RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-wages-of-conspicuous-compassion/

One of the most feckless acts of “compassion” for the victims of a conflict has been the West’s decades-long provision of food, medicines, and other aid to Palestinian Arabs living in the Gaza Strip. These in-kind and cash donations come with an enormous moral hazard.

By now everyone knows that indeed the bulk of such aid is stolen by Hamas terrorists, who sell the goods and use the money to line the pockets of Hamas officials, pay their fighters, reward their “martyrs” killed while slaughtering mostly civilian Israelis, and buy weapons and missiles fired indiscriminately at civilian targets.  These funds are on top of the billions provided by the UN–– nearly $4.5 billion just from 2014 to 2020––and billions more from EU and Muslim nations.

Given that moral hazard, Israel is planning to let the U.S. Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and the IDF distribute the aid, removing Hamas and the UN from participating. In a display of their hatred of Israel, the Wall Street Journal reports, “Canada, the U.K. and France threatened Israel on Monday with ‘concrete actions’ unless it halts military operations and facilitates more aid, which ‘must include engaging with the UN’”––which recently spread the blood libel that Israel is preparing to starve to death 14000 babies in Gaza. Hamas sent Turtle Bay and the three “liberal democracies” a note of thanks.

This spectacle of Western nations libeling and browbeating Israelis into financing an enemy sworn to their destruction, and who ruthlessly targets civilians, including children, is another shameful marker of the decline of the West, especially the Europeans who morally preen about their “conspicuous compassion,” as Alan Bloom called such self-serving actions.

But in fact, such displays are morally idiotic camouflage for Europe’s failure of nerve and despicable political hatred of the region’s only free democracy. The “international community” has treated Israel like a pariah for 77 years––especially the UN, which has formally condemned Israel more than all the world’s nations combined.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/409027

Although wars are destructive, they are also often unavoidable and even necessary; in addition, they are also sources of new technologies, innovations, and, of course, political changes.

As a result of wars between Britain and the American colonies in 1776 and 1812, for example, the groundwork was laid for a new nation and a new political identity.

Similarly, the Mexican-American War of 1847-1849 was the basis for America’s continental expansion and it reaffirmed its national identity, as well as its economic, military and technological power.

The American Civil War (1861-65) ended the institution of slavery and opened a massive expansion westward with newly-formed states. America became coast-to-coast.

In 1898, when Spain attacked American ships, it led to the Spanish-American War. As a result, the United States conquered the islands of Puerto Rico; the territory has been under U.S. sovereignty ever since. Although not a state, its inhabitants were given US citizenship.

The First and Second World Wars confirmed America’s dominant position. As a result of these wars, the USA became the greatest democracy in the world.

For Israel, and for Hamas/Palestinian Arabs, the war in Gaza is also definitional. It is a way of clarifying who the sides are and what they represent. In that sense, Israel’s war against terrorism, and the war in Gaza are existential.

The nation-state of Israel has been fighting for its survival since its establishment in 1948. It won its War of Independence against five Arab countries in 1949, and against some of them again in 1956, 1967, and 1973. However, because many countries and organizations support Palestinianism and Palestinian Arab terrorist groups, that war and the current war in Gaza continue.

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A “senior official” of the Israel Defense Forces says Israel is on the way to a “decisive victory” in Gaza.

Military plans indicate that in two months Hamas will control only about 30% of Gaza, down from 40% in recent days. [In the current phase,] the IDF is destroying infrastructure both above and below ground.

The IDF assesses that Hamas

is in severe distress both militarily and civilian-wise. It has lost its command chain and is in a deadlock. Cracks are forming in the population’s dependency on the group, and pressure is mounting—but a full breakdown has not yet occurred. That collapse, they believe, may come through intensified military pressure and control over aid delivery.

Some say Israel can’t afford to keep fighting in Gaza because the situation of the twenty-or-so remaining live hostages is too dire, and Israel urgently has to make a deal for their release. The problem is that according to reports from Doha, Hamas—despite its own dismal situation—keeps stonewalling such a deal.

US envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been pushing hard for a deal in Doha, says: “What I have seen from Hamas is disappointing and completely unacceptable.”

Some in the Israeli security establishment have been saying all along that the hostages are so precious to Hamas as leverage over Israel that Hamas will never agree—unless compelled—to give all of them up.

As the above-quoted senior IDF official put it:

“Hamas will not return all the hostages at once—they’ll play a game and always keep some in their hands…. What drives Hamas to a deal is military pressure— that’s what has brought hostages back so far.”

… Asked what a military victory over Hamas would look like, the official outlined the following phases: destruction of Hamas’s military wing, dismantling of its governing capabilities, capture and retention of territory, and control over humanitarian aid while cutting Hamas off from it.

