Virtue Signaling By The St. Petersburg City Council
Don't cities already have enough issues to deal with?
Last week, St. Petersburg, FL, city council member Richie Floyd introduced HE-3, a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza. I am all for a cease-fire in Gaza and the end of Hamas terror over Gazans and Israelis alike. I don’t understand why a city council anywhere would discuss and pass a unilateral resolution demanding a cease-fire in Gaza. Chicago recently approved such a resolution, and given the news from there, with street killings out of control, people fleeing, unfunded pensions, and a host of other unaddressed problems that should automatically disqualify anyone from making such a resolution. Fiddling while Chicago burns, so to speak.
Gazans are suffering because Hamas wants them to suffer. Messrs. Haniyeh and Sinwar, in their luxurious accommodations provided by Qatar, could return the hostages tomorrow, and the war would stop. The problem is that they love dead Gazan babies and adults almost as much as they love tortured, slaughtered, and kidnapped Israelis. Dead Gazans serve the purpose of radicalizing their political, economic, and social grip on Gaza. The Al-Akasa Flood has well and truly turned into a nightmare for Gazans, courtesy of the sociopathic culture of Islamist death lovers.
The resolution tracks H. Res. 786, introduced by Reps. Tlaib, Omar, Ocasio-Cortez, Pressly, Coleman, and Cory Bush called for a cease-fire imposed only on Israel. There are ten US citizens and over a hundred twenty-five Israelis who were taken hostage, and the International Committee of the Red Cross has not seen them. I suppose they must stay hidden while Hamas benefits from a cease-fire. No mention is made of them.
Some background might be helpful. In 2005, the Israeli government forcefully evacuated all Jewish residents from the Gaza Strip in the hopes of peace. They gave the Gaza Strip to the residents living there. Freely, unilaterally, in the hopes that the people living there would enrich their lives and seek peace. The removal of those people was a very controversial action within Israel and around the world. The Israeli Defense Forces were seen on television removing Jews from their homes to give those homes, farms, and businesses to Arabs. Gazans tore down the hydroponic gardens and housing, leaving all infrastructure left intact by Israel as rubble..
Since that time, there has been no Israeli occupying force in Gaza and no Israeli troops in Gaza. Within two years after Israel's unilateral disengagement, the Gazans had selected the Islamic extremist group Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, as its leadership.
Hamas' Charter calls for the eradication of the State of Israel, as well as the Jewish people worldwide. Christians, Buddhists, and Hindus are also apostates. Kuffirs (apostate non-Muslims) cannot be allowed to exist either. Approving such a resolution requires that the Jewish population within St. Petersburg, Florida, neighbors, and constituents of the city council must all be murdered.
Hamas, as a group, had been attacking Israel since before Israel unilaterally gave the Gaza Strip to the residents there, including the firing of rockets at Israeli civilian population centers like Ashkelon, Sderot, and others. They continued doing so afterward.
After Hamas took governing control of the Gaza Strip and militarized the region, Israel and Egypt closed their borders for fear that the militants would export their extremist philosophy and warfare. Israel blockaded weaponry and other war supplies and machinery from getting into the Gaza Strip. At the same time, Hamas and Iran continued to ship weaponry into Gaza for the sole purpose of conducting strikes against Israel and Jews.
Instead of bettering the lives of Gaza's residents, for almost two decades, Hamas has used aid monies and whatever material entered Gaza to build weapons and fortify its positions within the Gaza Strip for the sole purpose of attacking Israel.
The United Nations furthered this purpose through its "aid" organization "UNRWA," which also promoted propaganda to children to hate and kill Jews at UNRWA schools and other institutions. These textbooks are documented and were solely intended to radicalize the population, which it has.
United Nations aid (unknowingly mainly funded by American tax dollars) went to supplying concrete, steel, and other building materials to create the world's largest underground tunnel and fortification network, extending hundreds of feet below Gaza from every religious, hospital, police, and residence location imaginable. It is now estimated that the "length" of the UN-funded Hamas tunnels exceeds any of the world's subway or metro systems. That doesn't account for the multilevel platforms, blast doors, bunkers, weapons caches, and other boobie traps within those fortifications. It was also paid for with our federal tax dollars.
Then came October 7, 2023, a Saturday and one of the holiest days of the Jewish calendar. The military wing of Hamas, the recognized government in Gaza, launched an attack and invasion of Israel from these UN-built fortifications. October 7, 2023, was the largest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust.
This Hamas invasion consisted of thousands of fighters using coordinated air, sea, land, and cyber-based attack units. The targets were primarily Israeli civilians asleep in their beds. Children were intentionally targeted in front of their parents, and peace activists at a concert were brutally raped and murdered. Yes, raped and gang raped. Babies were beheaded and tortured to death. The elderly and infirm were intentionally killed in the most horrific ways possible. The killings were planned, filmed, and live-streamed. In one image that I have seen and can't get out of my head, a four-year-old toddler was crucified on the wall of his home in front of his parents, and then he was left hanging there. Yes, crucified. Like Jesus Christ. A four-year-old.
Hundreds of hostages were brought back into Gaza and hidden in the tunnel fortification systems to protect the perpetrators. These hostages include American citizens, as were those killed. And in case this makes a difference to you, the victims were not just Jews.
Israel shut down its economy, evacuated hundreds of thousands of citizens from the "Gaza envelope" and the Lebanese border, mobilized its forces, and sent the IDF into Gaza to retrieve the hostages and capture, kill, and eliminate the perpetrators, Hamas.
Israel would have been well within its rights under international law to carpet bomb Gaza in retaliation for the invasion and Gazan war crimes, just as the allies did in WW2, but Israel did not do that. Israel would have been well within its rights under international law to use massive unguided munitions, just as we did when we invaded Afghanistan after 9/11, but Israel did not do that. If Israel had done so, the war would have been over within days, maybe a few weeks. The dead would have been innumerable.
Instead, Israel sent its troops into Gaza and placed them at risk for months now in a war it did not seek and did not want. Instead of using large bombs, Israel used many carefully guided munitions targeted for their strikes. Each strike is carefully reviewed to minimize civilian casualties. Israel does so because it adheres to the Judeo-Christian values we share and hold dear. Because it is correct.
On the other hand, civilians are placed in harm's way by Hamas, which uses civilians as human shields. It has been documented that Hamas has shot civilians for seeking to leave the war zone.
Of the many casualties in this horrible war, there is no way to know how many are combatants because they all dress as civilians. How many are killed by Hamas? If a 12-year-old is shooting at you with an AK-47, is he a combatant or a child?
More relevant to the citizens in St. Petersburg are the many (weekly, if not daily) marches and demonstrations within US cities after October 7. These marches support Hamas and call for the genocide of the Jews, including American Jews…your neighbors and constituents. "Gas the Jews!", "River to the Sea," "Hitler was Right!" and others are chants and signs being hailed and carried down American streets and colleges. American college campuses are becoming anti-Semitic hotbeds where Jewish students are being harassed, assaulted, and attacked.
Not being Jewish, you may not be that cognizant of these events and their meanings, but I can assure you that the council’s Jewish neighbors and constituents see and hear them all.
The Jews in the US feel mostly betrayed and abandoned by their allies, many of whom the Jewish community has stood by and marched in their trying times of need. Many of your Jewish neighbors are arming themselves in anticipation of future "problems" here in America, with the growing realization that their friends and government will abandon them as being not worthy of support, the epitome of antisemitic indifference.
The commissioner who introduced HE-3 knows it will not have any real or practical effect on the war. Israel, a multicultural democracy, is almost uniformly in support of the Israeli Defense Forces, the war in Gaza, bringing the hostages home, and eradicating Hamas as a threat to Israel. Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze, White, Black, Arab, Bedouin, men, women, children, elderly, left-wing, right-wing, religious, and secular all support this war and the removal of these active threats to Israel and its populations. None of them are safe while Hamas is in power.
Hamas has stated that it will continue to attack Israel any chance it gets that October 7 was only a rehearsal! Those are Hamas's own words. Any ceasefire with Hamas still functioning is just an invitation for Hamas to do it again. Gazans themselves have started to demonstrate against Hamas and want their ouster. If the Israeli government sought to stop the war, it could not. It would be voted out and replaced with a government that would continue. If anything, the types of resolutions considered and passed will entrench Israelis' belief that it must complete its task because Jews have nowhere else to go. We have no other haven.
A council member’s vote, however, will send a strong message to the Jews who are your neighbors and constituents. Those of us who are here at home. Who goes to the synagogue down the street? Who sits next to you at dinner? Will you stand with us? Will you abandon us? Will you fight for us and our rights, or have you decided we no longer deserve your support and protection? Will you abandon your Jewish neighbors and constituents to make a political point? Because that is what you would be doing in supporting resolution HE-3.
Let’s examine a few facts about the situation. Hamas started it long before October 7. No Israelis occupied Gaza. Egypt has a border crossing at Rafa into Gaza, but very little aid gets through it. Under it, guns, ammo, and all sorts of illegal things get into Gaza through tunnels dug by Hamas. Gazans can’t mix with their Sunni Arab brethren across that border because the government doesn’t want radical Islamists in.
Meanwhile, Israel has traditionally allowed the crossing of food, medicines, diesel, and every good of almost every kind to flow into Gaza. Hamas has used concrete and steel to build scores of kilometers of concrete-reinforced tunnels, not for civil defense use by civilians to protect them from the “Zionist Entity.” They’re used for weapons manufacture, carrying out rocket fire into Israel, and other non-productive uses. Who gets blamed? Israel, of course.
A cease-fire imposed on Israel only benefits Hamas and allows them to emerge from their hiding and re-arm to attack Israel again and again. When people tell you that they will kill you, you should take heed.
History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes.