BIDEN DOES JEDDAH

BIDEN DOES JEDDAH

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN ARAB ISRAEL CONFLICT, BIDEN FOREIGN POLICY, SAUDI ARABIA

President Biden offered a weak and tired set of remarks following his “meetings in Saudi Arabia,” as the White House transcript puts it. Biden talked up his supposed accomplishments. “First, as you saw this morning,” he said, “the Saudis will open their airspace to all civilian carriers. That is a big deal. A big deal.”

I’ll give him that one, but is it a big deal? Jacob Magid reports for Times of Israel: “Contradicting Biden, Saudis deny opening of airspace is step toward ties with Israel.” However, the Saudis have their own interest in talking it down while Biden talks it up.

Skipping over number 2, which is beyond my ken, we have these other big deals for those of us struggling to survive the Biden era:

[W]e agreed to work together to deepen and extend the Yemen ceasefire. And you know there’s been — there’s carnage been in Yemen of late. And it’s been in place more than three months, resulting in the most peaceful period in Yemen in seven years.

We further agreed to pursue a diplomatic process to achieve a wider settlement in Yemen. The Saudi — and Saudi leadership also committed to continue to facilitate the delivery of food and humanitarian goods to civilians. In this context, we discussed Saudi Arabia’s security needs to defend the Kingdom, given very real threats from Iran and Iran’s proxies.

Fourth, we concluded several new arrangements to better position our nations for the coming decades. Saudi Arabia will invest in new U.S.-led technology to develop and secure reliable 5G and 6G networks, both here and in the future, in developing countries to coordinate with the Partnership for Global Initiative — the Global Infrastructure and Investment, which I put together at the G7. This new technology solution for 5G, called Open RAN, will outcompete other platforms, including from China.

Saudi Arabia will also partner with us on a far-reaching clean energy initiative focused on green hydrogen, solar, carbon capture, nuclear, and other projects to accel- — to accelerate the world’s clean energy transition and to help the U.S. clean energy industry set global standards.

Yes, we can count on the Saudis to ally with the American climatistas to “transition” themselves out of business. More:

And fifth, we had a good — we had a good discussion on ensuring global energy security and adequate oil supplies to support global economic growth. And that will begin shortly. And I’m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America, which I expect to happen. The Saudis share that urgency, and based on our discussions today, I expect we’ll see further steps in the coming weeks.

It reads like Biden’s speechwriters are struggling to make something out of not much and losing. And can we get a fact-check on “I’m doing all I can to increase the supply for the United States of America”? I assess that to be false and give him four Obamas on that one.

Finally, Biden asserted: “With respect to the murder of Khashoggi, I raised it at the top of the meeting, making it clear what I thought of it at the time and what I think of it now. And it was exactly — I was straightforward and direct in discussing it. I made my view crystal clear.” The Saudis dispute that one. Biden disputes the Saudis. Read about it here.

Biden also talked this up:

Tomorrow, with nine leaders from around the region, we’ll have more. One thing we will discuss is the multibillion-dollar commitment of the GCC to invest in the Partnership for Global Infrastructure Investment, which I announced at the G7 last month, to help address infrastructure needs of low- and middle-income countries that don’t have the wherewithal to borrow the funds to meet the needs of their people.

And after years of failed efforts, we have now finalized an agreement to connect Iraq’s electric grid to the GCC grids through Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and deepening Iraq’s integration into the region and reducing its dependence on Iran. And it was pointed out to me that remi- — I was reminded by staff at the time, at the meeting, that I tried to do that back when I was — in the early days of my vice presidency. Finally, it’s done — being done.

Biden is really struggling for material, among other things. Tony Badran’s Tablet column prevising Biden’s trip seems to me a more realistic assessment than Biden’s Jeddah jabber .

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2022/07/biden-does-jeddah.php

NYT: Who we gonna believe, the Saudis or the serial fabulist?

NYT: Who we gonna believe, the Saudis or the serial fabulist?

ED MORRISSEY 

Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace via AP

Decisions, decisions. Did Joe Biden really stare down Mohammed bin Salman over the Saudi-regime-ordered assassination of Jamal Khashoggi? Or is this yet another instance of Biden’s penchant for self-promoting fabulism?

Oh, let’s not always see the same hands. It’s not just conservative critics wondering which narrative to buy, though, after conflicting accounts of the Biden-MBS meeting emerged over the weekend. The New York Times’ Peter Baker recalls a few similar Biden tall tales over the years and wonders as well, albeit very politely:

Mr. Biden is by nature a storyteller with a penchant for embellishment.

This is a nice way of saying that “Mr. Biden is by nature twenty pounds of manure in a ten-pound bag.” In 1987, the same New York Times had another description of Biden’s “storyteller” penchant: plagiarism. Biden stole stories and speeches from Neil Kinnock, including Kinnock’s descriptions of his childhood, which Biden adopted as descriptions of his own without crediting Kinnock. That, and Biden’s “storytelling” about his education history that went way beyond a “penchant for embellishment,” forced Biden to withdraw from the 1988 presidential primary.

Baker leaves out these “embellishments” but includes enough instances tailored narrowly to this particular “penchant” of Biden to connect the dots:

He has often told the story of meeting President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in 2011 as vice president and telling him, “I’m looking into your eyes, and I don’t think you have a soul.” Others present at the time had no memory of that specific exchange.

Mr. Biden has similarly described an unvarnished confrontation in 1993 with Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian nationalist leader who unleashed an ethnic war in the Balkans. “I think you’re a damn war criminal and you should be tried as one,” Mr. Biden, then a senator, related having told Mr. Milosevic, according to a 2007 memoir, “Promises to Keep.” Some other people in the room later said they did not recall that line.

Mr. Biden likes presenting himself as standing up to dictators and crooked figures. Another favorite story stemmed from a meeting with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan in 2008, when the Afghan leader denied that his government was awash in corruption. Mr. Biden said he grew so irritated that he threw down his napkin, declared, “This dinner is over,” and stormed out.

Often, others in the room for such sessions say that some version of what Mr. Biden has described did take place, only not with quite as much camera-ready theatricality. During his presidential campaign, for instance, he told a moving story about honoring a war hero that fact checkers at The Post later concluded conflated elements of three actual events into a version that did not happen.

In other words, this is yet another version of the Super Joe Filmstrip. He just clips out the villain in one frame and plugs the next one into the same script.

It’s not surprising to see a serial fabulist such as Biden, who’s literally done this for decades on the national stage, try to sell a barely-repackaged Super Joe narrative again. It is surprising that the national media has continued to swallow it for as long as they have, and that Barack Obama got suckered by it in 2008. Therefore, it shouldn’t be surprising to see the media and especially the NYT start to question it now, but it happens so little that it’s still noteworthy when it happens.

And of course, all of this wouldn’t have mattered in the least if Biden hadn’t suckered the media into thinking that Donald Trump’s realpolitik approach to Saudi Arabia was some sort of betrayal. Biden wanted to exploit media outrage over the murder of Khashoggi and use his Super Joe Filmstrip persona to assume the mantle of moral leadership. That in itself is risible given Biden’s constant self-inflating lies, but so was the idea that Biden could turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah state” while at the same time negotiating with terror-sponsoring Iran. That idiotic policy was doomed to failure, and yet its obvious incompetence and incoherence drew nary a comment from the media enthralled by the Super Joe narrative.

It’s all well and good to figure out 35 years late that Biden is a lying sack of s***. It’s another to pose this “whose version is true” poser as the question that arises out of Biden’s meeting with the Saudis, rather than the sheer idiocy of the policy Biden pursued in making this necessary in the first place, even apart from the energy policy choices that also made Biden beg for more production.

https://hotair.com/ed-morrissey/2022/07/18/nyt-who-we-gonna-believe-the-saudis-or-the-serial-fabulist-n483426

Biden's Rabid Trump Reversal-Fever Is Bad for America

Biden's Rabid Trump Reversal-Fever Is Bad for America

BY STEPHEN KRUISER 

 

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Top O’ the Briefing

Happy Tuesday, dear Kruiser Morning Briefing friends. There are only so many things that need to be flannel.

Do we really want to get along? I find myself wondering that a lot these days. In more normal times, finding ways to be less contentious and better to each other would be a noble goal. With Congress almost evenly divided some bipartisanship might be helpful.

