Israel at War—We Should CAIR

The the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has been a darling of the Democrats (and a few uninformed members of the GOP) for at least the past 30 years Dems and their trained hamsters in the propaganda media often characterize CAIR as a "moderate Islamic advocacy group" that espouses "co-existence and moderation." If the Democrats [1] actually believe that nonsense, they are guilty of stupidity and naivete. More likely, they did what all leftists do all the time—retreated into fantasy thinking and convinced themselves the CAIR is not a threat. 

My first post on CAIR (as I noted earlier in the "Israel at War" series was in 2006. I wrote:

The MSM (i.e., the propaganda media ) often quotes the views of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and characterizes the group and its spokesmen as “moderate” in their views. Nothing could be further from the truth.

And what is the truth?

• CAIR is a front group for HAMAS and other islamist death cults.
• CAIR is supported financially by those same terrorist groups and countries.
• CAIR is in the US to promote radical Islamist thinking and encourage the institution of Sharia law, first in Islamic communities and ultimately, throughout the U.S.

And yet, the Democrats and their propaganda media allies persist in labeling CAIR as moderate.

MEMRI recently publicized a speech given by Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, who spoke at the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention in Chicago on November 24, 2023. Here's a part of what he said (since removed from the CAIR website):

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on Oct. 7. And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, that they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves. And yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.”

I suppose I could spend a few paragraphs fisking his words, but what's the point. Like everything associated with palestinian claims and history, it's lies all the way down. CAIR promotes and amplifies those lies because it has the support of a major U.S. political party and their media shills.

It's interesting that Nihad Awad, like his allies among hard-left Democrats, believes his own bullshit. Later in the speech he stated:

"Israel did not scare them [Hamas], because they knew their heaven is in Gaza, and if they would like to die, they will go to another heaven. That is the faith of the people of Gaza. That is why Gaza and the people of Gaza were able to transform everyone who is watching – they have learned from these people. Those who felt bad for Gaza – they don't understand the equation. Those who thought that Gazans are less than those who can help them, they are mistaken. They are mistaken. The Gazans were victorious."

Maybe he should ask the "poor, suffering palestinians" whether they still feel "victorious." TBH, I would be surprised if the 57% of palestinians who support Hamas (and its atrocities) feel that way at the moment. But then again, Islamists tend to be fantasy thinkers, much like their Democrat admirers. In their fantasy world, it's all about "victims" and the "oppressed," so obvious atrocities are easy to rationalize.

So let the palestinians feel "victorious" as the IDF wipes out Hamas. Let them stew in their own hatred of all Jews. Let them become the world's longest-term "refugees" (from where, exactly?). Let them be parasitic "victims" who live solely on continuous welfare provided by the West. Let them and the spokespeople continue to build their edifice of lies.

Until they recognize that Israel will NOT cease to exist at the whim of Islam, let them reap the rewards of their "victory." 

I don't CAIR. 

FOOTNOTE:

[1]  CAIR was named an advisor to the Biden Administration as they developed guidelines for their fight against "Islamophobia."
 

Israel at War—U.S. Politics

In the very early weeks of the Hamas-Israel war, a very blue, Jewish acquaintence told me how impressed she was by Joe Biden's support for Israel in its response the the Hamas' atrocities of October 7th. You know—the atrocities that led to the wanton slaughter of entire families, the rape, murder, mutilation, and gleeful display of young, dead Israeli women, the murder of infants and their subsequent beheading, and the kidnapping of hundreds to be used as bargaining chips and human sheilds—those atrocities that the propaganda media would prefer that we all forget. All in the name of the palestinian cause and, of course, Allah.

Our conversation went something like this:

"You have to admit," she said, "Joe Biden's support for Israel is wonderful!"

I nodded, "Yeah, his words are encouraging, particularly because his supporters on the Left have become VERY anti-Israel and increasingly anti-Semitic." [This was in the first days of the conflict]

She frowned. "But, but, most of the anti-Semitism is coming from the hard right, you know, neo-Nazis."

"Nah," I laughed, "there aren't many Neo-Nazis who teach at Cornell or go to classes at Harvard, or are graduate assistants at NYU. The last time I looked there were no anti-Israel KKK demonstrations in New York City."

She began to speak and then stopped. The truth somehow penetrating her pre-programmed demonization of the Right.

But I wanted to add one more thing, "Biden is good right now, but get back to me in 2 months to see whether his actions match his words."

It's now been two months, and as I suspected, the Democrats' leftist, anti-Israel wing has eroded Biden's support for Israel. Michael Goodwin writes:

The odds that Israel’s security could be sacrificed to help boost Biden’s bid for a second term have been growing ever since polls started showing that many young leftist Americans have no love for the Jewish state.

The polls inadvertently tell an ugly truth — the antisemites chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” on college campuses are mostly Democrats. And now they have Biden’s full attention because he’s desperate.

So much so that his support for Israel, iron-clad in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 massacre, has softened dramatically.

His once-stout statements about Israel’s right to defend itself have turned into scolds and warnings that it must do more and more to protect Arab civilians.

Never mind that Hamas uses its own people as human shields. Biden is joining the chorus demanding that Israel protect them, even at the risk to its own citizens and soldiers.

The clear implication is that Israel cannot count on American support for its ultimate goal of eliminating Hamas from Gaza and killing its leaders. Biden doesn’t have the stomach for it.

His shameful new message is being delivered primarily by others in the administration. Most alarmingly, Secretary of State Antony Blinken is talking gibberish about a two-state solution in ways that smack of rewarding Hamas.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also has been drafted into the campaign, and he warned recently that Israel could be driving civilians into siding with Hamas, saying it would turn a “tactical victory” into a “strategic defeat.”

If that weren’t enough, Harris finally got called off the bench last weekend and she raised the ante in separate talks and meetings with the leaders of three Arab nations — Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

Ostensibly on a trip to a Dubai climate summit, Harris reportedly spent nearly all her time making it clear the United States is nearing the end of its tolerance for Israel’s military operations in Gaza. She is also said to have taken a hard line in a call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog.

Heh. The anonymous cabal that sets policy in the White House [reminder: Joe Biden is cognitively disabled] has decided that losing millions of 18 - 25 year old leftist voters takes precedence over Israel's right to exist and absolutely trumps any concern about left-wing anti-Semitic demonstrations and menacing behavior at major elite universities. 

Goodwin nails it when he states, "Politics doesn’t get any cheaper or more reckless than pandering to the bigot-laced mob calling for Israel’s destruction."

The real problem is that the "bigot-laced mob" has been jointed by the likes of the New York Times, CNN, WaPo, and dozens of other propaganda media outlets. So in yet another act of weakness, Biden caves. And in a coincident act of abject stupidity, progressive Jews like the person I introduced at the head of this post will continue to vote for the political party that forced him to cave. 

UPDATE-1:

This post by Glen Reynolds on Instapundit is telling:

THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION IS ON TOP OF ITS GAME AS USUAL: Kirby: We Need Another Pause to Get 8 American Hostages Out of Gaza. “And why would that be, precisely? Could it be that Joe Biden somehow failed to negotiate their release during the first operational ‘pause’ that he took credit for brokering last month? . . . That certainly sounds suspicious. Hanlon’s Razor could apply here, in which we shouldn’t presume malevolence when incompetence can fully explain a failure. Biden and his team abandoned 14,000 Americans to the Taliban while bugging out of Afghanistan in August 2021, so we have ample precedent for this kind of disgraceful disregard for American lives by Biden et al. What this looks like, however, is Biden and his team using American hostages as leverage on Israel, manipulating American public opinion to force them into bad deals and eventually a solve-nothing cease-fire that allows Hamas to survive and rebuild … again.”

Nothing says that you can’t be both evil and incompetent.

UPDATE-2:

And this post on X (Twitter) from Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX):

 

 

Israel at War—Casualties

The usual suspects—a.k.a. the Biden administration, all the most virtuous voices in the Democratic party, the propaganda media, the most 'respected leftist NGOs, and, of course, that pillar of virtue, the United Nations—gear up to save the Islamist death cult, Hamas, from defeat. They do this, not be saying they're pro-Hamas (although by their words and actions, they sure seem to be) but by wailing about a "humanitarian crisis" that has befallen the "innocent and suffering" palestinian civilian population of Gaza. 

Not a word, mind you, on the reasons that this "humanitarian crisis" has occurred, nor a condemnation of Hamas for starting a war by committing atrocities so heinous they precipitated an extreme Israeli response, nor any recognition of how the Israelis have gone above and beyond any other military to shield palestinian civilians from the worst of the fighting, nor any questions about the scope of the claimed "civilian" casualties that have occurred. Nope. There's a "crisis" (!!!!) and Israel has to cease fire right now (!!!!) ... just ask Kamala Harris or Bernie Sanders.

