Tag Archives: israel

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Daily Broadside | Israel Must Utterly Destroy the Life of Hamas

As we watch events unfolding in Israel, waiting for the ground offensive to begin, waiting on whether Hamas will release hostages in return for a ceasefire (nah), waiting to see if Iran will intervene or conduct a “preemptive strike,” waiting to see if two American aircraft carrier strike groups will deter Iran or Hezbollah in Lebanon, I’ve been mulling over where I stand on the issue.

Bottom line for me is this: Israel must totally and utterly annihilate Hamas. They have to go in and destroy the ability of Hamas to attack, regroup or reconstitute itself in any way, shape or form.

I can hear the cries of horror as readers react. “Sure, but what about all the innocent Palestinian women and children? What about the elderly Palestinians and those who don’t support Hamas? What about proportionality? How can you support such bloodshed?”

Here’s my position: Hamas chose this.

Hamas is a terrorist organization. Their attack on Israel wasn’t an act of “war,” it was an act of terrorism. They indiscriminately murdered men, women, children and the elderly in cold blood. And they didn’t just kill them; they tortured them and desecrated their bodies. The committed atrocities against their neighbors simply because their neighbors are Jews.

What they did was indefensible. I don’t care what excuses are made for their savage slaughter of innocent Israeli citizens. They may have grievances with Israel, but civilization is not required to tolerate their barbarism. Hamas has proven that it is incapable of moderating itself; it’s time to eliminate them.

As far as the women and children go — it is a terrible thing to kill the defenseless, even if they are members of the enemy. I do not advocate for the killing of civilians and if it can be avoided, it should be.

But Hamas does not show that level of concern for their own people. They deliberately position their weapons of war in civilian buildings and neighborhoods in order to create a moral dilemma for civilized nations when it comes to killing innocent: Wipe out the terrorists and take innocent lives with them, or allow the terrorists to survive in order to avoid civilian deaths?

In this case, I place that responsibility squarely on the terrorists. Hamas are the violent enforcers of a religious death cult, and the wives and children of Palestinians are indoctrinated to hate Jews. I don’t want to see impressionable children used as pawns or human shields, but I don’t want the terrorists to survive and launch more attacks.

It’s an imperfect metaphor, but I once discovered that paper wasps had built a nest under the eaves of my garage. There were three larvae in the nest and two adults caring for them. They aren’t a particularly aggressive insect, but will attack if they feel threatened. So I ventured out there with my wasp and hornet spray and gave them a maximum dose, killing both the adults and the larvae. Why the kids? Easy—nest building and attacking is in their nature, and I didn’t want them to grow up and be a threat to me or my family (or any other family). I wanted to completely annihilate them, and I did.

Not only so, but in this post by Rev. Donald Sensing, he argues that Israel is not only battling a physical army of psychopaths, they’re battling an ideology, which can survive physical defeat.

Having formed a “unity government” for the war, Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu has stated clearly that the permanent end of Hamas as the principal war aim. That this objective requires a land invasion of Gaza is also clear. But what can it take to destroy Hamas? Netanyahu has said that killing its terrorists fighters is a specific goal, but Hamas is not merely an organization. It is also an ideology. How does Israel end with not only the present Hamas organization destroyed, but also the ideology?

He goes on to write that both the American Civil War and World War II provide examples of how to achieve the end of Hamas. First, the Civil War:

After more than two years of indecisive, though bloody fighting, the Union’s strategy took a linchpin turn when Gen. U.S. Grant was appointed commander of the US Army and he unleashed Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman to invade the South. Sherman stated his goal very plainly.

“War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.”

“This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.”

Sherman’s tactics were ruthless, but they did do what he set out to do. His and Grant’s maneuvers and battlefield victories made it very plain not only to the Confederacy’s leadership (especially Gen. R.E. Lee) that they could not win the war, it was also crystal clear to ordinary men and women throughout the South, including those never actually touched by the fighting. Slavery was ended by the war and it is worth noting also that no state has attempted to secede since then. 

