RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-785904?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=293469766&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9zLrcE4y-

An Israeli women’s basketball team beat Ireland 87 to 57 in the first game of the 2025 Women’s EuroBasket qualifier in Riga on Thursday evening, a game in which sport was overshadowed by politics when the Irish team refused to shake hands with their Israeli counterparts.

The Israeli Basketball Association (IBBA) said on social media that the victory came “despite the lack of sportsmanship of the visiting team.”

“Basketball Ireland fully supports our players in their decision,” the national governing body for basketball in Ireland said in a statement.

Ireland’s team refuses to associate with Israel’s team

The statement by Basketball Ireland detailed that it informed the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) on Wednesday that its players would not be exchanging gifts or formal handshakes before or after the game, and that players would line up by the bench rather than at center court for the playing of their anthem.

The move came in response to comments made by Israeli players and published by IBBA that included “inflammatory and wholly inaccurate accusations of antisemitism.”

IBBA published an interview with Israeli basketball player Dor Saar on Tuesday in which she touched on the behavior and statements of the Irish team.

“It’s known that they are quite antisemitic and it’s no secret, and maybe that’s why a strong game is expected,” said Saar. “We have to show that we’re better than them and win. We talk about it among ourselves, we know they don’t like us and we will always leave everything on the field and in this game especially.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/02/the-empty-sloganeering-of-a-two-state-solution/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_

The Palestinian people are pawns, props in a local, regional, and global game that puts their real interests last.

It is beyond ironic that the vile attacks of October 7 have revived the notion of a two-state solution to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians — an idea that was, until that moment, politically moribund. Of course, such a “solution” was far from Hamas’s aim, but it remains the only idea available to the lazy diplomatic and peace-processing class. The two-state idea serves the aims of political leaders in the United States and Europe flailing for a response to the far Left’s anti-Israel-driven outrage over the war in Gaza. It answers the mail to the demand to “do something.”

But the one question no one has bothered to ask is, Is it good for the Palestinians? And the short answer to that question is no.

“Two-state solution” is part of the lexicon of sloganeering-cum-politics that includes “black lives matter,” “defund the police,” and “cease-fire now.” And like all of those reductionist bumper stickers, it crumbles under scrutiny. The evolution of each of these ideas is predicated on a grain of truth: Of course black lives matter. There is indeed police brutality. A cease-fire now would indeed end the fighting in Gaza, albeit briefly. And a two-state solution would certainly satisfy the symbolic demands for a Palestinian state.

Also true of these parallel political constructions is that the slogan has precious little to do with the actual lives it purports to value. The Black Lives Matter movement, while soothing to upper-class suburban whites focused intently on their virtue and their Land Rovers, has enriched a few grifters at its heart and delivered shockingly little to the actual blacks who live in America’s cities and are disproportionately victims of crime, beset by poor schooling, drugs, broken families, and more.

Ditto the mindless effort to slash police budgets in the unreasoned hope that by destroying the instruments of law enforcement, somehow there would be fewer incidents of police brutality. Instead, as numerous failed experiments in a light police footprint have demonstrated, crime has skyrocketed, businesses have been forced to shut down, and cities like Portland, Ore., San Francisco, Oakland, and Washington, D.C., have spiraled into dystopia.

Back to the Palestinians. They are people before they are a nation or a movement. And like the hapless props for the various other slogans/movements, their fate is of little genuine interest to their putative champions. To be pro-“Palestine” has come to mean little more than to be anti-Israel, shortchanging the very people such a position is intended to support.

http://bit.ly/3uqh4aO

Prof. Bernard Lewis, who was a leading authority on Islam and the Middle East, shed light on a cardinal aspect of the frustrating, complicated and inconvenient reality of the Middle East: “If the fighters in the war for Islam are fighting for God, it follows that their opponents are fighting against God…. In the classical Islamic view, the world is divided into two: the House of Islam… and the House of Unbelief, which it is the duty of Muslims ultimately to bring to Islam…. The struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some 14 centuries…. America has become the archenemy, the incarnation of evil, the diabolic opponent of all that is good… of Islam….”

*Western conventional wisdom has been based on the assumptions that Middle East violence is despair-driven; that radical Middle East dictators can be induced to subordinate their radical ideologies to dramatic financial benefits (“money talks”); and that significant gestures and concessions could motivate rogue Middle East leaders to embrace peaceful coexistence, compliance with agreements, adoption of human rights and democracy, to depart from fanatic ideologies, and to join the “multilateral/cosmopolitan club.”

*In order to advance its well-intentioned assumptions, Western conventional wisdom has consistently overlooked the 1,400-year-old shifty, unpredictable, violent, totalitarian, intolerant, anti-“infidel” (Islam vs. the West), anti-“apostate” (Shiite vs. Sunni), fragmented, volcanic and frustrating nature of Middle East (intra-Arab and intra-Moslem) reality. It has also overlooked the supremacy of fanatical ideologies over financial benefits in shaping the policy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Moslem Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, as reflected in their (K-12) school curriculum, mosque sermons and constitutions/charters.

