If Israel can’t stop weapons from infiltrating Gaza now, what does the situation look like when it is dealing with an “independent” state?

Posted on February 8, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

BREITBART
Blinken Tried to Meet Privately with Israeli Military Chief; Netanyahu Nixed
Joel Pollak
February 7, 2024

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken tried to meet privately with Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi on Wednesday, without Israel’s elected leaders present, before the meeting was blocked by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Blinken is currently on a visit to Israel to discuss hostage negotiations and the Biden administration’s goal of a Palestinian state. The Times of Israel reported: A previously scheduled one-on-one meeting between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi will not take place, amid reports that the Prime Minister’s Office opposed a meeting between a foreign diplomat and the military without the presence of elected leaders. READ MORE

FEDERALIST Joe Biden Keeps Rewarding The Terrorists  What does it look like when Iran becomes a nuclear power? What does it look like when the Islamic Jihad — or whatever group pops up to take its place — begins lobbing rockets at civilians? Israel will be compelled to act. Next time, it would be invading a territory recognized as a sovereign state by the U.S. To allay these fears, the State Department promises it will only move forward “with real security guarantees for Israel.” We are in no position to offer security assurances to Israel. What is the U.S. going to do if there’s another Oct. 7? Are we going to send in troops and build a democracy in Ramallah? We can’t even close our own borders. The Biden administration, in fact, already opposes the creation of a security buffer zone within Gaza to prevent more attacks.

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U.S. officials using pro-Palestinian NGO sources to back controversial effort aimed at sidelining Jewish state

Posted on February 8, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
The Fraudulent Case Against ‘Violent Settlers’
Liel Leibovitz
February 5, 2024

…According to sources in and out of the U.S. government familiar with Fenzel’s reports and advocacy, nearly every claim presented by the USSC as fact seems to have been lifted directly, sometimes verbatim, from the websites of highly partisan pro-Palestinian organizations, including the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) and the far-left Israeli NGO B’Tselem, which accuses Israel of apartheid and receives vast support from European governments and from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.  In the past 12 months, 13 Israelis were murdered by Palestinians in Jerusalem and 17 in the West Bank—not counting those slaughtered on Oct. 7, 2023—while doing nothing more provocative than driving home or stopping for gas. The number of Palestinian civilians who have been killed by Israelis under such conditions over the same time period is zero. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL With unprecedented executive order, US sanctions settlers behind ‘intolerable’ violence First series of financial penalties, travel ban slapped on 4 violent Israeli extremists; move creates tool that could be used to cut off entire settler movement from US financing

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The reason UNRWA is so sacred: “Keeping themselves as perpetual refugees, rejecting any form of permanent personal settlement that would allow Israel to exist, became one of the main weapons in this total Arab war against the Jewish state”

Posted on February 5, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL POST
Without UNRWA there would be no Hamas — it must be dismantled
Einat Wilf
February 1, 2024

Canada’s temporary suspension of its financing of UNRWA over charges that some of UNRWA’s members participated in the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel should be made permanent. That UNRWA has created the ideal conditions for murderous terrorist groups to emerge, from Black September, which carried out the gruesome slaughter of Israeli Athletes in the 1972 Munich Olympics, to Hamas, is not a bug in the operating system, but a feature. Anyone who truly cares about charting a path to true peace in the Middle East should have every interest in ensuring UNRWA is dismantled..The Arab refugees and the Arab countries fought against UNRWA resettlement. The agency therefore failed to settle even one Arab refugee..READ MORE

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Aliyah North American Style, Explained

Posted on February 4, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
To be or not to be (an Israeli American) that is the question? #2
Beth Kopin
February 1, 2024

…Having received Aliyah I wanted to share some hard earned wisdom and bring some clarity. We have friends who went through the process, ten and some five years out, still guiding us who are dual citizens and commute. We are a unique category and have different challenges than those who reside full time in Israel. We all plan to spend more time in Israel as time goes on, to ease in. Our friends recommended Nefesh B’ Nefesh, NBN, (soul to soul) as the organization to work with. Each one had stories to share, all hilarious. We still ask them about next steps as we are adjusting to our new status. The biggest advantage to working with NBN is their connection to the Jewish Agency which is key to Aliyah. READ MORE

Apply for Aliyah from North American, click here

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“What if ‘what the Palestinian people want’ is mostly to destroy Israel?”

Posted on February 4, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
The Two State Delusion
Elliott Abrams
February 1, 2024

…In the West, the call for a “two-state solution” is mostly a magical incantation these days. Diplomats and politicians want the Gaza war to stop. They want a way out that seems fair and just to voters and makes for good speeches. But they are not even beginning to grapple with the issues that negotiating a “two-state solution” raises, and they are not seriously asking what kind of state “Palestine” would be. Instead they simply imagine a peaceful, well-ordered place called “Palestine” and assure everyone that it is just around the corner. By doing so they avoid asking the most important question: Would not an autocratic, revanchist Palestinian state be a threat to peace? READ MORE

JNS Dennis Ross is blaming Israel again Former U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross just can’t stop blaming Israel. Speaking via Zoom for the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy on Jan. 31, Ross offered some expected, perfunctory criticism of Hamas, Iran and Hezbollah. But again and again, he managed to bring in one-sided and unfair criticism of Israel. Referring to Israel’s counter-terrorism actions in Judea and Samaria, Ross said: “West Bank violence [by Arabs] is not disconnected from Israel’s policies in the West Bank.” That’s just absurd. The terrorists are not responding to Israeli policies. They were murdering Jews long before there were any settlements or so-called occupied territories. They oppose Israel’s existence, not its borders. It’s these terrorists who are the aggressors, and Israelis must respond to them.

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“No military in modern history has faced over 30,000 urban defenders in more than seven cities using human shields and hiding in hundreds of miles of underground networks purposely built under civilian sites, while holding hundreds of hostages”

Posted on February 3, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

NEWSWEEK
Israel Implemented More Measures to Prevent Civilian Casualties Than Any Other Nation in History
John Spencer
January 31, 2024

No military fighting an entrenched enemy in dense urban terrain in an area barely twice the size of Washington D.C. can avoid all civilian casualties. Reports of over 25,000 Palestinians killed, be they civilians or Hamas, have made headlines. But Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war. In fact, as someone who has served two tours in Iraq and studied urban warfare for over a decade, Israel has taken precautionary measures even the United States did not do during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. READ MORE

GATESTONE Daniel Greenfield: Israel’s War on Hamas is the Least Deadly War in the Region On October 7 and in the months since, Hamas has engaged in the deliberate killings of civilians. Israel has not. The number games are meant to be a distraction from that simple fact. Morality is defined by intent, not statistics.

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Netanyahu is trying to defeat Hamas. The Biden administration’s efforts—and its fictional “doctrine”—seek to depose the Israeli prime minister and re-elect the president.

Posted on February 3, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
It’s Biden who’s playing politics with the Gaza war, not Bibi
Jonathan S. Tobin
February 2, 2024

…Netanyahu probably still hopes to salvage his reputation and serve out the rest of his term after being returned to office in November 2022. But the widespread characterizations in both the Israeli and the international press of his stand on the hostage negotiations, the conduct of the war and what will happen in Gaza once the fighting ends, as merely another example of his desperate attempts to cling to office is largely inaccurate. He may be pursuing two goals that cannot both be achieved as well as clinging to his pre-war strategic objective of getting Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. Yet the real scheming going on right now is in Washington, not Jerusalem. It is Biden who is playing a double game in which he seems willing to ensure Hamas’s survival in power in order to settle scores with Netanyahu, as well as to defeat former President Donald Trump in November. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Michael Goodwin: Joe Biden is playing with fire in the Middle East and risking World War 3 With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu strongly objecting on both counts, Biden is offering him a sweetener that would have Saudi Arabia normalize relations with the Jewish state. As its reward, the Saudis would get American civilian nuclear technology and a promise of military protection for the monarchy. The Saudis would also likely be expected to pump more oil to keep the price of gasoline in America from rising during the campaign. Biden aims to get all this done by summer so he can run as the president who stopped the war in Gaza, brought the Saudis and Israelis together and created a Palestinian state.

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Prayer for the IDF- Netanel Hershtik & The Maccabeats featuring Lt. Gen Benny Gantz

Posted on February 3, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

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“The 2011 deal with Hamas that freed Gilad Shalit led to the taking of hundreds more”

Posted on February 2, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Overvaluing Hostages Is Israel’s Weakness
Michael Segal
February 6, 2024

Nothing illustrates this better than Israel’s release of 1,027 terrorists and other security prisoners in 2011 in exchange for one hostage, Gilad Shalit. Among those released was Yahya Sinwar, now leader of Hamas in Gaza. Hamas learned that Israeli hostages are hugely valuable and promised a cash bounty for each hostage brought back to Gaza on Oct. 7. An estimated 80 hostages are alive in Gaza. Some hostage families, prominent Israelis and Western leaders have urged Israel to release its thousands of security prisoners in exchange. Yet the conflict is far from over, and releasing terrorists would lead to more attacks. It would create the impression that Hamas didn’t lose the war and that being captured in the next round is temporary until the next hostage release. The willingness to pay a high price for captives has deep roots in Jewish tradition. It is discussed in detail in the Talmud, though tempered by the concern that paying too high a price would encourage seizing of more captives. READ MORE

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Would Biden adminstration actually reward Hamas for the October 7 massacre by unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state ?

Posted on February 1, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

BREITBART
Blinken, Biden Considering Unilateral Recognition of Palestinian State
Joel B. Pollak
January 31, 2024

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly asked the State Department to review options for a unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state at the end of the war between Hamas and Israel — a major break from past U.S. policy, and from Israel. Barak Ravid of Axios reported: While U.S. officials say there has been no policy change, the fact the State Department is even considering such options signals a shift in thinking within the Biden administration on possible Palestinian statehood recognition, which is highly sensitive both internationally and domestically. For decades, U.S. policy has been to oppose the recognition of Palestine as a state both bilaterally and in UN institutions and to stress Palestinian statehood should only be achieved through direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Elliott Abrams: The Two-State Delusion The Biden administration is leading a push to recognize a Palestinian state that will be a danger to the security of Israel No one is explaining how that state will live in “peace and security” with Israel if its people would prefer war with Israel. What if, to use Blinken’s language, “what the Palestinian people want” is mostly to destroy Israel? And they may: Opinion polls suggest that very many Palestinians and not just those in Hamas consider the State of Israel illegitimate, want it eliminated, and favor “armed struggle.” That is, their Palestinian nationalism is not positive—mainly about building a democratic, prosperous, peaceful state of their own—but negative, mainly about destroying the Jewish state. 

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