There’s no threat quite like an empty threat!

“Why do you keep bashing your head into that wall?” ask sensible people.

“Because it feels so good when I stop,” answers Ali Khamenei.

“We are capable of destroying all that the Zionists possess with one operation,” said General Ali Fadavi, the Iran Revolutionary Guards Corps deputy commander. So, General Fadavi is telling us that Iran’s two separate ballistic missile attacks on Israel, the vast majority of which were intercepted, and the few that hit doing little damage, were not attempts to ‘destroy all that the Zionists possess’?

Iranian Officials Threaten Retaliation for Israeli Strikes

It was unclear how or when Iran plans to respond, or whether the rhetoric could be bluster. Iranian officials had downplayed the damage of Israel’s last attack.

By Farnaz Fassihi | Hallowe’en, October 31, 2024

Two top Iranian officials on Thursday said Iran planned to respond to Israel’s recent attacks, according to Iranian media, threatening to continue a cycle of retaliation between the countries.

“Iran’s response to the Zionist aggression is definite,” said Gen. Ali Fadavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, according to Iranian media. “We have never left an aggression unanswered in 40 years. We are capable of destroying all that the Zionists possess with one operation.”

General Fadavi’s remarks, made to Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television station, were the first statement from an Iranian official indicating that Iran intended to retaliate to Israel’s Oct. 26 strikes on its soil. The escalating tit-for-tat cycle of direct attacks between Iran and Israel over the last six months has taken the region to the brink of an all-out war, but neither side appears to be standing down.

The second Iranian official, the head of the supreme leader’s office, Gholamhossein Mohammadi Golpayegani, also said on Thursday that Iran planned to deliver “a fierce, tooth-breaking response” to Israel’s “desperate action,” according to Tasnim, a semiofficial news agency affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards.

A “tooth-breaking response”? It’s a good thing that there are so many Jewish dentists! 🙂

Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” the Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered the attack after reviewing the damages reported by military officials, which detailed the strikes across Tehran’s missile production plants and defense systems, including the killing of four soldiers. The attack did not target existing missile stockpiles, meaning that Iran has some left, but the ability of the mad mullahs to have more of them built. The attack did not target Iran’s nuclear weapons research facility, which is supposed to have been seriously hardened against attack.

In one regard, I get it. The Ayatollah has to strike at Israel last, because he feels the need to save face, both for his country and for himself. However, he is reported to be seriously, if not terminally ill, and at 85-years-old, he doesn’t have that much time left on earth. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu probably looks at things the same way, that Israel must strike last, but his concerns are different: Israel faces enemies north and south and cannot afford the slightest sign of weakness. Mr Netanyahu’s political position isn’t the strongest, so there are personal reasons for him to continue to strike.

Iran striking Israel is, in the end, fanaticism. None of the actual nations bordering Israel want war, because they know that Israel is capable of defeating them easily. Iran is 1,000 miles away from Israel, and isn’t an Arabic nation; the people there are primarily Persians. Iran’s grievance with Israel is wholly religious, because the Islamists who control the place hate Jews. There is absolutely no other reason for Iran to want to fight Israel.

But, then again, Iran is ultimately governed by a madman.

Another one bites the dust!

We now have another reason why Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, fled Lebanon on the orders of his bosses in Iran. Just days after Hezbollah’s fearless leader, Hassan Nazrallah was sent to Jahannam, the late Mr Nasrallah’s cousin, Hashem Safieddine, seen as his likely successor, also went to see his 72 bacha bazi boys. From The New York Times:

The late Hashem Safieddine.

Israeli Military Says It Killed Top Hezbollah Leader

Hashem Safieddine was widely seen as a potential successor to his cousin, Hassan Nasrallah, the armed group’s former leader whom Israel also killed in September. There was no immediate confirmation from Hezbollah.

Tuesday, October 22, 2024 | Updated: Wednesday, October 23, 2024 | 3:58 AM EDT

Israel’s military said on Tuesday that it had killed Hashem Safieddine, the presumed successor to Hezbollah’s recently slain leader, in an airstrike near Beirut, Lebanon, in early October.

The airstrike had targeted a meeting of senior Hezbollah leaders. It was one of the heaviest bombardments to hit the area known as the Dahiya since an Israeli assault killed Hezbollah’s longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah, on Sept. 27.

Perhaps “meeting(s) of senior Hezbollah leaders” aren’t the safest places to be. I suppose that Mr Safieddine didn’t have his pager with him.

CNN has a list of Hezbollah’s top leaders, and how many of them became former leaders.

Another #Hezbollah leader goes into exile Have governments-in-exile ever achieved liberation for their countries?

