Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Blogging from France! This is how the good and noble 'Palestinians' treated the hostages they seized.

Ville de Nice, France (8:43 AM local time) — In the ‘First World,’ we at least feed even the worst of the prisoners.

One thing is certain: even if you do not particularly like Jews, or know any Jews, for those of us in the Western world, members of Western civilization, the Jews of Israel are the last, easternmost bastion of Western civilization.

That’s what happened to the six hostages murdered just before the Israel Defense Force got there. The reports from the autopsies found that they had attempted to defend themselves, bravely but futilely, at the end.

One of the female hostages, an adult woman, weighed less than 90 lb when her body was recovered. This is what the Arabs would do to you, if they had the power.

Click on the tweet to see the extension.

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Blogging from France! Freedom of speech for he, but not for thee, or me

Ville de Nice, France (4:08 PM local time) — My Twitter feed has recently been full of calls from people using their freedom of speech to stifle other people’s freedom of speech. Jay Michaelson, “author and journalist,” as he describes himself, wrote:

Like a pack of anguished Austrian nuns, progressives can’t stop singing this tune on talk shows and Twitter feeds. And for good reason: the world’s richest man has turned a once-essential social media platform into a far-right propaganda machine.

Despite his lofty libertarian claims of a year ago, X (formerly Twitter) CEO Elon Musk has put his finger on the scale in countless ways to boost far-right posts and deprecate others — starting with his own posts.

There’s more at the MSNBC original.

Even though I do not follow many leftist sites and people at all, my Twitter feed is full of posts supporting the Communist from California, and the antiSemites wishing death upon Israel and total victory for the ‘Palestinians’ and Hamas. It’s pretty laughable when I read tweets by people in the United States whining about ‘stolen land’ and ‘white settler colonialists’ when that’s exactly how and why the US exists: white settler colonialists, white Christian settler colonialists, came to these shores and conquered the Indians who were here before them. If you are an American, if you live in the US, everything you have is something you owe to those white settler colonialists.

Somehow, some way, those opinions get expressed in my feed on Twitter. I am, of course, free to block them, but I haven’t.

Mr Michaelson wants us all to boycott Twitter, but it’s his self description as a journalist, paid and fed by MSNBC, which tells us something. The credentialed left have long hated that major thing about this internet thingy that Al Gore invented, that we commoners, we riff-raff, can extend our voices beyond local shouting distance, without the need to get approval by an editor of The New York Times or MSNBC. Their gatekeeping function has been lost.

Freedom of speech and of the press are, for people like Mr Michaelson, reserved for those who have been approved by the powers who control the media, and Elon Musk’s (mostly) libertarian attitude is just another, another very large, medium for the Little People to say things, sometimes things of which Our Betters disapprove. Freedom of speech and of the press for he, but not for thee, and me.

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Blogging from France! The only way the war can really end

Ville de Nice, 11:12 AM — I’m sitting in our airbnb balcony, French doors open this Sunday morning. The Mediterranean beach is just a couple of blocks away, but, alas! it’s raining this morning.

Even six hours away from the US, I’m still being inundated with social media messages — yes, I have Twitter on my phone — in support of the poor, poor ‘Palestinians,’ the Arabs who live in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Those mean ol’ Jooos stole their land, don’t you know!

Never mentioned, of course, is that the Jews were forced off their land starting in 70 AD by the Roman conquerers, pushed into Europe at the point of a sword. And never mentioned is that our good, Christian forebears in Europe, in all of Europe, hounded and persecuted the Jews living among them; Adolf Hitler and the Nazis were simply the last of the last and worst of the persecutions.

Theodor Herzl wrote Der Judenstaat well before the Nazis, in the last years of the 19th century, following a series of antiSemitic episodes, in which he posited that the only way Jews could truly be safe was to have their own nation. He died before the Nazis came to power, and never knew about the Holocaust.

Why is it, I have to ask, that the Jews returning to Israel is not something that today’s left see as just as much of a homecoming as they see the ‘Palestinians’ deserving what they laughably call ‘Palestine’?

