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Science & Technology

Mysterious 18th-century warship unearthed at [9/11] Ground Zero site gets new home

2025-05-24

[FoxNews] Revolutionary War vessel was studied for 14 years before New York State Museum exhibition

A lost Revolutionary War-era ship that was unearthed at the site of the World Trade Center will finally be exhibited in a museum over a decade after it was found.

The New York State Museum announced in a mid-May press release that the ship will be housed in its Albany headquarters. The 18th-century vessel was found during an excavation of Ground Zero in July 2010.

But details about the boat have perplexed historians until now – just in time for America's 250th anniversary.

With help from Texas A&M University historical preservationists, experts have been working for 14 years to gather facts about the ship while preserving it carefully.

The ship, which measures 50 feet long and 18 feet wide, has been identified as a "rare" American-built gunboat.

The vessel was likely built in the Philadelphia area in the 1770s.

It was used during the Revolutionary War but was decommissioned after roughly two decades.

"[B]y the 1790s, the ship was out of commission and repurposed as landfill to expand New York City, ultimately ending up beneath what would become the World Trade Center," the New York State Museum said.

"Today, it stands as one of the few American-built Revolutionary War ships to be identified, studied and preserved in New York State."

In total, 600 pieces of wood and roughly 2,000 artifacts were found at the site, including musketballs.

After years of carefully preserving each piece of wood and artifact, the preservation team began the process of reconstructing the vessel at the New York State Museum on May 14.

In a statement, New York State Historian Devin Lander said, "We’re not just unveiling a ship – we’re resurrecting a lost relic of the American Revolution, right before your eyes," Lander said.

"New York stood at the epicenter of our fight for freedom, and this gunboat is a physical reminder of that courage and grit."

The historian added, "To watch it rise again, plank by plank, is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness the intersection of archaeology, storytelling and national identity."

Link

Economy

Tariff Tantrums: While Boomers Rage and Millennials Panic, Gen X Knows We've Got a Country to Save

2025-04-08

While by some measures I am considered a tail-end Baby Boomer, by others I am a Gen X. Perhaps because I am the eldest child of my family, or because my parents arrived in this country as adults, or because I grew up without a television, which disconnected me from many of the touchstones of an American childhood of the period, I am certainly by experience a Gen X-er, and this is the song of my people.

[RedState] I'm not sure if any of you caught the goofy "Hands Off" ragefests that took place this past weekend, but I took a gander to see what the left was fussing about this time. Other than their tiresome "orange man bad" refrain. Sure enough, it was more of the same, with a dash of DOGE and a twist of Musk Derangement Syndrome thrown in for dramatic effect.

What struck me, though, was how very Boomer the crowds looked (see the accompanying photo captured this past weekend by our own Jennifer Oliver O'Connell). It's as if every retired librarian who identifies as a coastal elite, which seems to be most of them, had dragged their Birkenstock-clad spouses out to the spectacle and shoved a silly sign in their hands. In short, the protestors were very old and very white.

The stereotypical Boomer, anyway. The generational cohort was actually two — the quiet, uncelebrated other half being mostly as sensible and lovely as one could want.

Like many Gen-Xers, and especially those of us who were born right on the heels of the Boomers, I've always held a healthy amount of disdain for the group that came before us. As a group, they come off as incredibly self-righteous, smug, and completely un-self-aware, and despite having enjoyed the best years of America, they're still mad and are now complaining about those of us who have to clean up their messes.

Then, after logging onto X to see the latest "discourse" around the tariffs, I see this:

A good friend of mine who is conservative / right-wing / Republican just sent me this.

You start messing around with people’s investments and 401(k)s and you’re going to lose support — fast. pic.twitter.com/GEBcYxMGcx

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) April 7, 2025

Reading the Twitter thread, the conclusion appears to be that the good friend is imaginary because the tweet he shared is manufactured, not real. Which makes the whole thing a metaphor of a whole bunch of things…

I don't even have to know the person involved to know they are a Millennial. This sentiment oozes, "I like my fat 401(k) and cheap consumer goods and I'll give up all of my freedoms to have them!" Hey, we all like those things, but you're kidding yourself if you think there's not a steep price to pay for them. Did "new math" make an entire generation financially illiterate?

While our generational bookends are engaged in their tariff and Trump tantrums, we Gen Xers are over here wondering how so many of our fellow citizens thought the gravy train was going to go on for forever. The signs have sure been there for a long time that we'd eventually pay the price for things like printing money and selling our farmland to China. And here we are.

Generation X has always known there'd be a day of reckoning for the United States. We've been told for decades we'd best save our pennies because there sure as heck wasn't going to be any Social Security left for us when we hit retirement age. When I was handed my college diploma in the early 90s, it came with a message of: "Congratulations, sure hope you can find a job in this economy. Oh, and you'll never have it as good as your parents."

Not a great note on which to start adulthood, but it's okay to live in reality and not on tired slogans and scaredy-cat doomsday scenarios. My generation has learned some hard lessons along the way, having experienced the Cold War, stagflation, Black Monday 1987, high mortgage rates in the 90s, the tech stock bubble burst of the early 2000s, two terror attacks on the World Trade Center, the war on terrorism, the financial crisis of 2008 and, of course, COVID. We've weathered these things, having grown up in an America that valued freedom, was proud of the "Made in America" label, and celebrated patriotism.

For goodness sake, we were forced to listen to the bloviating of Boomers like Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, and Billy Joel as they lamented the loss of middle America and our manufacturing base. And now that generation is ticked off that Donald Trump wants to return our country to some of its past glory? Spare me.

Now, it's too easy to blame all of today's problems on Boomers, and the truth of it is that it's been generations of both Republicans and Democrats who have used the American taxpayer as a limitless credit card and doing their best to suck freedom dry. But, the truth is also that Generation X is staring down retirement while wrestling with a Boomer generation that is hanging for dear life onto a lot of our country's resources and Millennials who don't seem to have the backbone to deal with an economic downturn that history has proven will be temporary.

The funny thing about all of this is that the object of these two generations' ire, Donald Trump, may turn out to be the most Gen X president this country ever gets. Our tiny group may never get one of our own into the White House, but Trump, who's on the older side of the Boomer cohort, seems to have begun the fight we always knew was headed our way.

