Gaza: Razzia as Political Warfare by Amir Taheri

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20516/gaza-razzia-political-warfare

British and European Union leaders say the time has come to formally accept the creation of a Palestinian state.

Meanwhile, Major-General Ismail Qaani, chief of the Quds Force of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, promises to “rebuild Gaza stronger than before as an advance post against world Zionism.”

Claiming to be a “freedom fighter” shouldn’t mean a license to kill at will. Even the “oppressed” have certain duties and must observe some rules while, as history has shown, the tyranny of the underdog could be as deadly as that of the oppressor.

The question today is why, when no time limit is imposed on conventional war until a victor emerges, should war against an insurgent group be subjected to calendar-based shenanigans?

In fact, the origin of razzia is the Arabic word ghazwa, which means a sudden no-holds-barred attack on a single set of targets in the hope of knocking out an adversary… The 9/11 attacks of 2001 on the US were four coordinated razzias.

World War II produced over 30 million refugees, all of whom acquired new abodes within a decade. The partition of India produced 14 million refugees, again, seeing all of them re-settled in less than a decade. Since 1959, more than 10 million Cubans have been driven out of their homeland and settled in a dozen countries, notably the United States.

Does it make any sense to have refugee camps even in Gaza, which was free of Israeli occupation for two decades? Or in the West Bank, governed by the Palestinian Authority? Is it humane to turn being a refugee into a profession, with UNRWA as the franchise-holder?

The Biden administration is making a big mistake by implicitly upgrading Hamas to a legitimate partner through regional allies, thus creating the illusion that razzias like the October 7 one could still produce at least a lollipop for perpetrators.

Show the Video, Israel It’s time for Israel to show the 47-minute video of the October 7 attack to the world. By Michael E. Ginsberg

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/23/show-the-video-israel/

Across the globe, a critical mass of the ignorant, the brainwashed, the Islamist supremacists, and the evil is forming.

Just consider what a massacre of Jews on October 7 launched:

Downtown London has become a no-go zone for Jews every weekend.
Jewish teachers have been being chased by frenzied student mobs through the halls of New York schools.
Jewish university students have been barricaded in auditoriums and libraries by braying mobs.
Synagogues and Jewish hospitals in the US and Canada have become the targets of screaming protesters.
Jewish-owned restaurants and businesses have been vandalized, and their patrons have been threatened with violence.
Jewish artists have had their shows cancelled or protested.
Rallies featuring Nazi imagery and celebrating the events of October 7 have taken and continue to take place in Times Square and on the streets of New York City.

And all this has been in response to a genocidal attack on Jews on October 7.

October 7 was the final crank of a jack-in-the-Pandora’s-box of Leftist and Islamist antisemitism that has been bubbling under the surface for years.

The Hamas pogrom of October 7 is no longer just an existential threat to the Jewish state. It is an existential threat to every nation in the civilized world. And the civilized world, from academia to politicians to law enforcement, has proven incapable of or unwilling to forcefully stamp this evil out.

Which is why Israel must do what few others in power are able or willing to do: directly confront

Bobulinski’s Testimony: Unraveling Allegations of Biden Family Influence Peddling Joe Biden has repeatedly denied ever talking to his son about his business dealings. Bobulinski shows that it was an outright lie. By Roger Kimball

https://amgreatness.com/2024/03/24/bobulinskis-testimony-unraveling-allegations-of-biden-family-influence-peddling/

The entertainment committee never sleeps.  Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski came to Congress a few days ago to testify before the House Oversight Committee about Hunter, his uncle Jim Biden, and the “Big Guy,” Mr. 10 percent, Joseph R. Biden himself.  It was an extraordinary performance. Calm. Deliberate. Detailed. Deadly. Mr. Bobulinski’s written statement shows what care he took in marshaling facts and evidence.

But it was his in-person testimony that made popping the corn worthwhile.  Tony Bobulinski and Congressman Jay Raskin. Tony Bobulinski and Congressman Dan Goldman.  He called both liars to their faces. It was delicious. It was also true.  Representative Raskin spluttered, stalled, and looked like he might burst into tears. He later, out of the line of fire, pouted about Mr. Bobulinski’s “outlandish and baseless accusations,” but that was just a feckless face-saving gambit.

