“Spencer argues that US is inadvertently paving the way for a Hamas victory”

Posted on May 20, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

CNN
A military expert on why the US view on Israel’s fight against Hamas is a turning point for the world
Hilary Krieger
May 17, 2024

Since Hamas’ attack on southern Israel on October 7, military expert John Spencer has been carefully observing the Israel Defense Forces’ war against the terror organization, including on two trips he made to the Gaza Strip as an embed with the IDF over the winter. Spencer tells CNN Opinion that he sees a military with the capability to rapidly eviscerate Hamas’ army being held back by the international community. He feels that the US bears some of the responsibility for the devastation in Gaza because of how it’s slowed down and limited Israel’s ability to win the war. It’s a restraint that he says the US hasn’t imposed on its own military campaigns, and it has the effect of increasing Palestinian casualties and suffering by dragging out the fighting. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Israel Is Succeeding in Gaza As the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conducts another assault in the north of Gaza, they face significant criticism from Western officials and analysts who are asking why the IDF is repeatedly going into areas they have already cleared and conducting further operations. Critics claim this behavior reflects a flaw in operational design, or is even proof that Israel’s campaign against Hamas has failed. The flaw, however, lies in their own assumptions…In the case of the 2023-24 Gaza war, Western critics have almost comically misunderstood what the Israeli military is trying to do. The flaw in Western analysis is always the same: “We wouldn’t do it that way.” Yet the IDF has absolutely no intention of using the clear-hold-build COIN tactics the West tried in Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would it? Those tactics were an unmitigated disaster in both campaigns, which ended in humiliating defeats at the hands of technologically inferior armies.

NATIONAL REVIEW Soeren Kern: Germany’s Woke Government Wavers as Islamists Declare Holy War The demonstration, organized by a fast-growing Islamist group called Muslim Interaktiv, was allowed to proceed after left-wing parties in Hamburg’s legislature rejected a petition by right-wing parties to prohibit the event. During the April 27 march in Hamburg’s multicultural Sankt Georg district, the Islamists — mostly young men, but also women in chadors, hijabs, niqabs, and jilbabs — complained about an alleged surge in “Islamophobia” in Germany since October 7, when Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis. Amid shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and “There is no God but Allah,” the protesters reminded German authorities of their constitutional obligation to ensure justice for everyone. READ MORE

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“Squad” Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to consulting firm led by anti-Israel activist working on behalf of groups linked to Palestinian terrorist faction

Posted on May 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Rashida Tlaib has paid $435,000 to firm of anti-Israel activist for terrorism-tied groups
Gabe Kaminsky
May 21, 2024

…Tlaib, who often faces criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for her anti-Israel rhetoric and defense of a phrase calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, has delivered more than $435,000 in payments earmarked for “fundraising consulting” since 2020 from her campaign and leadership PAC to Unbought Power, according to Federal Election Commission filings. The Florida-based limited liability corporation is operated by Rasha Mubarak, a close ally of Tlaib’s who recently held key roles for terrorism-tied organizations in the United States.  The routine cash transfers from Rashida Tlaib for Congress and Rooted in Community Leadership PAC to Unbought Power underscore how the congresswoman has aligned herself with activists helping to coordinate operations for entities sharing connections to Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and other terrorist factions. READ MORE

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“I used to hate Jews. Hopefully my story can help people acknowledge profusely misguided errors of the antisemitic way”

Posted on May 18, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
Confessions of a Former Antisemite
Amir Pars
May 4, 2024

…One thing was consistent, regardless of where I went: We all hated Jews. In the cultures we grew up in — even when there was very little else in common (Shia versus Sunni, Arab versus Persian, Religious versus Atheist, Theocrat versus Monarchist, et cetera) — Jew-hatred is omnipresent. We were born with it, we grew up with it, we were indoctrinated in it. It is in our bone marrow. In my late teens I, like so many other teenagers, was infatuated with Marxism, which only served to fuel my antisemitism. I suddenly belonged to two tribes hating the most persecuted people in history, and where my fellow “svartskallar” only expressed a visceral, sadistic hatred of Jews, my comrades took a more diplomatic approach. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Do You Actually Hate Jews?: A simple test to check ‘criticism of Israel’ for antisemitism But it’s people like my fellow soldier on X who trouble me more. When you know that Israel is the freest, most liberal state in the region; when you know that war is hell and civilians die in all wars; when you know that the IDF engages in state-of-the-art mitigation measures to protect innocent civilians; when you know all of these things and still engage in the blood libelish lies of “Israel is committing genocide,” No. 2 is the only logical conclusion. The only stain is the one on that person’s soul—a black stain of Jew hatred that goes back millennia.

