A Question That Needs To Be Asked

On Monday, The New York Post posted the following headline:

How many aid groups knew Hamas was hiding in a hospital and lied about it?

The article reports:

Hamas used Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital as a base of terror operations. That’s the obvious conclusion following Sunday’s discovery of a large terror tunnel under the hospital along with videos of Hamas bringing Israeli hostages inside.

Now comes an important question for Congress: Which US-funded international organizations knew the truth about al-Shifa and helped Hamas conceal its war crimes?

The Israel Defense Forces this weekend discovered a tunnel beneath al-Shifa Hospital that extends 10 meters down and 55 meters across — leading to what might be a booby-trapped door. Special units that specialize in handling explosives have been summoned to break through to the next section.

Meanwhile, Israel also released security footage showing two hostages brought through al-Shifa by Hamas terrorists following the Oct. 7 massacre as hospital workers looked on — suggesting a widespread conspiracy to conceal both the presence of hostages at al-Shifa and Hamas’ terror infrastructure within the compound.

The article notes:

Within days of the Hamas massacre, Fabrizio Carboni, the Middle East regional director for the International Committee of the Red Cross, began spreading Hamas disinformation — telling international media that Gaza “hospitals risk turning into morgues.”

When Carboni said this, he may have already known that hospitals in Gaza were used as terror bases and hostages were being stashed under those hospitals.

…In its 2022 annual report, the ICRC says it received $689 million from the United States last year — roughly one-third of contributions received from all countries combined. That’s a lot of taxpayer money sent to an organization that may have betrayed its most fundamental duty to uphold the Geneva Conventions by covering up Hamas war crimes and abandoning Israeli hostages.

The article concludes:

The ICRC and WHO have strong lobbies in Washington that will fight to protect their flow of taxpayer money. If, as expected, the State Department does nothing to hold these groups accountable, Congress — which holds their purse strings — should intervene. The first step: Investigate. The next: Put a pause on US funding until leadership changes and reforms guarantee that complicity in terrorist war crimes will never happen again.

How much American taxpayer money paid for Hamas headquarters?

After The Damage Has Been Done…

On Wednesday, Breitbart reported the following:

The UK state broadcaster issued an apology on Wednesday after incorrectly reporting Israeli soldiers were targeting “medical teams as well as Arab speakers” while clearing Hamas terrorists out of a Gaza hospital.

The BBC said its report on the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) taking on Hamas terrorists inside a hospital “fell below our usual editorial standards” after the newsreader stated attacks were targeting medics and Arabic speakers.

According to the Guardian:

Hiram Johnson (1866-1945) – a Progressive Republican senator in California. His actual quote, ‘The first casualty, when war comes, is truth’, was said during World War 1. He died on Aug. 6, 1945, the day the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The Breitbart article continues:

The Board of Deputies said they were “absolutely appalled” that the BBC had misreported that the IDF was taking medical teams and Arabic speakers into the hospital to help patients there so catastrophically. “At best”, they said, the misreading of the situation showed a “staggering lack of care” which made a mockery of the BBC’s “oft-stated dedication to professionalism and impartiality”, behind which the Corporation has hidden in the past month to justify not calling the Hamas attack on Israel a terrorist act. The BBC was also criticised for the error by the Israeli Embassy in London.

…The broadcaster issued an apology on Wednesday, and said on air:

And now, an apology from the BBC. BBC News as it covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital, we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report. We should have said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers for this operation. So we apologise for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards. The correct version of events was broadcast minutes later.

How many of the people who heard the initial report will hear the apology? This is the sort of sloppy (or biased) reporting that helps terrorists justify their actions (yes, I know there is no justification for terrorism, but in their own minds, the terrorists regard what they are doing as their ticket to paradise).

In general, the media has forgotten the horrors of October 7th and replaced them with criticism of Israel defending its people.

What The Israeli Defense Forces Are Discovering

On Monday, The Times of Israel posted an article showing what the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have found at the Hamas headquarters under Gaza City’s Rantisi Hospital, which treats children. The headquarters was purposely placed there so that if the IDF were to attack the hospital, they would be accused of war crimes. Never mind the war crime of placing your command center under a children’s hospital.

