Israel’s ‘Top Gun’: The US-Israeli aircraft that can take down Iran - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

Top Israeli officials have all made direct threats against Iran. US-Israeli F-35 aircraft drills have helped make this option a possibility.

 

PREPARING FOR a joint mission? US and Israeli fighter jets participate in the Juniper Oak drill over the Negev in January.

(photo credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

White, yellow and purple fire erupted from their engines like a volcano.

The force of the explosion in their engines was deafening, even at a distance of a couple of hundred meters, and slightly shook the entire area.

Israel’s F-35 Adir elite fighter aircraft sped off one by one down the Nevatim Air Force Base runway near Beersheba, curving at first slightly to the right and then bursting forward with a stunning thrust, cutting deep rightward, as well as sailing upward at an acute angle.

After witnessing six aircraft taking off (and nearly going deaf the one time that we were too slow in covering our ears), the Magazine, a group of IDF officers, and one other media outlet turned our attention to the American F-15s that were due to take off next.

The F-35s had taken off with increments of 30 to 90 seconds in between each aircraft.

ISRAELI AND AMERICAN train through Israeli airspace. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

IDF Lt.-Col. M, commander of the 140 F-35 squadron, told the Magazine that the entire squadron could be up in the air during the exercise in less than 10 minutes and in an operational situation, far more rapidly.

However, the four American F-15s, even during the exercise, seemed to take off at a much faster rate – within 30 seconds or less – practically one right after another.

A Gulfstream G-500/G-550 (Nachshon) was also involved to train for intelligence collection.

Up close and on the ground, the gray F-35s, in shades of red, sported an eagle symbol and had a variety of messages written in large font on the aircraft itself.

These messages are to remind pilots and crews about proper handling of the cockpit and canopy, as well as instructions relating to items to remove before flying and various latches that need to be moved.

F-35s: A small and deadly aircraft

The F-35s seem astonishingly small for the best fighter aircraft in the world.

THEN AGAIN, as IDF Capt. I, the commander running the joint Israeli-US drill from the Israeli side, pointed out, the F-35s are made to be small and to carry fewer weapons. That is so they can have a much lower radar signature and achieve their stealth attack-with-surprise capability.

Asked about a variety of tasks, such as refueling, which might be necessary when striking distant locations such as Iran, M declined to address specific targets but said, “The Air Force would be ready for all tasks,” sending a message that the IDF has creative solutions for long-range flights.

Analysts have speculated that the IDF could use its aging Boeing 707 for mid-air refueling, even if not ideal, or that IDF aircraft might land and refuel at moderate Sunni locations in the Gulf. If an attack were to occur at some point in the future, or with US refueling assistance, Israel could use the American or its own new KC-46 refueling aircraft, which it will eventually receive from Boeing.

M was asked what he would do if he were engaged by antiaircraft missiles and if there were different maneuvers for avoiding one missile versus 10 or 30 or more.

Without revealing specific tactics, he confirmed that there were different tactics “to make sure we protect the aircraft according to different antiaircraft defense scenarios.”

In mid-December, outgoing IDF chief of staff Aviv Kohavi said that Israeli Air Force jets attacking Syria in recent years have, at times, faced 30 to 40 surface-to-air missiles or even up to 70 such missiles without losing a single aircraft.

When Kohavi’s recent quote regarding 70 antiaircraft missiles was mentioned, M said, “We know how to deal with” any scenario.

SOME ANALYSTS have noted that the aircraft that Israel possesses can also fire long-range missiles to strike targets in Iran from a significant distance, and then hightail it back to Israel while remaining out of range of Iranian defenses or while maximizing their ability to get out of range before those defenses kick in.

When presented with the idea that the IDF has had a 90% success rate in attacks in Syria against land-based targets, whereas hitting aerial targets which can maneuver in more of a three-dimensional manner, M demurred. He said, “Both land forces and hitting aerial attack drones have different challenges.”

He did not specify the different challenges. But one special challenge sometimes presented with land-based targets versus aerial targets is the proximity to potentially innocent civilians.

M would not say all the places he had flown, but there was a clear implication that with his long flight record, he would have served in missions striking targets in Syria.

At a recent graduation ceremony of Air Force personnel, then-defense minister Benny Gantz said that the graduates would need to be ready to attack Iran in “two to three years.”

Since then, outgoing chief Kohavi, new IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, new Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have all made direct threats to Iran about its nuclear program and regional terror.

The goal of the joint flights and simulated attacks witnessed by the Magazine was to train for hitting targets in “deep” enemy territory, often a euphemism for Iran and other countries that do not have immediate borders with Israel.

Clearly, the US is a huge asset and backer. As M said, “Any help from the US could be good” if any foreign strike were ordered, but “we do not need them or anyone else” if Israel is compelled to take action and other allies prefer to stay on the sidelines.

IN LATE January, the exercise which the Magazine partially witnessed was followed by “Juniper Oaks,” which was called the largest US-Israel joint exercise in history.

IDF Chief Herzi Halevi (C) and US CENTCOM Commander General Michael Kurilla (L) receive a briefing. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

CENTCOM, IDF and anonymous US officials all made it clear, either explicitly or implicitly, that Iran should take notice of the joint capabilities of Washington and Jerusalem to project and use power anywhere in the Middle East.

The F-35 could be called on to be the first wave of a climactic Israeli preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities at some point. If so, it is this stealth capability which Israeli experts hope will surprise and knock out Iran’s prized S-300 antiaircraft missile system.

Without discussing a specific operation, M emphasized the power of the F-35’s stealth capabilities and that he had personally confronted danger on various missions over the course of his career.

In 2016, when Israel was rolling out its new F-35s, Steve Over, director of the F-35 International Business Development for Lockheed Martin, said publicly that the F-35 fighter was designed to counter advanced threats just like the one posed by the Russian-made S-300.

He was speaking to journalists a day after Russia announced that it was lifting a ban on the sale of the air defense system to Iran, and said countries like Russia and China “have the capacity to sell advanced air defenses and planes and will sell to any nation with the money to buy them.”

But the F-35, he added, “has the capacity” to deal with advanced surface and airborne threats.

Israel's F-35s: Outfoxing the Syrian air defense system

During the period of 2018 to October 2022, it is believed that the Israeli Air Force’s F-35s succeeded in outfoxing the Syrian S-300 antiaircraft missile system.

Kohavi told the Magazine in January that Israel attacked targets in Syria on average on a weekly basis.

Despite the massive number of aerial attacks, which reportedly also included F-15 and F-16 fighter aircraft at times, Israel lost only one F-16 in early 2018 and has never lost an F-35.

This gives Jerusalem some confidence about the ability to do the same, if necessary, against the Islamic Republic.

Israel also made progress on January 21, announcing that the Defense Ministry had officially requested 25 F-15 EX fighter jets from Boeing and the US. It is expected that Jerusalem will request even more in the future.

According to Boeing, the F-15 EX “carries more weapons than any other fighter in its class and can launch hypersonic weapons…weighing up to 7,000 pounds.”

But attacking Iran would be challenging.

How would Israel attack Iran?

Scenarios of an attack might play out with an opening salvo from Israel’s F-35 fighters, who might fly in from a variety of directions.

The F-35 has a small radar signature, but too many aircraft moving all together at the same time could set off other alarm bells and suspicions.

