Two of the Israeli hostages are rescued in a complex and daring operation; plus AP coverage of the event

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a video with a few of the details; more can be found here:

New Argentinian president Milei, a friend of Israel who recently visited there, got a present because both hostages – Fernando Marman, 61, and Louis Har, 70 – were originally Argentinian nationals.

From the Times of Israel article I linked:

The joint operation by the police’s elite Yamam counterterrorism unit, the Shin Bet security agency, and IDF began at around 1 a.m. in Rafah, an area that Israeli forces had not yet maneuvered into during their ground offensive against the Hamas terror group.

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said Yamam officers “carried out a very complex action on the premises and the second floor where the hostages were held.” …

He said the forces breached the apartment with explosives at 1:49 a.m., killing the three terrorists guarding the hostages and “hugged and protected Louis and Fernando with their bodies.”

“The troops pulled Louis and Fernando out of the apartment and rescued them under fire, until they reached the safe zone,” Hagari said.

The IDF later released footage from the air showing the rescuers entering a building and strikes hitting the area.

Fighting also broke out in several adjacent buildings, with massive airstrikes carried out against Hamas terrorists in the area of the rescue operation at 1:50 a.m., Hagari said.

The fact that they were on the second floor seems to be a significant reason that Israel was able to carry out this rescue, but as pointed out in the video, this is unusual and most of the hostages are being kept underground. I wish they didn’t release these details, but once they’re released they can’t be unreleased.

AP coverage of the same story is typically slanted against Israel (as are many other MSM stories I found, such as this one, all of which emphasize the numbers of Palestinian dead given out by Hamas, although the articles don’t put it exactly that way). The headline of the AP piece is: “Israeli forces rescue 2 hostages in dramatic Gaza raid that killed at least 67 Palestinians”

So even in the headline we have a tit-for-tat approach in which the Israelis are by implication the bad guys – to rescue two men, they killed at least 67 “Palestinians.” And these are supposedly generic Palestinians, not armed terrorists or terrorists at all. Most people just read the headlines and maybe the first paragraph or two; some just the headlines.

Another AP article by the same three people – who seem to write a lot for AP on this war – also takes Hamas’ word for the number of casualties. The headline for that article also gives no hint that the figures just might be propaganda: “More than 12,300 Palestinian minors have been killed in Israel’s war in Gaza, health officials say.” Who are these “health officials”? The AP does not tell us in that headline (or often in the articles themselves, either), which is no accident.

These headlines are very carefully crafted, as are the articles themselves, to stir up hatred of Israel and sympathy for the Palestinians. The sub-headline of that article edges up to saying the fuller truth but still doesn’t say it directly; this is an art they’ve perfected: “The Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says more than 12,300 Palestinian minors have been killed in Israel’s war.” Why not say these figures are uncorroborated and highly suspect and that the Health Ministry and Hamas are one and the same? You know why; then people wouldn’t be as sympathetic and wouldn’t hate Israel so much, and the AP can’t have that.

Continuing:

More than 12,300 Palestinian minors have been killed in Israel’s war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory said Monday.

Minors made up about 47% of the total number of 28,176 Palestinians killed so far, the ministry said. About 8,400 women were also among those killed.

“Minors” is a legal term. What does it mean? Shouldn’t they define it? Much better for propaganda purposes if they leave it vague, but it usually refers to people under 18 years of age. They don’t want people thinking of 17-year-old and 16-year-old Hamas fighters with guns as being chief among those “minors.” And of course they want the reader to trust this “health ministry” that might be in “Hamas-run” Gaza but certainly isn’t identified as being Hamas itself.

Then the first AP article I linked is repeated, the one on the hostage rescue operation. An excerpt:

Israeli forces rescued two hostages early Monday, storming a heavily guarded apartment in the southern Gaza Strip and extracting the captives under fire in a dramatic raid that was a small but symbolically significant success for Israel. The operation killed at least 67 Palestinians, including women and children, according to Palestinian health officials in the beleaguered territory.

So here we have, “According to Palestinian health officials in the beleaguered territory.” There are those health officials again; no mention of Hamas in that paragraph. And note the adjective “beleaguered,” designed to elicit even more sympathy for the Gazans.

The raid was celebrated in Israel as a victory in the sluggish battle to free the hostages, with more than 100 captives still held by Hamas and other Gaza militants, and briefly lifted the spirits of a nation still reeling from Hamas’ cross-border raid last year. But in Gaza, where civilians have borne a staggering toll since the war erupted on Oct. 7, the operation unleashed another wartime tragedy, with many Palestinians killed or wounded.