My good friend William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove reported that, now that Yahya Sinwar has been sent to his 72 bacha bazi boys in Jahannam, the so-called ‘Palestinian Authority’ in Judea and Samaria are calling for a ceasefire. No Westerner can truly comprehend what passes for ‘thinking’ among the Arabs, but at least to me, it sounds as though the ‘Authority’ are worried that, now that Mr Sinwar is dead, the Israel Defense Force might turn more of its attention to the West Bank. I’d say that the IDF has more work to do in Gaza and the Hezbollah-controlled areas of southern Lebanon first.

We noted on Saturday that Mr Sinwar’s top surviving deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, has vowed that Hamas will continue the fight, but also noted that Mr al-Hayya lives comfortably in exile in Doha, Qatar, where many of the wealthy Hamas leaders stayed. Mr Sinwar, at least, had remained in Gaza, to ‘lead’ his Hamas followers in their war against Israel.

Which leads me to this article from The Jerusalem Post:

Fearing an Israeli targeted strike, Hezbollah’s new chief relocates to Tehran – report

Qassem left Beirut for Tehran on October 5, accompanied by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

By WALLA! | Sunday, October 20, 2024

Hezbollah’s Deputy Secretary-General, Naim Qassem, has relocated from Lebanon to Iran out of fear that Israel may attempt to assassinate him, according to a Sunday report by the Emirati website Aram News, citing an Iranian source.

The Iranian source claimed, according to the website, that Qassem, who is considered the de facto leader of Hezbollah since the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah, has been in Tehran since October 5.

The source added that Qassem left Beirut that same day on an Iranian plane, accompanied by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, to Damascus, and from there, he continued to Tehran.

The report continued to note that Sheikh Qassem’s second speech was recorded in his new residence in Tehran, and the move to Iran was ordered by senior officials in the Iranian government. But, as we have previously noted, Ismail Haniyeh found out that being safely ensconced in Tehran isn’t necessarily as safe as hoped.

The Palestinian Chronicle reported, in a biography of Sheikh Qassem, that he studied Islam under Shi’ite scholars, so that would make him appeal even more to Iran’s religious overseers. ‘Governments in exile’ are formed by governments and ‘leaders’ who have been defeated in their home countries. Poland’s leaders fled first to Paris following the Nazis’ September 1939 invasion, and later to London, after the Third Reich turned West and quickly defeated France. General Charles de Gaulle formed a French government-in-exile in London after France surrendered in June of 1940. These governments in exile exerted some small influence, but they never actually won the liberation of their countries; that was accomplished by other, foreign powers.

The demented mind of Yahya Sinwar

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

To me, the most amazing thing about Hamas’ October 7, 2023 surprise attack on Israel was that they thought that they could get away with it. The New York Times reported, five months ago:

As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, (Yahya) Sinwar masterminded a strategy that he knew would provoke a ferocious Israeli response. But in Hamas’s calculus, the deaths of many Palestinian civilians — who do not have access to Hamas’s subterranean tunnels — were the necessary cost of upending the status quo with Israel.

That sounds like utter stupidity to me, but I’m a product of Western civilization, not Islamic barbarism. I’ve said it before: Mr Sinwar’s actions resemble, to me, those of Adolf Hitler, holed up in his Führerbunker, unwilling to surrender to save the Germany he supposedly loved so much from the oncoming destruction and devastation that the inexorable Allied advance and bombing campaign would continue to cause.

Now there’s more insight into his diseased mind:

Secret Documents Show Hamas Tried to Persuade Iran to Join Its Oct. 7 Attack

The Times reviewed the minutes of 10 meetings among Hamas’s top leaders. The records show the militant group avoided several escalations since 2021 to falsely imply it had been deterred — while seeking Iranian support for a major attack.

By Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon, and Patrick Kingsley | Reporting from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Doha, Qatar | Saturday, October 12, 2024 | 9:55 AM EDT

For more than two years, Yahya Sinwar huddled with his top Hamas commanders and plotted what they hoped would be the most devastating and destabilizing attack on Israel in the militant group’s four-decade history.

Minutes of Hamas’s secret meetings, seized by the Israeli military and obtained by The New York Times, provide a detailed record of the planning for the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, as well as Mr. Sinwar’s determination to persuade Hamas’s allies, Iran and Hezbollah, to join the assault or at least commit to a broader fight with Israel if Hamas staged a surprise cross-border raid.

