The people of Israel are all praying for a miracle. 🧡
“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. He will not let your foot slip—He who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, He who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand; the sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night. The Lord will keep you from all harm—He will watch over your life; the Lord will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.”
(Psalm 121:1-8, Shir LaMa’alot)
שִׁ��יר לַֽמַּ֫עֲל֥וֹת אֶשָּׂ֣א עֵ֭ינַי אֶל־הֶהָרִ֑ים מֵ֝אַ֗יִן יָבֹ֥א עֶזְרִֽי׃
עֶ֭זְרִי מֵעִ֣ם יְהוָ֑ה עֹ֝שֵׂ֗ה שָׁמַ֥יִם וָאָֽרֶץ׃
אַל־יִתֵּ֣ן לַמּ֣וֹט רַגְלֶ֑ךָ אַל־יָ֝נ֗וּם שֹׁמְרֶֽךָ׃
הִנֵּ֣ה לֹֽא־יָ֭נוּם וְלֹ֣א יִישָׁ֑ן שׁ֝וֹמֵ֗ר יִשְׂרָאֵֽל׃
יְהוָ֥ה שֹׁמְרֶ֑ךָ יְהוָ֥ה צִ֝לְּךָ֗ עַל־יַ֥ד יְמִינֶֽךָ׃
י וֹמָ֗ם הַשֶּׁ֥מֶשׁ לֹֽא־יַכֶּ֗ךָּ וְיָרֵ֥חַ בַּלָּֽיְלָה׃
יְֽהוָ֗ה יִשְׁמָרְךָ֥ מִכָּל־רָ֑ע יִ֝שְׁמֹ֗ר אֶת־נַפְשֶֽׁךָ׃
יְהוָ֗ה יִשְׁמָר־צֵאתְךָ֥ וּבוֹאֶ֑ךָ מֵ֝עַתָּ֗ה וְעַד־עוֹלָֽם׃
(תהילים קכ"א:א-ח, שיר למעלות)
Never stop praying.
❤️💔One Year Later Should We Cry or Should We Dance?
It's been 365 days since the October 7th terror attacks in Israel.
The Jewish anniversary of Oct. 7 is Simchat Torah. How do you celebrate Simchat Torah on the anniversary of a massacre?
Am Yisroel Chai!
EVERYONE KNOWS I WOULD NOT SUPPORT A FEDERAL ABORTION BAN, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, AND WOULD, IN FACT, VETO IT, BECAUSE IT IS UP TO THE STATES TO DECIDE BASED ON THE WILL OF THEIR VOTERS (THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE!). LIKE RONALD REAGAN BEFORE ME, I FULLY SUPPORT THE THREE EXCEPTIONS FOR RAPE, INCEST, AND THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER. I DO NOT SUPPORT THE DEMOCRATS RADICAL POSITION OF LATE TERM ABORTION LIKE, AS AN EXAMPLE, IN THE 7TH, 8TH, OR 9TH MONTH OR, IN CASE THERE IS ANY QUESTION, THE POSSIBILITY OF EXECUTION OF THE BABY AFTER BIRTH. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!
A message of solidarity from Lebanese 🇱🇧 singer Carine Bassili to Israel 🇮🇱 and the Jewish people, singing “October Rain” in Arabic. Worth listening and sharing
This is the first time a song in Arabic has been dedicated to Israel as a gift of solidarity.
Bassili decided to translate the song into Arabic following the October 7th massacre against Israel, honoring the 1,200 Israelis who were slaughtered by Hamas and the 101 Israeli children, women, men, and elderly still in captivity in Gaza by Hamas.
Joining this message of solidarity with @carinebassili are vibrant and vocal non-Jewish speakers from across the Middle East, such as:
@ACTBrigitte 🇱🇧
@JustLuai 🇾🇪
@RawaneOsmane 🇱🇧🇸🇾
@MaryamYounnes 🇱🇧
@lalshareef 🇦🇪
Fatema El Harbi 🇧🇭
And myself
Along with many others who couldn’t publish their names for security reasons.
This message of solidarity worth sharing.
An Open Letter to Leftists:
On July 13, 2024 things CHANGED. For too long you have mistaken our TOLERANCE for weakness and it emboldened you. That TIME has come to an END. Things are going to happen FAST now and you will find yourself wondering HOW you got here. So, here’s how.
Kamala says she believes in freedom, but I was put on a secret terror watch list after I publicly criticized her. No one will be safe from political retaliation under a Harris administration. I put my life on the line for this country. Now the government calls me a terror threat.
