Biden Administration's $10 Billion Prize to Iran - Majid Rafizadeh

 

​ by Majid Rafizadeh

Just A Small Thank You for Engineering a War, Wounding 56 US Troops and Trying to Drive the US Out of The Middle East.

 

• From the Iranian regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would presumably be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater than Saudi Arabia's.

• The dedicated funds that this new $10 billion will release can now be used to put the finishing touches on the mullahs' nuclear bomb – to threaten their Sunni neighbors in the Gulf, Europe, and above all, "The Great Satan, the United States. Iran's plans for cutting "The Great Satan" (and others) down to size are already underway in Cuba and throughout South America. Earlier this month, Israel helped Brazil thwart an attack by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hizballah on Brazil's Jews.

• Sadly, the $10 billion looks suspiciously like a "pretty please" bribe not to try to drive the US out of the region this year [before the 2024 US election]; instead, wait for next year.

• The solution is not to give Iran $10 billion as a prize for practicing extensive regional aggression and engineering mass-murder. Real solutions would include cutting the flow of funds by re-imposing -- and enforcing -- primary and secondary sanctions; incapacitating the port from which Iran sends oil to China; sending Ayatollah Khamenei and the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) pictures of their homes; making the ruling mullahs seriously aware of military options, such as taking out the training bases and leadership of the IRGC, and employing significant military force when required -- for instance now.

From the Iranian regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would presumably be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater than Saudi Arabia's. (Image source: iStock)

Who needs the Nobel Peace Prize when you can have the Biden War Prize? That's right, the Biden administration announced this week that it plans to give the Iranian regime another $10 billion in unfrozen assets from Oman, apparently as a small token of appreciation for launching a savage war in the Middle East and targeting US troops in the region at least 56 times, wounding at least 56 US servicemen, many with traumatic brain injury -- in just one month! Where does everyone sign up?

The total number of attacks on US troops by the Iranian regime since US President Joe Biden assumed office, is (so far) 139: 83 before March, 56 since. This new $10 billion comes on top of the earlier "closer to $60 billion" it already gave the regime by not enforcing sanctions against it.

One fairy tale making the rounds is that the funds will only be used for "humanitarian purposes." As your pet cat knows, that just frees up other funds that would have been used for humanitarian purposes to do anything else the mullahs want– as they already announced about an earlier $6 billion deal that was reportedly quietly scuttled "for now." The mullahs' priorities no doubt include further funding their proxy militias -- a sophisticated example of outsourcing other people to die for you. Their proxies include Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis, all of which since October 7, been ganging up on Israel, while the mullahs stay home and watch. If a million Palestinians and Israelis die in the process, to the mullahs, at least it wasn't them. The dedicated funds that this new $10 billion will release can now be used to put the finishing touches on the mullahs' nuclear bomb – to threaten their Sunni neighbors in the Gulf, Europe, and above all, "The Great Satan, the United States. Iran's plans for cutting "The Great Satan" (and others) down to size are already underway in Cuba and throughout South America. Earlier this month, Israel helped Brazil thwart an attack by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hizballah on Brazil's Jews.

As Iranian dissident and Nobel Prize nominee Masih Alinejad reminded the world this week, "...for the Islamic Republic, eliminating Israel is [a] humanitarian cause!"

The Biden administration may be hoping to bribe Iran's mullahs not to rock the Middle East further until after the US presidential election on November 5, 2024 – but so long as the West does not recognize the sad fact that payments, concessions and appeasement have only emboldened the theocratic establishment of Iran and its new allies, Russia and especially China, the mullahs will simply feel more empowered -- and presumably act accordingly, if not on Biden's watch, on that of the next president. The blackmail price for a short-term, fake peace goes only one way: up.

The Iranian regime's organizations and the ministry of education have recently been promoting in their schools a new practice that has now become compulsory: "Hello Commander." Children are obliged to sing "Hello Commander! Sayyid Ali [Khamenei] has called his children [to mobilize]!" and they say that they are prepared to sacrifice their life for the "Commander". In response to this propaganda, a tweet read: "In his last years, like all other dictators, Hitler resorted to performance of a 'Hello Commander' song in schools to reassure his supporters but this didn't save him from defeat because it was too late".

One of the Iranian regime's most non-negotiable and fundamental revolutionary ideals is exporting its ideology and system of (Velayat e Faqih: Guardianship of the Islamic Jurist) to other countries. The late founder of the Islamic Republic, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, introduced a revolutionary notion in Islamic Shiite thought with the concept, which means an Islamic Shia clergy or an ayatollah should have custodianship and power over the people across the world, should rule over people and should be the final decision maker.

The regime calls this core mission, Jihad; it can be achieved only through hard power and violence, never through peace and negotiations. As the Islamic Republic's constitution points out: "The Army of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps ... will be responsible not only for guarding and preserving the frontiers of the country, but also for fulfilling the ideological mission of jihad in God's way; that is, extending the sovereignty of God's law throughout the world."

Ayatollah Khomeini repeated this important Islamic mission on several occasions. He famously said, "We shall export our revolution to the whole world," he said. "Until the cry there is no god but Allah resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle." [Emphasis added.]

From the Iranian regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would presumably be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater than Saudi Arabia's.

For the revolutionary regime of Iran, all that matters is the triumph of Islam. "We do not worship Iran," stated the regime's current leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, "we worship Allah. For patriotism is another name for paganism. I say let this land [Iran] burn. I say let this land go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the rest of the world." "Islam," he added, "is politics or it is nothing."

To achieve this revolutionary ideal of creating one nation under Islam, the ruling mullahs believe that whoever does not obey them, including other Muslims, is an infidel and must be eliminated. As Ayatollah Khomeini warned, "If one permits an infidel to continue in his role as a corrupter of the earth, the infidel's moral suffering will be all the worse. If one kills the infidel, and this stops him from perpetrating his misdeeds, his death will be a blessing to him." He adds, "All those against the revolution must disappear and quickly be executed."

The regime's key mission is securely incorporated in Iran's current constitution:

"The constitution provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad. In particular, in the development of international relations, the constitution will strive with other Islamic and popular movements to prepare the way for the formation of a single world community."

Iran's predatory, radical regime, whose mission is to "Export the Revolution" bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world by means of its military and terror groups, will not stop its Jihad and alter its aims through appeasement. From the regime's perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater, they might expect, than Saudi Arabia's.

Sadly, the $10 billion looks suspiciously like a "pretty please" bribe not to try to drive the US out of the region this year; instead, wait for next year.

In the 1930s, Britain pursued a policy of appeasing Hitler and Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding a war. To the contrary, as we know, that view only empowered Germany to invade and attempt to take over other nations. The policy of appeasement led to World War ll.

