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ISRAEL

France, Germany offer Israel worst advice ever to deal with latest Hamas attack By David Zukerman

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/france_germany_offer_israel_worst_advice_ever_to_deal_with_latest_hamas_attack.html

“Absorb the attack”? Really?

The lead story in The New York Times, May 20, on the demand (really) on Israel that it halt its self-defense campaign against the evil Hamas criminal entity, referred to France and Germany as “strong allies of Israel.”  Whom is The New York Times kidding?  France?  Where Jews are advised not to wear yarmulkes outdoors lest they provoke a Muslim to attack them?  With a reported millions of Muslims being accepted by the countries of Europe, how long until the streets of Europe today, resemble the streets of Europe in the Middle Ages, when a Jew strolled about a city, town or village at his peril?

And consider Europe today.  Police protection is called in, for a time, after an Islamist kills Jews — not before.  The truth remains: Islamists fear no authority in Europe when a Jew is in his line of vision.  Is there outrage when an Islamist assaults a Jew in Europe?  Not at all.

And now comes Europe again to advise the government of Israel, when Hamas or Hezb’allah rockets strike Israel — to “absorb the attack.”

Donald J. Trump would never have yielded to pressure from Europe’s anti-Semites.  How brave he was, willing to stand apart from our “NATO allies.”  Biden has demonstrated that not only is he the puppet for the Jew-haters, but he is craven in his acceptance of their demand that the proper place for the Jew is in harm’s way — even if it means letting a few hundred Gazans, here and there, serve as collateral damage.

Have the so-called “strong allies” of Israel, Macron in France and Merkel in Germany, ever denounced Hamas for putting Gazans in harm’s way, as blood sacrifice for the primary goal: killing the Jew?  Not in the slightest.

How Europe Became Pro-Israel:  The most recent fighting with Palestinians has revealed a radical change in European foreign policy that’s been years in the making. By Benjamin Haddad, the director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/20/how-europe-became-pro-israel/

By Benjamin Haddad, the director of the Future Europe Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, D.C.

Last week, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz made the unusual decision to fly the Israeli flag on official buildings in solidarity with the country facing Hamas rocket attacks on its cities. “I condemn, with the utmost firmness, the attacks against Israel from the Gaza Strip,” said the conservative chancellor. “Israel has the right to defend itself against these attacks.” Kurz is known to have court Israel in the last few years, most likely to deflect criticism for his alliance with the far-right Freedom Party of Austria. On Wednesday, the European Council agreed (minus Hungary) on a resolution calling for a cease-fire, but the Austrian chancellor isn’t an outlier among European leaders in expressing support for Israel.

Since the start of this new round of violence between Israel and Hamas, European leaders have been vocal in expressing their support for Israel’s right to defend its citizens. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called Hamas rockets “terrorist attacks,” and the German political class on the left and right, in the midst of a parliamentary campaign, has echoed her support for Israel. Green candidate and current poll leader Annalena Baerbock has called Israeli security “the national interest of the modern German state.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu acknowledged these statements of support, thanking U.S. President Joe Biden but also European leaders, specifically “the president of France, the British prime minister, the chancellor of Austria, the chancellor of Germany, and others.” Netanyahu added: “They have upheld our natural and self-evident right to defend ourselves, to act in self-defense against these terrorists who both attack civilians and hide behind civilians.”

Israel Faces Hard Political Problems After the Gaza Fighting Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/21/israel_faces_hard_political_probl

It’s hard waging war against terrorists camped out among civilians. It’s even harder when your best ally starts edging away. That was the position Israel faced after an abrupt change-of-face by the Biden White House.

Until Wednesday, the Biden team supplied the press with readouts stressing America’s “strong” and “unwavering support” for Israel, based on the president’s calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those days are over. Biden buckled under growing pressure from anti-Israel factions within the Democratic Party and some allies in Europe and the Middle East.

The administration’s revised goals were Israel’s immediate de-escalation and a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Progressives want to go further. They hope to block a huge, scheduled sale of military equipment to Israel, including Iron Dome defensive missiles. (That progressive goal is a long shot since the Biden administration publicly supports the sale.)

The administration’s pressure on Israel returns the Biden White House to Obama-era policies, much like its resumption of Obama’s policies toward Iran. The people tied to those old policies are back, too. They have learned from their mistakes and can repeat them exactly. The policies themselves have become mainstream among Democrats and represent two decades of steady effort by the party’s left wing, including some progressive Jews, led by J Street.

