RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20204/revitalized-palestinian-authority

Many of the officials managing the Palestinian Authority (PA) are the same ones who helped establish it in 1994 and were responsible for its rampant corruption. This corruption is one of the main reasons why Hamas won the PA parliamentary election in 2006, when the Islamist movement ran under the banner of “Change and Reform.”

Mahmoud Abbas and senior PA officials have been stirring up bloodlust for Israel both before and after Hamas’s October 7 massacre. Palestinians hear these messages and vote for Hamas when given the opportunity, as we saw in the recent student council elections at a number of Palestinian universities in the West Bank. This is exactly what Abbas feared when he cancelled the PA’s presidential and parliamentary elections that were slated to take place in 2021.

The assumption that, three decades later, the Palestinian Authority is going to embark on any serious reforms is a mirage. Abbas and the PA leadership will not change unless they are pressured to do so… One thing is clear: the Palestinian Authority is in no way, shape or form up to this job.

The Biden administration is continuing to promote the idea of having a “revitalized” Palestinian Authority (PA) govern the Gaza Strip after the Israel-Hamas war. US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the phrase “revitalized Palestinian Authority” to express support for placing the Gaza Strip, currently ruled by the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group, under the control of the PA, headed by Mahmoud Abbas. On December 2, Vice President Kamala Harris became the latest official to promote the idea that “we have to revitalize the Palestinian Authority” to prepare it for ruling the Gaza Strip after the war.

The White House has further suggested that Palestinians “should be the determining voice” in who governs them.

The Palestinians already had a determining voice. They elected Hamas. According to public opinion polls, even in the West Bank, under the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority that pays people to murder Jews, Palestinians would elect a terrorist regime once again.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/03/charging-jews-with-genocide-declare-them-guilty-precisely-what-was-done-to-them-middle-east

Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attacks has emboldened many to say the once unsayable.

When is a genocide a genocide? The word is much in vogue, though its precise meaning – the intentional destruction of a people – is hard to justify in the case of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, which, though without doubt brutal in execution and heartbreaking in effect, falls a long way short of any ambition to exterminate an entire population.

Genocides don’t leaflet the populations they want to destroy with warnings to stay out of harm’s way, and Hamas, which Israel avowedly does want to see the back of, is not the Gazan people. For all the sensationalist pronouncements of academics who specialise in genocide, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, settler-colonialism, etc, the words simply flutter like so many pennants at a medieval joust. Denoting, in the fading light, which side you’re on, no more.

The only party to a declared intention to commit genocide is Hamas. It is a matter of contention whether the chant “From the river to the sea” is also genocidal. But perhaps the circumstances allow for hyperbole. To accuse its enemies of wanton exaggeration is not to exonerate Israel. There has to have been, and there will need to be, a better way of securing peace for the country than the assertion of military might. But brutality isn’t genocide.

Words matter in war, and when a vocal third party to a war operates from the campuses of western universities, where words go off like hand grenades, we must be careful which we choose. Among the casualties of this war are the young, who are susceptible to lurid language and who get their disinformation from the internet and their rhetoric from their professors. We have been here before but with this difference: the vilification of Israel is more scurrilous and orchestrated this time because on 7 October Hamas breached not only a fence but a decorum that in the past has marked us out as civilised. We don’t – we didn’t – turn the traumatic history of a people into a justification for hating them. Post 7 October, we can say things about Jews we haven’t dared say before. At last, we can throw the Holocaust back in their teeth.

Some years ago, I borrowed the title for a lecture from the English philosopher John Gray. “It has long been known,” he wrote in his book Straw Dogs, “that those who perform great acts of kindness are rarely forgiven. The same is true of those who suffer irreparable wrongs.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/witnesses-confirm-rape-beheadings-systematic-genital-mutilation-by-hamas/

‘Everything was an apocalypse of corpses,’ one official said, as Israel challenged the U.N.’s silence about Hamas’s crimes.
Witnesses to the brutal aftermath of Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack presented new, graphic testimony about the group’s widespread use of rape, at a United Nations event today organized by Israel’s mission to the body — one of the most extensive public presentations on those, and other, atrocities yet.

This took place against the backdrop of a rapidly unfurling backlash against the U.N.’s laggard approach to acknowledging Hamas’s use of rape on October 7, with UN Women only condemning the assaults in a statement following public criticism and an interview in which an official struggled to unequivocally condemn the terrorist group. Last week, U.N. secretary-general António Guterres said in a statement on X that accounts of Hamas’s sexual violence need to be “vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli authorities have deepened their investigation into sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas during the massacre. Hamas’s sexual crimes might also have played a role in its decision to break the cease-fire with Israel, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying today that Hamas appears have chosen not to hand over several female hostages because “they don’t want those women to be able to talk about what happened to them.”

During today’s event, individuals directly involved in tending to the bodies of Hamas victims gave testimony about their experiences, and Israeli officials played videos featuring interrogations of Hamas fighters who acknowledged that members of the group raped victims and an interview with a woman who witnessed rape at the Nova music festival.

