Israeli

Extortion, Ugly Americans and Gaza


POST 1155

Executive Summary

> Musk failed. He’s expelled.

> Once an extortionist, always an extortionist

> Giving credit where it’s due: DOGE excels at idiotic claims and vile cruelty.

> It used to be “makers and takers.” Now it’s “Trumpys and parasites.”

> Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were repatriated to Israel last week – in boxes.

Musk Update

Elon Musk failed to email his declaration of 5 things he did last week, as required by the demand email set forth in this space on February 26. Accordingly, he is immediately fired from his non-job. He will have 15 minutes to remove his personal items from his office and until noon tomorrow, Monday, March 3 to leave this country permanently.

The Extortionist

In 2019 Trump got caught trying to extort President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, demanding an announcement from Zelenskyy claiming he was investigating wrongdoing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine. Trump hoped that would kneecap Joe Biden in the upcoming election. Appropriately, Trump’s attempted extortion got him impeached.

Ukraine continues to be in need of military aid and Trump is making that aid contingent upon Ukraine giving away half of its rare earth mineral wealth and caving in to Putin’s Russia.

It’s yet another Trump extortion. To be fair, it’s actually a protection racket. You can almost hear Trump saying to Zelenskyy, “You’ve got a nice little country. It would be a shame if anything happened to it.”

The Lowest god

Surely, the Trump/Vance ambush  of President Zelenskyy served to puff up Trump’s extremist bro-bros. It served to buoy Putin’s ambitions to restore the Soviet Union through grabs of entire countries. And it served to display the reality that everything associated with Trump is solely about money and fame/power. But all that Trumpian worthlessness misses the point.

From Norm Eisen, The Contrarian, March 1:

Trump and Vance in one fell swoop managed to embolden our adversaries (not just Russia) and alienate our staunch European allies.

As Trump and hillbilly Vance vomited their playground bully stupidities, believing that they were humiliating President Zelenskyy, they were, in fact, humiliating themselves. They are too vain and clueless to understand that, but that misses the point anyway. They were humiliating the United States of America before the world. That’s the point.

We all understand that their Mafia don behavior in public will be enthusiastically applauded by right wing extremists (MAGA swagger for the insecure) and by spineless Republicans. But it will serve as a warning to our allies that the United States is no longer the leader of the free world and cannot be counted on as an ally. It will show Putin and Xi that we are nothing more than a grovelling paper tiger that can be manipulated by a single complementing breath and a pat on Trump’s comb-over.

Apparently, Trump’s art of the deal is nothing more than crude extortion and humiliation. Trump fancies himself king and a god. Perhaps he is right. But he is solely a god of self-humiliation

Trumpy Americans

They are the ones who support Trump and his pet raptor, the co-president of Smash and Grab. Just like Trump, Musk is severely challenged to stay within sight of truth, reality and decency. Look at this tweet from him →

Let’s unpack that.

First, there isn’t 90% of Americans loving DOGE; it’s around 50% and falling. That is like the oops of Musk conflating millions into claims of billions when he reports government savings through his ready, fire, don’t-bother-to-aim shotgun firings.

Musk gets such things wrong because:

A. He just likes the sound of “billions” the way some people like the sound of their own voice.

B. His love of ignorance and fantasy far outweighs his experience with truth and reality.

C. He’s going to Mars anyway, so why should he sweat the small stuff that doesn’t hurt him?

D. He’s been far too busy jumping like a 4-year-old to notice little discrepancies that are off by a thousand times.

E. All of the above

Second, other than the most determined-to-be-angry extremists, almost nobody “loves” a phony, largely illegal bunch of juvenile delinquent flying tech monkeys or their greedy non-boss.

Third, this statement apparently from Trump’s mean girl press person* makes clear that for those in the White House and for the national Trumpy ones, there are “others” and who cares about them because everything is only about whether it affects “you”? – meaning themselves. Empathy has no place in this White House or in that third of our citizens.

