the DON JONES
INDEX… |
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GAINS
POSTED in GREEN LOSSES
POSTED in RED 10/14/24...
14,804.46 10/7/24... 14,758.85 |
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6/27/13… 15,000.00 |
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(THE DOW JONES INDEX: 10/14/24... 42,863.86; 10/7/24... 42,352.75; 6/27/13… 15,000.00) |
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LESSON for OCTOBER
FOURTEENTH, 2024
“5785!”
The world... like it or don’t... is amidist the Jewish
holiday season – Rosh Hashanah last week, Yom Kippur on Friday and Sukkot, lasting for
a whole week beginning Wednesday. (Time,
Attachment One)
The three major holidays for this, year 5785 are also
derived from the Book of Leviticus. (along with many, many sins to be atoned for –
Attachment Two)
As there are Orthodox and Reform Jews, as well as other
identity points sorted out through skin color, belief in or avoidance of
certain passages from the whole of the Old Testament, Islam (which validates
the first five books therein - aka the
Pentateuch) is also divided with most of Saudi Arabia, the other Gulf
States, Egypt, Jordan and points south
belonging to the Sunni branch, Iran and some of its satellites following the
Shiites. (NPR, Attachment Three)
ONE YEAR AFTER...
Time’s October 7th report by Melanie Lidman
and Tia Goldberg covered the “vigils
and somber ceremonies” marking a year since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack, “the
deadliest in the country’s history, which sparked the war in Gaza and scarred Israelis
indelibly...
caught Israel unprepared on a major Jewish holiday, shattered Israelis’ sense
of security and shook their faith in their leaders and their military. (Attachment Three)
“Its aftershocks still ripple one year later.”
A New York Times report that the attacks, which “killed more than 1,100 people and took hundreds more
hostage,” was the proximate cause of three “main changes”. (Attachment Four) The Hamas offensive and Israeli Defense
Forces (IDF) response and retaliation have: First: weakened Israel’s enemies;
Second: devastated Gaza
and its people, and Third: brought the Middle East to the “precipice of a regional war.”
1. A
weakened axis
Israel’s incursion
into Gaza has devastated (although not destroyed) Hamas. Israel has killed
thousands of its fighters and destroyed much of its weapons stockpiles. Israel
has also killed many of Hamas’s leaders, including the head of its political
wing, Ismail Haniyeh, as has its offensive against Hezbollah.
2. A
humanitarian crisis
Second, the war has caused a humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Israeli attacks have killed more than 41,500 Palestinians, including both
civilians and militants. (This figure,
from Hamas-controlled sources, may be exaggerated.)
Despite this latter and the Israeli contention that the
civilians were “human shields” for Hamas and, thus, subject to attack,
“survivors have lost family and friends to fighting; food, water and medical
supplies remain scarce, leading to starvation and untreated illness (and)
entire neighborhoods are now rubble, leaving people without housing and other
important infrastructure.
3. A wider
war
“What began as an Israeli campaign into Gaza has turned into
a multifront conflict between Israel and Iran, which has financed and advised
both Hamas and Hezbollah. Israel has also invaded Lebanon, where Hezbollah
controls territory, forcing thousands of Lebanese civilians to flee. And Iran
has twice fired a barrage of missiles at Israel. Israel promised to retaliate
for the second attack, which took place last week.”
What the offensive
has not done has been to free most the hostages. Some few were recaptured and 117 more were release in cease-fire deals now
obliterated. Families as continue
protesting face violent attacks from “rightwing activists” and, as the focus “has
shifted from the Israeli operation against Gaza to the conflict with Hezbollah
in the north, with no movement on those still held by Hamas” hopes raised for
further deals has dissipated, with
more dead hostages than alive being found during Israeli operations.
“The grim news over the fate of hostages found
killed has punctuated the glacial pace of negotiations for a ceasefire-for-hostages
deal that critics say Netanyahu has been in no hurry to advance.” (Guardian U.K., Attachment Five)
Families have detected subtle changes in attitude as
“(s)upport remains still strong, but momentum has faded as
other considerations have crept in.”
Noam Peri,
whose father, Chaim, a veteran peace activist, was kidnapped in Nir Oz aged 79,
“recently heard the news she hoped her family would be spared, that he had died
in a cramped tunnel 20 metres underground.”
Describing meetings with diplomats and officials,
including with Netanyahu, Noam told GUK that: “(t)he only person I haven’t met
is [the Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar. If I am mad at the Israeli side, it is
because it is the only side I can have expectations of.”
Sinwar, for his part, is said to be “holding out for a
bigger war,” according to unnamed U.S. officials speaking to the New York
Times. (Attachment Six)
“Mr. Sinwar
has long believed he will not survive the war, a view that has hindered
negotiations to secure the release of hostages seized by his group in the Oct.
7 attacks in Israel, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.
“His attitude has hardened in recent weeks, U.S. officials
say, and American negotiators now believe that Hamas has no intention of
reaching a deal with Israel.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has also
rejected proposals in the negotiations and added positions that have
complicated the talks. U.S. officials assess that he is mainly concerned about
his political survival and might not think a cease-fire in Gaza is in his
interests.”
Hezbollah also began carrying out strikes in northern Israel
in a show of solidarity with Hamas but Hamas criticized this support as
inadequate and Hezbollah’s leaders did not want to start a wider war with
Israel, U.S. officials assessed at the time – a situation that has only changed
within the past week. An Iranian series
of missile strikes has failed to do “any real damage” and this failure of Hezbollah or Iran to
meaningfully damage Israel, at least so far, is a telling sign of Mr. Sinwar’s
miscalculation, other unnamed American officials said. (Attachment Seven)
For months, American
and Israeli intelligence agencies have assessed that Mr. Sinwar “has a
fatalistic attitude and cares more about inflicting
pain on Israelis than
helping Palestinians”; which
position stiffened this summer after Israel assassinated Ismail
Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas based
in Qatar and one
of the chief negotiators. “Mr. Haniyeh was a more conciliatory negotiator who
was interested in making a deal,” according to the Times, and U.S. officials
said he was “willing to push back against Mr. Sinwar’s more extreme demands.”
Despite this, his murder infuriated Mr. Sinwar, according to U.S. officials.
“American officials are waiting to see whether the conflict
between Iran and Israel escalates further. They do not believe that Iran wants
a full-scale war with Israel or to directly intervene to help Hamas. But they
also publicly support a planned Israeli strike against Iran in retaliation for
the ballistic missile attack this week.”
As to what has happened to Al Qaeda, the original face of
Islamist insurgency, the Times also reported – and almost two decades ago –
that they were sitting on the sidelines, watching movements “antithetical to
its philosophy steal its thunder.”
(2006, Attachment Seven.A)
“Al Qaeda’s Sunni ideology regards Shiites as heretics and
profoundly distrusts Shiite groups like Hezbollah,” The Times reported two
decads ago. “It was Al Qaeda that is reported to have given Sunni extremists in
Iraq the green light to attack Shiite civilians and holy sites. A Qaeda
recruiter I met in Yemen described the Shiites as “dogs and a thorn in the
throat of Islam from the beginning of time.”
Perhaps Hezbollah’s ascendancy among Sunnis will make it
possible for Shiites and Sunnis to stop the bloodletting in Iraq — and to focus
instead on their “real” enemies, namely the United States and Israel.
That may be good news for Iraqis, but it marks “a dangerous
turn for the West,” the Times concluded. And there are darker implications
still. Al Qaeda, after all, is unlikely to take a loss of status lying down.
Indeed, the rise of Hezbollah makes it all the more likely that Al Qaeda will
soon seek to reassert itself through increased attacks on Shiites in Iraq and
on Westerners all over the world — whatever it needs to do in order to regain
the title of true defender of Islam.
ABC News dated back the Israel-Hezbollah-Iran conflict to
October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas invasion on which Hezbollah began renewed attacks on Israel in opposition to
the Gaza invasion, and since then, “the two sides have been trading attacks
with increased intensity in recent months.”
