Friday, January 19, 2024

01/19 Links Pt1: Israel must draw a red line in Gaza; The Great Jackass-Terrorist Alliance; The ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Peace Activist’ Who Cheered the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack

From Ian:

Israel must draw a red line in Gaza
Now, six weeks after the last of an aggregate of 70 Israeli hostages was released, there is a justified sense that a new deal is nowhere in sight, that the previous formula no longer works, and that the situation of more than 130 abductees still held in Gaza’s suffocating tunnels is deteriorating by the day.

Writing out of this nadir, Yediot Aharonot’s Nahum Barnea last week reported that the deal that negotiators are promoting involves eight points:

A three-month ceasefire; a phased release of all hostages, the living and the dead, with the elderly and the wounded coming first; release of thousands of Palestinian convicts; the IDF’s withdrawal from Gaza; redoubling humanitarian aid shipment into Gaza; displaced Gazans’ return to the northern strip; the establishment of an internationally financed administration for Gaza’s reconstruction; and Hamas’s inclusion in Gaza’s future government.

Barnea, the dean of Israel’s journalists and an Israel Prize laureate, then asked: “Does the hope for 136 Israelis’ lives justify such prices?” and answered his question himself: “I think it is.”

The inverted argument was offered earlier by Yedidia Stern, president of the Jewish People Policy Institute and a Bar-Ilan University law professor, who wrote in this newspaper that “the call to release the abductees at any cost must be rejected.” The 1,000 terrorists released in 2011 for Gilad Schalit’s, he reasoned, “were set free to plan the death trap” we met in 2023.

Jewish heritage, added Stern, counts hostages’ redemption among its highest values, but at the same time also caps the price of their release. “The captives are not redeemed for more than their actual value,” he quoted the Mishna (Gittin 4:6).

Between these two poles, and with a very heavy heart, this writer sides with Stern who, like all Middle Israelis including this one, has much immediate family deep in the current fighting.

Anyone who ever negotiated anything knows that the first rule of negotiation is to bargain with a red line in mind, a maximum price above which one will not pay even one penny. Now, as we digest what was done to us last October, we must draw such a red line as we set out to free our hostages.

OUR RED line should be drawn with a political marker and a military ruler.

The political red line has to be that Hamas does not get another day in Gaza’s government, in any size or capacity. This is not just a moral imperative or a political prerequisite. It’s a strategic precaution.

The fanaticism of the hatred Hamas has cultivated over the decades, and the intensity of the violence it has just displayed, must make us assume that anyone associated with this ideology is dedicated to nothing but our massacre and that, if given an opportunity, will always be guided by this obsession.

We must, therefore, avoid any empowerment of any of Hamas’s members, or the Jewish state will lose its sense of security, not to mention its merciless neighborhood’s respect.

The military red line we must draw stems from this political red line, and says plainly: we will continue fighting Hamas; physically, frontally, and stubbornly, until Gaza’s military disinfection.

The Gaza Strip should thus be divided into a grid of several dozen blocks separated by bulldozed dirt roads. Each block will be given to one IDF unit that will comb it street after street, alley after alley, house after house, so that every tunnel, shaft, armory, or missile launcher within it is found and destroyed, even if this takes months, years, or decades.

Under one of those blocks, we will find our hostages and their captors. That’s how victory can arrive, negotiations can begin, and the war can end.
In central Gaza, where gunmen lurk underground, a commander sees a long slog ahead
Shushan, who grew up in Yated, an agricultural community near the Gaza border, was supposed to take command of the brigade on October 8. But hours after Hamas began its assault on October 7, Shushan understood that the IDF needed all the forces it could muster as quickly as possible and took the reins a day early.

One of his first acts was to activate the brigade’s reconnaissance battalion, showing up at Kibbutz Be’eri in the afternoon with 100 paratroopers.

His men searched for terrorists and helped families escape from their homes.

While Shushan was fighting Hamas infiltrators and saving Israeli civilians, he also tried to calm his mother, hiding in her safe room in Yated. He lost contact with her when her phone died, but she succeeded in fleeing safely to Eilat.

Shushan only understood the immense scale of the massacre the next day, as he cleared bodies along Route 232. The reservists piled dozens of bodies onto trailers as they searched bomb shelters and fields.

On October 9, the brigade helped clear Be’eri of slain Hamas terrorists. He counted 104 bodies.

Shushan’s soldiers didn’t join the initial ground operation into Gaza, instead serving as a reserve force for the northern theater. During this time, the brigade was sent to Jenin in the West Bank where it carried out a major raid on foot into the heart of the city’s refugee camp.

The brigade joined the 99th Division’s offensive into central Gaza in early December, and since then has battled to keep a corridor from the border toward the coast secure. Shushan’s forces have been slowly pushing northward against Hamas’s Zeitoun Battalion, and southward against the Nuseirat and El Bureij Battalions.

The Zeitoun and El Bureij battalions have disintegrated as fighting units, and the remaining fighters are reconstituting in smaller formations, Shushan said. Nuseirat, however, is still operating as a coherent unit, though he said the last week had seen that battalion also begin to fall apart.

Earlier this month, one of the 646’s battalions began going through central Gaza’s al-Azhar neighborhood, dubbed by Israeli officials the “Towers neighborhood” for the 31 apartment buildings allegedly populated by Hamas officials.

“We discovered that every house has a shaft, and a whole underground network connects them, including the school and the mosque,” said Shushan.

They’ve found hundreds of rocket launchers and dozens of rocket workshops.

The brigade has lost five soldiers in the effort to clear the area. In every episode, Hamas fighters used tunnels to attack IDF forces.

“The clearing phase takes a long time because there is a very significant underground network,” Shushan explained. “We are able to attack everything above ground quite easily, but know of a lot of terrorists are waiting for us underground. ”

Many of the decisions on where to attack come from the work of a major who serves as the brigade intelligence officer. Using a range of sources, the officer, a startup executive with a PhD, has created a map of the tunnel network in the sector, one that he is continuously updating as new intelligence comes in.

“We have started in a systematic fashion to go from tunnel to tunnel, to attack shafts based on intelligence, to get to the main routes and to destroy them,” said Shushan. “That determines the pace of the attack.”
Jonathan Schanzer: Pakistan, a New War Front?
In other words, the likelihood of a full-on war between these two countries is probably quite low. Neither country is willing to wage a wider war over a bunch of radical Baluch separatists. But we can also now add Pakistan to the long list of countries at war in the region, in response to Iranian aggression.

It is certainly worth noting that this is the first time a Sunni country has fired back at the regime after a provocative action. Some might even say this could serve as a roadmap for the Sunni states that continue to suffer from Iran’s hegemonic designs on the region. But Pakistan is not at all similar to a weak Gulf Arab state. It is in another league. It’s a nuclear power, after all.