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Yishai Fleisher destroys Israel-hater Norman Finkelstein on Piers Morgan Uncensored

Posted on May 18, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

Yishai debates Norman Finkelstein on Piers Morgan’s “Uncensored” program on the subject of the Gaza War and Israel’s response to Hamas’ October 7th terror massacre of Israeli civilians. Yishai lays out a vision for winning the war in Gaza, stabilizing the region, and achieving prosperity for Jews and Arabs in the Abrahamic Region.

Click here to watch the debate which begins at the 15:30 mark

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Highland Park City Hall Shakespeare

Posted on May 18, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

A Shakespearean drama at Highland Park’s City Hall. Click here to watch video.

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In the great global battle for power, the elites are losing. Why? Martin Gurri explains.

Posted on May 17, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
The Revenge of the Normies
Martin Gurri
May 20, 2024

A fierce political conflict is raging over much of the democratic world. On one side we find the normies: ordinary people who defend, naively, the historic principles of democracy such as freedom of speech and assembly, the separation of powers, etc. On the other side stand the elites, masters of the great institutions of wealth, knowledge, and power, who insist that extraordinary measures must be taken to save a depraved and self-destructive society from its own history and its own people—that is to say, from the normies. The elites are driven entirely by the impulse to control. They detest democracy, which keeps getting in their way, and much prefer a golden ideal they possessively call “Our Democracy”—their own rule in perpetuity. Individual rights are unfortunate legacies from a simpler era. The First Amendment, for example, they see as “hamstringing the government in significant ways.” READ MORE

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Five Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire in Jabalia, northern Gaza on Wednesday

Posted on May 16, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Diverse backgrounds give way to shared fate as Gaza friendly-fire victims eulogized
Canaan Lidor
May 16, 2024

The deaths of five soldiers in a Gaza friendly fire incident affected diverse communities from Tel Aviv to a Haredi community in Tiberias to two West Bank settlements and the Jewish community of Argentina. Four of the five fatalities – all men in their twenties who were killed in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday when an Israel Defense Forces tank mistook them for terrorists – were buried Thursday afternoon. The funeral of the fifth fatality, Sgt. Ilan Cohen, is scheduled to take place in the coming days, once his parents arrive in Israel from his native Argentina, the Ynet site said. Seven additional soldiers were hurt in the friendly fire incident in Jabaliya Wednesday, three of them seriously. READ MORE

JNS Five IDF soldiers mistakenly killed by tank fire in Jabalia  The casualties were identified by the IDF on Thursday morning as Capt. Roy Beit Ya’akov, 22, from Eli; Staff Sgt. Gilad Arye Boim, 22, from Karnei Shomron in Samaria; Sgt. Daniel Chemu, 20, from Tiberias; Sgt. Ilan Cohen, 20, from Carmiel; and Staff Sgt. Betzalel David Shashuah, 21, from Tel Aviv. The incident brings the Gaza death toll since the start of the ground invasion on Oct. 27 to 273 and to 621 on all fronts since the start of the war on Oct. 7.

JPOST Yonah Jeremy Bob: Israel is winning the war if you ignore original unrealistic goals set by the gov’t Israel is indeed winning the war – just not the way you might think. In October, the government set unrealistic goals. It would have been wiser to be more modest with those military objectives. But the fact remains that if the government had set more reasonable goals, and if one were to ask if these goals were desirable and achievable, Jerusalem would have quite a few triumphs to date. With or without Rafah, the IDF has taken apart 19 out of the 24 existing Hamas battalions, killed around 14,000 terrorists, wounded potentially close to a similar number, and arrested thousands more.

JNS Yaakov Lappin: IDF gradually tightens grip on Hamas’s last bastion in Gaza Developments in Rafah signify that the Israeli military is implementing a gradual expansion of its operation in Hamas’s last fortress.The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in intensive operations in central and northern Gaza as well, where on Thursday, a tragic friendly-fire incident involving the Paratroopers’ 202 Battalion led to five IDF casualties.

