RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.algemeiner.com/2022/08/15/israeli-runners-win-gold-in-munich-championships-50-years-after-olympics-massacre/

Israeli marathon runners took the gold at the European Championships in Munich, Germany on Monday — nearly 50 years after the Jewish state’s Olympic delegation was massacred in the same city by Palestinian terrorists.

The men’s marathon team won first place with a total time of 6 hours, 31 minutes, and 48 seconds, while Ethiopian-born Israeli runners Marhu Teferi and Gashau Ayale also earned individual silver and bronze medals, respectively. Teferi narrowly lost to first place medalist Richard Ringer of Germany, who crossed the finish line two seconds ahead.

The German men’s team placed second with a time of 6:35:52, while Spain’s team was awarded third with a time of 6:38:44.

Later on Monday, Kenyan-born Israeli runner Lonah Chemtai Salpeter won the bronze in the 10,000 metres run, snagging Israel’s fourth medal in the championships and setting a new Israeli record with her finishing time of 30:36.37.

After the finalists from the men’s marathon race were awarded their medals, Israel’s national anthem Hatikvah was played to applause. Several commentators noted the poignancy of the victory, which came shortly before the 50-year anniversary of the Munich massacre on September 5, 1972, when 11 members of Israel’s Olympic team were murdered in the Bavarian capital by the Palestinian terrorist group Black September. One West German police officer was also killed during a failed rescue attempt.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18798/iran-proxy-war-israel

“The US has started packing its bags to leave the Middle East. It is no longer able to impose maximum pressure on us.” — Major General Hossein Salami, commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, August 4, 2022.

Like their patrons in Tehran, these proxies are all staunchly committed to the destruction of Israel and the killing of as many Jews as possible. PIJ continues to threaten and attack Israel, while Hezbollah and the Houthis are doing their utmost to destabilize security and stability in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, Syria and the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia.

In a clear warning to the Biden administration, the Arabs are stressing that the Americans are mistaken to think that Iran will change its dangerous policies and actions once it reaches a new nuclear deal with the US and the other world powers, including the European Union.

“Today, Lebanon is not suffering from war as much as it is suffering from Iranian occupation through Hezbollah, which threatens the collapse of the country as a whole. We are facing an Iranian political fantasy from which the region has gained nothing but devastation and destruction, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria, as well as Yemen and Iraq.” — Tareq al-Hamid, former editor-in-chief of the London-based Asharq Al-Awsat; aawast.com, August 7, 2022.

“Western countries continue to bet on Iran’s so-called moderation and demand that it change its behavior, reduce its regional influence, and abandon its ballistic missile program. This is an impossible task, regardless of any deal presented to Tehran. Hostility to America is one of the foundations of the Islamic Revolution. Spreading the Islamic Revolution in the region is the task of the Islamic Republic. Iran’s strength is not only with weapons, the Revolutionary Guards, and the army, but also with influence in the region. Iran’s destabilizing behavior in the region is the highest priority in Iranian policy-making.” — Rafik Khoury, veteran Lebanese journalist, independentarabia.com, July 27, 2022.

“These armed groups are working in Iran’s interests. In return, they are rewarded [with weapons and money] for serving Iranian interests.” — Dr. Jassim Khalfan, Emirati political analyst, posts.com, August 7, 2022.

“The [Palestinian] groups just provide services to those who pay them. Wars by proxy and working for external agendas have destroyed the Arab world and many countries….” — Dr. Talal Al-Sharif, former member of Jordan’s Parliament, amad.ps, August 8, 2022.

At this point, one has to ask if the Biden administration is negotiating with Iran and offering it billions of dollars simply not to attack Israel until President Joe Biden’s term is over in another two-to-six years.

Once again, the Biden administration’s irresolution has only served to embolden the terrorists and their masters in Tehran, as well as the Russians and the Chinese Communist Party.

The recent war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) organization in the Gaza Strip should be seen, according to several Arab political analysts and authors, in the context of Tehran’s mullahs’ attempts to force the Biden administration to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. By unleashing Islamic Jihad against Israel, the mullahs are apparently trying to tell the Biden Administration, “You see what we are capable of doing? We have a number of militias and armed groups that could attack Israel and Arab countries. Hurry up and give us (Iran) everything we want before it is too late. Remove the Revolutionary Guard from the list of foreign terrorists. Give us billions of dollars or else we will continue to attack America’s Arab and Israeli friends. Hurry up and sign a new nuclear deal with us or else we will be angry at the US and we will continue to attack Israel and kill Jews.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/08/10/progressives-for-jihad/

Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states? Those were the days. As a godless humanist instinctively wary of religious fundamentalism, I miss them. They really are long gone. The sympathy offered by self-styled progressives to Palestinian Islamic Jihad in recent days has made that clear. Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement. It says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it – uppity women, homosexuals, atheists – would suffer. For the right-on to sympathise with such an outfit is akin to chickens giving solidarity to KFC.

