Tuesday, October 10, 2023

Israel

The most hotly contested piece of real estate in the Middle East found itself once more besieged by the usual suspects (in this case, Iranian-backed Hamas) in one some conclude is a stunning failure of intelligence and in a sadly bloody fashion.

This is lather, rinse and repeat for Islamists who see it as their Koran-given goal to murder non-Muslims (not just murder but humiliate and frighten), as they have done SO many times in France, Spain, the United Kingdom and the US - to name a few (but strangely enough not Tokyo or Warsaw ... hhhmmm ...). The Israelis, of course, are doing all that they can to mop but it is not easy. It's not only the bloodbaths on the ground but how to deal with Iran, any peace deals that are no doubt defunct and the ignorant and decadent West (of which Israel must be included - it must be said) which apologises for the utterly evil Hamas.

Below is a link dump of the events on the ground so far, the dreadful images that have to be seen so that no one forgets and the disgusting apologia for people who see it as their cosmological purpose to murder even children.

 

To wit:

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Bar Perry woke up to the sound of war. At 6am she heard the scream of rockets, followed by sirens, in her hometown of Sderot, Israel, a mile from Gaza. Very soon she was being sent messages about Palestinian gunmen walking through the town, knocking on front doors, battering them down — and taking people away.

“They shot people and entered homes, kidnapped people,” said Perry, 36, who was still trapped in a safe room with her husband and their dog on Saturday afternoon. “People shared footage from safety cameras showing it all happen. There were gunshots, screams. The amount of terror and cruelty is beyond compare. It’s like a horror movie.”

Early on Saturday, Palestinian fighters began their most daring and brutal raid on Israel in decades. Before dawn broke, the highly guarded fence between Gaza and Israel was breached. Hamas troops flooded into the country by land, sea and air.

Palestinian fighters set fire to tanks and occupied towns, with dozens of Israelis reportedly taken back to Gaza as hostages. Unverified videos on social media show them handcuffed and bloodied, paraded through the streets by Hamas terrorists carrying Kalashnikovs.

Thousands of rockets were fired from Gaza, and Israel launched airstrikes in retaliation. Just over three hours after the first rockets were fired, the Israeli government declared that the country was at war. The attack appeared to take the Israeli defence forces (IDF) by surprise, the strike happening on Shabbat and the public holiday of Simchat Torah.

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Many of the young men and women started running in the flat expanse of the western Negev desert. Faced with the spectacle of kids fleeing for their lives on a largely flat surface, the terrorists began rounding up the rest of their victims.

Others were captured and bound and kidnapped. “I saw videos with a male getting held by a group of Arab kids. Like, they’re like 16, 17,” one survivor recalled. “They’re kids, but they’re young men already, and they’re holding this guy, and he looks as his girlfriend is being mounted on a bike and driven away from him. God knows what she’s going to experience … Women have been raped at the area of the rave next to their friends bodies, dead bodies.”

Several of these rape victims appear to have been later executed. Others were taken to Gaza. In photographs released online, you can see several paraded through the city’s streets, blood gushing from between their legs.

One survivor who’d returned to the scene later in the day to look for his friends spoke, in a breaking voice, of what he’d seen. Of the bodies, mainly of young women, lying cold and mutilated. Of scantily clad corpses, many of whom appeared to have been shot at point-blank. Of cars, perforated by bullets or blown up by grenades.

Some of the lucky ones ran to a nearby wadi, seeking shelter amid the shrubbery. “I felt like they were shooting right above our heads,” one survivor recalled. “I dove into a bush … It felt like the shooting was coming from 180 degrees, all around us. I understood we’re going to be there for at least a couple of hours. And I had nothing on me. And I was like, the only thing I want is a weapon. I want something to protect us.” Eventually, he and his friends, some of them barefoot, decided to risk it and try to reach safety, walking close enough to the road to see it but not so close so that they might be seen. “I said, if we see like army or police cars, we’re going to go to the road. Otherwise, we’re going to stay away. When we saw police and army cars, we knew that it’s a safe place.”

Later, when the gruesome attack was finally over and IDF soldiers managed to subdue the attackers, they searched these trucks and found RPG launchers, high-end communications devices, assorted AK-47s and other mostly Soviet-made weapons, along with numerous copies of the Quran.

