Tag Archives: palestinians

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Daily Broadside | Don’t Be Fooled. The Palestinians Aren’t Innocent Bystanders

While Israel continues to pound Gaza into submission and to exterminate the Hamas terrorists, the world continues to condemn the “excessive” civilian casualties.

Macron criticises ‘excessive’ civilian casualties in call with Netanyahu

The president of France criticised the “excessive number” of civilian casualties in Israel’s military operation during a phone call with Benjamin Netanyahu.

While reiterating Israel’s “right to defend itself”, Emmanuel Macron told Mr Netanyahu there was an “absolute need to distinguish terrorists from the population and to provide effective protection for civilians”, according to a summary of the conversation.

Mr Macron also reiterated “the importance of establishing an immediate humanitarian truce leading to a ceasefire”.

It is not the first time the French president has made comments of this nature, having called on Israel to stop bombing Gaza earlier this month and saying he hoped the US and the UK would join him in appealing for a ceasefire.

How does one measure “excessive”? Does Macron have a number in mind? Is it purely mathematical? In our world of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity (DIE), is it a life for a life? Or does it include the goal of eradicating the existential terrorist threat presented by Hamas and its groupies in Gaza? When the terrorists build tunnels under hospitals and arranges to protect itself behind civilian human shields, does that somehow make those civilians off limits?

Besides, what do you say when 90 percent of the “civilians” support Hamas and its goals?

A new opinion poll released by the Ramallah-based Arab World for Research & Development (AWRAD) revealed that the vast majority of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip support jihadist terrorism, and that Palestinians overwhelmingly approve of the October 7 slaughter in southern Israel that was carried out by Hamas.

The Palestinians support the most ferocious jihadi terrorist groups while having nothing but contempt for the United States and even Arab countries that had previously attempted to assist them.

The Al Qassam Brigades, which is supported by 89% of respondents, is the militant arm of Hamas. They are known for carrying out suicide bombing missions and terrorist attacks on civilians.

Islamic Jihad (known in the West as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or PIJ), the second most popular group with 84% approval, is a terrorist organization that operates in Gaza and Lebanon. Their operations also include suicide attacks and indiscriminate violence against civilians.

The Al Aqsa Brigades, which, like the two aforementioned groups, is best known for its suicide attacks, receives an 80% approval rating. They operate mostly in the West Bank.

Hamas comes in fourth place with 76%. In all likelihood, Hamas is taking a back seat to the above groups because they are not committed to enough carnage against Israelis and the greater Western world.

As Jordan Schachtel goes on to note, this poll is not an aberration, but quite in line with other surveys that show a lifetime of radicalization and hatred of Israel and the United States.

If you think “these poor innocent civilians” you’re gravely mistaken. They fully support what Hamas stands for, even if Hamas isn’t as vicious in their terrorism as, say, the Al Qassam Brigades.

I fully recognize that, even if the majority of the civilian population supports Hamas and the atrocities of October 7, that does not qualify them as combatants, per se. However, it puts the lie to the terror apologists who cry about all the “innocent” women and children and grandparents. These are not pure as the driven snow, peace-loving people who just happen to live in a semi-state run by terrorists. They not only voted to put Hamas in power, they support their campaign of terror against the Israeli state.

Unfortunately, that puts them at risk as “collateral damage,” as the war statisticians put it. As General William Tecumseh Sherman put it, “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

To that I would add, Don’t want none? Don’t start none.

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Daily Broadside | The Situation in the Middle East is Volatile

Is the current eruption of violence and conflict in the Middle East a prelude to World War III?

The United States sees the prospect of a significant escalation in attacks on its troops in the Middle East and of Iran seeking to widen the war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group, the top U.S. diplomat and defense officials said on Sunday.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the United States did not want to see the conflict spread and that recent U.S. deployments to the region were designed to prevent this.

“This is not what we want, not what we’re looking for. We don’t want escalation,” Mr. Blinken told NBC News on Sunday. “We don’t want to see our forces or our personnel come under fire. But if that happens, we’re ready for it.”