Gird your loins and saddle up, my fellow Gen Xers. We've got a country to save.

Link

Home Front: Politix

NJ Gubernatorial Hopeful Defends Nation Of Islam After Video Surfaces of Him Applauding Violent Rhetoric by Louis Farrakhan

2025-03-30

[WahingtonFreeBeacon] ‘The cracker hit you on your jaw, you break his neck. That’s the way we think,’ Farrakhan said, prompting applause from Baraka

New Jersey gubernatorial candidate and Newark mayor Ras Baraka (D.) defended the Nation of Islam and accused critics of trying to silence him after a video surfaced showing him applauding racist and ~~violent~~ mostly peaceful comments from Louis Farrakhan, the group’s notorious anti-Semitic leader.

While serving as Newark’s deputy mayor in 2004, Baraka hosted Farrakhan to celebrate the first day of Kwanzaa. The Nation of Islam minister encouraged the mostly black audience to "break his neck" if "the cracker hit you on the jaw," called white people "the devil," and praised Baraka’s father. Baraka, for his part, called Farrakhan a "role model" whose teachings helped him "become a man" as a college student.

"The cracker hit you on your jaw, you break his neck. That’s the way we think," Farrakhan said, prompting Baraka—in the front row—to stand and applaud, video footage posted by the Nation of Islam shows.

After the video resurfaced, Baraka provided a lengthy statement to Jewish Insider on Thursday, saying he would "not be bullied."

"I will not be bullied or silenced into walking away from the fight for justice. I will not be cowed into denouncing my lifelong work for peace, equality, and equity," Baraka said. "These latest accusations and insinuations aren’t just false—they’re a reflection of the fear my candidacy is provoking in the political establishment."

"The Nation of Islam holds deep respect in many parts of the Black community because of the work they’ve done to reduce violence and support self-determination in neighborhoods that have been ignored and abandoned for generations," Baraka added.

The Nation of Islam and its leader have long histories of anti-Semitism. Farrakhan, for example, has compared Jews to "termites" and has praised Adolf Hitler
Hitler

...late Fuehrer of Germany, founder of the Third Reich, currently communing with his pals Himmler and Heydrich. He is reincarnated every few days, sometimes every few hour if it's an election year, as a politician somebody doesn't like...
as a "very great man." The Nation of Islam, meanwhile, sent a letter to several House Democrats
...every time you hear the phrase white people, white supremacy, white anything but paint, you're listening to a Democrat. Ask him/her/it to reimagine something for you; they do that a lot, though not well. They can hear a dog whistle a mile or two away. They invented the spoils system and Tammany Hall, and inspired the addition of the word (Thomas) Nasty to the English language. They want to stop continental drift and repeal the law of unintended side effects...
defending its leader, telling them not to listen to "Satanic Jews" in 2018.

Baraka, the mayor of New Jersey’s largest city, is a leading candidate in the race for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He describes himself as an "underdog," even though he has the highest favorability among the six Democratic candidates jockeying for the governor’s mansion, according to a March 5 Fairleigh Dickinson University poll.

Farrakhan, during the 2004 speech, said the "cracker is the real devil" and praised Baraka’s father—another anti-Semite.

"You’re dealing with a devil, man. You’re not dealing with righteous people. This cracker is the real devil, and you better wake up and realize that," Farrakhan said.

"Ras Baraka came from a father that understood, ’You kill my cat, you lose your dog,’" he added.

Amiri Baraka, while serving as New Jersey’s poet laureate in 2002, wrote a poem suggesting that Jews had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.

"Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed / Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers / To stay home that day / Why did Sharon stay away?" Amiri Baraka wrote in a poem titled, "Somebody Blew Up America."

Farrakhan, during the 2004 speech, said black people, not Jews, are the subject of biblical prophecies.

"You may think that’s talking about some Jews somewhere, but it’s talking about you," Farrakhan said to the predominantly black audience.

The younger Baraka, in his statement to Jewish Insider, denied any anti-Semitic accusations.

"I am not antisemitic. I have never been. And it’s offensive and irresponsible for anyone to suggest otherwise," he said. "Throughout my life, I’ve built bridges across communities, faiths, and backgrounds to stand for justice and peace."

"This is what happens when someone challenges a broken status quo that’s failed working people for decades," Baraka continued. "So let’s be clear, the people trying to twist my words and my record are the same ones who don’t show up for any community—not Black, not Jewish, not Latino, not South Asian, not working-class people from anywhere. These are people who rely on our collective division."

Baraka did, however, praise Farrakhan and his teachings during the 2004 event.

"It wasn’t until I heard the voice and the organization of the Nation of Islam and Minister Louis Farrakhan that I really began to try to stand up straight and get the courage that I needed to get to begin to organize in the community the way I should have," he said.

Baraka hosted Farrakhan again in 2017 while serving as Newark’s mayor to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of the Million Man March.

"For all these years, the American taxpayers’ money has been given each year to Israel to maintain them on the land of the Paleostinians. So don’t you tell me that we have not earned by our sweat and blood—a land of our own and to obligate them," Farrakhan said. "Since we cannot get along with them in peace and equality after giving them 400 years of our sweat and blood and receiving in return some of the worst treatment human beings have ever experienced, we believe our contributions to this land and the suffering forced on us by white America justifies our demand for complete separation in a state or territory of our own."

Baraka, who did not return a request for comment, has not shied away from associating with anti-Israel groups while on the campaign trail. On March 11, he spoke at an anti-ICE rally that featured the Council on American-Islamic Relations

... the Moslem Brüderbund's American arm ...
New Jersey, an anti-Semitic group that characterized Hamas
..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
's Oct. 7 attack on Israel as a prison break, calling it "inevitable" and "not unexpected."

