RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-n-women-retracts-statement-condemning-hamas-attacks-on-israel/?utm_source=recirc

After weeks of silence on Hamas’s October 7 crimes against women and children, United Nations Women issued a definitive statement on Friday that condemned “the brutal attacks by Hamas.”

Then, the organization deleted its statement.

In a post on Instagram, U.N. Women initially denounced Hamas’s attacks and said that it would “continue to call for the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages.” U.N. Women deleted the statement soon after it was posted and replaced it with another that omitted condemnation of Hamas.

U.N. Women has faced mounting pressure from Jewish women’s organizations, who say that the organization’s response to Hamas’s October 7 attacks has been skewed at best. In October, U.N. Women waited days to publicly comment on the attack. When the organization did comment on the “situation in Israel,” it called for increased humanitarian aid and fuel for Gaza, began to advocate for a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, and said nothing of the violence that Hamas committed against Israeli women and children.

The U.N.’s leading women’s body is now spearheading its annual 16-day campaign to bring attention to gender-based violence. Its 16-day campaign might be to blame for the media mix-up that caused U.N. Women to post its Friday statement, a representative told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

https://victorhanson.com/what-were-the-hamas-monsters-thinking/

We know the multifaceted strategy of the monstrous Hamas operation of October 7.

In precivilizational fashion it wished to kill and mutilate the most vulnerable of all Israeli civilians and thus to shock the world that it was capable of—and proud about— anything, from decapitation to necrophilia. Such animalistic savagery, in the reckoning of Western therapeutic society, was supposedly to be seen as forced upon Hamas murderers by the “occupation.”

The killers felt they would shock the Israelis into concessions given their eagerness to commit the unspeakable. They took captives for tripartite reasons: to barter children and the elderly for their kindred terrorist murderers in Israeli jails; to use captives to force the Israelis to grant cease-fires and pauses in their retaliation; and to bank them as shields to protect Hamas kingpins from retaliation.

Hamas invaded during a holiday in the early hours, in a time of peace, and on the iconic 50th-annivesary of the Yom Kippur surprise Arab attack. Their aim was to prove that  Israeli soil was for the first time porous and 2,000 killers could enter sacred Israeli ground with impunity and kill in one day more Jews civilians than at any day since the Holocaust.

The terrorists shot thousands of rockets into Israel to overwhelm Iron Dome and terrify the entire civilian population.

All these tactics was aimed at long-term strategic goals: stop the Abraham Accords; obey the directives of Hamas’s Iranian terrorist masters as payment for their arms; discredit the radical Palestine Authority and Arab moderate nations as anemic in their opposition to the supposedly shared hated Zionist entity; and prompt an Israeli response that by necessity would involve collateral damage to human shields, and schools, mosques, and hospitals atop subterranean Hamas headquarters.

Yet if we know their despicable methods, aims, and strategies, why did they think the civilized world would support their barbarity or at least excuse it?

One, Hamas assumed anti-Semitism was prevalent throughout the West and was canonical in the Middle East. Palestinian authorities count on the fact that being an enemy of the Jews of Israel wins them empathy of the world and creating their own unique rules of passive-aggressive victimhood.

So Palestinians demand to be the only “refugees” in the world—not Greek Cypriots, Eastern European Germans, and Prussians, Kurds, Armenians, and certainly not a million Jews cleansed from the Arab Middle East.

Israelis are to be “settlers,” not millions of Middle Easterners who surge and settle into the West, form resistance communities, sneer at integration and assimilation, and use Western liberality to protect and project their own illiberality.

https://www.jns.org/the-israeli-people-demand-victory/

Israel is currently focused on the sequential release of groups of our hostages held by Hamas. According to reports, some 52 hostages will be released over a four-day period as part of a temporary truce deal between Israel and the terror group. Three-quarters of them have already been released.

The question is: What follows? This is where things get not only murky, but potentially frightening.

Hamas is clearly hoping that we will become addicted to a daily schedule of releases, which will require a prolonged ceasefire. This scenario makes Hamas the puppet-master. It will be in full control of events and their timing. Moreover, as ceasefires are extended, Israeli leverage, born of battlefield success, will diminish. And it will embolden those who want Israel to stand down and end its military operations.

American and European leaders will proclaim: You’ll get all your people back, you inflicted heavy damage on Hamas, you killed a lot of Gazans—that sounds like enough. There is also the enormous economic cost of keeping hundreds of thousands of IDF reservists in the field.

Taken together, this could mean that the drumbeat for winding things down will become increasingly, even irresistibly loud.

This is a formula for disaster.

Israel is not fighting a war to recover hostages. We are fighting for the ground we stand on. Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 massacre taught us that we can no longer tolerate its existence on our border. Not if we want to have a southern Israel.

https://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/elon-musk-israel-visit/2023/11/27/id/1143708/

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk lent support Monday to Israel’s campaign against Hamas, saying one challenge was stopping propaganda of a sort that led to the Hamas terrorists’ killing spree that triggered the Israel war on Gaza.

The owner of the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, Musk was on an unusual visit to Israel, during a four-day pause to the fighting, and held a live online discussion with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Hearing Netanyahu describe the destruction of Hamas, which Israel has set as a war goal, as necessary for any prospective peace with the Palestinians, Musk sounded his general agreement for such objectives during an X Spaces discussion.

“There’s no choice,” said Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX, adding: “I’d like to help as well.”

“Those that are intent on murder must be neutralized,” Musk said. “The propaganda must stop that is training people to be murderers in the future. And then, making Gaza prosperous. And if that happens, I think it will be a good future.”

Netanyahu replied: “I hope you will be involved. And the fact that you came here, I think, speaks volumes to your commitment to try to secure a better future.”

Musk has himself been accused of incitement after agreeing on Nov. 15 with a post that falsely claimed Jews were stoking hatred against white people.

Netanyahu showed Musk some footage of the Oct. 7 attack assembled from Hamas bodycams, CCTV and other sources.

When they last met, in California on Sept. 18, Netanyahu urged Musk to strike a balance between protecting free expression and fighting hate speech after weeks of controversy over antisemitism on X.

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/231127

Since October 7, 2023, everything has changed

The latest Hamas and Hezbollah aggression, unleashed against Israeli civilians by the mullahs of the Islamic Republic of Iran, masks the growing and insidious myth that has metastasized in the West, namely the endlessly repeated lie by Arab propaganda that the Jewish state occupies a country called Palestine and that Israelis are colonists and occupiers. I first became aware of this baseless lie during the last two weeks of May 2003 when I spent time in England visiting family and friends.

My visit afforded me an opportunity to sense how the British media was treating Israel in its daily news coverage. I was already aware of the corrosive and institutionalized bias by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) towards Israel, but what I saw and heard exceeded my worst fears.

On one day alone, the BBC ran a program called “Correspondent” in which Israel’s construction of a security fence to protect Israeli citizens from Arab terror was roundly criticized. The BBC correspondent expressed no understanding of Israel’s basic needs of defense; instead, the program blamed Israel’s “occupation” for the Palestinian violence and denounced the fence as a “wall of apartheid.”

Of course, when Arabs use the word “occupation” they are not talking of Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) or Gaza, they are talking about all of Israel. Thus, when they speak of peace once Israel withdraws from “occupied territory” what they really mean is that there will be peace once Israel no longer exists. That is also what they mean when they scream, “From the River to the Sea.”

The same day on British TV’s Channel 4, a bizarre opera called “The Death of Klinghoffer” was aired. This filmed opus, composed by a John Adams, dealt with the hijacking by Palestinian terrorists of the cruise ship, the Achille Lauro, in 1985 and the murder of the hapless wheelchair bound Jewish American, Leon Klinghoffer, who was subsequently tossed overboard by the Arab hijackers. The opera provided a misplaced dignity to the terrorists and attempted to excuse their actions in part because of the Israeli “occupation.”

Earlier in the week, BBC 1 was to have televised “Raid on Entebbe” and viewers tuned in only to be dismayed that the Beeb, as the BBC was once affectionately known, arbitrarily cancelled the program. The showing of the film, which cast Israeli commandos in a heroic light as they rescued hijacked Jewish passengers from a German/Palestinian gang in Idi Amin’s Uganda, was deemed by the BBC spokesperson as “insensitive at this time of terrorist alerts.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20178/arabs-betrayed-palestinians

The stance of the Arabs and Muslims is yet another indication of their disillusionment with the Palestinians in general and Iran’s proxies — Hamas, Hizballah and the Houthis — in particular.

Countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt and Jordan are as opposed to Hamas as they are to Israel. Hamas is another branch of the Muslim Brotherhood organization, which has long posed a threat to their national security.

In 2017, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain cut ties with Qatar after accusing it of providing support for Islamist terrorists, including Hamas and the Taliban, as well as Iran.

Now that their eyes have been once again forced open, the Palestinians should distance themselves from Hamas and other terrorist groups and join forces with those Arabs and Muslims who recognize that to create a better future for their people, it would benefit them immeasurably to recognize the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

The Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group and its supporters are once again disappointed that the Arab countries did not come to the rescue of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the current war which erupted after the October 7 Hamas massacre of Israelis. At least 1,200 Israelis were murdered and more than 4,500 wounded in the massacre. Another 240 Israelis, including toddlers, children, women and the elderly were kidnapped to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

This is not the first time that the Palestinians have voiced disappointment with their Arab brothers. In all previous rounds of fighting between Israel and Hamas, the Palestinians have claimed that the Arab and Islamic states were not doing enough to help them. In fact, Palestinians have over the past few decades accused the Arabs of “betraying” them by signing normalization agreements with Israel and refusing to provide them with financial aid. The Palestinians receive lip service from the Arabs and Muslims, but that is all.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/video_amazing_israeli_women_saved_a_community.html

When you suddenly get innumerable emails from people wanting you to see the same story, you know it’s an important one. In this case, it’s the story of the young women who, with three tanks, fought a 17-hour-long furious battle against Hamas terrorists, saving an entire community through their actions. Their triumph is an important counterpoint to the women who were ignored in the lead-up to the October 7 attack. Some are blaming sexism, but I have another theory.

The tank battle took place at Yated, a community that sits near the Egyptian and Gaza borders at the southernmost end of the Gaza Strip. This video shows the women explaining how they responded to the attack and what they did. They are matter of fact, saying that they were completely focused on the task at hand, which was to fight the terrorists swarming into Israel:

It’s worth noting that, even as the women are getting the respect they deserve for their impressive military feat, there is a story emerging that part of the reason Israel was caught unprepared was that commanders ignored warnings from female “spotters,” many of whom died on October 7, saying that they saw unusual Hamas activity along the border.

The current narrative is that this failure resulted from command sexism. That’s possible. Israel is the most enlightened country in the Middle East, with full women’s rights and innumerable strong women. Still, many people in Israel are the descendants of the approximately 900,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after Israel’s creation. Unlike the Zionist Europeans who moved to Israel before and after the modern state’s creation, all of whom were very modern in their attitudes towards women, these emigrants came from conservative countries and might have reflected those values and passed them to their children.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamas-holds-everyone-hostage-war-gaza-israel-biden-truce-694318db?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The civilized world is rejoicing at the release of hostages by Hamas, especially the sight of young children reunited with parents after seven weeks of hell. But that relief shouldn’t blind us to the way the jihadists are manipulating human sentiment to achieve their terrorist aims.

The killers are releasing a dozen or so hostages each day in return for three times the number of Palestinians released by Israel. Hamas snatched innocent Israelis and others in a deliberate act of terror. The released Palestinians were arrested or convicted of crimes under the law.

Now Hamas is using the hostages to play on Western respect for human life. Hamas knows its strategy is dividing Israeli opinion between those who prioritize the release of the hostages and those who want Hamas defeated so it can never again slaughter 1,200 people.

