Silence On Hamas’ Twisted Use Of Hospital Will Ensure More Die

 The Federalist  Few of the facts seem to matter as international organizations and the press ignore documented evidence of al-Shifa Hospital’s military use.

"Countless journalists from outlets hostile to Israel have reported Hamas activity within, around, and below the hospital. The hospital also served as a weapons arsenal, a launching point for rockets targeting Israel, and the headquarters of Hamas leadership."

"For weeks, Hamas has denied it was using al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical complex, as a base of operations. Captured Hamas terrorists tell a different story. They admit to using hospitals for military purposes as well as hiding places for their superiors.

"Ahmed Kahlot, the arrested director of the Kamal Edwan hospital in Gaza, recently confessed to Israel’s domestic security agency, “Hamas has offices inside the hospitals. There are places for senior officials, they also brought a kidnapped soldier there. There is a designated place for investigations, internal security, and special security. They all have private phone lines inside the hospital.” Still, many in the media, and especially the United Nations and International Red Cross, supposedly designed to protect civilian lives, have yet to offer an unequivocal condemnation of the usage.

"When it comes to Hamas’ usage of al-Shifa and other commandeered hospitals, the international community has abdicated its responsibility. Indeed, the effective silence of the rest of the world only ensures that Hamas will continue to rely on civilian structures.

"Despite corporate news outlets, such as The New York Times, attempting to portray Hamas’ usage of hospitals as a contested matter, it is not. Hamas has a long and storied history of utilizing civilian facilities — such as hospitals, schools, and mosques — for its military and terrorism operations. As the military engagement continues, rife with accusatory misreporting, it is worth recalling the illustrative instance of al-Shifa Hospital in particular, a civilian medical complex that has served as the headquarters for Hamas’ operations.

"There is nothing novel about Hamas using al-Shifa as a base of operations. During the 2014 Gaza War, The Washington Post’s London bureau chief William Booth asserted that al-Shifa Hospital had become a “de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices.” Even Amnesty International, amid its virulent anti-Israel sentiment, managed to cobble together an accusation in 2014 that Hamas was torturing Palestinians in certain sections of the hospital." . . .

"In this current war, neither attacks on terror facilities masquerading as humanitarian facilities nor the number of casualties should detract from Israel’s lawful and just effort to liberate the region from this stain on humanity."

Leftists Scratch Their Heads As More Abandon Their Ranks

  Issues & Insights

"In any case, the reason the left is puzzled is because it’s so completely blind to the poisonous fruit of its own ideology, something that is finally dawning on common-sense Americans."

"The only thing more uplifting than watching several prominent liberals drift rightward is the cluelessness of those on the left as to why it’s happening.

"This drift is obvious enough, since it includes journalists once heralded by the left such as Matt Taibbi (who won a Young America’s Foundation award) and Glenn Greenwald, and Democratic politicians, including Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (whose speech at a Daily Caller award ceremony drew many loud cheers from the conservative audience), and Sen. John Fetterman (who recently declared that “I am not a progressive”).

"Celebrities such as Russell Brand, David Chappelle, and Bill Maher (who “has been riding an asphalt roller over the far left,” according to Townhall) are part of the shift, as are a handful of prominent business leaders, Elon Musk for instance.

"That’s to say nothing of the fact that surveys show once tried-and-true liberal constituencies – Hispanics, Asians, blacks, working class, and the young – are abandoning the Democratic party.

"It’s not as though these people are suddenly small-government conservatives. They just are waking up to the fact that the left is a cesspool of hatred and intolerance and are looking for the exits.

"All of which has caused a lot of confusion on the left. Case in point is a commentary by the New York Times’ Michelle Goldberg, who manages to come up with some theories to explain the realignment.

"One is that “celebrity defectors … lurched right after a cancellation or public humiliation.” (In other words, for petty reasons.)

"Another is that “the culture of the left is simply less welcoming,” and “people go where people accept them, or are nice to them, and away from people who are mean to them.” (An incredibly odd admission given that the left is supposedly all about “diversity” and “inclusion.”)" . . .

