Israeli defense minister: 'dozens' of UNRWA staff took part in Hamas’ Oct 7 massacre - Ruth Marks Eglash

 

by Ruth Marks Eglash

Yoav Gallant says UNRWA is 'Hamas with a facelift' and needs to be replaced

 

 

FIRST ON FOX – Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant says Israel has new evidence that dozens of individuals employed by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) – the controversial U.N. aid agency responsible for the welfare of millions of Palestinian refugees and their descendants – were directly involved in the atrocities carried out against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, Fox News Digital has learned.

In a briefing this week with Fox News Digital, Gallant said the country had knowledge that "dozens" of UNRWA staff were involved in the Hamas-led massacre. While he declined to give a specific figure, Gallant said it was a far greater number than the 12 employees already acknowledged – and dismissed last month – by the organization. 

Calling UNRWA "Hamas with a facelift," the defense chief, who is a member of Israel’s war cabinet and considered the highest ranking official after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that it was time for the world to "dismantle UNRWA" and create an alternative mechanism for providing aid to civilians in the war-stricken Gaza Strip.

"I think the world needs to wake up and address this issue in a different way, while also addressing Gaza’s needs," Gallant told Fox News Digital. "UNRWA is a group of terrorists who receive salaries from many countries – these countries gave money to people who raped, murdered and took people into captivity."

UN APPOINTS INDEPENDENT REVIEW OF UNRWA AMID ALLEGATIONS ITS WORKERS JOINED HAMAS-LED ATTACK ON ISRAEL

Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant, right, speaks during a joint statement with his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, following a joint statement following their meeting about Israel's military operation in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel, on Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. (AP Photo/ Maya Alleruzzo)

On Oct. 7, thousands of Palestinians, led by terrorists from Hamas’ elite Nukbah force, broke through the border fence from the Gaza Strip into Israel, murdering more than 1,200 people on multiple army bases, as well as in towns, villages, and at a music festival taking place in the area. In addition, some 240 individuals, including babies, children, women and the elderly, were taken hostage back to Gaza. More than 100 people are still being held captive some four months later. 

The minister highlighted that many of those murdered or kidnapped held dual Israeli and U.S. citizenship.

Last month, UNRWA, which receives billions of dollars in funding from multiple countries, including the U.S. and the EU, acknowledged previous Israeli revelations that 12 of its workers were directly involved in the murderous rampage. 

United Nations headquarters and flag juxtaposed with a picture of an Israeli woman kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. (Getty Images/Hamas-Telegram)

The organization’s Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said at the time that he had decided to "immediately terminate the contracts of these staff members and launch an investigation in order to establish the truth without delay."

ISRAEL'S EVACUATION ORDERS COVER MORE THAN TWO-THIRDS OF THE GAZA STRIP AS WAR WITH HAMAS CONTINUES

"Any UNRWA employee who was involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution," Lazzarini said in a statement, acknowledging that the "Israeli authorities had provided UNRWA with information."

Following Lazzarini’s announcement, at least 19 donor countries, including the U.S., froze their funding to the organization. On Tuesday, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted 30-19 to advance a bill to permanently cut all U.S. aid to UNRWA in response to the allegations.

There has, however, been some pushback against halting UNRWA’s funding, particularly at this critical stage when the organization, as well as other non-profits working inside Gaza, says a dire humanitarian crisis threatens thousands of people who have been forced from their homes during four months of fighting that has destroyed the healthcare system and other essential infrastructure. 

A man walks in front of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building as UNRWA personnel strike demanding a salary increase because of the high cost of living, in Gaza City, Gaza, on Jan. 30, 2023. (Photo by Ali Jadallah/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Despite its past and current controversies, UNRWA and its commissioner-general were shortlisted this week for the Nobel Peace Prize. 

This image from undated bodycam video footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by Israel Defense Forces, shows a Hamas terrorist walking around a residential neighborhood at an undisclosed location in southern Israel. Israel's military brought together a group of foreign correspondents on Monday, Oct. 16, 2023, to screen a 40-minute reel of gruesome footage compiled from Hamas' attack on Oct. 7. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)

On Monday, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres appointed a committee to look into what he said were "alleged breaches of U.N. staff regulations, rules and codes of conduct." Led by Catherine Colonna, a former French Foreign Minister, with assistance from three international research organizations, the Raoul Wallenberg Institute in Sweden, the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway, and the Danish Institute for Human Rights, the committee will begin its work next week and is expected to deliver an interim report sometime in March. A final report is slated to be completed by late April.

IDF VIDEO REVEALS TUNNEL USED TO HIDE HAMAS MEMBERS, HOSTAGES IN TERRORIST GROUP'S STRONGHOLD

From 2009 to 2024, a little under $4 billion in taxpayer dollars was given to the humanitarian relief organization, according to a Fox News Digital review. (Mahmoud Issa/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

A spokeswoman for UNRWA told Fox News Digital that to date "the Israeli government has officially informed UNRWA of ONLY about 12 staff who are allegedly involved in the attack against Israel on Oct. 7."

"That was in a meeting between the Israeli authorities and the UNRWA Commissioner General on 18 January," said the spokeswoman, adding, "No additional information has been shared by the government of Israel directly or indirectly or officially to UNRWA since then."

Israel has long claimed that UNRWA, which was established in 1949 to provide shelter, welfare and health services for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced when Israel was created, perpetuates the decadesold conflict. It points out that Palestinian refugees are the only group afforded their own separate aid agency – while refugees from almost every other global conflict past and present are cared for under the broader umbrella of the U.N.’s High Commissioner for Refugees – and the only nation where refugee status is inherited.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, confers with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, during their meeting with President Biden, left, at the start of the Israeli war cabinet meeting, in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (Photo by Miriam Alster / POOL / AFP)

Israel has also highlighted multiple times that UNRWA’s education system allows antisemitic tropes to be taught to hundreds of thousands of Palestinian pupils in its schools throughout Gaza, the West Bank and the Arab countries in which it operates. In January, UN Watch, an NGO that monitors U.N. bias against Israel, published messages celebrating the Oct. 7 massacre that were shared in a social media group made up of some 3,000 UNRWA school teachers.

