When Will the Israel-Hamas War End?

 

The short answer is “never.”  There may be a ceasefire to this current conflict—and we all pray that will happen very soon—but the “war” is never going to end.   There are some people in the world in whom the animosity and hatred are so great that they will always be at “war” with each other, whether they are actually shooting at one another or not.   And because the feelings are so bitter and run so deeply, then, even during times of “peace,” they will be seeking to break that peace when they believe a suitable, beneficial opportunity has arisen.  That is the situation with the Arabs and the Jews.

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They aren’t the only ones.  Look at the history of Russia and the Ukraine.  They have been fighting, off and on, for generations, and as long as there is one Russian and one Ukrainian on earth, they are going to fight.  There may be a lull in the “shooting war” (occasionally) for a few years, but the “war” in their hearts never ends, and never will.  There are African tribes that are the same.  We rarely hear about them because Africa doesn’t mean much to us.   But the reason that so many African nations have been, and still are, unstable is tribal warfare.  It’s just shifted from the jungle to the halls of government.  Some Indian tribes in America (e.g., Comanches and Apaches) were also like this. The other side was the “enemy” that needed to be obliterated.  Sometimes the issues are so long-standing and ancient that the current members of the “tribe” don’t even know what they are.  They just hate, fight, and kill the other tribe because, well, that’s what our tribe does.  It is not, in the least, an uncommon phenomenon in human history.

And that is the situation with Palestinians (Arabs) and Jews.  The Palestinian grievance is they believe Israel stole their land, and recently enough that it is still in living memory.  Israel believes that God gave them that land 4,000 years ago, that it is theirs by unalienable right, and that they should possess every inch of it until the end of time. However, the disagreements are much more hoary than the recent history.  Arabs and Jews have been at animosity with each other for literally hundreds of years (thousands?).  That isn’t going to change overnight; it never will, any more than between Russian and Ukrainian.  And the rest of the world is caught in between and suffers for it.

So, last month, Hamas saw what it thought was an opportunity to break the peace and do some damage to its most hated enemy, the Jews (Israel).  Israel would like to be left alone in what they believe is their homeland, but it isn’t going to happen in the near future.  And they probably aren’t terribly distraught at having to off a few Arabs.  They hate each other, always have, and always will.

Barack Obama, in typical ignorant, blind, Leftist fashion, has called for a Palestinian homeland.  That isn’t going to solve the problem, for the reason stated above—the Jews believe ALL of that land is theirs by God-given right. They aren’t going to give any of it away, especially not to Palestinian Arabs.  If Israel IS forced—and it will only be by force—to give the Palestinians a “homeland” on territory that Israel believes belongs to itself, then Israel will bide its time, waiting for a propitious opening to seize the land back again. More war.  

If the Palestinians do, finally, give up, and leave Israel or accept that they will never have a “homeland” on that piece of earthen geography, then there will be, in the future, another reason brought forth to continue the tragic, never-ending conflict between these two peoples.  The “homeland” question is just the current, visible manifestation.  The dispute emanates from much deeper concerns, long-enduring, and with their true source in the human heart.  Bombs and bullets can only put a temporary band-aid on the problem; they cannot fully solve conundrums that are rooted deep in human history and animosity, not without total genocide. 

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So.  Another conflict between Arab and Jew.  It’s tragic, it’s horrible, and it shouldn’t be ignored.  But a little historical perspective would help, too.  Hopefully, there will be a ceasefire in this war soon.

A ceasefire until one side or the other sees the next golden opportunity to assault its despised foe.  There will never be a true “peace” in the Middle East.

Ilhan Omar Says a Local Mosque Fire Was Arson. There's One Big Problem With That Allegation.

 

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been one of Hamas’ top allies on the Hill. She’s been clamoring for a ceasefire, which no one supports, not even liberals on her side of the aisle. Democrats are toying with so-called humanitarian pauses, which are essentially the same thing and will only benefit Hamas. The terror group would get a breather from Israel’s relentless assault in Gaza, and they’ll be able to steal more relief aid. 