Hamas Retreats in Hostage Negotiations As IDF Seizes Key Intel Center

 HotAir

The very fact that Hamas fought to defend this position for weeks even while abandoning other parts of northern Gaza speaks to the value of this victory. The battle exposed an elaborate tunnel system connected to at least one mosque and one school, as well as the Rantisi Hospital.

"Well, well, well. Hamas had insisted in recent days that it would release no hostages until the IDF withdrew from Gaza, a position that left the Israeli government in firm position to reject. After more losses on the battlefield, however, Hamas has had second thoughts.

"Now they want a day of cease-fire for every hostage released, but without an IDF withdrawal. And the Israelis say …

Hamas negotiators have waived the condition of a final ceasefire and the withdrawal of IDF soldiers from Gaza in their ongoing talks with Israel for a second hostage release, according to a report by the Arab World News Agency (AWP), citing sources in Hamas.

“The five-way talks between Egypt, Qatar, the United States, Israel, and Hamas are ongoing, but so far no agreement has been reached,” the source told AWP, adding that talks have “accelerated significantly in recent hours,” with “Cairo and Doha making persistent efforts.”

The terrorist group is now open to the release of 40 hostages in exchange for 120 prisoners held by Israel, the report said, adding that Hamas had demanded a one-day ceasefire in exchange for each hostage released, but Israel refused.

"That suggestion is absurd on its face, but the direction of concessions is certainly notable. Hamas still wants to wring strategic value from the hostages that remain in their hands, but Israel clearly wants to disincentivize future hostage taking by reducing that strategic leverage. They are still negotiating on a disproportional 1:3 basis, according to reports at the Jerusalem Post and other Israeli media, but even that’s limited to inmates arrested over less-serious charges. And even the 1:3 ratio is another retreat by Hamas, which had demanded thousands of prisoners exchanged for an estimated 133 hostages captured on October 7.

"The change in direction comes as no surprise. First off, Hamas has a history of attempting to game negotiations by making outrageous demands, followed by a fallback to somewhat less-outrageous terms. But in this case, Hamas has suffered real and significant losses in the last few days that threaten to undermine their already-tottering regime in Gaza. The IDF killed one of their top commanders of the October 7 massacre, they announced yesterday, among other notable advances: . . ."

“The results will be clear results,” Gallant vows. “We will end this campaign when Hamas does not function as a governing body and certainly not as a military framework… It will take time,” he says.

Time that the cowardly Democrats in the US will allow?

 

Sure he'll debate: Joe Biden tells us his accomplishments

  Mike McDaniel - American Thinker   . . ."Americans can’t afford groceries or gas, new cars, new homes, or pretty much anything else, but Joe “cracked down on junk fees?”

Did you know we have an American Climate Corps? Do they create one or what? Do they have uniforms? Do you care?

Wow. Look at those improvements in airports, high-speed Internet, clean water and reliable transit and rail! Does anyone have a clue what they are? Joe also spent $7.5 billion to build one electric vehicle charging station. In Ohio. There was an economic recovery? In what country?

Reproductive Health Care: what?

Did you know we have a White Office Office Of Gun Violence Prevention? The first in history? What did it prevent? In which alternate reality? Oh, and we have executive actions to keep guns “out of dangerous hands.” Unfortunately, Joe thinks that means honest, law-abiding Americans. . . .

. . ."Wait a minute. Didn’t the Supreme Court rule Joe didn’t have the power to cancel student loans? Not even through “various actions?” Can anyone produce a single American who thinks their college bills were more affordable last year?

He strengthened democracy at home and abroad? Oh, that’s why our allies won’t help us secure the Red Sea, or pretty much anything else.  And there’s nothing like speaking out “against discrimination, racism, anti-LGBTQI+ hate" for democracy strengthening.  

"Highly qualified judges? Like whashername on the Supreme Court? The one who doesn’t know what a woman is? And what is AANHPI and how does it apply to judges? Sounds like a deadly lung disease.  "I'm sorry Mr. Smith; it's...AANHPI." Oh. It’s “Asian American Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander.” Were any of those AANHPILGBTQI+? Wouldn’t they be the very most qualified? Why don’t we have any of those?

"I’m really looking forward to the presidential debates this year. Just kidding. There aren’t going to be any.  Can you imagine how impaired Biden is going to be by October? It would be the first Weekend at Bernie's debate.

"The only good thing to come of this is we’re going to have a definitive answer to this vital question: what happens to America and the world when the POTUS is a demented, perverted, compromised agent of foreign powers?

"They’ll make up fake positives about that too." . . .

Joe Biden kicks off 'one more great year in the books' - American Thinker

. . ."Most Americans have concluded otherwise, months ago, with Biden's previous policy failures. Cumulatively, they have been moving away from Biden in a dynamic that builds upon itself. One key inflection point in many public approval polls was reached around the time of Biden's chaotic pullout in Afghanistan -- when his public approval ratings started to move downward. And sure enough, at that time he was denying anything was wrong then." . . .

The ‘Two-State Solution’ Echoes Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ -

 

“Some say that anti-Zionism isn’t tantamount to antisemitism,” Joshua Muravchik recently wrote. “If so, it’s worse … Anti-Zionism can only mean the destruction of Israel … some seven million Jews.”

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics  "Israel is fighting our fight.

For civilization.

"Against the barbarians.

"Yet — Biden/Harris, Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lloyd Austin, Senate/House Democrats publicly urge Israel to ramp down, even stop its military in Gaza. Imagine FDR in newspapers (read by the Nazis) — scolding Churchill — “Not victory, Winston, it’s stalemate, stupid!”

"Consequently, as Israel modifies (the U.N. will condemn Israel anyway), IDF casualties mount, and the war is prolonged. IDF reservists include teachers, professors, doctors, lawyers, engineers, scientists, artists, musicians, chefs, store owners, and more. Should they die to placate the intellectual frauds who dominate our schools and universities? DEI ideology: its Jew-hating coalition discards reality; Iran and its proxy Hamas are hardly bastions of women’s rights, gay rights, the environment. 

"Palestinian genocide? Gaza’s population has grown exponentially. The Hamas playbook, not Israel, puts noncombatants in harm’s way. Note: The number of Arabs killed by Israel in all wars and conflicts since its founding in 1948 is dwarfed by the number of Arabs killed by Arabs. No outrage or demonstrations. Akin to BLM’s indifference to black-on-black murder. (Does anyone care, for example, about how many Christians have been killed by Islamists in Africa? The Vatican reported that 52,250 Christians have been murdered by Islamists over 14 years in Nigeria alone.)

"Especially in the Middle East, Bad Guys respect strength. Biden, after the Afghanistan fiasco, is perceived as weak. His policies enrich Iran: higher oil prices, relaxed sanctions, billions released. Is Biden’s team of Obama holdovers arguably traitorous? (One outed so far). The good news is most are just stupid!

"Biden’s patron Obama was obsessed with Muslim outreach; Obama’s deep proximity to his spiritual guru, America/white/Jew-hating Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was not incidental. Anti-Zionists claim Jews used the Holocaust to justify stealing Arab land. Obama obliged, publicly basing Israel’s existence on the Holocaust, yet Zionism predated it. In effect, Obama deprecated the historic claim of Jews to their ancestral land.". . .

In his first trip abroad as president — the apology tour — Obama groveled to ingratiate himself with “Islam.” He then promoted Iranian regional hegemony. He sidestepped Senate approval for his Iranian deal to slow-walk, rather than to end, Iran’s nuclear program, now more dispersed, harder to degrade. Iran’s stated purpose remains to annihilate Israel, the nuclear fallout contaminating neighboring Muslims callously incidental. 

Newsom’s California: Latest Evidence of a Death Spiral

The American Spectator | USA News and Politics

A new wave of regulations and wage mandates degrade a state that once epitomized the American dream.

. . ."Newsom noted that the state is home to 500,000 fast-food workers who seek better pay, but we’ll need to adjust that number downward a bit. After Christmas, Pizza Hut disclosed to the state’s Employment Development Department (you know, the same agency that paid out as much as $32 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims) that it was laying off all 1,200 of its stores’ delivery drivers.

