialists have pointed out that the prolonged pause, while shutting of fuel suypplies, may have been related to the tunnel network, as that would become unlivable without forced air circulation.
An email that was leaked showed a BBC correspondent encouraging staff to use terms like “settler-colonialism” and “ethnic cleansing,” according to media reports.
The email had allegedly been sent to international staff, according to the Jewish Chronicle. One such staff member included Director General Tim Davie, whom he emailed with the complaint that “Words like ‘massacre’, ‘slaughter’ and ‘atrocities’ are being used – prominently – in reference to actions by Hamas, but hardly, if at all, in reference to actions by Israel.”
“The power of emotive coverage and repetition is well understood. The selective application of emotive repetition is sure to have an impact on audiences, and it is exactly the kind of impact Israeli propagandists are aiming for as they dehumanize Palestinians and set the stage for the mass murder they have pledged – and begun – to carry out,” wrote the correspondent.
And more of this mindless dreck. Classic “Lawrence of Arabia Complex”, neo-Marxism, or just plain old judeophobia? Answer: yes.
(c) I have a first-person eyewitness report from the deluded fools, useful idiots, and mashta”pim (collaborators) of the so-called “Jewish” voice for “Peace” in NYC Grand Central Station. My interlocutor gave them a piece of his mind hat the pre-printed signs made no reference to a hostage release.
Via Harold Bergstein on Facebook, a meme that says more than a thousand words
(a) The other day, the Arbel-daughter messaged me about some “Asian Studies” anusclown-instructor at UC Berkeley who was giving his students extra credit for attending a pro-HamAss protest. Steven Hayward of Powerline, presently a scholar in residence at the UC Berkeley law school, reports from there that in fact, the administration stepped in almost immediately, reminding the evil clown in question (and any wannabe copycats) that existing U. regulations explicitly prohibit canceling classes to attend protests or giving extra credit for doing so.
Moreover, a group of about 400 faculty, including very senior people, signed an open letter pushing back against the pro-HamAssery. (I know a number of the signatories personally and/or professionally.)
Here's an open letter signed by hundreds of faculty at UC Berkeley expressing concern about the campus climate – including some on-campus support for the Oct. 7 attacks as "resistance" and "freedom struggle" Signed by the chancellor, law school dean, etc.https://t.co/1X9V4OiliO
It’s been noted by commenters that the signatories are very heavy on STEM — this is true, although the law school is also represented well (including by its Dean Chemerinsky, otherwise a died-in-the-wool leftie).
A number of Berkeley insiders have told me over the years that UCB is really two institutions: a very rigorous STEM college and a rather frivolous/vapid “XYZ studies” outfit populated by radical pajeros and their hangers-on.
(b) Meanwhile in the UK, the head of the Labour Party (and of His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition) Keir Starmer has come under fire from the radical wing of his party for his fairly staunch defense of Israel. He has been credited with restoring party unity after the ouster of his predecessor, the odious antisemite Jeremy Corbyn; it is widely assumed that the Tories will lose the next general election (mostly, because they have betrayed their middle class base) and Starmer will be the new PM.
(c) I don’t trust a word that comes out of the Emir of Qatar’s lying liar mouth, but he supposedly promised US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken that Qatar would “review” its ties with HamAss, hinting at a downgrade.
“Qatar has a 360-degree foreign policy,” [a former CIA official] continued. “They host senior Hamas political officials. They provide the United States with a huge air base. They talk to the Iranians. They cover all their bases so they can communicate with anybody at any time in a low-key fashion.”
Israel has informed Qatari mediators that in exchange for the release of a significant number of hostages from Gaza, it is prepared to give something in exchange, the Kan public broadcaster reports.
The report citing an unnamed political source does not specify what Israel would be willing to offer and Jerusalem has already been said to reject proposals that required it to allow fuel into Gaza due to fears that it’ll be used by Hamas.
Israel has publicly insisted that the hostages must be released unconditionally and it is unclear whether they gave anything in exchange for the release of the first four hostages over the past week.
Kan reports that Israel passed along its red lines for the negotiations to the Qatari mediators.
Hamas is reportedly seeking the entry of fuel into Gaza as well as the release of security prisoners from Israeli jails along with a ceasefire.
The source speaking to Kan speculates that a major development in the talks would soon unfold.
So who voted not to stand with Israel in connection with the war begun by Gaza on October 7? The roll call is here. Democrats Bowman, Bush, Carson, Green, Lee, Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Ramirez and Tlaib voted against the resolution. Democrats Casar, Castro, Garcia, Jayapal, Pressley and Velasquez voted Present. That gives you a good idea where the locus of anti-Semitism in our political life is. One Republican, Thomas Massie of Kentucky, voted No.
Related: Does congresscritter Rancida Taliban Rashida Tlaib have actual HamAss ties? If so, would involvement with a proscribed terrorist organization be grounds for expulsion from the House?
UPDATE: “Son of Hamas” Mosab Hassan Yousef, a.k.a. “the Green Prince” — the son of a HamAss co-founder who eventually not just renounced HamAss but converted to Christianity — minces no words in an interview with Piers Morgan on Sky News (Australia).
“They care the least for the Palestinian people and their future […] The Palestinian society has been hijacked by these criminals, and whoever takes their side [becomes complicit in their crimes].”
ANOTHER ADDENDUM: in-depth read on hard lessons from Israel’s hi-tech border failure. Hitech is great as a handmaid, bad as a master. And any hitech solutions should be “antifragile” [to use Nassim Taleb’s term], which are resilient to “failure cascades” of complex systems.
The White House calls out the “grotesque” and “antisemitic” actions of students protesting against Israel on American college campuses since the outbreak of the Gaza war.
“Amidst the rise in poisonous, antisemitic rhetoric and hate crimes that President Biden has fought against for years, there is an extremely disturbing pattern of antisemitic messages being conveyed on college campuses,” White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates tells The Times of Israel.
“Just over the past week, we’ve seen protests and statements on college campuses that call for the annihilation of the State of Israel; for genocide against the Jewish people. Jewish students have even had to barricade themselves inside buildings,” he says.
The comments appear to be the furthest that the White House has gone yet to weigh in on campus debates about Israel. In the past, Biden officials stressed the importance of allowing peaceful protests while also stressing the importance of Arab, Jewish and Muslim Americans feeling safe.
On Tuesday night, messages including “Glory To Our Martyrs,” “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now,” and “Free Palestine From The River To The Sea” were projected onto the exterior of a campus building at George Washington University. At Cooper Union College in New York last night, Jewish students were locked in their school’s library for 20 minutes as pro-Palestinian demonstrators pounded on the doors and shouted anti-Israel slogans.
Bates says “these grotesque sentiments and actions shock the conscience and turn the stomach. They also recall our commitment that can’t be forgotten: ‘never again.’”
“Delegitimizing the State of Israel while praising the Hamas terrorist murderers who burned innocent people alive, or targeting Jewish students, is the definition of unacceptable – and the definition of antisemitism. President Biden is proud to have been an enemy of antisemitism and hate his entire life, and he always will be,” Bates adds.
