JoelBklyn Offline

JoelBklyn:
To all of you who revile Israel and choose to lend your misplaced support to Palestine, I urge you to read this article in the hope you'll come away with a clearer understanding of Hamas's psychopathic methodology for going about prosecuting its uncompromising, Satanic War against Israel. The article is a real eye-opener and is likely to provide you with the kind of insight that will cause you to look upon the true enemy of humanity in a new revelatory light. (Note the ironic title of the article.)

From COMMENTARY -- April 21, 2024 (Foreign Affairs)

Israel Is Hamas’s Most Potent Weapon: by Ruth R. Wisse

For 76 years, through combined military campaigns, sustained economic boycott, terrorist massacres, diplomatic isolation, and religious incitement, a changing constellation of pan-Arab and Islamist forces has been trying to destroy the Jewish state. So far they have failed. Israel fought off the bombardment from Iran and its proxies as it has the earlier assaults, thereby incidentally giving its friends and allies much to learn about new weaponry, tactics, and the pros and cons of moral restraint in battle.

But if anything is to be learned from the experience, it is that those acts of wars did not damage Israel half as much as the current ongoing Hamas operation. Those earlier forces, despite enjoying greater advantages than almost any aggressor in history, lost multiple wars on every scale of reckoning, whereas Hamas—with about 30,000 fighters backed by shadowed Iran—may yet have reason to claim victory even if it loses its entire armed force. What is to be learned from that?

Judith Miller’s recent Tablet profile of Yahya Sinwar shows how this mastermind of the Hamas October 7th attack was able to study Israel’s vulnerability while serving four consecutive life sentences in its prisons. Nicknamed the “Butcher of Khan Yunis” for his murder of competing factions of Palestinians and those whom he termed collaborators, Sinwar boasts of not caring how many more of them must be sacrificed in his goal to “rid Palestine of Jews for good.” This is not your run-of-the-mill terrorist but a psychopath who revels in sadism, including against his own people. Regardless, there is no denying his success.

Sinwar used his prison years to study Hebrew and the ways in which Israel could be defeated. The most obvious of these ways was his own release in 2011 as one of the 1,026 prisoners freed in return for the captured hostage Gilad Shalit. If a single hostage could bring the release of 280 murderers who had been convicted for killing 569 Israelis, Sinwar realized that exploitation of hostages could inflict much more damage than missiles.

But unlike other civilians being held for exchange, like Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, the Israelis captured and held hostage by Hamas were dragged off to Gaza to be publicly humiliated, sexually abused, and serially killed in a manner designed to torment an entire population, every one of whom feels each Israeli captive could be its own child or grandchild. Sinwar does not pretend to be managing the Israelis humanely, or to be bargaining for their release. He uses their suffering to excite families into demanding Israeli government concessions just as some have been doing. The worse the prisoners are treated, and the more of them are killed, the greater has been the pressure on Israel, and within Israel, to secure their release.

In their new book The Genius of Israel, whose release practically coincided with October 7, Dan Senor and Saul Singer describe the qualities that account for the achievements they first called attention to in its prequel, Start-Up Nation. As though privy to their analysis, Sinwar exploited those same qualities to try and break the country from within. In 2005, after Israel withdrew every last Jew from Gaza hoping for a cooperative accord thereafter, nearby Jewish settlements prided themselves on helping their new Arab neighbors to medical care and employment. Hamas, permitting Palestinian workers to take these jobs, had them scout those settlements and map the “safe rooms” that had been created for protection. This information, then relayed to Hamas lieutenants, guided the attackers who raped, burned, brutalized, pillaged, turned beauty to filth so that residents could never again imagine living in peace. These deliberate evils were meant to destroy the prospect of coexistence, which historically has been the prerequisite for Jewish survival among the nations.

The book’s chapter on “Thanksgiving every week” highlights Israel’s collective observance of Sabbath and festivals like Sukkot, the last day of which fell this year on October 7. In 1973, Arab armies attacked on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, but Hamas did them one better by attacking on a Sabbath that simultaneously marked the festival of the harvest and of the Torah, celebrated by the religious in their synagogues and by a mixed multitude at the large open air Nova music concert. Killing Jews in the act of rejoicing has the added advantage of turning Jewish holidays into days of national mourning—this by people who expect others to respect their observance of Ramadan.

