GREAT QUESTIONS – GREAT ANSWERS

Biden’s pro-Israel stance is more rhetoric than reality

BY PARK MACDOUGALD, UNHERD

Last Wednesday, several dozen pro-Palestinian activists, their faces obscured by keffiyehs and Covid masks, attempted to block the entrance to the Democratic National Committee Headquarters in Washington, DC. Reports of a riot may have been hyperbole, but footage showed a chaotic demonstration reminiscent of the racial justice protests of 2020. The organizers later accused the police of attacking the “non-violent” protestors; Capitol Police claimed that six of its officers were assaulted. Read more…

T. Belman. Cabinet and the IDF and security forces recommended this exchange. It is incumbent on them to prevent the Gazans returning. So far, they haven’t prevented it. That means the hostage deal is as bad as many are saying. This is the litmas test.

Hasmas has also renegged on commitment to allow Red Cross to visit remaining hostages.

2 reported killed as Hamas encourages civilians to go back to war zone; IDF drops flyers, tries to prevent flow; 13 hostages to be freed at 4 p.m.; humanitarian aid enters Gaza

By EMANUEL FABIAN, AGENCIES and TOI STAFF       Friday, 1:57 pm

Palestinians who had taken refuge in temporary shelters return to their homes in eastern Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip during the first hours of a four-day truce between Israel and Hamas on November 24, 2023. (Mahmud Hams/ AFP)

As Israel’s four-day truce with Hamas came into effect in Gaza on Friday morning, thousands of people who had fled to areas near Gaza’s border with Egypt were seeking to return to their villages with children and pets in their arms and their belongings loaded onto donkey carts or car roofs.

Overnight Thursday-Friday, Hamas urged Gazans to return to the north of the Strip, where the IDF has focused its ground offensive for the past three weeks. The truce deal, under which the Gaza-governing Hamas terror group is set to free 50 Israeli hostages over four days from Friday, bars Gazans from returning to the north of the Strip.

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By Daniel Greenfield,       23 Nov 11:02 PM

Ever since Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, along with ordinary Arab Muslims from Gaza, invaded Israel, murdered, raped and kidnapped women and children, the debate has been about how innocent they are. And how easy Israel should be willing to go on them.

In the weeks since, Israel has been lectured about a “disproportionate” response and the urgent need to avoid civilian casualties. That’s a little tricky when fighting an Islamic terrorist group whose only real defensive strategy is hiding behind civilians. Fighting Islamic terrorists without killing civilians is like trying to invade Russia while avoiding cold weather. It’s impossible.

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by Victor Rosenthal    November 24, 2023

Look for a moment at the Israel-Gaza war in a different way, a Middle Eastern way. Look at it in terms of honor and shame. Despite the fact that these ideas are almost gone from the West – replaced in some places by “woke” concepts that are almost unintelligible here – they are tremendously important. The tribes of the Middle East still operate in a zero-sum world, where the weak are prey, deterrence is paramount, and honor is deterrence. And Israel’s future, if she has one, will be dependent on her relations with her Middle Eastern neighbors and not with post-Christian Europe and North America.

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Israel expelled Hamas. The world forced Israel to take it back.

November 23, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield  Front Page Magazine

“Deporting The Hope For Peace?” Newsweek asked. The hope for peace was Hamas.

The year was 1992. The Clinton administration was trying to get Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and the PLO’s Yasser Arafat to sign on the dotted line of the Oslo Accords to create a terror state inside Israel. In the name of peace. Unfortunately Hamas kept killing Israelis.

15-year-old Helena Rapp had been stabbed to death at a bus stop on the way to school. A few days later, Rabbi Shimon Biran, a father of four, was similarly murdered by an Islamic terrorist.

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For weeks, senior Israeli leaders were divided about whether a temporary cease-fire might help Hamas regroup and endanger the remaining hostages.

By Ronen Bergman, Patrick Kingsley, Adam Sella and Aaron Boxerman, NYT

In recent days, thousands of demonstrators marched from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, calling on the government to help free the hostages held by Hamas.Credit…Amit Elkayam for The New York Times

By JOHN HAYWARD, BREITBART   22 Nov 2023

PEDRO PARDO/AFP via Getty Images

Human Rights Watch (HRW) published a report on Wednesday that said China is shuttering mosques in Ningxia and Gansu provinces under a “mosque consolidation” policy that violates the religious freedom of Muslim residents.

“The Chinese government is not ‘consolidating’ mosques as it claims, but closing many down in violation of religious freedom,” said HRW’s acting director for China, Maya Wang.

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T. Belman. More and more EU countries are banning Muslim immigration.
As a rule the more anti-Muslim immigration you are, the more pro-Israel your are.

by Ben Cohen, ALGEMEINER

Dutch politician Geert Wilders of the PVV Party. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman

Pro-Israel parties found themselves in a commanding position on Thursday morning following the prior day’s elections in the Netherlands which resulted in the country’s main far right leader winning a plurality of votes.