Hamas is in dire financial straits, too—“the worst…in its history, with government employees in Gaza receiving just 900 shekels (approximately $250) a month for the past four months.”

https://www.jns.org/yechiel-leiters-refreshing-undiplomatic-candor/

The Foreign Ministry announced on Sunday that its director general, Eden Bar Tal, was summoning Israeli Ambassador to the United States Yechiel Leiter for a hearing, in accordance with “the directive of the senior director of the disciplinary division at the Civil Service Commission.”  

The anticipated wrist-slapping is over remarks that Leiter made in an interview last week on the conservative PragerU podcast, “Real Talk with Marissa Streit.”

During the course of the one-on-one—an articulate and comprehensive discussion about the war in Gaza; the death of his son, Moshe, who was killed last year fighting Hamas; U.S.-Israel relations; normalization with Saudi Arabia; the Iranian nuclear threat; and predictions for the future of the Middle East—Leiter committed what the Foreign Ministry considers a diplomatic faux pas.

This consisted of his spending six out of the 66-minute tete-a-tete defending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu against demonization. The passage in question begins with his referring to the “accusations on the international stage to call our prime minister a war criminal?! What is that? That’s insane.”

He goes on to point out that “there’s no way you can really fight antisemitism until you remove the stain of Cain” from Netanyahu. Because, he explains, “if you call the Number One Jew in the world a war criminal, well, Jews are responsible; they’re like their prime minister. They’re war criminals, right? Jews who identify with Israel identify with a war criminal. So, why shouldn’t there be antisemitism?”

Yet then he’s asked by Streit about the claim—“made not just by antisemites; also by Israelis”—that Netanyahu is prolonging the war in Gaza in order to “keep him[self] out of political trouble or from going to jail.”

And here’s the section that spurred the ostensible need to “discipline” the relatively new diplomat, who’s been in his post for a mere four months: “Political opposition sometimes is a horrible thing, but they go too far. There is nothing more malicious and malevolent than to level such charges at the prime minister. I know the prime minister for 40 years. He’s a sensitive man who cares about people. Prolong a war? What kind of insanity is that? How dare they say something as malicious as that?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21650/two-state-solution

After the 2007 Hamas takeover, the Gaza Strip became an independent Palestinian state controlled by Hamas, with its own government, parliament, police force, and multiple armed groups. The Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, in addition, had exclusive control over the border with Egypt, which was also abandoned by Israel.

In the absence of any Israeli military or civilian presence inside Gaza, Hamas had a chance to turn the coastal strip into a prosperous area, a “Singapore” or “Dubai” on the Mediterranean. Instead, the terror group chose to manufacture and smuggle weapons, including rockets and missiles, and invest tens of millions of dollars in building a vast network of tunnels for stockpiling its weapons, facilitating the concealed movement of terrorists, and providing shelter for its leaders and members.

[T]he war is continuing because of Hamas’s refusal to release the remaining Israeli hostages, relinquish control over the Gaza Strip and lay down its weapons. Hamas, backed and armed by Iran, is determined to fight to the last Palestinian because its primary goal is to destroy Israel and replace it with an Islamist state.

For more than a decade, these payments [to the Palestinian “pay-for-slay” program] have amounted to more than $300 million annually. Last year, the PA’s payments increased by $1.3 million per month. The murder of Jews is what the European Union and many European countries have been funding.

By advocating a “two-state solution,” France, Canada and Britain are essentially authorizing a genocide.

Before reviving their idea, the French, Canadians and British need to look at the results of all of the polls. They consistently show that most Palestinians support Hamas and the armed struggle against Israel. The last thing Palestinians and Israelis need now is to transplant the failed Gaza model onto the West Bank.

As the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip enters its 20th month, France, Britain and Canada have revived the talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state. In a joint statement in mid-May, the leaders of the three countries proclaimed:

“We are committed to recognizing a Palestinian state as a contribution to achieving a two-state solution and are prepared to work with others to this end.”

Next month, the United Nations is scheduled to host an international conference, co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia, to advance the idea of a “two-state solution” between Israel and the Palestinians.

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com

There are more new Israeli medical discoveries and treatments; the secrets of the DNA exposed in the human microbiome; an Israeli medical innovation outpost opened in Boston. US care staff explained how to support children suffering from cancer; and a German TV network shown how an Israeli hospital treats trauma patients. Plus the truth about Israel’s inclusive society, as told by two Israeli Arabs and a visiting Bahraini Moslem woman.