Still, one could argue that Islamabad has just showed the world how to respond to Iranian aggression. The Pakistanis fired after being fired upon, and the Iranian regime has backed down, at least for now. Whether we would see the same reaction by the regime after military action from the U.S., Israel or a coalition in the Middle East is hard to say.

In the end, the skirmish between Iran and Pakistan is something that must be tracked, but it’s not likely to change the equation significantly. Islamabad is not going to swoop in and put a stop to the Iranian regime’s aggression across the Middle East. So if the Biden administration wants to prevent a wider war, it’s time to address the source of the chaos. It all started and ends with the Islamic Republic in Iran.


‘Nothing further from truth,’ Erdan says of UN claim to be unaware of Hamas tunnels
Israel’s envoy to the United Nations is crying foul over a claim from a spokesman for the U.N. chief that the global body didn’t know about Hamas’s web of terror tunnels beneath Gaza.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, was asked on Wednesday whether, given the sizable U.N. presence amid a multitude of Gazan agencies, the organization had any indication tunnels were being constructed

“No is clearly the answer for that,” Dujarric said. “It seems to me that all this infrastructure was built in a highly secretive way.”

Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, rejected those claims in a post late on Thursday on social media.

“Watch the U.N. secretary-general’s spokesperson say the U.N. didn’t know about Hamas terror tunnels in Gaza! Nothing can be further from the truth,” Erdan posted. “The secretary-general himself received four detailed letters from me in the past two years reporting on Hamas tunnels built under Gaza’s civilian infrastructure including under U.N. facilities.”

Erdan attached screen captures of two of those letters—one dated Aug. 11, 2021 and the other July 29, 2022—to his post. The former informed Guterres that Hamas was denying a U.N. agency an opportunity to inspect a pair of Gazan schools run by the international body, underneath both of which the Israel Defense Forces had discovered tunnels.

The following year, Erdan wrote to Guterres and enclosed detailed proof of the “deliberately close proximity” that Hamas digs terror tunnels to schools, mosques and weapons storehouses.

“But wait: there’s more!” Erdan added in his post.

The Israeli envoy cited a 2022 statement by UNRWA, the Palestinian-only, perpetual U.N. agency for refugees and their descendants, condemning the presence of a “man-made cavity” beneath one of its Gazan schools as a breach of neutrality and international law.

Erdan claimed he briefed UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillipe Lazzarini on the tunnels in 2021.

“The digging was not secretive. The U.N. knew about it for years but because of its bias, refused to report on it and became an accomplice to Hamas’s crimes,” he wrote. “Beyond Shameful!”


Israel’s Policy in Gaza Is the Opposite of the ‘Deliberate Starvation’ Lie
While Israel initially cut off the water it supplied to Gaza — which only amounted to 8% of Gaza’s total consumption before the war — it began resuming such water supplies to Gaza on Oct. 15. Israel has also facilitated successful repairs of vital water infrastructure, including fixing water pipes that Hamas itself destroyed.

In addition to this, field hospitals have been set up and are expected to be operational in the coming days.

Israel has also continually implemented daily pauses in its military operations between 10:00 and 14:00 to facilitate and enable movement of humanitarian aid and allow Gazan residents to replenish their supplies of food and water.

It’s important to note that Israel has placed absolutely no upper limit on humanitarian aid entering the Gaza Strip, only requiring that all aid trucks be inspected. If there are shortages of essentials in Gaza, it is because humanitarian organizations themselves have been unable to keep up with the aid demand or are failing to distribute it effectively.

Despite the narrative being spun by many that Israel is preventing aid from entering Gaza, the real truth is the opposite. Israel, rather than targeting civilians, has done everything it can reasonably be expected to, and more, to try to help the Palestinian population while also fighting a deadly war under indescribably difficult conditions — including Hamas’ all-encompassing efforts to intertwine all of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure with its military machine.

It therefore seems truly astonishing that pressure is constantly placed on Israel to fix Gaza’s humanitarian situation, while no demands are ever made of Hamas, the actual terrorist organization that initiated this war, which continues to steal aid, uses civilians as human shields, and currently holds 136 hostages — many of whom have been murdered.

The uncomfortable reality is that the world has funded Hamas’ terror state, and instead of electricity plants and desalination plants and educational institutions and engineering schools, the money and materials received were used to build over 500 kilometers of underground tunnels and command structures under hospitals, and establish an armory of thousands and thousands of military weapons and rockets that were used for terror attacks.

How could all that aid be so blatantly abused? It’s a question that the world should demand answers to from Hamas, not Israel.

Perhaps the Hamas billionaire leaders sitting in luxury hotels in Qatar might be able to answer it.
Israel, Red Cross agree to share information on Gazans detained by IDF - report
Israel plans to agree to an International Committee of Red Cross request to hand over information on 60 Gazans who have been arrested and detained in Israel since October 7, N12 reported on Thursday night.

The Red Cross has, to date, failed to visit and treat any of the hostages remaining in Gaza.

The defense establishment reportedly supports the disclosing of information, which was raised following a petition filed to the High Court against the Israel Prison Service on the issue.

Red Cross 'not involved' in transferring medicine to Gaza hostages
The Red Cross stated on Thursday that it would not be involved in the transfer of medication during the Qatar-Israel agreement to bring medication to the hostages being held captive by Hamas, according to Israeli media.

It stated that it is "in contact with the parties necessary in order to reach an agreement regarding the creation of a mechanism to transfer medication to the hostages."

"The Red Cross is not a party that will participate in the implementation of the agreed upon mechanism, including the supply of medicine.

"The Red Cross welcomes the agreement of the delivery of medication to hostages and medical facilities for the residents of Gaza, viewing it to be a positive humanitarian step," they concluded.


An IDF reservist’s inside look at the destruction in Gaza
All these have been wasted by Hamas, and there is no pleasure to be had from such sights. Such destruction is the wages of war, willingly paid by Hamas terrorists just so they could wantonly slaughter Israelis. The October 7 massacre, which resulted in the loss of almost 1,200 lives and the kidnapping of hundreds, was an act of spiteful, suicidal hatred, intended to harm Gazan and Israeli citizens alike.

Hamas knew that Israel would need to remove the threat of further pogroms when it attacked; it knew that Israel would need to strive to free the captives, which could only be responsibly achieved with an unprecedented ground incursion.

Gaza was by no means a paradise, and there were many in poverty and unemployed. Yet the shame of Gaza is not just that Hamas sacrificed the territory it ruled for the opportunity of barbaric violence; it is also that the potential of the Strip had been wasted for the last 20 years.

