Hostages

MODERN-DAY MACCABEE: What Bat-Sheva Yahalomi has endured until now is unfathomable. She survived an abduction attempt, she is treating her son who survived Hamas captivity, and she is doing everything she can to get her husband home from Hamas’s Terror Dungeons. We honor… pic.twitter.com/qXQNtrrv3v

— Israeli Citizen Spox (@IsrCitizenSpox) December 31, 2024

As the New Year approaches, I can't help wondering if the American and Israeli hostages held prisoner by Hamas will ever be released or rescued. Here's the latest on a possible deal ...

Hamas said willing to free only 22 of 34 living hostages demanded by Israel in deal

Palestinian terror group Hamas has partially rejected a list of hostages that Israel insists must be released in the first phase of any ceasefire deal, according to a Monday report.

Kan news, citing an unnamed Palestinian source, said Hamas is willing to release 22 of the 34 hostages on the list, but is refusing to agree to the release of the other 12. Instead, the report stated, the group offered to release 22 living hostagesand 12 bodies during the first phase of a potential deal.

Israel turned down the notion and made it clear that it would only accept living hostages during the initial stage of a deal, the report added ...

I've come to the conclusion that Hamas will never release all the hostages, but will keep them for years as leverage so that they can stay in power after the war. It makes me feel sick that they might get away with all the damage they have done.

H-1B visas

Interesting talk on the current rift in MAGA about the H-1B visa program .... Elon Musk for the visas and Steve Bannon against the visas. I have to say, I agree with Bannon on this subject - invest in American workers, instead of importing them.

An intriguing bit of info from Stuart Stevens in the video above ... he said that it's generally believed that Musk lied on his documents when applying to become a naturalized citizen of the US, and that people who do this are usually deported. Can we? Can we jusrt deport him? Please let it be true! We could send him to Germany, as that seems to be the latest country he's trying to buy - Berlin accuses Elon Musk of seeking to influence Germany's election

But back to the visas - read what Robert Reich has to say about this ...

Robert Reich: Why Musk Is Wrong About Opening America To Skilled Workers From Abroad – OpEd

When I was secretary of labor, America’s emerging big tech industry pushed to raise the cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the United States under the H1B visa program.

I resisted the pressure, telling business that if they wanted skilled workers so badly, they should train Americans for these jobs, including their own workers ...

Jimmy Carter: RIP

BREAKING: Jimmy Carter, whose tireless humanitarian efforts made him one of the most respected former presidents in U.S. history, has died. He was 100.

Read more about his life and legacy: https://t.co/7vx5J4CEU4 pic.twitter.com/nwSArnvAjf

— ABC News (@ABC) December 29, 2024

Sad to see he has passed away. He was a good presient and a really good person ... among other things, he said Pope Francis should let women be priests :)

Jimmy Carter: Women’s rights the fight of my life

Attack on the hospital

Today's news briefing from The Times of Israel has their military correspondent talking about the raid on the Gaza hospital that has been in the news recently. I think most people are getting their news on this and all things Israeli/Hamas war from US and European news sites, which mostly seem to only give the Hamas side of things. I guess that's what people want t hear, but it's not really "news' if it isn't impartial and factual.

Olivia Hussey: RIP

Actress Olivia Hussey has passed away ... ‘Romeo And Juliet’ star Olivia Hussey Eisley dies at 73

It is as Juliet that I mostly remember her, in the 1968 movie directed by Franco Zeffirelli, Romeo and Juliet . My English class in high school took us all to see it. Here's a clip ...



But I also remember her as Mary, Jesus' mother, in Zeffirelli's tv series Jesus of Nazareth ...



Sad she is gone.

Tulsi Gabbard

God help us all :(

Field hospitals

- International Medical Corps field hospital in Gaza

In the news, most headlines on this subject are like this one from CNN ...

Israel arrests hospital director and other staff in raid on last functioning facility in northern Gaza, health officials say

That headline cites its source of information as the Gazan health ministry = Hamas. And the headline gives the impression that Israel just wiped out the very last place where Palestinians could get medical care.

