Some quotes here that deserve further comment:
With the shops closed and the midday sun beating down, Palestinians took to the streets in the centre of Ramallah to vent their anger.
Ramallah, home of the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, is not exactly a stronghold of Hamas. The demonstration wasn’t huge – a few hundred people at most.
But no one should doubt the strength of feeling, the sense of shock and anger, generated by the killing of Ismail Haniyeh. The green banners of Hamas were held aloft, alongside – but outnumbering - the black, white, green and red, Palestinian flag. Children rode on their fathers’ shoulders, carrying toy machineguns.
This just demonstrates everything that is fundamentally wrong with Palestinian society. After months of insisting on a ceasefire for a war they encouraged and supported, you would think that Palestinians would welcome the death of a man who started this war.
Note that the BBC says that Ramallah isn't a stronghold of Hamas. But Palestinian polls show that Hamas' popularity has increased in the West Bank since the October 7 terrorist attack. And the Palestinian Authority (Fatah) attempted unsuccessfully to form a unity government with Hamas. The PLO is one of the Palestinian terrorist groups that previously met in Iran to swear allegiance to the IRGC and the Ayatollah.
Notice also the children brandishing toy machine guns, further proof that the Palestinians breed their children as cannon fodder in their neverending campaign of war.
Defiant chants echoed through the streets. But there’s real anxiety here too. Palestinians feel that a wider conflict might be looming, one that could engulf the West Bank. They feel that this is what the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu wants.
Once again, we see the post-factum wisdom of the Palestinians. A sensible and ordered society would have foreseen the threat of a wider war prior to launching a heinous terrorist attack. Not so with the Palestinians. As the saying goes, fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
The Palestinians threw in their lot with Hamas, wildly celebrating some of the worst crimes against humanity within living memory (while simultaneously denying those crimes took place). Now that they are forced to face the cost of the war they planned, funded, and celebrated, they have suddenly become fearful of wider escalation.
Note how instead of blaming their own billionaire terrorist organisations and the foreign government using them as a tool, they choose to blame Prime Minister Netanyahu. Palestinian society is incapable of accepting personal responsibility.
“I think the Israeli government has just committed one of the gravest mistakes in its life,” the moderate Palestinian politician and former presidential candidate Mustapha Barghouti told me earlier, as he prepared to walk with the demonstrators.
“This was a political, criminal act and if they think that this act of assassination will break the Palestinian resistance, they are absolutely wrong.”
The Palestinians committed one of the gravest mistakes in their lives when they decided to stoop to unprecedented levels of savagery on October 7. In doing so, they lost the sympathy and support of almost all of the Israelis who had previously supported the establishment of a Palestinian state and peaceful coexistence.
They started a war that they are clearly losing, hence the desperate begging for an unconditional ceasefire and weaponisation of international outrage to save Palestinian SS officers from punishment.
But the supposedly "moderate" Palestinian politician Mustapha Barghouti does not mention October 7, let alone condemn the atrocities his people planned, committed, celebrated publicly, and then, in their moral bankruptcy, decided to deny because millions of civilised foreigners were disgusted by those crimes.
It never occurs to him that the Palestinians are almost entirely at fault for the predicament they find themselves in. Nor that the Palestinians' willing slavery to Iranian terrorists is a liability, not an asset.
Palestinian society is allergic to personal responsibility. Even the so-called "moderates". If this man is so moderate, why does he list a war criminal Haniyeh as part of Palestinian "resistance"? Because what is falsely labelled as "Palestinian resistance" is in fact the bloodthirsty ideology of Islamic jihad, as seen before in Islamic State, the IRGC, Hezbollah, and the rest of the savages currently causing murder and mayhem in the Middle East.
This morning I spoke to three senior Hamas officials, and they were all in a state of shock.
First of all, there is no such thing as a "Hamas official". These are terrorists, plain and simple. Do you ever hear people speak of "Islamic State officials" or "the al-Qaeda-run health ministry"? Terrorists are illegimitate by definition.