Soldiers repeatedly remarked to me as we patrolled the ruins that Gaza could be an amazing place. It lies on a beautiful plot of land – a green coastal state bordering on a desert. There are villas that lord over orchards from atop hills with views of the Mediterranean Sea. The beaches could have drawn visitors from across the Middle East. The same coastline hosts successful Israeli cities, such as Tel Aviv, Ashkelon, and Ashdod.

Gazan cities could have rivaled their Israeli counterparts if the concrete and resources for hundreds of kilometers of underground terrorist infrastructure had instead been invested into civil amenities. Instead of producing unguided rockets to indiscriminately attack Israeli cities, munitions workshops could have been devoted to local industry.

I saw beautiful fields torn up during operations. These fields could have been fertile ground for a thriving Palestinian agricultural industry. Given the prominence of the Palestinian cause, Gazan olives and citrus could have been a boutique product sought across the world. Instead, Gaza’s chief export has been rockets and murder.

Gaza could have been another United Arab Emirates; it could have been a jewel of the Levant. Instead, it was yet another failed Middle Eastern kleptocracy.

The dream of the establishment of a Palestinian state could have been realized in Gaza. Instead, Hamas pursued nationalist irredentism and jihadist endeavors, not satisfied or appreciating what it had.

I wish I could show what I saw to Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Deif and ask them if this destruction was worth it. But the evil of Hamas and those cheerleading their operations from the West is that the blood of Palestinians is cheap.

I hope from the ashes of Gaza, a new generation of Palestinian leadership will rise and see that the strategies pursued by Palestinian factions for the last 75 years do not work and are not worth acts of “resistance.”

I hope that together, we can rebuild Gaza, and that I can someday return to Khan Yunis not in uniform but as a guest of a thriving city.
If Israel is ‘winning the war’ on Hamas, why are rockets falling?
Hamas resilience:
While aerial photos of the Gaza Strip and reports by foreign media show that Israel has damaged or destroyed at least 70% of the buildings and infrastructure in Gaza, Hamas and its top leaders remain alive and well enough underground.

Moreover, despite Israel’s flattening of the Gaza skyline, the resilience of the remaining fighters and citizens appears high. They still have enough military power to launch rockets at Israel, and Hamas continues its unyielding ground fight, evident in the daily toll on our soldiers.

According to IDF reports, Hamas has experienced limited losses in terms of key military figures, with only three top military leaders out of 14, two brigade commanders, and 19 battalion commanders eliminated. The army is taking out around 10 to 20 terrorists a day, resulting in approximately 9,000 Palestinian fighters being neutralized since October 7, the IDF said earlier this week.

This figure contrasts with the overall death toll of around 24,000 in the enclave, reported by the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry.

Earlier this week, the spokesperson for Hamas’s Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Obeida, claimed that “the enemy’s announcements of imaginary achievements regarding rockets and tunnels are a subject of ridicule for us, and the day will come when we prove their falsehood.”

Finally, despite escalating famine and disease threats, the Gazan citizenry has refrained from rebelling against their terror government, a trend likely to persist if the polls prove accurate.


The Day After in Gaza | Our Middle East
Can the IDF defeat Hamas? Is the Palestinian Authority a viable replacement? Who will be in charge of security? Are the Americans out of touch with the reality on the ground?

In this episode of “Our Middle East”, JCPA President Dr. Dan Diker and Arab-Israeli journalist Khaled Abu Toameh discuss “the day after” the war in Gaza with JCPA Fellow and Arab Expert Yoni Ben Menahem.




“Lies, damned lies and statistics” in Gaza
A chief engine of anti-Semitic propaganda are the casualty figures from Gaza, cited constantly by Israel’s critics and by reporters—despite the fact that they are generated by a branch of Hamas. Oved Lobel shows systematically that these statistics don’t support any of the conclusions drawn by those who cite them:

During the Bosnian War (1992–1995), for instance, according to the best data available, of the approximately 100,000 killed or missing, the overwhelming majority, 59 percent, seem to have been combatants. This number would tell us nothing about how that war was fought or the extent of atrocities, including what was judged to be an act of genocide at Srebrenica.

Similarly, while there are no reliable figures for casualties from the Syrian civil war, all available figures show that the majority of deaths since 2011 were combatants. You would never know about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons and starvation sieges, the massacres of civilians and political prisoners, and a plethora of other horrific war crimes from this topline figure.

Even if one were to trust the casualty estimates coming out of Gaza, one would have to know the usual civilian-combatant casualty ratios in wars, particularly in comparable wars. . . . But for those genuinely interested in how the war against Hamas compares to other, at least superficially similar operations, the figures available strongly suggest that it is neither especially deadly nor especially destructive.


Israeli Women Fight on Front Line in Gaza, a First
When Capt. Amit Busi gets a chance to sleep, she does so with her boots on — and in a shared tent in an improvised Israeli military post in northern Gaza.

There she commands a company of 83 soldiers, nearly half of them men. It is one of several mixed-gender units fighting in Gaza, where female combat soldiers and officers are serving on the front line for the first time since the war surrounding the establishment of Israel in 1948.

Captain Busi is responsible not just for the lives of her subordinates — search-and-rescue engineers whose specialized training and tools help infantry troops enter damaged and booby-trapped buildings at risk of collapse — but also for the wounded soldiers they help evacuate from the battlefield. She and her soldiers also help scour the area for fighters, weapons and rocket launchers and are responsible for guarding the camp.

It can be easy to forget Captain Busi is only 23, given the respect she has clearly earned from her subordinates — among them Jews, Druze and Bedouin Muslim men.

“The borders have been blurred,” Captain Busi said of the decades-long limits on the roles of female combat troops in Israel. The military, she said, “needs us, so we are here.”

Since Israeli ground forces entered Gaza in late October, women have been there fighting. Their inclusion has helped bolster the image of the army domestically after the intelligence and military failures of Oct. 7, and amid global scrutiny of the campaign’s high civilian death toll. More than 24,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, have been killed since the start of the war, according to Gaza health officials.

The integration of women into the military’s combat units has been the subject of a lengthy debate in Israel, home to one of the world’s few armies that conscript women at 18 for mandatory service. For years the question of women serving at the front pitted ultraconservative rabbis and religiously observant soldiers against feminists, secularists and critics of the country’s traditionally macho culture.

Now, that debate is effectively over.
IDF eliminates Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s deputy head of psychological warfare operations - JNS.org
The Israel Defense Forces eliminated a senior Palestinian Islamic member who was instrumental in propagating the organization’s narrative through media, the military announced on Friday.

Wael Abu-Fanounah was the deputy head of Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s psychological warfare operations. He held several positions within the terrorist organization’s ranks, including as an assistant to Khalil Bahtini, the Islamic Jihad’s Commander of the northern region of the Gaza Strip, the military stated.