Intertwined values of individual life and love of family—the foundation of Israeli Judaism—were the special targets of Sinwar’s murder-squads that killed children and parents in each other’s presence and photographed themselves violating even the dead to torture the nation with evidence of this desecration. Judaism takes the human body so seriously that every part of it must be brought to burial. Hamas intentionally left body parts so unrecognizable that forensic scientists had to labor for days to establish their identity. While Israel, to spare their families, will not reveal the most heinous acts done to women—and men—Hamas uses defilement of Jews as a tool of recruitment and promises the killers martyrdom if they are killed in the process.

People who have seen the films that Israel released of the Hamas mutilations report that hardest of all to watch is the glee of the Gazans celebrating their deeds. By inevitable comparison, whereas the Nazis in World War Two tried to preserve their code of military honor by concealing their mass murders from their home communities, Hamas correctly anticipated that dehumanizing Israeli victims would increase their honor among radical Islamists—including those who promote jihad in America.

Hamas’s highly ingenious scheme—plotted over sixteen years and executed with the aid of billions of dollars—ensured that Israelis would be blamed for the killing of Palestinians. When Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza, neither the allegedly moderate Palestinian Authority nor the openly terrorist Hamas undertook to build the infrastructure of autonomy. For Palestinian leadership in general, the main goal of destroying Israel has always eclipsed the building of a neighboring state, but Hamas proved itself the much greater belligerent with escalating rocket barrages that provoked retaliation. Credit for the policy of using civilians as human shields, introduced in 2009, goes to Hamas commander Nizar Rayan, who called on the local population to swarm the buildings and rooftops of Hamas command centers, knowing that Israelis would hesitate to order airstrikes against Gazan civilians. Rayan’s sacrifice of his own family in one of Israel’s retaliatory targeted strikes against him simply reinforced the Hamas cult of martyrdom.

Sinwar took this strategy to a new level by building a massive underground city that would suck Israelis into killing Palestinians. Armaments, missile launchers, and terrorist command posts were positioned under hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential buildings, forcing Israelis to kill civilians, whether by airstrikes or in any conceivable ground operation if they were ever to stop the attacks. Sinwar, whose life was saved by Israeli medical intervention during his time in prison, knows that Israel does not execute even convicted murderers of Jews. His goal in provoking Israel into retaliation was to create and keep worsening Gaza’s “humanitarian crisis” and the toll of civilian casualties, thereby eliciting liberal sympathy for the Palestinians and international calls for an advantageous ceasefire while, most crucially, demoralizing the Israelis who must sacrifice their soldiers in a war they would have done anything to avoid.

Has the genius of Israel met its match in the genius of evil? Other commanders in the history of war have been known to sacrifice tens of thousands of their soldiers rather than surrender, but no invader ever turned his enemy into his primary weapon. Sinwar intends never to surrender, hoping that Israel will be forced to kill most of the population of Gaza in order to stop Hamas. The genocide of Jews that he undertook to engineer has already been equalized to a genocide by Jews against the innocent, harmless Hamas electorate.

When Golda Meir famously told Anwar Sadat, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. But we can never forgive them for forcing us to kill their children,” she divulged Israel’s greatest weakness. Coexistence is to Judaism as conquest has been to Islam, requiring the former to seek accord from the latter. Hamas was first to fully to exploit this political contrast. Liberal democracies are generally loath to go to war, but a look at the Middle East map shows why Israel—when you can find it there—has the ultimate disincentive for military action against neighbors whose acceptance it seeks. As a minority by choice, Jews have always been at the mercy of imperial powers, of which Iran with its proxies is currently the most threatening. To succeed, the aggressor has learned—and demonstrated—that he must come in the form of a victim.

Meir was wiser when she said, “Peace will come to the Middle East when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us.” The defeat of Hamas is the necessary precondition for that day, though not yet its guarantee.

And now that sizable numbers of pro-Hamas sympathizers and belligerents are already active in this country, testing its freedoms and liberal virtues, we are seeing whether Americans learn enough from the war in Israel in time to prevent the brewing war against them.