The state of shock further undermines how divorced the Palestinian mindset is from reality. These people thought that Israel was joking about targeting Hamas' leaders. They hid Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel, but thought that Ismail Haniyeh, who pretended to support ceasefire negotiations, would be immune to said punishment. They thought Israel was buying the line that Haniyeh was a mere "political leader" and wouldn't be treated as an architect of October 7.
And they were proved entirely wrong.
No wonder they are in a state of shock. This will devastate Hamas for weeks, if not months. It will severely restrict their ability to travel safely, thereby strengthening their isolation and weakening their terrorist infrastructure. Yahya Sinwar, who was relying on Ismail Haniyeh's confidence, is now isolated, all the more so since Mohammed Deif and Mohammed Issa are both dead.
They gave different - quite confusing - accounts as to what exactly happened in the Iranian capital, Tehran, in the early hours of today.
Terrorists are untrustworthy. Surprise, surprise. Maybe it's time to take a closer look at their "death toll" statistics as well, where they have been mysteriously concealing the number of dead Hamas terrorists and inflating the number of women and children fatalities.
They said they were very surprised by the attack, that Haniyeh had visited the city many times before and must have felt safe going there.
What are they surprised by? Israel meant business about destroying Hamas. Ismail Haniyeh was on Israel's kill list from day one of this war. These bewildered Arabic SS officers evidently thought they could tie Israel's hands behind its back by continually stalling over the hostage negotiations, and that this would protect Ismail Haniyeh and Yahya Sinwar from being killed. Hubris and a total lack of morality.
And the question now arises as to who should be responsible for this major security failure - and was it the right decision for Haniyeh to be in Tehran in the first place?
Really? No questions as to Haniyeh's leadership of a Nazi terrorist organisation, his perpetrating of Nazi extermination doctrines against the Jews since the late 1980s, his involvement in October 7, his fomenting of wider war, his support for the Iranian terrorist state, and his attempt to prolong the suffering of Israel's hostages by frustrating negotiation?
Was it the right decision for Ismail Haniyeh to centre his life around the extermination of the Jews?
Ceasefire talks: And there are also concerns for what it means for ceasefire talks - as Haniyeh was a key figure in negotiations. Qatar's PM says how can talks succeed when one side targets another.
Is Qatar's Prime Minister on drugs? Or is he suffering from amnesia? Ceasefire talks are being governed by the hostages that his friends in HAMAS kidnapped from Israel. Has he forgotten that? Has it occurred to him that no talks with his corrupt, pro-terrorist state would be necessary if HAMAS had not targeted ISRAEL last October?
Hamas is the reason why talks are failing. Hamas is the reason for the "wider war" that journalists and Palestinians who refuse to learn their lesson are now quivering over.
These foreign useful idiots wait for the Palestinians to commit crimes instead of stopping them from doing so, launder those crimes as being inevitable or justified, then start drumming up "wider war" fears whenever Israel pursues justice against the Palestinian (and Lebanese and Iranian) criminals. This helps entrench the Palestinian sense of perpetual victimhood, allowing them to avoid addressing their own wrongdoing and involvement in starting wars they clearly cannot win.
Here's a rather telling part:
But not every incident like this leads to escalation.
In 2020 then-President Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s most powerful military commander Gen Qasem Soleimani, in Baghdad.
There were furious calls for revenge but not much happened.
In 1986, then-President Reagan ordered an airstrike on Libya in retaliation for the bombing of a Berlin discotheque.
There were fears the Arab world would erupt in flames but it didn’t.
And why is this the case? Because the Palestinians and their deluded, amoral followers keep making the same fundamental miscalculation. They overestimate the amount of support they have in the Arab and Muslim world. Granted, many Arabs and Muslims have chosen to jump on the Palestinian train of Islamic jihad masquerading as political grievance. But the Palestinians and their Iranian slave masters simply do not have as much support as they believe.
Hamas gave slow, yet increasing Arab and Muslim willingness to normalise relations with Israel as a justification for its apocalyptic slaughter of Israelis on October 7. Hamas and its proxies hoped that October 7 would mobilise the mujahideen (Islamic soldiers). Hamas and its proxies hoped that the entire Arab and Muslim world would back Iran's attempts to exterminate Israel.
