ESSE SINE METU IN FACIE INIMICI TUI. TUENDAM INOPS ET FACERE NON MALI.
Category: Enemies Foreign and Domestic
BLUF
Now, I don’t think for a minute that Biden is “directing all of this” — he’s getting directed by his staff. But even CBS is now throwing him under the bus by questioning his age and ability to do the job. You know how bad the interview truly was when that’s the takeaway.
I wrote earlier about a couple of the teaser clips from the “60 Minutes” interview with Joe Biden.
Those were bad, but the complete interview was even worse.
First, we should note that there was a little bit of water-carrying for Joe Biden with host Scott Pelley saying that the president was fitting them into his busy schedule on Thursday.
Can't make it up.@60Minutes's @ScottPelley carrying water for Biden before the interview even airs.
Pelley claims Biden had to "wedge" the interview into his busy schedule.
Biden had his 10 a.m. daily briefing and a 4:30 meeting where he just had to sit and listen to CEOs, how is that busy? Maybe it’s “busy” for an 80-year-old who has so many issues. But that’s why he shouldn’t even be there.
Biden seemed completely at sea throughout the interview, and so old.
Pelley asked if he could foresee U.S. troops involved in the Israeli war. Notice his answer: it wasn’t “no.”
It was “I don’t think it’s necessary” because “Israel has one of the finest fighting forces in the country.” Um, Joe? Israel is its own country, it’s not part of the U.S., what are you even saying here? In what country?
Then he threw Israel under the bus with this confusing remark, saying they should not reoccupy Gaza, that he thought that would be a “big mistake.” Funny, that’s just what Iran was hoping Joe would say, and there he is right on cue. You can see him struggling to answer this question.
Pelley asks what was his message to “Hezbollah and its backer Iran.” Biden’s response wouldn’t exactly send fear down any bad actor’s back, and Pelley even had to finish his thought for him.
"What is your message to Hezbollah and its backer, Iran?"
New bill intro by Assemblywoman Jenifer Rajkumar, A-8132, Requires a criminal history background check for the purchase of a three-dimensional printer capable of creating firearms; prohibits sale to a person who would be disqualified on the basis of criminal history from being granted a license to possess a firearm.
From the bill memorandum:
Three-dimensionally printed firearms, a type of untraceable ghost gun, can be built by anyone using an $150 three-dimensional printer.
Three-dimensional printed guns are growing more prevalent each year. There were 100 taken off the streets of New York City in 2019. That number skyrocketed to 637 in 2022.
Concurrently, ghost gun shootings have risen 1,000% across the nation. Currently, three-dimensional printers allow people to make, buy, sell, and use untraceable guns without any background checks.
This bill will require a background check so that three-dimensional printed firearms do not get in the wrong hands.
New: The USAID inspector general warned just a few weeks ago that the Biden administration was ignoring risks in sending aid to Gaza. The Biden admin has indeed funded groups in the region that have links to Hamas and terrorism, a review found.https://t.co/Lrwoktb9MP
Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration gave Hamas $75 million in early October, just days before the group launched an assault against Israel and after learning that a terrorist attack was imminent.
The aid was pushed through in a quiet move bypassing Republican obstructionism.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken approved the release of $75 million in funding for Hamas-controlled Gaza.
Blinken diverted the cash to Hamas just hours before the funds were set to be redistributed elsewhere.
The move was hushed through with little attention in early October, just days before Hamas launched its terrorist attacks against Israel, slaughtering, raping, and kidnapping hundreds of innocent civilians.
However, the funding was approved after the U.S. government learned that Hamas was likely planning an upcoming terror attack against Israel.
Blinken’s decision came after months of pressure from Democrat lawmakers and dozens of civil society groups.
They warned that blocking the aid would create a humanitarian disaster for over one million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
The aid had been held up by Republican Senators who were pushing back against the release of the funds.
Senator Jim Risch and Representative Michael McCaul, the top Republicans on the Senate and House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committees, have since late July been blocking the State Department from providing funds to the UN’s Palestine refugee agency (UNRWA).
After he assumed office, Biden reversed President Donald Trump’s efforts to squeeze off funding to the UN agency and Hamas.
UNRWA thanked Blinken for the funds that will sustain its food distribution through early 2024.
“Thank you [Blinken] for providing $75 million in food assistance to Palestine refugees in Gaza!” said UNRWA
“This generous support from the American people will allow UNRWA to continue this critical aspect of its humanitarian and human development work through the end of Q1 2024.”
Meanwhile, more details have emerged the Biden admin also sent $33.7 million from the American Rescue Plan.
The spending bill was meant for Americans to combat Covid during the pandemic.
It was sent to a Palestinian relief organization that has previously been accused of providing safe harbor to terrorists in Gaza.
I write a lot of stuff here at Bearing Arms. More than one-third of all the content on this site has my name on it, and I haven’t exactly been here from the beginning.
As a result, I often write a story, and then forget it after a week or two. It’s impossible to remember everything I wrote unless something sparks my memory and not necessarily even then. It’s a lot to remember.
Yet it’s all there in the archive, waiting to remind me.
Most of the time, that’s not newsworthy. I’ll take a look at a story I forgot about and read it, then go back to the rest of my day. Yet looking for one on the site yesterday, I came across something that, at the time, wasn’t that big of a deal. It didn’t deal with American gun control or anything that would impact us. It was a group of people voicing their support for gun control.
I’ve literally written thousands of those stories.
If you’re a gun owner and haven’t actively done everything you could to keep that on the down low, there’s a good chance someone has referred to you as some kind of domestic terrorist. After all, some people think the very act of owning a gun is a terroristic act.
These people are demented, of course, but they exist. Let’s also not forget that the NRA was called a domestic terrorist organization despite no evidence of an act of terrorism carried out by an NRA member.
The issue was a suggestion that Jewish settlers should carry guns. Hamas called it “incitement to murder” and denounced it, apparently arguing that settlers doing so would create a danger.
Well, now we know what that danger was.
I wrote that here on Bearing Arms on September 18th, about a day or so after the initial response by Hamas.
Now, understand that what we saw wasn’t the result of a two-day planning session. It wasn’t the result of something that just cobbled together over a lunch meeting. Hamas’ attack on Israel was a well-coordinated assault that probably took months to plan.
Including the month in which Hamas told Jewish settlers that they didn’t really need guns and that saying so was “fascist.”
Here at Bearing Arms, we are one of many sites dedicated to preserving our Second Amendment rights. Israel had no such protections, either from their constitution or sites like ours or our friends across the internet. They were relatively disarmed, even with calls to carry guns.
And Hamas capitalized on it.
It’s kind of hard not to now wonder how many of the groups that are calling for gun control here in the US have similar designs. Hamas knew what it was planning even as it denounced calls for settlers to carry guns because they preferred to have less resistance when they invaded. How many American groups of people also would like to carry out vile attacks on their opposition and want gun control so as to help facilitate that?
Well, they’re not going to find easy prey here and there are a whole lot of us who stand ready to make sure they don’t.
demoncrap SOP for decades; Throw money at the problem.
It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation,
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:–
For fear they should succumb and go astray;
So when you are requested to pay up or be molested,
You will find it better policy to say:
“We never pay any-one Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!”
But history has taught us that, like paying the Dane-Geld, such appeasement is more likely to cause war and indescribable suffering than it is to prevent it. Despite those blood-soaked lessons, the appeasement gene continues to proliferate among cowardly politicians.
There are countless examples of this in modern history, but it is beyond the scope of this short article to attempt to catalogue them here. Each reader will think of examples.
Often the end results of policy decisions and statements, and how they invite more aggression and war, are not fully apparent until sometime later when it is too late because the damage has already occurred. Joe Biden’s statement that a limited Russian invasion of Ukraine might be somewhat tolerable or at least met with dissention among the Western allies, is a good example. Predicting what Russia would do, he said, “it depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do.” Even though Biden and his handlers tried to “walk back” (the press’ euphemism of correcting a dumb statement) that invitation, the damage was already done – Biden had sent a signal to Putin of his thinking, and it was a signal of weakness.
To the extent that we can, it therefore is important to call out such projections of weakness and appeasement in real time, as they are occurring. Because of the homicidal intent of the Islamists in the Mideast – indeed, across the globe – it is of over-riding importance to shine a light – no, to focus, focus and focus – on the most recent examples of this appeasement that are certain to cause more bloodshed, not only in Israel and the Mideast, but in the United States, Europe, and other countries worldwide.
