Just whose side is America really on?

Melanie Phillips at jewishworldreview.com.

MP is on target.

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Soon after the Hamas pogrom on Oct. 7, the United States sent two aircraft carriers, additional land-based warplanes, and eventually, a guided-missile submarine to the region. This was said to be a "clear message of deterrence" to Hezbollah and its patron Iran, warning them not to escalate the ensuing war between Israel and Hamas by attacking Israel from southern Lebanon.

With 150,000 precision-guided missiles embedded in Lebanon's civilian population and able to target the whole of Israel, Hezbollah poses a vastly greater threat to Israel than Hamas.

But Hezbollah is already at war with Israel. Since the Hamas atrocities, Hezbollah has regularly been firing volleys of missiles into northern Israel, causing the evacuation of Israeli communities closest to the border and sending thousands of Israelis into their shelters.

Iran is also waging war against America itself. During the past month, Iranian proxies in the region have mounted drone and rocket attacks against U.S. air bases in Iraq and Syria at least 40 times. Dozens of American personnel have been injured and one American contractor died of cardiac arrest.

Yet the U.S. response has been feeble. It's been limited to shooting down the drones and mounting a couple of airstrikes in eastern Syria against buildings categorized as "Iranian Revolutionary Guards-affiliated" weapons storage facilities, but otherwise doing nothing at all.

The Iranian and Hezbollah attacks keep coming. So, what exactly would it take to establish deterrence? At what point does the Biden administration decide that the war in the north has indeed escalated and requires a decisive response?

What's the point of the mighty apparatus of war that America has sent into the region if it's not going to use it? And if we're all asking that question, how does the U.S. think the Iranian regime will answer it?

America's passivity is going hand-in-hand with a notable cooling of its original support for Israel. Immediately after the Hamas atrocities, U.S. President Joe Biden visited Jerusalem, pledged that the U.S. would stand shoulder to shoulder with Israel in the total destruction of Hamas and undertook weapons supply programs costing millions of dollars.

Now, however, there's been an ominous change in the rhetoric. With Israel having trapped Hamas in the nerve center of its terrorist operations in Gaza City and poised to deliver a decisive blow, Biden had called for a three-day "pause" in Israel's ground operation. Any such ceasefire would stop the IDF's momentum, throw a lifeline to Hamas and make the terror group more likely to survive. Israel has now agreed to daily “pauses” of four hours to allow for aid and evacuation.

Last week, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken told a Senate hearing that, after Israel succeeded in ousting Hamas, "what would make the most sense would be for an effective and revitalized Palestinian Authority to have governance and ultimately security responsibility for Gaza."

Seriously? That's the same Palestinian Authority that incites jihadi holy war against Israel, pays rewards to terrorists and their families, teaches Palestinian Arab children to murder Jews and steal their land, and is presiding over a huge increase in murderous attacks on Israelis in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria.

Not only is Blinken's proposal a recipe for further Israeli bloodshed, it also ignores the elephant in the room. Israel isn’t just fighting Hamas and Hezbollah. It is fighting Iran.

Tehran funds and arms Hamas and, as Hamas has acknowledged, was behind the Oct. 7 pogrom. Iran funds and arms Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Syrian militias, the Iraqi Shi'ites and the Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories.

Israel is thus surrounded by a regime and its proxies whose aim is the annihilation of the Jewish state. If Iran isn't stopped, Israel will before long face the ultimate nightmare of a genocidal enemy armed with nuclear weapons.

Even if Hamas is utterly destroyed, Hezbollah and Iran will still need to be dealt with. America needs to strike the head of the snake.

But the Biden administration studiously avoids identifying Iran as the real enemy. For the terrible truth is that Iran has been empowered by America.

The Obama administration's 2015 nuclear deal would not only have enabled a nuclear-weaponized Iran after only a few years’ delay. It also funneled billions into Tehran's coffers, which it used to accelerate its regional power grab and terrorist activities.

This strategy of empowering Iran has been continued by the Biden administration. It has groveled to Tehran in an attempt to restore the nuclear deal, relaxed sanctions once again and retaliated on only four occasions to the 90 attacks by Iranian proxies over the past three years on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria.