I have addressed many of the issues noted in the preceding paragraph in other posts in the "Israel at War" series. In this post I'd like to discuss palestinian casualties further [1], you know, the ones that are reported by the usual suspects without even a semblance of verification or skepticism (given their source) or common sense.

Where to begin. Let's start with the "source." The usual suspects quote UN casualty figures as their source. They do this without any skepticism, as if the figures were audited by a big six accounting firm using rigorous methods that verify every number. That's not the case. Robert Spencer writes:

... The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Sunday published a chart of “Reported Casualties” in Gaza, and the numbers look grim indeed: over 15,523 deaths, with 4,257 women and 6,387 children making up fully 70% of that figure. The far-left establishment media is putting out substantially the same figures; the UK’s Guardian wrote Tuesday that “in the last three days, bombing has been heavy, and the total death toll since 7 October has risen to 15,899.”

These figures not only aroused the righteous indignation of our nation’s leftist self-appointed voices of conscience, but they moved the antisemitic Unz Review to the heights of hysteria: “We are certainly witnessing the greatest televised slaughter of helpless civilians in the history of the world, with nothing even remotely comparable coming to mind.” 

Oh my, that sounds terrible indeed. But let’s step back for a moment. If you follow an asterisk down to the small print, you’ll see that the UN attributes its figures for Palestinian casualties in Gaza to the “Ministry of Health” and the “Government Media Office.” Which Ministry of Health? Which government? The UN doesn’t say, and its reticence on this point is likely due to the fact that the government and Health Ministry in question are those of Hamas in Gaza. The Guardian likewise attributes its figures to “the Gaza health ministry.” Yes, that’s right: the one that Hamas runs.

This would be like the New York Times during World War II reporting massive German civilian deaths in an Allied offensive and attributing its data to Josef Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry. 

"But, but, but," shriek the usual suspects, "maybe there's a little exaggeration, but even a single civilian casualty is too much." 

Wars are awful, and that's why you don't commit heinous atrocities against a sovereign nation who has the capability of hitting back—hard. Hamas did that. It put it's own civilians in harm's way—knowingly. Yet not a peep on this from the usual suspects. Never any recognition whatsoever that deaths that have occurred (and surely, deaths have occurred [2]) are a direct result of Hamas breaking a ceasefire that existed on October 6th.

Hamas is lying about casualties for propaganda purposes and everyone who is not a brain dead leftist knows it. But if you're a pro-Hamas leftist you perfectly willing to be credulous and quote the numbers (15,899—not 898 or 900, but 899, exactly) as if they are real—all because they fit your depraved narrative that Israel is the aggressor in all of this.

Spencer goes a bit deeper:

... A board member of the media watchdog Honest Reporting who goes by the single name Aizenberg, took a close look at the day-to-day casualty figures that the UN publishes from Hamas and found a large number of significant anomalies. “It is immediately obvious,” notes [read the whole thing] Aizenberg, “that Hamas does not report ANY combatant deaths & the numbers amazingly seem to indicate that IDF bombs & bullets disproportionately hit women, children & elderly. The IDF CANNOT seem to hit too many fighting age men.” But also, “the numbers are faked.”

On Oct. 19, for example, the total casualty number increased by 307, from 3,478 to 3,785. Yet at the same time, the total number of children killed went from 853 to 1,524, an increase of 671. Nor was that the only time such a thing happened. On Oct. 26, the total number of casualties increased by 481, while the number of children casualties went up by 626. Clearly, the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza is not too concerned that people will study these numbers closely; the idea is simply to shock and appall people with Israel’s alleged inhumanity, and that is working well enough.

Indeed it is, but only because of the complicity of the usual suspects. 

FOOTNOTES:

[1]  My earlier posts on Hamas casualty claims can be found here and here. 

[2]  Much is being made of a comment by an Israeli official who noted that it's likely that there are more civilian casualties than Hamas casualties. Nowhere in that comment does he state that the death/casualty figures are accurate. They are not. In addition, if an enemy (Hamas) hides within a civilian population and often prohibits those civilians from fleeing to safety, casualty figures will mount.

Israel at War—Anti-Semitism and the Left

In my last post in the "Israel at War" series, I wrote:

... it became painfully apparent with the rabid, campus anti-Semitism that so-easily took hold with 24 hours of the Hamas atrocities on October 7th. Originating solely from the hard left, students and their leftist faculty mentors were screaming threatening anti-Semitic tropes in a menacing display that would have made a neo-Nazi smile.

The left is anti-Semitic and has been for many years. It's sadly amusing to note that many Jews who have enthusiastically supported leftist ideology were gobsmacked by overt displays of Jew-hatred from once-revered institutions like Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Columbia.