Abu-Fanounah was responsible for publishing videos of PIJ rocket attacks, as well as the “creation and distribution of documentation of the Israeli hostages as part of the psychological warfare waged against the Israeli public by the terrorist organizations in the Gaza Strip,” the IDF added.


Eritrean migrants hold barbecue dinner for Israeli soldiers near Gaza border
Dozens of Eritrean migrants hosted IDF soldiers serving on the border with Gaza to a festive barbecue dinner on Tuesday, showing support for the country where they have sought shelter.

The extraordinary event saw the workers-cum-asylum seekers and an IDF artillery unit stationed on the outskirts of this southern kibbutz, which was hard-hit in the Hamas invasion, break bread together.

“We feel that this is our country, and what happened on October 7 happened to us as well,” said 36-year-old Yhselu Gebrem.

Gebrem, who has lived in Israel for 12 years, noted that this was the fourth time their group of Christian Orthodox Eritreans who oppose the totalitarian government that has ruled Eritrea for the last three decades, ever since their country’s independence from Ethiopia, had come to volunteer on the Gaza-border, including previously offering a helping hand to farmers.

“We came to support the people of Israel during their difficult hour and to be at your side,” said Michael Russoi, 30, who came to Israel 14 years ago and works in a supermarket in Ashdod. “We saw what happened on [Oct. 7] and there are simply no words to describe it. Your enemy is the enemy of us all.”


Has Israel already lost the war with Hezbollah?
We can continue to tell ourselves stories that Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah is deterred, does not want war and continues to live in a fortified bunker. But those are exactly that – stories – the same kind we were telling ourselves up until 6:30 a.m. on October 7 when Hamas unleashed its barbaric assault on southern Israel.

Israel’s options here are limited. On the one hand, there is an argument to launch a preemptive strike and try to eliminate as much of Hezbollah’s missile arsenal before they can be launched at Israel.

On the other hand, doing so would be perceived as unprovoked Israeli aggression due to a misunderstanding by the world – and a failure by Israel to articulate – what is really happening in the North and how there already is a war raging there.

The other option is easier and is the strategy that Israel has currently adopted – waiting for the Americans and French to hopefully bring a political resolution even though the IDF and the war cabinet understand that it is just kicking the can down the road and that Hezbollah is not about to change or stop amassing weaponry and using it to threaten Israel.

What will we do, for example, a year from now when Hezbollah is supposed to be north of the Litani River and we start seeing it rebuild positions south of it and patrol along the border with Israel?

This is exactly what happened after the 2006 war, and then the decision was the same as it was with Hamas – Israel decided to “contain” the threat. It wagged its finger, warned the Security Council that 1701 was being violated, but not much more. It never used military means to try and stop Hezbollah.

On page 4 of his paper for the US Army War College, Eisenkot spelled out why the Six Day War was such a critical victory for Israel. “In this war, the IDF struck preemptively against the Arab air and ground forces and within six days Israel achieved a great victory which validated Israel’s Principles of Security.

These principles provided the solutions to Israel’s lack of strategic depth and the requirement to prosecute a war as quickly and decisively as possible.”

Depth, speed, and decisiveness. When it comes to Lebanon, Israel no longer seems to have any of that.
Hezbollah has rejected moving its forces away from border — US, Lebanese officials

Biden Houthi Sanctions Include Carveout Allowing Lucrative Energy Deals With Terror Group
The Biden administration’s recently announced sanctions on the Iran-backed Houthi rebels will include a carveout that permits the terror group to engage in lucrative energy and fuel-related transactions with Americans, a decision that congressional critics say effectively neuters the sanctions.

A license issued by the Treasury Department and circulated to Congress this week authorizes "transactions related to refined petroleum products in Yemen involving Ansarallah," otherwise known as the Houthi militant group. This includes authorization for the "sale of refined petroleum products for personal, commercial, or humanitarian use in Yemen."

The decision to grant this carveout is already attracting congressional concerns, with GOP lawmakers telling the Washington Free Beacon they have begun pushing the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees to investigate the license, which they say undermines sanctions that are intended to choke off the terror group’s resources.

The sanctions on the Houthis, which will go into effect next month, have already drawn fierce pushback from Republican officials for being issued under a weaker federal statute that does not criminalize support for the terrorist group or force banks to seize their assets, the Free Beacon reported on Wednesday. An additional license authorizing critical energy deals with the Houthis further undermines sanctions that are meant to deter the terror group from its attacks on American military forces and Western commercial ships, critics say.

"There’s absolutely no reason for the Houthis to be able to engage in energy-related transactions with American citizens," Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told the Free Beacon. "These so-called sanctions are pathetic. Biden needs to fully sanction the Houthis and designate them as a foreign terrorist organization immediately and reverse this weak foreign policy." Wilson also serves as national security task force chair of the Republican Study Committee, Congress’s largest GOP caucus, which is helming efforts to investigate the license.

While humanitarian exemptions to sanctions are commonplace, and used to ensure civilians in war torn countries are not adversely impacted, sources who spoke to the Free Beacon said that energy-based transactions with the Houthis are not relevant to the delivery of aid inside Yemen.


Houthis promise safe passage for Chinese, Russian ships transiting through Red Sea
Russian and Chinese vessels transiting through the Red Sea will be granted safe passage, a senior Houthi official tells Russian outlet Izvestia in an interview.

Senior Houthi official Mohammed al-Bukhaiti insists the waters around Yemen, which some shipping firms are avoiding due to the ongoing aggression from the Iran-backed rebel group, are safe so long as vessels are not linked to certain countries, particularly Israel.

“As for all other countries, including Russia and China, their shipping in the region is not threatened,” he says.

“Moreover, we are ready to ensure the safe passage of their ships in the Red Sea, because free navigation plays a significant role for our country.”

Despite their insistence otherwise, the attacks carried out by the Houthi rebels have targeted ships with no apparent connection to Israel.

Attacks on vessels “in any way connected with Israel” will continue, he adds.


Rachel Riley pleads for safe return of one-year-old Israeli hostage Kfir Bibas
RACHEL Riley joined a heartbreaking rally last night to make an emotional plea for the safe release of a one-year-old Israeli baby boy being held hostage by the terrorist group Hamas in Gaza.

The British television presenter spoke to The Sun about the horrific issues facing the Jewish community around the world amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Hamas group in the Gaza Strip.

Kfir Bibas' first birthday was on Thursday 19th January, at which point the baby would have spent a third of his life as a hostage.

He was only eight months old when Hamas terrorists stormed stormed Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7 in their cross-border bloodbath in Israel.

Kfir has since become Hamas's youngest out of 240 people kidnapped by the terror group and taken back to Gaza as captives.




