If you were Israel's Prime Minister, how would you respond?

[Soloist]

The ones caught don’t really matter if they are actual threats.

[Bootstrap]

The article doesn't make that claim at all. The claim that the article makes is that no SIA apprehended by Border Patrol has killed anybody in a terrorist attack.
It kind of stands to reason that if Border Patrol apprehens a terrorist he might not get the chance to kill anyone. I'm not aware that Border Patrol arrests all of the SIAs that cross the border through legal ports of entry (I may be wrong) in which case "apprehended by" is a much smaller subset compared with your "encountered by" claim.

The article does make that claim.

I think you mean that particular sentence, taken alone, does not clearly make that claim. But if you read the whole article, it does, with clear evidence. Enough evidence to get lost in, the article is not entirely easy to read for that reason.

However, nine foreign‐​born terrorists entered the United States illegally during the 1975–2022 period. Three of the nine convicted illegal immigrant terrorists entered illegally by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. They are Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka, and they entered illegally in 1984 when they were aged 5, 3, and 1, respectively. They were arrested almost 23 years later, in 2007, while plotting to attack Fort Dix, New Jersey. Of the other illegal immigrant terrorists, five illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border (Kabbani, Thurston, Mezer, Ressam, and Abdi) and one was a stowaway on a ship (Meskini).

The United States is not awash with terrorists who are killing American citizens. The numbers of suspected terrorists or associates coming into the USA are much, much lower than the number of SIAs listed in those lists. If 73,000 terrorists entered the USA through the Southern border, I think we would see a whole lot of terrorist incidents. We don't.

September 11th did not involve crossing the Southern border, they flew in.

[Valerie]

I was simply explaining what a Special Interest Alien is. It does not mean "suspected terrorist". Was the news broadcast clear about that?

Most people trying to enter the United States from countries like Afghanistan are deemed Special Interest Aliens. Most of them are probably fleeing terrorism at home, not trying to commit terrorism here. Nobody designated as an SIA by border patrol has ever killed anyone in the United States.

And you would know that how?

I provided this link together with the claim. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank, wrote this article, which makes that claim and provides evidence:

https://www.cato.org/testimony/terroris ... est-border

The Department of Homeland Security says that the number of terrorist suspects or close associates apprehended at the border was around 100 last year and is about 160 so far this year.

That's quite different from the 72,885 Special Interest Aliens in the list. The source for this list seems to be a xweet by Bill Melugin:



Here's how he defines "Special Interest Alien":

A special interest alien is a term used by the U.S. government to refer to people coming from countries that have conditions that favor or harbor terrorism, or pose a potential national security to the U.S.

He is citing anonymous sources and data that is not available, apparently. And he only cites the last two years, so there is no way to compare this to other years:

Internal CBP data provided & confirmed by CBP sources reveals thousands of “special interest aliens” from mostly Middle Eastern countries have been apprehended by Border Patrol while crossing into U.S. illegally over last 2 years.

Regardless, most people from these countries are not suspected terrorists.

Let's not be naive. The burning of American Flags together with Usraeli flags together I dicate hatred to the "Big Satan" they call us. The chant in Iran on a daily basis is "Death to America". We've been warned of sleeper cells for 1 decades. This attack by Gamas was planned for ladtv2 years. The leader of Hamas called for Global Jihad to be Octoberc13. Thankfully it did not transpire. I've been watching closely the reporting since the massacre in Israel. Radical Isalm hates Ammerica. There is NO good reason these men from the countries of concern should be crossing the border. Continue to be in denial of what has been reported since the attack. The "soneday" may happen so let's keep that in mind as we have an administration that has created a much worse situation at the border. How ignorant can he be?? And 'vocal" support of Israel by gim did not help their feelings towards USA. It was interesting that 2 countries leaders refused to meet with Biden when he went to Israel a few days ago.
Anyways- I won't argue it anymore. I realize you are not watching the reporting as I was solidly for 2 weeks. Even our untrustworthy FBI had warnings.