We hear a lot about how divided we are as a nation. Worst time ever, and whatnot. I don’t know, from everything I’ve read, the politics in America during the Civil War seem to have been pretty heated. There was a fair amount of tension here in the late 1960s too. We’re sniping a lot at each other right now, but are we really at an all-time low?

I’m usually a big fan of political battles, especially now that the Democrats have moved to the left of Cuba. It would be nice if we could get along better but it’s just too much work now that common ground has practically disappeared into the ether.

Our alleged president is most certainly not the centrist uniter we were promised during the campaign. We’ve now been treated to almost six months of a governing philosophy that is driven by nothing but a desire to undo everything President Trump did.

Here’s the thing though: Trump did a lot of good things. Republicans still want what’s best for America, Democrats want what’s best for Democrats.

At the beginning of the month, I wrote a column about an Arizona sheriff lamenting the consequences of Biden signing an executive order ending the construction of the border wall almost immediately after he was sworn in. The overwhelming urge of Biden and his handlers to unravel Trump’s legacy began having unpleasant domestic consequences right away.

Do they care?

Nah.

Now the Biden administration’s hatred for all things Trump is trying to sweep international peace under the rug.

Matt has the story:

Imagine being so anti-Trump that you would throw even historic peace agreements between Israel and neighboring Arab nations down the memory hole just because President Donald Trump brokered those deals.

Well, according to a report from the Washington Free Beacon, that’s exactly what’s happening. According to the report, based on emails reviewed by The Washington Free Beacon, Biden’s State Department is discouraging employees from “referring to the historic peace agreements signed by Israel and its Arab neighbors by its official name, the Abraham Accords.” The name “Abraham Accords” has also “been erased from a wide array of official State Department communications as the new administration presses officials to refer to the Trump-era deals as ‘normalization agreements.’”

A search of the State Department website still contains references to “Abraham Accords.”

It’s no secret that the Democrats were broken by their hatred for Trump. It’s a real sickness, though, if they need to pretend that peace in a historically war-torn region isn’t a good thing. Objectively, the Abraham Accords are something to be celebrated. Being so consumed by partisan bile that they can’t acknowledge them is not a good look for Biden or the Democrats. Then again, as has been noted by many people, Joe Biden has spent almost 50 years on the national stage being on the wrong side of foreign policy issues.

Barack Obama left quite a foreign policy mess to clean up when his eight years in office were over. At this pace, Biden could do as much damage in a year as Obama did in two terms.

We get it, Dems, you loathe Trump and still haven’t managed to emotionally break up with him. Maybe try to take a breath and be honest with yourselves about the policies and achievements of his that worked out well for you too.

This lashing-out-like-a toddler- in-mid-tantrum way of governing is getting old.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2021/06/08/the-morning-briefing-bidens-rabid-trump-reversal-fever-is-bad-for-america-n1452695

FOR THE CHILDREN, TIMES STYLE

FOR THE CHILDREN, TIMES STYLE

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN HAMAS, ISRAEL, MEDIA

I’m guessing you probably missed the May 26 New York Times page-one feature on children killed in the Gaza war “They were only children.” As Robert Satloff writes, the Times spread displayed thumbnail photos
of “69 youths under 18 years old – 67 Palestinians and two Israelis, one Arab and one Jewish – killed in the 11 days of conflict between Israel and Gaza-based Palestinian terrorist groups Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).”

Satloff’s long deconstruction of the Times feature is posted at the Times of Israel under the heading “What’s wrong with the NY Times’ report on children’s deaths? So much.” Subhead: “It’s a one-sided article that obscured whether Hamas was an information source, which deaths were caused by ‘friendly fire,’ and why Israel used force at all.”

Satloff’s post presents a classic case study in media manipulation and deception. Skip the testimonial to Abe Foxman with which Satloff opens and proceed directly to Doing journalism in Gaza and what follows.

Twitchy picks up the Twitter feed of Professor Gerald Steinberg commenting further on the Times feature. Professor Steinberg is the founder and president of NGO Monitor. The Twitchy post collecting his tweets on the Times feature is “‘Israel demonization plan?’ Prof takes NYT APART for pushing Palestinian propaganda ON THEIR FRONT PAGE with ZERO due diligence or fact-checking.”