An aerial view of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) tent camp, where hundreds of Gazan families fleeing Israeli attacks are trying to survive their daily lives under limited means and difficult conditions in Khan Yunis, Gaza, on Nov. 27, 2023. (Ashraf Amra/Anadolu via Getty Images)

One of the U.N.’s largest agencies, UNRWA employs more than 30,000 individuals worldwide and operates out of two main headquarters located in Amman, Jordan and Gaza. According to its latest figures, around 5.9 million Palestinian refugees are eligible to receive UNRWA’s services and its annual budget for 2022 was more than $1 billion. Ninety percent of that funding comes from U.N. member states, with the U.S., Germany and the EU being the largest donors.

Speaking to his cabinet members last week, Netanyahu said that the evidence that some of UNRWA’s staff "participated in the atrocities and abductions on October 7… only strengthens what we have known for a long time – UNRWA is not part of the solution, it is part of the problem."

Ruth Marks Eglash is a veteran journalist based in Jerusalem, Israel. She reports and covers the Middle East and Europe. Originally from the U.K, she has also freelanced for numerous news outlets. Ruth can be followed on Twitter @reglash

Source: https://www.foxnews.com/world/israeli-defense-minister-dozens-unrwa-staff-took-part-hamas-oct-7-massacre

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UNRWA, the Greatest Welfare Scam Ever - Sha'i Ben Tekoa

 

by Sha'i Ben Tekoa

The “Palestinian refugees” are neither Palestinian nor refugees.

 

The Israeli Army in the Gaza Strip slaying thousands of Muslim Brotherhood brothers (Hamas) came upon evidence of UNRWA employees participating in the satanic events of October 7, which should not surprise because UNRWA has been a major player in the antisemitic fantasy of a “Palestinian people” whose homeland was allegedly stolen from them by the Jews, the lie that justifies the very existence of UNRWA in support of the “victims of Zionism.”

UNRWA’s brief for 75 years has been supporting millions of “Palestinian refugees” when, truth be told, there is nothing Palestinian about these people. And neither are they refugees.

The historical record is clear: There never was in the Promised Land a people calling themselves “Palestinians” and were called that by others. A Biblical generation prior to the first Zionist Congress in 1897, American novelist Herman Melville in 1857 made a pilgrimage to the Land, then under Muslim rule for twelve of the previous fourteen centuries, that he described as “a caked, depopulated Hell.”

A decade later, that other American writer Mark Twain made his pilgrimage and likewise reported the land “sits in sack cloth and ashes.” Neither in writing of his pilgrimage mentioned running into any “Palestinians.”

Prior to the Zionist movement under the Turks, there was no such living political entity called Palestine. Jerusalem no less was a neglected shamble. It never meant anything to Muslims except for a miracle story about Mohammad flying in one night on a flying horse. Under the Muslims, prior to the Zionist renascence, the condition of the Holy City was a ramshackle slum, a rat-infested, unsanitary medieval relic that literally stank for the indifferent sanitation.

Today, Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and home to almost a million people, a city whose resurrection has been an exclusively Jewish enterprise. No “Palestinian” municipality ever installed a stop sign, let alone sewers and other public works.

The Paris Peace Conference of 1919 produced several mandates. The UK and France created states where the collapsed Ottoman Caliphate had ruled for four centuries. France drew the boundaries of modern Syria and invented Lebanon, named for no nationality but a mountain.

The British invented Iraq and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, also named for no nation but a river, while the Palestine Mandate of the League of Nations “recognized the historical connection of the Jewish people” to Palestine and created it explicitly for Jews, versus the leader of the Arabs at the time, the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem who murderously resisted by insisting there never was such a country in Islamic history and he was right.

Unlike the mostly illiterate Muslims in these new states created for them by European imperialists, the Jews had to fight and die for their independence, declared on May 14, 1948, which was instantaneously bombed and invaded by a half-dozen Arab armies that opposed the Zionist movement as an insult to Islam. Their opposition had nothing to do with defending “Palestine” and everything to do with Islam’s hostility to Jewish independence after fourteen centuries of Koranically-commanded “oppression and humiliation” of them as dhimmi (tolerated infidels).

Zionism in Muslim eyes has been the intifada of the Jews.

In the 1920s and 30s, as Mandatory Palestine came to life thanks to Zionist immigration, sacrifice and investment, Arabs from all over the Middle East streamed in looking for work. And when the Arab armies attacked the infant Jewish state on its first day, these thousands of migrant laborers, not wanting to be caught in the middle of a war, ran, like those in the south who sought shelter behind the Egyptian force that had come up the coast bent on conquering Tel-Aviv but was stopped by the heroics of the Jews at Kibbutz Mordechai.

In history, so-called Gaza City until 1948 had never been a city as civilized peoples know them. It was an overgrown caravansary when suddenly invaded by 200,000 foreign workers arriving in expectation that soon the Egyptians and other Arab armies would kill all the Jews, and they could return to loot what the Jews had built.

Following the war, the Arab Muslim states who launched it refused to take any responsibility for these now homeless co-religionists. Their position was that the war was the responsibility of the United Nations that had licensed the Jews to live free of Muslim domination as they had for fourteen centuries, and in the wake of their refusal, the UN established UNRWA to look after these migrant workers whom everyone in the world, including all Muslims and Arabs, called “the Arab refugees” and would for the next decade and beyond. Nobody called them “Palestinian refugees” because there was nothing Palestinian about them having come from Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, etc.

The morphing of them into the putatively primeval “Palestinians,” whose spawn in UNRWA schools today are taught their “ancestors” have been living in Palestine for five thousand years, began on March 29, 1959 in Cairo where Gamal Abdel Nasser, also head of the Arab League of States, announced in a League meeting his idea of creating a Kiyan al-Filastini/ “Palestinian entity” out of these “Arab refugees” on the model of the situation in Algeria then in its fifth year of anti-colonial terrorist rebellion. In 1954, Muslims there erupted in random, brutal violence to drive out the French, and Nasser supported them by letting the FLN use Egyptian radio facilities in Cairo to broadcast propaganda and instructions to their comrades back home; he also allowed them to smuggle weapons and explosives to them across the Sahara Desert.

Algeria’s Muslim rebels also understood that to win support in France, they had to rebrand their cause as not religious – among themselves in Arabic they were mujahidin/holy warriors — but to the world they would be political, anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist “freedom-fighters.”

Nasser also thought that rebranding the “Arab refugees” from the war against the Jews as a “nation” was the way to go. Although many believe the KGB created the “Palestinian national identity,” it was Nasser. Muslims like him needed no lessons in Jew-hatred from the Russians. The Koran is an antisemitic tract.

Then seven months later, the 25-year-old son of the leader of the clandestine Muslim Brotherhood cell in Mandatory Palestine, Rahman al-Qidwa, who would adopt the nom de guerre of “Yasir Arafat,” a religiously significant name after Mt. Arafat, a hill in Mecca, with seven other former members of the Muslim Brotherhood youth organization came together to create Fatah, the name of the forty-eighth sura in the Koran which means “conquest” and in context “of the infidel.” Even Thomas Friedman in his book wrote that Arafat was a practicing Muslim years before he rebranded himself a political revolutionary and remained one his whole life.

In 1965, Fatah’s men took their first steps in sabotage inside Israel and eventually graduated to gruesome terrorist horrors, and in their bloody footsteps, other Arabs created other groups. At its peak, the Palestine Liberation Organization counted eighteen separate terror fraternities. What triggered their emergence was the humiliating defeat of the Arab armies in 1967. The newborn “Palestinians” would then do to the Jews what the Algerians did to win independence in 1962 via their terror war of the random murder of the French community in that country.

Fatah and other terror cells planted bombs in Europe in El AL Israeli airline offices, shot up El Al counters in airports, planted bombs at Israeli consulates, in Jewish restaurants and all in the name of “Palestine.” The PFLP in particular specialized in skyjacking, basically kidnapping innocent airline passengers in midair to demand freedom for “Palestinians” in Israeli prisons. The same motivation as Hamas on 10/7.

Fatah, following its terrorism debut in 1965, grew in strength as would the other Muslim terror fraternities. Still, not since the founding of the UN in 1945 had there been one resolution, amid hundreds on the interminable violence, referring to a “Palestinian people” as a party to what otherwise was known as the Arab-Israeli conflict.  Not until GA Resolution 2628 of December 8, 1970 did the General Assembly produce its first document referring to a “Palestinian people.”

And the rest is history. In the decade of the 70s, PLO Arabs so “mugged” Europe with their terror attacks, in 1980 the European Community (precursor to the EU) submitted to their demand for recognition as not criminal terrorists but political activists in a legitimate war of national liberation. It was called the “Venice Declaration.”

And as for UNRWA, many of its sixty-seven donor nations support it in fear of these “Palestinians” if they do not. For others, it has never been anything but a false front for peoples with histories of atrocious hostility and persecution of Jews who have supported the gangs in Gaza, Judea and Samaria with billions of dollars. Post-Holocaust, with antisemitism out of fashion, “Palestinian nationalism” became the new, “legitimate” way of reviling Jews and accusing them of crimes against humanity. UNRWA has been the conduit for maintaining more than a million people on its welfare rolls. And why? To give the Jews no peace. For such nations, UNRWA is ostensibly about charity for the “Palestinian refugees” that cloaks a timeless hatred of Jews.

There is nothing “Palestinian” about these people, and they certainly are not refugees. Their great-grandparents were, but unlike other war refugees in history, they were never helped to restart their lives in a new country of asylum. The PLO terrorists got the UN to recognize that the status of “Palestinian refugee” passes to their children and grandchildren, etc. until they can all “return home.” It is the only war-refugee population in history that has not dissolved over time via resettlement and the inexorable reality of actuarial tables but ballooned exponentially. The original 200,000 refugee migrant workers suddenly in Gaza in 1949 produced between one and two million of the Arabs in the Strip today, all of them recognized by the world as “Palestinian refugees” when they never in their lives sought refuge anywhere.

In the last week in January, UNRWA made headlines when the IDF revealed evidence of some dozen employees participating in the satanic Jew-killing, Jew-raping, Jew-mutilating, and Jew-kidnapping, sadistic murder orgy of October 7. At first, UNRWA protested they were a few bad apples and unrepresentative of the organization. But IDF soldiers in Gaza have been astonished to find Hamas propaganda, weapons and ammunition in home after home. Thousands worked for UNRWA/Hamas. These IDF veterans of Gaza have come to believe that everyone in Gaza is Hamas.

And that is why all the recipients of UNRWA handouts in Gaza, that is, 70% of the population, must be relocated away from Israel, which should be no problem since there are 56 officially Muslim states, 21 of them officially Arab as well, so surely Believers in the One True Faith will want to care for their co-religionists by taking them in and helping restart their lives.

Sha’i ben-Tekoa’s PHANTOM NATION: Inventing the “Palestinians” as the Obstacle to Peace is available at Amazon.com in hard cover or a Kindle ebook. His podcasts can be heard on www.phantom-nation.com.

Sha'i Ben Tekoa

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/__trashed-14/

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Knesset Speaker cancels meeting with UN chief over his anti-Israel statements - Elad Benari

 

by Elad Benari

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana says he decided not to give Antonio Guterres any legitimacy following his latest criticism of Israel's actions in Gaza.

 

Amir Ohana                                                                                      Yonatan Sindel/Flash 90

Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, who is currently on a visit to Washington, DC, cancelled a scheduled meeting with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, which was scheduled for Friday, due to Guterres’ statements against Israel, Channel 12 News reported.

According to the report, Ohana made clear that he would not give Guterres legitimacy by holding the meeting. The UN Secretary-General heard about the cancellation of the meeting from the Channel 12 News report. His spokesman said in response: "Our door remains open to any delegation that would like to meet him."

"The cancellation of the meeting did not come in a vacuum," Ohana told Channel 12 News, in a swipe at Guterres following his past controversial comments that Hamas’ attack on Israel “did not happen in a vacuum”.

"I intended to try and convince, as well as hand him a book we prepared in the Knesset which documents October 7 with still images. But yesterday he again called on the State of Israel to stop fighting and criticize it 'even if Hamas uses human shields'. There are lost causes and red lines. I will not legitimize Guterres,” he added.

Guterres on Thursday was pressed by Channel 12 News correspondent Yuna Leibzon about his ongoing claims that Israel is carrying out “collective punishment” in Gaza.

Asked by Leibzon what he would have done if a terrorist organization had launched a murderous attack against his people, the UN chief replied, “I think there is something wrong in the way the military operations are being conducted.”

When Leibzon pointed out that Hamas hides within civilian populations, Guterres retorted, “I have condemned the use of human shields. I even said that it is a violation of international humanitarian law, but the same international humanitarian law is clear that even when there are human shields, there is an obligation to protect civilians, so in that regard, I think we are abiding by principles without double standards.”