The conflict intensified with the detonation of Hezbollah communication devices in
Lebanon and Syria. Thousands of people were injured and dozens were killed
across Lebanon and Syria by remotely detonated pagers on Sept. 17, according to Lebanese officials. ABC News sources confirmed it was an Israeli covert
operation. (Attachment Eight)
On Sept. 30, the IDF announced it had begun a ground
incursion into Lebanon. The IDF described the operations as "limited,
localized, and targeted ground raids based on precise intelligence against
Hezbollah terrorist targets and infrastructure in southern Lebanon."
On Oct. 1,
Iran launched missiles into Israel.
Sam Heller of the Century Foundation opined in Time (October
5th, Attachment Nine) that Hezbollah seems “discombobulated...
unable to deter Israel’s sharp escalation.
The
“simmering” Hezbollah – Israel conflict blew wide open when, unable to deter Israel’s sharp escalation with elderly
technology and a perceived weakness of will, Israel exploded thousands of booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies
belonging to Hezbollah members and launched a devastating campaign of bombing on Beirut’s southern suburbs and Lebanon’s
south and east. In targeted strikes, Israel also took out much
of the
group’s leadership, including Secretary-General Hassan
Nasrallah.
Now the Israeli military has launched
a ground offensive into
southern Lebanon.
In an address
following Nasrallah’s death,
deputy leader Naim Qassem insisted Hezbollah will not cease fire or abandon
Gaza. He also emphasized the group still possesses its arsenal of medium- and
long-range missiles. Yet Hezbollah seems to have only employed these weapons
sparingly, if at all according to Mr. Heller.
“Israel has been pressing since for a solution that would
push Hezbollah back from the “Blue Line,” the de facto Lebanese-Israeli border,
and allow tens of thousands of Israelis evacuated from northern communities to
return home safely. Hezbollah said it would end its rocket fire only
once a ceasefire in Gaza was reached.
By dragging Lebanon into regional conflicts –
often at the behest of its backer, Iran – Hezbollah damaged its
popularity at home and deepened its rift with rival sectarian factions, according to Al Jazeera, below.
A perverse scenario is
unfolding – courtesy of Cornell University positing that, as fears of a regional war in the Middle East continue to
escalate, “the reality of a
severely diminished Hezbollah in Lebanon may provide an opportunity for a path
toward peace.”
Uriel Abulof, a visiting professor in Cornell University’s
government department and a professor of politics at Tel-Aviv University, says
that a coalition of
moderate Arab leaders “has never been so ripe as now, having realized the
mortal dangers inherent in the Iranian Axis of Resistance... a nuclear Iran
means a third world war and most Israelis and Palestinians want, or at least need: To eradicate the radicals via force, finance,
and a two-state solution.
“The U.S. has the
right carrots (helping to axe the Axis) and sticks (funding, armament, and UNSC
veto) to make Netanyahu say yes.”
Of course, the Palestinians, Iranians, Netanyahu and
terrorists say an emphatic “No!”
But, could rival Lebanese factions exploit
a weakened Hezbollah?
Al Jazeera’s Mat Nashed (Sep. 30,
Attachment Ten) thinks it possible.
“Hezbollah is very vulnerable. As an organisation that has
been decimated, it is difficult to see them spring back to normal anytime
soon,” says Mohanad Hage Ali, an expert on Lebanon and a senior fellow with the
Carnegie Middle East Center.
But their hegemony over Lebanon is in question – and has
been since accusations of
involvement in the killing of its rivals dogged Hezbollah, “including the
killing of Sunni leader Rafik Hariri in 2005.”
“The demolition of Hezbollah’s capabilities will likely
embolden its opponents and anti-Iranian forces within Lebanon,” said Imad
Salamey, an expert on Lebanon and a political scientist at the Lebanese
American University.
“Political factions that have long opposed Hezbollah’s dominance,
particularly those aligned with Western interests, may see this as an
opportunity to push for more radical changes, including greater alignment with
the West,” Salamey told Al Jazeera with the potential power vacuum leading to
civil strife and a breakdown in social order – and tempting global players to exploit the chaos for
their own interests.
Like the United States?
While Hezbollah appears weak, Christian and Sunni factions
likely won’t be able to exploit Hezbollah’s weakness unless they align with
Israel, argues Salamey.
He believes that Israel will become the new dominant force
in Lebanon via its aerial supremacy and that Israel could channel material and
financial support to factions looking to isolate Hezbollah.
And, as Nicholas Blanford, an expert on Hezbollah with the
Atlantic Council think tank predicted: Israel “may conclude that an incursion into south Lebanon
is necessary to achieve its objectives.”
Hage Ali, from Carnegie, is even less optimistic that
Hezbollah will survive in its current form.
He stressed that Israel is decimating Hezbollah’s senior
leadership through disproportionate strikes that are devastating and uprooting
the Shia community.
“It’s like blast or dynamite fishing,” he told Al Jazeera. “[Israel] kills a
hundred fish, just to get the few that it wants.”
But if its leadership and, even, its organization should
disappear, Ali believes it will recover – or something else, probably worse,
will arise and take its place.
“Hezbollah is more
than just an organisation,” he added. “It’s an identity project that brings together Islam and resistance, both of which
are intertwined with broader community thinking and [Shia community]
narratives.”
As for Hamas, Eve
Sampson of the New York Times (October 8th, Attachment Eleven) opines
that, even as Israel
says it has killed many Hamas fighters (unverified stats say 17,000 of the
group’s 25,000 fighters) and commanders among the thousands murdered in Gaza, the
group, while weakened, is continuing to wage a guerrilla war.
“On Monday, to coincide with the first anniversary of its
Oct. 7, 2023, attack, Hamas fired several rockets at Israel, showing that at least some of its more sophisticated
military capabilities are still intact. A spokesman for Hamas’s military wing
vowed to “continue a long and painful war of attrition” against Israel.
While this was occurring, the IDF was escalating its
airstrikes against Hezbollah in Beirut, leaving two neighborhoods smoldering,
killing 22 people and wounding dozens.
(Time, Attachment Twelve).
The attack came the same day Israeli forces fired on United
Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon and wounded two of them, “drawing
widespread condemnation and prompting Italy's Defense Ministry to summon
Israel’s ambassador in protest.”
Iran launched some 180 ballistic missiles at Israel last week
in retaliation for the killing of top Hamas and Hezbollah militants.
Asked about the latest airstrikes in Lebanon, U.S. Vice
President Kamala Harris told reporters in Las Vegas, “We have got to reach a
cease-fire, both as it relates to what’s happening in Lebanon, and of course
Gaza. We are working around the clock in that regard, but we need these wars to
end and we’ve got to definitely de-escalate what is happening in the region.”
But, as noted above, Hamas leader Sinwa explicitly stated he
wants a wider war. And while Hezbollah’s
leadership has been decapitated, Israel’s “repeated” attacks on U.N.
peacekeepers (known as UNIFIL) has drawn denunciation from France, Spain and
Jordan, as well as the Italians – who said the attacks “could constitute war crimes.”
Earlier on Thursday, an Israeli strike on a school
sheltering displaced people in central Gaza killed at least 27 people,
Palestinian medical officials said. The Israeli military said it targeted
Palestinian militants, but people sheltering there said the strike hit a
meeting of aid workers.
“The dead included a child and seven women, according to the
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where the bodies were brought. An Associated Press
reporter saw ambulances streaming into the hospital and counted the bodies,
many of which arrived in pieces.”
“We headed to tents. They bombed the tents ... In the
streets, they bombed us. In the markets, they bombed us. In the schools, they
bombed us,” said Iftikhar Hamouda, who had fled from northern Gaza earlier in
the war. “Where should we go?”
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
this week made what he called a direct appeal to ordinary Iranians to rise up
and overthrow their leadership. “He said that if the regime truly cared about
their future it would stop wasting billions of dollars on futile wars across
the Middle East and spend more on public services.”
Linking
the fate of Iran so closely with the Palestinian resistance carries risks given Iran’s economy remains
racked by 31% inflation, low growth and reduced living standards. Iranian
defence spending is about 2.9% of GDP.
