#Israeli leaders plot response

[odinsblog]

When US Senator Bernie Sanders argued two months ago that it was time for the United States to halt new military aid to Israel, the Biden administration and most members of Congress refused to take him seriously. They didn’t listen when the Vermont independent urged them to “block unfettered offensive military aid to the extremist Israeli government—a government led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who is continuing his unprecedented assault against the Palestinian people.” They dismissed Sanders’s warning that “Netanyahu and his extremist government are clearly in violation of US and international law and, because of that, should no longer receive US military aid.”

They cannot ignore the compelling case for a suspension of aid—based on both international standards and US law—any longer.

With the decision of the International Criminal Court’s prosecution team to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—along with Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza; Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, who is better known as Mohammed Deif, the leader of the Al Qassem Brigades; and Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s political leader—it is time, once and for all, to stop making excuses. The five named individuals face charges that they have engaged in war crimes and crimes against humanity: the Hamas leaders for the role in plotting and implementing the October 7 attack that left at least 1,200 dead, and the Israeli leaders for launching an assault on Gaza that has left more than 35,500 Palestinians dead, a substantial portion of them women and children, and wounded almost 80,000.

The prosecutor’s decision to apply for the warrants should tip the balance, even for those who have been cautious about pressuring Israel, against the allocation and distribution of any additional US military aid.

It is true that the legal process is just beginning. ICC judges must decide which warrants, if any, will be issued. But the seriousness of the charges against the Israelis ought to cause the president and Congress to press the pause button—for practical, political, and moral reasons.

According to Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, the charges against Netanyahu and Gallant include “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.” The charges against the Hamas leaders are equally grave. But as Khan explains, the Israeli response to the October 7 attack has had a disproportionately deadly impact on civilians in Gaza.

“The fact that Hamas fighters need water doesn’t justify denying water from all the civilian population of Gaza,” said the prosecutor.

(continue reading)

[eretzyisrael]

by Jacob Frankel

Following the shooting, prominent antisemitic internet personalities quickly claimed that the Jews and Israel were involved.

Jon Minadeo, the founder and leader of the Goyim Defense League (GDL) — a a neo-Nazi and white supremacist group — hosted a live audio “Spaces” conversation on X/Twitter titled “”The Jews Try to Assassinate Trump!” in which he blamed the Jews for the assassination attempt, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

Conspiracy theorists continued to push the narrative throughout the weekend that the Jews and Israel were responsible for the attempted assassination.

Stew Peters, an alt-right internet personality, responded to a post on X/Twitter questioning why police who were notified of a suspicious character on a roof adjacent to Trump failed to react. “The Israeli-based, American War Machine is responsible for the attempted coup on Saturday,” he wrote. “This was NOT a ‘lone wolf’ scenario as the Israeli-funded ‘media’ would LOVE for you to believe.”

Conspiracy theorists also claimed that the assassination attempt was a plot to remove Trump as the de facto Republican presidential nominee and instead replace him with someone more pro-Israel.

In another X/Twitter Spaces meet-up following the shooting, notable internet provocateurs including Nick Fuentes, Andrew Tate, and Mario Nawful, accused Israel of targeting Trump.

“The [Israelis] tried to discard Trump … it was an attempt to throw him out of there,” said Fuentes, a white supremacist and Holocaust denier.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Back in 2005, shortly after Arafat’s death, the situation appeared more open. The PA agreed, in coordination with the governments of Israel and the United States, to hold new elections for its presidency and its parliament (both of which have tightly limited powers under Oslo). This time around, Hamas’s leaders agreed to take part in the parliamentary election. It was the first time Hamas showed a willingness to work within the Oslo framework, the clear goal of which was always understood by the PLO and all other Palestinian and Arab leaders to be the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. When those elections were held in January 2006, Hamas won them handily, taking 74 of the council’s 132 seats. The victory stunned the traditional Fatah leaders of the PA and their backers in Washington and Tel Aviv. In a reporting trip to the region soon thereafter, I found that Hamas’s success reflected a combination of skills: a history of having provided helpful community services to different grassroots constituencies; a reputation for generally “clean hands” (unlike Fatah); effective organizing through women’s networks, with several Hamas women leaders getting elected to the parliament; and good electoral discipline, not running more candidates than there were seats in multi-seat constituencies, as Fatah and its allies did in several places. The elections gave the PLO and its U.S. and Israeli allies a great opportunity to work to find a way to draw Hamas into the political process. Hamas was willing, too, initially making inroads to form a “government of national unity” with Fatah. But the reaction from Israel and Washington was harsh. They threatened to kill any of the newly elected legislators who would agree to join such a government—which I know because I was the conduit for conveying one such threat. Later, Washington and Israel persuaded Fatah to start plotting to overthrow the newly elected leaders of the PA’s parliament and premiership. In 2007 Fatah tried to launch a violent coup against Hamas, but Hamas leaders in Gaza rebuffed the attempt. Afterwards, Hamas set about institutionalizing their position in Gaza while Fatah retreated, with their generous U.S. funding, to Ramallah in the West Bank. All the while, Hamas and its allies retained significant support in the West Bank and throughout the widespread Palestinian diaspora—and remained the democratically elected government in Gaza, although new elections have not been held since. Though by 2005 Israel had withdrawn all its civilian settlers from Gaza, it has always maintained very tight control over all the crossings through which people or goods could pass in or out of the Strip—until October 7, that is. The United Nations continues to deem Israel as the “occupying power” there, with all the responsibilities that status entails under international law. And since 2007, several Israeli governments have undertaken punishment raids into Gaza—actions that some Israeli commentators have cynically dubbed “mowing the lawn.” The raids of late 2008 and summer 2014 were particularly destructive, with thousands of Palestinians killed in total. Successive U.S. presidents have generally seemed happy to allow these incursions. And the United States’ position in the global political order has meant that its word is law.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

Imagine if Vice President Harris publicly called on a foreign nation that has a history of interfering in our elections to help her defeat Donald Trump. The response would’ve been wall to wall media coverage and members of the GOP would’ve been calling for a DOJ Investigation. But when Donald Trump did that exact thing on Thursday, it barely received any coverage from the corporate media.  Yet there was Trump at an event organized by Trump’s close ally Miriam Adelson—the widow of billionaire Sheldon Adelson and a supporter of far-right policies in Israel—calling on Israel to defeat Harris. I don’t mean Trump inferred he wanted the help of Israel to win, he stated it point blank.