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Maya Alper was standing toward the back of the bar with teams of environmentally conscious volunteers, picking up trash and passing out free vodka shots to party-goers who reused their cups. Just after 6.a.m., as a light-blue dawn broke and the headliner D.J. took the stage, air raid sirens cut through the ethereal trap music. Rockets streaked overhead.

Alper, 25, jumped into her car and raced to the main road. But at the intersection she encountered crowds of stricken festival attendees, shouting at drivers to turn around. Then, a noise. Firecrackers? Panicked men and women staggering down the road just in front of her fell to the ground in pools of blood. Gunshots.

Saturday’s attack on the open-air Tribe of Nova music festival is believed to be the worst civilian massacre in Israeli history, with at least 260 dead and a still undetermined number taken hostage. Dozens of Hamas militants who had blown through Israel’s heavily fortified separation fence and crossed into the country from Gaza opened fire on about 3,500 young Israelis who had come together for a joyous night of electronic music to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Some attendees were drunk or high on drugs, magnifying their confusion and terror.

 

(Sidebar: well, it's probably not a good idea to do drugs then, is it?) 

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Authorities believe 260 people were massacred at the event at which between 3-4,000 people were in attendance. 
Many of those kidnapped by Hamas terrorists include women - both young and old - and children. The terrorists even shot the legs off hostages to prevent them from escaping.

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Hamas terrorists murdered approximately 40 babies as part of their Oct. 7 attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza, Israel Defense Forces soldiers who retook the community told i24News on Tuesday.

“Talking to some of the soldiers here, they say what they witnessed as they’ve been walking through these communities is bodies of babies with their heads cut off and families gunned down in their beds,” said the report, which was shared by the official X (formerly Twitter) account of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

 

(Sidebar: had these children been beheaded before birth, well ...)

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Shiri, Yarden, Ariel and Kfir Bibas are believed to have been abducted from the kibbutz in southern Israel where they lived and where Shiri was a kindergarten teacher. Shiri was pictured holding Ariel, aged 3, and 9-month-old Kfir, surrounded by Hamas militants.

Yossi and Margit Silberman, Shiri's parents, are also missing and thought to have been captured.

Doron, Raz and Aviv Asher were taken captive while staying with relatives near the Gaza border. Husband Yoni saw a video of his wife and daughters, aged 5 and 3, being loaded onto a truck with other hostages. He also traced her mobile phone to Gaza.

Carmella and Noya Dan with Ofer, Erez and Safar Kalderon were taken prisoner in Nir Oz, a kibbutz next to Gaza where they lived. A video on social media appeared to show 12-year-old Erez being taken by gunmen into Gaza, their relative Ido Dan told the BBC, who said he also feared for the health of 80-year-old Carmella without her medication.

Ada Sagi is believed to have been abducted from her home in Nir Oz, about 400m from the border with Gaza. Her son, Noam, said Israeli soldiers found bloodstains but no sign of his mother and she was not among those killed or injured in the small community.

The parents of Sharone Lifschitz - a London-based artist, who asked for them not to be identified for fear of reprisals - are also believed to have been taken hostage from Nir Oz. Ms Lifschitz said her father speaks Arabic and spent his time in retirement driving Palestinians who needed medical treatment to hospital.

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Since the surprise attack began, graphic images and videos of innocent civilians of all ages and Israeli soldiers being kidnapped and attacked by Hamas have been circulating on social media.

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Miss Louk's mother has released a video appealing for help. Do the Germans have special forces? If not, maybe they could send in that 98-year-old SS officer who's a hero of the Canadian House of Commons.

Israel, as always, is being urged to confine itself to a "proportionate" response. Headline from my former newspaper The Irish Times:

Micheál Martin indicates Israeli response to 'appalling' Hamas attack has not been proportionate

Mr Martin is the former Taoiseach and current Tánaiste (deputy Taoiseach) and Foreign Minister. I wonder what he thinks is the "proportionate" response to that scene? The "proportionate response" to an army that, as its principal tactic, seizes your womenfolk and children, and rapes, tortures and kills them. Would raping, torturing and killing their womenfolk be "proportionate"?

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More than 1,600 people have been killed since Hamas launched an unprecedented assault on Israel over the weekend, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare war.

Speaking from the White House on Tuesday, President Biden said the number of Americans who have died in Israel since Saturday has risen to 14. He confirmed that Americans are being held hostage by Hamas.

 

 

Canadian hostages are as good as dead. No one should expect the Canadian government (even if it DID have clout, and it doesn't) to race to their aid. Justin let two Canadian nationals die in the Philippines. These hostages mean nothing to him:

At least two Canadians are dead and two more are missing after the attacks on Israel by Hamas.

