Once again, events are happening too fast for me to keep up with. The presidential campaigns are accelerating, the polls remain tight, and FEMA’s relief efforts in the wake of Helene are being badly bungled, in keeping with Biden-Harris’ sterling record over the last four years.
Meanwhile, my oldest daughter remains in the hospital in Denver – she’s making progress and doing well, and thanks for your continued prayers — and now it’s my youngest daughter’s turn to be in the path of a second storm in as many weeks. Thankfully she’s on the Atlantic coast, and so Milton will likely be a tropical storm rather than a hurricane by the time it reaches her campus.
Additionally, I’ve noticed a moment in the Vance-Walz debate that I’d over-looked before, and I also need to take some well-deserved shots at Que Mala’s beta-boy role-model husband, Doug Emhoff.
But I’m going to have to save all that for a Wednesday column, because today is the anniversary of the evil attacks on Israel last October, and attention must be paid.
Regular readers know that I’m a big fan of Israel’s approach over the last several months: they’re ignoring Biden and the Democrats’ advice and input – everywhere and at all times a wise move! – and they’ve been pursuing terrorists with the wrath of an Old Testament God. (Some might even say THE Old Testament God.)
I admire the way they’ve minimized civilian casualties, achieving a civilians-to-enemy-combatants-killed ratio far lower than in any war in all of history, including the ones we’ve waged during our own country’s history.
And I love the way they’ve mixed traditional arms and operations with high-tech tweaks, psychological warfare, and hilarious, intelligence-aided trickery to take out the top levels of Hamas and Hezbollah. The latest details came out in a story this weekend, explaining how the weapons geeks in Israel had wired the explosive pagers such that an authentication message appeared on the screens of those pagers that didn’t detonate in pockets.
The authentication process to read the page required the users to touch two different buttons on both sides of the pagers, which meant that many of the terrorists who received the page had both of their hands mangled or blown off, along with being blinded if they were holding the pager close to their faces when they pressed those buttons.
It’s almost enough to make you feel sorry for them, until you remember who they are, and what they did to end up holding those pagers in the first place.
The frequency of Israel’s successes is making it hard to keep up with the latest news. I remember that during the Iraq war, we made a deck of cards featuring the 52 top scumbags in Saddam’s regime. As our forces advanced, we started taking playing cards off the table.
That wouldn’t work for Israel, though, because they’d be changing out cards faster than a casino trying to cool off a gambler on a hot streak at the blackjack table. In just two air strikes – the one that took out Nasrallah and his deputies and the one the week before that – they wiped out the equivalent of three entire suits of cards.
Each day I come across a story about the latest Hezbollah boss to assume rubble temperature. These guys are dropping like old Soviet commies in the Reagan era. We try to set up a phone call with Achmed Brezhnev, only to find out that he’s been replaced with Muhammad Andropov, and before Tony Blinken can catch a flight over to kiss his butt, he’s replaced by Hassan Chernenko.
Last Wednesday, Israel located Khider al-Shaebia, the terrorist responsible for the rocket attack on 7/27 that killed 12 Druze children playing soccer. Apparently al-Shaebia wasn’t carrying a detonating pager in his pocket on 9/17, because he didn’t get turned into the Queen of al-Shaebia that day. So the IDF had to eliminate him the old-fashioned way: with an airstrike.
The latest head of Hezbollah was Hashem Safi Al-Din, who enjoyed a tenure of 7 days in office before experiencing rapid molecular disassembly last Friday, courtesy of an IDF air strike. Several of his likely successor candidates are high-ranking members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Fortunately, they were gathered around Al-Din when the clock struck Boom!
At this point, I’d love to be a fly on the shell-pocked wall, observing a bunch of the remaining, twitchy Hezbo commanders meeting to decide the next leader. I don’t know how they do that in the first place. It’s not like they’ve got a phone chain they can use. And I’m guessing that emails or zoom calls are out, too.
But however they put the word out, they somehow end up cowering around a folding table with one leg missing under a half-collapsed parking garage down a rubble-strewn alley. I’m picturing it goes something like this:
Weird Beard #1: You’ve probably already heard that Muhammad Abdul Aziz was killed by the Jewish pig-dogs.
Weird Beard #2: Oh no! How’d they get him? Exploding pager? Exploding radio?
WB#1: Poisoned hummus. (One guy starts spitting violently.) What are you doing?
Spitting Guy: I just ate some hummus.
WB#3: We ALL just ate hummus. The Jews haven’t poisoned all the hummus in Lebanon.
WB#2: Are you sure?
(They all look at each other uncertainly.)
WB#4: I thought Muhammad Abdul Aziz got killed when his scooter exploded.
WB#1: No, that was Abdul Aziz Muhammad. He died last Thursday. We’re talking about Muhammad Abdul Aziz. He was halfway through a romantic dinner with his goat bride when he pitched down face-first in his bowl of hummus.
WB#5: I thought he was blown up when he knelt on an explosive prayer rug?
WB#6: No, that was Mohammad Aziz Abdul, last Friday. The hummus thing was this Monday.
WB#2: Are you sure? Because I thought—
WB#1: Okay look. For the last time, here’s the rundown:
A week ago Friday, Hassan Nasrallah got a building dropped on him, along with a half-dozen other Nasrallah cousins and brothers, two of his brother’s-in-law, and his father-in-law.
On Saturday, Muhammad Suleiman was named as his replacement. When he went to his brother Abdul Suleiman’s house on Sunday to announce the good news, a ring doorbell that the Jews had installed two months ago blew his head off.
Abdul became the leader, but on Wednesday he used a q-tip that Mossad had coated with napalm, and his head caught fire.
Hassan Suleiman was elected on Thursday, but on Saturday he found—
WB#5 (snapping his fingers and pointing): The kosher cobra in the toilet!
WB#1 (sighing): Yes, the cobra in the toilet. Then Hassan Abdul took over, and he stayed in his house until Wednesday, when someone slipped a copy of the Beirut Post under his front door.
(The men in the circle looked at each other.)
WB#3: Self-igniting newspaper?
WB#4: Poisoned newsprint ink?
WB#6: Oh, I know! The paper had the transcript of a Kamala Harris interview, and halfway through reading it he shot himself in the head because he couldn’t stand it any more?
WB#1 (shaking his head): Exploding eyeglasses, courtesy of Shin Bet Optometrists.
Then it was Abdul Aziz Muhammad on the scooter on Thursday, then Muhammad Aziz Abdul with the detonating prayer rug last Friday, then Muhammad Abdul Aziz with the poison hummus on Monday.
WB#2: So now who’s up?
Everyone looks at everybody else, then most of them stare at their sandals, or at the ceiling, or out into the alley, whistling softly.
WB#1 (pulling out a bunch of straws, snapping one off, then mixing them up and holding his hand out with their ends sticking out) Everybody pick one.
They all choose with shaking hands, and Muhammad Muhammad Aziz pulls the short one. He sighs deeply, while everyone bows their head to him and calls him “Sheik.”
MMA: Great. Let me ask one favor though. Whatever you do, when you are setting up the seating chart for my funeral, don’t seat my goat wife anywhere near my goat mistress. They do not get along, and I don’t want trouble.
And, scene.
On this somber anniversary, I wish fitful sleep, haunted dreams and swift justice for the Iranian government, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis. For the Israelis, I wish good luck and good hunting, and the return of the remaining hostages.
Hamas delenda est!
Martin Simpson 