Even now, the Biden administration still wants to bring Iran on its side. Even now, it is still banging the drum for a Palestinian state despite the murderous terrorism against Jews incited by the people America wants to run it.

As a result, far from having Israel's back, the Biden administration is aiming its knives at it.

The IDF is going to great lengths to protect Gaza's civilians as much as possible in the middle of a war. It is warning them to evacuate targeted buildings through leaflets, phone calls and "knock on the roof" missiles. It set up a humanitarian corridor to the south, along which it has been guarding evacuees against attacks by Hamas.

Yet despite the fact that the United States took no such steps to protect Iraqi civilians when it flattened Mosul in its fight with ISIS, Washington is increasingly harassing Israel to do more to protect Gaza's civilians.

This is clearly paving the way for Washington to abandon Israel in the event of a genuinely high civilian death toll in Gaza.

This malignant appeasement of Iran and harassment of Israel goes back to former President Barack Obama. In his recent remarks about the Hamas pogrom and the Gaza war, Obama equated Hamas's "horrific" atrocities with Israel's "unbearable" occupation and war.

But Israel hasn't "occupied" Gaza since 2005. If Obama was referring to the disputed territories, what's "unbearable" there is the daily and unremitting campaign of murderous attacks on Israeli Jews.

Obama's attempt to shift the blame for the depraved onslaught against Israeli Jews onto Israel itself was despicable and morally degenerate. Worse, the Biden administration is stuffed with Obama retreads and acolytes. There's worse still.

In September, the news platform Semafor and the London-based émigré opposition outlet Iran International reported sensationally on a large leak of Iranian government correspondence and emails.

These revealed that, in 2014, senior Iranian Foreign Ministry officials initiated a quiet effort to bolster Tehran's image over its nuclear program through a network of influential overseas academics and researchers.

This involved Iranian infiltration of the Obama administration. At least two of the people on the Iranian network list were, or became, top aides to envoy Robert Malley. He was the point man on Iran under both the Obama and Biden administrations until he was placed on leave in June following the suspension of his security clearance.

The leaked materials showed that, in 2021, Malley helped infiltrate an Iranian agent of influence named Ariane Tabatabai, who was associated with the Iranian network, into the State Department to assist him in his negotiations with Iran.

Tabatabai then moved to the Pentagon, where she still serves as chief of staff to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations Christopher Maier in an office that oversees hostage recovery—including presumably the U.S. citizens now being held hostage by Hamas.

No one will say why Malley was suspended other than it was over a "mishandling of classified material." The tight secrecy suggests that what he did was devastating to national security.

Meanwhile, as Lee Smith writes in Tablet: "Pro-Hamas and pro-Iran influencers inside the Pentagon are briefing that Israel is manipulating the U.S. into a war with Iran."

Just whose side is America really on?

 

Teaching the causes of the Great Depression to college students – do the histori-ans get it wrong?

At the Journal of Economics and Finance Education.

Teaching the Causes of Great Depression to College Students: Evidence from History, Economics, and Economic History Textbooks, by Jeremy Horpedahl, Phillip Magness, and Marcus Witcher.

Here is the link.

The message is that historians get it wrong compared to economists and economic historians. Worse, the former focus, you guessed it, on failures of Capitalism.

Here are some excerpts.

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ABSTRACT

We survey the treatment of the Depression in college-level textbooks for courses in US history and economics. History textbooks emphasis on inequality, the stock market crash, and underconsumption as the primary causes does not reflect the consensus of economic historians. Introductory economics textbooks use the Great Depression as an example to illustrate macroeconomic concepts in ways aligned with the research consensus, which emphasizes declining aggregate demand and issues related to monetary policy and the financial system. History textbooks could be improved by focusing more on bank failures, the actions of the Federal Reserve, monetary deflation, and declines in autonomous spending.

Free speech in freefall

 Freedom in the US has been in decline for awhile. There is no sign that the decline will stop.

The problem is too many voters who do not value freedom and are intolerant. We can thank educators for much of this.

Here is Jonathan Turley - on target again.