But what is the underlying catalyst that has turned university students, who no more that a year ago, needed a safe space to recover when someone used an improper pronoun, into rabid and menacing anti-Semites?

Historian Victor Davis Hansen describes a long list of anti-Semitic incidents and attacks that have occurred in the U.S. over the past two months. He described one this way:

At Hillcrest High School in Queens, New York, hundreds of students rioted on news that a single teacher in her private social media account had expressed support for Israel. Waving Palestinian flags, and screaming violent threats, the student mob rioted, destroyed school property, sought the teacher out and tried to crash into her classroom—before she was saved from violence by other teachers and an eventual police arrival.

The subtext was that the overwhelmingly minority students (whose school is ranked academically near the bottom among New York City schools) were acculturated to the racist reality that as the “oppressed” they were exempt from any punishment for hunting down their own teacher. As a Jewish (and thus white) “oppressive” supporter of Israel, she was reduced to, in the words an enthusiastic commenter on a Tik Tok video of the riot, a “cracker ass bitch.” And so the student pack tracked her down as if they were hunting an animal. The old Nazi youth gangs tried to kill Jews because they were not considered “white;” our new Nazis hunt them down because they allege that they are. The common denominator between the 1930s and 2023 is an unhinged hatred of Jews.

The propaganda media downplayed the incident and quickly moved on to claims that the Israelis were "indiscriminately" killing the "innocent, suffering palestinians," quoting unverified and likely false casualty numbers  (e.g., the outrageous claim that 70 percent of the 15,000+ [unverified] deaths in Gaza are women and children).

Because the propaganda media is anti-Israel and left-wing, it avoids any investigation that might make the palestinians and/or the Left look bad. Hansen does not have that restriction:

For the last 40 years, while Western leftists have naively supported Palestinian terrorists, their governments have appeased terrorist-supporting Middle Eastern governments for very practical reasons. The old subtext to such mollification was that 500-million irate Arab Muslims, and a Middle East with 40 percent of the world’s oil reserves, in realist terms, simply argued against the interests of 10 million Israelis.

But now there are two new, venomous elements in the matrix.

One is that the racist DEI industry assumes that all intersectional nonwhite communities are victims of white privilege and supremacy. Therefore, as permanently oppressed, they are declared incapable of being racist themselves. And so they can harass with impunity the supposed victimizers—in this case American Jews, who are declared culpable whites.

So the oppressed, according to the DEI bible, cannot be anti-Semitic, though many certainly are. And they apparently cannot be held accountable for their hatred or frequent violence.

Secondly, in the last two decades there has been an epidemic of immigration into Western nations from the Middle East. In often-divided democracies like ours, politicians seek to appease as many pressure groups as possible, whether citizen voters or merely resident demonstrators, to acquire and maintain power.

Such pro-Hamas demonstrators, rah-rahing from a free, prosperous, and secure West, expect no rebuke for their obvious hypocrisy in cheering on an autocratic, dictatorial Hamas that has wrecked the economy of Gaza, shoots dissidents, and allows no free expression. And Middle Eastern guests and immigrants are never reminded that their very demonstrations are predicated on not being physically present in their homelands, where they might be shot for what they say and do freely in the West.

We are on a trajectory similar to that of 1930s Germany.

As regular readers of this blog know, I believe there is yet another reason. Because the left controls 95 percent of all major sources of communication, they have normalized insanity. And when a group embraces insane thinking, the more it is emboldened to adopt ever-more insane ideas. Hence, we have a group at Columbia University that will be celebrating Hamas on the two-month Anniversary of October 7th.

 

Israel at War—Academic Capture

As an ex-college professor (of computer engineering), I understand the dynamics of a university more thoroughly than most Americans. But my tenure as a professor happened decades ago and during the time that has passed, Universities have (in the main) morphed from liberal-left institutions of learning, to increasingly hard-left indoctrination centers. Non-STEM faculties have, over the decades, been purposely transformed into a collection of leftist ideologues. This modern faculty profile exhibits little, if any, diversity of thought and even less tolerance for opposing views on any of the mind-numbing leftist narratives that they present to their young and impressionable students.

The dynamic I've described has been on-going at major universities for decades, but it became painfully apparent with the rabid, campus anti-Semitism that so-easily took hold with 24 hours of the Hamas atrocities on October 7th. Originating solely from the hard left, students and their leftist faculty mentors were screaming threatening anti-Semitic tropes in a menacing display that would have made a neo-Nazi smile.