In this age of extremist rage, Mitt Romney’s label “takers” has devolved into “parasites.” Today there is never a description of anything by MAGAs, Republicans, oligarchs or fascists without including demonization of “others.” That stuff often comes from the ethically strained White House and always comes from dictators.

The over-proud, angry and poorly informed Trumpy Americans brought us this crashing of the America they claim to love but clearly they don’t. It’s the America they should have learned about in civics and history classes, the America of All-We-The-People, but they obviously never did.

Finally,

Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas were quite alive when they were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The mother likely was raped and tortured after that. Then they were all dead.

In repatriating the bodies to Israel, Hamas substituted a deceased Gaza woman for the dead mother of two dead children. Connect all that to some other dots and perhaps you’ll see things a bit differently, if you dare.

From Mike Koplow regarding the return of the bodies of Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas last week:

It is unfathomable to watch Hamas parade coffins of dead innocents who were kidnapped into Gaza [and are now being flaunted] before the cheering hundreds as music blares, unfathomable to watch them march tortured hostages onto a stage in a public square and force them to humiliatingly thank their cruel captors in front of television cameras before their release, unfathomable to contemplate that no Palestinian in Gaza appears willing to step forward and put an end to this or to even publicly object.

As you contemplate the horrors visited upon non-militant Gazans, consider Koplow’s words and scratch your chin a moment to see if you can understand, even if only a bit and even if only for a moment how that might have come about.

What if you had attended that concert in the desert on October 7? What if that were your family returned in boxes? What if one of those humiliated prisoners was your brother, friend, or father who was tortured for no reason other than Hamas savage sadism, was malnourished and forced to humiliate himself in front of cameras and a cheering Gaza crowd? That is the kind of reality Israeli’s live in.

Go slowly and gently with your certainties – and teach your idealistic college student waving a Palestinian flag to do the same. Perhaps there is more to learn. Perhaps there are things worth standing up for that are beyond our own individual limited view and which surpass our own individual sense of offense.

_________________________________________

* Questions for 27 year old Karoline Leavitt, White House Press Secretary:

  1. Do you think that bratty mean girl rants are what the world should hear from the press room of the White House?
  2. Do you think that the cross you prominently display absolves you from the answer to the question, “What would Jesus say?”?
  3. No seriously, do you think it’s okay to lie for Trump?

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The Fine Print:

  1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not necessarily mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
  2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
  3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine, but I do wish that I could blame someone else. Glad to have your corrections.
  4. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.
  5. Clicking on most pics in these posts will take you to the source information.
  6. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.

Click me

JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Forget About Finding the Why – We Already Know – Part 1


Post 1,011

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Hamas terrorists brutally wounded and killed thousands of Israelis on October 7. Most of the world was aghast at the massacre – right until the Israelis began doing what every other nation on Earth would do in such a situation: They hit back.

They set out to make it so that the terrorists could not attack them again. That’s a lot like the U.S. going after ISIS – you know: the be-headers of journalist Danny Pearl and many others. Most thought clobbering those terrorists was a pretty good idea. The IDF got into full motion on October 8 to do the same sort of thing. That’s when world opinion began to shift.

One of Hamas’ war crimes is that it embeds itself in civilian Palestinian infrastructure. Their doing so means that for Israel to protect itself by going after the terrorists, civilians will die. So, do a thought experiment with me.

Imagine that you’re the Prime Minister of Israel and you’re making decisions from among only terrible choices. What would you do?

Hint: A ceasefire is not an option while Hamas is still armed and prepared to kill your people; indeed, is still killing your people.

What’s your decision, Prime Minister?

Israel chose to protect its people and has been condemned internationally for doing so.

Hamas provides video and claims to have statistics of injured and killed Palestinians, especially of children and babies. They claimed that 4,737 children had been killed by the IDF by November 7. Our human empathy insists that we care. But there is no way to verify Hamas’ spectacular claims. They commonly lie for propaganda purposes and the world oddly and dumbly accepts their claims as true.

