RUTHFULLY YOURS

 https://www.commentary.org/john-podhoretz/israel-two-front-crisis/?vgo_ee=

Joe Biden did something extraordinarily beneficial at the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war: He moved two aircraft carriers  to the Mediterranean and parked them right off the shores of Lebanon. The purpose was unmistakable. America was telling Hezbollah to keep quiet and stay out of it while Israel went to war with Hamas down south. It didn’t quite work, since intermittent rocketry still led Israel to evacuate much of its northernmost population. But it worked well enough.

Something happened quietly a few months ago. The carriers left. The USS Gerald Ford returned to Norfolk. The USS Eisenhower was redeployed to the Red Sea to deal with the shipping crisis. And guess what? Without American deterrence, Hezbollah has been emboldened, the more so as time has gone on.

Another 70,000 Israelis have been newly evacuated from the North as bombardments from Lebanon have become extraordinarily savage. The town of Kiryat Shmoneh is on fire. A Druze village was unmercifully attacked. Israel is wracked with uncertainty. It cannot allow Hezbollah’s depradations to continue. It must respond. It must restore deterrence by raising the cost to Hezbollah of its actions. But it’s still got Rafah to finish. And it’s still trying to navigate the weird situation of the past two weeks, in which an “Israeli proposal” for a ceasefire and hostage release created a new sense of urgency for negotiations with Hamas—a proposal offered and re-offered that Hamas has, by my count, now rejected five different times.

Joe Biden made this all public with his strange speech “accepting” Israel’s proposal to which he then doodled a conclusion on top that said “end of war end of war” like Annette Funicello in a beach party movie writing “Mrs Frankie Avalon” over and over on her chemistry notebook. For nearly two weeks now, America has said the ball is in Hamas’ court because the Israeli proposal is so good (while Biden and others say Bibi wants to keep the war going because he’s mean or something). Hamas has replied, in effect, “well, if it’s in our court, we’re keeping the ball. Drop dead.” And still the Bidenites keep on, insisting if Hamas wants a good future for the Palestinian people it will accept the deal. What does Hamas have to do to convince these supposed experts that it has no interest in a “good future for the Palestinian people”—that what it wants are dead Jews and a crippled Israel on its way to destruction?

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/06/why_should_israel_sign_on_to_biden_s_hideous_ceasefire_dea.html

Joe Biden has a way of giving ceasefires a bad name.So when he first proposed his ceasefire bill for Israel and the Hamas terrorists, Hamas and its crummy little ally, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, didn’t have much problem signing on.

The ceasefire would be great for them, allowing the to regroup for the next round against Israel. Israel, which by now is winning its war with its hostage rescue, is supposed to forget about that success and just give the terrorists a mulligan.

Now the United Nations Security Council, with the exception of Russia, has signed on, too. (Russia said it didn’t have enough information as to what the heck this thing was about.)

Here’s what little is known about the bill, according to the Associated Press:

Biden’s May 31 announcement of the new proposal said it would begin with an initial six-week cease-fire and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas in Gaza and the return of Palestinian civilians to all areas in the territory.

Phase one also requires the safe distribution of humanitarian assistance “at scale throughout the Gaza Strip,” which Biden said would lead to 600 trucks with aid entering Gaza every day.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/11/why-hamas-must-be-defeated/

Israel’s operation to free four hostages in Nuseirat, central Gaza may be dominating media coverage of the Israel-Hamas war at the moment. But the Israel Defence Forces’ operations in Rafah will be headlining the news again very soon.

This particular Gazan city is now Hamas’s final stronghold. The IDF has made significant inroads there, surrounding Rafah’s centre and seizing more than 75 per cent of the Philadelphi Corridor border with Egypt, which Hamas uses to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip.

Yet, the hostage crisis aside, Gaza is actually a tactical sideshow for Israel. The genocidal terrorists of Hamas certainly need to be militarily diminished and removed from power. But Israel faces far more serious strategic threats from elsewhere.

There is Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia based in Lebanon. Since October last year, the IDF has struck roughly 4,000 Hezbollah targets within Lebanon, and Hezbollah has fired over 4,500 rockets into Israel in return. Northern Israel has been ablaze with wildfires from downed rockets. As it stands, 60,000 Israelis have been internally displaced thanks to the threat of these rocket attacks.

Yemen’s Houthis, another Iranian proxy, also pose a significant threat. Their ongoing attacks on shipping in the Gulf in support of Hamas threaten to choke off the Suez Canal.

Then there’s Iran itself. As a sign of its intent, it launched a large-scale drone and missile attack on Israel in April. It is also on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons.

Beyond Iran and its ‘axis of resistance’, Israel also faces challenges from Qatar and Turkey. Both continue to support Palestine on the international stage with funds, strategic direction and sympathetic news media.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20686/iran-burns-middle-east

Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron came to Jerusalem, where he told Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in Gaza. “The ordeal of the Palestinians in Gaza must end,” Macron said, without even bothering to demand the release of the remaining hostages as a precondition for his fever-dream of a ceasefire. So far, Hamas has rejected all proposals but one, and that came only after extreme military, not diplomatic, persuasion.

World leaders like Macron play a game of “pretend.” According to it, the situation in the Middle East is an issue between Israel and the Palestinians; and if just that is resolved by establishing of a new Palestinian terrorist state, “peace” will drift down upon the region. Of course, the idea is demented, as the world leaders are undoubtedly aware, but they continue to propose it – but only to the victim, Israel, which was attacked without provocation and is still being attacked; never to Hamas, Qatar or Iran, the parties that ignited the war. The ceasefire that the world claims it wants could be delivered this week if Iran and Qatar seriously ordered their proxies to stop, and Hamas and Hezbollah laid down their weapons.

Clearly Iran and Qatar have no intention of doing any such thing: they undoubtedly see their job as keeping their proxies in power to be able to strike again.

World leaders, however, are not demanding that Iran or its proxies stand down. The main reason Ireland, Norway and Spain have recognized a borderless Palestinian terrorist state is that they do not have to live with the consequences. Maybe Spain would also like to recognize a State of Catalonia? Ireland, even at the height of the “Troubles” in Northern Ireland, never demanded that all the Welsh, Scots and English leave Britain, to have it peopled only by Irish Catholics.

Conspicuously, the same Macron who is ordering Israel to lay down its weapons in Gaza has been silent when it comes to asking that of Hamas and Iran.

Iran’s proxy Hezbollah already is the main power inside Lebanon; a new ineffectual border agreement will not change that. Furthermore, a border agreement is not what Biden wants. Biden’s policies, like Obama’s, are all about strengthening Iran in every way, including allowing it to fully realize its nuclear ambitions.

“Most importantly, these profits have enabled Iran to accelerate completing its nuclear weapons program, if it has not already done so and is not just being paid to stay quiet before the US presidential election this November.” — Majid Rafizadeh, Gatestone Institute, June 1, 2024.

Iran’s terrorist proxy Hezbollah, having fired thousands of rockets, guided anti-tank missiles and exploding drones into Israel since October, has lately ratcheted up its attacks even more, killing and wounding Israelis and igniting massive wildfires that have so far consumed more than 3,500 acres of farmland, forest, brush.

For months, a steady stream of world leaders has flocked to Israel to pressure it not to defend itself. Israel has now been attacked incessantly for eight months by Iran and its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon: Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Since October 7, 2023, they have rained down more than 10,000 rockets, missiles and attack-drones on a democratic country smaller than New Jersey, presumably in attempts to obliterate it, or at least cause mass slaughter.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/06/10/the-racism-of-never-blaming-hamas-for-anything/

So rescuing hostages is a war crime now. A ‘grave, grave war crime’, in fact. That’s according to the Guardian’s Owen Jones who is outraged that IDF troops used a humanitarian truck to sneak into the town of Nuseirat where they rescued four of their hostages from the clutches of Hamas and its local heavies. Kenneth Roth, formerly of Human Rights Watch, is also fuming over the IDF’s Trojan Horse antics, reminding Israel that it has a legal duty ‘not to disguise soldiers as civilians’. These people are nuts. What do they expect the IDF to do? Knock on the doors of the fascists holding their compatriots and say: ‘Can we have our Jews back, please?’

There is frothing anger online over Israel’s rescue operation in Nuseirat. It is bloody proof of Israeli deceit, people are saying. From the ‘war crime’ of troops wearing civilian disguise to the subsequent streetfighting and airstrikes that caused many civilian deaths, this was a wicked massacre, says the anti-Israel set. They’re in agreement with Hamas, which has accused Israel of carrying out a ‘complex war crime’ in Nuseirat. Just one thing is missing from all this boiling commentary: any acknowledgement whatsoever of Hamas’s responsibility for bringing this hellish situation about. When is Hamas going to get some credit for its evil?

From what we know, the raid of Nuseirat seems to have been a difficult, daring strike. It was given the name ‘Seeds of Summer’. It had been planned in great detail, with the IDF even building mock-ups of the two apartment buildings they believed the four hostages were being held in, in order that they might train for all eventualities. It is reported that the special forces were disguised as displaced Gazans. They told locals they were moving into the apartment buildings. But once inside they started their op, taking out the men who were guarding the hostages and taking the hostages to freedom.

When Hamas clocked what was happening it fired on the IDF troops, reportedly with AK-47s, rocket-propelled grenades, explosive devices and mortar rounds. A battle ensued. Israeli airstrikes were called in. And many died. Fewer than a hundred, according to Israel; more than 250 according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.

