RUTHFULLY YOURS

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*The Western attempt to distinguish between Hamas terrorists and the majority of Gaza Arabs defies Middle East reality, which documents that Hamas terrorists and most Gaza Arabs are interwoven with each other, socially, educationally, culturally, ideologically, and religiously.

*Moreover, Middle East reality highlights Hamas as a terror state (Gaza and potentially the West Bank), not as merely a terror organization.

*Therefore, most of the Arabs in Gaza enthusiastically celebrated the October 7, 2023 Hamas ISIS-like slaughter, rape, torture and mutilation of (mostly) civilians, heralding it as role model of sacrifice and heroism in the service of a Holy Islamic War and a demonstration of national liberation fortitude.

*The fact that the Arab population of Gaza lends itself to terrorism was underscored by a June 29, 1967 memorandum, submitted to the US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara by General Earle G. Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. The memorandum presented a map of Israel’s minimal security requirements, including Gaza, which “serves as a salient for introduction of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel’s military advantage…. It has served as a training area for [Palestinian terrorists]…. Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five and eliminate a source for raids and training of [terrorists]….”   

*The terroristic potential of the population of Gaza has been leveraged since 1947 by the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest Sunni terror organization, which established Hamas in 1988 – when it established Gaza as one of its five centers in British Mandate Palestine (Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Jerusalem and Gaza). The Gaza branch collaborated closely with the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the birth place of the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas’ popularity was limited to the Gaza middle class, such as the religious establishment, lawyers and businessmen. However, since the 1990s, Hamas has increasingly evolved into a focal point of social, ideological and religious cohesion with the Gaza population at-large.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-in-the-shadow-of-american-decline/

Strictly speaking, Israel’s Gaza war is not a tragedy, but rather a hideous accident. Many wars wait for years to happen until they can’t be stopped. Those are the tragedies. This one never should have happened. Israeli intelligence had the plans for the October 7 Hamas attack a year in advance, as well as urgent warnings from lower-echelon officers just before the event. But the top military and political leadership brushed them off.

This fits a venerable pattern. Stalin had the plans for Operation Barbarossa from his spy Victor Sorge; U.S. Naval Intelligence had warnings about the attack on Pearl Harbor; and the FBI had the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of 9/11, but failed to fit them together. Intelligence services are not rewarded for timely warnings, but for serving their masters’ political agendas, and Israel’s fabled spies turned out to be no different than their counterparts in other countries. Believing that $40 million a month in subsidies from Qatar and other economic concessions would keep Hamas quiet, the Israeli government refused to consider anything else.

There simply is no contest between 300,000 regular troops from the Israel Defense Forces and 30,000 to 40,000 lightly armed Hamas irregulars, any more than there was a contest between ISIS and the American army and its proxies. Whether Hamas is entirely or largely extirpated from Gaza depends on the extent to which Israel can resist American pressure to vitiate its operations. The outcome will not be much different in any case. Whatever happens, most of Gaza’s two million residents will spend the next couple of years in tent camps while the rest of the world dickers about what to do with them. Their living conditions will be similar to those of the more than 200,000 Jewish refugees who lived in tent cities for up to two years after they were expelled from Arab countries following the 1948 war.

For all the horrors of the October 7 attacks, they did not constitute an existential crisis for a country with the region’s most powerful military and an extraordinary capacity for national solidarity in the face of external threat.

https://nypost.com/2023/12/25/news/gaza-terrorists-reject-giving-up-power-as-part-of-any-peace-plan-sources/

Hamas and Islamic Jihad terror groups operating in Gaza have rejected an Egyptian-led truce proposal with Israel that would see the militants relinquish power in return for an end to the war, sources say.

The terrorists, who conducted the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, have refused to take part in one of the biggest conditions laid out by negotiators in Cairo on Sunday: an end to Hamas’ reign in Gaza by forming a Palestinian parliament and holding free elections, according to two Egyptian security sources.

The terrorist organizations instead reiterated that the only thing they’re ready to discuss is a prisoner swap that would see more than 100 Israeli hostages released in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel’s jails.

But a Hamas official who was in Cairo during the negotiations added that even a new prisoner swap would only take place once Israel has withdrawn from war-torn Gaza.