So, upon hearing these questionable claims, the world became shockingly outraged over Israelis “killing Palestinian babies” and began calling for a ceasefire. This is a stunningly effective PR campaign by Hamas. And it’s a stunningly effective counter to the Hamas killings of Israeli children and babies that Hamas videoed and posted online on October 7.

There is not now, nor has there ever been, a way to overpower the always instantaneous Arab claims of victimhood. Just a few weeks ago Hamas used its errant missile fired into a Gaza hospital parking lot to blame Israel. The world Pavlovian dog salivated.

You may also recall how expertly Yassir Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Army used this same blaming technique to point a damning finger at Israel for killing innocents. He garnered huge world support for Palestinians and condemnation of Israel. The technique is simple: “Hit and run, leave civilians in the center of the bulls eye and claim victimhood when Israel hits back.” Rope-a-dope. It worked then just as well as it does for Hamas today.

Strangely, other than on October 7 (and only on October 7) there hasn’t been world indignation about Hamas’ terrorism unleashed upon Israelis. There’s no hint of recognition of or sympathy for the thousands of Israelis killed and maimed. There’s no world outrage over Hamas continuing to fire rockets into Israeli cities to injure and kill civilians. World outrage is aimed only at Israel.

Since 2006 Palestinians have at least tolerated and sometimes supported Hamas and the cruelty it does. They allowed Hamas to embed their command centers, their weapons caches and their rocket launchers in the midst of Palestinian civilians, knowing full well that many would die if Israel chased into Gaza after the Hamas terrorists.

At this point, though, I don’t care why Palestinians agreed to risk their lives in that way or why people around the world march in mindless solidarity with terrorists. I’m out of patience with seeking to understand people who only want paroxysms of rage and violence and murder.

I don’t care about the why of the fools and the gaslighted millions who are demanding a ceasefire in Gaza, an action that would allow Hamas to rearm and attack Israelis again, exactly as they have promised to do. And I certainly don’t care about the why of protesters worldwide and their abhorrence of Israel’s actions to protect its citizens but who don’t give a damn about the terrorism done to Jews and Israelis by Hamas.

Their protests make it clear that they don’t care about the mass murders, the bombings and rocket attacks, the parents and children burned alive, the concert attendees gunned down in the desert, the babies beheaded in front of their parents, the hundreds held hostage, including Holocaust survivors. They just rage.

The death and destruction visited upon Israel really doesn’t matter to the world’s ignorant and gaslighted protesters. Here’s the quiet part said out loud:

They don’t care because the threatened and the dead Israelis are just Jews.
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As well, that explains the indifference of so many.

Forget wondering about the why of this. The world already knows. It has always known.

For a gentler form of this message, read this short essay/poem. If you’re feeling quite brave, read it out loud.

Many thanks to SL for providing the link. And many thanks for KL for caring.

Note: To be fair, there are some rallies in support of Israel. Not many, but some.

Today is a good day to be the light

_____________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

Much To Say


Post 1,001

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Save a Life

I don’t have combat fatigues or desert boots. I don’t have an assault rifle or mortar shells, nor even a hobby style drone. I’m a pilot but I cannot fly a military fighter or helicopter. I’m good with a Band-Aid, but I’m no corpsman, much less a doctor. Plus, I passed my “best if used by” date for war a long time ago. But that doesn’t mean that I can’t help.

Regular readers know that my focus is usually on the insanity that passes for our national politics. I write, hoping to disambiguate and make a difference. That is something I can do.

And I can do something for the young people who are guilty of having gone to a music festival in the desert. I can do something for those who survived in their “safe rooms” as Hamas terrorists set fire to their houses. I can do something for the families murdered near the Gaza border. I can do something for those now homeless in Ashkelon because of Hamas rockets.

I can write to you.

American Friends of Magen David Adom is about saving lives. Every penny of every contribution goes toward saving lives. It’s their tagline: “Saving lives. It’s in our blood.”