The solution is not to give Iran $10 billion as a prize for practicing extensive regional aggression and engineering mass-murder. Real solutions would include cutting the flow of funds by re-imposing -- and enforcing -- primary and secondary sanctions; incapacitating the port from which Iran sends oil to China; sending Ayatollah Khamenei and the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) pictures of their homes; making the ruling mullahs seriously aware of military options, such as taking out the training bases and leadership of the IRGC, and employing significant military force when required -- for instance now.

• Follow Majid Rafizadeh on X (formerly Twitter)

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20152/biden-10-billion-prize-to-iran

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A Resonating Message to Iran: Your Oil Exports Fuel Genocide - Lawrence Kadish

 

​ by Lawrence Kadish

At the very least, the United States should return to a policy that seeks to bring Iran "to its senses" if not its knees. It's time to return and enforce strict economic sanctions immediately.

(Image source: iStock)

As Imperial Japan of 1940 pursued a strategy of aggression and murderous destruction in China, the United States sought to confront Tokyo with a strategy of economic restrictions, trade embargoes, and the threat of frozen financial assets.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) said at the time it was not his intent to bring Japan to its knees but to its senses.

There are lessons from policies and strategies forged nearly 85 years ago that need to be learned and applied as it becomes evident to those even in deliberate denial that Iran remains the malevolent force in the Middle East, masterminding the recent carnage inflicted by Hamas on Israel.

Under FDR, the Commerce Department created a task force of specialists that identified key commodities they believed were vital to Japan functioning as a society and important to their military. From rubber and petroleum to chromium and silk, Japan's imports and exports were analyzed within the context of their war-making capabilities. The U.S. Treasury would also deploy their analysts to track Japan's cash reserves, including their tens of millions of dollars that, even then, was a crucial global currency for international trade.

Today, the United States is facing an Iran that has used diplomatic guile, terrorist surrogates, and hidden cryptocurrency transfers to handle everything from paying for imports to funding those who will do their bidding in Gaza and Syria. They are a sophisticated and ruthless enemy. Yet they are strategically vulnerable if America and her allies are prepared to use that most potent of weapons: economic sanctions.

Analysts report that Iranian oil exports have significantly increased over the past three years as U.S. sanctions eased. To no surprise, China has taken advantage of the opportunity to literally fuel their economy with Tehran's "liquid gold." But that is a minor sideshow compared to how Iran has used its surging oil profits to instigate a conflict that has catastrophically harmed the ability of the Middle East to find peace. Tragically, it has been the misguided policies of the current White House that allowed these events to unfold.

Some may argue that with militants in Syria attacking American forces at the direction of Iran, we have the right to respond by mining the waters off Iran's oil terminals. That escalation would surely have unintended consequences, but our failure to enforce and sustain crippling economic sanctions requires us to understand the forces of evil we have allowed to be unleashed.

At the very least, the United States should return to a policy that seeks to bring Iran "to its senses" if not its knees. It's time to return and enforce strict economic sanctions immediately.

Lawrence Kadish serves on the Board of Governors of Gatestone Institute.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20151/iran-oil-exports

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Is Israel-Arab peace fading or holding strong in the face of war? - Troy O. Fitzhand

 

​ by Troy O. Fitzhand

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said at least three times since the Gaza war started that peace is still likely on the horizon.

 

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (center) presides over the Joint Arab-Islamic Extraordinary Summit in Riyadh, Nov. 11, 2023. Credit: The Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

Judging only by public statements by Arab leaders, including signatories to the 2020 Abraham Accords peace treaties with Israel, you would think that the Jewish state’s ties with the Arab world are at a decades’ low, and any peace made, or in the works, is all but over.

However, as the war in Gaza rages on, it appears that not only are the peace pacts already forged holding strong, but prospects for more after the war are becoming increasingly stronger.

This past Saturday, leaders from 56 countries and the PLO convened in the Saudi capital of Riyadh for the Organization of Islamic Cooperation summit. The readout, unsurprisingly, condemned the IDF’s actions against Hamas. The most surprising news though is what came afterward.

A more severe statement was considered, likely drafted by Iran, that would have worked to prevent the transfer of weapons stored in Arab countries to Israel, freeze diplomatic and economic ties, impose an oil embargo, and close air space to Israeli aircraft.

This was blocked by a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, which included Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, Mauritania and Djibouti. All of these nations, with the exception of Saudi Arabia and Djibouti, have peace agreements or formal diplomatic ties with Israel.

The Iranians and a two-state solution

Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, clarified the voting mechanism of such events, saying the details are ironed out prior to the summits by the foreign ministries. He said he was not surprised that the stricter condemnation was not agreed to, not least because of the ties the countries already have.

The highlight is that “the Saudis managed to get the Iranians to sign on a statement that endorses a two-state solution,” Abdul-Hussain says.

According to the statement, “a credible peace process should be launched on the basis of international law, legitimate international resolutions and the principle of land for peace … within a specific time frame and based on the implementation of the two-state solution with international guarantees.”

Abdul-Hussain says that though it doesn’t mean Iran supports this—Tehran has been clear of its goal to destroy Israel—the Saudis will use it. “This will protect the Saudis in the future with peace negotiations. …it is a success from the Saudi point of view.”

It is widely accepted that Iran implicitly gave the green light to Hamas to conduct its brutal terror attack on Oct. 7 to start the current war, in an effort to upend peace talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia. Before the war, it was anticipated that peace could come in just a few months. At the same time, prior to the war, Iran and Saudi Arabia had warmed their own ties.

Abdul-Hussain dismisses this, saying, “Ties with Iran don’t harm potential peace with Israel.”

Dr. Yonatan Freeman, an expert on international relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, also says this doesn’t matter. He also says it doesn’t mean they are even friendly, pointing to the fact that many countries maintain embassies in hostile territory, giving the U.S. presence in Russia as an example.

More so, Abdul-Hussain brought up that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has said at least three times since the war started that peace was still likely on the horizon.

Both experts, therefore, are confident in the prospects of formal peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia once the war ends, assuming the high-intensity warfare remains confined to the Gaza front.

Lebanon brings in a different part of the equation. Israel has been exchanging fire with Hezbollah terror forces in the north in what has so far not led to a serious escalation, but the localized conflict could spill into all-out war.

Freeman says if this happens it could hurt the chances for peace, because the perspectives of the Arab world may change. 

Abdul-Hussain does not believe war in the north will break out, saying it does not make any sense for Hezbollah. It could violate what is known in Israel as the Dahieh doctrine, in reference to the Israel Air Force’s destruction of the Dahieh quarter (where Hezbollah has its headquarters) in Beirut in the 2006 Second Lebanon War, meaning that it just isn’t worth the destruction in the Land of the Cedars that Hezbollah would face if there is another war.

As to why Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah keeps up the rhetoric despite not actually wanting war, Hussain-Abdul says there is a Lebanese proverb that reads “Whoever picks up the biggest stone never throws it.” So, while Hezbollah may talk, it is not really ready for war.

