Hamas
April 7, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden used the IDF’s accidental killing of the seven World Central Kitchen aid workers in Gaza to demand that Israel capitulate to Hamas. That’s my translation of the White House readout of Biden’s April 4 phone call with Prime Minister Netanyahu. I posted the crucial excerpt here last week. I also noted that Secretary of State Blinken added a twist in his April 4 press conference. He declared that
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April 5, 2024 — Scott Johnson
We have traced President Biden’s retreat from the public defense of Israel in its war on Hamas to his adoption of the Hamas line. He has now taken up the strategery of Dr. Jill to demand an immediate ceasefire. The White House readout of Biden’s call yesterday with Prime Minister Netanyahu has Biden demanding Israel’s agreement to Hamas’s terms: [Biden] made clear the need for Israel to announce and implement
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March 31, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Let’s hope so. Kill-the-Jews protesters broke into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York last night, chanting “Free Palestine” and the like, and disrupting an Easter mass. They were hauled out after a couple of minutes: The protesters carried a sign that said “Silence is Violence.” That is dumb, of course. Speech isn’t violence, let alone silence. Still, they might have a point in this sense: the Left’s silence about the
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March 31, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri awarded the Associated Press with a Pictures of the Year award for photos including Hamas savages absconding in a pickup truck with the corpse of Israeli/German victim Shani Louk (below, in the Team Picture Story of the Year category). The citation accompanying the award is itself a piece of work, but never mind that. (Credit: Ali Mahmud/Associated Press) Controversy
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March 29, 2024 — John Hinderaker
From Foreign Policy magazine comes a breathtakingly obtuse article by Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute. The article’s title, “Israel Is a Strategic Liability for the United States,” only hints at the venom that Hoffman directs at Israel. The piece is a lengthy denunciation of the “special relationship” between the United States and Israel and of Israel’s conduct of the war against Gaza, which–astonishingly–never once mentions Hamas’s October 7 massacres,
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March 26, 2024 — Scott Johnson
We’ve traced the drift of President Biden and his team away from Israel toward the side of Hamas in the current war. You might say they’re selling Israel out, but it’s not clear what they’re getting in return. You might say they don’t know what they’re doing, but one fears that they do. They seek the survival of Hamas as Israel seeks to complete its campaign to eliminate it as
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March 25, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari is the IDF spokesman. I posted his briefing on the current IDF operation at Gaza’s Shifa Hospital last week. The operation continues. Yesterday Hagari provided a three-minute update on the operation (video below). This is what he said: Today is day 6 of the IDF’s operation against Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Shifa Hospital. 170 terrorists were neutralized in or around the Shifa Hospital compound while
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March 24, 2024 — Steven Hayward
The Biden Administration’s diplomacy with Israel over its war against Hamas has reached the Animal House “double-secret probation” stage, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken warning Israel that it may find itself diplomatically “isolated” in the world if it attacks Rafah. Is it possible for Israel to be any more “isolated” than it already is in the joke that is called “the diplomatic community”? Dean Wormer could hardly have done
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March 24, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Times of Israel provides updates on Palestinian casualties according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, but suggests that skepticism is warranted. Indeed, the Ministry of Health is best understood as the functional equivalent of the Ministry of Truth (“Minitrue”) conceived by George Orwell in 1984, i.e., the ministry of propaganda. In its update on Palestinian casualties in Gaza today, the Times of Israel states the numbers of dead and wounded
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March 23, 2024 — John Hinderaker
It is widely believed that Joe Biden’s anti-Israel, pro-Hamas policy is driven by his desperate need to carry Michigan if he is to have any hope of re-election. That seems like a reasonable assumption, although, to be fair, it is also possible that he shares his old boss’s anti-Israel animus. But here is another one: Scoop: The US has urged Ukraine to halt attacks on Russia’s energy infrastructure, warning senior
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March 23, 2024 — Lloyd Billingsley
Joe Biden turning against Israel puts Scott “in mind of the time when England stood alone against a genocidal maniac.” That was the time when Hitler’s National Socialist regime was allied with Stalin’s Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. They signed their Pact on August 23, 1939, and Stalin began handing Jews directly to the Gestapo. In September, 1939, both powers invaded Poland, effectively starting World War II. In November, 1939,
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March 23, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute. He took issue with the December 2 Washington Post story “Israel’s assault forced a nurse to leave babies behind. They were found decomposing.” Satloff deconstructed the Post story in the 5,000-word critique “Once Again, a ‘Palestinian Babies Story Merits a Washington Post Apology.” Satloff’s critique elicited a response from Post executive editor Sally Buzbee. She stands by the Post’s story and
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March 22, 2024 — Scott Johnson
President Biden has turned on Israel. He and his brain trust support the survival of Hamas. It’s a big-time sell-out. The cover of the current issue of England’s Economist depicts Israel Alone (cover story here behind the Economist paywall). It reminded me of the time when England stood alone against a genocidal maniac — alone against “the insane tyrant,” as Leo Strauss referred to Hitler in his tribute to Churchill
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March 21, 2024 — John Hinderaker
We are often told, by Joe Biden and his minions among others, that Hamas doesn’t really represent Gaza. Hamas is a murderous, terrorist organization, but Gazans are innocent, put-upon civilians. For example: That is the party line, but those who saw video footage of delirious crowds of Gazans celebrating as Israeli captives and bodies were paraded through Gaza’s cities wondered how innocent those civilians actually are. These poll data, from
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March 21, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Ron Dermer is Israel’s Minister of Strategic Affairs serving in the government war cabinet. He is an eloquent spokesman for Israel’s cause. Dan Senor sat down with Dermer for the current episode of the Call Me Back podcast. Dermer will be one of the government’s representatives dispatched to Washington in response to the summons for a meeting with Biden’s brain trust. Senor provides this summary of the podcast: In the
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March 20, 2024 — Scott Johnson
The Biden administration produced a disgraceful debacle with its exit from Afghanistan. We live with the consequences around the world. Our enemies hold Biden in contempt. The authors of the debacle have suffered no impairment of their self-regard, let alone any detrimental effect on their career. Merrily they roll along. The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on the debacle yesterday. Retired Army General Mark Milley, former chairman of
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March 19, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Representatives of the Israeli government have been summoned by the Biden administration to meet in Washington next week. See Joel Pollak’s Breitbart News story on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s press conference yesterday here (the White House transcript is posted here). This is classic: Sullivan said that Biden had specifically criticized Netanyahu’s plans to attack Hamas in Rafah. Sullivan said that Biden had addressed what he called a “straw man,”
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