Yael Richert, chief superintendent of the Israeli Police’s Lahav 433 unit, described some of the horrifying testimony that her colleagues have gathered so far. Referring to an interview with a survivor of the Nova music festival, she said: “Everything was an apocalypse of corpses. Girls without any clothes on . . . without underwear. People cut in half, butchered, some were beheaded.

“There were girls with a broken pelvis, due to repetitive rapes. Their legs were spread wide apart in a split.” Other survivors said that girls were pulled out of shelters, raped, then burned.

https://bit.ly/3NbGIq2

“Those who experience wake up calls usually discover, in hindsight, that they had received plenty of warning before the poop hit the propeller, but they chose to disregard it…. Whether a wake up call becomes a boon, or a bane, depends on what you’re willing to learn from it, and whether you’re willing to be moved by experience.” (Greg Levoy, a psychologist and an author).

The US-Israel mutual threat of Islamic terrorism

Israel’s war against Hezbollah and Hamas is a wakeup call, highlighting the shared US-Israel war against Islamic terrorism. The latter considers Israel a US geo-strategic beachhead in the Middle East, that should be uprooted as a critical step toward the defeat of the Western “infidel.”

For example:   

*Hezbollah and Hamas are critical proxies of Iran, which funds, trains and supplies advanced ballistic and engineering hardware, aiming to realize its 1,400-year-old vision of toppling all “apostate” (Sunni) regimes, export the Islamic Shiite Revolution globally, and bring “the Great American Satan” to submission.

*Hamas was established in 1988 by the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been dedicated since 1928 to the toppling of all national Islamic regimes, replacing them with a universal Islamic society, establishing Islam as the only, divinely-ordained, legitimate religion on earth, defeating the “infidel” Western culture and bringing down “the Great American Satan.”

*Securing a boon, rather than a bane, requires the uprooting of Hamas’ terroristic, political and educational infrastructure, which would deter anti-US Islamic terrorism. On the other hand, the survival of Hamas would adrenalize the veins of anti-US Islamic terrorists in the Middle East and beyond, afflicting the US with a bane.

Israel’s war highlights Iran’s terrorist nature  

*Heeding the October 7, 2023 wakeup call should trigger a US reassessment of its 44-year-old diplomatic option toward Iran, which has facilitated Iran’s lead role – operationally and financially – in the transformation of Hezbollah and Hamas (as well as a multitude of additional Islamic and non-Islamic terror organizations) into a most effective anti-US global terrorist network. The US diplomatic option has also bolstered the evolution of Iran into the leading regional and global epicenter of anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking, money laundering and proliferation of advanced military systems.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/the-truth-about-the-hostages-and-the-israel-hamas-ceasefire-colonel-richard-kemp-atlnow-5539835?ea_src=author_manual&ea_med=related_videos

https://www.newsmax.com/politics/hamas-hezbollah-iranian/2023/11/30/id/1144266/

To this day, Hezbollah remains a powerful force in Lebanon and a dire threat to Israel, especially those living in the north.

At some point, the war between Hamas and Israel will come to an end.

A looming but important question: what’s next?

What comes next after an Iranian-funded terrorist organization manages to kill over 1,200 Israelis and take 240 of its citizens hostage into Gaza?

The future of the region must be addressed, and whatever resolution is generated must include increased security measures in volatile areas like Gaza, the West Bank, and the northern border with Lebanon.

Additionally, the U.S., and more broadly, the U.N., must give the Jewish State full autonomy and support in dealing with this dangerous conflict.

We are now aware that the Biden administration is putting pressure on the Jewish State to restrain its operations against Hamas by conditioning aid to Israel.

Not only is this giving Hamas exactly what it wants, it continues this long cycle of Israel listening to western influence and ultimately causing more harm to Israel and the Jewish people.

In a recent interview with the BBC, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett remarked that Israel’s biggest flub over the past 20 years was listening to the advice of Western nations rather than doing the job at hand.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/three-israelis-dead-13-injured-in-jerusalem-shooting-after-cease-fire-extended-another-day/

Just after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the existing cease-fire by another day, two Hamas terrorists opened fire at a bus stop near Jerusalem, leaving at least three Israelis dead and 13 injured.

Israeli police received reports of the shooting around 7:40 a.m. local time Thursday when two individuals pulled up in a car armed with weapons and shot several civilians standing by a busy bus station. The gunmen were killed by Israeli security forces at the scene, according to authorities.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attack later Thursday, saying it was carried out in response to Israeli soldiers killing two Palestinian children in the West Bank the day prior.

“As we mourn our martyrs, we confirm that this operation came as a natural response to the unprecedented occupation crimes” of Israel, the terrorist organization said in a statement, identifying brothers Murad and Ibrahim al-Nimr as the deceased perpetrators.

The mass shooting came shortly after the cease-fire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war was extended by another 24 hours ahead of the 7 a.m. deadline, allowing Hamas to release more hostages in exchange for Israel freeing its Palestinian prisoners and providing humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip. Unless another cease-fire extension is agreed upon, both warring sides will resume fighting by Friday.