Netanyahu tried to resist the new White House pressure, insisting Israel would fight until it achieved its objectives. But it was difficult to hold out for long. International pressure was building, not on Hamas terrorists firing rockets at civilians but on the Jewish state defending against them. The result was a cease-fire, brokered by Egypt, that began Friday morning. Like all such arrangements, it doesn’t come with a long-term warranty. Cease-fires are fragile. In any case, it is far short of a peace deal and even farther from resolving the Palestinian conflict.

The deadly exchange of fire has drowned out public discussion of several large — and difficult — questions that confront Israel as the fighting ends. The answers to these questions will determine the political outcome of the 2021 Gaza conflict, which may be different from the military outcome.

Is the Biden Administration an Enemy of Israel and the Free World? by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17392/biden-administration-israel-enemy

Biden made no distinction between a democratic ally of the United States and a terrorist organization he did not even name. He spoke as if he did not know that the calm was broken by a terrorist organization and by no one else, and that what prevents Palestinians from having freedom, prosperity and democracy is precisely that they are ruled by terrorists and people who supports terrorism.

On April 7, a US Department of State press statement said that the Biden administration had decided to restore US financial “aid to Palestinians”, without requiring that American money not be used for terrorist purposes….

The appointment to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs of Hady Amr, a man who has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid”, and said that he was “inspired by intifada”, seemed to confirm that the Biden administration would not be particularly “pro-Israel”…. Amr met Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Ishtayya in Ramallah to negotiate the use of US financial aid to the PA while Israel was under missile fire….

In a PBS interview on April 2, one of the American negotiators, Robert Malley, announced that he wants “to remove those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal”, “so that Iran enjoys the benefits that it was supposed to enjoy”. Nothing shows that the Biden administration has changed that position.

There were no threats to stop the new funding he had promised the Palestinians until they stopped firing rockets. He did not threaten to withdraw his promise of an office in Washington DC for them.

Most unsettling of all, while Iran’s proxy, Hamas, was raining nearly 4,000 rockets and missiles into a country the size of New Jersey, the US was engaged in talks in Vienna to discuss how much money the US was prepared to give Iran – to buy more weapons to batter Israel again?

Seemingly to destabilize Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the US administration made public a report accusing the him of being responsible for the murder of the anti-Saudi writer, Jamal Khashoggi, without specifying that Khashoggi was an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch-enemy of the House of Saud.

A recent article by Michael Doran and Tony Badran on Tablet explains why Israel needs to stay on guard and be ready to act decisively. A project designed during the Obama presidency and aiming to “create a new Middle Eastern order” seems to be underway. It would place the interests of Iran over those of US allies in the Middle East, thereby leading to the hegemony in the region of Iran. The project would erode new the Abraham Accords, push Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to come to an agreement with Iran and involve “forcing Israel into a more passive posture in the face of Iran’s rising power”. Is this project that the Biden administration is now implementing?

“[I]n war and conflict, one side wins and one side loses…. Israel must do what all nations… are doing to achieve victory: beating its enemy….” — Daniel Pipes, historian, Commentary, January 2017.

The Biden administration acts as if it does not see that it puts Israel and other longtime American allies in danger; it acts as if it does not see that behind Iran and the mullahs, China is on the move.

Is the Biden administration about to seriously diminish the status of the United States and the Free World to herald in a new world order that is radical and monstrous?

May 10, 6.07 pm. Six missiles fired by Iran’s proxy militia, Hamas from the Gaza Strip fly into Israel and quickly become more numerous. Most were destroyed by the Iron Dome, but not all. Within a week more than 3,000 missiles had been fired by Hamas. Some caused deaths, injuries and destruction. Hamas’s goal was to exhaust the capabilities of the Iron Dome and cause as many civilian casualties as possible. To that end, it targeted Tel Aviv at night when people are asleep. Without the Iron Dome, there would have been thousands of deaths. Hamas has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

About Those ‘DOA’ Abraham Accords Biden Administration policy—not a failed “peace process”—is the underpinning of the current Hamas war against Israel. By Shoshana Bryen

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/20/about-those-doa-abraham-accords/

It is hard to be against a peace agreement. Really hard. But the Biden Administration is giving it a go. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki slammed Donald Trump’s policies in the Middle East and called the Israel-United Arab Emirates-Bahrain Abraham Accords “DOA.”