*Western appeasement of Shiite, Sunni and Palestinian terrorism has ignored the well-documented fact, that terrorists bite the hands that feed them, as demonstrated by the Mujahideen (who were assisted by the US to drive the USSR out of Afghanistan and proceeded to carry out 9/11), Iran’s Ayatollahs (who were critically assisted by the US to topple the Shah of Iran and proceeded to become the lead  anti-US terrorist and drug trafficker) and the Palestinian leadership (which was hosted by Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Kuwait and proceeded to subvert and terrorize them).

Here are some select portions of the rather lengthy article, translated:

Captain ‘B’s clothing closet at the Palmachim Air Base is where she hides the greatest secret of her life. Captain ‘B’, in her twenties, is the first female Arab flight mechanic in the history of the IDF, and in fact, the first female airborne service person from the Arab community. Except for a few close family members and the members of her squad, no one knows.

Captain ‘B’ lives in an Arab village, which includes a militant population, who, to put matters mildly, are not among the “lovers of Zion.” Thus, for the five years that she has served in a variety of positions in the Air Force, she’s never gone home wearing a uniform. “In my clothes closet at the base,” she says, “there are more civilian clothes than uniforms. And when I get to the base in civvies, I go straight to the room, change clothes, and then head out to the squadron. And vice-versa: before I go home, I change into civilian clothing. You wouldn’t believe how careful we have to be at home. In the winter and in the summer, we launder the uniforms and they go straight into the dryer—we would never hang them outside to dry.”

And that’s because why? What would happen if people in the village knew what you do?

Someone would get attacked. That’s for sure.

From your family?

Yes.

And they’d have to be taken out of the village [for their safety]?

I don’t think there’d be anyone to take out after that.

Really? To that extent?

I think so.

And then, when we leave the office and head to the landing strip of the Black Hawks of Squadron 123, where she is now serves, she’s transformed. Captain ‘B’ stands tall, doesn’t stop smiling. Wearing her flight jumpsuit and her helmet and visor that cover her face, she hops quickly onto one of the helicopters to be photographed. It’s evident that here, among the flying machines that come in and out of Gaza, she’s more comfortable in her own skin than she is in the streets of the village where she was born and raised.

How long are you really going to be able to keep this secret from the people in your village?

There’s been an escalation in my village of late. Violent incidents, grenades, shootings. My own motto is “it’s good to die for our land” [DG – a famous quote commonly attributed to the early Zionist icon Yosef Trumpeldor], and I don’t care if they kill me, but the thought that they might do something to my family, and even worse, because of me? I couldn’t live with that. My priorities in life are first God, then my family, then the army.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384819

Israeli sovereignty, the basis for its national existence as a Jewish state, the homeland of the Jewish People, is defined in Israel’s Declaration of Independence in 1948. It incorporated much of UN Resolution 181, passed in1947, including the rights of its non-Jewish residents, and, following the war in 1948-9, Israel was accepted as a member state of the United Nations.

The result of the war, however, was inconclusive. Israel and the Arab countries that had attacked Israel agreed to a cease-fire and an Armistice was signed based on temporary – de facto, not de jure ‘borders.’ The areas that were conquered by Egypt, Jordan and Syria became known as “the West Bank.” Local Arab terrorists, and those from neighboring countries, however, continued to attack Jews.

Since the beginning of its existence as a state, therefore, Israel was faced with a problem: what to do with Arabs who lived under its jurisdiction and did not accept Israeli sovereignty; many, if not most still do not. For them, Israel’s survival and victory in the war of 1948-49 was a “Nakba” (catastrophe) – the essence of the Palestinian narrative, and its ideology, Palestinianism.

As a result of the war, many Arabs fled to other countries, especially to Jordan, nearly a million became “refugees,” most of whom were cared for by UNRWA, and about 156, 000 who remained in Israel and became Israeli citizens. In addition, as a result of the war, Israel acquired abandoned Arab villages and property, and areas which had not been assigned to Israel in 1948, especially in the Galilee, the Negev, and western Jerusalem – which Israel declared as its capital — with their Arab populations. Arabs still consider these areas as “disputed,” and they oppose any form of Israeli sovereignty.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384783

On October 7, Palestinian Arab terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, aided by Gazan “civilians” of all ages, invaded Israel, pillaged, plundered, raped, and marauded, murdered approximately 1200 Jews, wounded thousands, and kidnapped hundreds. Tens of thousands of Israelis remain displaced, exiles in their own country.

The Palestinian Authority has yet to condemn the brutal assault and subsidized it in the form of its pay-for-slay program which continues, with a steadily increasing number of terrorist recipients. The attack was greeted with widespread celebrations among Palestinian Arabs and their supporters across the world.

And Joe Biden wants to reward these people with an independent state, recognized by the United States and the Western world.

This is not only morally repugnant; it is also diplomatic folly, which, if it ever succeeds, would pose a mortal danger to Israel’s existence. Biden has said some nice things and done some important things for Israel since the invasion, for which we should be thankful; he has also said some nasty things and done some incredibly harmful things to Israel, for which we should be wary of his continued support.

