You only go to war for two reasons. Either you know you're going to win, or you know that you're going to lose if you don't. //

it is very clear that Hamas has won a stunning strategic victory and reset a political environment in which it had been marginalized. This is not without a historical analog. //

The Saudis seem to be looking for an exit from plans to normalize relations with Israel by suddenly demanding a Palestinian state within the 1967 borders. This demand effectively kills the Abraham Accords unless the Saudis eventually walk it back. //

I have no doubt that Israel will root Hamas out of Gaza. But I do have doubts about what it means for Israel.

The Hamas narrative will be that it, alone had the courage to attack Israel when most thought the Palestinian cause was lost. It was the organization that moved Palestinian statehood back to the front burner of international issues. They will claim that they, not Mahmoud Abbas' flaccid Palestinian Authority, have earned the right to govern all Palestinian territories. We know from past experience that the Palestinians will generate a flood of martyrs and heroism from this to inspire and radicalize Palestinians outside Gaza.

The media that shamelessly ran to trumpet a hospital bombing that never happened will package each story of a dead Gazan into a major tragedy while the dead of October 7 and 8 will be shoved aside. //

unless Israel is very careful, it will emerge from this war with the Palestinian Authority run by Hamas-like forces, in a very weak position to resist "land-for-peace" demands from the West, and with the diplomatic relationships in the Arab world made possible by the Abraham Accords in rags.

Sure, internet connectivity aided aid workers. But it also aided Hamas. Most of the press in Gaza seem to have a personal interest in seeing Hamas emerge victorious and armed Hamas terrorists (as an aside, why is it that no one mewling about the Geneva Conventions ever wants to mention that Hamas terrorists are illegal combatants and not covered by the Law of Land Warfare?) use internet and cell connections to plan terrorist attacks, monitor the progress of the IDF, and coordinate combat operations. //

Ukraine Reporter @StateOfUkraine
·
An astoundingly simple three-move checkmate of Western civilization:

1. UN & Israel must ensure safety of Gaza civilians.
2. Civilians shield Hamas, hiding in its secure tunnels.
3. Hamas attacks Israel, as Israel must not target Hamas because of civilians
   MEMRI @MEMRIReports
   Hamas Official Mousa Abu Marzouk: The Tunnels in Gaza Were Built to Protect Hamas Fighters, Not Civilians; Protecting Gaza Civilians Is the Responsibility of the U.N. and Israel #Hamas #Gaza
   Embedded video
   4:11 PM · Oct 30, 2023 //

The meddling in Israel's entirely just chastisement of Hamas will result in more Israelis and Gazans dead because imposing limits on violence in warfare does not add to the humanity of essentially inhumane activity. It merely drags it out to ensure more and more people are killed; factually, Sullivan is wrong when he says, "It does not lessen Israel’s responsibility under international humanitarian law to distinguish between terrorists and civilians, and to protect the lives of innocent people." Additional Protocol I of the Geneva Conventions says:

The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations.

The International Criminal Court statute covers the same ground.

Utilizing the presence of a civilian or other protected person to render certain points, areas or military forces immune from military operations” constitutes a war crime in international armed conflicts. //

The reason for White House meddling is apparent. The Biden administration is heavily infiltrated by Iranian agents who are developing US policy for the Middle East....

"I have heard from many people my whole life that antisemitism is growing, that the Holocaust — while we say we will never forget — many have forgotten. And the swiftness with which the global population has seized upon the massacre of Jewish civilians living inside of a border — the swiftness with which the world has stepped up to redefine terrorism, to redefine statehood, to redefine the right of a people to exist — nothing has prepared me, or any of us, for this. //

it is clear that there is a strain of antisemitism that is alive and well. //

"This is not acceptable. It's not normal. We should not normalize it. There is no excuse for calling for a genocide of an entire people. Period. Full stop. //

universities that cannot find a way to unanimously, undeniably, irrevocably denounce any organization that celebrates the massacre of Jewish people. Many universities cannot figure out how to unequivocally state that organizations that incite violence and hatred by calling for an end to the Jewish people are not welcome to receive funding from the government of that university. This is astounding. //

I just finished watching Mayim Bialik's recent post about how she sees things, and it took October 7th for her to see things. And...I'm just so...I don't know...I don't understand why it has taken so long for people to see what a lot of us have been screaming for the last four years, especially — and I hate to say it — especially the progressive Jews in America.

