I am so weary of starting posts by asking, “Is anyone at all surprised at this?” But – is anyone at all surprised by this?:
An Israeli official says that Jerusalem has received Hamas’s response to the hostage release and ceasefire deal offer presented by US President Joe Biden late last month, and that the reply from the terror group effectively rejects the proposal. …
The official adds that Hamas has changed the main parameters of the proposal.
The statement comes after Hamas announced that it had submitted a response to Qatari and Egyptian mediators expressing “readiness to positively” come to a deal in the ongoing war in Gaza, sparked by the terror group’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel.
The Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad response to Israel’s latest hostage-ceasefire proposal reportedly includes amendments to the offer, including a new timeline for the hostage release and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza.
The entire attempt to negotiate with Hamas is a bleak and completely unfunny joke. Hamas, unlike most parties to a war, is not only completely unconcerned with how many non-fighters it loses, it actively wants to lose civilians (or what passes for civilians in Gaza) in order to win the propaganda war.
And in the propaganda war, Hamas is doing very well indeed. The only reason it’s doing well in that latter war is that much of the world swallows its lies. In addition (as I’ve also said many times), the Hamas leaders are not dumb. They took all the hostages in the first place because they knew it would force Israel – and the Biden administration – to negotiate no matter what was happening in the larger war and how badly Hamas might be doing.
Speaking of the Biden administration – why is the US a party to these negotiations? And not just a party, but apparently leading the way? That’s somewhat of a rhetorical question; I’m aware that the administration would like to control Israel and force it into a ceasefire.
And could it be that Blinken is really just this stupid?
You get to a point where you have to question whether Hamas is proceeding in good faith? How about: right from the beginning you know they’re not proceeding in good faith, not even close? Hamas is a terror group dedicated to Israel’s destruction, not to mention the destruction of Jews and the West. They are toying with you. They are laughing at you.
This is a charade, and not just because Hamas keeps refusing these deals. It is also ludicrous because the deals themselves are incredibly favorable to Hamas.
NOTE: And recall that Sinwar, the current head of Hamas, was released from an Israeli prison as part of the deal for a single hostage, Gilad Shalit:
Five years and four months after Shalit was captured by Palestinian militants in southern Israel, a deal was reached between Israel and Hamas to release Shalit in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian and Israeli Arab prisoners. The deal was brokered by German and Egyptian mediators and signed in Egypt on 11 October 2011.
Eight people with suspected ties to the Islamic State have been detained in the U.S., according to several media reports.
The arrests took place in New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles, and the individuals entered the country through the southern border, anonymous sources told The Associated Press. They had been vetted by law enforcement upon their entry, sources said, and there was no indication of their ties to the Islamic State at the time.
You mean they weren’t carrying their ISIS IDs? Odd.
More:
Their connection to the Islamic State group is not immediately clear, but the individuals were being tracked by the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was working with the JTTF and made the arrests, It’s now working to remove them from the country, per the sources.
I’m surprised that the Terrorism Task Force took a break from tracking conservative parents at school board meetings, old-fashioned Catholics, and anyone who ever doubted the 2020 election results, and paid some attention to these guys.
On the other hand, I have become so suspicious of the FBI that I wonder whether this is a case of entrapment. I don’t actually think so, but it is theoretically possible, because the administration might want us to think the FBI is more on the ball concerning actual terrorists in this country than it is. Again, I doubt it, because this story reflects poorly on the administration’s border policies, and that wouldn’t be desirable prior to an election.
More:
The individuals were from Tajikistan and passed through the U.S. government’s screening process after entering the country last spring, the AP reported. …
The individuals crossed the border without proper documents and were released into the U.S. with notices to appear in immigration court. Law enforcement later became concerned with their presence and took action.
They had no documents. As Ace points out, professional smugglers at the southern border regularly advise people to burn their passports to avoid proper vetting, knowing that they’ll be let in. As these guys were. Nice going!
More:
They are in detention and face deportation proceedings now, but an official told CBS that it’s difficult to deport people to Tajikistan due to operational and diplomatic reasons.
How nice.
The article goes on to say that the FBI is aware of heightened terror threats especially since October 7. Actually, I think we’re all aware.
Part of the investigation featured a wiretap which revealed one of the now-arrested individuals was talking about bombs, the sources said.
