World War III Watch: Maybe this wasn’t the best idea

No, I don’t think this will result in World War III, despite my headline and stock illustration, but wars do not always turn out quite the way you expect. Der Führer certainly didn’t expect Germany to have been virtually destroyed, Hideki Tojo did not expect Japan to be utterly defeated and bombed to smoking ruins, and Vladimir Putin is still shaking his ugly head over the fact that Ukraine wasn’t conquered in four short weeks.

Did our campaign in Vietnam save the South from the scourges of Communism? Saddam Hussein was sent to Jahannam, but is Iraq the liberal democracy that the younger President Bush envisioned? The war in Afghanistan was necessary, to go after Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but, after twenty years of fighting, while al Qaeda was virtually destroyed, the Taliban still run that country.

Two things can be true at the same time:

  1. The Iranian government is a cabal of scum and a plague against the civilized world; and
  2. The United States should not have attacked Iran to depose that government.

The people of Iran were already revolting, and though we cannot know whether they would have succeeded, the United States and Israel striking Iran can only lend credence to the claims of the mad mullahs that the uprisings in Iran were created and coordinated by the Great Satan. While the attacks might destroy the government, they are less likely to create a new government which will be that friendly toward Western civilization.

Iran was already suffering through real poverty, and a crippling drought. The very strained water systems in Iran could easily be damaged or destroyed in military strikes, possibly leading to the very civilians we support dying of thirst.

Though there are times when war is necessary, it is still a very bad thing.

We in the United States have too antiseptic a view of war. Even the wars we lost or in which we were stalemated, while we lost men and machines, there were no strikes on the United States itself. We have two very broad oceans which have protected us from war coming to American soil itself, while we have the ability to strike nations half a world away. We lost 58,220 soldiers in Vietnam, a tragedy for their families and them, but the United States wasn’t struck by the Viet Cong, because they couldn’t. The last war on our soil was our own Civil War, which ended 161 years ago; no one alive today remembers that war.

But wars are not antiseptic for those countries in which war rages. Ukraine has not yet been defeated, but has suffered tremendous losses in not only soldiers and civilians, but in the infrastructure which enables a country to survive and prosper. The damage to Israel has been slight, due in significant part to their defensive technology, bit some has occurred. For the Palestinians, I do not know just what they expected after the October 7th attack, but surely they did not expect the Hell they received.

We need to look at what happens to other nations when war happens on their soil, and realize that eventually it could happen to us.

Kristallnacht in New York City? It’s not so far-fetched! As long as their protests remain peaceful, they are protected by our First Amendment, and its provisions protecting freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. But make no mistake about it: these people are total scum.

This site noted, on Friday, how self-proclaimed ‘imam’ and ‘Islamic scholar’ Abdullah Mady led a walkout of about 100 attendees at an interfaith service at the City University of New York because there was a ‘Zionist’ there.

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch apologizes to famed synagogue’s congregants for botched response to antisemitic protest

By Rich Calder | Saturday, November 22, 2025 | 4:53 PM EST

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch issued a heartfelt apology to the congregation of an historic Manhattan synagogue Saturday — conceding cops should have done a better job of keeping away hateful anti-Israel protesters.

Tisch told a crowd of 150 congregants attending service at Park East Synagogue that this week’s protests are legally allowed outside houses of worship — no matter how vile the topic — but said the NYPD failed to keep the front entrance clear and ensure “people could easily enter and leave shul.

“That is where we fell short, and for that, I apologize to this congregation,” the 44-year-old top cop said during a 10-minute speech which drew a standing ovation.

“Our plan didn’t include a frozen zone at the entrance. As a result, the space right outside your steps was chaotic.”

This story makes me appreciate the recently ended television series Blue Bloods and sadly fictitious Police Commissioner Frank Reagan.

Some 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Manhattan synagogue and heckled Jews attending an event by Nefesh B’nefesh, a Zionist organization that helps Jews immigrate from North America to Israel.

Many chanted “Globalize the intifada” and sinisterly urged the “resistance” to “take another settler out.”

Internal hyperlink not in the original, but added by this site.

Can someone tell me how such chant would not be seen as direct threats by the attendees? That was the direct intention of at least some of the protesters:

“It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events,” one protest leader told the crowd.

“We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared. We need to make them scared,” the agitator repeated emphatically.

The crowd also chanted “From New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada” to the beat of a drum.