JoelBklyn:
Here is a fascinating list of the alleged (presumptive) IQs of all the Presidents of the United States.

Certainly fun to look at and contemplate, but take these conclusions with a grain of salt, for they were determined unscientifically, based on conjecture and speculative deduction.

JoelBklyn:
A Mind-Blowing Revelation (for classical music lovers):

Helmer Alexandersson's little-known SYMPHONY NO. 2 is nothing less than music to obsess over repeatedly. While all four movements are sure to grab you upon first hearing, the turbulent Fourth Movement (posted here) -- virile...darkly Romantic...savagely full of "Sturm und Drang"** -- will leave you positively breathless.

**Note: Strum und Drang: a late 18th century German literary movement characterized by works containing rousing action and high emotionalism [PASSION] that often deal with the individual's revolt against society.

JoelBklyn:
Pretty soon (if it hasn't happened already) 2 + 3 may come to equal 6 -- or just about anything else one's "victimized" and "oppressed" little heart may desire.

Read the following brief article, my friends, and see if the new "revised" math being proposed isn't another one of those items on the Left's woke agenda that lends believability to their favorite adjective..."progressive".

(Note: Don't feel at all reluctant to use the term "bullsh*t" in rendering a just verdict of what follows):

From: THE ROYAL PATRIOT

"White Supremacy in Math? Bill Gates Sponsors New Curriculum"

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is funding efforts to eliminate “racism” from mathematics lessons in American schools. A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction contains resources and guidance documents to help teachers “dismantle racism” in math, which they claim is derived from white supremacy. Instructions include abandoning requirements that students show how they reach a mathematical conclusion or even that they provide the correct answer. Asking pupils to answer a math question accurately is racist, according to the documents.

“White supremacy culture infiltrates math classrooms in everyday teacher actions,” the guidance claims, adding that this causes “educational harm” to non-white students.

The notion of racism in math is not new and is primarily based on lower test scores by black and ethnic minority students. Seattle math teacher Shraddha Shirude says math is a way of understanding the world, and because America is built on “toxic” whiteness, math is similarly influenced. Shirude introduced ethnic math classes to counter an education system that provides only one “master narrative.”

Nevertheless, research suggests that focusing on race in mathematics harms non-white pupils. Luke Rosiak’s book “Race To The Bottom” found that participants in radical race-based programs saw their test scores drop. Ethnicity-based math lessons have been trialed in West Coast states and promoted by the Oregon Department of Education. Still, even though the educational attainment of black students fell, it did not stop race-based education from advancing.

Oregon math teacher Muhammad Rahman, who believes math upholds “capitalist and imperialist” thinking, responded to low achievement, saying he would examine his teaching methods and ensure “I’m the best version of myself.”

To further manage the discrepancies, Oregon’s legislature passed laws allowing students to graduate without proficiency in math, reading, and writing due to high failure rates among minority students. Similarly, the school board in Vancouver, Washington, ended advanced math classes because too many white pupils were enrolled. They forced high achievers to take courses alongside low achievers in the name of “equity.”

JoelBklyn:
I doubt I'll get many thumbs-up for THIS posting -- and that's to be expected -- but if you care to check out and discover one of my all-time favorite cello concertos...well...here it is: The Victor Herbert Cello Concerto No. 2 in E minor Op. 30.

I discovered this not-very-well known, darkly romantic concerto, with its driving first movement, long ago as a young teen -- maybe around 14 or 15 and have heard and loved it many times since.

Note: Victor Herbert is probably best known for having written over 40 operettas (e.g., "The Enchantress", "Naughty Marietta, and "Babes in Toyland", etc.), and was "the first composer to write a musical score exclusively for American cinema, the 1916 silent film The Fall of a Nation." This last fact was unfamiliar even to me. (Thank you, Google!)

JoelBklyn:
Fascinating...Exciting...Positively Spellbinding!!

My friends, even if you have absolutely no interest whatsoever in the intricate, easy-to-learn-difficult-to-master game of chess, watch how this 8-year-old "kid from nowhere" nearly crushes a seasoned master in a harrowing game of "blitz".

I found myself drooling with envy over this kid's unrelenting tenacity and blossoming genius.