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It’s baffling that so many progressives cannot put the two together. Hamas has ruled Gaza for 17 years; they control all government agencies. Terrorists will steal any humanitarian assistance, but maybe Omar knows that and doesn’t care. As we’ve seen from the pro-terrorist rallies nationwide, it’s clear that these young left-wingers know who Hamas is and what they stand for and will support any initiative to strengthen them. 

Omar’s irresponsible actions don’t just stem from her appalling views on this subject but the peddling of terrorist propaganda. She claimed years ago that Israel has hypnotic powers, a tweet many rightfully saw as antisemitic. Omar’s lack of intelligence was exposed again when she tweeted photos of dead children from Gaza when, in fact, they were Arabs gassed by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in 2013. 

A fire has caused extensive to a mosque in my district in Minneapolis.

This same mosque was subject to an arson attack earlier this year while over 100 people were inside.

I am grateful that no one was hurt and praying for the safety of my community. pic.twitter.com/Y9UIvNZuPp

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 3, 2023

Now, she’s trying to gin up the islamophobia card, heavily insinuating it was arson. There’s only one problem with that—authorities haven’t found anything suspicious (via CBS News) [emphasis mine]: 

Muslim leaders and worshippers are on edge after a fire at the property of the Mercy Islamic Center. 

The same mosque was set on fire less than a year ago. Investigators say Jackie Little was behind the fire intentionally set on the third floor. Little was also tied to burning down the mosque inside the Somali Mall. He is facing federal charges. 

Minneapolis Police said they don't believe the cause of the Wednesday's fire to be suspicious at this time. However, that is not doing too much to ease the Muslim community's concerns. 

"Looking at this, I'm like wow, it also makes me feel unsafe," said Aweis Hassan. 

Oh, shut up, Hassan. No one here is going to barge into your home, bind you, torture you, and then set you on fire. That’s what Hamas did to 1,400 Israeli families.

How Long Can a System Built on Lying, Cheating, and Corruption Survive?

 

I’m going to continue writing about the saga that is China, which I have written about many times before.  It’s relevant because China is America’s number one antagonist in the world today, our greatest opponent, and we need to understand what is happening there.  It is also pertinent because many of the things going on in China can be seen in our government and country. And I have to start out by saying, Thank God for our Founding Fathers who wrote a Constitution that still gives some protection to the American people.  Those protections are being increasingly eroded by the Leftist, power-craving Democratic Party, which mindlessly hates the Constitution and wants to eliminate it, but it still exists, and they struggle to get around it.  China doesn’t have that kind of protection for its people, and they are cursed because of it.

This article is being written based upon two communications I had yesterday with former students of mine in China.  I mentioned one of them in an earlier column.  He had a job, his company didn’t pay him his monthly salary, then only paid him half of it, and promised to pay the rest in a few days.  They never did, so he told me last night that he had quit that job and found another one.  I wish him well.  I’ll talk to him more soon.

The stupidity of some Chinese employers is staggering.  They think they will save money by not paying their employees and that the employee will just accept it because, well, there is nothing that can be done. China (with its great Marxist, “worker’s paradise”) supposedly has labor laws to protect those workers, but as this former student recently told me, “the government doesn’t do sh*t about these companies” who exploit their employees. I know that from personal experience, because I sued a former employer of mine, with overwhelming evidence of his guilt. The judge decided totally in his favor.  Why have labor laws if they aren’t going to be enforced?

But that student/employee was a skilled worker—a cameraman.  You don’t find those kinds of people walking around on the street. The employer might have saved a little money by not paying him the full salary owed, but now, the employee quit, and the company will have to hire, and train, another worker.  That will cost them a lot more money than they stole from the employee.  Same with me. The employer who was stealing from me, and who I eventually sued, lost countless thousands of yuan because I quit.  What little he gained from stealing from me was overwhelmingly lost by my resignation.  And I heard he never was able to replace me. This isn’t good business, to say the least.