"You thought marching with these leftist organizations meant that you were one of them and that they supported you. You failed to read the charter of Black Lives Matter, that had antisemitism written in it from the beginning. You failed to notice the antisemitism at the Women's Marches by Linda Sarsour on stage — one of the people on the board of the Women's March.

"You failed to listen — you failed to see. And what? Now you see? Now you're awake? You're disappointed in the world? I'm disappointed in you. I'm disappointed that it had to take a massacre of the Jewish people for your eyes to be opened. //

Bialik appears to be undergoing a rude (and heartbreaking) awakening. I understand the desire to seek peace and to hope for the best — I share in it, even. Yet Nazarian's response serves as a poignant reminder not to be so quickly dismissive of those who warn of evil's swift approach, notwithstanding those sentiments.

Brytek
2 hours ago
As the heart breaks for the hostages and murdered victims, it hardens towards Hamas. The more they push fear and terrified hostages in our face our hearts break but harden more, hardened to what needs to be done. //

anon-ymous99
37 minutes ago
Strange…I’ve heard not a peep about the Geneva Convention, from the Euro elites and the domestic MSM and intellectual elitists, while they tut-tut about ‘innocent Palestinian civilians’ killed, or injured.
Tell me: How many hostages has the IDF taken?
…really? THAT few?
My. Zero is a pretty small number, isn’t it?

“Just as the US would not agree to a ceasefire after the bombing of Pearl Harbour or after the terrorist attack of 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas after the horrific attacks of 7 October,” he says.

"Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism," he says.

“The Bible says ‘there is a time for peace, and a time for war’,” he continues, “this is a time for a war”.

“A war for our common future. Today, we draw a line between the forces of civilisation and the forces of barbarism.” //

Nobody wants to see civilians on either side of the conflict lose their lives or be otherwise harmed by the fighting. But those calling on Israel to halt its offensive against Hamas appear to live in fairyland, where everything just works out once Israel puts their guns away. The fact of the matter is that Hamas is a vicious terrorist group that has publicly stated that its goal is to eliminate the Jewish presence in Israel, and it is willing to sacrifice civilians in Gaza to do so.

In fact, Ismail Haniyeh, the group’s top dog, recently gave a speech on a Lebanese news outlet in which he declared that Hamas needs “the blood of women, children, and the elderly” in Gaza to inspire its operatives to continue the fight against Israel.

The Spectator Index
@spectatorindex
·
BREAKING: Israel's defense minister says Hamas has two options 'surrender unconditionally or die'
1:19 PM · Oct 30, 2023

To put it simply, no matter what one's views on the Palestinian cause are, there is no scenario where Israel can continue to share a border with a terrorist government that has broken ceasefire after ceasefire over the years, with the last one taking the lives of nearly 1,500 people. //

Liza Rosen
@LizaRosen0000
·
Hamas leader, Ha-mad Al-Regeb, calls for the genocide of Jews, and prays to Allah to help Muslims behead Jews: "Oh Allah, Enable Us to Get to the Necks of the Jews".

He explains that the conflict is not related to land disputes, but to the sins of Jews… Show more

11:40 AM · Oct 28, 2023 //

poedoldman
3 hours ago
A ceasefire stopped WWI and WWII. It came when the governments that started them surrendered. Surrender or die. Seems the ball is in Hamas' court and I'm pretty sure Israel would rather they opt for the die option. //

ConservativeInMinnesota
3 hours ago edited
Surrender or die are the same conditions we gave the Germans and Japanese during WW2. Israel is acting with the same proportionality that America did. Problem solved. //

TK421 anon-cdoc
4 hours ago edited
"The truth is that if Israel were to put down its arms there would be no more Israel. If the Arabs were to put down their arms there would be no more war." - Benjamin Netanyahu, in a speech to the Knesset, 2006

On Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Magazine published a lengthy piece authored by [National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan] on its website providing an overview of U.S. foreign policy under President Joe Biden. //

Most notable about Sullivan’s diatribe, however, are the significant differences between the online edition published on Tuesday and the print version published earlier this month. Included at the bottom of the online edition of Sullivan’s piece is an editor’s note revealing that the section of the article discussing Middle Eastern affairs had been “updated” from the print version “to address Hamas’s [Oct. 7] attack on Israel.” A closer look at the lines scrubbed from the original reveals what little understanding Sullivan and the Biden administration have of the geopolitical environment in the region. //

4. All quiet on the Middle Eastern front

It’s tragically obvious that Sullivan’s original claim that the Middle East “is quieter than it has been for decades” holds about as much validity as Bruce Jenner’s belief that he’s a woman — Zilch.