The concern involved an ISIS offshoot called ISIS-K, which stands for Islamic State Khorasan:
The bureau had been investigating whether dozens of migrants from Uzbekistan crossed the US-Mexico border with the help of a Turkish smuggler tied to ISIS, CNN reported last August. …
With migration continuing at unprecedented levels, federal authorities have already accidentally released migrants into the country who have suspected or known terror ties.
The article goes on to describe how weak Biden’s new order regarding the border is. The entire thing seems quite out of control and has been for a long long time.
It’s been clear for quite some time that the Biden administration is trying to stab Israel in the back. Yesterday this happened at the UN:
The United Nations Security Council on Monday adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution aimed at reaching a three-phase ceasefire deal to end the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.
The resolution was passed by 14 of the 15 permanent Security Council members, with Russia abstaining. Moscow claimed that the parameters of the deal the resolution endorses had not been sufficiently clarified.
Note that this was generated by the US.
More:
Phase one of the proposed ceasefire deal includes “an immediate, full and complete ceasefire” coupled with the release of an unspecified number of hostages—both living and dead—in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinian security prisoners, the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “populated areas” of Gaza, the return of Gaza civilians to their homes throughout the Strip and the scaling up of aid delivery.
Phase two, which would be negotiated between the parties during the first phase, comprises “a permanent end to hostilities” in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages and full withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces from Gaza.
What are they smoking? Of course, this is unenforceable, but it represents the administration’s application of pressure and a public notice that it’s going full steam ahead in this direction in terms of policy for the Israel/Hamas war.
The wording of the resolution calls into question whether Israel would retain operational freedom in Gaza to fully remove Hamas from power, though it “stresses the importance” of the Palestinian Authority returning to power in Gaza.
The Israeli government rejects both P.A. governance of the Strip and leaving Hamas in power.
The PA is Hamas with a slightly prettier public face.
Let’s see, what else is the Biden administration doing? Oh, there’s this about Iran [emphasis mine]:
Why is President Biden still treating Iran as if it were our friend or ally? His actions — such as honoring Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s deceased president, lobbying our European allies not to censure Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s meeting, and ignoring Iran’s steady march to nuclear weapons — make no sense.
Oh, they make plenty of sense if you think of the Biden administration as a continuation of the Obama administration, which cast its lot with Iran and dissed Israel and Netanyahu.
What precipitated Gantz’s departure? Are new elections upon us? How will his decision affect the trajectory of the war?
Two forces are responsible for Gantz’s move: the Biden administration and the far-left, anti-government political campaigners popularly known as the Kaplan force. Gantz joined the government in response to U.S. pressure and a call from the far left to undermine the government from within. He is leaving due to pressure from both.
As Politico reported on Thursday, Biden’s main focus these days is to end the war as quickly as possible. To achieve this goal, he is applying pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to capitulate to Hamas’s demands for a permanent ceasefire.
“The president and his aides are working to make sure Netanyahu is feeling the squeeze from all sides,” the magazine reported.
The report explained that Biden and his team are working not only with international actors but with “Israeli citizens and Netanyahu’s political allies and foes alike.”
I shudder to think what will happen – to the US and the world – if Biden gets a second term. It boggles my mind that more people don’t appreciate the danger.
Apparently the evidence of guilt was overwhelming, because even the Delaware jury has returned guilty verdicts, and it didn’t take long.
On the other hand, I doubt he’ll get much of a sentence – maybe suspended, plus a fine? That would close the books and establish the argument that justice has been served and is even-handed. Of course – as opposed to Trump in NY – Hunter was charged for an actual crime and was almost certainly guilty; his defense arguments were so weak as to be almost ludicrous.
The charges against Hunter in this trial were personal to him and did not involve his father or his uncle, unlike other charges that might have been brought against Hunter – for example, FARA violations – that might have exposed his powerful relatives. I’ll start taking more of an interest if charges of that nature are ever brought. But I think I’m fairly safe in predicting that won’t be happening.
There is that first moment of shock when the hostages are trying to process who these troops are, friend or foe. And then of course all the live fire. Movies try to capture this sort of thing, but this was no movie.
The term “lethal journalism” was coined by Richard Landes, who also came up with the moniker “Pallywood”:
Rigorous fact checking, the attempt to move as close to objective journalism as possible, and non-compliance with trite framing (Israeli Goliath versus the Palestinian David, to cite Landes) are abandoned once many foreign correspondents arrive in Israel. The medievalist historian Landes asserts that many journalists report “Palestinian claims (lethal narratives) as reliable until proven otherwise, while treating Israeli counterclaims as dubious, if not false, until proven true.” …
From a journalist’s perspective, Landes has penned one of the most authoritative books on the collapse of journalism in its coverage of Israel and Palestinians.