Hezbollah certainly did agree to that “broader fight,” though perhaps the Hezbollah leadership, at least those who are still breathing, might regret it now. I’ve seen speculation that Hassan Nasrallah might not have been killed instantly by Israel’s bombing attack on his location, but might have been trapped in an unventilated pocket and suffocated, perhaps giving him time to realize just how badly he had f(ornicated) up.

Iran? Several Iranian big wigs have been killed in Israeli attacks on Hezbollah sites, and, more embarrassing of all, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh was killed when a safe house in Tehran where he was staying was destroyed by a planted bomb. But, even with that, Iran has limited its direct action to two mass ballistic missile attacks against Israel, both of which were largely intercepted. And now CNN has reported:

Iran’s government is extremely nervous and has been engaging in urgent diplomatic efforts with countries in the Middle East to gauge whether they can reduce the scale of Israel’s response to its missile attack earlier this month and – if that fails – help protect Tehran, sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Iran’s anxiety stems from uncertainty about whether the US can convince Israel not to strike Iranian nuclear sites and oil facilities, and the fact that its most important proxy militia in the region, Hezbollah, has been significantly weakened by Israeli military operations in recent weeks, the sources said.

Mr Sinwar must be so disappointed! Back to the Times:

The documents, which represent a breakthrough in understanding Hamas, also show extensive efforts to deceive Israel about its intentions as the group laid the groundwork for a bold assault and a regional conflagration that Mr. Sinwar hoped would cause Israel to “collapse.”

The documents consist of minutes from 10 secret planning meetings of a small group of Hamas political and military leaders in the run-up to the attack, on Oct. 7, 2023. The minutes include 30 pages of previously undisclosed details about the way Hamas’s leadership works and the preparations that went into its attack.

This is what makes the article really interesting, and I urge you to follow the link and read it; the Times has done very useful journalism here, but I cannot just plagiarize it and reproduce the whole thing.

Mr Sinwar and his minions clearly wanted, and perhaps even expected, Hezbollah and Iran to follow Hamas into the fight, but, as the above CNN story told us, while Iran might like striking at Israel, even the mad mullahs aren’t particularly interested in what happens if Israel strikes back.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has publicly denied that Iran had any role in the Oct. 7 attack. And American officials have described intelligence showing key Iranian leaders were caught by surprise, fueling doubts that Iran played a direct role in planning. But Hamas leaders have spoken broadly about the support they have received from regional allies, and there have been scattered and sometimes conflicting reports that Iranian and Hezbollah officials helped plan the attack and train fighters.

So, maybe Iran and Hezbollah helped Hamas, and maybe they simply spewed hot air; we just don’t know. But we do know one thing: whatever training the Hamas fighters were given, it wasn’t very good. They were able to kidnap and rape and burn and murder, but if there was any actual military goal, they didn’t achieve it. Instead, they engaged in an orgy of death and destruction, one which made the denizens of Gaza deliriously happy, right up until the IDF got its response organized and entered Gaza.

The Gazans aren’t so happy now!

And Mr Sinwar isn’t too happy, either. What he expected isn’t what happened. Gaza is heavily damaged, Hamas seriously weakened, Hezbollah has lost almost all of its previous leadership, and has perhaps a thousand of its lower-level people seriously injured by the diabolically brilliant pager attack. Iran has made two expensive but ultimately futile ballistic missile attacks, and is now shuddering in fear over what Israel might do in retaliation. Like the Führer he’s now emulating, he’s waiting in his underground bunker, waiting for a miracle deliverance to keep him from adjourning to Jahannam. He guessed wrong, and he’s going to pay for it. Sadly, tens of thousands of innocent people have also paid the price for his fantasies and delusions.

What would ‘Palestine’ be like if Hamas and Hezbollah won? If they were under the kind of government that Hamas and Hezbollah would set up if they could, 'progressives' would be utterly astonished to find that they'd be the first ones lined up against the wall.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is, according to his Wikipedia biography:

an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie’s second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be “the best novel of all winners” on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.

After his fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), Rushdie became the subject of several assassination attempts and death threats, including a fatwa calling for his death issued by (Ayatollah) Ruhollah Khomeini, the supreme leader of Iran. In total, 20 countries banned the book. Numerous killings and bombings have been carried out by extremists who cite the book as motivation, sparking a debate about censorship and religiously motivated violence. In 2022, a man stabbed Rushdie after rushing onto the stage where the novelist was scheduled to deliver a lecture at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York.

Simply put, Mr Rushdie is personally familiar with Islamist governments, and what they do, but, not to worry, a Swedish PhD candidate, @AcademiskC — she does not give us her real name — thinks that she knows more about the Middle East than Mr Rushdie. She tweeted:

I have not one atom of respect for this guy. Not one atom. I am trying very hard to remain polite. There is simply no intelligentsia left. No one big voice. Nobody. Also a complete indictment of academia.