At a
meeting on Thursday in Doha, Gulf
state leaders insisted they would not support a US attack on Iran but would
remain neutral.
Encouraged
or indifferent to the wiles of the Sunnis, Khamenei, has vowed that Hezbollah
in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza will re-emerge strongly with new leaders. (GUK, October 4,
Attachment Thirteen) In a rare public sermon
in front of tens of thousands in Tehran on Friday, Khamenei defended the “legal
and legitimate” ballistic missile attack on Israel this week that Iran has said “was in retaliation for the deaths of
the Hezbollah secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, and the Hamas
political leader, Ismail Haniyeh.”
As evening
fell on Friday in the region, the media in Yemen reported a new round of
airstrikes, including on the capital, Sana’a, and near the airport at the port
of Hodeidah, and Israeli strikes continued in Gaza and Lebanon.
With what
GUK called “minimal
prospect of an end to the escalating violence that has displaced well over 2
million people and killed tens of thousands”, Khamenei, speaking predominantly
in Arabic but also in Farsi, urged Muslims from “Afghanistan to Yemen,
and from Iran to Gaza” to be ready to take action, and praised those who had
died doing so.
"After the Iranian missile attack against
Israel there is no questioning anymore the basic understanding that Iran is the
greatest generator of terror and death in the Middle East. Until now, Israel has been playing a whack-a-mole game with Iran’s
proxies – fighting Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and others,"
Yaakov Katz, the author of "Shadow Strike: Inside Israel’s Secret Mission
to Eliminate Syrian Nuclear Power," told Fox News Digital. (Attachment Fourten)
“The Islamic republic has been recognized as the
center of Mideast volatility, terrorism and jingoism for decades. In 2010,
Saudi Arabian King Abdullah told the United States to "cut off the head of
the snake" by launching military
strikes to eradicate Iran’s reported nuclear weapons facilities.
Critics, especially
on the Republican side of the aisle, decried the Biden-Harris adminstration’s
release of administration billions in sanctions relief to Iran that will flow
into its proxies' war machines, according to experts.
The topic
of funneling billions to Iran’s regime surfaced during the vice presidential
debate on Tuesday. Republican Sen. JD Vance said, "Iran, which launched
this attack, has received over $100 billion in unfrozen assets thanks to the
Kamala Harris administration.
"What
do they use that money for? They use it to buy weapons that they're now
launching against our allies. And God forbid, launching against the United
States as well."
Lisa Daftari, whom Fox calls “an expert on Iran”, dated
conflicts with Israel and the West to the 1979 overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlevi,
an American ally.
"Over
the past 45 years, the Iran regime has persistently targeted American and
Israeli interests, orchestrating terror proxies to execute its strategic
objectives against both nations. More recently, U.S. policies that have
enriched the mullahs have facilitated billions of dollars on establishing a
formidable encirclement around Israel, via the regime's various proxies in
Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Gaza and the West Bank."
She noted
that it historically has engaged in tit-for-tat-like responses but noted,
"Israel is now poised to take decisive measures aimed at neutralizing this
looming risk, with its focus now entirely on the regime in Tehran."
David
Wurmser, a former senior adviser for nonproliferation and Middle East strategy
for former Vice President Dick Cheney, told Fox News Digital, "This is a
war between Israel and Iran which began as a direct war on April 14. The
war is a twilight struggle between a nation run by a tyranny that seeks to
extinguish the other. Either Iran or Israel, but not both, will emerge
from this war not only as victor but survivor."
Two months after
the Hamas attack, NPR predicted that the war in Gaza would “push together”
Shiite and Sunni factions who “differ in religious ideology but are
united by opposition to Israel and the United States.” (December 11, 2023,
Attachment Fifteen)
Sanam
Vakil, director of the Middle East program at Chatham House research center
says many militant groups have mostly domestic aims in the countries where they
operate and there is not yet a transnational axis of militant organization.
But, earlier
this year, China brokered a historic agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia in which the two rivals
agreed to resume
diplomatic relations.
A bleaker prospect unfolded in the Hindustan Times on
Tuesday, based on reports from geologists that a 4.5-magnitude seismic
event was reported from Iran's Semnan province on Oct 5. The epicentre of the
quake was reportedly around 10 kilometres beneath the surface and close to an
Iranian nuclear power plant...
earthquake's depth and proximity to a nuclear facility leading to concerns in
South Asia that the cause was “a possible nuclear event.” (Attachment Sixteen)
But in the West, support for Hamas, distrust (or outright
hatred) of the Jews and the “virtue signaling” by wealthy college students at
elite colleges and universities remains vigorous and is expanding to the sort
of “woke” personal shaming previously limited to hamburgers and Confederate
statues.
The hyper-liberals at ultra-liberal GUK discovered more
instances of intrusion of the war into the personal lives of the “nice”
people... purging former friends insufficiently committed to Hamas from their
social media friendatorium and making anti-Semitism the, if not only a critical component that determines who or who
not a believer can date (and presumably have sex with).
The Guardians
interviewed several Jewish students including some who said the debates and protests of the last year had made them feel
“really judged by and uncomfortable around anti-Zionists”, including other
Jews, with one confessing “anxiety” about facing that judgment in his romantic
life. “I don’t want to have to defend the most core parts of my identity in my
most intimate relationships,” he said.
Another, a
patron of online sex and dating sites, said he now finds him self “swiping
past” people he might have otherwise found attractive, because he assumes they
won’t his stance. “I can feel that I’m
being less nuanced [in my thinking], and I still am unable to lift myself out
of this hole because I’m in pain,” he said.
Israeli
soldiers, Palestinian civilians or United Nations aid workers rising life and
limb in Lebanon and Gaza might understand.
Or not.
The
pain is worse for Islamic-Americans, with cases of domestic violence and
divorce becoming endemic. GUK added that
the MidEast war is even straining relationships among crossword puzzle addicts,
foodies and persons of either the same or different ethnic and racial
backgrounds as long as... one told GUK: “Let’s make sure we’re on the same page about Israel being a
terrorist state.”
Not that
any of these soft, otherwise polite people would actually do something about the war, like going to Tel Aviv to enlist in the
military or bombing a kosher deli while screaming: “God is great!” but they do
have values, and do care about expressing them.
And the
dilemma is even worse for celebrities, especially in the arts where the wrong
political position may... cost money!
Or, in the
case of politicians, support from the rank and file.
Thus the
modest donning of an “Artists for Ceasefire” pin on the red carpet by Bridgerton actor Nicola Coughlan at the Time 100
Next gala in Manhattan (Time, October 8,
Attachment Eighteen)
“It's a call for peace. It's a call for everybody to try and
find peace within that region,” Coughlan said.
The
vehemence of anti-Israel protests began to fade with the ending of the 2024
spring semester... although some schools like the University of Southern
California cancelled commencement exercises over ‘security concerns’ according to the Times of Israel
(May 13th, Attachment Nineteen)
A heroic ambush by
juvenile Jihadists at Duke University did manage to shut down Jewish comedian
Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement speech with screams and chants of “Free
Palestine” while waving the red, green, black and white Palestinian flag.
The standup comic-turned-actor, who stars in the new
Netflix movie “Unfrosted,” has publicly supported Israel since it invaded Gaza
to dismantle Hamas after the terror group attacked the country on October 7.
Pro-Palestinian protesters also blocked access to Sunday evening’s
commencement for Southern California’s Pomona College until police arrived to
escort gradutes’ families into the commencement.
Students at other institutions were donning Arabic-style
keffiyehs and obtaining tattoos of (or, for the lukewarm, simply painting)
watermelons... the symbol of the season for the Palestinian national
movement.
European diplomats, many of whom had been on the fence,
careful not to antagonize Washington, expressed “outrage” after Israel bombed
the U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon.
