Archive for the ‘middle east’ Category

Via the Jerusalem Post

Dude: He stepped in a puddle, all right. He’s the fellow we wanted. I guess this is his. A nice, fresh $50 gold piece. It’s just about what Burdette would figure a man’s life was worth. That’s earning money the hard way.
Sheriff Chance: Paid killer. Nice, fresh $50 gold piece. You, mister, you got one in your pocket?
Man who claimed the killer wasn’t there: Nobody paid me. Nobody!
Sheriff Chance: And nobody run in here, either, huh? [floors him with swing of his rifle barrel to the face]
Dude: Chance…
Sheriff Chance: Oh, I’m not gonna hurt him. Get up! [walking down the line of men] You’re all in it. The whole lot of you. You’re gonna get out of town. Take your boy here with you. You can tell Burdette you got Wheeler. You can tell him anybody else he sends, he’d better pay them more…because they’re gonna earn it.

Rio Bravo 1959

We now have it officially that our Palestinian friends have murdered the Bibas children and their mother (the father was released alive earlier) and will be returning their bodies along with the body of Oded Lifshitz today.

It will be interesting to see how apologists for the mass murders of Hamas , particularly those in the west and on US campus’ spin their kidnapping and murder of a six month old and three month old kid as just and right. Particularly since it can’t be denied that they were deliberately targeted and taken.

What’s even worse is their bodies are being traded for murderers and terrorists. Israel should from this day forward toss out life in prison and introduce the death penalty for terrorists so that they will never be in the position where you have to trade killers for the body of someone their allies kill.

I suspect the results of the autopsies on those children’s bodies will be almost as traumatic to the nation as their return.

I completely understand that Israel is doing all they can to get whoever is left alive back and that’s their call but the fact that they have not launched a war of extermination against these barbarians at their gates completely amazes me. If I was the PM of Israel and the lives and safety of the people of Israel were my responsibility the gloves would be off and as for humanitarian aid, food and water for those in Gaza? Not a drop, not a crumb for those who cheered, celebrated and still celebrate those who kidnapped those kids.

I suspect that the Palestinians will never see another $ of US aid during the Trump years and I suspect our relationship with Qatar who funded this horror will reap some nasty consequences, but not as nasty as they deserve.

News like this really stretches my ability to follow Christ’s command to love enemies and pray for them because such people are enemies of all humanity. I’ll obey the non-optional doctrine but I’m not going to pretend that I like it.

Closing Thought One: I kind of wonder if the decision to kill the man’s wife and children and leave him alive was deliberate as it would inflict the maximum possible pain on any husband and father. The only think that would surprise me about such a decision would be Hamas having the restraint to do so.

Closing Thought Two: Anybody surprised at these actions by the Palestinians/arabs in general and Hamas in particular simply has not paid attention for the last 80 plus years. This is who they are, this is who they always have been. You can’t change them, you can only make the cost of acting like barbarians too prohibitive to contemplate.

Note: This was going to be an “Under the Fedora” column with this as the first item but writing it stopped me cold in my tracks. How can you talk about or quip about anything else? What is more important than this?

So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say I am a king. For this I was born and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Pilate said to him, “What is truth?

John 18:37-38a

If I had to explain the communist left why they can not be trusted from only one example, the one that instantly comes to mind is their actions from 1939 to 1941 concerning World War 2.

Being two sides of the same coin the Soviet Communists and the German Fascists’ hated each other with a passion having fought against each other by proxy in Spain during the Spanish Civil war. Their proxies in the west had plenty to say attaching the German Reich and their provocative moves right up until August 24 1939 when the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact or Hitler Stalin pact was signed at which point leftist all over America in editorials and in song urged America to stay out of World War Two and particularly not to aid Britain in her time of need…

…right up until June 22nd 1941 when the Nazi juggernaut poured into the USSR and the states that they had invaded after 1939. Suddenly all of these voices pivoted 180 degrees and demanded that the US get involved in World War Two to stop the Nazi Menace.

