Pray for Palestinians to be free of their homicidal leaders
During the last Hamas-Israel war, in the summer of 2014, I was staying at the Catholic research center at Tantur, next door to Bethlehem.
Once a week, the center leaders would say a rosary to Our Lady of the Wall—the Wall being the massive concrete border wall, 30 feet high, that Israel built along the entire Green Line of the West Bank, from north of Jenin all the way south of Hebron.
The idea was that Catholic leaders were praying for all those suffering because of the wall—the tens of thousands of Palestinian workers cut off from their former livelihoods in central Israel.
Yet there were two sides to the story of the Wall. One day, soon after I arrived, I visited the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which I hadn’t seen in more than 20 years. I stood in the plaza outside the Frank Sinatra International Student Centre and saw this odd tree growing sideways from a planter. Intrigued, I walked over to read the plaque nearby.
In July 2002, the Palestinian organization Hamas—the same Hamas that attacked innocent Israelis on October 7—planted a bomb in the Hebrew University cafeteria. The bomb killed nine students, including five Americans, and wounded 100 more. The sideways tree is a memorial to those who died. The Hamas terrorists who carried out the bombing, now languishing in Israeli prisons, just had their stipends from the Palestinian Authority increased to $2,572 per month.
Image: The wreckage of the Dizengoff Street bus bombing. CC BY-SA 3.0.
Bombings were rife in the years before my visit. During the Second Intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorists from the West Bank regularly blew up civilian buses and school buses. By 2003, there had been 73 suicide bomber attacks from the West Bank in central Israel, killing 293 Israelis and wounding 1,900 more, many of them children.
After the wall was finished, the bus bombings declined to virtually zero. Apparently, border walls work.
Naturally, everyone at Tantur, the European academics and the Palestinian staff, supported the Palestinian cause. Yet we European and American researchers were regularly advised to take only “Arab buses” to Jerusalem. The theory was that Arab buses would be safer because, presumably, Palestinian terrorists would only strike Israeli buses.
I took both Arab and Israeli buses, whichever went where I wanted to go. I got along fine with the Arabs, regularly squeezing myself into the hot and sweaty 231 bus from the Bethlehem checkpoint up to Jerusalem’s Jaffa Gate.
Of the four or five dozen researchers then working at Tantur, I was one of the few who spoke some Hebrew and supported Israel. The only other one who did was a Portuguese fellow working on his master’s degree at Oxford on Vatican diplomacy.
The truth is, it’s difficult not to sympathize with ordinary Palestinians. Hardworking and friendly, they are among the best educated and generous of Arab peoples. Now, they must endure regular humiliations at the hands of 18-year-old Israeli soldiers, forced to walk through innumerable checkpoints, produce papers, and keep their eyes down.
Israelis, who have been in the Army all their lives, can be abrasive, even to tourists. Hebrew is a “me Tarzan, you Jane” language at the best of times, and when combined with typical Israeli brusqueness can sound mostly like barked commands.
In addition, Palestinians have been betrayed by their leaders for more than 70 years.
From the first U.N. proposal for a two-state solution in 1947, the Palestinian leadership has consistently chosen war over peace. Their “all or nothing” intransigence—“from the river to the sea, all of Palestine will be free,” as U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib chants—has cost ordinary Palestinian families dearly.
Plus, those who call Israel an “apartheid state” don’t know what it’s like to live among people who want to kill you. While I was staying at Tantur, three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped on the West Bank and, it was discovered later, summarily executed.
At the same time, Hamas began firing mortar shells and rockets into central Israel—literally hundreds of thousands of them. I got the app on my iPhone that lets Israelis know when a rocket attack has started in their area, and it went off constantly—one of the most startling and grating alarms you’ve ever heard.
At the time, I kept wondering what would happen if Mexican drug cartels began regularly blowing up school buses in downtown San Diego and lobbing mortar rounds into Newport Beach. How would the U.S. population react? Probably not very peacefully, I imagine.
So, yes, everyone should pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for ordinary Palestinians to be finally free of the brutal killers who speak for them and who make peace impossible. Pray for Israelis as well, who are regularly victimized by brutal terrorist attacks and the murder of innocent women and children.
Our Lady of the Wall, pray for us.
Robert J. Hutchinson is the author of Searching for Jesus: New Discoveries in the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth.
THE U.N. IS CONTROLLED BY A PACK OF BLOODY DICTATORS AND SHOULD BE REGARDED AS SUCH ACCORDINGLY!