Those nasty Israelis, celebrating the rescue of the two while a far larger tragedy occurs in the Gazan neighborhood – another tragedy for the poor innocent Palestinians. No mention that most of these people that Hamas reports having been killed are probably Hamas terrorist themselves. And the grisly October 7, with its terrible attacks on civilians featuring massive sadistic torture and rape is reduced to a “cross-border raid.” That’s quite the eupemism.

Much of the rest of the article is spent in recapping the background of the conflict and describing the hostage rescue. Then, as if we hadn’t already heard this, we hear again:

[The two hostages] were among roughly 250 taken captive during Hamas’ stunning cross-border raid, when an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, according to Israeli authorities. Israeli’s retaliatory air and ground offensive has killed over 28,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, displaced over 80% of the population and set off a massive humanitarian crisis.

You see, what Israel did is so much worse, according to this paragraph. The October 7 massacre is labeled a “stunning cross-border raid” – a fairly neutral word – in which civilians “were killed.” Well, isn’t that what Israel is doing? Killing? No mention that Hamas broke a ceasefire. No mention of the purpose of the “stunning raid” being to kill civilians and to torture and rape them in a manner that was extremely barbaric. Just that a certain number of people were killed by Hamas in a raid, and of course the numbers from these “health officials” are so much greater than any killed in that little October 7 “raid.” Plus, mention of the huge numbers of Palestinians that were displaced, but with a little detail left out: that this was done by Israel to save their lives and leave only terrorists to target, and that Hamas wants the civilians dead and discouraged them from leaving in order that the AP and MSM could write just this sort of story about their deaths.

Then there’s a lengthy description of the wounded in a Gaza hospital. But we already know from many previous experiences that much of this is often staged, so that what is real cannot be ascertained at this point or sometimes at any point (some videos even feature the same actors over and over as victims in different places and with different garb, and at least those can easily be seen to be fake).

NOTE: Another story is that a huge Hamas center for processing data was found under UNRWA headquarters in Gaza.

So, who was the shooter at the Osteen church in Houston? [scroll down for UPDATE]

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s what CNN has to say:

A woman who walked into a popular Texas megachurch Sunday afternoon with a long gun and a young child opened fire before she was killed by law enforcement officers on scene. The gunfire left the child in critical condition and another man injured, officials said.

Authorities are now probing the shooting at televangelist and pastor Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church – roughly 6 miles from downtown Houston.

The woman, identified in a search warrant as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, entered the church shortly before 2 p.m. wearing a trench coat and backpack and opened fire, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said in a Sunday afternoon news conference.

Officers “shot and killed her in self-defense” after she pointed her weapon at them, according to the search warrant released Monday by the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office.

Female shooters are unusual, but not unheard of. Some recent ones have actually been trans, and although a few outlets have said that Moreno was trans, there is no official confirmation so we still don’t know for sure. However, a previously unheard of thing – as far as I can tell – is for any such shooter in the US to purposely bring a young child to the scene of the planned murder or murders.

Why would anyone do that? The following – which can be found quite far down in the story, might just be a hint:

The shooter used an AR-15 that had “Free Palestine” written on it, according to a federal law enforcement source. Investigators are trying to determine whether she was politically motivated or a disturbed individual, the source said.

Well, how about “both”? It’s an old Palestinian custom to use children either as human shields to discourage authorities from shooting, or as tools to implicate authorities for cruelty if the child is hit by their return fire.

And you better believe that, if the weapon was reported to have had something like “Donald Trump is the greatest!” on it, that would have been the CNN lede and headline.

The right-leaning NY Post covers the story quite differently. The transgender possibility is in the headline, and the “Free Palestine” detail is in the lede sentence.

More on the possible transgender angle:

Moreno had a criminal history dating back to 2005 and was previously arrested under the name Jeffery Escalante, according to local station KHOU, raising questions over whether the shooter was transitioning before or at the time of the attack.

A 2022 photo taken when Moreno was booked into jail at Fort Bend County, Texas, listed her sex as female, according to the website Mugshots Zone.

I haven’t seen any article mentioning the obvious, which is that Moreno/Escalante seems to be Hispanic. The shooting occurred right before a Spanish-language service, as well.

At any rate, this sort of incident is why many houses of worship have armed guards these days. It’s a wise move.

UPDATE 6:40 PM:

Now it is reported that the shooter was a biological woman with “a history of mental illness,” and that the child was her 7-year-old son.

