Showing posts with label iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iran. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 13, 2024



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Trump trounced Harris and the next morning, she conceded. Now, all that was left was for Dems to do grieve. Except for the small matter of sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with their Trump-happy relatives in just a little over 3 weeks—less at the time of this writing. Should Harris voters be expected to sit across the table from their cretinous MAGA cousins?

Not at all, explained Yale-affiliated psychiatrist Dr. Amanda Calhoun to MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “If you are going to a situation where you have family members, where you have close friends who you know have voted in ways that are against you . . . against your livelihood . . . it's completely fine to not be around those people and to tell them why.”


Calhoun’s advice, I’d venture to say, runs contrary to what most of us were taught by our mothers; namely that is courteous to set aside political differences at the holiday table for the sake of preserving family harmony. We can agree to disagree, because presidents come and go but family is family until death do you part. We spend time with family at the holidays not because they are entitled to our presence, but because it’s a tradition we value and cherish as a society.

In Israel, of course, there is no such November 28th conundrum to worry about. For one thing, most of those celebrating Thanksgiving in Israel are expat Americans. They left their families behind to make Aliyah, so there’s no one to argue with at table.

Then again, Thanksgiving is something expat Americans mostly celebrate for the sake of the food: turkey, stuffing, yams, gravy, cranberry sauce, and pie. And guess what? Sitting down to eat that meal will be pure pleasure not only because of the food and the lack of argumentative relatives, but because Donald J. Trump won—which means that this year, the only arguing around Israeli Thanksgiving tables will be over who gets the wishbone.

With our stateside cousins of course, it is a different story. We spend time with them only virtually in fits and starts. That makes it a little easier to avoid tense subjects. And if ever there was a tense subject it was this election, with most American Jews wildly at odds with their Israeli counterparts.

Our cousins care about the hostages, but not as much as they care about domestic issues, for example reproductive rights. They care about Iran, but they care about abortion more; they have been told that Donald J. Trump will take away their rights to their own bodies. Kamala Harris told them so.

Joy Reid told them so.

In Israel, we understand our Jewish cousins in America have domestic priorities. But we have trouble understanding how they feel about geopolitics. We don’t like to think that they are ignorant, but do they know they voted for a woman who helped fund October 7 and all that has happened in its wake?

Israelis are hyper-aware of these geopolitics. So much so that in the run up to the election, all of us were tense. I was tense. My neighbors were tense. We all knew that Israel’s enemies were watching and waiting to see who would win the election. My personal fear was that if Harris won, Hamas would take it as a green light to shoot all the remaining living hostages dead.

I did not dare tempt evil by voicing my fears, but now, in retrospect, I can talk about it because it didn’t happen—Harris lost. But it was rough. In the run-up to the election I could literally see those executions playing out in my mind’s eye. Over and over again.  It was hard to hold down food. Hard to breathe.

I don’t know if I was alone in experiencing these visions—but I know my feelings of dread and terror were not exclusive to me. Everyone around me felt the same way and we were all quietly speaking about it to each other. The election was the Sword of Damocles hanging over not just the hostages’ heads, but all our heads. This was something more than politics.

And it is that “something more” that makes it so difficult to be polite as we were taught, and set aside differences for the sake of family.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s the difference, Harris lost. But you see, it’s the vote that counts. It’s the vote that hurt and cut so deeply.

It’s hard to square it in our heads, how “family” could vote for Harris, someone who sends money to Iran and ties Israel’s hands. Someone who bears responsibility for the fact that the Jewish people are no longer safe anywhere in the world.

Many of us have a very hard time with this. We think of what happened on October 7, of the hostages and of the hundreds of soldiers who have been killed since, beautiful young people, older reservists with wives and children, and we can’t bring ourselves to agree to disagree and move on. It’s just too hard. We can’t look the other way and call it “only politics.”

I myself think back to certain lovely childhood memories from back when I was a toddler, and I don’t know what to do. We are family and yet this "family" prioritizes something other than me, my family here, and our people. They prioritized something other than the hundreds of Israeli soldiers who died defending our people—something other than the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who can’t go home to their homes in the north. 

How can I look the other way?