Link

Home Front: WoT

It was you: Obama

2025-03-19

[X]

Mike Gallagher, the 8th most recognized talk radio personality, in the U.S.A., is heard by over 2.25 million
listeners weekly. He compiled and wrote the following essay entitled,
"Obama: It was You."
* It was you who spoke these words at an Islamic dinner - "I am one of you."
*… pic.twitter.com/p77OyOue3S
— I am Ken (@Ikennect) March 18, 2025

… "I am one of you."
* It was you who on ABC News referenced - "My Muslim faith."
* It was you who gave $100 million in U.S. taxpayer funds to re-build foreign mosques.
* It was you who wrote that in the event of a conflict- "I will stand with the Muslims."
* It was you who assured the Egyptian Foreign Minister that - "I am a Muslim."
* It was you who bowed in submission before the Saudi King.
* It was you who sat for 20 years in a Liberation Theology Church condemning America and professing Marxism.
* It was you who exempted Muslims from penalties under Obamacare that the rest of us have to pay.
* It was you who purposefully omitted - "endowed by our Creator " - from your recitation of The Declaration Of
Independence.
* It was you who mocked the Bible and Jesus Christ's Sermon On The Mount while repeatedly referring to the 'HOLY' Qur'an.
* It was you who traveled the Islamic world denigrating the United States Of America.
* It was you who instantly threw the support of your administration behind the building of the Ground Zero Victory mosque overlooking the hallowed crater of the World Trade Center.
* It was you who refused to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, but hastened to host an Islamic prayer breakfast at the
White House
* It was you who ordered Georgetown Univ. and Notre Dame to shroud all vestiges of Jesus Christ BEFORE you would
agree to go there to speak, but in contrast, you have NEVER requested the mosques you have visited to adjust their decor.
* It was you who appointed anti-Christian fanatics to your Czar Corps.
* It was you who appointed rabid Islamists to Homeland Security.
* It was you who said that NASA's "foremost mission" was an outreach to Muslim communities.
* It was you who as an Illinois Senator was the ONLY individual who would speak in favor of infanticide.
* It was you who was the first President not to give a Christmas Greeting from the White House, and went so far as to hang
photos of Chairman Mao on the White House tree.
* It was you who curtailed the military tribunals of all Islamic terrorists.
* It was you who refused to condemn the Ft. Hood killer as an Islamic terrorist.
* It is you who has refused to speak-out concerning the horrific executions of women throughout the Muslim culture,
but yet, have submitted Arizona to the UN for investigation of hypothetical human-rights abuses.
* It was you who when queried in India refused to acknowledge the true extent of radical global Jihadists, and instead
profusely praised Islam in a country that is 82% Hindu and the victim of numerous Islamic terrorists assaults.
* It was you who funneled $900 Million in U.S. taxpayer dollars to Hamas.
* It was you who ordered the United States Postal Service to honor the MUSLIM holiday with a new commemorative stamp.
* It was you who directed our UK Embassy to conduct outreach to help "empower" the British Muslim community.
* It was you who funded mandatory Arabic language and culture studies in Grammar schools across our country.
* It is you who follows the Muslim custom of not wearing any form of jewelry during Ramadan.
* It is you who departs for Hawaii over the Christmas season so as to avoid past criticism for NOT participating in seasonal
White House religious events.
* It was you who was uncharacteristically quick to join the chorus of the Muslim Brotherhood to depose Egypt's Hosni
Mubarak, formerly America's strongest ally in North Africa; but, remain muted in your non-response to the Brotherhood
led slaughter of Egyptian Christians.
* It was you who appointed your chief adviser, Valerie Jarrett, an Iranian, who is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, an
off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.
* It was you who said this country is not a Christian nation.

Link

Home Front: Politix

US Senate confirms Howard Lutnick as Trump’s commerce secretary

2025-02-19

[IsraelTimes] The US Senate confirms wealthy financier Howard Lutnick as commerce secretary, putting in place a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump

...Oh, noze! Not him!...
’s hardline trade polices.

At the Commerce Department, Lutnick, who was CEO at the investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, will oversee 50,000 employees who do everything from collecting economic statistics to running the census to issuing weather reports. But he’s likely to spend a lot of time — along with Jamieson Greer, Trump’s nominee to be the top US trade negotiator — managing the president’s aggressive plans to impose import taxes on US trading partners, including allies and adversaries alike.

The Senate vote to confirm Lutnick was 51-45.

Lutnick was CEO at Cantor Fitzgerald when its offices were hit in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center. The firm lost two-thirds of its employees — 658 people — that day, including Lutnick’s brother. Howard Lutnick led the firm’s recovery and is a member of the Board of Directors of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

Lutnick, who is Jewish, has promised to sell off his business holdings. They’re complicated. His financial disclosure statement shows that he had positions in more than 800 businesses and other private organizations.

Link

Government Corruption

Biden's USAID Paid Terrorists, and Here's HOW They Did It

2025-02-17

[PJMedia] Readers were shocked when we reported that USAID had paid Taliban
...the once and current oppressors of Afghanistan...
and Al Qaeda terrorists. Now we've found out how they moved the money.

In the story "USAID Pays the Terrorists Who Kill Us," I wrote:

The U.S. State Department and USAID pay millions of dollars per week to the Taliban, the bin Laden family leading the group, and the Haqqani terror network. Remember those guys? Didn't we wage a 20-year-long war to get rid of them ...???

...We left Afghanistan, left behind billions of dollars in equipment, the strategically important Bagram Air Base, and all the biometric data of our Afghani supporters who put their lives on the line to help our efforts to get the Taliban and the murderous Moslems they were hiding from us. So, of course, when Joe The Big Guy Biden
Joe <q>The Big Guy</q> Biden

...46th president of the U.S. We hold these truths to be self-evident. All men and women created ... by the — you know — you know, the thing...
, Tony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan had us bug out in disgrace, they left the Taliban a ready-made kill list of our allies.

Former CIA targeter and DoD employee Sarah Adams has reported that the bin Laden, Mullah Mohammad Blinky Omar

...a minor Pashtun commander in the war against the Soviets who made good as leader of the Taliban. As ruler of Afghanistan, he took the title Leader of the Faithful. The imposition of Pashtunkhwa on the nation institutionalized ignorance and brutality in a country already notable for its own fair share of ignorance and brutality. Died of an unspecified ailment in a Pak hospital...
, and Taliban families have intermarried. Paying the Taliban is paying al-Qaeda. That wasn't the plan when U.S. troops went into Afghanistan 20 years ago to get the late Osama bin Laden
...... who is now sometimes referred to as Mister Bones......
and his al-Qaeda terror cell, which brought down the World Trade Center Towers.

After the Biden administration left Afghanistan in shame on Aug. 30, 2021, somehow, inexplicably, the U.S. government, through USAID, began to pay off the same people who tried to kill us.

According to the Horowitz Freedom Center's Daniel Greenfield, USAID laundered $1.7 billion to the Taliban through a series of banks, accounts, shell organizations, and other entities. USAID says it had no idea. You make the call after you see how Greenfield connected the banking dots.

The UN flew the currency to Afghanistan and deposited it in an unnamed 'private' bank.

Then it paid NGOs on the ground who converted the money into the Taliban's Afghani currency at an exchange rate set by the Taliban.

The Taliban bank then 'auctioned' off the dollars
3/ pic.twitter.com/UNdhfuNoLP
— Daniel Greenfield - "Hang Together or Separately" (@Sultanknish) February 13, 2025

In November 2022, the bag men for the Afghanistan Bank crowed over the stacks of cash that fell off the back of a plane.

There was $40 million in this shipment, according to Google Translate.

Greenfield reported at Front Page Magazine that the $40 million "on the tarmac was part of a much larger scheme under which USAID and the State Department provided over $1.7 billion in funding to the U.N., which then shipped $2.9 billion in cash to Afghanistan."

Greenfield reports the money from USAID was laundered through the U.N., turned into hundreds of dollar bills at a New York bank that kept the Afghanistan bank accounts, and then put in shrink-wrapped bags on pallets and sent to the terrorists. That money, in turn, was put into private Afghanistan banks since, at the time, normal banking with the Taliban was operational. That money was then doled out to USAID-approved NGOs.

The money was to go to humanitarian causes, according to an Inspector General's report, but as we've since learned, the Taliban, and by extension, al-Qaeda, sit on the boards of all the NGOs in Afghanistan, so "humanitarian aid

" is funneled to terror training camps and other non-humanitarian needs, according to Adams. I'll just bet they'll rebuild the schools for girls they destroyed any minute now.

"USAID claimed it didn't send money to the Taliban because it put the money in UN accounts it didn't control," Greenfield reported. "UN claimed it didn't send the cash to the Taliban, just put it in a private bank and the NGOs did business with the Taliban when they converted dollars to Afghani," he says. Greenfield reported that the Biden administration "sent both dollars and Afghanis to the Taliban."

The conclusion is that this was no mistake and no misunderstanding. This was an intentional act by the Biden administration to funnel money to the Taliban.

And here's the dirty payoff. "The Biden admin funded the entire Taliban economy by not only printing money for them, but sending them the dollars to exchange for Afghanis that the Taliban used to make the Afghani into a top currency. The dollars gave the Taliban control over Afghanistan," he writes.

Not only did we cede the country, but we also paid the Taliban off to take it over, and we bugged out in shame.

This sounds similar to how Biden hid his millions of shakedown dollars from Russia ($3.5 mil), Ukraine ($6.5 mil), Romania ($3 mil), China ($8 mil), and Kazakhstan ($142,300 for Hunter to buy a car). It makes you wonder if Biden got a Taliban kickback, doesn't it?

Link

Home Front: WoT

Feds warned a year ago that U.S. ill-prepared for attacks on ‘soft targets and crowded places'

2025-01-12

[JustTheNews] Tragic start to 2025 prompts worries about a new era of terrorism foretold in a 2023 Rand Corp. report to the Homeland Security Department.

Thank goodness the grownups are in charge again, unlike the Biden administration ignoring the obvious possibilities.

A year before twin New Year’s Day incidents in New Orleans and Las Vegas darkened the start of 2025, the Department of Homeland Security commissioned a study that warned America was facing a new era of terrorism and was ill-prepared to protect its citizens from that threat.

“Attacks on soft targets (STs) and crowded places (CPs) (ST-CPs) represent a significant challenge in the 2023 security environment,” Rand Corp’s Homeland Security Operational Analysis Center reported to the agency, urging a significant change in posture for a security apparatus that spent two decades hardening defenses against the sort of foreign-inspired and spectacular attacks that al-Qaeda pulled off on Sept. 11, 2001.

Rather than flying planes into hardened security targets of major institutions like the Pentagon or World Trade Center towers, a growing number of foreign-inspired or domestic-grown terrorists and mass shooters have deployed low level tactics – vehicles, improvised explosive devices and guns – on targets with less security but that still house large numbers of potential human victims, the report noted.

Drivers in Wisconsin in 2022 and Germany in 2024 plowed through Christmas Day gatherings with extreme lethal consequence. Shooters from Buffalo, N.Y.; to Charleston, S.C.; and Orlando, Fla.; to San Bernandino, Calif.; claimed numerous victims by focusing on stores, schools, and houses of worship with lower security postures. Plots to plant improvised explosive devices multiplied in the last decade too, a Just the News review of tens years of mass casualty incidents showed.

Meanwhile, such soft targets have been provided little training and security guidance, Rand warned.

“We found little specifically on how to secure open spaces and non-secured buildings that, almost by definition, do not have more-intensive security measures,” the report warned. “What little is present sometimes includes surveillance cameras and other sensors (for areas that have shot detection). The only reliable security measure present, however, is the bystanders themselves.”

You can read the full report here.

Rand’s report was as academic as it was prescient. On Wednesday, police said, an Army veteran apparently radicalized to support ISIS drove his vehicle bearing an ISIS flag into a crowded French Quarter in New Orleans, where scores were still celebrating New Year’s Eve, claiming 15 lives and injuring many more.

The driver, identified as 42-year-old Shamsud Din Jabbar of Texas, also came armed with guns to shoot officers and had explosives both inside his car and planted in the neighborhood he targeted.

FBI officials said it was a terror attack, and they believed others, still uncaptured, assisted it.

Meanwhile, another driver pulled up to the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas a few hours later on Wednesday morning and detonated a rented Tesla Cybertruck filled with fireworks and explosive materials, killing one and injuring seven.

FBI officials said they were trying to determine if it was a terrorist attack and whether it was related to New Orleans. Both drivers, authorities said, rented from the same rental company, heightening concerns.

Whatever the final outcome, the incidents reaffirmed that soft targets remain soft and easily accessed, creating potential catastrophic opportunities for bad actors when they are crowded like a hotel and public celebration area were on the New Year’s holiday.

The vulnerabilities coupled with four years of an insecure border under President Joe Biden and liberal defund the police movements in big cities have created a perfect storm, one key lawmaker told Just the News on Wednesday night.