There’s also this:

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said it remained too soon to identify a motive for the shooting, but officials said they were looking into a dispute involving the shooter and the family of the shooter’s ex-husband, adding that investigators also found antisemitic writings by the shooter.

Hassig also said the rifle used in the shooting had a “Palestine” sticker on the buttstock.

This sounds as though the incident may have involved a combination of factors: a mentally disturbed person, a family conflict, and recent current events giving the perp’s rage a pro-Palestinian political form and perhaps even the idea of taking her child with her as a combination of shield and sacrifice. The child was shot in the head, whether by the woman or the security guards we don’t know, but the exchange of gunfire occurred in a hallway and lasted several minutes.

Today is Lincoln’s birthday

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited version of a previous post.]

His actual birthday, that is.

When I was a child, Lincoln had a birthday all his own. Nowadays he’s lumped in with other presidents. And who knows where he’ll be in the future?

When I was a child, Lincoln also fascinated me more than any other president. One reason was a superficial one: he was just about the strangest-looking president ever (see this). Another was his eloquence, and a third was his sense of humor.

Which brings us to a series of Lincoln quotes. This first one seems especially apropos today:

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

More:

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

It’s not me who can’t keep a secret. It’s the people I tell that can’t.

I hope this prediction is correct:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

And of course, one of the most famous:

If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

Natasha and Andrei dance

The New Neo Posted on by

Same scene, two versions of War and Peace.

Hollywood, circa 1956. Ferrer and Hepburn were married in real life at the time:

Here’s the Russian version made in the 1960s, which I saw in movie theaters long ago. I found it a mixed bag, and extremely long; it’s over seven hours, and I saw it in segments. But the length and scope allowed the filmmakers to take their time with scenes such as this one. I also found the actor who played Andrei to lean too heavily towards the reptilian and repellent. Natasha was excellent, though:

The Carlson/Putin interview

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s what I think might be one of the most “fair and balanced” discussions of Tucker Carlson’s interview of Putin:

As for what I think of the interview and the fact that Carlson did it – I’m not going to listen to a long monologue by Putin, which is basically what this interview was. I’ve seen some clips, but I’ve already read many of Putin’s speeches about Russian history and Ukraine and I’m already quite familiar with his point of view. Hearing it again doesn’t interest me unless the interview contained something important and new, which this one apparently didn’t.

As for Carlson, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Tucker did this, and that he mostly gave Putin the floor without interruption. That latter point is what I see as the problem, not an interview itself. Carlson’s foreign policy positions in particular have been at odds with mine well before Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. I have long found Carlson’s knowledge of many areas lacking (see this for just one example).

However, I certainly don’t always disagree with Carlson either, especially on domestic matters. But I stopped listening to him long ago. Not that I ever listened to him a lot, but I got tired of yelling corrections at the screen every time he did a piece on foreign policy.

NOTE: Apparently Colonel MacGregor has become his go-to person on the Ukraine war, which surprises me not at all. Here’s my post on MacGregor. Also, here’s a piece about Carlson and the reaction to 10/7; here’s another. Carlson has long reminded me of a more telegenic and preppy Pat Buchanan.

Jerry Sandusky and recovered memory

The New Neo Posted on by

Remember Jerry Sandusky, convicted of many counts involving serious sexual abuse of children? His name came up in a thread yesterday, when commenter “Abraxas” wrote: “I hadn’t heard the name Jerry Sandusky in a while, but the last time I did, people were writing that he may not actually have been guilty, but just may not have known how to defend himself effectively.”

I hadn’t heard a thing about that, and so I became curious and looked it up. I found this extremely disturbing article that introduces quite a bit of room for doubt concerning Sandusky’s guilt, because the accusations appear to have been the result of pressure, guided questioning of a type that occurred mostly in the 1980s but has since been discredited, and “recovered memory.”

I can’t say whether or not Sandusky is guilty, but if you’re interested in the question, I suggest you read the article or at least most of it. He’s eighty years old now and almost certainly will be in prison for the rest of his life.

Not all recovered memories are false, of course. But they are subject to manipulation, and it is my opinion that they should be regarded with great suspicion in a court of law and no guilty verdict should rest on them, particularly when the “recovery” occurs after accusations about the perp have been made by others and publicized, and when the possibility of high monetary rewards for lawsuits are involved.

NOTE: If you’re interested in learning more about recovered memory, please see this book.

Biden the joke

The New Neo Posted on by

The memes write themselves, and they are funny. Go feast your eyes and laugh.

