T. Belman. Russia said Hamas attack was “unprecedented in its cruelty”. Til this, both Russia and China did not acknowledge this truth. Putin is going out of his way to call for “the creation of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as it capital.”  Why? He probably thinks it will get Russia more friends in the Muslim World.

Whereas the West has taken the position for the moment that Israel has the right to defend itself.  Here, Putin rules out a ground invasion.  Why? Many suggest Putin welcomed this war so that it would take presure of him in the Ukraine War. This stance says otherwise.

by Reuters • 5h

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) leaders’ summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, October 13, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via REUTERS© Thomson Reuters

BISHKEK (Reuters) -Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Friday for an end to the bloodshed in the Middle East and cautioned Israel that a ground offensive in Gaza would lead to an “absolutely unacceptable” number of civilian casualties.

Israel’s military on Friday called for all civilians of Gaza City, more than 1 million people, to relocate south within 24 hours, as it amassed tanks for an expected ground invasion in response to a devastating attack by the militant group Hamas.

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Along with ammunition and Iron Dome interceptors, US Special ops cell assisting with intelligence, planning and hostage recovery, as pair of aircraft carriers sail toward Israel

By TARA COPP, TOI     Today, 4:27 am

The USS Gerald R. Ford, arrives in Halifax on Oct. 28, 2022. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP, File)<

WASHINGTON (AP) — Within hours of the horrific attack by Hamas, the US began moving warships and aircraft to the region to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond.

A second US carrier strike group departs from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday. Scores of aircraft are heading to US military bases around the Middle East. Special operations forces are now assisting Israel’s military in planning and intelligence. The first shipment of additional munitions has already arrived.

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Along with ammunition and Iron Dome interceptors, US Special ops cell assisting with intelligence, planning and hostage recovery, as pair of aircraft carriers sail toward Israel

By TARA COPP, TOI     Today, 4:27 am

<
>
The USS Gerald R. Ford, arrives in Halifax on Oct. 28, 2022. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press via AP, File)<>

WASHINGTON (AP) — Within hours of the horrific attack by Hamas, the US began moving warships and aircraft to the region to be ready to provide Israel with whatever it needed to respond.

A second US carrier strike group departs from Norfolk, Virginia, on Friday. Scores of aircraft are heading to US military bases around the Middle East. Special operations forces are now assisting Israel’s military in planning and intelligence. The first shipment of additional munitions has already arrived.

Read more…

Daniel Greenfield, 13 Oct 12:36 AM

In 2021, State Department officials warned that “there is a high risk Hamas could potentially derive indirect, unintentional benefit from U.S. assistance to Gaza” and asked for a special exemption from sanctions on funding terrorists.

In 2022, Biden met with Palestinian Authority terror leader Mahmoud Abbas and boasted that, “I reversed the policies of my predecessor and resumed aid to the Palestinians — more than a half a billion dollars in 2021.”
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Hamas’s Assault—and Iran’s Role in It—Lays Bare Washington’s Illusions,

By Suzanne Maloney, FOREIGN POLICY       October 10, 2023,

The shocking Hamas assault on Israel has precipitated a beginning and an end for the Middle East. What has begun, almost inexorably, is the next war—one that will be bloody, costly, and agonizingly unpredictable in its course and outcome. What has ended, for anyone who cares to admit it, is the illusion that the United States can extricate itself from a region that has dominated the American national security agenda for the past half century.

One can hardly blame the Biden administration for trying to do just that. Twenty years of fighting terrorists, along with failed nation building in Afghanistan and Iraq, took a terrible toll on American society and politics and drained the U.S. budget. Having inherited the messy fallout from the Trump administration’s erratic approach to the region, President Joe Biden recognized that U.S. entanglements in the Middle East distracted from more urgent challenges posed by the rising great power of China and the recalcitrant fading power of Russia.

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TOI

A poll shows public support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies collapsing in the wake of Hamas’s deadly assault on southern Israel, with voters shifting to Benny Gantz’s National Unity party in the wake of his decision to join the government and form a wartime cabinet.

The survey, published by Maariv, gives the centrist National Unity 41 seats, up from the 12 it currently holds. Likud meanwhile drops to just 19 seats, well below the 32 it currently has. The poll gives hardline parties Otzma Yehudit and Religious Zionism five and four seats respectively. The two garnered 14 seats together in the last election. Ultra-Orthodox parties are also seen losing a modicum of support.
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RUSSIA TODAY

Representative Michael McCaul backed up earlier claims that Egypt tipped officials off to an impending assault

Michael McCaul (center) talks to reporters after a classified briefing about Hamas’ attack on Israel in Washington DC, October 11, 2023 ©  AFP / Chip Somodevilla

Three days before Hamas’ large-scale assault on Israel, the Egyptian authorities warned their counterparts in Tel Aviv that such an operation was imminent, US House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul told reporters on Wednesday.