They put us all at risk.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, June 26, 2024


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

John Kirby, though someone I don’t like, is a darned sight better at presiding over a White House presser than is, for instance, KJP. That’s about the best I have to say about him. But the way he sneered at Fox News Chief Legal Correspondent, Journalist Shannon Bream, in an April interview, literally turned my stomach.

Ugh.  It was like he was saying, “Listen little Lady, you stay in your corner, and let the big boys handle this.”

Well, like I said, this was back in April, but the subject of that interview, covert US support for Iran, remains relevant to our current news cycle, with Israel looking at a face-off with the evil Iranian proxy, Hezbollah. Biden’s support of Iran was relevant too,  in November, when I wrote about the money trail that led to October 7. It irritated me, the way the Biden administration kept saying that Iran can’t possibly use its own money to fund its war machine. I hear that stuff and say out loud, squinting my eyes at my computer screen, “You know darned well that money is fungible, you blankety blank blank.”

Fungible. It’s not that difficult a concept. When one anticipates money coming in, they risk taking it from somewhere else. Some not of my religion might call this “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

You don’t need to be a lawyer to understand any of this, right? Yet here was Shannon Bream, a lawyer, polite, refined, asking a reasonable question, and all John Kirby does is sneer and leer at her. You can practically hear Kirby rolling his eyes.

Here's how the conversation went:

Shannon Bream: There are a number of critics, most of them on the GOP side of the Hill, who say, “We shouldn’t be in this position.”

That there are things that were done by this administration, that let Iran think it had an opening here, or others that want to go after Israel. Senator Marsha Blackburn among those, posting on X last night, she says,

“Under President Trump, Iran was broke.

“President Biden gifted them billions of dollars and then naively said, ‘Don’t.’

“‘Don’t.’ is not a foreign policy.” 

Shannon Bream: You know the conversations about unfreezing assets, about waivers on sanctions . . .

John Kirby: Yeah, Yeah. (laughs)

Shannon Bream: Could this administration [have been] tougher on Iran?

John Kirby: (shakes head) It’s hard to look at what President Biden has done with respect to Iran and . . .

Shannon Bream: (interrupts) but we’re also leaving sanctions.

John Kirby: . . . say that he hasn’t been tough on Iran, that we haven’t put pressure on them, that we haven’t—an additional 500 sanctions, additional resources in the region and let’s take a look at that ballistic missiles—okay, so they launched more than 100 ballistic missiles, and how many got through? And the reason they didn’t get through is because President Biden made sure that we pre-position forces in the region to help Israel—will shoot them down—so this vaunted ballistic missile program of theirs, last night (stutters) didn’t turn out to be so vaunted last night.

Shannon Bream: (interrupts) But why not support something that would have stopped that program or at least contained it in some way, so it’s not launching at Israel, so that we aren’t having to get involved defensively?

John Kirby: Again, Shannon, let’s look at the sanctions we put in place with Iran, the resources in the region ... it’s hard to take a look at what President Biden has done and say that we’ve somehow gone soft on Iran. It was the previous administration that promised, that promised to get us out of the Iran Deal and now Iran is so much dramatically closer to a potential nuclear weapon capability than they were before, uh, before, uh, before Mr. Trump was elected. (sneers)

Shannon Bream: Is it not fair to say though, that there have been moves by this administration that have opened up cash and other opportunities for them which we know are fungible, in ways that are not helping the Iranian people (Kirby laughs) but are benefitting the elites and people there who chant “Death to America.” And “Death to Israel.”

John Kirby: You and I have had this fungibility argument, eh, (stutters) before em, um, I obviously take a different issue, uh, take an issue with that characterization. The (gestures), the sanctions relief that has come about. . .  or it’s not even sanctions relief, but eh, (stutters) the eh, eh, additional funds which have been made available to Iran, due to the sanctions relief program that the Trump administration put in place. (shakes head) It can only be used for humanitarian goods; it doesn’t go to the regime. And the idea that the regime was somehow . . . felt like they were freed up to support these proxies because of that it just doesn’t comport with the facts that they have been supporting these proxies for many, many years.

Shannon Bream: And it comports with their language though, saying, we will use this money in the way that we want to use it.

John Kirby: They can’t (shakes head, laughs, sneers). They can’t! They physically can’t do that. 