"With the Democrats defund the police and open borders policy fiascos, it was always just a matter of time before America would experience these terrorist type of attacks,” said Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee and soon to be chairman of the Senate’s most powerful investigative body.

Johnson’s home state experienced the Christmas parade massacre carried out by a lone driver in 2022 in Waukesha, Wis., and he has warned for years that America has too many soft targets for bad actors to strike.

“President Trump has some major Democrat-created messes to clean up,” he added.

The question of local police capabilities has already surfaced in the New Orleans tragedy, where officials admitted security barriers known as bollards that were intended to protect pedestrians from vehicles had been temporarily removed and were to be replaced because they malfunctioned at times before the attacker drove through Bourbon Street shortly after 3 a.m. Wednesday.

“Bollards were not up because they are near completion, with the expectation of being completed before the Super Bowl,” Mayor LaToya Cantrell admitted Wednesday afternoon.

The lack of barriers and the ease the driver found in driving into the French Quarter is particularly alarming for experts given that the city was hosting a major college championship football game, the Sugar Bowl, on Wednesday and the NFL's Super Bowl a month later.

"There's obviously a lot of blame to go around for this terrorist attack in New Orleans,” former CIA analyst and National Security Council chief of staff Fred Fleitz told Just the News. “Security barriers in the street that were put in place to prevent this type of attack were not activated. That is the fault of New Orleans police and officials. “

But Fleitz said the federal government and the Biden administration also deserved blame, focusing on issues like opening the borders to more illegal aliens, imposing ideologies like Diversity, Equity and Inclusion on security agencies, and equating political dissent with terrorism.

“The Biden administration has admitted at least 250 of the known migrants were on the U.S terrorist list. I believe a much larger number of terrorists entered the country as illegal migrants across the southern border since 2021,” he said.

“We also have a Homeland Security Department and an FBI that has lumped radical Islamist terrorists, a non-politically correct term government employees are forbidden to use, with peaceful protesters such as parents who attend PTA meetings, pro life protesters, and the January 6 protesters.

Fleitz said he is "very concerned that Biden's mismanagement of our homeland security agencies has seriously undermined their ability to defend the American people against real domestic security threats like radical Islamist terrorism."

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., who was briefed on the New Orleans tragedy, suggested Americans will be more alarmed when all the details are eventually made public.

“Here’s what I want to ask from the federal government: Catch these people and then tell the American people the truth,” Kennedy said. “Now, I don’t want you to tell us yet anything is going to interfere with the investigation. And there are things that I’ve been told that I think are true that I’m not sharing with you today because it could interfere with their investigation.”

Link

Government Corruption

Paradise Lost - The burning of L.A. is not just a natural disaster. It's a man-made catastrophe.

2025-01-10

[Free Press] The first job of the government is to keep people safe. Failing that, its job is to show that someone is in charge when crisis erupts. On 9/11, there was nothing then—Mayor Rudy Giuliani could do to keep the World Trade Center from falling. Yet he became, in that long-ago era, the most popular person in America by staying on the scene and leading at his city’s moment of greatest danger.

That brings us to the fires in Los Angeles—the most devastating in the history of the city, with a reported 27,000 acres burned and the fires mostly uncontained. There, authorities have failed not only at protecting its residents but at inspiring confidence that they had the situation in hand.

We start with Mayor Karen Bass. As the Palisades fire began to consume wide swaths of America’s second-largest city, she was in Ghana to watch the inauguration of that country’s new president.

Bass left Los Angeles on Saturday—two days after the National Weather Service warned that strong winds and "extreme fire weather conditions" would soon threaten the city. On Sunday, the NWS announced a fire weather watch. By Monday, the warnings had become much more urgent, with the NWS tweeting in all-caps that "A LIFE-THREATENING, DESTRUCTIVE, Widespread Windstorm" would hit L.A. imminently.

Link

Home Front: WoT

9/11 terrorists to be spared death penalty after judge shoots down Pentagon''s bid to nix plea deals

2025-01-01

[NYPOST] Plea deals for three murderous Moslems behind the 9/11 attacks are back in play after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin lost his bid to nix the disturbing agreements that would spare them the death penalty

A military appeals court on Monday night ruled against Austin's order this summer nullifying plea deals reached with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad

...Mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. He was captured in Faisalabad, Pakistain in 2002 and interned at Guantanamo...
, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi.

The terrorists' defense attorneys argued that the secretary did not have the authority to overturn the agreements after they were already approved by the top authority of the Guantanamo Bay courts in July.

They further claimed that Austin's order was unlawful interference in the case.

The move clears the way for Mohammad, the criminal mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, and his co-conspirators to plead guilty in a hearing next week.

However,
Caliphornia hasn't yet slid into the ocean, no matter how hard it's tried...
Austin retains the ability to appeal the decision. Reps for the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prosecutors offered the deal to bring about an end to the pretrial court proceedings that have dragged on for more than a decade.

The decision comes after a lower court in November ruled that Austin's order came too late — and that the act was beyond his scope of authority.

''We agree with the military judge that the secretary did not have authority to revoke respondents' existing PTAs because the respondents had started performance of the PTAs,'' the three-judge panel said.

The agreements were originally signed by Pentagon official Susan K. Escallier, whom Austin appointed to be in charge of military commissions.

While the initial blow of the plea deals shook many 9/11 victims' loved ones and survivors, some have told The Post that the on-off nature of their status has put them through an emotional roller coaster.

Courtesy of badanov, Regnum adds:

Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited.

According to the publication, on December 30, the military appeals court overturned the order of US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who in August canceled a pre-trial deal between the prosecution and three terrorists - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi - to plead guilty in exchange for a life sentence.

The case of conspiracy with the hijackers has been in the pre-trial stage since 2012.

The defendants are suspected of helping the terrorists who carried out the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001.

As reported by the Regnum news agency, the two towers of the World Trade Center collapsed after terrorists flew two hijacked passenger planes into them. As a result, over 2.6 thousand people died.

A previously unknown video of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers on September 11 has emerged. The footage was published by Japanese photographer Kei Sugimoto.

In September 2023, two more victims of the terrorist attacks were identified. The total number of identified victims of the terrorist attacks is 1,649 people. Another 1,104 victims remain unidentified. The names of the identified victims, a man and a woman, are kept secret at the request of their relatives. The victims were identified through DNA analysis of their remains.

Link

Home Front: Politix

Trump assassination attempt hearing devolves into screaming match

2024-12-06

Methinks he doth protest too much.

[FoxNews] Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe shouted at Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, after the congressman lambasted the service

The acting director of the U.S. Secret Service and a Texas congressman got into a screaming match Thursday during a hearing on the agency's failures leading to two assassination attempts against President-elect Donald Trump.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe shouted at Rep. Pat Fallon, R-Texas, after the GOP lawmaker lambasted the service for security lapses that made Trump a target of two failed shooting attempts.

The outburst happened after Fallon showed a picture of Presidents Biden and Trump at a 9/11 commemoration ceremony this year and suggested that as the Special Agent in Charge of that detail, Rowe should have been close enough to Biden to be in the picture. Rowe was not pictured.

"Who is usually at an event like this closest to the President of the United States?" Fallon asked, pointing at the photo. "Were you the special agent in charge of the detail that day?

Rowe said the security detail was present but out of view of the camera. As he spoke, he became enraged and accused Fallon of using 9/11 for political purposes.

"That is the day where we remember more than 3,000 people that have died on 9/11. I actually responded to Ground Zero," Rowe said. "I was there going through the ashes of the World Trade Center."

"I'm not asking that, I'm asking you, if you were… were you the special agent in charge!?" Fallon interrupted, shouting at Rowe.

Rowe raised his voice in response. "I was there to show respect for a Secret Service member that died on 9/11!" he yelled back.

"Do not invoke 9/11 for political purposes!" Rowe screamed at the lawmaker.

"I'm not," Fallon fired back, as the committee chairman demanded order and banged his gavel.

"You are, sir. You are out of line, congressman!" Rowe fumed. "Way out of line."

Fallon then accused Rowe of "playing politics" by refusing to answer his question.

"I am a public servant who has served this nation," Rowe retorted, saying he served on the nation's "darkest day."

"You will not politicize it!" Rowe thundered.

Nor is it his place to chastise the congressman who oversees his work. I’m not sure if it is insubordination, but it’s certainly impolitic. And rude..

Outside the hearing room, Fallon told Fox News' Chad Pergram that he had legitimate questions about why Rowe was there that day, suggesting that Rowe was auditioning for the job of full-time director by getting close to Biden and Trump that day.

"There's no reason for him to be there. There isn't. Try to find a place at a time in history where the Secret Service director was that close to the president at a function or event. I don't think you could find it. So, yeah, I think he was auditioning for the job, a job that I don't believe he's going to get come Jan. 20. I have not talked to the president about that, but I suspect that they're going to find much better people because we need to change the culture as well."

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Reports: Hamas delayed Oct. 7 attack to enlist Iran, Hezbollah; plotted 9/11-style bombing

2024-10-13

[IsraelTimes] Records of meetings indicate terror group was ready to carry out cross-border massacre by Sept. 2022, chose eventual timing for reasons that include judicial overhaul divisions

The deadly terror onslaught carried out by Hamas
Hamas

..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, had originally been planned for the previous year, but was delayed amid efforts by the Paleostinian terror group to enlist the help of Iran
...a theocratic Shiite state divided among the Medes, the Persians, and the (Arab) Elamites. Formerly a fairly civilized nation ruled by a Shah, it became a victim of Islamic revolution in 1979. The nation is today noted for spontaneously taking over other countries' embassies, maintaining whorehouses run by clergymen, involvement in international drug trafficking, and financing sock puppet militias to extend the regime's influence. The word Iran is a cognate form of Aryan. The abbreviation IRGC is the same idea as Stürmabteilung (or SA). The term Supreme Guide is a the modern version form of either Duce or Führer or maybe both. They hate ~~Jews~~ ~~Zionists~~ Jews. Their economy is based on the production of oil and vitriol...
and Hezbollah, according to a series of documents obtained by international media outlets on Saturday.

The reports cited minutes from a series of meetings held by Hamas’s military and politicianship over the course of two years, in which they planned the logistics of the attack, as well as various correspondences between Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and Iranian officials.

An initial report published by The New York Times

...which still proudly claims Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
on Saturday detailed the minutes of 10 meetings spanning from January 2022 until August 2023, which the outlet said had been discovered back in January on a computer in a Hamas control center in Khan Younis.

How very interesting.

The Times said that it had verified the authenticity of the documents and had separately obtained an internal report by the Israel Defense Forces that did the same.

The contents of additional meetings and messages, mostly focused on Iran’s involvement in planning and funding the attack, were then shared by the IDF with The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal, both of which said that they could not independently verify the authenticity of the information they received.

While it was not always clear which officials had attended which meetings, The Times found that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was present at each one, while now-dead brass hats Muhammed Deif and Marwan Issa had attended at least several of them, as did Muhammad Sinwar, Yahya’s brother.

The plan for a cross-border attack on Israel’s military infrastructure and civilian communities was first mentioned in a meeting in January 2022, The Times reported, when the Hamas officials in attendance discussed the need to avoid escalating conflict with Israel and to instead focus on "the big project."

However,
women are made to be loved, not understood...
the ball may have started rolling even earlier than that, as The Post said it had obtained letters written by Sinwar to Iranian officials in which he requested financial and military assistance for a large-scale assault on Israel.

"We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it takes us toward achieving this sacred goal," Sinwar was said to write in a letter dated June 2021.

His request appeared to have been granted, as The Wall Street Journal said it had obtained a letter in which an Iranian official confirmed the allocation of $10 million for Hamas’s armed wing. Sinwar later asked for an additional $500 million, which he said could be delivered over the course of two years, with $20 million being transferred per month.

Following the meeting in January 2022, the "big project" was discussed at length in later meetings of Hamas’s Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
leadership in April and June of that year.

It was during that period that the attack began to take shape. Last November, a 36-page document was uncovered in northern Gaza, The Washington Post reported, in which various scenarios for attacking Israel were outlined and reviewed. Among the targets discussed were shopping malls and military command centers, The Post reported, as well as the Azrieli Towers in Tel Aviv, which house offices, a large shopping mall and a train station. In this scenario, the terror group reportedly envisioned carrying out an attack similar to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York.

However,
women are made to be loved, not understood...
the report said, this plan was discarded after the terror group concluded that it lacked the ability to bring down the towers.