(hat tip: masgramondou): “How Netanyahu’s ‘divide and conquer’ strategy backfired.” My reservation: while I agree that Netanyahu (as the guy at the apex) should take responsibility and resign, I do not agree with the “lone hero theory of disaster” (to quote a Bujold-ism). A tragedy on this scale could only be achieved by the collective delusions of a multitude.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis orders state universities to disband local chapters of Sturmabteilung of Judeophobes for Perversion of justice, a.k.a. “Students for Justice in Palestine”, saying it illegally backs a terror organization.
Finally for now, some much-needed moral clarity from Victor Davis Hanson: “Israel vs. a Death Cult”
Israel vs. a Death Cult
Here are three critical considerations that must be understood about the current Israel-Hamas conflict. It is a sort of half-war. It consists of a military trying to defeat an organized clique of passive-aggressive, media-obsessed tribal murderers.
For all the people on social media crying about Israelis blowing up innocents this week, yep, that sucks, but why do terrorists hide behind civilians? You. That's it. You make it an effective tactic for them. I see people saying that anything that harms innocents should be a…
The issue of allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza has become yet another stick with which western “liberals” and their media mouthpieces are choosing — sickeningly — to beat up the target of genocidal attack, the State of Israel.
The premise upon which their criticism is based is, as ever from these usual suspects, ignorant and shallow. By refusing to allow in humanitarian aid, they scold, Israel is in breach of international law.
For a magisterial take-down of this charge, watch this interview with British international lawyer Natasha Hausdorff. With calm politeness, she schooled the BBC’s Katya Adler in what the law actually requires in these circumstances, how Israel is observing this law to the letter and the singular perversity of Adler’s BBC mindset. It was a master class in telling truth to moral idiocy.
[/blockquote]
This is an embed of the interview in question:
[blockquote]
In the Wall Street Journal, law professor Eugene Kontorovich similarly pointed out that international law permits a siege as long as it isn’t intended to deny sustenance to the civilian population. As West Point law professor Sean Watts put it in 2022:
Siege — or encirclement as military doctrine refers to it — is an essential aspect of modern military operations… Only starvation directed specifically at civilians is prohibited.
In a war, care should be taken to avoid civilian casualties as far as possible. But it has never been expected that the fate of civilians should be allowed to undermine and weaken those waging a just war and consequently enable a barbarous tyranny to survive.
“Humanitarian aid” may in fact aid a tyrannical enemy. That’s exactly what happens in Gaza. The notion that, in such a place, the aid sent by a compassionate world relieves the suffering of the civilian population is naive to the point of imbecility.
Gaza is ruled by Hamas. Hamas is not some benign civil authority. It is despotic, oppressive and corrupt. Nothing happens in Gaza that is not under its tyrannical thumb. That goes for aid supplies.
[…]
But most of this aid doesn’t even get to the civilians of Gaza. Hamas take it for themselves to replenish and augment their armoury of mass murder.
Early last week, there were reports emanating from the UN Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) that Hamas had stolen fuel and medical equipment from its compound in Gaza City. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) said the amount of fuel that had been stolen was enough to power Gaza’s water desalination facilities for six days.
Today, as Times of Israel reported, the IDF issued photographs that it said showed fuel tanks near the Rafah crossing in the south of Gaza, stating it had information that large amounts of fuel were being kept there by Hamas. The photos were shared by the IDF’s Arabic-language account on X, formerly Twitter. “This is what over half a million litres of diesel looks like,” wrote IDF Arabic spokesman Avichay Adraee, “while Hamas keeps claiming it does not have enough fuel to support hospitals and bakeries.”
From the Substack. Fair use under Section 27 of Copyright Law (Israel)
There are also numerous reports that, as it has done many times before, Hamas has been appropriating food and other aid packages and selling them at hugely inflated prices on the black market so it can buy more weapons with the profits.
And reports of power supplies running out at Gaza hospitals have been followed by video footage of these hospitals fully lit and operating as normal.
Clearly, Hamas routinely exaggerates and lies about the plight of the civilians. Equally, war must inescapably mean privation and worse for ordinary Gazans. But the evidence suggests that Hamas has been stockpiling supplies of fuel, food and water for its own use at the expense of the civilian population, from whom it further steals essential aid supplies.
The suffering of the Gazan civilians is entirely due to the activities of Hamas who, treating them as little more than human shields and canon fodder, have brought catastrophe upon them by waging a genocidal war and then by stealing the aid intended for them — thefts carried out in order to amass more weapons to further that genocidal agenda.
[…]
And of course, once again it is only Israel whose defence against barbarism and annihilation western liberals feel an overwhelming need to undermine.
So two elderly women hostages were released yesterday night. I’m very happy for them and their families. It suggests, however, the possibility that HamISIS may try to stave off a massive ground operation by releasing hostages a few at a time. Meanwhile, our army cannot remain at maximum state of alert forever. As much as it nauseates me to write this, HamISIS may be able to escape its destruction in this manner. [UPDATE: Interrogation report of several HamISIS terrorists describing not only what unspeakable acts — several too vile to even repeat here — they committed, but how they were explicitly ordered to commit them, knowing that they are actually forbidden by the Quran. “There is no difference between what we did and what ISIS does. The brutality is the same.”]
And then what? Some quiet until the next round of rockets followed by “lawn-mowing” on our part? It is blatantly clear that almost nobody in Israel will accept a return to things as they were. So even if the Gaza Strip continued (G-d forbid) under HamISIS rule, there will be changes. No 20,000 daily commuters, no matter how “vetted” by the Shin Bet they were (I suspect at least some of them were scoping out things). Also, “human rights” organizations who protested against an inner buffer zone around the Gaza fence will be told to go kibinimat and such a zone will very likely be created. There will be no return to the failed “hi-tech fence” (without redundancies) concept — instead, a sizable garrison will probably be maintained permanently on the border. I could see some of the evacuated kibbutzim in the Gaza periphery being turned into garrison towns.
I can say only one other thing: when you’re fighting a snake, strike for the head. Yes, we’ve been able to eliminate some of the operational commanders with blood directly on their hands. But we know where the ‘capo di tutti capi’ of the HamISIS mafia[*] sits — and it’s not in Gaza. I would not be greatly surprised if an ‘unfortunate accident’ befell some ‘people’ in Qatar or Iran in the next few months. If only they could be brought to Israel alive, Eichmann [y”sh] style.
In other news, the Dutch and Greek prime ministers paid solidarity visits yesterday, and French president Macron will land today, not yesterday as announced earlier. A bipartisan delegation of ten US senators (five D and R each) also visited — underlining that, whatever the despicable “squad” in the House, Israel is largely still a bipartisan cause in the US.
And a surprise (?) visitor, CA governor Gavin Newsom. He said all the right things:
“As I reflect back on the extraordinary people I just met today in Israel, I am reminded of the deep connections between my home state and this country. A country that has faced many dark times before, and certainly is in one now.
“But amid this present struggle against terrorists are stories of unimaginable heroism — and unspeakable tragedy.
“I listened to the grief and terror in a mother’s voice as she spoke about her son — a Californian right now being held hostage in Gaza — whose arm was blown off by a terrorist’s grenade.
“I hugged a girl — another Californian, born in Los Angeles — who was shot in the leg by Hamas and left for dead, in truly horrific conditions.
“I grieved with families in mourning, I met with young soldiers fresh from bomb shelters and battlefields, and I sat with leaders who bear the responsibility of response to it all.
“Despite the horror, what I saw and heard from the people of Israel was a profound sense of resilience. A commitment to community and common purpose, especially in these most difficult of times.