Progressives for Islamic Jihad – this is where we’re at now; this is the latest deranged alley wokeness has taken us down. Since Friday, when the Israel Defence Forces launched Operation Breaking Dawn to take out the leaders of Islamic Jihad, we’ve had oceans of Twitter tears from Western progressives and virtually no analysis. ‘Might a group called Islamic Jihad be a tad problematic?’ – you’ll be searching for a long time before encountering even a question as basic as that. Instead, the same old script has been dusted down: Israel is evil, Zionism is racist, the Palestinian people have the right to resist, etc etc. The dearth of curiosity over what Islamic Jihad represents has been appalling.

Islamic Jihad has been talked about in the sympathetic language of ‘resistance’. A UN special rapporteur on Palestine thrilled the online left by tweeting during the raining down of Islamic Jihad missiles on Southern Israel that ‘Palestinians’ right to resist is inherent to their right to exist as a people’. The BDS movement used the glowing terms of resistance, too. It shared an image of a CNN headline that said ‘Israel clashes with Islamic Jihad’, though BDS changed it to ‘Israel massacres Palestinians’. Do not dismiss ‘the resistance of a besieged and trapped population’, BDS warned the mainstream media. At a rowdy rally in New York City, protesters insisted that ‘resistance is not terrorism’. Palestinians should use ‘every means possible’ against Israel, one speaker declared. An Irish anti-war group went further, declaring ‘Victory to the Palestinian Resistance!’. Right now, that ‘resistance’ takes the form of religious violence from a group that has primarily targeted Israeli citizens. You want victory for that?

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-714517

Operation Breaking Dawn, Israel’s 55-hour war against Islamic Jihad in Gaza that ended on Sunday night, not only aroused the wrath of the world’s usual antisemitic suspects; it also caused the small but vociferous domestic “peace camp” chorus to sing its tired refrain about the desperate need for a political solution to the conflict.

The tired “two-state” mantra is also reiterated by White House and State Department officials at every opportunity, other than when they are busily beseeching Iran to return to the nuclear deal. Naturally, US President Joe Biden repeated it during his visit last month to Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA).

He went beyond his already foolish even-handedness, however, when touring the Augusta Victoria Hospital on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. On his way to the medical center that treats Palestinian patients from East Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Gaza, his team removed the Israeli flag from his limousine and forbade Israeli reporters from covering the event. He then gave a little speech in which he likened the plight of the Palestinians to that of his Irish forebears.

“[W]e have a long history not fundamentally unlike the Palestinian people with Great Britain and their attitude toward Irish-Catholics over the years, for 400 years,” he said, before quoting an Irish poem about hoping for a “tidal wave of justice.”

https://bit.ly/3p5Y7DV

The August 2022 Israeli war on Gaza-based Palestinian terrorists serves as a wake up call for Israeli and Western policy makers and public opinion molders, who are determined to observe/assess the volcanic and treacherous Middle East through the accommodating and relatively-peaceful Western lenses.

For example:

*The August 2022 war on Palestinian terrorism is a wake up call to the Israeli and Western “Palestine-Firsters.” Once again, Arab countries showered the Palestinians with an embracing-talk, but refrained from a supportive walk, militarily, financially or politically. Hence, the 2022 Arab walk was consistent with the Arab conduct during all previous military clashes between Israel and Palestinian terrorism: the First and Second Intifada of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005, the 1982-85 war against the PLO in Lebanon, and the four wars against the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists in 2008-9, 2012, 2014 and 2021.

*During the last few days, I participated in several TV panel-discussions with experts from Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. All of them concurred with my perspective on the non-centrality of the Palestinian issue in Middle East affairs, displaying indifference or hostility toward the Palestinians. They echoed the Arab image of Palestinians as a role-model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism and ingratitude, as documented by the Palestinian intra-Arab track record.  