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/06/for-the-children-times-style.php

CCP OR DEMOCRATIC PARTY LINE? WHO CAN TELL?

CCP OR DEMOCRATIC PARTY LINE? WHO CAN TELL?

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ARAB ISRAEL CONFLICT, DEMOCRATS

On a number of issues, it is getting hard to tell the difference between the Chinese Communist Party line and the Democratic Party line. As, for example, the current conflict in the Middle East and America’s historic support for Israel.

The Jerusalem Post quotes a Chinese government English-language outlet:

Israel is a US military proxy that enjoys US support because of the influence of wealthy Jews, Chinese government-affiliated English-language news channel CGTN said Tuesday in a video posted online.

In a video titled “Why does the US act as a diplomatic shield for Israel?” presenter Zheng Junfeng floated a version of the theory, found in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic tracts, that Jews control government policies by nefarious means.
***
“Some people believe that US pro-Israel policy is traceable to the influence of wealthy Jews in the US and the Jewish lobby on US foreign-policy-makers,” Zheng said.

The CGTN presenter said there are “over five million Jewish people in the US,” and that 18 of the top 40 people on the Forbes World’s Billionaires List are Jewish. [Ed.: That isn’t true, actually, but who’s counting?]

In other words, as Ilhan Omar put it so memorably, it’s all about the Benjamins baby. The CCP is fully in tune with the Squad. And as it happens, Ilhan Omar is currently busy defending the Chinese Communists on Twitter, as well as standing up for Hamas.

Is Omar just a radical backbencher with little influence in her party? Unfortunately, no. AIPAC published this Facebook ad that is mildly critical of her:

The ad is correct; Omar did indeed call Israel’s effort to defend itself against rocket attacks an “act of terrorism.” But these days, being right is of limited value. The wrath of the Democratic Party came down on AIPAC’s head. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said:

I don’t agree with Congresswoman Omar’s comments, but it’s very disappointing to see [AIPAC’s] deeply cynical and inflammatory ads twisting her words.

“Twisting” by accurately quoting.

As for Joe Biden, Caroline Glick weighs him in the balance and finds him wanting. Her whole piece is worth reading.

From the moment Hamas launched its current offensive against Israel, radical Democrat lawmakers in Congress have escalated their anti-Israel rhetoric and actions to unprecedented levels. On Monday, Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Cori Bush and others adopted rank anti-Semitic language against Israel referring to Israel as an “Apartheid” state and insisting that Israel is not a democracy because “Apartheid states aren’t democracies.” The State Department itself has determined that accusing Israel of being an “Apartheid” state is an anti-Semitic act.

No “responsible adult,” not Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and definitely not Biden, called them out for their bigoted behavior.
***
If that weren’t bad enough, Monday, Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Gregory Meeks announced his intention to place a hold on a routine sale of $735 million worth of precision guided missiles to Israel that Biden approved. Meeks was acting under pressure from the likes of Omar, Cortez, Tlaib and Betty McCollum. … His stunning interference in a routine arms sale that enjoys the support of a wide majority of members of Congress indicates that the radical wing of the Democratic Party controls the party’s discourse on Israel today.

That is, unfortunately, true.

Biden himself underlined this point on Tuesday. As Tlaib was expanding her anti-Semitic assaults on Israel, Biden praised her in a speech in Detroit. He referred to the woman who has made rejecting Israel’s right to exist her signature issue as a “fighter.” Biden said to Tlaib, “I want to say that I admire your intellect, I admire your passion and I admire your concern for so many people.”

To coin a phrase, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing in today’s Democratic Party. It is blowing in step with the Chinese Communist Party and Hamas.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/05/ccp-or-democratic-party-line-who-can-tell.php

Biden Snatched War From the Jaws of Israel Peace Deals. Pence Explains How He Did It

Biden Snatched War From the Jaws of Israel Peace Deals. Pence Explains How He Did It

BY TYLER O'NEIL 

AP Photo/Evan Vucci

A new era of peace was dawning in the Middle East with President Donald Trump in office. Last year, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Muslim-majority Kosovo, Sudan, and Morocco formally acknowledged the state of Israel, and Saudi Arabia was well on the way. Yet, barely four months into President Joe Biden’s term, thousands of Hamas rockets have targeted Israel, killing ten Israelis and likely killing Palestinians, as well. Israel has responded with targeted strikes taking out key terrorist leaders, and Hamas has claimed that these attacks have killed at least 201 Palestinians.

