Fierce Patriots

Conservative Political News

  • Save 30% off Patriotic Shirts at KnightThreads.com
  • Subscribe

Israel / Middle East

Report: Kfir Bibas and Family May Still Be Alive as Hostages in Gaza

by Leave a Comment

Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari suggested Friday that red-headed Israeli infant Kfir Bibas; his four-year-old brother, Ariel; and their mother, Shiri may still be alive as hostages in Gaza.

The Times of Israel reported that the Bibas mother and children were meant to have been released and handed over to Israel — and that Hamas’s failure to do so helped scuttle a seven-day truce, which Hamas violated Friday morning.

The Times of Israel noted:

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari says Hamas was supposed to release members of the Bibas family from the Gaza Strip, as part of the temporary ceasefire deal.

…

“We demanded today, like every day during the framework, to return the women and children as agreed-upon in the deal, which Egypt and Qatar had a commitment to. Hamas decided to violate the framework,” Hagari says.

Earlier this week, the IDF said that it believed that Hamas had transferred the mother and her children, abducted from Kfar Aza during the October 7 terror attack, to another terror organization.

Hamas then claimed that they were dead, killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The IDF said it would investigate that claim, and then Hamas released a propaganda video in which the father of the family, Yarden, was made to blame Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for their fate.

Hagari’s statement Friday suggests that the IDF still believes the family may be alive.

If so, the Bibas children would be the last children known to be in Hamas custody.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

IDF Strikes 200 Terror Targets in North, South Gaza After Hamas Breaks Truce

by Leave a Comment

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said Friday that Israel had struck over 200 terror targets in both northern and southern Gaza after Hamas violated a seven-day truce just over an hour before it was set to expire.

In a statement, the IDF said:

Following Hamas’ violation of the operational pause, over the last few hours, ground, air and naval forces struck terror targets in the north and south of the Gaza Strip, including in Khan Yunis and Rafah.

The IDF struck areas booby-trapped with explosives, terror tunnel shafts, launch posts, and operational command centers designated by Hamas for use in the renewed fighting.

Hamas broke the truce, hours after the seventh and last group of released hostages released Israel, by launching rockets at Israeli communities near Gaza, most of which are still evacuated.

Gaza rocket fire (Jack Guez / AFP via Getty)

This picture taken from southern Israel near the border with the Gaza Strip shows a rocket being fired from inside Gaza towards Israel, as battles resumed between the Israeli forces and Hamas militants, on December 1, 2023. A temporary truce between Israel and Hamas expired on December 1, with the Israeli army saying combat operations had resumed, accusing Hamas of violating the operational pause. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP) (Photo by JACK GUEZ/AFP via Getty Images)

According to Israel, Hamas also thwarted a last-minute extension of the truce by refusing to release remaining female civilian hostages, whom Hamas considers potential soldiers.

Hamas also refused to comply with a demand by Israel and the United States that it allow the Red Cross to visit roughly 140 remaining hostages.

American, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators had hoped to extend the pause into an eighth day, but to no avail. The U.S. also warned Israel against operating in southern Gaza without a comprehensive plan for taking account of Palestinian civilians. On Friday, the IDF published a detailed map in which it had divided the Gaza Strip into hundreds of sections with numbers. The IDF says that it will warn residents, by section number, of impending military action.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who warned Israel Thursday it did not have “credit” for a long fight to remove Hamas, was evidently satisfied with Israel’s new humanitarian effort.

The IDF also struck military targets in southern Lebanon in response to attacks from Iran’s terror proxy there, Hezbollah.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Scarborough Floats Withholding Israel Aid Until Netanyahu Ousted — ‘We’re Not Going to Throw Money Down a Rat Hole’

by Leave a Comment

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough said Friday on his show “Morning Joe” that the United States should consider withholding aid from Israel until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is removed from power.

The panel was discussing a New York Times report that the Israeli government had received warnings over a year ago about the kind of terror attack launched by Hamas on October 7.

Scarborough said, “We mourn the terror attack as a nation and we support the Israelis. At this point, we still support the Israelis. But this idea that we’re going to continue supporting Netanyahu’s government and have them saying, ‘Well, you know, we’ll get to it when we get to it.’ The United States could say that after 9/11, because the United States was fighting that war. And we had allies, but we were funding the overwhelming majority of it. The Israelis know it, certainly our enemies across the Middle East know it: We are the primary funder of Israel and we are propping Israel up so they can continue this fight not only against Hamas, but for their very existence.”

He continued: You see something like this: you keep looking at the mistakes the Netanyahu government makes, and let me add: You look at the chaos in the West Bank that I lay all at the feet of Benjamin Netanyahu and his policies over the past ten years. People, listen closely I didn’t, I didn’t blame his policies for the attack in Gaza, but the chaos in the West Bank that threatens any peace process moving forward and also threatens another, a second front in this war, possibly a third front in this war.”