Just as amusing is that so many of the things I see came from Americans, or at least people living in the United States. They whine about “white settler colonialism”, but if you are living in the United States, you are the beneficiary of “white settler colonialism,” the beneficiary of those primarily English settlers who expanded westward, conquering a continent, expelling and often exterminating the Indians, the weaker people who were here before them.

It isn’t just in the US. Every nation on earth, with the exception of Iceland, is ruled by the descendants of the last people to conquer the land. The Norman French conquered England, and imposed their rule, assimilating and in some instances killing the Anglo-Saxons, who themselves had conquered the Britons before them. Today’s Germans are not the people who lived there 2,000 years ago.

Today’s left are screaming for a ceasefire, but what they really want is for Hamas, the terrorists who started the war with a bloody attack last October 7th, to survive, so that they can regroup, rearm, and attack Israel again. Unthinkingly, they want this war to end, but the fighters to be able to start the next war.

Can you imagine today’s left, in January of 1944, advocating a ceasefire, since Germany was obviously beaten, instead of continuing on, to spare the lives of innocent Germans, don’t you know? That would have left Adolf Hitler and his minions alive and in power, to keep on oppressing the people and murdering the Jews.

World War II was the last war we actually won, and that ought to be a lesson: the demand was for unconditional surrender, and we continued on, bombing and burning and killing until that was achieved. Since those dark days of 1945, neither the Germans nor the Japanese nor the Italians have threatened world peace again, because we destroyed their ability to make war, and occupied those countries, installing decent governments and forcing changes in the militaristic cultures. That’s how you win wars!

Right now, Yahya Sinwar is sitting somewhere, in a tunnel, surrounded by his human shields hostages, like Hitler in his bunker, hoping for some kind of miracle to save him. In the end, he shot himself as the Red Army was a few blocks away. His miracle never happened.

Mr Sinwar is hoping for the same kind of miracle, and the lamebrained protesters in the West are trying to give it to him. But this war can only truly end when Mr Sinwar puts a bullet in his own head. Regrettably, he’ll kill his last hostages before he kills himself, because death, other than his own, is meaningless to him.

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Vacationating!

My good friend William Teach, the great(x 6) grandson of the infamous pirate Edward Teach, more famous as Blackbeard, proprietor of The Pirate’s Cove, will be pinch hitting for me on this poor site for the next two weeks, as our family are off to visit our English forebears for three days, and then it will be through the Chunnel to France! Here’s hoping that my American version of Freedom of Speech doesn’t get me thrown in an English gaol!

La Marseillaise below the fold. Continue reading →

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Will Yahya Sinwar meet his end the same way Adolf Hitler did?

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

We have previously reported on Yahya Sinwar, the now official leader of Hamas, several times in the past, most recently on how he reportedly wants any ceasefire agreement with Israel to include a guarantee that his life will be spared.

Now there’s this, from Sunday’s New York Times:

Israel’s Hunt for the Elusive Leader of Hamas

Yahya Sinwar’s ability to evade capture or death has denied Israel a military success in a war that began after he planned the Oct. 7 attacks.

by By Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman, Julian E. Barnes, and Adam Goldman | Mark Mazzetti and Julian Barnes reported from Washington. Ronen Bergman and Adam Goldman reported from Tel Aviv and Rafah. | Sunday, August 25, 2024

In January, Israeli and American officials thought they had caught a break in the hunt for one of the world’s most wanted men.

Israeli commandos raided an elaborate tunnel complex in the southern Gaza Strip on Jan. 31 based on intelligence that Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, was hiding there, according to American and Israeli officials.

He had been, it turned out. But Mr. Sinwar had left the bunker beneath the city of Khan Younis just days earlier, leaving behind documents and stacks of Israeli shekels totaling about $1 million. The hunt went on, with a dearth of hard evidence on his whereabouts.

Since the deadly Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that he planned and directed, Mr. Sinwar has been something of a ghost: never appearing in public, rarely releasing messages for his followers and giving up few clues about where he might be.

He fled without the money? 🙂 I guess he understands that you just can’t take it with you! Previous ‘official’ Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, found out just a month ago that his estimated $4 billion personal fortune wasn’t enough to Israel from sending him from being sent to Jahannam and his 72 bacha bazi boys.