"That looks like fewer fathers or mothers who can feed their children or put our state’s overpriced gas in their car. That $4-an-hour wage boost sounds good on paper, but not it if means fewer jobs. Who couldn’t see this one coming? As I wrote in the Orange County Register in November: “The unions are claiming a victory for workers, but it’s not hard to guess the result. Higher prices will mean fewer customers and reduced profits. That means fewer restaurants and fewer jobs.”

"Pizza Hut will let third-party delivery services, such as Grub Hub, handle deliveries, but this won’t be the last announcement of fast-food layoffs. In many cases, the jobs will simply dry up as individual franchises reduce shifts, curtail hiring, and shift to automatic kiosks as customers cut back on their restaurant outings. The law doesn’t target mom-and-pop restaurants, but they’ll face wage pressure as they compete for workers who can (theoretically) earn more at national chains.

"None of this will stop Newsom from touting his record of helping low-wage workers. “We’re making it known that the health and wellbeing of workers and their families is of the utmost importance for California’s future,” the governor noted in October when he signed Senate Bill 616, which expands the number of paid sick days (from three to five) that California’s private employers must pay. It also imposes new reporting and regulatory requirements.

"The California Chamber of Commerce is concerned that “far too many small employers simply cannot absorb this new cost, especially when viewed in context of all of California’s other leaves and paid benefits, and they will have to reduce jobs, cut wages, or raise consumer prices to deal with this mandate.” The group warns about the law’s impact on California’s “long-term competitiveness,” but few in the Capitol listen to mere employers." . . .    

Douglas Murray’s spectacular tirade against Palestine supporters

Douglas Murray’s spectacular tirade against Palestine supporters

Why Is Everything So Stupid?

The domination of the stupid in the public square is endlessly annoying, so I only scan what appears before my eyes courtesy of the AI bot who believes I must be re-educated.

 By Elizabeth Nickson (substack.com)   "It is impossible to estimate the opportunity cost of the climate scam, but it is in the quadrillions. Think of all you could have done in the last decades were your family income quadrupled. It should have been. We should be dancing in the stars, the real ones, not among the ghastly baboons of Hollywood. You can always tell an elite scam by the fact that it guts the lower 50%, as it is doing in the demented Dominion where people are actually going without food because of brutal carbon taxes levied all along the food chain. Two million of us are using food banks, 7%, this in the richest country in the world, given our massive resources, our expensively, meticulously educated populace.

"The stupidity of gutting the lower 50% is mindblowing, since all prosperity and peace rests upon people thriving and rising. It was the secret of the past three hundred years. Now reversed. Now going into reversal. In Canada, where the climate scam is most advanced (barring Africa), our GDP is crashing hard - 4.4% in the last three months. Will it pull up? Or will it be annualized to 6%, more? Our media is so dishonest it doesn’t report. In any case, no one under 40, reads or watches the news.

"“If you are under 40, in 2023, it has to be a medical condition that your IQ is low enough that you still watch the news. It’s one hour of propaganda in order to program.”. . . 

Destroying democracy to save it: Maine shows the danger of zealots in our legal system

 Some of these advocates exhibit precisely that zealotry of someone who seems to understand little beyond the next election, as opposed to the next generation.

Jonathan Turley; The Hill    “You had me at hello.” That line from the movie “Jerry Maguire” came to mind this week after yet another Democratic secretary of state moved to prevent citizens from voting for former president Donald Trump.

"Maine’s Shenna Bellows issued a “decision” that declared Trump an “insurrectionist” and ineligible to be president. She joined an ignoble list of Democratic officials in states such as Colorado who claim to safeguard democracy by denying its exercise to millions of Americans.

"Yet the most striking aspect of this poorly crafted decision was not its litany of conclusory findings, but rather Bellow’s implausible suggestion that she struggled over the decision. Bellows was a natural choice for challengers, who have been searching for any officials or courts willing to embrace this dangerous theory under the Fourteenth Amendment that they can unilaterally bar candidates deemed rebellious or insurrectionalist.