Of course, no one can predict the future except God. But there are great risks with the coming fight in Gaza. Israel has already warned both Hezbollah and their state-sponsor Iran to stay out of it.

Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said the country had increased airstrikes across Gaza to hit targets that would reduce the risk to troops in the next stage of the war.

Fears of a widening war grew as Israeli warplanes struck targets across Gaza, two airports in Syria and a mosque in the occupied West Bank allegedly used by militants.

Israel has traded fire with Hezbollah militants since the war began, and tensions are soaring in the West Bank, where Israeli forces have battled militants in refugee camps and carried out two airstrikes in recent days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told troops in northern Israel that if Hezbollah launches a war, “it will make the mistake of its life. We will cripple it with a force it cannot even imagine, and the consequences for it and the Lebanese state will be devastating.”

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Israel repeated its calls for people to leave northern Gaza, including by dropping leaflets from the air. It estimated 700,000 have already fled. But hundreds of thousands remain. That would raise the risk of mass civilian casualties in any ground offensive.

Israeli military officials say Hamas’ infrastructure and underground tunnels are concentrated in Gaza City, in the north, and that the next stage of the offensive will include unprecedented force there. Israel says it wants to crush Hamas. Officials have also spoken of carving out a buffer zone to keep Palestinians from approaching the border, though they have given no details.

“Unprecedented force.” That means ratcheting up the power of the munitions and engaging in curb-stomping violence. Israel has also been attacking in Syria to prevent engagement there.

Syrian state media, meanwhile, reported that Israeli airstrikes hit the international airports in the capital, Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo, killing one person and putting the runways out of service.

Israel has carried out several strikes in Syria since the war began. Israel rarely acknowledges individual strikes, but says it acts to prevent Hezbollah and other militants from bringing in arms from Iran, which also supports Hamas.

And if Iran refuses to stand down?

Israel last night vowed to cut off ‘the head of the snake’ and launch a military attack against Iran if Tehran-backed terror group Hezbollah joins the war.

In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, Nir Barkat, Israel’s Minister of Economy, warned that Iran’s Ayatollahs will be ‘wiped off the face of the earth’ should Hezbollah, their proxy terror group in Lebanon, attack Israel.

His incendiary comments raise the grave spectre of a rapidly escalating regional conflict and come ahead of an expected Israeli ground invasion of the Gaza Strip to ‘annihilate’ Hamas.

How could Israel wipe Iran off the face of the earth?

Nuclear weapons, my friends.

Israel has a three-stage plan for their war on Hamas.

Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant laid out Israel’s war aims in three stages while speaking to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Friday.

The war against Hamas was unavoidable and a “war of no choice,” Gallant told the committee members.

He went on to give an overview of the army’s operations so far, before presenting his strategic aims for the war, which will be reached in three stages.

“We are in the first phase, in which a military campaign is taking place with [air]strikes and later with a [ground] maneuver with the purpose of destroying operatives and damaging infrastructure in order to defeat and destroy Hamas,” Gallant said.

“The second phase will be an intermediate phase, continuing the fighting at a lower intensity and eliminating pockets of resistance.”

“The third phase will be the creation of a new security regime in the Gaza Strip, the removal of Israel’s responsibility for daily life there, and the creation of a new security reality for the citizens of Israel and the residents of the surrounding area,” Gallant explained.

Big changes are coming both there, and potentially here in America. We’re already seeing a surge in Jewish citizens arming themselves.

Firearm instructors and Jewish security groups across the country say they have been flooded with new clientele since Hamas assaulted Israel on Oct. 7. And gun shop owners in Florida say they have seen more Jews purchase firearms in recent weeks than ever before. 

“We’ve definitely seen a tremendous increase in religious Jewish people, Orthodox people, purchasing firearms,” said David Kowalsky, who owns Florida Gun Store in the town of Hollywood, and also offers firearms training classes. “I’ve seen a surge in interest in individual training as well as group training.”

For those of you who cheered the ouster of a president who kept us out of any new wars because of his MeAn TwEeTs, congratulations on your choice. Your adults are back in charge, baby!

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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.