Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi.
Say their names. Say them out loud. Think of them as individuals, not simply as six hostages, abducted during the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by terrorists from Gaza.
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Photo: Iranian missiles over Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem, courtesy of Mehr News Service under a Creative Commons 4.0 license.
There was significant activity on the military front in the Mideast last week. The events changed the calculus for diplomacy in the region and could lead to new opportunities for peace, if the principals are willing to consider them.
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(Interactive Map © 2024 Institute for the Study of War and AEI’s Critical Threats Project)
There are 133 souls still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, more than 184 days since Hamas declared war by invading Israel. I thought it necessary to point out this simple fact because most of the rhetoric discussing the six-month anniversary of that barbaric attack takes little note, if any, of the people involved.
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On Monday New York Judge Juan Merchan scheduled a trial beginning April 15 of Donald Trump on charges he falsified business records to cover up making a hush money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels. The payment was allegedly made during the 2016 presidential campaign to prevent Daniels from speaking publicly about her claims of having an affair with him. It will be the first-ever criminal trial of a fomer U.S. president.
Tuesday morning Trump took to his Truth Social online account to attack not only Judge Merchan but also Merchan’s daughter. Tuesday afternoon Merchan issued a gag order restricting Trump’s future posts about the trial.
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For two weeks I have wanted nothing more than to look to the sky and scream like a banshee. Even though I long ago concluded I would never get an answer.
For two weeks I have sat down to write. And been unable to start. I am supposed to write. That is what I do. I am supposed to explain, to educate, to stimulate thought and debate. But nothing came. It has been as if the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel placed my brain into suspension and froze my fingers.
How do you explain the inexplicable? What lesson can be learned from a demonstration of cruelty so overwhelming that it leaves one shell shocked both literally and figuratively? Except that human history includes so many examples of this kind of barbarism that I must wonder why we should be allowed to continue to defile the planet by our very existence.
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What Ukraine could use is a Jimmy Doolittle. James (Jimmy) Doolittle was a pilot, a Lieutenant Colonel in 1942, when he led a bombing raid on Tokyo. It was just five months after Pearl Harbor, where the Japanese struck the American Naval base in a surprise attack.
Doolittle led sixteen stripped-down B-25 bombers carrying extra fuel and a reduced bombload taking off from the U.S.S. Hornet – a feat never attempted – and struck Tokyo. Fifteen of the planes then flew to the Chinese coast where they ditched and the crews were recovered by Chinese nationalist allies, while the other bomber landed in the Soviet Union.
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This is the 21st century. The Russians deny they are responsible for the slaughter of civilians in Bucha, Ukraine, claiming corpses were planted on the streets after Russian soldiers had left the scene. Satellite pictures clearly show bodies on the ground and Russian troops still on the scene.
There is a fiction making the rounds that says the average Russian does not know what their country is doing in Ukraine. Don’t buy it for a minute. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union worked hard to keep the truth out of their territory. Western news media were blocked, jammed, and banned. But the truth leaked in, and when the USSR fell in an economic collapse, the truth flowed in with a vengeance.
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