Hamas and its supporters around the world are worse than Nazis
U.N. adopts eight resolutions condemning Israel, none condemning Hamas -- or anyone else
The U.N. recently adopted eight resolutions condemning Israel for various alleged human rights violations, yet made no condemnation of other nations or groups, including Hamas.
This, after Hamas slaughtered nearly 1,500 innocent Israelis during a surprise attack on October 7.
And at a time of inexplicably rising anti-Semitism. This tells you all you need to know about the “world body.” It is nothing more than a wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, said via press release: "The U.N.’s assault on Israel with a torrent of one-sided resolutions, just one month after the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and on the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, is surreal.”
And morally repugnant.
Neuer added, “The only purpose of these eight lopsided condemnations is to demonize the Jewish state. The world should not be deceived that these annual resolutions advance the cause of peace or human rights in any way.”
The U.N.’s Second Committee, which focuses on Economic and Financial issues, announced the passage of three such resolutions, including one demanding that Israel cease the “exploitation, damage, cause of loss or depletion and endangerment” in the Golan Heights region of Syria. Huh?
Unsurprisingly, Bashar al-Assad’s Syria drafted and co-sponsored the resolution, which passed with a vote of 151 in favor to six against. Only Israel, Canada, the Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau and the United States opposed the measure. Eleven members abstained from voting.
Neuer called the Syrian-backed resolution "obscene," and stated that it is "astonishing" that the U.N. would support a call for "more people to be handed over" to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has killed "half a million of its own people."
Neuer noted that Assad’s forces have killed "more than 3,000 Palestinians" in their conflicts, prompting him to add of the resolution, "The text is morally galling and logically absurd.”
“Morally galling and logically absurd.”
That would be the perfect motto for the U.N.
Image: PxHere // CC0 public domain
A lot more needs to be done to put these animals down. They are obviously in some kind of gang or cartel dynamic as a quasi state actor, same as the cartels, and fueled by their ill-gotten gains. The U.S. knows how to issue sanctions and seize assets of bad state actors and make them scream. We don't see too much of that going on as Joe Biden calls for a ceasefire or pause in order to allow Hamas to regroup.
It's an outrageously weak response, given the resources of the U.S. government. There shouldn't be any billionaires right now among the Hamas elite. They need to be running and hiding. Instead, they are rolling in the dough as their minions conduct anti-Semitic attacks and organize demonstrations.
These people are bin Laden, ISIS, and the cartels rolled into one. It's time to take out the trash.
Manipulating with Lies and Manufactured Sob Stories
As has been the case since the barbarous attack on Israel by Hamas aided by Palestinian civilians, international organizations have chosen by their silence to ally themselves with the butchers instead of condemning the 10/7 attack. Canary Mission, which tracks anti-Semitism (and these days it’s not untoward to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, because it comes from the same fetid font: hatred of Jews and the globalists’ anti-nationalism) notes the silence of those entities from whom we were led to expect more:
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, speaking as head of the WHO (World Health Organization); Amnesty, the International Red Cross, the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur, Human Rights Watch, the EU Commission, Malala Yousafzai, chief of UN women.
Canary Mission is not alone in this observation.
Dr. Einat Walif:
In a better world, on October 8, the UN Secretary General, the head of the International Red Cross and other luminaries would have stationed themselves on the Egyptian border with Gaza demanding the full, immediate, and unconditional release of all the kidnapped hostages, insisting that Israel owes absolutely nothing to Hamas for the release of children, mothers, the elderly, and civilians because there is no world in which such acts are OK. Israel is forced to negotiate with the twisted leaders of Hamas for our children only because so many people in official and non-official positions of power failed to do their job and normalized the idea that kidnapping children from their beds and keeping them as bargaining chips is somehow a legitimate act that leads to negotiations rather than to stringent condemnation and global ostracism.
The "free press" can fairly be characterized as outright liars and enablers of Hamas. Hamas, as the world has long known, has used hospitals, mosques, schools, and ambulances in clear contravention of international law to store military weaponry, and hide and transport fighters. Israel claimed at the start something that everyone in Gaza -- including the UN personnel stationed there -- knew: Underneath the hospital was the Hamas operational headquarters and series of tunnels leading to and from the hospital. Major news outlets suggested strongly that Israel’s claim was a lie. After Israel took over the hospital and secured the underground, definitively proving how the hospital had been used by Hamas, including how it drained electricity and water from it to maintain its operations, how its terrorists took refuge there, and even transported hostages there. the lie had spread around the world. Why did the press do this disparage Israel?
Omri Ceren offers up as good an explanation as any:
Here's the thing about all those outlets that ran stories suggesting Israel lied about Hamas using Shifa Hospital as a military HQ:
1st, it was all of them.