Dead terrorists had on them written orders that included directions for operating GoPro cameras to capture their evil escapades and sometimes broadcast them in real time on social media.

Hamas and its Iranian masters wanted the dirty deeds documented. They aimed to terrorize an entire nation and beyond by showing just what they’re capable of. //

But human beings still have the capacity to shock — if one can call Hamas members human beings. I’ll long be haunted by what happened Oct. 7. //

They [Israel] need people to see what happened — and put the word out to counter those who pretend it didn’t or wasn’t as bad as claimed. Journalists from supposedly serious publications insist you can’t say Hamas beheaded babies — sure, dead babies were found without their heads, but who knows who did the deed?

The hate I witnessed goes beyond those who entered Israel that day. A young man uses a dead Israeli woman’s phone to call his parents and brag of killing 10 Jews “with my bare hands.”

He pleads, “Please be proud of me, Dad.”

That’s the culture Israel must fight even after it destroys those who planned and executed the Oct. 7 massacre. //

And then there’s New York City. A day after the screening, thousands of antisemites marched into Manhattan via the Brooklyn Bridge after a rally at the Brooklyn Museum. At the front were people holding a banner that read “By any means necessary.”

We Stand Together with Israel Against Hamas

We are horrified and sickened by the brutality and inhumanity of Hamas. Murdering innocent civilians including babies and children, raping women and taking the elderly as hostages are not the actions of political disagreement but the actions of hate and terrorism. The basis of all universities is a pursuit of truth, and it is times like these that require moral clarity. Like the fight against ISIS, the fight against Hamas is a fight against evil. We, the presidents and chancellors of universities, colleges and higher education associations across the United States of America and the world, stand with Israel, with the Palestinians who suffer under Hamas' cruel rule in Gaza and with all people of moral conscience. //

Mark Zupan
President, Alfred University
...
Wayne D. Lewis Jr.
President, Houghton University

The interrogator asked the terrorist, “Were the girls and the mother armed? And is it allowed to shoot women like this according to the Quran?” The terrorist replied, “None of them were armed, and they didn’t fire at all. We simply slaughtered them. According to the Quran, it’s forbidden.”

An investigator asked one of the terrorists, “Aren’t your actions similar to those of ISIS? Killing civilians indiscriminately is exactly what ISIS does.’ The terrorist replied, “That’s correct; it’s just like ISIS. There’s no difference.”

The hostages held in Gaza will not be recovered alive unless Israel gives major concessions and leaves Hamas in power. While of course Israel wants to get them back alive, Israeli military options are severely constrained if that is the goal. Hamas has grown comfortable taking hostages and using them as shields to temper Israeli military responses. The goals of toppling Hamas and getting the hostages back alive are not consistent. Israel faces a tough choice.

Now the death toll exceeds 1400, the number of hostages are over 200, and the brutality and savagery of Hamas, with gruesome physical and sexual defilement even of dead bodies, has shocked Israelis and the civilized part of the civilized world (i.e. excluding western leftists and Islamists). //

NBC News reports on what it witnessed:

The brutality and elation of Hamas militants as they killed Israeli civilians — including babies, young children and the elderly — is evident in an Israeli government compilation of videos shown to two dozen journalists in New York on Friday.

The videos, which were aired for the first time outside of Israel, consist mostly of GoPro, cellphone and dashcam footage recorded by the attackers themselves.

Israeli officials said they showed the compilation to President Joe Biden when he visited Israel on October 18th. They also showed it to a group of journalists in Israel, including NBC’s Raf Sanchez, on Wednesday. The atrocities depicted suggest that jihadism has evolved in chilling and perverse new ways. //

Israeli first responders were initially barred from taking videos or photographs of the dead out of respect for their families, officials said. But a decision was made to film what they found in order to preserve evidence of atrocities. Israeli officials said the video compilation is the most comprehensive visual evidence of war crimes carried out by Hamas.

