John Spencer | February 27, 2024

John Spencer, a leading expert on urban warfare, interviews PM Netanyahu on the war in Gaza.

Mike Benz,  October 9, 2023

E. Rowell:  For every plan in wartime there are advantages and disadvantages; and there are advantages that can be salvaged from a potential disaster.  We have posted a number of different perspectives on the Biden Gaza pier project.  I think it should be looked at as part of a greater whole:  the whole Biden political agenda in the Middle East.  In action after action undertaken by Mr. Biden, Iran and her proxies benefit.  While the US has not outright blocked military aid to Israel, it has sought to use this aid as a goad, a cudgel, if not an actual stranglehold, around the body politic of Israel and her ability to win the war.

Biden’s floating port scheme is a potential trap for both the United States and Israel, as well as an opportunity for terrorists to exploit sympathy for Palestinians.

By Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS                                                 13 March 2024

Displaced Palestinians pitch tents next to the Egyptian border with the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 8, 2024. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

After months of pressure from left-wing critics and liberal media outlets that seem to only highlight the suffering of Palestinians since Hamas started a war on Oct. 7, President Joe Biden felt he had to respond with something big. What he needed was a gesture that would be a tangible demonstration of his sympathy for Gaza civilians, as well as a scheme that would allegedly provide aid to them without helping the terrorists. What he came up with was a plan to build a floating port for the Strip from which food and other supplies would flow to alleviate the shortages that have produced a steady stream of appalling images and heart-rending stories about conditions there.

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The Queen of Jordan Rania Al-Yassin was born in Kuwait to Palestinian Arab parents Faisal Sedki Al Yassin and Ilham Yassin from Tulkarm, so the next King of Jordan will be the son of a Palestinian Arab. Op-ed.

By Ezequeil Doiny, INN                                                        14 March 2024

Queen Rania of Jordan

On March 12, 2024 Arutz 7 reported “Queen Rania of Jordan once again criticized Israel in an interview last night with CNN. “As devastating and as traumatic as October 7th was, it doesn’t give Israel license to commit atrocity after atrocity. Israel experienced one October 7th – since then the Palestinians have experienced 156 October 7ths,” she accused.

It is certainly not true that “Palestinians have experienced 156 October 7ths”. Israelis did not deliberately target civilians like Hamas did in October 7th. If Palestinian Arab civilians were killed it was because they were used as human shields by Hamas.

Hamas could have ended the war a long time ago if it had released the hostages and surrendered the leaders who orchestrated October 7th but Queen Rania does not say this.

Why is Queen Rania omitting important information? Why is she distorting the truth? Why is she so biased?

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By David Israel, JEWISH PRESS                                     15 March 2024

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich standing side by side with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, March 13, 2024.

Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has had it up to here with US sanctions against Jewish settlers in Judea and Samaria, and this week decided to release the kraken. 

Smotrich responded to the sanctions: “These decisions are a surrender of the Biden administration to the BDS campaign designed to blacken the entire State of Israel and lead to the elimination of the settlement enterprise and the establishment of a Palestinian terrorist state. The Israeli government is standing to the right of the settlement. These measures are completely unacceptable and we will fight to cancel them.”

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By Bassam Tawil, GATESTONE                                        15 March 2024

Pictured: Biden delivers the State of the Union address in the US Capitol on March 7, 2024 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

• Biden’s reported threat to halt or suspend US military supplies to Israel if the IDF enters Rafah is what encourages Hamas to continue fighting and reject every proposal to release the hostages. When Hamas leaders hear that Biden is threatening Israel to prevent the IDF from entering Rafah, they must say to themselves: “Why should we make any concessions to Israel? America doesn’t want the Israelis to destroy the four remaining battalions. The US administration is opposed to Israel’s plan to eliminate Hamas, so let’s wait!”
• A total defeat means the elimination of all of Hamas’s battalions. An Israeli victory will never be complete as long as one, or even half, a Hamas battalion remains intact.
• Biden is actually sending a message to Hamas and Iran’s other terror proxies, including Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis, that America is about to throw Israel under the bus. Cutting off US weapons supplies to Israel is the ultimate fantasy of the terrorists.
• The administration could show impressive leadership and in fact “bring this to an end as quickly as we can” — not just for Israel but for all in the region who are seeking peace — by encouraging Israel to take out the terrorists in Rafah without delay.
• Instead of pressuring Israel, Biden should be pressuring his friends in Qatar to force their Hamas puppets to hand over the Israeli hostages and surrender. Instead of threatening to cut off weapons supplies to Israel, he should be threatening the leaders of Qatar with the withdrawal of US forces from the country’s Al Udeid Air Base and to officially designate Qatar as a State Sponsor of Terrorism (for its funding of Hamas, Hizballah, ISIS, Al Qaeda, Taliban, Al Shabab, Al Nusra Front, among others).
• This is the way – the only way – to end the war quickly, as well as to send a signal to America’s adversaries looking on, that the US is prepared to uphold the values of civilization, not the values of terror.