He’s been saying all of this for over twenty years, not just post-10/7. Journalism has become “lethal” to Jews and to Israel – and even to Palestinians, to the extent that it gives Hamas a pass for purposely sheltering among them in order to maximize their deaths, stealing from them, indoctrinating them, and often directly murdering them as well. In a future post I hope to take up the reasons I think journalism has become so obviously lethal, but for now I’ll put that aside and simply say it has become even more clear since 10/7 that that is the case.
The rest of this post is a roundup of news around the hostage rescue. I say “rescue” because the lethal journalists at CNN would have you think they were released. Oh well, they’re both words that begin with “re,” right?
And the august BBC has a brilliant question – why didn’t Israel warn the Gazans about the rescue operation? You cannot make this stuff up, but the BBC reporter can:
Among other things – in the gunfight that ensued, it is highly possible not only that many of the dead (most?) were Hamas gunman, but that many of the actual civilians killed (whatever the number) were killed by Hamas shooters, having been caught in the crossfire. We simply don’t know and cannot know at this point, but that doesn’t stop the press from reporting the numbers of people supposedly killed by Israel according to Hamas, and often featuring those numbers in headlines without challenging their veracity.
I want to add some very sad news about the father of one of the hostages. Very sad – he died of an apparent cardiovascular event just hours before the news came out of his son’s release. Some say he died of the stress of his son’s captivity and a broken heart about it, and that’s not hard to believe.
Back to the hostage rescue and the coverage thereof, from Jim Treacher:
Have you ever had one of those days?
You’re just sitting at home minding your own business, guarding the Israeli hostages your Hamas buddies kidnapped after their bloody rampage on October 7. Then, all of a sudden, for no reason whatsoever, a bunch of Zionists bust in and kill you. A lot of you. Hundreds of you, if your terrorist comrades are to be believed.
And for what? Why did so many people need to die just for four Jews? Aren’t your lives important too?
That’s what Hamas supporters are feeling today, because they’re evil idiots.
Can’t argue with that.
And if the word “journalist” comes after the modifier “Palestinian,” it needs to be in scare quotes:
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on Sunday confirmed that three of the four hostages rescued in the recent raid were held at the house of a Gaza ‘journalist.’
Abdallah Aljamal, a Hamas terrorist, posed as a journalist and has written for several media outlets in the past, including Qatari state-owned Al Jazeera.
“Following the completion of [Israeli military and security agency Shin Bet] agency and ISA examinations of reports on the subject, it can be confirmed that Abdallah Aljamal was an operative in the Hamas terrorist organization, who held the hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv captive in his family home in Nuseirat,” the IDF disclosed Sunday.
“The hostages were held captive by Abdallah Aljamal and members of his family in their home,” the IDF statement added.
Apparently his father was a doctor and lived there as well. I use the past tense because they may have been killed during the rescue operation – at least, according to Hamas-friendly sources at EuroMed, a Geneva-based NGO:
“The army immediately executed 36-year-old Fatima Al-Jamal upon encountering her on the staircase. The forces then stormed the house and executed her husband, journalist Abdullah Al-Jamal, 36, and his father, Dr. Ahmed, 74, in front of his grandchildren. The army also shot their daughter, Zainab, 27, who sustained serious injuries.”
Keeping hostages is a war crime. And I also wonder whether any of these people were armed and shooting when they met their demise, or whether the story of their manner of death is even true. Also impossible to say at this point.
The Israeli troops rescuing the hostages met with fierce resistance at various points; their commander Arnon Zamora was killed in the firefight. This describes what kind of a man Zamora was.
Here’s another rumor, possibly true: some of the Israeli rescuers dressed as Arab civilians to gain access. Of course, some Israel-haters find fault with that – probably the same ones who say that Israel should have given warning of what it was about to do.
Biden of course seems to think all of this calls for a ceasefire.
Former peace envoy Dennis Ross said it best today: “The world is upside down when there are those who criticize the Israelis for rescuing their kidnapped hostages. Hamas fires on them, trying to kill those being rescued and their rescuers. The IDF fires on Hamas and civilians get killed. Why is it so hard for some to blame Hamas?” Ms. Albanese, the truth is that no one has encouraged Hamas terrorism more than you. Abusing your UN title, you infamously told Hamas terrorists at their 2022 Conference: “You have a right to resist.” You bear responsibility for encouraging Hamas to attack.
