It has frequently been noted that the top Hamas leadership lived not in Gaza, but in wealth and safety in Doha, Qatar. The Qatari government told them to find someplace to stay, so most of them have headed for Turkey. A lot of their families live there, but I have to wonder how long the Turkish government will put up with these cretins.
Hamas officials booted by Qatar last week, now hosted in Turkey, diplomat says
“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.
Either the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, UNRWA, didn’t properly check Mohammad Abu Itiwi’s background, something which would be hugely improper considering the circumstances in which the UN worked in Gaza prior to the war, or they just didn’t care, or the UNRWA leadership in Gaza knew who and what he was, and were deliberately providing Hamas with ‘civilian’ cover.
In one way, it really doesn’t matter: the outcome was the same, a Hamas commander was given wide access, wages, access to UN vehicles, and civilian cover. Is it any wonder that the Israeli government do not trust the United Nations and its various organizations and projects? Continue reading
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.
At what point in history did the losers in a war ever get to dictate terms to the winners?
All kinds of people were sagely telling the world that, with the express train that sent Hamas’ leader, Yahya Sinwar, to his 72 bacha bazi boys in Jahannam, there was a fresh opportunity for a ceasefire to be negotiated. But the next dead man walking says no. From The New York Times:
Hamas Says Its Demands Are Unchanged as Biden Pushes for Gaza Cease-Fire
A top deputy to the killed Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar vowed that his “banner will not fall” and that the group would hold to its cease-fire conditions.
By Liam Stack, Aaron Boxerman, Bilal Shbair, and Jim Tankersley
A top Hamas official vowed on Friday that the killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, would change nothing for its war with Israel, saying that it would fight on even as President Biden pressed for a deal to stop the conflict in the Gaza Strip and free the remaining hostages there.Khalil al-Hayya.
In Hamas’s first official comments since Israel announced Mr. Sinwar’s death on Thursday, his deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, said that the group maintained its conditions for a cease-fire. He said Hamas still insisted on an end to Israel’s onslaught in Gaza, as well as its complete withdrawal from the territory and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
“We are continuing Hamas’s path,” Mr. al-Hayya, who lives in exile in Qatar, said in televised remarks in which he praised Mr. Sinwar for dying on the battlefield and added that his “banner will not fall.” It remained unclear when Hamas would announce a successor to Mr. Sinwar, who was fatally shot by Israeli soldiers in southern Gaza on Wednesday.
Mr. Sinwar orchestrated the Hamas assault on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were taken to Gaza as hostages. The assault led to Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed 42,000 people, according to local health officials, and left much of the territory in ruins.
Mr al-Hayya continued to say that there would be no release of the 101 hostages being held by Hamas until their demands are met. Of course, as the Times noted, Mr al-Hayya lives comfortably in exile in Doha, Qatar, where many of the wealthy Hamas leaders stayed. He’s far less vulnerable to Israeli attack, but, as Ismail Haniyeh and Hassan Nasrallah learned the hard way, living outside of the ‘Palestinian’ areas does not guarantee that your health won’t take a very quick turn for the worse.
There is continual political pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cut a deal that gets the hostages released, but that’s a poor idea. In 2011, Israel traded 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, one of whom was Mr Sinwar, for the release of one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, and look how that turned out. It’s cold-hearted to say, but the 101 hostages, perhaps a third of whom are believed to already be dead, need to be considered casualties of the war, and lost forever. If, by chance, there are a few left alive and they are somehow rescued, great, but no ‘Palestinian’ prisoners — Mr Sinwar was in prison for killing four ‘Palestinians’ in Khan Younis — should ever be released.
The hostages are the only point of strength Hamas have; if Mr Netanyahu and the Israeli government take the hard decision to regard themas casualties, Hamas will have nothing left.
Mr Sinwar’s body will probably be given a Muslim burial in a secret place in Israel, to prevent it from becoming some sort of sick shrine for the ‘Palestinian’ irredentists to visit.
There is no more appropriate song of which I can thing for the journey of Yahya Sinwar to Jahannam, that Queen and Another One Bites the Dust,
The rest of this is below the fold, because Mr Sinwar was as unlovely in death as he was in life. Continue reading
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.