“Hamas seeks to end the Israeli aggression against our people, the massacres and genocide, and we discussed with our Egyptian brothers the ways to do that,” the official told Reuters.

“We also said that the aid for our people must keep going and must increase, and it must reach all the population in the north and the south,” the Hamas official added. “After the aggression is stopped and the aid increased, we are ready to discuss prisoner swaps.”

A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, later told Al Jazeera, “No one accepts negotiating under fire – not Hamas, not anyone else.”

In terms of who would govern the Palestinian region after the war, Hamdan added, “Who will lead the Palestinians is an internal Palestinian issue. 

“The people must elect their own leadership. No one has a right to dictate, not the Americans, Israelis or any one else,” he said.

https://www.jns.org/voluntary-population-transfer-floated-as-option-for-gaza-residents/

(December 26, 2023 / JNS) South American and African countries have already expressed interest in taking in Palestinian Arab refugees from the Gaza Strip in return for monetary compensation, Likud Knesset member Danny Danon said on Monday.

Israel’s former ambassador to the United Nations, who has floated the idea of the transfer of Gazans as part of his five-point plan for the post-war period, told Israeli broadcaster Kan Reshet Bet that Israel should “make it easier” on those Palestinians who wish to leave the Strip for other countries.

Danon noted that Canada said last week that it would expand immigration for Gazans, referring to Canadian Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Minister Marc Miller’s Dec. 21 announcement that he would enact measures to allow extended families of Gazans with Canadian citizenship to enter the country.

“Migration happens in every war, look at what happened in Syria,” said Danon. (More than 5 million Syrian refugees are registered with the U.N.’s refugee agency. This does not include those who went to Europe.)

The interviewer questioned the feasibility of the plan as both Egypt and Jordan have cautioned that if Israel considers directing Gazans into their territories, it would mean war. Danon replied, “Look what happened during the Syrian civil war. Jordan made the identical statement. Now there are one-and-a-half million Syrian refugees in Jordan.”

The Arab countries, he continued, “have an obligation to help the Palestinians. Let them help instead of giving inflammatory speeches.”

He emphasized that the plan doesn’t involve large numbers.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/benjamin-netanyahu-our-three-prerequisites-for-peace-gaza-israel-bff895bd?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Hamas must be destroyed, Gaza must be demilitarized, and Palestinian society must be deradicalized. These are the three prerequisites for peace between Israel and its Palestinian neighbors in Gaza.

First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany and many other countries support Israel’s intention to demolish the terror group. To achieve that goal, its military capabilities must be dismantled and its political rule over Gaza must end. Hamas’s leaders have vowed to repeat the Oct. 7 massacre “again and again.” That is why their destruction is the only proportional response to prevent the repeat of such horrific atrocities. Anything less guarantees more war and more bloodshed.

In destroying Hamas, Israel will continue to act in full compliance with international law. This is especially challenging because an integral part of Hamas’s strategy is to use Palestinian civilians as human shields. Hamas places its terrorist infrastructure inside and underneath homes, hospitals, mosques, schools and other civilian sites, deliberately putting the Palestinian population at risk.

Israel does its best to minimize civilian casualties by dropping leaflets, sending text messages and using other means to warn Gazans to get out of harm’s way. Hamas by contrast does its utmost to keep Palestinians in harm’s way—often at gunpoint.

Unjustly blaming Israel for these casualties will only encourage Hamas and other terror organizations around the world to use human shields. To render this cruel and cynical strategy ineffective, the international community must place the blame for these casualties squarely on Hamas. It must recognize that Israel is fighting the bigger battle of the civilized world against barbarism.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/global-empire-of-palestine

Polls showing that Palestinians in the West Bank as well as Gaza continue to celebrate and support Hamas, with nearly 75% backing the Oct. 7 massacre that killed 1,200 in southern Israel, would seem to dash U.S. policymakers’ hopes of gaining momentum toward establishing a Palestinian state.

But for the Palestinians, that’s irrelevant. Why should they bother with arduous negotiations leading to compromise over two non contiguous plots of land when they already have something far greater and much rarer? Empire.

