Hamas

Biden’s abstention

Featured image 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 »

Return to Shifa, cont’d

Featured image 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 »

Smartest Thing a Liberal Said Last Week

Featured image 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 »

What’s wrong with this picture?

Featured image 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 »

Is Biden’s Re-Election Campaign Driving US Foreign Policy?

Featured image 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 »

In Mind of the Time

Featured image 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, »

Tools of jihad, then and now

Featured image 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 »

Return to Shifa

Featured image 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 »

Gazans for Hamas

Featured image 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 »

Understanding Israel’s war, cont’d

Featured image 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 »

Biden’s guidance for Israel

Featured image 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 »

Netanyahu’s case

Featured image 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,” »

Understanding Israel’s war, cont’d

Featured image Rick Richman is the author of And None Shall Make Them Afraid: Eight Stories of the Modern State of Israel (2023) and Racing Against History: The 1940 Campaign for a Jewish Army to Fight Hitler (2018), both published by Encounter Books. He forwards the video of Dave Rubin’s “utterly amazing interview” of former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and now Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer below with the recommendation »

Understanding Israel’s war

Featured image John Spencer is chairman of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point. His profile is posted here. His X feed can be found here. He has been in Israel and Gaza to see what he could learn from the current war. Yesterday he uploaded the video of his February 27 interview with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu (below). This is an intensely interesting discussion of “everything from »

Doesn’t know Schumer from Shinola

Featured image In a long speech on the floor yesterday Senate Majority Chuck Schumer called for the replacement of the current Israeli government under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Times of Israel has posted the full text of Schumer’s remarks here. According to Schumer, Netanyahu is an obstacle to peace, the two-state final solution, and the Big Rock Candy Mountain. We must popularize the phrase “He doesn’t know Schumer from Shinola.” Jonathan »

The trouble with Dennis Ross

Featured image Dennis Ross is a scholar and diplomat of unmatched experience in the vagaries of “the peace process.” His 2005 memoir The Missing Peace: Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace runs to 880 closely printed pages. He served in both the Bush (41) and Clinton administrations. He also served as special assistant to President Obama and worked on National Security Council in both the Reagan and Obama administrations. »

Netanyahu’s negation

Featured image The Biden administration obviously seeks to depose the government of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. The administration has released our intelligence community’s assessment that Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” is “in jeopardy,” according to the annual report on the national security threats facing the United States that was presented to Congress on Monday. I assess that the wish is father to the thought. The assessment provides: “Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to »