Home » Biden insisted on aid for the Gazans, but where did it go?

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Biden insisted on aid for the Gazans, but where did it go? — 20 Comments

  1. I suspect that some of the people throwing Israel to the wolves are just trying to prevent the wolves from attacking THEM.
    I also suspect that it won’t work. Just because you don’t want to fight someone doesn’t mean that they don’t want to fight you.

  2. “Today is day 500 for the hostages, and it’s been marked in Israel by intense demonstrations and demands for the hostages’ return. I’ve written many posts about the hostages, so I won’t belabor the point again. I’ll just briefly repeat that the demands and pressure should be focused on Hamas and Gaza, and that those demands should come from the entire world.”

    Who was captured by Hamas 1) Left Wingers from Left Wing Kibbutzim 2) Concert Goers from the Psychedelic Tantric Festival 3) Tatzpitanyot female soldiers abandoned by the IDF Hierarchy.

    The rallies in Israel for The Hostage Deal are 99% from The Left. The whole country wants their people back but the Left is using the hostages to stop Israel from crushing Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and finally Iran. The demonstrators hate Netanyahu as much as they hate Hamas.

    Since October 7th the number of Israel Jews allowed a gun permit (a sidearm) has gone up by around 50,000 meaning that the Left still does not trust its own Jews to protect themselves, leaving an estimated 95% of the non-IDF, non-police Israelis to throw pots and pans at Muslims with guns and knives. Oh, if you are one of the lucky ones with a semi-automatic or a revolver you also have a restricted amount of ammunition you are allowed to have.

    I support Israel 100% but sometimes its policies and laws are baffling.

  3. So did democrats, who I’d think supported Biden’s insistence on “getting aid to Gazans”, truly not know it was mostly going to Hamas, not care, or think it was a small price to pay for some aid getting through? There is also the insidious thought that they knew and liked the idea of most of it going to Israel’s enemy.

  4. ”…most of the world is silent or even in sympathy with Hamas, and the demands in Israel seem to be aimed only at the government of Israel to capitulate.”

    So the world, including much of Israel, demands that Israel capitulate to Hamas, and America demands that Ukraine capitulate to Russia. It even threatens Europe with removing American troops, leaving them at the mercy of a rebuilt and modernized Russian military, if they don’t play along.

    It seems that despite the election the West really does want to commit suicide.

  5. ”…the Left still does not trust its own Jews to protect themselves, leaving an estimated 95% of the non-IDF, non-police Israelis to throw pots and pans at Muslims with guns and knives.

    Yup. Suicide.

  6. mkent

    Israeli Jewish thinking is an enigma. The take hostages release terrorist cycle (ad nauseum), severe restrictions on owning firearms of a population surrounded by enemies, relegating their defense to technology. To quote Bloom County: “Yep, that’s a stumper.”

  7. Richard F. Cook; John Galt III:

    I certainly don’t think their hostage exchange attitude is a stumper, although I can understand why someone might think it is.

    Israel is a very small country, and most people are only one or two degrees of separation from a hostage. But in addition, Jews consider themselves not just a nation or a religion, but a people. In terms of DNA, for various complicated reasons having to do with Jewish history and genetic bottlenecks, Jews do tend to actually be closely related to each other in the biological sense. But I think even more important than that is the Jewish reverence for every single life. They are, in that respect, quite the opposite of Gazans.

    Please watch this video, starting at 39 seconds, for an in-depth discussion of Jewish religious law on the subject. It is very interesting and might shed some light on the subject for you.

    I also wrote the following in a previous post:

    Many people believe that if Israel did not negotiate for the freedom of the hostages, the refusal would end hostage-taking by Islamic terrorists such as Hamas. I disagree. I think hostage-taking is a win for Hamas no matter what happens. They get the pleasure of having total control of the hostages. What a sense of power! That part of their motivation is similar to what drove someone like Ariel Castro, the man who kidnapped and tortured the three young girls in Cleveland, Ohio, for many years.

    Not only can the Hamas kidnappers inflict pain and suffering on the hostages, and wield the power of life and death over them and release periodic videos of their pathetic state, but they cause the hostage families and millions of Israels and Israeli-sympathizers around the world to suffer. The taking of hostages – whether Israel bargains for their lives or not – also increases division and anger within Israel. These phenomena are their own rewards to those who hate Jews, Israel, and Israelis. Getting terrorists back in an exchange is a bonus, but it is not the only point and IMHO it may not even be the most major point of the whole undertaking.