That is not true. The Times of Israel's story on thus below states that patients were taken by the IDF to the Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza. And there are also a number of field hospitals in Gaza run by aid organizations like the Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders, and the International Medical Corps.

Tha CNN article also does not say why the hospitals have been attaccked. You get the impression it's because the IDF is evil. But the hospitals have been attacked ... after patients and staff are evacuated to other hospitals ... because terrorists have opened up shop there ...

IDF completes raid on north Gaza hospital, says some 240 terror suspects arrested

See the page for the International Medical Corps and its work in Gaza.

And - Humanitarian Supplies Looted En Route to Field Hospitals in Gaza

Hamas turned hospitals in Gaza into bases for its terrorist army.

Listen to what a British doctor told France 24 last year about what it was like working at Shifa hospital in Gaza City:

"The main point was when I was first asked to work there, I was told there was a part of the… pic.twitter.com/16YaXZHbaw

— Daniel Rubenstein (@paulrubens) December 28, 2024

Why we lost

As Joe Biden's term comes to a close, news pundits on the shows I watch continue to tell us about the economic wonders of his years in office. They seem to think that people who are worried about the economy through their own personal lived experience are just tripping. just failing to recognize "the truth".

Well, here's "the truth" ...

Homelessness rates jumped by double digits in 2024 as Americans battled to afford housing

More Americans were homeless this year compared to 2023, as families continued struggling to afford rent and other basic necessities, federal officials announced Friday.

Across the U.S., more than 771,800 people lived without housing in 2024, according to a count conducted annually taken on a single night in January. The number for January 2024 is 18.1% higher than in 2023, when officials counted about 650,000 people living in homeless shelters or in parks and on streets. In 2022, the population of people experiencing homelessness was around 580,000 ...

On those news shows I mentioned above, Democratic operatives keep going on about how we lost the election because Democrats didn't effectively "get their message out" to all the voters.

No. It's not that no one heard your message. It is that no one liked your message. You know, that message where Kamala Harris is partying with Beyoncé and hosting millionaire campaign events. Every Democratic big-wig seems to be wealthy ... Harris, Obama, Clinton, even Biden. I mean, can you be more entitled than appearing on Saturday Night Live?

Saying that you support unions doesn't fix this reality ... the people who really need help don't have union jobs. Where were the campaign messages about raising the minimum wage? Where was the message about increasing Social Security for the impoverished elderly and disabled? Where was even one word about the homeless?

I'm still angry about this.

The headlines

The headline you might see today ...

The Guardian: Five Palestinian journalists killed in Israeli strike on van in Gaza

The headline you probably won't see today ...

The Jerusalem Post: IDF kills PIJ terrorists, including five who doubled as journalists in Nuseirat strike

Still Christmas

Looking at old photos. Here's my mom at a past Christmas party at our house, 1969, when my sis and I were in high school.

Irony

- Lively and Allen

In the entertainment news, there's much ado about actress Blake Lively accusing Justin Baldoni, the director of a movie she was in, of sexual misconduct (Reevaluating Blake Lively: 'It Ends With Us' actress's legal complaint against Justin Baldoni puts misogyny in the spotlight).

I haven't seen that movie, don't know who Justin Baldoniis, but I do know who Blake Lively is, and only for one reason. I remember her from an incident years ago that makes this current news about her seem ironic.

When Dylan Farrow, daughter of Woody Allen, accused her father of raping her as a child, Lively, who was in one of Allen's movies, brushed aside the allegations, apparently because, well, Woody was making her so, you know, famous?

Blake Lively Calls Woody Allen “Very Empowering” (2016)

Last year, Blake Lively joined an elite club of actresses who can be considered Woody Allen muses—see also: Emma Stone, Kristen Stewart, and Scarlett Johansson—when she was cast to star in the director’s latest comedy, Café Society. As the actress told us at Cannes this year, she signed onto the project without knowing anything about it—not even its time period, let alone her character—because she was so eager to work with the Oscar winner. And in a new interview, Lively explains what it was like to be directed by the legendary—if beleaguered—filmmaker.