Mr Sinwar, along with several other Hamas leaders, have been hiding in the sophisticated Hamas tunnel network in Gaza, and the Times’ report tells readers that they have ceased using sophisticated electronics communications, as Osama bin Laden famously did as well, to avoid being tracked by American and Israeli intelligence. Rather, these 7th century minds are using a very 7th century method of communications, human couriers. I’d note here that Adolf Hitler served as a dispatch courier from regimental headquarters during World War I, and there’s probably some irony in that.

The Times reported that messages to and from Mr Sinwar used to be completed within days, but that it has recently become more difficult and time consuming. If Mr Sinwar’s approval is required for any ceasefire agreement to be concluded, then such automatically draws out any negotiations. But, to me, the entire idea of ceasefire negotiations is ridiculous: the losing side in a war does not get to dictate terms to the winners. In the last war the United States actually won, the terms to Germany and Japan were simple: unconditional surrender.

The ‘Palestinians’ cannot do much more than lob a couple of harmless rockets at Israel at this point, and Israel can decide to stop shooting at the ‘Palestinians’ any time they choose. The only sticking point is the roughly 109 hostages Hamas currently holds. CNN reported, on June 13th that a senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, stated that no one really knows how many of the 120 remaining hostages are even still alive. The Israel Defense Force recently recovered the bodies of six more hostages, which ought to indicate that relatively few of them remain alive.

Speaking to CNN in the Lebanese capital Beirut, Hamdan said the latest proposal on the table – an Israeli plan that was first publicly announced by US President Joe Biden late last month – did not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war.

Hamdan told CNN that Hamas needed “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the (lifting) of the siege … and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”

Wait, what? The current proposal “(does) not meet the group’s demands for an end to the war”?

Mr Hamdan is saying, in effect, that Israel has to give Hamas something that they have not won on the battlefield to end the war!

Unlike bin Laden in his last years, Mr. Sinwar is actively managing a military campaign. Diplomats involved in cease-fire negotiations in Doha, Qatar, say that Hamas representatives insist they need Mr. Sinwar’s input before they make major decisions in the talks. As the most respected Hamas leader, he is the only person who can ensure that whatever is decided in Doha is implemented in Gaza.

This has been previously reported, including the fact that Mr Sinwar’s consent had to be obtained even when Mr Haniyeh was the nominal leader of Hamas. That’s the beauty of an unconditional surrender demand: no ‘negotiations’ are required, and the IDF can keep shooting and burning and bombing until the rats come out of the tunnels with their hands up.

Adolf Hitler never surrendered. Instead, as the Red Army were closing in on Berlin and the Führerbunker, he poisoned his wife and shot himself in the head, his last loyal aides taking their bodies outside and burning them in the garden. After living underground for over none months, that might be a fitting end for Mr Sinwar. After all, he hates Jews just as much as did der Führer!

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What did we achieve?

Captain Harry Wales in Afghanistan.

There was little choice for the United States to go into Afghanistan following the September 11th attacks. There were 2,459 American military deaths, along with 20,769 Americans wounded. Along with that were 1,822 civilian contractors and 18 Central Intelligence Agency operatives killed in the two months short of twenty years we were there. 457 British soldiers were killed there, and another 2,209 wounded seriously enough to be admitted to field hospitals.

Even His Royal Highness, Prince Henry of Wales, before he went bat guano insane over Meghan Markle, served in Afghanistan, as an Apache helicopter pilot.

Al Qaeda was routed reasonably quickly, although Osama bin Laden wasn’t killed until May 2, 2011, at a compound hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan. His successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, lasted until July 31, 2022, after the United States had evacuated troops from the country, by an American drone strike at a villa in Kabul that he used.

Al Qaeda Is Back—and Thriving—in Afghanistan

The architects of 9/11 are profiting from gold and gem mines in the Taliban-led country.

By Lynne O’Donnell, a columnist at Foreign Policy and an Australian journalist and author. | March 22, 2024

Al Qaeda is back to its old tricks in Afghanistan. Much as it did before masterminding the 9/11 attacks, the terrorist group is running militant training camps; sharing the profits of the Taliban’s illicit drug, mining, and smuggling enterprises; and funneling the proceeds to affiliated jihadi groups worldwide.