The ongoing marches around the world to “flood” Western cities, college campuses, and government office buildings, and halt traffic on major arteries and thoroughfares in support of Hamas, are evidence that the Palestinians have managed to create something much loftier than a mere political arrangement of institutions and offices that would make them no different from the 193 members of the United Nations. With Oct. 7 representing the high-water mark of their long campaign against the Jews, and Americans, the Palestinians have called forth from the nations those who are ready to awaken and celebrate the new spirit of the age.

Since Oct. 7, pro-Palestinian protesters—Arab and Muslim immigrants joined by locals—have filled the streets of European and North American cities with crowds of thousands, tens of thousands, and hundreds of thousands in Berlin, Washington, Stockholm, Paris, Toronto, Oslo, Chicago, London, Rome, Los Angeles, and others. In Glasgow last week, they shut down a Zara’s outlet because, according to pro-Palestinian activists, the retail giant’s advertising campaign featuring mannequins wrapped in white cloth resembled dead Gazans. Students at Harvard University can’t study in Widener Library or walk to class without being confronted by mobs calling for Israel to be emptied of Jews “from the river to the sea.” It’s as bad or worse at other elite universities.

By continually ‘revitalizing’ the Palestinians, the stewards of global affairs have engendered something that by definition cannot survive in nature on its own: a society that celebrates death as its highest value.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/381508

The prime minister of Canada recently blasted Israel for accidentally killing civilians in Gaza— even though the Canadians deliberately killed German civilians in World War II. 

    Hypocrisy? Cynical indifference to the historical record? Perhaps a little bit of both.

    The Canadian Royal Air Force was a participant in the Allies’ strategy of “area bombing” in World War II, the policy of attacking civilian areas in order to undermine the German public’s morale. Canadian bombers took part in some of the war’s most famous strikes on civilian targets—including the bombing of Hamburg in July 1943, which left 40,000 dead, and the attack on Dresden in February 1945, which killed tens of thousands more. 

    The bombings were reported in the Canadian press at the time, and nobody protested. The Hamilton (Ontario) Spectator, for example, reporting on July 30, 1943 about one of the attacks on Hamburg, noted: “A great many Canadian bombers participated in this attack as they have in every Hamburg raid since the round-the-clock bombings began last week-end.” 

    And that’s not all.

    Canadian troops fought a storied urban battle in World War II that had more than a few similarities to the situation in Gaza today: enemy fighters holed up in underground tunnels, savage house to house fighting, booby-traps everywhere—and more than a few civilian casualties. 

https://www.thefp.com/p/miracle-in-hell-the-baby-twins-who

On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed into the home of Hadar and Itay Berdichevsky in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the Israeli communities along the Gaza border. Hadar and Itay—both 30 years old—were butchered in their own home.

Miraculously, their 10-month-old twins survived. The babies were found—rescued by the IDF—14 hours later, crying in their cots. Their parents’ bodies lie in pools of blood around them.

Today on Honestly, we’re talking with the twins’ aunt and uncle, Maya and Dvir Rosenfeld, who are now helping raise their orphaned twin nephews. Maya and Dvir also survived the massacre on Kfar Aza that day. They hid in their safe room for more than 24 hours with their own baby boy—holding their hands over his mouth to keep him quiet—as they heard the terrible sounds of their neighborhood being turned into a slaughterhouse around them.

Maya and Dvir flew to L.A. last week to share their family’s story. They’re doing this—even in the midst of mourning the loss of family, even while trying to recover from this unspeakable terror and tragedy—because they cannot understand how there are people who either don’t know, don’t believe, or simply don’t care about what happened that day. Or about the over 100 remaining hostages in Gaza.

There are so many stories from October 7 that need to be told. We’ve told some of them on this show. And still, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what happened that day, of the thousands upon thousands of stories—individual, human stories of horror and tragedy—each one deserving of being shared with the world. 

This one today represents a little light in a sea of darkness. These innocent babies—who will not remember the terror of October 7—represent both senseless tragedy and unbelievable bravery. Both pain and hope. Both ultimate despair and miracle beyond belief. Both death. . . and life. 

Our full conversation is available on Honestly (click here to listen) or as a video, which we are embedding below. And underneath that is an edited excerpt. —BW