I am referring to the blatant lies and craven cowardice by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his ostensible boss, Joe Biden, which have further encouraged Iran in its support for its and its proxies’ murderous jihad against Israel (and potentially the U.S. and Europe) about the supposed non-involvement of Iran in the barbaric atrocities Hamas is perpetrating upon Israeli civilians. These are not civilian “collateral damage” caused by bombing, when Hamas attempts to hide among civilian shields or has situated its arms caches near hospitals and mosques. And, contrary to some attempts by our media to equate the two, they most decidedly are not in any way comparable to the IDF’s targeting and killing of the barbaric Hamas fighters terrorists.
Blinken led off on Sunday, October 8, with his claim that our government has no evidence that Iran is behind Hamas’ bloody and barbaric attacks on women, girls, babies, and other civilians. And his weasel-worded statement encourages both Iran and Hamas with its blatant evasions and flat-out lies.
Sunday, on NBC’s Meet the Press, and CNN’s State of the Union.Blinken said, “In this moment, we don’t have anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out.”“In this specific instance, we have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack.”
On Saturday, as the raping and murdering and kidnapping were happening in Israel, Najma Sharif, a writer for Soho House magazine and Teen Vogue, posted on X: “What did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? losers.”
So far, Sharif’s post has been liked 100,000 times and reposted nearly 23,000 times—by, among others, The Washington Post’s global opinions editor, Karen Attiah.
The point was: Don’t be squeamish. Never mind the Jewish girl being pulled by her hair with blood streaming between her legs. Never mind the women being raped beside the corpses of their friends at a music festival. Never mind the children and babies snatched from their parents.
If you can’t handle it, if you condemn it without a preamble or equivocation, you’re an apologist for the Zionist colonizers.
All this is a good reminder that when people say something, they often mean it, and we should believe them, or at least take them seriously. Fancy-sounding academic jargon is not a curious intellectual exercise. Words make worlds.
Here is how Quillette editor Claire Lehmann put it on X, formerly Twitter: “For the past decade I’ve been told that jokes, words & scholarly debates need to be suppressed because they may cause ‘harm’ to vulnerable minorities. Yet when a global minority is butchered, tortured & maimed, those who suppress words shrug as if war crimes are no big deal.”
Real decolonization is a physical process. It is about removing bodies from a place.
The meaning of Sharif’s post—a very tidy, very millennial encapsulation of the old Bolshevik spirit—is: the ends shall justify the means, and if that bothers you, well, you’ve probably been infected by some bourgeois, liberal fungus.
Nor was she alone.
“And as you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where they were having a great time until the resistance came in electrified hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker at a Democratic Socialists of America rally in New York proclaimed to whoops and laughter. (DSA members include representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar.)
“Decolonization is about dreaming and fighting for a present and future free of occupied Indigenous territories,” Jairo Fúnez-Florez, an assistant professor at Texas Tech, posted. “It’s about a Free Palestine. It’s about liberation and self-determination. It’s about living with dignity.”
A pro-Palestinian rally in New York’s Times Square. (Photo by Bryan R. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
Columbia student groups called the attack on Israel “an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them.”
A joint statement issued by dozens of Harvard student organizations declared “the Israeli regime” is “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”
“Shabbat shalom and may every colonizer fall everywhere,” wrote Barnaby Raine, who received his PhD in history from Columbia and now teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
The writer Mohammed El-Kurd, the Palestine correspondent for The Nation, stated: “What is happening in occupied Palestine is a response to weeks and months and years of daily military invasions into Palestinian towns, killings of Palestinians, and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade.”
Rania Khalek, a Lebanese American journalist, wrote: “Watching armed indigenous people take their land back from their colonizers is something else.”
Self-styled “journalist” Mariam Barghouti said: “Gaza just broke out of prison.”
Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis suggested “the path to ending the tragic loss of innocent lives—both Palestinian and Israeli—begins with one crucial first step: the end of the Israeli occupation and apartheid.”
The New York Times decided this was the right moment to run a story headlined “Gaza Has Suffered Under 16-Year Blockade.” The Times was good enough to note that the blockade was made possible not only by Israel but by Egypt, but it failed to mention Israeli forces withdrew from Gaza in 2005; that Palestinians elected Hamas to rule them; that Israelis routinely give Gazans notice before attacking to minimize loss of civilian life; and that one reason (maybe the reason) so many Palestinian children have died during Israeli air strikes is Hamas uses them as human shields—the better to generate sympathetic news coverage.