One problem, of course, is the government-run, socialist system of China.  The people are not raised learning capitalist, market-oriented business principles and sound economic laws, thus so many of them really do not know how to run a business.  They can’t see ahead; they see only the here-and-now of theft.  As I have mentioned before, the biggest fight I had, as a teacher in China, was with the constant cheating and lying of the Chinese students.  They are pressured so much to succeed, that anything goes, including cheating and lying. There is no God in China, so no moral absolutes.  You do what you can get away with—lying, cheating, stealing—that is the system they grow up with, and many of them, especially if they become business or government leaders, put them into practice when they have the opportunity. And the “slaves” suffer for it.  

I also heard from a second former student last night.  She recently finished her Master’s degree in Australia and located a job in China about two months ago.  She contacted me and told me she hadn’t been paid yet.  Same thing.  Boss keeping the money, lying about the situation, exploiting the labor of his employee, which is nothing more than theft, of course.  So, just yesterday I received these two examples of the corruption, lying, cheating, and theft that is so deeply rooted in the rotten country called China.  t’s endemic to their system, to any socialist, totalitarian system.

As a historian, this also intrigues me.  How long can a country survive by being built on lying, cheating, and corruption? I don’t know the answer to that, there is no way to know.  There have been other such systems in history, and they eventually collapsed. China will, too, but I can’t guess when that will be.

This is further relevant because of what is happening in America.  Washington, D.C., is thoroughly corrupt now, the “Swamp,” every bit as dishonest as Beijing.  There are no bigger liars in the nation than Joe Biden and politicians, on both sides of the aisle (well, their media, too).  This is exactly what power does to weak people who should never have it; power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  It is clearly happening in America.

Again, thanks to our brilliant Founding Fathers, we, the people, do still have some protections in our Constitution that the Chinese people do not have.  But the Democratic Party is working overtime to destroy that Constitution and give us as corrupt a totalitarian government as China has.  And since there is no morality in the Democratic Party, either, save whatever satisfies their insatiable lust for control, if they succeed in utterly revoking our Constitution, America will be totally finished, a mirror image of China.  We don’t’ want that, folks.  I can tell you that from personal experience, and I’ve tried to relate, in my articles what is happening to the people in China.  It will happen in America if the Democrats get the power that they want.

How long can such a system last? I can’t fathom a guess.  I can only tell you that we don’t want it.

Nightmare on Martha’s Vineyard

 

Based on MSNBC’s recent special, “Martha’s Vineyard v. DeSantis,” even award-winning documentarians cannot produce a propaganda film about Gov. Ron DeSantis’ “political stunt” of sending illegals to this wealthy liberal redoubt without the residents coming across as clueless, entitled douchebags.

The documentary is the celluloid equivalent of stepping on a rake and having the rake hit you in the face.

I will dispense with correcting the usual immigration lies scattered throughout the documentary. (No, the Venezuelans did not enter our country “legally”; and no, Venezuela’s economic disaster isn’t something that happened to them — they did it to themselves. Can’t wait to have these Aristotles voting here.)

I’m more interested in the prodigious entitlement of the Martha’s Vineyarders.

The documentary begins with a bunch of New Englanders bustling around a dock, and a ruddy-faced woman holding up a fish for a picture (the closest liberals ever get to the working class). She is then introduced as Lisa Belcastro, director, Harbor Homes Shelter.

Belcastro: “So I get a call at around 4 o’clock and I was like ‘What? We have about 50 Venezuelans in the parking lot? And I … why? What do you mean?'”

Her befuddlement was echoed by Geany Rolanti of Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, who said, “I saw them walking across from the high school to the bus stop. I was confused. I was confused. Because, I was like, how did you get here?”

Wouldn’t it be great to live in a place where the sight of unkempt third worlders is confusing? Not too long ago, that was America. But by now, there aren’t many towns left where it would be considered unusual.

