RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/biden-rebuilds-gaza-infrastructure-hamas-brags-it-daniel-greenfield/

After the war comes the reconstruction.

That means pouring money into Gaza while insisting that none of the money will go to Hamas and that none of the humanitarian aid will be used for terrorist purposes. It’s just rebuilding infrastructure. Meanwhile, Hamas keeps boasting about how it turns infrastructure into terrorism.

Terrorists’ ability to turn seemingly innocent household commodities into the tools of terror has always created a challenge for peaceful states fighting terror. Fertilizer has been used to build lethal bombs and instead of using tons of cement that Israel permitted into the Gaza Strip for the building of homes, schools and factories, Hamas built 100 kilometers of terror tunnels that Israel destroyed in the recent war.

Now there is another seemingly innocuous construction material that has joined the arsenal of terror: water pipes. There were some reports that Israel was surprised by the high number of rockets – 4,300 – that Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists had in their arsenals to launch against civilians in Israeli cities in the recent 11-day Gaza war. Now the Secretary-General of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad has explained this: He bragged that the “resistance engineers” have turned “water pipes… into the rockets that you see.”

Time to rebuild that “infrastructure”.

The United Nations said it had released $22.5 million, which would go towards rebuilding damaged water and electricity infrastructure and disposing of explosive ordnance.

The ordnance can go into the infrastructure. That’s how it works.

President Joe Biden told a White House briefing on Friday that a two-state solution was the only answer to resolving the deep-rooted conflict.

“I’m praying this cease-fire will hold,” he said, before pledging U.S. support to help rebuild Gaza, which is governed by the terrorist group Hamas 

It’ll hold until enough of Gaza is “rebuilt” for Hamas to rebuild more rockets. 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-two-state-solution-the-only-answer-to-israel-palestine-conflict_3826072.html

President Joe Biden said on Friday there has been no shift in his commitment to the security of Israel, insisting “the only answer” was a two-state solution with Palestine.

“There is no shift in my commitment … to the security of Israel. Period. No shift—not at all,” Biden told reporters at a White House press conference with South Korea’s president. “But I’ll tell you what there is a shift in. The shift is … we still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer. The only answer.”

Biden also addressed the idea of a rift among Democrats who want his administration to rebuke Israel and end a planned arms deal between the United States and Israel, saying, “I think that my party still supports Israel.”

“Let’s get something straight here,” he added, “Until the region says unequivocally they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace.”

On Friday, about 140 progressive groups called on the Biden administration to condemn Israel.

“We are horrified by Israel’s use of disproportionate and deadly force against Palestinians in Gaza which have already resulted in the killings of dozens of Palestinians, including children,” the statement reads (pdf).

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also moved to block a planned weapons sale to Israel.

A ceasefire began early on Friday, ending 11 days of conflict that broke out this month after Hamas launched rockets at Israel over a court case to evict several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. Nearly 250 people have been killed, mostly Palestinians, according to Israeli and Gaza authorities.

Biden said he spoke to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and renewed the United States’ commitment to security and economic support for the West Bank.

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.

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.

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.” 

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a group of like-minded colleagues want to sink the proposed $735-million sale of a Boeing-built arms guidance kit to Israel.  The Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) kit converts unguided or “dumb” bombs into precision-guided munitions.  The goal, according to Politico, is “leverage to push the Israelis to drop their resistance to a ceasefire.”

In fact, Israel’s resistance is not to a ceasefire, but to the continued rocket attacks by Hamas into Israeli civilian centers.  The Biden administration has no leverage at all with Hamas and is pushing desperately for an Iran deal, which precludes asking Iran to rein in its Hamas terror-proxy.  For America to consider punishing Israel is nasty at best and counterproductive of AOC’s stated goal at worst.  Would she prefer that Israel use “dumb” bombs to defend itself and its people?

We’ve seen this before.

In 2009, Barak Obama’s administration blocked delivery of six Apache helicopters to Israel on the grounds that Israel might use them in Gaza.

During Israel’s 2014 response to Hamas rockets and mortars fired into Israel, President Obama accused Israel of “heavy-handed battlefield tactics” and halted the supply of Hellfire missiles.  Military equipment supplied to Israel would also have to be vetted individually in the White House instead of shipped by the Pentagon according to prior agreements.  The irony of withholding precision missiles — precision being the operative word — was lost on the White House.