These attacks were
“unjustifiable” and constitute a “serious violation of the obligations of
Israel” under humanitarian international law, said a statement released by the
leaders of France, Italy and Spain...
the largest European financiers of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
(UNIFIL) peacekeepers in Lebanon. (GUK,
October 11th, Attachment Twenty)
In the joint statement, they called for an immediate
ceasefire and said they counted on “Israel’s commitment to the security of UN and
bilateral peacekeeping missions in Lebanon as well as international organisations active in the
region”.
Other protests were registered from Downing Street, which said that the UK prime
minister, Keir Starmer, was “appalled” to hear reports that
Israel deliberately fired on peacekeepers in Lebanon and from President Joe,
who said he was asking Israel to not hit UN peacekeepers in its conflict
with Hezbollah.
From the UN itself came words from secretary
general, António Guterres, who told Israel that attacks on the peacekeeping
force were intolerable. “I
have never seen in my time as secretary general any example of death and
destruction as dramatic as what we are witnessing here,” Guterres said on
Friday. The Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz, declared
Guterres persona non grata earlier this month, accusing him of “lending support
to terrorists” after the secretary general’s calls for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières has said that thousands of Palestinians are trapped in
Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza, including
five of its staff who are “fearing for their lives”.
Israeli forces issued evacuation orders for Jabalia camp on
earlier this week “while carrying out attacks at the same time, preventing
people from leaving the area safely,” the medical charity said on
Friday.
“Nobody is allowed to get in or out – anyone who tries is
getting shot,” MSF project coordinator Sarah Vuylsteke said.
Another UN tentacle, the Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA),
has 13,000
staff working in Gaza and more than 30,000 in the
region providing health and educational facilities to Palestinian refugees.
In July, the Israeli parliament
gave preliminary approval to a bill that would declare Unrwa a “terrorist
organisation”. Israeli leaders have accused Unrwa staff of collaborating with
Hamas in Gaza, leading to many western donors to suspend funding.
See more here...
In many Western nations, October 7th
was an opportunity to celebrate Hamas, not Israel.
Police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse violent demonstrators in Rome as
tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters took to the streets in major
European cities and around the globe Saturday to call for a cease-fire as the
first anniversary of the Hamas attacks on Israel approached.
Some protesters, dressed in black and with their faces
covered threw stones, bottles and paper bombs at the police, who responded with
tear gas and water cannons, eventually dispersing the crowd. At least 30 law
enforcement officers and three demonstrators were injured in the clashes, local
media reported. (Associated Press,
Attachment Twenty One)
In London, thousands marched through the capital to Downing
Street amid a heavy police presence. The atmosphere was tense as
pro-Palestinian protesters and counterdemonstrators, some holding Israeli
flags, passed one another. Scuffles broke out as police officers pushed back
activists trying to get past a cordon. At least 17 people were arrested on
suspicion of public order offenses, supporting a proscribed organization and
assault, London's Metropolitan Police said.
Other raucous demonstrations occurred in
Hamburg, Germany, Paris and New York and other parts of the world, while Pro-Israeli demonstrations are also expected to be held
Sunday because Jews across the world are still observing Rosh Hashana, or the
Jewish new year.
Washington’s protesters carried signs criticizing the Biden-Harris
administration’s handling of the issue. One read: “Abandon Harris ’24.”
“Law student Annette Tunstall said she considered voting Democratic
after Biden stepped down and Harris became the candidate. But she lost faith
after pro-Palestinian voices were muzzled at the Democratic National
Convention, she said.
“I really wanted to feel like I could vote for her in good conscience,”
Tunstall said. “I don’t think it would have taken a lot for thousands of
pro-Palestinian people to hold their nose and vote for Harris.”
Instead, they’re voting for Trump.
For some
such as Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and his Middle East adviser
during Trump’s first term, this is suddenly a moment of infinite possibility.
“The Middle East is too often a solid where little changes. Today, it is a
liquid and the ability to reshape is unlimited. Do not squander this moment,”
he wrote on X.
The pro-Palestinian GUKsters... Malak A. Tantesh in Gaza and Emma Graham-Harrison... d
stories of Gaza’s victims... one who was killed at 101 years, the other at just
two hours.
Ahmed
al-Tahrawi was born in 1922 in al-Masmiyya, which today exists only as a
handful of ruins, fading memory and the name of an Israeli road junction about
half an hour’s drive from Gaza’s northern border.
Its
residents fled during the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948, in which about
700,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homeland after the creation of
Israel and both of Tahrawi’s children did not survive the flight into exile.
Settling
in Bureij, a refugee camp in Gaza, he worked as a cook and a tailor, raised
another family and lived long enough to meet his great-great-grandchildren
before Israeli airstrikes bombed his daughter’s house. He died a week later.
“My
grandfather did not belong to any military organisation, and he wasn’t guilty
of any crime,” his grandson said. “He was just an old man who couldn’t harm
anybody.”
Nor
could Waad, whose mother, Salam al-Sabah, nine months pregnant was buried under
rubble in another Israeli airstrike and taken to the Kamal Adwan where her
uncle by marriage Eid Sabah, the director of nursing, recognized her under the
dust and soot from the explosion.
“It was too late for his niece, but the unborn baby in her
womb was still fighting for life, so doctors performed an emergency caesarian
and rushed Waad to intensive care. She survived for two hours.”
GUK also
reported that 120 Palestinian academics have been killed since October 8th. One who escaped, Amani Ahmed... now studying
for her Ph.D. in Edinburgh... returns again and again to Gaza, in her mind,
everytime she learns of another friend or family member killed by Israelis.
“I feel
that I am physically here, but mentally there in Gaza,” she told GUK’s Rachel
Hall (October 10, Attachment Tenty Three).
While she
received support from the nearly hundred year old Council for At Risk Academics
(Cara), which rescues academics who are at risk from persecution, violence and
conflict.
Cara
helped Ahmed arrange for her family members to obtain student dependent visas,
covering the exorbitant costs that Ahmed estimated at more than £10,000, along
with their living expenses.
Her
sisters, brother and mother are now staying in tents in al-Nuseirat camp, where
there are regular bombings and evacuation orders as continues to work for the
university, helping displaced students secure exchange opportunities in other
countries. “I’m still engaged and I hope I will be able to support further
after getting my PhD,” she said.
Another
Gazan in exile is Palestinian poet
and essayist Mosab Abu Toha, who left his native Gaza 10 months ago, but (like Ahmed)
“is still very much there—mentally and emotionally, that is.” He also worries about family members left
behind in Gaza and poems in Forest of Noise, his
new book, were written both before and since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel
and Israel’s punishing response.
Chosen as one of a “next generation of leaders”, he was
interviewed by Time on the anniversary of October 7th, telling
reporter Yasmeen Serhan that every day brings another piece of breaking news:
my family has to leave their house, my family has to leave their school, my
family doesn’t have food, my teacher was killed. My student just two days ago
was killed while he was looking for firewood to help his family not to live,
but to survive. So I’ve been trying for one year to just relax and sit and
remember the people who I lost….I couldn’t.
“Even
though we were under Israeli occupation and under siege.We had
a good life: We had trees, we had cars, we had the sea.” (Time, October 11th, Attachment
Twenty Four)
In his last poem, Abu Toha wrote “only cemeteries welcome
us.” It’s no longer the case, he told
Time. “At least 16 cemeteries have been
damaged by
the Israeli bulldozers and tanks. So even cemeteries don’t welcome our bodies
because we are kicked out of the cemeteries, kicked out of our graves.
“A lot of poems could be rewritten based on the way Israel
is wiping out not only houses, but neighborhoods and streets and cemeteries and
cities. They are not killing people. They are killing cities.”
In his poem “For a Moment,” written after he watched a video
of a young man carrying the unmoving body of a girl and running to the
hospital, “(s)he was dead. I thought, why are you running? Are you trying to
rescue her from death? So I was trying to understand, I was trying to make
sense of my feelings. Because this is really mysterious to me. Why is a young
man, why would I, run with someone who is dead? Why am I in a hurry? Am I going
to an emergency room with the body of a girl who is dead?
I thought that this guy was trying to give life to this girl
when he was running, because when someone who is alive runs with the body of
someone who is not, they are trying to give them some life, that they are
moving. They are not on the floor, they are not in a cot, they are not in the
morgue. So that’s one way I tried to face my trauma, face my pain.”