“I Was with Him Until The End” The Untold Story of an Oct. 7th Fallen Hero | The Quad
This week, the Quad speaks with Jessica Elter, girlfriend of Ben Shimoni. Shimoni heroically saved many people at the Nova festival before his car was ambushed by Hamas terrorists He was murdered and a passenger was kidnapped from his car. Jessica was on the phone with Ben the whole time and reveals new details of the harrowing story.

In addition, the Quad talk about Israeli unity right now: Does it really exist or are the fissures in society from before Oct. 7th coming to the surface again?

And of course, Scumbags and Heroes of the Week!




Why are feminists silent on Hamas's use of rape as a weapon of war?
The fight for recognition is just beginning. Denialism is one of the antisemites’ key tools, and across world history has been used to silence victims of violent antisemitism and rape.

Silence breeds negation and further violence. Women across Israel were brutally silenced, and the fight to ensure their stories are told is just beginning. We cannot stay silent. We cannot allow our institutions to be silent, and we must continue to organize.

We can take inspiration from the courageous Egyptian civil rights activist Dalia Ziada, who bravely and publicly condemned Hamas atrocities, including rape. Within days, the credible threats to her life, including from her own government, were so dangerous that she was forced to flee her native Egypt.

Indeed, her bravery makes the weak response of Western human rights and women’s rights organizations look all the more morally bankrupt.

We can follow the example of Cochav Elkayam-Levy, who chairs Israel’s civil commission investigating rape as a weapon of war on 10/7. She has painstaking gathered devastating testimony and demonstrated that Hamas carried out a systematic campaign of sexual abuse.

While the international community has turned its head and allowed its anti-Israel bias to blind them, she has fought on, taking on the UN, and eventually with her fellow activists securing a statement and hearing from UN Women.

We can join feminist luminaries like Gloria Steinem, Letty Pogrebin, and Sheryl Sandberg in organizing letters recognizing and condemning the sexual violence on 10/7. We can join American Jewish leaders like Sheila Katz and NCJW in speaking out and organizing. Planned Parenthood recognized and condemned Hamas’s sexual violence.

We can urge our members of the US Congress to join resolutions, such as the bipartisan one in the Senate, which officially recognizes how Israeli women suffered. Together, we can ensure that denialism stays on the fringe, and the world recognizes Hamas’s campaign of sexual violence and holds them accountable.

Silence is violence, and Israeli women have suffered enough. We must all speak now.
Innovative treatment helps family severely burned when Hamas set their home on fire
Haik, who has treated burn victims all over the world, said NexoBrid is a game-changer.

“If we hadn’t used it, [the Golans] would have had lots of skin grafts, surgeries, a longer hospitalization, and experienced more pain. By using NexoBrid we had to perform less debridements and saved tissue that otherwise we would have cut off,” he said.

The United States has bought $20 million worth of NexoBrid for its strategic national stockpile. At the end of 2023, the US Department of Defense awarded MediWound an additional $6.7 million toward a total $14.4 million budget for a different version of NexoBrid that can be used on the battlefield.

“The drug as it is now must be stored between two and eight degrees Celsius. The US government wants a stable preparation that can be used in combat situations far from medical facilities or out at the scene of a mass casualty event,” Gonen explained.

“Fortunately in Israel, we can use the original preparation because we can evacuate burn victims quickly to one of our burn centers,” he said.

According to Gonen, MediWound has received a request from Israel for emergency stockpiling of NexoBrid. This may be possible down the road, but not now.

“MediWound is currently committed to fulfilling obligations in other regions, including the US and Japan. The company’s manufacturing facility [in Yavne] is fully occupied around the clock to ensure the availability of supplies for patients in urgent need,” Gonen said.


Senate Democrats Vote Down Rand Paul’s Effort to Condition Palestinian Aid
Senate Democrats voted down an amendment offered Thursday by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) to make any future aid to Palestinians contingent on their recognition of Israel, rejection of terror, and release of all Israeli hostages abducted in the October 7 attack.

Every Republican voted for the amendment; every Democrat voted against it — including Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA), who has adopted a pro-Israel posture in recent weeks, but who bowed to party leadership when it came down to a vote on actual policy.

Direct U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority government is already barred by the Taylor Force Act as long as Palestinian leaders continue to spend public money to subsidize terror. But the Biden administration has sought other, indirect ways to send aid.

In a statement, Paul’s office said:
Today, U.S. Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) introduced an amendment that would prohibit U.S. foreign assistance to the Palestinian Authority or any other Palestinian governing entity in the West Bank and Gaza, unless the President certifies to Congress that they have:

Formally recognized the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state;
Publicly recognized the state of Israel;
Renounced terrorism;
Purged all individuals with terrorist ties from security services;
Terminated funding of anti-American and anti-Israel incitement;
Publicly renounced Hamas and the October 7, 2023, attacks perpetrated by Hamas on Israel;
Honored previous diplomatic agreements; and
Released all hostages abducted on October 7, 2023, and held in territory governed by the Palestinian Authority or other Palestinian governing authority.

The amendment also directs the Secretary of State to submit to Congress a report on the human rights practices of the Palestinian Authority, or any other Palestinian governing entity in the West Bank and Gaza.

If foreign aid is intended to project American power and values, the United States must insist that those recipients of foreign aid act in a manner consistent with internationally recognized human rights.
Earlier this week, Paul voted for an anti-Israel resolution introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) that would have directed the State Department to report on Israel’s human rights record, and which including a number of false accusations against Israel.

Paul’s subsequent amendment will partially restore his credibility on the Israel issue — and exposes the Democrats on the issue.


European Parliament ties Gaza ceasefire to dismantling Hamas
The European Parliament on Thursday called for a “permanent ceasefire” in Israel’s war against Hamas, but said a possible truce must be conditioned on the terror group’s dismantlement and the release of the 130-plus hostages still held captive in the Gaza Strip.

Resolution C9-0068, adopted with 312 votes in favor, 131 against and 72 abstentions, calls for “a permanent ceasefire and to restart efforts towards a political solution provided that all hostages are immediately and unconditionally released and the terrorist organization Hamas is dismantled.”

Israeli officials and diplomats hailed the resolution’s passage as a significant diplomatic win for the Jewish state.

“We are happy to see that the European Parliament understands the need to release the hostages and disarm Hamas before any ceasefire,” Haim Regev, Israel’s Ambassador to the E.U., told Politico.

“The European Union wants Israel to win this war against Hamas,” tweeted government spokesman Eylon Levy. “The European Parliament just demanded the immediate and unconditional release of the hostages and dismantling of Hamas. It said no permanent ceasefire until then.”

Meanwhile, Adel Atieh, a Palestinian Authority representative in Brussels, denounced the vote as “a moral failure of the European Parliament.