    On the gun control issue – first of all, there is a lot of military gun ownership in Israel. And since 10/7, Israel has relaxed civilian gun ownership laws. Please see this:

    Before October 7, anyone with a gun was usually in the military and a common sight in Israel. But guns are now even more ubiquitous as Israeli government has moved to loosen the rules around gun ownership by fast-tracking the permitting process.

    There is also fear of them being used in conflicts with Israel’s Arab population. Do you allow the Arab population of Israel to arm, and if not, won’t that be propagandized as racism? It’s actually a fairly complicated issue.

  8. John Galt III:

    Where did you get your figures on how much Israeli gun ownership has gone up? Is it a recent figure? I can’t find a current figure. I think your figure might be low. I did find something that says they’ve been issuing 3K permits a day, at least for a while.

    And this article, which is 2 months old, says that since October 7, 188K permits have been issued.

  9. Today I was knocked out by this video.
    _____________________________________

    –“Israelis Poured Billion Tons of Unsalted Water Into a Desert, Few Years Later Result Was Unexpected”
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8HcGK6NoPU

    _____________________________________

    It is flat astonishing what Israelis have done with their land. If humanity were as good with the rest of the planet, it would be paradise.

    Compare and contrast what the Gazans and Hamas have done with their beachfront property on the Mediterranean. Not to mention the billions of dollars in aid they have received.

    I wonder how much Arab/Muslim hatred of Israel is fueled by their shame and resentment of Israel’s accomplishments.

    Clickbait answer — Israelis are growing a forest in the Negev desert.

  10. @ huxley > “Israelis Poured Billion Tons of Unsalted Water Into a Desert, Few Years Later Result Was Unexpected”

    Fascinating!

    Look at the map at minute 7:21- you can visually see the border between Israel and the West Bank.

    Can you imagine what the Middle East would look like if the Arabs had accepted Israel and worked with the Jews on improving the entire area, instead of wasting unfathomable millions of dollars and who knows how many lives trying to eradicate them?

    John Lennon maybe wasn’t so wrong to “Imagine” some desirable goals, but you can’t get there with his prescriptions.
    https://genius.com/John-lennon-imagine-lyrics

  11. @ John Galt > “the Left still does not trust its own Jews to protect themselves,”

    Regardless of the number of permits issued after 10/7, and the alleged fears about arming Arabs in Israel (some are pro-Hamas, others are serving loyally in the IDF and other areas), the control of guns is very familiar anywhere the Left has power.

    https://thenewneo.com/okay-im-going-to-defend-margaret-brennan-of-abc-just-a-teeny-tiny-little-bit/#comment-2788906
    TommyJay > “I’ve read that the Weimar laws regulating personal firearms made it easy for the Nazis to confiscate them. All firearms had to be itemized and registered, annually, I believe. So the Nazis just went down the existing lists.”

  12. Another aspect in the Israel video at 15:00 is the use of solar “farms” for power — in a place where they actually make sense.
    (But they are still net energy sinks because of manufacture and disposal, although maybe the Israelis have addressed those problems as well.)

  13. After the Israeli video, my autoplay brought up this very interesting explanation of entropy and heat engines.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxL2HoqLbyA

    Would enjoy hearing what our physicists think about the video.
    I thought the presentation was very good, but don’t know the science itself well enough to judge its accuracy.

  14. Murder, rape, sodomy, torture, and abduction in the pursuit of social progress is no ethical vice. Then when Israel responded to the Hamasidals, they raised their women, children, and others as human shields to protect their terrorists, profits, and garner empathetic support. It worked.

  15. Neo

    I understand what Israel considers itself to be. However, when do they consider the eventual endpoint? Do they continue a course of action that feeds hostage taking? That is the issue at hand for me.

  16. Richard F Cook:

    They consider the endpoint to be the destruction of Hamas. But at the moment they consider that they must get the hostages back. And as I wrote, hostage-taking would work for Hamas even if Israel never got a single one back.

    Also, Israel, like all non-totalitarian countries, is not a single unit with one mind. There are huge differences of opinion on most issues.

  17. Another aspect in the Israel video at 15:00 is the use of solar “farms” for power — in a place where they actually make sense.
    (But they are still net energy sinks because of manufacture and disposal, although maybe the Israelis have addressed those problems as well.)

    AesopFan:

    Glad you appreciated the video. I don’t know how well Israelis have worked out solar for the long term, but they certainly are in a place where solar makes sense.

    I had an interesting chat with Chat recently about energy sources. Chat agreed with me that solar and wind aren’t ready for prime time, and nuclear is the sensible way to go. Excerpt:
    ____________________________________

    I agree with you—we shouldn’t gamble on solar and wind magically working out. Nuclear is ready now, and failing to use it is a self-inflicted crisis. The real problem isn’t technological—it’s political and ideological resistance.

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