This Sneaky Senator’s Insider Trade Isn’t the Most Corrupt Part of This Story.

When a senator who sits on the Health Committee makes a big bet on a small, home-state medical devices company that just happens to get mucho moolah from the federal government, and then that stock goes up more than 40% in the weeks after said senator’s big bet, it’s the opinion of this mostly humble columnist that there’s some real shady stuff going on.

But it gets worse.

Earlier this month — November 8, to be exact — Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) purchased up to $250,000 in shares of Tactile Systems Technology (TCMD). TCMD shares had been on a real losing streak in 2023, down more than 60% from its 52-week high of $26.11. The price was down nearly another third, to $10.27 from $12.61, in the 48 hours before Smith made her big buy.

Buy the dip, of course. What’s remarkable is just how quickly TCMD recovered over the next three weeks — up 43% since the Minnesota senator plunked down her big bucks on a Minnesota company in an industry that Smith’s committee oversees.

That’s just one trade by one senator.

Financial analyst Quiver Quantitative called it “the most suspicious congressional stock trade I’ve seen in months.”

In May of last year, Quiver built “a trading bot that buys stocks that are being bought by politicians.” In a flat market, Quiver’s congressional bot’s fund is up 20% in just 18 months.

The sliminess is bipartisan. Here’s one example of how Quiver’s bot has performed by following the Tesla trades of one Democrat and two Republicans.

How’s your portfolio doing?

“It’s worth noting,” QQ reminds investors, “that despite the outperformance of the Congress Buys Strategy, it may still be held back by weak disclosure regulations.” Congresscritters, under the 2012 STOCK Act signed by President Barack Obama, have 45 days to disclose their stock transactions — but the penalty for late disclosures is all of $200.

So, yes, you could build a portfolio based on what people like Sen. Smith buy and sell, but you still wouldn’t do as well as they do because you’ll be up to 45 days behind their trades. Or longer if they decide to pony up the $200 for late disclosures.

But it still gets worse.

Quiver claims to have traced 7,912 STOCK Act violations, but “only a few have been investigated.” If any of those investigations have actually gone anywhere, it would be news to me. But Congress writes the laws governing Congress, so what would you expect?

That’s why, as far as I’m concerned, the most scandalous part of any of this is the mainstream media’s absolute silence on the matter.

As Bill Whittle put it to Right Angle viewers years ago, the press is supposed to act as a healthy society’s antibodies — gathering in the bloodstream at the site of any corruption to reveal and destroy it. And yet when a sitting member of the Senate Health Committee, whose “husband is an investor with a focus on medical industry stocks,” is making a killing on a volatile health company’s shares, it results in precisely zero stories in the mainstream media.

That’s despite Quiver’s revelations getting more than two million views on Twitter/X — the preferred social media platform of American journalists.

We know what Congress gets out of all this, so what’s the media’s payout?

The Trace Accidentally Shows How Little Brady Bill Did

It’s been 30 years since the Brady Bill passed. This was the bill that mandated all licensed gun dealers had to conduct background checks on anyone trying to buy a firearm.

It was heralded as a huge step forward. After all, before the law went into effect, felons could walk into gun stores and buy a firearm. They weren’t supposed to–it was illegal for them to do so–but they could just lie and say they weren’t a felon. In most states, that was enough.

So then the law changed. The Brady Bill went into effect and after 30 years, The Trace has decided to look at some numbers as to just how effective it’s been.

Let’s take a look at a few.

2,266,746

The number of federal background checks that resulted in a denial

These denials occurred because an FBI search of the NICS indices turned up a record that legally disqualified the person from owning firearms. This total does not include denials in states where state or local law enforcement handles the background checks. In 2023, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimated that federal and state agencies combined had denied a total of 4.4 million firearm background check applications since 1994. [FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics]

3 in 20 (or 1.5 percent)

The proportion of firearm background checks that result in a denial

This estimate from the Bureau of Justice Statistics encompasses denials issued at both the state and federal levels. Between 1998 and 2020, state and federal background checks blocked an average of 509 prohibited gun purchases and permits each day. However, when BJS looked solely at 2019 and 2020 — a period that overlaps with the pandemic gun-buying surge — the average number of denials jumped to 878 per day. [Bureau of Justice Statistics]

1 in 2 (or 51 percent)

The proportion of denials that are the result of felony convictions

Federal law prohibits people from owning firearms if they have been convicted of a felony or certain misdemeanors. Since the national background checks system went into place, this prohibitor has been the most common reason applications are denied. Compared to the FBI, state and local agencies deny for felony reasons at a lower rate, but one that still accounts for the largest proportion of denials. State and local agencies deny applications for state prohibitions and mental health reasons at a higher rate than the FBI. [FBI and Bureau of Justice Statistics]

Now, more than 2.26 million denials sounds like a lot, but what The Trace isn’t including in their numbers are false denials. They might be denied and counted as someone with a felony, only the person in question isn’t a felon. NICS gets it wrong a fair bit because, well, they’re people. That’s going to happen.

So the number of felons being denied guns is actually lower.

Further, this is over 30 years. When you consider just how many guns are bought and sold annually in the US, the just over 75,000 denials we see on average per year doesn’t sound particularly staggering.

And The Trace notes that only half of them are for felonies.

See, while they’re celebrating how effective the Brady Bill is, what I’m seeing here is that criminals are getting plenty of guns and they’re not getting them from gun stores. They’re not even trying to get them from gun stores.

Why would they? Most know they can’t get one lawfully anyway–many of those who do try to get a gun don’t realize they can’t own a firearm anymore–so they look for alternate way to obtain one.

They bypass the Brady Bill framework entirely so they never show up in the denial numbers.

So hundreds of millions of people have bought guns over the last 30 years, undergoing background checks that make them feel like they’re the criminal, all while doing next to nothing to actually stop criminals from getting guns because the criminals just went a different direction.

Archery Hunter Kills Mountain Lion in Self-Defense

On November 11, at about 3:45 in the afternoon, Ben Karash shot a mountain lion that was stalking him in Buffalo County, Wisconsin. Karash was belted into his tree stand, hunting deer.  He saw the lion coming closer from about 40 yards out. He shouted. He waved his arms. The lion knew he was there. The lion knew he was not a deer. The lion kept moving closer.

Have you ever watched a house cat stalk a bird? Mountain lions stalk their prey in a similar fashion.

I was able to talk to Tom Bilski, the District Attorney of Buffalo County. Tom was wonderfully open and transparent about what had happened. In recent years, people have thought the purpose of a prosecutor is to prosecute crimes. No. The purpose of a prosecutor is to see justice done. It is equally important to decide not to prosecute people as it is to prosecute them.

Tom said the local game warden, representing the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) asked him if he wished to prosecute the hunter who shot the lion. The local game warden, Bob Jumbeck, had investigated the incident after Ben Karasch called it in on the DNR hotline.

Karash had seen the big cat stalking him. It had come closer and closer, no matter what he did. He was in a vulnerable position, strapped to the tree, on his tree stand, with limited movement. As the cat neared the base of the tree, he drew his bow and fired an arrow into the upper body of the cat. The distance was later measured at 13 yards from him.

Lion shot in Wisconsin by Ben Karash, Photo Courtesy Wisconsin DNR via Outdoorlife.com

Tom Bilsky, Barron County District Attorney, was asked by the DNR if he wanted to prosecute the hunter. Bilsky recalled this from his conversation with Warden Jumbeck.

This cougar was stalking the hunter. The cougar knew he was in the tree. The hunter yelled at the cougar to go away. The cougar kept on coming to the tree stand. Now logic would suggest that the cougar was coming to the tree stand to kill him. When the game warden told me, when Bob Jumbeck told me, what had happened, my first thoughts are we should be putting a medal on this person, not worrying about charging him. In my opinion this cougar would have killed somebody.

The District Attorney asked Warden Jumbeck: Did Jumbeck want to charge the hunter who killed the lion? Jumbek said no. In the investigation, all the physical evidence confirmed what had been said by the hunter.

Tom said he had been contacted by someone who wanted the hunter prosecuted. The person demanded information Tom did not have. Tom told them to contact the DNR for the information they sought.

Tom told the person he might have a different opinion if he saw the mountain lion stalking him. If he saw the lion kept getting closer and closer, and the lion would not be deterred by yelling and arm waving, he might think differently.

The District Attorney said if a person would not shoot the mountain lion under those circumstances, he was “dumber than a box of rocks.”

Comment O’ The Day
Sporting rifle or ” weapon of war” – doesn’t matter. The very point of the 2A was to acknowledge that we possess the right to own & bear weapons = to those of the government/military in order to protect ourselves from tyranny

Hamas Shifting the Goalposts for Releasing Hostages

There is already talk of a second ceasefire once fighting in the Israel-Hamas war resumes. But goalpost shifting by Hamas means talks ahead of any upcoming hostage release deal will be more hotly contested than the last.

The terror group is currently releasing just one of the 240 mostly Israeli hostages taken during its October 7th attacks for every three Palestinian prisoners set free by Israel. Over the course of the current ceasefire, which much of the West is demanding be extended again, Hamas has mainly released young children and elderly women—some of whom were taunted by Gazans during their handover—while Israel has released prisoners, many of whom it says are affiliated with Hamas and who, though not convicted, are alleged to have committed a range of offences.

Thoughts are now beginning to extend to the possible release of Israeli men and soldiers—both men and women—held by Hamas, which has signalled that it will demand a higher ‘price’ for these captives.

In 2006, Hamas released an abducted Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been held for five years in exchange for more than 1,000—one thousand—Palestinian prisoners. Retired U.S. Ambassador Dennis Jett told NPR that it “wasn’t lost on Hamas” that such a steep price could be demanded of Israel again.

Jerusalem may, however, be wary of such a controversial number, especially after one of the prisoners released in 2006, Yahya Sinwar, went on to lead Hamas in Gaza and to plan the October 7th terror attacks. For the same reason, The Times has suggested that “even Hamas might be discouraged from asking as high a price again, though its spokesmen have mentioned the Shalit deal.”

But before talks for the next ceasefire can begin, Israel is already being pressured by officials in the West to keep the existing one going longer. U.S. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that “to continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek. We can’t do that.” His comments appeared to contradict the official U.S. stance that a prolonged ceasefire would mainly benefit Hamas, granting it enough time to regroup.

President Biden’s comments also came ahead of today’s ‘International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,’ held annually, though this year piggybacked by Hamas. The terror group has called for global protests and “solidarity marches,” according to the German paper Jüdische Allgemeine. The paper added that this poses particular threats for the West’s Jewish communities which have already seen a massive increase in antisemitic incidents since October 7th.

Man killed during confrontation at Bessemer home was 19 years old

Authorities said the young man killed in a Bessemer [Alabama] shooting Tuesday afternoon was 19 years old.

The Jefferson County Coroner’s Office said they have identified the homicide victim but have not yet located and notified his family, so they are withholding his name.

Bessemer police Det. Justin Burmeister said the altercation happened at 1:44 p.m. Tuesday in the 1300 block of Hearn Avenue.

During the altercation, one man stabbed the other. The man who was stabbed then pulled a gun and shot his assailant.

The stabbing victim was taken to the hospital. The extent of his injuries wasn’t immediately known.

The 19-year-old was pronounced dead on the scene at 2:22 p.m.

Coroner’s officials said the confrontation may have begun as a home invasion. Burmeister said the investigation is ongoing and detectives are still trying to sort out details, but said the deadly shooting appears to be justified.

There have been nine homicides so far this year in Bessemer. In all of Jefferson County, there have been 173, including the nine in Bessemer.

November 30

1707 – The 2nd Siege of Pensacola comes to end with the failure of the British to capture Pensacola, Florida from the Spanish during Queen Anne’s War.

1782 – In Paris, representatives from the United States and Great Britain sign preliminary peace articles, later formalized as the 1783 Treaty of Paris.

1803 – In New Orleans, Spain officially transfers the Louisiana Territory to the French First Republic.

1804 – The Senate begins an impeachment trial of Federalist Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase on the charge of partisan political court decisions

1864 – Near Franklin Tennessee, the Confederate Army of Tennessee, under Lieutenant General John Bell Hood, suffers heavy losses in numerous frontal assaults against fortified positions occupied by the the Union Army of the Ohio under Major General John Schofield while his troops stage an orderly retreat to Nashville.

1941 – The SS-Einsatzgruppen begin to round up some 25,000 Jews from the Riga, Latvia Ghetto and kill them in the Rumbula forest over the following week.

1947 – War breaks out in Mandatory Palestine between Jewish and Arab forces.

1954 – In Sylacauga, Alabama, a Hodges meteorite crashes through a roof and hits a woman taking an afternoon nap; the only documented case in the Western Hemisphere of a human being hit by a rock from space.

1962 – Eastern Air Lines Flight 512, a Douglas DC-7, crashes during an aborted landing  due to extremely heavy fog, at Idlewild Airport in New York, killing 25 of the 51 passengers and crew aboard.

1982 – Michael Jackson’s sixth solo studio album, Thriller, is released worldwide, ultimately becoming the best selling record album in history.

1995 – Operation Desert Storm officially ends.

1999 – Exxon and Mobil sign a $73.7 billion agreement to merge, creating ExxonMobil, the largest company in the world

2001 – Gary Ridgway is apprehended in Renton Washington, and charged with four murders. He is eventually convicted of a total of 49 murders as the Green River Killer and sentenced to 49 consecutive terms of life imprisonment, plus 10 years.

2007 – Robert ‘Evel’ Knievel dies, age 69, on the way from his home to the hospital in Clearwater, Florida.

2018 – Former President George H. W. Bush dies, age 94 at his home in Houston, Texas.

2021 – A 15 year old student shoots and murders 4 students and wounds 7 more people, including a teacher, at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan.

Laws Requiring Permission to Obtain Guns Look Vulnerable

According to a landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision, the Second Amendment constrains the requirements that states may impose on residents who want to carry guns in public for self-defense. It stands to reason that the same is true of the steps that people must take to acquire guns in the first place.

That is essentially what the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit concluded last week, when it ruled that Maryland’s handgun licensing system is inconsistent with the right to keep and bear arms. The case exemplifies a new front in constitutional challenges to gun control laws under the Second Amendment test that the Supreme Court established last year.

To pass that test, a law must be “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.” But Maryland’s law, which requires would-be handgun owners to complete a process that can take up to 30 days, bears little resemblance to regulations enacted in the 18th or 19th century.

Maryland is one of 14 states that require background checks for all firearm purchases, whether or not the seller is a federally licensed dealer. Since 2013, Maryland has imposed an additional requirement on handgun buyers: They must first obtain a “handgun qualification license,” which entails completing at least four hours of firearm training and undergoing a seemingly redundant “investigation” aimed at screening out people who are legally disqualified from owning guns.

Maryland argued that its law fits a tradition of disarming “dangerous” individuals, such as people with felony records, illegal drug users and people convicted of domestic violence misdemeanors. But even assuming those categories of “prohibited persons” are validated by long-standing practice, 4th Circuit Judge Julius Richardson said, Maryland’s statute goes further by “preemptively disarming every person until they can each prove that they are not dangerous,” which “burdens a far broader swath of people.”

Writing in dissent, Judge Barbara Milano Keenan highlighted the Supreme Court’s distinction between “may issue” laws like New York’s, which required carry-permit applicants to demonstrate “proper cause,” and “shall issue” laws, which make permits available to all applicants who meet “objective criteria.” Maryland’s licensing system for handgun buyers falls into the latter category, Keenan said, which suggests the Court would be inclined to uphold it.

While the Supreme Court did indicate that “shall issue” laws could be consistent with the Second Amendment, it also noted that “any permitting scheme can be put toward abusive ends.” It therefore did not rule out “constitutional challenges to shall-issue regimes where, for example, lengthy wait times in processing license applications or exorbitant fees deny ordinary citizens their right to public carry.”

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Well, I personally don’t hardly believe anything the goobermint says.

BLUF
“The manipulation of statistics to create a narrative ultimately scares people. Whether the goal is for ratings or more gun control, it pushes people, especially women and mothers, to fear guns,” said Miller. “And that just isn’t right.”

We Can’t Believe These Agencies
Too often, the U.S. government skews statistics on gun use to push false narratives.

While Americans are frequently confronted with stories centered on guns being used to take lives, few are aware that many more humans are likely saved by firearms every year. A key reason for this lack of understanding is unreliable federal crime data—data that has too often been skewed by anti-gun politics.