Elad Benari

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384963

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Treasury confirms using 'MAGA' and other political terms to surveil private transactions - Ben Whedon

 

by Ben Whedon

Scott initially wrote to the Treasury for answers in January following revelations from the House Judiciary Committee that it had asked financial institutions to review transactions with such keywords.

 

The U.S. Department of the Treasury on Friday confirmed that federal investigations had used politically sensitive terms such as "MAGA" and "Trump" to monitor private transactions in the wake of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Fox News reported, citing a letter sent to South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott.

Acting Assistant Secretary Corey Tellez wrote that that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) began so-called "Exchange events" after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and that said events "included terms such as 'antifa,' 'MAGA,' 'Trump,' 'Biden,' 'Kamala,' 'Schumer,' and 'Pelosi.'"

Fox did not publish the letter in full.

Scott initially wrote to the Treasury for answers in January following revelations from the House Judiciary Committee that it had asked financial institutions to review transactions with such keywords.

"These allegations, if true, represent a flagrant violation of Americans’ privacy and the improper targeting of U.S. citizens for exercising their constitutional rights without due process," Scott wrote to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen at the time. The Judiciary Committee, for its part, found that frequent shoppers at sporting goods stores, such as Bass Pro Shops, Cabela's, and Dick's Sporting Goods, were flagged.

Ben Whedon is an editor and reporter for Just the News. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter.

Source: https://justthenews.com/government/federal-agencies/treasury-confirms-using-maga-and-other-political-terms-surveil-private

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Impasse in talks: Israel rejects most of Hamas' demands - Elad Benari

 

by Elad Benari

War Cabinet agrees that Hamas' demands are unrealistic, and therefore there is no point in attending talks in Egypt on a hostage release deal.

 

War Cabinet meeting                                                                  Amos Ben Gershom/GPO

Israel has decided to reject most of Hamas’ demands for a new hostage release deal, Channel 12 News reported on Friday.

According to the report, the War Cabinet agreed that Hamas' demands are ridiculous and unrealistic, and therefore there is no point in attending talks in Egypt until those demands are watered down.

The Israeli reply included several principles, the report noted. They are:

Returning to the framework of the understandings from the Paris plan, and excluding from the document all the demands of Hamas that are not related to the issue of the war, such as the Temple Mount and the imprisonment conditions of the terrorists in Israeli prisons.

An Israeli insistence on "humanitarian releases" of hostages in the first stages.

Delaying the release of so-called “heavy prisoners” in the next stages of the deal in exchange for the return of the soldiers and members of rapid-response squads.

The Channel 12 News report also said that in the last part of the discussion, an argument broke out within the War Cabinet, when Gadi Eisenkot and Benny Gantz wanted to send the official position in writing to the mediators in Qatar and Egypt, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that the official position must go through the expanded cabinet before it is delivered in writing.

On Tuesday, Hamas finally provided the Qatari government with its response to the proposed deal after days of dragging its feet.

As a precondition for any arrangement, Hamas demands a complete halt to Israeli military activity in Gaza, including its airspace.

The hostages to be freed in the first stage would be women, children, the sick, and the elderly, in exchange for the release of all Palestinian Arab women, children, and men aged 50 and above currently held by Israel.

This is in addition to approximately 1,500 other Palestinian Arab prisoners held by Israel, including 500 convicted of murder who are serving life or lengthy sentences.

Despite all the conditions that Hamas set for a deal, a senior Biden administration official told NBC News that the response provided by the terrorist organization was “generally positive.”

Elad Benari

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384959

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IDF eliminates three senior Hamas officers in Rafah - Jerusalem Post Staff

 

by Jerusalem Post Staff

The strike comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF to begin preparations to enter Rafah.

 

Three senior members of the Hamas police in Rafah were killed as a result of an attack on their vehicle in the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood, west of Rafah, according to Israeli media reports from Saturday afternoon.

Those killed are the director of investigations Ahmed Eliakubi, his deputy Iman Rantisi, and Ibrahim Shatt. Eliakubi was responsible for the security provisions for senior Hamas leaders and served as a senior commander in the Rafah district.

The strike comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the IDF to begin preparations to enter Rafah.

Netanyahu ordered the IDF to begin planning to evacuate civilians from Rafah into areas of Gaza cleared of Hamas units.

Displaced Palestinians, who fled their houses due to Israeli strikes, take shelter in a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at the border with Egypt, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 8, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/IBRAHEEM ABU MUSTAFA)

Impossible to leave Hamas in Rafah

"It is impossible to achieve the goal of the war without eliminating Hamas, and by leaving four Hamas battalions in Rafah," the statement noted.

"On the contrary, it is clear that intense activity in Rafah requires that civilians evacuate the areas of combat."

Netanyahu was criticized for the plan by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas told the UN, " [Israel] taking this step threatens security and peace in the region and the world. It crosses all red lines."

"We're extremely worried about the fate of civilians in Rafah," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said on Friday.

Jerusalem Post Staff

Source: https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-786183

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IDF strikes three Hezbollah military command centers - Israel National News

 

by Israel National News

Three launches fall in northern Israel, IDF strikes source of fire in Lebanon and Hezbollah military command centers.

 

The IDF on Saturday struck targets in Lebanon in retaliation for fire towards northern Israel.

On Saturday evening, the IDF said, "Earlier today, three launches were identified crossing from Lebanon toward Shlomi that fell in an open area. IDF artillery struck the sources of fire and additional areas in southern Lebanon."

"A short while ago, IDF fighter jets struck a number of Hezbollah targets, including three military command centers in the area of Ayta ash Shab and Naqoura where the terrorists operated, and two terrorist infrastructure in the area of Khiam and Marwahin.

"Furthermore, earlier today, additional terrorist infrastructure was struck in the area of Boustane."

The IDF added, "Hezbollah’s ongoing terrorist activity and attacks against Israel violate UN Security Council Resolution 1701. The IDF will continue to defend Israel’s borders from any threat."

Israel National News

Source: https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/384965

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A Quick Look at the 21st Century So Far - Drieu Godefridi

 

by Drieu Godefridi

Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

 

• If you add to this the European Union's obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of "energy transition", it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

• China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond.

• Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform.

• If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

• Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

• If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21^st century will be more American than ever.