“That’s the Israeli spirit. And it’s also the California spirit. We are bound by more than those who live one place or another, or who have family here or there. My heart is heavy for all innocent people under the crushing pressure of loss and grief, no matter which side of fence they quite literally find themselves on.
“So as I prepare to leave, I share these words: may the memory of those who perished be a blessing to the whole world.”
Except, note, one thing: not a word of direct condemnation of HamISIS, which might cost him the radical “squad” segment of his electorate. He was on his way to China, BTW. I am personally convinced at least a faction inside the D machine wants to put Biden and [Finnish word for disaster — seriously!] Harris out to pasture and engineer Newsom’s nomination. Instapundit has been riffing for months on how, for a guy who professes not to be interested in running for POTUS, he’s made a surprising number of pivots to the center in recent years. Everything about the man oozes phoniness and insincerity to me — but those are sadly two qualities that get politicians everywhere plenty of low-information voters.
And speaking of low-information (via Powerline and multiple other sources), this tells you something about the level of informedness and professionalism of CNN:
They don't only lie. They can't even show a proper map of #Israel. FYI @CNN: 1) #TelAviv is located on the beach. 2) Sderot is nearby #Gaza. You can't deliver correctly even the simplest things & you wish us to believe a lot more difficult stuff you report on!?#IStandWithIsraelpic.twitter.com/Mhnw1xE5hI
They’ve got Tel Aviv on the Golan Heights, and Sderot, which is frequently in the news for being attacked by Gazan rockets, on the West Bank. I think it is a matter of common knowledge that Tel Aviv is on the Mediterranean. Would CNN produce a map showing Istanbul in the middle of Asia Minor? Or Venice up in the Dolomites? I don’t know, maybe they would. I know good help is hard to find, but how do you hire someone to situate cities on a map who doesn’t actually…look at a map?
In between bong hits and “self-care” sessions?
Seriously, reality is so ridiculous that it’s putting satirists out of work:
It's hard to stay ahead of reality at The Babylon Bee. We had this written last night only to wake up and see the White House doing exactly this before we had the chance to publish pic.twitter.com/Xheyvt2CrB
Ham-Ass divers trying to reach Israeli shore eliminated, says IDF.
France walks back comments by president Macron that seemed to suggest simply including HamAss as part of the mission of the international anti-ISIS frontl
UN [puta-de-culo-in-]Chief Antonio Gutierrez makes excuses for HamISIS barbarism, prattles on about “occupation”.
Dark are the days when the United Nations Secretary General condones terror.
Absolutely nothing can justify the slaughter of innocent civilians. Now is the time to stand on the right side of history, or be judged by it.
Terror apologists cannot speak on behalf of the world.
I have long been saying that the Useless Nabobs should relocate to a less Eurocentric, more neutral location — my two favorite choices are Antarctica and the bottom of the Marianas Trench.
And taqqiya or true flying pig moment of the day: Firebrand Islamist cleric calls on both sides [including his nominal own] to “stop the war” and “spread peace”, and implicitly criticizes HamAss savagery.
[*] Though the sheer psychotic brutality of HamISIS/ḤamDAE”Sh reminds me less of the Cosa Nostra — which had some form of code of honor, no matter how warped — than of its Russian counterpart.
1. Free speech protections do not extend to illegal conduct. If you express opinions, no matter how repugnant, that’s speech. If you start beating up, harassing, or intimidating people who disagree with you, that’s not free speech.
2. To quote Ben Boychuk many years ago, free speech means any ass has the right to say what he likes — but if people mock him for being asinine, he’s got nobody to blame but himself. You shout from the rooftops that you cheer on brutal torture-murderers of people for the crime of being born Jewish? And then you’re shocked! Shocked! That some companies won’t hire you?
You didn’t think for one second that — when you opened the Pandora’s box of “canceling” people for not being 100% on board with “woke” orthodoxy — that this nuclear weapon might be used against YOU one day by the other side?
Lesson three: Those who support Israel and have witnessed the anti-Israel protests on their campuses should expect no support or assistance from their institution’s so-called Bias Response Teams.
While these teams are allegedly concerned with eradicating bias and hate on campus, it apparently has to be the right bias or hate to illicit a response.
Does anyone question that if the anti-Israel protesters were holding signs that read “Support Merit-Based Admissions,” “There Are Only Two Sexes.” “Save Women Sports For Real Women,” “No In-State Tuition For Illegal Aliens,” or “Keep Your Hands Off My Gun,” they would have been immediately hauled before their institution’s Biased Response Team to acknowledge their verbal infractions and repent for the hate or bias they caused?
While I am an absolutist when it comes to free speech on campus, and believe there is no placefor Bias Response Teams in higher education, if institutions are going to characterize the mere misgendering of someone as potential hate or bias, shouldn’t calling for the annihilation of an entire people warrant similar consideration and condemnation?
Instead, what do we hear from most campus officials who claim bias and hate have no place on their campuses? Crickets.
Tough lessons, indeed.
I thank G-d Eternal every day that I left US academia a decade ago, when I was starting to see the writing on the wall — not just of hyper-politicization, but of an education “race to the bottom” in pursuit of the hare-brained idea that everyone should go to college, including those who back in my day wouldn’t have graduated academic-track high school. And no, I do not think the two are unrelated. The dumber and/or more ignorant students are, the easier it becomes to indoctrinate them and use them as foot soldiers for all sorts of nefarious causes.
Speaking of which, I am absolutely delighted that the Great Mountain of Tuna has finally been taken out of Israeli school curricula — where this child abuse victim of narcissistic parents should never have been in the first place.
(B) And speaking of corrupted institutions: ex-PM Naftali Bennett has some really choice words to a BBC interviewer.
(C) But possibly the biggest stunner of the day for me was an interview in Der Spiegel (English excerpts at Powerline) with German chancellor Olaf Scholz (leader of the center-left Social Democrats, and heading a red-green dominated coalition).
DER SPIEGEL: Among those in Germany who harbor hatred for Israel are many people with Arab roots. Did German policymakers ignore for too long the deep hatred entrenched in some groups?
Scholz: I don’t agree that anyone has ignored that issue. We have been keeping a close eye on it for quite some time.
DER SPIEGEL: Apparently not close enough. Should Germany be paying more attention to who is coming into the country and who is allowed to stay?
Scholz: We have been doing that for a long time. But we will now be differentiating even more precisely. On the one hand, there is the immigration of workers that we need. And there are those who are seeking asylum because they are the targets of political oppression. On the other hand, though, that means that all those who don’t belong to one of those groups cannot stay. That is why we are limiting irregular migration to Germany. Too many people are coming. . . And I haven’t even mentioned one important one yet: We must finally deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.
Wow. Is this a Social-Democrat leader speaking, or Belgium’s Bart De Wever (a self-described Burkean conservative)?
Humanitarian supplies are now (with Israeli consent) entering the Gaza Strip from the Egyptian border crossing. And while air attacks and (it seems) pinpoint special forces raids are taking place, the ground invasion seems to be delayed — perhaps under Victor Davis Hanson’s theory that it is in Israel’s interest to not rush in, and to first let HamAss stew in its own juices (and soften up the target)?
Meanwhile, this is a must-hear (or must-see) interview with Bari Weiss, former New York Times editor who left in disgust and is now editing The Free Press on Substack. She still considers herself a (centrist) liberal, which makes her “j’accuse!” to the “woke” left all the more compelling.
