Posted on 11/02/2023 3:11:17 AM PDT by dennisw
Hamas has built “a labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza, as wide as a city,” CNN reported on October 14. The tunnels were used to facilitate the Hamas pogrom, and the 150 Israelis whom Hamas kidnapped probably are being held there.
So how did Hamas acquire the cement, despite Israel’s blockade of such materials?
Apparently Hamas had some help from former U.S. Mideast envoy Dennis Ross—according to Ross himself.
Ross has been appearing as an expert commentator on major media outlets in recent days, including on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” on October 8, CNN’s “Amanpour and Company” on October 13, and Fox News on October 14, among others.
Yet Ross did not think it was relevant to mention in any of those interviews that he himself pressured Israel to let Hamas obtain the cement—a role he admitted in a Washington Post op-ed on August 8, 2014.
In the op-ed, Ross described how, as a U.S. envoy, he urged Israel to allow Hamas to import cement even though he knew, at the time, that Hamas had been using cement for military purposes.
“At times,” he wrote in the Post, “I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built. They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.”
In the 1930s, Americans were divided about permitting U.S. exports to another terrorist regime, Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt maintained trade with the Nazis, arguing that the persecution of the Jews in Germany was none of America’s business.
But Jewish organizations, and many other Americans, participated in a boycott of German goods. One noted supporter of the boycott was the mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia.
In 1935, the city’s Bridge Authority purchased five hundreds tons of sheet steel from Nazi Germany, in order to build the Triborough Bridge.
La Guardia learned of the deal while bedridden at Mount Sinai Hospital after a painful attack of sciatica. But he did not let his illness deter from him intervening.
In a telegram to Bridge Authority chairman Nathan Burkan, the mayor announced that he did not want that “damned steel” in his city. “The only commodity we can import from Hitlerland now is hatred,” La Guardia declared, “and we don’t want any in our country.”
Technically, the Bridge Authority was an independent agency that did not require the mayor’s approval for its construction purchases, but the mayor found grounds to block the deal: he bore responsibility for New Yorkers’ safety, and he could not vouch for the reliability of Hitler’s steel. He wrote to Burkan: “I cannot be certain of its safety unless I first have every bit and piece of German made material tested before used.” He added, in German: “Verstehen Sie [Do you understand] ?”
La Guardia took his share of heat for his one-man campaign against Hitler Germany. Six thousand German-Americans held a rally in New York City and pledged to vote him out of office. Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels threatened to bomb New York City. Secretary of State Cordell Hull complained that La Guardia’s actions were harming German-American relations.
The mayor was not fazed. “I run the subways and [Hull] runs the State Department–except when I abrogate a treaty or something,” he declared in classic La Guardia style.
One dissenter within the Roosevelt administration regarding Nazi Germany was the secretary of the interior, Harold Ickes.
In late 1937, President Roosevelt approved the sale of helium to power Germany’s Zeppelin airships, telling Congress it was “sound national policy” for the United States to be “a good neighbor” to Germany.
After initially supporting the sale, Secretary Ickes reversed himself in the wake of Hitler’s annexation of Austria in March 1938. That aggression proved it would be dangerous to provide the Nazis with a gas that was “of military importance,” Ickes declared. News of the dispute leaked to the press. A number of members of Congress then publicly opposed the sale, and mail to the White House ran heavily against it as well.
At a White House conference between Roosevelt, Ickes, and the administration’s legal experts in May, the solicitor general informed the president that the sale could not go forward without the interior secretary’s approval.
But FDR refused to give up. At a cabinet session two days later, the president again pressed Ickes to support the sale; Roosevelt was backed by all but two of the cabinet members. (Labor Secretary Frances Perkins and Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, Jr. said nothing).
FDR suggested he could relieve Ickes of responsibility by giving him a letter stating it was Roosevelt’s “judgment, as Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy, that this helium was not of military importance.” Ickes still refused to budge.
It’s a pity that statesmen of the caliber of La Guardia or Ickes weren’t around when Dennis Ross was urging Israel to let Hamas import cement. One suspects they would have offered very different counsel.
(October 2023)
Wouldn’t someone have noticed all the dirt that was taken out of the tunnels?
FACTS ON FILE-——China sides w/ Hamas against Israel. As of 2022, China was Israel’s
2nd largest trading partner, with total trade value reaching a whopping $24.45 billion.
Both the Trump and Biden administrations had restricted sensitive technological exports to China. As a result, China turned to cooperative Israel. China’s direct investment in Israel’s IT industry, especially in chips and semiconductors, now has increased.
In 2017, Israeli PM Netanyahu said China accounts for one-third of the investment in Israeli high technology, which includes US military technology the US shares w/ Israel, its strongest ally. In the ’90s, Israel sold military equipment and technologies to China, including the Harpy missile system.
This incident chilled relations between the United States and Israel, with Israel being suspended from its status as Security Cooperative Participant in the Joint Strike Fighter program. However, on 6 November 2005, Israel stated that it has been re-admitted into the program.
The US had to pressure Israel to stop sharing US military technology w/ China. Yet Israel still doesn’t restrict China from acquiring dual-usage technologies that could have military implications against the US.
A succession of US administrations warned Israel about its growing tie with China, sharing concern about China using Israel as a backdoor to access sensitive technologies from the US.
The most vocal objection to Sino-Israeli ties came from the Trump administration. When former Secy of State Mike Pompeo visited Israel in 2019, he warned Israelis that the CCP “engages in spying through its commercial state-owned enterprises and presents risk through its technology systems. Pompeo said China’s actions posed a risk.
Unfortunately, Israel largely brushed aside the warnings. Like many other countries, China’s massive market has enticed Israel. Plus, the Israeli government hopes China’s good relationships with Arab nations may help Israel.
This year, Netanyahu was working on a Sino-Israeli free trade agreement and planned to visit China. But China’s siding w/ Hamas should wake up Israel’s leaders to the reality that Communist China’s relationship with Israel is purely transactional.
Who did? DENNIS ROSS did!
Remember him? He was a big deal Middle East negotiator circa year 2000. Trying to get a peace agreement between Yasser Arafat-Fatah and Israel. I forget whether this was under Bill Clinton or George Bush. This jamoke pressured Israel to allow cement imports into Gaza.
You can go see at Wikipedia —— https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Ross
“Wouldn’t someone have noticed all the dirt that was taken out of the tunnels?”
This is quite a physically demanding job, hauling the dirt upward to the surface, then hauling it somewhere. From photos I have seen, this dirt looks like red clay. Much better for tunnel support than if it were sand.
Gaza does not have many jobs. But building tunnels is one of them. Iran paid for this mischief, of course.
LATEST GAZA NEWS-——TWITTER
Israel Radar
@IsraelRadar_com
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33m
IDF: Over 12,000 Gaza targets attacked so far; 1,200 new targets detected during war; for 1st time, ground forces receive constant real-time intel via new tech tools.
Israel Radar
@IsraelRadar_com
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IDF: Number of confirmed hostages in Gaza rises to 242; Israeli intelligence efforts to locate & rescue hostages continue 24/7.
Israel Radar
@IsraelRadar_com
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3h
Next stage of Gaza war: Israeli forces moving into center of Hamas operations in Gaza City to destroy weapons depots & key command centers; fighting expected to intensify in coming days.
@MaarivOnline
Quote
Israel Radar
@IsraelRadar_com
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4h
War update:
IDF infantry & armored forces kill dozens of terrorists in Gaza battles overnight; Israeli death toll in fighting rises to 17; army bombs Hezbollah targets in Lebanon after launches into Israel. Below is IDF video of forces in Gaza. @ynetalerts & @kann_news
On the north section of the Gaza...as much as people try to portray the strip as highly urbanized...it’s mostly fruit orchards. You could have twenty trailers a day with dirt dug out, and quietly drive it up to the farms/orchards at night, and dump them.
On ‘value’ now? I don’t see any reason to allow Gaza to exist. You might as well dismantle it...close off exits, and leave whoever is down there.
Mossad
No one needed to give them concrete. They can make their own local just fine. The principle stone of the area is limestone. Are they thought to be so primitive as to not know how to set up their own lime furnace or two or three?
https://www.internationalstandardbible.com/G/geology-of-palestine.html
Funeral home with 189 decaying bodies may have given family ‘cement’ instead of ashes
Or the fact that the cement trucks were dumping into holes, instead of miles of new freeways?
A simple satellite image, once a month, would have told the story.
“On the north section of the Gaza...as much as people try to portray the strip as highly urbanized...it’s mostly fruit orchards.”
Gaza has an excellent climate for orchards and farming. It’s a shame that the POS Hamas fundamentalists have ruined this exports to the EU moneymaker. Hamas is Sunni while Iran is Shiite ruled. But since they are both wacked out Muzzie Fundamentalists, they can get along.
A few of the top Hamas fundamentalists are billionaires.
“No one needed to give them concrete. They can make their own local just fine.”
Yassir Arafat and his family had an almost monopoly on the cement business in the areas that Fatah controlled. They got very very wealthy. You know how they build houses there. With cement, concrete and rebar.
Typically, they build two story homes for extended family and leave lots of rebar pointing upward. Then when they have more money, it is easy to build a third story. Tying on to all that rebar. Then a fourth story the same way.
“The only commodity we can import from Hitlerland now is hatred,” La Guardia declared, “and we don’t want any in our country.”
Well, the nazi’s are now running the american government.
surprise!
I’m trying to figure out where the mind set came from that they were not capable of cooking their own and it all had to be imported? That is just dumb as hell. The Romans were making concrete there in the 2nd to 4th centuries.
It was Dundee Cement Company
I was wondering the same thing….
I do not know who gave the cement to hamas. However, I blame Genghis Khan. Why? He had to opportunity to kill all of the middle Easterners, aka, Iran specifically, but made the mistake of letting teenagers and women live so that they could breed more evil.
General George S. Patton was correct: “The politicians never let us finish the wars.” He simply spoke it long after Genghis Khan.
At issue is the Portland Cement needed to make concrete. Simple concrete is Portland cement, sand. aggregate and water.
Presumably sand Aggregate and water are locally available in Gaza but Portland cement must be imported
The kidnapped Isrealis are down there, dude. Easy for you to say.
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