The State Department said Saturday that 29 Americans were murdered by Hamas terrorists during their brutal Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel — adding two more US citizens to the tragic toll.
Another 16 Americans — 15 citizens and one legal permanent resident — remain missing, a State Department official told CNN.
“The US government is working around the clock to determine their whereabouts, and is working with the Israeli government on every aspect of the hostage crisis,” the official said.
The slain Americans have not been officially identified, but several families — including that of Cindy Flash, 67, a Minnesota native who had advocated for Palestinian rights — have come forward to speak of their lost loved ones.
Flash and her Israeli-born husband Igal were slain in the safe room of their home in the Kfar Aza kibbutz, her daughter Keren said.
“They were good people,” Keren said of her parents.
Danielle Waldman, 24, was one of 29 American citizens killed by Hamas in the Oct. 7 terror attack. She and her boyfriend Noam died together while attempting to flee the carnage at an outdoor music festival.
Eyal Waldman/Facebook
“They fought for other people’s rights and other people’s voices.”
Danielle Waldman, 24, a native of Palo Alto, Calif., was one of 260 victims killed at the Nova Festival, a “rave for peace” near the Gaza border.
Her father Eyal Waldman tracked Danielle’s phone and Apple Watch to discover the bullet-riddled car where she and her friends died.
“Each and every one that met her has loved her,” Waldman said.
“She’s done nothing wrong and nothing bad to anyone.”
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.
As if we needed more evidence that Hamas has engaged in barbarity beyond belief in their attack on Israel, now “top secret” maps and documents captured from the bodies of dead Hamas terrorists show they made detailed plans to directly target youth centers and elementary schools — in the hopes of “seiz[ing] hostages”:.
Documents exclusively obtained by NBC News show that Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.
The attack plans, which are labeled “top secret” in Arabic, appear to be orders for two highly trained Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gather. Israeli authorities are still determining the death toll in Kfar Sa’ad.
The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with NBC News. They include detailed maps and show that Hamas intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.
One page labeled “Top Secret” outlines a plan of attack for Kfar Sa’ad, saying “Combat unit 1” is directed to “contain the new Da’at school,” while “Combat unit 2” is to “collect hostages,” “search the Bnei Akiva youth center” and “search the old Da’at school.”
Another page labeled “Top Secret Maneuver” describes a plan for a Hamas unit to secure the east side of Kfar Sa’ad while a second unit controls the west. It says “kills as many as possible” and “capture hostages.” Other orders include surrounding a dining hall and holding hostages in it.
In response to the release of information on Hamas’ targeting of civilians and children, Hamas has released a video of what was purported to be a Palestinian infant killed by Israeli fire; the “infant” was obviously fake, and the video was taken down, but not before going viral.
These were the results of that planning:
The Hamas documents, footage of the aftermath of the massacre and interviews with eyewitnesses and first responders tell a harrowing story.
“I saw murdered babies. I saw murdered children. I saw mothers and children murdered together,” said Yossi Landau, a commander of ZAKA, an Israeli first responder organization.
This is another startling example of the barbarity of Hamas in this attack. More than that, it proves that these attacks were carefully and scrupulously planned and rehearsed. The level of specificity in the documents shown is the product of a military structure; these were not simple thugs who planned and carried out these atrocities. Continue reading “”
Frog, meet scorpion
Eyal Waldman, the Israeli high-tech magnate, astounded the tech industry and the entire Arab world by creating research and development centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, all while employing hundreds of Palestinian developers. On Saturday, Hamas murdered his daughter Daniel pic.twitter.com/6KNuKhAXZP
“Like I said … [Israel’s promise that ‘Gaza will never return to what it was’] had me ditch two of the my three COA [Course of Action] from this weekend. If you wanted to know how it shifted, my most dovish COA is gone, and my most harsh COA is now the center of my Overton Window. A planner must try to align with CI and D&G as it is understood – not how he wishes it to be.”
Here they are:
COA-A: Germany 1945
• The Gaza Strip will be segmented and block by block, field by field, be demilitarized. Person by person will be identified biometrically with the primary goal to “de-Hamas” the entire population. Responsible leaders will be found to administer civil requirements. Zero tolerance for breaking the peace. Peaceful civilians can stay. Violence will result in non-subsidized exile or imprisonment followed by exile. (NB: the voluntary or involuntary exile of Gazans is a problem in all COA. If you look from London, to Sydney, to NYC, the West does not need to import any more of those who want to bring their sectarianism to the West. Any of these highlighted nations will suffice.) After appropriate security environment is achieved, transition to home rule for all but military or diplomatic areas can continue.