In vaguely related news, the president of a Detroit synagogue was stabbed to death.
The police is cautioning against jumping to conclusions concerning the motive. Yeah, right. It is just barely possible that she just was a random victim of out-of-control criminality in Detroit (exacerbated by “defund the police” garbage) — but my money is on SJS (Sudden Jihad Syndrome).
I used to wonder how Germans under Adolph Hitler came around to accept, support, or at least turn a blind eye towards the so-called “Final Solution”, during the 1930s and ’40s. Well, wonder no more – I’ve seen it play out now in real time. Corked up resentments, envy and pure unadulterated hatred, given voice in classrooms, newsrooms, in social media and from the pulpits of certain churches, spewing from so-called leaders of various communities … all spilling out, in the wake of October 7 … it’s as sick-making as reports of all the rejoicing in the Arab streets, and the comments about how we Americans had it coming, after 9-11. To try and focus on the horror and misery inflicted on the innocent and the self-justifying replies from the usual pro-Palestinians boils down to something like the rationale from an abusive spouse – “Look at what you made me do!”
All that being said, we are seeing a backlash of sorts, this time around. The loud, proud, and indiscreet Jew-haters are getting called out, substantially. Fired from jobs, having job offers rescinded, wealthy alums withdrawing support from various schools … outrage from parties who heretofore were rather sedate. I can see several reasons for this – First, because the Hamas raid into Israel was so brutal, duplicating Nazi atrocities in Occupied Europe, right down to setting fire to houses to smoke out anyone hiding who might have escaped. Second – because the Hamas raiders videoed themselves doing so, every sickening second. They posted to social media, to boast of every revolting bloody detail – and more than just their sympathizers could watch. The rest of us can watch, too – if we have the stomach for snuff videos. It’s almost impossible to explain all that away, to claim exaggeration, war propaganda, bias … when it’s all out there on the internet, unmediated by reporters and a media which likely has a bias of their own. The internet and social media have become a double-edged sword. We can see events unfiltered.
[…] We knew they were hate-filled, but even we were stunned by the depths of their depravity, their targeting of babies and children, the sick and elderly.
Their behavior was deliberate, not impulsive. Directives from a Hamas leader in Gaza, Sinwar, found on dead terrorists, laid it all out plainly. Their mission was to commit atrocities so terrible that Israeli society would collapse, and the Jews would all flee in fear. That is why they filmed and broadcast their atrocities, something even the Nazis were reluctant to do. The whole point for Hamas was to let us know what they’d done, even going so far as to use the iPhones of the murdered to film the killings and forward them to victims’ families.
[…]But if the purpose of the Hamas attack was to destroy Israeli society, it has accomplished the very opposite. From a warring and divided nation, they have managed to unite us as never before.
As if Hamas terrorists were not monstrous enough, their handlers gave them bags of Captagon – a synthetic, amphetamine-type stimulant known on the Arabic drug market as “Abu al-Hilalain” and consumed like candy to endure in battle and promotes feelings of rage, irritability, and impatience that encourage terrorists to murder and torture victims.
Known generically as fenethylline, it is trafficked through Turkey to the Middle East. According to authorities in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Qatar, the use of fenethylline is prevalent among their younger, affluent citizens. Captagon, used in Saudi Arabia since the late 1980s, is one of the most popular drugs of abuse among the young affluent populations in Arab countries where students use it to stay away [sic: clearly: “awake”] before final exams or women use it as an anorectic agent to lose weight.
[…]
The US Department of Justice reports that the drug does not have an accepted medical use in that country and is not approved for distribution. As available stocks of diverted fenethylline are depleted and the availability of chemicals for the clandestine production of the drug fluctuates, increasing amounts of counterfeit Captagon will likely become available.
A study on the drug was published seven years ago by Greek toxicologists and forensic medicine specialists in the journal Basic & Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology under the title “Fenethylline (Captagon) Abuse – Local Problems from an Old Drug Become Universal.”
I remember Captagon from my undergrad days in Antwerp. At the time, it was prescribed for “hyperkinetic” children (what we nowdays call ADD): It was taken off the market when its disastrous side effects became apparent. Students who spent more time partying and horsing around than studying — then panicked in the “blokweek” (“swotting week”, “cramming week” before trimesterial exams — would go on Captagon-fueled swotting marathons to somehow get a passing grade. It’s a prodrug that, inside the body, reacts to form theophyllin (innocuous, a caffein relative found in tea) and… amphetamin. Nasty stuff.
“As an Ivy League graduate who knows the value of a liberal education, I have one piece of advice for the youth of America: Don’t go to college,” Maher said. “And if you absolutely have to go, don’t go to an elite college because as recent events have shown, it just makes you stupid.
“There are few, if any, positives to come out of what happened in Israel, but one of them is opening America’s eyes to how higher education has become indoctrination into a stew of bad ideas, among them the simplistic notion that the world is a binary place where everyone is either oppressor or oppressed.”
Here is the whole video (warning: language alert):
How the American “academic elites” became HamAss apologists. My own take, as a former US academic who left for academia abroad: “Ten measures of sanctimonious hypocrisy have been placed in the world. Nine are in US academia.” (Talmud Interneti, tractate Bubbe Meises 69a).
Four out of five Israelis want Netanyahu to accept responsibility for intelligence and security failures on October 7, and that include two out of three voters for his own Likud.
(a) The US appears to have brokered a deal between Israel and Egypt, allowing humanitarian supplies to enter the Gaza Strip via the Egyptian border crossing. Families of the captives are furious.
(b) As pointed out by “masgramondou” in a comment on yesterday‘s update, even the BBC is now distancing itself from the HamAss narrative on the hospital. People have told me European news channels like RTL (Luxembourg) and VRT (Flanders, Belgium) are doing the same.
(E) IDF caught one of the HamAss infiltrators, exhausted, trying to make his way back to Gaza. While the IDF claims there have not been any new infiltrations, they cannot rule out this was the only one still hiding out.
(F) China is “deeply disappointed” that the US vetoed a UNSC resolution, introduced by rotating UNSC chair Brazil, on the Israel-Gaza war. “The US vetoed the resolution, which did not recognize Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Freilich is Jewish himself (he was/is? the publisher of Joodsactueel.be) but he has the backing of his party N-VA: “The head of my party, who is the mayor of the city of Antwerp, and head of the largest political faction in Belgium, Bart De Wever said very clearly at the beginning of the week: ‘In this fight between Israel and Hamas, there’s only one side to choose and that is the side of Israel. We stand resolutely beside Israel.’”
Independently, here is surveillance video from Kibbutz Netiv HaAsara right outside the Gaza strip:
Surveillance camera footage from Netiv Haasara shows a large barrage of rockets being launched from northern Gaza, followed by a massive blast in the Strip, apparently caused by a failed projectile. pic.twitter.com/PdNCbks02r
But still, that must have been one huge rocket. “Masgramondou” asked on yesterday’s thread whether it hit a munitions dump (its presence at the hospital is itself a war crime). And guess what… here is an unconfirmed report that there was an ammunition depot at the hospital and the rocket hit it.
Gaza Report say this was not an Israeli attack on a hospital, as per Ilhan Omar, but a misfired Palestinian rocket — which “detonated a stockpile of munitions held on the hospital grounds.”
