162 Democrats joining Republicans to attack free speech and condemn a phrase that advocates one thing—freedom—is what voters mean when they say Democrats aren't working for us.
This Republican Congress and the Democrats that enable them, week after week, are a joke. https://t.co/tLf4g6tQk2
After twenty-nine invocations of "whereas," the House of Representatives resolved that
the slogan, "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," is outrightl (sic) Anti-Semitic and must be strongly condemned; this slogan is divisive and does a disservice to Israelis, Palestinians, and all those in the region who see peace; this slogan rejects calls for peace, stability, and safety in the region; this slogan perpetuates hatred against the State of Israel and the Jewish people, and anyone who calls for the eradication of Israel and the Jewish people are Anti-Semitic and must always be condemned.
The phrase is "From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" is not a call for a pluralistic society. The Palestine national movement aims for a Palestinian state, not for intermingling of races, nationalities, or for individuals of varied religious faith. It is a fairly explicit call for the land of Palestine to be strictly for those supporters consider Palestinian, for a land which is judenfrei. It is clearly anti-Jewish or, in the words of the House of Representatives, anti-Semitic.
Words have meaning. In asserting that the phrase "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" must always be condemned, the House is not demanding that any individual must be stopped from using the slogan nor punished for doing so. It is not an abridgement of "free speech." The resolution is inconsistent with the cause of free expression but the First Amendment is silent on the issue of "free expression," mandating only free speech. If freedom of expression were constitutionally protected, a lot of public colleges and universities would be in more hot water than they are.
Fortunately, the use of the noxious- albeit clever and rhythmic- phrase cannot be prohibited or penalized with this resolution. The legislative action is non-binding. It is tantamount to an expression of support for Israel as a Jewish state against those who would like to see it eradicated. .There are bigger fish to fry for the radical left, including attacks on colleges and universities in the name of combatting anti-Semitism.
Merely symbolic and virtually meaningless, it is at worse, it is virtue-signaling; at best, it is virtue-signaling. Yet, Justice Democrats choose to blow smoke up the rear end of the public and claim the phrase merely calls for "freedom" which, ironically is in greater abundance for Palestinian residents of dreaded Israel than for Palestinians virtually anywhere else in the Middle East. The organization should have given the House resolution only the attention- none- it deserves, suck it up, and reserve their dishonesty and hatred for something substantial.
On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher, the conversation eventually was steered (abruptly) to the death of Orenthal J. Simpson. The host made a few remarks, a couple of them dangerously misleading, reflecting conventional wisdom..
Bill Maher remarks (at 41:30 of the video, if it were still available)
I think what it was, I think black folks knew very well that he did it and I don't blame them one bit for cheering him on. I mean, when you're on the wrong end of the justice system- first of all, as they have been, when they finally got one, even though he was not exactly the best recipient of that.
For what it's worth, poll(s) at the time indicated that most blacks believed Simpson was innocent. Through the years, more blacks (as most whites) came to realize that the Hall of Famer was guilty as charged. More whites did so, also, though both at the time of the trial and years later, more whites than blacks believed Simpson committed the two murders.
The unchallenged belief that blacks "got one" is inaccurate. And Maher was correct that Simpson was not "the best recipient" of the mercy extended, not only because he was guilty but also because he strove to represent himself as not black. "I'm not black, I'm O.J." he would famously assert.
Maher continued
I mean, of course, when we saw that split screen of white people going (mock horror expressed) "oh, my God, oh my God, justice has not been done" and black people screaming in joy- totally understandable. You can't have two completely different histories in American and then expect people to have same reaction to that.
Understandable, yes, the way it's understandable that (some) individuals devoted to Donald Trump believe that the insurrection/riot of 1/6/21 was an inside job, a set-up by the FBI to entrap patriotic Americans so they could be tossed into jail. By all indications, the protesters acted on their own, resisted by law enforcement officers who were overwhelmed by the numbers and anger of the crowd.