“There are two kinds of survivors,” he says, “... (a) person
and a story, and they have the responsibility to this story and to let it survive, not during
his lifetime, but forever.”
Not only people, but policies are being killed in the latest
escalation, not the least of which was DJI board member, former Congressman and
independent candidate for President Jack “Catfish” Parnell who outlined his
take on the MidEast in the April 8th and April 15th
Lessons, “States of Stasis” – rejecting both the One State (essentially, genocide) and Two State (Biden and other concerned outside world leaders) solutions...
So spaketh the Catfish
“(I)f elected to the highest office, I will strongly
support and will endeavor to effect, if elected, a three state solution to what advocates of three great and powerful
religions call the Holy Land... but there will have to be a few twerks
applicable.
“The 1947 division of the British Colonial Mandate
into independent states of Israel and Jordan was well-intentioned, but,
practically speaking, a disaster.
“As past Don Jones Index Lessons (and the sources
they admittedly borrow from) have pointed out, the establishment of a state
comprising the Gaza Strip and West Bank, with Jerusalem as its capitol and with
or without a land bridge would squeeze Israel between pincers that, at its
narrowest point, amount to variously nine or twelve miles. Given the plethora of fanatical Muslims...
their determination to cleanse the entire MidEast of Jews (and Christians)...
facing off against fanatical Israeli settlers fighting for a far vaster Jewish
homeland (with or without a Mohammedan population living under slavery, at
best, or facing genocide, at worst) such solution would seem nothing so much as
sending off a drunk into some permanent eclipse with a can of gasoline and a
lighted candle.
“Since Jerusalem is the Number One principality of
Hebrews, but only Number Three to Islam, any partition would have to leave it
intact – perhaps as the new capital of Israel – with the boundary following the
crest of the Judean Mountains on the West Bank, west of the Jordan River. Arrangements for Palestinians to travel to
Israeli sites would be contingent on behaviour.
Therefore – since it is
agreed upon that any
territorial concession to an independent Palestinian state will inherently be
at the expense of the already geographically narrow and therefore strategically
weak Israel, the Catfish three state remedy would not be Israel, an independent
Palestine on the West Bank and a ruined, but retributional Gaza on the other
side but, rather, Israel, Jordan and Egypt.
Amman would gain that broad slice of the West Bank,
as above, not as an independent state, but as a state within Jordan. Jewish settlers would have to choose between
their (pilfered) homes and transfer back over the mountain to Israel proper –
Palestinians from East Jerusalem and environs would, likewise, choose between remaining
in a validated Israel, with or without humanitarian recognition, or moving east
to occupy such settlements as are abandoned by the Jews. Substantial property trading would, of
course, take place – as well as substantial policing by Jews and Jordanians.
The “third state” would be Egypt itself... absorbing, for better or for worse, the badlands Gaza has become. There would, of course, be humanitarian and economic relief from America, the Sunni Gulf States and others (suck it up, Speaker Mike!) and a perhaps temporary resettlement in the under-occupied but much under-devastated Sinai – and perhaps a regimen of hard work and patriotic and religious resolution will facilitate the rebuilding.
Will the hard cases
among Gazans support absorption into Egypt?
Will West Bankers surrender their dream of an independent state and,
instead, become a component of the Kingdom?
They will not.
Will Israel’s religious
right support the “escape” of Muslims from the slavery (or genocide) as God has
intended for them – as well as a strengthening of old enemies?
They will not.
Will Jordan accept the
eastern half of the West Bank as opposed to the whole falafel or, more
pointedly, will Egypt take in the starving masses from Gaza and grant them the
citizenship and rights of native Egyptians.
Hell no!
And that is why this version of the three-state solution
is the only solution that is loathsome to all but, eventually, less of an
abomination than the failed one and two state states, merely continuing the
wars for years, decades, centuries. With
the shadow of Iran diminished, there is now a window of opportunity for such
persons of good will as survive in the afflicted territories to disabuse
themselves of their dominionist and imperal fantasies and return to the real
world – there to enjoy and endure an uncertain but promising peace. Eventually,
all but the most maniacal zealots will come to realize… if not embrace… the
fact that, in stasis is peace and prosperity.
And if they can’t deal with
that, the Israeli, Jordanian and Egyptian police and military will deal with them.
Mr. Parnell now rejects
even the three state solution given the entrance of Lebanon (and Hezbollah), as
well as Iran, Syria and portions of Iraq, even Yemen into what is now, the
wider war.
Perhaps the laughable
four-stater proposed by Michael Rubin in the extreme-right Washington Examiner
may be a starting point. That solution
affixes part or all of the Golan Heights back to Syria... it does not deal with
Lebanon... but perhaps a five state plan (perhaps sending that entire country
back to... well... Turkey?) or a six-state – the possibilities in today’s
unreal climate are numerous.
“Where is the
state,” Israelis asked on the ten seven anniversary, “any state?”
October 7 is, in a
phrase that’s taken root in the country, “the day that never ends.” After “365 iterations of that interminable day,” contended
Noga Tarnopolsky in New York Magazine (Attachment Twenty Six), life in Israel
is unrecognizable from that of a year earlier, “reduced to a sort of survival
mode.”
Numbering the differences and dissonances... the wail of
air-raid sirens, empty streets, banners with the faces of murdered or missing
Israelis, airlines grounded, restaurants closed... and the missile strikes, an
almost daily occurrence.
“Day 365 of October 7
opened with an early-morning terror attack at a McDonald’s in Beer Sheva, the
capital of Israel’s south, continued with funerals for nine soldiers killed in
action fighting Hezbollah, as well as the burials of most of the nine civilians
killed in a Wednesday-night shooting attack in Jaffa, almost all young women.
For this attack,” Tarnolsky noted, “Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad
issued competing claims of responsibility.”
Nearly lost in the torrent of news was a crushing
revelation: In a Sunday meeting with hostages’ families, Defense Minister Yoav
Gallant confirmed their worst fears: Netanyahu’s cabinet, he said, hasn’t
even discussed the captives’ plight in two weeks. “The army, he assured the
families, probably meaninglessly, would still prioritize the matter.”
If Israelis are
trapped in an endless loop, they are virtually blinded to the suffering this
war has brought Palestinians.
Shayke Shaked, a farmer whose land borders Gaza... enjoying and employing cheap
Palestinian labor to get his crops in...
told Kann News television with a wave of his hand that the brutality of Hamas’ attack “took away my
compassion.”
Protests contine, within and without the state (where the
writer contends Netanyahu pretends Ten Seven never happened. “I am ashamed of what we’ve done,” says Tom Segev, one of the country’s
most prominent historians, highlighting the thousands of Gazan children killed.
“Our reaction has been completely disproportional. Shame!
“A fundamental assumption was that we (could) count on the
state. We get pissed off at it, we complain, but we trust it’s there.”
Marauding Hamas guerrillas strutting for hours on manicured lawns, posting
extensive videos of themselves committing atrocities, shattered “all our basic
assumptions that we are safe here,” Segev says. “That the state fucks up, okay,
but it exists. To that extent, this is just a completely different thing.”
Finally, Netanyahu convened a meeting... but the hostages
were not discussed. Instead, he proposed
renaming the war, originally termed “Swords of Iron,” a name that never caught
on, “the War of Resurrection.”
Israelis will just keep calling it October 7.
And isolation from the rest of a finger-wagging world has,
say psychiatrists, has meant “about 70 percent of Israelis” feeling sad.
Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion,
famously said: “Our future does not depend on what the gentiles will say, but
on what the Jews will do.” His argument was that the Jewish people could no
longer be dependent on others as they had been for 2,000 years. Instead they
were independent, self-reliant and creators of their own destiny.
Today, faced by mounting diplomatic isolation over its war
in Gaza – “to the extent that Israel is now seen by some
nations as a pariah state,” according to Patrick Wintour of GUK, the instinct within its military has always been to
rely upon itself, and not to wrestle for world opinion in that the IDF “has
always played hardball, relied on escalation dominance and never seen war as a
popularity contest.”