“It’s really cool to work with a director who’s done so much, because he knows exactly what he wants,” Lively tells Hamptons Magazine. “The fact that he does one shot for an entire scene—[and] this could be a scene with eight people and one to two takes—it gives you a level of confidence because when he’s got it, he knows he’s got it.” ...

This past May, Allen, Lively, and the rest of the Café Society cast made headlines when Ronan Farrow, Allen’s estranged son, called out the parties who continue to collaborate with Allen in spite of the sexual-abuse allegations made against him. In an essay published in The Hollywood Reporter the same day that Café Society opened the Cannes Film Festival, Farrow wrote:

"Amazon paid millions to work with Woody Allen, bankrolling a new series and film. Actors, including some I admire greatly, continue to line up to star in his movies. "It's not personal," one once told me. But it hurts my sister every time one of her heroes like Louis C.K., or a star her age, like Miley Cyrus, works with Woody Allen. Personal is exactly what it is — for my sister, and for women everywhere with allegations of sexual assault that have never been vindicated by a conviction."

When we asked Lively about the essay in Cannes, the actress refused to comment on it, claiming that she had not read the piece and did not want to speak about something with which she was not familiar ...

Lively also defended Woody Allen again in The Los Angeles Times against the rape allegations.

Lively now wants the benefit of the doubt for herself that she would not give to another.

See Dylan Farrow's An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow, and Ronan Farrow's My Father, Woody Allen, and the Danger of Questions Unasked .

Merry Christmas

Sussex Carol

60 Minutes

It’s amazing to think, Israel not only carried off a sabotage operation that would make James Bond balk, it even made money on it. 🤣 https://t.co/0qJvfOeh6c

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 23, 2024

Weaponized empathy

From The Times of Israel podcast, British military expert Andrew Fox discusses the war in Gaza, and the use Hamas has made of social media and the press to weaponize the empathy of the international community and distort the facts.

And here is another interview with Andrew Fox by Eylon Levy on the purported death toll in Gaza ...

More on Mount Hermon

Israel won’t let Syrian jihadists seize the high ground. Our lives are at stake. pic.twitter.com/66ADMFs3fD

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 18, 2024

Mount Hermon

Mount Hermon, where lies Israel's only ski resort, is in the news ...

Defence minister orders Israeli troops to prepare to spend winter on Mount Hermon

[...] Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that the troops would remain until there was an effective force in place to enforce the Separation of Forces Agreement signed following the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. Israel has called the move a limited and temporary measure to ensure the security of its borders but it is unclear when it will judge the situation in Syria stable enough to pull its forces back ...

At the border between Lebanon and Syria, Mount Hermon has a few peaks, the highest of which is in Syria, and which is also in the area of the buffer zone between Israel and Syria. The soutern slope of Mount Hermon is in Israeli terriroty and that's where the ski resort is. Wikipedia has a page on it ...

Mount Hermon ski resort

The Mount Hermon ski resort ... is situated on the south-eastern slopes of Mount Hermon, a few kilometers off the Purple line, in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, Israel. The site is surrounded by the Hermon nature reserve. While the nature reserve is open year-round, the ski resort is open only at the peak of winter (usually January–March), when enough snow is accumulated on its ground ...

I never think of a place like Israel having snow. Reminds me of Mauna Kea in Hawaii, which does get snow too and you can actually ski there ...

Drone mystery solved! Not.

Mystery Drones Saga: Federal Agencies Say Sightings Are Mix Of Legal Drones, Aircraft And Stars

A group of federal agencies on Monday night said the weeks-long citings of low-flying drone-like objects in the night skies of New Jersey and other nearby states are likely a mix of legally flown aircraft, drones and misidentified stars which they assess do not pose any risk to national security or public safety ...

Oh, well ok then. Why didn't you say so in the first place? Mystery solved. Thank God!

