CNN shows some video of Israelis who’d been unwilling guests of the Palestinians getting into a CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter. Sikorsky first flew this machine in 1964.
This is exactly what Igor Sikorsky talked about: “If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that’s just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life.” (Noa Argamani did not identify as a “man”, of course, but the Sikorsky quote predates our world of verbose explicit gender inclusions.)
The big mystery is why there were any deaths or injuries on either side of this event. We are informed that Palestinians are unarmed and entirely peaceful. Picking up these four guests of the Gazans, therefore, shouldn’t have involved more violence than an Uber pickup from the Apple Store in Newport Beach, California. If Palestinians weren’t shooting at the IDF with weapons that they don’t have, why was there shooting? Were IDF soldiers shooting at each other?
From the Guardian:
We are told that the Gazans, as well as many of the righteous in Europe and the U.S., object to the events surrounding the departure of their hostages. Maybe the Palestinians should have taken only Americans hostage because the U.S. certainly hasn’t threatened to use military force to get back the U.S. citizens held hostage by the Gazans (supposedly 5 living and 3 dead bodies currently). In fact, Joe Biden has done more to bolster the Hamas/UNRWA/Palestinian Islamic Jihad war effort than anyone. A continued supply of US-funded aid keeps Palestinian fighters funded (since the “aid” is immediately confiscated by the legitimate elected government of Gaza (i.e., Hamas) and then sold in the marketplace). Joe Biden has also been instrumental in hamstringing the Israeli military operation.
A smaller mystery is why Noa Argamani wasn’t released in November 2023 when Hamas agreed to release women and children civilian hostages in exchange for Israel releasing captured and convicted Palestinian fighters. Noa Argamani wasn’t serving in the Israel military. She seems to have identified as a woman. Is the answer that Hamas wasn’t actually holding her hostage, but some other group of Palestinians was?
I’m surprised that Noa Argamani wasn’t kept with the other Sabaya. Here is the video https://x.com/Israel/status/1793296042890309821
Noa’s abduction on the back of a motorcycle was the iconic video of October 7.
And yet, the liberal, righteous media and anti-Israel, will not air images of Hamas attack and kidnaping like this one you shared. They, however, will air, day-after-day, images of Palestinians suffering!
If Hamas went after hard-targets, such as IDF and kidnaped soldiers, and Israel booms Hamas targets, including civilian areas where Hamas might be hiding and using Palestinians as shield, I too would have objected to what IDF is doing. But, hey, who knew that Hamas are pussies and they only attack soft-targets!
Cool story, bro. But I’m still not that interested in foreigners (7,000 miles from my house) killing each other as they have for decades, if not centuries?
And yet, that’s what every new US leader, promises to deliver: Peace in the Middle East!
Anon, do you have a list of topics that Philip should censor?
Events at what distance from your house are you willing to discuss?
I too have low interest in some of the topics discussed here.
Maybe you shroud tell Philip what is going around your hood so he could find pride events closer by and match them with right pronouns with references from NYT.
Seems like a lot of other people are very interested though, seeing as they’re protesting in front of the White House:
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/thousands-gather-white-house-protest-war-gaza-rcna156186
Ryan: I think our anonymous commenter may not have factored in the U.S. open border policy. According to the Washington Post, he may find himself living in an Islamic neighborhood within the next few years, whether he is interested in Islam or not:
“Across the nation, from the Deep South to Appalachia and relatively rural communities in the Midwest, protests in support of the plight of Palestinians are springing up, showcasing the continued spread of the U.S. Muslim population into the country’s heartland. … The burst of activism — which Muslim scholars said would have been unthinkable just a decade or so ago — is rooted in the broad spread of Muslim families throughout the United States. … a Washington Post analysis found that 234 U.S. counties have seen an increase in the number of Muslim congregations since 2000, representing around 7 percent of counties nationwide. In 217 counties, mosque membership doubled between 2000 and 2020. And across the nation, the number of mosques has more than doubled since 2000, according to the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research firm that studies Muslim communities.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/12/25/palestinian-protests-muslim-american-activists/
Ryan: Another important question is where our anonymous commenter gets his news. Even here in Lisbon, the fighting in Gaza is on the front page of newspapers and appears on TV screens when one casually looks up from a hotel breakfast. Stories about Gaza are linked from https://www.latimes.com/ and https://www.chicagotribune.com/ and https://www.bostonglobe.com/ (checked these coast-to-coast examples just now). He’s irritated by reading about Israel in this blog so wouldn’t he also be irritated any time that he looks at TV news or corporate media on the web or in print?
(To some extent I agree with the anonymous commenter. The Arabs declared war on the Jews in 1948 and, with the exception of Egypt and Jordan, remain at war. So no new “war” began in 2023. Just some additional battles in a 75-year-old war. And the situation won’t be different when these battles are concluded. Unlike the US/UK in WWII, Israel isn’t hitting the enemy hard enough to change minds regarding the viability of continued war. The majority of Palestinians will continue to support war against Israel in hopes of taking over all of the territory. The Israelis will continue to want to live in Israel and not be killed by Palestinians. So there isn’t a great case to be made for carefully following news about Gaza fighting. On the third hand, military battles are often interesting and often instructive when preparing for future battles. Hamas’s tactic of embedding fighters among blameless “civilians” seems to be a great strategy that other groups will want to emulate when fighting against a sanctimonious Western nation. (It wouldn’t work against Russia or China, I don’t think; they’d just flatten neighborhoods with artillery as necessary to win.))
I have also been told that there’s a famine going on in Gaza, but the general condition of those folks looks pretty good, with American-style physiques predominating. I’m no doctor, but that doesn’t look like famine to me.
Somehow Gaza has never had scarcity of RPGs.