2nd, it shows the incentives and disincentives that used to make journalism reliable have been nuked. They've been replaced by attaboys for whatever helps the home team win a couple of news cycles. The home team for them right now, weirdly but undeniably, is Hamas.
Incentives: Journalism wasn't designed so reporters could guide you towards truth. Mostly because they're bad at it, as the bulk of them don't know very much and the very best are still generalists. But also, because it becomes subtly corrosive in the way we saw during Trump, where they all convinced each other to print the same partisan line by telling each other it's the truth (which they'd be the last to know, because see above). Instead, journalism is supposed to be about facts and, more specifically, it's supposed to be a competitive industry where the incentives are about printing facts out before anyone else. "Scoops."
Which means that when you see them all printing the same thing, you can tell the incentive structure has broken down. [snip]
Disincentives: There was a time when having to print a correction was the most professionally mortifying thing imaginable. [snip] As journalism declined, and especially during Trump, they used all sorts of tricks with each other to take out the sting. Things that should have been "corrections" got downgraded to "editor's notes," and things that should have been "editor's notes" got downgraded to stealth edits. They had to, because they were simply making things up as they went along, and it wouldn't have worked otherwise. [snip]
For this Shifa Hospital news cycle, they ALL KNEW the Israelis would eventually publish evidence they were wrong. Everyone has known for a decade the hospital is a Hamas operation center. They did it anyway, because the stigma for being wrong is gone, as long as you're wrong for the right side.
Ceren is right, too, that journalists “don’t know very much.” Hussain-Abdul-Hussain, a Lebanese-Iraqi at the Foundation for the Defense of Freedom examines the ignorance of the Washington Post writers:
The @washingtonpost gauges Arab public opinion using voodoo reporting. As the Post imagines them, the Arabs have no debate or division between different views (like here in the US, older folks with Israel, younger people with Hamas). The imagined "Arab Street" is one monolithic bloc that is in consensus over the "Palestine cause." Did the Post ask itself what would happen to Arab dissenting voices who think that the "Palestine cause" is a lie behind which all corruption and terrorism hides? Did the Post ever seek out dissenting voices to try to see why they can't say their opinions out loud? Garbage samples: "The prevailing view throughout the Middle East is that while Israel is doing the fighting, this is an American war." And this: "In Arab nations, where solidarity with the Palestinian cause has endured for decades."
You rarely in the press see dissenting views even from Arabs outside the control of the authoritarian thugs who rule so many of these countries. Nor is much play given to the words and actions of Palestine’s neighbors, none of whom are willing to take refugees from there. Did you know that Egyptian president Abdel Fattah Al -Sisi made this proposal this week:
@EhabH91
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi proposed, "We are prepared to support the demilitarization of the Palestinian state, ensuring safeguards through NATO, UN, Arab, or American forces -- whichever is preferred.
This question should be directed to Hamas regarding whether they accept to stop the shedding of the blood of our people in Gaza.
Winner of the most stupid journalist of the week is Sky News presenter Kay Burley, who asked Eylon Levy, Israeli government spokesman, whether the fact that Israel had agreed to release 150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for just 50 hostages showed that “Israel does not think that Palestinian lives are valued as highly as Israeli lives.” Levy explained that absurd question failed to acknowledge that this was the deal Hamas insisted upon, at which point the idiot presenter said the suggestion she had advanced was given her by an unnamed “hostage negotiator.”
As for the status of the exchange, Hamas released none of the American hostages -- 13 Israeli women and children, the women mostly aged and frail (indeed, Hamas had earlier reported one had died in captivity) and a number of Thais and a Filipino whose exchange had been negotiated separately with Iran by the government of Thailand. Not one American was released. Not one young woman. Not a nine-month-old baby, Other breaches by Hamas have occurred and more are likely. The deal required ICRC access to all the hostages to assess their health -- and whether they are even alive -- and this never happened. The IDF has surrounded the fighters in Northern Gaza and that was the line set by agreement. Hamas is trying to break this by encouraging young men in the south to come to the north (and probably by reprovisioning with stolen relief supplies).
Friday night in front of a loud cheering crowd on the West Bank a Palestinian mob bound two men by hands and feet upside down and blindfolded, claiming that they had communicated with Israel. The men were hung, one was dismembered, and their remains were ceremoniously thrown onto a garbage heap. It was all videotaped, certainly to intimidate every watcher. One of the men executed was Hamza Ahmed Hamza Mubarak, a 31-year-old Afro-Palestinian, a descendent of slaves brought there by Arabs whose descendants still suffer humiliation and discrimination.
