RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nysun.com/article/some-things-are-unimaginable

Some things are unimaginable because they extend beyond the boundaries of what we allow ourselves to imagine. Yet videos streaming out of Israel over the last two days are tragic reminders that nothing is unimaginable. Jews should already know this, but prosperity has a way of muting memory and encouraging us to live in denial.

Brutal reality has now breached our moated American Jewish minds. The temptation is to avert the eyes. But this is the moment to look directly at barbarism and allow it to change us.

It isn’t possible to watch the video of 25-year-old Noa Argamani being abducted on the back of a motorcycle and to escape her voice crying out in your head at 4 a.m. There has been no movie about pain or fear ever made that has approximated the soul-shredding sound this desperate, innocent girl made as evil came to take her away. 

Yaacov Argamani sobbed on Israeli television after learning of his daughter’s fate. As he spoke, his eyes closed tightly as if he were trying to squeeze the horror of it all out of his mind. 

Another video shows a foreign worker lying on a cement floor. His neon yellow T-shirt is soaked in blood. He appears to be dead but then lifts his hand to his temple as if to protect it.

A garden hoe appears in the frame and rests for a moment across the neck of the victim, marking its target. Familiar calls of “Allahu Akbar” are heard as the hoe is raised and then slams down with precision. This is another sound that will never leave us. It is heard several more times as the murderer hacks away repeatedly, attempting not just to kill his victim but to demonstrate his consuming hatred for his existence.

So many vicious, upending scenes of depravity have spread across social media, and each one drags us farther out of our fog. “This is a pogrom,” some caption their posts. “Butchers, Nazis.” Before this, we were calling Americans with red baseball caps Nazis. That is how detached we were.

https://twitter.com/VDHanson/status/1711526451227619620?ref_

They Kill, While Our Government Tweets and Deletes…. If wild reports are true that the inhuman Hamas will execute dozens of civilian hostages, and if it is further accurate that there are rumored Americans among them—and if Americans then are to be executed by Hamas—aside from a military response, the United States will have to change radically its policies in the Middle East.

In the last 32 months they have been proven utterly disastrous. Hamas has gone full ISIS, and is now in addition reportedly beheading captured Israeli soldiers. Note that the Mahmoud Abbas, “president” for life of the  PNA, and a recipient of U.S. aid, has been cheering on Hamas. So of course have the usual suspects, such as the hard Western Left, the Ivy-League pampered student crowd, the Squad constituencies, the Taliban, Qatar, especially Iran, the parent of the current mass killing, and even Turkey.

Is it the mass mutilations, the rapes, the desecrations of corpses, the beheadings, the murdering of women, the elderly, and children, that so excites them all—as if they were gleefully watching sacrificial victims marched up to the top of an Aztec temple in ancient Tenochtitlán?

Or rather is their frenzy due to unspoken terror that Hamas at last has gone too far in its premodern savagery? There are now no more of its patrons with the power to call off the IDF. And so they may finally get the existential war that Hamas always for decades had bragged about and begged for. And the proper response to all this here in the U.S.? All monies to the West Bank and Gaza should be immediately cut off.

The Iran transfers, if our State Department’s pleas are correct that they are not yet finalized, should be stopped immediately. Sanctions and embargos should be placed on all Iranian exports. The alternative would be to keep subsidizing those who provide the wherewithal for murderers, rapists and precivilizational mutilators.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/an-existential-evil?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

At some point, past experience tells us, pressure from public opinion is likely to become intense over the number of civilians who will be said to have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. 

In previous wars, Israel has been accused of flouting international law by wilfully killing civilians and committing war crimes. This has been the opposite of the truth. The IDF (Israel Defence Forces) has always gone to greater lengths than any other army in the world to protect enemy civilians as far as possible, and its ratio of civilians to combatants killed has been far lower than any other country has achieved.

This pressure, however, imposed most critically by the US, has repeatedly forced Israel to curtail its military operations against the Gaza terrorist infrastructure.  

In US President Biden’s otherwise emotional and supportive speech yesterday, there was a lightly buried warning to this effect in which he said he had discussed with Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu “how democracies like Israel and the United States are stronger and more secure when we act according to the rule of law”. 

Israel has made clear that it is now taking the gloves off. Whereas in previous wars it aimed to degrade the capability of Hamas, now it intends to destroy it forever so that never again can it perpetrate the mass murder of civilians it achieved in last Saturday’s pogrom — an infernal aim it continues to prosecute through its rocket and other attacks. 

Dear MRC Supporter,

As a rule, I don’t make appeals for anything outside of the Media Research Center universe simply because that must always be my priority, and our little enterprise must always be fed.

But there are exceptions when there are emergencies. And this is an emergency.

You are well aware of the atrocities being committed by Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists against the Israeli people. These are not just Jews being targeted but Christians and even Muslims if they don’t abide by the terrorists’ extremist religion. 

But with the Jews, it’s different. Their stated goal is to eradicate the entire Jewish state. Their stated goal is exactly what Adolf Hitler wanted. 

He did it with gas chambers. They are doing it by butchering men, women and children with indiscriminate bombing, shooting, raping and slitting throats. The terrorists are even using their own women and children as shields. 

Think about this for a moment. Imagine you are a father, or a mother, and return to a kibbutz to find that your little baby has been beheaded by these monsters.

That is exactly what these monsters did to 40 little babies.

Israel is fighting for its very existence – and the fight is about to become far, far worse as the ground war begins. And if they’re attacked by Hezbollah from the north, with Iran pouring in weaponry, they will be virtually surrounded.

What can we do to help? Our government can and is supporting the Israeli cause, and that is good. But we as Americans need to do our part individually as well.

This is a humanitarian crisis. Hundreds of thousands of Jews are being displaced. They need everything – food, clothing, transportation, medical help. Their soldiers fighting, wounded, dying – they need emergency medical treatment. 

I think we are all morally bound to help Israel in her existential moment of need.

How can we help? Over the past two days, I have done some extensive research, talking to top Jewish friends (you know one or two of them!) and asking for their recommendations for those organizations most in need with the best reputations.

These are their recommendations. All funds raised will go directly to them.

Friends of the IDF provide support to soldiers in the Israeli military. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site.

Lev Echad recruits emergency volunteers and provides them with critical funding. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site.

Natal is the Israel Trauma and Resiliency Center, providing treatment and support to victims of war trauma. Click on this link, and it will take you to the site. 

How much should you donate? Listen to your heart. Think about these poor, poor people who want nothing more than to survive. Then, follow your heart.

If you could give $25, $50, $100, $1,000 or more, please do so. My wife and I are sending $1,000. I only wish it could be more. 

God bless the people of Israel. God bless America. 

God bless you.

https://www.aol.com/american-mom-67-spent-her-081059283.html

HEFAYIM KIBBUTZ, Israel − They exchanged text messages and emojis. Brief status updates with words of encouragement. A picture of the beloved family dog, Tutsi.

Until no more messages came.

And then, Cindy Flash, an American, and her Israeli husband, Igal, vanished into the violence, presumed kidnapped by Hamas.

Four days after Hamas attacked Israel, more than 100 Israelis and possibly dozens of foreign nationals are thought to be held captive in the Gaza Strip. At least 14 U.S. citizens have been killed and an unknown number are still unaccounted for.

Flash, 67, originally from St. Paul, Minnesota, is one of them. She lives in Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near Gaza, where some of the most harrowing and grisly stories have been emerging over the past few days.

“They are breaking down the safe room door,” Flash said in one of her final messages to her daughter Keren, 34. “We need someone to come by the house right now.” Keren had been communicating with her parents from a few houses away.