Assuming this holds true, the prospects for peace remain high.

 
Troy O. Fitzhand

Source: https://www.jns.org/is-israel-arab-peace-fading-or-holding-strong-in-the-face-of-war/

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Elon Musk vows 'thermonuclear lawsuit' against the weasels of Media Matters - Monica Showalter

 

​ by Monica Showalter

Media Matters has picked the wrong target.

 

Media Matters, the Soros-financed smear outfit that thrives on intimidating journalists into spouting its far-left agenda, has picked the wrong target.

According to Reuters:

X Corp, formerly known as Twitter, will file a lawsuit against Media Matters and those who attacked social media platform X, Elon Musk said on Saturday in a post on the platform, soon after major U.S. companies paused their advertisements on the site.

"The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and all those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company," Musk wrote in a post on X, without naming any other parties.

Liberal media watchdog group Media Matters for America earlier this week said it found that corporate advertisements by IBM, Apple, Oracle and Comcast's Xfinity were being placed alongside antisemitic content.

IBM on Thursday said it immediately suspended all advertising on Musk-owned X after the watchdog found its ads were placed next to content promoting Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Disney, Warner Bros Discovery and Comcast, Lions Gate Entertainment and Paramount Global said on Friday they were also pausing their ads on X. Axios reported that Apple would do the same.

Thermonuclear. Good one, Elon. It's time to hold these stinking little weasels accountable.

The leftist nuisance outfit, which until recently was run by David Brock, has taken its marching orders from the Obama White House in the past, and now relying on an old tried-and-true tactic it uses, by organizing an advertiser boycott in an attempted to defund 'X.'

The twist here is that they didn't have anything to sell the advertisers, so they rigged something up about Musk being a fan of Nazis, which is thin gruel given that Musk is Jewish [sic].

But here is how 'X' describes the rigging:

 

The split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company pic.twitter.com/55vl7PspaQ

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 18, 2023

So, they manipulated search results until they got the one Nazi ad they wanted and waited for an IBM ad to position itself next to it, which according to 'X' happened one time and was seen by one person besides the Media Matters person looking for it, amid millions of ads. That was enough for Media Matters to take a screen grab, yell that Musk was all in for the Nazis, and get a host of roundheel corporate advertisers to pull their ads.

What a game they've got going there.

Now Media Matters is hearing from media platform Twitter or 'X,' owned by the world's richest man, so it's lawsuit time. Owner Elon Musk can pay lawyers and persuade juries to hold them accountable.

Like their fellow leftist spirit animal, NewsGuard, they've got the censorship bug in them. NewsGuard follows the 'blacklist' model pioneered by Media Matters, which begins with smearing conservative outfits and then targeting advertisers to defund them. Media Matters goes slightly further in that it attempts to intimidate media outlets into going with their leftist "narratives" with loud name-and-shame tactics and often advertiser targeting as their leverage. Both insist that they are just bland and disinterested arbiters of the truth and not agenda-driven sleazebags.

As I wrote here in 2012, when they were caught collaborating with the Obama administration:

Abuse Of Power: The Justice Department has been caught colluding with left-wing media "watchdog" Media Matters to suppress critics who've embarrassed the Obama administration. What is this, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela?

Based on a cache of internal Justice Department e-mails obtained by the Daily Caller, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder's press staff has been collaborating all along with left-wing media "watchdog" Media Matters to smear any reporter asking uncomfortable questions, to discourage whistle-blowers, to discredit political watchdogs and to suppress damaging news about what's going on in the Obama administration.

The Daily Caller found dozens of pages of e-mails between DOJ Public Affairs Director Tracy Schnakler and Media Matters staffers planning and discussing how to attack reporters who covered scandals such as the Black Panther voter suppression case, and the Fast and Furious scandal where DOJ sold thousands of guns to Mexico's notorious crime cartels — the truth of which DOJ didn't want to get out.

These weren't just instances of over-sharing between political allies or a quest for access, such as the New York Times was caught doing when one of its reporters submitted an unpublished story to a CIA flack.

This was the Obama administration planning and directing operations from on high in a grotesque example of the state with all its powers using an off-the-books nuisance organization to harass its critics.

After the acts, the DOJ then praised them: "Great piece," gushed Schmaler after Media Matters attacked DOJ whistle-blowers J. Christian Adams and Christopher Coates.

They had a huge booth at the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver, the one that nominated Obama with his styrofoam pillars for president.

Well, now they can explain it all to a judge and jury.

Let's hope that 'X' hires the best lawyers out there and uses its deep pockets to win one for the free press in a way that puts the fear of lawsuits into this nasty little smear outfit that has operated for too long as a censorship outfit for the left.

If Musk gets this through, he will be launching one more blow for a free press and the truth itself, just as he did through his purchase of Twitter.

If he wins, the First Amendment will finally be on the road to being righted.

Image: Twitter screen shot

 

Monica Showalter

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/elon_musk_vows_thermonuclear_lawsuit_against_the_weasels_of_media_matters.html

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Drawing the Line Between Terrorist and Journalist - Kenneth R. Timmerman

 

​ by Kenneth R. Timmerman

Observers . . . or willing participants?

 

A U.S.-based media watchdog group issued a report last week exposing a half-dozen Arab photo-journalists who accompanied Hamas terrorists in the early hours of October 7 on their killing spree in Israel, documenting their atrocities.

All six of the photo-journalists whose work Honest Reporting examined were employed by major media organizations, including the New York Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press. Reuters heralded one photo, showing a lynch mob brutalizing an Israeli soldier they had dragged out of a tank, as its “image of the day.”

An AP photographer took a video of himself in front of the burning Israeli tank, glorifying that he was seeing it with “my own eyes.” He was wearing nothing to identify himself as a member of the press, and appeared to be part of a celebratory crowd.

Another AP reporter snapped close-ups of Hamas terrorists dragging a terrified and bleeding Israeli civilian to a vehicle for transport as a hostage to Gaza.

Others captured the initial breaching of the Israeli border fence, the torching of Israeli homes, and the capture of female hostages.

The report earned cringing excuses from all four news organizations, ranging from the expected “just doing their job,” to embarrassed denials that they had embedded their reporters with Hamas.

Senator Tom Cotton sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, demanding that the Department of Justice open a national security investigation into the four media outlets “to determine whether they or their leadership committed federal crimes by supporting Hamas terrorists.”

The six photo-journalists “almost certainly knew about the attack in advance, and even participated by accompanying Hamas terrorists during the attack and filming the heinous acts,” he wrote.

As someone who has reported frequently from Palestinian refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, and Jordan, and with Palestinian guerrilla fighters in the Bekaa Valley, I can tell you: the Palestinians control information tightly, just like any other totalitarian. They want to control the “narrative.”

I write about several instances where I succeeded in evading Palestinian attempts at control in my latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies. It was always a challenge; often, it was dangerous. The Palestinians have a long history of punishing journalists who do not comply with their demands.