The Al Qaeda version of that plan required two commercial airplanes with full tanks of fuel. Nothing like that in Gaza.

Among the other plans said to have been discarded by the terror group was one that involved the use of horse-drawn carriages, which the terror group said would serve as a "fast and light mechanism" to transport fighters without drawing the attention that modern vehicles do.

By the time Rosh Hashanah came around nine months later, in September 2022, Hamas appeared ready to attack, having settled on a plan to first attack military bases before later moving on to civilian residences, The Times said. But it would be another 13 months before it carried out its brutal plans.

The reason for the delay was never explicitly mentioned in the minutes obtained by The Times, but there were indications that it was related to the terror group’s efforts to enlist the help of Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah terror group.

Citing the minutes of a meeting held in August 2023, the report found that Sinwar’s deputy, Khalil al-Hayya, had traveled to Leb
...an Iranian satrapy until recently ruled by Hassan Nasrallah situated on the eastern Mediterranean, conveniently adjacent to Israel. Formerly inhabited by hardy Phoenecian traders, its official language is now Arabic, with the usual unpleasant side effects. The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. The Lebs maintain a precarious sectarian balance among Shiites, Sunnis, and about a dozen flavors of Christians, plus Armenians, Georgians, and who knows what else? It is the home of the original Hezbollah, which periodically starts a war with the Zionist Entity, gets Beirut pounded to rubble, and then declares victory and has a parade. The Lebs have the curious habit of periodically murdering their heads of state or prime ministers...
a month earlier and discussed the details of the planned attack with a senior member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammed Said Izadi.

During their meeting, al-Hayya told Izadi that Hamas would require its help striking Israeli targets during "the first hour" of the assault, coined the "Al-Aqsa Flood" by the terror group. According to the report, Izadi told al-Hayya that both Iran and Hezbollah welcomed the plan but stressed that they needed time "to prepare the environment."

While al-Hayya also intended to discuss the plan with now-dead Hezbollah leader His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah
...The late, lamented satrap of the Medes and the Persians in Leb...>
, their meeting was postponed and it was unclear whether it ever took place.

Despite their apparent willingness to participate, Hamas ultimately proceeded without the direct assistance of Iran or Hezbollah — although the Lebanese terror group joined the fray with missile fire of its own just one day later, spiraling into the current war on that front.

Several reasons for Hamas’s willingness to launch the attack without its allies were offered by The Times, including that the terror group had been concerned that a new and much-touted Israeli air defense system was almost ready for deployment, and because Jerusalem and Riyadh had appeared to be moving closer to normalizing relations.

The terror group also told Hezbollah that it was "compelled to move toward a strategic battle" by Israel’s "internal situation" — apparently a reference to the domestic political unrest last year over the government’s judicial overhaul push.

From the time it started planning the attack until the date of its execution, Hamas focused on lulling Israel into a false sense of security by leading it to believe that it was focused on governing Gaza instead of seeking further conflict, a ploy widely deemed successful, as Israel was caught unaware and unprepared.

In a Hamas meeting in April 2022, there was relief among participants that the Moslem holy month of Ramadan had passed without incident, allowing the terror group to "camouflage the big idea." Similar sentiments were expressed in later meetings, including in June 2022 after the annual Jerusalem Day Flag March snaked through the capital’s Old City, and again at the end of Ramadan the following year.

Not willing to take any chances, the Hamas officials decided that only those who needed to know would know about their intentions. As such, The Times stated, the terror group’s leadership in Qatar
...an emirate on the east coast of the Arabian Peninsula. It sits on some really productive gas and oil deposits, which produces the highest per capita income in the world. They piss it all away on religion, financing the Moslem Brotherhood and several al-Qaeda affiliates. Home of nutbag holy manYusuf al-Qaradawi...
was kept mostly in the dark, and only its since-assassinated political leader Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank...
was informed of the covert meetings with Iranian and Hezbollah officials.

Inside Gaza, a similar decision was made regarding the terror group’s lower-ranking operatives. The minutes from the June 2022 meeting revealed that Sinwar had decided they would only learn of the full extent of the planned attack in the hours preceding it.

By the fall of 2023, having misled Israel for close to two years, Hamas once again appeared ready to attack. Only one major point of contention remained: whether to attack on Yom Kippur, which fell on September 25, or to wait until Simhat Torah, on October 7.

Eventually, on the morning of October 7, the terror group launched its deadly assault. Some 1,200 people were slaughtered across dozens of communities in southern Israel that day, and 251 were seized as hostages. Of that number, 97 captives are believed to still be in Gaza.

Ynet adds:

Sinwar reportedly requested hundreds of millions from Iran and training for 12,000 operatives, claiming it would enable them to destroy Israel within two years; documents revealed in Washington Post also outline multi-front attack scenarios

Hamas leaders had plans for large-scale assaults on Israel, including a 9/11-style attack on skyscrapers in Tel Aviv, even before launching their deadly incursion into Israeli border communities on October 7 of last year, The Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing both digital files and paper records recovered from Hamas command centers by IDF forces in Gaza.

The documents outline a broad attack strategy involving the use of railways, boats, and even chariots, according to the Washington Post report. However, terrorism experts noted that many of these plans were not practical.

The 59-page trove of documents also details a 2021 request from Hamas to Iran for $500 million in funding, along with training for 12,000 additional Hamas operatives.

LETTERS FROM SINWAR TO KHAMENEI AND QAANI
Documents from 2021 indicate that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar reached out to senior Iranian officials, including Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, seeking additional financial and military support.

In a letter, Sinwar claimed that with Iran's backing, Hamas could achieve the total destruction of Israel within two years. "We promise you that we will not waste a minute or a penny unless it takes us toward achieving this sacred goal," Sinwar wrote in June 2021.

While the letter did not provide details on how Hamas planned to destroy Israel, it was also addressed to Esmail Qaani, commander of Iran’s Quds Force, who has been out of the public eye for two weeks amid reports of his investigation over alleged ties to Israel and a subsequent heart attack.

Months before the October 2023 assault, Hamas had considered an even broader attack plan. A 36-page presentation, discovered at a Hamas outpost in northern Gaza on November 10, outlined potential scenarios for a multi-front assault on Israel, targeting military bases and civilian locations such as shopping malls.

