RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21037/political-elites-mourn-hezbollah

[T]he West’s political “elites” condemned Israel for defending itself by targeting Hezbollah’s leadership.

There was no mention of international law for Hezbollah’s unprovoked, year-long attacks: bombardments of missiles and attack drones every day at a country smaller than New Jersey.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell lamented Israel’s continued successful attempts at destroying one of Iran’s proxy armies.

When Israel took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the world’s most dangerous arch-terrorists, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres could barely hold back his disappointment, counterfactually calling Hezbollah’s unprovoked war against Israel and the IDF’s response a “cycle of violence.”

Only Argentina’s President Javier Milei displayed a reaction fitting the removal of a terrorist mass murderer…

Israel, as has been noted, is doing the entire world an enormous service by taking out Hezbollah.

Iran, just since October 2023, through its militias in Syria and Iraq, has launched more than 160 attacks on the US forces in the Middle East.

[W]hen Israel killed Ibrahim Aqil, the mastermind of the 1983 attacks and a member of Hezbollah’s Jihad Council, its highest military body, the US could not even bring itself to thank its ally.

The world’s political elites apparently cannot forgive Israel for seeking to defend itself, and rid the world of terrorists working to destroy both America and Western civilization. Could these elites, wittingly or not, be working towards the same result?

It took the world community nearly a year to condemn the war in Lebanon, but they got the wrong mark. Instead of condemning Hezbollah, the world’s largest Iranian proxy terrorist army, with an estimated 40,000 – 50,000 fighters, for starting a year-long war on October 8, 2023 in support of the terrorist organization Hamas, the West’s political “elites” condemned Israel for defending itself by targeting Hezbollah’s leadership.

The UN Security Council called an emergency session on September 20, during which UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told ambassadors that he was “appalled by the breadth and impact” of the attacks on Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/21/the-tragedy-of-palestine/

That footage of Yahya Sinwar’s last, gasping breaths before he was justly shuffled off this mortal coil was extraordinary. Here we had the death agony of a fascist broadcast to the world. Crooked and hunched in a chair coated in dust, in a building bombed almost to nothing, he stared forlornly at his final foe: an Israeli drone. He used his one working arm – the other withered by injury – to toss a stick in the drone’s direction. It was a suitably primitive gesture from the leader of a gang of medieval militants who made the grave error of starting a war with the Jewish State. The stick did nothing, of course. Moments later, their drone having confirmed the presence of a terrorist, the IDF fired a tank shell into the ruins and the architect of the bloodiest pogrom since the Nazis was dead.

Not since the execution of Benito Mussolini by the Italian Resistance had the world been granted such a battle-side view of the death of a fascist. We have all seen the photograph of Mussolini hanging by his feet in Milan in 1945 following his summary execution by partisans and the pelting of his body with rotten vegetables by crowds of righteous, free Italians. Now we have seen the execution of the man who organised the largest slaughter of Jews in 80 years. It was less chaotic – the IDF troops who happened upon Sinwar’s hideout observed his body but did not desecrate it – but no less momentous. A little over a year since Hamas’s pogrom, justice had been served against the plotter of that racist outrage. The young Jews of the IDF had toppled the most notorious Jew-killer of our age.

Yet there was a tint of tragedy to the events of last week. Not in the death of Sinwar – no one should mourn a pogromist. But in that drone footage we also glimpsed the consequences of Sinwar’s murderous vanity. All around him we saw the wages of his futile war against the Jews. We saw the devastation of a patch of land, and of a people, that Sinwar clearly viewed as expendable entities, as mere chess pieces in his game of hate against the Jewish nation. It was brutally confirmed: courtesy of the hijacking of the Palestinian issue by the Islamist demagogues of Hamas, the very idea of Palestine is now as pulverised as that building Sinwar perished in.

The response of the woke West to the death of Sinwar has been mad, even by their standards. In the grimmest nooks of online Israelophobia, there is actual mourning. Even mainstream voices are saying Israel lied and Sinwar wasn’t in fact scurried in a tunnel underground but was on the frontline, fighting with his men. Shorter version: hero. Others say it is a grave folly on Israel’s part to think it can crush a ‘national liberation movement’ by bumping off its leaders. Honestly, the speed with which Western leftists went from saying ‘The only good fascist is a dead fascist’ to saying ‘We can’t just kill everyone in Hamas’ has been mindblowing. From puffed-up anti-fascists who fancied themselves the heirs to the International Brigades to snivelling weepers at the coffins of the fallen fascists of Hamas – it would be funny if it were not so tragic.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/very-concerning-mike-johnson-reacts-to-leak-of-u-s-intel-on-israels-plans-to-strike-iran/

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) is alarmed about the leak of highly classified U.S. intelligence documents on Israel’s plans to strike against Iran.

“The leak is very concerning. There’s some serious allegations being made there, an investigation underway, and I’ll get a briefing on that in a couple of hours,” Johnson said Sunday during an interview on CNN’s State of the Union.

Johnson is currently undertaking a swing-state tour to help Republicans fight to preserve the party’s extremely narrow House majority. He will receive a classified briefing on the intelligence leak Sunday and spoke with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“I talked to my friend Bibi Prime Minister Netanyahu, yesterday to encourage him,” Johnson said, while reaffirming U.S. support for Israel’s multi-front war in the Middle East.

“If he had taken Joe Biden’s advice, I think they’d be in a much weaker position right now. I think the United States needs to stand unequivocally with our ally there right now,” Johnson added. He called for a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran and criticized the Biden administration for trying to micromanage Israel’s military strategy.

The leaked U.S. intelligence documents started circulating online Friday when a pro-Iran account posted them on Telegram and claimed to have received them from a source inside the intel community, according to multiple reports. The top-secret documents were only meant to be seen by “Five Eyes” U.S. allies: Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Canada.

One of the documents appears to be an intelligence report created by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and contains details on munitions transfers. Another document appears to be attributed to the National Security Agency and shows Israeli air force exercises.

https://www.aol.com/us-investigating-unauthorized-release-classified-001118308.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is investigating an unauthorized release of classified documents that assess Israel’s plans to attack Iran, three U.S. officials told The Associated Press. A fourth U.S. official said the documents appear to be legitimate.

The documents are attributed to the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, and note that Israel was still moving military assets in place to conduct a military strike in response to Iran’s blistering ballistic missile attack on Oct. 1. They were sharable within the “Five Eyes,” which are the U.S., Great Britain, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

The documents, which are marked top secret, were posted to the Telegram messaging app and first reported by CNN and Axios. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The investigation is also examining how the documents were obtained — including whether it was an intentional leak by a member of the U.S. intelligence community or obtained by another method, like a hack — and whether any other intelligence information was compromised, one of the officials said. As part of that investigation, officials are working to determine who had access to the documents before they were posted, the official said.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-harris-admin-spied-on-israel-to-learn-iran-attack-plans-leaked-them-to-iran/

The media has been filled with anonymous ‘leaks’ and ‘quotes’ from Biden-Harris administration officials regarding Israel’s attack plans on Iran. It was all too obvious that these leaks were deliberate and orchestrated.

The leaks now appear to have escalated to directly passing material on to Iran.

Senior American officials voiced serious concern on Saturday following the leak of two US intelligence documents allegedly outlining Israel’s preparations for a potential strike on Iran. These documents were published by a Telegram account linked to Iran.

While both the US Department of Defense and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on the leaked documents, they did not deny their authenticity.

The leak occurred on Friday when the Middle East Spectator Telegram channel claimed it had received documents about Israel’s strike preparations from a source within the US intelligence community.

Is that an impossible scenario?

Rob Malley, Biden’s Iran envoy, is under FBI investigation for mishandling classified documents. Much of the State Department covered for him, lying to Congress and foreign officials.

And then there’s Ariane Tabatabai, the Chief of Staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations, an Iranian immigrant who was collaborating with the Iranian Foreign Ministry back in 2014 and ran her congressional testimony past Iran.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21035/biden-harris-owe-netanyahu-apology

“Again and again we see that Israel absolutely made the right call in not heeding the Biden administration and the rest of the world’s insistence that the IDF not invade Rafah.” — Lahav Harkov, Israeli journalist, X, October 17, 2024.