(Image source: iStock/Getty Images)

We are not quite a quarter of the way into the 21^st century, but already a few clear structural trends have emerged, even if it is impossible to predict the next "black swans" -- radically unpredictable events with far-reaching consequences – that might occur. Here are four of the trends.

Since 2000, Europe has stagnated on many fronts -- anemic growth, a crashing birth rate, military disinvestment -- from which countries such as Belgium and Germany have still not emerged. Perhaps most worrying of all, according to criteria such as patents, capital investment, and stock market giants such as GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon), Europe has stopped innovating. People innovate in the United States; they still innovate in Asia, but in Europe – hardly at all. If you add to this the European Union's obsession with the environment, which has become little more than a machinery for imposing constraints, vexations, punishments and taxes in the name of "energy transition", it appears that stagnation is a problem from which Europe might have the greatest difficulty in freeing itself.

As history shows, stagnation is an intermediate state. Over time, stagnation is almost always the prelude to regression (here, here and here). When Sparta stopped having children, Sparta wasn't defeated overnight. Sparta remained Sparta, for a time, with its glorious city and its military contingents. Afterwards, Sparta was not defeated: it simply gradually disappeared from the face of the earth.

The sharpshooters of French Thought, who have the distinction of being wrong almost all the time, on every subject have been telling us for 50 years that the 21^st century would be 'Chinese'. We are told: Learn Chinese as fast as you can, they are already on their way! In reality, the Chinese Communist Party is also stagnating, caught up in many crises at every level: Economic stagnation, demographic collapse, unemployment among young Chinese at 20%, stock market collapse, destruction of the Hong Kong financial center, monetary isolation. Many have predicted the replacement of the US dollar by China's yuan as the world's international currency -- a transformation China is clearly trying to effect -- but if you were a country, would you rather be protected by China or protected by the Free World?

China talks tough about Taiwan, but seems leery of using its considerable military force if it can count on the US failing to respond. One problem is that that China sees Biden as weak, passive and compliant, so they may well be planning to try to "Hong Kong" Taiwan. Above all, the Chinese regime is a ruthless dictatorship in which people and their property disappear, and there are no mechanisms for peaceful reform. Chinese President Xi Jinping alone decides everything, "like a god among men", and unfortunately for his people, does not seem particularly open to criticism.

Then there is the rest of the world, what in the 20^th century was known as the "Third World." Compared to the previous century, the Third World, at least in places, is doing better: some countries have become much richer, thanks to the market economy and openness to international capitalism. Experts tell us that the countries of the BRICS [Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa] organization embody the future, just as they told us yesterday that the 21^st century will be Chinese. The problem is that the two major countries of BRICS -- China and India -- are almost at war on their common border, and that there are far more things to divide the BRICS countries than to unite them, and that an organization can only ever decide according to the principle of the greatest common denominator, which, in the case of BRICS, seems close to zero.

The BRICS countries are getting richer, billions of people are being lifted out of poverty, and we rejoice. It is noticeable that countries such as the great Brazilian democracy are thinking of a future less dependent on the West. However, the idea that BRICS will shape the 21^st century does not stand up to analysis. Prof. Jyrki Käkönen wrote in 2014:

"[I]t is not easy to assume that BRICS would be an organization capable of changing the international system as long as BRICS members have different kinds of expectations when it comes to the future world order. In this respect the most important BRICS countries are China and India, which also have contradictory interests and expectations about the future order of Asia as well as the entire world order."

Argentina recently announced that it was dropping its application to join BRICS.

Then there is the American system, which constantly seems to test its own limits. There are countless problems in the United States, such as immigration, which has sadly become as lawless in the US as it is in Europe There is defunding the police, which, not surprisingly, has added to the anarchy. The political divisions that race-baiters have whipped up are such that rather than help minorities, such as improving K-12 education, there have just been increasing episodes of violence and an increasing number of cities with massive drug problems.

America, however, is also prosperous; formidably innovative, at the head of the most dazzling military concentration ever assembled, and structurally capable of managing economic and financial crises better than its competitors. Why? For a simple reason: flexibility. In many American states, you can hire and fire without cause, with just a few days' notice. As soon as a company expands, it can hire on a massive scale in order to grow because it knows that if it hits hard times, it can also lay off people just as fast. A company is a rational entity.

If there is a single element of the American system that Europe should replicate, it is this flexibility in the labor market.

Will that never happen? No, of course not. That is why Europe will continue to stagnate, while America, despite all its current difficulties, opens up the way of the future.

If the economic and geopolitical facts examined here are anything to go by, the 21^st century will be more American than ever.

Drieu Godefridi is a jurist (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain), philosopher (University Saint-Louis, University of Louvain) and PhD in legal theory (Paris IV-Sorbonne). He is an entrepreneur, CEO of a European private education group and director of PAN Medias Group. He is the author of The Green Reich (2020).

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20340/21st-century

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Populism, Pacificism, and Isolationism (Part 3): The Future - Thaddeus G. McCotter

 

by Thaddeus G. McCotter

As the pacifist-isolationist wings of both parties rise, the most effective and honorable means to garner public support for foreign policy is to tell the truth.

 

This is the third article in a three-part series on populism, pacificism, and isolationism. The first article, “The Past,” can be found here. The second article, “The Present,” can be found here.

Philosophically, we are a constitutional republic composed of sovereign citizens with a servant government; its constitutionally enumerated and proscribed powers are delegated by the people; and the exercise of these powers requires the consent of the governed. Consequently, as a practical matter, the government must recognize that both domestic and foreign policies require the consent of the governed.

Ironically, the Baby Boom generation should be well acquainted with this fact. They came of age during the Vietnam War, where they saw—and many of them abetted—the erosion of popular support for that cause. From the beginning, covertly supplying military advisors and intelligence officers into the country through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, a fraudulent sop to gin up public support for an escalation of America’s role in Vietnam, only served to commence and cement public skepticism and, ultimately, opposition to the continuation of the war. The enemy was correct that the Vietnam War would be decided in the streets of America—and they were not talking about terrorist attacks but rather anti-war protestors. The enemy’s prediction proved accurate. The war resulted in a defeat for the United States and a death sentence for a free South Vietnam.

In the wake of alienation and disillusionment of the public with America’s foreign policy, the War Powers Act was passed to ensure an administration could not conduct wars without the approval of the people’s other duly elected officials in Congress. As soon as it was signed into law, it became an almost dead letter law and was largely replaced by Congressional authorizations of force, which, though ostensibly short of a declaration of war, are in practice seemingly open-ended.