It’s upsetting. Bream is pretty, but that doesn’t mean she is empty-headed. Rather she is fiercely smart, and a lawyer to boot, and should not be treated with so little regard. I was sickened by his insulting manner toward a lady, and an intelligent one, at that.

Aside from this, Kirby never answered her question—never managed to explain why the fact that money is fungible is something to dismiss. Why would Iran not take advantage the fact that money is fungible to build its war machine? Bream has a good question, and deserves a good answer from this administration. We all do.

But there is no good answer. The Biden administration knowingly assisted Iran in building up its nuclear arsenal, and also gave Iran the power to fuel the October 7 massacre, and the volcano about to erupt in Northern Israel and Lebanon. Shannon Bream knows this, and so does Kirby—every time he stutters, you know he’s concealing something. In spite of this, John Kirby treats Shannon Bream as though she were a simpleton. This was profoundly disturbing to me, both as a woman and as a human being.

The silky words tripping off Kirby’s tongue, brought to my mind nothing so much as the snake who used cunning words to goad Eve on to eat the apple.

In this case the snake was just another Biden hack who’d sold his soul to the highest bidder.

I think Bream did a great job of exposing Kirby for what he is, for anyone who saw the interview and noted his demeaning manner toward his host, Bream. I cannot see how any woman, Democrat or Republican, can sit through that interview and not see how slimy he is. 

And now, as June comes to a close, the United States has let slip, by way of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown, that America will not be helping Israel fight Iran/Hezbollah this time around, not necessarily because America doesn’t want to, but because, it claims, the US doesn’t have the capability.

“From our perspective,” said Charles Brown, “based on where our forces are, the short-range between Lebanon and Israel, it’s harder for us to be able to support them in the same way we did back in April.”

In other words, those over 100 ballistic missiles Kirby referenced back in April were one thing, but not this. “Sorry,” says America to Israel. “We can’t help you with this one. Now, you’re on your own.”

Here is the logical—the only—answer to Bream’s question, solid proof that money is always fungible, even in the case of Iran. The lifting of sanctions by the Biden administration has directly led to the current existential threat to Israel and, one might add, to Lebanon.

The Biden administration has enabled Iran, all the while doing what it can to stymie Israel. The president feeds the enemy with fungible funds while starving his ally of promised weaponry and other assistance.

Some speak of a coming world war, while people like Kirby, continue to sneer and laugh and lie to intelligent people like Shannon Bream, who see right through them. At some point, John Kirby’s act will grow old—he was never meant to be anything but mid-level management. Not to worry—they’ll find a use for Kirby somewhere. Like I said, he gives a mean White House presser.

Or perhaps they can bury him in mounds of paperwork behind a desk, hidden away from public view.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, April 15, 2024

Downed Iranian missile in the Dead Sea


From Naharnet:
Hezbollah has congratulated Tehran on its attack on Israel, saying it "achieved" its military objectives.

"Hezbollah presents its congratulations... to the leadership" of Iran and its people for the "unprecedented" attack on Israel, the powerful Lebanese group said in a statement.

Hezbollah also praised Tehran's "brave and wise decision to respond firmly to the Zionist attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus".

The Islamic republic launched more than 300 drones and missiles towards Israel from late Saturday, Israel's military said.

It achieved military objectives? How, exactly?

 The answer is the same as the answer to this question posed by a supposed expert, Richard Haass, on Twitter/X (and later in a more extensive interview in Politico):

At first glance reported Iranian attacks on Israel violate Napoleon's dictum "Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."  This will change the narrative and create new support for Israel.  All of which raises the question: Why did Iran widen the war at this moment?

People, even supposed "experts," still think that Middle Easterners think like Westerners. They project their own logic onto people whom they have little in common with. 

Iran's objective wasn't military. It was psychic. It needed to restore its "honor."

Just reading Iranian media shows this. They are congratulating themselves on the few missiles that made it through Israel's defenses. And now they are bragging that Israel's defenses are not "impenetrable," which no one ever said.

Honor is the coin of the realm in the Middle East. And honor, almost by definition, includes lying in order to avoid shame. 