Then, the objective of the Allies in World War II:

One of the preludes to the massive landings on Normandy’s beaches to “enter the continent or Europe” in 1944 was sustained, large-scale aerial bombing of Germany by American and British aircraft. As the war went on and German (and Japanese) resistance failed to slacken, President Roosevelt decided that the German and Japanese peoples must realize after the war that not only had their armed forces been defeated: the entire nation, as a nation, had been beaten. He and Churchill were well aware that German militarism had survived World War I because its apologists had successfully propagated the myth that the Kaiser’s army had not really been defeated, it had been “stabbed in the back” by disloyal factions at home.

Hence, wrote Roosevelt in a letter to Secretary of War Henry Stimson,

It is of utmost importance that every person in Germany should realize that this time Germany is a defeated nation. . . . The fact that they are a defeated nation, collectively and individually, must be so impressed upon them that they will hesitate to start any new war.

[…]

One notes that Japan and Germany have been well behaved since 1945. But we also have to note that massive, destructive bombing was alone not the reason. It was simply impossible for either country’s armed forces to claim that they had prevailed, or at least held their own, on the field of battle. German and Japanese orphans, widows and grieving parents were in almost every other household, and a lie that their armed forces had not really lost could not possibly have found legs to stand on.

Hamas and the civilians who support them (at least 90% of the population) must be made to see, to feel, to know that they are thoroughly and utterly defeated. They must be made to see that abhorrent tactics they displayed on October 7 will be answered with overwhelming force, and that such savagery will not be tolerated in this world. They must be made to experience “the hard hand of war” and their defeat “must be so impressed upon them” that they spend the next 20 years recovering from their experience.

I am with Israel and pray that God gives them the victory over their enemies.

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Daily Broadside | The Kids Are Not Alright and That’s OK Says Vivek

I hit a milestone birthday last week, so I took a couple of days off from the blog to celebrate with family and friends. My favorite quote: “It’s weird being the same age as old people.”

Israel is gearing up for a ground invasion of Gaza, probably today. There’s a lot of mixed emotions being expressed on social media, ranging from “the Palestinians deserve it” to “what about the innocent women and children?”

It’s raised some heated conversations in this country as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have shown. It has also resulted in many elite college groups, particularly at Harvard, releasing statements of support for the Palestinians and Hamas and blaming Israel for the violence.

That led Bill Ackman, a Harvard grad and founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, who has a net worth of $3.5 billion, to issue a call for Harvard to release the list of students in the groups so that CEOs won’t inadvertently hire any of them.

As the New York Post reported:

The pro-Hamas Harvard groups that signed the letter are African American Resistance Organization, Bengali Association of Students at Harvard College, Harvard Act on a Dream, Harvard Arab Medical and Dental Student Association, Harvard Chan Muslim Student Association, Harvard Chan Students for Health Equity and Justice in Palestine, Harvard College Pakistan Student Association, Harvard Divinity School Muslim Association, Harvard Middle Eastern and North African Law Student Association, Harvard Graduate School of Education Islamic Society, Harvard Graduate Students for Palestine, Harvard Islamic Society, Harvard Law School Justice for Palestine, Harvard Divinity School Students for Justice in Palestine, Harvard Jews for Liberation, Harvard Kennedy School Bangladesh Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Muslim Women’s Caucus, Harvard Kennedy School Palestine Caucus, Harvard Muslim Law School Association, Harvard Pakistan Forum, Harvard Prison Divest Coalition, Harvard South Asian Law Students Association, Harvard South Asians for Forward-Thinking Advocacy and Research, Harvard TPS Coalition, Harvard Undergraduate Arab Women’s Collective, Harvard Undergraduate Ghungroo, Harvard Undergraduate Muslim Women’s Medical Alliance, Harvard Undergraduate Nepali Students Association, Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee, Middle East and North African Graduate School of Design Student Society, Neighbor Program Cambridge, Sikhs and Companions of Harvard Undergraduates, and Society of Arab Students.

“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence,” the letter states, adding: “The apartheid regime is the only one to blame. Israeli violence has structured every aspect of Palestinian existence for 75 years.”

The letter has since been updated to remove the list of groups that signed it “for student safety.” [All emphasis mine.]