Scarborough added, “The United States has the right to say, ‘If we’re going to continue propping up your government, if you don’t have faith in this guy who knew this was coming a year away, we need a better partner.’ And Benjamin Netanyahu is not that partner. When do we get to that point? Because if I were in Congress, this is what I’d be saying, and if I’m saying it as one of the biggest supporters of Israel, then there have got to be a lot of other people saying it. We’re not going to throw money down a rat hole for a government that knew this was coming for a year and didn’t do anything.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

Zelensky: World ‘Shifting’ to Help Israel Is Hurting Ukraine’s War

by Leave a Comment

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told the Associated Press in an interview published Friday that “only the blind” cannot see that his country has lost attention and support following the Hamas atrocities against Israel on October 7, which prompted an ongoing war to eradicate the terrorist organization.

Zelensky promised he would “fight for attention” for his war against Russia, particularly in the United States, where he warned “there may be weakness” in the will of Congress to spend more money on weapons for his country.

Ukraine has been at war with Russia in some form since at least 2014 when the regime of strongman Vladimir Putin began supporting separatists in the nation’s eastern Donbass region in guerrilla warfare efforts against Kyiv.

In February 2022, Putin announced that the Russian military would formally invade Ukraine for a “special operation” to oust Zelensky, who Putin branded a “Nazi” despite his Jewish heritage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrive for a working session at the Elysee Palace Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 in Paris. Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's president are meeting for the first time at a summit in Paris to find a way to end the five years of fighting in eastern Ukraine. (Ian Langsdon/Pool via AP)

File/Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy arrive for a working session at the Elysee Palace Monday, Dec. 9, 2019 in Paris.  (Ian Langsdon/Pool via AP)

Putin’s objection to Zelensky stems from a wave of protests in Ukraine in 2014 that resulted in the ouster of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych; the Russian government has considered all Ukrainian presidents after the protests illegitimate. Zelensky won a free and fair election, defeating Yanukovych’s successor Petro Poroshenko, as the “pro-Russian” candidate in 2019.

The full-scale invasion that began in 2022 remains ongoing, in large part due to Ukraine benefitting from generous weapons packages from European nations and the United States. America has offered $44 billion in security aid to Ukraine since February 2022. An extra $106 billion in aid – split among Ukraine, Israel, and other spending – is currently being debated in Congress, however, amid dwindling public support in America for funding Kyiv.

Speaking with the Associated Press, Zelensky contended that the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel had an impact on the world’s enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine. That day, the genocidal jihadist terrorist organization invaded Israel and engaged in mass torture, killings, gang rape, and abductions against random civilians. Terrorists went on door-to-door raids in residential communities, killing entire families, including brutalizing and desecrating the corpses of children. Forensic experts have found evidence of babies charred to death, decapitated, and suffering other atrocities. An estimated 1,200 people were killed on October 7 alone.

“We already can see the consequences of the international community shifting (attention) because of the tragedy in the Middle East,” Zelensky said in Friday’s interview. “Only the blind don’t recognize this.”

The president asserted that his country needed “to fight for attention for the full-scale war.”

“We must not allow people to forget about the war here … You see, attention equals help,” he explained. “No attention will mean no help. We fight for every bit of attention. Without attention, there may be weakness in (the U.S.) Congress.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Zelensky lamented that the prodigious amount of international aid for his armed forces was not enough to decisively defeat the massive Russian military and declared himself “not satisfied” with the current loss of life in the Ukrainian armed forces.

RELATED: Zelensky Releases Movie Trailer-Style Video Marking One-Year Anniversary of War in Ukraine

Volodymyr Zelensky via Storyful

“Look, we are not backing down, I am satisfied. We are fighting with the second (best) army in the world, I am satisfied,” he explained. “We are losing people, I’m not satisfied. We didn’t get all the weapons we wanted, I can’t be satisfied, but I also can’t complain too much.”

Zelensky urged Western countries to continue funding his country by predicting that Russia “will most likely invade NATO countries” if Ukraine falls.

“And then the American children will fight,” he added.

Zelensky has been a vocal supporter of Israel and in the early days of the war described his ideal post-war Ukraine as modeled after Israeli society.

“Ukraine will definitely not be what we wanted it to be from the beginning. It is impossible. Absolutely liberal, European – it will not be like that,” Zelensky said in April 2022. “We will become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face. We will not be surprised if we have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in cinemas, supermarkets, and people with weapons. I am confident that the question of security will be the issue number one for the next 10 years. I am sure of it.”

In the days immediately following the Hamas attack, Zelensky declared, “Israel’s right to defense is indisputable” and urged world leaders to visit the country.

“My recommendation – if I can use this word – my recommendation for the leaders of the world … go to Israel,” Zelensky urged, adding that doing so can “help to save your nation, people, save lives.”