That is when Trump declared: “More than any other people on Earth. More than any other people on Earth, Israel, I believe, has to defeat her. You know that?” He then repeated that Israel—not Jewish Americans—need to help him defeat Harris, stating, “And I’ve never said this before. And I’m thinking, Miriam, more than any people on Earth, Israel has to defeat her. I really believe that.” There is no wiggle room here. Trump twice asked Israeli leaders to help him defeat Harris in a room filled with people like Adelson who has very close ties to Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. Where is the outrage that Trump wants a foreign nation to interfere in our election?!! What could Netanyahu do to help Trump? Well one example is the online interference type campaign they were engaged in 2016 that I detail below.  Or far worse and what is what we are seeing over the past few days and that is spark a deadly war with Lebanon.

[...] To that end, in the last few days we’ve seen an unparalleled escalation of attacks by Netanyahu on not just Hezbollah—but the nation of Lebanon. It began with the pager bombings that may have been targeting Hezbollah militants but ended up killing and wounding innocent people including children. In the days that followed, Netanyahu’s military bombed targets in the suburbs of Beirut that killed 45 people, including three children and seven women. Two Hezbollah leaders were killed as well but we as we’ve seen in Gaza, there is no limits to the civilians Netanyahu will kill. And then there is the more traditional type of online election interference. For those unaware, the Israeli government under Netanyahu has a documented history –even noted in Israeli media outlets like Haaretz--of interfering in other nation’s elections, including the United States, to elect people supportive of his right wing views. That was the very point made by The Nation in a detailed deep dive article in 2023 titled, “The Trump Campaign’s Collusion With Israel.” As The Nation explained, “In the spring of 2016, no issue was more important to Benjamin Netanyahu than Donald Trump winning the White House.”  The reason was simple: “The GOP presidential candidate was key to everything he was after, from ending the Iran nuclear agreement, to recognizing Jerusalem—rather than Tel Aviv—as Israel’s capital, to continuing the occupation of” the West Bank.

To that end, Netanyahu personally directed a “covert operation” that “aimed to use secret intelligence to clandestinely intervene at the highest levels in the presidential election on behalf of Trump.” The Times of Israel in 2020 even addressed this plot noting Trump close ally Roger Stone was the point person for key Israeli figures, writing, “the Trump campaign, was in contact with one or more apparently well-connected Israelis at the height of the 2016 US presidential campaign, one of whom warned Stone that Trump was “going to be defeated unless we intervene” and promised “we have critical intell[sic].”

[...] Trump publicly asking Israel to help defeat Harris, of course, conjures up Trump’s infamous comment during the 2016 campaign when he declared about Hillary Clinton’s missing emails, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing, I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” And as the Mueller report detailed, “the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome.” Adding importantly about Trump: “the campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts."

Israel Apartheid State PM Benjamin Netanyahu’s escalation of war with Lebanon serves one purpose: put Donald Trump back in office as “President” in the USA.

[mariacallous]

The International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant based on allegations that they starved Palestinian civilians in Gaza during Israel’s war against Hamas.

The court on Thursday also issued an arrest warrant against Mohammed Deif, the Hamas military chief whose death has been reported but is not confirmed.

The Hague-based court’s pre-trial chamber decided to issue the warrants based on a recommendation in May by its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan. The court said in a statement that it “found reasonable grounds to believe that Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gallant bear criminal responsibility for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.”

The court added, “There are reasonable grounds to believe that the lack of food, water, electricity and fuel, and specific medical supplies, created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza, which resulted in the death of civilians, including children due to malnutrition and dehydration.”

In a statement, Netanyahu’s office called the prosecutions “antisemitic” and likened them to the Dreyfus affair, the late-19th-century prosecution of a French Jewish officer that was revealed to be an antisemitic plot. The affair spurred the modern Zionist movement.

“There is no war more just” than the war Israel has conducted since Hamas launched the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when it massacred some 1,200 people in Israel, Netanyahu’s statement said. “The decision was made by a corrupt chief prosecutor trying to save his skin from serious sexual harassment allegations,” he statement said. Netanyahu was referring to an investigation of Khan on charges of sexual misconduct.

The Biden administration, which has provided Israel with military aid, has also criticized the warrants.

“Let me be clear: whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas,” President Joe Biden said in a statement in May, when Khan sought the warrants. “We will always stand with Israel against threats to its security.”

The warrants will require Netanyahu and Gallant to take care regarding where they travel. The United States, like Israel, is not a signatory to the 1998 treaty that founded the ICC, and even those countries signed to the treaty are notoriously lax in whom they choose to arrest based on the court’s warrants. Still, an arrest warrant has caused even the most powerful of leaders to limit their travel; Russian president Vladimir Putin has traveled only to friendly countries since being place under warrant in March 2023 due to Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Gallant will no longer be travelling internationally as defense minister: Netanyahu recently fired him over differences regarding how to conduct the war.

The last time President-elect Trump was in power, he sanctioned ICC officials over plans to charge Americans with war crimes. President Joe Biden has lifted those sanctions, but Republicans in Congress are calling on Trump to reintroduce them when he returns to office, in part because of the actions against Netanyahu and Gallant.

“You can expect a strong response to the antisemitic bias of the ICC & UN come January.” Trump’s incoming National Security Adviser, Mike Waltz, said in a tweet.

A separate statement from the ICC noted that Khan had sought the arrest of Deif and other Hamas leaders. Two other Hamas leaders have since been killed, and Deif is believed to be dead, but because his death has not yet been conclusively determined, the court issued the warrant, the statement said.

[beardedmrbean]

A Hamas plot to kill Jews in Europe was foiled by German and Danish police who uncovered the terrorist group’s alarming change of tactics.

Three people were arrested in Germany, three in Denmark and one in the Netherlands with the Danish prime minister describing the plot as being “as serious as it gets”.

The Hamas operatives were under orders to bring a cache of weapons from an undisclosed location in Europe to Berlin to attack Jewish institutions, German prosecutors said.

Germany has said that four of the seven suspects in the alleged plot are members of Hamas, the proscribed terrorist group which controls the Gaza Strip and which launched the unprecedented October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

The suspects were allegedly planning attacks across Europe, officials said, without giving further details. Israeli officials have suggested all the arrests were linked to a single, cross-border European terror plot.

There was no immediate suggestion of a British link to the Hamas plot. But the Community Security Trust (CST), the body that provides security advice and protection to synagogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish sites, said the news had worrying implications for the UK.

British and Western intelligence agencies have previously warned that the war in Israel has increased the risk of attacks on Jews in Europe.

A CST spokesman said: “Historically, Hamas has never shown interest in carrying out terrorist attacks outside of Israel. There have been one or two plots over the years linked to them but nothing on a significant scale.