And then cry, because we’re in a terrible mess. But of course, we already knew that the moment Biden took the helm – or the moment his controllers took the helm, with Biden as the front man.

It’s like an old comedy bit: “There’s bad news and then there’s good news, Joe. The bad news is that you’re guilty of mishandling classified documents. The good news is that you’re too senile to be charged.”

Funny? Not funny? Both?

And then there’s Biden’s attempt at course correction, in which he not only seemed like the proverbial “angry old man,” but he also implied that Mexico is next to Gaza. Now, many American voters don’t know much about geography, but even most of them know where Mexico is.

The Democrats cynically ran Joe in 2020, hoping that with COVID no one would be noticing much or caring about his already-evident cognitive decline. Plus, they had confidence they could “rig” the election and win.

Now the Democrats are in trouble, and they are determined to fix it. Perhaps they have a plan, although I believe it will be hard to execute, whatever it may be. But perhaps that plan is merely to rely on Trump’s trials, and those have hit a few snags.

The following plan is unlikely to work very well, however:

Top party operatives are warning Biden aides that the president cannot retreat in response to the special counsel report that fueled concerns over his age and mental faculties. They say President Joe Biden, having largely shied away from interviews and press conferences, needs to be out in public far more.

They want to see him engage with the press and voters in the off-script and punchy exchanges he’s been known for in the past, which they believe will help chip away at concerns about the president’s mental acuity. They say that it’s worth the risk of potential slip-ups that could reinforce the image that he’s declining.

The American public has had three long years in which to observe Biden (those of us who are older have had a lot longer, because he’s been in public life for a half century). They know who he is. But will they care how awful he is, or has demonization of Trump gone on so long and so successfully with enough of the public that it won’t matter, and they’ll vote for Biden anyway? The wild card in these calculations is, of course, the “rigging” factor.

NOTE: I use the word “rigging” because we know that occurred, whereas the allegations of fraud are impossible to either prove or disprove. I’ve written about the latter many many times. Suffice to say that the way the rules were set up, it became impossible to trace ballots effectively enough to prove anything, but the suspicion is there.

So, what’s next for Joe Biden?

The New Neo Posted on by

Certainly not an indictment over the classified papers. But is he going to be pushed out of running in 2024?

I’ve long said that although the Democrats would dearly love to be rid of the Biden albatross as it becomes more clear that it would be increasingly difficult for him to win the election (otherwise they’d just as soon he stay in there), three things stand in the way of his removal: Joe Biden himself, who won’t go quietly; what method to use to accomplish their goal; and who will run in his place. Kamala Harris would of course be the natural substitute, just as Hubert Humphrey was the candidate in 1968 after LBJ surprised as all (how I remember that speech of his) by saying he would not run again. But Harris is another albatross, so the other problem is how to get rid of her without offending too many needed groups such as women and black voters.

Of course, if Joe is doing poorly enough, the powers that be (Obama and the rest?) may think she’s a better bet.

I don’t know whether they’ve figured out the solutions to these knotty problems, but it starts to look like it, although it’s still not crystal clear. I doubt the Hur report would have been issued in its current form if they had no plans. But I don’t pretend to know what those plans are, or how solidified they are. One thing I strongly suspect is that they wouldn’t take Joe out until Trump is undoubtedly the nominee.

Today they’ve been engaged in defending Joe, including in his awful appearance last night. That tells me that they’re probably not planning to remove him any time soon, at any rate.

And some Republicans are calling for Biden to step down. Why? Kamala would be just as bad, and then the Democrats would replace him with someone more likely to win in 2024.

As for who might end up the nominee if it’s not Joe, we have for example Whitmer of Michigan, whose name has been bandied about for some time. I don’t see her as having national appeal – she has a somewhat Cruella vibe, I think. But she probably could deliver Michigan, which is very important. How about Newsom? But they already have California without him; the question is his national appeal, which I also find iffy. Of course, everyone seems to think that Michelle Obama would be a shoe-in if she ran, but would she run? I’m not at all sure about that and have long thought “no.”

Trump will have to remain nimble and flexible in his campaign, because we may not know his opponent’s name till this summer. Not only that, but there is also the question of whether Trump’s trials will go forward, and on what schedule.

What a year.

Elie Wiesel and anti-Semitism

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s an interesting discussion on current anti-Semitism. About two-thirds of the way through (I would have to listen to the whole thing again to find it), the man being interviewed mentions that, at some point not too long before Elie Wiesel died, Wiesel told him he was very discouraged by an ominous rise in anti-Semitism. Wiesel died in 2016, so that conversation must have occurred before that.