UPDATE 2: IDF has eavesdropped audio recordings proving that HamAss and IJ _realized_ it was a misfired IJ rocket, and deciding to engage on a media blitz to blame Israel.
UPDATE 3: Biden, meeting with Netanyahu, appears to accept IDF explanation for the hospital deaths and blames “the other team”.
Hagari, in a briefing in English to international media, read out a translated transcript of an intercepted call between two Hamas officials, in which they talk about the failed rocket, launched by the smaller Gazan terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that hit the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital’s parking lot, following a barrage launched from a nearby cemetery.
The IDF then released a recording of the call, with a translation into English.
For context, here is a map (h/t: “Shifra”) of all the known locations where rockets aimed at Israel fell short inside Gaza:
UPDATE: according to the WSJ (cached copy with link to original), US intelligence services (read: the NSA) independently collected sigint corroborating the Israeli story.
The U.S. has collected “high confidence” signals intelligence showing that the explosion at a Gaza hospital compound on Tuesday was caused by the militant group Palestinian Islamic Jihad, U.S. officials said, buttressing Israel’s contention that it wasn’t responsible for the blast.
The U.S. assessment drew, in part, on communications intercepts and other intelligence gathered by the U.S., defense officials said.
“Our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza,” White House National Security Council spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said, adding that the U.S. continues to collect information on the incident.
[…]
Photos and videos taken at the site of the blast show a shallow crater that some open-source intelligence analysts say is inconsistent with the damage an airstrike would cause—or with the claim that some 500 people died. They said the images show what appears to be a relatively small explosion, with charred cars and a few dozen bodies sprawled on a nearby lawn. The surrounding buildings, including a church, didn’t appear to have suffered major damage.
“We have none of the indicators of an airstrike—none,” said Michael Knights, an expert on security and military issues at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “What you have instead is a scene that very clearly was hit by a rolling fireball.”
The most plausible cause for that, Knights said, is rocket fuel, consistent with the Israeli military’s explanation that a rocket misfired.
US FM Anthony Blinken, who is doing “shuttle diplomacy” in the region, announced that Biden would pay a solidarity visit to Israel tomorrow. This is widely perceived as a sign to various bad regional actors to stay out of the Israel-HamISIS conflict. He will subsequently meet with Egypt’s al-Sisi, the Jordanian king, and Mahmoud Abbas, in the 16th? 17th? year of his 4-year term as president of the “Palestinian Authority”.
A draft UNSC resolution on the conflict introduced by Russia did not even mention HamAss: it was defeated without even a US or UK veto, as only five member states voted for it.
Meanwhile, former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen (who was also Netanyahu’s sub-rosa diplomatic envoy to Arab countries in the leadup to the Abraham Accords) says Israel should not bow to global pressure to end the Gaza siege.
Former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen said Monday that Israel should not lift its siege on the Gaza Strip even as it faces a wave of international pressure to allow various goods into the enclave.
“In order for us to be able to [achieve our military goals] in Gaza, we need abilities and we need time,” Cohen told Kan public radio. “The element of time is critical — right now Gaza is under siege… and I have said we should not ‘blink’ on that.”
Cohen said he views the government’s decision on Sunday to restart water flow to the southern part of the Strip as “blinking… if it’s due to international pressure.”
“International pressure doesn’t understand that civilians from Gaza, civilians, not just Hamas terrorists… took part in the abominable murders of children, babies and women.”
Many Gazans, seemingly civilians, were seen in videos from the October 7 assault rushing through the border fence after the first wave of terrorist attackers had come through, taking part in looting and other activities near the border and within Israeli communities. There have been some reports that they too joined in murderous attacks on Israelis, though Jerusalem has not said so officially thus far.
Orientalist Mordechai Kedar, in a podcast with Dr. Roi Yozevich (both men are on the Bar-Ilan U. faculty), already a week ago made a reference to two subgroups of the invaders: the military wing of HamAss itself, and what they called the “mechabelim al kafkafim” (terrorists on flip-flops) who “hitched a ride” on the invaders. Kedar and Yozevich implied the possibility that some of the worst atrocities may have been committed by the latter rather than the former. Methinks the line between combatants and noncombatants in Gaza is a lot blurrier than the international media assume — to the extent that it exists at all.
I must add that I have spoken to a number of Israelis who belong to the broad “liberal left” in the past days. Unlike their supposed ideological brothers in arms abroad, my interlocutors appear to have been thoroughly “mugged by reality” and echo the calls for dismantling the HamISIS rule over Gaza “no matter what it takes”. One of them, who grew up in one of the most socialist kibbutzim near the Gaza border, stressed that the population of that region is overwhelmingly secular and left-wing, the diametral opposite of the “religious settlers” they generally revile. But the Death-Worshipers who invaded of course didn’t care.
Another theme that came back in conversations is: while Israel’s vigorous voluntariat was very quick to jump into action (much of it spontaneous) with aid for displaced residents of the Gaza periphery, support for called-up reservists, and all manners of other things, the government is AWOL in so many regards that it’s pathetic. Unsurprisingly, if an election were held now (of course it won’t be until after the war), the current government would essentially be wiped out and Benny Gantz’s National Unity list would become by far the largest party.
To be continued later today.
ADDENDUM, peripherally related: according to De Standaard [in Dutch], Brussels is at the highest state of terrorist alert after a DAE”Shbag attacked a group of Swedish soccer fans, killing two. The claimed motive has to do with Sweden permitting Koran burnings. The Telegraph has more in English (paywalled; cached copy). Le Soir (“The Evening”, Belgium’s largest French-language newspaper) reports that the fugitive killer was “known to law enforcement authorities” as an illegal resident (originally from Tunisia), human trafficker, and for endangering the security of the state. [UPDATE: Le Soir now reports that the suspect was shot dead by the police. ]
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 53% of Likely U.S. Voters believe that the Palestinians are mostly to blame for the conflict with Israel. Only 10% think Israel is mostly to blame, while 24% say both sides are about equally to blame for the conflict. Another 13% are not sure.
[Note, as Jazz Shaw points out, that the question was about “the Palestinians” and not specifically about “Hamas”. ] It’s easy enough to blame Hamas for virtually anything because they proudly confess to being murderous terrorists. But the conflict impacts all Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. It’s a clash of cultures. (We can ignore for the moment that the majority of Palestinians there who are not actively fighting either support Hamas or are unwilling to speak out against them or overthrow them.) If we have to blame someone, it turns out to be Palestine.
So 53% of respondents believe that Palestinians are mostly to blame. That’s a much smaller majority than I would have hoped for or expected, but it’s still a majority. And only 10% take the side of AOC and claim that Israel is either “entirely” or even “mostly” to blame for the attacks they suffered. I suppose we can forgive the roughly one quarter of people who are still engaged in the “both sides” nonsense.
The other main question in the poll produced even more surprising results, at least to me. Voters were asked if Israel had no choice but to execute “the complete eradication” of Hamas from Gaza. “Eradication” is a much stronger word than “removal” or “defeat,” carrying obvious connotations. And yet people agreed with the statement by 66 to 19, a more than three-to-one margin. So there are clearly many people who may be uncomfortable with wiping out the Islamic militants, but still agree that it’s the only viable solution.