"Challengers knew that they had Bellows at hello. She was one of the first officials to declare the Jan. 6 riot to be an “insurrection” prompted by Trump’s speech.

"Bellows previously declared that “the Jan. 6 insurrection was an unlawful attempt to overthrow the results of a free and fair election…The insurrectionists failed, and democracy prevailed.” A year after the riot, Bellows was still denouncing the “violent insurrection.”

"Of course, in the 1996 movie, Jerry Maguire reminded Dorothy that ” we live in a cynical world — a cynical, cynical world — and we work in a business of tough competitors.” However,  he added “you complete me.”

"In our cynical politics, Bellows and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, among others, have become wildly popular for seeking to complete the effort to defeat Trump by removing him from the ballot. This cynicism is captured in statements from pundits who warn that Democrats can no longer rely on the election process, given Trump’s soaring popularity."

Hypocrisy on Hamas Rape

 Rafael Medoff - The Lid (lidblog.com)   

 There was a time when self-described human rights advocates such as Samantha Power, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International earned the international community’s respect for their defense of the innocent and the oppressed. But they have forfeited that respect by failing to defend the human right of Jewish women to not be raped.

 " Rape during the Rwanda genocide? Outrageous. Rape during the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia? Abhorrent. Rape by Hamas terrorists? Not worthy of comment.

    "That’s the troubling position taken by Samantha Power, a senior official in the Obama and Biden administrations who has built her career on her concern for victims of genocide, sexual atrocities, and other human rights abuses.

   " Power, a journalist, authored the 2002 book “‘A Problem from Hell’; America and the Age of Genocide,” which blasted the United States and the international community for turning a blind eye to multiple instances of mass murder over the past century. 

    "The book won a Pulitzer Prize and catapulted Power to the position of senior policy adviser to presidential candidate Barack Obama and then the post of U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Obama administration. Today, as head of the United States Agency for Development (USAID), she remains one of our nation’s most prominent spokespeople on human rights.

    "Power’s declared concerns include the use of rape as a weapon of genocide. Well, the rape of some women, at least. 

    "In her book, she wrote of Turkish forces raping Armenian women in 1915. She described how Serb forces imprisoned Bosnia Muslim women in “rape camps” during the 1990s ethnic cleansing atrocities in the Balkans. She recounted how an international war crimes tribunal convicted a Rwandan mayor of genocide specifically because he used systematic rape against the Tutsi minority in 1994.

    "Power’s X (Twitter) feed since the October 7 Hamas invasion of Israel has included dozens of posts about the suffering of Arab civilians in Gaza. Oddly, however, she has never tweeted about the numerous Israeli-Jewish women who were raped by Hamas terrorists.

    "Power is a reasonably prolific tweeter. She posts something almost every day, and sometimes as many as eight to ten messages in a single day. She occasionally even uses her USAID account to circulate posts that stray beyond the agency’s mission, such as the imprisonment of a Russian pacifist or Uganda’s anti-gay law.

    "To be clear, Power does tweet about some rape victims. On November 2, for example, she posted about attacks on women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. On December 1, she wrote about “horrific sexual violence” against women in Sudan. She urged her readers to check out the “important reporting by Reuters” on that subject." . . .

Degenerate Animals [Updated] | Power Line   "Glenn Reynolds quotes some of the same accounts of rape and sexual mutilation of Israeli girls and women by Gazans that I wrote about here. What the Arab Muslims did on October 7 isn’t just unspeakable, it is almost unimaginable. Glenn comments:" . . .

‘To make a snowflake’

 J.A. Frascino - American Thinker  . . ."There is nothing natural about the formation of a human snowflake.  The nidus is a normal child seeking identity in a complex society.  The first step is to disconnect him from traditional social foundations, viewed by the left as oppressive, while offering it nothing of substance to replace them.  Teach the child that his nation was built on slavery and is systemically racist, that religion is dictatorial and science-denying, that the traditional family is patriarchal, that gender designation is repressive, and that first names are too restraining.

