Blazingcatfur

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was no deal yet to secure the release of some 240 hostages held by Hamas “as of now,” and dismissed “a lot of incorrect reports” in recent days about imminent agreements to free at least some of the hostages.

In a lengthy Saturday evening press conference, Netanyahu said that if a deal emerges, the Israeli public will be updated.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, writing on Nov. 14, raised with concern the difference between the American and Israeli views of how Gaza should be governed after the presumably successful conclusion of Israel’s current military activity there. This in itself need not raise a high state of alarm as the same veteran commentator opined that former President Trump’s fictionalized collusion with Russia was as great an intrusion on and threat to American sovereignty as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

OTTAWA — A string of events in Ottawa linked to antisemitism is creating alarm among Jewish people in the capital city, with a community leader saying the Israel-Hamas war is exposing hatred that has existed for years.

An Ottawa woman is facing charges, including attempted arson to endanger life and damage property, after gasoline was poured in the clinical area of the General Campus of The Ottawa Hospital last week.

There were messages left nearby that police described as related to the conflict in Israel and the Gaza Strip, although they said they did not believe the incident was motivated by hate.

The war between Israel and Hamas creates two challenges for Justin Trudeau, as it would for any Canadian prime minister.

First, he must try to take and hold a principled position on a dire conflict. Second, he must try to hold together a country whose citizens are understandably agonized by the death and destruction.

The strain of both those tasks only becomes more apparent with each passing day. Within 24 hours of Trudeau’s remarks on the conflict Tuesday, Trudeau was heckled by pro-Palestinian protesters inside a Vancouver restaurant for what he didn’t say — and scolded online by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for what he did say.

He’s kissing Hamas Ass.

Moral lessons from World War II.

As the war between Israel and Gaza rages on, some inevitable questions must be raised. If Hamas, an indisputable rogue organization that governs a region which exists more like a plot of land in a state of nature than as a civilized geographic entity, is not totally obliterated (which, with sentimental calls for ceasefires and daily pauses in aerial bombings and ground incursions on Israel’s part, seems unlikely), then can Hamas be politically rehabilitated? What would such rehabilitation look like? Or should we be thinking of more robust and radical solutions such as global incarceration whereby a country is evicted from the community of nations and radically contained militarily?

Americans were horrified at the atrocities perpetrated by Hamas against Israeli villagers on October 7 this year. The brutality and futility of the attack rocked the imagination. Yet within days, we witnessed huge protest marches in U.S. and world capitals and universities in favor of Hamas. Their favored chant, “from the river to the sea,” means only one thing, and that is the annihilation of Israel and all its Jewish inhabitants.