RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-7-29-settler-colonialists-in-israel-and-the-united-states

Of all the epithets of the left that don’t make any sense, the term “settler colonialist” is one of my favorites. We live in a world where the ability of people to relocate, even to places thousands of miles distant, has increased greatly over time. These days, many millions of people per year pick up and relocate, or try to relocate, from one country to another. By far the biggest mass migrations going on currently are into the U.S. and into Europe from various poorer countries. This November 2023 piece from NPR puts the number of “migrants” crossing the U.S. Southern border illegally in 2023 at about 2.4 million. That would be in addition to about 1 million legal immigrants to the U.S. each year. The European Commission at this site from April 2024 gives a figure of 42.4 million people living in the EU who were not born there, about 9% of the population. That would suggest something like 1 million or so new arrivals per year.

So are all these people “settler colonialists”? Try to find that term applied to any of these millions of annual migrants, and I will bet that you cannot. The legal entry of millions into the United States, and the illegal invasion of millions more, is cheered on by all on the left. Meanwhile the derogatory term “settler colonialist” is reserved for much smaller numbers of migrants who have been designated as disfavored based on criteria that I have never seen rationally articulated.

And yet, find yourself in a disfavored group making a relocation, and get ready for an unrelenting stream of invective. Of course, Jews are the ultimate such disfavored group.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20820/kamala-harris-destroy-israel

What is insupportable is that Harris completely ignored that the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip are suffering because of a war initiated by Hamas. She could have done many Palestinians a favor had she called on Hamas to relinquish control over the Gaza Strip and stop using its people as human shields in its Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Harris seems not to know or to have forgotten — either is not excessively impressive — that on October 6, 2023, there was a ceasefire in place between Israel and Hamas. Hamas broke it.

“Sometimes, on happier days, I like to comment on the remarkable similarities between Singapore and the Gaza Strip. Both are self-governing city-states located at key crossroads of world trade on the opposite ends of the Continent of Asia. Both combine density of population with a significant urban buildup and dramatic natural advantages, including a high-quality harbor. And yet, due to differences in civil culture and governance, Singapore has been built into the trade hub of East Asia. Gaza, as Saturday’s (October 7, 2023) events have demonstrated to the world, has chosen another path: becoming a terrorist dystopia like the benighted lands formerly under ISIS (Islamic State).” — Bassam Eid, Palestinian human rights activist, Newsweek, October 9, 2023.

The October 7 massacres, if anything, demonstrate why the creation of a Palestinian state is actually a surefire way to perpetuate the Palestinian jihad against Israel, as well as instability and insecurity throughout the Middle East. China, Russia, North Korea and Iran are watching and taking note that unacceptable behavior goes blissfully unpunished.

Hamas…. did not spend millions of dollars to boost the Palestinian economy or give young Palestinians in the Gaza Strip employment prospects. Rather than constructing a medical facilities or educational institutions, Hamas opted to build hundreds of tunnels to smuggle weapons, attack Israel, and shelter its terrorists and leaders.

[I]f and when a Palestinian state is established, as Harris and the Biden administration insist, it will be controlled by the same murderers, rapists and terrorist jihadists.

This is the time to remind Harris that Hamas’s charter views the Jihad as the way to take all of “Palestine” from the Jews and to destroy Israel. Harris sees a Palestinian state as the “only path” to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Palestinians, on the other hand, view the establishment of such a state as the first step towards eliminating Israel. The Hamas charter begins with a quotation attributed to Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Bana: “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”

Harris’s remarks regarding a Palestinian state are seriously problematic: they send a message to the Palestinians and others that the US is happy to reward them for terrorism and the October 7 atrocities. Instead of talking about a Palestinian state, she should have told the Palestinians that they will never achieve a state as long as they back Hamas or vow to destroy a UN member state. Harris should also have warned the Palestinians that they will never be granted their own state unless they recognize Israel’s right to exist as the ancestral home of the Jewish people, stop radicalizing their youth, and renounce violence and terrorism.