Then, of course, there were the moral relativists, those who provide a patina of legitimacy to the alleged freedom fighters. Amnesty International’s Agnes Callamard called on “all parties to the conflict to abide by international law and make every effort to avoid further civilian bloodshed.” Representative Ilhan Omar reminded everyone, “Gaza doesn’t have shelters or an iron dome” (one wonders if she mentioned this to the Hamas leadership in Doha or its patrons in Tehran before the violence commenced). Or Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s national embarrassment, declaring, “we need a route out of this tragic cycle of violence.”
Meanwhile, the ersatz activists of Hollywood and Silicon Valley are eerily quiet. The people who turned the Ukrainian flag into their avatars, those who worry about misgendering and triggering and safe spaces, those who insist words are violence (those for whom violence is apparently not violence)—they’re busy ignoring all this.
We should listen closely to these latter-day Bolsheviks and their many enablers. They are being honest. They are saying exactly what they believe and what they want to see happen.
I will say that I don’t think we’ll see as widespread violence compared to Israel if things ever did go south. Mainly because we are known as the most heavily armed nation on the face of the Earth, and will go kinetic if the opportunity ever presents itself. That being said:
Many are warning about terrorist attacks in America by Hamas operatives
If you had any doubt about the veracity of those warnings, just look at how many demonstrations in support of Hamas took place this weekend just hours after Hamas slaughtered hundreds of civilians
These people are not playing around and violence against the innocent is their preferred method of communication
Biden removed Trump’s travel ban from terrorist nations and our border has been flooded with millions of fighting-aged men this past year alone, so those Hamas operatives are probably already here and waiting for the green light. Biden is not going to protect us. We must protect ourselves
Why would the Biden administration take a position indistinguishable from that of The Squad in calling for Israel to stand down via “ceasefire” — as its people, and among them some Americans, are brutally murdered and held hostage by Hamas’ genocidal jihadists?
Why would the Biden administration have tabbed a Hamas-tied Hezbollah apologist, and all-around Third World Man like Rob Malley as State Department Envoy to Iran — enabling him apparently to build a spy ring for the mullocracy?
Why would the Biden administration have so empowered Iran and its proxies, while putting the screws to Israel in the first place — helping create the conditions for the catastrophe that has unfolded, which could well expand into a regional if not world war?
To understand all of this, you have to understand how President Barack Obama normalized the unholy intersectional progressive-Islamist alliance that has now come to dominate the Democrat Party, including this White House.
It took little time for people to connect the dots between Joe Biden’s unfreezing of $6 billion in Iranian assets last month — part of a prisoner swap — and the Hamas attack on Israel. Hamas gets funding from Iran, and all the restrictions on how Iran can spend their money are meaningless. In fact, Hamas spokesman Ghazi Hamad told the BBC that Iran did give financial support to Hamas for its surprise attack on Israel, and a senior adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, confirmed this.
That hasn’t stopped the Biden administration from desperately trying to absolve itself of responsibility for the deadly attack, which has set off yet another war in the region.
“Let’s be clear,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller wrote on X. “The deal to bring U.S. citizens home from Iran has nothing to do with the horrific attack on Israel. Not a penny has been spent, and when it is, it can only go for humanitarian needs like food and medicine. Anything to the contrary is false.”
Variations of this talking point have been repeated ad nauseam by various members of the Biden administration. One of them was Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who did the rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows to defend the Biden administration. He claimed on ABC’s “This Week” that “not a single dollar from that account has actually been spent to date, and in any event, it’s very carefully and closely regulated by the Treasury Department to make sure that it’s only used for food, for medicine, for medical equipment.”
Cute story, right? Well, that may be the line the administration is pushing, but when Blinken appeared on “Meet The Press,” he let slip some actual truth.
“What do you say about the argument that money is fungible — so Iran may have known this money is coming and used other funds to help fund this attack?” asked host Kristen Welker.
“Iran has unfortunately always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas,” Blinken replied. “And it’s done that when there have been sanctions, it’s done that when there haven’t been sanctions, and it’s always prioritized that.”