The Arabic document, titled “Strategy to build an appropriate plan to Liberate Palestine,” contains dozens of maps, photographs and schematics showing Hamas movements and follow-up attack strategies across Israel.

A VAST DATABASE OF OVER 17,000 IMAGES
According to the presentation, Hamas' attack plans were based on a vast database of over 17,000 images, including satellite photos and drone-captured footage of Israeli cities. The database also featured imagery from social media, covering key military and civilian sites such as Israeli Air Force bases and diagrams of civilian flight paths to Ben Gurion Airport.

Hamas' so-called 'Strategy to build an appropriate plan to Liberate Palestine'

The presentation outlined three attack scenarios, with tactics for deceiving Israeli defenses. Some of the planned operations were "low-tech," similar to methods used in the October 7 attacks, while others were far more ambitious.

Last week, Israeli prosecutors charged several residents of the central Israeli town of Taibeh with plotting to attack the Azrieli Towers and bring about its collapse.

A more practical target, according to the documents, was Israel’s railway system. Hamas outlined various scenarios for using trains to transport fighters and powerful explosives. “The railway line is designated for transporting fuel, which is a weak point in the event of a train explosion after moving inside one of the cities (a moving bomb),” the document read.

EXPLOSIVE-LADEN BOATS
Other documents showed Hamas planned to modify vehicles to travel on rails and convert fishing vessels into fast-attack boats capable of carrying fighters and explosives to infiltrate Israeli ports. Regarding the boat-bombing plan, the documents state that Hamas had "found a working mechanism."

The report also highlighted Hamas' deception strategy, which emphasized maintaining silence, even during Ramadan, and instructed members not to join the fighting alongside Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

The documents further revealed that Hamas aimed to launch its attack before Israel completed its laser weapon development and requested Iran to target sensitive sites with missile strikes during the first hour of the assault.

Courtesy of Skidmark, the Daily Mail’s take on the story: Revealed: Hamas' secret plot to bomb Tel Aviv towers in 9/11-style atrocity as part of a full-scale land, sea and air Israel invasion

Link

Israel-Palestine-Jordan

Gallant reveals document from top Hamas commander warning Sinwar of dire losses

2024-09-12

[IsraelTimes] IDF strikes Hamas command center in Nuseirat school-turned-shelter, announces earlier killings of Hamas operatives who participated in Oct. 7, guarded hostage Noa Marciano

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Wednesday revealed a document he said was written by the former commander of Hamas
Hamas

..a regional Iranian catspaw,...
’s Khan Younis Brigade in southern Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with an iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
, Rafa’a Salameh, and addressed to Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and his brother Muhammad, in which the commander described the "difficult situation" in which the terror group had found itself.

Salameh, a criminal mastermind of the terror group’s October 7 massacre, was killed in an Israeli ~~Arclight~~ airstrike
...KABOOM!...
in southern Gaza in July that also killed senior Hamas commander Muhammad Deif.

In the letter, he wrote: "Please consider the following: We maintain the remaining weapons and equipment, as we have lost 90-95 percent of our rocket capabilities; and we have lost some 60% of our personal weapons; we have lost at least 65-70% of our anti-tank launchers and rockets," according to excerpts provided and translated by the Defense Ministry.

"Most importantly," he continued, "we have lost at least 50% of our fighters between those who are martyred and maimed, and now we are left with 25%. The last 25% of our people have reached a situation where the people do not tolerate them anymore, broken on a mental or physical level."

Gallant said the document showed "a real hardship that affects Hamas and affects the most senior commanders."

Salameh "cries out for the help of the Sinwar brothers, but of course they cannot save him," Gallant said.

"Why? Because we are continuing the effort that started in October and continues step by step... and reaches all senior Hamas officials. He wrote this to the Sinwar brothers, we will get to them as well," the defense minister continued.

Yahya Sinwar is the leader of Hamas in Gaza, and is considered a criminal mastermind of the group’s October 7, 2023 attack, when thousands of gunnies invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting the ongoing war.

Sinwar was last month appointed as the head of the terror group following the July 31 liquidation of previous leader Ismail Haniyeh
...became Prime Minister of Gaza after the legislative elections of 2006 which Hamas won. President Mahmoud Abbas dismissed Haniyeh from office on 14 June 2007 at the height of the Fatah-Hamas festivities, but Haniyeh did not acknowledge the decree and continues as the PM of Gazoo while Abbas maintains a separate PM in the West Bank...
. His brother Muhammad is a senior commander in Hamas’s military wing.

Gallant’s presentation of the document came on the same day as two Israeli soldiers were killed and several others maimed in a helicopter crash attempting to extract a third, seriously maimed soldier from the battlefield. The crash was not a result of enemy fire.

Gallant also published a video on social media Wednesday from the same facility, showing a photo of Muhammad Sinwar’s children posing in front of a depiction of the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in the United States. The photo was discovered recently in a tunnel underneath Khan Younis, Gallant said in the video, which was posted on the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

Meanwhile,
...back at the barn, Bossy had come up with a new idea, one that didn't involve kerosene...
an Israeli airstrike Wednesday in central Gaza struck a group of Hamas operatives at a command room embedded within a former school. According to the military, Hamas was using the al-Jaouni School in Nuseirat to plan and carry out attacks against troops and Israel. The school has been serving as a shelter for displaced Gazooks.

Hospital officials reported 14 people killed, including two children, in the strike.

The IDF said it carried out "many steps," including using precision munitions, aerial surveillance and other intelligence, to limit civilian casualties in the strike.

"The Hamas terror organization systematically violates international law, brutally exploiting civilian institutions and the population as a human shield for terror activity," the military said.

In recent months, dozens of airstrikes have been carried out against Hamas sites embedded within schools and other sites used as shelters for civilians, according to the IDF.

The IDF also announced on Wednesday that recent airstrikes in Gaza had killed two Hamas gunnies who participated in the October 7 onslaught, one of whom was involved in guarding Cpl. Noa Marciano, an kidnapped soldier who was killed by Hamas at Shifa Hospital and whose body was recovered in November.

A separate dronezap recently killed Ayman Khaled Ahmed Abu al-Yahni, who the IDF said was a member of Hamas’s elite Nukhba force and was involved in attacking the Erez Crossing during the October 7 onslaught, the military announced.

Link

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