The left is anti-Semitic and has been for many years. It's sadly amusing to note that many Jews who have enthusiastically supported leftist ideology were gobsmacked by overt displays of Jew-hatred from once-revered institutions like Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Columbia.

Although the anti-Semitism is despicable and wrong, it is only the latest manifestation of a far bigger problem on American campuses. In an important op-ed, John Ellis writes:

America faces a formidable range of calamities: crime out of control, borders in chaos by design, children poorly educated while sexualized and politicized against parental opposition, unconstitutional censorship, a press that does government PR rather than oversight, our institutions and corporations debased in the name of “diversity, equity and inclusion”—and more. To these has been added an outbreak of virulent antisemitism.

Every one of these degradations can be traced wholly or in large part to a single source: the corruption of higher education by radical political activists.

Children’s test scores have plummeted because college education departments train teachers to prioritize “social justice” over education. Censorship started with one-party campuses shutting down conservative voices. The coddling of criminals originated with academia’s devotion to Michel Foucault’s idea that criminals are victims, not victimizers. The drive to separate children from their parents begins in longstanding campus contempt for the suburban home and nuclear family. Radicalized college journalism departments promote far-left advocacy. Open borders reflect pro-globalism and anti-nation state sentiment among radical professors. DEI started as a campus ruse to justify racial quotas. Campus antisemitism grew out of ideologies like “anticolonialism,” “anticapitalism” and “intersectionality.”

Never have college campuses exerted so great or so destructive an influence. Once an indispensable support of our advanced society, academia has become a cancer metastasizing through its vital organs. The radical left is the cause, most obviously through the one-party campuses having graduated an entire generation of young Americans indoctrinated with their ideas. 

As I have written in earlier posts in the "Israel at War" series, the left ruins just about everything it touches. As Ellis noted, it has ruined academia. It has crushed journalism and main stream media. It has broken the trust that we had in public health authorities and private medicine. It has damaged our military. It has exacerbated crime in cities and shattered our expectation of equal justice under the law. It has established voting policies that have reduced trust in the electoral process. It has crippled our economy by legislating massive debt. It has encouraged the grow of an overly large, centralized and generally incompetent government that is now acting in ways that threaten personal freedoms and dampen free speech. 

And worse, its adherents psychologically project the failings and intent of their ideology on their opponents. Hence, we hear about right-wing "threats to democracy" that are actually inherent in leftist thinking. We listen as leftists claim that their opponents are "authoritarian" as they mandate draconian policies across a wide range of their narratives. We watch as opponents are accused on "censorship" and "book banning" while the left shouts down speakers or shadow bans writers who offer opposing views. 

Ellis ends his op-ed with this statement:

The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.  

Although this may seem overwrought, it is close to accurate. My only modification would be the following change:

The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that hard-left ideology now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.

UPDATE-1:

And ... for those who think that John Ellis is being hyperbolic in his commentary, quoted in the body of this post, there's this from the Washington Free Beacon ... presented without further comment:

UPDATE-2:

Oliver Wiseman comments on a congressional hearing on anti-Semitism in which the presidents of three elite universities were questioned:

Tuesday’s [December 6th] congressional hearing on campus antisemitism saw the presidents of Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and MIT opt for exactly the kind of equivocation and double standards that have defined elite schools’ responses to hateful speech directed at Jews on their campuses since October 7. 

In one particularly astonishing turn, Rep. Elise Stefanik asked the university chiefs whether calling for the genocide of Jews breached their schools’ codes of conduct. Not a single one of them responded with a yes.

... It’d be one thing if these college leaders were free speech hard-liners who consistently applied this principle toward all. But that, of course, is not the case. Take Harvard president Claudine Gay, who said yesterday that when it comes to calls for the genocide of the Jews, context is everything ...  (For a fuller look at the hypocrisy, we recommend this piece by the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium.) 

When Gay could summon the courage to denounce antisemitism, she said it was “a symptom of ignorance” and that “the cure is knowledge.” 

It’s a nice thought, but the truth is more complicated—and more unsettling. After all, some of the most credentialed kids in the country have been taking part in hateful protests, calling for the freedom of Palestine “from the river to the sea.”

... Virtue, conscience, humility. These were all in short supply at yesterday’s hearing.

But there was a smug condescension that pervaded their remarks, typical of morally vacuous leftists who have all benefited from identity politics and think they're the smartest people in the room. They aren't.

But they are hypocrites, and worse, supporters of an indoctrination machine that has created the very anti-Semitic sentiment that they profess to be so, so concerned about.