"Having transformed the child into an isolated, self-immersed entity without an anchor, it is next necessary to weaken his resolve.  Teach the child that speech and events that may make him uncomfortable are an existential threat to his safety and well-being.  Teach him to be alert to microaggressions and to bullying.  Tell him that global warming will destroy the planet.  Allow him to skip classes and attend bereavement counseling when the Orange Man is elected.  Provide him with safe spaces.  Reward him not for accomplishment, but for participation.  Coddle and indulge him.  Capitalize upon his exalted status as the object of permissive parenting.  Discipline might be hurtful, especially for someone showing signs of emotional stress.  Allow him to find identity, escape, and safety in the alternate universe of social media.

"The snowflake is now fully formed — emotionally fragile, sheltered, socially withdrawn, and vulnerable to meltdown.  Just as physical stress builds strong bodies, dealing with emotional stress builds strong psyches.  Creating a stressful culture, and then taking every possible step to shelter the disenfranchised from having to deal with the stress so created, is how to make a snowflake." . . .

"Snowflake creation is but one adverse outcome of leftist “change America” activism — activism that seeks immediate gratification through vengeful attack on the “oppressors,” with apparent disregard for the outcome of its actions.  Save the planet — ban fossil fuels!  Replace nationalistic xenophobia with open borders.  End racism by replacing merit with diversity.  Reduce crime by not prosecuting it.  Support the economy with fiscal stimulus.  Eliminate misogyny by prioritizing career over family.  What could go wrong?" . . .

Ten Degenerate Democrat Scandals: Remember the Media Said the Democrats Were 'The Adults'? - The Lid (lidblog.com)   "As each month passes, there seems to be yet another Democrat arrested for some sexual crime, fired for some scandal, or mired in some sort of degeneracy. But remember in 2019 when the media told us that the Democrats were a more serious party and if they took power, “the adults would be in charge”?

"Well, the debauchery of these “adults” grows by the day.

"In no particular order…"

The Saudi Road to Peace

 Jon Levin - American Thinker 

"Israel is well on its way to defeating Hamas in the field and removing direct Iranian influence in Gaza, one prerequisite for long-term peace.  But that alone is not enough. ". . .

 "Israel winning its war against Iran’s proxies in the Gaza Strip is an opportunity to implement reforms necessary for reconciliation and long-term peace.  Israel, the United States and other western powers lack legitimacy in the Muslim world, and their taking the lead would undermine the project from the outset.  Israel will not empower the UN, UNRWA, or like international institutions that have so amply demonstrated their hostility.  There are few good options, but Saudi Arabia is influential and motivated to deprive Iran of its Mediterranean colony.  It also has a growing desire to be part of the modern world order, and is at least amenable to peace with Israel.  Perhaps most important, the Arab states are more suited to the sort of generational planning necessary to deradicalize an entire society.

"Rebooting an Oslo-style peace process is doomed to fail.  The Iranian, rejectionist faction (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, etc.) has only strengthened in the post-Oslo era, and the Palestinian Authority no longer even pays lip service to the idea of coexistence with Israel.  Hamas intends to destroy Israel and kill every Jew, and it enjoys overwhelming support both in Gaza and the West Bank.  Every peace offer has been met with violence, and the attempt to unilaterally disengage culminated in the worst anti-Jewish attack since the Holocaust.

"Israel is laying the groundwork for the generational changes needed for peace by defeating Hamas.  Hamas had three goals for the 10/7 attack: breach the Israeli border and kill as many Jews as possible; lure the Israel Defense Forces into a bloody quagmire in Gaza and expose the Israeli north to an invasion by Hezb’allah; and scuttle the then-imminent normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.  While Hamas achieved an initial tactical victory, it squandered whatever military advantage it had by perpetrating atrocities against civilians, and once word of the invasion spread, Hamas’ forces were forestalled by ad hoc Israeli forces even before the IDF routed the invaders.  Despite achieving surprise, Hamas’ casualties from the 10/7 attack approached in number the total Israeli casualties. Hamas may have terrorized the population, but showed itself essentially irrelevant as a military force." . . .