These aircraft would have to travel 1,200/1,350 miles/kilometers, possibly over Saudi airspace, which the Saudis might allow as the informal sponsors of the Abraham Accords. Alternatively, they might travel along the Syria-Turkey or Syria-Iraqi corridor, and then through Iraq itself to shorten the trip somewhat.

ANY AIRCRAFT crossing through Iraq would not be doing so with permission. But Baghdad has a weak air force and while nowhere near friendly to Israel, it has also not been actively hostile toward Israel since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

Their mission would be to take out Iran’s many air defense systems from the S-300 to less sophisticated but still worrisome systems. They would also destroy any Iranian aircraft on the ground so that there would be “clear skies” for the next waves of aircraft. The S-300 would be the biggest priority, given that Iran’s air force is ancient. Many are not even sure that its aircraft have had sufficient maintenance to be combat worthy at all.

Depending on how many F-35s Israel has at the time, it might even be possible to dedicate only some of them to this first round and to reserve some to join the second wave. Israel might also be able to begin striking certain nuclear facilities simultaneously with the first wave.

It is also likely that Israel would send a fleet of drones, along with the F-35s, to fire missiles to destroy various antiaircraft missile targets and nuclear facilities or to destroy them by crashing into them.

According to Iranian and foreign sources, Israel recently pulled off drone attacks on Iran at its Isfahan facility on January 29, as well as in June 2021 at the Karaj nuclear facility.

This would be a way to multiply force in the initial wave without risking as many pilots’ lives, until it was evident that the skies were clear of most threats to Israeli aircraft.

Deciding how many F-35s and drones to send in, and how many defense sites versus critical nuclear sites to go after, would be a balancing act between risks to Israeli pilots and maximizing the element of surprise.

Israel will need bunker buster weapons to stop Iran's Fordow, Natanz nuclear facilities

The most complicated element in the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities would be eliminating its deep underground Fordow facility and, depending on whether it is finished, the new deep underground facility the Islamic Republic has been building at Natanz since 2021.

TO DATE, the US has refused, even under the Trump administration, to provide Israel with “bunker buster” weapons which are specially designed to destroy such deep underground facilities.

Previously, former CIA director Michael Hayden told the Magazine that America should have and should give Israel these weapons as a way to deter Iran from thinking that it can safely build nuclear facilities by placing them deep underground.

AIR DEFENSE capabilities are tested as part of the drill, simulating what could happen in the event of an Iranian missile or drone attack. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Another problem would be that no Israeli aircraft to date is capable of carrying the weight of a huge bunker-buster bomb.

However, a large number of current and former top IDF and other intelligence officials have assured the Magazine, without hesitation, that Israel has the capability to destroy such underground facilities.

How? They will not specify because such things are classified.

But senior US officials have told the Magazine that repeated bombing raids could cause a cave-in, a cut-off or make any Iranian underground facility otherwise unusable.

Other targets might include the heavy water reactor at Arak; various facilities at Isfahan, including a uranium conversion plant (though according to Iran, Israel’s Mossad just hit Isfahan on January 29); research reactors at Bonab, Ramsar, and Tehran; and other facilities like Parchin, where Iran may have conducted or may be conducting nuclear weaponization experiments.

M did not want to give a time frame regarding when the 11 Israeli F-35 aircraft, which were grounded on December 25 from training flights to address a potential malfunction found in similar American jets, would be returned to full service.

The impression given was that the review of the potential malfunction could be complex and take time. But M was clear that the remaining F-35s available, of which Israel has three squadrons (squadrons often vary from 10 to 25 aircraft), were enough, along with other Israeli fighter aircraft, to accomplish any mission that would need to be assigned. Since the interview with M, partners of Lockheed Martin have said that there may be a fix for the US’ F-35s as soon as this coming month, with parallel efforts in Israel.

Additional sources the Magazine has consulted added that while reviewing those F-35s for the purposes of training may take time, they are likely still fit for combat, and the IDF could use them as such even if not taking such risks for mere training.

US, Israeli pilots training with F-35s together

Cutting back to the joint drill and what was achieved, Capt. I emphasized a mix of overcoming obstacles in language, as well as procedures and maneuvers. When he interviewed with the Magazine, the exercise had already been running for multiple days.

He said that even in only a few days, the two teams of pilots had a greater understanding of each other and intuiting each other’s approaches to flying.

While learning operational maneuvers and tactics and getting used to flying in different formations could lead to Israelis teaching Americans some moves – given that Israeli pilots currently have more regular combat missions – in terms of language, everything is about Israelis improving their English.

After all, Israeli pilots already have all been educated in English to a relatively high level, but the US is the big brother, so any discrepancies in communication will usually lean toward the American Air Force’s needs.

Curiously enough, both M and I said that the Israeli and the American pilots learned as much from each other while commiserating on the ground between exercises as they did in the air.

M noted that he was among the first to learn to fly the F-35 and spent five months living in the US on an American base in 2016, when the first F-35s started to become available to Israel.

He said that American pilots loved Israeli food and were stunned by the quick changes to Israel’s landscape and scenery in such a small geographic area, from fields of green to mountains to desert.

FLIGHT OPERATIONS aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77) during exercise Juniper Oak. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

M AGREED that Israel’s move from coordinating with EUROCOM, the US’s military forces in Europe, to CENTCOM, its forces in the Middle East, was a positive move which could be extremely helpful for future operations. He said that more generally, it also allowed the US and Israeli militaries to be more in sync.

M confirmed that the Abraham Accords have helped isolate Iran and have helped the Air Force in advancing greater regional cooperation, while emphasizing “not operational cooperation yet” (as opposed to the US, where there is already operational cooperation).

In addition, M said his pilots and the American pilots could “learn more specific tactics in this smaller exercise.” This is as opposed to a larger exercise, where the focus is less on unit-by-unit coordination and more on the full picture of a wider integration of diverse forces.

A remarkable aspect of the IDF is its work ethic. One of the pilots suffered a broken arm but pushed through it to perform a variety of activities on the ground during the drill until he was fully back in shape.

One thing that was self-evident was that M was a clear master. He walked around the aircraft on the base like it was his backyard which he had owned for most of his adult life.

Tall and with a swagger and overtly disarming confidence that pilots are known for, M fits the mold of exactly who the Jewish state would want in the cockpit, commanding the most dangerous and momentous missions over the horizon.

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-732487

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The Palestinian Authority for the Rights of Terrorists! - Bassam Tawil

by Bassam Tawil

[Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh] is... saying that Israel has no right to defend itself or take any measures against Palestinians involved in terrorism, who are then financially rewarded by his own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

• The bill basically states that an Israeli citizen or resident who commits a terrorist act and agrees to receive payment for it from the Palestinian Authority is thereby stating a preference to receive benefits from the Palestinian Authority over those of the State of Israel. When the terrorist completes his prison sentence, he will then move to the place of his chosen alliance, the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Needless to say, this also means that re-entry into Israel is prohibited.

• [Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh] is... saying that Israel has no right to defend itself or take any measures against Palestinians involved in terrorism, who are then financially rewarded by his own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

• Paying for murder in lieu of negotiating is not what the Palestinians committed to in the Oslo Accords or any other agreement.

• Would-be terrorists can now contemplate that choice [whether to commit murder or stay in Israel], unlike the victims of terror who will never get to "visit family" again.