Hamas is also manipulating the world, including the Biden Administration. President Biden said Sunday he hopes the initial four-day military truce can be extended so more hostages will be released. That includes the unknown number of Americans held in who-knows-what condition underground. Hamas released the first U.S. hostage on Sunday, a 4-year-old American-Israeli girl, Abigail Edan, whose parents were murdered in front of her.

But every day the truce lasts the more time the jihadists have to regroup, slip out of Gaza, rearm, or plan more ambushes against Israelis. And the longer it lasts the more odds increase of an extended cease-fire, which is what Hamas really wants. The onus will fall on Israel to end the truce, though Hamas is unlikely ever to release all hostages, who are its only source of leverage.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dont-give-gaza-to-the-palestinian-authority-terrorism-anti-semitism-israel-fatah-68aa2ba8?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

The Biden administration wants Israel to bring in Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party to rule Gaza when the war is over. Fatah controls the Palestinian Authority, which governs much of the West Bank. Uniting Gaza and the West Bank under a common government is a necessary step in the Biden administration’s seemingly unshakable goal of creating a Palestinian state sandwiching Israel.

The idea behind the strategy has a long history. Fatah is a secular, Arab nationalist party that occasionally claims to want peace with Israel, albeit on terms that would make Israel’s existence as a Jewish state untenable. Yet for many diplomats this makes it an attractive alternative to the terrorists who perpetrated the Oct. 7 attacks. But Fatah is a junior-varsity version of Hamas. Both have lethal policies when it comes to Israel. The Palestinian Authority sponsors the “pay to slay” salary program that provides financial rewards to terrorists, who get more lavish payouts for crimes that result in longer imprisonment. As recently as Oct. 2, an official Palestinian Authority TV broadcast showed Mr. Abbas saying: “Our martyrs, prisoners and wounded are the most sanctified that we have. . . . Our martyrs have a right to this money.”

Fatah has celebrated and glorified the Oct. 7 orgy of torture and murder. The party has boasted that its members directly participated in the invasion, crossing into Israel and brutalizing civilians. A video shown on a West Bank-based Telegram channel that has been repeatedly cited by official Fatah sources shows terrorists with the yellow headbands of Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade firing Kalashnikovs while assaulting an Israeli kibbutz. One terrorist proclaims, “Today we broke in the military post Nahal Oz [a civilian kibbutz] and we hit what we hit.” The terrorists brag that they “stepped on their heads,” and shows footage of them stomping a dead Israeli.

Other videos on Fatah channels boast of their participation, proclaiming that Fatah is “fighting with the rest of the resistance groups in ‘the Al Aqsa Flood’ battle,” using Hamas’s operational name for the massacre. On Oct. 7, death notices appeared on Telegram announcing the funerals (or “weddings,” as they put it) of Fatah members who died that morning in the attack on Israel.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/nov/25/im-grateful-for-israels-christian-allies/

A series of ads from the 1960s featured the slogan, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s real Jewish rye.” They were illustrated with pictures of a choir boy, an Asian child, an Italian mother, an Irish cop, and other obvious non-Jews happily munching on the kosher product.

Given the outpouring of Christian support for what Muslim radicals call the Zionist entity, today, we could say, “You don’t have to be Jewish to love Israel.”

America’s 100 million Evangelical Christians are a bulwark of support in a raging sea – antisemitic mobs roaming our college campuses, much of the Democratic party going over to the Palestinians and crass celebrities, like Susan Sarandon, essentially telling Jews they have it coming.

Some 700 members of Passages joined the Nov. 14 March for Israel in Washington, D.C. The organization brings Christian students to Israel to explore the roots of their faith. In the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, its members visited synagogues throughout the United States in a show of support.

With an estimated 10 million members, Christians United for Israel raised $2.65 million for Israeli charities in the days following the Hamas massacre. As part of its Don’t Look Away Campaign, CUFI projected pictures of the hostages high above New York’s Times Square, along with images of rope-bound hands, a bloody pacifier and an empty wheelchair.

The Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, promises, “Every time an antisemite spews hate, then we shall express our solidarity with the Jewish community.”