This is one of the reasons why once Japan attacked in December of 1941 you didn’t see the left complain about us going to war. Fighting Japan and Germany meant fighting to save Communist Russia as well so as far as the American left was concerned, they were all in!

Or to put it simply the atrocities and the danger from the Nazis didn’t matter all that mattered was advancing the desired narrative.

And that brings us to Gaza.

For years the Palestinians aided by the left pushed the idea of Gaza as an “open air prison.” that Israel kept oppressed with an iron fist, then Israel, after the attacks of October began their ground invasion of Gaza on October 27th twenty days after the October 7th attacks and demonstrated that this time they meant it and then the narrative slowly then all at once changed.

As Israel pulverized tunnels and destroyed terror infrastructure suddenly we saw Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular wax poetic about the beauty of Gaza that existed before the war. They talked about markets, malls, beautiful beaches and all the wonders and joys of Gaza that existed before the Israeli invasion. No talk of open air prisons, just talk about the paradise that Gaza was before the big bad Jews decided that for once Hamas had gone too far and they were going to root them out of their holes once and for all, no more hiding in schools, no more hiding in hospitals, no more hiding in tunnels. If you were Hamas you were going to be dead.

You see as long as Israel was not in Gaza it was important to the cause of Jew Haters to declare Gaza a prison and point fingers at Israel as the jailors, but once Israel actually came in and destroyed infrastructure used to support terror suddenly Gaza was an Arab paradise before October 2023 that Israel spoiled by their invasion. Reality didn’t matter, the narrative mattered.

And now we see the latest twist and turn of reality with the coming of the Biden (Trump?) cease fire.

For the last year everywhere you looked Israel was being attacked as perpetuating a genocide against the Palestinians of Gaza, in colleges, on news broadcast and in marches and rallies and especially in the UN & ICC the word of the day was Genocide.

The reality that if Israel wanted to slaughter the Arabs they could have done it at any time without putting any troops at risk didn’t matter, the fact that nations actually moved to change the legal defination of “genocide” to make it fit their cause didn’t matter, the fact that the Israel was allowing supplies in rather than letting their enemes starve and that Hamas was stealing the supplies and selling them didn’t matter either, what has happening in Gaza was genocide and that was that.

Until yesterday, when with the latest peace deal suddenly Hamas and their supporters declared victory.

Suddenly the last 15 months were transformed from “Genocide” to a grand victory that Palestinians in general and Hamas in particular could celebrate with pride.

The fact that large chunks of Gaza have been leveled and that Hamas while surviving has been castrated means nothing, victory must be declared because to not declare victory in public is to admit defeat.

This is what happens in a face society, a society that runs on reputation rather than reality can’t deal with seeing things in the light of truth. It’s why Egypt spent the first two days of the six day war vs Israel in 1967 declaring that they were at the gates of Tel Aviv when in fact their air force was gone and their armies were in retreat. Frankly if it wasn’t for the fact that Egypt prolongated this lie, Jordan would not have gone to war with Israel and would still hold the west bank and Jerusalem.

A society that lies to itself because the truth is too painful can not deal with things as they are and when you can’t deal with reality bad things happen.

The left in California can’t deal with the reality of what causes fires, so it burns.

The left in the Northwest can’t deal with the reality of socialism, thus it collapses

The left in NYC can’t deal with the reality of policing thus crime flourishes

The left in England (and the elite right for that matter) can’t deal with the reality of Islam and woman thus their children get raped and their people silenced for speaking out.

And most of all the Arabs can’t deal with the fact that will less that 16 million Jews in the entire world they have outpaced the entire Arab world in every single single measurable advancement of life and have repeatedly defeated their armies when they’ve tried to destroy them.

This is what the left and the Arabs have in common and why a group of people who are supposedly in love with Homosexuality, Transgenderism and gay marriage and destruction of the family unit can so embrace a culture that would slay people for all of these things. They share the unwillingness to alter their views to fit the facts rather than vice versa. Cue Tom Baker:

If Arab nations ignored Israel in general and the Jews as a nation in particular and concentrated on improving their own situation they would flourish. They have a large population, people who are devout (even if they in many cases see God incorrectly) and have so much potential. If they focused on these things they would be giants in the world of trade, science entertainment and the condition of their own people. That they have not is one of the tragedies of human history.

I still have high hopes that as a pious people the days will come (long after I’m gone) where they will discover Christ as he is rather than Christ as they paint him, there are already rumblings of such things taking place.

But until then they will declare a public truth that suits their fragile egos and ability to cope while privately seething in humiliation knowing that the only reason they are alive is that Israel doesn’t want to kill them.

I am a Northern man, and I know my people. I know their peculiar weaknesses and their national vanity. I know we can get better terms from them on the 4th of July than any other day of the year. We must sacrifice our pride to these considerations.

General John Pemberton on why he surrendered the City of Vicksburg to Grant on the 4th of July

In between browsing stories of the criminal incompetency of Democrats in California I noticed this piece linked at Elder of Ziyon concerning a possible hostage deal:

Officials in Washington were cautiously optimistic on Friday about the prospects of closing a hostage-ceasefire deal in Gaza before the end of US President Joe Biden’s term, with CIA Director William Burns assessing ongoing negotiations in Doha as “quite serious” and White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby saying he believes a hostage deal is possible before January 20.

In his interview on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” the CIA chief said, “Negotiations going on right now are quite serious and do offer the possibility, at least, of getting this done in the next couple of weeks.”

Usually I would consider the Biden administration odds of pulling something like this off less likely as Lynda Carter showing up at my doorstep and declaring uncontrollable desire for me but for the next 7 or eight days the stars are aligned in a way that provides massive incentives for both the Biden administration and Hamas to get this done.

For all of the screaming of their allies on campus concerning the Biden administration aiding their Zionist enemy they know Hamas understands that this administration is a secret ally and that they are likely to get better terms from the Biden team then they will from the Trump team. Furthermore any such terms will not involve them being killed.

Additionally Hamas’ backers in Qatar know that the only reason that Israel has not taken them out as the enablers of Hamas is due to US interests in their nation. Donald Trump however is a wild card who they can not predict. Furthermore he does not have to get elected again so he has very little to lose politically. If he tells Israeli that any operations against said leaders and financers of Hamas in Qatar from financial, to assassination or even military as long as he doesn’t know about it is not America’s business things might happen. The only thing you can do with millions if you’re dead is have a big funeral and a large tomb.

Those are pretty big incentives on the Arab side but they pale before the incentives of the Biden administration to go out with a success and deny Trump one. The Biden Administration has made it quite clear that they’re willing to harm America if it can hinder a future Trump administration. They can thus kill two birds with one stone by making a deal beneficial to Hamas and their terror allies while they still have the authority to do so. They can funnel them millions (minus the big guy’s 10% of course) make concessions and perhaps even arm them laying the groundwork for trouble for the administration all in the name of releasing the hostages because they know their allies in media and the UN will focus on the hostages release and ignore any long term harm any deal can bring. If they can get it done by the 18th or even the 17th There can be two days of pushing the Biden success rather than the Trump threat of hell to pay.

In short, like Confederate General John Pemberton at Vicksburg, Hamas, Qatar, the UN and international terror funding machine, international anti-Semites and the Biden administration know they can get better terms on any day before January 20th then they will any time after that date.

That’s my I think it’s likely we’ll see a deal.

One of the things that has been pretty consistent since the start of the blog has been Palestinian violence and the unwillingness of the media/left to condemn it when it’s against Jews or report it when it’s against their fellow Arabs.

Some things never change:

and this:

As there are no Jews involved this is not considered Newsworthy.

#unexpectedly of course.

If every Jew in the Middle East disappeared tomorrow the Arabs would not even need a week to start slaughtering each other. If you don’t believe me ask the Syrians.

Closing Thought: Actually there is one difference from the early days of the blog. Israel finally said enough and have leveled Hamas and dug them out of their tunnels.

Should have been done the first time the rockets fell.