“AkademiskC”, from her Twitter profile.

Here we have a novelist under a death sentence in absentia, one issued by a hard-line Islamist government, telling us that an Islamic government in ‘Palestine,'[1]I always put ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinians’ in quotation marks, to note that it is not a real place, and they are not a real people separate from the Arabs. … Continue reading should the world be so unfortunate as to see the ‘Palestinians’ succeed in their goal of conquering Israel and driving the Jews — at least the ones they don’t kill — into the sea would not be ‘progressive’ in any sense of the word as Western liberals see it.

The Taliban are, of course, the most extreme of the Islamist governments. They force women into almost completely obscuring burkas, ban girls from being educated, destroyed non-Islamic art in Afghanistan, and basically imposed their version of shari’a, Islamic law, on the country. Homosexual activity can be, and is, punished, sometimes with death. That Iran publicly and routinely hangs homosexuals has been extensively documented and photographed.

At least Da’ish’s method of executing homosexuals seems to kill them more quickly.

The religious leaders in Iran, which has been funding both Hezbollah and Hamas, are only slightly less restrictive in their laws.

Of course, the Taliban and Iranian religious leaders are not Hamas and Hezbollah. The obvious question is: what have Hamas promised? The Wilson Center stated:

Since its creation in December 1987, Hamas has invoked militant interpretations of Islam to spearhead a Sunni extremist movement committed to destroying Israel. Hamas distanced itself from the longstanding Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)—an umbrella organization for disparate Palestinian factions that ranged from Marxist to secular nationalists—by propagating resistance in the religious context of jihad, or a holy struggle and martyrdom. “Jihad is its path and death for the sake of Allah is the loftiest of its wishes,” Hamas said in its first statement in the late 1980s. Predominantly Shiite Iran has armed, trained and funded Hamas since the late 1980s largely due to its opposition to Israel and Islamic ideology.

The United States Department of State noted:

Hamas, a U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organization with de facto control of Gaza, Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and other extremist groups disseminated anti-Semitic materials and advocated violence through traditional and social media channels, as well as during rallies and other events. Hamas also continued to enforce restrictions on Gaza’s population based on its interpretation of Islam and sharia.

When people tell us who they are, perhaps we ought to believe them!

So, what would an Hamas/Hezbollah government over the Holy Land be like?

Israel is officially Jewish, but in my all-too-short visit to Jerusalem, I was able to visit and attend Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built over the site where Jesus was crucified and buried. The Church has existed since the conversion of Constantine to Christianity, and the subsequently ordered investigations and excavations of Christian sites. Following Muslim soldiers gaining control of Jerusalem, in 1009, the fanatical Fatimid caliph al-Hakim ordered the destruction of the church. However, subsequent Islamic rulers, as the city changed hands between the Muslims, then the Crusaders, to the Muslims again, the Islamic leadership allowed the Church in Jerusalem to continue.

Small mosque on the Via Dolorosa. Photo by D R Pico, and may be freely used, with proper attribution.

Today’s Jewish leadership allow and support the existence of Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. While there have been a few, and I stress the word “few,” protests by Jews in Jerusalem concerning Christian sites, the government have supported the freedom of religion.

It isn’t too far down the Via Dolorosa in which my daughter and I visited a small mosque. The Jewish government allowed that to operate as well.

I visited the Church of the Flagellation, supposedly where Jesus was scourged before his crucifixion, the Garden of Gethsemane, the (supposed) birthplace of Mary, and other sites. I had wanted to visit Bethlehem, but my daughter, an Army Reservist, was under orders not to enter the ‘Palestinian’ areas. While this was eleven months before the October 7th massacres, I understood completely.

I have to wonder: if the Islamists conquered the Holy Land, would they continue to allow the existence of Christian sites, or would they go all-out Taliban, and destroy them? When Jews attempted to visit Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus, some Muslims attacked them.

On two occasions, Israeli security forces prevented attempts to detonate explosive devices when Jewish worshipers visited the Tomb. In June and October (2019), unknown persons also threw explosive devices at Rachel’s Tomb from the West Bank.

One of the extreme idiocies we have seen in the anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas demonstrations in the United States following the October 7th massacres has been a few demonstrators holding “Queers for Palestine” posters. What would life be like for homosexuals and the ‘transgendered’ in a ‘Palestine’ completely controlled by the Islamists?

I don’t know AkademiskC, and the odds I will ever meet her are vanishingly small. I’ve never been to Sweden, and if we ever do visit Europe again, that country isn’t high on our list of places to go. Sweden produced global warming climate change and pro-Hamas activist Greta Thunberg, so great wisdom seems to be in short supply there.