ADDENDUM 3: Jordan says entry of “Palestinians” into Jordan or Egypt is “a red line”. In other words, “whatever lip service we have to render to the Palestinian cause, keep them far away from us”. Jordan already went through a failed takeover of the country by Yasser Archbandit and the PLO in 1970, while Egypt’s al-Sisi knows better than anyone else that HamAss is just the “Palestinian” branch of his own worst domestic enemies, the Muslim Brotherhood.
And now that spineless university admins are feeling the backlash of their catering to the whims of a small but extremely loud minority of braying radical-left jackasses, suddenly they are rediscovering the value of neutrality.
The Israel Defense Forces says that based on “intelligence information,” a failed Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket caused the deadly blast at the Gaza hospital.
In a statement, the IDF says that “an analysis of IDF operational systems indicates that a barrage of rockets was fired by terrorists in Gaza, passing in close proximity to the Al Ahli hospital in Gaza at the time it was hit.”
“Intelligence from multiple sources we have in our hands indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch which hit the hospital in Gaza,” the IDF adds.
Shavua tov. A quick roundup highlighting some news items:
an Israeli-born German citizen relates his experience attending Supernova, the peaceful EDM music festival where some 260 attendees (including non-Israeli, non-Jewish “festival tourists”) turned deadly. As he with two friends was driving away from the scene in his car, a bike with a HamAss driver and gunner came for him — in a split-second decision, he rammed the bike with his car. He says he used to be “let’s give them the land and coexist”, but now concluded “you cannot coexist with somebody who just wants to kill you”.
“First One Through” explains how baseless, and in fact risible, claims that Israel is trying to “settle” the Temple Mount were used to incite the Arab public recently. [Never mind that all mainstream rabbinical authorities have declared most or all of the Temple Mount off-limits to Jews on grounds of ritual impurity.]
senior HamAss official Moussa Abu Marzouk is quoted by the Times of Israel as saying that the political wing of the bowel movement was kept in the dark about the operational details (plausible, for opsec reasons) and surprised by the attack’s success.
Important: The October 7 Project — a website collecting first-person stories of the Black Saturday Massacres, lest some willful amnesiac will claim they didn’t happen. https://www.october7.org/
Speaking after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken says he is “incredibly grateful” to be back in Israel, “in this incredibly difficult moment, for this nation, but in fact for the entire world.”
Blinken tells a personal story as a Jew. He tells of his grandfather fleeing pogroms in Russia, and of his stepfather surviving concentration camps in the Holocaust.
“I understand on a personal level the harrowing echoes that Hamas’s massacres carry for Israeli Jews, indeed for Jews everywhere,” he says.
“I also come before you as a husband and father of young children. It’s impossible for me to look at the photos of families killed, such as the mother, father, and three small children killed as they sheltered in their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz, and not think of my own children,” he says.
“This was just one of Hamas’s countless acts of terror in a litany of brutality and inhumanity that yes, brings to mind the worst of ISIS,” Blinken says.
“How are we even to understand this, to digest this?
“And yet at the same time that we’ve been shocked by the depravity of Hamas, we’ve also been inspired by the bravery of Israel’s citizens. The grandfather who drove over an hour to a kibbutz under siege armed only with a pistol and rescued his kids and grandkids,” he says. “The mother who died shielding her teenage son with her body, giving her life to save his. Giving him life for a second time. Volunteer security teams on the kibbutzes who swiftly rallied to defend their friends and neighbors despite being heavily outnumbered.”
He also notes the “remarkable solidarity” of the Israeli people, the long lines of people giving blood, the reservists who flew home from abroad, the people who opened their homes to survivors.
“The people of Israel have long and rightly prided themselves on their self-reliance, on their ability to defend themselves even when the odds are stacked against them,” Blinken continues.
‘The message that I bring to Israel is this — you may be strong enough on your own to defend yourself, but as long as America exists, you will never, ever have to. We will always be there by your side,” he says.
Blinken welcomes the creation of the national emergency government, and the “unity and resolve that it reflects across Israel’s society.”
“We are delivering on our word,” says Blinken. ”Supplying ammunition interceptors to replenish Iron Dome, along with other defense materiel. The first shipments of US military support have already arrived in Israel, and more is on the way. As Israel’s defense needs evolve, we will work with Congress to make sure they are met. And I can tell you there is overwhelming, overwhelming bipartisan support in our congress for Israel’s security.”
Blinken repeats America’s “crystal clear” warning against other actors — state or non-state — getting involved. “Don’t. The United States has Israel’s back.”
He affirms that the US is also working to ensure the release of hostages.
Blinken criticizes world leaders in the past for equivocating when it comes to terrorist attacks against Israel.
“There is no excuse, there is no justification for these atrocities,” he stresses. “This is, this must be, a moment for moral clarity.”
The failure to do so, he says, puts at risk people in Israel and everywhere, he says, noting that people from 36 countries are killed or missing. “Anyone who wants peace and must condemn Hamas’s reign of terror.
“Israel has the right, indeed the obligation, to defend itself and to ensure that this never happens again.”
Blinken repeats the exhortation that democracies take every precaution to avoid causing civilian casualties.
“At least 25 American citizens were killed,” Blinken says.
[…] The IDF publishes a picture showing troops holding the flag.
Yesterday, a Telegram channel called South First Responders, which has been distributing shocking footage from scenes on kibbutzim and other areas devastated in Saturday’s attack, published images showing the Islamic State flag.
Israeli officials have repeatedly linked Hamas to IS in the aftermath of the attack, though the comparison is mainly seen as an attempt to explain the enormity of the atrocities and level of depravity as Israel rallies support for its counterattack on the Gaza-based group.
Actual links between Hamas and IS — which has been largely decimated and rendered irrelevant in the last several years — are harder to find. An IS affiliate in the Sinai, Ansar al-Bayt al-Maqdis, is also thought to have few connections with Hamas.
But who says “veterans” of that psychotic group haven’t joined other radical Islamist groups and started doing their old routines there? This was psychotic even by HamAss standards.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday disclosed unprecedented and explicit details of the “sheer evil” inflicted by Hamas against Israel in an emotional speech during which he promised to ensure that the Jewish state would have what it needs to respond to the shocking weekend onslaught.
“There are moments in this life — I mean this literally — when a pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” he said in a hushed voice during a speech shown live on many American and Israeli television channels. “This is an act of sheer evil.”
“Parents butchered, using their bodies to try to protect their children; stomach-turning reports of babies being killed; entire families slain; young people massacred while attending a musical festival… women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies,” he recounted with horror.
“There are still so many families desperately waiting to hear the fate of their loved ones. Not knowing if they’re alive or dead or [being held] hostage. Infants in their mother’s arms, grandparents in wheelchairs, Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage.”
“This is terrorism. But sadly, for the Jewish people, it’s not new,” Biden continued. “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”
“Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people,” he asserted.
US President Joe Biden on Tuesday disclosed unprecedented and explicit details of the “sheer evil” inflicted by Hamas against Israel in an emotional speech during which he promised to ensure that the Jewish state would have what it needs to respond to the shocking weekend onslaught.
“There are moments in this life — I mean this literally — when a pure unadulterated evil is unleashed on this world,” he said in a hushed voice during a speech shown live on many American and Israeli television channels. “This is an act of sheer evil.”