WOW!!! America is truly waking up!!! This guy completely debunks myths about Trump 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
“Waking up has restored my Patriotism for this country. Waking up has made me respect the American Flag. And waking up made me respect President Trump in a way that I never thought possible.”
Must Watch & Share‼️👇🏼
Judge unseals divorce case involving special prosecutor in Fulton County election case against Trump
Nathan Wade and DA Fani Willis are alleged to have engaged in an improper relationship and benefitted financially from taxpayer dollars.
Read more ⬇️
https://t.co/eiCMifLT8W
“Much more likely, what you are witnessing is part of Hamas’ ongoing psychological and propaganda warfare campaign of demonizing and delegitimizing the State of Israel in the eyes of public opinion.”
Hi, I’m a lawyer. Do want to know what is really meant by a “#proportionate response” under international law? Then read on - and feel free to ask questions!
Under International Humanitarian Law, #proportionality requires that any degree of damage (up to and including death) to #civilians not be “excessive” in relation to the “military advantage anticipated from a strike against a military target.”
We are going to break that down, so everyone understands what exactly that means.
However, first, you should be aware that it is a misnomer that anytime #Palestinian civilians die after an #Israeli strike, it is automatically evidence of an Israeli war crime. This is completely false - the law does not work that way.
Simply, and unfortunately, the international rules of law recognize that civilians are often killed during war; and, most of the time, those deaths are actually not indicative of a war crime.
Instead, the legal test for “proportionality” requires that each individual strike be looked at with a particular balancing analysis.
First, here is a hard and fast rule: the strike must be intended to target a military objective; it is, therefore, an unlawful war crime to strike with the intent of targeting civilians without any military objective whatsoever.
Now, let’s get a little technical while still keeping it simple.
Under the First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions of 1977 at both Article 51(5)(b) and Article 52(2), we know that when #Hamas uses its own population (or Israeli #hostages) as #humanshields - either by using them to shield themselves or to shield their weapons depots - Hamas has, under international law, turned civilians targets into military targets.
That means that when Hamas places weapons caches in and under schools, hospitals, mosques, etc., Hamas has made each of those places legitimate military targets.
So, it has been well-known for many years that Hamas purposefully placed its headquarters underground beneath the al-Shifa Hospital. In doing so, international law holds that the hospital is no longer just a civilian target, it is a legitimate military target.
That does not necessarily give the IDF carte blanche to attack hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.; however, it does mean that an IDF attack on a civilian target that has been made into a military target by Hamas’ use of human shields is not per se illegal under international law.
Instead, such a strike (as is the case with any strike conducted by a military like the IDF), must be analyzed through a balancing test.
One part of this balancing test performed by Israel before each strike is to determine whether the human shields in question are being used voluntarily or involuntarily.
If the human shields are being used voluntarily - meaning the human shields are there protecting Hamas and its weapons of their own volition - then the target remains a completely legitimate military target.
If the human shields are being used involuntarily - meaning Hamas is forcing people to act as human shields to protect themselves and/or their weapons - then the IDF must go back to the balancing test to determine whether the anticipated military advantage of a successful strike would outweigh the reasonably anticipated loss of civilian life.
Importantly, the IDF rules state that if it cannot determine whether a human shield is being used voluntarily or involuntarily, it must presume the civilian is being used against his or her own will and treat the civilians as an involuntary participant.
Assuming that there is a military target & that there may be human shields that are there involuntarily, the next step in the proportionality analysis for each individual strike (remember, proportionality is determined on a strike-by-strike basis, and not as the accumulation of strikes over time) is to try to determine the likely amount of damage to civilian persons and/or property as a result of the strike.
In other words, under international law, Israel must be able to give a sort of “value” to the anticipated impact on civilians (including potential civilian deaths). Simply, a smaller number of anticipated civilian casualties may make the strike proportionate if there is a significant military advantage to be gained by conducting the strike.
However, if Israel determines that the anticipated impact of a strike may cause many civilian casualties, it must make the difficult determination of whether the anticipated military advantage is so significant that it warrants carrying out the strike anyway.
So, if Hamas has a weapons depot underneath a house with two civilians inside, and that house has been used to fire 500 rockets at Israeli civilians, and it is reasonably expected that there are hundreds more rockets under that house, Israel can almost certainly carry out the strike within the confines of international law.
If that same house, however, had 10 families living inside, including many children, it could - and likely would - tip the scales of the proportionality balancing test toward Israel not being permitted to carry out the strike, even though the house has been used to attack Israeli civilians and can be expected to continue to be used to carry out attacks against Israeli civilians.