COA-B: Danzig 1945
• As with COA-A, the Gaza Strip will be segmented, etc. The exception here is the humane (as opposed to the rather brutal 45-47 depopulation of Danzig (now Gdansk)) depopulation of the Gaza Strip. As German Danzig is now Polish Gdansk – and Danzig will never be the same as it was – so too could Gaza no longer be non-Israeli. As German excesses (understatement) in WWII opened the window for otherwise unacceptable exile of an entire population, Hamas Gaza’s beheading of infants and Einsatzgruppen LARPing through neighboring kibbutzim has opened that window for Gaza. Israel suffered for decades terror from Gaza and in 2005 gave them a chance to be self-governing. Instead, they became a nest of death squads. An Israeli-annexed Gaza would not have that problem. COA-B is the entry level response if you want to make a statement to enemies that will last generations, while still maintaining humanity – especially if exile is subsidized. Per capita income in Gaza is $2,764. Upon exile with no right for return, each will receive $3,000 in three installments over three years; $9,000 total. Cost: ~$6 billion a year for three years, $18 billion total.
COA-C: Carthage
• Segmentation and subsidized exile as per COA-B, but no immediate Israeli settlement for 50-years. Inventory World Heritage Sites, religious sites that existed prior to 1950, and cemeteries. Protect and preserve. Level every other building in the Gaza Strip except for needed infrastructure and national security related locations. Allow the strip to rewild and turned to a nature preserve. Allow for a reevaluation of Gaza’s status in 2073. Want the lesson to be remembered? Want to make sure the threat does not return? Want to make Gaza unlike it was? That will do it, yet allow the nation of Israel to maintain its humanity.
If A) seemed too harsh for most people’s tastes on Sunday and C) seemed impossible, just remember that once an Overton Window begins to shift, it can move far, rapidly.
Well, actually they can be. You simply have to kill them until you run out of those who want to fight, just like any other war.
The main lesson for Israel from the hideous Hamas attacks suffered over the weekend is a simple one: Terrorists can’t be managed.
For decades, Israel worked with Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA) by combining incentives on the one hand with controlled military responses on the other. Major attacks, including rockets from Gaza last May, prompted retaliation, usually with air power, and a subsequent cease-fire, often brokered by Egypt.
When Iranian-sponsored militias set up weaponry in the West Bank, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducted on-the-ground operations in Jenin and Nablus.
In the case of Hezbollah, Israel allowed the US to broker a maritime border semi-deal last year that allows Lebanon to pump natural gas and receive the financial benefit, which will accrue to Hezbollah and run the government in Beirut.
All in the name of tamping down fires that could ignite the big blaze.
The policy derived from several elements. The first is “world opinion,” specifically American government opinion, that could turn against Israel unless it responded to terrorism in a manner congruent with pronounced Western standards. Israel believed that any military response had to happen quickly to avoid blowback from allies and friends as much as from enemies.
Israel has also always believed that someday, somehow there would be a political solution. Israeli leaders could be angry with Palestinian leadership – Hamas or the PA – but they also talked to them, subsidized them, looked the other way at language that veered into Nazi trope and even invited them to lunch.
The corollary was not to hammer too hard in response to terror and to go after individual terrorists, not the leadership, as much as possible – always leaving the door open to more talks.
Israel also thought it could use its long-range capabilities, especially airpower, to destroy enemy assets. While this sometimes worked as a form of retaliation, it never stopped the massive accumulation of Iranian-supplied and financed missiles, rockets and other weapons.
Hamas just demonstrated that fact by sending thousands of missiles into Israel and overwhelming Israeli air defenses not six months after the Spring rocket wars.
Israel understood, too, that billions of dollars flowed to the Palestinians not only from Iran and its partners like Qatar but also from the US and Europe. Much of it directly and indirectly fueled terrorism and hatred.
Israel itself provides gas and clean water as well as food aid and Israeli work permits. Before the weekend, 18,000 Gaza Palestinians entered Israel daily, sending $2 million per day into Gaza. To some extent, it was to help the people. To another, it aimed to moderate or placate Hamas.
It was no closer to true than the US financial support for Iran offered by the Obama and Biden administrations placated or moderated the mullah regime in Tehran.
One deeply-experienced Israeli expert writing about the intelligence failure that allowed preparations for the Hamas attack to go undetected noted, “Israelis have grown accustomed to missile attacks from Gaza.” In short, Israel built up some defenses, retaliated and otherwise figured it was controlling the situation, when in fact it was losing the larger war.
Carrots and sticks failed; there is now no going back. The more media coverage shows the shocking depravity of Hamas terrorists when they found Israeli and even foreign civilians to rape and murder– people burned alive and babies decapitated – the more necessary it becomes for Israel to revise its battle plan.
Because of internal political conflict in Israel, many citizens have lost faith in their democratic institutions. The Gaza war has temporarily created some unity – and soldier loyalty to the IDF is clear – but that won’t suffice.
Israel needs a new security strategy and an internal political solution – a unity government with a strong security component would be a big step forward.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he intends to “crush Gaza.” But what does that mean? Israel will send in the army and try and free as many hostages held in Gaza as possible. Then Israel will go after as many Hamas leaders as it can find, but many will likely try to cross the border into Egypt.
If and when Hamas is ousted it will leave the problem of who will run the Gaza Strip? Israel could, in theory, reoccupy it, but the burden will be huge and threats from inside lethal. It also risks blowback from Israel’s usual allies and friends – a political matter with security implications.
There aren’t many rays of hope in the situation. However, the fact that the UN constructed an international military coalition to manage Haiti temporarily in the absence of a national Haitian government and in the face of brutal rule by gangs, leaves some slim hope for an international solution until new Palestinian leadership emerges.
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.
Today in history, on October 10, 732 A.D., an epic battle saved Western Europe from becoming Islamic.
Precisely one hundred years after the death of Islam’s prophet Muhammad in 632 — a century which had seen the conquest of thousands of square miles of formerly Christian lands, including Syria, Egypt, North Africa, and Spain — the scimitar of Islam found itself in the heart of Europe in 732, facing that continent’s chief military power, the Franks.
After the Muslim hordes, which reportedly numbered 80,000 men, had ravaged most of southwestern France, slaughtering and enslaving countless victims, they met and clashed with 30,000 Frankish infantrymen under the leadership of Charles Martel, on October 10, somewhere between Poitiers and Tours. An anonymous medieval Arab chronicler describes the battle as follows:
Near the river Owar [Loire], the two great hosts of the two languages [Arabic and Latin] and the two creeds [Islam and Christianity] were set in array against each other. The hearts of Abd al-Rahman, his captains and his men were filled with wrath and pride, and they were the first to begin to fight. The Muslim horsemen dashed fierce and frequent forward against the battalions of the Franks, who resisted manfully, and many fell dead on either side, until the going down of the sun.
Entirely consisting of wild headlong charges, the Muslim attack proved ineffective, for “the men of the north stood as motionless as a wall, they were like a belt of ice frozen together, and not to be dissolved, as they slew the Arab with the sword. The Austrasians [eastern Franks], vast of limb, and iron of hand, hewed on bravely in the thick of the fight,” writes one chronicler. The Franks refused to break ranks and allow successive horsemen to gallop through the gaps, which Arab cavalry tactics relied on. Instead, they tightened their ranks and, “drawn up in a band around their chief [Charles], the people of the Austrasians carried all before them. Their tireless hands drove their swords down to the breasts [of the foe].”
Military historian Victor Davis Hanson offers a more practical take:
When the sources speak of “a wall,” “a mass of ice,” and “immovable lines” of infantrymen, we should imagine a literal human rampart, nearly invulnerable, with locked shields in front of armored bodies, weapons extended to catch the underbellies of any Islamic horsemen foolish enough to hit the Franks at a gallop.
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.
JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Although most of the Kibbutzim in the western Negev were woefully unprepared for a mass Hamas attack and paid a heavy price in civilian casualties, there was one Kibbutz where Hamas did not succeed in conquering the Kibbutz, did not take captives and did not cause any civilian casualties.
The kibbutz is situated at the southwestern tip of Israel, near the border with Gaza and Egypt. A few years ago, the kibbutz nearly disbanded due to lack of people willing to live in the parched, arid zone with few employment opportunities. However a Garin Torani (nucleus of Bnei Torah) arrived a few years ago to strengthen the kibbutz and to build their lives there in pioneering fashion. The young religious families energized the kibbutz and on Simchas Torah all the residents both religious and secular celebrated in the shul with many guests from all over the country.
At one point, Moshe Yedidia Raziel stood in the middle of the circle and began singing Am Yisrael Chai as everyone jumped up and down in unison. At the end of the Hakafos everyone went back to eat the festive meal.
At 6:30 A.M they awoke to sirens around the Kibbutz and the defenders, consisting of nine local residents with army training (former IDF soldiers) and six soldiers, prepared for the invasion. Amichai Yisrael Vitzan told his wife that “this is what we have been training for.” The small force deployed around the kibbutz in different places. Tens of terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz and the force engaged them in fierce fighting.
Kerem Shalom’s 35 homes became a battlefield. In the first hours the force eliminated many of the terrorists and for 6 hours continued the battle alone. In on of the shootouts, the wife of Moshe Yedidia Raziel heard heavy shooting and then Yedidia shouted: “We eliminated them”.
Amichai was calm and told his wife on Whatsapp to make the children feel good as today is Simchas Torah. This was the last she heard from him. A few hours after the fighting started, a terrorist surprised Amichai Yisrael and Moshe Yedidia from behind and murdered both of them. Amichai (33) left five children and Moshe (31) left three children. Both were friends from the same community (Psagot), both were studying social work in Ashkelon and both came to help the struggling kibbutz. It was their heroic struggle which saved the kibbutz members from the fate of neighboring communities. All of the families were saved (two other members of the fighting group were injured) and nobody was taken captive.
The army arrived only at 1 PM after the group had fought off Hamas for six hours.
Observation O’ The Day
Prime Minister Netanyahu got it right when he said, immediately after the invasion was launched, that Israel was at war. The difference is important. If the invasion was just another in a long series of terrorist outrages, then selective reprisals, as in the past, are the presumptive response. In other words, doing again what hasn’t worked before–destroying a few military installations and taking out a handful of political or military leaders. War is different. A war ends only when one side internalizes the fact that it is beaten and loses the will to continue. – Ed Driscoll
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office says his security cabinet has declared the country at war following a deadly Hamas assault in southern Israel.
The decision, announced on Sunday, formally authorises “the taking of significant military steps,” it said in a statement.
“The war that was forced on the State of Israel in a murderous terrorist assault from the Gaza Strip began at 06:00 yesterday,” it said.
Mr Netanyahu had previous declared the country at war and the military has promised a harsh response in Gaza.
Israeli media say at least 600 people have been killed in the surprise cross-border incursion by Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip.
The Kan public broadcaster and Channel 12, as well as the Haaretz and Times of Israel newspapers, all reported the toll.
There has been no official confirmation of the number of deaths on the Israeli side since the fighting erupted early on Saturday.
Palestinian officials say more than 300 people have been killed in Gaza, without differentiating between fighters and civilians.
A brief exchange of strikes with Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group raised fears of a broader conflict.
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:
Rep. Ilhan Omar shockingly called for international protections and support for Palestinians after their fundamentalist terrorist group Hamas carried out a brutal terrorist attack on Israel.
The progressive Minnesota congresswoman expressed her compassion for the people in the Palestinian enclave of the Gaza Strip amid widespread criticism for her and her colleagues’ response to the violence.
‘Reminder, Gaza doesn’t have shelters or an iron dome and to please pray for them,’ Omar wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. ‘May peace prevail in the region and move us towards a moral awakening to care about the human suffering we are seeing.’
‘Palestinians are human beings who have been in besieged and are deserving of protection from the international community,’ she added.
Omar is one of the two first Muslim women to be elected to Congress – joined by Palestinian-American Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who has remained noticeably silent on the recent terrorist attack.
The Palestinians who invaded Israel have focused on kidnapping civilians, mostly young women. This was facilitated by the fact that there was a “rave for peace” going on near Gaza that many young people attended. The Palestinians no doubt knew this, and planned to attack the event. They took a number of young women captive there.
This video has been seen millions of times. There is a naked young woman in the back of a truck, murdered (and God knows what else) by the Palestinians. The Arabs in the truck are yelling “Allahu Akbar!” “God is great!” Terrific religion they’ve got there.
WARNING GRAPHIC: Palestinians strip the corpse of an Israeli woman, put it on display and desecrate it while shouting ‘Allah Akbar’. Hamas and Israel are now at war. pic.twitter.com/qa1di87ac7
What is notable, I think, is the jubilant reaction of the crowd. Note the boy who spits on the woman’s corpse. The idea that what is happening is a “terrorist attack” by “Hamas” is a fiction. Hamas is a political entity that rules Gaza with the support of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinians who live there.