JoelBklyn:
To all my sharp-minded Trump supporters:

I think -- if you haven't already seen it -- you're going to LOVE this Donald Trump video. I came across it -- thanks to TESITA -- two hours prior of its posting. It is filled with both fervent reverence, celebration and wicked, poking humor.

When it comes to our hero, the reason many of us may appear to our detractors as inexplicable fanatics -- almost as though Trump were the Messiah Himself -- is not because we are allowing ourselves to be gullibly led astray by the false blandishments of this so-called power-driven, orange-haired demagogue...but rather because we have witnessed first-hand -- with our eyes wide open -- the tragic events that have resulted from a psychotic Administration, whose deranged leaders are driven only by their virulent lust for power and ultimately by their total, unchallenged control over every aspect of our lives.

History -- when it finally sets the record straight -- will never forgive these progressive imposters in Washington for their iniquitous attempts to destroy our heritage...to take down and "reimagine" what many historians have proclaimed as the greatest culmination in government ever to come upon the earth.

And that's why my eyes momentarily flooded with tears and my heart burst with pride as I watched the following video. Not out of any kind of childish, hero-worshiping fanaticism...but out of knowing that there was one man out there -- an often rude, brusque, insensitive, at times offensive, but down-to-earth man (with an occasional, pardonable outbreak of foot-in-mouth-disease), who was single-handedly capable of striking FEAR into the hearts of those preposterous frauds on the Left -- and committed wholeheartedly to making America once more the great nation it was under his leadership.

Let this video put a BIG CHEERING SMILE on your face -- as it did mine.

YouTube

JoelBklyn:
No, folks -- this ain't Monty Python. These are real, presumably educated, "adult" human beings demonstrating, with shameless sincerity, the kind of insanity that passes nowadays for intelligence and common sense. Try not to die laughing toward the end of the video when black actress, Jennifer Lewis, speaks her mind -- or what's left of it.

Thank you, True Assassin, from whose feed I extracted this video. I'm praying as many sleeping liberals get to see it -- and awaken finally from being "woke".

JoelBklyn:
Easter Sunday?...or Transgender Awareness Day?

Watch this excellent five-minute video to the end. You'll be surprised and delighted (if you think the way I do) with what Caitlyn Jenner (former athlete, Bruce Jenner) said about the ever-pandering Joe Biden.

JoelBklyn:

For those of my friends celebrating Easter and the Resurrection -- I actually don't, but I respect the context in which people choose to place their spiritual beliefs -- here is a most stirring piece of music to emphasize that context...music which brings me to tears every time I listen to it -- the glorious finale from the 1961 film "King of Kings", composed by the late brilliant Miklos Rosza.

Listen to it, my dear friends, with the volume turned up as high as you dare -- AND REJOICE!

JoelBklyn:
Another appreciative "thank you" to yet another liberal destroyer of the First Amendment -- this time Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. (How the hell do these cretinous dumbbells ever succeed in getting themselves elected to such high offices?...except perhaps by showing their traitorous contempt for the values that once made this country great.)

"My biggest concern," said Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson on Monday, "is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways."

That comment came during oral arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, the case that asks if President Joe Biden's administration violated the First Amendment when it sought to pressure social media apps to remove information it deemed harmful. It took almost no time for Jackson's tidbit to set off the viral narrative that she doesn't grasp basic constitutional principles, particularly when considering that the point of the First Amendment is indeed TO hamstring what the government can do in response to speech it may not like.

"Jackson raises eyebrows with comment that First Amendment 'hamstrings' government," wrote Fox News. "Leftists want unlimited government — which is why they hate the Constitution," lamented The Federalist. It was "literally one of the craziest things I've ever seen," said Rep. Jim Jordan (R–Ohio).

JoelBklyn:
To all my Republican friends and, especially, to those of my buddies who, although gay, have enough common sense to realize that competency, along with a proven record of achievement, are truly the qualifications required of a man to send him to the White House.

Thank you RiversDavid for posting the following brilliant Donald Trump add. Despite its theatrical dramatization, it resonates clearly and proudly with the unvarnished truth.

I'll get flack for this, for sure...but, like yourself, I don't give a damn! This is a crucial turning point in our country's history right now. This message must be delivered and seen by as many as possible. Our nation's survival depends upon it.