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President Herzog declares ‘a year of national mourning’

Posted on May 16, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

ALL ISRAEL NEWS
Israel salutes its fallen on first Memorial Day since Oct. 7 tragedy
May 12, 2024

Israel’s Memorial Day, commemorating the soldiers who fell in the nation’s wars and victims of terrorist attacks, began at 8 p.m. on Sunday with a nationwide siren for a minute of silence. On this year’s particularly mournful Memorial Day, the people of Israel remembered 1,600 soldiers and civilians who perished – either in combat or due to an act of terrorism – over the past year, the deadliest year for the Jewish state in over 50 years. As in every year, the siren marked the start of ceremonies being held in towns and communities across the country, at cemeteries, community centers and schools. On Monday, a second siren will sound at 11 a.m. Israeli media outlets displayed images of IDF soldiers in Rafah and the northern Gaza Strip, with some standing at attention on their tanks while marking Memorial Day in the shadow of ongoing fighting. The start of the central state ceremony at Jerusalem’s Western Wall Plaza was accompanied by red alert rocket alarms in the Gaza Envelope, including Sderot, Nahal Oz, and Shaar HaNegev. READ MORE

JNS Jewish Voice for Peace mocked widely for claim Israeli holidays meant to overshadow ‘Nakba Day’ Jewish Voice for Peace is being criticized and ridiculed widely on social media after the anti-Israel, far-left group claimed that Israel scheduled the holidays Yom Hashoah, Yom Hazikaron and Yom Ha’atzmaut to eclipse “Nakba Day.”

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The UN, in reports released on May 6 and 8, seemingly halved its previous estimates based on info provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health

Posted on May 15, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

I24NEWS
UN data suggests large revision in Gaza war casualty figures
May 12, 2024

Recent data published by the United Nations indicates a significant revision in the estimated number of women and children killed during the conflict in Gaza. The UN, in reports released on May 6 and 8, seemingly halved its previous estimates based on information provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, the Government Media Office in Gaza, and Israeli authorities. On May 6, the UN disclosed that 34,735 individuals had reportedly lost their lives in Gaza, with over 9,500 women and over 14,500 children among the reported casualties. However, just two days later, on May 8, revised figures showed a total of 34,844 fatalities, including 4,959 women and 7,797 children. READ MORE

JPOST 40% of total Gazan deaths based on unverified data After a drastic reduction in the reported death toll of in Gaza, scrutiny regarding method used to calculate the victims reveals that 10% are reported via Google Forms and and 30% via reliable media.

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“Biden apparently decided on his new Israel-bashing approach well in advance of his Holocaust Remembrance Day remarks, but held off on any public steps until he’d given that speech”

Posted on May 15, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

NEW YORK POST
Biden’s bribery of our ally Israel over intelligence on Hamas honchos is beyond despicable
Editorial Board
May 13, 2024

It’s official: President Biden’s policy on Israel makes no sense except as a sudden, all-out drive to stop the war completely, leaving Hamas able to recover. The Washington Post reports, citing four sources, that the White House has offered Jerusalem “sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels” if the IDF doesn’t go full-scale into Rafah. Huh? Why not just hand the info over ASAP? It’d help the IDF target those leaders now, and make the precision strikes the White House says it wants more likely — it’s not like Israel wants to take the casualties of a full-on assault if doesn’t have to. READ MORE

COMMENTARY John Podhoretz: Why Joe Biden Has Gone from Friend to Enemy It is true that Biden is in trouble with his base. And it is also true that there are young people and Arabs who are disgusted by him and the support he had shown for Israel. But there are plenty of young people—the absolutely overwhelming majority of young people, in fact—for whom the war in Gaza is not even a minor concern. In the Harvard Youth Poll conducted by the Institute of Politics in April, it ranked 15th—fifteenth—on a list of 16 issues people between the ages of 18 and 29 said they cared about. A grand total of 2 percent said Israel/Palestine was the issue that concerned them most.

TIMES OF ISRAEL US House passes bill requiring delivery of bombs to Israel in GOP-led rebuke of Biden 16 Democrats join nearly all Republicans to approve measure, which Schumer has pledged isn’t ‘going anywhere’ in the Senate and the president has vowed to veto. The US House of Representatives delivered a rebuke to President Joe Biden Thursday for pausing a shipment of bombs to Israel, passing legislation that seeks to force the weapons transfer as Republicans worked to highlight Democratic divisions over the Israel-Hamas war. Seeking to discourage Israel from its offensive against Hamas in the crowded southern Gaza city of Rafah, the Biden administration this month put on hold a weapons shipment of 3,500 bombs.

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