By advocating an end to the war in the Gaza Strip, Harris is asking that Israel, by allowing Hamas to remain in power, submit itself to unending jihadist attacks. What country would do that?

Demanding a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip is comparable to calling for an end to the US war on Al-Qaeda and ISIS. Unfortunately, destroying Hamas’s military capabilities and removing it from power is the only realistic option. Failure to achieve those two goals will only embolden Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Russia, Iran and other global aggressors waiting in the wings.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/07/29/why-is-it-only-escalation-when-israel-retaliates/

The New York Times is breathing a sigh of relief. For while Israel has fired a few rockets at Lebanon in response to Hezbollah’s massacre of 12 Druze kids in the Golan Heights on Saturday, it has stopped short of launching all-out war on its unfriendly neighbour. For now, says the NYT, we’ve not seen a ‘major escalation’ in Israel-Lebanon hostilities. Yes we have. The slaughter of the Druze youths was a ‘major escalation’. Hezbollah’s firing of a missile that butchered 12 children was surely the very ‘surge in fighting’ that the NYT fears. Or is it only ‘escalation’ when Israel retaliates to the apocalyptic violence of the Islamist armies that surround it?

The media chatter in the wake of Saturday’s bloodbath has been incredibly – and depressingly – revealing. Hezbollah’s rocket hit a miniature football pitch in Majdal Shams in northern Israeli territory. That’s a village inhabited by the Arabic-speaking Druze people, who are spread across northern Israel, Lebanon and Syria. The rocket’s 50kg warhead detonated right where youngsters were taking a breather between games of footie. Twelve of them, all aged between 11 and 16, were killed. It was such a devastating explosion that the remains of one of the kids have not yet been found.

Hezbollah denies firing the rocket. Few are taking its denials seriously, aside from the usual Israelophobic hotheads online, who hate the Jewish State with such unhinged intensity that they hang like wide-eyed fanboys on its enemies’ every word. Israel, as Sky News reports, says the missile clearly flew the short distance ‘over the sunburnt hills’ that divide Lebanon from the Golan Heights. US intelligence officials say they have ‘no doubt’ Hezbollah fired the rocket. And yet, still, the media discussion focusses less on the horror of what Hezbollah did than on the horror of what Israel might do in response.

Everyone’s fretting over an ‘escalation’ in hostilities following the Majdal Shams massacre. ‘Diplomats [are] scrambling to prevent a surge in fighting’, says the NYT. Too late. The surge in fighting already happened. It happened on Saturday when Israel lost 12 of its children to the rocket fire of radical Islamists. There are widespread ‘fears of escalation’ after Saturday, says Reuters. That it printed these words next to a photo of a row of small white coffins containing the remains of the kids murdered by Hezbollah is extraordinary. There’s your ‘escalation’, Reuters. It has already occurred.

https://www.jns.org/en-route-to-beirut/

When 12 kids were slaughtered Saturday in the Golan Heights town of Majdal Shams by an Iranian missile supplied to Hezbollah, Israelis were horrified but not surprised. Given the incessant bombardment of northern Israel—leading to the evacuation months ago of hundreds of families from their homes—mass murder was just a matter of time.

That’s what happens with a policy of containment—a key element of the very “conceptzia” that enabled Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre. If an enemy assault fails to be as deadly as it could have been, Israel doesn’t treat it with the response it deserves. Instead, it prides itself on preventing more casualties thanks to Iron Dome defenses and public obedience to Home Front Command directives.

These include: informing us of how many seconds we have to enter a bomb shelter or safe room when an air-raid siren goes off; instructing us to exit and clear away from our cars when caught by an alarm while driving on the highway, then lie on the asphalt with our hands on our heads; warning us not to photograph interceptions, which can result in injury from falling shrapnel; admonishing us to lock our doors, turn out our lights and close our shutters at the first sign of a potential terrorist invasion; and assuring us that we’ll be the first to know if we need to stock up on supplies ahead of a greater, less temporary threat.