All the fingers are being pointed at Israel. Not only by the usual suspects of the Israelophobic ‘left’ but by the mainstream media, too. ‘An Israeli operation rescues four hostages and kills scores of Palestinians’, said CNN’s headline. The BBC all but made itself an outpost of Hamas propaganda with its early headline on the raid. ‘Gaza health ministry says Israeli hostage rescue killed 274 Palestinians’, it announced to the millions who peruse the BBC for their news. Here was the public broadcaster splashing not with the liberation of four Jews from the captivity of a racist terror group, but with Hamas’s self-serving claim that Israel, and Israel alone, caused the civilian deaths in Nuseirat.

The political class stooped even lower. There is ‘outrage’ in European political circles over this latest ‘massacre’ in Gaza, reports the Guardian. The EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, called it ‘another massacre of civilians’. Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories, said the Nuseirat raid is proof of Israel’s ‘genocidal intent’. She accused Israel of killing ‘at least 200 Palestinians, including children’, all while ‘perfidiously hiding in an aid truck’. This was ‘humanitarian camouflage’ for genocide, she thundered.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20690/palestinian-civilians-complicit-in-hamas-crimes

If groups do not want their civilians killed during hostage rescue operations, they should not start unprovoked wars, then complain when they are hit back. They also should not take hostages, then hide them among the civilian population. It is not complicated.
The Palestinian families can hold only themselves accountable for the scores of Gazans who died during the rescue operation. Those families were not coerced or threatened into keeping the hostages inside their homes. The exact opposite is true: They were delighted to help Hamas because they support the terrorist group.
Unsurprisingly, Abdallah [Al-Jamal, a Gazan journalist who imprisoned three male hostages in his home] also worked for the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera network, which has long been serving as a de facto mouthpiece for Hamas and other Islamist terror groups.
Abdallah’s most recent article, dated June 3, was headlined: “My House Will Always Be Open – Stories from the Gaza Siege.
Indeed, the Palestinian journalist’s house was open – but only for hostages kidnapped by Palestinian murderers, thugs and rapists from a music festival on October 7.
The Biden administration and those in the West who have been crying about the “innocent” and “uninvolved” civilians killed and injured since the beginning of the war initiated by Hamas should direct their anger towards the Palestinians, not Israel, for aiding and abetting murderers, rapists, and kidnappers.
“Even if they were [coerced and threatened], what would it have taken to get into contact with anyone from the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) and say, ‘I’m being forced to hold hostages in my house; please come get them out and take my family with them.’ These families made the same choice hundreds of thousands of Gazans made and continue to make daily. They choose to help Hamas, they choose to hate Jews, they choose to participate in the killing and torture of Israelis, and they continue to support a murderous terrorist organization even if it means the death of them and their entire families.” –Raylan Givens, X, June 9, 2024

We must also not forget the thousands of “ordinary” Palestinians, to many of whom Israel had given work permits, who crossed the border into Israel on October 7 and took part in the crimes against Israelis.
The Israeli rescue operation serves as a reminder that Israel is continuing to do everything possible to save its citizens, while Hamas – with the help of many “ordinary” Palestinians — is doing its utmost to save itself, including sacrificing its own citizens.

The courageous Israeli operation that resulted in the rescue of four Israeli hostages on June 8 has confirmed what many Israelis and Palestinians have known for some months: that Palestinian civilians were, and continue to be, complicit in the crimes carried out by the terrorist organization Hamas prior to October 7, 2023, and onward.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-rescues-hostages-world-mourns-deaths-of-hamas-supporters/

In a daring raid on Saturday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Police, and Israel Security Agency (ISA) rescued four hostages who had been in the clutches of Hamas terrorists since the barbaric October 7 attacks: Noa Argamani, 25; Almog Meir Jan, 21,; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40. Decent people everywhere rejoiced, while Hamas apologists in the U.S. government and Western media were left rending their garments in mourning for the jihadists and their supporters killed in the raid.

This downer of a New York Times headline captured the disapproving spirit of the media response to the glorious hostage rescue: “Israel Rescues 4 Hostages in Assault That Killed Scores of Gazans.”

The actual number of Palestinian dead is unconfirmed as of this writing; CNN, the most distrusted name in news, reported that the Gaza Ministry of Health, the propaganda organ of Hamas, claims 274 Palestinians were killed and 698 injured – a number you can be sure has been inflated higher than a Chinese spy balloon. The IDF estimated that the number of casualties from the operation was “under 100.”

Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan contributed to the anti-Israel media narrative by stating that “innocent people were tragically killed in this operation. The exact number we don’t know, but innocent people were killed and that is heartbreaking. That is tragic.”

But ­how does he know innocent people were killed? Hamas itself does not distinguish between their militant and civilian casualties, and perhaps we shouldn’t either. According to a March poll of Palestinians, 71% of all Palestinians supported Hamas’ decision to attack Israel on October 7; 59% of all Palestinians think Hamas should rule Gaza; and 70% were satisfied with the role Hamas has played during the war. Support for Hamas has increased since the October 7 attacks.