Archive for October 8, 2023

Arming our enemies: From scrap metal being sold to Japan before World War II to $6 billion for Iran

Posted: October 8, 2023 by John Ruberry in Uncategorized
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By John Ruberry

Here’s an almost forgotten slice of history.

In 1939, Chinese Americans protested the loading of scrap iron in Oregon on a ship bound for Japan.

As you’ll see the link, there is a photograph of the protest “This iron is for bullets” and “Your wives and babies may be next,” are among the messages on the picketers’ signs.

The protesters were right.

As you of course know, two years later, Japan not only attacked Pearl Harbor, but also Guam and the Philippines, both US possessions.

Before those attacks, Japan seized Manchuria and invaded the rest of China in 1937. The Japanese committed numerous atrocities against the Chinese during the Second World War, most notoriously the Rape of Nanjing.

Last month, on September 11 no less, the Biden Administration announced it was releasing $6 billion in frozen funds to Iran, that was part of swap of American hostages held by the terrorist regime in exchange for some Iranian prisoners held here.

Swap? I call it a ransom payment.

The appeasement-minded Biden administration at the time claimed that the $6 billion can only be used for humanitarian reasons. Even if that is true, which I doubt it is, the definition of charity in the West is remarkably different than how jihadists define it.

In 2008, five former leaders of the Holy Land Foundation, which claimed to be a charity, were convicted of sending $12 million to Hamas.

Okay, yeah, I get it, the $6 billion probably isn’t in the hands of the radical mullahs in Iran yet, but like someone who knows he’s about to collect a huge inheritance, Iran is now financially confident–and it’s emboldened by Joe Biden’s weakness.

Yesterday, Hamas, the Iranian-funded terrorist group, attacked Israel in the deadliest strike against the Jewish state since the Yom Kippur War.

The Iranian mullahs call Israel “the little Satan” and America “the Big Satan.”

America may be next.

UPDATE 6:00pm EDT:

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Iran greenlit and helped plan Hamas’ attack on Israel.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Israel: I Advise General Sherman’s War Unless You Want a Replay in Years to Come

Posted: October 8, 2023 by datechguy in Israel, middle east, war
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Spock: Captain, you took a big chance.
Kirk: Did I, Mister Spock? They’ve been killing three million people a year. It had been going on for five hundred years. An actual attack wouldn’t have killed any more people than one of their computer attacks, but it would have ended their ability to make war. The fighting would have been over permanently.

Star Trek A Taste of Armageddon 1967

Our friendly neighborhood terrorists of Hamas have launched their boldest and bloodiest attack on Israel in decades and have put icing on the cake by the targeting and kidnapping of civilians, slaughtering families and killing and kidnapping not just Israeli’s but Americans and at least one German as well.

They caught Israeli intelligence completely off guard and US intelligence completely off guard as well, but that is understandable. Apparently just as US intelligence is busy going after Catholics at mass, Parents attending school committee meetings and Trump supporters Israeli spooks were more interested in going after their Prime Minister.

According to the leaked documents, an assessment attributed to a Central Intelligence Update from March 1, leaders of the Mossad “advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest against the new Israeli Government’s proposed judicial reforms, including several explicit calls to action that decried the Israeli Government.”

These documents were part of a huge leak of Pentagon documents that Hotair has covered, but what’s more important is this move by Israel to formally declare war.

Israel’s cabinet invoked Article 40 Aleph and formally declared war against Hamas after the terrorist group launched the worst attack on the Jewish nation in 50 years.

Over 600 Israelis have been killed, more than 2000 are wounded, and 100 are confirmed to have been taken captive by Hamas since the war began.

This is, in my opinion a very good sign, all you have to do is watch the arab world cheering and even in America as Americas are killed and kidnapped people organizing to support Hamas publicly to understand that you can’t just retaliate a bit and defeat Hamas. You have to destroy them.

Israel in my opinion needs to prosecute this war without restraint, they also have to do it, I’m sorry to say, with the idea that all the people taken as hostages are expendable (If they get a chance to save some by all means do so but not at the expense of destroying Hamas.

And the only way to do so is to retake Gaza, annex is and give the people there a choice to stay or go.

Israel has left Gaza once, and did so without condition and this attack is the result. Israel must recognize that no amount of deals, or concessions or anything is going to change the attitude of either the Palestinians or the Arab world toward them. If the Arabs or Muslims around the world had a chance to slaughter the Jews they would without hesitation.

The only way to prevent this from happening again is to destroy their ability to make war. It will be messy and it will be horrible, but it will end the threat from Gaza once and for all.

They need to take to heart these words by General William Tecumseh Sherman

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. 

And those curses need to be poured out in Gaza to all those who aid abet and cheer Hamas’ actions in the same way that Sherman poured those curses on the people of Georgia and the Carolinas. What are your critics going to say that they aren’t already saying about you now? Sherman again:

 “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.” The hard war was here for Georgia. “We cannot change the hearts and minds of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it.”

The time for mercy is after the enemy is defeated and helpless at your feet, until then the war should be fought hard until it’s won.

Until and unless Israel takes these words to heart, this cycle will repeat and they will really be responsible for the next attack that comes because it will be made possible by not destroying the ability of those who will make it when they had the chance.