Flanked in the White House by Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken for his second address to the nation on the ongoing war launched by the Gaza-based terror group early Saturday, Biden detailed some of the scenes from the attack.
“Parents butchered, using their bodies to try to protect their children; stomach-turning reports of babies being killed; entire families slain; young people massacred while attending a musical festival… women raped, assaulted, paraded as trophies,” he recounted with horror.
“There are still so many families desperately waiting to hear the fate of their loved ones. Not knowing if they’re alive or dead or [being held] hostage. Infants in their mother’s arms, grandparents in wheelchairs, Holocaust survivors abducted and held hostage.”
“This is terrorism. But sadly, for the Jewish people, it’s not new,” Biden continued. “This attack has brought to the surface painful memories and the scars left by a millennia of antisemitism and genocide of the Jewish people.”
“Hamas does not stand for the Palestinian people’s right to dignity and self-determination. Its stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people,” he asserted.
“Like every nation in the world, Israel has the right to respond — indeed has a duty to respond — to these vicious attacks,” the president said.
Biden said he had one word — “Don’t” — for any of Israel’s adversaries who might try to get involved, in a clear message to long-term foe Iran, which backs Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah.
And the president stressed he was ready to move “additional assets” if needed to show Washington’s backing for its ally and bolster its presence in the tense region.
He said the US was “surging” additional military aid to Israel, such as ammunition and interceptors to replenish the Iron Dome missile defense system. He pledged to ensure that Israel does not run out of equipment needed to protect its citizens and said the administration would ask Congress to take “urgent action” to fund Israel’s security needs upon returning to session in the coming days.
“This is not about party or politics. This is about the security of our world, the security of the United States of America,” Biden said.
In the full text of the speech:, Biden (or whoever wrote the speech for him) explicitly echoed Netanyahu’s comparison of Ham-Ass with ISIS.
The brutality of Hamas — this bloodthirstiness — brings to mind the worst — the worst rampages of ISIS.
The references above to when congress will reconvene are a reference to the House being without a speaker since Republican Kevin McCarthy was unseated by a strange-bedfellows coalition of Democrats with radical Republican critics of McCarthy, led by Matt Gaetz.
Nevertheless, a letter expressing full support for the right of Israel to defend itself has thus far been signed by 393 out of 435 Representatives.
As the full measure of the HamISIS atrocities becomes clear — the most graphic footage being released in the foreign media before ours — support for HamISIS becomes ever less tenable.
Anthony Blinken is supposed to land here tomorrow. A first cargo plane with US smart ammunition already landed here last night.
Egypt has offered to mediate a cease-fire, but Israel indicated it was not interested, and that it is prepared for a protracted war.
Developing…
1:50pm European Commission President (read: the de facto chief executive) Ursula von der Leyen orders a full review of all EU aid to the “Palestinians”, after first the Hungarian-born Development Commissioner froze it completely, then Foreign Affairs commissioner (effectively the #2 in the EC) overrode that and assured it would continue.
EU chief Ursula von der Leyen says that the Palestinian militant group Hamas’s killing of Israeli civilians was a coldblooded act of war and reflected an “ancient evil.”
“We have to be clear in defining this kind of horror,” she said. “And there can only be one response to it. Europe stands with Israel. And we fully support Israel’s right to defend itself.”
Addressing the start of a meeting of European commissioners, von der Leyen also supported a full review of the EU’s multi-million-euro financial support for Palestinian projects.
“Hamas terrorists killed women and children in their homes. They hunted hundreds of young men and women who were celebrating life and music,” von der Leyen tells the European Commission.
“They took hostage hundreds of innocents, whose fate is still unknown,” she says.
“These innocents were killed for one single reason: For being Jewish and living in the State of Israel. It is an ancient evil, which reminds us of the darkest past and shocks all of us to the core.”
2:33pm: Times of Israel has an updated and expanded version of an earlier piece on how Ham-ISIS managed to mislead Israel’s intelligence apparatus. Read, weep, and learn what not to do.
Earlier, IDF spokesman Col. Daniel Hagari claimed that, while Israel was surprised by the terror attack, the actual plan of the terrorists was to create a bridgehead —- and that they were surprised in turn by how quickly the IDF was able to mount a reaction. This may be true, it may be self-serving spin, or it may be a hybrid of both.
4:25pm: via Instapundit, a long exposé in the NYTimes (cached copy here) on how the intelligence failure happened. Insty snarks that the article does not speak about the politicization of intelligence services as an additional cause, and I myself have wondered if our intelligence chiefs were so preoccupied with fighting the judicial reform that they weren’t doing their job. But there was a lot, lot more going on. Read the whole thing (which I rarely will say about any NYTimes article — although it appears to be co-written by one of the better Haaretz journalists).
Insty (who is a law professor and not a defense expert, but generally a very sharp guy) adds this warning:
Let me add a caution. Hamas planned a war. They must have known that the Israeli response would be crushing. It’s safe to bet that they have prepared a very ugly urban-warfare defensive plan against just the sort of straight-in assault that everyone is talking about. It might be wise to respond somewhat differently.
Posted at 8:54 am by Glenn Reynolds
Emphasis mine. It is never smart to let your enemy get inside your decision loop. IDF officers are smart, and I’m sure then can come up with some very devious surprises if they put their minds to it.
As part of the deal, Gantz and fellow party member Gadi Eisenkot [both former IDF Chiefs-Of-Staff] will be sworn in as ministers and will join a war cabinet with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Note the absence in the war cabinet of such military “geniuses” as [finance minister] Betzalel Schmuckrich and [internal security minister] Itamar the TikTok Clown.
Good morning. I woke up to a nebulous dawn (Mrs. Arbel stayed up late answering worried Emails). No rocket fire on the Center of the country: the booms we heard were from a garden-variety thunderstorm. (It is the start of our rainy season here — almost right on cue for when we start saying prayers for rain at the end of Sukkot.)
Sarah Hoyt shared this footage of her beloved Leonard Cohen performing live in Israel during the Yom Kippur War.
The leaders of the US, Germany, Britain, France and Italy issued a joint statement on Monday condemning the attacks on Israel by the Hamas terrorist group and expressed their “steadfast and united support” for Israel.
“Over the coming days, we will remain united and coordinated, together as allies, and as common friends of Israel, to ensure Israel is able to defend itself, and to ultimately set the conditions for a peaceful and integrated Middle East region,” said the statement by US President Joe Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
The US military is “surging” fresh supplies of air defenses, munitions and other security assistance to Israel to help it respond to an unprecedented weekend attack by Hamas, a senior US defense official said on Monday.
[An unnamed] senior US defense official said there was not yet any evidence seen by the United States of Iran being behind the attack in Israel, following a report by the Wall Street Journal alleging Iranian security officials helped plan it.
“Of course, Iran is in the picture. Iran has provided support for years to the Hamas and Hezbollah. But we have no information corroborating the specifics of the Wall Street Journal story at this time,” the official said.
I have been (I believe deservedly) ragging on Justin Trudeau for a long time, so I was pleasantly surprised by this (from the same piece):
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and other Canadian authorities on Monday condemned demonstrations across Canada glorifying violence by supporting Palestinian Islamist group Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“I strongly condemn the demonstrations that have taken place, and are taking place, across the country in support of Hamas’ attacks on Israel,” Trudeau said in a post on X, formerly called Twitter.
“The glorification of violence is never acceptable in Canada,” he added.