As a UN expert, you should be condemning Hamas for shooting at the hostages and firing rocket-propelled grenades as they tried to escape. You should commend the Israeli officers who shielded the hostages with their bodies to try to protect them. As some brave Palestinians have done today, you should condemn Hamas for deliberately placing hostages in the center of a residential area, and for firing from among civilians today, using them as human shields.
Caroline Glick has a few things to say about all of this, too:
Also:
Israel is the only country on earth that would be criticized for such an operation. I take that back – I think the US would be criticized as well, if the commander-in-chief at the time was named Donald Trump.
ADDENDUM:
Here’s quite a pernicious little CNN video. As it shows footage of the hostages being greeted by families and friends, it simultaneously features a series of scrolling chyrons that indicate suspicion of Israeli accounts and suggest that actually these hostages were probably treated well. “Treated well” together with “hostage” is an oxymoron, however. I’m sure that some hostages were treated somewhat less horribly than others, but that has nothing to do with the fact that being taken hostage is by definition being treated abominably and abusively, and subjects the captive to almost unimaginable stress:
One of the comments I saw at another video about the hostages was this one: “Palestinian gave their life to protect those hostages, even if they don’t have enough to eat, but look those hostages still look fresh and healthy.”
And note how ABC manages to emphasize the negative:
Or rather, they’re not buying what the globalists are trying to force down their throats.
The result of EU elections in France was that Marine Le Pen’s party eclipsed that of Emmanuel Macron, and the latter has called for a snap General Assembly election:
French President Emmanuel Macron is going for broke, calling for a snap election that is likely to deliver big wins for the far right. But it may also knock Le Pen off her stride as she eyes the bigger prize: the presidency in 2027.
That is the maverick gamble that the French president is making after the National Rally’s spectacular win on Sunday evening. The far-right, anti-migration party is projected to win the European election in France with 32 percent of the vote — more than twice that of the president’s centrist liberal party.
These are the designations you read all the time – Le Pen and her party are not just right but far right – I assume for wanting to limit the flow of “migrants”? And Macron is a centrist – I suppose because he’s not a socialist? European politics is quite different from our own – and I’m certainly not an expert on the former. But the gist of what’s going on with Macron seems to be that he believes he’ll do better in the General Assembly election because the rules are different:
As Brussels is viewed as a very distant concern, the European election is usually where the protest vote is expressed most strongly. In contrast, the legislative election is a two-round vote — on June 30 and July 7 — that historically favors more traditional parties, as voters from the left and the right usually rally round the more mainstream candidate to beat the far right.
That’s what happened in 2022. Macron is betting it will happen again. And this is how he characterizes the forces on the right:
The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation and for Europe.
For the left in the US and in Europe, the word “nationalist” is a pejorative. And “demagogues” are the nasty ones on the other side – the right – as well. The root of the word is of interest, however:
When the ancient Greeks used demagogós (from dêmos, meaning “people,” and -agogos, “leading”) they meant someone good — a leader who used outstanding oratorical skills to further the interests of the common people.
Later, it became used with the implication that such a person appealed to the common folk in emotional way: “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power.” In other words, a populist spreading disinformation. Not like those lofty, truth-telling, intellectual, leftist globalists who are above such sordid interests as nationalism.
In Belgium, the Prime Minister has resigned. And in other countries:
Today is the start of a new era in Europe:
?? France: National Rally wins a historic 31.5% of the EU vote, forcing Macron to dissolve the national parliament.
?? Germany: AfD surges to become the 2nd largest party, liberal parties tank.
You could say that Trump was ahead of his times. But I don’t know whether this trend can be sustained. One thing I do know is that I trust the safety and security of the election process in these European countries more than I trust it here.
Britain seems to be an outlier – expected to move further to the left in its July election. But – as I recently heard Melanie Phillips say – the Conservative Party in Britain has proven itself to be quite globalist as well these days.
Who’s Griffin Dunne?, you might ask. He’s an actor I first became familiar with from the Scorcese film “After Hours.” I saw it in a movie theater when it first came out in 1985, and I think that although the word “quirky” serves as a descriptor, it doesn’t even begin to cover how strangely entertaining the film is. Dunne is no conventional leading man, either; he’s a hapless and confused character on the edge of desperation, and yet he manages to make the role bleakly comic as well.