Maybe the most entertaining moment of the afternoon came when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez did her best Minnie Mouse impersonation and demanded to know what crimes, if any, Mr. Bobulinski was accusing Joe Biden of having committed. “RICO is not a crime!” she squeaked.  It was priceless.  The “greatest deliberative body in the world” in action, ladies and gentlemen. The country’s in the very best of hands.

But, as the old song said, “it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” In any normal polity, Mr. Bobulinski’s testimony would have been devastating to its targets. But in our polity, it was just entertainment.  If Congressmen Raskin and Goldman were capable of embarrassment, they would be squirming with shame.  But they are not so endowed, which means that they will emerge unscathed by any pangs of conscience. After all, they are still in office. Perhaps they will even be reelected and continue suckling at the public teat for the rest of their adult lives.

There will be a lot of tongue-clucking. You’ll see many columns rehearsing the details of Mr. Bobulinski’s testimony. At the end of the day, though, it won’t matter what evidence Mr. Bobulinski adduced.  The Justice Department is run by the State Party, aka the Democrats, and the DOJ is going to do exactly nothing about what Rudy Giuliani colorfully baptized the Biden Crime Family.

The End of Everything: How Wars Descend into Annihilation by Victor Davis Hanson

A New York Times–bestselling historian charts how and why societies from ancient Greece to the modern era chose to utterly destroy their foes, and warns that similar wars of obliteration are possible in our time

War can settle disputes, topple tyrants, and bend the trajectory of civilization—sometimes to the breaking point. From Troy to Hiroshima, moments when war has ended in utter annihilation have reverberated through the centuries, signaling the end of political systems, cultures, and epochs. Though much has changed over the millennia, human nature remains the same. Modern societies are not immune from the horror of a war of extinction.

In The End of Everything, military historian Victor Davis Hanson narrates a series of sieges and sackings that span the age of antiquity to the conquest of the New World to show how societies descend into barbarism and obliteration. In the stories of Thebes, Carthage, Constantinople, and Tenochtitlan, he depicts war’s drama, violence, and folly. Highlighting the naivete that plagued the vanquished and the wrath that justified mass slaughter, Hanson delivers a sobering call to contemporary readers to heed the lessons of obliteration lest we blunder into catastrophe once again.

Biden Administration’s Jitterbug with Iran’s Regime When Crime Does Pay – Spectacularly by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20515/biden-administration-jitterbug-iran

The recent decision to shower Iran, the “leading state sponsor of global terrorism,” with yet another $10 billion in sanctions waivers, “freeing up $10 billion elsewhere to spend on terrorism, missiles, nuclear weapons and the repression of Iranian women,” defies logic and morality.

Despite galactic evidence of Iran’s atrocities — such as, since October 2023, more than 165 attacks by its proxies on American assets, which include the murder of three US service members; its support for terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis; its brutal crackdown on dissent at home, and its massively destabilizing actions across the Middle East — the Biden administration continues to court Iran and further enrich its regime, which thrives on chaos and bloodshed, especially against the country throwing the money at them.

“The FBI believes Iran is capable of a variety of attack options against US targets, to include cyber operations intended to sabotage public and private infrastructure …. [I]t’s clear the Iranians are determined to carry out attacks in the United States….” — Robert Wells, assistant director of the Counterterrorism Division at the FBI, March 20, 2024.

“The mullahs give up nothing but get a windfall nonetheless… For [Senate Majority leader Chuck] Schumer, apparently, regime change in Israel is the national-security priority — not stopping billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.” — Former National Security Council official Richard Goldberg, New York Post, March 14, 2024.

Former US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe’s assertion that the Biden administration’s actions has already enriched Iran by “closer to $60 billion” is nothing short of chilling. This staggering sum undoubtedly enabled Iran to further enrich its uranium to near weapons-grade level; to help Hamas attack Israel, and to torment its own people.

It is high time for the Biden administration to send a clear and unequivocal message to Iran, China, Russia and North Korea that the days of impunity are over.