“We know that Egypt has warned the Israelis three days prior that an event like this could happen,” McCaul said following a closed-door intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill.

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The political rationale of the Gaza conflict can be mirrored in the inexorable logic of an almost mathematical algorithm—studiously ignored by Israel’s policy-making echelons. Opinion.

By Dr. Martin Sherman, INN     Oct 13, 2023, 7:00 AM (GMT+3)

The enemy of …conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events—John Kenneth Galbraith

Saturday 7th of October marked the demise of conventional wisdom and of “respectable” Establishment perceptions regarding the conflict over the Gaza Strip. Decades-old precepts were washed away in a deluge of blood. The idea of Palestinian Arab self-rule (the two-state solution), along with the notion of “managing the conflict” (a.k.a. “mowing the lawn”, or “kicking the can down the road”) were swept away by the gory events of the past week.

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T. Belman.  That’s encouraging news.

UN spokesperson: It impossible for such a movement to take place without humanitarian consequences. Meanwhile, IDF strikes on Gaza continue.

Israel National News Oct 13, 2023, 6:13 AM (GMT+3)

The United Nations said early on Friday that it has been told by the IDF that some 1.1 million Palestinian Arabs in Gaza should relocate to the south within the next 24 hours.

“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said in a statement quoted by Reuters.

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The US may finally be prepared to let Israel defeat the Islamist terror group. But we will not allow a Palestinian state after that. Op-ed.

By Jonathan S. Tobin,    Oct 12, 2023, 11:08 AM (GMT+3)

(JNS) At last. After 17 years of Western diplomatic pressure from the United States to limit its responses to Hamas terrorism, it appears that Washington may be finally prepared to let Israel strike a decisive blow against the Islamist group in Gaza. The scale—the death toll now exceeds 1,200 murdered—and the depravity of the atrocities committed during the Oct. 7 assault seem to have convinced the Biden administration as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a maintenance of the status quo with Hamas isn’t an adequate response.

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T. Belman.  Blinken surprised me. He delivered a good speech.

Secretary invokes family’s Holocaust history as he urges world to condemn Hamas massacres of Israelis; pleads to avoid harm to civilians; Netanyahu: Sanction nations that host Hamas

By LAZAR BERMAN Today, 4:16 pm

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, left, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu make statements to the media inside The Kirya, which houses the Israeli Ministry of Defense, after their meeting in Tel Aviv, Thursday, Oct. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, pool)<

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged in Tel Aviv on Thursday that Israel will never have to defend itself alone for as long as America exists.

Having flown to Israel in the wake of Hamas’s devastating assault Saturday on southern Israel, in which over 1,300 were killed — most of them civilians — Blinken expressed horror at the killings, invoked the Holocaust and his own family’s experiences in the Nazi era, and said he was working energetically to ensure the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict did not spread.

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by Victor Rosenthal October 12, 2023

Never do an enemy a small injury – Niccolo Machiavelli

Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how they surprised you on the road and cut off all the weak people at your rear, when you were parched and weary, and they did not fear Hashem – Devarim 25:17

There is a great deal that is unknown about the horrific attack on Israel that took place last Shabbat, both regarding the methods and objectives of Hamas, and Israel’s failure to predict or properly respond. But there are some inferences that can be drawn from the timing of the event – and from its viciousness.

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Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
October 12, 2023,

No common-sense-observer of the volcanic Middle East and Islamic terrorism, in general, and Hamas/Palestinian terrorism, in particular, should be shocked by the October 2023 Hamas’ atrocities, which are not driven by the size of Israel and its policy, but by the aim to uproot the “infidel” Jewish State from the “abode of Islam.”

Ignoring the nature of Hamas

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Dear Ted,

Last night on The Ezra Levant Show, I gave a half-hour presentation on the horrors of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel.

Normally my show is behind a paywall, for subscribers only. But what happened this weekend in Israel was of historic significance — in some ways like 9/11 and even the Holocaust. It certainly had elements of each. So we have unlocked last night’s episode.

You can watch it for free by clicking here.

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Military sources confirm intelligence reports of imminent attack

by Yudi Sherman,FRONTLINE NEWS OCT 11, 11:45 pm

<
Convoys of Muslim women and children were spotted traveling to Jordan Wednesday from Samaria, raising concerns from the area’s residents about an impending attack.

Standing alongside his partners in Israel’s newly announced war cabinet, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday pledged to obliterate Hamas, at the close of the fifth day of war against the terror group controlling the Gaza Strip. Hundreds of Hamas terrorists burst into southern Israel and carried out a devastating assault on Saturday, killing at least 1,200 people, most of whom were civilians, and many of whom were massacred.

Read more…