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The Censorship “Switchboard”: A New Layer to the Biden Administration’s “Orwellian Ministry of Truth”

Free speech is in a free fall as millions embrace censorship as a political cause, including some now running for federal office on a pledge to silence others. One of the most alarming aspects of this period has been the emergence of a type of triumvirate of censorship, an alliance of government, academic, and media corporations. Together they have established the most comprehensive censorship system in the history of this country.

That system is being forced out into the public by the investigation of House committees. This week the House Judiciary Committee released a 103-page staff report on the academic prong of the triumvirate. What is most chilling about this report is that it adds yet another layer of government-supported speech controls. It also reflects a conscious and coordinated effort to carry out censorship through allies in a labyrinth of academic and public interest groups.

Earlier this year, I testified at the first hearing by the special committee investigating the censorship system. I warned that there was ample evidence of a system based on “censorship by surrogate” where government agencies used academic and media allies to silence those with opposing views.

The latest report reveals details of the critical role played by government officials in “switchboarding” the censorship system by channeling demands for removal or bans from state and local officials. In addition to the direct targeting of individuals by federal agencies, switchboarding allowed the agencies to operate as a control tower in this sprawling system.

This switchboarding system was confirmed by Brian Scully of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) in the Department of Homeland Security. CISA has emerged as one of the critical control centers in this system.

CISA head Jen Easterly declared that her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure would be extended to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes not just “disinformation” and “misinformation,”
but combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

Despite the determined opposition by Democratic members and the Biden Administration, the investigation has revealed a wide array of grants to academic and third party organizations to create blacklists or to pressure advertisers to withdraw support for conservative sites. The subjects for censorship ranged from election fraud to social justice to climate change.

The Election Integrity Partnership (EIP) was created in partnership with Stanford University “at the request of DHS/CISA.” It is described as a “consortium of ‘disinformation’ academics led by Stanford University’s Stanford Internet Observatory (SIO).

EIP supplied a “centralized reporting system” to process what were known as “Jira tickets” targeting unacceptable views. It would include not only politicians but commentators and pundits as well as the satirical site The Babylon Bee.

Some of us have previously criticized Stanford for its effort to systematize and expand censorship. Stanford’s Virality Project pushed to censor even true facts since “true stories … could fuel hesitancy” over taking the vaccine or other measures.

In newly released emails, the secret coordination with federal agencies was made public, including a July 31, 2020 email from the director at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, an EIP partner.

Graham Brookie, the lab’s senior director, confirmed that her group “just set up an election integrity partnership at the request of DHS/CISA and are in weekly comms to debrief about disinfo.”

During this time many of us in the free speech community were raising the alarm over the evidence of a government-supported censorship system, including the use of surrogates in academia. As noted in emails in May 2020, government officials were privately saying that they need to avoid any move that would “openly endorse” censorship while funding these groups and switchboarding the system.

As officials served as the conduit, it continued to attach a standard disclaimer that CISA “neither has nor seeks the ability to remove what information is made available on social media platforms.”

Notably, EIP worked not only with CISA, but with the Global Engagement Center, a multi-agency entity housed within the State Department. It was the Global Engagement Center that contracted with the Atlantic Council, which sent suggested blacklists to Twitter. It got to be so reckless that Yoel Roth, then Twitter’s head of trust and safety, responded “omg” and “what a total crock.”

This system rests on grants coming from Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the State Department, and other agencies. That system included scoring groups through a grant from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to the British-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI). The index targeted ten conservative and libertarian sites as the most dangerous sources of disinformation, including sites like Reason which publishes conservative legal analysis. Conversely, some of the most liberal sites were ranked as the most trustworthy for advertisers.

The report on switchboarding is most chilling when placed within this larger context. The Biden Administration has funded a global effort to score, target, and ban opposing views through an ever-increasing array of allied groups in academia and corporations. A federal court recently enjoined aspects of that system after finding that it is an unprecedented censorship system that effectively created a type of “Orwellian Ministry of Truth.”