My temple sponsored a new ambulance for them. That’s the kind of “every penny” for saving lives that I mean. They don’t discriminate – they help all they can.

Writing about and giving to save lives is something I can do.

Reading and giving to save lives is something you can do.

Click here or on the logo of Magen David Adom. Poke around their website to see what they’re about. Then click on the DONATE button and enter an amount that pinches a bit.

Go ahead. Save a life today. It’s in your blood.

And pass this along to your friends and family, your Facebook groupies, your congregants (any congregants – this is ecumenical, universal saving of life), your neighbors, your Sunday afternoon football bros. Every one of us was taught to help others, so here’s the opportunity in real time to do that. So, be a hero – lead the way.

Hurry: lives hang in the balance.

Victims

I watched part of Andrea Mitchell’s program on MSNBC on Thursday and listened to her telephone interview with a 22 year old woman in Gaza named Salma Shurrab. Shurrab described living without running water or electricity, with no hope of securing more food and in the midst of rubble. She said that there is no safe place and that hospitals are running out of supplies. She called Hamas “the Palestinian Resistance.” She called the IDF “the Aggression.”

Surely, she knows that Israeli actions are in response to the violence unleashed on Israelis since October 7 by Hamas terrorists (my word, not hers). We don’t know if she has details about beheaded Israeli children or Israelis burned alive or grandparents and Holocaust survivors dragged away as hostages. She must have some information about the death and destruction done by Hamas fighters, yet she points her finger at Israel. That made me wonder.

When her brother and his friends were thumping their chests, brandishing their AK-47s and yelling “Death to Israel! Death to Jews!” what did she do? Did she tell them that they were not allowed to lob missiles from their house in Gaza City to kill Israeli civilians?

For the past 20 years Palestinian mothers and fathers could have been teaching their children not to be terrorists, not to be bomb makers or suicide bombers, not to be murderers. They didn’t do that and you know what their grown sons have done. You know who has paid the price so far. You know who is going to pay a far greater price soon.

The failure of those parents made certain that the coming invasion and loss of Palestinian life was inevitable. Their failure has put the life of that woman talking to Andrea Mitchell at risk. Their failure has ensured that another generation of Hamas terrorists will arise to do nothing but kill and, in the end, get thousands more Palestinian civilians killed.

President Biden said,

“.  .  .  [Hamas’] stated purpose is the annihilation of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people .  .  .  Hamas offers nothing but terror and bloodshed with no regard to who pays the price.”

Many billions of dollars of aid from Qatar, Iran, Turkey and elsewhere have poured into Gaza over the years. That money could have gone to building hospitals, schools, tech startups, infrastructure and more. Instead it went into building rockets and buying armaments so that most Gazans live in militarized subsistence and their children are angry, quick to blame and eager to kill.

While most Palestinians aren’t militants carrying AK-47s or firing rockets targeted at Israeli civilians, they are not innocent victims because they allowed bomb factories to be placed in their mosques, command posts under hospitals, rocket launchers in kindergartens and all the rest of the war preparation that was done using Palestinian civilians as human shields.

Civilian death is what happens when hatred and blame come home. The Palestinians allowed their sons to grow up to be terrorists. So, with sincere concern for Salma Shurrab, there is no Palestinian civilian innocence.

Now, incrementally, the world is cautioning Israel to avoid harm to Palestinian civilians, but that advice is way too late. Advice and support that could have actually made a difference to preserve Palestinian life has been missing for decades.

As the body count ramps up, talking heads, in their self-righteous indignation, will call the Israelis terrorists, butchers and murderers. What you’ll hear is how Palestinians, injured or killed, were innocent victims of the oppressor, Israel. If history is a teacher, you won’t hear about Palestinian responsibility and they’ll have no useful ideas; just finger pointing. They’re no more than useful idiots for Hamas.