Iran has to claim victory. Even if Israel has stopped 100% of the projectiles, today's headlines in Iranian media would be about the amount of effort and time and money Israel spent, how it relied on other allies and couldn't defend itself alone, how this was one of the biggest attacks in history. They would be trying to ascribe honor to themselves and shame to Israel. 

Facts don't matter.  The results were of little importance, as long as Iran can twist facts to claim victory.

Just like Egypt in 1973. Just like Hamas in all previous Gaza wars. The facts don't matter because honor is the point, military victory is secondary.

The entire Middle East  conflict is an attempt by Middle Eastern Muslims to erase the shame of a small number of weak, dhimmi Jews defeating them in 1948 and 1967.  If you want a root cause, that's it. 

People who do not understand the importance of honor and shame to Israel's enemies cannot possibly be Middle East experts. 

Once you understand the honor/shame dynamic, you realize that the only real solution is Israeli victory that cannot be denied. This is why Muslims are deferential to Christian-majority Europe - because they lost to them, definitively. That is the reason Bahrain and the UAE wanted peace - they realized Israel isn't going anywhere. 

Undisputed Israeli strength is the only peace plan that makes sense. Unless you want another Holocaust.





Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 


An Israeli newspaper summed up the Iranian "Operation Truthful Promise" as "The Iranian lion roared like a cat."

As we get more information, we learn that the attack was in most ways larger than anything Russia has mounted against Ukraine. 

The extent of the attack was one of the largest seen in modern warfare. Russia's opening "shock and awe" barrage on the first day of the invasion of Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, included between 160 and 200 cruise missiles and ballistic missiles - against a country more than 20 times the area of Israel.

Russia first used Iranian-made Shahad drones in conjunction with a missile attack on October 10, 2022, a barrage aimed at Ukraine's infrastructure,. This  included a total of 84 missiles and 24 UAVs. Only about half of the Russian missiles were intercepted. 
This compares to 185 drones, 110 ballistic missiles and 30 cruise missiles launched by Iran towards Israel.

Iranian media is claiming a "clean victory," saying that their ballistic missiles landed exactly where they were intended.

So that means they wanted to create an easily repairable crater on a runway in the desert and on a road.


The attack shows that the ballistic missiles are the most difficult to defend against, since several made it through.  That doesn't detract from the amazing achievements of blocking them. The videos of missile intercepts in space, probably from an Arrow-3, are spectacular:



A surprising number of Iranian missiles failed, either exploding in Iran or en route.
Iran’s missile technology is to a great extent based on Soviet and North Korean know-how.

U.S. officials told The Wall Street Journal that half of the ballistic missiles that Iran launched either failed to launch or fell from the sky before reaching their targets.
Here's video of one that landed in Iran, this single missile causing more damage there than all the projectiles did in Israel combined:



As the Institute for the Study of War notes, however, Israel cannot afford to be complacent. The claimed "99%" intercept rate is somewhat exaggerated - it was probably closer to 97% or 98% - and the several that did make it through could have caused great damage had they hit populated areas:

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. Russian strikes on Ukraine have demonstrated that even a small number of precise strikes against key nodes in energy or other infrastructure can cause disproportionate effects. Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.
In 2022 Iran announced, to much fanfare, that it had manufactured hypersonic missiles than could not be stopped by known interceptors. They also claimed to have upgraded those missiles last year.  Iran is now claiming that every hypersonic missile it shot at Israel successfully hit their targets. 

It is unclear whether any of the missiles launched were indeed what would be considered hypersonic - meaning, traveling at greater than Mach-5 speeds while maintaining maneuverability. Regular ballistic missiles hit hypersonic speeds as they descend from space but that does not make them hypersonic missiles, which are usually defined as either hypersonic glide vehicles (HGVs) and hypersonic cruise missiles (HCMs). Iran's so-called hypersonic missiles are medium range ballistic missiles with limited maneuverability. It is not clear at this time whether any of the missiles that made it through were the Fattah-1 or Fattah 2 "hypersonic" missiles of Iran. 

What is clear is that Israel would not be able to rely on allies being able to help them stop all future similar attacks, especially without so much advanced warning. The simple math of being able to overwhelm Israeli defenses, which are much more expensive than the projectiles being shot are, remains an issue as it does in Gaza or Lebanon. 