US President Joe Biden will consider conditioning military supplies to Israel if the Israeli army moves forward with a large-scale invasion of the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, according to four US officials.

Biden has also told MSNBC that a Rafah operation would cross a “red line,” although he balanced that statement with a commitment to support Israel’s right to self-defense.

Israeli security sources have revealed that the Iran-backed Hamas terror group has at least four battalions in Rafah. Many of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians on October 7, 2023, are also believed to be held in Rafah.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have succeeded in destroying most of Hamas’s battalions in other areas of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli forces have dismantled 17 of Hamas’s 24 combat battalions in the Gaza Strip, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on February 4.

CONTINUE READING

MK Almog Cohen claims to have found the name of an IDF soldier caught releasing highly sensitive information at the beginning of the war, but the Supreme Court still refuses to allow the spy’s name to be made public.

Israel National News | Mar 14, 2024

Supreme Court Justice Yosef Elron rejected a petition this morning by MK Almog Cohen (Otzma Yehudit) to publish the name of a soldier who has been accused of serious espionage.

The lieutenant is accused of having entered the Southern Command base without permission under the cover of the prevailing chaos, pretended to have the rank of captain, and took part in classified meetings without having been permitted to do so. The indictment was filed last month and alleges among other charges that he entered command centers and recorded classified communications.

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The Rubin Report | March 12, 2024

Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” talks to David M. Friedman, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, about the current state of Israel and its resilience amid conflict; the fear and trauma experienced by Israelis during the war as well as their determination and resilience; how the Biden administration has weakened Israel’s ability to rescue hostages and prolonged the conflict; his concern for the state of the U.S.; the border crisis and the influence of left-wing ideologies; how a return to Judeo-Christian values could provide a path forward for both Israel and the U.S.; and much more.

Peloni: This is a must read condemnation of Schumer’s shamefully libelous tirade against the Jewish State, the Israeli people, and their legitmately elected govt.

Demanding Replacement of Israel’s Democratically Elected Govt.

By Mort Klein | ZOA |March 14, 2024

Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:

Senate Majority Leader Schumer often calls himself a “Shomer Israel” – guardian of Israel, and did so again at the outset of his lengthy speech on the Senate floor on March 14, 2024. Following the speech, ZOA received numerous calls from American Jews and pro-Israel Americans expressing their shock at Schumer’s dangerous statements, which attacked Israeli democracy and Israel’s fight for her existence against Hamas and other Palestinian Arab terrorists.

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Victory over the enemy will come when Israel will initiate the just and moral step of applying sovereignty to its land. In that way, the possibility of the enemy establishing a state in our land will be eradicated.

Yehudit Katsover & Nadia Matar | INN | Mar 14, 2024

Yehudit Katzover and Nadia Matar head the Sovereignty Movement.

Acknowledgement of the disaster that is a Palestinian state is clear today even on the Left, but the question of the timing for the application of sovereignty still deters many. The opposite is true.

Now is an opportunity to initiate a change in the rules of the game.

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E. Rowell:  Having not experienced personally what it was like to live in Stalinist Russia, it is difficult to say with certitude how closely living in the US today resembles those times.  But even if we speak about life in America today as frighteningly similar to the reports of Solzhenitsyn, it is significant, given that our country started out as a constitutional republic with a plan devised by the framers of the constitution to prevent the federal government from ever assuming too much power.  How out of touch with the every day reality described in this article and with reality in general does one have to be, to look at Biden and see him as the best person for the job as President?

By Paul Ingrassia, GATEWAY                                                  14 March 2024

President Joe Biden delivers his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber at the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, March 7, 2024, in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

“An arrest consists of a series of incidental irrelevancies, of a multitude of things that do not matter, and there seems no point in arguing about one of them individually…and yet all these incidental irrelevancies taken together implacably constitute the arrest,” wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his Gulag Archipelago, a book that viscerally chronicled the hellscape of life under Soviet tyranny.  The lasting impact of the work goes to the universal lessons it elaborates about tyranny – and how those lessons apply with as much fervor to modern American life as anywhere under Joe Biden, where impromptu arrests of innocent civilians, draconian censorship of the press and dissident views, and heavy-handed application of the law – impartially and without consideration for due process at all – defines the day-to-day realities of our seeming never-ending national nightmare.

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In the only way it can be done.

By Bernard Henri Lévy, TABLET         12 March 2024

An image from a video released by the IDF in February allegedly showing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel under Khan Yunis in Gaza/IDF SPOKESPERSON

An American soldier, Aaron Bushnell, lights himself on fire in solidarity with Palestine.

An electorate, in the United States, on both the left and the right, disputes with more and more vehemence Biden’s support of Israel.

