Above all, to have the hostages released faster, there must be as few "pauses" as possible and no let-up by Israel in military pressure.

While the Israelis were urging the residents of northern Gaza to move south to avoid airstrikes, Hamas's leaders were ordering the Gazans, to stay in their homes, or were shooting at them as they tried to flee -- presumably so that Hamas could have more dead bodies to show the television crews how evil the Israelis supposedly are.

To Blinken's credit and that of the Biden administration... on November 5, he rebuffed the request of Egypt and Jordan for humanitarian aid, saying that "such a halt right now would only allow Palestinian militant group Hamas to regroup and attack Israel again."

Unfortunately, Biden also announced that the US will send $100 million in "humanitarian aid" to Hamas and the West Bank, thereby freeing up other funds to be used for further attacks

Israel, regrettably, evidently under US pressure, has just agreed to four-hour "humanitarian pauses." The concession sounds virtuous, but actually breaks a law that prohibits resupplying terrorists. To Hamas, any pause is a gift. It can restock and plan attacks, and keep re-hiding the hostages. What chance is there that a terrorist group that shoots its own citizens to keep them from fleeing to safety will hand out food water and medicine to anyone but its cohorts?

In fairness, Biden immediately sent US ships , welcome materiel, and a nuclear submarine to the area...

The US president, nevertheless, has not failed to repeat his support for a "two-state solution", even though it is now clear more than ever that the creation of a genocidal Palestinian state on what is left of Israel's small border must be unthinkable.... In such a volatile region what if Iran or Islamic State were to take over the new Palestinian State?

If the US were to incapacitate the port Iran uses to ship oil China, or take out base of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) -- or at the very least, as Gen. Jack Keane has been advocating, the base Iran uses to train troops -- the war would likely be over in a minute.

The Ukraine is indeed a worthy US involvement: if Russia can keep the Donbass and Crimea, China's Communist leader Xi Jinping will be encouraged to take Taiwan, perhaps the Philippines, all the sea lanes in the Indo-pacific, as well as further threaten Australia and Japan.

A poll for the daily Le Figaro shows that 37 percent of the French still have sympathy for Israel, while Palestine gets 20 percent and Hamas 5 percent.

Those I talked to in the demo seemed as if they had forgotten October 7, reminding me of Isaac Bashevis Singer's phrase "What a miser is a human memory!"

In the Saturday demo, there was no mention of the nearly 250 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. The so-called elites have adopted a one-way indignation posture against Israel.