What happened? How did the Middle East go from historic peace deals to the brink of war? Former Vice President Mike Pence provided a salient answer in a National Review op-ed on Monday.

Pence argued that the violence between Israel and Palestine is “a direct result of the weakness shown by the Biden administration from its first day in office.”

Recommended: Israel Kills Islamic Jihad Leader Behind Missile Attacks

Pence argued that Biden and congressional Democrats enabled the recent Israeli conflict by abandoning unambiguous support for Israel, emboldening America’s enemies, and turning their backs on Trump’s legacy of peace in the Middle East.

“Under the Trump-Pence administration, we made it crystal clear to the world that America stands with Israel,” Pence explained. “We withdrew from the dangerous Iran nuclear deal brokered by the Obama-Biden administration, which put the world’s leading state sponsor of terror on the path to nuclear weapons while sending pallets of cash to the mullahs in Iran. We acknowledged Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. And President Trump kept the promise made by countless Republican and Democrat politicians by actually following through in moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, the capital of the state of Israel.”

The former Vice President noted that Democrats and foreign-policy “experts” attacked the Trump administration’s approach and warned that it would lead to war against Israel. Instead, the opposite happened.

Pence touted the historic Abraham Accords, historic peace agreements between Israel and Arab-Muslim countries, as “the most significant breakthrough for peace in decades.”

The Trump administration achieved this success because of America’s support for Israel, Pence argued. “Other nations knew where America stood with absolute certainty. They knew America would respond forcefully if our citizens or allies were threatened. As a result, they responded rationally by pursuing peace and harmony,” he wrote.

Yet Biden rejected this “peace through strength” approach, the former vice president charged. Instead, Biden “has invited violence through weakness.”

“President Biden has emboldened anti-Semitic terrorist groups such as Hamas by shunning Israeli leaders and restoring more than $200 million in aid to the Palestinians that had been canceled by the Trump-Pence administration. He unilaterally took the Iranian-backed Houthis off the list of designated terrorist organizations. And worst of all, he has announced his intention to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, destabilizing the entire region,” Pence noted.

While Biden has supported Israel’s right to defend itself in the current conflict, Pence noted that the Democratic president’s support for Israel has been extremely tepid.

Pence argued that “every tepid statement uttered by the Biden-Harris administration is built on a false equivalency between Israel and Hamas. One is a sovereign nation with a legitimate government, and a trusted ally. The other is an internationally recognized terrorist organization that has fired more than 3,000 rockets at Jewish families and businesses in the past week.”

The former vice president drew a line in the sand: “There is no moral equivalency between Israel and the terrorist group Hamas. President Biden and every American leader should uphold Israel’s right to self-defense and condemn the terrorists of Hamas — as well as their supporters and apologists — in the strongest possible terms.”

Pence also faulted Biden for bringing back the weak approach of the Obama administration. “President Obama’s thin ‘red line’ in Syria, his decision to ‘lead from behind’ in Libya, and his slipshod withdrawal from Iraq each created power vacuums that were quickly filled by America’s enemies,” Pence noted. “Now Biden is repeating those grave errors by creating a power vacuum of his own.”

“He has replaced strength with weakness, moral clarity with confusion, and loyalty with betrayal. Biden’s void, too, is being filled by America’s enemies — and Israelis are paying the price in blood,” Pence charged.

Recommended: Yet Another Muslim Country Joins Abraham Accords With Israel

During the 2020 election, PJ Media and other outlets warned that Joe Biden would likely derail Trump’s historic accomplishments toward peace in the Middle East.