Shredding the Law to Get Donald Trump Peter O’Brien

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/03/shredding-the-law-to-get-donald-trump/

Nothing has shocked me as much recently as the result of New York Attorney-General Letitia James’ prosecution of Donald Trump, following closely, as it did, on the absurd award of $83 million in damages for defamation to memory-challenged alleged sexual assault victim, E. Jean Carroll. 

If you’re not reporting for  the mainstream media, you know this is a politically motivated hit-job. In other words, an attack on the very essence of American democracy.  You know, the ultimate sin of which Trump stands accused.  The one for which he must be defeated later this year. James told us exactly that when she campaigned for election on a platform of getting Trump:

I will never be afraid to challenge this illegitimate president,” James said in a video during the campaign. “I believe that this president is incompetent. I believe that this president is ill-equipped to serve in the highest office of this land. And I believe that he is an embarrassment to all that we stand for.” She went on to say Trump should be indicted on criminal charges and charged with obstruction of justice.

So, even before she had any case, she was determined to pursue him, not because of any crime she may have suspected he committed but because in her eyes he was both an illegitimate president and incompetent. But, no doubt under the influence of Trump Derangement Syndrome, James would have been confident a fishing expedition would yield some dirt.  

There are many troubling aspects to this case.  The first is the staggering amount of the fine – US464 million.  And the second is that this matter was prosecuted as a civil fraud case.

New York, which reputedly has some of the toughest fraud legislation in the country, recognises two types of fraud – civil and criminal.  Here, from the website of East Coast Laws, is a short summary:

Fraud can be both a civil and criminal offense in New York. Civil fraud involves a breach of contract or a violation of a legal duty, resulting in harm to another party. The victim of civil fraud can sue the perpetrator and seek damages in court. Criminal fraud, on the other hand, involves intentionally deceiving someone for personal gain, which is a violation of the law. Criminal fraud is prosecuted by the government, and the penalties can include fines, imprisonment, and other criminal sanctions.

The ex-Democrat catching Trump’s and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s eyes Former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has gone from running for president as a Democrat in 2020 to interest in the open VP slots for Trump and Kennedy in 2024.By Allan Smith and Alex Seitz-Wald

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/ex-democrat-catching-trumps-robert-f-kennedy-jrs-eyes-rcna143941

Tulsi Gabbard wanted to be president. Now she wants to be vice president. And while that’s hardly unusual, the paths — plural — she’s considering to get there are. 

Neither involve the Democratic Party, which Gabbard used to represent until she left it in 2022. The four-term former member of Congress from Hawaii is now getting consideration for both former President Donald Trump’s and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s tickets, two sources familiar with the candidates’ deliberations told NBC News.

It’s a remarkable turnaround for the onetime progressive rising star, who within the span of eight years has gone from supporting Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign to running for the Democratic presidential nomination herself in 2020, eventually endorsing President Joe Biden, before then gravitating to the right and becoming a regular conservative media personality and conference speaker. 

More so, it’s exceedingly rare for a politician to attract interest from more than one presidential ticket or party. (Ahead of the 1952 election, Democrats and Republicans led dueling efforts to draft another politically ambiguous veteran, Dwight Eisenhower, the former supreme Allied commander in Europe during World War II, for the presidential race.)

But Gabbard’s 2024 possibilities are not fully in her control, nor are they both equally likely. As one source said, Gabbard would be more likely to seriously consider running as Kennedy’s vice presidential nominee had she not been swept up by the possibility of serving with Trump. This person said Gabbard “was enticed” by the chance of serving on Kennedy’s ticket but is now focused on the possibility that Trump will select her. 

“My understanding is that Tulsi is convinced that Trump is going to pick her,” this person said. “Had that not been the case, she probably would have gone with Kennedy.”

Professors at Embattled Rutgers Center Call for Genocide Andrew Harrod

https://www.meforum.org/campus-watch/65704/professors-at-embattled-rutgers-center-call-for

Palestinian Arabs “have sought a future of liberation from the river to the sea for all peoples,” claimed Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies during a late February webinar. Although she tried to whitewash this

Palestinian Arabs “have sought a future of liberation from the river to the sea for all peoples,” claimed Noura Erakat, a Rutgers University associate professor of Africana studies during a late February webinar. Although she tried to whitewash this well-known call for the genocide of all Israeli Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, her comments to Rutgers’ Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR) remained objectively horrifying.Erakat addressed the webinar on the topic of “Justice for Some: Law and the Question of Palestine,” the title of her 2019 book. Israel’s ongoing campaign to destroy the jihadist terrorist organization Hamas following its brutal Oct. 7 massacre was the background for her discussion.