But these six “photo-journalists” were not seeking to get around the Hamas narrative to report independently. They sought to glorify Hamas and its atrocities.

And there is no way they just happened upon the scenes they filmed. They were led there by Hamas.

Their actions show that they were not journalists, but Hamas operatives. They should be treated as such by Israel. I will shed no tears when that happens.

On Senator Cotton’s question of culpability of The NY Times, AP, Reuters, CNN: their pathetic efforts to escape responsibility demonstrate that “ethics” and corporate journalism are incompatible.

They published those photographs because they were sensational, and because there was virtually no news (and certainly no images) coming from the Israeli side in the early hours of the attack.

Remember Mike Wallace (of 60 Minutes fame) who said proudly during the Vietnam war he would report from the Vietcong side even if it meant watching the killing of American soldiers — and that he would not warn the Americans?

I have always found such journalistic “ethics” despicable. That’s one of many reasons I never felt I had “betrayed” my profession when I become an Israeli “spy” briefly in the late 1980s, in an effort to free downed Israeli aviator Ron Arad, held hostage at the time by Lebanese militiamen. Or when I helped my country during the first Gulf War to better understand the sophisticated weapons Saddam Hussein had acquired from the French, which I had seen with my own eyes in Baghdad not long before the war. (For both mercantile and political reasons, the French were refusing to provide that information to the Americans.)

Sen. Tom Cotton is right to threaten media owners and editors that employed these terrorists with legal action. If nothing else, when they filed those photos, a vigorous discussion with editors should have ensued, as in “Mohammad, how the *** did you get that photo? Where is your Press brassard?”

Hamas obviously alerted them to the upcoming action and brought them along, including them in its genocidal rampage. They were willing participants, not observers. That is the line that they crossed.

Kenneth R. Timmerman's latest book, And the Rest is History: Tales of Hostages, Arms Dealers, Dirty Tricks, and Spies, details his work as a war correspondent in the Middle East. He was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 by the former deputy premier of Sweden, for his work on Iran.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/drawing-the-line-between-terrorist-and-journalist/

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Dashcam footage documents farmer who saved 120 lives on Oct. 7 - David Isaac

 

​ by David Isaac

Oz Davidian, from a local moshav, traveled again and again to the site of the attack to rescue survivors.

 

Oz Davidian made some 20 trips to rescue trapped victims at the Supernova music festival during the Hamas massacre on Oct. 7. Source: Screenshot.

Oz Davidian, a farmer from southern Israel, saved 120 young people from the Supernova Music Festival, the nature party that Hamas terrorists burst upon with bloodthirsty savagery on Oct. 7, killing some 260 unarmed revelers.

Dashcam footage from his jeep captured each moment of the 20 or so trips he made from the site of the outdoor party to his moshav, Maslul and another community, Moshav Patish, to rescue survivors and bring them to safety.

The footage was published by Channel 13 on Tuesday.

Davidian relates how a young woman he had taken in his jeep asked, “Tell me, who are you?” He answers, “I’m just a moshavnik that came to extricate you.”

“No, no, it can’t be,” she says. “What special person are you? Someone from the Shin Bet?”

When he asks why she says that, she answers, “Look, there’s no one here. We’ve been stuck here for hours. There’s no one here. It can’t be there’s no one here [and that] you’re the only one who comes.”

That theme, that the victims were left to fend for themselves, with the IDF and other security forces nowhere to be seen, runs like a current through all the stories of rescue and survival that day.

“It’s difficult to see again and again and again. They were in the area for hours. He rescues many people. [But] there are no [security] forces,” comments the Channel 13 anchor after the report.

Hamas controlled Route 232 and the rural area where the music festival was held for six hours, according to the report.

Yossi Eli, the Channel 13 journalist who put together the news segment, posted on X, formerly Twitter: “What I take from the recordings is that … even when the camera showed the time 12:30—six hours(!)—after the Hamas invasion, the damned terrorists were alone in the region of [Kibbutz] Re’im doing what they wanted: raping and murdering women (I spared you the pictures), looting the bodies of soldiers, and no one bothered them.”

 

לבד בתוך התופת: מכל הכתבה , ואומץ הלב שגילה עוז, מה שאני לוקח מהתיעוד זה ה״לבד״ שלו בשטח: גם כשהמצלמה הראתה את השעה 12:30 , שש שעות! אחרי הפלישה של החמאס, המחבלים הארורים היו לבד בשטח רעים, עשו מה שהם רןצים: אנסו ורצחו נשים (חסכתי את התמונות) , בזזו גופות של חיילים, ואף אחד לא… pic.twitter.com/1uTQ2EPtP8

— Yossi Eli יוסי אלי (@Yossi_eli) November 15, 2023

 

Eli described Davidian as “The only point of light among hundreds of terrorists trying to save [people] from the inferno.”

The farmer’s dashcam records him driving past burnt-out cars, corpses and terrorists. Davidian describes at one point seeing two men near the body of a soldier. At first, he thought they were Israeli forces, but then it hit him they might be terrorists. He pulls alongside and asks in Arabic if the soldier is dead. One terrorist answers in the affirmative.

“Then it hit both of us. I understand that he’s a terrorist and he understands that I’m a Jew,” Davidian says, who then hits the gas and speeds away. The terrorists can be seen in the jeep’s backup camera standing up and turning towards the vehicle.

“In the flight, you can hear them shooting at us. By a miracle the bullets didn’t hit the car,” Davidian says.

He saw a woman raped by a terrorist as his comrades stand by and shoot. “You see his friend rape there. They guard him and continue to fire.

“You see piles of bodies, one on top of the other. … Apparently, they slaughtered them and they fell one on top of the other in the gunfire.”

He saw the faces of those killed and it saddened him that he wasn’t able to take the bodies out of there. “Because you have wounded and survivors still hiding and terrorists that are still shooting at them,” he says.

The entire time he was carrying out his self-assigned rescue mission his wife and four daughters were hiding in a safe room at their home.

“You worry. There are terrorists in the entire area. They’re simply spraying [bullets] in every place possible. It’s inconceivable—this evil. … They shot at everything that moved.”

Davidian says it helped that he was familiar with the area and knew “where all the pits were,” so he could drive at full speed. On each of his trips to the nature party, he took a different route.

Oz Davidian’s trips to the nature party as documented by Channel 13. Source: Screenshot.

During one of his trips, one of his daughters, Uriah, calls. He tells her he can’t talk at the moment as he’s “just at the moment rescuing people from the party, from the mess.”

Uriah, in a later interview, tells the reporter as she hugs her father, “He was always my hero.”

Acts of courage continue to filter out from the horrific attack on that first Saturday in October, now known in Israel as “Black Sabbath.”

Earlier this week, video from the Oct. 7 massacre showed the final heroic act of an off-duty soldier, Staff Sgt. Aner Elyakim Shapiro, who protected a packed public bomb shelter by throwing out Hamas grenades as the terrorists tossed them in.

