Israel goes Welsh or Indian or Gypsie

Good afternoon to both Loyalist and Nationalist readers of Stroock's Books. The temp is 52 degrees today, that's American not Canadian. 

Mrs. Stroock will be away thru Thursday. Could be an interesting week here. 

Let's pop on over to FB to see if a European friend has begun yet another morning by sending us yet another article about the awfulness of Donald Trump and how dare you Americans not support Ukraine? No. No, he hasn't. We're relieved but also a little disappointed. Update: never mind, there it is. Yay Ukraine, we guess. 

So the same Israeli squadron that buried Hassan Nasrallah beneath tons of rubble last September buzzed his funeral yesterday. Which is nice. Another squadron bombed several Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. The IDF has lifted all restrictions on people returning to northern border towns. The Hezbollah War may well and truly be over. 

Meanwhile after Hamas' hostage ceremony depravity, Israel is refusing to release 609 terrorists previously agreed to for the hostage/terrorist swap. Is Hamas Gypped (Romaed?)? Did Netanyahu Welsh on the deal? Is Bibi an Indian giver? Choose whatever retrograde un-PC term you like for Bibi's move, but we like it. 

President Trump says he supports this measure fully. The Trump Administration's rhetoric has been 100 percent pro-Israel, staunchly so. Behind the scenes though, it seems Trump is exerting a lot of pressure on Netanyahu to get to stage 2 of the hostage deal. But public statements matter, and Trump is exerting even more pressure upon the Arabs. What a difference a month makes. 

Yesterday we read through half a dozen scenes in World War 1990: Thatcher's War. The Battle of Londonderry, or Derry for you Calvinists (see what we're doing?), is coming along. Embiggen we shall. 

As noted yesterday, this week is A line Through the Desert Week here at Stroock's Books. 'Let's move some merch,' we concluded optimistically. We didn't move some merch. Which is standard. That first year, that first awful year of 2009, we moved 123 copies of A Line through the Desert, softcover all as we hadn't yet discovered Kindle. ALTD's best year was 2013, when we finally exploded on Amazon with Israel Strikes. 

We thought that magnificent cover would sell books. It didn't. We thought the description and book blurb would sell books. It didn't. We thought an advertising campaign would sell books and....you guess it. It didn't. 

A Line Through the Desert Week is an experiment, to see if we can move a few copies via relentless book dropping. So if you want to read an extremely technical military novel that begins with teen angst and ends with young people maturing and handling their problems like adults, with an interlude about the last tank battle of the 20th century, why not pick up a copy?