*In contrast to Western conventional wisdom, Arab policy makers are convinced that the proposed Palestinian state would be a pro-Iran, pro-Russia and pro-China rogue/terrorist entity, fueling domestic and regional turbulence, and intensifying the existing threats to the survival of every pro-US Arab regime.

https://www.jns.org/as-latest-round-of-fighting-ends-israels-gaza-strategy-comes-under-scrutiny/

 “Operation Breaking Dawn” is being described as one of Israel’s most successful Gaza operations in recent years. “All goals have been achieved, whoever tries to harm us will pay with his life,” Prime Minister Yair Lapid said on Monday evening, addressing the nation. Yet some have questioned Israel’s current Gaza policy, which leads it into successive rounds of fighting with no end in sight. They say it’s time to develop a new strategy.

“How do we see the next 20 to 50 years? Are we really going to live with the reality where every six months to a year, half of Israeli society is always under fire?” asked Amir Avivi, CEO and founder of the Israel Defense and Security Forum (IDSF), an Israeli NGO comprising thousands of former security officers.

“The idea is we will hit the terrorists hard and then gain a few years of quiet, but we see it’s not working,” he told JNS. “They build themselves back very, very fast. And with each operation they’re able to shoot more rockets with more explosives and more accuracy, while developing other capabilities. We need to ask ourselves: Is this the reality that the people of Israel deserve?”

While the current operation focused exclusively on the smaller Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist group, it’s to Hamas and its growing strength that Avivi points as proof that Israel’s current strategy is a failure. “Hamas is projecting its power and ideology all over Israel and all over the region. It’s becoming the leading organization in the fight for Jerusalem and the Temple Mount. They are the heroes of the Palestinians and also of Arab Israelis in the north and the south. This has become a huge threat. It’s not just about Gaza anymore,” he said.

Avivi praised the latest operation on the tactical level, but not the strategic one.

“This is the paradox. When the army fights, there’s nothing like the IDF. It’s amazing. But when you look at the overall picture, the strategic picture, it’s terrible,” he said.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18785/palestinians-americas-adversary

The statement in support of China is yet another example of the Palestinians’ betting on the wrong horse. Always on the side of the despotic regimes and countries, Palestinians appear to have learned nothing from their mistakes.

While Israel consistently stands by its US partners, Palestinians continue to ridicule and condemn the US, undermine its interests by aligning themselves with anti-US parties, and financing the families of Palestinians who murder Israeli and US citizens.

Palestinians expect US financial aid, but oppose the US on every foreign policy front. The Biden administration does not seem to have a problem funding the Iranian regime, the Chinese Communist Party, the illegitimate Venezuelan government or the Palestinian leadership while Palestinians are spitting in the face of the US and openly supporting all those who hate the US and the Americans. It sometimes seems as if the harder America’s adversaries spit, the harder the Americans rush to fund them.

Palestinians, who have sided against America with Nazi Germany, the Russians, Saddam Hussein, North Korea, Syria’s Assad, Iran, Hezbollah, and now China, are again exposing their anti-US sentiments. They will happily pad their bank accounts with American money, while continuing to act against the US and its policies in different parts of the world.

Many Arab countries have learned the lesson of Palestinian betrayal: that is why they long ago stopped funding the Palestinians. The Arab leaders refuse to throw their money at those who praise their enemies.

The US has actually been teaching those who wish to create a Palestinian state that being best buddies with America’s worst enemies is where the biggest profits lie.

Palestinian leaders have a tradition of backing tyrants and corrupt regimes around the world. When their choices prove disastrous, they run to the Americans begging for pity.

The Palestinian leaders do not run to their Arab brothers: they know that most Arab countries are sick and tired of Palestinian lies and backstabbing.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-fighting-is-a-sign-of-israeli-failure-hamas-idf-weapons-military-terror-organizations-security-rockets-11659972663?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Another round of fighting in Gaza has ended with a brokered cease-fire after a limited yet deadly exchange of fire between a terror organization and the Israel Defense Forces. The fighting lasted three days, more than 1,000 rockets were fired at Israel—including toward Tel Aviv and Jerusalem—and millions of Israelis found cover and relative safety thanks to the phenomenal Iron Dome, which intercepted more than 96% of the lethal rockets aimed at Israeli civilians.

At least 20 operatives of Palestinian Islamic Jihad were killed in action by the IDF, and scores more were wounded. Most important, almost the entire chain of command of the Islamic Jihad was eliminated in separate pinpoint strikes, leaving that organization with significant staffing shortages for the foreseeable future. Sadly, several Gazan civilians were also killed, either inadvertently by the IDF or by malfunctioning Palestinian rockets fired by terrorists.

None of the above should be surprising or sound new to anyone who has been following Middle Eastern news for the past 15 years. Other rounds, like Operation Guardian of the Walls in May 2021, lasted longer, caused more casualties and destruction in Israel and in Gaza, and ended in similar fashion.