Saying that Israel should regard this as a victory is short-sighted. As others have pointed out, surviving someone shooting at you many times because of your bulletproof vest is not a victory. The shooter can reload and only needs one bullet to make it through. Israel cannot afford to remain in a purely defensive posture forever, especially as Iran has proven that it is now willing to directly attack Israel.

The question is not if, but when. 






Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, November 22, 2023




Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

                                                                     --1--

If it were you, my child, husband, brother, sister, mother, grandmother, grandfather, aunt, uncle, grandchild, friend. If it were you I would fight like hell to set you free, to bring you home and into my arms. Safe.

Then we would deal with the aftermath. The nightmares, the poisoned minds of the children raised to hate themselves and what they came from. The massive, multi-level trauma of it all, from beginning to the something that will never end.

Still, from a distance so far away that I don’t want to see it, I know that procuring your release has broader implications. You are a Hamas bargaining chip, or rather an Iran bargaining chip for use with Joe Biden, along with a cascade of other evil actors across the globe who will use human beings—use you—to get what they want. Hamas randomly keeps you alive—if you are alive—to get concessions; to retrench and regain strength to hurt the Jewish people; to score a victory; to wound Israel and live to kill, maim, and destroy more Jews another day.

                                                                    --2--

Every day since October 7th, we have heard Israeli officials say, all the hostages or no ceasefire. It was  clear from the start—Israel had been quite clear from the start.  Or rather, the objective was clear until it wasn’t, and Israel began to speak of a “partial ceasefire,” when just to speak of this even in a fuzzy sort of way, already put Israel. at a distinct disadvantage. It must be said and taken into account, that while the hostage deal may save the lives of some of the hostages, it will put an untold number of other lives at risk, for example, just now, our dear Israeli soldiers. To breathe life into Hamas is to wreak havoc with the future. This Amalek must be stopped. Hamas must be obliterated, completely.

Ain breira. There is no choice. It's all or nothing. There is no other way. All the hostages or no ceasefire, partial or otherwise. Israel must hold firm, because a deal with Hamas is Obama’s deal, Biden’s deal, a deal with the devil, Iran. For Hamas, this deal translates to Jews ceding victory and paying the jizya, even unto releasing 300 felons back onto the streets of their natural hate-infested society.

We have certainly learned something here: the going rate for a handful of Jews is 300 felons for Hamas to parade as trophies. "How stupid is the Jew?” you might hear from the laughing crowd as they watch the 300 go by, and slap each other on the back. "They turn Gaza into rubble, then cry to us, 'You won!'"



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Wednesday, November 15, 2023


Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

The United States has approved a whopping $14 billion military aid package for Israel and has also sent troops and aircraft carriers to the region. But the hand that giveth, also taketh away. A month before the savage Hamas attack of October 7, widely believed to be financed by Iran, Biden unfroze $6b in Iranian revenues. Now Biden has approved a sanctions waiver that will put $10b into Iran’s coffers. This leads to the question: If Biden frees up $16b for Iran, and gives Israel $14b, don’t these gifts kind of cancel each other out—or worse?

Biden freed up money for Iran in September, and in October we had Iranian proxy attacks in Israel. Now Biden gives aid to Israel to defend itself from the Iranian proxy, but frees up more money for Iran. The president gets away with this by swearing that the money can only be used for humanitarian purposes.  

The president said the same thing about his aid to Gaza. It’s only for humanitarian aid. Neither of these assurances are worth a damn. Hamas literally runs humanitarian aid in Gaza. The money goes straight to Hamas. The unfrozen funds for Iran, will similarly not go to fund humanitarian aid, but will go straight to the terror machine.

It’s true that the Biden administration put a “pause” on unfreezing the original $6b ransom payment to Iran due to Republican criticism. But with this $10b coming in, as Hillary might say, What difference does it make? Iran is still getting way more than it was slated to receive in the first place, thanks to the generous hand of Joe Biden. The question is why? Why is Biden freeing up ever larger amounts of cash for Iran?

