RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/vengeance-2/

“The glory in this moment, therefore, is owed to Israel alone. And although it has become a thankless mission, all those who stand against barbarism and tyranny are the beneficiaries of Israel’s actions.”

The Israeli military confirmed on Thursday that Yahya Sinwar — Hamas’s longtime strategist, the group’s leader since summer, and the foremost architect of the October 7 massacre — has been eliminated.

Sinwar is only the latest high-profile terrorist to meet his fate at the hands of the IDF. His predecessor at the top of Hamas’s hierarchy, Ismail Haniyeh, was killed in Tehran when a bomb covertly smuggled into an Iranian diplomatic safehouse exploded in July. Mohammed Deif, the commander of Hamas’s military wing, was neutralized in a July airstrike after seven unsuccessful IDF attempts to deliver him to justice. Hamas deputy commander Marwan Issa met his fate in March, two months after his deputy, Saleh al-Arouri, was cut down in the suburbs of Beirut by an Israeli drone.

A little over a year after the war Hamas inaugurated against Israel on 10/7 in the deadliest one-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the terrorist organization has been entirely decapitated. Its fighters are scattered, disorganized, and reduced to chaotic rearguard actions against the Israeli troops busily rolling them up. Critics of Israel’s campaign like to insist that Hamas is an idea and therefore cannot simply be dispatched like the thousands of its fighters the IDF has cut down. True enough, but an idea cannot shoot at you or launch rocket attacks on your cities. That requires well-connected, deeply embedded commanders with years of experience conducting asymmetrical insurgent attacks on a superior force. Those commanders are all dead.

The Israeli officials who have pursued Hamas’s barbarians until the end have done so without much encouragement from the West. Indeed, the death of every Hamas commander was fretted over in the West as though it created a new impediment to peace and to the negotiations over the hostages Hamas itself captured on 10/7 — 97 of whom still have not yet been located. Joe Biden’s administration withdrew almost all rhetorical support for Israeli operations in places like Rafah, where Sinwar himself was taken out. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government deserves the gratitude of the civilized world for rejecting these entreaties seeking Israel’s surrender in its righteous war.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/10/justice-in-gaza/

Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks and leader of Hamas, has been killed. His death was confirmed on Thursday by the Israeli government and supported by a powerful photo of Israeli military personnel standing over his bloody, debris-covered corpse.

This is a wonderful development.

Sinwar, who remained in the tunnels of Gaza as other leaders sought refuge abroad, launched the current war by sending an army of terrorists into Israel under the cover of thousands of rockets — to massacre children, rape women, and burn homes to the ground. By the end of that horrific day, 1,200 were dead and 251 were taken hostage and dragged into Gaza. In over a year of fighting, Sinwar has refused to surrender and release the hostages, as he preferred to have his people suffer if it meant that world opinion, and the U.S. government, turned against Israel.

The terrorist leader had previously been held in an Israeli prison, where he survived brain cancer owing to treatment by Israeli physicians. But in 2011, he was one of the 1,000 prisoners released as part of the deal to secure the release of abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Once released, he rose up the ranks of Hamas and became its de facto leader in Gaza.

The killing of Sinwar is a major victory for Israel, both operationally and symbolically. As long as Sinwar was alive and defiantly leading Hamas, it was difficult for Israel to view its costly war in Gaza as a success.

His death follows a string of major successes by Israel — the killing of Hamas’s political leader Ismail Haniyeh, of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and of dozens of other high-ranking leaders of both terrorist groups. Coupled with the overall campaign, Israel has dealt a significant blow to the proxies of Iran as it contemplates retaliatory steps against Iran itself.

https://www.algemeiner.com/2024/10/15/more-than-8-10-americans-support-israel-over-hamas-harvard-poll-finds/

An overwhelming majority of Americans support Israel over the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, according to a new Harvard-Harris poll.

The poll, conducted from Oct. 11-13, revealed that the American public wants Israel to prevail in its ongoing military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza. The data also indicated that the American people believe the Jewish state should continue to prosecute the war until it achieves its objectives, including the permanent removal of Hamas from the Gaza strip and the release of the remaining hostages kidnapped from southern Israel last October.

According to the poll, Americans support Israel over Hamas by a margin of 81-19 percent. This represents a slight uptick from September, when 79 percent of Americans indicated support for Israel over the terrorist organization. Among respondents that follow the war “closely,” 81 percent similarly indicated support for Israel and 19 percent support Hamas.

The poll also showed a generational divide on Israel. Americans over 65 support Israel over Hamas by a staggering margin of 94-6 percent. Those aged 35-44 support the Jewish state over the terrorist group by a margin of 74-26 percent. Young Americans aged 18-24 are far more divided on the conflict, with 57 percent supporting Israel and 43 percent supporting the Hamas terrorist group. 

https://www.jns.org/usaid-package-found-in-hezbollah-weapons-cache/

Evidence that U.S. aid has found its way to terrorists in Lebanon emerged almost as a footnote in a video of a Hezbollah weapons cache posted to X on Oct. 13. A box marked “USAID” (United States Agency for International Development) appears in the background.