“But if this is a shift in policy for Hamas to carry out attacks on Jewish communities outside the region, in line with Iran and Hezbollah, that would be extremely concerning. It represents a significant shift in the threat posed to Jewish communities. There is a big concern if Hamas HQ is ordering Hamas people in Europe to carry out an attack.”

Three of the suspects arrested in Berlin are citizens of Egypt and Lebanon according to German prosecutors. The three suspects arrested in Denmark are to be charged with terror offences, according to Danish police chief inspector Flemming Drejer.

Europe has been on high alert for Hamas-linked attacks since the terror group launched the October 7 massacre.

The arrested suspects appear to have additional links with criminal gangs in Europe according to Danish police.

Security patrols around Jewish sites in Denmark are being stepped up in response to the foiled plot as well as police patrols in Copenhagen.

The three men arrested in Berlin, and another held in the Netherlands, were preparing a weapons cache that would be “kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe”, they said.

Bild, the German tabloid, named the suspects held in Berlin as Lebanese-born Abdelhamid Al A, Egyptian citizen Mohamed B and Lebanese-born Ibrahim El-R. German authorities typically withhold the surnames of criminal and terror suspects.

“The three men have close ties to senior leaders of Hamas’s military wing,” Bild reported, citing sources close to the investigation.

No later than early 2023, Hamas leaders in Lebanon had tasked Abdelhamid Al A, with locating a “depot with weapons in Europe, which the organisation had covertly set up there in the past”, prosecutors said.

Abdelhamid Al A, Mohamed B and another suspect, Nazih R, “set out from Berlin several times to search for the weapons”, and were aided in their efforts by Ibrahim El-R.

“The protection of Jews is our top priority,” Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, said on Thursday night.

Five apartments and a restaurant in Berlin were searched by police as part of the investigation. German prosecutors said that the investigation into the three suspects arrested there had been launched several months before the October 7 Hamas massacre.

The three suspects arrested in Denmark are due to appear at a closed court session on Friday.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said the plotters were trying to expand the Hamas-Israel conflict into Europe.

“It is of course – in relation to Israel and Gaza – completely unacceptable for someone to bring a conflict elsewhere in the world into Danish society,” she said at a meeting with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.

The Israeli prime minister’s office suggested that Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, played a role in alerting the authorities, as well as Shin Bet, its domestic security service.

“The Hamas terrorist organisation has been working relentlessly and exhaustively to expand its lethal operations to Europe, and constitutes a threat to the security of these countries,” it said.

“The Mossad and the ISA [Shin Bet] will continue to combine forces and capabilities with their partners in the country and around the world in order to thwart Hamas’s intentions and eliminate its capabilities.”

Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, the head of Danish intelligence, said a spate of burnings of the Koran in both Denmark and neighbouring Sweden has been a factor in the heightened security risk.

On Thursday night, Marco Buschmann, Germany’s federal justice minister, thanked authorities for catching the suspects and vowed to protect Jews in Europe.

“My thanks go to everyone involved who, with this successful investigation, has made their contribution to ensuring that Jews in Europe can continue to live in security and peace,” he said. “We must therefore do everything we can to ensure that Jews in our country do not have to fear for their safety again.”

Increased risk of terrorist attacks

In early December, an EU official warned that there was an increased risk of terrorist attacks over the winter holiday period, as potential fallout from the Israel-Hamas war.

“With the war between Israel and Hamas, and the polarisation it causes in our society, with the upcoming holiday season, there is a huge risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union,” said Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner.

The Israeli government has also warned that attacks could be on the rise since war broke out, advising its citizens to reconsider travel abroad.

Just a few days ago, Israel said the Mossad had worked with authorities in Cyprus to thwart an Iranian-ordered plan to attack Israeli and Jewish targets on the island. Many Israelis have decamped to Cyprus since the outbreak of war.

Last month, Israeli authorities said they had cooperated with Brazil, which resulted in the arrest of two individuals on suspicion of terrorism and links to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based armed group that is an ally of Hamas.

Also on Thursday, the US and UK announced sanctions on eight Iran-linked individuals, amid concerns that the Tehran regime is financing Hamas activities in the West.

They include Esmail Qaani, the head of the Quds Force, the military intelligence wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and four Quds Force operatives based in the Palestinian territories.

[workersolidarity]

🇮🇱⚔️🇱🇧 🚀🚗💥☠️ 🚨

ZIONIST AUTHORITIES RELEASE FOOTAGE FROM THE ASSASINATION OF HAMAS LEADER IN STRIKE ON LEBANON

📹 The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) released footage today showing the assassination of Hadi Mustafa in a targeted strike on his civilian vehicle near the village of Rashidieh, on the outskirts of the southern Lebanese city of Tyre on Wednesday.

The strike commenced during daylight hours as traffic passed through streets of Rashidieh, where Zionist forces bombed the civilian vehicle of Hadi Mustafa, a supposed leader within the political movement of Hamas, whom the Israeli authorities accuse of plotting terrorist attacks against the Israeli entity and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The Zionist strike was also responsible for killing a Syrian passerby who happened to be riding his motorbike by the scene when the strike occured.

For its part, Hamas has said Hadi Mustafa was not in fact a senior leader within the movement.

#source

#videosource

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: James Rothwell, Jörg Luyken, Sophia Yan and Robert Mendick

Published: Dec 14, 2023

A Hamas plot to kill Jews in Europe was foiled by German and Danish police who uncovered the terrorist group’s alarming change of tactics.

Three people were arrested in Germany, three in Denmark and one in the Netherlands with the Danish prime minister describing the plot as being “as serious as it gets”.

The Hamas operatives were under orders to bring a cache of weapons from an undisclosed location in Europe to Berlin to attack Jewish institutions, German prosecutors said.

Germany has said that four of the seven suspects in the alleged plot are members of Hamas, the proscribed terrorist group which controls the Gaza Strip and which launched the unprecedented October 7 massacre in southern Israel.

The suspects were allegedly planning attacks across Europe, officials said, without giving further details. Israeli officials have suggested all the arrests were linked to a single, cross-border European terror plot.

There was no immediate suggestion of a British link to the Hamas plot. But the Community Security Trust (CST), the body that provides security advice and protection to synagogues, Jewish schools and other Jewish sites, said the news had worrying implications for the UK.

British and Western intelligence agencies have previously warned that the war in Israel has increased the risk of attacks on Jews in Europe.

A CST spokesman said: “Historically, Hamas has never shown interest in carrying out terrorist attacks outside of Israel. There have been one or two plots over the years linked to them but nothing on a significant scale.

“But if this is a shift in policy for Hamas to carry out attacks on Jewish communities outside the region, in line with Iran and Hezbollah, that would be extremely concerning. It represents a significant shift in the threat posed to Jewish communities. There is a big concern if Hamas HQ is ordering Hamas people in Europe to carry out an attack.”