That our oh-so-noble leftists will lie through their scummy teeth whenever they think it to their advantage is of no surprise to anyone who pays attention. That The New York Times would report on it actually is at least slightly surprising.
Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas
Columbia University Apartheid Divest has withdrawn an apology it made last spring for a member who said “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
by Sharon Otterman | Wednesday, October 9, 2024
The pro-Palestinian group that sparked the student encampment movement at Columbia University in response to the Israel-Hamas war is becoming more hard-line in its rhetoric, openly supporting militant groups fighting Israel and rescinding an apology it made after one of its members said the school was lucky he wasn’t out killing Zionists.
The ‘student’ in question is Khymani James, who, according to NBC News “uses he/she/they pronouns,” thus proving that he’s mentally ill and an idiot, was barred from Columbia’s campus on Friday, April 26th, and is now suing Columbia over his dismissal. Apparently Mr James open support of “militant groups fighting Israel” means fighting Israel in Morningside Heights, and not actually picking up a rifle and heading to Gaza to face the Israel Defense Force in real life.
“We support liberation by any means necessary, including armed resistance,” the group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, said in its statement revoking the apology.
The group marked the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by distributing a newspaper with a headline that used Hamas’s name for it: “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory,” it read, over a picture of Hamas fighters breaching the security fence to Israel. And the group posted an essay calling the attack a “moral, military and political victory” and quoting Ismail Haniyeh, the assassinated former political leader of Hamas.
“The Palestinian resistance is moving their struggle to a new phase of escalation and it is our duty to meet them there,” the group wrote on Oct. 7 on Telegram. “It is our duty to fight for our freedom!”
Also see: William Teach, “Unhinged Jew Hating Group At Columbia U Rescinds Apology For Anti-Semite Comrade
Reporter Sharon Otterman’s article noted the problems the university’s leadership have with statements made under our First Amendment protections, but which can also create a “hostile environment for Jewish students.”
Laughably, Mr James, in his lawsuit against Columbia, as reported by the Columbia Spectator, is claiming that he is the one being victimized by a ‘hostile environment’:
“The environment at Columbia, which has been rendered hostile for James, is sufficiently severe, pervasive, persistent, and offensive such that it deprives James of equal access to the opportunities and benefits that Columbia provides to other students,” the lawsuit reads.
The lawsuit states that after James began sharing “anti-war and anti-genocide political beliefs” on their personal Instagram account, they (sic) became the target of “racist, homophobic, and physically threatening messages,” including ones that called James slurs. These messages distracted James from their (sic) schoolwork and caused them (sic) to feel “uncomfortable, anxious, and unsafe,” according to the lawsuit.
Laughing out loud! At least the Times wasn’t silly enough to use Mr James’ preferred pronouns, but the Spectator, produced by the foremost School of Journalism in the country, was. 🙂
I have to ask, are Mr James and his attorney claiming that he has “anti-war . . . political beliefs” at the same time he and his supporters are calling for war against Israel, and are actively supporting the war Hamas started against Israel? But, I can answer my own question: for the anti-Semitic left, violence in advance of their cause is perfectly acceptable; they are simply “anti-war” when it comes to other people and other people’s defense.
There have been several stories about Americans, primarily combat veterans, who have left the United States and gone to Ukraine, to fight against the Russians, and at least a few of them have been killed in action. Hey, they were vets, knew the dangers, and chose to brave them anyway!
And there have been many stories about Americans and Europeans, primarily Jews, who have gone to Israel to fight with the Israel Defense Force. Some are dual citizens, and the anti-Semitic left have been calling for them not to be allowed to return to their European countries, saying that they are “war criminals.”
But pro-‘Palestinian’ Europeans and Americans? I can’t say that none have gone to Gaza to join the fight, but if any have, there haven’t been enough of them to have merited any story that I have seen in the credentialed media about it.
On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israel was not in open warfare with Hamas or Hezbollah. On Friday, October 6, 2023, Israelis were going about their business. At sundown, on Friday, October 6, 2023, observant Jews were beginning their Sabbath celebrations.
On Sunday, October 6, 2024, Catholics around the world were listening to parts of Psalm 128:
5 – The Lord bless you from Zion: may you see the prosperity of Jerusalem all the days of your life;
6 – May you see your children’s children. Peace be upon Israel!