Both a virtue and a weakness of Israeli society is the overwhelming concern for Israelis captured by Hamas or other terrorist groups.

In 2011, after his family mounted a public pressure campaign that ended up almost paralyzing Israeli society, the government agreed to exchange over 1000 terrorists in its custody for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Israeli society paid a very steep price for that exchange. By 2018, over one-third of Palestinian terrorists freed in the 2011 hostage deal returned to terror. Among the freed terrorists were almost the entire present Gaza military leadership of Hamas responsible for planning the October 7 attack. Thousands of Israelis died to recover one Israeli hostage.

Will Israeli society succumb to the pressure now that there are over 200 hostages, including babies and children? Already there are signs of a pressure campaign building. //

One can feel for the families and the hostages, but also understand that such a hostage-for-prisoner exchange would mean thousands more Israelis would die in the future, and Hamas would remain in power.

The horrors of what Hamas did may be what holds Israel together in its goal of eliminating Hamas, which is not consistent with getting all the hostages back alive. That’s the hard truth.

In a write-up Thursday explaining the dramatic 11-point drop in one month for Joe Biden among Democrats, Gallup connected it to his stated support for Israel ... //

etba_ss
3 hours ago
And we wonder how Hitler rose to power in Germany and the people stood by while atrocities were committed.

At least 25% of the Democrat party would openly support a Holocaust on US soil if they could see a political advantage to it and I might be really low. It might be closer to 50%.

Do you think people who support drugging and mutilating and grooming kids are going to have a problem with ethnic and religious genocide? Do you really think people who advocate for the death of anyone who won't join their religious devotion to the poison poke would really oppose genocide for other reasons?

If they support these things, there is no logical reason why they would not support other types of genocide. I'm sure if asked the question, they wouldn't admit it, but neither would Germany have admitted it in 1920, but in less than a generation, most of the population would do nothing or willingly assist as millions of Jews were rounded up, tortured, enslaved and murdered.

Unfortunately, when we wrote on Omar backtracking... sorta, Google demonetized our article, claiming that it contained "dangerous or derogatory content." They didn't bother to tell us which line or lines in the piece were problematic; they never do. //

The bottom line is, we reported on a Congresswoman spreading misinformation/propaganda and halfheartedly retracting it, and Google thought that was "dangerous or derogatory content" that ads should not be run on.

When the truth keeps getting out despite our tech overlords' best efforts, their last tool is to starve us and destroy our business by denying us advertising revenue.

It's Thursday, October 26th, and pigs have flown. That was the story after John Kirby managed to actually come out on top of an exchange with a reporter.

After being criticized for questioning the casualty numbers coming out of Gaza, Kirby let loose, not only doubling down but doing so in a way that would almost make one forget he works for the Biden administration. //

Krähenbühl: So, besides saying that he doesn't have confidence in these numbers, the President went further to say that innocents will die and that this is the price of the war. You also said that.

Kirby: I have indeed.

Krähenbühl: Don't you think this is insensitive? There’s being very harsh criticism in about it. For example, the Council of American-Islamic Relations said it was deeply disturbed and call on the President to apologize. Would the President apologize?”

Kirby: No.

Krähenbühl: And does he regret saying something like that?

Kirby: What’s harsh — what’s harsh is the way Hamas is using people as human shields. What’s harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families and anxious, waiting and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are. What's harsh, is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon. I could go on and on. That's what's harsh. That is what's harsh and being honest about the fact that there have been civilian casualties and that there likely will be more is being honest, because that's what war is. It's brutal. It's ugly. It's messy. I've said that before. President also said that yesterday. Doesn't mean we have to like it. And it doesn't mean that we're dismissing anyone of those casualties each and every one is a tragedy in its own right...It would be helpful if Hamas would let [Gazans] leave....We know that there are thousands waiting to leave Gaza writ large and Hamas is preventing them from doing it. That is what is harsh.