• In the view of the Palestinian leadership, if Palestinians murder innocent civilians simply because they are Jews, that is not racist or unlawful, but if Israelis hold those murderers responsible and imprison them, that is racist and unlawful.

• [Shtayyeh] apparently wants to make sure that while he continues to fund the families of the terrorists in the West Bank, the Arab terrorists in Israel will be able to maintain their citizenship, live a pleasant life inside Israel and be able to continue murdering Jews.

• In Lebanon, Palestinians, with rare exceptions, are not permitted citizenship, period.

• The intriguing thing is that Palestinian officials who are upset by this bill seem extremely worried about "Palestinian rights to citizenship," but only in Israel -- not in Lebanon or Jordan.

• What these Palestinian leaders are worried about are the rights of terrorists -- far more than they worry about the living standards or economic hardship that millions of their people face in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The motivation, sadly, seems to be shoring up their own political power at the expense of their people.

• They seem concerned about "Palestinian rights" only when it can involve delegitimizing Israel.

• The Biden Administration and the European Union, meanwhile, continue to provide political and financial support to the Palestinian Authority without demanding an end to Abbas's "pay-for-slay" "jobs program" that incentivizes and rewards the murder of Jews, or the ongoing campaign to defend the "rights of terrorists."

• By their silence, the Biden Administration and the European Union are sending a message to the Palestinians that it is perfectly all right to finance terrorism and murder Jews.

Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh is saying that Israel has no right to defend itself or take any measures against Palestinians involved in terrorism, who are then financially rewarded by his own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. Pictured: Shtayyeh speaks at the 36th Ordinary Session of the Assembly of the African Union in Addis Ababa on February 18, 2023. (Photo by Tony Karumba/AFP via Getty Images)

A new bill that is moving swiftly through initial rounds in the Israeli parliament is garnering harsh criticism from the Palestinian leadership. The bill basically states that an Israeli citizen or resident who commits a terrorist act and agrees to receive payment for it from the Palestinian Authority is thereby stating a preference to receive benefits from the Palestinian Authority over those of the State of Israel. When the terrorist completes his prison sentence, he will then move to the place of his chosen alliance, the West Bank or Gaza Strip. Needless to say, this also means that re-entry into Israel is prohibited.

Sounds fair enough. Not, however, to Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh.

According to the Palestinian Authority's official news agency Wafa, Shtayyeh is livid. He has warned of "the serious consequences of the Israeli Knesset's approval of the law to revoke the nationality of our imprisoned children in the lands of 1948 and in the occupied city of Jerusalem."

Notably, Shtayyeh, like many other Palestinians, refers to the State of Israel as "the lands of 1948." That means that these Palestinians do not recognize Israel's existence: as far as they are concerned, Israel is one big settlement that needs to be uprooted.

Shtayyeh is furious about the revocation of the citizenship of terrorists from the state that he refuses to acknowledge exists. He is also saying that Israel has no right to defend itself or take any measures against Palestinians involved in terrorism, who are then financially rewarded by his own Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

It is quite the conundrum. Shtayyeh claims he wants an independent Palestinian state next to Israel, calls Israel the "lands of 1948," but is irate about the revocation of Israeli citizenship from an Arab citizen of Israel. It is a difficult stance to maintain.

Still, he persists, in utter defiance of logic, to appeal to "the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union: To denounce the resolution, and to put pressure on Israel to force it to cancel it... this decision is a racist practice and a flagrant violation of international law and international humanitarian law."

In the view of the Palestinian leadership, if Palestinians murder innocent civilians simply because they are Jews, that is not racist or unlawful, but if Israelis hold those murderers responsible and imprison them, that is racist and unlawful.

The Palestinian Authority is bolstered in this perversion of justice and law by Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, which has come out in defense of the "plight" of the murderers, whose citizenship could be revoked under the new law:

"It leaves people without any status, it leaves them stateless... They are even talking about not allowing these people to re-enter Israel – whether with a work permit, or even to visit family."

Would-be terrorists can now contemplate that choice, unlike the victims of terror who will never get to "visit family" again.

Adalah, founded in 1996, calls itself The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights. In light of its position on the revocation of the Israeli citizenship of terrorists, perhaps the group should change its name to The Legal Center for the Rights of Jew-Murderers. The Palestinian Authority, for its part, should change its name to The Palestinian Authority for Defending Terrorists.

Unlike the many times Palestinian leaders have grotesquely called the slaying of children and the murder of innocents a "natural response," this time Shtayyeh has it right when he calls the new legislation "a natural result."

One could almost hope he has seen reason, but that hope is instantly dashed. He continues that this legislation is, "a natural result of the double standards policy, which sends wrong messages to Israel encouraging it to commit more such violations as long as it is able to escape punishment."

Ironically, it is Shtayyeh's Palestinian Authority that "sends the wrong messages" by rewarding terrorism -- in cash -- instead of holding the attackers accountable. Paying for murder in lieu of negotiating is not what the Palestinians committed to in the Oslo Accords or any other agreement.

All the same, Shtayyeh is extremely worried about the rights of terrorists living both in Israel and under the rule of his government in the West Bank. He apparently wants to make sure that while he continues to fund the families of the terrorists in the West Bank, the Arab terrorists in Israel will be able to maintain their citizenship, live a pleasant life inside Israel and be able to continue murdering Jews.

This is about to change, it seems -- and that is why the Palestinian leaders are having a fit.

Israel has had enough of seeing murderers released to the cheers and parades of a hero's welcome, as witnessed recently with the release of Israeli Arab citizen Karim Younis, who murdered an Israeli soldier in 1980.

After being carried on the shoulders of an admiring crowd, Younis declared that he would gladly do it again if given the chance. "I'm prepared to serve another 40 years in order to liberate the homeland of the Palestine," he was quoted as saying.

To ensure that more terrorists do not get the chance to continue murdering Jews, 94 members of the Israeli parliament, in an unusually cross-spectrum representation, voted in favor of the recent legislation.

Minister of Knesset Ofir Katz, commenting on the bill, said:

"Let there be no mistake... it doesn't matter if it is a terror organization or a lone terrorist. I promise the bereaved families who are here or are watching us... we will not allow a situation where, while our brothers are bleeding to death, just a few meters away the families of the terrorists will joyfully hand out candy."

The intriguing thing is that Palestinian officials who are upset by this bill seem extremely worried about "Palestinian rights to citizenship," but only in Israel -- not in Lebanon or Jordan.

In Lebanon, Palestinians, with rare exceptions, are not permitted citizenship, period. They are prohibited from owning property, from working in most desirable vocations, and are denied even the most basic government welfare services. Palestinians are considered by Lebanese authorities as "refugees."

"Palestinian camps in Lebanon are ghetto-like settlements, sometimes surrounded by segregation walls, barbed wire and military surveillance," according to Lebanese journalist Sawssan Abou-Zahr. "They are overcrowded and unorganized concrete blocks with decaying infrastructure."

The Lebanese government's human rights record regarding the Palestinians in its country is beyond dismal.

Instead of addressing the criminal treatment of his people in Lebanon and seeking reforms, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, in his 2017 visit to Lebanon, was seen hobnobbing with celebrities at the Arab Idol television show. Somehow, he missed visiting a single Palestinian refugee camp.