The article reports:

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says the Navy’s elite Shayetet 13 commando unit and the 401st Armored Brigade have raided Gaza City’s Rantisi Hospital, which treats children, and that Hamas operatives were holed up there. He says he has just returned from the hospital, having filmed there, and that the IDF has evidence indicating that hostages were held there.

“Underneath the hospital, in the basement, we found a Hamas command and control center, suicide-bomb vests, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, explosive devices, RPGs, and other weapons, computers, money, etc,” Hagari says, in an English-language press conference.

“We also found signs that indicate that Hamas held hostages here,” he says, adding that “this is currently under our investigation,” but that the IDF has intelligence to verify it.

“Additionally, we found evidence that Hamas terrorists came back from the massacre [in southern Israel] on October 7 to this hospital, among others, after butchering Israelis in their homes,” he says.

The Spokesman also noted the IDF’s efforts to protect the civilians in Gaza:

Hagari says the IDF has been working to enable the safe evacuation of patients from Rantisi over the last week, as well as from other hospitals in northern Gaza.

“Israel helped the hospital managers evacuate the Gaza patients to a safer hospital,” he says, adding that the IDF has been informed that “the last 18 patients in the Rantisi Hospital had safely evacuated to a safer hospital.

“This is because our war is against Hamas, not against the people in Gaza. Especially not the sick, the women, or the children,” he says.

“Our war is against Hamas who uses them as human shields,” Hagari adds.

Unfortunately many residents of Gaza support what Hamas is doing.

They Are Here Already

As the White House focuses on the ‘problem of Islamophobia,’ they might want to look at some of the Islamic groups that have been quite openly practicing anti-Semitism in America for years.

On November 8, Real Clear Investigations posted an article about the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group connected to the Muslim Brotherhood (see article here for further information) that has been operating in America since 1994. CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Trial, where the Holy Land Foundation was accused of funneling money to terrorists. If you can find the exhibits from that trial, they include “An Explanatory Memorandum on the General Strategic Goal for the Group in America.”  (the group is the Muslim Brotherhood). Look at the list of unindicted co-conspirators, then look at some of the organizations on our colleges. After you compare those two things, the anti-Semitism we are seeing on our college campuses makes sense.

The article at Real Clear Investigations reports:

After Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil.” He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the U.S.-designated terrorist group.

What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years – without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization.”

Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas – which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people – CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.

On Oct. 7, the day Hamas terrorists butchered 1,400 Jews, including 33 Americans – raping many and abducting some 240 others to Gaza from southern Israel – CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered an anti-Israel message in Arabic which seemed to justify what Hamas did. Translated into English, it read: “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, Oct. 8 – and every day – in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime [Israel].”

Please follow the link to read the entire article. I am beginning to wonder if we have anyone in our government who represents the interests of the American people.

You Get More Of What You Subsidize And Less Of What You Don’t Fund

On Tuesday, The Gatestone Institute posted an article about the European funding of Hamas.

Here are some of the highlights of the article:

    • Israel had not even buried its dead from the horrifying jihadist pogrom that Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians in south Israel — beheading babies, burning them alive, torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering — before the European Union decided to reward the terrorists by tripling its assistance to Gaza.
    • “The Commission will immediately increase the current humanitarian aid envelope foreseen for Gaza by 50 million euros,” European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen said. “This will bring the total to over 75 million euros. We will continue our close cooperation with the UN and its agencies to ensure that this aid reaches those in need in the Gaza strip.”
    • Oh really? How? The terrorist group Hamas, a proxy of Iran, the “worst state sponsor of terrorism,” is wholly in control of Gaza and will take what shows up and dribble it out slowly to a chosen few, mainly in their military. The idea that any of it will reach the million displaced souls who were urged by the Israelis to flee to southern Gaza to save their lives is charming, but woefully starry-eyed. Food and water — if that is really what is in the uninspected trucks, rather than weapons — will go to the Hamas foot soldiers to make sure they stay fit and loyal.
    • “Hamas are trying to prevent people leaving northern Gaza. And that is the point… Of course we want to minimize Palestinian casualties. We want to minimize Israeli casualties. We want everybody to respect civilians. But the real clear distinction is Israel are trying to get civilians out of danger; Hamas are trying to put civilians into danger, and that is a fundamental difference between the two.” — UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, October 15, 2023.
    • Sadly, massive injustices were done by the international media which, without checking, wrongly blamed Israel for firing at a hospital in Gaza, supposedly killing hundreds. Video evidence and a voice recording revealed that the real cause of the explosion at the hospital was a rocket, launched toward Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that landed in the hospital parking lot. The media, it seems, could not wait to stick it to the Jews.

