They Kill, While Our Government Tweets and Deletes…. If wild reports are true that the inhuman Hamas will execute dozens of civilian hostages, and if it is further accurate that there are rumored Americans among them—and if Americans then are to be executed by Hamas—aside from a military response, the United States will have to change radically its policies in the Middle East. In the last 32 months they have been proven utterly disastrous. Hamas has gone full ISIS, and is now in addition reportedly beheading captured Israeli soldiers. Note that the Mahmoud Abbas, “president” for life of the  PNA, and a recipient of U.S. aid, has been cheering on Hamas. So of course have the usual suspects, such as the hard Western Left, the Ivy-League pampered student crowd, the Squad constituencies, the Taliban, Qatar, especially Iran, the parent of the current mass killing, and even Turkey. Is it the mass mutilations, the rapes, the desecrations of corpses, the beheadings, the murdering of women, the elderly, and children, that so excites them all—as if they were gleefully watching sacrificial victims marched up to the top of an Aztec temple in ancient Tenochtitlán? Or rather is their frenzy due to unspoken terror that Hamas at last has gone too far in its premodern savagery? There are now no more of its patrons with the power to call off the IDF. And so they may finally get the existential war that Hamas always for decades had bragged about and begged for. And the proper response to all this here in the U.S.? All monies to the West Bank and Gaza should be immediately cut off. The Iran transfers, if our State Department’s pleas are correct that they are not yet finalized, should be stopped immediately. Sanctions and embargos should be placed on all Iranian exports. The alternative would be to keep subsidizing those who provide the wherewithal for murderers, rapists and precivilizational mutilators. If it is true that Hamas killer-masterminds have been residing in Qatar, and, as often has been alleged, enjoying Qatar as a financial clearing-house for terrorist operations, and given Qatar has been blaming Israel for its own murdered, then why do we persist in basing the United States Central Command (USCC) and United State Air Force Central Command (USAFCC) at Qatar government facilities? There are, of course, realist arguments for our relationship with Qatar. But the world in the Middle East has now irrevocably changed and we need to make the necessary adjustments and separate from this de facto Al Jazeerist enemy. Expect some terrorists to attempt to join the swarm at our open border. And soon “refugees” from Gaza and the West Bank will be likely demanding asylum here in the Great Satan. In reaction, we should not only bar all travel from Palestinian territories into the US, as well as from Iran and Qatar, but yank all visas of any of those nationals who currently reside in the U.S. and send them home to enjoy the advantages now offered on nightly video displays in their own native countries. The national security team of this administration—gifts from the failed Obama administration that is responsible for much of the current Middle East mess— remains confused and inept. And that’s a charitable assessment. It of course starts at the top.  Joe Biden is neither physically nor cognitively up to the task of Commander in Chief in a crisis. He has more or less disappeared other than offering an occasionally brief appearance where he mumbles about standing with Israel and then vanishes again. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken recently deleted a tweet calling for an immediate cease-fire–music to the ears of Hamas and Iran. Why? Does he believe it is moral to allow Hamas to murder 900 Jews, beat their chests about such savagery, and then head home with human trophies to be tortured and executed without a response? Blinken  noted that he and the Turkish foreign minister had talks that led to such an absurd statement. And what about Turkey, the erstwhile Obama key to the Middle East? Its intrusive armed drone was shot down recently in Syria by the US Air Force and remains an unapologetic pro-Hamas partisan. And whether long-term it can remain in NATO—long opposing Sweden’s entry, chronic overflights of the Greek islands in the Aegean, supplier of weapons to Russia, threatening to send missiles into Athens, a security risk anytime it receives US weapons—is a real concern, given it has the largest, non-US army in NATO and hosts a nuclear-armed U.S. base. Blinken also blasted critics who deplored his outreach to Iran, disparaging them as misinforming and misinformed. He is petulant because he knows that the Iranian expectation of an upcoming $6 billion US-driven cash transfer (another sick idea to buy back hostages from a murderous Tehran) gives them in the here and now fungible opportunities to send more cash and arms into the hands of anti-Israeli terrorists. As far as Iran’s role in the Hamas orgy of killing, Blinken also declared that there is no evidence of "anything that shows us that Iran was directly involved in this attack, in planning it or in carrying it out.” No one but you, Secretary Blinken, believes that. When one remembers Blinken’s Palestinian Affairs office in the State Department and its even worse ceasefire tweet, which, like Blinken’s, disappeared without comment, the appointment of the Iranian megaphone Robert Malley (currently under investigation by the FBI) as our point man on the bankrupt Iran Deal, and Blinken’s recent brag about all the hundreds of millions of dollars we have sent to the Palestinians, the picture is one of partisan incompetence. That pattern goes all the way back to the 2021 Chinese humiliation in Anchorage of both Blinken and Jake Sullivan. Or perhaps both were suspect even earlier when we recall it was campaign honcho Blinken who on the eve of the 2020 election apparently thought up the nasty idea of calling on ex-interim CIA director Mike Morell to round up 51 intelligence “authorities” to lie to the American people that the Hunter Biden laptop under FBI wraps was somehow a product of “Russian disinformation” and not authentic (a claim even Hunter Biden could not make). That gambit was designed to fuel Biden in the upcoming debate and indeed warp the election itself. And it did. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has a similar politicized record, as one of the principles seeding the 2016 Clinton-campaign lie that a mythical Trump server was communicating with the Russians and thus proof of “Russian collusion”. Sullivan, remember, just a week before the Hamas slaughter assured us that "The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.” So Hamas kills, while we tweet and delete….