“With this vote, Europe is losing credibility,” Atieh told Politico, while claiming there were “positive” aspects to the resolution as well—the text adopted by lawmakers denounces Israel’s military response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre as “disproportionate” and calls for measures against “extremist settlers,” in addition to expressing support for the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court and UNRWA.

The European Parliament has little sway over Brussels’ foreign policy decision-making, and members of the 27-nation bloc have been deeply divided on the war against Hamas.


EU sanctions six people linked to Hamas with asset freeze and travel ban
The European Union on Friday imposed asset freezes and travel bans on six people it said were linked to Hamas, under a new sanctions regime targeting the Palestinian terrorist group.

The EU already listed Hamas as a terrorist organization but moved to create a legal framework focused on the group after its deadly attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7.

The list could be widened to target "all those who support, materially or financially," Hamas or Islamic Jihad, another terrorist islamist group operating mainly in the Gaza strip which took part in October's assault, said the Council of the European Union, which represents the bloc's member states.

Who were the individuals sanctioned?
The Council listed those sanctioned as Sudan-based financier Abdelbasit Hamza Elhassan Mohamed Khair, Nabil Chouman, the former's son Khaled Chouman, senior Hamas financier Rida Ali Khamis, senior Hamas operative Musa Dudin and Algeria-based financier Aiman Ahmad Al Duwaik.

Arms trading, supporting actions undermining the stability or security of Israel, and involvement in serious humanitarian law or human rights breaches were cited as possible reasons for sanctioning.
EU's Borrell says Israel financed creation of Gaza rulers Hamas
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday that Israel had financed the creation of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, publicly contradicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who has denied such allegations.

Opponents of the Israeli government and some global media have accused Natanyahu governments of boosting Gaza rulers Hamas for years, including by allowing Qatari financing of Gaza.

"Yes, Hamas was financed by the government of Israel in an attempt to weaken the Palestinian Authority led by Fatah," Borrell said in a speech in the University of Valladolid in Spain without elaborating.

Pushing for Palestinian statehood
Borrell added the only peaceful solution included the creation of a Palestinian state.

"We only believe a two-state solution imposed from the outside would bring peace even though Israel insists on the negative," he said.

Hamas carried out a surprise attack on southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing 1,400 people and kidnapping around 240 hostages in the deadliest day in Israel's history.

The Israeli government launched a counteroffensive in which allegedly more than 24,700 Palestinians have since been killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.


The Israel Guys: Are There ANY INNOCENT Civilians Left in Gaza? *trigger warning*
Recent news headlines as well as many global leaders are stating that Israel’s war on Hamas has seen far too many Gazan civilian casualties. Historically, Israel has been known as one of the most moral militaries in the world. So, is this headline true? Or is this yet another one of those misleading international attacks against Israel.


Hamas an ‘extremist army’ which carries out ‘barbaric’ actions: Former US Army General
Former US Army general David Petraeus has slammed Hamas for being an “extremist army” that carries out “barbaric” and unspeakable actions against Israel.

Hamas’ attack on October 7 was the bloodiest day in Israel’s history, with more Jews killed in a single day than any other day since the Holocaust.

“Israel seeks to destroy an extremist army, which is the accurate description of Hamas,” General Petraeus told Sky News host Erin Molan.

“I don’t think you can reconcile with an organisation that is as barbaric and carried out such horrific, unspeakable actions.

“I don’t think there is any case since 1945 that is as fiendishly difficult in operation as what Israel faces in Gaza.”


October 7 a ‘clear-cut terrorist incident’: Andrew Hastie
Shadow Defence Minister Andrew Hastie has branded October 7 a “clear-cut terrorist incident.”

“Hamas is a listed terrorist organisation,” Mr Hastie told Sky News Australia.

“The parliament passed a joint motion condemning this as a terrorist act.

“It is significant, and I think it shows that the government is slow – there is a lack of precision, there is a lack of clarity in the Prime Minister’s leadership.”

His comments come as the Albanese government is facing criticism for not formally designating the massacre of 1,200 Israelis by Hamas on October 7 as an overseas terrorist act.


Albanese govt panders to ‘far-left’ in failure to condemn ‘acts of gross terrorism’ by Hamas
Menzies Research Centre Senior Fellow Nick Cater has slammed the Albanese government for “pandering” to the “whacky far-left” by refusing to call Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis an overseas terrorist attack.

The move denies friends and families of the victims any financial assistance in Australia.

It has now been over 100 days since the slaughter of Jewish lives at the hands of an internationally recognised terror group, Hamas.

“This is an international terror group committing what is undoubtedly acts of terrorism on a civilian on a civilian population – acts of gross terrorism the likes of which I can’t ever recall seeing,” Mr Cater told Sky News host Liz Storer.

“It’s undoubtedly a terrorist attack, and why Albanese can’t bring himself to do so, well, there’s two reasons: he’s beholden to two groups of people – one is the whacky far-left, amongst whom anti-Semitism has bizarrely become fashionable, and the other group is Islamic constituents in Islamic electorates.

“The Albanese government feels like it has to pander to these people.”




'We're Playing With Israelis' Minds': Inside Telegram Group Helping Thousands Spread Disinformation
"A clarification: Our campaign is not about convincing or fighting with them. The idea is that we play with their minds and implant ideas, images and phrases that have a cumulative negative impact on public opinion. We speak as if we are one of them ... with negative ideas. We're moving them from this image of the victor sweeping Gaza to the sense and image of the vanquished."

This text was written by an Egyptian expat affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood who runs a Telegram group called "ISNAD-Palestine." The members of the group, whose name means "Support for Palestine," established a large network consisting of accounts impersonating Israelis. Every day, they send out tens of thousands of posts and comments, each intended to undermine Israeli society from within.

The network distributes messages in Hebrew and instructs its operators to present their location as if they were writing from within Israel. The members create hashtags and even manage to spread them and create trends on Twitter – for example, through using the phrase "Netanyahu massacre" as a nickname for the events of October 7.

This network differs from others that have previously tried to influence Israeli public opinion: while earlier influencer networks were linked to governments and states, this time it's been set up by Egyptian expats and operated by Arabic speakers from around the world through Telegram.

The thousands of pro-Palestinian activists work on a voluntary basis. Their network is highly sophisticated and uses artificial intelligence tools to create texts in Hebrew. They operate using the "sock puppet" method – that is, they create a multitude of fictitious users, behind whom there is one genuine person. The operator either steals an existing identity or creates one from scratch, a method that makes it difficult for the average user to recognize it's a fake account.

For examples of videos in Hebrew created by the group using AI technology click here and here.

In the first weeks of the war, the network tried to influence decision-makers such as U.S. President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi. It also targeted cultural figures and journalists, demanding that they stop supporting Israel. Later, the campaign focused on X (formerly known as Twitter), which is owned by Elon Musk.