More recently, Dunne surfaced playing another quirky (there’s that word again) character in the very popular TV series “This Is Us.” He grabbed my attention in that one, too, all these years later.
Griffin Dunne’s memoir isn’t the usual Hollywood tell-all stuff either. He came from a famous and literary family, marked by tragedy but also quite loving:
The black comedic vignettes of Dunne’s memoir, befitting a Nathanael West novel, feature the ascendant, fallen, and broken stars of an era when celluloid was still currency. Dunne was “raised in the land of make-believe,” he writes—first in New York, where Elizabeth Montgomery, a struggling actress before she played Samantha in Bewitched, was his babysitter, and then in Los Angeles, where Sean Connery saved him from drowning in a pool. (“A wee bit early for the deep end, sonny,” said James Bond.)
Dunne’s cinephilic and literary family made possible these early Tinseltown encounters. His parents, Dominick and Ellen (Lenny) Dunne, were Hollywood’s mid-sixties “‘it’ couple, invited to every party and hosting their own, big and small,” including a black and white ball that inspired one attendee, Truman Capote, to throw his own more famous one, in 1966. His uncle John Gregory Dunne married the up-and-coming writer Joan Didion; it was at their home that Dunne saw the W-shaped palm trees from a favorite childhood movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, and assisted a young carpenter, Harrison Ford, in building their deck.
Much much more at the link. His sister Dominique was murdered by an abusive boyfriend, and there was a sensational trial which his father wrote about for Vanity Fair. Interestingly, although I hadn’t yet read the piece about Griffin Dunne when I wrote my post today about Dershowitz and OJ, there are some coincidental tie-ins: the article about Griffin’s book says that his father covered the OJ trial for Vanity Fair, and also that in the trial of his daughter’s murderer Sweeney, “Dunne’s father managed to hate the defense attorney ‘even more than he hated Sweeney.’” I think that, as the father of the victim, he can be forgiven that sentiment.
Here’s a little clip from “After Hours” – it doesn’t do it justice, but it will suffice. I highly recommend the film itself:
The judge presiding over former President Trump’s New York criminal trial notified his defense team on Friday of a comment on the court’s public Facebook page that implies one of the jurors discussed the guilty verdict ahead of time.
Fox News obtained the letter Judge Juan Merchan shared with Trump defense attorneys and Manhattan prosecutors.
“‘Today, the Court became aware of a comment that was posted on the Unified Court System’s public Facebook page and which I now bring to your attention. In the comment, the user, ‘Michael Anderson,’ states:
“’My cousin is a juror and says Trump is getting convicted! Thank you folks for all your hard work!!!!’”
The profile for “Michael Anderson” has little publicly available information, but the user identifies himself as a “Transabled & professional sh– poster.”
A Trump campaign official told Fox News Digital they are “investigating the matter.”
There are many things that can be said about this, but the first that comes to mind for me is that “Michael Anderson” didn’t speak to any jurors and is just – as he or she indicates – “shit posting.” A troublemaking troll, in other words. That is actually my leading theory at this point.
The next thing that comes to mind is the outrageous fact that this jury wasn’t sequestered. So the door was opened for such a discussion to have occurred in an incredibly important case, and/or for the jurors to have read or heard the news and/or social media and seen what was being said about the trial. It could have easily been prevented, but it wasn’t.
The next thing that occurs to me is that, if in fact “Michael Anderson” is actually a juror’s cousin (which I tend to doubt), they’ll probably find a way around it. They’ll interview him or her and get the answer that it was just a joke and that no such discussion ever occurred. They’ll interview the juror, who will say the same thing. They’ll interview other jurors and they’ll agree that the verdict wasn’t a foregone conclusion and everyone was as objective as objective could be.
But the next thing that occurs to me is that the Democrats are probably a mite perturbed that the verdict doesn’t seem to have damaged Trump as much as they’d hoped and expected. They may even want to take the opportunity to back away from it and pretend the whole thing never happened. They might see doing so as a way to establish their fairness bona fides: “See, even though Trump is obviously guilty, we want to protect the process and the rule of law by starting over.” They might even wait till after the election, to take away Trump’s claim to martyrdom. I think this approach is unlikely but possible.
As I indicated, I think this whole matter will end up being inconsequential.