Three of the suspects arrested in Berlin are citizens of Egypt and Lebanon according to German prosecutors. The three suspects arrested in Denmark are to be charged with terror offences, according to Danish police chief inspector Flemming Drejer.

Europe has been on high alert for Hamas-linked attacks since the terror group launched the October 7 massacre.

The arrested suspects appear to have additional links with criminal gangs in Europe according to Danish police.

Security patrols around Jewish sites in Denmark are being stepped up in response to the foiled plot as well as police patrols in Copenhagen.

The three men arrested in Berlin, and another held in the Netherlands, were preparing a weapons cache that would be “kept in a state of readiness in view of potential terrorist attacks against Jewish institutions in Europe”, they said.

Bild, the German tabloid, named the suspects held in Berlin as Lebanese-born Abdelhamid Al A, Egyptian citizen Mohamed B and Lebanese-born Ibrahim El-R. German authorities typically withhold the surnames of criminal and terror suspects.

“The three men have close ties to senior leaders of Hamas’s military wing,” Bild reported, citing sources close to the investigation.

No later than early 2023, Hamas leaders in Lebanon had tasked Abdelhamid Al A, with locating a “depot with weapons in Europe, which the organisation had covertly set up there in the past”, prosecutors said.

Abdelhamid Al A, Mohamed B and another suspect, Nazih R, “set out from Berlin several times to search for the weapons”, and were aided in their efforts by Ibrahim El-R.

“The protection of Jews is our top priority,” Nancy Faeser, Germany’s interior minister, said on Thursday night.

Five apartments and a restaurant in Berlin were searched by police as part of the investigation. German prosecutors said that the investigation into the three suspects arrested there had been launched several months before the October 7 Hamas massacre.

The three suspects arrested in Denmark are due to appear at a closed court session on Friday.

Mette Frederiksen, the Danish prime minister, said the plotters were trying to expand the Hamas-Israel conflict into Europe.

“It is of course – in relation to Israel and Gaza – completely unacceptable for someone to bring a conflict elsewhere in the world into Danish society,” she said at a meeting with EU leaders in Brussels on Thursday.

The Israeli prime minister’s office suggested that Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, played a role in alerting the authorities, as well as Shin Bet, its domestic security service.

“The Hamas terrorist organisation has been working relentlessly and exhaustively to expand its lethal operations to Europe, and constitutes a threat to the security of these countries,” it said.

“The Mossad and the ISA [Shin Bet] will continue to combine forces and capabilities with their partners in the country and around the world in order to thwart Hamas’s intentions and eliminate its capabilities.”

Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, the head of Danish intelligence, said a spate of burnings of the Koran in both Denmark and neighbouring Sweden has been a factor in the heightened security risk.

On Thursday night, Marco Buschmann, Germany’s federal justice minister, thanked authorities for catching the suspects and vowed to protect Jews in Europe.

“My thanks go to everyone involved who, with this successful investigation, has made their contribution to ensuring that Jews in Europe can continue to live in security and peace,” he said. “We must therefore do everything we can to ensure that Jews in our country do not have to fear for their safety again.”

Increased risk of terrorist attacks

In early December, an EU official warned that there was an increased risk of terrorist attacks over the winter holiday period, as potential fallout from the Israel-Hamas war.

“With the war between Israel and Hamas, and the polarisation it causes in our society, with the upcoming holiday season, there is a huge risk of terrorist attacks in the European Union,” said Ylva Johansson, the EU home affairs commissioner.

The Israeli government has also warned that attacks could be on the rise since war broke out, advising its citizens to reconsider travel abroad.

Just a few days ago, Israel said the Mossad had worked with authorities in Cyprus to thwart an Iranian-ordered plan to attack Israeli and Jewish targets on the island. Many Israelis have decamped to Cyprus since the outbreak of war.

Last month, Israeli authorities said they had cooperated with Brazil, which resulted in the arrest of two individuals on suspicion of terrorism and links to Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based armed group that is an ally of Hamas.

Also on Thursday, the US and UK announced sanctions on eight Iran-linked individuals, amid concerns that the Tehran regime is financing Hamas activities in the West.

They include Esmail Qaani, the head of the Quds Force, the military intelligence wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and four Quds Force operatives based in the Palestinian territories.

==

“The Hamas terrorist organisation has been working relentlessly and exhaustively to expand its lethal operations to Europe, and constitutes a threat to the security of these countries,” it said.

"Queers for Palestine" have always had the luxury that they would never have to actually go there. But they might not need to; Hamas is working on coming to them. It's like when people send fan letters to prisoners, then discover the prisoner is being released on a technicality.

This is exactly what the "pro-Palestine" people have been wanting: expansion of Islamic terrorism.

This is what "intifada" looks like. This is what Hamas promised.

"Pro-Palestine" is pro-Hamas is pro-terrorism.

[head-post]

Israeli Air Force launches massive airstrikes on southern Lebanon

After the “pager” attack, Israel has moved into a new phase of the war against Lebanon. There are reports of dozens of Israeli warplanes dropping bombs on southern Lebanon, at the same time missile strikes are being carried out.

Israel itself said the strikes were being carried out as a “justification” for aggression against an independent state, as a response to “an Iranian plot to assassinate a senior Israeli official.”

Israeli officials stammered:

“Iranian intelligence services recruited an Israeli to assassinate Prime Minister Netanyahu, Defence Minister Gallant or the head of the Shin Bet Bar (Israel’s general security service).”

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is addressing the nation in these minutes:

“We are facing a serious and unprecedented security and humanitarian blow for both Hezbollah and Lebanon. This is an unprecedented blow since the beginning of the conflict.”

Nasrallah also commented on the pager blasts in Lebanon:

“4,000 people had pagers – this means that Israel planned to kill 4,000 people at the same time. In yesterday’s attack, it planned to kill at least 1,000 people. Israel crossed all red lines. By blowing up the pagers, the enemy violated all rules of self-control and ethics. This criminal act is a major terrorist operation, an act of genocide and massacre, and is tantamount to a declaration of war. We have formed several internal technical, technological and security investigation committees and they are studying all hypotheses.”

The Israeli Air Force Command issued a message that “the air phase of the operation in Lebanon has begun.” In terms of the level of intensity and the very nature of indiscriminate bombing, this phase of the operation differs little from the carpet bombing of Gaza.

The decision to fight Hezbollah seems to have already been made: IDF Chief of General Staff Major General Herzi Halevi recently finalised the approval of battle plans for the northern sector.

Read more HERE

[indizombie]

I want to thank all the young people speaking up for Palestine. The young people who are always being told that everything is ‘Too complicated’ for them to understand, and that they should leave serious matters to ‘responsible adults’. Please, I beg you, don’t listen. Follow your instincts. The ‘responsible adults’ have lost the plot. It’s not complicated to understand. We – the English, the Americans, the EU – are supplying weapons, support and political cover for a bunch of fascist thugs. We’re helping Israel in its live-streamed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, destroying homes, schools hospitals and – worst of all – whole families with the complicity of our states, corporations, and institutions. They are burying alive a whole society under concrete slabs. It’s not complicated at all. It’s how fascism works and has always worked. It’s going through an overtly genocidal phase, led by the far-right leaders who are determined to ethically cleanse the country of those who have inhabited it for many generations. Please, those of you in the encampments and on the demos, keep on. Civilisation and humanity are counting on you. Boycotting works. This is the lesson we took from the fight against apartheid in South Africa. Israeli leaders need recognise the impact of Palestinian-led boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) moment has had. Although I understand the special cultural significance of The Great Escape Festival, I want to salute the courageous artists who passed up a chance to play there in support of the people in Gaza.

Brian Eno, on The Great Escape boycott

[monathedefiant]

last year, i joined @kiscon and it was the best fandom decision i'd made in a long time. i'd been in a number of fan groups but nothing like this one. i felt scene. i felt heard. i felt like i'd finally found my people.

then the group's leader @larissabernstein sent me an email on the morning of oct 9th letting me know that i'd been kicked out for "supporting terrorism".

what then followed was a series of increasingly hostile messages between us:

basically, she exposed herself to be a victim of zionist propaganda. i celebrated palestinian freedom fighters tearing down checkpoints, she saw me celebrating the death of her people. i acknowledged that israel's brutal actions against palestinians led to their freedom fighters taking drastic measures, she saw me hating jewish people.

the only thing i regret about my part in our conversation is that i didn't know enough to take the stance i should've when i had the chance.

instead i let her make me feel bad for hurting her personally which led to me trying to fix it with her before i really even understood what was going on or that many of hamas' alleged crimes were completely made up (plot twist: by israeli zionists!).

however, i learned quickly enough through my own research and ended up sending this final message a few days later:

the whole thing left me with a sour taste in my mouth. i'd felt so comfortable and so accepted by @kiscon and its members only to be tossed out like yesterday's trash when it was most convenient.

in retrospect, tho, i can at least respect that @larissabernstein outright told me how she felt about me and the whole situation. i had to learn through a third party that apparently my removal was a group decision and not just a sudden one made by her alone.

this explains why @lollians just straight up stopped responding to my messages. even tho they'd always seemed the friendliest towards me, to the point of sending me a uhura button.

but it doesn't explain why @1lostone told me this:

when i reached out them on the day i was kicked out. instead they gave me a vague response where they pretended to be shocked and then completely ghosted me.

meanwhile, @kiscon shared these posts on their twitter and then tumblr that same day:

it's been crickets from most of the other @kiscon members (other than @page-of-wands11 who at least had kind words for me when i reached out afterwards).

these past 2 months have been hard. even moreso because @kiscon was a source of comfort i had for a year. then i lost it in a day with nothing to replace it.

no more tight-knit group of k/s shippers with inside jokes. no more fellow trekkies meeting up via zoom on saturdays to rewatch tos episodes, play games, or just share thoughts -- on trek or anything else.

i miss it. then saturday rolls around and i miss it even more. but if the price of that comraderie was my silence in the face of palestinian suffering, i was never going to pay it.

and anyway, losing @kiscon has opened me up to finding a trek/spirk group that doesn't ask me to compromise my morals for a sense of belonging.

i can't wait to find them! bonus points if they're black trekkies + trekkies of color + queer trekkies!!

🖖🏾

[libertariantaoist]

News Roundup 12/6/2023 | The Libertarian Institute

Here is your daily roundup of today's news:

News Roundup 12/6/2023

by Kyle Anzalone

US News

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has hit out at Americans who prefer a less interventionist foreign policy, smearing them as isolationists who want to see the US “retreat from responsibility.” AWC

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has scheduled a vote for Wednesday to advance President Biden’s massive $106 billion emergency spending request that includes military aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as additional funding for the border, POLITICO reported. AWC

Adm. Christopher Grady: US Can Handle Middle East, Russia and China All at Once. YouTubeThe Institute

China

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo called for tighter export controls on advanced technologies going to China and labeled Beijing “the biggest threat we’ve ever had.” AWC

Russia

White House Will Run Out of Funds to Arm Ukraine By the End of the Year. FTAWC

US Assistant Secretary of State for Energy Resources Geoffrey Pyatt explained that Washington was plotting a decade-long economic war targeting Moscow. The US has maintained sanctions on Russia since the 2014 Washington-backed coup in Ukraine sparked Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. Following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the economic war on the Russian economy was significantly intensified. The Institute

Bulgarian President Blocks Weapons Transfer to Ukraine. Newsweek

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko has said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is turning Ukraine into an authoritarian state as public criticism of Ukrainian leadership is becoming more common. AWC

Zelensky Cancels Address to US Senate. Forbes 

Israel

Biden Admin Says US Intel Had No Knowledge of Hamas Battle Plans for October 7. Axios

The UK announced on Saturday that it would begin surveillance flights in the skies above Gaza in search of captives held by Hamas. Over the past month, the US has conducted drone operations seeking hostages. Both Washington and London have engaged in a military buildup in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea in support of Tel Aviv. The Institute 

UN Warns Israel Against Exacerbating the Already Catastrophic Humanitarian Situation in Gaza. VOA

Israel Hayom reported last week that some members of Congress have reviewed a plan to condition US aid to Arab countries on their willingness to accept refugees from Gaza, which would facilitate the Israeli goal of cleansing the territory of Palestinians. AWC

Israel intensified airstrikes in southern Gaza on Monday and bombed areas where it told Palestinians to seek shelter, Reuters reported. AWC

Amnesty International: “US-made Weapons Facilitated the Mass Killings of Extended Families” in Gaza. Press ReleaseThe Institute

Polling continues to show that the majority of Americans favor a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, a position the Biden administration has rejected. AWC

The IDF Ignored Warnings Hours Before October 7 Hamas Attack. Haaretz 

The House on Tuesday passed a resolution that says “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” the chamber’s latest piece of legislation conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism. AWC

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reaffirmed on Tuesday that he wants Israel’s military to maintain an open-ended occupation of the Gaza Strip after the current war. AWC

 Middle East

Officials Tell Politico that US Ships Under Threat in Red Sea and Persian Gulf. Politico 

The US Approves Arms Sales to UAE and Saudi Arabia. MEE

US officials are considering forming a Red Sea task force with other nations after a series of attacks by Yemen’s Houthis against commercial shipping that’s come in response to the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. AWC

Read More

[eretzyisrael]

by Mark Birbeck

The problem we face runs far deeper than a lack of respect for one important institution. For over 75 years, the Western world recognised the singular evil of the Holocaust and the Nazi’s genocide of the Jews. But in recent years, these historic crimes have been routinely relativised. Indeed, you can see this clearly in the angry responses to the Auschwitz Museum. The museum was bombarded with tweets insisting that Israel’s war with Hamas is actually a ‘genocide’, that Israelis are the new Nazis and that the deaths of civilians in Gaza are somehow comparable to the Shoah.

