Jo-Ann Mort, from her website.
Jewish “Humanitarian leftist”, self-described co-founder of the Democratic Socialists of America, Jo-Ann Mort sees anti-Semitism in conservative policies, but can’t see that it permeates the Democratic Party and the ‘Palestinians’ she so wants to see free and independent.
You can oppose Israel’s policies without killing Jewish people
The majority of US Jews overwhelmingly oppose Netanyahu’s policies. But subtleties get lost and truly unleashed people react
Pope Leo XIV blesses riders at the beginning of the Giro d’Italia, June 1, 2025. Screen capture by D R Pico.
Pope Leo blesses cyclists as Giro d’Italia hits Vatican Gardens
by Associated Press | Sunday, June 1, 2025
Pope Leo XIV offered his blessing to the 159 cyclists competing in the Giro d’Italia on Sunday, as the final stage of the iconic three-week race began with a historic ride through the serene Vatican Gardens behind St. Peter’s Basilica.
Upon entering Vatican grounds, overall leader Simon Yates and the classification frontrunners dismounted to personally greet the pontiff, who was presented with a symbolic pink jersey – the emblem of the race leader.
“You are role models for young people across the globe,” Pope Leo told the peloton. “May God bless you all on this final leg of the Giro d’Italia. Congratulations, and know that you are always welcome here in the Vatican, embraced by the church, which reflects God’s love for all people.”
There’s more at the original, and it’s wholly apolitical.
Our family watch European bike races. Our younger daughter is an absolute fanatic, and knows everything there is to know about the competitors, while I am more interested in the scenery. And the scenery was completely messed up in this year’s Giro by the awful and ubiquitous ‘Palestinian’ flags and stupid ‘Free Gaza’ bovine feces painted on the roads throughout by stupid activists.
The ‘Palestinian’ supporters ruin everything.
I have said it before: if we had social media back in 1944, the Usual Suspects wopuld have been decrying the violence and whining that Germany was defeated, that there was no need to continue the march into Germany proper, and think of all of the poor, innocent civilians who would be killed! Had such people been around then, they wouldn’t have cared that their calls for a “Ceasefire Now!” would have left der Führer and his henchmen alive and in power, and a couple of the concentration camps in place, but still . . . .
This morning’s story is what piqued The Philadelphia Inquirer’s far-left columnist’s ire: Continue reading
Imagine, if you will, that there were ubiquitous iPhones and the internet, and social media in 1944. The scenes, which Joseph Goebbels would be doubtlessly pushing across the West, of German families shattered by the deaths in collapsed houses due to Allied bombing, of orphaned children rescued from the rubble, where they had been buried next to their dead parents.
Were today’s American and European left alive in 1944, but with today’s mentality, we would be seeing all sorts of plaintiff cries on Quitter — the 1944 version of Twitter — saying that Germany was clearly defeated, that the Allied armies were at the Rhine and the Oder-Neisse and the Third Reich had been expelled from all of the territory it had captured in the war, and we should declare a ceasefire, leaving everything in place, to stop the killing, to stop the unnecessary deaths.
That, of course, would have left Adolf Hitler and his henchmen alive, and the concentration camps that were in Germany proper operating. All of the actual extermination camps were located in occupied Poland, to keep them secret from German civilians, but the fanatical Führer and his equally insane Schutzstaffel would have adapted camps like Bergen-Belsen in Germany for more mass killings. Continue reading
The Islamists know that hostages have value. From President Reagan trading arms for hostages held by Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the exchange of 1,027 ‘Palestinian’ terrorists — including Yahya Sinwar — for one captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit in October of 2011, the Islamic militants have realized that a few civilized Westerners have an outsized value to Western civilization and the democracies. On October 7, 2023, Hamas and their fellow travelers killed 1199 innocent Israelis, raping many of the women before killing them, and burned some of the victims alive. They seized 251 people to be held as hostages, including some children.
One would think that, if the ‘Palestinians’ had any brains, they’d have realized that live hostages should carry more value than dead ones, but realistically, no one ever accused the ‘Palestinians’ of being smart.
‘Unspeakably evil’: Kfir, Ariel Bibas were brutally murdered in Gaza captivity, not by IAF strike
I have been saying for years now that the Israelis should have expelled every last ‘Palestinian’ from Judea, Samaria, and Gaza following the 1967 conquest of the territory. It would have been a humanitarian disaster, but it would have been over 57½ years ago, leaving the Arabs with a chance to build their lives again without being under Israeli occupation, and Israel with shortened, more defensible borders.
Now it seems that President Donald Trump has caught up with me! From The Wall Street Journal: Continue reading
There was a no-win question asked on the fourth-grade playground at Mt Sterling Elementary School when I attended, back in the days of quill pens and inkwells: If you were up to your neck in [insert vulgar term for feces here], and someone threw a bucket of [insert slang term for urine here] at your head, would you duck? That’s of what President Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy move reminds me:
US asks Israel to approve military aid to Palestinian security forces
By Jewish News Syndicate | Boston Tea Party Day, December 16, 2024 | 2:55 PM EST
The Biden administration has privately asked Israel to approve an urgent request for U.S. military aid to Palestinian Authority forces, Palestinian, American, and Israeli officials told Axios on Sunday night. Continue reading
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.