Israel at War—Cease the Cease Fire

The Editors of the Wall Street Journal discuss the increasing pressure being placed on Israel from Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken who are, in effect, doing the bidding of the growing hard-Left, pro-Hamas segment of the Democratic party.

Mr. Blinken is adamant: It must be nothing like the operation in north Gaza. The Secretary of State said he “underscored” to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “the imperative to the United States that the massive loss of civilian life and displacement of the scale we saw in northern Gaza not be repeated in the south.” He said Israel must take “more effective steps to protect the lives of civilians.”

The best way to save civilians is to get them far from urban combat zones, away from Hamas strongholds like the city of Khan Younis. But Mr. Blinken demands “avoiding further significant displacement of civilians inside of Gaza.” Instead, he called on Israel to create “safe zones” for civilians near the fighting.

But what should Israel do when Hamas positions itself in those zones? That’s how it used hospitals and schools in the north. Could Israel attack Hamas in those sanctuaries?

Mr. Blinken tried to close that door, too. Protecting civilians “means avoiding damage to life-critical infrastructure like hospitals,” he said. “Intent matters, but so does the result.”

If Israel must do more to protect civilians but can’t evacuate them and can’t hit Hamas when it hides in key civilian infrastructure and safe zones, how is it to fight at all? It could try a methodical, grinding campaign to force Hamas into the open. But Mr. Blinken demands Israel keep fuel flowing—precisely what Hamas needs to hunker down in its tunnels. That leaves relying on the infantry, at great cost in Israeli lives.

As I discussed on the very first day of Israel at War, the West, influenced by the fantasy thinking of leftist elites, always steps in to stop Israel from destroying the Muslim extremists (and it always is Muslim extremists) who want to obliterate the State of Israel. They're now doing it yet again. Biden and Blinken aren't pro-Hamas (yet) but their stated restrictions will save an Islamist death cult and will set the stage for further atrocities down the road.

Eitan Fischberger comments:

The obvious allure of the ceasefire lies in its immediate cessation of hostilities. But this is merely a facade of progress, a superficial calm that does not address the core of the conflict: Hamas’s genocidal intentions for Israel, which it has repeatedly stated in its founding charter and public statements, and which it acted upon in grisly fashion on October 7, on a scale never before achieved.

Indeed, as Israel has painfully learned time and again, ceasefires do more than just allow problems to continue to fester: they provide Hamas with invaluable opportunities to regroup, rearm, and strengthen its military capabilities. Even the term “ceasefire” is a misnomer, as Hamas has consistently violated such pauses to keep up its campaign of terror over the years. On November 30, for example, Hamas gunmen opened fire at a bus stop in Jerusalem, murdering three innocent people in the process. Later that evening, Hamas resumed launching indiscriminate rockets at Israel’s cities, forcing the Israeli military to respond. As the adage goes, “We cease. They fire.”

... The hostages-for-terrorists framework [for the cease fire] brings with it immense cognitive dissonance. While it yields obvious and immediate benefits for Israel, it also establishes a dangerous precedent, as it gives Hamas an incentive to take new people hostage when hostilities resume. And now that Israel has established the pattern in which it will agree to ceasefires in exchange for hostages, Hamas will doubtless see how far it can stretch the line. Thus, Israel will likely see diminishing returns to this approach—fewer hostages returned in exchange for longer ceasefires and larger quantities of fuel entering Gaza.

On a broader military level, agreeing to the type of long-term ceasefire that some in the West envision and failing to vanquish Hamas would pose an existential danger to Israel, as it will embolden Iran and its other proxies like Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad to heed Hamas’s example and launch deadly attacks against Israel. Additionally, it would cement Qatar as an indispensable player in any enduring solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and amplify the monarchy’s already outsize influence in international matters, despite its being largely responsible for financing and legitimizing Hamas in the West.

Given these considerations, it’s disturbing that the Biden administration would tacitly hint at reduced American support unless Israel achieves the nearly impossible goal of swiftly eliminating Hamas with minimal civilian casualties. A diplomatic shift like this would also galvanize Iranian proxies across the Middle East to intensify their attacks on American troops, including in Syria and the Gulf.

It might be "disturbing" that a Democrat administration would "hint at reduced American support" for Israel, but it is hardly surprising. 

After all, in some ways another 'hostage' situation is on-going. The old Democratic party is now being held hostage by hard-left, pro-Hamas members of Congress, by leftist useful idiots among their college age and progressive supporters, and by a substantial percentage of the propaganda media. The 'cease fire' that the old school Democrats seek with these hard left Democrats requires that Israel is prohibited from destroying Hamas.