Unpopular as is Israel (and to a growing majority, Jews in toto), defenders from Netanyahu, to
Trump Team’s Jared Kushner (above) to President Joe and like-minded heads of
state in and about NATO with Olaf Scholz saying “Germany has only one place and
that is by Israel’s side,” and French president, Emmanuel Macron echoing: “The
unspeakable has emerged from the depths of history.”
The
condemnation has come from condemnors within the United States... Chuck
Schumer, a Democrat from New York and the highest-ranking Jewish elected
official in the US... and without (the United Nations has passed numerous
anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic resolutions, to no avail) and has spanned the
gamut from the trivial (heckling of Israeli singer Eden Golan at Eurovision,
Italian disrespect for Israel’s national anthem at the World Cup) to the
diplomatic (Indonesia and the Maldives barring Israeli passport holders, Turkey cutting trade links) to the economic... the Bank of Israel revising its growth
predictions down to 1.5% for 2024, from its earlier 2.8% prediction” while
Moody’s rating agency “downgraded Israel’s credit rating by two notches.”
The polls
are trending negative, too.
The
antipathy is mutual. The more international organisations criticise Israel, the
more Israelis reject their legitimacy. According to Pew, three-quarters of
Israelis have an unfavourable view of the UN.
“Our
leaders do not understand that when we fight a war against a terror –
ideological, theological, radical terror organisation, we are fighting in two
dimensions,” Ami Ayalon, a former head of Israel’s domestic security service,
told GUK. “One is a battlefield, but in
order to defeat Hamas we have to win the war of ideas. And we cannot do it by
the use of military power. The only way to do it is to create or to present a better
idea.”
GUK
also convened a panel of “experts” on October fifth (Attachment Twenty Eight),
asking that same old question: “(W)hat next for the Middle East?”
An anti-American, Fawaz Gerges, a Professor at the London School of
Economics, hailed the coming great rupture in international
relations, and “the accelerated decline of the US-led international liberal
capitalist order that has prevailed since the end of the second world war,” having, by supporting Israel, negated its commitment to
the Nuremberg principles.
Leila
Seurat, a
researcher at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Paris, said that drawing Hezbollah (and perhaps Iran) into the
war fulfilled Yahya Sinwar’s dream of a “regional and global explosion.”
“The enemy
wants to turn the war into a religious battle. We would prefer this not to
happen. But if the Zionist extremists absolutely want it, then we will accept
the challenge,” Sinwar said.
“Expanding the war is also a way to obscure the
colonial nature of the conflict against the Palestinians, by turning it into a
civilisational or religious confrontation against Iran.”
For
Jason Burke, the
Guardian’s international security correspondent, Netanyahu’s
escalation into Lebanon “is a gamble that might not pay off,” raising the prospect
that... despite President Joe’s latest “red line” for a weapons cutoff... possibilities ranging “from a
spectacular attack against oil facilities, potentially
destroying Iran’s most vital economic lifeline”, to a less likely but still
tempting “strike against Iran’s nuclear programme (which) would need US
involvement, (and) is unlikely to be forthcoming.
“Israel’s already limited democracy is decaying under the fog
of war,” noted Orly Noy (a journalist and editor at the Hebrew-language news
magazine Local Call) who predicted that Israeli society “will emerge from this
last year more nationalistic, more violent and much more uninhibited” and that,
even when Netanyahu’s rule eventually comes to an end, “his legacy of
destruction and hatred will remain for many more years, if not generations.”
Dr. Sanam
Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa programme at Chatham House
blamed the failed cease-fire for hostages negotiations in Egypt, Qatar and the
U.S. on the “maximalist
goals of Netanyahu and Sinwar – two men whose leadership has been damaged by
the 7 October attacks and subsequent war.”
“With
Israel now repeating the same model of warfare against Hezbollah and with the
prospect of a wider regional conflict with Iran growing, it can only be hoped that the Biden administration will urgently return the focus
to a ceasefire and negotiations, despite the pending
November presidential elections.”
Of
course, if Donald Trump recaptures the White House, ANYTHING might happen.
Just as
some Americans are making plans to emigrate rather than serve under MAGA, the year of war has accelerated a
‘silent departure’ of Israel’s elite... many working in the hi-tech sector
critical to the nation’s economic and military advancements.
This
summer, the Nobel laureate Prof Aaron Ciechanover joined a group of prominent
Israelis gathered in the ruins of the Nir Oz kibbutz to demand a hostage
release and ceasefire deal. Nir Oz was
the worst hit of all the communities targeted by Hamas on 7 October, with a quarter of its residents
kidnapped or killed. Twenty-nine are still in Gaza.
GUK’s Emma Graham-Harrison (October 6th, Attachment Twenty
Nine) reported on his contention that an accelerating
“brain drain” of doctors and other professionals (is) “a worrying sign that
some of Israel’s elite already feel they no longer have a future in the
country. And without them, Israel itself might struggle to have a future.”
Ciechanover
is a long-time enemy of Netanyahu, but
Bibi’s former chair of the National Economic Council, Eugene Kandel,
joined forces with the administrative expert Ron Tzur to issue a paper warning
that Israel faces an existential threat.
Among the
threats they highlighted were rising emigration, particularly among the people
who have built up Israel’s hi-tech sector and the schools and hospitals vital
to attracting the global elite. “Israel’s locomotive of growth is innovation,
and that is driven by a small group of several tens of thousands of people in a
country of 10 million,” their paper warned. “The weight of their departure from
the country is immense in comparison to their number.”
Wealthy
parents are looking into European schools for their children, afraid not only
of the Arabs, but of a growing
number of ultra-orthodox young people not qualified for professional jobs
because they do not study maths or science, or speak English with some holding
avowed extreme far-right religious views (tho’ not right enough to seek service
in the IDF).
“If you
ask me what we are headed for, you can look at the Iranian model, where
religion plays a major role in daily life,” said a worried parent who runs a
cannabis pharmacy.
“Even
without the enemies we have all around [the region], that’s a good enough
reason for any child loving parent to take his children away from harm.”
And, finally, GUK published an
appeal by Raja
Shehadeh, a Palestinian lawyer and writer, and founder of the human rights
organisation Al-Haq, that Israelis,
one day, “will grasp that endless war against Palestinians doesn’t work.”
(Attachment Thirty)
Asking “how will we Palestinians live with the Israelis after this?” he
dodges the obvious answer... “you can’t and you won’t.”
Time
(October 7th, Attachment Thirty One) also asked what lies ahead for
the Middle East, and reporter Yasmeen Serhan, citing analysts, and recent history, states that the answer, for
Gaza, is “an indefinite Israeli military presence.”
For the
West Bank, dramatic deterioration and murders by both the IDF and others to violent Israeli settlers, “whose efforts to displace
Palestinians from their land—already spiking under Netanyahu’s extremist,
pro-settler government—grew all the more brazen during the Gaza war.”
For
Lebanon, a message to Iran
Israel
said the invasion, its fourth, is “limited, localized and
targeted.”
But the 1982 incursion became an occupation that lasted 18 years. “We know from
experience, and we know from the specific history of Israel-Lebanon, that they
don’t ever intend to stay. They don’t intend to occupy, but that’s what
happens,” says Mairev Zonszein a senior Israel analyst at the International
Crisis Group, based in Tel Aviv. “Unfortunately, I don’t think there is one right
now.”
For the
United States, a choice.
“Outside the Middle East, perhaps the single biggest
variable that stands to influence where things go next is the U.S. presidential
election. Should Kamala Harris succeed Joe Biden, the expectation is that she will
likely continue her predecessor’s supportive posture towards Israel, albeit
perhaps with more sensitivity to the growing public uproar over the
humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, as well as Washington’s own role in
perpetuating it,” wrote Shaheen. But,
should Donald Trump be elected, “the former president is widely expected to
resume his unambiguous backing of Israel, which he said should be allowed to “finish the job” in Gaza.”