Lula’s Brazil, and the South Africa of Mandela’s heirs, decry Israel’s supposed crimes against humanity: “It’s apartheid, it’s genocide,” they say.

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Peloni: As the US is feeding Hamas, funding Iran, and ignoring the Houthi terror campaign, Schumer claims that Bibi is the obstacle to peace…

Israeli, Republican officials blast majority leader as he alleges PM ‘has lost his way,’ allowing political survival to take precedence over good of the country

Jacob Magid | TOI | March 14, 2024

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Thursday called on Israel to hold new elections, saying he believed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “lost his way” and was an obstacle to peace in the region.

His comments, which sparked anger and swift condemnation by various figures in Jerusalem, came as gaps between the US and Israel continue to grow over the latter’s prosecution of its war in Gaza against Hamas. Read more…

Among other things, the IDF is examining the possibility of establishing a new engineering battalion, bolstering the unmanned aerial vehicle array in the air force, strengthening the Armored Corps by adding regular infantry battalions to replace reserve battalions, establishing several light infantry battalions, opening two additional regular Iron Dome batteries, and more.

By Lilach Shoval, ISRAEL HAYOM                                13 March 2024

IDF forces in the Gaza Strip on February 24, 2024 | Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit

Although has only just begun to investigate the lapses and lessons of the Gaza war, it is already working on creating new units that will meet the new security needs following the October 7 massacre, Israel Hayom has learned.

Among other things, the IDF is examining the possibility of establishing a new engineering battalion, bolstering the unmanned aerial vehicle array in the air force, strengthening the Armored Corps by adding regular infantry battalions to replace reserve battalions, establishing several light infantry battalions, opening two additional regular Iron Dome batteries, and more.

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By Adam Kredo, FREE BEACON                                     13 March 2024

TEHRAN, IRAN – MARCH 01: Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) speaks after casting his ballots during the parliamentary and key clerical body elections at a polling station on March 1, 2024 in Tehran, Iran. Iranians are voting in parliamentary elections and will also cast ballots for the Assembly of Experts, which selects and nominally oversees the work of Iran’s supreme leader. (Photo by Majid Saeedi/Getty Images)

The Biden administration on Wednesday reapproved a sanctions waiver that unlocks upwards of $10 billion in frozen funds for the Iranian government, according to a copy of the notice submitted to Congress late Wednesday and reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

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Analysis: US initiative aims to deliver aid effectively, meet Democratic hardliners’ expectations and bypass Smotrich and Ben-Gvir’s influence for strategic benefit

By Ron Ben-Yishai, YNET     |

The United States has an interest in building a floating sea pier off the coast of Gaza for four main reasons. First, a sea pier would allow the unloading of large cargoes and quantities of humanitarian aid, which are 10 times or more larger than the quantities currently arriving in Gaza by trucks, most of which are plundered.

The second reason is that a pier off the northern shores of Gaza, where Israel has control and there is relatively speaking no dense population that would attack the aid shipments, will ensure that the aid directly reaches the aid organizations operating inside the strip without the mediation of Hamas and crime families.

Politico report: Senior US officials have told their Israeli counterparts the Biden administration would support a Rafah operation as long as Israel avoids a large-scale invasion.

Israel National News  Mar 14, 2024, 3:51 AM (GMT+2)

Senior US officials have told their Israeli counterparts the Biden administration would support Israel going after high-value Hamas targets in and underneath Rafah, as long as Israel avoids a large-scale invasion that could fracture the alliance, Politico reported on Wednesday.

The Biden administration is still grappling with what kind of Israeli military operation it can accept in Rafah, the report said, with US officials knowing full well Israel wants to eliminate Hamas’ four battalions in the southern Gaza city on Egypt’s border.
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Peloni: Hirch provides a very detailed review of both why this law is needed and how it will work.  He also explains the limitations of the law and why these limitations were not expanded.  This is a very important move, and it is very good to see that this law has finally been passed, as its passage is well overdue.  May it serve as the first of many nails in the coffin of the old conception.  Terror should be prosecuted by all military, political and fiscal means.

JPOST article on this law can be found at bottom

IDSF | March 13, 2024

Lt. Colonel Res. Maurice Hirsch discusses the new law passed in the Knesset to allow Israeli victims of terror to sue the Palestinian Authority.

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Israeli PM Mar 12, 2024

Sound improves after about 1 min.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a speech to the AIPAC conference

The evidence is in their own poorly fabricated figures

BY ABRAHAM WYNER, TABLET    MARCH 07, 2024

The number of civilian casualties in Gaza has been at the center of international attention since the start of the war. The main source for the data has been the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, which now claims more than 30,000 dead, the majority of which it says are children and women. Recently, the Biden administration lent legitimacy to Hamas’ figure. When asked at a House Armed Services Committee hearing last week how many Palestinian women and children have been killed since Oct. 7, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the number was “over 25,000.” The Pentagon quickly clarified that the secretary “was citing an estimate from the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.”
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