Still, as a PhD candidate, I have to assume that AkademiskC knows a little bit more than Miss Thunberg. Surely she’s noticed the increased crime in her country due to immigration from Third World countries. Yet she is utterly appalled that someone would dare to suggest that an independent ‘Palestine’ would somehow not be an enlightened and ‘progressive’ place.

Our Swedish doctoral candidate complained, “There is simply no intelligentsia left.” Mirriam-Webster defines “intelligentsia” as “intellectuals who form an artistic, social, or political vanguard or elite,” but I find it difficult to accept the idea that “intellectuals” or “intelligentsia” can accurately define people like AkademiskC, and so many on the left, who cannot see just what and who Hamas and Hezbollah really are. It is as though the “intelligentsia” are completely absorbed by the silliness of “intersectionality“:

Intersectionality is an analytical framework for understanding how individuals’ various social and political identities result in unique combinations of discrimination and privilege. Intersectionality identifies multiple factors of advantage and disadvantage.[1] Examples of these factors include gendercastesexraceethnicityclasssexualityreligiondisabilityweightspecies[2] and physical appearance.[3] These intersecting and overlapping social identities may be both empowering and oppressing.[4][5] However, little good-quality quantitative research has been done to support or undermine the theory of intersectionality.[6]

Intersectionality broadens the scope of the first and second waves of feminism, which largely focused on the experiences of women who were whitemiddle-class and cisgender,[7] to include the different experiences of women of colorpoor womenimmigrant women, and other groups. Intersectional feminism aims to separate itself from white feminism by acknowledging women’s differing experiences and identities.

This is intellectual vacuity, empty and lacking content or serious ideas. It doesn’t take a doctoral candidate to see that the interests of different groups, even if the left find them to be oppressed in some fashion, are not all the same. The desires of the ‘Palestinians’ and Islamists are not at all like those of homosexuals or ‘progressives’ or feminists, and the Muslims have been perfectly willing to tell everyone this. The ‘progressives’ have simply been unwilling to believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears.

If they were under the kind of government that Hamas and Hezbollah would set up if they could, ‘progressives’ would be utterly astonished to find that they’d be the first ones lined up against the wall to be shot.

References

References
1 I always put ‘Palestine’ and ‘Palestinians’ in quotation marks, to note that it is not a real place, and they are not a real people separate from the Arabs. ‘Palestinians’ are simply Arabs who live in the areas conquered by Israel in 1967.

#Hezbollah’s pagers go boom, #AntiSemites wax wroth

Israel launched one of the greatest covert action attacks ever yesterday, with some kind of operation that targeted the pagers that Hezbollah were using in Lebanon. Israel had the pager numbers of the Hezbollah operatives, including an Iranian representative to the group in Beirut, and sent a group page than caused the pagers to explode. As nearly as I can see, the only problem with the operation is that the explosions weren’t lethal enough!

Hezbollah had turned to pagers for communications because the Israel Defense Force, IDF, had been successful in tracking Hezbollah’s cell phones, and targeting drones to zero in and whack the terrorists. At least in theory, the pagers couldn’t be tracked.

This was a brilliant operation, because it targeted Hezbollah members specifically, as opposed to having to bomb particular buildings or streets to strike at the terrorists, thus including possibly significant ‘collateral’ casualties. There were a few, few! collateral injuries in this operation; that was unavoidable. Nevertheless, FrumTikTok — who is not Libs of TikTok! — found and tweeted out the frantic response of a pretty but nevertheless silly redhead — and redheads always get a break from me! — to the operation.

Click on the image and you can listen to her entire rant.

She was horrified, horrified, that Israel was able to strike Hezbollah so precisely. Would she have preferred that the IDF would have blown up entire blocks?

Also see: William Teach, “Funny: Hezbollah Pagers Explode

No, of course not. Rather, she is horrified that Israel is fighting back at all against the terrorist group, who have been launching missiles and rockets against northern Israel. Nowhere in her rant did I see any mention that Hezbollah had been attacking Israel, or any condemnation of the terrorists’ actions. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have greatly preferred that his country not have to deal with other Islamist enemies while the operation in Gaza was continuing, but Israel is not going to just sit back and take potentially lethal attacks, from anyone.

The odious Edward Snowden, who has had nothing to say about the Islamists attacking Israel, said that this precision attack was “terrorism.”

I will admit to being amused that some of these pagers detonated in ways that could have emasculated some of the terrorists. 🙂 They fully deserve it.