Team Biden made a Day 1 decision to pour millions of dollars into Hamas areas. Internal emails show them saying it would boost Hamas terrorism, but they did it anyway.
A few weeks after SloJoe and him minions let loose of $6 Billion to Iran. and the moslem minions attack Israel….. Hmmmmmm.
I’ve said many times before; I don’t believe in coincidence.
At six o’clock am on Saturday, Oct 7, many Israelis were woken by rockets fired from the Gaza Strip, and Hamas terrorists entered Israeli communities, taking residence hostages, including children. Notice I use the term terrorist, migrants, which is being used in the woke world in Israel with rockets being sent at a much higher frequency than in previous conflicts.
This is the most significant attack on Israel since the Yom Kippur War 50 years ago.
Hamas has taken over complete towns, and the IDF is pushing them out.
Per the IDF:
The IDF declares a state of alert for war. over the past hour, the Hamas terrorist organization launched massive barrages of rockets from Gaza into Israel, and its terrorist operatives have infiltrated into Israel in a number of different locations in the south. Civilians in southern and central Israel must remain near shelters, and in the area surrounding the Gaza Strip, inside shelters. The Chief of the General staff is currently conducting a situational assessment and approving plans for the IDF’s continued activity. The Hamas terrorist organization is responsible for these attacks and will face consequences for them.
The IDF says Hamas has taken over Israeli towns for kidnapping civilians. The IDF is getting them out one by one.
This isn’t an operation of 100 rockets a day. According to the IDF, by 9:30 am EDT, there were over 2,000 rockets fired at Israel during the first 8 Hours.
As far as Israel’s biggest ally:
The United States unequivocally condemns the unprovoked attacks by Hamas terrorists against Israeli civilians. There is never any justification for terrorism. We stand firmly with the Government and people of Israel and extend our condolences for the Israeli lives lost in these attacks. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has spoken to Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi and we remain in close contact with our Israeli partner
A question raised is similar to the Yom Kippur War: why was Israel surprised? Know that Israel was caught with their pants down. Israel will take Hamas out but don’t expect it to happen in one day. It will take a few days, perhaps a week or so.
What Can Americans Do?
1)Pray–in English or Hebrew (Per Jewish VirtualLibrary ) or in your own words. It’s what is in your heart that matters.
Our Father in Heaven, Rock and Redeemer of Israel, bless the State of Israel, the first manifestation of the approach of our redemption. Shield it with Your lovingkindness, envelop it in Your peace, and bestow Your light and truth upon its leaders, ministers, and advisors, and grace them with Your good counsel. Strengthen the hands of those who defend our holy land, grant them deliverance, and adorn them in a mantle of victory. Ordain peace in the land and grant its inhabitants eternal happiness.
Lead them, swiftly and upright, to Your city Zion and to Jerusalem, the abode of Your Name, as is written in the Torah of Your servant Moses: “Even if your outcasts are at the ends of the world, from there the Lord your God will gather you, from there He will fetch you. And the Lord your God will bring you to the land that your fathers possessed, and you shall possess it; and He will make you more prosperous and more numerous than your fathers.” Draw our hearts together to revere and venerate Your name and to observe all the precepts of Your Torah, and send us quickly the Messiah son of David, agent of Your vindication, to redeem those who await Your deliverance.
Manifest yourself in the splendor of Your boldness before the eyes of all inhabitants of Your world, and may everyone endowed with a soul affirm that the Lord, God of Israel, is king and his dominion is absolute. Amen forevermore.
2) Shut UP. Not kidding. If, perchance, you see a troop movement on YouTube, Or your cousin Mika, who lives in Tel Aviv, says she saw a squadron marching south, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF: Hamas has computers also you will be telling Hamas the IDF’s next.
3) Unless you have heard it from the IDF or the Israeli govt, consider it a lie. Even if you read it in a trusted newspaper, reports from the war zone are made very fast and include many mistakes.
The latest IDF statement regarding Israeli casualties is 100 confirmed dead and 1,000+ wounded.
The news is fast and furious. It will be posted on this site as it is confirmed, no rumors. Israel will be on top, but it won’t be easy. As Bette Davis said in All About Eve, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”
The IDF says Hamas has taken over Israeli towns for kidnapping civilians. The IDF is getting them out one by one.