Civilians are dying in Israel and the Gaza Strip. There is a lot of finger pointing going on about who is to blame. Republicans want to blame Biden, Democrats and Republicans want to blame Iran. It is hard to separate the lies from the truth. Just like everything else today if you don’t do your research you will just be swamped with misinformation. People are dying but everyone is playing politics. Some of the people that are dying are Americans. I have now seen a report in The Times of Israel that Egypt had given them advance warning that something big was going to happen but they were basically ignore and were concentrating on the West Bank instead Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Whatever the truth is, one thing is certain, peace is a long way off in the Middle East.

I am not expert on the Middle East but just like everything I don’t want to be told what the truth is. I will look for it. One of the first pieces of garbage is that Biden financed this by giving money to Iran. I looked that up and the first thing I saw was, any money hadn’t been touched yet and that it can only be used for humanitarian reasons. The next thing that I read was that Iran was financing Hamas, but, they are not alone. In the beginning of Hamas Saudi Arabia helped finance them. Qatar has given Hamas one and a half billion dollars. Turkey has helped finance Hamas. I believe probably most of the Arab and Islamic World have given help to Hamas at one time or another. I have read that there are private organizations in Europe that have given money to Hamas. This is a real complicated situation that has a lot of bad guys and very few good guys.

Many of the weapons, at one time, had been smuggled through tunnels for Egypt to the Gaza Strip but that Egypt has been working at shutting this down. Supplies can be smuggled in from the sea, Hamas even had underwater tunnels.  I read was that Hamas was manufacturing their own missiles because it was just getting to risky and unproductive to try and smuggle them in.  It is suspected Hamas has manufactured 8,000 missiles. They had been preparing this for a long time and it is very hard to keep 8000 missiles a secret. Many say that this was planned with the help of Iran who has close ties with the Hamas government in Gaza. That wouldn’t surprise me. I have also read on social media that information was supplied by Trump to the Russians and that was shared by Russia with the Iranians. That would not surprise me either but I doubt that Trump really had information that would have been relevant for this attack unless there was information on what it would take for the number of rockets that it was take to overwhelm that Israel defense dome.

I have read that the real reason for the attack was to disrupt/end the diplomatic talks between Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the Palestinians with Israel would not be successful. Hamas does not want peace and they wish to drive the State of Israel out of the Middle East. Any retaliation by Israel will be condemned by the Islamic world and sadly our goal for a lasting peace and stability in the Middle East is just a pipe dream for now. Hamas’s goal was to lead to war and it got what it wanted. All we can hope and work for is that it doesn’t spread to the rest of the world.

Hamas targeted civilians, women and children. They targeted young people at a concert. These were not military targets. These were targets of terror. They didn’t care that Americans would be killed. I think they knew ahead of time that the Russians would threaten the United States if we interceded and that is exactly what Putin did. Americans have died and there should be a response from us. Because of the Republican Party, our Military our State Department is in a weakened state waiting for Senate approval for Military and State Department appointments. We don’t even have an Israeli Ambassador. Hamas has done to civilians the same thing that Russia has done with civilians in the Ukraine. Only cowards target Women and Children and because of the pro-Russian stance with the Ukraine, women and children are dying. The Republicans have divided America and a divided America is a weakened America and Putin knows this and take advantage of it.

Tomorrow I am going to be in the hospital all day and will miss much of what goes on. I am in for a heart catheterization for a partially blocked artery.   I hope to be back at it Wednesday.