Read how Israeli technology is showcased in the US and European militaries, US healthcare and Japanese telecoms providers, and in the financial centers and institutions of London, Germany and Singapore.  Europeans were stunned when Israel’s Yuval Raphael showcased her transformation from Nova festival survivor to Eurovision singing sensation. And US motor racing enthusiasts gasped as an Israeli rookie rocketed to pole position at the start of the Indy 500. Michael Ordman

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Saving lives on the battlefield. A tragic fact of war is the number of casualties. But even here, Israel is setting global standards. We already know about the record low ratio of civilian to combatant ratios. But the IDF Medical Corps is also achieving the world’s fastest casualty evacuation times, saving hundreds of lives.
https://www.jns.org/idf-sets-global-standard-in-combat-casualty-evacuations/
 
Israeli hospitals innovate to rehabilitate. (TY Hazel) One of Israel’s major achievements post 7 Oct 2023 has been how Israeli hospitals have developed protocols for treating the 139 returning hostages from Gaza. They had to cater for children who had suffered abuse and adults suffering severe psychological and physical injuries.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/facing-a-hostage-situation-without-precedent-israeli-hospitals-innovate-to-rehabilitate/
 
Movie about female tank brigade heroines. (TY Yanky) On 7 Oct 2023, Israel’s first all-female tank unit (see here previously) pitted their three armored vehicles against hundreds of Hamas terrorists in a battle lasting over 17 hours. The story of these fearless female soldiers is now to be featured in a new movie, entitled “Tankistas”.
https://deadline.com/2025/05/swell-ariel-or-october-7-film-tank-unit-tankistas-1236388126/
 
Honoring Oct 7 victims at the highest level. Minyan Everest, a group of Jewish climbers, pray and unfurl a banner of 7th Oct 2023 victims’ names at the top of the highest mountains. On one climb their sherpa guides told them that Hamas had murdered 10 of their fellow Nepalese in the attack. Their names were on the banner.
https://www.jns.org/french-jewish-mountaineers-bring-solidarity-to-new-heights/
 
One in five combat soldiers is a woman. The IDF has reported that women now account for 20% of troops serving in both active and reserve combat units. It highlighted efforts to integrate women into additional roles and units.  https://www.ynetnews.com/article/ryk15009xeg
 
Wounded Fauda star performs at airport. Israeli singer-songwriter and Fauda actor Idan Amedi was filmed giving an impromptu performance at Miami airport. He was about to fly to New York on his first US tour since being wounded in battle in Gaza. https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408305
 
New El Al plane named “Acheinu”. El Al’s 17th Boeing 787 “Dreamliner” has not been named after an Israeli city, rather “Acheinu Kol Beit Yisrael”, meaning “Our brothers, the entire House of Israel.” It is from the morning prayer, asking G-d to protect and have mercy on Jews in captivity and bring them home in peace.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/408633
 
German TV features Herzog hospital Jerusalem. (TY Yanky) The German news network RTL featured how Herzog Medical Center in Jerusalem  has helped Israelis cope with trauma during the war. The RTL Foundation also made a significant donation to the hospital. Turn on captions and auto-translate into English.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsqOXgttsVY
 
Israeli Arabs reject Hamas. After Oct 7, Israel’s 2-million-strong Arab minority didn’t riot, wave Hamas flags or cheer. Arab medics treated the wounded. Arab mayors calmed tensions. Arabs donated blood, delivered aid and helped evacuate families. Arab enlistment in the IDF grew. Israeli Arabs stood with Israel.
https://nypost.com/2025/05/15/opinion/arab-israelis-stand-with-their-country-reject-hamas-hate/

https://www.jns.org/douglas-murray-israel-cant-afford-to-leave-hamas-in-gaza/?utm_campaign=Daily%20Syndicate%20Emails&utm_

Despite mounting international pressure and war costs, Israel cannot afford to end it war “with Hamas in power in any form,” British public intellectual Douglas Murray told JNS last week.

A prominent author, associate editor of the British magazine The Spectator and regular contributor to The Times and The Daily Telegraph, Murray in an interview with JNS justified Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to keep fighting until Hamas’s dismantlement, and downplayed concerns that it would leave Israel isolated.

“Anything short of victory is defeat,” Murray told JNS at a conference organized by the European Jewish Association in Madrid on combating antisemitism.

Israel’s decision this month to intensify the fighting until Hamas is removed from power in Gaza has triggered a coordinated effort within the European Union and beyond to punish the Jewish state for what its critics call war crimes.

.

On Monday, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Canada published a joint statement threatening “concrete actions in response” to the war. The European Commission on Tuesday decided to review its trade agreement with Israel, citing concerns of human rights abuses.