JoelBklyn:
Here's some "eye candy" for my special friends:

Don Durant (born Donald Allison Durae; November 20, 1932 – March 15, 2005) was an American actor and singer, best known for his role as the gunslinger-turned-sheriff in the CBS Western series Johnny Ringo, which ran on Thursdays from October 1, 1959 to June 30, 1960.

I recall Don Durant from a very fascinating Twilight Zone episode entitled "A Piano in the House" (see link address).

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0734547/

JoelBklyn:
Here are three brief commentaries on yesterday’s State of the Union speech by Joe Biden.

Senator Steve Daines (Republican, Montana)


Senator John Kennedy (Republican, Louisiana)


Senator Marco Rubio (Republican, Florida)


And here follows the actual address itself in its entirety for those who missed it last night.



(In my own personal opinion, the most stinging slap on America’s collective face was Biden’s cynical criticism of Republicans for not supporting his new border bill to alleviate the crisis at our southern border—which Biden alone was responsible for having created on day one of his presidency.)

JoelBklyn:
Great Britain Has Talent:

Listen to this brief video (only 7 minutes in length) from Great Britain Has Talent -- and see if your eyes don't flood uncontrollably (as did my own) with tears of joy.

JoelBklyn:
An Amazing Trivia Fact:

Powell Alexander Janulus

Powell Alexander Janulus (born 1939) is a Canadian polyglot who lives in White Rock, British Columbia, and entered the Guinness World Records in 1985 for fluency in 42 languages. To qualify, he had to pass a two-hour conversational fluency test with a native speaker of each of the 42 languages he spoke at that time.

JoelBklyn:
From a recent fundraising letter from Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU:

For decades I have been saying that sending your child to college is playing Russian Roulette with their values. There was a one in six chance that your child would come home morally unrecognizable. Recently that has deteriorated to a 50% likelihood of a bad result. Yes, it is that grim.

Students are more morally confused than ever. The anti-Israel protests on campus are all the evidence you need. On the Hamas massacres -- the clearest moral issue since 9/11 -- many students are on the wrong side. Over 50% of students, according to recent polls. And the more elite the campus, the worse the protests.

How is this possible?

It’s because our education system is broken. Not just college, but grammar schools, middle schools, high schools, even pre-schools.

Our schools promote moral confusion, dividing the world between oppressor and oppressed. Judeo-Christian values are the villains in the narrative. And the moral confusion is not only about Israel. We are morally confused about the most obvious differences between man and women. We are morally confused about capitalism vs socialism. We are morally confused about free speech vs censorship.

The only antidote is moral clarity. And the only way to develop that moral clarity is through education. But the public and even private schools are the source of the problem.

JoelBklyn:

LONGING FOR AUSCHWITZ -- by Alvin H. Rosenfeld:

For those of you standing intransigently against Israel -- while those butchering savages (Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, etc.) seek to annihilate it -- you sorely need to read this illuminating article.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/history/articles/longing-for-auschwitz

JoelBklyn:
To all you well-intentioned liberals out there who, in the next presidential election, are planning to vote unwaveringly for Joe Biden...or Gavin Newsom...or Kamala Harris...or Hillary (Rerun) Clinton...or Michelle (Rumor-Has-It) Obama -- or any other screwball socialist flop the Democrats foolishly believe are destined to replace the one we currently have....PLEASE! -- watch the following brief video below, and think hard and long before casting your vote this November. Our country's survival depends on the choice you make.

YouTube

Thank you Clint for calling this video to my attention.

JoelBklyn:
THE GLORY OF THE HUMAN MIND AND SPIRIT:

This is one of those times when I miss New York City TERRIBLY...not for the way it was when I left it -- crime ridden, rat-infested, filthy, flooded with homeless vagrants, police precints defunded, 85% of its residents voting for the same "progressive" liberals repeatedly -- but New York City, in its towering splendor, as a brilliant monument to human ingenuity and achievement:



My eyes always flood with tears when I watch videos like this. I wonder if my readers might feel similarly.

JoelBklyn:
FOX BUSINESS NEWS -- (4 minutes -- worth watching)

LOSER STATE: Kevin O'Leary, of Shark Tank, says he will never invest in NY after Trump fraud ruling