ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza Hostage Crisis Is an American Hostage Crisis If the estimates are right, this is the largest mass abduction of Americans since the Tehran embassy crisis of 1979. By Armin Rosen

Posted By on October 11th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/gaza-hostage-crisis-is-an-american-crisis

This piece was first published on Tablet. 

The hundreds of Hamas fighters who carried out a murderous rampage inside Israel over the weekend returned to the Gaza Strip with an invaluable new strategic asset. On Sunday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told journalists that the Islamist group had captured “dozens” of hostages with American citizenship. If this number is even remotely accurate, the assault would be the largest mass abduction of Americans since the Tehran embassy crisis of 1979.

Hamas has likely divided those hostages across unmapped underground sites throughout Gaza, foreclosing the possibility of a single, swift rescue operation. The hostage issue threatens to inject a future source of divergence into Israeli and American objectives during the crisis.

In a speech at the White House Tuesday, Joe Biden said that he had “no higher priority than the safety of Americans being held hostage around the world.” Outgoing House speaker Kevin McCarthy listed “rescue all American hostages” as the U.S.’s top priority in the unfolding war. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters that, as of Tuesday, the exact number of American hostages remains unknown.

Israel must now weigh the survival of American hostages against neutralizing active threats against other groups of civilians, and also against the country’s stated war aim of disarming Hamas, which would likely require a massive ground operation in which most, if not all, of the hostages would be killed. Hamas, meanwhile, can parade American corpses through downtown Gaza and claim that they are victims of the Israeli assault.

“Hamas will use the hostages in two ways: as human shields and as a source of leverage over Washington,” explained Michael Doran, director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and a former senior director on the National Security Council. “As human shields, they will prevent Israel from destroying critical infrastructure. As a source of leverage, Hamas will convince Washington to compel Israel to make concessions—on the terms of a cease-fire, the release of prisoners, relaxing economic restrictions on Gaza, delivering payments from abroad, etc. Hamas will parade American hostages before the cameras to beg Washington to bring a halt to Israeli military operations so that the hostages can gain their freedom.”

The ways in which American hostages complicate the conflict hardly ends there. The tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar served as the laundering mechanism for $6 billion in unfrozen Iranian oil money that the U.S. used to purchase the freedom of five American citizens or green-card holders that the Islamic Republic had imprisoned, a transaction announced only last month. Doha also happens to be where much of Hamas’s exiled high command lives. Qatar, Washington’s chosen middleman for hostage diplomacy with Iran—which is Hamas’s leading state sponsor—can claim it runs an existing and effective channel for negotiating the hostages’ freedom. Any apparent progress on this diplomatic track could provide the Americans with an incentive to restrain any Israeli operation in Gaza.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Darkest Day: David Goldman

Posted By on October 11th, 2023

https://lawliberty.org/israels-darkest-day/

Israel’s Darkest Day

More than 1,000 Israelis died at the hands of Hamas terrorists on October 7, by far the worst day in Israeli history, roughly triple the death count on the bloodiest day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The Israeli military and civil society were taken unawares, and responded slowly and ineffectively. The Hamas attack uncovered deep flaws in Israel’s tactical capabilities as well as its strategic outlook. Israel’s existence depends on speedy correction of these flaws.

The term “intelligence failure” became an overnight cliché. Hamas employed drone attacks in emulation of tactics employed successfully by both sides in the Ukraine war for nearly two years, destroying Israeli observation posts and at least one Israeli Merkava IV main battle tank by dropping grenades from cheap drones. Israel introduced drones into warfare in the Syrian theater in 1983 during the so-called Beqaa Valley turkey shoot, and its failure to adopt electronic countermeasures widely deployed in Ukraine implies a failing technical edge. Despite warnings about the vulnerability of the Gaza barrier from some Israeli military intelligence analysts, Hamas fighters drove a bulldozer through the Gaza fence and hundreds of Hamas killers—the number still is unknown—entered Israel on motorized vehicles. We know this from videos released by Hamas itself; we do not know whether the terrorist organization used more sophisticated communications security measures to evade Israeli detection.

The details of the tactical intelligence failure, though, matter less than Israeli self-deception. The Netanyahu government thought that it had all strategic bases covered, and that it could bribe Hamas to remain on the sidelines as it negotiated diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia. It lulled itself into a complacent haze that obscured the recalcitrant elements of the ancient world that opposed the modernizing impulse of the Abraham Accords.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Jihad on Israel: Where Does Turkey Stand? by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20035/jihad-israel-turkey

When, on October 7, the terrorist group Hamas launched a barbaric attack on Israeli targets, including thousands of civilians, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, instead of his usual inflammatory anti-Israeli rants, uncharacteristically advised restraint to both sides.

