Archive for the ‘middle east’ Category

4th Doctor: I was thinking in terms of a psychological barrier. It’s cheap, efficient and energy saving,

One of the great advantages of being Sicilian ,other than the excellent genes that you get when your ancestors come from an area that just about everybody in the world conquered at one time or another, is the fear factor.

There are still a few Italians in general and Sicilians in particular who get angry that when people hear “Italian” or “Sicilian” they think “Mafia” because they don’t like the stereotype of being considered gangsters applied to them.

Most of the Sicilians I know not only don’t care but actually like it for two reasons.

  1. They don’t give a damn what other people think
  2. There is a large advantage in life if nobody wants to mess with you

If any person who might cheat or harm you is afraid that there is a large organization that might choose to take revenge on them for doing so and that said organization may take said revenge even years after the fact in a most unpleasant way said people tend to decide it’s a much better idea to look for easier marks.

It takes away the tension every time you have to start your car.

Now consider for a moment Jews in General and the State of Israel in particular.

From 70AD till 1947 a period of 1877 years there was no state of Israel or Jewish state. Even when Israel had kings and rulers it’s status as an international power pretty much ended with the death of Solomon centuries before the Romans or the Greeks or even the Persians extended their empires to include the Holy Land.

As for the Jewish people while you might have some Jewish quarters in cities in various countries Jews as a total population of most areas were in fact nominal. The only reason why you tended to notice Jews in quantity in an area is the same reason why most Americans notice Rhode Island license plates on cars. While they might be common in Massachusetts & Connecticut in the rest of the country they’re a rare sight.

Even today the total number of Jews in the world based on 2023 figures is only 17 million. That’s barely over 3/10’s of 1% of the worlds population. Even in the US which has the highest number of Jews in the world (barely edging out Israel) has only 7.4 million Jews out of a population of over 330 million people, under 3% of the population. Even in Israel Jews make up only 80% of the population of the Jewish state.

Meanwhile as a population that was hated by many and collectively blamed for the crucifixion of Christ based on a bad interpretation of a gospel verse (Matt 27:25) that went beyond Christ’s prophecy (Luke 18:41-44) on it’s effect, Jews who excelled tended to stand out in a population again because there were so few relatively speaking.

And none of those points even touch on the holocaust.

So consider. You are the Jews, you’ve somehow become the only ancient nation to survive to the 20th century. Your capital falls during the days of the Roman empire but you stay united as a people. You finally get your nation back seventeen centuries later in 1948 after a bloody war and you finally regain your historical capital Jerusalem in 1967 after beating three enemy armies in six days but you remain a nation and people who are:

  1. Historically hated
  2. Incredibly tiny both in population & size
  3. Surrounded by nations whose populations want you dead
  4. Marked for death by one of the worlds largest religions
  5. BUT considered sly

How do you keep from being destroyed?

Well having a strong sponsor with the largest population of Jews in the world (the US) helps but they are thousands of miles away. You can develop an excellent war industry and tech industry and various innovations to make your country wealthy but even that is not enough. You need to convince people that you have an almost superhuman reach to get to your enemies.

That’s where a Tucker Carlson et/al come in.

If you want to convince the world that your tiny nation is a nation of bad asses who you don’t want to mess with it really helps a lot if you have a member of the media widely known with a huge following telling anyone who will listen that you are this insidious power who manages to manipulate all kinds of things in the world and responsible for all sorts of things.

While Carlson’s rants might increase hatred among a population that already doesn’t care much for you what it also does is reinforce the idea that messing with you might not be the wisest move in the world.

Now ops like the pager attack on Hezbollah and infiltrating Iran anti-Mossad agency (the head of it was a Mossad agent) and the hacking of Iranian traffic cameras helps sell this even more and it all brings the desired effect that of making people think that messing with you might not be the best idea.

It’s true that if your enemies are part of a giant suicide cult which is a fair description of radical Islam it might not completely stop the odd bomber or assassin but there is a reason why millions of Muslims men of military age who hate Israel and Jews are in England and Europe rather than in the middle east carrying weapons.