“Resistance you make us proud, take another settler out,” the hate-filled group chanted at one point, video shows.

It’s not as though the NYPD did not have advance warning about the protest, as we reported last Wednesday.

Counter protestors were also on the scene, calling the masked demonstrators “cowards” and “pussies” for not showing their faces.

Cops set up metal barricades to keep protestor at bay, but some of the barricades were left too close to the synagogue entrance – putting event attendees coming and going in potential risk.

Pal-Awda NY/NJ, the anti-Israel activist group leading the protest, said it was demonstrating against an effort to “recruit American settlers to illegally occupy stolen Palestinian land.”

Again, internal hyperlink not in the original, but added by this site.

I find it amusing that Pal-Awda is whining about “stolen Palestinian land” while living on what some of our friends on the far-left call stolen Indian indigenous land.” They don’t want American Jews to immigrate to Israel, but they also try to make life miserable for Jews who live in the United States.

Oddly enough, of the four women most visibly protesting the Jews, three looked like very white Americans.

American Jews, in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, are learning the hard way, as have their brothers in the Holy Land, that such virulent anti-Semitism has to be resisted from the very beginning. The history of Nazi Germany, and of Kristallnacht, has demonstrated for Jews the dangers of hoping that anti-Semitism just disappears, just goes away.

Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

Last Sunday, The First Street Journal reported on the approximately 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists trapped in one of the organization’s tunnels. And, unless there has been a breakthrough too recently to have been reported, they’re still trapped down there. As was said then, these aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Jerusalem Post:

Hamas terrorists intentionally stayed in IDF zone, security expert claims

National Security researcher Kobi Michael: ‘Hamas is trying to insert a new deal into an existing deal, and this is something Israel must reject.’

By Giorgia Valente | Friday, November 14, 2025 | 4:26 EST

As negotiators argue over maps and timelines, one of the most sensitive tests of Gaza’s US-brokered ceasefire is unfolding out of sight, deep under Rafah.

Israeli and foreign officials estimate that around 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists are holed up in a tunnel network on the Israeli-controlled side of the so-called “Yellow Line” in southern Gaza, unable to move back into Hamas-run territory without surfacing into areas patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces. For Washington, what happens to those men is more than a tactical problem; for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it has become a political red line.

At stake is not only the fate of a few hundred fighters but the credibility of a broader ceasefire architecture that is supposed to end large-scale fighting in Gaza and gradually strip Hamas of its weapons, even as violence spirals in the West Bank.

There’s much more at the original.

President Trump has been pushing Israel hard, as have Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, all the supposed guarantors of the cease-fire agreement, but when last we heard, Hamas have said that the trapped fighters would not surrender, even though their only way out is an entrance that the Israel Defense Force control. We don’t know how much food and water they have down there, but eventually they’ll run out.

The article notes Media Line’s claim that the Hamas fighters intentionally remained in the tunnels in the Israeli controlled areas, ostensibly to be behind IDF lines and able to pop out and fight again. But, if true, it’s like so many Hamas operations, not particularly well thought out. I’m not certain that the fighters get their 72 bacha bazi boys for being martyrs if they die of starvation.

Me? I think back to Judges 1:4-7, somewhere around 1,400-1,200 BC, in which Adoni-Bezek states that he defeated 70 kings, and had their thumbs and big toes cut off — a fate he suffers himself after being defeated — to prevent them from ever acting as warriors again. A lot of Israelis do not want these fighters to ever be released, believing that they were part of the October 7 massacre, but at the very least, they should be rendered unable to fight again.

Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

These aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Wall Street Journal:

Hundreds of Hamas Fighters Are Stuck in Tunnels in Israeli-Controlled Gaza

The presence of the militants, who have killed three Israeli troops, is threatening to unravel the cease-fire

By Dov Lieber in Tel Aviv, and Summer Said in Dubai | Thursday, November 6, 2025 | 5:43 AM EST

A detachment of Israeli engineering troops was demolishing tunnels behind the withdrawal line in Gaza last month when Hamas militants sprang from a hidden shaft, fired an antitank missile toward their excavator and killed two soldiers.

A little over a week earlier, Israel and Hamas had agreed to a cease-fire. Israel responded to the deadly encounter with a round of airstrikes on Gaza that killed dozens of people.

The early test of the fragile truce pointed to a bigger problem: Hundreds of armed Hamas fighters are trapped in tunnels under the Israeli-controlled side of Gaza, and willing to take shots at Israel.