That admission completely undermines the talking points that the Biden administration has been pushing. They unfroze $6 billion for Iran, and Iran funded the Hamas attack. It’s that simple. Per Blinken’s own words, the condition of the money only being used for humanitarian purposes is meaningless. Iran will always use money to fund terrorism.
So if the Biden administration knows Iran funds terrorism, why did it unfreeze $6 billion as part of the prisoner exchange last month? There’s no good answer to that — or to the question of why the Obama administration and now the Biden administration are so intent on giving the Iranian regime a pathway to nuclear weapons.
Just a few weeks back, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham declared a public health emergency to attain what she believed was the legal justification to override the 2nd Amendment. Her public health emergency was created out of thin air to give herself the power to mandate a 30 day ban on the public carry of firearms in Albuquerque and the surrounding county. She said, “No Constitutional right, in my view, including my oath, is intended to be absolute.”
The backlash was swift as police departments denied her support in enforcing the rule, the public defied the governor by carrying openly in public to make a point, and even the media, along with some of her fellow Democrats ridiculed her by saying she was overreaching her power. Apparently, this corrupt governor did not care and continued to demand that the police departments enforce her unconstitutional rule regardless of its unconstitutionality, She created an unjustified “health emergency” as a vehicle to push her “one woman dictate” over the people of New Mexico.
Grisham used the death of an 11-year-old boy in an attempt to create irrational fear and hype in her pursuit to violate the rights of the citizens she represents. Standing on the graves of dead children has been an effective tool for gun-grabbing politicians, as it drums up irrational fear among parents and directs anger toward gun owners. The implication is that these heinous killings wouldn’t happen if gun owners would “compromise-away” their rights. In Grisham’s case, it would appear she used the tragedy to portray herself as the hero.
In response to the overreaching rule, A Federal Judge temporarily blocked Gresham’s ban on carrying guns in Albuquerque and its surrounding county. Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said, “This order will not do anything to curb gun violence other than punish law-abiding citizens who have a constitutional right to self-defense.”
In defiance of the law and the Constitution, Grisham recently revised her public health order prohibiting firearms in parks, playgrounds and other public places where children go in Albuquerque. The governor also added a provision that tasks the state Department of Public Safety with organizing safe surrender events — also known as gun buybacks — in Albuquerque, Española and Las Cruces within a month. According to Maddy Hayden, a spokeswoman for the governor, the renewed order will remain in effect until Nov. 3.
As an additional slap in the face to New Mexicans, Grisham said, “We’re not letting up, and I’m continuing to make investments that drive down violence in our communities and protect our children.”
Throughout this entire battle, Grisham has failed to offer any solutions to solve the problem of “human violence,” and only seems to be focused on gun control. As usual, and like other gun-grabbing governors, Grisham appears to be avoiding responsibility for the violence that is created as a direct result of failed Democrat policies.
After several lawsuits last month in response to the Governors’ 30-day gun ban, U.S. District Judge David Herrera Urias issued the initial restraining order but has delayed a decision on whether to order a preliminary injunction against the edict. Grisham seems to be taking full advantage of every bit of power she can dig up in the meantime.
Michelle Lujan Grisham is the exact type of person our Founding Fathers warned us about. Her attempt to unilaterally suspend the right to carry is why the 2nd Amendment was written, and why so many New Mexico gun owners stood up and defied her unconstitutional order.
It bears repeating; in 2023 a degree from Harvard isn't something a potential employer should find impressive, but should consider a warning. https://t.co/vFtFqWwKuP
The Army has a serious recruiting problem. One of their solutions? Hey! Let’s cut our Special Ops Forces by 10-20%! Yes folks, that’s really what they are considering.
The Army is cutting about 3,000 troops, or about 10% from its special-operations ranks, which could include so-called trigger-pullers from the Green Beret commando units who have conducted some of the nation’s most dangerous and sensitive missions around the world, from the jungles of Vietnam to the back alleys of Baghdad.
The reductions would enable the Army to rebalance toward the large conventional ground forces needed in a potential fight in Asia. The trims in the ranks of special forces would also help the Army cope with a recruiting shortfall in a strong labor market. But opponents of the cuts, notably senior special-operations officers, have argued they could hinder training of U.S. partners, including the Ukrainian and Taiwanese militaries, and limit the elite units’ ability to respond to crises.