The video, which was taken from the dashcam of a nearby car and posted to the South First Responders group on Telegram, shows how Shapiro managed to throw out seven grenades before the eighth fatally wounded him.

The shelter was full of partygoers who were attending the music festival and who entered for protection from the rocket barrage from Gaza that morning.

 

David Isaac

Source: https://www.jns.org/dashcam-footage-documents-farmer-who-saved-120-lives-on-oct-7/

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Three in four Palestinians support Hamas’s massacre - Akiva Van Koningsveld

 

​ by Akiva Van Koningsveld

Ninety-eight percent of respondents said the Oct. 7 slaughter made them feel "prouder of their identity as Palestinians."

 

Mourners attend the funeral of five members of the Kotz family, murdered by terrorists on Oct. 7 in Kfar Aza, on Oct. 17, 2023. Photo by Flash90.

Slightly more than three in four Palestinians have a positive view of Hamas in the wake of its Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, according to a survey by the Arab World for Research and Development (AWRAD) research firm.

The Ramallah-based institute polled 668 Palestinian adults in the southern Gaza Strip, Judea and Samaria between Oct. 31 and Nov. 7. (The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points, AWRAD said.)

The Palestinian poll—the first of its kind since the Oct. 7 attacks—found that 48.2% of respondents characterize Hamas’s role as “very positive,” while 27.8% view Hamas as “somewhat positive.” Almost 80% regard the role of Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades “military” wing as positive.

The Al-Qassam Brigades killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and wounded thousands in the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. In addition, terrorists took some 240 people hostage.

When asked whether they supported or opposed Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7, 59.3% of the Palestinians surveyed said they “extremely” supported the attacks and 15.7% said they “somewhat” supported the murderous spree.

Only 12.7% expressed disapproval with 10.9% saying they neither supported nor opposed the attack.

Almost all (98%) of the respondents said the slaughter made them feel “prouder of their identity as Palestinians,” with an equal percentage saying they would “never forget and never forgive” the Jewish state for its ongoing military operation against Hamas.

Three-quarters said that they expect the Israel-Hamas war to end in a Palestinian victory.

In response to the question “What would you like as a preferred government after the war is finished in Gaza Strip,” 72% said they favor a “national unity government” that includes Hamas and Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction.

Approximately 8.5% said they favor a government controlled by the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, more than 98% of Palestinians surveyed by AWRAD hold negative views of the United States.

On Nov. 8, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Gaza must be handed over to the P.A. following hostilities. The solution “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority,” stated Blinken.

During an Oct. 18 visit to Tel Aviv, U.S. President Joe Biden delivered a speech in which he claimed that “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people.”

AWRAD said that “the poll’s sample includes all socioeconomic groups, ensuring equal representation of adult men and women, and is proportionately distributed across the West Bank and Gaza.”

 
Akiva Van Koningsveld

Source: https://www.jns.org/three-in-four-palestinians-support-hamass-massacre/

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How the left infiltrates through government - Jay Davidson

 

​ by Jay Davidson

Governments don’t create. But they do provide a great vehicle for tyrants.

 

Senator Ted Cruz’s new book accurately describes how our nation’s government, in collusion with universities, media, and bureaucracies became a breeding ground for the mentality of central control.  This book provides the methodology by which the left (communists, fascists, any central control through a government) infiltrates existing structures and institutions to effect change.

By its nature, Marxism, and its spawn, communism, can’t create.  They can only destroy the private economy through “wealth redistribution.”   The philosophy of central control requires a strong government.  President Woodrow Wilson knew this 100 years ago; he created the Administrative State with the intent of using federal bureaucracy to control the population through regulation.  

The list of subsequent federal bureaucracies is now legion.  Communist Russia destroyed the tsars and crippled the private economy in Russia.  Communist China had a good run with capitalism in a bubble, which is now bursting, because central-control mindsets can’t tolerate freedom.  Fascism almost destroyed the world but met its demise through selfless sacrifice. 

Governments don’t create; they govern.  If not held in check, governments overpower.  Every tyrant used his nation’s government to come to power.  There can be no greater argument for our constitutional republic, and every citizen thereof, to demand that our government adhere to the Constitution as written.

Contrast this philosophy of destruction through control with America as she was conceived.  The founders rebelled against the same type of overpowering tyranny that Marx, Hitler, Mao, Wilson, and Obama visualized: the British king.  They created three documents to create a nation based on the premise of the sanctity of the individual.  They saw a federal government as a necessary evil and proceeded to lay in restrictions on government power.  It’s called the Constitution.

The individual freedom and responsibility, recognized in our nation’s founding, gave rise to capitalism: the right of each citizen to own property and benefit from the fruits of his individual labor.  That private economy, as opposed to public or government, propelled America from a backwater nation to the most powerful in only 100 years.  Capitalism springs from individual initiative based on freedom, not control.  Capitalism creates.  It stands against the cult of control practiced by so many of the elites on both sides of the aisle.

Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center via Flickr, CC BY 2.0 (cropped).

 
Jay Davidson is founder and CEO of a commercial bank.  He is a student of the Austrian School of Economics and a rabid capitalist.  He believes there is a direct connection joining individual right and responsibility, our Constitution, capitalism, and the intent of our Creator.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/how_the_left_infiltrates_through_government.html

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After UK Pro-Hamas ‘Ceasefire’ Riots, ‘Ceasefire’ Support Falls From 76% to 33% - Daniel Greenfield

 

​ by Daniel Greenfield

Maybe rioting isn't the effective persuasion tool leftists think it is?

 

Maybe running around, smashing things and defacing monuments, including sacred ones, aren’t the effective persuasion tools that Islamists and leftists think they are?

In October, the leftists and Islamists were touting a YouGov poll in which 58% of Brits said that there definitely should be a ceasefire and 18% said that there probably should be.

Current numbers are less enthusiastic with only 33% urging a push for a ceasefire.

Now granted these are YouGov polls, which are not exactly the height of scientific polling, and they don’t ask quite the same questions, but there’s still a diminution in enthusiasm for saving Hamas that seems counterintuitive. Normally last month should have been the highest level of support for taking out Hamas with the numbers getting worse from there.

And it’s not as if there’s a groundswell of support for Israel, but there’s distinctly less enthusiasm for a ceasefire.

What could have brought that one?

Let’s see, maybe it was Islamists and leftists running wild while the Met Police let them get away with it and arrested anyone who stood up to them?

After weeks of screaming about a ceasefire while wrecking things, a ceasefire became actually less popular.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Source: https://www.frontpagemag.com/after-uk-pro-hamas-ceasefire-riots-ceasefire-support-falls-from-76-to-33/

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Urgently Needed: An Economic and National Security 'War Cabinet' - Pete Hoekstra

 

​ by Pete Hoekstra

In light of the recent, stark warnings given by the Five Eyes security leaders on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and so many others, it is time for the U.S. to propose an economic and national security "war" cabinet to coordinate, strategize, and implement plans to address the China challenge as well as the national debt's impact on our ability to confront it.

