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

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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.

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Our founder, @bariweiss, on @morning_joe sets the record straight on the Israel massacre. “The Nazis tried to hide their war crimes. Hamas is livestreaming theirs.” pic.twitter.com/7iDFVz4Vr5

— The Free Press (@TheFP) October 10, 2023

Reuters
October 11, 20233:18 AM EDTUpdated 16 hours ago

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Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal gestures as he announces a new policy document in Doha, Qatar, May 1, 2017. REUTERS/Naseem Zeitoon/File Photo Acquire Licensing Rights

DOHA, Oct 11 (Reuters) – Former Hamas chief Khaled Meshaal called for protests across the Muslim world on Friday in support of the Palestinians and for the peoples of neighbouring countries to join the fight against Israel.

“[We must] head to the squares and streets of the Arab and Islamic world on Friday,” Meshaal, who currently heads Hamas’s diaspora office, said in a recorded statement sent to Reuters.

Meshaal, who is based in Qatar, said the governments and peoples of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon and Egypt have a bigger duty to support the Palestinians.

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Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defense Minister Gallant, and State Camp chairman Benny Gantz give their first statements after establishing an emergency unity government and special war cabinet.

The move reflects broad support for war against Hamas.

David Isaac

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Benny Gantz at the weekly Cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, June 28, 2020. Photo by Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90.

(October 11, 2023 / JNS)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and National Unity Party leader Benny Gantz reached a deal to establish a unity government on Wednesday, the fifth day of Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

According to the agreement, a war cabinet will be established to include Netanyahu, Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, while Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Knesset member Gadi Eisenkot, a member of Gantz’s party, will serve as observers.

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