Similarly, the evidence against Simpson was so overwhelming that rational dissenters could have realized they were exposing themselves as ignorant by expressing their joyful exuberance at the verdict. Instead, this should go down (but won't) as the beginning of the "all exuberant emotion is good, especially if it will be filmed" movement in society.
Conceding that the defendant was in fact culpable, Maher added "It was a miscarriage of justice but for white people to be that upset about the one time, the one time a black guy gets off, I thought that was the gross part about it." Asked by guest panelist Gillian Tett whether "it's different now," Maher said
it is different now. Everything is different now. There's a whole complete different generation that never experienced the kind of racism that the people alive in 1994 who were born in whatever, 1964, 1954, anything like that, they did experience. So would there still be a lot of that reaction? Of course, for understandable reasons.
A moment later, he clarified
It was payback and on a very larger scale, that's happening in America and will happen for decades to come because the legacy of our despicable racial past doesn't go away in a generation. It takes a very long time. Even people today, younger people, maybe they didn't have anything terrible to happen to them but they're like "yeah, but I know what you did to my grandfather and that was some s_ _ _ and I love him so I'm mad for him. That's not going to go away in my lifetime or yours.
The "understandable reason(s)" that there still would be "a lot of" blacks who now would celebrate a similar outcome in a similar case is perception, not reality. The perception- in the media and among the power elite- seems to be that the common "miscarriage of justice" in the USA is predominantly racial in nature. Maher cites the "two different histories in America" as explaining the discrepancy in reaction of whites and reaction of blacks to the not guilty verdict.
The two different histories extend to treatment by the criminal justice system (and policing, which came into play in the trial, courtesy of the infamous Mark Furman). It was "the one time a black guy gets (got off" because black guys, even less than white guys, have enough money to get off. The discrepancy in history was not, ultimately, the reason Mr. Simpson was not convicted.
The defendant's "dream team" of attorneys included eleven lawyers, four of them prominent- F. Lee Bailey, Johnnie Cochran, Robert Kardashian, and Alan Dershowitz. No one- even a white, Christian, land-owning male- is able to hire so much talent without being very, very wealthy. A typical defendant cannot afford to hire even one private attorney and if he is able, she probably is someone not at the top of the legal heap. Although no one who would know for sure is talking, estimates are that Mr. Simpson's defense cost approximately five million dollars.
That is the numeral "5" followed by 7 digits. Without deep pockets- earned by being a phenomenal professional football player, effective celebrity pitchman, and mediocre actor- Simpson would not have been able to sniff an effective defense. And he did so while being black because- in the world of criminal justice as in most of society- black or white is far less important than green.
Thus, it's not only Bill Maher who is mistaken. A professor of Afro-American Studies was quoted by The Washington Post soon after Simpson's death maintaining that racial divisions persist "because we haven't repaired the social fabric in a way that we like to pretend we have because we fall back on race and racism at the drop of a hat or a drop of the glove in this case."
Nonetheless, that's not the only reason racial divisions persist. We also fall back on race and racism because we fail to acknowledge the impact of other, more important factors in some matters. The jury, including eight blacks and only one white, did (as Maher noted) believe that the acquittal of OJS constituted a rare victory for a black man in a system beset by racial prejudice. However, the verdict was less an aberration or correction than it was reinforcement of the most significant feature of the criminal justice system; not white makes right, but money can buy most defendants out of most of the trouble they face.
The vast majority of whites, and an even greater percentage of blacks, are not wealthy enough to put on an effective defense. And so while we can join Bill Maher in debating whether racism will prevent blacks from getting a fair shake in the future, most will not because they lack the financial resources to put on a fight. Marc Watts, who covered the trial for CNN and is now with the African American Leadership Forum, has stated "many African Americans believed that O.J. Simpson was the revenge verdict. It was the one black people had won in response to some of the ones black people had lost."
No, sorry; black people, few of them in the same universe as Simpson financially, lost rather than the almost universal view that they won one. The video (from seven years ago) below, portrays the trial, as has been typical, as being about race. There is a lesson, as Bill Maher might put it (if he understood), of "happening in America and will happen for decades to come." However, the lesson is less about the importance of race than of the importance of class.