The rise of political Islam in Turkey in the past two decades, however, and Erdoğan’s inherent anti-Zionism — he once called Zionism a crime against humanity — have apparently left an indelible mark on the Turkish psyche.

The militant Islamist newspaper Yeni Akit called the Hamas terror campaign a “historic victory.” Its story went on to detail, “here is how many Zionists have been killed.” Presumably, the more Zionist bodies, the better. This newspaper’s journalists are regular guests on Erdoğan’s private jet.

Turkish Islamists are accusing Israel of not helping Hamas by refusing to give it electricity, money, weapons, equipment and training to Gaza residents to kill more Israelis.

There is fragile peace between Ankara and Jerusalem. In theory, Erdoğan reconciled with Israel, but diplomatic relations were fully restored only after his vow to isolate Israel internationally had brought Turkey a heavy geopolitical cost.

The fanatical anti-Israeli legacy of Erdoğan has “successfully” poisoned an already xenophobic society; it will probably take generations to clean up.

When, on October 7, the terrorist group Hamas launched a barbaric attack on Israeli targets, including thousands of civilians, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, instead of his usual inflammatory anti-Israeli rants, uncharacteristically advised restraint to both sides.

The rise of political Islam in Turkey in the past two decades, however, and Erdoğan’s inherent anti-Zionism — he once called Zionism a crime against humanity — have apparently left an indelible mark on the Turkish psyche. In addition to his balanced, ostensibly unbiased, advice for restraint, Erdoğan has also said that a Palestinian state is a requirement that cannot be delayed.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Secret Agent Fauci NIAID boss taps CIA to spread the coverup By Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/09/secret-agent-fauci/

Dr. Anthony Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), once paid a covert visit to the Central Intelligence Agency. Rep. Brad Westrup, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, wants to know if Fauci succeeded in gaining CIA support for his contention that the pandemic arose naturally in the wild, what he calls “proximal origin.” Sen. Rand Paul, a medical doctor who has called for a criminal investigation of Fauci, outlines the possibilities.

Dr. Fauci may have “convinced the CIA to dishonestly obscure the lab origin of COVID.” It is also possible that “the CIA convinced Fauci to obscure the lab origin of COVID.” Or, as Paul sees it, “An outside entity or person with unlimited monetary resources convinced Fauci to influence the CIA to obscure the lab origin of COVID.” By now that should be obvious to all but the willfully blind. Even the FBI now inclines to the laboratory origin, and the evidence is strong.

Dr. Fauci funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology to conduct gain-of-function research that makes viruses more lethal and transmissible. The WIV, in turn, received shipments of deadly pathogens courtesy of Dr. Xiangguo Qiu, the Chinese national who headed the special pathogens unit at Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory. In 2017 and 2018, Qiu made at least five trips to the Wuhan lab.

The lab origin was obvious to medical scientists such as Dr. Kristian Andersen of Scripps Research. Fauci pressured him into changing his view to the proximal origin theory, which is speculation, not science. Former CDC director Robert Redfield found evidence of a laboratory origin, he got death threats. No word of any investigation by the FBI, and no surprise that the CIA would collaborate with Fauci.

At the request of Antony Blinken and the Biden campaign, the “intelligence community,” persuaded some 50 officials, including former CIA boss John Brennan, to say that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” According to Rep. Westrup, the agency offered six CIA analysts significant financial incentives to conclude that the result of its investigation was inconclusive.

Those funds could have come from Dr. Fauci, who commanded a budget in the range of $6 billion. As NIAID boss since 1984, Fauci controlled both public health policy and spending on medical research, a huge concentration of power. Consider the experience of Dr. Jonathan Fishbein, an NIH official fired by Fauci for exposing his dangerous drug experiments.

“Dealing with Tony Fauci is like dealing with organized crime,” Fishbein told Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in The Real Anthony Fauci. “He’s like the Godfather. He has connections everywhere. He’s always got people that he’s giving money to in powerful positions to make sure he gets his way, that he gets what he wants.” Despite the efforts of Fauci, the lab origin failed to go away.

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Countering the lie that ‘Israelis are Western colonizers’ By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/countering_the_lie_that_israelis_are_western_colonizers.html

Jews are Israel’s indigenous people; the Muslims are the colonizers.

Across the West, Muslims and their socialist allies claim that Israel is a Western colonizer. That’s a lie. Here’s a very slimmed-down history of the last 4,000 years.

The original indigenous people of the land we now call Israel were the Canaanites. When the Jews migrated to that land roughly 4,000 years ago, tribal warfare ensued, and the Canaanites lost. Since then—for around 4,000 years—the Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel. They are the indigenous people with a claim to the land older than any other living people. In ancient times, they held that land despite wars with and occupations by Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, and Greeks.

Finally, in 70 A.D., the Romans fully conquered Israel, erasing its identity as a nation. To symbolize that conquest, Rome renamed the land Palestine after the Philistines whom the Jews had destroyed in David’s time. In subsequent centuries, Christians, Persians, Umayyad Muslims, Abbasid Muslims and, eventually, Ottoman Muslims invaded the land and ruled as imperialist colonizers. Through it all, Jews continued on the land.

During the Ottoman period, Israel was a barren wasteland riddled with malaria and yellow fever. The Jews were eventually joined by two Muslim tribes: the Druze, whom Muslims consider heretics, and the Bedouins. Beginning in the early 19th century, Muslim refugees from other lands came, too. Pierre Van Paassen, a Protestant minister and journalist, knew the region intimately in the first half of the 20th century. His book The Forgotten Ally, much of it based on events he witnessed and people he knew, fills in some of the erased facts in the region’s history, including how the modern “Palestinians” came there.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Dianne Feinstein’s forgotten immigration legacy By Dale Wilcox

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/10/dianne_feinsteins_forgotten_immigration_legacy.html

Once upon a time, in the days when sane Democrats ruled, Dianne Feinstein was an articulate and eloquent opponent of illegal immigration

As Washington D.C. mourns the loss of long-time California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, it’s worth looking back at her legacy on the issue of immigration.

Feinstein, the longest-serving female senator in U.S. history, died earlier this month at the age of 90. During her more than three decades in the U.S. Senate, Feinstein was a leader on a variety of different issues, including immigration. The late senator was once a strong, articulate opponent of illegal immigration. In the 1990s, Feinstein advocated for strong border controls and assailed the government of Mexico for facilitating the flow of illegal aliens into the U.S.

In a 1993 statement, Feinstein eloquently laid out how illegal immigration strains resources intended to serve Americans.

“It’s a competition for space, whether the space is a job, the space is a home, [or] a place in a classroom, it becomes a competition for space,” Feinstein said at the time. “You become so overtaxed you have to concentrate on saying, the people who should be here are those who come legally at this time.”

Feinstein also sounded the alarm about the growing number of children being born to illegal aliens during a 1994 appearance on Face the Nation with Federation for American Immigration Reform President Dan Stein.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Biden Is Lying about the Border Wall Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/biden-is-lying-about-the-border-wall/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

And Biden being Biden, no one on either side of the aisle believes a word he says.

Record numbers of illegal aliens continue to pour into the United States at the invitation of President Biden’s no-enforcement border policies. The administration is thus feeling the heat from blue-state and big-city Democrats on whom it had never dawned that preening as a “sanctuary” would require, you know, actually providing sanctuary. Their education, health-care, social-welfare, and law-enforcement resources are grossly inadequate to deal with the resulting crisis. It is that political reality, and nothing else, that has forced Biden’s grudging concession to the need for border-wall construction.

Naturally, reality is not welcomed by the Democrats’ transnational-progressive base, which does not believe the United States should have borders or be a nation, and which is used to having its way with our senescent chief executive. (See, e.g., Biden’s joining hard leftists Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Justin Trudeau, respectively the president of Mexico and the prime minister of Canada, in the “Declaration of North America,” which, among other post-sovereign tripe, celebrates how “North America” has now “welcomed record numbers of migrants and refugees from the Western Hemisphere under new and expanded labor and humanitarian programs.”)

The Left is in revolt over Biden’s sudden conversion to border-wall construction. So, as is wont to happen on those rare occasions when reality intrudes on utopia, Biden is lying. While seeking credit from the country at large for building some (but not nearly enough) border barrier, Biden is telling his base that he had no choice.

“The money was appropriated for the border wall,” he mewled at the White House on Thursday. He really, really tried to get Congress to redirect it, but those bad Republicans wouldn’t hear of it. This from the same man who continues to try to cancel student loans that Congress has not authorized him to cancel, even after the Supreme Court (in June’s Biden v. Nebraska decision) ruled that doing so violates the Constitution he is sworn to uphold.

