RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/two-dozen-israeli-soldiers-killed-in-single-deadliest-day-of-fighting-in-gaza/

Twenty-one Israeli soldiers were killed after two buildings rigged to be destroyed by the IDF were struck by a Palestinian rocket with the men inside, bringing the day’s IDF death toll to 24 after three paratroopers were slain hours earlier as fighting intensified in the southern Gazan town of Khan Younis.

Israeli Army Radio reported that the twenty-one soldiers, all of whom were reservists, were operating across the border from the Israeli community of Kissufim in the middle of Gaza, attempting to secure a border zone between the Strip’s northern and southern half.

IDF spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a press conference that the incident occurred “around 4 p.m., [when] an RPG was fired by gunmen at a tank securing the forces, and simultaneously, an explosion occurred in two two-story buildings. The buildings collapsed due to this explosion, while most of the forces were inside and near them.”

“The mission [was] to create the security conditions for the return of the residents of the South,” Hagari added.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country had “experienced one of the most difficult days since the start of the war,” and vowed to investigate the matter. “We need to learn the necessary lessons and do everything to preserve our soldiers’ lives,” Netanyahu noted in a statement released Tuesday. “We will not stop fighting until complete victory.”

Similar statements were echoed by Israel’s upper military and political echelons. “This is a war that will determine the future of Israel for decades to come,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant tweeted. “The fall of our fighters is a requirement.”

President Isaac Herzog praised the “heroism” of the fallen soldiers affirming, “there is no war that is more just.”

The incident was the deadliest since Israel began its invasion of the Gaza Strip in October. Since October 7, more than 500 Israeli soldiers have been killed in combat.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20325/palestinian-leaders-terrorism

If the Biden administration thinks that the Palestinian Authority leaders will cease inciting Palestinians against Israel, they need to think again.

How can Palestinian leaders, who are terrified of Hamas and even more terrified of their own people, be expected to prevent the terrorists from attacking Israel in the event that these leaders were handed a state?

In addition, why would Israel – or anyone else – trust any Palestinian leader who considers Islamist murderers, rapists and baby-killers as “part of the Palestinian national, social and political fabric”?

More than three months have passed since Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, during which hundreds of Israelis were murdered, beheaded, raped, mutilated, and kidnapped — and it is still hard to find any senior Palestinian Authority official who is prepared to condemn the atrocities.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has held a number of meetings over the past few weeks with senior US administration officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, has refrained from publicly denouncing the Iran-backed Hamas terror group for its barbaric attacks on Israelis.

Abbas, it appears, fears a backlash from his people and other Arabs if he speaks out against the murder of Israeli women, children, and the elderly. One word against Hamas and its terrorism, and Abbas’ people might well label him a “traitor” and “collaborator” with Israel.

Abbas’s fear is not unjustified. Almost three out of four Palestinians believe that the October 7 massacre was “correct,” according to a public opinion poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Research Survey (PSR). The poll also found that support for Hamas had risen in the Gaza Strip, and more than tripled in the West Bank, after the carnage.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-imaginary-two-state-solution/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=second

A fine line distinguishes admirable consistency from blinkered thick-headedness. The Biden administration’s indefatigable commitment to advocating in support of a “two-state solution” in the Middle East long ago ceased to be the former and now verges on the latter.

Within weeks of the October 7 massacre, Secretary of State Antony Blinken recommitted to lobbying for the establishment of an internationally recognized Palestinian state as the only true pathway to “durable peace and stability.” Even as reality in the region shifts beneath his feet, Blinken hasn’t changed his tune. “If you take a regional approach, and if you pursue integration with security, with a Palestinian state, all of a sudden, you have a region that’s come together in ways that answer the most profound questions that Israel has tried to answer for years,” Blinken told a World Economic Forum audience at their embarrassing annual spectacle in Davos.

At a certain point, a rational observer must withdraw charitable assumptions about the fallacies that have motivated Blinken to cling to this unimaginative approach to statecraft. His advocacy likely contributed to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s unequivocal rejection of a two-state process — a rejection that was framed in the international press as a recklessly provocative act of defiance. But Netanyahu didn’t incept this international row into existence — he responded to it. The Israeli prime minister articulated the consensus view in Israel on the viability of a two-state process amid an ongoing existential war against a terrorist outfit in Gaza. Even if Netanyahu’s remarks were intended for a domestic audience, the Biden administration’s lobbying provided the platform for this politicking.

But as to the international media’s account of this controversy, you could be forgiven for thinking that Washington and Jerusalem were the only parties to it. The competing and, oftentimes, conflicting Palestinian factions seem just as eager to reject Blinken’s terms.

It shouldn’t need to be said given its empirically observable bloodlust, but Hamas has no interest in a two-state solution if Israel is one of those two states.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20323/biden-threatens-netanyahu-drive

The Israeli premier has also reiterated his long-standing opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, which he insists would become a launching pad for attacks on Israel.

Israel’s efforts to achieve its goal of destroying Hamas, though, are at serious risk of being undermined by the Biden administration’s growing hostility towards Netanyahu’s government.

There are credible indications, moreover, that the Biden administration’s hostility towards Netanyahu has led it to work with senior figures within Israel’s security establishment, which is known to have a difficult relationship with the Israeli premier, to remove his government from power.

[T]he Palestinian leadership has always been just as deeply and outspokenly committed to the destruction of Israel as Hamas is.

Instead of trying to overthrow the Netanyahu government, the Biden administration would be better advised to grasp the vital strategic consideration that defeating Hamas is as much in the interests of the US as it is for Israel.

The deepening antipathy of the Biden administration toward Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is threatening to derail Israel’s military offensive to destroy Hamas.