This Holocaust relativism isn’t just confined to academics, activists or social-media influencers. World leaders are in on the act, too. President Erdoğan of Turkey received warm applause last week for a speech in which he compared Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Hitler, and claimed that Israel treats Gazans like the Nazis treated Jews. This week, the South African government lodged an accusation of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice (which Israel will challenge).The memory of the Holocaust is not only being downplayed here. It is also being weaponised to attack and delegitimise the world’s only Jewish state.

Encouragingly, after revealing the loss of 7,000 followers, the Auschwitz Museum announced that it had gained 53,000 new followers in a single day. Clearly, there are many decent-minded people out there who still recognise the unique significance of the Holocaust. But there is still a concerning minority who are determined to relativise it, to downplay it and to use ‘Never Again’ as a weapon against Israel. We cannot afford to let this bigotry fester and grow.

[syabm]

Folks like OP and 99K aren't doing that. They're just looking for "reasons" (excuses) to hate Israel and hand-wave away Hamas' bad actions.

If they ever acknowledge Hamas has done anything wrong, they will inevitably find some way to blame it on Israel, no matter how much logical contortions they have to do.

>Seems like the same "abuser logic," yes?

Not to me.

99 is a racist twit making rationales to excuse and ignore murdering civilians, not someone speaking about the cold realities of war.

It could only be equivocated if you assume that quote wasn't about soldiers and militants.

And I strongly doubt he has personal experience like Muir did. He's not making hard choices that get people killed, or watching people she's responsible for die.

I doubt he'd be trusted to manage a hot dog stand, because he'd say Kosher dogs are ZioNazi plot.

Muir also said "“A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.”

Also;

It is a dreadful thing to see the dead city. Next to the port I found children, women, the old, waiting for a way to leave. I entered the houses, there were houses where the coffee and pita bread were left on the table, and I could not avoid [thinking] that this, indeed, had been the picture in many Jewish towns [i.e., in Europe, during World War II]‘.

– Gloda Meir on 6 May, 1948 after a visit to Arab Haifa.

More empathy than I'd expect from a gung-ho war hawk.

Also, she's been dead for 45+ years. I doubt she's influencing modern Israeli policy very much.

[dankusner]

Remembering a Visit to Jimmy Carter in Plains, Georgia

The late President’s priorities were remarkably prescient, and his personal qualities offered a dismaying contrast to so much of the present state of American politics.

By Lawrence Wright

December 29, 2024

In September, 2011, I drove to Plains, Georgia, with Gerald Rafshoon, President Jimmy Carter’s former media adviser.

Rafshoon had asked me to write a play about the 1978 Camp David summit between Carter, President Anwar Sadat, of Egypt, and Menachem Begin, the Israeli Prime Minister.

They were three pious men.

Sadat called himself “the first man of Islam.”

He plotted against the British and was charged with complicity in an assassination of a pro-British minister, and had come to the Presidency only through the death of the charismatic leader of the Arab world, Gamal Abdel Nasser.

Begin was an Orthodox Jew—the first non-secular leader of Israel and the founder of the Likud Party—and had lost his parents in the Holocaust. He had also been the head of a terrorist organization, the Irgun, and was responsible for the deaths of more than ninety people in the bombing of the King David Hotel, in Jerusalem, in 1946.

Carter, an evangelical Christian, had had little prior political experience other than a single term as the governor of Georgia.

These men spent thirteen days secluded near Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain and produced a peace treaty that has endured for forty years. It was Jimmy Carter’s signature accomplishment and one that has never been matched in the region, despite decades of strenuous attempts.

The Carters lived in a ranch house on the edge of town.

We met in the front room, where Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, sat on a couch upholstered in a blue print that matched the curtains.

Behind them was a painting that Carter had made of the same room, with its grandfather clock, rocking chairs, and roll-top desk.

It looked like an illustration from the children’s book “Goodnight Moon.”

Not depicted were two matching elliptical machines that faced the television.

Carter was eighty-six at the time.

He wore khaki pants, short athletic socks, and a blue shirt that almost disappeared against the couch.

His silver belt buckle was a horseshoe enclosing the initials J.C. He had not shaved, and his white stubble made his face more wintry than usual.

I was just beginning my research, and I didn’t yet know who the characters in the play should be, beyond Carter, Sadat, and Begin.

Rafshoon introduced me by saying that I had recently published an article in The New Yorker about Scientology. “Oh, I read that,” Carter said. “I found it most intriguing.”

“Since when did you start reading The New Yorker?” Rosalynn asked.

“I read it every week!” he protested.

Rosalynn rolled her eyes.

It was as if she had leapt onstage.

Dramatically, I needed someone who could talk to Carter with the unvarnished candor and the unsparing insight that comes from a lifetime spent together.

Rosalynn was born in Plains, and her family lived next door to the house where the Carter family then lived, though she and Jimmy didn’t become romantically involved until 1945, when he came home for the summer from the United States Naval Academy, in Annapolis.

After their first date, he told his mother that he was going to marry Rosalynn.

They were wed the following year, after his graduation.

He was twenty-one and she was eighteen.

Carter owned a stand of pines, which were being harvested, so we rode out in a Secret Service Tahoe to watch the trees being cut, trimmed, and loaded onto a flatbed truck.

The agent driving the car was new and unfamiliar with the back roads.

Carter was testy and snapped at him when he missed a turn.

I felt sympathy for the agent, who had signed up to protect his country and found himself driving down on a dirt road, answering to an impatient old man who had once been the most powerful figure in the world and had since become the closest approximation in public life to an American saint.

Along the way, Carter gave us a drive-by tour of his childhood home, which is now a historic site, the Jimmy Carter Boyhood Farm, in the small community of Archery, three miles west of Plains, where his family moved when he was four.

