RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/01/the-deaths-of-these-hostages-shames-the-western-conscience/

The discovery of the bodies of six Israeli hostages in a tunnel in Rafah confirms what many of us knew about Hamas – that it is a Jew-killing machine that masquerades as a national-liberation movement. That it has no purpose beyond the persecution and slaughter of the Jewish people. That its aim, for all the crowing of its useful idiots in the West about ‘resistance’ and ‘decolonisation’, is nothing more and nothing less than the fascistic terrorising of the inhabitants of the Jewish State. The ‘brutal murder’ of these six people, their only crime their Jewishness, is the bloodiest proof yet that in Hamas Israel faces not only a military foe, but also a virulently racist, existential threat.

But the discovery of the slain Jews shines a harsh light on other people, too. Not just Hamas, but also us, the West, and especially that portion of it that calls itself ‘progressive’. When I saw the photos of the four men and two women killed by their captors in a dank lair in Rafah, I thought to myself: there are people in my community here in the UK who have defaced posters of these people. There are people on my streets who scrawled the word ‘coloniser’ on their faces. There are people in my profession who described the day they were kidnapped as a ‘day of celebration’. There are people in London – and New York, Berlin, Sydney – who expressed solidarity not with these six seized Jews, but with the racists who seized them.

And it made me think: it is not enough today to condemn Hamas. We must also ask how so many in the West came to share in Hamas’s twisted, bigoted hatred for these six human beings. Why so many in the West made excuses for their abduction, vandalised their likenesses and falsely called their persecution ‘resistance’. The barbarism uncovered in Rafah is on Hamas. But the Western conscience is not wholly innocent of this depraved crime.

Let us be clear: the horror in Rafah is what some progressives in the West felt ‘exhilarated’ by, it’s what they ‘celebrated’. This is Hamas, this is its ‘resistance’. All six, according to the IDF, were ‘brutally murdered’ a ‘short time’ before being found. They were: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, an Israeli-American; Alexander Lobanov, a 32-year-old father of two; Carmel Gat, a 40-year-old from Tel Aviv who was visiting her parents in the Be’eri kibbutz on the day of the 7 October pogrom; Almog Sarusi, a 27-year-old who loved ‘travelling around Israel in his white SUV with his guitar’; Eden Yerushalmi, a 24-year-old who was bartending at the Nova music festival; and Ori Danino, 25, who was about to embark on an electrical-engineering course when he was seized.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20916/gaza-ceasefire-hostages

The Biden-Harris administration apparently sees no problem with a Palestinian state being yet another terrorist state, committed to annihilating Israel — as both Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force commander General Esmail Qaani (“Israel is a cancer that must be eliminated”), and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad have straightforwardly vowed.

A ceasefire might sound as if it is a “good thing” that benefits everyone — understandably if a friend or family member is a hostage. The problem seems to be the Hamas demand that Israel should leave the “Philadelphi corridor” on the border between Gaza and Egypt, so that Hamas, backed by its patrons Qatar and Iran, can resume smuggling weapons and ammunition into Gaza, rearm, rebuild and attack again.

It is probably more convenient, for all those trying to overthrow Netanyahu, to look at him rather than at the real perpetrators: Hamas, Iran and Qatar.

Qatar, “the Trojan Horse in Washington D.C.,” has long been financing Islamic terrorist organizations, as well as bestowing more than $6 billion on US universities to teach American youths whatever Qatar’s leaders decide. Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris administration decided that these qualifications made Qatar perfect to negotiate the Gaza war on America’s behalf, the same way the administration unfathomably decided to have Russia negotiate on America’s behalf with Iran over restarting the nuclear deal.

The Biden-Harris administration seems to want Netanyahu gone to be able to work with “their” prime minister: one who presumably would be delighted not only to have a terrorist Palestinian state on his borders — a state sworn to Israel’s destruction — and who would also be delighted if Iran — also sworn to Israel’s destruction — had nuclear weapons. It is the policy embraced by Obama, so long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons “on his watch.” Down the road, however, would be an altogether different story.

What many Israelis seem unwilling or unable to see is, sadly, that even with a ceasefire, the hostages will not be released. Hamas will hold on to as many of them as they can for as long as they can, to keep them in play as a weapon.

With a ceasefire, Israel unfortunately will not get peace and will not get the hostages. The Israelis might see a few hostages at a time dribbled out, the living ones first, they hope, each one exchanged for hundreds, if not more, of convicted Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons, whose first job would be to go right back to terrorizing.