A separate Time dispatch, by Mary Robinson... a former
President of Ireland and Chair of The Elders, the group of independent global leaders founded by
Nelson Mandela... and Juan Manuel Santos... a former President of Colombia, a
Nobel Peace Laureate, and another member of The Elders checked in for their
solution to Shaheen’s whole shebang... the elderly two-stater.
A sovereign, independent State of Palestine alongside the
State of Israel, with borders along pre-1967 lines, remains the internationally
agreed way forward. This solution has lost popular support among both Israelis
and Palestinians in the three decades since the Oslo Accords due to the deepening occupation and conflict, and
above all a lack of political leadership. But there is no better alternative.
Since Israel
would categorically reject any “pincer plan” squeezing it between the West Bank
and Gaza halves of the Palestinian state, the two Elders descend into wishing
and hoping... their box of magic including a lasting political solution to “guarantee the security of the
State of Israel alongside the security of a fully sovereign State of
Palestine”, disarming of all “non-state armed groups and civilian militias”
including not only Hamas, Hezbollah and whatever succeeds them, but violent Israeli settlers as
noted above... UN membership for the new state, a “responsible” Iran and “respect
for international law and gender equality.”
And a pony.
Further, “all international actors, particularly the five
permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have a d responsibility to
respect all relevant resolutions and decisions of the ICJ and International
Criminal Court (ICC). ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s decision to apply for
arrest warrants for
leaders of Israel and Hamas is a principled, even-handed approach in pursuit of
accountability and justice for atrocity crimes.”
All this, anda panda!
“All of this requires bold, principled leadership by
political leaders commensurate with the daunting challenge ahead,” the two
Elders say. The words are brave, the
intentions noble, but the scheme is fanciful.
With Mr. Parnell’s three state solution in ruins due to the
entry of Hezbollah, and its proximate puppet master Iran into the war, the path
to a solution becomes simple.
Hamas
chief Sinwa and the persons or people who next control Hezbollah have to be
killed. That’s all.
Netanyahu must be deposed and
defeated, and the 88 year old Khameini dispatched to Paradise by disease or
revolution.
Or maybe a multinational UN police force can invade the
whole MidEast, fight through the Islamist and Israeli military and drag both
Sinwar and Bibi to some nice prison in some nice country... Switzerland, or
Sweden, somewhere.
They could be cellies.
And then they could argue about real issues, like who gets to empty the
slops bucket or whether the daily baloney sandwich contains pork – things that
matter.
Concerned Americans... Jewish, Gentile or ungentlemanly...
may ask: Who, then, takes charge in Tel Aviv.
Our answer, an interim one pending restoration of a democratic electoral
process, might be... oh... Jerry Seinfeld?
After all, a comedian in high office is working well for Ukraine, and
under the most difficult circumstances.
And
another sticking point... who gets to pay for rebuilding Gaza, not to mention
Lebanon, northern Israel and... why not... the West Bank and Golan.
What
would Speaker Mike have to say regarding that?
And, from Yahoo News, this holiday blessing…
May this Yom Kippur be not only a day of solemn reflection
but also a starting point for renewed hope and unity. May we emerge from our fasting
and from our prayers for the release of the hostages and for the swift recovery
of all those injured, with the resolve to stand together, to heal, and to
create a world where light overcomes darkness, where good overcomes evil.
Together, we will honor the memory of the victims and our brave soldiers by
building a future worthy of their sacrifice.
Our Lesson: October Seventh through October
Fourteenth, 2024 |
|
|
Monday,
October 7, 2024 Dow: 41,954.24 |
It’s the first anniversary of the Hamas
attack on Israel (above).
Families of hostages say hostage release must be prioritized as a new
front opens with Hezbollah firing more rockets at Tel Aviv. “We don’t have the privilege of not
remaining strong,” one says.
Millions evacuating Florida in fear of Hurricane Milton, expected to
strike the Tampa Bay area while first responders, residents and government
agencies are still cleaning up after Helene.
Donald Trump accuses FEMA of spending money earmarked for Helene
relief on illegal aliens and conspiracy theorists spread rumors to deter aid
seekers whose homes were destroyed without flood insurance.
SCOTUS returns from vacation to start the fall term as polls say only
43% of American approve of the Trump Court’s job. First up – fighting “ghost guns” over the
objections of Second Amendment advocates.
Most of their agenda will involve guns, gays or porn.
After a weekend of upsets, Texas returns to #1 in NCAA football. Lebron and Bronny James become the first
father/son duo to appear in NBA playoffs. |
|
Tuesday,
October 8, 2024 Dow: 42,080.31 |
Tampa residents evacuate in long traffic
jams as gas runs out and residents ask: “How can this be, again?” FEMA sends money for rescue and relief,
housing them in cots at the Raymond James Buccaneers Stadium, preparing 20M
meals and 40M liters of water for those who can’t or won’t escape. A ten to fifteen foot storm surge is
predicted, which would make Milton the worst storm to hit Tampa since 1921.
Harris calls Trump irresponsible for spreading mis- and
dis-information about FEMA and says that he “lacks empathy”. So does his former DefSec, Mark Esper, who
appears in a Democratic commercial with others from the first administration
who no longer support Djonald DisEndorsed.
Even the mustache guy (Bolton) jumps ship.
After Hezbollah honcho Hassan Nasrallah is killed by the IDF, its new
leaders “taunt” Israel, which starts killing them, too. As the Hamas-affiliated health agency for
Gaza says 41K civilians have been killed (which Israel disputes), CBS
producer Marwen al-Ghoul documents the killing of children, saying: “There is
no safe place in Gaza. No place at all.” Domestically, the FBI arrests an Afghan
immigrant in Oklahoma for joining ISIS and plotting terror on Election Day.
Lottery officials will raise the price of Mega Millions from $2 to $5
per ticket. They promise that more
money will go into prize jackpots, not their own pockets... |
|
Wednesday,
October 9, 2024 Dow: 42,512.00 |
TV
Sheriffs in Florida proclaim a Last Call for evacuations, saying: “You might
be uncomfortable, but you will still be alive. You can’t run from water.” Milton expected to blow Helene debris
around, break things and kill people – its past shifts southwards towards
Sarasota as twenty tornadoes spin off in advance of the deluge. As repair scammers proliferate, President
Joe calls Trump’s lies about FEMA “un-American”. For
his part, Djonald UnAshamed reiterates that FEMA gave its money to illegals,
not Americans. He also denies a report
by Nixon-slayer Bob Woodward that he gave Vladimir Putin life-saving COVID
vaccines while Americans were dying while even Ron DeSanctimonius denounces
“online crap” posted by crooks. The
iconic Tropicana Hotel in Vegas ends its Rat Pack days, dynamited to build a
new stadium for the runaway A’s as Oakland seethes and weeps. Angry mama Grazer gets
revenge... sort of... winning the Fat Bear contest over defending champ
Chunk, who had just killed her cub.
Four other bears in Colorado
die in retaliation for a home invasion and murder of 74 year old human. |
|
Thursday,
October 10, 2024 Dow: 42,454.12 |
Milton makes overnight landfall at Siesta
Key near Tampa as a Cat. 3 with 120 mph winds, causing flooding and spawning
3 tornadoes. 3M are powerless, 9K
National Guardsmen and 50K line workers begin work but one of the casualties
is the Tampa Bay Tropicana Stadium, whose destruction means that emergency
workers will have to find other shelter.
TV
weatherpeople say the damage to Tampa Bay was less than it could have been
because there was an offshore wind that blew the storm surge back out to sea
so that tornadoes kill more than flooding.
Pets and children are “restless”, alligators are “agitated”. Survivors tell tales of terror (the dead do
not).
President Joe tells Congress to come back from their paid vacations
and authorize more help for the victims of Helene and Milton. Congress says “Nah,” but Taylor Swift donates
$5M to hurricane relief.