No, really? Come on! Surely our government can do better than this. No swamp gas, no weather balloons, no planet Venus?

Their lame explanation reminds me of an episode of the X-Files, Jose Chung's From Outer Space, in which someone sights a (real) UFO, and is thereafter visited by two Men in Black, played by Jesse Ventura and Alex Trebek ...

More on airstrikes

In the news, Israel has conducted more aitstrikes on Syria's military assets. When I listened today to the State Dept's press briefing, some of the reporters thought this was a bad thing.

But really all we know so far about the guy in charge now in Syria, Abu Mohammad al-Julani, is that he used to be an Al-Qaeda terrorist, and he actually still has a reward on his head from the US ...

The US State Department listed al-Julani as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist" in May 2013, and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. Al-Julani released an audio statement on 28 September 2014, in which he stated he would fight the "United States and its allies"...

He says he's changed, maybe he has, but it's not surprising Israel is worried about him being on their border, especially with ISIS still in Syria as well.

Here's what General Barry McCaffrey wrote today ...

Brilliant IDF immediate strikes. This will add to peace thru deterrence. USAF also conducted 75 strikes in Syria against ISIS concentrations. https://t.co/j4e3S81VZu

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) December 11, 2024

And this from Eylon Levy ...

Israel is stopping a navy, an air force, and WMDs from falling in the hands of jihadists.

Israel is keeping the whole world safe.

Thanks us later. https://t.co/ctaUtQL3k1

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) December 10, 2024

Airstrikes in Syria

- F-15E Strike Eagle

In the news, stories about Israeli airstrikes in Syria against chemical weapons sites. But it isn't just them, the US, which has something like 1000 troops on the ground in Syria, has also been making airstrikes ...

B-52s, F-15s, and A-10s Conduct Massive Anti-ISIS Airstrikes in Syria After Fall of Assad

U.S. Air Force B-52 Stratofortress bombers, F-15E Strike Eagles, and A-10 Thunderbolt II attack aircraft conducted dozens of airstrikes against Islamic State leaders, fighters, and camps in central Syria, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) announced. The aircraft dropped about 140 munitions on more than 75 targets belonging to the militant group, a senior administration official told reporters.

The strikes came as the U.S. is trying to prevent ISIS militants from exploiting the chaotic situation in Syria after Assad fled the country and rebels led by the group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham took over Damascus 13 years into the Syrian civil war ...

U.S. working to destroy Syria's remaining chemical weapons, official says

The U.S. is working with several other countries in the Middle East to prevent chemical weapons possessed by the Assad regime from falling into the wrong hands, a U.S. official told reporters.

The U.S. and its allies are concerned that the collapse of the Syrian army and other security forces — and the chaos engulfing the country — will allow terrorist groups to seize dangerous weapons held by the Assad regime ...

The Purple Line and the UNDOF Zone

Prime Minister Netanyahu comments on the fall of the Syrian government and the temporary movement of Israeli troops to to the buffer zone between Israel and Syria ... the Purple Line and the UNDOF Zone ...

Syria

It's just past midnight here and in the news, rebels have entered Damascus and Bashar al-Assad has fled the country for Russia. The prime minister is still there and he wants a peaceful reansition of power to the rebels. Worries about the rebels - some affiliated with ISIS and Al-Qaeda?

CNN: Syria rebels declare Damascus ‘free,’ claim Assad has fled the capital

The Times of Israel: IDF deploys in Golan buffer zone with Syria, girding for post-Assad regime chaos

Wikipedia: Fall of the Assad dynasty

Aviva Siegel

On Meet the Press Now today, Aviva Siegel, who was a hostage held by Hamas but released, talks about her husband, Keith, who is still being kept prisoner by the terrorists in Gaza.

Amnesty International

Amnesty accuses Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza

Well, not exactly ...