Orenthal James Simpson has died, and he leaves behind an impressive, in a manner of speaking, record of misbehavior.
In 1964, Simpson as a juvenile had his first run-in with the law. In 1989, he was arrested after wife Nicole Brown Simpson, who went to the hospital with severe bruising and cuts, told the police "he's going to kill me, he's going to kill me." Orenthal pled guilty to spousal abuse and was fined and placed on probation.
The year after Orenthal and his wife divorced in 1992, Mr. Simpson broke into the rental home occupied by Nicole and the (ex-) couple's two children. Nicole called the police and reported "he always comes back."
In June of 1994 Mr. Simpson stabbed to death Mrs. Simpson and an acquaintance, Ron Goldman, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Orenthal immediately fled to Chicago, then promptly returned to Los Angeles, dumping somewhere along the line the knife he used. Simpson failed to appear after the L.A. Police Department, through the suspect's attorney, offered Orenthal a chance to surrender. Simpson was arrested after the famous "white Ford Bronco" chase.
Simpson in October, 1995 was acquitted, as is almost universally believed, because a majority of the jury was black. However, in February of 1997 a civil court jury found him liable for the murder of Goldman and responsible for beating Nicole on the night of the murders.
Over the next dozen years, Simpson is accused of a burglary and theft at a girlfriend's house, with no charges filed; acquitted of a felony; had his home searched by federal law enforcement in response to a drug-smuggling scheme; lost a civil suit filed by DirecTV over signal stealing' and arrested after he broke into a Las Vegas hotel room to steal memorabilia which he later claimed was his own property. For that he was ound guilty of weapons, robbery and kidnapping, sentenced to thirty-three years in prison and granted parole in 2017.
So I'll say this. Our thoughts are with his families during this difficult time, obviously with his families and loved ones. And I'll say this- I know they have asked for some privacy and we're going to respect that. I'll just leave it there.
There is little doubt that the abomination known as Jean-Pierre wanted to "leave it" at sympathy for the Simpson family, which had issued a tweet which included "his family asks that you please respect their wishes for privacy and grace." By contrast, the father and the sister of Ron Goldman, in neither their statement to NBC News nor a subsequent statement sent to reporters, asked the public for privacy or anything else.
(As any believing Christian will tell you, "grace" is "unmerited favor." Why the Simpson family would suggest that the favor of privacy is unmerited is curious.)
This incident bears a similarity to the occurrence in 2024 of International Day of Transgender Awareness on the same day as Easter Sunday. The President could have merely signed a standard proclamation recognizing transgender day, but he went much further. He attacked "extremists" for "proposing hundreds of hateful laws that target and terrify transgender kids and their families" while decrying "the bullying and discrimination that transgender Americans face." Biden blamed these unnamed individuals for "worsening our Nation's mental health crisis," described the Administration's efforts on behalf of the transgender community, and pledged "my entire Administration and I have your back."
All on Easter Sunday, which the President later realized he had to acknowledge, thus issuing an anodyne statement of recognition.
As of this writing, the Administration still has not noted the murders of two innocent people, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Those murderers were, beyond of a shadow of doubt, committed by Orenthal James Simpson. As longtime sportscaster Bob Costas, a friend of Simpson until the latter slashed two people to death, put it
If I could give him the benefit of any doubt, I would. And I'm sorry I have to say this on the day that he passed away, but someone asked me once "do you think O.J. did it"? I said "yes." They said "why"? I said "because I live on this planet."
Bob Costas recalls someone once asking him how he could possibly believe OJ did it, and responding: "Because I live on this planet. The evidence just adds up to nothing else." pic.twitter.com/4sIT9gNx0U
Joe Biden and Karine-Jean Pierre live on this planet, as do the Republicans, who criticize the President for a weak economy which is very strong, declining oil production which has risen to record levels, and the rising crime in cities which is not occurring. Of course, expressing sensitivity for the death of a convicted felon rather than to the families of two individuals he earlier murdered is not in their wheelhouse.
But that doesn't absolve the President of responsibility for considering Transgender Visibility Day more important than Easter, nor for being more concerned about the death from chronic disease of an elderly criminal than for his victims. Something is askew in the values at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and at some point someone will notice.
Some day, somewhere a reporter or news host will ask Representative Mike Lawler of New York why he is so fond of Benjamin Netanyahu.
The coordinated effort by Schumer, Pelosi, and other Dems to undermine Netanyahu is all about trying to keep the Democrat party’s base together in November. Make him the bad guy to try and keep the pro-Hamas crowd happy. It’s total insanity. https://t.co/lBbDcx2h2G
In his speech in the House chamber on March 14, Majority Leader Schumer
-called on "the Israelis, the Biden Administration, the Qataris, the Egyptians, and anybody else at the (negotiating) table" to "continue doing everything possible to get to a deal" which would include freeing every hostage;
-encouraged the USA to "provide robust humanitarian aid to Gaza and pressure the Israelis to let more of it get through to the people who need it;"
-urged the Israeli government to "prioritize the protection of civilian casualties when identifying military targets;"
-noted "Hamas has heartlessly hidden behind their fellow Palestinians by turning hospitals into command centers and refugee camps into missile-launching sites" whose "soldiers use innocent Gazans as human shields"- and berated "most media outlets covering this war and many protesters opposing it" for placing "the blame for civilian casualties entirely on Israel;"
-recommended "a negotiated two-state solution- a demilitarized Palestinian state living side-by-side with Israel in equal measures of peace, security, prosperity ,dignity and mutual recognition;"
-criticized as "a fatal impediment to progress" those Palestinians who "don't acknowledge how their insistence on an unequivocal 'right of return' is a fatal impediment to progress;"
-lamented that "many people, especially on the left, seem to acknowledge and even celebrate this right to statehood for every group but the Jews;"
- recognized that "Israel moving closer to a single state entirely under its control would further rupture its relationship with the rest of the world, including the United States;"
-noted that the "four major obstacles to peace" are "Hamas and the Palestinians who support and tolerate their evil ways; radical right-wing Israelis in government and society; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu;
-urged "all sides" to "reject from the river to the sea thinking;"
-suggested "there is enough strength in the Arab world to get President Abbas to step down and to support a gradual succession plan for responsible Palestinian leaders to take his place;"
-advocated "normalization with Israel" by "Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations" as "the foundation of a grand bargain in the Middle East that will finally make meaningful Palestinian statehood a reality;"
-proposed that the USA "demand that Israel conduct itself with a future two-state solution in mind;"
-asserted that "holding a new election once the war starts to wind down would give Israelis an opportunity to express their vision for the post-war future"- but that the USA should not try "to dictate the outcome."
It's a long list- but that's the point. All you hear from Republicans such as Lawler is that Chuck Schumer wants the Israelis to interfere with the affairs of another nation and remove Benjamin Netanyahu. To some, recommending that Israel have another election- after the war starts to wind down- is to overthrow a legitimate leader and 1/6/21 was a mere riot. And what you hear from the media when Republicans simply and trivialize this speech in this manner is.... nothing. No correction or even a follow-up question.
The speech of Majority Leader Schumer was not anti-Israel, as Mike Lawler and some other Republicans have portrayed it. The government of Benjamin Netanyahu facilitated the funding of Hamas by Qatari for several years. it obtained more than a year before 10/7/23 what The New York Times terms a "blueprint" which was followed "with shocking precision." Last July, Israel's signal intelligence agency "warned that Hamas had conducted an intense, daylong training exercise that appeared similar to what was outlined in the blueprint."
That warning was rejected by the military as Qatar continued to prop up the government in Gaza. However, Netanyahu was obsessed with hatred of the Palestinian Authority and the possibility of creation of a Palestinian state.
