For years, the various governments led by Benjamin Netanyahu took an approach that divided power between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank — bringing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to his knees while making moves that propped up the Hamas terror group.

The idea was to prevent Abbas — or anyone else in the Palestinian Authority’s West Bank government — from advancing toward the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Thus, amid this bid to impair Abbas, Hamas was upgraded from a mere terror group to an organization with which Israel held indirect negotiations via Egypt, and one that was allowed to receive infusions of cash from abroad.

Welcome to the middle east where you get to pick from Isis, Al-Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood, Shi’ite, Sunni – or some combination. And when you choose wrong or your choice turns on you, Monday morning quarterbacks in the west have a field day with it.

Then when you add this brutal report on the bureaucratic stupidity of Israel’s Government, Hamas had an open door. Here are a couple nuggets from the article:

For over a decade, the IDF wrongly assessed Hamas’s capabilities and intentions. Military officials believed that Hamas was uninterested in a full-scale war, that its tunnel network had been significantly degraded, and that Israel’s high-tech border fence would thwart any cross-border threat.

The investigation revealed that the Military Intelligence Directorate received clear indications over several years that Hamas was planning a large-scale attack on Israel—yet repeatedly dismissed these plans as unrealistic.

Yeesh, no wonder why some people think Netanyahu and his government deliberately allowed this to happen. Why? There has been an ongoing attempt by the leftist Israeli Supreme Court to jail Netanyahu for years – so I took a look at that, too.

Here is a recent article showing what a mess it is. But, here is something key – I could not find anything suggesting an effort to impeach the Prime Minister of Israel, and the info on the trial shows that it is going to last until 2027. If there was no real effort to toss Netanyahu from office (Via Impeachment or something similar) in 2023 and that the Trial was slated to last until 2027, trying to say that Netanyahu wanted Hamas to attack Israel and take hostages – most all of whom were raped repeatedly, starved and tortured for 2 years – is just ludicrious. The charge being leveled is that Netanyahu wanted war with Hamas to save himself politically, you’d have to be dealing with a complete Psychopath or Sociopath as well for that to be possible.

Others have accused Netanyahu of prolonging the war with Hamas to distract attention – while Hamas has proven to be plenty dishonest in negotiations themselves.

I have no clue the efficacy of the charges against the Prime Minister – I just note that the accusers and those carrying the water are the leftist media, and the left of Israel. An example I found in all of the articles is that one of the gifts that Netanyahu is alleged to have received in exchange for favors was a teddy bear for one of his grandkids. The fact that it has been difficult to find specifics of the gifts Netanyahu is alleged to have taken is also of concern.

But here is the thing, the USA is in the middle of all of these messes and that should be the debate. Why? Should we be?

What causes further distraction is that the passisons related to anything Israel are higher than those related to anyother country or conflict. I’ve been treated to all kinds of stuff on social media – one of my favorites was “Jewish Businessmen stole all of America’s Gold from Fort Knox”. Idiots like those on the anti-isreal side make it a lot harder to have an honest discussion, including Tucker Carlson and his over-the-top comments.

I can draw some conclusions.

Israel wants to occupy / subdue Gaza. I am not sure I have a problem with that.

The Israeli Government Sucks.

The UN is crooked and immoral and it is hard to agree with them on anything.

The people asking questions about what Israel has done or doing are peppered with legitimate racists making it hard to discern legitimate questions and jew-hate

A growing chorus are equating Islam with other religions in 2025, even as Islam has the market cornered on terrorism and chaos.

The information I was able to find about Israel is completelty polarized. It is extremely difficult to find any middle ground of information on Israel.

Most critics of Israel simultaneously whitewash Islamic violence

Then I turned up this last piece of research on what life is like for Christians in Israel. It is disturbing.

Report shows rise in attacks on Christians in Israel, but a willingness to tackle issue.

Last year’s inaugural report documented 89 cases, including 32 attacks on church properties, 30 formally reported cases of spitting, and seven violent attacks, most of them against multiple victims. In the 2024 study, 111 episodes are reported, including 46 physical attacks, 35 attacks against church properties, and 13 cases of harassment.

Now, when I read this, I could see how some would equate Judiasm to Islam. To me, it is still absurd and a total stretch given that these extremists in Israel are a small minoiry. Linked here is a fascinating and comprehensive anaylsis of Islam. This shows statistically significant support for ISIS, Imposing Sharia Law, etc… to varying degrees around the world of Islam.

Some 180,300 Christians live in Israel, representing approximately 1.8% of the Israeli population, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics. Almost 80% of the Christians in Israel are Arab, constituting 6.9% of the country’s Arab population. In 2023, the Christian population grew by 0.6%.

Now this made me wonder if there was a racial angle, but I dismissed this because of the specificity of stuff in the article. Further, the perpatrators seemed to be the much younger indicating that the radicalizatrion in the world has spliied in to the ultra-orthodox community.

“In the past, Christians were hesitant to report episodes because they were unsure how they would be treated,” Bendcowsky said. “We have been working on persuading them otherwise. Often the reporting is done not by the Christians themselves but rather by Israeli Jewish volunteers.”

Bendcowsky also said that recently, they witnessed a notable change in attitude among Israeli police.

“In the past few months, we have seen how the police have realized that [attacks against Christians] is an issue, and they started to track incidents, arrest people and make the arrests public. This has a huge impact on deterring future attackers because people do not want to get in trouble for spitting at someone. At the same time, it makes Christians feel seen,” she said.

It looks like the Israeli government has more problems that just Gaza to deal with. I am certainly glad that the Israeli government has this on their radar screen, but there is a lot of work to be done.

I tried to see if I could find examples of this elsewhere in the world and the obviously are not occurring with enough frequency to be identifiable, or perhaps it is because nowhere else in the world is there the majority Jewish population.

All this said, I am going to track this issue because this is NOT condoned in the Torah (aka the Old Testament). While one can find substantial evidence in the Koran to sugggest it calls for violence against “Kafir” or “Infidels”, I do not see similar language against “Goyim”.

Given that Israel already has an image problem in the world, this sort of behavior by a group representing 13.9% of its’ population is not helpful in the slightest and will buttress the feelings of some that Judiasm = Islam.

I certainly did not think I would find what I did, but it is what it is. All that said, Israel is still our best ally in the Middle East. One example is how they basically saved the F-35 program from failure. So, does the USA abandon Israel and become buddies with Qatar? Or do we become fortress America (only) as others would like? It still seems insane to me to abandon Israel given that the middle east is a pivot for everything and of all there, they appear to be the only nation that has demonstrated any real level of friendship towards the USA. What a statement that is.

I am sure I will have more to say on this later.