RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/democratic-politics-shift-toward-the-view-that-hamas-should-win/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=hero&utm_content=related&utm_term=first

Israel’s critics will not be sated until Jerusalem is forced to accept the status quo ante.

Not even six full months have passed since the October 7 massacre, and already that act of unspeakable barbarity has been reduced to a passing aside in Democratic rhetorical assaults on Israeli perfidy — that is, when it is mentioned at all.

“Of course,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken began in remarks before reporters on Thursday, “what happened after October 7 could have ended immediately if Hamas had stopped hiding behind civilians, released the hostages, and put down its weapons.” Indeed. At any point in the war Hamas inaugurated, including the present moment, the conflict would end and a brighter day for the Palestinian people would dawn. Nothing else needed to be said. But Blinken continued.

Following a throat-clearing digression about the importance of drawing distinctions between Israeli democracy and a “terrorist organization,” he proceeded to mute those distinctions. “As has been said, whoever saves a life, saves the entire world. That’s our strength,” America’s chief diplomat mused wistfully. “It’s what distinguishes us from terrorists like Hamas. If we lose that reverence for human life, we risk becoming indistinguishable from those we confront.”

The implication in this poetic digression is that it will be Israel’s fault when those who lack elementary powers of discretion discern no difference between the Jewish state and a nihilistic death cult that murdered, raped, and burned alive as many Jews as it could — including Americans. As a matter of fact, the observational deficiencies that would lead someone to endorse this hopeless moral equivalency are the observer’s problem. But the myopia Blinken described is increasingly endemic among his fellow Democrats.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/05/the_data_show_israel_is_not_causing_a_gazan_famine_150751.html

Awi Federgruen Is the chair of Columbia Business School’s Decision. Risk and Operations Division. He is an expert in logistics and data science.

Ran Kivetz is the Philip H. Geier Professor at Columbia Business School. He is an expert in decision making, including the intersection between behavioral economics and political science.

Israel’s acknowledgement that a drone attack mistakenly killed seven aid workers in Gaza has led to renewed criticism of the Jewish State. The tragic incident came less than three weeks after a report issued by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) claimed that 1.1 million people – nearly half the population of Gaza – face “catastrophic food insecurity” conditions and that Northern Gaza will face famine by May if hostilities continue.

The European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, Josep Borrell, blamed Israel, saying, “Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.” And U.S. officials unveiled a United Nations ceasefire resolution that cited “famine” conditions after the IPC report came out.

But Hamas, which has been hoarding food and stealing from Gazans, is the root cause of Gazans’ suffering. As Congressman Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat and ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, stated in a CNN interview: “Hamas has a long history of stealing aid, and needs to stop that in the interest of the people that they purport to represent.”

Israel has tried for years to balance its interests with those of innocent Palestinians. Its maritime blockade did not stop Gaza from being self-sufficient in fruits and vegetables, with enough left over to potentially export.. Despite the war, three-quarters of greenhouse acres were still available as of Feb. 15, according to a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) report, which has the latest available data. Israel’s Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) indicates that bakeries can still provide “over 2 million breads, rolls, and pita breads a day.” 

Since the war began, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have engaged in what West Point Urban Warfare Studies Chairman John Spencer described as “a remarkable, historic new standard” for wartime treatment of civilians, resulting in a civilian-to-combatant mortality ratio that is “historically low for modern urban warfare.” For example, Israel regularly provides warnings of impending attacks, assists with evacuations, and even stops its attacks on a daily basis to allow humanitarian aid to arrive.

https://www.jns.org/anti-netanyahu-protests-threaten-war-effort-hostage-deal-experts-say/

The demonstrations against Benjamin Netanyahu are back, this time wrapped in calls for the release of the hostages held by Hamas.

Analysts tell JNS that protest organizers, many of whom, like former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, were behind the anti-judicial reform protests, are obsessed with bringing down the Netanyahu government to the exclusion of all else, endangering the war effort and the possibility of a hostage deal.

Since the start of the war, anti-government protests had quieted, only to burst out fiercely in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Tens of thousands turned out, according to estimates, with protesters blocking the Ayalon Highway and accusing the country’s leadership of purposefully torpedoing a hostage deal.

Some hostages’ families, who joined the protests on Saturday, urged War Cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eizenkot of the National Unity Party to leave the government and “replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately.”

Demonstrations shifted to Jerusalem on Sunday, turning violent on Tuesday night as a group, some bearing torches, evaded barricades and rushed Netanyahu’s official residence.

Police said the protest descended into “unrestrained disorder and street rioting” as “hundreds of rioters tried to break through by force the police barriers placed near the Prime Minister’s Residence.”

Some observers described speeches at the protest as “incitement.” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held by Hamas, said of Netanyahu: “You are the traitor. You betrayed your people. You betrayed your voters. You betrayed the State of Israel.”

She labeled him a “Pharaoh who inflicts on us the plague of the firstborn.”

“We will continue to persecute you: we will burn the country down, we will shake the earth, you will not have a day and you will not have a night. As long as my Matan has no day and no night neither will you,” she said.

Not at any price