It’s because thanks to those ops and the loud “Israel controls the world” crowd like Tucker they would rather scream “Death to the Jews” far far away from a safe distance. It’s a psychological barrier that only a few dare to cross.

Frankly if folks like Tucker didn’t exist I’d expect the Mossad to create them.

I was pleasantly shocked this morning when the remaining living Israeli hostages were released, I really didn’t expect it to happen. I won’t be shocked if the bodies of the dead ones don’t come back but I’ll be delighted to be wrong.

I was not shocked when the Palestinians in Gaza started slaughtering each other (the ones in areas not still held by Israel of course) that was no surprise.

But if you want to see what is the least surprising thing of all, it’s this:

Not a protestor in sight over the murder of Palestinians by other Palestinians, because in the end the “protestors” don’t care about Arab lives, they simply want Jews dead.

I suspect you will see this lack of reaction from all those who loudly demanded a cease fire because the only people they wanted to cease firing were the Jews.

Unexpectedly of course

Yesterday during the Antifa conference Marco Rubio upstaged the rather important meeting with the news that they where on the verge of a breakthrough in the middle east.

Now I have woken up and the news is Hamas has accepted stage one of the peace deal and the hostages (at least the living ones) will be released on Monday.

Now I don’t for one minute doubt the deal making ability of this Trump administration which has pulled rabbits out of their hats on more occasions then I can count.

But what I DO doubt is the sincerity of Hamas, I doubt that they will release the living hostages, I doubt that they will release the bodies of the dead, I doubt they will disarm and I doubt they will give up killing Jews.

My guess is that they will (at absolute best) release the living hostages and then dig in their heels figuring Trump will not be as adamant about dead bodies when it comes to pushing the peace plan. Of course we might not actually see all the living hostages released either. Given Hamas’ history we also might not see any hostages released and Hamas back out at the last minute.

Now in fairness I’ve argued from the beginning that Israel should consider the hostages dead and crush Hamas without mercy. I know that’s a hard thing but the destruction of Hamas will save a lot more lives in the long run, but it’s not my call it’s Israel’s call and if they were willing to lose troops to free these people then so be it.

Bottom line: I’ll believe that the hostages will be released when they are all turned over to Israel till then I’ll watch and wait.

I hope I’m wrong.

If I am and Trump not only gets the hostages, but secures peace then the Nobel Peace Prize will not be good enough for him.

Trump Cancels Qatar’s Insurance Policy

Posted: September 9, 2025 by datechguy in middle east, war
Tags: , , ,

I’ve said for a long time that Qatar by allowing US bases has pretty much bought an insurance policy to prevent Israel for striking them for harboring Hamas not to mention financing antisemitism all over the world.

A couple of days ago President Trump said this:

President Donald Trump has delivered what he called a “last warning” to Hamas, urging the group to accept a U.S.-backed proposal to release hostages from Gaza — a deal he said Israel has already endorsed.

Needless to say Hamas has not released the hostages.

So two days later we discovered that the Qatar Insurance policy has run out:

The IDF and the Shin Bet on Tuesday confirmed a stunning attempt to assassinate Hamas’s leadership in Doha, Qatar.

After two years of Qatar hosting negotiations between Israel and Hamas over hostage exchanges and ceasefires, the government reached the decision that killing the remaining Hamas leaders was more important than leaving that diplomatic channel open.

A statement said that the leaders targeted were responsible for the October 7, 2023, massacre of around 1,200 Israelis in the country’s South, as well as managing the terror group’s operations for years before that.

And there is reason to believe that Qatar understood this and tried to warn Hamas to play ball

they didn’t and via Hotair and Ed Morrissey (who has an excellent piece on this) it’s likely they will never do so again:

The last word on this:

The President has put out a statement saying Israel attacking Qatar is not conducive to their or the US’s goals but also saying hitting Hamas is.

I think Trump has had it with Qatar and they have decided what profit a man if he gains the entire world and loses his life, and thus have decided that Hamas in Qatar was not worth the risk.