The box, also featuring the logo of the World Food Programme (WFP), a United Nations organization, is not even remarked upon by an Israel Defense Forces officer as he details the weaponry his men found in Southern Lebanon.

Those arms included anti-tank guided missiles, heavy and light machine guns, ammunition and other military gear.

Yona Schiffmiller, director of research at NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based watchdog group which has long warned about the dangers of U.S. aid being diverted to terrorists, told JNS that he can’t recall seeing another more concrete example illustrating the danger of sending aid without proper oversight.

“We’ve certainly seen, over the years, a number of instances where USAID and the State Department gave support to organizations that glorified terrorists and promoted violence,” he said. “But there’s obviously a substantive difference between that and actual aid materials winding up in the hands of U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.”

In this instance, Schiffmiller said it appears that the aid first went to a U.N. agency and then was redirected to Hezbollah further downstream.

It points to the need for “very strong U.S. oversight” to ensure the ultimate beneficiaries aren’t affiliated with terrorist organizations, he said.

“It’s not sufficient to just say we’re signing off on a U.N. project,” he added. “The United States needs to know who the ultimate beneficiaries are.”

The video comes in the wake of growing concerns among lawmakers that U.S.-taxpayer funded assistance meant for distressed civilian populations is finding its way to the world’s worst actors.

In an Oct. 9 letter, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), questioned Samantha Power, the administrator of USAID, about more than $1 billion in U.S. humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip that has likely been misused.

ps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21012/biden-harris-palestinian-policy

On a number of occasions over the past few months, US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has declared her support for the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Last month, Harris said: “We must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve.”

Harris’s repeated talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the October 7 atrocities against Israelis is the best gift the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group could have wished for.

Harris seems to ignore that a majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas and the October 7 atrocities…. Two-thirds of the Palestinians [in a poll conducted by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in June] said that the October 7 massacres were “correct.”

What is most disturbing about Harris’s advocacy for the establishment of an Iranian-controlled Palestinian state is that it is seen by many Palestinians as a reward for the October 7 atrocities…. So, when Harris talks about the need to establish a Palestinian state, she is sending a message to Hamas and other Palestinians that terrorism against Israel pays….

If Harris really cared about the Palestinians, she should be calling on Hamas to surrender; and calling on the Palestinian Authority (PA) stop glorifying terrorists and paying their families monthly salaries, dismantle all terror groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stop poisoning the hearts and minds of their people, and recognize Israel’s right to exist. Unfortunately, she has done none of the above.

Moreover, the assumption that the PA can be “revitalized” and play a role in a post-war Gaza shows that Harris and the Biden administration are unfortunately clueless…. The poll also found that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar would receive 41% of the votes, while Abbas would get only 13%. A majority of 84% of the Palestinians want Abbas to resign.

Abbas is also well aware that the talk about “revitalizing” the corrupt PA is nothing but a farce. The PA was established more than 30 years ago and its leaders, first Yasser Arafat and now Abbas, have never shown any serious intention to combat rampant corruption, anarchy and lawlessness in areas under their control.

Abbas and the Egyptians appear to have renewed their talks with Hamas because they sense that the Biden-Harris administration is not interested in ending the terror group’s rule over the Gaza Strip.

If Biden and Harris really wanted to see Hamas removed from power and the Israeli hostages released, all they need to do, is issue an ultimatum to the ruler of Qatar, who funds and hosts the terror group’s leadership, that the US will withdraw its air base from the Gulf state and impose sanctions on the emirate if the issue is not resolved immediately.

If the Biden-Harris administration really wanted to get rid of Hamas, they would be calling out Abbas and the Egyptians for negotiating with a terror group about ways of incorporating it in a new administration in the Gaza Strip.

Talk about creating a Palestinian state emboldens terrorists everywhere and assures the world that the US is on their side.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21017/middle-east-total-victory

Such were the mutilations that not a single corpse of a girl or a woman was in a state fit to be shown to her family before burial.

[W]ithin days of the atrocities, the global moral compass had swung 180 degrees. Starting significantly in London, and long before the IDF had marshalled itself to go into Gaza, street protests in Western cities and reporters in mainstream media were portraying Hamas as the victims and Israel as the violent aggressor…. This accusation has been the biggest lie of the past year.

If one is among the modern cult “perfecti”…. one’s inherent virtue confers special privileges and exemptions which are not available to less-perfect people. By definition, one can do no wrong. Any respect for the integrity of history is lost. As in the former Soviet Union, but no longer a joke: the future is certain, only the past is ever-changing…. and the mandatory projection of modern values onto the past is popular among the self-righteous.

[I]n Israel’s war of self-defence… tactical operations show that minimisation of loss of life of everyone except the terrorist enemies has been a prime concern…. To a degree that is unmatched, the IDF routinely warns civilians to leave targeted zones before attacks.

Iran’s proxy groups hide their attack tunnels, command posts and weapons caches in Gaza and Lebanon under residential buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques, in an express flouting of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war…. The tunnel complexes which, in the instance of Gaza, exceed the length of the London Underground, were not built for the protection of civilians in time of conflict, but only for the protection of Hamas terrorists, as Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas’s political bureau, readily admits…. Not by choice, these are the circumstances under which the IDF has been forced to fight.