Yes, the President of the United States let "Muslim-American officials" edit his speech to ensure it wasn't too focused on those massacred by Hamas. You see, an equivalency must always be drawn. Sure, murdering Jews in cold blood for being Jews is terrible, but is it really any worse than claims of rising Islamophobia? //

The Biden administration has become an adult daycare where supposedly "marginalized" people get listening sessions and special concessions regardless of how personally oppressed they actually are. That leads to the absurdity of Israel, a country that just suffered the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, being pushed down the ladder in favor of more preferred groups. //

I understand that there are Palestinians in Gaza who have died needlessly due to what their leadership has brought upon them. With that said, when analyzing any war, you have to do so from a realistic footing, and it is simply ridiculous for Palestinians (and Muslims in general) in America to complain about being "totally left out" regarding messages of sympathy when it was Palestinians who marched across the Israeli border and butchered 1,400 people. //

In 2021, for example, the FBI recorded five times as many anti-Jewish hate crimes compared to anti-Muslim hate crimes. To the extent that Islamophobia exists, it is nowhere near the threat of antisemitism. In fact, it barely outstrips anti-Catholic hate crimes (9.6 percent vs. 6.1 percent).

This would have been a photo of a lifeless pregnant woman next to her beheaded unborn baby cut out of her belly by Hamas Terrorists. Due to the this platform's guidelines, we can't show you that.

So, first of all, I don’t deny suffering in Gaza. I don’t deny the fact that there have been Gazan civilians who have been killed in the crossfire between us and Hamas. But I would urge you please to be cautious with the numbers that come out of the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Health in Gaza.

"Sure," Nawaz replied, dismissively adding: "Do you have more accurate numbers?" Regev explained that he couldn't provide more give more accurate numbers, given the absence of IDF on the ground in Gaza, while saying: "I’m urging you to be skeptical with those.” //

Nawaz again pushed back. This time, Regev went bottom-line —with a clear distinction between the IDF and Hamas in matters of war.

I’m not at liberty to discuss that, I apologize, because we’ve still got combat ongoing, and we haven’t had ground troops in yet, and the situation could change. But what I would say is this, we are trying to make a maximum effort to avoid collateral damage.

Hamas, unfortunately, has the opposite goal. And here is something that I think needs to be said, when we’re asking civilians to leave areas of expected heavy combat, Hamas is telling them to stay, and they must die for the crazy cause.

The Israeli government has released video showing all of the footage they have gathered of Hamas' attack on October 7, some of it being described by journalists as among the most horrifying things they have ever seen.

The video, which Israel gathered in the wake of the attack earlier this month, shows many of the scenes we've heard described in various media reports, but the screening is the first collection of footage released to an international group of journalists in an effort to show the world just how real, devastating, and monstrous the attack was.

On Tuesday, numerous media outlets reported that Israel bombed a Palestinian hospital. Did they actually see Israel strike the hospital and kill hundreds of people or confirm that it happened? No, they were just reporting it as if it were fact.

Of course, some left-wing congressional Democrats in “the Squad” seized on the reporting and immediately used it to castigate Israel on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter.

But is there any truth to the claim that Israel is just wantonly bombing hospitals? //

One should always be skeptical of information coming out of a war zone. Not only can war zones be chaotic, but the belligerents often have a strong incentive to manipulate information for propaganda purposes.

In the case of Hamas, the government of the Palestinian territories, it’s a terrorist organization with a history of hiding behind civilians as human shields, in hopes of dissuading Israel from attacking their military assets and to cause bad press for the Jewish state.

Despite what you’ve heard, both Israel and Hamas have their own version of defense given to them by Western countries. Israel has the Iron Dome; Hamas has left-wing media.

Hamas understands that. The only way they can “win” a war against Israel is by creating outside pressure and persuading Israel to restrain its military efforts so much as to be ineffective.

That’s why if media outlets are concerned about the truth and reporting the news—a fanciful notion, I know—they would at least be cautious when Hamas tells them that Israel blew up a hospital and killed hundreds of people.

That didn’t happen. Instead, countless legacy media outlets didn’t even wait for the dust to settle before they went with the narrative Hamas wanted to tell—that the hospital was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

As a result of the fighting and Israel’s siege of the Gaza Strip, Saudi Arabia appears to have suspended negotiations to normalize diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. It seems it was all part of the plan.