Speaking to the Washington Free Beacon, Richard Goldberg, a sanctions expert who previously served on the White House National Security Council, said, "The world is living in a post-Oct. 7 world, but the White House is still running an Oct. 6 policy toward Iran. Why should Iran have any access to more than $10 billion after sponsoring one of the worst terrorist attacks against American citizens and the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust? It would make more sense to freeze all of these accounts and keep every penny out of Tehran's hands."

It would make sense to freeze the funds only if protecting the Jews was chief among your aims. This lack of desire to secure the safety Israeli Jews was also evidenced by Biden agreeing to send weapons to protect Israelis living in Judea and Samaria, only so long as no guns went to the people who need them, Israeli civilians:

The guns are critical to Israel’s defense as it faces down the most significant threat in decades. With the military engaged in an assault on the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, Jewish civilians in dangerous areas like the West Bank are being trained and equipped to defend themselves against potential attacks.
On an emotional level, it feels as though Biden doesn’t want me, a dual Israeli American citizen, to have protection. He is not on my side. On the other hand, he does seem to like the terror-sponsoring, nuclear bomb-producing mullahs. 

How do we know? He keeps giving them money in creative ways, such as lifting sanctions on Iranian revenues or putting stipulations on how the money is to be spent so as to forestall criticism. Biden knows that Iran doesn’t play by the rules, especially where money is concerned, and yet he frees up their funds even directly after they slaughter us.

Then, there is Biden’s insistence that Israel allow for “humanitarian pauses” which of course, allow Hamas to rearm and retrench, increasing the danger to Israel and to Israeli soldiers. Like a lot of Israeli Americans, my sons serve in the IDF. They are also American citizens and Biden is endangering them with these pauses. How is this at all humanitarian? Biden allows the “innocent people of Gaza” who voted for and overwhelmingly support Hamas, have time to flee, at the same time as he puts MY children in harm’s way? Biden giveth and he taketh away. And somehow it’s always the Jews who lose out.  

So, we have billions of American aid flowing to Israel, but also to Iran. And we also have billions of American aid flowing to Hamas in Gaza. The $106 billion national security aid package that Biden presented to Congress in October includes $9b for humanitarian aid, and while some of that may go to Ukraine or Israel, the White House acknowledges that it’s largely for Gaza, and that means it will inevitably end up in Hamas’ hot little hands.

Sending aid to Gaza is, by the way, illegal, according to Prof. Avi Bell:

Any country providing aid to the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip indirectly supports Hamas, thereby breaking United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, explained Prof. Avi Bell of Bar-Ilan University's Faculty of Law.

He said the resolution, which was adopted by the UN Security Council in 2001 and is therefore legally binding, includes several duties states have to fight terrorist organizations, one of which is to not provide any form of support – active or passive, direct or indirect.

"As long as we have a degree of certainty that some of the aid [entering from Egypt to Gaza via the Rafah crossing] is being diverted to Hamas – and we do have that certainty – then all the states of the world must refrain from providing this indirect support to Hamas," Bell said.

We are, of course, certain that humanitarian aid is being diverted to Hamas. The IDF provided 300 liters of fuel to Shifa hospital and Hamas took it. Just swooped down and seized it to “fuel” its terror machine. Well, actually Hamas didn’t just swoop down and seize that fuel. First the Hamas terrorists blocked the hospital from receiving the fuel, and then the Hamas terrorists seized the fuel for their own “use.”

It is, by the way, also illegal for Israel to be giving aid to Gaza, knowing it goes to Hamas, and that’s been happening ever since there was a Hamas. But this is a different story. Israel is pressured by corrupt leaders like Joe Biden—Israel is fighting for its life and cannot say no to Biden’s demands. Also, Israel is held to a different moral standard. Because Jews.

Take what happened with Shifa Hospital. The White House let Israel know, in no uncertain terms that it did not want to see fighting there (emphasis added):

“The United States does not want to see firefights in hospitals where innocent people, patients receiving medical care, are caught in the crossfire. And we’ve had active consultations with the Israel Defense Forces on this,” [said US National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan.

We know what happened with that one, don’t we?

The White House on Tuesday said it had its own intelligence that Hamas was using Gaza's largest hospital Al Shifa to run its military operations, and probably to store weapons, saying those actions constituted a war crime.

"We have information that confirms that Hamas is using that particular hospital for a command and control mode" and probably to store weapons, national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters aboard Air Force One. "That is a war crime."