[ken_sylvania]

The article doesn't make that claim at all. The claim that the article makes is that no SIA apprehended by Border Patrol has killed anybody in a terrorist attack.
It kind of stands to reason that if Border Patrol apprehens a terrorist he might not get the chance to kill anyone. I'm not aware that Border Patrol arrests all of the SIAs that cross the border through legal ports of entry (I may be wrong) in which case "apprehended by" is a much smaller subset compared with your "encountered by" claim.

The article does make that claim.

I think you mean that particular sentence, taken alone, does not clearly make that claim. But if you read the whole article, it does, with clear evidence. Enough evidence to get lost in, the article is not entirely easy to read for that reason.

However, nine foreign‐​born terrorists entered the United States illegally during the 1975–2022 period. Three of the nine convicted illegal immigrant terrorists entered illegally by crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. They are Dritan Duka, Eljvir Duka, and Shain Duka, and they entered illegally in 1984 when they were aged 5, 3, and 1, respectively. They were arrested almost 23 years later, in 2007, while plotting to attack Fort Dix, New Jersey. Of the other illegal immigrant terrorists, five illegally crossed the U.S.-Canada border (Kabbani, Thurston, Mezer, Ressam, and Abdi) and one was a stowaway on a ship (Meskini).

The United States is not awash with terrorists who are killing American citizens. The numbers of suspected terrorists or associates coming into the USA are much, much lower than the number of SIAs listed in those lists. If 73,000 terrorists entered the USA through the Southern border, I think we would see a whole lot of terrorist incidents. We don't.

September 11th did not involve crossing the Southern border, they flew in.

I think the article is very clear that they only looked at terrorism related killings, not generic murders, etc.

I said what I meant, and I meant what I said.

[Dan Z]

Just jumping in here with my 2 cents, I don't see that Hamas has left the Israeli government with much choice but to speedily and dramatically neutralize Hamas and all terrorist functionality within Gaza. Hamas has triggered the hell that Gaza will face (although Israel's long-term lack of creative peacemaking in Palestine has contributed to the desperation that breeds Hamas militants). I just wish there was a way that Israeli objectives could be achieved surgically, over time, rather than by catastrophically destroying the homeland of over 2 million already impoverished people (at great cost to lives and wellbeing) in the process of neutralizing their enemy.

It all just makes me sad.

[Bootstrap]

Let's not be naive.

!!! SNIP !!!

Anyways- I won't argue it anymore. I realize you are not watching the reporting as I was solidly for 2 weeks. Even our untrustworthy FBI had warnings.

If we don't want to be naive, I think it's worth considering the fact that some reporting is sensationalist. They make money by getting people worked up. That's their business model. So we should not treat them as the ultimate source of truth. If you believe everything they tell you, I think that's naive.

If 73,000 terrorists slipped in through the Southern border, I think something big would happen. These 73,000 people are people who were caught trying to enter illegally. They did not get in. That's what "apprehended" means. People who come from countries like Afghanistan, and may well be fleeing terror there. They are not designated as suspected terrorists, that's a different list. If the reporting was not clear about these things, I wouldn't trust that source.

[Valerie]

Just jumping in here with my 2 cents, I don't see that Hamas has left the Israeli government with much choice but to speedily and dramatically neutralize Hamas and all terrorist functionality within Gaza. Hamas has triggered the hell that Gaza will face (although Israel's long-term lack of creative peacemaking in Palestine has contributed to the desperation that breeds Hamas militants). I just wish there was a way that Israeli objectives could be achieved surgically, over time, rather than by catastrophically destroying the homeland of over 2 million already impoverished people (at great cost to lives and wellbeing) in the process of neutralizing their enemy.

It all just makes me sad.

It makes all of us sad Dan. This attack did interrupt a peace process in the works- what did Hamas EXPECT would happen. Hamas is not the first to want to rid the world of Jews.
Curious why 9/11 happened on American soil?
Why did Hamas call for Global Jihad?
We have to realize this is not just about Palesinians otherwise Hamas would not putcthem in harms way.