As at America’s southern border, Biden abandoned the successful policies of the Trump administration, and the results have been both swift and disastrous.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/05/18/mike-pence-explains-how-biden-brought-israel-from-historic-peace-deals-to-the-brink-of-war-n1447787?utm_source=pjmedia&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=nl_pm&newsletterad=&bcid=333548a2571394d78f5984884e55069e&recip=28668535

ASSOCIATED PRESS, HAMAS PROPAGANDISTS

ASSOCIATED PRESS, HAMAS PROPAGANDISTS

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN HAMAS, ISRAEL, MEDIA, TERRORISM

I have been groping toward a condemnation of the Associated Press as a Hamas collaborator in my posts on the bombing of the Gaza office tower in which it was holed up with Hamas military intelligence, according to Israeli officials. The AP has called for an independent investigation of the bombing. I have called for an independent investigation of the AP.

The AP’s collaboration with Palestinian terrorists is an old story. I introduce as evidence my own 2008 Weekly Standard column “He didn’t give at the office.” AP’s service in the terrorist cause is laughably obvious.

From inside the AP, we have former AP correspondent and editor Matti Friedman’s Atlantic essay first-hand testimony to the same effect. Friedman added to the record in related Tablet essays here and here. Friedman’s testimony is devastating.

National Review’s David Harsanyi hasn’t quite obviated the need for an independent investigation of AP’s collaboration with Hamas, but he makes a valuable contribution in his NR column “Associated Press, Hamas propagandists.” Among other things, Harsanyi quotes AP CEO Gary Pruitt asserting that they “had no indication Hamas was in the building or active in the building” and “[t]his is something we actively check to the best of our ability. We would never knowingly put our journalists at risk.” Harsanyi comments:

This is nonsense. Pruitt knowingly puts journalists at risk every day he sends them to places such as Gaza, where the ruling regime wages war behind civilians it uses as shields. But how did Pruitt “actively” check? Did he ask Hamas? Did he call the landlord? Did he ring everyone’s bell? And how could we trust that a media outlet that is unable to track down a single Hamas militant shooting Qassam rockets — from dense civilian areas right near its offices — would be able to figure out who was in their building, anyway?

Harsanyi omits to raise any question why AP journalists in Gaza are not “at risk” from Hamas. It is a terrorist organization with a genocidal objective. Hamas has no First Amendment in its charter. The question answers itself. The AP’s Gaza journalists report nothing that might displease Hamas. That’s why they aren’t at risk from Hamas.

In today’s “explainer” on possible “war crimes in Gaza,” the AP describes Hamas as “a grassroots movement.” The “explainer” explains:

As a grassroots movement, Hamas is deeply embedded in Palestinian society, with a political operation and charities separate from its secretive armed wing. While Israel and Western countries view Hamas as a terrorist organization, it is also Gaza’s de facto government, employing tens of thousands of people as civil servants and police. So just being connected to Hamas doesn’t mean someone is a combatant, and there are many in Gaza who oppose the group — and all are equally exposed with nowhere to run.

The “explainer” goes this far: “The firing of hundreds of imprecise rockets into Israel by Hamas and other Palestinian groups is fairly clear-cut [as a possible war crime].” Love that “fairly.”

But it’s all so complicated: “Who’s right? It’s hard to say, especially in the fog of battle.” The words “terrorist” and “terrorism” do not appear in the AP “explainer,” which devotes as much space to the destruction of the office tower as it does to Hamas’s rockets. With “explanation” like this, who needs obfuscation?

The questions that Harsanyi poses are legitimate and important. They should be answered in any fair-minded investigation. In truth, however, we have sufficient evidence to concur in the judgment rendered in the headline on Harsanyi’s column.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/05/associated-press-hamas-propagandists.php

A picture shows the explosion after an Israeli strike targeted a building in Gaza City on May 14, 2021. (Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)

VIEWPOINTS

This Time Israel Should Finish Off Hamas

Roger L. Simon

Commentary

Sometimes when psychopaths, religious and otherwise—people whose charter urges the faithful to “kill all Jews,” even Jewish trees, whatever that is or could be—rain missiles on your country again and again, try to destroy you any way they can, dig tunnels under your property, loft flaming balloons over your schools and farms, fly drones toward your airports and even nuclear installations, it’s time to say “enough!”

Or, in the local parlance, “dayenu.”