I envy their utter obliviousness to what’s happening in the rest of the country.

The Biden administration has dumped nearly 4 million illegals on the United States in the past three years alone. Martha’s Vineyard — which voted 80% for Biden — got 49 of ’em and immediately called the police. Within 36 hours, the National Guard had removed the unsightly newcomers.

Could we put Martha’s Vineyard in charge of border security?

Venezuelan illegal: “They didn’t know what to do with us. We arrived unexpectedly.”

Unexpectedly! Whereas the hundreds of thousands of illegals showing up in other people’s towns were totally expected!

No, I’m sorry. That’s incorrect. Biden has been furtively sending planeloads of illegals on late-night “ghost flights” to U.S. airports with absolutely no advance warning, no resources and no right of refusal. Even in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, the Department of Homeland Security redacts the names of the luckless cities. Martha’s Vineyard: 80% for Biden.

The Democratic sheriff in San Antonio, Texas, Javier Salazar, perhaps hoping for an invitation to the Vineyard someday, is all over the documentary, making hilariously obtuse comments based on his expertise of having the 49 Venezuelans pass through his town first.

“If I want to make a point by inconveniencing not just the people I’m dumping, but inconveniencing the people I’m going to dump them on, that’s a perfect place to do it.”

Imagine the cheek of DeSantis inconveniencing Martha’s Vineyard! Salazar should be the keynote speaker at the next Democratic National Convention to elaborate on this point: Do NOT inconvenience the rich!

How did this nitwit get elected anywhere, much less in Texas? Oh, I see: San Antonio: 67% Hispanic, who vote about 70% for “D,” no matter what. (You’re definitely going to win the Hispanic vote, Republicans. Just keep trying!)

Most bizarrely, Salazar demanded to know, “What business is it, quite frankly, of the governor of Florida or anybody in Florida, what’s going on in my county?” The sheriff seems sublimely unaware that illegal immigration is affecting the whole country, not just his county.

Weirdly, Salazar — so proprietary about “what’s going on in [his] county” — flew to Massachusetts to oversee the illegals’ new accommodations after they got booted off the island.

Singing their praises, he talked about what great housekeepers they were. “They cleaned the barracks from top to bottom.”

Any engineers or surgeons in there, or are the rich still clamoring for more maids?

In a total coup, the documentary producers somehow got a living, walking, hectoring exemplar of “Karen” to participate in the documentary! Rachel Self, Martha’s Vineyard resident and immigration lawyer, keeps popping up, screeching about “crimes,” “victims,” “survivors,” “grooming” (isn’t that word a hate crime?), and people being “kidnapped.” I said, salad dressing on the SIDE!

Her immediate response to 49 illegals on the Vineyard was to call the chief of police to report a kidnapping.

— A governor sending 49 illegals to Martha’s Vineyard: KIDNAPPING.

— Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas dumping millions of illegals on towns throughout America (not Martha’s Vineyard): a Democratic hero!

— Ms. Self loading illegals onto a bus and personally ushering them off the island: Good Samaritan … and I’d like to speak to the manager!

Perhaps realizing that their blind hysteria about 49 illegals sounded a little Trumpy, the Vineyardites kept making excuses for their rush to get the illegals off the island.

First, they bragged about how wildly “diverse” Martha’s Vineyard is. Did you know the year-round population is one-quarter Brazilian?

That’s not true, at least according to any liberal’s definition of “diverse.” Only 0.19% of the population moved from abroad. Eighty-six percent of the year-rounders are American-born U.S. citizens. The median household income (off-season) is $74,000 — and $1 billion during summer — compared to $57,000 in Florida and $68,000 in Texas.

Next, the put-upon residents kept insisting that they bent over backward to help their beloved Venezuelans — “my 49 people,” as Self put it.

Massachusetts State Rep. Dylan Fernandes: “I hopped in and started blowing up air mattresses.”

You’re right, Dylan. No one could have done more.