Sahar Aziz, the factually challenged director of CSRR and its jihadist apologetics, moderated the webinar. CSRR recently drew the scrutiny of Washington lawmakers in the wake of revelations that Adeel Mangi, nominated by President Joe Biden to the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, formerly served on the Center’s advisory board.

Moreover, recent research revealed that Aziz received $143,000 from anti-Israel billionaire George Soros’s network and that Erakat “participated in an online workshop along with senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad.”

Their comments on law and “Palestine” confirmed lawmakers’ concerns about the Center.

Destroying Hamas is the only goal that makes sense There is a lot more at stake here than another October 7th. Moshe Phillips

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/387184

On March 18 Jake Sullivan, the United States National Security Advisor, said “The president told the prime minister again today that we share the goal of defeating Hamas.”

And the very next day, on March 19, Matthew Miller, Spokesperson for the United States Department of State, said “every step must be taken to degrade Hamas so such an event like October 7th can’t be repeated.”

Is the State Department now saying that the Biden Administration policy is to see Hamas degraded and not destroyed? If the defeat of Hamas remains “the goal” why hasn’t State corrected its March 19 statement?

Is the delivery of conflicting signals intentional?

To have the goal that Hamas does not ever carry out another October 7th type event assumes that Hamas is evil and both needs and deserves to be utterly and completely destroyed. Destroyed because it is evil. The moral thing to do is to destroy evil when it poses a “clear and present danger” or likely will again.

When the Allies after World War Two conducted a systematic effort of denazification it was not because the Nazi Party or Nazi ideas were going to be threat in 1946 or 1947 but because the Nazis’ ideas were dangerous enough that if not outlawed and fought and vanquished on the battlefield of ideas then the Allies had every right to believe that they might have to return to combat on the actual battlefield in the 1950s or 1960s and fight the Nazis yet again. Israel has fought Hamas too many times already.

The purpose of war is to permanently eliminate the threat coming from your enemy. Far too often history has revealed the eternal truth that wars are things that must be won decisively or they will cause subsequent conflicts that will grow in both intensity and the degree of devastation. Evil must be confronted and evil must be destroyed. Hamas is evil. Hamas is the enemy. Hamas must be eliminated.

Destroying Hamas is the right thing to do.

Destroying Hamas is a necessary thing to do.

Blinken’s Rafah blunder: Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/blinkens-rafah-blunder/

In a press conference on Thursday in Cairo, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated his opposition to an Israeli ground operation in Rafah, saying that such a move would be a “mistake.”

An invasion into the southern Gaza city, he stated, was “unnecessary” to achieving the goal of defeating Hamas. This attitude, which the Biden administration has been expressing with increasing fervor, runs counter to Israeli assessments.

It has become the key bone of contention between Washington and Jerusalem since the start of the Oct. 7 war, spurred by a massacre of Jews that hadn’t been seen since the Holocaust.

Other disagreements—surrounding the use of Israeli force, civilian Palestinian casualties and plans for “the day after”—have been mild in comparison. Or at least they’ve been treated by Israel as arguments that can be addressed through a presentation of the facts.

This hasn’t been simply a tactical ploy to avert discord. On the contrary, the justice of destroying the genocidal terrorist organization that controls territory along Israel’s southern border and vows to repeat the atrocities of Oct. 7 “again and again and again” is irrefutable.

Anyone disputing Israel’s duty to eradicate Hamas—for the survival of the Jewish state, as well as for the benefit of the region and the world—is on the wrong side of history. Period.

Furthermore, Israel has the data to support the extreme measures it employs to avoid non-combatant deaths in Gaza. It has proof of the huge quantities of humanitarian aid entering the Strip. It also has evidence of its efforts to prevent Hamas from stealing the goods.