“This is where I learned blacksmithing. This is the barn where I used to corral mules,” he said, not bothering to get out of the car.

There was a dirt tennis court that his father had built.

“I could beat every kid in town, but I never beat my father,” Carter told us.

The Carters were the only white family in Archery, and his playmates were the children of Black tenant farmers.

The lessons he drew from his background in southern Georgia would define his political career.

He lost his first run for governor, in 1966, to Lester Maddox, one of the most racist figures in modern Georgia history.

That defeat sent him into a spiritual crisis, and he later credited his experience of being “born again” for getting him through this bleak period.

In his gubernatorial inaugural address, in 1971, Carter said, “I say to you quite frankly that the time for racial discrimination is over.”

In the South at that time, the declaration was a landmark, and it got him on the cover of Time magazine.

Carter made a point of showing me the family cemetery—a dirt patch surrounded by a hurricane fence.

His people had been in the area since the early nineteenth century, and the tombstones were worn and covered in lichen.

He was clearly proud of how tidy the ground was, having cleared it himself, nearly stepping on a rattlesnake in the process.

We passed a deserted farmhouse that Carter said was haunted. “By what?”

I asked. “Haints,” Carter said, using an old Southern term for ghosts.

He said that, as a boy, when he was working in town or staying late at school after dark, he was terrified of walking past the house.

Several times, he thought he saw a haint in the window, “a woman with a lamp.”

There was a legend that a woman who once lived there kept her daughter in the attic, he told me.

“Maybe that was her.”

When we got back to the house, the Carters decided that we should all go into town for dinner—i.e., lunch—at Mom’s Kitchen.

The Carters rode in the Tahoe, and Rafshoon and I drove with Mary Prince, an African American woman who had worked for the Carters for decades.

Prince had been convicted of murder following the shooting of a man outside a bar in Lumpkin, Georgia, in 1970.

When the Carters lived in the Governor’s Mansion, she was assigned there as a trusty prisoner, and worked as a nanny to their daughter, Amy.

During Carter’s Presidency, he arranged to be designated as Prince’s parole officer, so that she could work in the White House.

She was eventually declared innocent of the murder and was granted a full pardon.

Mom’s turned out to be an all-you-can-eat buffet serving fried chicken, meat loaf, and collard greens.

We talked a bit about politics and the 2012 election.

Carter had his differences with President Barack Obama but thought that he would be reëlected.

Rick Perry, then the governor of Texas, had just jumped into the race as an early favorite.

Carter thought he had no chance of winning, but, if he did, “it may be a disaster for the Republican Party.”

“Of course,” Rosalynn observed, “we thought the same about Reagan.”

I was still intrigued by Carter’s paranormal experiences, so I asked him about a time in the nineteen-sixties when he said he saw a U.F.O.

He was the head of several Lions Clubs in Georgia, and had gone to make a speech at a club in another town.

“There were about twenty-five other men standing outside,” he recalled.

“There was a light over the trees, at first no bigger than a star, then like a moon, then it hovered over the trees. It was big and round. Then it moved away.”

I said that I had once seen something similar, while driving through Alabama.

An astronomer friend had said it was a “noctilucent cloud,” a mysterious phenomenon which, at the time, was common enough to have acquired a name but still defied understanding.

It was shaped like a perfect globe and appeared solid, like a hovering moon, until it slowly dissolved.

“Something else strange did happen, while I was President,” Carter said.

“We had a plane go down in Zaire with some important documents. We searched for it. We adjusted our satellites to comb through the area, without success. Finally, my director of intelligence, Stansfield Turner, said he knew of a psychic in California. Apparently, he spoke to her, and she wrote down some coördinates. And we programmed that into the satellite, and, the next time it passed over, there was the plane.”

“That tells me a lot about the intelligence community,” I said.

“Indeed,” Carter said. “One of our few successes.”

In 1973, when Carter was still governor, he and Rosalynn journeyed to Israel.

It was both a spiritual and a political pilgrimage.

Golda Meir was the Prime Minister, and, as a courtesy, she accorded the Georgia governor and his wife an old Mercedes and a driver to ferry them around the Holy Land.

The trip to Israel fortified Carter’s international portfolio and awarded him credibility among American Jews, a critical Democratic constituency for the improbable race that he was considering.

The Carters also visited several Jewish settlements on the West Bank, which he concluded posed a significant obstacle to peace.

He was profoundly moved by Israel’s struggle, and on his first day in the Oval Office, in January, 1977, he stunned his Vice-President, Walter Mondale, by saying that his first priority was to bring peace to the Middle East.

Carter later told me that he believed God had put him into the Presidency for that very reason.

Carter had taught Bible classes since he was in the Naval Academy, and he still taught Sunday School when he was in Plains, at the Maranatha Baptist Church.

He and Rosalynn had a habit of reading the Bible to each other in Spanish.

I felt a little sheepish questioning him about his understanding of the meaning of the scriptures, but I reminded him of the vengeful, partisan God depicted in the Old Testament.

“So why do you think God wants peace in the Holy Land?” I asked.

“Because we follow the Prince of Peace in the New Testament,” he responded.

Secularists and mainstream Christians were, in some ways, more at ease with Carter’s faith than were his fellow-evangelicals.

In 1980, two-thirds of white American evangelical voters turned to Carter’s opponent, Ronald Reagan, who rarely attended church.

Indeed, the Moral Majority and other evangelical movements arose in opposition to Carter’s Presidency and became firmly aligned with the right.

(Three decades later, more than eighty per cent of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.)

This was despite the fact that, as President, Carter promoted an overtly Christian agenda, working to overcome poverty and disease, make the tax code fairer, reduce the prison population, and promote human rights around the world.

When he left office, he monitored elections in strife-torn nations, brokered peace, secured the release of hostages, and helped build or repair more than four thousand houses in fourteen countries.

In retrospect, Carter’s priorities in the White House—the environment, energy conservation, peace, health care—were remarkably prescient, and certainly his personal qualities offer a dismaying contrast to so much of the present state of American politics.

Perhaps his piety soured the American public on him.

Other qualities—his doggedness, earnestness, sincerity, blunt honesty—were in sharp contrast to those of Reagan, who proved irresistible to the public.

Both of the Carters attributed his loss in the 1980 election to the failed attempt to rescue the fifty-two American hostages who were being held in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.

The mission was aborted when three of eight helicopters deployed were disabled, in part because of a sandstorm.

Another helicopter crashed into a transport plane, killing eight servicemen.

The Ayatollah finally released the hostages on the day that Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.

It was a tragic capstone to Carter’s luckless Presidency.

Constituencies that seemed tailored to endorse Carter gave him a cold shoulder.