A 50th Anniversary War? Why did Hamas stage a long-planned, carefully executed and multifaceted attack on Israeli towns, soldiers, and civilians—one designed to instill terror by executing noncombatants, taking hostages, and desecrating the bodies of the dead? And how were the killers able to enter Israeli proper in enough numbers to kill what could be hundreds and perhaps eventually wound what could be thousands? a) Ostensibly, radical Palestinians wanted to stop any rumored rapprochement between the Gulf monarchies—the traditional source of much of their cash—and Israel, by forcing the issue of Arab solidarity in times of “war”, especially through waging a gruesome attack aimed at civilians and encompassing executions and hostage taking. Iran likely was the driving force to prompt the war—given its greatest fear is a Sunni Arab-Israeli rapprochement. b)  Arab forces have had only success against Israel through surprise attacks during Israeli holidays, as in the Yom Kippur War (i.e., was it any accident that the present attack began 50-years almost to the day after the October 6, 1973 beginning of the Yom Kippur War?). And so they struck again this Saturday during Simchat Torah, coming at the end of a weeklong Jewish celebration of Sukkot—in hopes that others will join in as happened in 1973. (So much for the Arab warnings not for Westerners to conduct war during Ramadan). c) Hamas may have reckoned that recent Israeli turmoil and mass leftist street protests over proposed reforms of the Israeli Supreme Court had led to permanent internal divisions and thus a climate of domestic distraction if not an erosion of deterrence. But, more importantly, in a larger sense the Biden administration has contributed both to the notion that Hamas was a legitimate Middle East player, and to the perception that the U.S. was backing away from its traditional support for Israel—to the delight of Hamas—based on the following inexplicable policies: 1) In February Secretary of State Blinken had bragged that not only had the Biden administration resumed massive aid to the PLA cancelled by Trump, but cumulatively had transferred $1 billion—even as Palestinian authorities bragged that they would continue to pay bounties to the families of “martyrs” (i.e., those killed while conducting terrorists attacks against Israel). And millions of American dollars also went into Gaza, run by Hamas—despite the Biden administration’s efforts to keep mostly quiet the resumption of such inexplicable support. In this regard, note the current shameful State-Department (“U.S. Office of Palestinian Affairs”) website news release that was posted after today’s attack. It ended with this quite embarrassing, morally equivalent admonition: “We urged all sides to refrain from violence and retaliatory attacks. Terror and violence solve nothing.” "All sides?" "Refrain from retaliatory attacks?” So Israel is the moral equivalent of terrorists executing civilians and brutalizing their corpses? And the IDF then is not supposed to retaliate against these killers? This Biden State Department insanity cannot stand. So expect some apparatchik to take down this Munich-like posting as soon as possible. 2) The Biden administration had recently released some $6 billion to Iran through a prison swap deal that saw South Korea hand over embargoed Iranian money to Qatar—despite Tehran’s  increased anti-Israeli rhetoric and its loud brag about the escalation. We should assume money for rockets (Hamas claims they have launched 5,000, and have received 100,000 of them via the Damascus airport) and weapons in general for Hamas were supplied by Iran, which again is likely the chief catalyst for this surprise attack. 3) Almost immediately, after his inauguration Biden mobilized to resume the bankrupt Iran deal. And in unhinged fashion he appointed the anti-Israeli bigot, pro-Iranian journalist Robert Malley as America’s chief negotiator. Note that Malley is now under FBI investigation for security breaches, involving disclosing classified U.S. documents and also for allegedly helping pro-Iranian activists and propagandists land influential billets inside the U.S. government. In short, there was a general Hamas and Iranian perception that the Biden administration had resumed the discredited Obama madness of empowering Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas. This discredited agenda was to “balance” the power of Israel and the moderate Arab Gulf governments to achieve “creative tension”, exacerbated by Biden’s loathing of the government of Benjamín Netanyahu (who has been snubbed by Biden and never invited for an official visit). Note as well that the Biden administration has siphoned off key weapons and munitions from stockpiles inside Israel to transfer them to Ukraine. The so-called “War Reserve Ammunition—Israel" is all but depleted of just the sorts of weapons needed in the present crisis. In this regard is there not a pattern here? Upon the ascension of Biden and his woke military agendas, we saw the following: the complete humiliation of the U.S. in Kabul in its most shameful flight in 50 years and greatest abandonment of equipment in its history; followed by Vladimir Putin’s opportunistic invasion of Ukraine; followed by China’s new belligerence and escalating threats to Taiwan; followed by Turkey’s new de facto alliance with Russia and recent drone encounter with the U.S. air force in Syria; followed by the Hamas/Iranian inspired attack on Israel—with more to come unfortunately. And will Biden finally get the message from the attacks on the Ukraine and Israeli borders, that borders matter and we too are being invaded, with the encouragement of the Mexican government and to the advantage of the cartels whose fentanyl exports kills 100,000 Americans a year? What to expect in Israel? Expect the following: the usual Hamas/terrorist selling and/or execution of Israeli hostages, the use of Israeli hostages as “human shields” in Gaza,  the bargaining/sale of the remains of Israeli dead, occasional killings of Jews inside Israel by Arabs who falsely believe there will be a winning Middle East-wide existential war against Israel. And finally, a devastating Israeli counter-response that will eventually earn a U.S. rebuke. What should the U.S. instead do? It should quit talking to Iran and restore full sanctions against it. It should cut off all aid immediately to all the Palestinians. It should undertake a 1973-like massive arms lift of key munitions to Israel and warn Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and others in the Middle East not to intervene or else, given that Israel will need several weeks to deal with Hamas and Gaza. And if it shows any hesitation or weakness, other terrorist groups will opportunistically jump in.