The solution is as obvious as the danger itself. Congress must bar any funding — directly or indirectly — for censorship systems. Calling opposing views “disinformation” does not alter the fact that there is a comprehensive censorship system using groups allied with the government. Federal agencies are always able to respond to claims that they deem are untrue about their own policies and programs. However, we need to get the government out of the business of speech controls, including shutting down the censorship switchboard.

The anti-freedom wave continues

 Jonathan Turley is on target again.

The Salem Witch hunt gathers momentum.

It's not just the politicians - it's those who elect them. Too many voters have no conception of where their voting is leading.

History is clear: a free country is the exception, not the rule. Theorem: Freedom is not a stable equilibrium.

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Running on Censorship: A California Candidate Seeks to Ride the Anti-Free Speech Wave

It is not easy to unseat an incumbent in Congress, but Will Rollins believes that he has hit on a guaranteed winner to galvanize Democratic support in California’s 41st congressional district. He is pledging to push for greater censorship to stop those “profiting by spreading division based on lies.” Of course, the former assistant U.S. Attorney suggests that he will know who is lying and who should be allowed to speak freely.

Rollins is also running on his role “prosecuting insurrectionists” from January 6. While most of us condemned the riot on that day and supported the prosecution of those who broke into the Capitol, polls shows that most Americans do not view what occurred as an actual insurrection or rebellion.

That, however, is a legitimate matter of debate and people of good faith can differ in how they view the crimes committed that day. What is far more serious is the embrace of censorship as a political cause.

Rollins pledged to stop people saying things that “erode our democracy.” His policy platform promises “accountability” for tech platforms that “spread conspiracy theories” and do not yield to demands for censorship. It appears to be a pitch to restore censorship systems on sites like X but also pledges to go after “media outlets.”

He is not alone in such efforts. Democratic members caused a firestorm previously by writing to cable carriers like AT&T to ask why they are still allowing people to watch FOX News. Rollins promises to crackdown on “propaganda networks to protect the public’s right to be informed.” He does not identify which networks would be targeted but the assumption is that it is not MSNBC. (For full disclosure, I am a legal analyst on Fox News). However, he wants ramped up penalties for anything that he considers “harmful lies and conspiracy theories.”

Of course, one person’s “conspiracy theory” is another person’s news. It is again unlikely that Rollins will be pursuing the Washington Post which recently reaffirmed that it is standing by past false claims made about Lafayette Park, the Hunter Biden laptop, and Russian collusion. It is not likely the false conspiracy theories funded by the Clinton campaign like the Alfa Bank allegations.

As someone who was raised in a liberal, politically active Democratic family in Chicago, Democrats once championed free speech as a touchstone of the party. Now it is often treated as an existential threat to democracy.

In recent hearings on the government’s censorship programs, Democratic members and pundits attacked witnesses “Putin lovers” or supporters of “insurrectionists” in opposing censorship.

President Joe Biden is now the most anti-free speech administration since John Adams. His administration is unabashedly and unrepentantly pursuing the silencing of those with opposing views. Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.” That includes combating “malinformation” – described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

Democratic members have warned social media companies that they will not tolerate any backsliding after Elon Musk dismantled the massive censorship system at Twitter.

In one hearing, tech CEOs appeared before the Senate, Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) pushed back on statements from the witnesses suggesting an effort to protect free speech and reminded them that “the pandemic and misinformation about COVID-19, manipulated media also cause harm” as well as “climate change misinformation policy” and “climate denialism.”

It did not matter that many censored over their views on the efficacy of masks or the necessity of shutting down schools have been vindicated. Even raising the lab theory on the origin of Covid 19 was denounced as a conspiracy theory. Even after the theory was embraced by government agencies as possible or the most likely explanation, science and health reporter for the New York Times, Apoorva Mandavilli, continued to denounce the theory as “racist.”

The concerning aspect of Rollins’ campaign is that censorship was largely used as a political tactic in Washington to silence critics and opposing views. It is now an actual political campaign. It shows how speech regulation has become popular with the rank-and-file in the party. It now defines the party.