It's not clear that the likes of Lawler and Donald Trump are particularly fond of Israel. But Benjamin Netanyahu is indicted for fraud, breach of trust, and accepting bribes in three separate instances. And he has been trying to limit the power and oversight of the judiciary in order to centralize power in the office of Prime Minister. And he laid the groundwork for the worst terrorist attack in Israel's history.
The Senate Majority Leader had the temerity to suggest that the Israeli voters have a chance- sometime in the near future- to render their judgement on their Prime Minister. However, many Republicans are fiercely loyal to Netanyahu, who undoubtedly reminds them of their own party's beloved leader. That may not fully explain the fondness toward the Israeli Prime Minister but it certainly seems to be a worthy point of inquiry.
Following the the weekend fundraiser for Donald Trump in Palm Beach, Florida, New York Jets owner and multi-billionaire Woody Johnson honed his skills at stand-up. Appearing on Jesse Waters' Fox News show, Johnson remarked
It will be a safer, better pace. There will be less crime. He's extremely compassionate. People don't know that. He's extremely funny. I think people are starting to appreciate his sense of humor. And, uh, he just impressed all of us once again. I think that the overwhelming thought was, yea, this is just the beginning for us. Everybody in that room was ready to step up hard.
Woody Johnson: Trump is extremely compassionate. People don’t know that. He’s extremely funny. People are starting to appreciate his sense of humor pic.twitter.com/cA0Xb2zX43
And they allegedly did step up hard, to a reported tune of over fifty million dollars donated by a group justifiably confident that a President Trump would cut its taxes substantially.
A President has virtually nothing to do with crime, though if Trump unleashes local and state police as he promises, crime may drop a little in the short run and increase considerably in the long run, as a view of police as the enemy of the neighborhood is reinforced.
Johnson may not have recognized the irony of his his claim that the 45th President is "extremely compassionate." Evidently oozing compassion is the President who willfully separated children of immigrants from their parents; referred to deceased American veterans as "losers" and tortured prisoners of wars "suckers;" significantly curbed access to food stamps for hungry Americans; implemented policies which eliminated health insurance for hundreds of thousands of children; and told police "when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, just just seen them thrown in, rough. I said 'Please don't be too nice. When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just seen them thrown in, rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice." And who could forget this demonstration of compassion for handicapped individuals?
If Donald Trump were compassionate, he wouldn't now be the GOP's presumptive presidential nominee, would not have become President, and would not even have been his party's nominee in 2016. The lack of compassion is his brand- he alone will figuratively bash in the heads of liberals and, as the 1/6/21 insurrection displayed, perhaps physically. I am your retribution.
Nonetheless, Woody Johnson's portrayal of Trump as compassionate crime-fighter, soft but tough, was not his most dangerous assertion. Worse, if voters are to buy the act, is his assessment of Trump as "extremely funny. I think people are starting to appreciate his sense of humor." Let us not forget one of the most telling of Trump's comments when in a rare burst of honesty on June 23, 2020 the President
insisted he was serious when he revealed that he had
directed his administration to slow coronavirus testing in the United States,
shattering the defenses of senior White House aides who argued Trump’s remarks
were made in jest.
“I don’t kid. Let me just tell you. Let me make it clear,”
Trump told reporters, when pressed on whether his comments at a campaign event
Saturday in Tulsa, Okla., were intended as a joke.
“We have got the greatest testing program anywhere in the
world. We test better than anybody in the world. Our tests are the best in the
world, and we have the most of them. By having more tests, we find more cases,”
he continued.
Administration officials as high ranking as Vice President
Mike Pence have scrambled in recent days to clean up Trump’s statements from
his weekend rally, where he reprised his dubious logic regarding testing rates
before an arena of supporters.
“When you do testing to that extent, you’re going to find
more people,” Trump said during the rally. “You’re going to find more cases. So
I said to my people, ‘Slow the testing down, please.’”