“We felt there was not a constructive action by the prior administration, aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival. We don’t think they did anything constructive really to bring it into the long-standing conflict in the Middle East.”

Psaki appears to be channeling Washington Post columnist Max Boot. “The clashes in recent days between Israelis and Palestinians make clear that there is no ‘peace’ and no ‘new Middle East.’ It remains the same blood-soaked mess as ever. The Abraham Accords were nice, but they did nothing to resolve underlying conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya—or the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

It is understandable that critics choose not to consider the accords in their own context. Yemen, Syria, and Libya weren’t on the table. Neither was world hunger, relief for China’s Uighurs, or the U.S. national debt. And, deliberately, neither were the Palestinians. 

In the immediate aftermath of the September 2020 signing, a horde of pundits and politicians including Samantha Power, John Kerry, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Representative Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and media including Reuters, CNN, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, the Guardian and more, spewed their litany about how much more dangerous the region had become and how the United States was doomed to fail. They are joined now by Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (again), and others.

They are wrong.

Glazov Gang: Killing Jews and Double Standards What country in the world would tolerate rockets killing its civilians?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/glazov-gang-killing-jews-and-double-standards-frontpagemagcom/

Due to YouTube Censorship, The Glazov Gang has moved to Rumble. Please SUBSCRIBE.

This new Glazov Gang episode features features Barry Nussbaum, the son of Auschwitz survivors, the founder of the American Truth Project, and a news commentator on international affairs who has regularly appeared on major television networks. His new book is Because You Asked.

Barry discusses Killing Jews and Double Standards, reflecting on the question: What country in the world would tolerate rockets killing its civilians? 

Don’t miss it!

Canada: Open Letter Lobbies Journalists on How to Cover the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict The “woke” agenda that tarnished journalism. Joan O’Callaghan

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/canada-open-letter-lobbies-journalists-how-cover-joan-ocallaghan/

A letter with nearly 1600 signatories was sent on May 14 to newsrooms across Canada, calling for greater “balance” (code for pro-Palestinian) in coverage of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas. The letter began with the observation that covering events in the Middle East is “complicated” but then goes on to imply that newsrooms are cowed by pressure from “outside groups” into favoring the Israelis. This amounted to the latest iteration of the old canard that Jews control the media, a favorite trope of the world’s antisemites. It was rather befitting to the victimhood agenda that has grown steadily to morph real journalism into becoming woke activism over time.

An examination of the signatories of this “open letter” revealed that the vast majority of names have a Middle Eastern ring to them, and most were not media people, although several of the signatories did claim to work in the media.  

The letter of course is ironic because–both nationally and internationally–most media outlets have found ways to present Israel as the villain, the bully beating up on innocent Palestinians, booting them out of their homes and dropping bombs on them.

The journalistic rot began a long time ago and is now in full flower.

Take for example, in his memoirs, Maverick Publisher – J. Patrick O’Callaghan: A Life in Newspapers (Carrick Publishing, 2015), O’Callaghan recalled an April, 1995 annual Canadian Press dinner, where Ralph Klein, former premier of Alberta, was the keynote speaker. Klein maintained that newspapers were obsessed with victim-of-the-week journalism. He cited the case of the Edmonton Journal, which in advance of an Alberta budget had prepared a document for reporters suggesting how they might contextualize the budget items. At the head of the list was the proposal to put the case for those who would be “victimized” by certain budget cuts. In other words, reporters were expected to go out and find “victims.”

Biden’s Handlers Get the Ceasefire They Wanted All for the benefit of Hamas. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bidens-handlers-get-ceasefire-they-wanted-robert-spencer/

He demanded it, and he got it: CNN reported Wednesday that according to the White House, Old Joe Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “‘that he expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire’ in the raging violence. The statement was a signal Biden is losing patience with Netanyahu, a leader he has known for four decades.” It’s hard to believe the Most Beloved President in History could hold that coherent a conversation, but whatever may be the truth behind this, Biden’s handlers got their ceasefire. According to Reuters on Thursday, “Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said his security cabinet had voted unanimously in favour of a ‘mutual and unconditional’ Gaza truce proposed by Egypt.” Nevertheless, the chief beneficiary of the respite is not Israel, but Hamas.