With every day that the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) maintain their military effort to end the threat to Israeli security posed by Hamas’s presence in Gaza, more details emerge of the staggering underground terrorist infrastructure the Iranian-backed group has constructed in Gaza.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383932

Most (if not all) countries go to war to win; Israel, however, is different. First, neither Israel nor the PLO conceives of the conflict as a war, since they have mutual ongoing political, security, and economic interests; terrorism, therefore, is seen as part of an ongoing relationship.

Until Oct 7, Israeli leaders assumed that this was also true for Hamas.

This leads to the second reason: Before October 7, Israel was not fighting Hamas to destroy terrorism, but to prevent attacks, neutralize or arrest terrorists, and then, temporarily, return to a “status quo.” That’s why warnings about what Hamas was doing were ignored by Israel’s political, military and security leaders; they duped themselves.

Hope-doped, drugged by self-assurance, and seeking to appease the Obama/Biden administrations, the EU, the UN and the international community, some of them accepted “the two-state-solution” (2SS) . They failed to understand that the conflict is not over territory, but is – as Hamas proclaims – a religious war to eliminate Israel. That explains why Palestinian Arab leaders consistently reject offers of statehood in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and why they continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. They are engaged in a “holy war” against Jews and Zionists as “invaders” and “occupiers of Palestine” – all of it.

That is a call for genocide.

Attempts to reduce, or “manage the conflict” by making concessions, therefore, failed because of an unwillingness to understand what the PLO, Hamas and other terrorist organizations want. Despite ongoing terrorism during the 1990’s, Israeli, European, and American leaders promoted a “peace process,” the Oslo Accords.

As Yasser Arafat admitted, it was only a step towards his goal of destroying Israel.

Although the Abraham Accords were a sign of hope, they had no effect on the terrorist war against Israel. Meanwhile, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and other Muslim countries poured billions into Hamas’ war efforts. Distracted, Israeli leaders ignored what was going on in Gaza. Self-assured, they refused to accept reality

https://www.timesofisrael.com/maj-jamal-abbas-23-grandson-of-prominent-druze-officer/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23, a company commander in the 101st Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, was killed in combat in Sheikh Ijlin, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 18.

Abbas was born into a family of high-ranking military officers from the Druze village of Peki’in. His grandfather, retired Col. Gideon Abbas, is among the first Druze soldiers to attain the rank of brigade commander in the IDF.

Jamal’s father, Col. Anan Abbas, followed suit and rose to the rank of colonel while serving in the Northern Command.

“I grew up with the state and I was beaten even before the establishment of the state by the legion stationed here in the area. They suspected me of passing on information. I still felt the pain in my body from back in 1948,” Gideon Abbas said.

Abbas still, however, became an active member of the Druze Scouts Association in Israel and decided to join the army in 1960, at the age of 22. He raised his children with the army, taking them to military training and occasionally the Lebanese border during his service.

“I raised them this way, that they should be fighters and officers… I always believed in their abilities and believed that they should serve the country like everyone else,” he said.

https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2024/01/why-the-cause-of-israel-is-that-of-all-the-west/

There are a number of important features about Israel’s actions in Gaza against Hamas which have not been made in public commentary but need to be pointed out. If one thinks that Israel’s drastic actions against Hamas in response to the horrifying atrocities of October 7 are unjustified, consider this: if the Cuban government launched thousands of rockets and missiles at targets in Florida, and then followed this up by landing hundreds of trained terrorists in the United States, where they murdered 240 Americans at a music festival, and then invaded a nearby American town, where they killed or kidnapped everyone there, beheading American babies or burning them alive, what do you think the reaction of the president of the United States would be—any president, from either party? The response is not hard to predict: within a week or so, Havana would be a heap of smoking rubble, resembling Berlin or Dresden in 1945, destruction enthusiastically supported by the overwhelming majority of Americans. The response of the Israeli government, supported by the vast majority of its citizens, is hardly surprising.

Another notable facet of the Gaza conflict is that, as I write this, no Arab or Islamic state, even the most extreme, has given more than lip-service support to Hamas, if that. Indeed, Egypt and Jordan, Israel’s neighbours and military opponents in the 1967 and 1973 wars, have not lifted a finger to help Hamas or any other extremist Islamic group.

However, arguably the most important feature of this conflict and the support and hostility it has engendered is also very clear, but seldom commented on directly. Almost without exception, Israel’s supporters have been conservatives and those on the political Right, its opponents left-wingers and radicals (apart, of course, from Western Muslims, the largest local bloc opposed to Israel’s actions). Moderate centre-Left elements, such as President Biden and most of America’s Democratic Party, have also been strong supporters of Israel—at least so far. But those clearly on the political Left have been, to a man or woman, strongly hostile to Israel, regularly whitewashing the barbaric attacks against Israelis—in Israel itself, not in Gaza—carried out by Hamas terrorists, and totally hostile to Israel’s military response.

In the historical context of attitudes towards Jews during the past 150 years or so, this represents a near-total reversal of support for and antipathy to the Jews, and it is important to analyse the reasons for this reversal. In my opinion, perhaps the most important factor in this great shift has been the existence of the State of Israel, especially the nationalistic, tradition-minded and militarily powerful and successful nation it has become, its military prowess a necessary response to the deadly antipathy of its enemies since its establishment in 1948. The strategies and values embodied by Israel have almost entirely negated the bases of pre-1945 anti-Semitism, in which hostility towards the Jews was largely based in the fact that, almost uniquely, they were an ethno-religious group without either a state or a contiguous and distinct area of residence, but were, to their enemies, always outsiders, regardless of where they lived, and moreover, were seen as continuously engaged in a vast international conspiracy of evil.