Campaigning for censorship should be a warning sign of the breakdown of democratic values. Limiting free speech is akin to cutting off oxygen to the body politic. It produces atrophy in a system, the breakdown of our political tissues. That is also reflected in a recent poll that shows that 52% of Biden supporters say Republicans are now a threat to American life while 47% of Trump supporters say the same about Democrats. Roughly 40% of both parties believe violence is now justified and roughly a quarter of both parties now question our system of government.

Politicians fuel that anger by running on silencing their opponents in the name of disinformation or malinformation. It is of course popular. Rage is often popular. Indeed, it can be addictive. Yet, what remains is release from reason in the blind pursuit of those with opposing views.

Will Rollins is right that this is a popular pitch for an age of rage. However, it is the political version of the Dead Sea Fruits that were irresistible to pick but would turn to ashes in one’s mouth. Silencing others creates an insatiable appetite for combating an ever widening circle of “lies.” Until, that is, when you find yourself encircled by your own truth police.

Why they rip down the “Kidnapped from Israel” fliers

 Jeff Jacoby at the Jewish World Review.

JJ is on target.

The asymmetry is remarkable.

What we are seeing is the product of our "educational system": schools, cultural contexts, and yes, parents.

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A cat from my neighborhood has gone missing. Her owner has distributed fliers around the area, asking residents to keep an eye out for her. "LOST CAT," it says in big letters beneath a photo of Coco, a beautiful animal with fluffy white fur and blue eyes.

Whether the fliers will lead to Coco's recovery I don't know. But of one thing I am certain: No one walking through the neighborhood will be grabbing all the posters and stuffing them in the trash. Even people who dislike cats wouldn't be that callous and mean.

But ever since fliers calling attention to something far more terrible than a missing cat — the plight of the more than 200 hostages abducted from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7 — began going up on telephone poles, subway walls, utility boxes, and worksite fences in cities around the world, a startling number of people have been eager to tear them down. Individuals have been filmed destroying or defacing the posters in Boston, London, Miami, New York, Melbourne, Philadelphia, Richmond, Ann Arbor, and Los Angeles.

There is no possible justification for such heartlessness. The whole purpose of the fliers is to heighten awareness of the Israeli (and other) civilians kidnapped by the Hamas terror squads — to put names and faces to the hostages, all with one goal: to bring them back home. How can a project so heartfelt and humane trigger such a poisonous response?

The posters were the brainchild of two Israeli artists, Nitzan Mintz and Dede Bandaid, who were visiting New York when Hamas carried out its bloodbath. Aching to help in some way, they drew on their art backgrounds to design the eye-catching fliers. Each is topped with the word "KIDNAPPED" in large white letters on an orange background; below that heading is the name, age, nationality, and photo of one of the hostages, who range in age from 3 months to 85 years.

The posters went viral overnight. Within days they were appearing everywhere, a powerful symbol of Israel's anguish and of the desperate yearning for the captives' safe return. Then came the backlash. "Within minutes or hours of going up," reported the New York Jewish Week, "many of them had been partially ripped off the subway station's walls, tears obscuring the victims' faces or details about their lives, while others were defaced with marker or surrounded by messages such as "Free Palestine." On a poster of two of the youngest hostages, 3-year-old twins Emma and Yuli Cunio, Hitler mustaches were drawn on the girls' faces. On other posters, the words "Lies" or "Actors" were scrawled.

Those ripping down or damaging the signs are by no means abashed about doing so. Some have filmed themselves attacking the fliers and posted the video online. Others, when asked why they were trashing the pictures of civilian hostages, have yelled about "genocide," declared their support for "Palestinian civilians," claimed the fliers contained "inaccurate information," or simply cursed out the person filming them.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is intensely controversial and generates great emotion on both sides. But these assaults on the "Kidnapped" posters have nothing to do with the merits of the dispute. The sole purpose of the fliers is to emphasize the humanity of the innocent hostages seized by Hamas (many of whom, as it happens, were peace activists deeply committed to Arab-Israeli coexistence). What drives the people ripping down the posters or adding Hitler mustaches to the pictures is a pathological need to deny the humanity of those kidnapped Jews.