Thank you, Captain Obvious.

That was Shifa Hospital. But we also know what happened at Rantisi Hospital.


Today, in response to bitter criticism of Biden by an American Israeli, I heard my Israeli-born neighbor gently chide him, saying “We have to say thank you to America.”

But do we? Really?

Biden gives Israel money, but he gives it to Iran as well. He gives aid to Israel, but also to Gaza, ergo Hamas. Should we say thank you to America for giving aid and succor to those who perpetrated the single worst massacre on the Jewish people since the Holocaust and who, even now, have Jews in their sights?

What in the name of God is happening here, and why aren’t the people in the rallies demanding accountability?

With one hand, the president of the United States facilitates Iranian and Hamas terror, while simultaneously tying Israel’s hands with the other. The Jews are expendable, he reasons. Give Iran a little nip to take the edge off. And it won’t hurt his creds with Rashida, et al.

But it all has to have a veneer of respectful support for and generosity toward Israel, to appease the other side, as well. It’s a balancing act, but Joe’s been doing this for half his life. He’s a career politician. A hack. The emperor in new clothes.

It’s all a political balancing act: Biden giveth and Biden taketh away. He’ll give us guns, but we can’t use them. He gives money to Iran to take Jewish lives.



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 



Wednesday, November 08, 2023



Disclaimer: the views expressed here are solely those of the author, weekly Judean Rose columnist Varda Meyers Epstein.

Rallies have figured large in the wake of October 7th. Not in Israel, mind you. In Israel, we are too busy to hold rallies. We prefer to rally around each other.

Outside of Israel, things are different. There, the rally has become an important vehicle for expressing solidarity; for taking sides, and in some cases, for whipping up the masses to kill Jews. 

The rally is many things, but what, in fact, does the rally really achieve for those of us on the side of Israel? It’s all a numbers game, and their numbers will always be larger: There are more of them than us.

Does it matter? Of course it does. The rally is a kind of test; a chance to choose good or evil, though it’s not always cut and dried. There are the sheeple who passively allow themselves to be swayed by the crowd; they just want to fit in. On the other hand, there is true evil, the thugs, and the academics who say they are exhilarated by what happened to the Jews—and the people who tear down posters of Jewish babies held hostage in Gaza.

Evil takes other forms, sometimes in the guise of a Jew who will tell you that as Jew, they say it’s okay to commit atrocities as long as you know the context—as long as you know the history. . .

 . . . or the woman who shouts “I’m a rabbi and I demand a ceasefire!” These Jews are sick, sicker, sickest and the very definition of the banality of evil.  

It must be said that sometimes, and here there is only one phrase, crude as it is, to describe the phenomenon: the rally is a pissing contest. Sometimes the participants scuffle or worse. 


Sometimes someone hits an elderly Jew over the head with a megaphone and kills him, and the police can’t decide if it’s murder.

It’s not all bad, though. There are Jews, pure of heart, who flock to rallies to express anguish and cry out for justice, “Justice, justice, you shall pursue.”

That’s very nice. But as I told my relatives on the eve of October 11, “From experience, all of you should stay close to home. I wouldn't go to shul or to rallies. It's not worth the risk, even with beefed up security. Personal safety is more important, and it's bad to be in crowded places. . . Don't be lulled into thinking you're far away and safe. I mean it. Please just stay safe. The rallies don't help us anyway, IMHO.”

The response? “This was an attack on all of us.”

That’s true. I’m glad their eyes are open. But it doesn’t help us in the aftermath. There’s a war, and it is those of us in Israel who must fight it.

What would help us would be unceasing rallies at the White House, protesting Biden’s aid to Iran and Hamas, and his demands for a ceasefire. Short of that, rallies are pretty useless. They may make you feel good, and give you a feeling of communal bonding, but that’s not a good enough reason to get together when it isn’t safe out there for Jews and lovers of justice and light.

***
Our IDF soldiers need ceramic vests to keep them safe as they fight Hamas. We have started a crowdfunding campaign to purchase these vests for my son's platoon:  Ceramic Vests for IDF Soldiers.

Even a small donation would be greatly appreciated--each vest costs approximately $520.



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