“So my recommendation to the leaders [is] to go to Israel and, I think, to support people. Just people, I’m not speaking about any institutions,” he added. “Just to support people who have been under terrorist attacks, people who are dying now. It’s very important. Unity is more important than to be alone is more strong. It’s very important.”

He also suggested that a “risk” existed that support for Israel would siphon away attention from his own country.

A month later, Zelensky lamented that that had been the case.

FLASHBACK “St. Patrick’s Name is Now Zelensky”– Pelosi Reads Poem by U2’s Bono for Ukraine

C-SPAN

“The world is not focused on this situation or on our battlefield in Ukraine. Dividing focus really doesn’t help,” he told British Foreign Minister David Cameron in November. “We understand the help of the world can be divided because the crisis in the Middle East and it’s a pity.”

Following the meeting with Cameron, Zelensky admitted that delivery of weapons aid at “really slowed down” after October 7.

“It’s not like the US said: we don’t give Ukraine any. No! It’s just that everyone is fighting for (stockpiles) themselves,” Zelensky said. “This is life. I’m not saying that this is positive, but this is life, and we have to defend what’s ours.”

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

CNN’s Phillip: ‘What Did Israel Know and When Did They Know It?’

by Leave a Comment

Thursday, during her show’s opening, CNN’s Abby Phillip suggested there was some blame to placed on the Israeli government for the October 7 Hamas terror attack on southern Israel.

According to Phillip, based on reporting from The New York Times, Israeli intelligence may have known Hamas was planning such an attack yet did not take adequate steps to stop it.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: What did Israel know and when did they know it? An explosive report provides an answer to both of those questions. That’s tonight on Newsnight.

Good evening. I’m Abby Phillip in Washington. And breaking tonight, The New York Times reports that Israel had the Hamas attack plan — plan of attack more than a year before October 7, and they chose to simply file it away.

Now, the consequences here were deadly. And now, there is a question about if at all, the war, the deadliest day in Israel’s history, thousands and thousands of Palestinians caught in the crossfire of all those bombs, if it was all preventable.

The Times claims that Israel intercepted a Hamas blueprint nicknamed Jericho Wall for a sprawling terror blitz. It, quote, called for a barrage of rockets at the outset of the attack, drones to knock out the security cameras and automated machine guns along the border, and gunmen to pour into Israel en masse in paragliders, on motorcycles, and on foot.

Now, the document, according to The Times, circulated among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, leaders who then dismissed that plan as beyond Hamas’ capabilities, not just once, but multiple times.

The discovery of this document’s existence also adds drama to a decision that is just hours away now. Does Israel try to push a faltering truce to an eighth day, or does Mr. Netanyahu try to bury these failures with more bombs?

I’m now joined by CNN National Security Analyst Beth Sanner, former deputy director of National Intelligence.

Beth, this has already been pretty clear to be a devastating intelligence failure for Israel, but The Times is reporting that these attacks were planned for years, that they knew about the plans, that they had even previous iterations of these written plans. Could this all have been avoided?

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, you know, it probably never comes down to just one thing, right, or one moment. I think that it’s possible, but a lot of things would have to be different because it’s not just about paying attention to a report. It’s actually about how do you think about that report.

And so you had analysts, and not just this one analyst that’s mentioned here, but you had junior female soldiers on the line looking and reporting similar things weeks before, separate reports.

PHILLIP: Yes, they saw Hamas practicing.

SANNER: Right, exactly, exactly. And so those things reported up, but the mindset issues are the things that really affected decisions and they affected decisions that were political decisions, you know, big strategic decisions about where to focus intelligence and then ultimately by seniors to say, well, we don’t believe these reports because it doesn’t fit with our mindset.

PHILLIP: But when you see a document that is this detailed, that is this devastating if it were to come into fruition, first of all, how rare is it to come into something like that as an intelligence officer? And then are you surprised really that that would not be in any way protectively acted on?

SANNER: Well, I mean, you can take a parallel. We did have that for the Russian invasion, basically.

PHILLIP: Yes.

SANNER: And what did CIA do with it? They wrote it up. And they talked about the likelihood of it, and they analyzed it based on that.

And so I would expect, and I haven’t worked directly with Israeli military analysts, which are different than the foreign Mossad, but I would have written a PDB on it that said, in our organization, this is what this says. And then you say, either you think it’s right or not. And maybe you have a dissent in there where an agency says that they think it’s true. But I don’t think this got floated all the way up.

PHILLIP: Yes. I mean, I think that is now the essential question that will face Israeli leaders, perhaps when this war is over.

SANNER: Definitely. PHILLIP: But in the meantime, we’re learning so much more.

Beth Sanner, thank you so much for joining us tonight.

SANNER: Thank you, Abby.