An unpublished report circulating among Western diplomats and U.N. officials details how deeply embedded the group once run by Osama bin Laden is in the Taliban’s operations, as they loot Afghanistan’s natural wealth and steal international aid meant to alleviate the suffering of millions of Afghans.

The report was completed by a private, London-based threat analysis firm whose directors did not want to be identified. A copy was provided to Foreign Policy and its findings verified by independent sources. It is based on research conducted inside Afghanistan in recent months and includes a list of senior al Qaeda operatives and the roles they play in the Taliban’s administration.

To facilitate its ambitions, al Qaeda is raking in tens of millions of dollars a week from gold mines in Afghanistan’s northern Badakhshan and Takhar provinces that employ tens of thousands of workers and are protected by warlords friendly to the Taliban, the report says. The money represents a 25 percent share in proceeds from gold and gem mines; 11 gold mines are geolocated in the report. The money is shared with al Qaeda by the two Taliban factions: Sirajuddin Haqqani’s Kabul faction and Supreme Leader Hibatullah Akhundzada’s Kandahar faction, suggesting both leaders, widely regarded as archrivals, see a cozy relationship with al Qaeda as furthering their own interests as well as helping to entrench the group’s overall power.

There’s more at the original.

So, after going in and spending almost twenty years there, spending trillions of dollars and seeing over 2,000 American soldiers coming bad in body bags, all to destroy al Qaeda, the terrorist group are back.

The younger President George Bush included in the mission ousting and, supposedly, destroying the Taliban, the hardline Islamist faction which governed the country at the time. It wasn’t too difficult for American soldiers and Marines to kick the Taliban out of power, but, as we all know, the US, under President Donald Trump, negotiated a withdrawal from that abysmal place, though it wasn’t accomplished until August of 2021, under President Joe Biden. Naturally, under Mr Biden, the final departure was a complete mess and foul-up, in which 13 more Americans were killed, and the US handed power right back to the same Taliban President Bush swore would be driven from power.

And now we have this:

Taliban publish vice laws that ban women’s voices and bare faces in public

The Taliban say it’s mandatory for Afghan women to conceal their voices and bare faces in public

by The Associated Press | Thursday, August 22, 2024 | 12:19 PM EDT

ISLAMABAD (AP) — Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers have issued a ban on women’s voices and bare faces in public under new laws approved by the supreme leader in efforts to combat vice and promote virtue.

The laws were issued Wednesday after they were approved by supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada, a government spokesman said. The Taliban had set up a ministry for the “propagation of virtue and the prevention of vice” after seizing power in 2021.

The ministry published its vice and virtue laws on Wednesday that cover aspects of everyday life like public transportation, music, shaving and celebrations.

They are set out in a 114-page, 35-article document seen by The Associated Press and are the first formal declaration of vice and virtue laws in Afghanistan since the takeover.

“Inshallah we assure you that this Islamic law will be of great help in the promotion of virtue and the elimination of vice,” said ministry spokesman Maulvi Abdul Ghafar Farooq on Thursday.

There’s more at the original

Al Qaeda are back and the Taliban are back, returning to the same basic Islamist and authoritarian principles they imposed in their previous regime. And that, along with the failure of democracy in Iraq, raises the obvious question: what the f(ornicate) did we gain from all of the blood spilled and all of the treasure burned up and blown up?

President Bush was seduced by Natan Sharansky’s and Ron Dermer’s book, The Case for Democracy: The Power of Freedom to Overcome Tyranny and Terror, in which the authors argued that the only moral foreign policy is to expand democracy across the world, and that once a people experience democracy, they will want to keep it. More, democracies will never be aggressors against their neighbors. Mr Bush tried to impose democracy on Iraq and Afghanistan — remember the purple-stained ‘I voted’ fingers? — but once American soldiers were not there to enforce democracy, it just never took.

Democracy is an artifact of Western civilization, a development of northern European and American culture. We managed to impose democracy on Japan and South Korea, but only after they had been completely devastated by war, and much of their military aged male population were killed or wounded. Those nations have copied and assimilated Western culture to the extent that they could. Israel is a Western democracy because it was resettled by Jews fleeing from Europe.