Meanwhile, the negotiations over every hostage would allow plenty of time for Iran and Hamas to bring more weapons in through the unguarded border from Egypt into Gaza, in order to rearm. The current leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, is himself a convicted terrorist who confessed to murdering four people with his own hands. Sinwar was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison when he was released, among more than 1,000 terrorists, in exchange for one Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, in 2011.

There is at least one way to get the hostages back quickly…. “Many Americans believe that they owe Qatar for its hosting of the U.S. CENTCOM base. The truth is precisely the opposite: It is Qatar that owes the U.S., for locating this base there. Without this base’s presence in the country, Qatar would disappear within less than a week – its neighbors would eat it up.” — Yigal Carmon, MEMRI, June 10, 2024.

Instead of saying, as the propagandists no doubt like, “Bring them Home,” meant to sound as if Netanyahu is hiding the hostages under the Knesset, Israelis would be better off saying, “Release the Hostages” — directed at Hamas, Qatar and Iran.

A ceasefire deal unfortunately will not bring back the hostages any time soon. Hamas will drag out each negotiation, continue attacking Israel and try to make Israelis miserable enough to give up the fight, as many seem to be doing even now.

The murder of six more Israeli hostages — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino — captured by the terrorist group Hamas appears to be leading many Israelis, along with most of their ever-gullible media (remember the Oslo Accords?) to think that if only their government would agree to a ceasefire, they would get their hostages back. Most people, at least in the West, would desperately like that — not just the American ones — all 120 of them, especially before Hamas finishes murdering them. If the Israelis really want their hostages back, however, they had better think again.

https://www.thefp.com/p/bari-weiss-dark-tunnels-and-moral?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=260347&post_

Today at The Free Press, we mourn the six innocent Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists who stole them nearly a year ago.

They are:

Eden Yerushalmi, a 24-year-old from Tel Aviv, who attended the Nova music festival with friends.

Ori Danino, a 25-year-old from Jerusalem who escaped the Nova music festival, but returned to help save others and was captured.

Alex Lobanov, 32, the head bartender at the Nova music festival, who leaves behind two children, one who was born while he was held captive.

Carmel Gat, a 40-year-old yoga instructor and occupational therapist from Tel Aviv. She had been visiting her mother in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7. Released hostages reported that Carmel had been seen practicing yoga with other hostages.

Almog Sarusi, 27, from Ra’anana, north of Tel Aviv, who attended the Nova music festival with his girlfriend. She was murdered there.

And Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, the American-Israeli citizen who lost part of his left arm reportedly fending off grenades, and was taken hostage from the Nova music festival.

Hersh Goldberg-Polin (courtesy of family)

It is that last name that will be most familiar to you.

Hersh’s father, Jon Goldberg-Polin, was one of the first people The Free Press interviewed in the hours after we learned of the October 7 massacre. Jon told us that at 8:11 a.m. that morning, he and his wife, Rachel, received two text messages from their only son. “Message number one said ‘I love you.’ Message number two said ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Jon told us on Honestly. “It’s been chaos ever since.”

https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/09/02/mcmasters-jerusalem-revelation/

Lt. Gen. (ret.) H.R. McMaster reveals in his new book that as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, he warned that there would be terrible consequences if the US embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

Well, guess what? The embassy was moved, and there weren’t any terrible consequences. So what does that tell us about all the “experts” – and there were many – who made those kinds of predictions? According to McMaster’s new memoir, “At War With Ourselves”, President Trump was ready to announce the relocation of the embassy when he visited Israel in May 2017.

But McMaster and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pushed to delay the move, because they thought there would be a massive, violent Arab reaction. Their advice succeeded, for a time: Trump held off on the relocation for another seven months before finally proceeding with it in December 2017. Looking back to see who else got it wrong is important – not because of the I-told-you-so opportunity, but because so many of those people are today still in positions of influence, or are still being quoted by the major news media as “experts.”

Ilan Goldenberg, for example. He’s a senior Middle East adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and serves as her liaison to the American Jewish community. Many media outlets are reporting that he would have a major role in US Mideast policy if Harris becomes president.

Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be “playing the role of arsonist throwing more fuel on the flames instead of calming things down,” Goldenberg told Politico. A Jewish ex-State Department official likewise invoked the dramatic danger of Arab wildfires if the embassy was moved. “It’s hard to come up with a single act that would make the Middle East burn more than it is burning right now,” Aaron David Miller declared.