None of this turned out as the Palestinian terrorists had hoped. Saudi Arabia, while maintaining an appearance of distance from Israel, nonetheless chose to help block Iran's unprecedented missile strike on Israel this past April. Saudi Arabia also blocked financial transfers to the West Bank and Gaza. Prior to this, Saudi Arabia had blocked financing to the Palestinian Authority, only relaxing that block as part of the 2020 Abraham Accords.
Even Jordan, whose Queen never misses a chance to excoriate Israel, helped block Iran's missile strike against Israel.
There are quiet, yet notable factions within the Arab and Muslim world that fear Iran and see Israel as a necessary tool of pushing back on the Islamic Republic's murderous sphere of influence.
But there's an even more fundamental issue here. For decades, Western journalists, "intellectuals", and others have capitulated to Islamic terrorists by demonising anyone who wishes to confront them. The reasoning goes that confronting Islamic terrorists will lead to escalation. The idea that Islamic terrorists often use threats to fabricate an appearance of strength, that they can overestimate the number of allies they have, and that it is, in fact, possible to defeat them, is often ignored.
Hence why the world has refused to back Israel's aim of destroying Hamas. It's not possible, they said. Hamas will always be there, they said. It will lead to escalation, they said.
Yet after the killing of Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas' terrorists are reportedly in a state of shock, unable to account for how Haniyeh could be targeted while in Tehran, and now fearing for the prospect of a ceasefire. Hamas will now struggle to travel freely, knowing that if Israel could kill Haniyeh in Tehran, no Hamas leader is safe (as Israel vowed last year). Hamas will struggle to promote a new leader. Yahya Sinwar will be further isolated.
The fact that Hamas is doing everything it can to engender a ceasefire with little to no conditions is already proof that Hamas cannot win. Not even with the support of the terrorist Islamic Republic, Lebanon, and the Houthis in Yemen. As soon as they feel the heat from Israel, they are suddenly interested in negotiation for a ceasefire.
Islamic terrorists can be defeated. People just have to want to do it. If the civilised world declared war on Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and the IRGC, these amoral savages would be in serious panic mode. Without gullible Westerners believing that these people are "fighting injustice", they have limited support. Even the Arabs and Muslims openly cheering for these Palestinian SS officers aren't that keen on taking in many Palestinians from the war zones they created.
One day we will wake up and hear that Yahya Sinwar has been captured and killed. It will be like the last days of Adolf Hitler in his bunker. This is because Israel believes in justice and is dedicated to victory, no matter what the cowardly international community says. And when the Middle East becomes a civilised place, people will have to thank Israel for having sacrificed so much to rid the world of these Islamic terrorists.
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The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step
After the U.S. invaded Iraq 20 years ago, Iraqi American playwright and actor Heather Raffo created and starred in an acclaimed play “Nine Parts of Desire” about the lives of Iraqi women.
She’s returned to the subject on film and through a distinctly American lens, setting a new version in Michigan. Jeffrey Brown of PBS went there to see the work for the PBS arts and culture series, CANVAS.
Uprooted after her father’s death during the pandemic, an Iraqi American woman attempts to grieve at the site of the oldest Iraqi Church in North America.
What starts in profound isolation, becomes communal as Iraqi women, ordinary and extraordinary, come to her in spirit and ancestry with their personal stories of love and resilience.
Together, they offer a celebration of the Iraqi female experience and an explicit warning – the divisions Iraq endured are not unique, Iraq is a bellwether for America now.
Nearly 20 years ago, 9 Parts of Desire premiered to widespread acclaim on London stages and Off-Broadway, later becoming a global theatrical phenomenon.
Now, Heather Raffo adapts her multi-award-winning solo play about Iraqi women for the screen and for our current time.
From Iraq to Michigan, Raffo transforms into a wide cross-section of Iraqi women in her inspiring exploration of love and grief within countries undone by division, violence and loss.
Nine Parts, a film by Mike Mosallam, Heather Raffo and Nilou Safinya is streaming now on PBS.
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