But let’s tell the truth here: We will never see true democracy or Western civilization in the Muslim Middle East, and we should not be naïve enough to waste our money and our blood on trying to push it. Iraq and Afghanistan are abject lessons in this.

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Once again, the left want to restrict our choices It's all for our own good, right?

I have said it many times before: today’s left are pro-choice on exactly one thing, prenatal infanticide. In everything else, they want the government to take control of your lives. William Teach noted that the Biden Administration are trying to shut down existing coal-fired electricity generation plants through emissions regulations which would force them out of business. The Democrats tried to force every American to take an experimental and long-term untested ‘vaccine’ against COVID-19, punishing those who refused with loss of their jobs. They have put in regulations designed to ban the sales of new gasoline-or-diesel-powered trucks and automobiles by 2035, even as the Administration threaten to shut down the coal-fired generation plants, even though 16.2% of our electricity is produced from burning coal. I’m not quite sure how the math works out in trying to push plug-in electric vehicles and concomitantly reducing our electric generating capacity.

Not only do they want to force people into plug-in electric vehicles, the government also wants to regulate the choices we have in those vehicles:

As cars and trucks get bigger and taller, lawmakers look to protect pedestrians

by Joel Rose | Friday, August 23, 2024 | 5:00 AM EDT

RUCKERSVILLE, Va. — In a cavernous white room full of bright lights, video cameras and microphones, a driverless cart hurtles at 37 miles per hour into the side of a large SUV.

Researchers at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety have crash-tested thousands of cars and trucks like this one over the past three decades at their facility in central Virginia.

But a few years ago, they noticed that those vehicles were getting bigger and heavier. So they decided to make the cart that crashes into them larger, too.

“It was meant to represent a small pickup or a midsize SUV, and those vehicles have gotten heavier and heavier over time,” says Becky Mueller, a senior research engineer at IIHS. “So it’s 500 kilograms more weight because that’s what the vehicle fleet now reflects.”

Americans’ cars and trucks are getting bigger and taller, while roadway fatalities have also climbed sharply over the past decade.

Why have cars and trucks gotten bigger and taller? Because those are the vehicles that the car-buying public have chosen to buy. American automobile manufacturers have moved to produce the vehicles that their customers want to buy. Article continues below the fold, because it contains an embedded video. Continue reading →

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Live by the gun, die by the gun A public service homicide

Yeah, I’m treading on Robert Stacy McCain’s “Aspiring Rapper Update” turf with this one, but it was a Philly story, so I can call dibs.

Abdul Vicks, 25, had some sort of rap career as “YBC Dul”, and Philly Crime Update told me that he had “millions of streams” for his ‘songs,’ if rap can actually be called a song, and I don’t think it can.

Popular rapper who prosecutors say was ringleader of violent gang was fatally shot in Olney

Abdul Vicks, who performed as “YBC Dul,” was fatally shot on the 5500 block of North Sixth Street, just after 3:30 p.m. Friday.

by Ellie Rushing and Robert Moran | Saturday, August 23, 2024 | 7:14 PM EDT

A popular 25-year-old rapper — who prosecutors say was considered the ringleader of a notoriously violent West Philadelphia-based gang — was shot and killed Friday afternoon in the city’s Olney section, a law enforcement source said.

I’m shocked, I tell you, shocked, that The Philadelphia Inquirer, which told us that there are no gangs in the city, just “cliques of young men affiliated with certain neighborhoods and families,” who sometimes had “beefs” with other cliques, used the word “gang,” especially when one of the writers of this article, Ellie Rushing, was also the first name in the byline of that September 19, 2022 article.

Police said the shooting occurred just after 3:30 p.m. on the 5500 block of North Sixth Street. The victim, who was identified as Abdul Vicks, was taken by private vehicle to Einstein Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m.

The newspaper’s source remains anonymous, because he was not authorized to speak to the press about the case. As of the writing of this article, no arrests have been made.

Prosecutors say Vicks, who performed as “YBC Dul,” was considered the ringleader of the West Philadelphia-based gang called YBC, or Young Bag Chasers.

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, “‘Public Service Homicide’ in Killadelphia“

Philly Crime Update also told us that young Mr Vicks, who will never become the elder Mr Vicks, was also known by a gang name, “Mr Disrespectful.” It appears that someone else has “disrespected” Mr Vicks.