Starting in mid-December, though, the influence operation began to operate in the Israeli sphere. The network identified several key objectives: running a campaign to undermine Israelis; engaging in psychological warfare regarding the fate of the hostages held in Gaza; increasing polarization in Israel; and tarnishing the image of the army in an attempt to portray it as losing to Hamas.


Soccer match between Belgium’s KAA Gent and Maccabi Haifa will take place without fans over safety concerns
A soccer match between Belgium’s KAA Gent and Israel’s Maccabi Haifa scheduled next month in Belgium should be played without fans because of fears of serious riots linked to the Israel-Hamas war, local authorities rule.

Belgian media reports that Ghent mayor Mathias De Clercq took the decision on the advice of local police.

Gent will host the Israeli club on February 21 in the second leg of their Conference League playoff.

“Based on police information, serious problems are expected,” says Thomas Dierckens, a spokesperson for Mayor De Clercq, as quoted by Flemish newspaper Het Nieuwsblad.

“The KAA Gent Arena has no outer perimeter, which makes control difficult, and there is a good chance that public order in and around the stadium will be disrupted. This not only has consequences for the safety of fans and players, but also sporting consequences,” he says. “If the match is stopped for more than half an hour due to disruption, UEFA will give KAA Gent a forfeit score of 0-5.”


The Great Jackass-Terrorist Alliance
This weekend marked 100 days since Israeli civilians were brought as captives into Gazan tunnels: girls raped, men tortured.

Here, in hip New York, an unending series of escalating demonstrations hamper the city’s functioning and citizens’ general sense of trust and stability. What are the protesters calling for? An immediate Israeli ceasefire. Whom do they represent? An enormous coalition of jackasses.

If the thousands of Gothamites who pretend to care about Arabs (except when other Muslims oppress and slaughter them) really wanted a ceasefire, they would demand that Hamas release innocent civilians and renounce terrorism.

But they don’t actually want a ceasefire. What they want is to be jackasses.

In 2024, New Yorkers need to stop tolerating those who think the fun of disrupting the system is more important than everyone else’s daily lives.

Like cities nationwide, the Big Apple has been sliding down a slope from tolerating jerks to letting them ruin the joint. Since 2014, the post-Ferguson police-shooting moment has blurred the lines between protesters genuinely concerned with how police respond to lawbreakers and those who think lawbreaking is pretty groovy. The more civil faction (the non-jackasses) has been scared to resist this great stand against authority. So, when the most strident voices in the coalition insisted that minor offenses should not be policed, the non-jackasses indulged them, thinking it a necessary sacrifice, even if, deep down, they valued quality of life and public order.

But low-level offending matters. And while we should work to balance community and law-enforcement responses to bad behavior, pretending that such infractions are no big deal is to let the jackasses win. And winning they are: multiple overlapping policy and political shifts, each diminishing our seriousness about low-level crime, have enabled New York City’s masked, belligerent, solipsistic demonstrators to get away with mayhem.


Daniel Greenfield: The ‘Rabbi’ and ‘Peace Activist’ Who Cheered the Hamas Oct. 7 Attack
When pro-Hamas insurrectionists stormed Capitol Hill, Brant Rosen, described as “one of the demonstrators”, was quoted as falsely accusing Jews of genocide. He was later arrested.

In Chicago, where he claims to have co-founded the “first anti-Zionist temple”, he showed up at a rally urging, “stop the violence, and then, to work toward a true and lasting and just peace.”

‘Rabbi’ Brant Rosen, a co-founder of the pro-terrorist JVP Rabbinical Council (the misleadingly named Jewish Voice for Peace is neither Jewish nor peaceful) is a public face of the political campaign against Israel disguised as calls for “peace” and a “ceasefire”. The media describes him as a “rabbi” and as a “peace activist”. Much like JVP, he’s as much of one as the other.

Rosen actually became a regional director for the American Friends Service Committee, a radical anti-American and anti-Israel Quaker group, after being pushed out of his synagogue for his hatred of the Jewish State and support for Islamic terrorists. In its 5-year tribute to him, AFSC did not use the ‘rabbi’ title. While at the AFSC, he claimed to have opened the “first anti-Zionist temple”. In reality, the “temple” appears to be a PO Box opposite a Little Caesars.

Whether the “temple” exists is unclear, but Brant Rosen’s hatred for Jews is all too real.

“When I heard the initial reports of Hamas’ attacks on Israel this past Saturday, I will be completely honest – my first reaction was ‘good for them,’” Brant Rosen wrote in response to the Hamas attacks of October 7.

When Hamas terrorists burst into homes in Kibbutz Nahal Oz, massacring families and livestreaming the horrors on Facebook, Brant Rosen described it as “not the first time this community had experienced Palestinian armed resistance”.

This is Brant Rosen and the Jewish Voice for Peace’s idea of “Palestinian armed resistance”.

“A father huddles over a mortally injured girl lying in a pool of blood as his wife wails.”

In his column, published at the People’s Voice (formerly the Communist Party’s Daily Worker), he claimed that “this latest violence did not occur in a vacuum. It is but the latest manifestation of an injustice that Israel has been perpetrating against the Palestinian people for decades.”

Later in October, Brant Rosen argued that, “Hamas’ abduction of hostages – brutal and heinous as it was – occurred in response to a colonial, apartheid regime that (sic) been governing their lives for the past 75 years.”

Brant Rosen gets a great deal of mileage for his activism by claiming to be a “rabbi”. In reality, he was “ordained” by the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College: an atheistic movement which believes neither in the Bible nor the G-d of the Bible, or in any actual form of Judaism. He speaks most convincingly about faith when discussing his love of Quaker spiritual teachings.


Daniel Greenfield: Pro-Hamas Protester Accused of Running Over NYPD Officer
Mostly peaceful vehicular assault.

The wrong-way driver who struck and seriously wounded a Manhattan cop on Wednesday afternoon is a known pro-Palestinian protester who allegedly targeted the officer, police reported.

The officer and a partner were guarding an abandoned vehicle at the location when the suspect, a female driver, came speeding northbound on Park Avenue’s southbound lanes.

Police say that the vehicle came to a stop as one of the cops approached to investigate before the female driver allegedly slammed on the accelerator and swerved into the male officer.

Sources familiar with the investigation said the driver allegedly yelled verbal insults at the officer when he approached the vehicle seconds before ramming the car into him.

Other stories have identified the driver as Sahara Dula.

The motorist, identified by police as 24-year-old Sahara Dula, of Brooklyn, was also hit with assault, reckless endangerment and impaired driving charges.