This is an asinine idea that will blow a significant crater in our current war fighting capabilities. Yet doing this, according to the brilliantly idiotic minds at the Pentagon will “rebalance” our forces and magically ramp up recruitment? Are You Kidding Me?
BLUF
Obama’s transformation of America was to remake it in his own image, by junking the idea that America is exceptional and dissolving the country’s borders with the rest of the world. America is not unique. It is as sinful as any other nation, he was effectively arguing, and possibly worse. What better way to make that point than by throwing Israel overboard, and replacing it with Iran—a country that preaches God’s retribution against America.
Now that the Israel part of Obama’s dream has been achieved, we should all be prepared for the other shoe to drop. The violence he unleashed in Israel will be coming to these shores now.
The current state of affairs began when Joe Biden’s former boss Barack Obama legalized a terror state’s nuclear weapons program.
Despite what its publicists claimed, the purpose of the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was never to stop Iran from getting the bomb. Rather, the tens of billions of dollars that Obama paid the clerical regime, which included planeloads of cash, was to facilitate construction of the nuclear weapons program under the protective umbrella of an international agreement backed by the United States. Even a cursory glance at the agreement’s clauses restricting Iranian nuclear and other activities reveals the truth—they are called “sunset clauses” because they were designed to expire. And once they expired, Iran’s industrial-size nuclear weapons program would be entirely legal under the continuing protection of the United States.
No, no, say JCPOA advocates and defenders—the Iran deal was constructed to prevent Iran from ever getting a bomb. And at the time that Obama proposed his plan, it seemed inconceivable that the president would mislead Americans about something as serious as legalizing the nuclear weapons program of a terror state that has been killing Americans since its inception in 1979. Surely, Obama had some more conventional idea of arms control in mind. His critics must be conspiracy theorists, projecting their own pyromania onto the righteous president, probably because they were racists, or Zionists, or both. The Iranian emigres and Saudi analysts who expressed their shock at the idea of giving Iran the bomb must have their own local axes to grind.
Nearly a decade after the selling of the Iran deal, it’s much easier now for Americans to see that it was the origin point in a series of hugely consequential lies that have shaped our country at home as surely as they have shaped the lives of people in the Middle East. They lied about Obama’s successor being a Russian spy to delegitimize the government and divide the country, in the hope of removing an elected president from office. They lied about an “insurrection” on Jan. 6, 2021, to justify designating one half of the country as domestic terrorists, in order to put their political opponents in jail. They’ve lied about so many things because they’re certain that their communications infrastructure—where intelligence officers direct big tech and censor what was once America’s independent press—will shape the “information space” on their behalf, effectively controlling what we see, hear, and read. They first built their echo chamber to sell the idea that the Iran deal would stop Iran from getting a bomb; now the echo chamber is everywhere—a high-tech version of how the press is run in countries like Egypt, or Iran.
Why did Hamas stage a long-planned, carefully executed and multifaceted attack on Israeli towns, soldiers, and civilians—one designed to instill terror by executing noncombatants, taking hostages, and desecrating the bodies of the dead?
And how were the killers able to enter Israeli proper in enough numbers to kill what could be hundreds and perhaps eventually wound what could be thousands?
a) Ostensibly, radical Palestinians wanted to stop any rumored rapprochement between the Gulf monarchies—the traditional source of much of their cash—and Israel, by forcing the issue of Arab solidarity in times of “war”, especially through waging a gruesome attack aimed at civilians and encompassing executions and hostage taking. Iran likely was the driving force to prompt the war—given its greatest fear is a Sunni Arab-Israeli rapprochement.
b) Arab forces have had only success against Israel through surprise attacks during Israeli holidays, as in the Yom Kippur War (i.e., was it any accident that the present attack began 50-years almost to the day after the October 6, 1973 beginning of the Yom Kippur War?). And so they struck again this Saturday during Simchat Torah, coming at the end of a weeklong Jewish celebration of Sukkot—in hopes that others will join in as happened in 1973. (So much for the Arab warnings not for Westerners to conduct war during Ramadan).
c) Hamas may have reckoned that recent Israeli turmoil and mass leftist street protests over proposed reforms of the Israeli Supreme Court had led to permanent internal divisions and thus a climate of domestic distraction if not an erosion of deterrence.
But, more importantly, in a larger sense the Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player, and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel—to the delight of Hamas—based on the following inexplicable policies:
