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Tuesday, August 13, 2024

08/13 Links: Hamas says it killed a hostage, Hamas document reveals paraglider terror plan, Israel pivots to build more of its armaments

Ian will be unavailable for another couple of days. I'll try to muddle through.



Vice President Kamala Harris has named Ilan Goldenberg, who spearheaded the Biden administration’s sanctions against Israel, as its new liaison to the Jewish community Monday.

Michael Doran documented in Tablet magazine on Sunday how Goldenberg, a left-wing Israeli-born peace negotiator, helped lead an unprecedented effort by the Biden administration to hunt and target Israelis for sanctions — in the middle of a war against Hamas terrorists.

One Israeli male hostage was killed by his guard and two women captives were seriously wounded in two separate incidents in Gaza, the spokesperson for Hamas' armed al-Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubaida, said on Monday.
Abu Ubaida blamed the incident on what he described as Israeli "massacres" against Palestinians.

The Hamas terrorist movement’s use of paragliders as part of its mass murder of nearly 1,200 people, including over 30 Americans, in southern Israel on Oct. 7 was laid out in a methodical plan that Fox News Digital can disclose for the first time.

A Hamas military plan obtained by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the Gaza Strip reveals the great lengths the Iranian regime-backed terrorist organization Hamas went to deceive the world about its use of the aerial sports device. 

The Hamas document, originally in Arabic and translated into English and reviewed by Fox News Digital, shows how the terror group was looking to exploit its wider use. "The sport should be developed so that the paragliders become motorized. Areas where the sport can be exploited from a military aspect: Landing behind enemy lines, as part of a silent infiltration across the border using paragliders," it read. 
The fact that Sinwar was elected shows that Hamas's political and military branches are the same. It also demonstrates that when it comes to Islamist terrorist organizations, there is no difference between a political and military leader. By electing Sinwar as its "political" leader, Hamas itself is stating that it does not distinguish between a politician and terrorist.

Has anyone ever considered referring to Osama bin Laden and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the heads of Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State (ISIS), as the "political leaders" of their respective organizations?

In addition to Haniyeh, Hamas's "political bureau" consists of several figures such as Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashaal, Musa Abu Marzouk, Ghazi Hamad, and Taher a-Nunu who have long been advocating the armed struggle against Israel and glorifying acts of terrorism against Israelis.

 Now that UN admits employee involvement in Oct. 7, it’s time to end UNRWA

On Monday, the UN’s internal oversight arm released a report that found nine employees of the UN Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, took part in terrorist activities on Oct. 7 and in its aftermath.

That admission is awful enough — but the greater scandal is that investigators ignored evidence indicating that hundreds or even thousands of UNRWA employees are Hamas operatives.

The purpose of this charade is to protect UNRWA’s funding, but Congress should not be fooled.

Rather, it should permanently ban UNRWA from receiving US taxpayer dollars and impose terrorism sanctions to cut off the agency’s remaining sources of income.

Iran: The Next Nuclear Weapons State? 

An astonishing U.S. intelligence report just revealed a grim truth: The Islamic Republic of Iran may be conducting nuclear weapons activities — yet Washington is doing nothing about it.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) recently provided an overdue report to Congress, omitting from the unclassified version a key phrase ODNI has used in annual threat assessments since 2019: “Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities necessary to produce a testable nuclear device.” In other words: The U.S. intelligence community can no longer assert Tehran is not working on nuclear weapons. Iran has “undertaken activities that better position it to produce a nuclear device, if it chooses to do so,” the intelligence report concluded.

In recent years, Iran has expanded its political, military, and economic foothold in Latin America in an effort to utilize to its advantage the political changes in the region, especially the rise to power of left-wing parties. Without the coordinated activity of the United States and its allies in Latin America, the spread of Iranian influence in the continent could reach levels that would threaten Israel’s fundamental interests in the region.

Amid US tensions, Israel pivots to self-reliance on homegrown arms

 Israel Hayom has learned of a decision to develop and manufacture heavy bombs for the Israeli Air Force domestically, including one-ton bombs akin to the American MK-84, whose delivery has been stalled for months by direct White House order.

The Defense Ministry is also broadening the domestic production of additional armaments, including tank ammunition (which is globally scarce) and 155mm shells. The ministry recently announced substantial procurement deals, including a 1.5 billion shekel ($400,000) contract with Elbit for ammunition acquisition and the establishment of a new specialized factory in Israel's south. Defense Ministry director general, Major General (Res) Eyal Zamir, described this as "a large-scale strategic move designed to ensure the IDF's war machine continues to advance. We are investing and will continue to invest tens of billions in building infrastructure and capabilities, expanding production lines, establishing new lines, and purchasing inventories to solidify production independence."


There are two stories here. The first, no less troubling for being obvious, is that trying to prevent clinicians who support the existence of Israel—or are Jewish, or have Jewish-sounding names—from treating patients constitutes a grave breach of professional ethics. Interfering with the work of colleagues for political reasons is unconscionable. 

But the blacklist is also part of a larger drama unfolding within the world of psychotherapy as more and more clinicians insist that psychotherapy is, foremost, a political rather than a clinical enterprise. It is a trend that I, a psychiatrist, find alarming. 

Unfortunately, instead of fighting back, the major professional organizations are embracing this malignant philosophy. The American Psychological Association has committed itself to “decolonial” psychology. The National Association of Social Workers states that “antiracism and other facets of diversity, equity, and inclusion must be a focal point for everyone within social work.” The American Counseling Association emphasizes “the dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression that influence the counseling relationship.” Training programs for new therapists have injected these tenets into their curricula. 
At the beginning of February, Lahav Shapira was beaten up in front of a bar by an anti-Israel fellow student. Shapira then filed a lawsuit against the Free University in the Berlin Administrative Court . According to the lawsuit, the university had "not taken adequate measures to prevent or structurally eliminate anti-Semitic discrimination against the plaintiff or other Jewish students. Instead, an environment of insecurity was allowed to develop."

What this environment looks like in reality can be guessed from the messages from the history students. Due to the threat situation, Shapira was temporarily accompanied to the university by a bodyguard. One student wrote that Shapira was "acting up". Another student replied: "He should be quiet, wallah that he is allowed to go to the university is disgusting." When confusion arose because the group was writing about two different Jewish students, one chat member commented: "There are several of them too...", another added, "too many" - apparently referring to Jews.

Shapira, who is studying to be a teacher, will surely "only be a teacher for their Jewish private schools," one person speculated. "Chosen people, chosen school," mocked a student. One member asked, referring to anti-Semitic conspiracy theories: "Why is the brother studying, they're all rich anyway?" Another chat member wrote: "They flow into various positions in society so they can exercise power."


Many on the Western left, including the LGBT left, have become enamored with Critical Social Justice, which provides a warped lens through which they perceive all of humanity as oppressors versus oppressed classes. Armed with this simplistic, binary worldview, leftists gravitate toward perceived liberation movements for other so-called oppressed groups. This narrow prism, however, obscures the universalist ideology of Islamism espoused by groups like Hamas, which, under a facade of anti-imperialist rhetoric, harbors a brutal dogma that is antithetical to the liberties and rights championed by LGBT activists. No amount of screaming about “pinkwashing” can drown out the irony of folks who believe in LGBT liberation cheerleading ideological movements from which they would flee as refugees.

The aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran is a harrowing tale of leftists being tortured and executed en masse by the very Islamic regime they supported for the sake of their anti-imperialist goals. Many Iranians who aligned with leftist organizations supported the revolution only to find themselves persecuted by Islamists they helped put in power.

Immediately following the revolution, the new regime led by Ayatollah Khomeini began systematically oppressing LGBT people and publicly executing them by the thousands. These atrocities were justified as a means to "eliminate corruption" and prevent the "contamination" of society. Between 4,000 to 6,000 gay, lesbian, and bi people have been executed since the 1979 Islamic Revolution​​. Iran’s legal system, rooted in Islamic law, criminalizes consensual sexual relations between same-sex individuals, with penalties ranging from lashes to death. Iranian law does not distinguish between consensual and non-consensual same-sex intercourse, allowing authorities to prosecute both perpetrators and victims of sexual assault​.

For the third time ever, an MLB game featured a Jewish pitcher, catcher and batter at the same moment 

Regardless of who stood in the batter’s box, Jewish pitcher Max Lazar’s first career strikeout would have been a big deal.

But as it was, that moment in Saturday night’s game between the Philadelphia Phillies and Arizona Diamondbacks was significant for connoisseurs of Jewish baseball history as well.

The batter Lazar struck out in the bottom of the eighth inning, Diamondbacks outfielder Joc Pederson, is also Jewish. So is the player who gloved the pitch, Phillies catcher Garrett Stubbs.

That meant that Pederson’s at-bat became a rare trifecta in which the pitcher, catcher and batter were all Jewish. According to the Jewish Baseball Museum, Lazar’s strikeout of Pederson was only the third instance of a Jewish pitcher-catcher-batter combination in the more than 100-year history of MLB. It was also only the eighth-ever occurrence of a Jewish pitcher-catcher battery.
Hamas has been holding over 100 innocent people hostage, including eight American citizens, for more than ten months. They, and their families, endure daily, constant agony.

At Boston City Hall Plaza from Sunday, August 18, to Tuesday, August 20, there will be a walk-through tunnel simulation that will provide powerful insight into the experience of the hostages, and give patrons the opportunity to unite across political divides in the call for their freedom.

The simulation is built into a shipping container and includes audio recordings from body cameras worn by Hamas terrorists on October 7.

 








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