An independent Palestinian state Arab is a moral obscenity for several reasons. It literally rewards terror – past, present, and future. Biden and his minions, much like they are doing with Ukraine, are hoping that Israel can defend itself but not prevail in this conflict.

The obsession with Gazan refugees (while concurrently indifferent to the condition of Jewish refugees) has, with irrational Israeli acquiescence, resulted in the unremitting resupply of Hamas’ fuel, food, and other provisions, instead of the evacuation of Gazans from the war zone which is a right afforded all other refugees enmeshed in a conflict. It is designed to make Israel’s military effort much more difficult, essentially an endorsement of the Gazans’ employment as human shields and hampers any possibility of rescuing the hostages. Israel has foolishly consented to this.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/while-israel-fights-hamas-leader-his-niece-is-in-an-israeli-hospital/

Social media is saturated with pro-Hamas propaganda accusing Israel of every possible atrocity including killing Arab Muslims just for fun. In reality, much like us, Israel bends over backward to do just the opposite.

While the head of the political bureau of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, is still examining the proposal for a hostage deal formulated at the Paris summit, Israel’s News 13 reported that members of his family are receiving life-saving medical treatment at Soroka Hospital in Be’er Sheba.

Several of Haniyeh’s sisters are Israeli citizens through marriage to Bedouins and live in Tel Sheva in the Negev. In recent days, one of Haniyeh’s nieces gave birth to a baby in Soroka hospital. The baby was born prematurely and has since been hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit. The medical staff at the hospital have been working to save his life.

As the story goes on to document, multiple Haniyeh family members have been treated in Israeli hospitals.

While some Haniyeh family members were transferred out of Gaza for treatment in the past, this specific niece is apparently from the side of the family that married into a Bedouin clan and has members, including one of Haniyeh’s nephews, who served in the Israeli Army.

Like most things in the Arab world, this comes down to tribalism. Historically certain Arab clans chose to make their peace with Israel while others waged war against it.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/don-feder/

Democrats are driven by delusion: Guns cause crime. Republicans are to blame for the border fiasco. Electric vehicles are the wave of the future. The polar ice caps are melting.

The ultimate fantasy is that a two-state solution will bring peace to the Middle East.

On Jan. 29, 49 Senate Democrats — all except Joe Manchin III and John Fetterman, who abstained on technicalities — co-sponsored an amendment to the Israel aid bill affirming U.S. support for the two-state delusion. All six Democratic senators who are Jewish joined their colleagues. They should return their bar-mitzvah presents forthwith.

Coincidentally, this was the day after Israel buried 24 of its soldiers who died fighting the future leaders of a Palestinian state.

The amendment affirms that the U.S. supports negotiations “resulting in two states with Israelis and Palestinians living side by side in peace, security, dignity and mutual recognition.” They have no idea how dumb they sound.

For a cold dash of reality, consider a Nov. 14 Arab World for Research and Development poll that showed 75% of Palestinians approved of the Oct. 7 massacre. They approved of the gang rape and genital mutilation of Israeli women, the beheading of babies and the burning of captives alive.

The same percentage said they supported a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea.” Kiss Israel goodbye.

https://www.jns.org/indigenous-embassy-in-jerusalem-opens-in-unconventional-ceremony/

(February 5, 2024) Wearing colorful traditional costumes, native peoples from around the globe made speeches, sang, danced, beat drums and, in one case, sounded a giant ram’s horn on Thursday to celebrate the inauguration of the Indigenous Embassy Jerusalem.

The embassy will serve as a much-needed antidote to the false claims by the Palestinians that there is no evidence of any Jewish life in Israel prior to 1948, when Jews ostensibly arrived as colonialist invaders.

The embassy is in part due to the efforts of the Indigenous Coalition for Israel (ICFI), a New Zealand-based group founded by native Maori to counter the false narrative about the Israel-Palestinian conflict that has “taken hold amongst indigenous peoples” and “has often bled into antisemitism,” its website says.

“We recognize that Jews are the indigenous people of this land, and we stand with you and your struggle,” ICFI co-founder Sheree Trotter told the 200-plus audience, noting that the Land of Israel is the place where the Jewish “nation was forged, its language and sacred literature developed, the beliefs, customs and traditions began. It is the most sacred place in the world to Jews. … This deep connection to a particular land and its ancestors are defining features of indigeneity.”

Trotter expressed her hope that the embassy would become an information hub and welcoming space for indigenous peoples visiting Israel, and act as a center to “galvanize” global indigenous support. The embassy will develop a digital production department to counter misinformation about Israel prevalent on social media and “to tell the story of our indigenous friendship.”

The embassy will also host academic symposia and become a tourist attraction. “We plan in time to have an NGO presence at the United Nations,” she added.

While not an embassy in the ordinary sense—it will not represent governments of the indigenous peoples’ host nations or the indigenous peoples themselves—it has been recognized as an embassy by the State of Israel. The audience cheered when they learned from Gil Haskell, Chief of State Protocol for Israel’s Foreign Ministry, that the Indigenous Embassy was the 100th embassy to be opened in the Jewish state.