Trudeau joined a solidarity gathering for Israel late on Monday and condemned Hamas’ attack in his address. Political leaders from across the spectrum in Canada have expressed support for Israel.
And now for some personal comments. Everybody here seems to have just one or two degrees of separation from somebody who’s dead or missing, and that includes my daughter (currently on a work assignment somewhere in the Americas). There is nothing abstract for any of us about this.
It is time for a mea culpa here. Many of us believed that by giving the Gazans “something to lose” we could keep the HamAss regime from seeking another confrontation. In particular, we increased the number of worker commuter permits for Gazans to upwards of 20,000 — what these people [all vetted by the Shin Bet, of course] can earn in Israel (mostly in agriculture and construction) goes VERY far in Gaza — and allowed the influx of humanitarian aid money from Qatar. We saw that HamAss was sitting on the sidelines in the last rounds of conflict with its ostensibly more radical rivals, the Pal. Islamic Jihad — so we assumed this policy was working, and that the regime understood a non-belligerent situation was more beneficial to Gazans and themselves than the alternative. (It was my default assumption that much of a “aid money” disappeared into the pockets of the billionaire leadership, sitting fat and happy in Qatar etc.)
Perhaps some of the population understood they were better off at peace with us than at work. I am certain there are plenty of Gazans who just want to get on with their lives. But I was sorely mistaken about the regime having “changed its stripes” out of self-interest. They were just, as Yigal Carmon and others have argued, lulling us into a false sense of security while preparing this multi-9/11 atrocity.
Every scientist learns (or should learn) to be wary of getting stuck in a “konzeptziya” (freely: conceptual paradigm). This was another dire lesson on the subject.
Coalition negotiations about a national unity government apparently are being held up by Itamar “the TikTok Clown” Ben-Gvir insisting that it was Benny Gantz and previous IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot who are responsible for the present situation, because “I kept warning them about HamAss and they weren’t listening”. https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-767542 This elicited fierce responses from other coalition members: “this is not the time to play politics”. And according to the YNet ticker (in Hebrew), even fellow far-rightist Betzalel Smotrich told him “Enough. National unity government now!”
I think it is imperative that Israel open an embassy on Antarctica and I can see no more deserving candidate for the post of ambassador than Itamar Ben-Gvir.
UPDATE 2:41pm: apparently Ben-Gvir realized that he was in a minority of one and withdrew his objections — thus the coalition heads unanimously approved the entry of (the centrist) National Unity Party into an emergency government. I expect a formal press conference with Netanyahu and NU leader Benny Gantz later today. This will bring several experienced and cool heads into the coalition, particularly Gadi Eisenkot and Gantz himself as two former IDF chiefs of staff. (I wonder if Moshe “Boogie” Yaalon and Gabi Ashkenazi, other prior incumbents, might fancy a return to politics.)
Former President Obama on Monday sharply condemned Hamas’s “brazen terrorist attacks” against Israel, which have left hundreds dead in recent days.
“All Americans should be horrified and outraged by the brazen terrorist attacks on Israel and the slaughter of innocent civilians. We grieve for those who died, pray for the safe return of those who’ve been held hostage, and stand squarely alongside our ally, Israel, as it dismantles Hamas,” Obama said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“As we support Israel’s right to defend itself against terror, we must keep striving for a just and lasting peace for Israelis and Palestinians alike,” the former president added.
Wow.
15:46: for some amazing tales of bravery, read this
[…] while the steps and reactions in the West are very predictable, what happens in the East is less so. Iran has achieved a great initial victory through one of its (several) proxies but how valuable is it to preserve the viability of that proxy? While all of Iran’s public narrative in the region and against Israel is tied up with the Cause of Palestine and the “Axis of Resistance,” how valuable will it be to preserve the Hamas Card from destruction? Of course, proxies are, by their very nature, disposable but Iran and, to a lesser extent, Turkey and Qatar, have invested a lot in the Hamas project.
If – God forbid – Israel does poorly in the upcoming campaign against Hamas, if it is somehow stymied by stiff Hamas resistance in densely populated urban Gaza or if it is immobilized by a lengthy hostage crisis, then Hezbollah and Iran will do nothing because the victory has been assured and the damage is done. The prestige or awe of the state of Israel, what Arabs call Haybat Al-Dawlah, will have been fatally punctured.
The more successful the Israeli operation against Hamas, the more complete it seems to be to the outside world, the greater the possibility of Hamas rule coming to an end, the more likely the chance that Iran and Hezbollah will escalate. Such an escalation will, at least initially, not involve Iran directly at all but would be led by Iran’s surrogates in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and even Yemen. Of course, this will all be directed by Iran but an effort will be made to try to keep the parameters of the conflict limited to between Israel and Iran’s many cutouts.
Hezbollah hegemony in Lebanon is relatively unpopular (especially among the non-Shia majority – Christians, Sunni Muslims, and Druze) but, of course, the group is even stronger, better armed and battle hardened, than Hamas. According to the pro-Hezbollah daily Al-Akhbar, Hezbollah and Hamas have had a joint operations center in Beirut since at least 2021. It is likely that the initial war has been run to some extent from Lebanese soil since the beginning.
Because I expect Israel to be successful against Hamas in Gaza, indeed it must do so to restore the strength of its deterrence, I do expect that – at the very least – a wider conflict involving several or all of Iran’s militia/terrorist proxies will take place. How far it will go once it starts is unpredictable. It is quite likely that Washington will do all it can to prevent Hezbollah and Iran from entering the war. Indirect messages are already being sent. The Biden Administration has been nothing if not deeply solicitous toward both Iran and its main Lebanese proxy since day one in 2021, continuing a pattern started under President Obama. And a broader war would be deeply embarrassing to an American government that has repeatedly tried to play down the importance of the Middle East.
Meanwhile, Mahmoud Abbas, in his 18th? 19th? year of his 4-year term as “Palestinian Authority President” is basically missing in action.
A detailed write-up of an interview with a HamAss insider, on just how HamAss (successfully) tried to fool Israel about its intentions. “Terror group had Israel convinced it wasn’t interested in war; Hamas source says elite cell jammed signals at IDF base in 1st stage of assault; report claims Iran involved in plans” and “‘WE WERE SHOCKED THAT THE IDF WAS NOT WAITING FOR US'”
The consequences for Israel’s future behavior with that treacherous gone-full-ISIS gang are obvious.
according to the YNet ticker, a Likud source stated that Benny Gantz has been invited to a meeting with Netanyahu, and that the Unity Government is “progressing with great strides”. Cannot come soon enough. [UPDATE: Jpost now too.]
Mansour Abbas, leader of Israel’s moderate Islamist party (yes, we have that!) urges HamAss to release women, children, elderly among the hostages. [blockquote] In a message on the X platform (formerly Twitter), the politician writes: “Islamic values command us not to imprison women, children and elderly people. This is a humanitarian action that must be implemented immediately.” The tweet is only in Hebrew. It is unknown if Abbas conveyed his message in Arabic through other channels. [/blockquote] The latter is of course a reference to the well-known habit of many Arab politicians to say one thing in Arabic and another in English (or in this case Hebrew). I do hope the man is being sincere.
UK Houses of Parliament lit up in solidarity (source: fair use under Section 27 of the Israeli copyright act)
Spin, strangeness, and charm 