Earlier this month, 22-year-old Quamere Hall, a Vicks associate, was arrested at the Criminal Justice Center and charged with the shooting death of a 34-year-old man last year.

Hall, another rapper who performs as “Mere Pablo,” was at the Criminal Justice Center to show support for Arshad Curry, a fellow YBC member who was scheduled to be sentenced for shooting five people, three fatally, in 2021. Curry was sentenced to 42½ to 85 years in prison.

Last year, three other YBC members were convicted of killing two teens.

Let’s tell the truth here: other than for the families of the Young Bag Chasers, this is all pretty good news. Mr Vicks, the supposed ‘ringleader’ of the gang, has been taken off the streets, permanently. Mr Hall has been arrested for murder.

Arshad Curry, a.k.a. “Most Wanted,” Raheis Sherman, street name “F5ive,” Zaire Crawford, a.k.a. “1k” or “Murda K”, Yaseam Miles, a.k.a. “Baby Wick” or “Ya Ya”; and Semaj Nolan, a.k.a. “Reek12Hunnit,” some of them with the Chaser’s allied gang, the Young Face Arrangers, are all behind bars, most for decades. How can it be a bad thing when bad guys are off the streets?

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LOL! Yahya Sinwar is afraid of the death he inflicted on so many others Israel needs to send him to his 72 Bacha bazi boys!

Following the extermination — I will not use the word assassination to reference the killing of a cockroach — of Ismail Haniyeh as the political leader of Hamas, the leadership of the terrorist group decided that Yahya Sinwar should be their new Fearless Leader.

Well, now the distinguished Mr Sinwar has added a new demand for a ceasefire: to save his own skin!

Oct. 7 mastermind and Hamas leader Yaya Sinwar reportedly adds new demand for cease-fire deal: Don’t kill me

By Ronny Reyes and Reuven Fenton | Wednesday, August 21, 2024 | 5:26 PM EDT

Hamas chief and Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar, who previously claimed that it would be an honor to die fighting Israel, has made his own survival a condition of any cease-fire in Gaza, according to a new report

Sinwar allegedly emphasized that his safety must be guaranteed, and that Israel must not try to kill him, a senior Egyptian official told Ynet.

The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.

“Sinwar insists on a guarantee that his safety and security are assured,” the official said.

Sinwar, who rose to the top of Hamas following the assassination of former chief Ismail Haniyeh last month, allegedly claimed that if Israel could agree with his demands, then a cease-fire deal would be possible.

The new position comes after months of Sinwar intervening with the cease-fire and hostage exchange talks, with the terror chief calling on Hamas to continue fighting until Israel is destroyed.

As The New York Times pointed out on May 12th, Mr Sinwar was among 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ prisoners traded for one Israeli soldier, Staff Sergeant Galid Shalit, in 2011. It is the sad irony of the Middle East that Mr Sinwar planned what turned out to be the deaths of about 1,200 innocent Israelis on October 7th, along with the capturing of roughly 250 hostages.

The Israeli government has already stated that Mr Sinwar is a dead man walking, and that he is to be killed, period.

It’s a strange notion, that the losers in a war could demand a ceasefire. Israel can stop shooting whenever they choose. Then, if Hamas and the ‘Palestinians’ decide to keep shooting, the Israelis can start destroying what’s left of Gaza all over again.

Hamas only bargaining chip is that they still hold 109 hostages, but the Israel Defense Force just recovered the bodies of six more. As the rescues keep ‘rescuing’ hostages who are already dead, it becomes ever more clear that there are few, if any, of the hostages still alive.

It’s a tough thing for the Israeli government to do, but at this point — actually, that point passed long ago! — they need to declare all of the hostages unfortunate casualties, and just proceed with the war to exterminate Hamas. Western nations cannot let concern for hostages guide their policies, because all that does is to put a premium on hostage taking. If some few of the hostages get rescued in the end, that will be great, but concern for their lives must not stop Israel from doing what it must.

Declaring all of the hostages casualties removes any leverage Hamas have left in ceasefire negotiations; all that will remain for them is unconditional surrender or a fight to the death.