It is time to put paid once and for all to the evil terror organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad that have been attacking the heartland of Israel virtually ever since Israel freely gave Gaza to the Palestinians, first to the Palestinian Authority and then to Hamas after they murdered the PA officials in a mini-civil war and took over the territory as a fanatical dictatorship.

Every few years Hamas (and their now-billionaire leadership) seizes on something, some issue on the Temple Mount, a neighborhood where, in their view, too many Jews are moving in, and start a missile barrage, aiming to hit as many innocent civilians as possible and ignite the “Arab street.”

The current barrage, thanks largely to Iran, is the biggest ever, with modern weapons that can reach the entire Jewish state with significant payloads.

Several times the Israel Defense Force has been constrained to enter Gaza to put a stop to these barrages.

That appears to be happening again now. At this writing the IDF seems on the edge of a ground incursion, if not actually over that edge.

Whatever the case—this time they should finish the job. Finally.

They shouldn’t listen to the United States or anybody.

It’s too bad that life in the region had been improving so dramatically for all—Arabs and Jews—while the dreaded orange-haired man was in office, and almost the moment Joe Biden replaced him, things went immediately South, like everything else. (Was Hamas waiting for this? Probably.)

But recent as that was, that was then and this is now. We can’t be nostalgic, tempting as it is. With those lethal Iranian missiles—why is Biden negotiating with the mullahs now of all times, by the way… don’t get me started on that—in the hands of Hamas, the facts on the ground are overwhelming and must be dealt with.

I didn’t always feel this way. I supported negotiation and a two-state solution, even when it became apparent, unless your head was buried so deep in the ground it was coming out the other side, that the Palestinians had no interest in one. I also wanted the Israeli army to show “restraint,” at least to the degree possible.

I was proud the IAF was the only air force to “knock on the roof” of their target, phoning the occupants to give them a half hour to vacate the premises and save themselves, before the building was destroyed.

No longer. I don’t care how polite the Israeli armed forces are now. I only care that they win.

I have been all over the land of Israel several times, over multiple years as it grew into an extraordinary country, and I hate to see it overwhelmed by rioters who act like an Arab-clone of Antifa. I have lost all patience. In fact patience, which is often one of the more laudable traits, no longer has any point in this instance.

Turn to social media and you can see why. The current situation has stimulated a veritable freak show of anti-Semitism on all platforms (particularly Tik Tok), almost without opposition. Everything, and I mean everything, is Israel’s fault. You might as well be in Russia during the pogroms or in Nazi Germany.

(You will, of course, hear that this is coming from the “extreme right,” but this is as big a lie as you can find. Almost all is coming from the left.)

Good, old fashioned Holocaust denial is back with a vengeance, reaching down, it appears from one Tik Tok video with umpteen likes and shares, to American eleven-year-olds, one of whom insisted to her family the gas chambers never existed—her teacher had told her so—and were made up to distract the public from the evil of slavery.

This should be news to Hamas, however, one of whose favorite English-language chants (for media consumption, no doubt) at demonstrations is “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas.”

You can’t have it both ways. Not that that matters to any of these people. The purpose of propaganda is to convey things that have little or no relationship to the truth, in fact are counter to it.

The Jerusalem Post has an article on what can be done about these myriad social media lies about Israel. The Post’s intent is laudable, but the reality is it’s unstoppable. Social media, we should all know by now, is the Devil’s spawn. Believe it at your, and the world’s, peril.

But there is something that can be done about Hamas.

Israel, and those of us who support her—even some liberal Jews, if they can be shaken from their morally narcissistic lethargy—can ignore public opinion for once, it’s not going to get better anyway, forget this “light unto the nations” business that no one could live up to in the first place, and go full bore on the terrorists of Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

No mercy, this time. Full Dresden—or enough Dresden for them to know for once you’re very serious, desperately wave the white flag and disarm the way Germany and Japan did.

If you don’t win a war, I mean really win it, as both the United States and Israel have seen to their detriments, you are going to fight it again and again and again.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/this-time-israel-should-finish-off-hamas_3815825.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-05-15&mktids=13d7e446fd722c726e49668d60dfd066&est=wayZ5uhvBtrg77cTTtIkcBM%2FBYRvwUxB%2BFF7%2FbiImp4VatrO%2FxavNY8iwpzG