As currently defined by the FBI, active-shooter incidents involve individuals who kill or attempt to kill people in a populated, public place, even if only one shot is fired or the intended target is not struck. Shootings that are related to other criminal activities, such as robberies or drug-turf wars, are not included in the FBI’s “Active Shooter Incident” reports.

But, according to economist John Lott, there was an abundance of cases missing or misidentified by the FBI, and while the FBI acknowledged errors, the Bureau failed to update the reports for accuracy purposes. Lott is the president and founder of the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC), and also worked in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) up until January 2021 as senior advisor for research and statistics evalutating the FBI’s reports.

“The FBI continues to report that armed citizens stopped only 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents that it identified for the period 2014-2022. The correct rate is almost eight times higher. And if we limit the discussion to places where permit holders were allowed to carry, the rate is eleven times higher,” wrote Lott. He further noted, “[O]ut of 440 active shooter incidents from 2014 to 2022, an armed citizen stopped 157. We also found that the FBI had misidentified five cases, usually because the person who stopped the attack was incorrectly identified as a security guard.”

He also emphasized that while the FBI claims that just 4.6% of active murderers were halted by law-abiding citizens carrying guns, his research found that the figure was at least 35.7%. A false statistic—like this 4.6%—misleads people and can prevent good policies from being passed.

Indeed, without reliable crime data, it is impossible to have a fair “gun-control” debate, and yet the FBI continues to depend upon minimal data sets to reach conclusions meant to encapsulate the entire country.

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Contra Costa County Sheriff Won’t Allow CCL Holders to Carry With Red Dots, Lasers, or Pistol Lights 

Months ago, the California Rifle & Pistol Association heard from a member that Contra Costa County Sheriff David Livingston has some rather unique restrictions on the guns that his office will qualify for carry by residents in the county.

If you’re unfamiliar with California’s byzantine carry laws, applicants for a license must qualify with each specific firearm they intend to carry. Each handgun’s serial number appears on your carry license. Most counties will allow up to three firearms, but some limit you to only one. Sheriffs have wide latitude in what they will and won’t qualify for carry.

We were told that Sheriff Livingston won’t qualify applicants if they attempt to qualify with a pistol that has a laser, red dot sight, or a pistol light attached (night sights are allowed), and found the page at the bottom of this post on the county’s web site. We wrote to ask the Sheriff for his rationale for these restrictions and this week we heard back from him.

Unfortunately, Sheriff Livingston won’t budge on this policy. He writes that he has a “Firearms Committee” he consults on these questions. He tells us the committee is made up of employees with a wide range of backgrounds, all of whom are firearms instructors. The committee recommended against changing the policy.

The reasons for excluding these accessories are (I summarize here, these aren’t quotes) . . .

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“Everybody want to sanctuary until it time to do sanctuary stuff”

How it got started:
Mayor Rahm Emanuel: ‘Chicago Always Will Be A Sanctuary City.’

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Blames City’s Illegal Immigrant Crisis on ‘Right Wing Extremism’ (Video).

 

If You Want Peace, Prepare For War: Why All Should Be Armed

A lot of people get armed for a lot of reasons. Those reasons generally don’t matter all that much because we don’t have to provide a reason why we want to exercise our Second Amendment rights, but those reasons exist and are varied.

People who live in high-crime areas tend to prefer not to become a victim. Some people recognize bad things can happen at any time and place. Still others figure they’ll never need it, but are armed simply because they have the God-given right to be armed.

Yet the flip side is that a lot of people refuse to carry a firearm. They believe the world should be better than it is and that there’s no reason for any of us to have a gun.

My friend Yehuda Remer, aka The Pew Pew Jew, had an interesting post over at his site that I think we should talk a bit about. It starts with a story from the Old Testament. Jacob and his family, with all their riches, are on the road to meet his brother, Eisav, who sanctioned his murder 20 years prior and who thinks Jacob is already dead.

To prepare for this meeting, Jacob does three things. The first is to send an offering to Eisav to hopefully make peace. The second was to pray. It’s the third thing that leads to why I’m writing this.

Lastly, and the real reason I am writing this blog, is that Jacob prepared for war. He split his family into two different camps to spare one if Eisav decided to attack. Of course, he would be willing to fight but still ensured some of his family would live.