One of the camp residents bitterly noted:

"Abbas doesn't know about suffering and us being deprived of civil rights and the right to work, and Abbas doesn't care about the living conditions of the people here."

Another asked, "Why did he come?... Did anything change.... will we be able to own property or get passports and travel to other countries?"

The answer is no.

In Jordon, Palestinians are permitted citizenship but can easily be stripped of it. This problem does not seem to be of urgent concern for either the Palestinian Authority or Abbas, although there has been a lot of mutual back-patting and behind-the-scenes coordination.

The advocacy group Minority Rights spells out the situation:

"... the Jordanian government has engaged in a policy of stripping some Palestinians of their Jordanian citizenship, often on apparently arbitrary grounds... and had few practical avenues through which to appeal the decision.... [Jordan] has also engaged in refoulement of Palestinian refugees to Syria, in contravention of international law."

According to a report from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies, when Palestinians in Jordan are stripped of their citizenship,

"children... can be barred entrance to, or expelled from, public schools.... Palestinians.... can be fired from current employment no matter the length of time or status in such a position.... and have rendered lifetimes of work and experience irrelevant."

Worse, Palestinians stripped of citizenship in Jordan can no longer "obtain certain medical treatment free or at low cost at public health facilities. Stateless Palestinians are excluded from those benefits."

Abbas and Jordan's King Abdullah II are working together for political control rather than out of any actual concern for the Palestinians' condition. As for stripping thousands of Palestinian-Jordanian's of citizenship, "Jordanian officials have defended the practice as a means to counter any future Israeli plans to transfer the Palestinian population of the Israeli-occupied West Bank to Jordan." Needless to say, this is a false accusation and another libel against Israel.

Abbas actually approved this revocation of citizenship in Jordan to cut short the US and international suggestion throughout many years that actually "Jordan is Palestine."

Whether in Lebanon, Jordan, the West Bank or anywhere else, Abbas, Shtayyeh and the Palestinian Authority are not worried about the rights of Palestinians, their citizenship, or international law. What these Palestinian leaders are worried about are the rights of terrorists -- far more than they worry about the living standards or economic hardship that millions of their people face in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The motivation, sadly, seems to be shoring up their own political power at the expense of their people.

They seem concerned about "Palestinian rights" only when it can involve delegitimizing Israel.

The Biden Administration and the European Union, meanwhile, continue to provide political and financial support to the Palestinian Authority without demanding an end to Abbas's "pay-for-slay" "jobs program" that incentivizes and rewards the murder of Jews, or the ongoing campaign to defend the "rights of terrorists."

By their silence, the Biden Administration and the European Union are sending a message to the Palestinians that it is perfectly all right to finance terrorism and murder Jews.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab Based in the Middle East.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19462/palestinian-authority-terrorists

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The Woke Wrecking Machine - Victor Davis Hanson

 

by Victor Davis Hanson

End it now - before it ends America first.

 

Almost everything that has followed from the woke mass hysteria gripping the nation since 2020 has proved disastrous.

Wokeism destroys meritocracy in favor of forced equality of result – history’s prescription for civilizational decline.

If we continue with the woke hiring of administrators, air traffic controllers, ground crews, pilots, and rail workers, there will be even more news of disasters and near-miss airline crashes.

Wokeness demands a McCarthyite suppression of free expression. No wonder a woke FBI recently hired out social media censors to suppress stories it deemed unhelpful.

Soviet-style, wokeism mandates strict ideological party-line narratives under the cover of “science.” No wonder a woke government lied that requiring vaccines would prevent both infection and infectiousness.

Woke substitutes race for class in its eternal neo-Marxist quest to divide permanently the nation along racial lines, between victims and victimizers.

Yet wokeism recently has embarrassed itself as never before.

Take the COVID pandemic.

The Department of Energy has joined the FBI and is now attributing the origins of the pandemic to a leak of a likely engineered virus from the top-security virology lab in Wuhan, China.

Wokesters had long suppressed that reality, demonizing any who rejected its orthodox lies and spoke a larger truth: A dystopic China is not our global partner in greening the planet. Criticizing Stalinist China is not “racist.” China is not building a progressive society that is a model for others.

The ongoing environmental catastrophe in East Palestine, Ohio, following the train derailment revealed more woke moral bankruptcy.

Ostensibly the ensuing toxic spill and noxious plume have poisoned a poor and working-class small town. It should have galvanized the old Democratic Party that once voiced loud support for all green causes and championed the lower American classes.

But woke ended all that – substituting racial chauvinism for class concerns and ideology for genuine worry over the environment.

Woke dogma mandates that pollution and poverty are no longer concerns – if they affect the white poor who are stereotyped collectively as privileged victimizers.

Wokesters insisted that California is the greatest casualty of “climate change” defined as permanent drought.

Purported climate change required radical new bureaucratic rules and antidemocratic mandates over irrigation supplies, ground water, and contracted water deliveries from public reservoirs.

But then it rained. And it snowed. And it became terribly cold in supposedly scorching California. Southern California is blanketed in snow.

Even so, for much of this cold, wet winter, state officials continued to claim the man-made drought was in full force. But finally, the most recent frigid, wet weather strangled the woke drought – and with it the credibility of our climate change Cassandras.

Americans sympathize with Ukraine’s plight as Russian President Vladimir Putin seeks to destroy its autonomy. But woke brooked no deviation from the party line that Ukraine’s Volodomyr Zelenskyy is a saint, while Russia is near bankrupt due to sanctions, and doomed to lose the war.

Accordingly, the United States was obligated to give Ukraine a veritable blank check given Kyiv’s commitment to freedom. Zelenskyy’s team now even talks of a victorious Ukrainian armored counteroffensive into Moscow’s Red Square.

This week, however, we are learning the Russian economy is nearly as strong now as it was before the war. It has mobilized 700,000 troops to ensure that eastern Ukraine becomes a Verdun-like killing field where tens of thousands more will be ground up.

Ukraine bars dissidents and maintains a government media monopoly. And the more President Joe Biden promises another $2-3 billion in biweekly aid, the more Zelenskyy acts as if it is a pittance given what supposedly stingy Americans should be capable of supplying.

Meanwhile, at home, new woke protocols mandate race as essential rather than incidental to the human experience. Supposedly such fixations will heal racial wounds.

Under the new reparatory and compensatory diversity, equity, and inclusion rules, those deemed non-white were to be hired and admitted to colleges in greater numbers than their demographics. Even the old mandated proportional representation quotas were no longer enough.

But racial chauvinism, nonstop talk of reparations, and the new campus segregation have not resulted in better racial relations.

Polls show that there are greater racial tensions than ever before.

Data on interracial and hate crimes show even sharper racial disproportionalities. The incidence of both Black violent criminal perpetrators and Black crime victims are near historical highs.

Woke policies of no cash bail, downgrading felonies, and no jail time only spiked violent lawlessness.

Our elite universities are now fully woke. Almost weekly an embarrassing story further erodes their credibility and reputation.

Ridiculous lists of  taboo words are issued on woke campuses, barring incendiary words like “American” and “immigrant.”

Bragging of segregated dorms, graduations, and safe spaces recalls Jim Crow, not woke racial utopias.

Grades and standards are deemed counterrevolutionary, even as incompetent graduates increasingly fail to impress employers.