From Wiesel’s Wiki page, here is part of a speech he gave in 2005 at the opening of a new building at Vad Yashem (the Holocaust Remembrance Center) in Israel:

I know what people say – it is so easy. Those that were there won’t agree with that statement. The statement is: it was man’s inhumanity to man. NO! It was man’s inhumanity to Jews! Jews were not killed because they were human beings. In the eyes of the killers they were not human beings! They were Jews![

It seems to me that this is applicable to the carnage wrought on Israelis on October 7, 2023. Of course, murderous anti-Semitism is indeed also a subset of “man’s inhumanity to man,” because dehumanization is often part of it and perhaps a necessary one to attain that degree of vicious and violent hatred. But Jew-hatred is probably the most special, enduring, and protean example of it. It goes on and on and on, with a changing face: religious hatred, ethnic hatred, racial hatred, envy and hatred of the “other,” national hatred of Israel, and now neo-Marxist hatred of those labeled “colonizers” and by definition “oppressors.”

Also, the following is interesting in light of recent events [emphasis mine]:

Wiesel was active in trying to prevent Iran from making nuclear weapons, stating that, “The words and actions of the leadership of Iran leave no doubt as to their intentions”. He also condemned Hamas for the “use of children as human shields” during the 2014 Israel–Gaza conflict by running an ad in several large newspapers. The Times refused to run the advertisement, saying, “The opinion being expressed is too strong, and too forcefully made, and will cause concern amongst a significant number of Times readers.”

The word “amongst” cued me that the Times being mentioned there was the British Times. It showed its true colors.

Another topic discussed in that video above is whether Holocaust education has helped, or even mattered, in stemming the tide of anti-Semitism. I think it sometimes has but also sometimes causes resentment and a backlash. Many times – particularly in the comments of blogs on the right, but I doubt it’s limited to that population – I’ve read the equivalent of: “why do we keep hearing about Jewish suffering? What complainers those whiny bastards are! And they’re all stupid leftists anyway so they deserve whatever they get.” The left, of course, has somewhat different concerns, the aforementioned “Jews are dirty rotten colonialists, settlers, oppressors, viciously committing genocide and apartheid.” As we have learned from history, many different groups have found it convenient to scapegoat Jews for whatever reasons come to mind and matter to them.

Steyn loses and Mann wins in “hockey stick” defamation trial

The New Neo Posted on by

The trial was held in DC. Increasingly, that’s all you need to know in order to predict the outcome.

This trial was apparently twelve years in the making, and it’s not over yet because there will be an appeal. Here’s John Hinderaker’s report:

Today the jury returned its verdict in the defamation trial of Michael Mann v. Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn. The verdict was disappointing to those of us who followed the case and thought that Michael Mann presented a pathetically inadequate case. The jury actually agreed: it found that the defendants had defamed Mann, but awarded only a token $1 in damages, since Mann had failed to prove any. But it found that both Simberg and Steyn acted with actual malice–they didn’t actually believe what they said about Mann–and awarded punitive damages in the amount of $1,000 against Simberg, and $1 million against Steyn.

As we’ve seen from the E. Jean Carroll defamation case, juries often express themselves quite prejudicially and vindictively when in comes to setting punitive damages.

More from Hinderaker:

In this case, there was no evidence whatever that Steyn and Simberg didn’t sincerely believe that what they said was true. Indeed, as Mark pointed out in closing argument, he has been saying the same things about Mann’s hockey stick for something like 21 years, and even wrote a book about it.

Ah, but the jurors were mind-readers, and they know better. Or perhaps they just meant to punish anyone who went against the current leftist position on global warming, and to reward those who promote it:

… [T]he case is destined for more years in the appellate courts. In John Williams’ closing argument on behalf of Mann, he said that the jury should award punitive damages so that in the future, no one will dare engage in “climate denialism”–whatever that is–just as Donald Trump’s “election denialism” needs to be suppressed. In 41 years of trying cases to juries, I never heard such an outrageously improper appeal. John Williams should be ashamed of himself, but he won’t be, because this jury apparently bought his argument: they want to make Mark Steyn pay $1 million out of his own pocket, to a plaintiff who suffered no damages but only made an ideological argument, so that no one will, ever again, try to challenge the regime’s global warming narrative. However false that narrative may be.

This is the direction in which the US legal system is going.