 

• In World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill formed a wartime cabinet to unify the UK to fight the threats the country faced.

• In 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a war cabinet to confront and defeat Hamas.

• In light of the recent, stark warnings given by the Five Eyes security leaders on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and so many others, it is time for the U.S. to propose an economic and national security "war" cabinet to coordinate, strategize, and implement plans to address the China challenge as well as the national debt's impact on our ability to confront it.

In World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill formed a wartime cabinet to unify the UK to fight the threats the country faced. In light of the recent, stark warnings given by the Five Eyes security leaders on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and so many others, it is time for the U.S. to propose an economic and national security "war" cabinet. Pictured: Churchill with the war cabinet in 1941; from L to R seated, John Anderson, Churchill, Clement Attlee, Anthony Eden, and back row, Arthur Greenwood, Ernest Bevin, William Aitken, and Kingsley Wood. (Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Voters in a small Michigan township ousted their entire township board over the board's support for building a Michigan-taxpayer subsidized, Chinese battery manufacturing plant in their midst. History might not remember them as among the first Americans to take a stand against the creeping Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence growing in the United States, but their vote should serve as a historic and valiant wake-up call for all Americans and their leaders.

How then should their leaders respond to the valid concerns over the threat posed by the CCP's efforts in America?

The Israeli government's political response to the barbaric Hamas terrorist attack on October 7 shows one potential avenue of response to Communist China's rapidly increasing national security threat – critically, before a crisis or an attack forces a response.

Later on the day of the attack, leaders of four of Israel's opposition parties issued a joint statement in which they said, "In times like these, there is no opposition and coalition in Israel." The statement reinforced the unity of nearly all political parties in Israel to defeat the existential threat posed to Israel by Hamas and Iran.

On October 11, a war cabinet was formed. There was a unity of purpose to protect the Israel today and in the future.

While China has not launched a direct military attack against the United States, it has become conventional wisdom that China poses the greatest geostrategic threat to the U.S. and the West. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee that the CCP, "represents both the leading and most consequential threat to U.S. national security and leadership globally." The U.S. National Defense Strategy also lists China as the top threat, with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stating:

"The [People's Republic of China] is the only competitor out there with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, a power to do so."

The U.S. and its "Five Eyes" national security partners—composed of the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand—warned of an existential threat from the Chinese Communist Party that cannot be ignored. In an unprecedented series of meetings in Silicon Valley and with media, the senior officials representing the Five Eyes issued a sharp call to their governments, businesses, and the public about the threat from the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the CCP. This is the first time in the more than 80-year existence of the Five Eyes partnership that its leaders have met to share publicly concerns they have.

Summing up the unified message from the Five Eyes partners, FBI Director Christopher Wray stated:

"The People's Republic of China represents the defining threat of this generation this era. There is no country that presents a broader, more comprehensive threat to our ideas, our - our innovation, our economic security, and ultimately our national security."

The head of Australia's security service, Mike Burgess, added:

"All countries seek strategic advantage. But the [PRC's] behavior we're talking about here goes well beyond traditional espionage. This scale of theft is unprecedented in human history."

In the same interview, the Five Eyes officials noted, "Chinese companies are overseen by the Communist Party, and for many, espionage is a sideline on behalf of the PRC." They also raised alarms about the building of industrial sites in Five Eye countries that actually might be covers for Chinese spying, with Wray confirming that the FBI sees economic projects in the U.S. by Chinese companies that clearly raise national security concerns. He added:

"We have seen over and over again [China's] efforts to really stop at almost nothing to intimidate people who would have the audacity here in the United States where we have freedom of speech to express criticism of the [Chinese] regime."

The threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party is further magnified by the massive U.S. national debt that exceeds $33 trillion and counting. There are multiple reasons why excessively high national debt may be dangerous, including the interest on the national debt that now exceeds $1 trillion a year – before we pay any other expense. Not only could this force cutbacks in key programs; the most significant reason the national debt is a strategic problem is that if China attacks the U.S. or U.S. interests abroad, it will make responding more difficult due to fiscal constraints.

In World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill formed a wartime cabinet to unify the UK to fight the threats the country faced.

In 2023, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu formed a war cabinet to confront and defeat Hamas.

In light of the recent, stark warnings given by the Five Eyes security leaders on the threat posed by the Chinese Communist Party and so many others, it is time for the U.S. to propose an economic and national security "war" cabinet to coordinate, strategize, and implement plans to address the China challenge as well as the national debt's impact on our ability to confront it.

Pete Hoekstra is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute. He was US Ambassador to the Netherlands during the Trump administration. He also served 18 years in the U.S. House of Representatives representing the Second District of Michigan and served as Chairman and Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20149/economic-national-security-war-cabinet

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The Biden Administration's Dangerous Solutions For Gaza - Bassam Tawil

 

​ by Bassam Tawil

As he has already proven in the West Bank, Abbas has no intention of disarming any Palestinian armed group or arresting any terrorist.

 

• If Abbas cannot and does not want to fight Hamas in the West Bank, there is no reason to believe that he will do otherwise in the Gaza Strip, where terrorist groups enjoy widespread support...

• The assumption that the Palestinian Authority would fight terrorism in the Gaza Strip is completely incorrect and terribly dangerous. As he has already proven in the West Bank, Abbas has no intention of disarming any Palestinian armed group or arresting any terrorist. His preferred policy has always been to try and win over Hamas and other terrorist groups by offering them jobs and handouts as part of a reconciliation agreement that would result in the formation of a Palestinian unity government -- in addition to being a perfect reason to ask the international community for money.

• If Abbas is allowed to return to the Gaza Strip, he will undoubtedly continue with his policy of appeasement toward Hamas. He is not going to order his security forces to crack down on Hamas: he knows that his people would condemn him to death as a traitor who collaborates with Israel, just as they did with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981.

• The Biden administration should think very carefully before floating dangerous ideas. Before talking about the day after the Israel-Hamas war, the administration should first allow Israel to finish the job of eradicating Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip.

• The Palestinian Authority, which pays salaries to terrorists who murder Jews and engages in anti-Israel incitement day-in and day-out, cannot be entrusted with any role in the Gaza Strip.

The assumption that the Palestinian Authority would fight terrorism in the Gaza Strip is completely incorrect and terribly dangerous. As he has already proven in the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas has no intention of disarming any Palestinian armed group or arresting any terrorist. Pictured: Gunmen from a number of terrorist groups, including the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, Izaddin al-Qassam Brigades, Al-Quds Brigades, and Abu Ali Mustafa Brigades, hold what they called a "joint press conference" in Jenin refugee camp on February 25, 2023. (Photo by Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden administration officials believe that the Palestinian Authority (PA), headed by Mahmoud Abbas, should be brought back to the Gaza Strip after the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group is removed from power.

The officials, including US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, appear convinced that the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should be unified in the post-Hamas era. On November 9, Blinken was quoted as saying that after the current Israel-Hamas war, the solution must "include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority."

Days later, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan also floated the idea that the Gaza Strip and West Bank be unified under the control of the PA:

"Secretary Blinken also said that ultimately, we do want to see the reconnection, the reunification of control between the West Bank and Gaza under Palestinian leadership.

"The Palestinian Authority is the current leadership on the West Bank. But ultimately, it's gonna [sic] be up to the Palestinian people to decide their future, who governs them, and the United States will support a process."

These two ideas – reinstating the PA in the Gaza Strip and unifying the Gaza Strip and the West Bank – show that the Biden administration is utterly clueless about the reality on the ground and equally oblivious to the security threats facing Israel.

The Palestinian Authority was in control of large parts of the Gaza Strip between 1994 and 2007.

In 2005, Israel withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip after evacuating thousands of Jews from their homes and destroying more than 25 Jewish communities there. The Israeli pullout, known as the "Gaza disengagement," saw Israel go back to the 1949 armistice line, leaving the entire Gaza Strip under the full security and civilian control of Abbas's PA. Less than two years later, Hamas staged a coup against the PA and seized control of the Gaza Strip. The PA security forces were unable to prevent the coup and many of its officers quickly surrendered.

During the years that it ruled the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority, first under Yasser Arafat and Abbas later, failed to stop Hamas and other Palestinian groups from carrying out terrorist attacks against Israelis. These attacks included a wave of suicide bombings and firing rockets and mortars at Israeli civilians and soldiers.

There were times when the PA, under pressure from the US and Western donors, did crack down on Hamas members in the Gaza Strip. That, however, was not done out of concern for Israel's security, but because the PA viewed Hamas as a threat to its own rule over the Gaza Strip. Additionally, the crackdown was aimed at showing American and European donors that the PA was fighting terrorism.

Both Arafat and Abbas employed the revolving door policy: shortly after arresting terrorists, they would release them. An example of the revolving door policy can be seen in a document seized by Israeli security forces in 2002 and analyzed by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center, in a bulletin entitled "The Release of 27 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad Detainees." The bulletin deals with the release of terrorist operatives who were detained by the Palestinian Authority, including those who were involved in bombing attacks and the manufacture of explosive devices and rockets. An examination of the names of the released operatives showed that some of them returned to terrorist activities and were involved in the planning, direction and carrying out of mass-casualty terrorist attacks.

In December 2001, after a wave of terrorist attacks against Israelis, then White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer and State Department Deputy Spokesman Philip Reeker commented on Arafat's failure to take measures against the terrorists. Fleischer said:

"The President thinks that this is the chance now for Yasser Arafat to demonstrate real leadership that is lasting, that is enduring, that puts people responsible for this away and does so in such a way that they cannot get out again and commit more terror. The President thinks it is very important that the Palestinian jails not only have bars on the front, but no longer have revolving doors at the back."

Reeker, for his part, said that "there has to be sustained action by the Palestinian Authority against those individuals," referring to suicide attacks in Jerusalem and Haifa.

"They need to bring them to justice, but they also need to take action against the infrastructure of those groups that support those individuals. And there's absolutely no excuse for failure to take immediate and thorough action."

Nearly two decades later, the US is still talking about the need for the Palestinian Authority and its current leader, Abbas, to take measures against terrorists – this time in the areas controlled by Abbas's security forces in the West Bank.

Needless to say, Abbas has done almost nothing to disarm the many terrorist groups active in areas controlled by his security forces in the West Bank. Abbas even rejected an American security plan to combat terrorism that was prepared by US Army Lieutenant General Michael Fenzel, who coordinates between the US administration and the PA security forces. Fenzel planned to establish a special force of several thousand PA security personnel who would be stationed in the cities of Nablus and Jenin to fight against the armed terrorist groups and allow the PA to regain security control. Abbas tried to convince the Biden administration that he has a better way to combat terrorism: luring the terrorists with promises of amnesty, salaries and vehicles in exchange for them laying down their weapons.

The Palestinian Authority's refusal for the past two years to go after the numerous terrorist groups operating under its nose in the West Bank has led to a massive upsurge in terrorist attacks against Israelis, and was probably one reason Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu got re-elected: to deal with it.

Instead of combating terrorism, Abbas chose to suspend security coordination with Israel. The security coordination is not only important to Israel, but it is what has kept Abbas and the PA in power in the West Bank. Were it not for the security coordination and Israel's presence in the West Bank, the PA would have collapsed long ago and Hamas -- as it did with Gaza -- and would have seized control of Palestinian cities, including Ramallah, the de facto capital of the Palestinians.

The assumption that the Palestinian Authority would fight terrorism in the Gaza Strip is completely incorrect and terribly dangerous. As he has already proven in the West Bank, Abbas has no intention of disarming any Palestinian armed group or arresting any terrorist. His preferred policy has always been to try and win over Hamas and other terrorist groups by offering them jobs and handouts as part of a reconciliation agreement that would result in the formation of a Palestinian unity government -- in addition to being a perfect reason to ask the international community for money.

Abbas's latest attempt to win over Hamas was in late June, when he invited the terrorist group to a "national unity" conference in Cairo, Egypt. If Abbas is allowed to return to the Gaza Strip, he will undoubtedly continue with his policy of appeasement toward Hamas. He is not going to order his security forces to crack down on Hamas: he knows that his people would condemn him to death as a traitor who collaborates with Israel, just as they did with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981.

If Abbas cannot and does not want to fight Hamas in the West Bank, there is no reason to believe that he will do otherwise in the Gaza Strip, where terrorist groups enjoy widespread support. It is important to remember that it was under both Abbas and Arafat that Hamas flourished and amassed weapons. The two Palestinian leaders never used the thousands of security officers on their payroll to wipe out the terrorists. Abbas and Arafat had the security forces to accomplish this, but chose not to do so.

The idea of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank is every bit as dangerous as the idea of relying on the Palestinian Authority to combat terrorism. Reconnecting the two areas would mean allowing thousands of terrorists and their supporters in the Gaza Strip to move to the West Bank, including the hilltops overlooking Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion International Airport. It would also mean jeopardizing the lives of hundreds of thousands of Israelis living in different parts of the West Bank. Unifying the two areas would pave the way for Iran and its proxies, including Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, to turn the West Bank into another base for Jihad (holy war) against Israel.

Has anyone asked the Palestinians in the West Bank whether they would like to see tens of thousands of impoverished Gazans flood into their cities and villages? First, there is not enough room in the West Bank to absorb a large number of Gazans. Second, such a move would be an unbearable burden on the Palestinian economy.

The Biden administration should think very carefully before floating dangerous ideas. Before talking about the day after the Israel-Hamas war, the administration should first allow Israel to finish the job of eradicating Hamas and other terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. Because of the extreme care that Israel is taking to limit harm to civilians, this mission will probably take months to accomplish. Only then can the question of Gaza's governance be properly discussed.

What is certain is that the Palestinian Authority, which pays salaries to terrorists who murder Jews and engages in anti-Israel incitement day-in and day-out, cannot be entrusted with any role in the Gaza Strip.

Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle East.

 

Bassam Tawil

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20150/biden-gaza-solutions

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Who's behind the UK anti-Israel rallies? - opinion - Neville Teller

 

​ by Neville Teller

On October 27, an exclusive report in The Times revealed that hostile state activity in the UK has been directly linked to the Iranian regime.

 

Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, in London, on Saturday.

(photo credit: HOLLIE ADAMS/REUTERS)

November 11 is known in Britain as Armistice Day. A two-minute silence is observed nationally to commemorate the end of the First World War in 1918 – at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. This year it fell on a Saturday. Ever since Saturday, October 28, when a reported 100,000 pro-Palestinian supporters marched through central London, waving anti-Israel banners, chanting anti-Israel and antisemitic slogans, and calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war, mass rallies – although on a smaller scale – have taken place every Saturday in London and in cities across Britain. 

Leading up to Armistice Day this year, influential voices throughout the UK, including the prime minister himself, Rishi Sunak, urged the head of the Metropolitan Police to prevent the pro-Palestinian march from taking place, but the police chief confined himself to requesting the organizers to postpone it. They refused, and he maintained that the police do not have sufficient powers under the law to ban an event that does not pose the threat of extreme violence.

In a final gesture of exasperation the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, penned an article in The Times, deploring the failure of the Metropolitan Police chief to act, and asserting that the force has demonstrated bias in their handling of political rallies. She claimed they favored left-wing groups, citing the pro-Palestinian rallies which she called “hate marches”. 

“Terrorists have been valorized,” wrote Braverman. “Israel has been demonized as Nazis, and Jews have been threatened with further massacres.”

A political storm burst around her. There was an instant demand from the Labour Party and its supporters, joined by some in her own Conservative party, for the prime minister to sack her. On November 13 Sunak announced a reshuffle of his Cabinet, and Braverman lost her job.

Demonstrators gather at Trafalgar Square as they protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in London, Britain, November 4, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/TOBY MELVILLE)

On Armistice Day, the pro-Palestinian rally went ahead with some 300,000 people taking to the London streets. The marchers took more than four hours to proceed along a route starting in central London and ending at the US embassy on the south bank of the River Thames. 

The antisemitic rhetoric had been toned down, if not entirely eliminated, but anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans abounded, many advocating a ceasefire in the Gaza war. There are media reports that the police spotted a few pro-Hamas banner holders, and are trying to identify them. It is illegal to support the terrorist group. But the march proceeded peacefully, and few arrests were made.

Major demonstrations are complicated things to pull off

A COUNTER-PROTEST, however, by far-right groups, did turn violent. Police battled with aggressive protesters and made more than 90 arrests. 

The police and Britain’s counter-terrorism services are well aware that such protest demonstrations are a highly complex operation, requiring detailed organization ranging from assembling vast numbers of supporters and controlling the routes of marches, to the location of rallies, devising slogans to be chanted, and providing banners and placards telling the same story. 

On November 7, an exclusive report in The Daily Telegraph revealed that a former Hamas chief, Muhammed Kathem Sawalha, said to have been active in Hamas as recently as 2019, is behind one of the six groups organizing the pro-Palestine protests. Sawalha, 62, came to Britain in the late 1990s and founded the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB). He was granted British citizenship in the early 2000s. The Daily Telegraph further discovered that, in addition to the MAB, at least two more of the groups that organized the November 11 march have links to Hamas.

On October 27, an exclusive report in The Times revealed that hostile state activity in the UK has been directly linked to the Iranian regime, including the spread of disinformation online and lodging Iranian agents in the crowds attending marches. Following that report, the police announced that Iranian agents are hijacking Britain’s pro-Palestinian rallies. 

People don't appreciate the extent of Iranian activity in the UK

None of this should have come as a surprise. On October 19, Robin Simcox, head of the independent Counter-Extremism Commission, gave a long and thoughtful address to the highly prestigious Royal United Services Institute (RUSI).

Simcox began by endorsing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s description of the Hamas onslaught of October 7 as a pogrom. “Hamas reveled in this bloodshed,” he said. “It was sadism.“

He went on to say that, in the UK, support for Palestinian rights too often translates into rhetoric supportive of Hamas. “Too many in positions of prominence have praised them or their leadership; or sought to rationalize or excuse their acts of terror… The Hamas support network in the UK is entrenched.”

Simcox continued: “What is underappreciated is the scale of Iranian-backed activity in this country; and the extent to which Iran attempts to stoke extremism here.”

In March 2023, the UK government revealed that since 2022, there have been 15 credible threats by the Iranian regime to kill or kidnap British or UK-based individuals. 

The Director General of MI5, Britain’s domestic counter-intelligence and security agency, has said that “Iran projects a threat to the UK directly, through its aggressive intelligence services.” 

NOW THAT the UK government has proscribed Hamas as a terrorist organization, Simcox strongly advocates that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) should be similarly proscribed because of its role in plotting violence. Despite the urging of some government ministers, Britain’s Foreign Office has opposed a ban because it claims it would cause permanent damage to diplomatic relations with Iran.

“The IRGC has operated like a terrorist organization ever since its inception, over four decades ago,” said Simcox. “And yet it is legal, at present, for the IRGC to be, for example, hosted in UK institutions.” He believes that the IRGC is operating Iran’s destabilizing policies in the UK but also worldwide. 

In February 2023, acting on police advice, the independent Iran International TV closed its operation in Britain because of threats to its staff from operatives acting for the Iranian regime.

“I cannot believe it has come to this,” said Mahmood Enayat, the station’s general manager. “A foreign state has caused such a significant threat to the British public on British soil that we have to move.”

The channel will continue its output from its Washington DC site. “We refuse to be silenced by these cowardly threats,” said Enayat. “ We will continue to broadcast. We are undeterred.”

Valiant words, and an intrepid attitude – but the truth is that, on police advice, a media outlet operating legally on British soil has succumbed to Iranian threats. That is scarcely a satisfactory position. Some in the police have called for legal clarification and enhanced powers to deal with terrorism and incitement to violence on Britain’s streets. That would seem a step in the right direction. Unmasking, charging, and expelling foreign agents masterminding illegal antisemitic activity would be another.

Neville Teller is the Middle East correspondent for Eurasia Review. His latest book is Trump and the Holy Land: 2016-2020. Follow him at www.a-mid-east-journal.blogspot.com.

Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-773427

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