A long time ago, a old school Democrat Icon and President named John F. Kennedy wrote a book entitled Profiles in Courage. Today, "courage" might be defined by a Democrat leader who has the balls to push back against the hard-left wing of the party and support Israel unequivocally as it destroys an Islamist death cult. There's very little Democrat courage in evidence at the moment.

UPDATE:

Chants of "ceasefire" are essentially chants that advocate a Hamas "victory." @AGHamilton29 posts this:

 

 

Israel at War—Surrender?

In an earlier post in the Israel at War series, I defined an '"Axis of Lies" whose job it is to ensure that the [Hamas] atrocities are "lost" down a memory hole, the truth is obfuscated and distorted, and the public is convinced that Hamas is a group of freedom fighters while Israel is their "oppressor." 

"The Axis of Lies encompasses pro-palestinian/pro-Hamas Muslim activists in the West, leftists who are their useful idiots, and the anti-Israel propaganda media (e.g., NYT, WaPo, LAT, BBC, Reuters, AP, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS) that is the public relations arm of the Palestinians and Hamas."

David Bernstein offers a question about the Axis of Lies on Instapundit:

WHY DON’T PEOPLE WHO EXPRESS GRAVE CONCERN ABOUT PALESTINIAN CASUALTIES CALL ON HAMAS TO RELEASE ITS HOSTAGES AND SURRENDER?: Because they don’t really care about Palestinian well-being. The allegedly “pro-Palestine” movement’s main objective is to destroy the State of Israel, for various reasons–antisemitism, Islamism, pan-Arabism, hatred of the West. The welfare of actual Palestinians is at best a secondary concern. This, among others things, is why you see virtually no voices who claim to be concerned with Palestinian well-being calling on Hamas to surrender. Hamas’s surrender would surely be good for the Palestinians. It would end the war and its attendant destruction, and it would mean that some new group would govern Gaza, and that new government could hardly be worse than the corrupt, Islamist, war-mongering dictatorship of Hamas. But, and here’s the key, Hamas’s surrender would also benefit Israel. And the “movement” is happy to sacrifice both immediate and long-term Palestinian well-being to harm Israel.

I agree, but Bernstein is missing another subtle part of this hypocrisy. A clear majority of the palestinian population, despite The Biggest Lie, support Hamas and want them as their leadership. An even bigger percentage of palestinians are deeply anti-Semitic and would have no problem with the complete destruction of the State of Israel.

The Axis of Evil understands this. Therefore, if the Axis advocates the surrender of Hamas, they believe it would be doing a disservice to the palestinians. 

Surrender is not an option ... but destruction of Hamas is. That's why the Axis of Lies desperately demand cease fire after cease fire—to avoid Hamas' just and appropriate obliteration.

Israel at War—History

Many leftist history professors at schools like Harvard, Michigan, Stanford, and Princeton allow their ideology to warp their view of history. They distort historical fact, omit key events in history, and outright lie in order to promote an anti-Israel narrative. They falsely claim that Israelis are "colonialist settlers" in the "state of palestine" and then demand that Israel should therefore be sanctioned, attacked and ejected from the "palestinian's homeland." 

Professor Victor Davis Hansen—a historian with a clear and undistorted view of the history of the Middle East, provides a truthful assessment of the current conflict between the palestinians and Israel. After discussing the rabid anti-israel sentiment expressed by leftist students on college campuses that has often morphed into overt anti-Semitism, along with more than a few acts of violence and intimidation against Jewish students, Hansen address the history of the region:

For the first time in their lives, many of the ignorant [college] protestors suddenly professed concern about refugees, colonialism, disproportionality, innocent civilians, and the rules of war.

But none could explain why the Palestinians who fled Israel in 1947-48 still self-identify as victimized "refugees" when 900,000 Jews ethnically cleansed from Middle-East Arab cities about the same time do not ...

Few protestors knew that Jews have lived in present-day Israel for over three millennia. The longest colonialist presence there were Muslim Turks who brutally ran the Holy Land for 300 years until they lost in World War I and were expelled.

How exactly did it happen that the eighth-century A.D. Al-Aqsa Mosque was built within King Herod's earlier Second Temple enclosure?

The pro-Hamas crowd has little appreciation that colonizing Arab Muslims have one of history's longest records of "settling" other countries far from their historic birthland.