The situation is the result of Israeli efforts that began in May to flush out militants and destroy Hamas’s extensive tunnel system where the group has hidden fighters, hostages and weapons throughout the conflict. The strategy was to cut off sections of the underground web from one another. But Israel’s partial withdrawal under the U.S.-brokered cease-fire last month has left militants who remain behind the line trapped underground with no means of escape and dwindling supplies.

Don’t read that last sentence wrong. It does not mean that the Hamas fighters cannot get out of the tunnels; it means that they have no means of leaving and escaping capture by the Israel defense Force.

While Arab and Israeli guesstimates put the number of trapped Hamas fighters at between 200 to 300, Hamas negotiators claim that the number is closer to 100, and Hamas want the IDF to grant the fighters safe passage to ‘Palestinian’ controlled areas. Israel, on the other hand, wants them to surrender and be disarmed, or to kill them. But Israel doesn’t really have to do anything; if the terrorists don’t come out and surrender, they’ll eventually die of thirst or starvation. The IDF could simply seal them in, or flood the tunnels with sea water, but it’s simpler to just wait them out and let the Lord decide their fate.

According to the Kenya Times early Sunday morning, the IDF have already “eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists and dismantled hundreds of the group’s infrastructure sites in the Khan Yunis area of Gaza over the past two months.”

The IDF also said the operatives are commanded by a Hamas deputy battalion commander from Rafah and that mediating countries have been able to communicate with the Hamas operatives, according to the military.

In recent days, IDF troops killed several Hamas terrorists attempting to cross the Yellow Line, the boundary separating ceasefire zones between Hamas- and IDF-controlled areas.

It’s simple: with the last remaining living hostages released, Hamas have no leverage at all. By any Western civilization logic, the trapped terrorists should surrender, surrender their weapons, and have a realistic hope that they’ll be allowed to rejoin their comrades on the other side of the ‘Yellow line.’ If they’re determined to keep killing Jews, they can at least hope that they could get back to that in a few years.

But Hamas’ logic, if we can stretch the meaning of the word, is that it’s better to hold out, and the trapped terrorists starve to death. I would guess that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is just fine with that. I just can’t seem to put into words just how sorry I feel for them.

My response to the Trump Peace Plan

I, for one, will wait and see if this deal is fully implemented. That the hostage release is the first step should mean, if there’s any rationality left in Hamas, that they intend to follow through with the rest, because the hostages are Hamas’ only point of leverage.

But whether this deal is completed or not, I don’t foresee any lasting peace. Looking at the timeline, we see Arab attacks against the Jews in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, just the cycle for the 10- and 12- and 14-year-old boys, too young for the previous war, to get old enough to try to do what their candy-assed fathers couldn’t. Raised on resentment and hate, but not having gotten beaten themselves, they grew up thinking they could be the generation which succeeds.

This time has been different, however, as Israel unleashed so much Hell on Gaza that perhaps the growing generation of boys will be so terrorized that they won’t try it, but eventually children will grow up without memories of what happened to Gaza, and they’ll rise up and try again.

And let’s not kid ourselves: Israel won this war due to Benjamin Netanyahu, who was strong-willed and smart enough not to give the Arabs a cease-fire until they were thoroughly, thoroughly beaten. The wars in 1967 and 1973 were ended too soon, leaving too much of the Arab armies intact and alive and able to rearm. Fortunately, the Arab nations still learned the lesson, and the Arab nations never again attacked Israel, but the various terrorist groups kept at it. Hamas had hoped, perhaps even believed, that if they started the way, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia would mobilize and join them. The Arab national leaders were at least smart enough to say thanks but no thanks, in no small part because none of the other Arab leaders like or trust the Palestinians.

The only ones who joined the fight were Hezbollah, Iran, and the Houthis in Yemen. Iran is a thousand miles away from Israel, and the Houthis several hundred miles away, so they knew they wouldn’t get invaded by IDF troops, but they f(ornicated) around and found out anyway. Hezbollah sort-of tried to intervene, albeit a bit half-heartedly, but found out themselves as well, as their eyes and fingers and balls left their bodies.

You don’t get into martyr heaven without your balls! No 72 bacha bazi boys for them!

And Donald Trump deserves a lot of credit as well. Had Kamala Emhoff been President [shudder!] she’d have been pressing Mr Netanyahu to ease off all along, but President Trump recognizes enemies of Western civilization in ways our past DEI Vice President never did, and while he wanted this deal, and potential past deals, he also let Israel know that the US would support them if they went all out to destroy Hamas.