Palestinian civilian death is tragic, but is guaranteed by the promises of Hamas to kill any and every Palestinian who so much as speaks of peace with Israel or Jews. Hamas exists for only one thing: killing Jews and killing anyone who doesn’t want to kill Jews. Doubt that? Read their charter, especially Article 7. Easier: read this.

What Will Happen

This post was written on Saturday, October 14. The IDF had bombed most of Gaza and instructed Palestinians in the north to go south, telegraphing where the IDF land invasion would begin in the search for hostages and Hamas fighters. The Israeli forces will not stop; they will not use half-way measures. Here’s why.

From the Jerusalem Post, May 23, 2021:

There’s a story that US President Joe Biden has told many times over the years about his first trip to Israel.
.
As a freshman senator in 1973, Biden was granted a meeting with prime minister Golda Meir, who together with Yitzhak Rabin briefed Biden on the many threats Israel faced, showing him a series of maps.
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“I guess she could see the sense of apprehension on my face,” Biden said in a 2010 retelling of the story. “She said, ‘Senator, don’t look so worried… We Israelis have a secret weapon.’ And I thought she only had said this to me, no one else in the whole world .  .  . And I thought she was going to tell me about a new secret weapon.”
.
So what is Israel’s secret weapon, Biden asked eagerly.
“We have nowhere else to go,” replied Golda.
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That was true in 1948, in 1967, in 1973 and in all the conflicts with Hamas and Hezbollah. It is still true today. That is why Hamas cannot and will not win this or any war against Israel.
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At the same time, Israel, now propelled by humiliation, outrage, the real need to protect its citizens and, indeed, Jews everywhere, is falling into the Hamas trap – more on that here.
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Mass civilian deaths from an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza will paint a black scar on Israel and has already interrupted peace negotiations with Saudi Arabia. The price for Hamas to achieve that interruption is already over 3,000 dead and there likely will be thousands more Palestinian deaths, but Hamas doesn’t care a bit about that. They have a boatload of bastardized Quranic phrases to justify slaughter. Again, read their charter.
.
Both Hamas and Israel could have peace. But for that to happen, both sides would have to want peace. At least one side doesn’t want it, any more than Yassir Arafat wanted peace when it was within easy reach in 2000 at Camp David.
.

If you have a workable solution to this mess, contact the nearest Israeli embassy immediately. But, please, be real. If those were your babies who were beheaded, your children who were hacked to death in the desert, your parents who were burned alive or shot dead fleeing their burning home or taken hostage, how would you counsel Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz?

In WWII we Americans firebombed Dresden, Tokyo and more cities. We dropped atomic bombs on two cities that were not military targets. We were after eliminating the enemies who sought to kill us. Can you conjure a reason there should be different rules for Israel facing the homicidal insanity of Hamas?

The maniacal Hamas murderers can’t be jawboned into becoming flower children. They live solely to kill. It’s in their charter.

Today is a good day to be the light

______________________________

  • Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
  • Fire the bastards!
  • The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.


  • Did someone forward this post to you? Welcome! Please subscribe – use the simple form above on the right. And pass this along to three others, encouraging them to subscribe, too. (IT’S A FREEBIE!) It’s going to take ALL OF US to get the job done.

    And add your comments below to help us all to be better informed.

    Thanks!

    The Fine Print:

    1. Writings quoted or linked from my posts reflect a point I want to make, at least in part. That does not mean that I endorse or agree with everything in such writings.
    2. There are lots of smart, well-informed people. Sometimes we agree; sometimes we don’t. Search for others’ views and decide for yourself.
    3. Errors in fact, grammar, spelling and punctuation are all embarrassingly mine. Glad to have your corrections.
    4. Responsibility for the content of these posts is unequivocally, totally, unavoidably mine.
    5. Book links to Amazon are provided for reference only. Please purchase your books through your local mom & pop bookstore. Keep them and your town or neighborhood vibrant.

    Click me

    JA


Copyright 2025 by Jack Altschuler
Reproduction and sharing are encouraged, providing proper attribution is given.

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