They "settled" and "colonized" the Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine Middle East, Berber North Africa, and southern Spain. Millions of Middle Easterners migrated to -- "settled?" -- supposedly infidel European cities, where they often self-segregate, and do not assimilate fully with their magnanimous hosts.

As far as "disproportionality," it is the goal of every power at war, Hamas included.

What protestors are furious about is that Israel is more effective at being disproportionate in retaliation than Hamas and its Iranian supporters were in their preemptive mass murdering.

Targeting innocent civilians? Hamas is among the current greatest offenders in the world.

It rockets Israeli cities without warning. It mass murders Jews in their beds during peace. It exposes Gazans to mortal danger by impressing them as human shields. Hamas shoots those who refuse.

The "rules of war" are violated by Hamas daily. Such protocols require combatants to wear uniforms not to blend in with civilians, not to use them as shields, not to murder noncombatants, not to rape them, not to mutilate them, and not to execute civilians without trial.

Yes, all of the accusations levied on Israel are actually psychological projection by Islam (and their millions of useful idiots on the Left). The virulent anti-Semitism that overlays the psychological projections also come directly from Islam. It is NOT "islamophobic" to state this—the history of Islam in the region is clearly documented as a history of subjgation and conquest. Islam's guiding books are not kind to Jews, repeatedly suggesting their subjugation or slaughter. Despite desparate attempt to soften the palestinians support for Hamas, polling indicates that a majority continue to support the Islamist death cult that leads them, along with its unabashed advocacy of genocide against the Jews.

The college snowflakes who have turned into anti-Semitic attack dogs prefer to live in leftist fantasy land, where psychological projection reigns. In the real world, history rules and in that world, the Left is shown to be profoundly ignorant at best, and in their support for Hamas, downright evil.

Israel at War—Climate Change

There's really nothing that connects the israel-Hamas war to climate change, but wait ... apparently there is.

It's fair to state that the apocalyptic climate change movement is nothing more than yet another example of the normalization of insanity, orchestrated by the Left with the intent of controlling the lives of every person in the West—other countries are generally exempt. It is an authoritarian movement led by leftist elites throughout North America, the EU, and a few countries in other parts of the world. Those elites are quick to recommend draconian mandates (that do not apply to their private planes, yachts, and vacation homes) that will do little or nothing to "save the planet." but will be guaranteed to reduce the freedoms and the living conditions of normal people across the globe.

But how does any of this apply to the Hamas-Israel war?

Enter Saint greta Thrunbeg. Greta is the spokesmodel for the aspocalyptic climate cult. Along with other great scientists like John Kerry and Al Gore, Greta pinches her cherubic face dramatically and tells us that we're all gonna die unless we stop using gas stoves, jettison our private cars, stop eating meat, move into a 10' x 10' living space, and otherwise repent the damage we have done to Mother Earth. And members of the Left swoon at here every word.

Greta is a Marxist, although she may not yet understand that categorization. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that as a guest at the latest climate conference, COP28, you know, the one where global elites jet in on their private planes, pontificate on how the rest of us must sacrifice to "save the planet," and then fly off to southern climes where they live in their 10,000 square foot second homes and board their 80+ foot yachts to sail around with their contemporaries.[1]

At the conference, Greta, along with many of her leftist pals, decided that the most important thing to talk about wasn't the climate, but rather her pro-Hamas position. Nellie Bowles comments:

... wanting clean air means wanting Israel destroyed, of course. Climate movement leader Greta Thunberg has been insistent upon that, turning an eco-rally into an anti-war rally (“there can be no climate justice without international solidarity”) and this week chanting simply “crush Zionism.” How about the Sunrise Movement, America’s primarily youth environmental group? They’ve tweeted more various deranged war stances than anything eco since October 7. Anyway, call me crazy and old-fashioned, but I didn’t used to think clean air required killing Jews. But Greta tells me it does. Therefore, I am joining Hamas, for environmental reasons.

Greta is young and immensely ignorant the the science that governs the climate, but that doesn't excuse her support for Hamas, a genocidal death cult that is an existential threat to Israel. Even worse, Hamas and the palestinians (I'm beginning to think their generally one in the same) couldn't give a damn about the climate, except as it might be used to further their evil propaganda. Greta is there to help them out.

FOOTNOTE:

[1]  As if to punctuate the utter hypocrisy of those who lecture all of us on climate Change, Alex Berenson reports on an unintentionally comical story about a couple who decided to build a "sustainable" cottage on Cape Cod. If you want to smile at the cluelessness of the writters and editors of the hard left New York Times, give it a read.