A core principle of antisemites in all times and places is that Jews are not fully human and are never innocent. A thousand years ago, Jews were slaughtered by Crusaders for being satanic Christ-killers who consumed the blood of children; a century ago Hitler preached that they were subhumans who polluted the racial purity of Aryan Europe. Today the Jewish state is accused of committing the demonic crimes of genocide and apartheid. The poison never changes, only the vial it comes in.

The "Kidnapped" fliers are intolerable to the haters because they so urgently challenge the antisemitic paradigm. They make it vividly clear that in the war between barbarism and civilization, between oppressor and oppressed, it is Jews who are under attack. That infuriates those whose worldview revolves around the certainty that Israel and its supporters are the victimizers. The outpouring of sympathy for Jews kidnapped by Palestinian terrorists — and the moral force of that sympathy — is anathema to them.

That explains as well why the atrocities committed on Oct. 7 immediately triggered so many vehement public demonstrations in support of the Palestinians. Precisely because the massacre and abductions had been so unspeakably horrific, it was necessary to reinforce the narrative of Jewish villainy. At times, denunciations of Israel gave way to naked antisemitsm. At a pro-Palestinian rally in Sydney, a chorus of voices chanted "Gas the Jews! F*** the Jews!" Others expressed their hatred by rejoicing in the slaughter of Israelis. A professor at Cornell, for example, told a crowd he was "exhilarated" by what Hamas had done.

In the wake of terrible mass shootings like the one that took at least 18 lives and convulsed Lewiston, Maine, on Wednesday, grieving family and friends often display pictures of their loved ones. It is a way of reinforcing the humanity of the victims and of evoking compassion from passersby. Who, seeing such a display, would destroy or vandalize it? Some norms are so ingrained as to be all but inviolable. When someone puts up an image of a missing or murdered child, no decent person rips it down.

But antisemitism has the power to override every norm and decent impulse.

On Reddit last week, a commenter explained that coming across a "Kidnapped" flier made him feel not empathy with the hostage, but "the exact opposite." It filled him with "white hot rage," he wrote, and he decided that "ripping it down and tearing it to shreds is the only thing I can do."

The ripped-up fliers are one more indication of the rising tide of antisemitism in America and the West. A "white hot rage" is building. I, for one, cannot shake the conviction that Jews are at graver risk than they have been in decades, and not only in southern Israel.

Perspective on Gaza – and more

 Victor Davis Hanson is on target.

It is remarkable that:

• Otherwise civilized people can be so uncivilized.
• How naive othewise smart people can be.
• How stupid some geniuses can be.

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There is something surreal, even sick about the current Gazan war.

Throughout European and American cities and campuses, tens of thousands of Middle East immigrants and students, and radical leftists chant nonstop "Free Palestine from the River to the Sea."

More recently, they are also yelling, "Israel, you can’t hide, we caught you in genocide."

Consider the hypocrisy of that dual messaging.

Hamas and its supporters are openly and eagerly calling for the genocidal end of Israel by wiping it out from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet at the same time they also claim it is Israel that is committing genocide — the very current self-described agenda of Hamas and its expatriate community of devotees!

The war has become crazier still.

Hamas and its megaphones abroad also blast Israel daily for retaliating for the October 7 butchery of some 1,400 Israeli infants, children, women, and the elderly.

They further demand Israel must be selective in its airborne targeting of the Hamas killers, who burrow beneath hospitals and mosques while using civilians as shields.

Hamas takes for granted that a supposedly heartless Israel nevertheless will be reluctant to strike the Hamas terrorists when and if they are surrounded by civilians.

Indeed, Gazans are put in more danger by Hamas than they would otherwise be by the Israel Defense Forces.

Yet the world accepts that Israel itself would never employ such a ruse of using civilians to shield its cities from indiscriminately fired Hamas missiles.

The world further knows that if Israel ever employed such a barbaric tactic, Israeli civilian shields would attract — not deter — Hamas rockets.

Hamas’s apologists insist that Israel warn in advance civilians to keep clear of Israeli bombs.

Yet at the same time, daily Hamas launches rockets into Israel. And no one in the international community lectures Hamas first to drop leaflets or text Israeli civilians that Hamas rockets are on their way into their vicinity.

