Israel's ceasefire plan

Blow terrorists up and they stop fighting.

The Daily Mail reported that Iran finally launched its oft-promised retaliation against Israel. It went as expected:

Israel's defense system stood firm on Tuesday night as Iran unleashed a barrage of nearly 200 missiles across the country, sparking fears from world leaders that the escalation could plunge the Middle East into an all-out war.

Iran launched wave after wave of warheads towards Jerusalem and Tel Aviv in revenge for Israel's campaign against Tehran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, including the assassination of its leader last week.

In the most dramatic development of the Middle Eastern conflict, air raid sirens sounded as 181 missiles began raining down on Israel, with some rockets dramatically exploding into bright orange flames near Tel Aviv.

But as Iran unleashed a salvo of missiles, ordered by its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, falling projectiles burned like comets against the night sky after the rockets were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome defensive system.

The sickening attack, which Israel has vowed to exact revenge for, forced civilians to seek shelter as huge chunks of molten metal crashed to the ground.

The expected assault, hailed as heroic by Iran-backed Hamas, marks a major escalation in the Middle East, and was twice the scope of Tehran’s bombardment in April, which saw more than 170 explosive drones and 120 ballistic missiles launched.

In a major embarrassment for Iran, the U.S. said that the missile volley was defeated and ineffective, with just one reported death — a Palestinian man who was killed by shrapnel in the West Bank.

Communists and Nazis are sad because Israel lives. The Iron Dome turned the barrage of bombs into a nationwide fireworks display.

The American press never understood how impotent Iran is.

Last Wednesday, Thomas L. Friedman, the dour and serious self-appointed voice of the mythical Arab Street for the New York Times, wrote, “Why Everything Is Suddenly Spiraling for Israel.” A reader duly forwarded a link and declared TLF to be the Jim Cramer of global politics — that is a man who always bets wrong.

Two days later, Israel blew up the last of Hezbollah’s hierarchy as they met in secret in a totally secure bunker. Netanyahu casually addressed the UN while terrorist-supporting diplomats walked out of his speech. I wonder how many had pagers on their belts.

The big kahuna in the bunker busting was an austere religious scholar — as the Jeff Bezos Post might put it — named Hassan Nasrallah.

NYT praised him for seeking a limited war — you know, one in which Israelis die but not the terrorists. The paper quoted him as saying, when he could still talk, “Some in Lebanon say that we are taking a risk. But this risk is part of a beneficial, correct calculation.”

He found out the hard way just how beneficial and correct his calculation was. As Archie Bunker said 50 years ago, “and you do anything to a Jew, oh boy, the whole Israel Air Force swoops down on you and kicketh the crapola out of you.”

They do.

They infiltrate as well.

CNN Turk said, “Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an interview with CNN Turk said that Iran’s secret services had created a special unit to combat Mossad operating in Iran. However, turns out the head of this unit was himself a Mossad agent, along with 20 other agents, who were responsible for multiple intelligence operations in Iran including stealing nuclear docs and assassinating several Iranian nuclear scientists before allegedly fleeing to Israel.”

Part of Nasrallah’s calculation was that the USA would keep Israel on a short leash. But after Obama humiliated Netanyahu and Biden showed he’s just a pawn of an incompetent and ignorant deep state bureaucracy, Netanyahu just ignored the USA. Begone, Biden. You have no power in Tel Aviv.

Israel apparently did not give the Biden administration advance notice of Friday’s surprise attack. Eliana Johnson tweeted, “Lloyd Austin speaking to reporters just now: The U.S. had nothing to do with Israeli strikes and did not get a heads up. His aggravation is clear.”

It’s nice to see the part-time secretary is not in the hospital or on paternity leave. Oh wait, the paternity leaver was the gay guy.

This is Biden’s Team of Slackers. They went 11 months without a Cabinet meeting. Given the condition of our country, it shows.

If I see it in Poca, West Virginia, they see it even better in DC. And Tel Aviv and every other capital in the world.

Apparently Friedman is blind. He wrote about how everything is suddenly spiraling. Poor Israel? All its enemies are becoming room temperature.

Friedman wrote before Friday’s bombing that Israel asks the world, “What would your country do if terrorists crossed your western border and killed, maimed, kidnapped or sexually abused hundreds of Israelis they encountered and the next day their Hezbollah allies sent rockets over your northern border, driving away thousands of civilians — all cheered on by Iran?”

My answer on October 7 was level Gaza.

No, no, no. According to Friedman, that’s the wrong thing to do.

He wrote, “I’ve argued from Day 1 that it was a trap, a trap I’m sorry to say the Biden administration was not firm enough in stopping Israel from falling into and not firm enough in insisting on a better road, a road not taken.

“This is no time to be pulling punches. The Jewish state of Israel is in grave, grave danger today. And the danger comes from both Iran and the current Israeli ruling coalition.”

Let’s see, a year ago terrorists casually paraglided in, raped and tortured and killed 1,200 people and then took 240 hostages.

Today most of those terrorists and their leaders are dead. Their heads may not be on pikes — dust is hard to pike — but the message is clear. I don’t foresee a rush of applicants to replace them. Few men want to be pagered in the crotch.

After the IDF eliminated Nasrallah, Hezbollah picked Hassan Khalil Yassin as its leader. The IDF allowed him enough time to tell his mom about the promotion before eliminating him.

Rather than kill the bastards, Friedman and the loony left demanded Israel turn the other cheek. He wrote that he “would have done the following: 1) Opened the way to isolating and pressuring Hamas to agree to a cease-fire in which Israel gets out of Gaza in return for all the hostages — ending the war there and eliminating Hezbollah’s excuse for attacking Israel from the north.”

Israel abandoned Gaza on September 22, 2005. One would think that a Pulitzer Prize-winning self-proclaimed expert on the Middle East would know that by now.

He wrote, “Netanyahu’s strategy is a disaster. As a veteran U.S. military commander who has observed close up Israel’s war strategy in Gaza told me privately, anyone with two eyes in his head knows that the only way to defeat Hamas is a strategy of ‘clear, hold and build’: Destroy the enemy, hold the territory and then build an alternative local, legitimate Palestinian governing authority. Israel’s strategy in Gaza, he said, has been: ‘Clear, leave, come back, clear again the same place, leave again, come back and clear again.’ ”

Clear, hold and build is the strategy we used in Afghanistan. How did that work out?

The only trap is rewarding terrorism in any way, shape or form. Israel gave the terrorists Gaza. That emboldened them. They built Gaza City into a military fortress shielded by schools, hospitals and mosques. For 20 years, Hamas harassed Israel.

Israelis finally had enough after October 7, stopped worrying about world opinion and began destroying Hamas and then Hezbollah. Hamas already had a ceasefire. It violated the ceasefire. Friedman says Israel faces an existential threat — but he does not want Israel to fight.

Why would he? He has a cozy job and nice home. He gets to travel the world. The only existential threat he faces is Father Time.

Mossad did the world a favor by eliminating Hezbollah. First, it blew the balls off Hezbollah recruits. Then it went after its leadership.

Someone tweeted that Hezbollah learned not to mess around with Israel. The rest of Arabia learned that lesson in six days in 1967. Egyptian tanks are surprisingly speedy in reverse gear.

Israel is unafraid now of any terrorist organization be they Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthis or the United Nations.

You didn’t hear about that?

National Review reported, “A Hamas commander in Lebanon who was killed in an Israeli airstrike overnight was an accredited member of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, the embattled agency confirmed after his death.

“Hamas’s Fateh Sherif and his family were killed in an airstrike at a Palestinian refugee camp in the southern city of Tyre, the Israel Defense Forces announced on Monday. ‘Sherif was responsible for coordinating Hamas’ terror activities in Lebanon with Hezbollah operatives, as well as Hamas’ efforts in Lebanon to recruit operatives and acquire weapons.

“While leading terrorist activities, Sherif also headed the UNRWA teachers’ union in Lebanon. Though employed by the U.N. agency, Sherif was suspended without pay in March due to allegations involving ‘his political activities,’ UNRWA told the Times of Israel in a statement.”

He headed the teachers’ union! This is like a scene from a Woody Allen movie — back when he was funny and before he started dating his girlfriend’s daughter. [UPDATE: Mia Farrow and André Previn adopted her before Farrow’s relationship with Allen began.]

As Fred Kaplan explained in a tweet, “One of Woody Allen’s best, though esoteric lines, in Sleeper: the scientist, explaining the origins of the apocalypse: ‘We think it happened when a man named Albert Shanker got an atom bomb.’ ”

At the time Allen made the movie, Shanker was the radical head of a teachers’ union in New York City. That was back in the days when a teachers’ unions strike did not involve a missile.

Israel’s peace plan is spelled P-I-E-C-E. You put a piece of the terrorist here and a piece there and a piece over yonder and pretty soon the fighting ends. I have called it the FAFO War. Terrorists are finding out as they expel their final breath.

The Verse of the Day on Monday was Nehemiah 9:30: “For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you handed them over to the neighboring peoples.”

Netanyahu finally listened.