The New York Post is reporting that the number of Americans killed in Hamas’s rampage in Israel is currently at least 14.
It also tells us, via White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, that the number of missing, perhaps kidnapped, could be 20 or more. This likely isn’t the full story. Also from the New York Post:
“Bryan Stern, CEO and founder of the group, said his team has already received hundreds of requests from Americans, their families, and other allies who need assistance under the organization’s Operation: PROMISED LAND as Hamas continues to kidnap individuals.
“The group—comprising a team of special operations and intelligence community veterans, as well as civilian volunteers—has already mobilized assets in the region and initiated emergency launch preparations of its American Operations team for potential evacuation and hostage rescue operations.”
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal has been reporting for a few days the heavy involvement of Iran in Hamas’s actions:
It goes on with more details worth reading, but, disturbingly, further down in the article, we find Secretary of State Antony Blinken weirdly equivocating, “We have not yet seen evidence that Iran directed or was behind this particular attack, but there is certainly a long relationship.”
Why?
At the minimum, Mr. Blinken may fear acknowledgement of Iran’s role that, with the mounting American death toll, might appear as a casus belli for the United States to attack Iran.
More likely, he’s concerned that it would redound poorly on the Biden administration and on Mr. Blinken himself for their Iran policy that recently resulted in the release of $6 billion in frozen funds to the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism.
Mr. Blinken has been going everywhere insisting that the $6 billion hasn’t yet reached Iran, but that’s at best deceptive and at worst a lie.
The money was transferred to Iran through Qatar, which has functioned for some time as the mullahs’ financial conduit. Its status is therefore unknown, and money, as we all know and Mr. Blinken fails to admit, is fungible.
Conservative Treehouse has much interesting information on how the Qatar “bank” actually works, and how it has enabled both Iran and Hamas over the years.
This was reiterated to me in a phone conversation that I just had with an old friend of mine in Israel, Yigal Carmon, who says that Qatar has long provided intelligence to Hamas.
Talking with Mr. Carmon, it’s clear that he found the intelligence failure the latest version of a form of naïve wish-fulfillment dating back at least to the 1995 Oslo Accords, which created a belief in Israel and the rest of the world that the likes of Yasser Arafat actually wanted a peaceful two-state solution to the conflict.
He sees little difference in the end between Hamas and Arafat’s—now Mahmoud Abbas’s—Palestinian Liberation Organization.
As the counterterrorism expert put it succinctly: “You don’t make peace with people who are trying to kill you. You fight them.” He abjures, actually finds ridiculous, the famous quotation “You only make peace with your enemies.”
The facts on the ground have clearly borne him out.
He said that to call these people animals was an insult to animals because animals kill to live. These people kill and rape for the pleasure of it.
For that reason, Mr. Carmon sees no room for any kind of traditional negotiated settlement of the conflict. It will end only when one side or the other gets tired.
Nevertheless, he was grimly optimistic.
“As someone who was in five wars,” he said, “I can assure you, we will not get tired. They will get tired before we will, and then there will be a settlement.”
More to come.