So now, pouts the president, “there’s nothing under the law other than [for my administration] to use that money for what it was appropriated for.” But the wall-construction funding was appropriated four years ago. Why hasn’t he “had to” build any border wall until now? And if he “had to” do it, then why immediately upon taking office did he order a cessation of border-wall construction? Why did he proclaim during the 2020 campaign, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration”?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

There Is No ‘Both Sides’ Between Israel and Hamas By Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/there-is-no-both-sides-between-israel-and-hamas/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth

One of the most common accusations I receive from readers on the left — for example, when discussing why a certain segment of voters likes Donald Trump, or why people are alarmed about Joe Biden’s potential corruption and concerned about his accelerating senility — is of “both-sidesism.” For those unfamiliar, this is a common term for the purported moral error of news analysis that makes the mistake of trying to “balance” something obviously good against something transparently evil. (“Adorable Kittens vs. Crushing Adorable Kittens: The Debate Continues.”) If the concept has any merit at all, it’s wholly inapplicable to all but the most extreme situations in American politics, and America, despite its numerous miseries over the years, is not subject to occasional wars of attempted annihilation.

So why do these same people retreat immediately into the very “both-sidesism” they otherwise criticize disgustedly, when the matter turns to Israel? Why were the first words out of so many people’s mouths this past weekend a pro forma condemnation of Hamas’s sneak attack used as prelude to the more important issue of how Israel brought this upon itself and should not defend itself against what is clearly an ongoing and rapidly developing threat? No, this isn’t Israel’s 9/11, this isn’t even quite analogous to the Yom Kippur War of 1973; it is far worse. The number of dead will likely turn out to be over a thousand — imagine if America had lost 30,000 mostly civilian lives on 9/11 instead of 3,000, with a further 2,000 carried away by al Qaeda to a nightmarish fate.

Moral equivocation in Israel’s war with Hamas and its backers is senseless. Strategic concerns remain as valid as always — nobody wants World War III — but yes, people are going to die in Israel’s war, some of them civilians. This is precisely what Hamas seeks. They will put innocent civilians in the way of the Israel Defense Forces for the same reason they captured (and apparently are now set to execute, on videotape) hundreds of Israeli men, women and children: Lacking all morality themselves, they are well aware that they can use their enemy’s scruples against them. I must insist upon this. This is not “the morality of the powerless.” This is a choice.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

To Win a War, Fight One We don’t win wars anymore because we don’t fight them. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/to-win-a-war-fight-one/

As highly civilized people, we’re lost touch with some basic concepts. Like war.

We complain that we never win wars anymore, but that’s because we don’t fight them. Instead, we have limited interventions against insurgents. We try to stabilize failed states. Sometimes we go in, take out a few terrorists, and then go back home. Veterans, whose wounds are very real, sit around wondering what it was all for. So do the families of the men who died fighting in a war that was never a war.

To win a war, you have to fight one.

If your enemy is fighting a war and you’re fighting something less than a war, the enemy will win.

Police actions, nation-building exercises, and the like have vague and poorly defined objectives, while wars have very clear ones.

Wars are either won or lost. That’s why modern governments rarely like fighting them. Or doing anything that has clear and measurable results. Once you declare a war, you know you have to win.

We fight things that are not wars to ‘stabilize’ regions. Wars are not fought for stability, but destruction. To win a war, destroy the enemy. That’s what the United States did in WWII, raining mass death and destruction on Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in ways that still make modern liberals cringe.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Have They Gone Mad? Hillary Clinton suggests “formal deprogramming” for seventy million Matt Taibbi

Posted By on October 10th, 2023

https://www.racket.news/p/have-they-gone-mad

Hillary Clinton on CNN said of Trump supporters, “You know, maybe there needs to be a formal deprogramming of the cult members.” This among other things came in the context of a report in Newsweek to the effect that the federal government, and the FBI in particular, has “quietly created a new category of extremists that it seeks to track and counter: Donald Trump’s army of MAGA followers.”

That seems… like a lot of people? In addition to the obvious observation that people like Hillary seem increasingly unmoored from reality, as well as wilfully deaf to the political consequences of their words — Maybe we need to formally deprogram you makes the “Basket of Deplorables” episode seem like a Valentine’s Day card — someone should point out that a month ago, on September 8th, Joe Biden renewed the original State of Emergency issued three days after 9/11 by George W. Bush. We spent the last 22 years giving presidents the ability to surveil, isolate, and detain even American citizens. Fortunately we’ll never regret those decisions!

What impolitic comment is next? “We have enough railway capacity for the job”? “Welcome, future deprogrammed!” banners above the entrances to decommissioned military bases? These people are truly Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and this would be funny, if Hillary Clinton’s mouth were not such an accurate weathervane for establishment thinking.