“Pretty rich after a year of undermining Netanyahu, saying he MUST go to a ceasefire, MUST deescalate, trying to stop Israel from going into Rafah WHERE SINWAR WAS KILLED, and Kamala boycotting his joint address to Congress – now Biden & Harris have the nerve to congratulate him for setting the path to peace. I’m sure the phone call sounds something like ‘You were right Bibi [Netanyahu], we apologize,'” — US Rep. Mike Waltz, X, October 18, 2024

Israel’s killing Sinwar and destroying Hamas’s military infrastructure in Rafah sadly show how steadfastly the Biden-Harris administration was trying to prevent Israel from achieving victory over the Iran-backed Islamist murderers and rapists responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust.

Netanyahu deserves credit for ignoring the warnings and threats by Biden and his senior officials. Thanks to Netanyahu, Hamas has been significantly debilitated and Sinwar has been eliminated, making the Middle East a safer place. It now remains to be seen whether the Biden-Harris administration will reconsider its failed foreign policies and apologize to the Israeli prime minister for attempting to undermine his efforts to combat terrorism and bring more security and stability not only to Israel, but the entire Middle East as well.
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration spent weeks warning Israel not to enter the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where many of the leaders of the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were believed to be hiding. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had prepared to enter the city as part of a counterterrorism offensive to destroy Hamas’s military capabilities and rescue some of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by the terrorist group on October 7, 2023.

https://www.jns.org/idf-still-hasnt-internalized-the-tunnel-threat-experts-say/

Tunnels have proven to be a critical threat to the Jewish state. While the Israel Defense Forces certainly hasn’t ignored them, it has been slow to grasp their strategic significance.

Some argue that it still hasn’t.

“I still don’t see the necessary change in the IDF’s worldview that would allow us to better deal with this phenomenon of underground warfare,” Yehuda Kfir, a civil engineer and researcher of subterranean warfare, told JNS.

Professor Joel Roskin, a geomorphologist at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, has reached the same conclusion.

Perhaps the best supporting example is that when the IDF built its defensive “smart wall” (completed in 2021) between Israel and the Gaza Strip, it continued to let Hamas build all the underground infrastructure it pleased as long as it stayed on its side of the fence.

The resulting underground city in Gaza, from which Hamas could command and control its forces, send them out to attack and recall them to shelter in place, has served to prolong the war and prevent Israel from saving the remaining hostages.

It allowed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to elude Israeli forces for more than a year. Sinwar himself (along with 1,026 others) was released from Israeli prison in 2011 in exchange for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit—who had been kidnapped by terrorists who emerged from a tunnel.

https://dailycaller.com/2024/10/18/opinion-israel-wisely-not-listen-biden-harris-shoshana-bryen/

The elimination of Yahya Sinwar improved the already-joyful Sukkot holiday for millions of Israelis and Jews and their supporters around the world. In all likelihood, it will also irritate President Joe Biden, as the Hamas leader was killed in Rafah, where he demanded Israel not enter under threat of an arms embargo and a warning by Vice President Kamala Harris that it was impossible.

Israel, wisely, didn’t listen.

It will also irritate Qatar, a regional partner of both Iran and the United States. Qatar has been hosting Hamas leadership in very swanky quarters in Doha while insisting that Sinwar, hiding under the ravaged streets of Gaza, held the key to a hostage release. If he ever did, he no longer does.

And Iran will be shaken by one more setback in its pursuit of victory in a broad religious war against Israel and the United States and their allies.

How did we get here? A reminder is useful: The Hamas orgy of rape, torture, mutilation and murder was accompanied by the transport of 241 people from Israel to the Gaza Strip — most living, some already dead. According to the International Humanitarian Law Database, hostage-taking is a war crime.

The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) entered Gaza with guns blazing — destroying vast tunnel networks and military facilities that Hamas had built under the civilian population of Gaza City (also defined as a war crime under IHL). One of the announced aims of the IDF entry was the return of the hostages.

The U.S. was, apparently, unhappy with the intensity of military operations. In early November, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested that Israel use “smaller bombs,” try “targeted assassinations,” and offer Hamas a “humanitarian pause.” Israel declined the first two on military grounds and said the third was only possible after the hostages were released.