As we go to press, Hamas is playing a delaying game by refusing to release the second batch of hostages -- remember these hostages include children and a nine-month-old baby. Israel has given them until 12 midnight on Saturday night to release them or the pause will be over and the attack resumed.
As Hamas delays, it and its allies are drumming up street mobs around the world, and posting ridiculously phony videos on social media, appealing to the credulous and partisan -- things like Hamas fighters wearing Israeli uniforms and bragging about stealing a necklace and demolishing a building, and more of the same Pallywood pictures of kids smeared with paint which they claim are the victims of “genocide.”
It’s time to wipe Hamas out, and follow the suggestion of Egypt’s president. These people can neither govern nor comply with the basic requirements of decency and international law, and they never will be able to.
Hamas and its supporters around the world are worse than Nazis
World War II historian Andrew Roberts has a powerful essay making an important point: Hamas is worse than the Nazis because the Nazis still had a sufficient moral compass to be embarrassed by their genocidal crimes, while Hamas and its supporters are loud and proud. And when I say supporters, I don’t just mean the Gazastanians, a huge majority of whom support both Hamas and the massacre of Israelis. I mean their collaborators in the West, too, with the execrable Greta Thunberg as Exhibit A.
Roberts writes that, while still lacking the wherewithal to kill six million Jews, Hamas and the whole panoply of antisemitic Jihadists are “qualitatively worse than the Nazis in their belief systems, impulses, and instincts.” The reason?
In October 1943 Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, delivered a notorious speech to 50 of his senior lieutenants in Posen. “I want to speak frankly to you about an extremely grave matter,” he said. “We can talk about it among ourselves, yet we will never speak of it in public. … I am referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. … It is a page of glory in our history that has never been written and is never to be written.”
By total contrast, the Hamas killers 80 years later attached GoPro cameras to their helmets so they could livestream their atrocities over social media. Although the Nazis burnt Jews alive in barns on their retreat in 1945, they did not film themselves doing it. There are plenty of photographs of Nazis standing around death-pits full of Jewish corpses, but these were taken for private delectation rather than public consumption.
When the Soviets approached Auschwitz, the Nazis did everything they could to hide their crimes, whether it was to empty the camps by taking prisoners on death marches or simply destroying the crematoria, which were the infrastructure of mass murder. Moreover, the reason for the gas chambers was that the ordinary German soldier was sickened by slaughtering civilians en masse, even the Jews he’d been taught to believe were subhuman.
Hamas’s fighters, on the other hand, recorded, broadcast, and celebrated their raping women to death, slaughtering babies, and torturing children before killing them. They are ecstatic with blood lust, as is the civilian population in Gaza. Look at these happy citizens filming two men who were lynched and later dismembered for allegedly collaborating with Israel. I can assure you there was no due process, not even the faux-formality of a “kangaroo court.”
Hamas also has a rape culture worse than anything the Nazis did. Historically, conquering militaries have always raped. However, the Nazis had as their official policy avoiding rape because of their obsession with racial purity. Yes, the prohibition was widely ignored, but nothing the Nazis did compares to Hamas:
But that is different from the Hamas leadership giving their men orders to rape as many Jewish women as they could find and film themselves doing it, and in all too many cases taking them hostage afterwards or killing them.
Meanwhile, Israeli troops do not rape because they are moral. Yes, there will be exceptions, but Hamas and the Gazastanians don’t even try to pretend that their women are at risk.
Hamas and its jihadist ilk are death cultists who are out, loud, and proud. And that means their followers around the world are, too. When they chant “Khaybar, Khaybar ya yahud,” they are calling for the massacre of all Jews:
And it’s not just Muslims. It’s also their fellow travelers on the left, with no one more perfectly exemplifying this than the anorexic Greta Thunberg, an uneducated neurotic teen who became the leader of the climate change movement. Of course, what’s hiding behind the movement is the dream of human extermination to retain the purity of a mindless planet for the benefit of a select few (Thunberg among them, of course).
While Greta can’t admit that she seeks humankind’s extermination, she openly calls for Jewish genocide:
And yes, Jewish genocide is the goal behind “crushing Zionism.” Hamas and the surrounding Muslim nations aren’t shy about their goal of deleting, with blood and finality, the “stain” of a Jewish presence on “their” land.
Clarity is a good thing, and we’re finally seeing the evil face behind the anodyne slogans. These are unabashedly murderous people. Whether they’re starting point is Islam or leftism, Jews are first in line for extermination, but the rest of us are on the chopping block, too.
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