I don't kid. Die-hard Trump voters know that; it's one of the reasons they're not Haley or Pence or Tim Scott or Doug Burgum voters. They're confident he says what he will do and will do what he says. He's authentically loud, mean- and serious.
When Donald Trump says he'll be a dictator on Day One. Steve Bannon asserts "this is just not rhetoric. We're absolutely dead serious." Kash Patel, undoubtedly on Trump's short list for Attorney General, states "yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who rigged presidential elections.." And Trump himself has made clear his intention to weaponize federal law enforcement and prosecute political opponents, Joe Biden and others.
Take Donald Trump literally and seriously. He's not joking.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, mother of a 23-year-old man held
hostage by Hamas since October 7, 2023remarked on Sunday'sFace the Nationon CBS
Well, you know, this is such a painful, staggeringly
indescribable odyssey that we are on. And, as you said, you can't imagine. I
often say, oh, I also can't imagine what we're going through. And, yes, we are
going to be returning to Washington tomorrow to have meetings with different
people in the administration. And we really want to understand what is
happening to ensure that these people - and remember, Margaret, we have eight
American citizens who have been held for 184 days, and we are feeling extreme
desperation, despair. And we've had wonderful access and sympathy and open
doors and lots of hugs from everyone in the U.S. government, but this is a very
binary situation. We want our people back. Period. And that's what we're going
to be talking tomorrow about is, what is actually going to be happening? What
leverage? What levers need to be pulled in order to make this happen? Because
six months is actually a complete failure on everybody's part.
Rachel Goldberg-Polin, whose son, Hersh, is being held hostage by Hamas, says six months without the release of all hostages is a "complete failure on everybody's part."
"I have not been able to save my son...I feel that I have failed, and I feel our governments have failed." pic.twitter.com/JMoMUVCXfn
It's not a failure on Hamas' part. The terrorist
organization has played very well its role as hostage-taker, to hold on to
individuals until it believes it has squeezed from the victimized party the
maximum it's likely to achieve. Hamas did this when in 2011
Gilad Schalit, a former IDF soldier, was released from Gaza
after being held captive there by the terrorist group, Hamas, for five years.
He was only released when Israel agreed to a prisoner swap that involved the
release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, including those responsible for killing
Israelis in terror attacks.
On the day of his release, Egyptian military officials
received Shalit from Hamas control on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and
updated the IDF command post at the Kerem Shalom crossing of the transaction
earlier on Tuesday morning.
As a result, Israel transferred all the Palestinian
prisoners to be released to Gaza and the West Bank to Red Cross buses.
Upon passing into Israel, Shalit was guarded by soldiers of
the Israel Air Force's 669 unit, who accompanied him until he was home safe in
Mitzpe Hila.
As part of a carefully orchestrated prisoner swap, Israel
freed 477 Palestinian prisoners on that day, with a further 550 set for release
at a later date.
It was not vey long before the deal started paying dividends-
for Hamas. As we learned in July of 2015
The suspected mastermind behind a deadly West Bank terror
attack last month was among 1,027 Palestinian inmates freed by Israel in
exchange for the release from Gaza of the captured Israel Defense Forces
soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011.
On Sunday, the Shin Bet announced it had detained four
members of a seven-member Hamas cell who allegedly opened fire on a car near
the settlement of Shvut Rachel in June, killing Malachy Rosenfeld, 25, and
wounding three others.
Rosenfeld was the sixth Israeli to be killed in attacks
carried out or planned by Palestinians released under the Shalit deal since
April 2014.
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, is
widely believed to have helped mastermind the unprecedented Hamas attack that
changed the course of Israeli-Palestinian history.
He spent more than two decades behind bars in Israel, before
being freed 12 years ago in a hostage ransom deal his brother helped negotiate.
In early October, Sinwar outsmarted Israel with the same hostage-taking tactic
— resulting in Israel's deadliest day on record.
Israel believes in the value of human
life, to the extent of releasing 1,027 terrorists, criminals, and those
suspected of violent behavior in return for one human being. Hamas believes in death, destruction, and and
annihilation. That's not merely annihilation of the Jewish state- if the Muslim
nation-state of Gaza, is completely demolished, all the better to the terrorist
group.