What a very DIVERSE set of student groups reflected at Harvard. Notice how they’ve separated into their own little tribes based on their ethnic, gender or religious affiliations (or some combination of each).

This all led to Vivek Ramaswamy, candidate for president in these United States, making an unwise statement on X the other day.

The Harvard student groups who co-signed the anti-Israel letter are simple fools. But it’s not productive for companies to blacklist kids for being members of student groups that make dumb political statements on campus. Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas. I’ve been as vocal as anyone in criticizing left-wing cancel culture (see my first book “Woke, Inc.”), but it’s bad no matter who practices it. It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive “DEI” pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel. This isn’t a legal point, it’s a cultural point. I say this as someone who vehemently disagrees with those Harvard student groups.

Those calling for blacklisting students right now are responding from a place of understandable hurt, but I’m confident that in the fullness of time, they will agree with me on the wisdom of avoiding these cancel-culture tactics.

I take issue with his first sentence that the student groups who co-signed the letter “are simple fools.” A “group” is an anonymized organization, not a person, and therefore cannot be a “simple fool.” Groups are made up of students led by one or more students and only such a student can be a simple fool. Calling a “group” foolish is really calling its leaders and / or its members foolish.

Secondly, what is this idea of being unproductive about? It’s “not productive” for a company to blacklist students? Why not? If I were a CEO, I’d wouldn’t want to hire someone who blames the cold-blooded murder, rape and decapitation of innocent civilians by barbaric terrorists on the victims.

If your ideology won’t let you distinguish between good and evil when it’s that obvious, maybe you have a problem distinguishing between right and wrong at any level. Or perhaps you have a different idea of what “right” and “wrong” are.

And finally, to criticize blacklisting as “wrong” in all cases is to reduce all perceived offences to the same level. Is he really going to argue that refusing to hire someone because they have the “wrong” political opinion (MAGA) is the same as refusing to hire someone who unequivocally and publicly supports the brutal killing of defenseless men, women, children and the elderly?

Are you saying that blacklisting is inappropriate in this case? We shouldn’t do it? Not ever? Not even if it’s Kathy Griffin holding up the severed head of Donald J. Trump?

What is wrong with you?

Former Fox News personalilty Megyn Kelly wasn’t having it either.

This, to me, is a perfect example of how convictions about what is right and what is wrong have been weakened in our contemporary culture. Ramaswamy says he’s making “a cultural point.” Well, at some point the “culture” needs to take a stand on good and evil. And when they do, it might look like blacklisting the overtly hostile instead of trying to “persuade” them that they’re wrong.

The “kids” (as Ramaswamy calls them) may have to learn a harsh lesson — that such extreme ideology has no place in a civilized society.

Like Kathy Griffin.

I’ve soured on Vivek. Nice guy with a lot of energy and some good thinking on some things, but he’s not my candidate, and his thoughts on this matter didn’t help.

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Daily Broadside | The U.S. Has Blood on Its Hands

Don’t look away. SEE what the Hamas terrorists are doing. There’s no excusing or rationalizing it.

I hate to say it, but it looks like American policy in the Middle East played a more than significant role in the bloodshed being waged in Israel. I love my country, but I hate what my leaders have done and are doing.

For the better part of the past decade, the United States has pursued a foreign policy designed to strengthen Iran and enable it to form a strong sphere of influence in the region. This is the idea behind what Tony Badran and Michael Doran called “the realignment,” a vision of a new world order in which America partners with Iran in order to “find a more stable balance of power that would make [the Middle East] less dependent on direct U.S. interference or protection.” Those words aren’t Badran and Doran’s; they’re Robert Malley’s, Barack Obama’s lead negotiator on the Iran deal who, as Semafor reported this week, helped to infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence into some of the most sensitive positions in the U.S. government—first at the State Department and now the Pentagon, where she has been serving as chief of staff for the assistant secretary of defense for special operations. Biden himself, in an op-ed in The Washington Post, spoke of “an integrated Middle East,” using the phrase no less than three times to make clear that his administration was intent on pursuing his predecessor’s commitment to seeing Iran not as a U.S. foe but as our collaborator.