[Dan Z]

Just jumping in here with my 2 cents, I don't see that Hamas has left the Israeli government with much choice but to speedily and dramatically neutralize Hamas and all terrorist functionality within Gaza. Hamas has triggered the hell that Gaza will face (although Israel's long-term lack of creative peacemaking in Palestine has contributed to the desperation that breeds Hamas militants). I just wish there was a way that Israeli objectives could be achieved surgically, over time, rather than by catastrophically destroying the homeland of over 2 million already impoverished people (at great cost to lives and wellbeing) in the process of neutralizing their enemy.

It all just makes me sad.

It makes all of us sad Dan. This attack did interrupt a peace process in the works- what did Hamas EXPECT would happen. Hamas is not the first to want to rid the world of Jews.
Curious why 9/11 happened on American soil?
Why did Hamas call for Global Jihad?
We have to realize this is not just about Palesinians otherwise Hamas would not putcthem in harms way.

This makes sense Valerie - the Hamas end game appears to be to win their cause by invoking a Gaza catastrophe that would incense and provoke the Arab world into a unified outpouring of hate-filled force against Israel. And sadly, Israel may have little choice but to give them just what they want.

[Bootstrap]

Just jumping in here with my 2 cents, I don't see that Hamas has left the Israeli government with much choice but to speedily and dramatically neutralize Hamas and all terrorist functionality within Gaza. Hamas has triggered the hell that Gaza will face (although Israel's long-term lack of creative peacemaking in Palestine has contributed to the desperation that breeds Hamas militants).

Is it even possible to speedily and dramatically neutralize Hamas and all terrorist functionality within Gaza? What exactly are the military objectives that would achieve that goal?

I just wish there was a way that Israeli objectives could be achieved surgically, over time, rather than by catastrophically destroying the homeland of over 2 million already impoverished people (at great cost to lives and wellbeing) in the process of neutralizing their enemy.

It all just makes me sad.

I agree. But I also wonder what the military objective is. It's easy to catastrophically destroy the homeland of over 2 million already impoverished people (at great cost to lives and wellbeing). It's much harder to know how to target Hamas. After all, Hamas is a movement, it's not a point on a map that you can bomb, and Hamas lives on outrage.

Ezra Klein's last podcast was good on this point: Israel is giving Hamas what it wants:

Oct. 7 was Israel’s Sept. 11. That’s been the refrain. I fear that analogy carries so much more truth than the people making it intend.

[Bootstrap]

It makes all of us sad Dan. This attack did interrupt a peace process in the works- what did Hamas EXPECT would happen. Hamas is not the first to want to rid the world of Jews.
Curious why 9/11 happened on American soil?
Why did Hamas call for Global Jihad?
We have to realize this is not just about Palesinians otherwise Hamas would not putcthem in harms way.

This makes sense Valerie - the Hamas end game appears to be to win their cause by invoking a Gaza catastrophe that would incense and provoke the Arab world into a unified outpouring of hate-filled force against Israel. And sadly, Israel may have little choice but to give them just what they want.

I agree with both of you.

The fact that there was no peace process in the works - and has not been for a very long time - is relevant. But it will now be a very long time before another peace process can begin. Israel needs to do something else now.

But it's hard to define a "something else" that doesn't make things even worse. I think some of the things the US did after September 11th did make things worse. I think Biden was right when he said this:

Since this terrorist attack — terrorist attack took place, we have seen it described as Israel’s 9/11. But for a nation the size of Israel, it was like 15 9/11s. The scale may be different, but I’m sure those horrors have tapped into so- — some kind of primal feeling in Israel, just like it did and felt in the United States.

Shock, pain, rage — an all-consuming rage. I understand, and many Americans understand.

You can’t look at what has happened here to your mothers, your fathers, your grandparents, sons, daughters, children — even babies — and not scream out for justice. Justice must be done.

But I caution this: While you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it.

After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. And while we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.

I’m the first U.S. president to visit Israel in time of war.

I’ve made wartime decisions. I know the choices are never clear or easy for the leadership. There’s always costs.

But it requires being deliberate. It requires asking very hard questions. It requires clarity about the objectives and an honest assessment about whether the path you are on will achieve those objectives.