There is in Israel a growing movement to get the hostages, not all of them Israeli, back with or without defeat of Hamas.. "We want our people back. Period,"
says Rachel Goldber- Polin, reflecting the mounting sentiment.
It is also dangerous. When Hamas hears this, they
justifiably hear "anything you want; period." When the Israelis gave
up 1,027 prisoners for one Israeli in 2011, they bought themselves more
terrorist attacks. After the remarks
noted above, Goldberg-Polin added
And I include myself
in that as a parent, that I have not been able to save my son. And I don't know
– I think that you're a parent, anyone who is a parent, can appreciate our job
is to keep our children safe. And when they get in a situation when they're not
safe, our job is to save them. And I feel that I have failed and I feel that
our governments have failed and I feel that all the parties at the table have
failed to get these 133 souls back home.
The job of the parents is "to keep our children
sage" and otherwise "to save them." But that is not the sole job of a
government, especially one that accepts not only the importance of making whole
the families of 100+ hostages but also the short-term and long-term welfare of
the nation itself.
Goldberg-Polin probably is not naive. She is focused on what
she needs to be focused on. However, the military and political establishment
has a broader mission. This includes return of the hostages, an aim hampered
throughout this war by global pressure for a lasting ceasefire, the hostages whatever. More obviously, if a permanent ceasefire is imposed prematurely, Hamas will live to fight another day.
In the badly edited video below, ignore the right-wing charlatan psychiatrist, Phil McGuire. Instead, consider the message of Mosab Hassan Yousef, a son of the co-founder of Hamas, who defected to Israel in 1997 and became an undercover agent for Shin Bet, and who has since moved to the USA.
Aside from condemning Hamas, Yousef at 2:22 contends "since October 7, I personally don't differentiate between Hamas and so-called Palestinians and a minute later, "Palestine depends on the destruction of Israel. This is not acceptable and we are not going to agree with it."
Asked by one of the two Muslim women present whether Palestinians "are the same, one and the same," Yousef replied "after October 7, yes. There's no difference. The vast majority of the Palestinian people support Hamas. That is a fact. This is proven by statistics and...."
Dr. Phil confronts two female Hamas propagandists on the question of whether the October 7th Hamas massacre would be considered genocide and whether it was morally acceptable. Joining Dr. Phil is Mosab Yousef, the son of a Hamas leader. He also confronted the two kaffiyeh wearing… pic.twitter.com/SmYd5QKSUo
Thursday on Morning Joe, host (co-host?) Joe Scarborough spent a few minutes bashing the very vulnerable Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for actions taken (or not taken) to keep Israel safe. He noted, as The New York Times put it, "Israeli officials obtained Hamas' battle plans for the October 7 terrorist attack more than a year before it happened."
Additionally, beginning at 1:38 of the video, Scarborough asks rhetorically "What about Benjamin Netanyahu? What about him- has he always looked upon Hamas as Nazis?" After the response, the former Florida congressman noted
So- so let me ask you this question. I can't get an answer. Maybe we're just not covering it in the press. Maybe you can help me out. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu send the head of Mossad to Doha three weeks before the worst attack on Jews since the Holocaust and told Qatar to continue funding Hamas?
Wanting to emphasize his point, at 2:41 he added "We were always angry that Qatar founded Hezbollah and Hamas. I want to know- why did Benjamin Netanyahu do that? Let me ask you this. Why did Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump know in 2018 the sources of Hamas' illicit funding and they still did nothing? They wanted that money to get to Hamas. I'd like to know because we in America- has there been any investigations in Israel to this point?
MORNING JOE hosts erupt at Israel’s economy minister and his government’s handling of the war in Gaza.
In the annals of poor judgement displayed by government leaders, the collaboration of the Israeli prime minister with Hamas ranks high. In December, we had learned
In a series of interviews with key Israeli players conducted
in collaboration with Israeli investigative journalism organization Shomrim,
CNN was told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continued the cash flow to
Hamas, despite concerns raised from within his own government.