We are lead by idiots and treacherous imbeciles.

And the Biden administration wasn’t just talking the talk. It was also walking the walk, from unfreezing billions in assets to make it easier for Tehran to support its proxy Hezbollah-controlled Lebanon to sending huge cash infusions used primarily to pay the salaries of tens of thousands of unvetted “security personnel.” And while the previous administration halted all aid to the Palestinians—directly because of the “pay for slay” policies that support the families of those who slaughter Israelis—the Biden administration was quick to reverse the decision.

At least Trump had the good sense to cut off aid, but it barely slowed Hamas or Hezbollah with the “””election””” of Brandon. We need to not only cut off aid to these animals, we need to get Trump back in the White House.

In addition to creating the external circumstances for terror, the Biden administration did everything in its power to derail Israel’s democratically elected government and prevent it from being able to see an attack like today’s coming. That the Israelis let themselves fall for this was stupidity of criminal order. But the invisible hand here was America’s. Biden himself took to CNN to call Netanyahu’s government “the most extreme” he’s ever seen, and lost no opportunity to lecture his Israeli counterpart about democratic values. The former U.S. ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides, took the unprecedented step of intervening in the country’s domestic affairs, announcing ominously that he “think[s] most Israelis want the United States to be in their business.” And if words weren’t enough, the administration also sent American dollars to support the anti-Netanyahu NGOs organizing the protests that brought Israel to a halt for months. Netanyahu was famously denied an invite to the White House; his key opponent, opposition leader Benny Gantz, had no such problem.

It’s outrageous and embarrassing for us, not to mention deadly for the Israelis and the Palestinians who are being killed in the war they’ve started.

We need to get clear-eyed, and quickly. There is no negotiating or “managing” a nation or people group that seethes with hatred toward another nation. Iran and its proxies in Gaza and Lebanon, and other nations around the Middle East loathe Israel and the United States. When they chant “Death to America” or talk about pushing the Jews into the sea, they mean exactly that. More importantly, they mean to do it.

I once told an Arab in Jerusalem’s Arab quarter that I had heard that the Palestinians don’t want to share the land with Jews, but that they want to rid the land of them and he affirmed my statement.

The reason is eschatological: fighting the Jews will hasten the “last day.”

Media analysts are describing the latest attacks as a retaliation for Israel’s supposed desecration of the al-Aqsa Mosque, or for “settlement” activity, and all the usual half-truths, distortions and outright lies that characterize establishment media coverage of Israel. Ultimately, however, this is happening not because of al-Aqsa, or because of any “occupation,” since the “occupation” is a propaganda fiction anyway. It’s happening because of the Islamic imperative to fight Jews.

A hadith says: “Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” (Sahih Muslim 6985) Read the beginning of the words attributed to Muhammad again: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight the Jews and the Muslims would kill them.”

So this is not a hadith about the “last day.” It is a hadith about the conditions under which the “last day” will come about, and how Muslims can bring about the “last day”: by killing Jews. The true believers of Hamas are busy doing it now.

That’s why Muslim nations don’t rest in their harassment and abuse of Jews, Christians and other infidels. They are commanded to fight in the name of Allah. While territorial claims may be part of the mix, the hostility is driven by an apocalyptic vision of Islam conquering all nations and their part in bringing it about.

It is a fanantical death cult that the U.S. has further enabled.

As far as that $6 billion that Brandon freed up for Iran: even though it hasn’t been distributed yet, here’s a former State Department advisor on Iran explaining to Fox News’s hapless Jennifer Griffin how Iran’s budgeting works. Go read the whole thing here.

How does it feel to know that your country funded the murder and mayhem in Israel?

Awful.

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Daily Broadside | Terrorist Organization Needs to Be Eradicated

What’s there to write about except the war that’s broken out in Israel? Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization, attacked southern Israel and of this writing, have launched 3,500 rockets, have infiltrated nearly 30 Israeli communities, have taken more than 100 hostages including the elderly, women and children, and have killed 1,100 in the terrorist attack.

There are reports that several Americans are among the dead and captured.