Now, that balancing test can always change. If that same house is being used to fire long-range, precision-guided missiles at Israel’s major population centers in places like #TelAviv (effectively putting millions of Israeli civilians in danger), the balancing test may tip back in favor of Israel being legally permitted to carry out the strike.
This all suggests the third and final step in the proportionality balancing test: the #IDF must determine and place a “value” on the anticipated military advantage that would be gained if it were to carry out a particular strike.
An attack on Hamas leadership and/or its weapons manufacturers would be considered a high value target. An attack on a single Hamas member who has no special skill, would be a much lower value military target.
Similarly, an attack on a small cache of mortars would have less military value that an attack on a large cache of advanced rockets that can reach large Israeli civilian population centers.
Once the @IDF determines the anticipated “value” of the likely effect on civilian persons and property and the anticipated “value” of the likely military advantage to be gained if the strike is carried out, the balancing test can be performed, and a certain amount of judgment must go into the determination of whether that strike would or would not be “proportionate.”
Importantly, this decision is so vital that the IDF does not simply permit a single solder on the ground with his or her hand on the proverbial (or actual) “trigger” to make that determination.
In fact, the decision of whether a strike is proportionate is not even left up to IDF officers. It’s not even left up to IDF Generals.
Instead, before any IDF strike can take place, IDF Guidelines provide that the proportionality balancing test must be presented to and analyzed by IDF military lawyers who then determine whether the strike is legally permissible as “proportionate” under international law and the rules of war.
And these IDF military lawyers are not mere patsies or people who simply “rubber stamp” what the IDF requests.
In fact, the IDF’s military lawyers work entirely independently of the IDF. They are outside of the chain of command and do not answer to anyone in the IDF, including a General (for example).
Plus, every IDF military lawyer knows he or she may very well be held to account if he or she makes a wrong decision based on the evidence available at the time.
Furthermore, sometimes the decisions to be made while balancing the likely military advantage against the likely civilian casualties can be so difficult that the legality of the strike is first brought to the Israeli Supreme Court for instant review.
Another important concept: the comparison of civilian body counts of #Israelis versus #Palestinians (to the extent those numbers can be trusted since they come directly from Hamas-only) is not relevant to a proportionality analysis. Each strike must be viewed individually to determine proportionality. It is not a test of the cumulative nature of the strikes.
Also, by simply comparing body counts, it does not factor in how many people killed were actually #HamasTerrorists, how many were Hamas collaborators there voluntarily, and it does not consider what military advantage was gained by Israel carrying out any individual strike.
As Israel is now in the process of seeking to secure the military advantage of preventing Hamas from having the capacity to carry out repeated attacks of the kind and nature seen on October 7th, Israel is permitted to act proportionately insofar as necessary to achieve that military objective (the elimination of Hamas and/or its ability to make war).
One more important fact people do not know, but that they should know: according to UN statistics of global conflict, the average civilian to combatant killed ratio is a rather appalling nine civilians killed for every one combatant killed.
That’s why civilian body counts in and of themselves are never indicative of a war crime. Each individual strike has to be analyzed, and unfortunately civilians always suffer disproportionately in wars.
In fact, while Israel is routinely criticized for any of its strikes that kill civilians, you may be surprised to know that Israel’s civilian to combatant ratio is routinely much lower than the nine to one average.
In the very last operation carried out by the IDF prior to October 7 (in Jenin), 0.6 civilians were killed for every one combatant killed.
In that conflict, not only were the IDF’s ratio numbers nowhere near the nine to one international average, but the IDF actually managed to kill more combatants than civilians - something that is extremely rare.
In truth, Israel is targeted by accusations of war crimes almost immediately by the media, by politicians, and by the UN General Assembly despite the fact that those accusations are near 100% of the time based neither in fact nor in law.
Since a proportionality balancing test must be used to determine whether a single specific Israeli strike falls within the confines of international law, someone providing an analysis must have all of the facts Israel considered before carrying out that strike as to the anticipated impact on civilians and the anticipated military advantage. Obviously, anyone who is making a snap judgment critical of Israel could not possibly have that information.
Understand then, that when you see talking heads accusing Israel of “war crimes” immediately after and/or during Israeli strikes, that is not an actual legal analysis under international law of what constitutes a war crime.
Much more likely, what you are witnessing is part of Hamas’ ongoing psychological and propaganda warfare campaign of demonizing and delegitimizing the State of Israel in the eyes of public opinion.
#Hamas_is_ISIS #HamasisISIS #HamasISIS #HamasMonsters #October7massacre
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….