There’s other news, too. Donald
Trump warns that Biden and Harris have so ruined the United States economy
that, if Harris and Walz are elected, the whole country will look like
Detroit. In Detroit! |
|
Friday, October
11, 2024 Dow: 42,863.86 |
Milton death toll up to 12, but still far
below Helene. A fisherman, rescued
from the deep, says Helene had clean floodwaters, but Milton’s was dirty,
perhaps sewage. It’s cost to taxpayers
will be $50M in “insurance losses” as denials and scams further bedevil
survivors, leaving behind happy lawyers.
Premiums, already up 50 – 90% over four years expected to rise again.
Liberal critics say some states “are changing the ballot counting
rules to manipulate elections. Local
and county Boards of Election are suing states for changes such as those
requiring hand counting ballots.
Partisans parse the hurricanes and economy. On the left, Ex-Pres. Obama says we can’t
afford four more years of arrogance and bumbling; talkster Jimmy Kimmel
denies MTG claim of the government controlling the weather, saying only
Beyonce can. J. D. Vance denies claims
MAGA called FEMA corrupt, saying that it’s merely incompetent.
Falling inflation rate causing rising Dow and joy to Harris campaign,
but Seven Eleven will be closing hundreds of stores while Boeing cuts
thousands of jobs to punish striking machinists, scuttling settlement. |
|
Saturday,
October 12, 2024 Dow: Closed |
It’s Yom Kippur (above). Also the real Columbus Day, tho’ pushed
back to Monday, and National Chess Day.
Florida floodwaters rise from six to twenty feet in some areas with
two millon Milton powerless, but death toll still only 17. The bad news is that FEMA is running out
money, gas stations out of gas and destruction of the company manufacturing
60% of IV fluid apparatus means that hospitals nationwide are having to
triage treatment with many more deaths arising – not counted in hurricane
tolls.
Crime news finds mobs of looters attacking greight trains in Chicago,
fatal shootout in Oklahoma City Halloween party, The
hurricans are gone, so weather woes return to plain old rain and heat in the
Midwest and West... Little Rock hits 94° and Phoenix “celebrates” 20th
straight day of 100°+. |
|
Sunday,
October 13, 2024 Dow:
Closed |
Bean counters doing their job estimate that
Milton’s costs are $70B, so far. Only
250K file for FEMA aid, many more deterred by dis-information. Rescues continue as recovery begins in
Florida and N. Carolina as new storm goblins emerge... house gobblin’
sinkholes, massive gas outages and piles of rubble. And more Good Samaritans, including a
roaming laundry truck cleaning the dirty Milton clothes of victims and first
responders. The
death toll in Lebanon, however, is up to 2,255 as Israel and Hezbollah trade
rocket attacks, with both firing at UN peacekeepers who Netanyahu orders to
leave. They don’t.
Sunday talksters include J.D. who denies that Trump will appoint an
Attorney General to seek vengeance upon Democratic politicians and civilians,
but also denies to reply when asked who won 2020 election. Also on The Week, Gov. Andy Beshear (D-Ky)
says the race is close because race war tops class war on agenda of many angry
Americans who just believe that Harris is Biden’s surrogate and, says Obana,
blacks and white working class men are misogynistic. The
Round Table’s Rachel Burke (Politico) agrees, saying Trump is perceived as a
Strong Man strongman, while perennial Donna Brazile says it will boil down to
the “ground game” and Susan Glasser (New Yorker) asks who voters think the
election is about. Token Republican
Reince Priebus proclaims the “Harris joy” gone after a disastrous interview
on The View, adding that people are “tired of being told they are wrong”,
leading to a “leak in the Harris balloon.” On
Face the Nation, DHS chief Mayorkas says FEMA needs more money because the
hurricane season lasts longer (another forming in Caribbean) while Speaker
Mike says Congress will cut off any aid for future disasters, endorsing
belief that FEMA money was filched by Dems to encourage more migrants to
cross the border and vote for Harris. |
|
Soaring tech stock prices send the Dow
soaring and bring back some of the joy leaking out of Kamala’s popularity
balloon. A reduction in gas prices
overwhelms slight increases in other costs and there don’t seem to be any
hurricanes around for at least two weeks to come. There was a sharp uptick in the trade
balance as America heeded the call to buy American and even a slight dip in
debt (personal) as Don Jones paid off some of his credit card bill. (But Christmas is coming!) |
|
CHART of CATEGORIES
w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000 (REFLECTING… approximately…
DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013) Gains
in indices as improved are noted in GREEN. Negative/harmful indices in RED as are their designation. (Note – some of the indices where the total
went up created a realm where their value went down... and vice versa.) See a
further explanation of categories here… |
ECONOMIC
INDICES |
(60%) |
|
||||||||
CATEGORY |
VALUE |
BASE |
RESULTS by PERCENTAGE |
SCORE |
OUR SOURCES and COMMENTS |
|
||||
INCOME |
(24%) |
6/17/13 revised 1/1/22 |
LAST |
CHANGE |
NEXT |
LAST WEEK |
THIS WEEK |
THE WEEK’S CLOSING STATS... |
|
|
Wages (hrly. Per cap) |
9% |
1350 points |
9/24 |
+0.43% |
11/24 |
1,534.33 |
1,534.33 |
|
||
Median Inc. (yearly) |
4% |
600 |
10/7/24 |
+0.028% |
10/21/24 |
674.70 |
674.89 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 39,740 751 |
|
|
Unempl. (BLS – in
mi) |
4% |
600 |
9/24 |
-2.44% |
11/24 |
556.38 |
556.38 |
|
||
Official (DC – in
mi) |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+0.21% |
10/21/24 |
222.09 |
221.63 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
7,263 278 |
|
|
Unofficl. (DC – in
mi) |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+0.25% |
10/21/24 |
231.75 |
231.18 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 13,815
849 |
|
|
Workforce Participation Number Percent |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
-0.0006% -0.0065% |
10/21/24 |
299.82 |
299.80 |
In 161,421 420 Out 100,502 Total: 261,633 61.633 61.629
|
|
|
WP % (ycharts)* |
1% |
150 |
9/24 |
+0.16% |
11/24 |
151.43 |
151.43 |
https://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate 62.70 |
|
|
OUTGO |
(15%) |
|
||||||||
Total Inflation |
7% |
1050 |
9/24 |
+0.2% |
11/24 |
956.70 |
954.79 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.2
.2 |
|
|
Food |
2% |
300 |
9/24 |
+0.4% |
11/24 |
272.16 |
271.07 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm +0.1
.4 |
|
|
Gasoline |
2% |
300 |
9/24 |
-4.1% |
11/24 |
239.49 |
249.31 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm -0.6 -4.1 |
|
|
Medical Costs |
2% |
300 |
9/24 |
-0.7% |
11/24 |
288.45 |
286.34 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
+0.1 0.7 |
|
|
Shelter |
2% |
300 |
9/24 |
+0.2% |
11/24 |
259.72 |
259.22 |
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
+0.5 0.2 |
|
|
WEALTH |
|
|||||||||
Dow Jones Index |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+1.21% |
10/21/24 |
332.89 |
336.91 |
https://www.wsj.com/market-data/quotes/index/ 42,863.86 |
|
|
Home (Sales) (Valuation) |
1% 1% |
150 150 |
10/7/24 |
-2.28% -1.44% |
11/24 |
124.95 292.49 |
124.95 292.49 |
https://www.nar.realtor/research-and-statistics Sales (M):
3.86 Valuations (K): 416.7 |
|
|
Debt (Personal) |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+0.04% |
10/21/24 |
264.24 |
264.14 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 75,943
973 |
|
|
GOVERNMENT |
(10%) |
|
||||||||
Revenue (trilns.) |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+0.18% |
10/21/24 |
419.27 |
420.04 |
debtclock.org/
4,932 941 |
|
|
Expenditures (tr.) |
2% |
300 |
10/7/24 |
+0.23% |
10/21/24 |
295.48 |
294.81 |
debtclock.org/ 6,990
7,006 |
|
|
National Debt tr.) |
3% |
450 |
10/7/24 |
+0.05% |
10/21/24 |
377.05 |
376.85 |
http://www.usdebtclock.org/ 35,684 703 |