Importantly, the nation’s experience in Vietnam and, prior to that war, in Korea was to largely oppose the insertion of American military personnel in conflicts that were active kinetic theaters in the larger “Cold War” strategy. Unfortunately, when they came of age in the halls of government, the Baby Boom policymakers learned the wrong lessons. The War Powers Act was not to be honored but evaded; supporting proxies was preferred to sending U.S. troops; and the rationale for sending U.S. troops into harm’s way had to be believable—not factual. Especially after the “Cold War” was won and followed by the “War on Terror,” such rationales usually had three components: the justification for sending the troops into combat; the military mission to be accomplished; and the ultimate disposition of the nation upon which we wage war. In the instances of Iraq and Afghanistan, the rationale was a regime bent upon exporting terrorism to America; the military mission was regime change; and the ultimate disposition was the creation of model democracies opposed to terrorism and allied with the U.S.

In the almost quarter century that has passed since September 11, 2001, the failure of these enterprises has served to disillusion and alienate Americans and led to the ascent of each party’s pacifist-isolationist wings. Today, it is not the Iraqi government but the Biden administration attacking the murderous Iranian proxies in Iraq, and America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan proved a debacle that saw the return of the very terrorist regime that was supposed to be deposed, the Taliban. In Iraq, what were “weapons of mass destruction” but a 21st-century Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? In Afghanistan, what was the eradication of the Taliban and the erection of a model democracy but a fool’s errand paid in American blood and treasure? In the American public, what was accomplished but alienation and disillusionment, and its accompanying rise in pacifism-isolationism?

Unlike past generations of policymakers, it is imperative for this crop of elected officials and national security personnel to learn the lessons of history, lest they be repeated with dire consequences for our vital strategic interests and, most importantly, for our fellow Americans in uniform.

Despite the failure to honor it, the three-pronged template for foreign policy—especially the use of military force—remains sound: the justification for sending the troops into combat, the military mission to be accomplished, and the ultimate disposition of the nation upon which we waged war. But this tripartite test must be adhered to honestly and factually.

The initial rationale must be self-evident to the American public. This does not mean it must be initially obvious. Yet, it cannot be based on conjecture and/or connivance to facilitate the administration’s questionable or unwarranted insertion of American troops into combat theaters.

The military mission must be clearly defined, commensurate with the danger posed by the enemy, and not open-ended. This must not necessitate a “deadline.” However, the public must agree the attainment of the military mission will be commensurate with the danger posed by the enemy and the sacrifice of American lives and billions of dollars.

So, too, must be the ultimate disposition of the nation upon which we wage war. This must be practical and concrete, not theoretical and abstract. To wit, post-Iran and Afghanistan, the creation of a “model democracy” (at least in the absence of an overwhelming unconditional surrender by the enemy) is no longer seen as a viable war goal for the ultimate disposition of an enemy nation.

In sum, then, even as the pacifist-isolationist wings of both parties rise, the most effective and honorable means to garner public support for foreign policy is to tell the truth—about the danger, the strategic objectives imperiled, the military objectives, and the ultimate resolution of the conflict for both our enemy and the United States.

A foundational foreign policy’s principles entail that an administration’s first priorities are to defend American citizens and secure our vital national interests.  This is not a recrudescence of the rightly loathed pacifism-isolationism of pre-World War II America.  Rather, it is the starting point for harmonizing the mutual strategic interests of America and her allies, who also make their determinations based upon their own perceived national interests. In this regard, an administration would be wise to elucidate the foreign policy paradigm in which we find ourselves—in a new Cold War with authoritarian enemies.

Such a foreign policy based upon the consent of the public must recognize that the way to preserve and promote America’s strategic interests is by pursuing “Peace through Strength.” As a practical people, most Americans would rather be “safe than sorry” and be prepared for the worst rather than hope for the best from barbarous nations that butcher and brutalize their own people. Not only must an administration’s principles and practices in foreign policy guard against diminishing American sovereignty for the surfeit laurels of sundry international organizations with dubious effectiveness. It must also prevent foolhardy bartering with barbarous rogue regimes bent upon the subjugation and eradication of free peoples and nations.

Further, an administration must not echo the claims that America is a racist, imperialist nation. Who wants to ally with such an evil country? Who wants to risk their lives defending it? (Given the current crisis in military recruitment, it appears we have an answer—and not a good one.) Most citizens believe, to greater and lesser degrees, that America is an exceptional nation, a force for moral good in the world, and, consequently, must be ever vigilant and prepared to defend herself because her free people’s very existence poses an existential threat to the world’s autocrats, tyrants, and terrorists. Why? Because Americans inspire the world with what a free people can achieve.

Honestly fulfilling the tripartite test and its concomitant principles will produce a practical foreign policy appealing to a practical people and secure the popular support to ensure this foreign policy prevails and endures. If not, the rising support in both parties for pacifism-isolationism will carry the day and debilitate our nation’s ability to defend its vital national interests. Charitably, we can assume the pacifists-isolationists are motivated by a desire to preserve human life and improve it here at home. Yet, by making it more difficult for America to protect and project its critical strategic interests and, first and foremost, defend its citizens, the pacifists-isolationists will accomplish neither of their goals.

But the ultimate fault will not be theirs. It will be upon the “best and brightest” elected officials and policy makers who, through duplicity and/or incompetence, refused to give the pacifist-isolationist movement—and every citizen—a practical foreign policy honoring the wisdom and wishes of the American people.

An American Greatness contributor, the Hon. Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) represented Michigan’s 11th Congressional district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.

 
Thaddeus G. McCotter

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/10/populism-pacificism-and-isolationism-part-3-the-future/

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DNC files federal complaint against RFK Jr., alleging illegal campaign coordination with super PAC - Charlotte Hazard

 

by Charlotte Hazard

Kennedy's campaign has denied the allegations, calling them “a nonissue being raised by a partisan political entity..."

 

The Democratic National Committee has filed a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission alleging that independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has illegally coordinated with a Super PAC supporting his bid for the White House. 

The complaint filed on Friday alleges the Super PAC American Values 2024 has been illegally working with Kennedy's campaign in a "ballot access scheme" to get signatures to help him get on the ballot in certain key states. 