Israel responded by declaring war—not just an “operation”—and has vowed to crush Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving PM, called for a massive military response after the attack, which occurred 50 years to the week after the surprise attack on Yom Kippur in 1973.

Reports say that 450 Palestinians have been killed so far.

I am an unwavering supporter of Israel. I believe that God has a plan for the Jewish people, and that the hostility we see toward them today is a continuation of the hostility they’ve experienced since they were slaves in Egypt.

I also believe that there are innocents on both sides of the conflict. I don’t doubt that there are Palestinian families who wish for peace just as there are Jewish families who wish for peace. I encourage all of us to pray for the peace of Jerusalem, that both Arabs and Jews would come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

But I will denounce in no uncertain terms that Hamas is a barbaric entity that deserves to be completely annihilated. They may be fighting for what they believe in, but there is no place in a civilized world for such morally repugnant behavior.

Israel has every right to defend itself against this evil.

Here’s his daughter and the video of her being taken prisoner.

Iran is undoubtedly behind the attacks; even Hamas has claimed Iran’s support for their war against Israel. We should cut off funding for Iran, for Palestinians, for any terrorist state or entity of any kind.

But what do our current leaders do? Fund Iran as they chant, “Death to America!”

Insanity.

Here in the states, we’re beginning to see the benefits of all that “diversity” we’ve been importing.

Just wait until our “diverse” citizens and guests start attacking those who support Israel. It’s going to happen.

While the U.S. is moving a carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean, we can hardly afford to enter a third World War. But it’s beginning to look a little dicey.

Pray for peace.

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Daily Broadside | America is an “Indispensable” Friend of Israel

Daily Verse | Philemon 20
I do wish, brother, that I may have some benefit from you in the Lord; refresh my heart in Christ.

Tuesday’s Reading: Hebrews 1-2

It’s Tuesday and less than three weeks left in the year 2022. Only this many days, hours and minutes to Christmas! Have you gotten your Christmas shopping done?

Bari Weiss, who resigned from The New York Times in July 2020 after becoming “the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views,” recently started a new media company called, The Free Press (thefp.com). I found it because I had subscribed to her newsletter, “Common Sense,” whose readership grew to a quarter-million, and a few days ago she announced that the newsletter now has a permanent home as The Free Press.

I haven’t become a paid subscriber, yet, but am thinking this may be a new source of independent reporting that seeks to include a variety of viewpoints. Here’s how they describe the company:

The Free Press is a media company built on the ideals that were once the bedrock of great American journalism: honesty, doggedness, and fierce independence. We publish investigative stories and provocative commentary about the world as it actually is—with the quality once expected from the legacy press, but with the fearlessness of the new.

We place a special emphasis on subjects and stories that others ignore or misrepresent. We always aim to highlight multiple perspectives on complicated subjects. And we don’t allow ideology to stand in the way of searching for the truth.

Still to be seen, I think, but I like the premise.

I was impressed with an interview Weiss did with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s just been reelected to a third term. Bibi, as he’s called, had some interesting things to say about the United States in his comments, and I wanted to call those out and share them with you (emphases mine).

I believe in democracy, not only within my own party, but also in the public. My views of democracy are informed by the basic texts of American democracy. I read the Federalist Papers, all 80 of them. I’m a Hamiltonian in many ways, but also a Madisonian. And these two basically set the ground rules. John Locke and Montesquieu are my heroes because I think there have to be checks and balances. 

You do not have a proper democracy by having self-chosen moral people who are above the public, above national interests. That’s ridiculous. If you want to look at an instance in history where you had exceptional people who were above the plebeians, look at the founding fathers of the United States. Geniuses, one after the other. But if you told them the way you’re going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that’s ridiculous. But that’s a view of democracy that is penetrating Western democracies and is very, very dangerous. It’s not going to sustain them. I’m the opposite of a strongman. I believe in democracy, obviously, in the balance of between the three branches of government but also in a basic bill of rights. You can have a majority, but you can’t decapitate all redheaded people, and neither can the courts say that you can decapitate all redheaded people. There has to be a balance between the three branches of government. That balance has been in many ways impaired in Israel by the rise of unchecked judicial power. Correcting it is not destroying democracy, it’s protecting it.