Why is this important? Why is the preparation for war so integral to Jacob even though he had God’s ear? What can we learn?

I am a Jew who carries a firearm. I write about guns. I use firearms regularly. I train people on firearms and educate them on their Second Amendment rights. Unfortunately, Jews get a bad rap because so many of them are anti-gun and anti-2A, which is true. I know many Jews from all walks of life who hate firearms and believe that guns have no place in society. Well, my question to them is, if guns don’t have a place in society, how do we explain the fact that Jacob prepared for war? How is exercising my Second Amendment and carrying a firearm on my person to ensure my family is protected any different than what Jacob did?

The answer is that there is no difference.

“Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war.

Exactly.

Look, I’d love to live in a world where there was absolutely zero chance I’d ever need my gun for anything but recreational shooting. We don’t live in that world, we live in this one.

As such, I can and should take all the steps one can think of to prevent myself from becoming a victim and, as a society, we should take all the steps we can to make it so crime disappears forever.

Those of us who are the praying sort should do that as well, pray that those who would become violent criminals and those who already have find another way forward with their lives.

But we shouldn’t rest exclusively on those.

We should want peace, but we should prepare for war. At least in a manner of speaking, anyway.

Violence can and will come for some of us. We can and should do everything we can to mitigate the risk of that, but some of us won’t be fortunate enough to escape that.

So, we should be prepared to meet that violence with the threat of force and a willingness to use violence in the defense of ourselves or others if need be.

Robber shot, killed during robbery at Dollar General,

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – A robber died after being shot during a robbery at a Dollar General store in Memphis on Tuesday, according to the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

MPD said three people began robbing the Dollar General on Winchester Road around 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 28.

During the robbery, someone witnessed the crime and shot at the suspects, according to police.

One of those alleged robbers was hit by the gunfire and rushed to the hospital but died from his injuries, police said.

Another of the alleged robbers was quickly arrested but the third ran away, MPD said.

The person who shot at the robbers was detained at the scene but no charges were immediately announced.

“That’s horrible to hear that someone actually lost their life,” Crystal Blair told FOX13. “But that’s what’s going on in Memphis and we need to really take this seriously.”

Blair owns a business down the street from the scene of the botched robbery. She said her store opened three months ago and had already been broken into twice.

“I don’t even stay open after dark anymore,” Blair said. “I’m really hoping when the new mayor comes in that he has a plan. Businesses are suffering over here.”

The Double & 1 Drill: 10 Rounds Is All You Need

Most shooters have a “sweet spot” of which is a favorable balance of distance, shot tempo and target size for their skill level with handguns. It is common to see enthusiasts, competitors and even armed professionals struggle to speed up as they encroach closer on the target from the sweet spot and struggle to use more time to good effect as the distance stretches much beyond their preferred-and most-practiced range. The ability to modulate the degree of trigger finesse and sight refinement based on proximity to the target is one of the key skills which make good shooters … well, good.

This is the exercise space for the ‘Double & 1’ drill. Double & 1 begins a scant 2.5 yards from the target on a tight time limit of only one second to fire two shots into the NRA B8 bullseye target from the low-ready position. For each succeeding string, the distance is doubled and an additional one second is allowed; hence Double & 1. The strings look like this:

String        Distance (Yards)  Time (Seconds) Shots From Ready
1 2.5 1 2
2 5 2 2
3 10 3 2
4 10 3 2
5 20 4 2
Total shots 10/ Possible score 100

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Hamas Had to Stop Palestinians From Murdering Hostages on Their Way Out of Gaza

A fifth round of hostages were released by Hamas in the Gaza Strip Tuesday on day five of an extended, six day ceasefire. Twelve people were released, none of them were Americans.

But before they gained their freedom after being held for more than 50 days by the Iranian backed terror group, hostages were confronted by Palestinian civilians who shouted “Allahu Alkbar” and blocked Red Cross vehicles from quickly exiting. According to local reporting, the Egyptians had to essentially rescue the hostages as they were being harassed and threatened with death.

Meanwhile, recent polling from the Arab World for Research & Development shows the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank approve of the October 7 massacre of more than 1400 Israeli civilians in their homes, at a music festival, in bomb shelters and elsewhere.