Many states, including Arizona, Michigan and Illinois, have rules that only candidates and their campaigns can collect signatures and not PACs backing candidates, according to The Associated Press.

“They simply cannot comply with federal law and state law at the same time,” DNC legal counsel Bob Lenhard told reporters. 

Kennedy's campaign has denied the allegations, calling them “a nonissue being raised by a partisan political entity that seems to be increasingly concerned with its own candidate and viability.” 

American Values 2024 referred to the FEC complaint by the DNC as "political games."

“The DNC wants to deny millions of people their basic constitutional voting rights in a relentless onslaught against democracy,” said Tony Lyons, the PAC's co-founder.  

Charlotte Hazard

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/dnc-files-federal-complaint-against-rfk-jr-alleging-illegal-campaign

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Rewarding the Oct 7 Massacres With a ‘Palestinian’ State - Daniel Greenfield

 

by Daniel Greenfield

What do you get when you massacre over a thousand people? A country.

 

What do you get when you massacre over a thousand people, rape, behead, torture and kidnap everyone Jewish, Christian or non-Arab in sight? International diplomatic recognition.

Secretary of State Tony Blinken has reportedly begun conducting a review of options for recognizing a ‘Palestinian’ state after the war. The State Department has claimed that there are no policy changes, but that may be yet more diplomatic doubletalk.

UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, brought in after PM Rishi Sunak ousted Minister Suella Braverman for speaking out against the pro-Hamas rallies, published an op-ed calling for a “pause” in the fighting, exchanging Israeli hostages for captured Hamas terrorists, and providing “safe passage” to “key Hamas leaders” and “the people responsible for October 7” to leave Gaza. After that he announced that his government might recognize an Islamic terror state.

“We – with allies – will look at the issue of recognising a Palestinian state, including at the United Nations,” he claimed. “That could be one of the things that helps to make this process irreversible.”

Why the urgent need for the “irreversible” recognition of a terror state?

According to Cameron, “we must give the people of the West Bank and Gaza the political perspective of a credible route to a Palestinian state and a new future.”

The “people” in question have already been polled on what they want from the future.

A poll found that 74% of ‘Palestinians’ supported the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7 and a majority “extremely” supported them. Only 12% were against. 83% of those in the West Bank, under the Palestinian Authority and the immediate beneficiaries of statehood, supported the crimes.

98% in Gaza and the West Bank said that they felt ‘pride’ as ‘Palestinians’ over the war. 74% expected the fighting to end with the defeat of Israeli forces in Gaza. Only 17% supported a two-state solution while 77.7% wanted to destroy Israel and replace it with a ‘Palestinian’ state.

This is what supporting the “Palestinian people” with a “Palestinian state” really means.

Former Minister Theresa Villiers who, unlike Cameron, had backed Brexit, warned that “accelerating unilateral recognition of Palestinian state would be to reward Hamas’ atrocities.”

And that’s exactly right.

The only reason any of this is being discussed is the Oct 7 Hamas attack. Recognizing a terror state after one of the worst acts of terror in history will retroactively validate everything.

Hamas will be able to claim victory, and so will the ‘Palestinians’ who took part in it, cheered it and supported it to a larger degree than Germans supported Hitler.

The Palestinian Authority, on which the hopes for a Palestinian State, depend is just as bad.

Despite Blinken’s best efforts, Mahmoud Abbas, the PLO leader who serves as the official ‘President’ of the Palestinian Authority, refused to disavow the Oct 7 attacks. Instead, the PLO, Fatah and other elements of the ruling regime in charge of the West Bank have praised it and others, like the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, even bragged about taking part in the attacks.

A video from the Palestinian Authority terror group features “terrorists wearing Fatah’s yellow armbands firing Kalashnikov rifles at a kibbutz” and “a Fatah terrorist stamping on the head of a murdered Israeli” as the group boasts that “we had a prominent and clear role” on Oct 7.

Abbas was elected to a four-year term in 2005. There have been no elections since and he has functioned as a glorified dictator subsidized by our foreign aid. His likely successors, including the imprisoned leader of a terror group who is ahead in the polls, all praised the Hamas attack.

Democratic elections in a ‘Palestinian’ state would mean Hamas. The Islamic terror group won the 2006 legislative elections and took over Gaza. It’s why there have been no elections since. Current polls show that if there were to be democratic elections, Hamas would easily win them.

Biden claimed that, “the vast majority of Palestinians are not Hamas. Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.” But the vast majority of them disagree and want Hamas to head or form part of a unity coalition of Islamic terrorist groups running a ‘Palestinian’ state..

The only Palestinian Authority candidate who could beat Hamas is Marwan Barghouti, the grandfather of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, currently serving several life sentences in Israel prison, who responded to Oct 7 by urging a total war against Israel. Hamas has demanded Barghouti’s release as part of any ‘terrorists-for-hostages’ trade with Israel..

Recognizing a ‘Palestinian’ state means either recognizing the Palestinian Authority’s terror dictatorship in the West Bank or Hamas. Either way an Islamic terrorist group will run the place, eliminate any opposition and launch more terrorist attacks against Israel and then anyone else.

But diplomats who were blindsided by the Oct 7 attacks are fighting to take control of the situation and the narrative by offering up the same old failed policies. Diplomats claim that Oct 7 was caused by a failure to negotiate, but it had really been brought about by endless negotiations.

Before the Oct 7 assault, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan had an article in Foreign Affairs magazine touting how negotiations with Hamas had led to quiet in Gaza. After the Hamas invasion, the online version had that edited out and only the print copies remain.

The roots of the Oct 7 attack lie in the 1992 pressure campaign to force Israel to take back the Hamas terror leaders it had deported, followed by the Oslo accord deals with Arafat and the PLO, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s ’s insistence on democratic elections that brought Hamas to power, Obama’s Arab Spring which empowered the Muslim Brotherhood parent organization of Hamas to win democratic elections, including in neighboring Egypt, which provided a vital outlet of support for Hamas, and then the Iran Deal that funded the state sponsor of Hamas which led Iran to expand its operations and ambitions around the region.

The addiction to diplomacy, nation building, accords and agreements led fatally to Oct 7.

Israel had resisted allowing Hamas to take part in elections only to face pressure from Rice.

“Whenever you have 80 percent of the Palestinian people turn out in a free and fair election, one that is free of violence, it has to be a cause for hope,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued after Hamas won the 2005 elections.