In his reëlection bid, he was the first Democratic nominee since 1920 not to gain the majority of the Jewish vote, despite his signal accomplishment of making peace between Israel and its most dangerous foe.

Sadat and Begin won the Nobel Peace Prize immediately after Camp David, but Carter was spurned, even though he had risked everything to make it happen.

In 2002, the Nobel committee finally amended its error, justifying it, in part, because Carter had criticized the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq.

In April of 2014, my play “Camp David” opened at the Arena Stage, in Washington, D.C.

The Carters were there, along with Sadat’s widow, Jehan.

To my alarm, Carter was seated directly behind me.

I had no idea how he would respond.

Throughout the performance, I imagined his disappointment, anger, distrust, whatever, radiating through me.

The play treated him as a flawed man with a great dream.

He was driven by a belief that God would not let him fail in his effort to bring peace to the Holy Land, but God was certainly not helping.

Carter had set aside three or four days to accomplish the feat—in the event, it took thirteen days, an almost unimaginable time commitment for a modern President.

Failure was always the most likely outcome, even on the last day.

Carter’s trust in his own ingenuity, persistence, and persuasion, as well as his trust in God, were brought into question.

Camp David was his greatest political accomplishment, but from the start it teetered on the edge of fiasco.

There was another story that underlay the peace negotiations, and that was the story of the love between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

Their relationship was deep, honest, and durable.

I had come to admire the Carters as I did few people in public life.

They came from a stigmatized part of America, and they had been decisively rejected by the electorate, but they never paused in their service.

Nor did they enrich themselves.

Their entire life together was marked by high aspiration and noble effort. Their marriage endured more than seventy years, until Rosalynn passed away at their home in Plains, in November, 2023, at the age of ninety-six.

At the end of the play, Jerry Rafshoon and I were called up on the stage along with the actors and the Carters.

The Carters were weeping.

I wondered what exactly had affected the President so strongly.

The Carters went down the line, thanking the actors.

Richard Thomas, who played the President, had been as nervous as I was, and Carter teased him.

But when he came to Hallie Foote, who played Rosalynn, he simply said, “I fell in love with you again tonight.”

Jean-Pierre Khazem, "First Ladies," Rosalyn, 2004.

Using women who were physically similar to various first ladies, Khazem dressed bis models in designer outfits and had them wear silicone masks.

The masks produce an eerie doll-like effect, but the result is a near-perfect resemblance.

There's a hyper-glitzed Nancy Reagan casting her famous gaze.

A bouffant-encrusted Pat Nixon rests a hand on her narrow chin.

But seated alone on a big couch with folded newspapers at her side, the humbly attired Rosalynn Carter is right out of a David Lynch film.

"Rosalynn" is by far the most nightmarish portrait.

But why?

Isn't she known as one of the sweetest liberal wives to ever reside in the White House?

[bllsbailey]

Ayatollah Paranoia: Iran's Leadership Reportedly Plagued by Fear and Mistrust As Israel Keeps Owning Them

If you’re an Israeli-hating Middle Eastern terrorist these days, your life prospects don’t look that good. The Jewish state has systematically eliminated the ranks of Hamas “leaders,” sent almost the entire hierarchy of Hezbollah to an early grave, and even threatened Iran’s boss, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Israeli forces managed to pull off an audacious plot where exploding pagers took out numerous Hezbollah operatives. They then followed up with a massive airstrike in Beirut, Lebanon, which ended the existence of terrorist Hezbollah psychopath leader Hassan Nasrallah.

Turns out, they’re getting into the heads of Iran’s despotic rulers:

Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah last week has reportedly stirred paranoia among top Iranian officials and the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, according to Reuters. Israel targeted Nasrallah in a significant airstrike against his bunker on Friday, marking the latest blow to an increasingly weakening Hezbollah, which has been attacking Israel since last year. Khamenei had reportedly warned Nasrallah that Israel was going to try to kill him and urged him to flee Lebanon in the days prior to his assassination, a senior Iranian official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Related: Damn, They're Good: Head of Iranian Spy Group Targeting Mossad Was… an Israeli Double Agent

Israel Confirms Death of the Terrorist Nasrallah; Does This Open a Door for Peace in the Region?

Khameini reportedly is getting pretty freaked out:

Iran had already been concerned for years that Mossad, an Israeli intelligence agency, had infiltrated Tehran’s ranks, the outlet reported. Following Nasrallah’s death, that concern has grown larger — and Iranian officials have become worried about Khamenei’s safety, officials and sources close to the matter told Reuters. “The trust that held everything together has disappeared,”  an Iranian official told Reuters. “[Khamenei] no longer trusts anyone,” another source close to the Iranian regime told Reuters. [Emphasis mine.]

As so often happens in totalitarian countries, the rats are turning on each other. If this continues, expect a housecleaning—which, as we know from history in Nazi Germany, North Korea, Soviet Russia, and other demonic regimes, means the wholesale assassinations of all those even remotely suspected of lacking sufficient allegiance to the despots.

Authorities have opened investigations to see whether some Iranian officials or members of Iran’s military are compromised, another Iranian official told Reuters. The investigations are particularly centered around officials who travel or have family outside the country. Authorities are reportedly suspicious of Iranian military members who have recently been in Lebanon, one of the officials told Reuters. One of the military members had recently been asking about Nasrallah’s location, raising eyebrows among other officials. That individual was arrested, along with several others, the official told Reuters.

As Joe Biden continues to blather on about a ceasefire and “proportional responses,” the reality is that this evil empire will continue to be a threat as long as it’s allowed to exist. Biden on Wednesday said “the answer is no” when asked about a preemptive Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The obvious question: why not? Either take them out now, or face more war in the future or even a nuclear detonation in Jerusalem.

That’s the reality we’re facing, and the weak leadership of Harris and Biden simply isn’t up to the task of dealing with it.  

The Trump campaign, in a Wednesday campaign email, brought the point home:

On Iran, the terrorist-funding regime has managed to make at least $90 billion from illicit oil sales under Kamala, largely due to "ongoing hesitance to enforce oil sanctions on Iran." Iran had just $4 billion in foreign reserves when President Trump left office. It’s clear that Iran does not respect Kamala Harris. She told Iran in October of last year "don't” – and since her tepid “warning,” Iranian proxies have killed U.S. troops, attacked U.S. Navy ships, shot down U.S. drones, and Iran itself has attacked Israel… Kamala Harris’s weak arguments were completely and fully debunked. That’s why she struggles to defend her record – it’s indefensible.

As bad as things have gone under the incredibly disappearing Joe Biden, they would get even worse under a feckless Harris-Walz regime. Just say no.