Belcastro: “People wanted to help. People wanted to give. People wanted to donate.”

Yeah — donate to the buses to get them the hell off the island.

Rolanti: “They got hugs, they got kisses, they got clothing, they got food, we did everything we could, but unfortunately, we don’t have a lot of resources. … We have a lot of people who need food, who need shelter.”

Luckily, no one else in the entire country needs food or shelter. Only Martha’s Vineyard.

Fernandes: “It’s a very small island.”

Yes, small, but somehow big enough accommodate an extra 180,000 people during the summer — unlike the hundreds of towns and cities in less well-connected parts of the country that have been compelled to accommodate 4 million illegals just in the last three years.

I’ll let Karen write the epitaph to this column, as she seems so eager to do for the country.

“Martha’s Vineyard,” Self said, “has a year-round population of 17,000 people total, so 49 people for us being dropped here was the equivalent of 24,000 people being dropped in downtown Manhattan. That is not my America.”

See? Clueless. In the last year, more than 113,000 illegals have been “dropped” on New York City, with no end in sight.

That’s not our America, either.

GOP Warns Americans to ‘Brace for Impact’ As Caravan Carrying Thousands of Illegals Heads for the Border

 

As President Joe Biden’s southern border crisis continues to spiral out of control, Republicans are warning of a massive caravan carrying thousands of illegal migrants that is heading toward the U.S.-Mexico border. 

According to the Associated Press, at this time, approximately 7,000 illegal aliens are on the caravan— up from 5,000 earlier this week. One of the organizers said the migrants are traveling from Cuba, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, and Venezuela. 

This will make the largest caravan since last summer. However, it marks a fraction of the numbers Border Patrol agents will encounter over a month. 

More details on the caravans from Fox News Digital: 

Caravans have been a regular feature at the border in recent years, heading to the border in both the Trump and Biden administrations. They often break up on their way to the border, with migrants either seeking relief in Mexico or moving to the U.S. border to seek entry in smaller groups. But the images of the enormous numbers of people heading to the border offer a snapshot of how many have surged into the U.S. under the Biden administration.

Republicans are blaming the latest surge in immigrants storming the U.S. border on the Biden Administration as the country grapples with a historic crisis. 

One of the first things Biden did when he entered office was dismantle Trump-era policies that kept encounters at the southern border at ease. 

In response to the thousands illegally crossing the border, wreaking havoc on the nation, the Biden Administration said that it would restore asylum pathways that were demolished under former President Trump. 

Biden has claimed he will implement “consequences for illegal entry,” however, that has yet to deter migrants from coming into the U.S. as numbers at the border are expected to rise again in the coming weeks. 

House Homeland Security Counterterrorism Subcommittee Chairman August Pfluger admitted that caravans know that there are “no consequences for illegal entry into the U.S.” 

“The President’s policies have incentivized millions of illegal crossings, and I am extremely concerned about the heightened risk of terrorism due to the wide-open southern border. President Biden must enforce our existing laws to secure the border, disincentivize illegal migration flows, and safeguard our national security,” he told Fox News Digital. 

The Biden Administration requested Congress to pass a $14 billion legislation to “fix” the crisis at the border, which would allow for the increased use of expedited removal of those in the country illegally and hire more Border Patrol agents. 

“The Biden administration has rolled out the welcome mat for migrants heading to the U.S., allowing for eight million to illegally cross under his watch so far,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) said. “Now thousands more have set foot toward our country because, according to the caravan’s leader, ‘Biden has lost control of the border.'”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX.) is also warning about the millions of illegal aliens making their way to the U.S. amid a terrorist war in the Middle East. 

“With the radical Islamic terrorism sweeping the Middle East, border security is now more important than ever. Just last year, 736 people on the terrorist watch list tried to get into our country — and those are just the ones we know about,” Cruz said. “The Biden Border Crisis is threatening Americans, and this caravan is just the latest disaster in the long list of Biden’s failures.”