Someday wokeism will disappear because it is inherently nihilistic and cannibalistic.

But in the meantime, Americans should end it now before it ends America first.

Victor Davis Hanson

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-woke-wrecking-machine/

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Russian Billionaires Did Business with Hunter Biden, Dined with Joe, Dodged Sanctions - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

Here’s your Russian collusion.

 

Before Donald Trump was even elected president and throughout the entire period of his administration, the Leftist establishment that is entrenched in Washington officialdom and among the propaganda outlets that are known as the major news organizations inundated us with nonsense about how he had improperly colluded with Russia in order to gain the White House, and was still in Vladimir Putin’s pocket. There was, as is now well-known, nothing whatsoever to it; it was all a hoax designed to discredit Trump and destroy his presidency, although like the Japanese soldiers found hiding in the woods in the 1970s, not knowing that the war was over, there are still some holdouts on the far Left who insist it was all true. And actually it was, but not of Donald Trump. If you want actual Russian collusion, take a look at Old Joe Biden.

The New York Post reported Thursday that “two Russian billionaires who have managed to dodge US sanctions over Moscow’s year-old invasion of Ukraine went property shopping with Hunter Biden, dined with then-Vice President Joe Biden, and discussed ‘favors’ they might swap.” That’s collusion for you, but of course the Washington establishment that went after Trump with such vicious ferocity over nothing whatsoever is entirely indifferent to this fresh evidence that the demented corruptocrat they installed in the White House is as crooked as the day is long. Russian collusion is only of interest to this establishment when it can be used as a political tool; when people on their side do it, it’s entirely beneath notice.

Well, almost entirely. The Biden regime’s Treasury Department did take notice long enough on Friday to spare two Russian pals of Joe and Hunter, Yelena Baturina and Vladimir Yevtushenkov, from “a fresh batch of sanctions.” The UK and Australia have sanctioned Yevtushenkov, but not the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. And with a level of understatement that was positively Hemingwayesque, an anonymous source whom the Post says has “firsthand knowledge of the business relationship between Hunter Biden and Yevtushenkov,” says: “I think it’s very fishy.”

So does Michael McFaul, who is such a right-wing Trumpian ideologue that he served as Barack Obama’s ambassador to Russia. “I think he should be sanctioned,” McFaul said of Yevtushenkov. “I don’t understand why he has not been.”

I do, Mike. It’s really quite simple. Yevtushenkov hasn’t been sanctioned because he had the good judgment to do business with Hunter and Joe Biden. This gives the Russian an all-purpose Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card, as the Washington establishment will do anything it can possibly do to shield the Bidens from the consequences of their corrupt dealings, and to keep the American people from discovering just how crooked the man who pretends to be president really is.

And he is. Yevtushenkov “admitted last year he met with Hunter Biden for breakfast at the Ritz-Carlton in Manhattan on March 14, 2012 — but denied any further contact.” He was, the terminally naïve will be surprised to learn, lying: “emails and calendar entries from Hunter’s former laptop show that they were set to meet again on Jan. 27, 2013, for dinner at DC’s Cafe Milano before looking at a commercial real estate development the next day near Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.” The Post’s source recounted: that he asked Yevtushenkov why he was meeting with Hunter, and the Russian billionaire replied: “I think it would be good to have a good relationship with this guy … maybe he can do a favor for us and we can do a favor for him.” The source added: “It was a complete quid pro quo that he was going in for.” Collusion and quid pro quo! It looks as if yet again the Left has engaged in the old tactic of accusing the other side of that which they are guilty of doing. The source added: “I told him that’s not the way it works in America, [but] he basically laughed at me and told me I was so naïve.”

Indeed. And wait, there’s more: “A different source, meanwhile, told The Post he vividly recalled Baturina and her husband, ex-Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, looking ‘like an odd couple’ at a now-infamous, intimate dinner with Hunter and his father, the then-vice president.” Also at the dinner was “Vadym Pozharskyi, an executive at Ukrainian energy company Burisma, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 while his VP dad controlled the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy. Pozharskyi emailed Hunter the next day to thank him for ‘giving an opportunity to meet your father.’”

But Old Joe Biden knows how the game is played. He “called the report a false ‘Russian plant’ at the time and social media platforms Twitter and Facebook initially censored it.” Even now, he will face no political consequences for all this Russian collusion. That’s only for presidents who dare to put America first.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 26 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest books are The Critical Qur’an and The Sumter Gambit. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/russian-billionaires-did-business-with-hunter-biden-dined-with-joe-dodged-sanctions/

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'Oops! ... I did it again!' Establishment media forced into major recent retractions - Madeleine Hubbard

 

by Madeleine Hubbard

NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Rolling Stone have all issued major corrections over the past week.

 

Establishment media outlets, including NPR and The Washington Post, have been forced to issue major retractions in recent days, correcting misreporting on matters ranging from FBI whistleblowers to how President Joe Biden's son Beau Biden died. 

NPR was forced to issue a correction Saturday to clarify that Beau Biden died from brain cancer in 2015, not from injuries he received while stationed with the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, as stated in the original report.

The public outlet is not the only source to misrepresent Beau Biden's death. The president himself has previously claimed that his late son died in Iraq, not from cancer.

NPR also walked back a claim in an article last month headlined "Speaker McCarthy leads first border trip in his new role. Critics call it a photo op." The piece inaccurately reported that no Democrats attended a hearing at a Texas border town, bolstering critics' claims that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans were using the border visit to generate media coverage.

"In fact, some Democrats attended," NPR later clarified.

The New York Times, the Washington Post and Rolling Stone all issued corrections to articles over the weekend about a Democrat House Judiciary Committee report criticizing Republican whistleblowers and GOP-led House investigations.

The Times admitted Saturday it had incorrectly stated that FBI whistleblower Stephen Friend worked for the Center for Renewing America, largely funded by former President Donald Trump's chief of staff Mark Meadows' Conservative Partnership Institute, in an article headlined "G.O.P. Witnesses, Paid by Trump Ally, Embraced Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theories." The Times issued a correction stating: "The center is affiliated with the institute and sustained mostly by donations; it is not largely funded by the institute."

Rolling Stone corrected an inaccurate claim regarding former FBI analyst George Hill, whose attorney Jason Foster says retired from the agency on "good terms."

Rolling Stone reported originally that Hill’s FBI security clearance had been “revoked” when in fact it was in good standing. The magazine said it mistook Hill for another whistleblower, Steve Friend, whose clearance had been suspended for a review but not revoked either.

"This story has been corrected to reflect that Steven Friend's security clearance was suspended and George Hill retired of his own volition," Rolling Stone stated.

"Obviously, they couldn't keep the details of George Hill's and [Stephen Friend's] cases straight," Foster tweeted. "So, they just blended them together with some fiction out of thin air about how Hill had to retire because his clearance was revoked and he couldn't find work anymore."

Rolling Stone has been called out before for media ethics issues. 

In November 2014, the magazine published an article titled "A Rape on Campus" claiming that a University of Virginia student was the victim of a fraternity gang rape. The story was retracted in April 2015, and the outlet lost a defamation lawsuit brough by a university official and settled other cases with the fraternity and some of its members. 

The Columbia Journalism Review said at the time that "Rolling Stone needs a transparency lesson" and the outlet "damaged the credibility of an important movement" bringing attention to sexual assault. 

The Washington Post, which still uses the slogan "Democracy Dies in the Darkness," has issued an alarming number of corrections this year alone to stories dealing with conservatives.

Most recently, the outlet issued a correction to a Friday article headlined "Democrats challenge credibility of GOP witnesses who embrace false Jan. 6 claims," stating: "An earlier version of this article erroneously said former FBI official Stephen Friend had not reported to a supervisor one of his concerns related to the use of a SWAT team in arrests related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riots. He said he did tell the supervisor, but he did not mention it in a written declaration."

Previously, the Post issued an undated correction to a 2020 article headlined "Tom Cotton keeps repeating a coronavirus fringe theory that scientists have disputed," which criticized the Arkansas Republican senator for speculating that COVID-19 originated from a Chinese lab leak. The theory has since been found credible by the Energy Department and the FBI, and the Post added to its article: "The term 'debunked' and The Post's use of 'conspiracy theory' have been removed because, then as now, there was no determination about the origins of the virus."

In January, the Post was forced to issue a correction to a story about conservative activist Chris Rufo, who said the paper published "flat-out lies" in an article headlined "DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one." 

"A previous version of this story called Christopher Rufo a Republican activist who denies the existence of systemic racism," the Post wrote in a correction. "He is a conservative activist who has said American law is not currently discriminating against racial minorities."

The recent corrections from these outlets follow several high-profile media corrections regarding claims about COVID-19 and the since-disproven Steele dossier alleging then-candidate Trump colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. 

Madeleine Hubbard

Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/media/oops-i-did-it-again-establishment-media-forced-major-recent-retractions

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Iranian Mullahs Ratchet Up Threats to Kill Trump - Robert Spencer

 

by Robert Spencer

But not Biden.

 

The Leftist establishment and the Biden regime want to destroy Donald Trump politically, but the Islamic Republic of Iran wants to do Old Joe and his henchmen one better: the mullahs and their cohorts are making no secret of the fact that they want Trump dead, along with Mike Pompeo and others involved in the 2020 killing of Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani. On Tuesday, Fox News reported that Iran has renewed its threats against Trump and the others, and even stated them in Islamic religious terms. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps aerospace force, declared: “God willing, we are looking to kill Trump [and] Pompeo… and military commanders who issued the order should be killed.”

Armies of all kinds throughout history have invoked God’s help upon their activities in wartime, and so it’s no surprise that a commander in an avowedly theocratic regime would do so. It’s nonetheless worth noting, however, as those who are convinced that they’re fighting an apocalyptic struggle of good vs. evil are unlikely to give up easily.

In line with that, as protests have rocked the Islamic Republic over the last few months, the Iranian regime has charged several protesters with “waging war against Allah,” a crime that is based on the Qur’an: “The only reward for those who make war upon Allah and his messenger and struggle to sow corruption on earth will be that they will be killed or crucified, or have their hands and feet cut off on opposite sides, or be expelled from the land. Such will be their degradation in this world, and in the hereafter, theirs will be an awful doom” (5:33). Stating the civil unrest in Iran in such stark and uncompromising terms is not just an attempt to terrorize the regime’s opponents into submission; it’s also a claim to hold the moral high ground: warring against the regime, you see, is the same thing as going to war against the Almighty Himself.

As he reiterated the Islamic regime’s threat against Trump, Hajizadeh emphasized that Iran did not plan to kill “poor soldiers,” but was gunning for the ringleaders. Iran analyst Behnam Ben Taleblu warned that the threats should be taken seriously: “Make no mistake, Iranian military officials mean what they say here. They still seek to wash blood away with blood. Threats by the long arm of the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism against American officials like Trump, Pompeo and McKenzie are not to be taken lightly.” Gen. Kenneth McKenzie is the former head U.S. Central Command. Ben Taleblu added: “This regime continues to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to global terrorism.”

While the threats are no doubt serious, it also must be noted that we have heard all this before. Back on New Year’s Day 2022, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted: “Martyr Soleimani is an eternal reality that will live on forever. His assassins – including Trump & the like – will go down in history’s garbage bin, but of course after receiving retribution in this world for the crime they committed.”

Even before that, Iran’s state-controlled Ahlul Bayt News Agency reported on January 23, 2021, that the Supreme Leader’s official website “posted a photo-montage of former US President Donald Trump playing golf under the shadow of a drone, vowing to avenge the assassination of Iran’s Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani.”

Khamenei also thundered in December 2020: “Revenge is certain.” He added: “The assassin of Soleimani and the one who ordered the murder should be punished. As an esteemed person said, Soleimani’s shoe is worth more than the assassin’s head and even decapitation of the assassin will not compensate for Soleimani’s shoe; but they did the wrong thing. They should be punished. The one who ordered and the assassin should know that they should be punished at any time possible.”

Trump was a favored Khamenei target even before Soleimani was killed. In February 2019, the Supreme Leader declared to a military gathering that “as long as America continues its wickedness, the Iranian nation will not abandon ‘Death to America.’ ‘Death to America’ means death to Trump, John Bolton, and Pompeo. It means death to American rulers.”

The Iranians have not, however, threatened Old Joe Biden. After all, what has he done but try to appease the Islamic Republic? Why kill someone who could turn out to be quite useful?

Robert Spencer

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/iranian-mullahs-ratchet-up-threats-to-kill-trump/

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Atlanta police says 35 arrested after mob attacks officers, destroys construction equipment - Hubbard Madeleine

 

by Hubbard Madeleine

Multiple pieces of construction equipment were destroyed by fire and vandalized.

 

The Atlanta Police Department said 35 people are in custody after a violent mob attacked police officers and destroyed construction equipment at the site of the proposed law enforcement training center.

Police said Sunday "a group of violent agitators used the cover of a peaceful protest of the proposed Atlanta Public Safety Training Center to conduct a coordinated attack on construction equipment and police officers." 

Several law enforcement agencies responded to the scene as demonstrators "changed into black clothing and entered the construction area and began to throw large rocks, bricks, Molotov cocktails, and fireworks at police officers," according to the department. 

Multiple pieces of construction equipment were destroyed by fire and vandalized. 

The responding officers used non-lethal force to make the arrests, the department said. 

Demonstrations against the training center have turned violent and resulted in arrests before. 

An anti-police protester shot a Georgia State Trooper and was killed in an exchange of gunfire earlier this year, according to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Hubbard Madeleine 

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/crime/atlanta-police-say-35-arrested-after-mob-attacks-officers-destroys-construction

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Parents alarmed by satanist after-school clubs forming across U.S. - The Foreign Desk Staff

 

by The Foreign Desk Staff

Parents say they are worried about the impact it may have on young children’s view of faith.

 

As curriculum awareness grows across the United States, parents are now sounding the alarm over the Satanic Temple (TST)’s efforts to create after-school clubs for students.

Parents say they are worried about the impact it may have on young children’s view of faith.

In December of last year, a TST “After-School Satan Club” was approved at a Virginia elementary school, resulting in backlash from parents distributed by the push to indoctrinate young children into Satanism.

Since then, TST has announced plans to create new clubs in New York, Pennsylvania, and Colorado, with religious advocates taking note of the trend.

Speaking to the Daily Caller over this issue, Penny Nance, CEO and President of Concerned Women for America, said that a satanic club is the “antithesis of religion.”

“Groups like this have free speech rights, but Satanism is not a religion. The fact that there are more of these clubs popping up means kids are searching for something to believe in.”

According to experts like Delano Squires, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family, the move to promote Satanic Temple in schools is a “concerning development in districts across the country,” she said to the Daily Caller.

“This group has no more ‘right’ to students and schools as a Neo-Nazi club demanding representation. Schools should use wisdom and discernment about decisions related to extracurricular activities,” Squires told Daily Caller.”

On Twitter, TST argued that a future vote at a Virginia school would decide whether or not the club would be on “equal footing” with other religious clubs.

 

The Chesapeake School Board will vote on two policy revisions tonight, putting non-profit organizations, including the After School Satan Club and the Good News Club, on equal footing for the use of school facilities. Join the live stream at ~6:30 pm EST. https://t.co/LIZx2jrm6j pic.twitter.com/iH3g08bM9e

— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_) February 27, 2023

 

In a 2022 Reddit Post, shared by TST’s National Campaign Director June Everett, the organization said that students would be engaging in puzzles, games, arts and crafts, and nature activities while being taught “benevolence and empathy, critical thinking, problem-solving, creative expression, personal sovereignty, and compassion.”

The post claimed that the program does not “attempt to convert children to any religious ideology” but that students are instructed in the tenets of TST.

Everett told a local news outlet that the organization’s religion is a “scientific, rationalist and non-superstitious worldview.”

According to the National Campaign Director, the purpose of the TST is to go to schools with other religious clubs to provide an alternative.

Officials familiar with TST’s religious beliefs and stances, like Family Research Council assistant director Arielle Del Turco, say that the goal of the organization is to undermine religion.

“It’s always a concern when people try to use kids to gain attention or legitimize themselves,” Del Turo told the Daily Caller.

“Treating The Satanic Temple as a religion undermines the credibility of religion and its role in American society, but that’s their point. They are so desperate to advance a secular vision of society that they created a fake religion to challenge the role of Christianity in our public institutions.”

Experts like Del Turco and others said that the TST’s clubs are really trying to get schools to refuse them so that they could say they faced religious discrimination, allowing them to “push Christianity and other religions out of the public square.”

Recently, TST said on a Twitter post that concerned parents who protested the Chesapeake club’s acceptance in Virginia with criminal activity.

“Unfortunately, some individuals made violent threats in response to our request to use school facilities and to be treated the same as other groups,” the post said.

“Anyone who has sought to block the After School Satan Club from meeting at B.M. Williams — even after the club and school were threatened should ask themselves why they are siding with criminal actors over children and families gathering in fellowship.”

Monday’s vote by the Chesapeake School Board will put all organizations that use school facilities, including the After School Satan Club and the Good News Club, on equal footing by requiring that meetings be held after 6 p.m. To support ASSC, visit https://t.co/UvjdpUqrSp today! pic.twitter.com/nULcrZn9BD

— The Satanic Temple (@satanic_temple_) March 2, 2023

 

Despite their announcement to expand their activities in schools throughout America, parent groups continue to raise concerns about The Satanic Temple, calling on state, local, and school officials to consider the impact the organization will have on students.

Additionally, other experts believe the presence of such an organization might turn students to God instead of away, with some turning towards the Bible to combat such religious practices.

The Foreign Desk Staff

Source: https://justthenews.com/world/foreign-desk/school-advocates-warn-about-satanist-after-school-clubs-forming-across-us

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Is Israel Ready for War with Hamas? - Hugh Fitzgerald

 

by Hugh Fitzgerald

Because it's coming.

 

Hamas is preparing for war with Israel. Israel is preparing for war with Iran. Is Israel also doing enough to prepare for war with Hamas, and not just in Gaza? That question is considered here: “Hamas Is Planning the Next War; Is Israel’s Current Government Ready?,” by Grisha Yakubovich, Algemeiner, February 24, 2023:

For the past year, Israel and the Palestinians have been in escalation mode, a phase that began under the previous Israeli government.

Ever since March 2022, after a period of relative quiet, the Palestinians have increased their terror attacks on Israeli civilians, and in response, the IDF has been much more aggressive in seeking out Palestinian terrorists in their lairs in the northern West Bank cities of Nablus and Jenin.

The sparks that lit the current escalation are unrelated to whether a right-wing or center-left government is in power, but Hamas is prepared to use the new right-wing Israeli government as justification for further conflict and violence if it finds it necessary to do so.

The upswing in Palestinian attacks began months before the “right-wing” Netanyahu government took power, and thus was unrelated to it. Nonetheless, Hamas has begun to suggest that any increase in violence between Israelis and Palestinians should be blamed solely on that “right-wing” government that has been anathematized by so many in the Western world, including the New York Times, The Washington Post and, of course, the Bidenites.

The escalation originates in a calculated strategy by Hamas, which envisioned, with considerable foresight, a Palestinian civil war — a scenario that appears to be around the corner — and a new opportunity to both weaken its rival, Fatah, in the West Bank, and ignite a regional explosion against Israel.

The PA has lost a great deal of its authority. More young Palestinians in the West Bank are joining Hamas, which they regard as steadfast in maintaining the resistance against the Zionist enemy, while the PA is seen by many as positively treasonous because its security services are widely believed to be collaborating with the Israelis. Furthermore, Mahmoud Abbas is seen, rightly, as a despot. He canceled democratic elections in 2020, elections that he had originally called himself, when he realized he would lose, overwhelmingly. He deals ruthlessly with those opposed to his rule. He had his goons beat to death Nizar Banat, who had been the most effective of his critics on social media. Now entering the nineteenth year of his four-year term, Abbas is also famously corrupt, having amassed a family fortune with his sons Tarek and Yasser that amounts to $400 million. He allows his cronies to also help themselves to some of the aid money meant for ordinary Palestinians, albeit on a far smaller scale than he allows himself.Abbas also provides the relatives of his loyalists with well-paid jobs – sinecures — in the PA administration.

While some observers have attributed the deterioration in the security situation to the power vacuum in the northern West Bank, where the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority (PA) is indeed losing control, the more significant catalyst driving it is the clash between the narratives promoted by Hamas and the PA, led by Mahmoud Abbas.

Both Hamas and Fatah ultimately seek to rule the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, yet both are realistic in understanding that Israel will not vanish any time soon — and neither for that matter will the Palestinians. While Hamas believes that in the long run, it will succeed in destroying Israel, it still needs to answer the question of how it envisions the Palestinians living alongside Israel in the same land in this current phase of history.

Hamas’ answer to this question is, first, to reject any possibility of a peace treaty. Due to this position, Abbas’ PA has felt unable to enter into any real substantial diplomatic process with Israel over the years, and Abbas has rejected Israeli two-state offers made in the past, such as the one put forward by former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in 2008.

Hamas and Fatah share the same goal – the destruction of the Jewish state – but they differ on tactics and timing. Fatah believes in the constant use of terrorism, that will demoralize Israelis, and ultimately so weaken Israel that a united Palestinian force – under Hamas’ direction — will be able, with Arab allies, to defeat the Israelis and expel them from all the land “from the river to the sea.” Hamas has no interest in peace treaties, and its opposition to such agreements has caused Abbas to walk away even from the most generous offer of a territorial settlement that Ehud Olmert made him in 2008. Hamas is breathing down his back for being too accommodating with the Israelis, and he cannot appear to be willing to make a peace deal with the hated Zionist enemy that does not squeeze Israel back within the 1949 armistice lines.