It’s no wonder, then, that our military is called the Israel Defense Forces. Considering the fact that we are surrounded by foes both bent on our destruction and equipped by Tehran to carry it out, one would have thought it appropriate to replace the word “defense” with “offense.”

But no. The IDF boasts of being the most moral army in the world, with a code of ethics fit for local and international kangaroo courtrooms, not soldiers risking their lives to protect the country.

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

Attitudes toward Israel in today’s world can be put into three categories:

1.       It must not continue to exist.

2.       It can exist, but it must not fight.

3.       It can exist, and it can fight.

The first category comprises much of the Muslim world and just about all of the far-left world. The second category corresponds broadly—not always precisely—with official attitudes and policies toward Israel of the United Nations and most Western governments.

The third category comprises mostly conservative governments, parties, and sectors in the Western world.

Although, at the time of Hamas’s October 7 massacre against Israel, the Biden administration seemed to be staunchly in the third category, it eventually began shifting toward the second category and now hovers between the third and the second. While Israel fights on seven fronts of the Iranian ring of fire (Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran itself), the Biden administration’s endlessly repeated mantra is now “ceasefire”—along with all other Western governments that publicly address the issue.

Accordingly, in an effort to discourage Israel from fighting and constrain its ability to do so, since February the Biden administration has been substantially reducing arms shipments to Israel.

Imagine that, say, Belgium—a country roughly the size of Israel—had in less than ten months suffered a massacre and mass kidnapping of its citizens, as well as a constant bombardment of well over 20,000 rockets, missiles, and explosive drones from six different countries. (In Israel’s case, the six countries are Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran; by June 10 more than 19,000 unguided rockets alone had been launched at Israel.)

It would be strange, then, if Belgium—not any of the countries or terror organizations attacking it—were under constant, obsessive pressure for a ceasefire. It would be even stranger if Belgium—not any of those countries or terror organizations—were being charged by two international courts with “genocide” and other severe human rights abuses.

But the push to deny arms to Israel has, by now, gone well beyond the US.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/they-should-be-ashamed-of-themselves-netanyahu-unloads-on-anti-israel-protesters-in-passionate-address-to-congress/

‘They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers,’ Netanyahu said, even as anti-Israel protesters congregated outside the Capitol.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu had harsh words for anti-Israel protesters in his Wednesday address to a joint session of Congress, slamming the activists as “useful idiots” for Iran and other bad actors even as they congregated outside the Capitol.

“Defeating our brutal enemies requires both courage and clarity,” he said. “Clarity begins by knowing the difference between good and evil. Yet, incredibly, many anti-Israel protesters choose to stand with evil. They stand with Hamas. They stand with rapists and murderers. They stand with people who come into the kibbutzim — into the home — with the parents and the children, the two babies in the secret attic, and murder the parents, find the secret latch to the attic, find the babies, and they murder them. These protesters stand with them. They should be ashamed of themselves.”

Netanyahu referenced the claims from many anti-Israel protesters that Hamas terrorism constitutes legitimate resistance while Israel’s retaliatory war is out of bounds.

“They refuse to make the simple distinction between those who target terrorists and those who target civilians — between the democratic state of Israel and the terrorist thugs of Hamas,” he told the chamber.

The prime minister stressed in his speech that anti-Israel protesters are not just opposed to the existence of the Jewish state but are anti-American as well.

“These protesters burn American flags even on the Fourth of July,” Netanyahu said. “And I wish to salute the fraternity brothers at the University of North Carolina who protected the American flag — protected the American flag — against these anti-Israel protesters.”

After a brief round of “U-S-A” chants, Netanyahu took aim at Iran, referencing the recent revelation from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines that the Islamic Republic has been funding campus protests in the United States.