On Saturday, October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas broke through the gates between Gaza and Israel proper, and went on a rampage of rape, murder, kidnapping, and mayhem. It was still the Sabbath in Israel.
As a terrorist surprise attack, it was wildly successful. 1,195 Israelis were killed, 815 of whom were civilians, and 251 people were seized as hostages. Many Israelis were wounded, and the ‘Palestinians’ used rape and serial rape as instruments of torture and terror.
Yet, for the ‘Palestinians,’ October 7, 2023, was a massive failure. None of the bordering nations came to Hamas’ aid, though Iran, a thousand miles away, kept sending weapons, and Hezbollah, not a nation but a terrorist group of Iranian puppets, tried to join in. Much of Gaza is in ruins, thousands upon thousands of homes destroyed, dozens of thousands of Gazans have been killed, all due to a war Hamas started but couldn’t finish.
Israel is not done. Gaza is still being pounded, and the Israel Defense Force has now focused on Hezbollah in the north. Almost all of Hezbollah’s leaders have been sent to Jahannam, and many of their fighters killed or wounded. Parts of Hamas leadership have also been sent to their eternal rewards, while Yahya Sinwar, who planned the October 7th attack has been stuck in underground shelters in Gaza.
Hamas Leader Is Holding Out for a Bigger War, U.S. Officials Say
Yahya Sinwar is increasingly fatalistic, has blocked a cease-fire deal and, so far, been frustrated that Hezbollah and Iran have not come to his aid, officials said.
By Julian E. Barnes, Adam Goldman, and Edward Wong | October 4, 2024
The psychopath Yahya Sinwar. You can see the crazy in his eyes.
The leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, has become fatalistic after nearly a year of war in Gaza and is determined to see Israel embroiled in a wider regional conflict, U.S. officials said.Mr. Sinwar has long believed he will not survive the war, a view that has hindered negotiations to secure the release of hostages seized by his group in the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.
His attitude has hardened in recent weeks, U.S. officials say, and American negotiators now believe that Hamas has no intention of reaching a deal with Israel.
What “deal” could be reached? Hamas have only one point of strength, and that is the hostages. If they surrender the remaining hostages, many of whom are already dead, they have no leverage at all.
But Israel has learned from past wars: whenever they grant the Muslims a ceasefire before the terrorist groups, or, in some cases, actual Arab armies, have been fully destroyed, they slowly reconstitute themselves, and a next generation of boys grow into men and want to take up the fight. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows this, and that’s why he is determined to destroy Hamas once are for all.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also rejected proposals in the negotiations and added positions that have complicated the talks. U.S. officials assess that he is mainly concerned about his political survival and might not think a cease-fire in Gaza is in his interests.
Well, yes, of course The New York Times and the liberals in the State Department are going to try to put the blame on Mr Netanyahu. But, as the Times previously reported:
As an architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, Mr. 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.
American and Israeli intelligence agencies have spent months assessing Mr. Sinwar’s motivations, according to people briefed on the intelligence. Analysts in both the United States and Israel believe that Mr. Sinwar is primarily motivated by a desire to take revenge on Israel and weaken it. The well-being of the Palestinian people or the establishment of a Palestinian state, the intelligence analysts say, appears to be secondary.
The distinguished Mr Sinwar is very much like Adolf Hitler in his Führerbunker, waiting for the last, and refusing to surrender to save Germany from near total destruction.
On 28 April, Hitler learned that Reichsführet-SS Heinrich Himmler was trying to discuss surrender terms with the Western Allies through Count Folke Bernadotte, and Hitler considered this treason.
How is that any different from what the crazy-eyed head of Hamas is doing? He knows that he’s a dead man, and that his dreams of the ‘frontline’ Arab nations attacking Israel are nothing but fantasy, but if he cared anything, anything at all, about the people for whose liberation he is supposedly fighting, he’d not only surrender himself, and Hamas, but should have done that months ago.
This is being published at 6:30 PM EDT in the United States, which is half-past midnight in Israel. At this time a year ago, innocent Israelis were mostly in bed, living in the peace that they had. When the morning sun arose on October 7th, it would be a red dawn.
