NYPost Editorial: Biden betrays Israel with Hamas ‘deal’ that wasn’t
Joe Biden betrayed Israel last night.Seth Frantzman: 'The Godfather' in Gaza: What a mafia movie tells us about Hamas war
Hamas announced with great fanfare that it had accepted a ceasefire proposal. There were celebrations in Gaza, and the White House said it was “reviewing” the deal.
Except: The Israelis knew nothing about it.
The supposed agreement wasn’t even on the table. Hamas had changed the terms of a previous treaty to one more favorable to the terror group. To take just one horrific alteration: Rather than turn over hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, Hamas would surrender dead bodies of the hostages it had killed.
That Hamas would try to pull this ruse, with the help of negotiators in Egypt and Qatar, is typical. It wants to pretend that Israel was the one “rejecting” a ceasefire it never knew about. Anti-Israel protesters in the US and a compliant media would eat it up, and they did.
But there’s a shameful twist. Axios reports that the US was aware of the Hamas deal but did not brief Israeli officials.
“Two Israeli officials said the feeling is that ‘Israel got played’ by the U.S. and the mediators who drafted ‘a new deal’ and weren’t transparent about it,” the outlet says.
Just as those same officials are willing to give Iran everything and more for the terrible nuclear deal, so Biden would bend over backwards for Hamas if only it will placate the Israel-haters on his left.
But this is beyond the pale. To push through an agreement without Israel’s input? To let Hamas, which attacked Israel, killed, raped and took hostages, dictate the terms? The US is siding with terrorists!
Again, it’s worth going back to that scene in The Godfather when the heads of the mafia families meet and Don Corleone finally realizes that it was “Barzini all along” who had been behind this war. The war that Hamas launched on October 7 was not just launched by Hamas in Gaza. This is evident from the fact that the Hamas leadership in Doha was not surprised by the attack. They didn’t run and make frantic phone calls to their hosts, saying, “We didn’t do this; we had no idea.” Their hosts didn’t call their allies in the West and say, “Hamas has betrayed us; we hosted them but they have carried out this terrible attack.” In fact, if you go back to October 7, there is no evidence that anyone linked to Hamas was surprised by this attack. Moscow didn’t make frantic calls. Tehran didn’t. Ankara didn’t.24 States Urge Congress To Permanently End Funding for ‘Anti-Semitic’ UNRWA
Back on October 6, Israel was being sold a story that portrayed Hamas as “deterred.” Back on October 6, Israel was being sold a story that portrayed Hamas as “deterred.” After October 7, we are told that it is almost impossible to defeat Hamas because of how strong it is, and that defeating most of its 24 battalions is enough of a “win” in Gaza. The two narratives don’t make sense. If Hamas was deterred and incapable of doing much damage to Israel, then how is it also so powerful that it is almost impossible to defeat? And, if Hamas was actually known to be very powerful, with 24 battalions of fighters – 30,000 terrorists – then why was the border left almost undefended against a genocidal terrorist group?
Clearly, the answer to that question is that Israel trusted Hamas because Hamas was filtered through a kind of Don Barzini character. After Hamas lied about being deterred and carried out a huge massacre, it continued to rely on its hosts and backers abroad during the war on Israel. For instance, Israel was told in December to transition to a lower intensity war in Gaza. In February, Israel was told it should do a ceasefire for Ramadan. Then Israel was told to postpone a Rafah offensive. At each stage, Hamas got the breathing space it needed and was able to Shanghai the hostage talks. We now understand that Israel was likely deceived throughout the entire process using a strategy of bait and switch. The macabre talks have been prolonged by Hamas, which continues to refuse to hand over a list of living hostages. Hamas has said that it wants to release one hostage for each day of a ceasefire so that it can parade them to get applause in the region.
It now wants up to a weeklong ceasefire for each hostage. Hamas’s goal and the goal of its backers is to use the hostage deal as an end to the war in order to take over the West Bank in the long run.
It’s now fair to say that it was Barzini all along. The powers that stand behind Hamas and have been influencing this war from the start, in order to keep Hamas in power in Gaza and bring it to power in the West Bank, are Barzini.
A coalition of 24 state attorneys general are calling on Congress to permanently end all American funding to the United Nations’ chief Palestinian aid group, citing its anti-Semitic bias and links to the Hamas terror group.
Led by Iowa attorney general Brenna Bird and South Carolina’s Alan Wilson, the state officials want Congress to enact a permanent ban on American funding to the United Nations' Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), saying that lawmakers must step forward to "stop funding anti-Semitic education efforts run by the United Nations body tied to terror organization Hamas," according to a copy of the letter sent Tuesday to congressional leaders and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
"Not one more dollar should go to fund this organization so long as it is committed to spreading anti-Semitism—much less an organization 10% of which had links to foreign terror organization Hamas," the attorneys general write, citing information indicating that UNRWA employees participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror rampage through Israel. The letter follows similar calls from outside advocacy groups, as well as efforts by Republican lawmakers to permanently freeze UNRWA’s funding as a result of its ties to Hamas.
The letter signals a growing appetite on the state level to hold UNRWA accountable for its history of promoting anti-Semitic educational materials and allowing Hamas to overrun its facilities in the Gaza Strip. Earlier this week, Israel struck a Hamas command center located in an UNRWA facility, one of several that have been discovered over the course of the seven-month war. At the state level, some officials and advocacy groups have floated the possibility of stripping the tax-exempt status enjoyed by UNRWA USA, the aid group’s American fundraising arm.
"The U.S. should not be funding terrorism. Period," South Carolina’s Wilson told the Free Beacon. "We’ve known UNRWA is used by terrorists and has helped facilitate terror attacks for decades. The UN’s own investigation confirms what we’ve been raising the alarm about for months. It’s time to permanently cut funding for UNRWA, and we need to do it before they receive another dime."
UNRWA, the state officials say in their letter, has mainlined anti-Semitic propaganda to a generation of Palestinian children that have become radicalized supporters of Hamas’s campaign to eradicate Israel. American funding—which totals millions and accounts for a sizable portion of UNRWA’s budget—is responsible for spreading anti-Semitic hatred, the attorneys general say.