I suspected but had not heard Bibi give credit to America’s Founding Fathers as his mentors in democracy. (He speaks of democracy, of course, but a reminder that we are a not a pure democracy but a representative republic.) And he puts his finger on exactly what is going wrong in the U.S. right now: an elite cabal of political, educational, business and media leaders who are determining what we can and cannot see, hear or say.

I have to say that I think America is an indispensable ally. I think America, the rise of America, made all the difference in Jewish history—it’s not merely the rise of Israel in the first half of the 20th century. America became the leader of the world, and it protected liberty, protected democracy, and protected human rights. It would be a tragedy if the United States abandons its role and stops believing in its mission to be the beacon of liberty and the world…

…With the United States in particular, there is a deep bond. It’s really a deep bond. It’s not just something I’m saying or just a figure of speech. There is a deep bond. We are the original Jerusalem. Americans are the new Jerusalem, the new promised land, and we’re the original promised land. There’s a deep bond there, and the same is true to a lesser extent with other Western democracies, however critical I am occasionally of their vacillating positions. I think that common bond is important.

I think it’s true that there has developed a deep bond between Israel and America, but it also seems to be true that the Left (again) is working overtime to weaken that bond. (It actually doesn’t matter what it is in our history; if it was part of American life under democracy, the progressive bullies want to destroy it.)

I like Netanyahu and think he’s the right leader for Israel, and I’m pleased he has such a positive view of the United States. I’m a supporter of Israel and reject out of hand the efforts to demonize the Israelis.

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Daily Broadside | More Violence Between Palestinians and Jews, This Time in New York

Daily Verse | Esther 2:12
Before a girl’s turn came to go into King Xerxes, she had to complete twelve months of beauty treatments prescribed for the women, six months with oil of myrrh and six with perfumes and cosmetics.

Happy Friday my friends. Are we still allowed to say “Black Swan event”?

I posted yesterday on the hostilities in LA the other night, as a pro-Palestinian gang hunted for Jews to beat up. Turns out that open confrontation on the streets of a major city is also happening clear across the country in New York City. There are a number of videos here documenting the incidents, and I embed a couple of them below just to give you a flavor of what’s going on.

The first is of a rather large firework that is thrown at Jews in Manhattan by, as they say, “Palestinian protestors.”

Surely that has to be illegal, doesn’t it? I didn’t find any mention of charges being filed against anyone.

Over in Times Square, pro-Palestinian marchers and Jewish demonstrators clashed in counter-demonstrations.

The open hostility—the hatred, if we’re being honest—really bothers me. It’s been a little challenging for me to put my finger on why, but here’s a few thoughts.

First, I feel like I’m watching something that could easily have been filmed on the streets of Jerusalem. As I’ve mentioned, I’ve been there a few times, and I’ve seen the uneasy tensions between the Jews and the Palestinians in the streets. I never saw it devolve into fisticuffs, but the impression I got was that a fight was always just under the surface.

Second, this isn’t an “American” problem, like the “Hatfields and the McCoys” are an American problem. These people, whoever they are, have just lifted and shifted their national identities from the Middle East to Middle America. The Hatfields and the McCoys were Americans; these people aren’t “Americans” in the true sense of the word, but foreigners who have brought their tribal feuds to the streets of our nation.

It’s clear that they identify first as Jews and as Palestinians; otherwise, why the flags for each people? This also underscores the problem of non-assimilation, as each group rages against the other over ancient hatreds and land that lies 6,000 miles away from here.

Politically, I unequivocally support Israel’s right to not only exist, but to defend itself from any and all enemies and acts of war. When the Palestinians get violent and begin firing missiles indiscriminately into civilian areas of Israel, they have not only the right, but the duty to counter with overwhelming force to neutralize the threat.

This is true for any nation, but especially a nation that was set up by legal authorities in the wake of World War II to be a place of safety and security for one of the most brutalized people groups in all of history.

Finally, both the Palestinians and the Jews need to come to Jesus Christ. That’s where unity will ultimately be found. Both sides in this conflict need our prayers, including the innocent men, women and children who are victims of the violence.

I just wish that they left their existential struggle overseas, where it belongs.

Have a good weekend.

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Daily Broadside | War With Israel Isn’t the “Normal” Anyone Wanted

Daily Verse | Nehemiah 2:17
Then I said to them, “You see the trouble we are in: Jerusalem lies in ruins, and its gates have been burned with fire. Come let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, and we will no longer be in disgrace.”

Welcome to this edition of the Monday Daily Broadside. I sometimes get a headache trying to open a bottle of aspirin.

When Resident Biden was “running” for president by holing up in his basement and telling African-Americans they weren’t black if they didn’t vote for him (a totally not racist thing for a white man to say), he also promised to return us to “normal.” In this completely honest and unbiased objective report in the completely honest and unbiased San Francisco Chronicle, senior political writer Joe Garofoli wrote (back in January),

Many Americans will exhale at 9 a.m Wednesday, relieved to have survived the Donald Trump presidency. Four years of chaos and lies and the presidential encouragement of America’s most malevolent elements will end when Joe Biden takes the oath of office.

But is America ready for what Biden promised: a return to normalcy?

Ignoring the fact that the other half of the country can say that about the Obama years and will be relieved when this current illegitimate farce of an administration is gone, I’ve got good news for you, Joe: your man in the White House has returned us to normal, and nowhere is that more evident than in the Middle East.

The current conflict started when Hamas launched rocket attacks in retaliation for restrictions imposed by Israeli police near al-Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s third holiest site, in East Jerusalem. There was also action against Palestinians protesting home evictions due to a court case in Israel.

The Israelis and the Palestinians have been going at it since 1948 when the British Mandate officially terminated and the Jewish Agency, led by David Ben-Gurion, proclaimed the creation of the State of Israel. The next day, U.S. president Harry S. Truman recognized the fledgling nation, which was immediately attacked by Egypt, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq as the British withdrew.

Miraculously, Israel defeated an overwhelming force against all odds and captured even more land.

Over the last 50 years their Arab neighbors have tried to defeat them militarily in conflicts like the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973). We’ve also watched as the Palestinians have launched intifadas, suicide bombers and missiles at Israel, supported by the terrorist state of Iran.

The Arab states and the Palestinian’s goal is to push the Jews into the sea. I know this for a fact not only because it’s been said so often, but because I’ve been to Israel a few times and I’ve spoken with men in the Arab quarter of Jerusalem. One older Palestinian man once told me they didn’t want “part of the land”; they wanted the whole thing, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. (He also told me that CNN sucked. We agreed on that.)

There have been promises of peace over the last many decades, too. The peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979; the Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (1993, 1995); the peace treaty between Israel and Jordan (1994). The peace treaties have held with Egypt and Jordan. Agreements with the Palestinians have not.

When President Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, he was beginning to isolate the Palestinians. The Arab states in the region had bigger fish to fry with a belligerent Iran pursuing nuclear weapons. The Palestinians had become an irritant, as a friend said, “never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity” when it came to peace. On the other hand, Trump was squeezing Iran with a suffocating regime of sanctions and being a strong and unshakeable ally to Israel. The Arabs saw the wisdom in being allies with Israel with the threat of Iran being so close.

But because of Trump’s Mean Tweets and a stolen election, we’ve now got an escalating conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians — just like normal! — because the players in the Middle East know weakness when they see it. Slow Joe Biden is no match for the diplomatic strength that Trump had and the Biden administration is riddled with anti-Semitic sentiment, just like our Congress is.

Thanks Joe!

Any loss of life, on either side, is tragic, as is the economic devastation that war brings. But for the record, Hamas started the conflict and has fired more than 2,200 missiles indiscriminately into Israel (about 350 landed in Gaza, killing their own people; about 1,000 were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defense system). Israel has fired about 930 rockets back with pinpoint strikes at terrorist infrastructure.

It’s not that this couldn’t have happened if Trump were still in the White House, but what we learn from this is that we need a firm hand guiding the United States and its relationship with Israel, and we don’t have one. This isn’t the “normal” anyone wanted.

Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.