The European Commission will be working with the UN to make sure that the aid reaches only those in need in the Gaza Strip. Really, how? When it was suggested that the aid be stopped because of the terrorist attack on Israel, the Commission claimed, “The suspension of the payments – punishing all the Palestinian people – would have damaged the EU interests in the region and would have only further emboldened terrorists.”

Common sense is obviously on vacation.

The Cost Of Unarmed Citizens

On Saturday, The American Thinker posted an article about some of the events in Israel on October 7.

The article notes:

On October 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, a 25-year-old security coordinator at the Kibbutz Nir Am settlement located near the Gaza Strip, saved lives because she had a gun.  After the kibbutz came under attack, Inbal hurriedly opened the armory and distributed guns to the twelve-member security team.

She caught the Hamas murderers unawares because they were not expecting to meet armed resistance.  Lieberman killed five terrorists while the others gunned down twenty-five before the Israeli Defense Force arrived.  Because of her actions, Nir-Am was the only settlement bordering the Gaza Strip that did not suffer Israeli casualties during Hama’s attack.

The number of Israelis killed in the terrorist attack is over 1,400.  How many of those deaths could have been averted had more Israelis owned guns? Israel has draconian gun-control laws, worse than those in New York City.  Only three percent (3%) of Israeli citizens own guns (compared to about thirty-two percent (32%) of U.S. citizens). 

The NY Daily News reports that less than one percent (about 0.5%) of New York City residents have legal handguns.  Jews comprise approximately nine percent (9%) of New York City’s population, the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel. 

An attack on America similar to what happened in Israel should be unthinkable, but is it? We have no idea how many terrorists have come through our porous border and what their intentions are. It would be a good idea at this point to have all Americans trained in how to use weapons and having weapons in their homes. Obviously there are some restrictions on that–mentally ill, people convicted of violent offenses, etc., but we need to have an instant, well-trained militia that can be called into action in case of an armed terrorist attack.

The New Face Of War

A website called “Partially Politics” posted an article on July 7th about a new weapon Israel has been using against terrorists.

The article reports:

In a massive step forward into a new world of future warfare, Israel has become the first nation to use AI (artificial intelligence) drones in battle against Hamas terrorists. With no human input after mission orders have been set, a drone swarm team has been utilized to seek out targets. The drones link together and use artificial intelligence to map out geography and locate targets, making mission decisions on their own. The drone swarm continues the mission until completion, even if some of the drones are destroyed in the process. A human operator sends out mission details as the machines gather information data to move forward from satellites, air vehicles, ground troops and other recon drones.

Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defense Force Intelligence Corps has developed and implemented the new technology. Algorithms by the IDF use signal data, geographical information and human intelligence together to build a framework of how to execute the desired mission. Artificial Intelligence and supercomputers locate targets and plan strikes to remove any strategic forces that could give opposing forces any advantage, while machine learning technology improves the capabilities of the system itself through action.

The article concludes:

Israel isn’t the only country getting involved in the new technological advances. The United States, Britain, Russia and China have all been developing artificial intelligence technologies designed for autonomous warfare. Concerns around the world here are that there is a vast potential for a new arms race. But that idea has been a reality in motion since the dawn of the potential for the technology was created. Whether you like it or not, that is the truth of the matter. This is only the beginning of what the future of modern warfare is going to look like. And whoever has the best technology will be the most secure. The idea of peace through strength comes to mind here. And the United States and its allies should be investing heavily on creating the best possible technology to protect our freedoms and to help stand for our way of life.

In a recent interview, retired U.S. Navy officer and author Jocko Willink said while talking to artificial intelligence podcaster Lex Fridman that he approved of the new technology despite some human concern around the world. Jocko said, “… if they could make a machine that could do more surgical attacks on enemy individuals, would I be for it? Yes, I would be for it”.

If you are interested in hearing the full interview, check out the new podcast. It is one of the best talks on autonomous war technology, leadership and human nature of recent times.

Although I am glad to see Israel gaining more ways to defend itself, I don’t think this is good news.