Taher Al-Nono, media adviser to Hamas top dog Ismail Haniyeh, sounded a decidedly tepid note with a hint of a threat, saying: “The Palestinian resistance will abide by this agreement as long as the Occupation (Israel) does the same.” Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, was less successful in hiding his enthusiasm: “With the help of God, we were able to humiliate the enemy, its fragile entity and its savage army.”

Abu Ubaida doesn’t have anything he can point to in order to justify this claim of victory. Netanyahu stated: “They received blows that they didn’t expect. And I have no doubt we set them back years.” There is no reason to doubt his word. While Hamas did succeed in firing more rockets at Israel than ever before, most of them were stopped by the Iron Dome Missile Defense System; few did serious damage. 

However, the chief indication to which Abu Ubaida can point in order to justify his claim that Israel has been humiliated is the fact of the ceasefire itself. This is because an Islamic army, which Hamas undoubtedly is, doesn’t ask for or want a ceasefire unless it is losing. And Hamas, according to Israeli Intelligence Minister Eli Cohen, was “begging for a ceasefire.” 

‘Cut off their heads’: Hamas leader repeats murderous directive to kill Jews Hamas previously walked back similar comments from a leader who said all Jews should be slaughtered. By Susan Katz Keating

https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/cut-their-heads-hamas-leader-re

A senior Hamas leader this month joined a years-long chorus from fellow extremists telling Palestinians to kill Jews using multiple methods, including cutting off their heads with knives, according to translated videos.

In a video released on May 17, the Israel Defense Forces portrayed the latest such demand, from Fathi Hammad, a member of the Hamas Political Bureau. 

“People of Jerusalem, we want you to cut off the heads of the Jews with knives,” Hammad shouted while speaking at a May 7 rally. The video was translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI). “With your hand, cut their artery from here,” Hammad said. “A knife costs five shekels. Buy a knife, sharpen it, put it there, and just cut off [their heads].”

Leaders of the militant group have for years alternately issued and retracted the deadly instructions. Hammad five years ago called for Palestinians around the world to murder Jews.

“All of you 7 million Palestinians abroad, enough of the warming up,” Hammad said at a 2019 protest near Gaza. “You have Jews everywhere, and we must attack every Jew on the globe by way of slaughter and killing, if God permits.”

Those comments brought condemnation, including from Hamas.

“These statements do not represent the movement’s official positions and consistent, adopted policies that stipulate that our conflict is with the occupation, which is occupying our land and sullying our holy sites, and not with Jews around the world or with Judaism as a religion,” the organization said in a statement posted on its website.

The IDF in its Monday video showed that Hamas leaders consistently have called for Jews to be killed.

The deputy speaker of the Hamas parliament, Ahmad Bahr, in 2012 invoked a wide-ranging curse on his perceived enemy.

After the Israeli Cease-Fire Islamist radicals saw how Democratic support for Israel has eroded.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-the-israeli-cease-fire-11621550460?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

As we went to press, it looked like Israel and Hamas would put down their arms—for now. The truce comes less than two weeks after the terrorist group commenced its 4,000-rocket barrage on Israeli civilians—the most intense since it took over the Gaza strip in 2007. Israel’s leadership wouldn’t have approved a cease-fire if it hadn’t accomplished most of what it wanted through air strikes, but the question now is what lessons the region’s players take from the short war and the world’s response.

The cease-fire has no strings attached, so neither Hamas nor Israel won a strategic victory. Israel says Hamas suffered the destruction of its tunnel network and the death of many military leaders. The group may lack the capacity to launch another major war on Israel, which it wants to annihilate, for some time.

Israel’s casualties were more limited because of its Iron Dome anti-missile technology. Yet Hamas inflicted a blow to Israeli democracy by showing that it could foment ethnic violence among Arab and Jewish Israelis, both of whom rioted during the conflict. That’s a tragedy, especially after Arab parties have advanced in recent years within Israel’s democracy.

Meanwhile Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran saw that Democratic support for Israel in the U.S. has declined. We credited President Biden this week with not trying to dictate Israel’s security decisions, but he soon bent rhetorically to his party’s left, saying Wednesday he “expected a significant deescalation today.”