RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt76mKUxDI0

https://www.spiked-online.com/podcast-episode/can-civilisation-survive/

Douglas Murray – bestselling author of On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel, Hamas and the Future of the West – is the latest guest on The Brendan O’Neill Show. Douglas and Brendan discuss how rising anti-Semitism speaks to our decaying civilisation, what the West can learn from Israel, and the pro-Hamas hysteria infecting the left, the right and the mainstream media.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/theres-no-evidence-idf-attacked-gaza-aid-center-u-s-media-ran-with-the-hamas-claim-anyway/?utm_medium=email&_

Over the weekend, media outlets including CNN, CBS, and ABC uncritically amplified Hamas’s claims that Israeli forces opened fire near a Gaza aid distribution center, killing dozens and injuring hundreds of others.

According to officials from the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 31 people were killed and 170 wounded on Sunday when Israeli forces opened fire on civilians massing near an aid site run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Israel immediately denied it was behind the attack and released drone footage of unidentified masked men shooting unarmed civilians near the aid center.

“Findings from an initial inquiry indicate that the IDF did not fire at civilians while they were near or within the humanitarian aid distribution site and that reports to this effect are false,” the IDF said in a statement.

“The IDF is cooperating with the GHF and international aid organizations in order to enable the distribution of aid to the Gazan residents — and not to Hamas.”

The IDF did acknowledge firing warning shots in an effort to maintain order at the aid site, but says no one was hit.

Curiously, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the organization running the distribution center, insists nothing happened at all, releasing a statement Sunday saying that food had been “distributed today without incident.”

“We are aware of rumors being actively fomented by Hamas suggesting deaths and injuries today. They are untrue and fabricated,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said.

It’s not entirely clear what happened, but it’s worth noting that Hamas aggressively opposes the distribution of aid by organizations that it does not control.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21666/hamas-witkoff-ceasefire

The leaders of the Iran-backed Hamas terror group do not seem to be in a rush to end the war with Israel: after all, they and their family members are not living in the Gaza Strip…

Hamas’s political leaders, billionaires funded by Iran’s mullahs and the rulers of Qatar, live in several Arab and Islamic countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Algeria and Lebanon. They and their family members lead luxurious lives in these countries and do not have to worry about lack of food or medicine.

Hamas leaders are in no rush to accept any deal because, unlike most of the residents of the Gaza Strip, they do not have to stand in line and risk being shot by Hamas terrorists for trying to receive food from a humanitarian organization.

Moreover, the Hamas leadership will never accept any ceasefire without prior permission from the Iranian regime. The mullahs in Tehran also appear in no rush to end the war against Israel. They want the war to continue: it distracts attention from Iran’s efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.

For [Hamas’s leaders], the No. 1 priority is to make sure that Hamas remains in power the day after the war

For Hamas, “the end” (eliminating Israel) justifies “the means” (sacrificing Palestinians as “martyrs” in the jihad against Israel).

Hamas staying in power would be great news for the Iranian regime, jihadis, and Islamist terror groups who consider the US the “Great Satan,” and are committed to killing Americans, Christians, Jews and all other “infidels.”

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/israel/doctoring-the-truth-about-gaza/

Last week hundreds of Australian doctors circulated a call to the Australian government for action against Israel. We want to believe that all were motivated by universal humanitarian concerns. But their call made minimal demands of Hamas and claimed that Palestinian terrorists held by Israel are hostages. The doctors’ repeated misinformation that has its sources in Hamas propaganda.

The Gaza Health Ministry information office, its data and its doctors are deeply complicit in the Hamas disinformation campaign. They are extensively supported in their spread of disinformation by Hamas-affiliated Gazan journalists who, in turn, are contracted by our own media. They accuse the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) of atrocities by “targeting children, women, the elderly and civilians”. There is no such evidence concerning Gazan casualties in the armed conflict, as we have detailed in depth in a report for the Henry Jackson Society noted under this masthead.

A controlling presence of Hamas military command at Gazan hospitals reflects its control over health information and its misuse of civilians in a human-shield policy, which accounts for many civilian casualties. Their presence is also a Hamas crime against hospitals, which lose their status as sites protected for humanitarian functions when they are repurposed as military bases.

A pitched armed battle between Hamas and the IDF at Kamal Adwan Hospital that took place over the 2024/2025 new year resulted in the deaths of 19 identified terrorists and the arrests of 240 others. Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Ahmed Kahlot, and his successor, Hossam Abu Saffia, held ranks within Hamas of Lieutenant-Colonel and Colonel respectively.

Hamas’ control of the Kamal Adwan Hospital was confirmed by the account of a visiting Kurdish volunteer doctor, Baxtiya Baram, in May 2024. “I saw with my own eyes that hospitals were used to hide Hamas leaders,” he reported. “We saw them and even spoke with them.”

Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa in Gaza City, was a major Hamas military base and the scene of other pitched battles. It is also where Israeli hostages were held and where spaces were dedicated for military command, prisoners, interrogations, communications, and military transport (by ambulance).

https://www.city-journal.org/article/israel-palestine-gaza-war-hamas-domestic-politics

Intellectuals, rarely short on opinions, often fall back on a familiar dodge when confronted with a controversy they’d rather avoid: calling the issue “complex.”

The war in Gaza is one such case. To be sure, the tangled history, religion, and culture behind the Israel–Palestine conflict make it genuinely complicated. Partisans on both sides accuse their opponents of ignorance while promoting their own preferred narratives and facts to claim authority over the subject.

I should acknowledge that I’m no expert on Israel and Palestine. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic. I haven’t visited either territory. For that reason, I’ve written little about the conflict and don’t claim to grasp all its intricacies.

But I do understand American domestic politics. And I can see the shadows the Gaza war has cast here at home. On one side stand Palestine’s domestic proxies: the decolonization theorists, keffiyeh-clad campus leftists, and, increasingly, the radicalized individuals now out for blood.

These elements are connected. The ideology is hatched at places like Harvard, where it trickles down to student activists who occupy campus buildings and make lithographs of Hamas paragliders. It then gets refracted on social media, flipping the switch within the minds of those predisposed to violence, giving them a rationale to lash out at Jews. Consider the recent spate of property bombings, the cold-blooded murder of two Israeli embassy employees, and the injuries inflicted by Molotov cocktails on a dozen people in Boulder, Colorado.

I don’t need to speak Hebrew or Arabic to recognize this domestic movement as an enemy. It’s enough to read its literature and observe its supporters’ actions to see that it embodies the forces of barbarism—forces that, if left unchecked, would tear down the pillars of civilization both abroad and at home.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/us-envoy-mike-huckabee-suggests-france-carve-palestinian-state-out-of-riviera/ar-AA1F

The US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has lashed out at France’s advocacy for recognition of a Palestinian state, saying that if it supported such an outcome it could “carve out a piece of the French Riviera” and create one.

France is co-chairing with Saudi Arabia this month an international conference at the United Nations aimed at resurrecting the idea of a two-state solution, which the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes.

Paris has also said it could recognize a Palestinian state itself this year.

In an interview with Fox News published on Saturday, Huckabee called the initiative at the UN “incredibly inappropriate when Israel is in the midst of a war.”

“October 7 changed a lot of things,” he said, referring to the 2023 Hamas attack on Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.

“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them – carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state. They are welcome to do that, but they are not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation.”