As police guarded that getaway car, an officer spotted Dula, who was behind the wheel of a gray Lexus, allegedly driving northbound in the southbound lane.

When the cop ordered her to pull over, the driver hit the gas and ran into the cop, sending him flying over the side of the car, authorities alleged. Dula was arrested at the scene.

The officer suffered leg and arm injuries.


Meet the Labour MPs who boost rallies where crowds chant for Houthis and against Israel
Placards carried by many of the marchers were equally extreme. “Thank you, Yemen” read one, the words decorated with love hearts. “Beware the deadly virus, Israel”, said another, adornedwith the red triangle which has become a signal of support for Hamas. Some carried pictures of the terrorist Leila Khaled, others bore images of the Israeli ambassador Tzipi Hotovely to which red devil’s horns had been added.

One 30ft wide banner carried the slogan “Victory to the resistance! Resistance to Israeli occupation is a right and a duty”; another, “The world stopped Nazism. The world stopped apartheid. The world must stop Zionism.” There were also balloons with the legend “Burn the IDF to ash.”

After the march, speakers from a platform in Parliament Square included Mohammed el-Kurd, a Palestinian writer. “We must reject Zionism in all of our institutions, because to be anti-racist is to be anti-Zionist,” he said. “Zionism is apartheid, it is genocide, it is murder… it is a political ideology rooted in settler expansion and we must root it out of our world. We must de-Zionise, because Zionism is a death cult, Zionism is indefensible.”

Yes, you read that right, he said “root it out of our world”. And he and his allies accuse Israel of trying to perpetrate genocide.

At the front of the march, flanked by the Palestinian activist Adnan Hmidan, who once declared his “love” for Hamas’s founder, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, was one Jeremy Corbyn. No surprises there, and at least we can be confident he will never stand again as a Labour Party candidate. The dark era of his leadership has been consigned to the past.

However, also marching were Corbyn’s deputy leader, John McDonnell, who is still the MP for Hayes and Harlington, and Streatham’s Bell Ribeiro-Addy. Claudia Webbe from Leicester East accompanied them though, like Corbyn, she has been deprived of the Labour whip after she was convicted of harassment. Two serving Labour MPs spoke from the platform they shared with el-Kurd: Zarah Sultana (Coventry South) and Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse), as did Corbyn. In her speech, Begum called the British and American airstrikes against the Houthis “shameful and deplorable”.

I’m pretty sure that the Labour Party leadership is well aware of these MPs’ presence, not only last weekend, but at previous events where the discourse has been only a little less extreme. Press reports show that Begum has attended at least five PSC protests since October 7, McDonnell eight, Ribeiro-Addy four and Sultana two. Other supporters have included the Leeds MP Richard Burgon (three PSC events) and Cynon Valley’s Beth Winter (four).

The question is: as we approach a general election, does the party intend to do anything about it?


California: Hamas-Linked CAIR Says Pro-Israel Demonstrator Provoked Hate Crime on Herself
KPIX, the San Francisco Bay Area CBS affiliate, includes a statement from the SFBA chapter of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). CAIR spoke of “provocation by pro-genocide individuals who sought to intimidate and harass rally attendees advocating for peace and a permanent ceasefire.”

In other words, the pro-Israel side provoked the attack. This is completely contradictory to what the reporter was saying, what the police are saying, and what the TV station broadcasted, as well as to common sense.

In a phone conversation with KPIX, a station representative said that the station felt obligated to include this gratuitous statement from CAIR.

That is the problem: TV stations are serving the interests of CAIR. Local area newscasters will do what CAIR wants, and spread rumors, misinformation, personal attacks, incitement, defamation, and so on, because TV stations see CAIR as being an important voice, and take the larger viewing audience for granted.

The woman attacked by a Palestinian partisan said that she does not feel safe, and that there should be an increased police presence, not just at pro-Israel demonstrations, but in general.

This is further evidence that the very tolerant San Francisco area is becoming unlivable for Jewish Americans.
Canada: Liberal and NDP MPs Head to Jordan, Judea and Samaria to Meet Palestinians, ‘Progressive Israeli Groups’
The reason Israel went to war with Hamas was precisely because it seeks peace. Hamas does not want peace. Did Zahid forget the details and execution of Operation Al Aqsa Flood? of course not. The gruesome, calculated operation was advertised by al-Jazeera as a “provocation by Israeli aggression and occupation.” A top Hamas official, Ghazi Hamad, has stated: “Israel is affront to the Islamic nation and must be destroyed.” He then vowed more October 7 massacres. This was not widely published in the mainstream media, but it is a well understood fact among those who are advancing the pro-Hamas agenda, as well as among those who support Israel’s right to exist.

Israel went to war against Hamas for the same reasons that the allied forces went to war against the Nazis. Up to 60 million civilians were killed in World War II. If Israel fails to decimate Hamas, Israel will be the one decimated, while the Muslim Brotherhood offshoot Hamas will move on to its vision of a global caliphate. Instead of pressuring Israel for a ceasefire, Canada should be expressing alarm over Hamas and its vision. In Canada, pro-Hamas protests are becoming increasingly organized, and protesters were discovered to be “paid to protest.” The Toronto Sun reported:
They’re being paid to protest. What many have suspected has now been confirmed by this newspaper and a few courageous Canadians: pro-Palestine — and, increasingly, pro-Hamas — protestors are being paid to protest. To block highways and roads. To intimidate and threaten Jews and non-Jews. To cause chaos.

Indeed, the goal is to “cause chaos.” Efforts to induce Canada to descend into chaos are now being exacerbated by certain politicians (whose jobs are to be public servants seeking Canada’s best interests), as well as by Islamic leaders. All of them are throwing kerosene on the fire. Prior to the Canadian delegation to Jordan and Judea and Samaria, the story about Toronto cops giving coffee to pro-Hamas protesters who blocked North America’s busiest highway and a major overpass circulated everywhere. Eventually, demonstrations were prohibited from carrying out such disruptions and charges were laid, but not before a public scandal which embarrassed the Toronto police. There were also meetings behind the scenes. Without such media attention and pressure, would there have been any such outcome? Canadians need to take a hard look at which authorities stand up for the rule of law and which authorities oppose antisemitism without being pressured to do so. Nonetheless, the pressure needs to be kept up to stop pro-Hamas agitators and antisemites from spreading their hate and propaganda in Canada.

It is also worthwhile to mention that support for Hamas among Palestinians in Judea and Samaria surged after October 7, despite the occasional article about rage against Hamas over its use of Palestinians as human shields. If Hamas would end its use of human shields and allow Palestinian civilians to escape, and if Egypt would take in Palestinian refugees instead of building a wall, the death toll of civilians in Gaza would be negligible. So where is the global outcry against Hamas and the surrounding Muslim countries?




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