The New Neo

A very depressing and yet insightful podcast from Caroline Glick:

And from her sister Bonnie Glick, we have this article. Here’s an excerpt that reminds us that something similar had come through a different source a few weeks earlier:

Out of thin air, on May 6 Hamas agreed to the ceasefire terms. Only, what actually happened was that the terms they agreed to were not the negotiated terms that the US, Qatar, and Israel had seen. Indeed, Egypt edited the ceasefire terms in such a way that Hamas would get a “win” and say they accepted the terms, but the terms, as edited, were outrageous.

Here’s the heart of Bonnie Glick’s essay:

Egypt built a formidable border wall, something Donald Trump could not even imagine in a fever dream for America. It is impenetrable, militarized, and closely guarded with Egyptian troops and security forces. The way through it for Gazans seeking to get out of Gaza? Baksheesh. Upwards of $5,000 per person. It has also been a gateway for international aid and smuggling into Gaza resulting in over $88 million in profit to the holder of the border keys.

The holder of those keys is a Bedouin tribal leader named Ibrahim al-Organi, now the wealthiest man in northern Sinai. But how could an ex-con smuggler rise to a position of border control prince? Through connections to the Egyptian government, Organi has cultivated extremely close ties with Egyptian President al-Sisi, and more significantly, with al-Sisi’s son, Mahmoud. General Mahmoud al-Sisi is the Deputy Chief of Egyptian intelligence and he sits on Organi’s board.

Here’s another good discussion of the Biden forces’ unilateral declaration of a peace plan:

Some people disagree with much of this. One is David Horovitz (note the “v” rather than the “w”). His piece is extremely convoluted in its reasoning and he practically ties himself in knots trying to express what he’s saying, but here’s the headline and subtitle: “Biden’s fateful, carefully timed, and highly complex challenge to Netanyahu and Hamas: It seems the PM is being asked to choose between his own interests and Israel’s, while Hamas is urged to consent to its own demise. But maybe there’s a more limited US game plan.” That’s a mouthful, but I think this is the gist of it:

All of the above brings us to the possibility — I stress, the possibility — that Biden himself and his team do not actually envisage the Israeli proposal playing out as specified, and are in fact seeking more immediate goals with only a vaguer hope of long-term fateful change.

The Israel-Hamas conflict is a zero-sum game: Israel wants to destroy Hamas; Hamas wants to survive and get back to destroying Israel. Neither side will agree to terms that definitively thwart its core goals.

By extension, therefore, complete clarity from Biden would have doomed the deal he is more realistically trying to achieve — which may be for the implementation of the first phase, but perhaps only the first phase, of a hostage-truce agreement.

That way, at least many of the living hostages get to come home from Hamas captivity.

That way, just possibly, too, a modicum of calm is restored at Israel’s northern border.

That way, more humanitarian aid enters Gaza. Global hostility to Israel recedes at least a little. Smotrich and Ben Gvir leave the coalition and Gantz stays. All good news from the Biden administration’s point of view and, it believes, from Israel’s too.

Even this more limited process does not obviate the danger of Hamas securing the release, early in phase one, of extremely dangerous terror chiefs into the West Bank, a marked escalation of terror from that front, and Hamas terminating the deal early, with very few hostages released.

Ya think? In other words, the whole thing is absurd. We don’t even know how many living hostages there are, and Israel is supposed to negotiate for “players to be named later”? And give up hundreds and hundreds of terrorist/murderers in the bargain? And stop fighting? And do Biden or Obama or Blinken et al actually think Hezbollah will stop the pressure on Israel for more than a short while (if that) in order to fool the world into thinking something has changed? The whole proposal is sickening, and sickeningly cynical, even as an idea.

At the mention of Lebanon I’m reminded of something else that Biden said when he debated Sarah Palin back in 2008, in the good old days when he possessed whatever faculties he had at his best. To refresh your memory:

Said Biden of the Bush administration’s supposed Middle East follies:

“When … along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Huh?

Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?

As if America’s NATO allies would have gone in the first place.

But hey, as long as it makes Biden sound presidential.

After that debate, the MSM praised Biden’s horse manure to the skies. They’re still doing it.