Global Affairs Canada, which was aware of least one of the deaths as well as the two missing people, said there are 1,419 registered Canadians in Israel, and 492 in the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, but noted this registration was voluntary and likely incomplete.

 

(Sidebar: also note that the Canadian embassy was shut for the week-end and offered no assistance to anyone. It might be open now.)

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A Vancouver-area MP says a man from his riding was among those killed when Hamas militants attacked sites in Israel early Saturday.

Ben Mizrachi "was found amongst those murdered by Hamas terrorists," Taleb Noormohamed, MP for Vancouver Granville, said on X, formerly known as Twitter, early Tuesday.

 

(Sidebar: this Taleb Noormohamed.)

 

 

And why would Canada - which applauded a Ukrainian Nazi - condemn Hamas, which Canadian taxes fund, and would it even matter now that Canada is back ... wards?:

A joint statement issued by the White House Monday evening condemning the Hamas attacks on Israel over the weekend includes signatures from five of the leaders of the G7 nations.

Absent from the list: Canada and Japan.

 

Now, surely the above (save Canada, of course) will do more than offer words.

 


Mr. Guterres, what is "humanitarian" about dragging a dead soldier out of a tank?

I'll wait. 

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The savagery is mind-numbing.

A gleeful mob of young men spitting on the half-naked body of a dead woman in the back of a truck, paraded down a Gaza side street. Heaps of bloodied Jewish corpses in bomb shelters. People pulled from their cars and riddled with bullets. The streets of Israeli towns littered with dead innocents.

What shocks the conscience at least as sharply is the depravity of celebration among the well-to-do in comfortable faculty lounges, bistros and leafy neighbourhoods far from the dreary Palestinian backstreets of Ramallah and Beit Heinoun. What can explain that?

On X, formerly known as Twitter, this was Sarah Shahid, freelancer for Now Toronto and Spring magazine: “What a glorious Saturday. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” At Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, assistant professor of social work Dr. Jessica Hutchison had this advice for conscientious Canadians: “I hope your upcoming acknowledgements will include support for Palestinians who are taking their land back from settler colonizers.”

 


Why aren't Canadians asking why their tax dollars are funding Hamas?:

Although the Trump administration stopped funding the UNPRA in August 2018, the Canadian government under Trudeau shelled out a whopping $50 million for a period of two years in the name of assisting ‘health and education efforts’ of the UN body.

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A federal charity is tax money given to a pet cause. 

Let's clear that up now:

A federal charity called Israel “sadistic” and “barbaric” after terrorist attacks in that country left 3,100 casualties, mostly Jews. Directors of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East include one former MP and a current Government of Canada manager: ‘Charities may not support one or another political faction or prolong violence.’ 

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Bull. Sh-- :

Canada will continue delivering humanitarian and development aid to Palestinians while preventing that aid from being diverted to Hamas, says International Development Minister Ahmed Hussen's office.

 

It's ALL going to Hamas, you vile worm.

**

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They have their rea$on$:

The European Union late Monday reversed an earlier announcement by an EU commissioner that the bloc was “immediately” suspending development aid for Palestinian authorities and instead said it would urgently review such assistance in the wake of the attacks on Israel by Hamas to make sure no money was misused.

“There will be no suspension of payments” at the moment, a terse European Commission statement said late Monday, five hours after EU Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi had said that all payments from the development program for Palestinians would be “immediately suspended. All projects put under review. All new budget proposals … postponed until further notice.”

No immediate explanation for the reversal was given. A full European Commission statement always trumps a statement from an EU commissioner, but the reversal on a 691 million-euro ($730 million) program capped an embarrassing day at the EU’s executive at a time of extreme geopolitical sensitivities.

Since Saturday, support of the 27-nation bloc for Israel had been steadfast, including that the country had now every right within international law to defend itself in the war with Hamas.

The surprise announcement by Varhelyi on development aid came just hours after EU officials stressed that no EU money whatsoever was going to Hamas in the first place and that contacts had been frozen for 16 years. The EU considers Hamas a terror group.

After hours of uncertainty over how deep the measures would reach and whether they would possibly also affect aid to those in immediate need, the European Commission said there was no suspension for now, but said it started “an urgent review of the EU's assistance for Palestine.”

 

 

Well, that explains some things:

 


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