Instead, the only purpose of Hamas rockets is to indiscriminately strike and kill Israeli civilians.

So the real issue is not about the principle of civilian deaths — given Israel is damned when it tries to avoid noncombatants and Hamas is cheered on when it deliberately targets them.

Instead, the asymmetry is explained by the efficacy of the Israeli response and impotence of Hamas rocketry.

In other words, Hamas cannot stop the IDF from hitting its targets, while Israel can knock down far more Hamas rockets.

And so Israel is being blamed for being too effective — or "disproportionate" — in its bombing, and Hamas is rewarded for being too ineffective in its rocketing.

There are other sick paradoxes in this war.

Hamas started the conflict by sending death squads of 2,000 killers into Israel at a time of peace to surprise murder more than 1,000 Israeli civilians.

There was no precivilizational, unspeakable atrocity that the butchers did not commit — torture, beheading, rape, mutilation, and necrophilia.

The terrorists were followed into Israel by a multitude of opportunistic Gaza civilians, who in turn joined in the violence and looting.

Back in Gaza crowds reviled and tried to harm Israeli captives bound as hostages to trade for jailed terrorists in Israel.

In sum, the population that once elected Hamas into power, and cheered on its bloodletting — as long as there was yet no Israeli response — now claims to have no connection at all with Hamas. Yet the world assumes correctly that the people of Israel are inseparable from its military.

The surreal paradoxes of this war still do not end there.

In its mass murdering spree of October 7, Hamas butchered more than 30 American citizens, and perhaps another 13 still are unaccounted for — and are likely hostages inside the tunnels of Hamas in Gaza.

Yet the Biden administration has not forced Hamas to return kidnapped Americans, much less responded to its killing of U.S. citizens.

Why then despite all the rhetoric of solidarity, is the United States constantly pressuring Israel to be measured in its retaliation against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza, pressure that will only make things easier on Hamas?

Why are we seeking to restrain those who are trying to destroy the killers of Americans, and indirectly aiding those who murdered them?

And why is the global elite community siding with the murderous aggressors and not those seeking justice for the murdered?

Lots of reasons.

There are 500 million Arabs in the world, and nearly 2 billion Muslims — but only 9 or so million Israelis.

Nearly 50 percent of the world’s oil reserves are found in the Muslim Middle East.

Westerners, like tiny Israel, are considered too rich and powerful, while non-Westerners are romanticized as blameless, victimized underdogs.

But the best way of understanding this sick war is that Israelis are Jews and the ancient plague of antisemitism is again sweeping the globe.

This is shooting

 This is shooting.

Here is the link.

SR-71 Video

 Here is the link.

Israeli Arrow 3 defeats long-range missile attack

 From Steve Trimble at  Aviation Week's Aerospace Digest

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Arrow 3 Makes Combat Debut, Thwarting Long-Range Missile Attack

The Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) Arrow 3 made its combat debut on Oct. 31 by successfully shooting down a long-range ballistic missile over the Red Sea, Israeli government and industry officials said.

Israeli officials did not confirm the source of the ballistic missile attack, but the location and direction suggest it may have come from Houthi-controlled Yemen.

In September, Houthi forces displayed a long-range missile reminiscent of Iran’s Ghadr and North Korea’s Nodong missiles.

The Arrow 3 “demonstrated today that Israel possesses the most advanced technology for defense against ballistic missiles at various ranges,” said IAI CEO Boaz Levy, who led development of the ballistic missile interceptor.

Israel Defense Forces deployed the Arrow 3 for the first time in 2017 to defend Israel against long-range missile strikes by Iran or its proxies.

The lower-altitude Arrow 2 interceptor had been fielded a decade earlier but shot down a Syrian surface-to-air missile in its combat debut in 2017.

The Israeli government has agreed to export the Arrow 3 system to Germany.

The Israeli Air Force also shot down “aerial objects” in the Red Sea region on Oct. 31, the Israeli Ministry of Defense said.

The intercepts come a week after the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Patrick Carney shot down three more cruise missiles over the Red Sea that were believed to be headed toward Israel from a Houthi-controlled area of Yemen.