“The PVV can no longer be ignored,” Geert Wilders — leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) and a veteran campaigner against migration — said as his party headed to win 37 of the 150 seats in the Dutch parliament in the surprise outcome. “We will govern.”

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by Matthew Levitt, JS TRIBUNE        November 2023

T. Belman.  This is absolutely fascinating.

The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel.

By Gary Wexler, JEWISH JOURNAL     [Originally posted on November 18, 2023]

City University of New York (CUNY) students and other supporters of Palestine hold a rally in front of the Chancellor’s office in midtown Manhattan on November 02, 2023 in New York City Spencer Platt/Getty Images

The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel.

It was around the time of the Oslo Accords. I had been hired by the Ford Foundation to create a marketing institute for their grantees in the country. Ford was funding the operations of both Jewish and Arab organizations within the Israeli green line, in an effort to help build a vibrant liberal civil society.

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T. Belman.  When Halevi served as Amb to EU in Brussels, my daughter served under him as a diplomat. He certainly feels that America will call the shots and Israel has no choice but to go along. This is the old comception.

Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevi told Ynet that the deal to release the hostages is ‘the best possible at this stage, and this is only the first stage’; Yair Moses’ elderly kidnapped father is not included in the deal: ‘The heart breaks, but we must bring back everyone who can be brought back’

By Alexandra Lukash, Nir (Shoko) Cohen, Moran Azulay, YNET

After it approved the deal with Hamas, which is set to exchange Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, the government on Tuesday night issued an official statement which said that “the government of Israel, the IDF and the security forces will continue the war to return all the hostages, to complete the elimination of Hamas and to ensure that the threat to the State of Israel from Gaza will not be renewed.”

Peloni: It is about damned time.  How many days have these videos been playing in the media.

In recent days, the IDF has published footage showing rooms and tunnels found under the hospital.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF NOVEMBER 23, 2023 08:56

Updated: NOVEMBER 23, 2023 12:56

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T. Belman. Yesterday I made the same point.

Both Netanyahu and Gantz are responsible for allowing this illegal construction to go on and for not demolishing all such buildings. They are also the ones responsible for allowing all the smuggling to take place in Gaza and for  making Israel dependent on the US for resupply.  They are also responsible for the IDF lowering its guard leading to Oct 7.

And they are the people we are looking to to prosecute the War on Hamas.

We need a new conception.

The same people whose mistaken view of the situation allowed the massacre on October 7th, made the decision fot a ceasefire now. Op-ed.

By Cindy Grosz, INN       Nov 22, 2023, 3:39 PM (GMT+2)

Cindy GroszCourtesy

As the news of the so-called “hostage deal” is made public, I can’t help but feel we are being set up! How could our government in good conscience agree to accept only some of the hostages? Don’t they realize this will endanger our soldiers, by accepting a ceasefire as part of the absurd conditions being dictated by none other than Hamas!

Why would we trust them at all? They are negotiating only because we are getting close to their leaders, destroying many of them, and their tunnels. And, exposing them to a world which seems to believe them, regardless of the facts on the ground, and their own camera’s evidence.

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The Caroline Glick Show IN FOCUS  (November 22, 2023 / JNS) –

Journalist, columnist and author Caroline Glick analyses the deal made between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization to free Palestinian prisoners “without blood on their hands” for the freeing of some of the hostages.

Is this a good deal for Israel or a trap to defeat the war effort against Hamas?

T. Belman. Bastards. How is Israel supposed to win the war if protecting the civilians is first and formost. Rules of War say that so long as we are targeting  Hamas, we are not responsible for collateral damage. Biden is screwing us. What did he promise Hamas for making this deal?

Israel must have a plan to protect the civilians in southern Gaza before proceeding with the war, says U.S.National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby.

(November 22, 2023 / JNS)

The White House says it won’t support Israel’s plan to expand its operations into the south of the Gaza Strip unless it shows it will protect the Palestinian civilians there.

In a Tuesday press call, U.S. National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby said the United States won’t support Israel “moving forward with operations in the south absent a clearly articulated plan for how they’re going to protect the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people” there. Read more…

The cabinet’s 35-3 vote shows ministers believed there was no better arrangement, and were persuaded the war will resume afterward; Yahya Sinwar may have other plans

By DAVID HOROVITZ    NOV 22/23, 3:55 pm

At the very start of Israel’s war against Hamas, an Israeli official told reporters that the IDF would strike Hamas everywhere in Gaza, even at the cost of possibly harming some of the 240 hostages being held there. If the IDF had information on a specific location where hostages were believed to be held, it would not target that location. But otherwise, its operations would not be limited by fears of inadvertently harming the hostages.
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