Still, with the Arabs allowed to stay in Gaza, there is eventually little way I can see this working out in the long run. Had Israel done what they should have done in 1967, and expelled every last Arab from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza, giving the country shortened, more defensible borders, and not having a Arabs under the thumb of occupation, we would not have seen this mess today.

Hamas have not yet accepted the Trump Peace Plan they supposedly had “no choice” but to accept.

Hamas keep dithering, unsurprisingly, on the Trump Peace Plan, and Gazan ‘civilians’ keep being sent to Jahannam because of it. But perhaps, just perhaps, the people of Gaza are finally getting fed up with their terrorist masters. From The New York Times:

‘Enough Is Enough’: Many Palestinians Say Hamas Must Accept Cease-Fire Plan

Interviews in Gaza suggest wide support for a proposal that calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

by Liam Stack | Thursday, October 2, 2025 | 5:04 AM EDT

Tel Aviv — Palestinians in Gaza have spent almost two years longing for an end to the war that has destroyed their communities and killed tens of thousands of their neighbors. Many say their best hope yet is the latest cease-fire plan proposed by the United States — if only Hamas would accept it.

“Hamas must say yes to this offer — we have been through hell already,” said Mahmoud Bolbol, 43, a construction worker who has remained in Gaza City with his six children in the battered shell of their home throughout the war.

President Trump unveiled the proposal while meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday. Mr. Trump said that if Hamas did not accept its terms, then he would give Israel the green light to “finish the job” of destroying the armed group.

Hamas has not yet given its response to the proposal, but interviews with Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday suggested widespread public support for the plan. It calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

Hamas, of course, don’t care about “immense civilian suffering,” but the well-being of their own leadership, a leadership which lead not from Gaza, but Doha, Qatar. We reported, on Monday, how the Qatari government (reportedly) told the Trump Administration that they could convince Hamas to disarm and accept the plan, and French President Emmanuel Macron stated on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏, the worst rebranding in history — that Hamas have “no choice but to immediately release all hostages and follow this path.”

Yet, it seems that Hamas believe they have a choice, and, at least at publication time, have not accepted the plan. It took two atomic bombs, and that after half a year of relentless explosive and firebombing, to get Emperor Hirohito to force the militarist government to surrender. There’s no particular reason to think Hamas are any less pigheaded.

For the past two days, Mr. Bolbol said, his neighbors have talked about almost nothing but the cease-fire proposal. If Hamas rejects it, he said, his family would finally leave Gaza City and head for what he hoped would be the relative safety of the enclave’s south.

“Hamas needs to understand: Enough is enough,” Mr. Bolbol said. Most Gazans are not members of the group, he added, “so why drag us into this?”

We do not know how Mr Bolbol reacted personally to the October 7th attack, but we do know that most of the denizens of Gaza erupted in a cheering frenzy as hostages, both living and dead, were paraded back in Gaza, tied up, thrown in the back of the ubiquitous white Toyota trucks, celebrating an attack that anyone with an IQ above room temperature — room temperature in Celsius! — should have known would lead to a strong lethal and destructive response from Israel.

Some, including some from Hamas, have said that they didn’t think that Israel would have destroyed Gaza to the extent that they have. In the mindset of the ‘Palestinians,’ I suppose that they accepted that there’d be some martyrdom, but perhaps not this much martyrdom.

But the proposal contains several elements that Hamas has said are unacceptable.

Those include a ban on the group exercising future power in Gaza, a requirement that it disarm and the establishment of a transitional government overseen by foreign officials, including Mr. Trump and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

The proposal unveiled on Monday sent a rare flash of hope through Gaza, people said in interviews. But others are less hopeful.

Some people said the terms of the proposal made them doubt that Hamas would agree. Others said their doubts grew from something more basic and bitter: They simply did not believe that Hamas would put the interests of the Palestinian people above the interests of the organization.

Also see: William Teach, “Surprise: Hamas Likely To Reject Peace Plan

Well, who can know? Perhaps Hamas leaders and fighters really believe that their interests and those of the ‘Palestinian’ people in general are the same, but attempting to read the minds of people who are in no way part of Western civilization by those of us who are civilized is often an exercise in futility. In the “mirror universe” episode of Star Trek, Mr Spock told Captain Kirk, once they were returned to their regular dimensions, that it was easier for them, as civilized men, to play the part of barbarians than it was for their opposites, as barbarians, to play the roles of civilized men.