Chair of Amnesty International’s Israel branch resigns over genocide report

The chair of Amnesty International’s Israeli branch and two board members have resigned over the human rights group’s report accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Daniil Brodsky and the board members stepped down on Thursday, after the group said in a statement the report had “not proved genocidal intent beyond a reasonable doubt” ...

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has a piece about this ...

The Propaganda War on Israel Never Stops

[...] The case law at the International Court of Justice requires a finding that “intent to destroy the group, in whole or in part, must be the only reasonable inference which can be drawn from the pattern of conduct.” Amnesty says that’s too high a bar and looks at the “broader picture” and “context.” ....

Here’s the report’s opening line: “On 7 October 2023, Israel embarked on a military offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip (Gaza) of unprecedented magnitude, scale and duration.” Gaza wasn’t occupied, and Hamas, not Israel, embarked on a military offensive. But Amnesty says it will get to the Hamas mass murder later ....

While Amnesty uses the casualty figures of the “Gaza-based Ministry of Health,” aka Hamas, it never mentions that Israel says 17,000 dead Hamas fighters are among them. It omits the crucial civilian-to-combatant ratio, which would suggest Israel has done better than most in urban warfare ....

Amnesty even criticizes Israel for evacuating civilians from active war zones. This, too, becomes evidence of “genocidal intent” because it displaces the civilians. But Amnesty also criticizes Israel as genocidal in cases where it it didn’t evacuate civilians. The game is to twist international law until Israel—or the U.S.—has no way to fight against terrorists ....

Depressing that most of the press is just stating that Amnesry International says Israel is committing genocide, as if that makes it a fact. I used to like Amnesty International. Why do my people (the liberals) have to hate Israel? :(

No little girl ...

... dreams of growing up to become a prostitute.

Belgium becomes first country to give sex workers robust labor rights and protections

Belgium made history on Sunday as the first country in the world to allow sex workers to sign formal employment contracts — granting them access to sick days, maternity pay and pension. The new law also guarantees fundamental rights for sex workers, including the ability to refuse clients, set the conditions of an act, and stop an act at any moment ...

I have two thoughts about this ...

1) it's way past time that sex workers have all the protections any other worker has.

2) Prostitution should be illegal.

You may think those two things are antithetical, but I don't. Of course everyone deserves work protections and rights, but being a prostitute is still a crap job - there really just isn't any honest way to dress it up.

At the end of the day, the "job" only exists because some people (mostly men) have a deep-seated belief that they should be able to screw another person whenever they want to. They believe they deserve this for all kinds of reasons, including health.

The fact that prostitution exists is not an affirmation of that tortured belief in entitlement, it's an example of the failure of our society from the dawn of time to treat women like people equal to men.

Some will use this law in Belgium as an excuse for why prostitution is fine, and they will tell thesmselves and others that most women become prostitutes because they love having sex with strangers and, hey, it's an easy buck. I don't believe those tropes.

Here's a scene from an episode of The West Wing, The Women of Qumar - the first part of the scene lays it out ...

First-hand view

🔴 I’ve just retuned from serving as a reservist infantryman in Gaza for a second time. Here are my ten takeaways from the experience👇

— Michael Starr (@StarrJpost) December 1, 2024

You can read his article in The Jerusalem Post. Here's the beginning of it ...

An IDF reservist's top ten takeaways after returning from Gaza

On Sunday, I returned to The Jerusalem Post after being drafted as an IDF reservist for almost 80 days for my second tour of duty in Gaza since the October 7 massacre. My anecdotal experience as an infantryman and perspective as a journalist in civilian life have given me a unique perspective on war issues, familiar and unexplored alike.

These ten takeaways from someone who has been in the mud of the battlefield should be considered by policymakers and citizens for whom much of the information about the war is second-hand or hearsay.

1. The IDF is winning, and needs to be allowed to win

Compared to their operations during my first tour at the end of 2023, there is a sense that Hamas is collapsing. The terrorist organization once fielded ambush cells that conducted frequent hit-and-run anti-tank missile attacks and ambushes from a wide network of bunkers and tunnels for a guerilla defense-in-depth strategy ....