Qatar has vowed not to stop those payments. Qatari minister
of state for foreign affairs Mohammed bin Abdulaziz Al-Khulaifi told CNN’s
Becky Anderson on Monday that his government will continue to make payments to
Gaza to support the enclave, as it has been doing for years.
“We’re not going to change our mandate. Our mandate is our
continuous help and support for our brothers and sisters of Palestine. We will
continue to do it systematically as we did it before,” Al-Khulaifi said.
Israeli sources responded by pointing out that successive
governments had facilitated the transfer of money to Gaza for humanitarian
reasons and that Netanyahu had acted decisively against Hamas after the October
7 attacks….
In 2018, Qatar began making monthly payments to the Gaza
Strip. Some $15 million were sent into Gaza in cash-filled suitcases –
delivered by the Qataris through Israeli territory after months of negotiation
with Israel.
The payments started after the Palestinian Authority (PA),
the Palestinian government in the Israeli occupied West Bank that is a rival of
Hamas, decided to cut salaries of government employees in Gaza in 2017, an
Israeli government source with knowledge of the matter told CNN at the time.
The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time, which Hamas
said was meant for the payment of public salaries as well as medical purposes.
Israel approved the deal in a security cabinet meeting in
August 2018, when Netanyahu was serving his previous tenure as premier.
Even then, Netanyahu was criticized by his coalition
partners for the deal and for being too soft on Hamas.
Palestinians are not all the same, not even now, though most do appear to support Hamas. They couldn't be expected to do otherwise; Hamas is fighting the war against Israel, whose bombs have killed something north of 20,000 Gazans. (Exact figures would be difficult to come by, even if they were not supplied by the Gazan Health Ministry.) No doubt opposition to Hamas would be interpreted by many neighbors of Gazan residents as support for Israel.
It didn't have to be this way. And those Palestinians who have rallied to the side of Hamas in response to Israeli attacks prompted by the 10.7/23 terrorist attack upon Israelis are actually a little late to the game. Someone beat them to it.
The PA opposed the Qatari funding at the time. If Netanyahu at the time recognized that Israel was facing two major enemies in the West Bank and Gaza, he did not appreciate that Israel had no choice but to come to an accommodation of sorts with the lesser evil and less deadly adversary- the Palestinian Authority. Instead, he actively facilitated the transfer of resources to the Hamas regime in Gaza.
Yousef now believes that there is no difference among Palestinians. Netanyahu seems all along to have believed the same. Alternatively, he may have thought that the PA was more dedicated to a Palestinian state and thus posed a greater threat to Israel.
He did so, at least in part because he believed, as Yousef does now, that there is no difference- none- among Palestinians. Ironically, this is something Benjamin Netanyahu has in common with most of the anti-Israel world, whether actually pro-Hamas or not. Israel is said to be bombing Palestinians, killing Palestinians, trying to exterminate Palestinians when it is exclusively Gazans, most of them Palestinians, who are the victims in the Israeli assault.
The emphasis on "Palestinians"- a distinction never defined and rarely understood- has prolonged the war by emboldening Hamas. Soon after October 7, Israel in the eyes of the world was no longer fighting Hamas or Gazans. It was not defending itself against a brutal, terroristic entity but against, in popular perception, a whole race of people. As the global community thus became ever more critical of Israel, Hamas has had no need to return the hostages it has held.
Benjamin Netanyahu has reinforced that perception. He enabled Qatar to finance Gaza, thus Hamas, and disregarded the growing military threat posed by the terrorist group while encouraging Jewish settlements on the West Bank. While he- finally- views Hamas as the mortal enemy of Israel it always has been, he refuses to recognize other representatives of Palestinians as legitimate. The irony of the Israeli right and of Palestinian sympathizers perceiving Palestinians as one undifferentiated mass is lost on both sides and does not bode well for regional peace.