So, we have the specter of civilized Westerners trying to bring aid and comfort to the people of Gaza, something the Israeli Navy has now stopped, all to aid people who have nothing in common with Western civilization, and who would happily assault or even kill many of the “Global Sumud Flotilla” if they actually lived in Gaza, or anyplace else in the world where Islamic fundamentalism has taken hold.

Perhaps Hamas will, in the end, accept or negotiate an amendment to the Trump plan, but one thing is certain: if Hamas do accept disarmament, it will only be until they can covertly — and perhaps not so covertly — rearm.

Who can seriously believe that this will happen?

Could you imagine the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among our friends on the left if Donald Trump’s peace proposal led to a lasting peace in the Middle East, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize for it?

Qatar tells US it can convince Hamas to disarm, accept Trump plan

Sources told the Post that Qatar was “capable of persuading Hamas to agree to a deal that includes demilitarization.”

By Amichat Stein, Jerusalem Post Staff, REUTERS | Monday, September 29, 2025 | 6:24 PM Jerusalem Time | Updated: 10:48 PM Jerusalem Time

Qatar informed the US President Donald Trump’s administration that it would be able to persuade Hamas to disarm and accept Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Sky News Arabia reported on Monday.

Qatari officials reportedly told Trump, along with Arab states, that it was “capable of persuading Hamas to agree to a deal that includes demilitarization,” a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post.

Concurrently with Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, senior Qatari officials are currently in Washington, a source familiar with the details told The Post. The Qataris are expected to participate in discussions regarding the negotiations for a deal.

Qatar does have the ability to force Hamas leadership to accept, by threatening to kick their candy asses out, and ship them to Tel Aviv if they don’t agree, but I can’t see that happening.

During the meeting, Netanyahu reportedly called Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani regarding the assassination attempt of Hamas leadership in Doha, a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post.

The article continued to tell readers that the apology was required for the Qatari government to agree to continue to facilitate the negotiations.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that he completely supported Mr Trump’s plan, and that Hamas have “no choice but to immediately release all hostages and follow this path.” Interestingly enough, Grok automatically translated the tweet from the original, which was not in French, but Arabic.

But let’s tell the truth here: Hamas will never seriously agree to disarm. There is a slight possibility that they’ll agree in public, but continue to hide weapons, and seek to covertly rearm as soon as possible, but they’ll never agree to actually disarm.

Tahir al-Nono, a senior Hamas official, said that yes, Hamas are willing to release all hostages, but will not disarm. More, he said that the Hamas terrorists imprisoned in Israel would have to be released as well. Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader currently burning in Hell, was one of 1,027 terrorists released by Israel in exchange for one captured IDF soldier, and look how that turned out. In exchange for 48 remaining hostages, over half of whom are already dead, Israel risks yet another October 7th attack!

Who knows? Perhaps this deal will go through, but I seriously doubt that any lasting peace can be obtained between the Israelis and those who want nothing more than to kill them all.

World War III Watch: Do the left really hate Mr Trump so much that they’d rather see more and more blood flowing than the President get some credit for stopping a war? The left would rather see the killing continue than President Trump achieve a diplomatic victory and peace

Our good friends on the left — and I include the recent neoconservatives, who are not really conservative in very much among the left — are up in arms that the wicked, evil, hated President Donald Trump is trying to get at least a ceasefire, and possibly a lasting peace agreement, between Russia and Ukraine, claiming that such would lock-in Russia’s conquests of roughly 20% of Ukraine. The Editorial Board of The Philadelphia Inquirer, about which I would have written yesterday but was afraid of sounding like a broken record, was simply the latest.

The left are just deathly afraid that Mr Trump might win the Nobel Peace Prize, said to be one of his heartfelt desires, as though promoting peace is somehow a bad thing. But the President said that he just loved stopping wars! Continue reading

The one tool Hamas have

Every once in a while, a ‘Palestinian’ ‘leader’ will do something really radical and tell the truth. It’s a very different thing, because, to paraphrase Mary McCarthy, “Every word they utter is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the’.” But sometimes the truth is so in-you-face obvious that it cannot be denied.

‘We have to reconsider our tools’: Terror chief Zubeidi laments that all Palestinian strategies have failed

Continue reading