It is all the more so because since October 7, 2023 the IDF’s actions on the ground in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon show the best record of any modern armed forces in discriminate targeting, even in combat with terrorists who deliberately use civilians as human shields…. On the basis of such data, former British Army Infantry Commander Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, has called the IDF “The World’s Most Moral Army.”

When one’s enemy has no war aim other than genocide, and has said so consistently for 90 years, there is most likely zero probability of a diplomatic route to peace. After six refusals of land offered for peace since 1922, there is now no prospect of any diplomacy this side of Israel’s total victory, and the terrorists’ total defeat. “Mugged by reality” is now… the realisation that, whatever else people may think about him, Netanyahu is the indispensable war leader for present times. The historian Andrew Roberts has called him “The Churchill of the Middle East.”

By and large the Western administrative class — whose worldview is framed by the assumption that with enough meetings in convivial places (“diplomacy”) deals can be reached that split differences — still does not rise to a sufficient level of geopolitical and comparative historical appreciation. This weak intellectual grasp only contributes significantly to the risk of a third world war.

The need for a strategy of total victory needs to be underscored. For decades, Iran and its proxies have been trying, as Iran’s former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, to “wipe Israel off the map.” Israel’s enemies are still trying. Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad warned a year ago that Hamas would repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel was annihilated.

With the high probability that if Iran were to be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, it would use them on Israel, the avoidance of World War III now depends upon Israel eliminating that threat. Once again, President Joe Biden must not be obeyed. Products of the Western mind-set, as mentioned, it was the disastrous naivety of President Barack Obama and Biden in seeking to negotiate over Iran’s nuclear programme (the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) — and illegitimately, with no mandate, to boot — that allowed Iran’s regime to play the US for fools and in so doing to acquire vital foreign currency inflow – and time — that enabled the Iranian theocracy to resume and hasten its road to nuclear weapons.

“Iran is reeling… insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated. Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible.” — Jared Kushner, advisor and son-in-law of President Donald J. Trump, X, September 29, 2024.

The threat is not just to the Jews but to the world order and the West…. Israel rightly feels unleashed. This tiny nation has both moral mandate and customary international legal right (which long predates the experiment of UN-drafted papers) to be so. Like Ukraine’s, Israel’s victory matters to the entire free world.

The world currently divides unequally into those who understand this and the majority who do not, or who may just not want to admit it.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/10/14/is-the-death-cult-of-hamas-on-its-last-legs-lets-hope-so/

Many grim things are happening in northern Gaza right now, as Israel puts the screws on Hamas. But there’s one thing in particular that leapt out at me from this bloody showdown between the Israel Defence Forces and the army of anti-Semites that started this infernal war with its pogrom of a year ago. It’s a thing that isn’t being widely reported. A fact you will need to dig deep to find. You certainly won’t spy any mention of it in the toilet of Israelophobia known as social media. It’s this: the IDF is pleading with Palestinian civilians to leave northern Gaza, while Hamas is instructing them to stay.

Even the BBC – so hostile to Israel that it refuses to refer to its fascistic persecutors as ‘terrorists’ – felt compelled to chronicle this most telling of stories from the benighted north of Gaza. In a typically breathless piece alleging that Israel is pursuing the military strategy of ‘surrender or starve’, the Beeb reports that where the IDF has warned Gazans that it will be ‘operating with great force’ in the north, and thus they should ‘evacuate immediately’, Hamas has told them to stay. In fact, Hamas has warned the 400,000 souls still left in the north to not even think about moving. It has used falsehoods and fear to cajole women and children into staying put, telling them the south is ‘just as dangerous’ (not true) and that if they leave ‘they will not be allowed back’ (bastards).

Reuters has likewise clocked these disturbing accounts from the ground. ‘The Israeli military [is] calling on Palestinians to evacuate south’, it reports, while Hamas is ‘telling them not to leave because it [is] too risky’. The IDF has gone to great lengths to convince civilians to flee, posting messages online in Arabic clearly stipulating that even ‘shelters’ in certain parts of the north would shortly become ‘dangerous combat zone[s]’. It has distributed maps with a ‘large yellow arrow’ showing civilians where to go. Hamas, meanwhile, has all but forbidden an exodus. There are even reports that it is using physical force to make people stay. One Gazan has claimed that their Islamist rulers are ‘beating them with sticks’ if they try to access the IDF’s mapped-out ‘humanitarian corridor’.

How do we make sense of this? According to the intellectuals and activists of the Western world, Israel is a demented genocidal state, hell-bent on slaughtering Palestinians and especially keen on killing children (blood libel, much?). Hamas, meanwhile, is a ‘resistance’ movement, if an iffy one, whose strikes against Israel are an understandable stab at protecting Gazans from the violent bloodlust of psycho Zionists. And yet here we have the ‘genocidaires’ pleading with Gazans to move out of harm’s way, and ‘the resistance’ ordering them to stay in it. Providing civilians with maps to safety? Israel is surely the most rubbish genocidal entity in history.