Abbas realizes that he will never be able to defeat Hamas. While Israel is powerful enough to deal with any threat posed by Hamas, Fatah’s existence as a ruling party is under direct threat from it, as the Hamas coup against Fatah in Gaza 2007 so clearly demonstrated.

Abbas is afraid of Hamas. He remembers how his Fatah men were defeated so handily by Hamas in Gaza in 2007, with hundreds of Fatah members killed by Hamas, while many others were forced to flee the Strip for the safety of the West Bank. He also knows that Hamas men are now thick on the ground in the West Bank, where young Palestinians are choosing to join Hamas or PIJ rather than Fatah. Abbas has learned from public opinion polls that nearly 80% of Palestinians want him to resign. So he’s staying away from any peace overtures that could be criticized by Hamas.

As a result, Abbas has settled for the vision of seeking a more comfortable existence for Palestinians in the West Bank. At the same time, he is resigned to the division of Palestinians between Gaza and the West Bank, and to the idea that he is not strong enough to reach an agreement with Israel.

Abbas has lately been mostly a fund-raiser for the people in the West Bank, managing to persuade the Bidenites to contribute $940 million to UNRWA for the care and feeding of the Palestinians. He has persuaded Israel to allow 100,000 Palestinians in the West Bank to acquire permits so that they can work in Israel. Through an amelioration of the Palestinians’ economic situation, Abbas hopes to win back some of the support he has lost through the years because of his corruption and mismanagement. He knows that Hamas has entrenched itself in Gaza, and there is no possibility of healing the Hamas-Fatah division in a way that he would favor. Such a healing of the divide between Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinians in the West Bank could only come about in one way – if Hamas were to engineer a takeover of the West Bank. This is Abbas’ constant worry.

Hamas, for its part, promotes the ukawama, the Arabic word for resistance, a word often misunderstood in the international community to mean resistance against occupation, when in fact it is resistance to acceptance of Israel — and the promotion of terrorism.

Since Ismail Haniyeh left Gaza to become the head of Hamas’s political bureau (he is now based in Qatar), the organization has decided that it wishes to be the legitimate representative of all Palestinians at the global level.

As Hamas navigates the region, reaching tense understandings with Egypt, while also moving closer once again to Syria’s Bashar Assad — after years in which it backed the anti-Assad rebels in Syria — it continually maintains its resistance narrative, claiming that it is leading Palestinians on the path to the destruction of Israel.

Hamas has been patching things up with former enemies, as part of its campaign to be recognized as the sole leader of the Palestinians. Though Hamas is the Gaza representative of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Muslim Brotherhood is the arch-enemy of the El-Sissi regime in Egypt, Hamas has nonetheless held talks with Egyptian leaders that appear to have ended the fighting between the Egyptian army and Hamas in the Sinai; in return for an end to Egyptian attacks on Hamas, Hamas likely has pledged to end its alliance with the Egyptian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Similarly, in Syria Hamas – which for ten years had backed the Syrian opposition against Assad – has recognized that the Syrian dictator has essentially won his civil war, and that to protect the interests of Palestinians living in Syria, it ought to make its peace with Assad. And Hamas has done so, by restoring relations with Damascus.

To market this narrative further, Hamas sparked an intense conflict in May 2021 in order to present itself as the defender of Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Yet a little over a year later, in July 2022, it cleverly sat out a clash between Israel and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), as the IDF pulverized PIJ operatives and positions. Hamas was able to get the message across to Palestinians: Only Hamas can challenge Israel, fire rockets at Jerusalem, incite riots among Israeli Arabs, and create Palestinian unity. Only it can lead the fight against “the Zionist enemy.”…

In May 2021, Hamas took part in a brief war against Israel for supposedly “endangering the sanctity” of Al-Aqsa Mosque. There was no such “endangerment,” but that did not stop some Palestinians from hysterically insisting that the Zionists were trying to take over all of the Temple Mount, in order to destroy Al-Aqsa and build a Third Temple in its place. The PA’s Fatah took no part in the fighting, and this allowed Hamas to present itself as the champion of the Palestinian cause. A year later, however, Hamas itself stood back when Israel went to war against Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), allowing the IDF to crush the rival terror group. The PIJ’s defeat conveyed the message: Fatah won’t, and the PIJ can’t, fight the Zionists. Only Hamas has both the will, and the strength, to do so. Only Hamas, not Fatah nor PIJ, is able to summon Israeli Arabs onto the streets to riot. Only Hamas can unite the Palestinians and lead the fight against the Zionist enemy.

In order to maintain the PA’s position vis-à-vis Hamas, Abbas has had to become more openly opposed to the Zionist enemy. He has allowed — though not encouraged — Fatah members to join other Palestinians fighting the IDF. And the PA now glorifies dead terrorists with ”martyr” posters. The PA also provides dead terrorists with state funerals. PA officials, to prove they are bonafide enemies of the Zionists, now declare that they will no longer continue any security coordination, no matter how limited, with the Jewish state.

Hamas has set itself up as the “moderate” terror group, as opposed to the hotheads of the PIJ. It hasn’t joined in the recent rocket attacks on Israelis by the PIJ, and has instead stopped the PIJ – possibly by prearrangement — from continuing its attacks.

Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, after routing Fatah, and killing or expelling many of its members. In May 2021, Hamas militants fought Israel. The violence was prompted birthed supposed Zionist threats to Al-Aqsa and to Palestinians in east Jerusalem, thus allowing Hamas to present itself as the Palestinian protector of Jerusalem and the Haram al-Sharif. Now, keenly aware of how unpopular Abbas has become – 80% of Palestinians want him to quit – Hamas has been recruiting new members in the West Bank. Once it can overthrow – by violence – the PA and its superannuated leadership, it will lay claim to being the sole representative of the “Palestinian people.”

In order to keep Western aid flowing, once it is in charge in the West Bank, Hamas will have to work to end its designation as a terror group. Perhaps it really will be able to blame all Palestinian terror attacks on the PIJ, and prove sufficiently convincing to gullible Westerners that it really has decided to end its use of terrorism as a weapon. It could even do something very dramatic, like ending the PA’s “Pay-For-Slay” program that rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism, to prove it is no longer a terror group.

Hamas wants to keep the Gazan front quiet as it tries to take power in the West Bank, but events could spiral out of its control. For example, the latest IDF raid into Nablus resulted in 12 dead and more than 100 wounded. It was impossible, under those circumstances, to prevent Hamas members from responding to those deaths by firing rockets into Israel from Gaza. So far that hasn’t led to a major conflict, but only because the Hamas rockets caused no casualties.

Hamas understands that it can use to its advantage the widespread perception that Israel now has a “far-right” government. Even when Israel takes exactly the same actions now against Hamas terrorists that it took under the previous “moderate” government of Bennett and Lapid, Hamas can nonetheless claim that this “right-wing” Zionist government is out of control, and that it is Hamas that is trying to tamp down the violence. As usual, this will be a flat-out lie, but when has that ever stopped the Palestinian propagandists?

Hugh Fitzgerald

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/is-israel-ready-for-war-with-hamas/

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