In 2007, a year after Hamas seized control of Gaza, Rice declared, “frankly, it’s time for the establishment of a Palestinian state.”

No matter how often the same approach fails, the diplomats never admit they were wrong.

To be a modern day diplomat is to ignorantly blame a lack of diplomacy and negotiations for everything and to promise that they can fix everything. Diplomats were telling us for generations that a “Palestinian state” would be the solution to all of the problems in the region, but ever since the Oslo accords, life in Israel and the Middle East has become much more violent.

There’s a limit to how much damage generals can do, but not diplomats.

Compare the damage from the Iraq War to the fallout from the Arab Spring which didn’t just set one country on fire, but led to brutal and enduring civil wars in Yemen, Syria and Libya, while causing serious harm in Egypt, Tunisia, and many other countries across the region.

Oct 7 was not the result of a military process, but a diplomatic one, in which the Biden administration and several Israeli governments had negotiated temporary quiet with Hamas.

Diplomats can’t afford to allow the impression that there is a military solution to terrorism. Or to much of anything else. And so they’re rushing to impose their diplomatic solution that would empower terrorists because that is all that diplomacy with terrorists ever accomplishes.

Since Oslo, diplomacy has consistently proved the flip side of the Roman “si vis pacem, para bellum” or “if you would have peace, prepare for war.”

Israelis have learned the hard way that if they prepare for peace, they will have war. Diplomacy is supposed to avert war, but with Islamic terrorists it encourages war instead.

Despite all the promises, the Oslo accords and other peace negotiations never ended the violence because the Islamic terrorists quickly realized that violence was their best leverage. Negotiations soon fell by the wayside as the Palestinian Authority terrorists focused on direct or indirect proxy terrorism. Hamas then took up the slack by promising to turn the violence on or off in exchange for money and political power. Recognizing a “Palestinian” state after Oct 7 would validate terrorism as the ultimate strategy yet again and would ensure more such attacks.

The push for a “Palestinian” state after Oct 7 not only rewards the atrocities of that day, but encourages the Arab Muslim ‘Palestinian’ settlers living in the West Bank and Gaza to repeat them.

What do you get when you massacre over a thousand people, rape, behead, torture and kidnap everyone Jewish, Christian or non-Arab in sight? The answer should not be your own country.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/rewarding-the-oct-7-massacres-with-a-palestinian-state/

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The Absurd Democrat Border Con - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

It remains unclear why Biden and Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both Americans and millions of illegal migrants?

 

 

In 2021, Joe Biden opened wide an inherited, secure southern border that had finally stopped mass illegal immigration.

When he overturned Donald Trump’s efforts, a planned flood of over 8 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S.

Almost all arrived without background checks, health screening, or vaccination certificates—but with massive needs for free housing, education, healthcare, and food entitlements and subsidies.

For four years, Donald Trump battled the courts, his Democratic opposition, and the open-border establishments within his own party to ensure legal-only immigration. Somehow, he rebuilt some of the old porous border fence. He had begun to build his long-promised new wall to the Gulf of Mexico. He had ended Obama-era catch-and-release.

Would-be refugees had to apply for asylum in their home country. Trump leveraged Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to police his own border and stop cynically transiting millions of illegal aliens into the U.S.

There was general Democratic Party opposition to all of Trump’s measures, both through Congress and via the courts.

For the last three years of Biden’s mass influx, the left has applauded open borders. That is, until late last year, when overwhelmed southern border state governors began busing and flying illegal immigrants en masse to northern sanctuary-city jurisdictions.

For years, these sanctuary zones had preened their liberality about open borders. They smeared as “racists” and “xenophobes” any who insisted on legal-only immigration.

But now they were subject to the real-life ramifications of their own destructive ideologies.

Major blue-state cities like Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., became outraged that they were inundated with tens of thousands of immigrants, all without legality, veritable identification, or background checks.

Some proved violent. Others crowded out scarce resources essential to millions of inner-city poor.

The liberal architects of illegal immigration are usually rich and powerful enough to be insulated from the consequences of their utopian policies.

But not so their poor or minority constituents. They deal first-hand with spiking crime, appropriation of their parks and civic centers, and restricted access to now overwhelmed social services.

So the once open-border Democrat Party and Joe Biden are in a quandary. They now fear mass defections of core Latino and Black voters in an election year.

But how can they square the circle of insisting on open borders with the need to appear to their own voters as determined to close them?

We saw the absurd answer this week. Shameless Democrats tried to enlist naïve and foolish Republicans to bail them out with a “comprehensive immigration bill.”

It was really designed to keep the border open while spending billions of dollars to facilitate more rapid and orderly transits—and more substantial welfare support for millions of illegals here and still to come.

Now Democrats, in lunatic fashion, claim that anyone who did not sign on to codify and regulate illegal immigration was responsible for their own deliberate open border policies in the first place!

To add insult to injury, they next sought to piggyback their toxic immigration bill onto massive aid for Israel and Ukraine. It was a transparent effort to blame any Republicans for harming Israel and aiding Putin, should they not sign on to a more efficient open border.

The real agendas of the bill’s supporters were absolutely no return to Trump’s legal-only immigration and a secure border.

That simple solution requires no new legislation and almost no new spending. But it does imply acknowledgement that the hated Trump had solved the problem executively—and that admission is apparently taboo.

Finally, public outrage from the left and conservative anger at foolish and naïve Republican enablers stopped the bill.

Still, it remains somewhat unclear why Biden and his Homeland Security chief, Alejandro Mayorkas, destroyed what Trump had achieved. Why would they ensure such misery for both American hosts and millions of illegal immigrants?

Did they want new long-term constituents, given that their neo-socialist agendas cannot win over a majority of current Americans?

Is importing millions of the poorest and most in need on the planet a way to ensure a still larger Great Society of entitlements and, with it, higher taxes on the “filthy rich?”

Do they assume that America’s increasingly non-Election-Day balloting ensures far less authentication and rejection of mail-in ballots, and thus it will be relatively easy for non-citizens to vote?

Many, left and right, make no effort to hide their desire for cheap imported labor—even though the current labor participation rate is only 62 percent of the potential American workforce.

Finally, one might expect this artifice from the left that is wedded to open borders.

But why some establishment Republicans aided and abetted these disingenuous efforts is yet another reminder why the doctrinaire Republican Party had to be reinvented by Donald Trump.

Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/08/the-absurd-democrat-border-con/

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