RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/the-high-cost-to-the-hostages-of-enlightened-hypocrisy/

The argument over whether there’s such a thing as too high a price to pay for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza continues to rage in Israel unabated. And “rage” is the right word to describe what is rarely a serious discussion on the part of the “Bring Them All Home Now” advocates.

Those whose family members are still languishing in the Strip can be forgiven for seeing the issue from a prism of personal pain. Still, not all the captives’ loved ones agree with their more vociferous counterparts that the government should cave in to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s demands in order to seal a deal that would put an end to the 11-month nightmare.
The latter group grasps that it’s not so simple. In the first place, Sinwar hasn’t consented to free all the hostages, including if Israel withdraws all troops from Gaza and leaves him in power to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 “again and again and again,” as his henchmen have vowed to do.
Second, the hundreds of bereaved families of soldiers who fell in this war to defeat Hamas and rescue the hostages are desperate not to have all that loss be in vain. Ditto for the men and women in uniform risking their lives every day in the same pursuit.
The people who deserve no sympathy are the ones who’ve been exploiting everyone’s devastation to fan the flames of the pre-Oct. 7 protests aimed at ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition. Indeed, their cynical abuse of the hostage crisis to further a political agenda that got upstaged by the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is nothing short of despicable.
Since the bulk of the Hebrew media has been complicit in this effort, it’s often difficult for members of the public to make a distinction between rational debate and “anybody but Bibi” hysteria. Occasionally, though, the disingenuousness gets exposed—and it’s a doozy.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/israel-launches-major-operation-against-irans-west-bank-proxies/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

I’ve been contending that, rather than launch a major war it would lose in devastating measure, Iran has been conducting calibrated operations against Israel — trying to terrorize, exhaust, and effectively contract the territory of Israel by a thrum of violence on multiple fronts, knowing the Biden administration’s obsession about avoiding “escalation” of the conflict constrains Israel’s response.

The latest hot spot is Judea and Samaria — the West Bank, in which 3 million Palestinians are governed semiautonomously by the Palestinian Authority led by Mahmoud Abbas (now in the 19th year of his four-year term), and where jihadist Iran backs such proxies as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Islamic Jihad, and Hamas (which controls Gaza but maintains a foreboding presence in the West Bank).

Israel has now commenced major combat operations against these jihadist strongholds. On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces deployed hundreds of troops, supported by air power, in an effort to dismantle terror platforms.

To recap, on October 7, Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza in the southwest, where it has been supplied via Egypt and where the fighting continues. Within 24 hours of Hamas’s attack, Hezbollah stepped up strikes across Israel’s northern border from its bases in Lebanon, where Iran has supplied it with over 150,000 missiles, thanks in part to Iran’s long-standing presence in neighboring Syria, propping up the barbaric Assad regime. In the interim, from over the southeast horizon, Israel has been subjected to continuous aerial aggression — hundreds of attacks — by the Houthis, Iran’s proxies in Yemen.

Concurrently, Iran has been turning the West Bank into yet another front, this one on Israel’s east, capitalizing on weapons-smuggling routes through Jordan. The Long War Journal reports that at least nine terrorists were killed in fighting that surged on Monday, with IDF forces “dismantling explosives planted under the roads, and confiscating large quantities of weapons.”

https://mailchi.mp/dd9d88d97a17/israel-current-events***

In incredible twists of irony that would even shock Jewess Alanis Morissette, Israeli forces rescued an Israeli Muslim Arab hostage this week from a Hamas tunnel in Southern Gaza. Why Hamas took this guy hostage in the first place is anyone’s guess. And he’s not the only one. There are still more Arabs being held. Farhan al-Qadi, from Rahat in the Negev and married to two wives with a slew of kids, was reportedly treated very similarly to the Jewish Israeli hostages. How woke of Hamas – no Arab privilege. 

The actual details of the rescue remain somewhat murky, but I would like to offer my own suggestion. In a recent misguided campaign, certain elements within the Haredi community began generating messages about their opposition to National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir and Jewish prayer activity on the Temple Mount – IN ARABIC! This is not the first time in history that folks have thought that potential Jew killers would spare them if they were the “right kind of Jews”.  Well, you communicate in Arabic and G-d answers you with Arabic. Very fortunate for our Bedouin friend Farhan. 

Obviously Mr. Al-Qadi speaks Arabic, so there are hopes that much intelligence about other hostages and Hamas will be gathered from him. Intelligence gathered from a captured terrorist led this week to the recovery of the body of an Israeli soldier killed on Oct. 7th. Sgt. Shaked Dahan, hy’d, was killed while fighting the terrorists from his tank that was stationed near the Jewish community of Nir Oz. 

Despite what leftist defeatist propaganda would have folks believe, Israeli forces are making serious headway in Gaza.