The longer the EU allows the Islamist regime of Iran to operate with no repercussions, the more it strengthens both Iran's and Russia's war machines. For the wellbeing of the EU, the Middle East and the Free World, the EU severing its ties with Iran cannot take place soon enough.
Moreover, maintaining...
economic ties grants legitimacy to the regime, signaling that the
European Union is willing to overlook Iran's role in supporting
aggression against Ukraine.
To stanch this, the EU urgently needs to stop its economic dealings with Iran.
Along with cutting economic ties, the EU would also do well to
list the IRGC as a terrorist organization and close all Iranian
embassies in Europe. The IRGC is the primary force behind Iran's
military support for Russia. Isolating it would be a crucial step in
weakening Tehran's capacity to destabilize the entire Middle East.
It [the EU] really has become a principal enabler of Russia's war against Ukraine.
The longer the EU allows the Islamist regime of Iran to operate
with no repercussions, the more it strengthens both Iran's and Russia's
war machines. For the wellbeing of the EU, the Middle East and the Free
World, the EU severing its ties with Iran cannot take place soon enough.
Maintaining economic ties grants legitimacy to the Iranian
regime, signaling that the European Union is willing to overlook Iran's
role in supporting aggression against Ukraine -- and what is ultimately
likely to be aggression against itself. The EU really has become a
principal enabler of Russia's war against Ukraine. Pictured:
Firefighters in Kyiv, Ukraine try to put out a fire in a four-story
residential building, in which three people were killed when it was hit
by a "kamikaze drone" (many of which are supplied to Russian forces by
Iran), on October 17, 2022. (Photo by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
It is hardly a secret that without the Iranian regime's financial,
military, and operational backing, its affiliated terror groups -- such
as Hamas, Hezbollah, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the Houthis as well
as its own militias, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) --
would not have been able to launch the kind of large-scale attacks
against Israel that have upended the broader region. Iran's support not
only provides these groups with financial resources but also with
crucial intelligence and military training. Without this support, the
military capacity of these groups would be significantly diminished, and
the extent of the chaos in the region far less severe.
Iran's reach extends, of course, far beyond its proxies and militias.
Some national governments, notably Russia, have relied on Iran's
support to sustain their military campaigns. Iran's backing of Russia's war against Ukraine, for example, only prolonged and intensified it.
At the outset of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, endorsed
Moscow's aggression. After Iran announced its support, the EU did
absolutely nothing. The Iranian regime, seeing no consequences in taking
sides against Ukraine, immediately became more involved in the
conflict.
Iran's role in the Ukraine war quickly moved from verbal support to direct military involvement. Iran began supplying Russia with kamikaze drones, which Russia has been used
to strike civilian targets as well as to destroy important
infrastructure in Ukraine. The Iranian drones, modified with advanced
explosives, have reportedly caused massive devastation, and only underscores Iran's expanding military influence in the war.
Despite the EU itself acknowledging
that Iran was indeed "provid[ing] military support for Russia's
unprovoked and unjustified war of aggression against Ukraine," no
country took any action of any kind. The ruling mullahs responded to
Europe's inaction by deepening their role. Iran sent
troops to Crimea to assist Russia in its attacks on Ukraine and its
civilian population, as well to see how best to increase the
effectiveness of the suicide drones.
On September 10, the US Department of Defense announced
that Iran had also supplied Russia with missiles. "The United States
has confirmed reports that Iran has transferred shipments of Fath 360
close-range ballistic missiles to Russia, which we assess could employ
them within weeks against Ukraine, leading to the deaths of even more
Ukrainian civilians," said Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Maj. Gen.
Pat Ryder in a briefing. He explained
that this would give Russia the opportunity to leverage the missiles'
lethal ability while safeguarding its own long-range assets for
prolonged use in combat. Iran's missiles would bolster Russia's
stockpile and further enable strikes on various targets, including
civilian ones.
To stanch this, the EU urgently needs to stop its economic dealings
with Iran. Continuing trade only empowers Tehran financially, giving it
the resources needed to support Russia's military operations and its
terror proxies. In addition, maintaining these economic ties grants
legitimacy to the regime, signaling that the European Union is willing
to overlook Iran's role in supporting aggression against Ukraine -- and
what is ultimately likely to be aggression against itself.
Along with cutting economic ties, the EU would also do well to list
the IRGC as a terrorist organization and close all Iranian embassies in
Europe. The IRGC is the primary force behind Iran's military support for
Russia. Isolating it would be a crucial step in weakening Tehran's
capacity to destabilize the entire Middle East.
Finally, the EU needs to make it clear that all military options are
on the table. While diplomatic and economic measures are important, they
may not be enough to deter Iran. By openly discussing potential
military strikes against IRGC assets, the EU would send a strong message
to Tehran, showing that its continued support for Russian aggression
could have severe consequences.
The EU really needs to confront the Iranian regime now, the sooner
the better. It really has become a principal enabler of Russia's war
against Ukraine. The longer the EU allows the Islamist regime of Iran to
operate with no repercussions, the more it strengthens both Iran's and
Russia's war machines. For the well-being of the EU, the Middle East and
the Free World, the EU severing its ties with Iran cannot take place
soon enough.
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
These are the first alarms that have been activated in Afula for more than 9 months, according to Israeli media. The IDF detected 10 launches.
Hezbollah
sent rockets into the Jezreel Valley at around 01:10 am on Sunday
morning, with alerts in and around Haifa, Nazareth, Afula and the lower
Galilee. At 2am, Army Radio announced that Israel was striking southern
Lebanon in response.
Army
radio and KAN reported that Hezbollah specifically targeted the Ramat
David base near Haifa for the first time in the war. Hezbollah confirmed
this on Telegram, saying they had targeted the Ramat David base and
airport in response to IAF strikes in Beirut which killed some of its top commanders.
The
IDF confirmed that ten missiles were launched. Most were intercepted,
but they announced that a fall was detected in the area.
Social
media reported falls in Moshav Sde Ya'akov, and a fire breaking out as a
result of a fall in Kfar Baruch, which was later confirmed by Israeli
outlets. Emek Jezreel regional council said one fall was detected in the
area and there was minor damage to property.
According
to KAN, a rocket fell in Nazareth, and a large fire broke out elsewhere
in the city. MDA reported that a 60 year old man was slightly wounded
by shrapnel in the Lower Galilee.
Israel Police urged the public to stay away from rocket shrapnel or fragments, as they may contain explosive material.
Documentation: A fall in Sde Yaakov, near the Ramat David base (credit: SCREENSHOT/X)
Residents of Kiryat Tivon said that they were unable to get into to public shelters as they were locked, according to KAN.
Al Hadath, a Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese outlet, reported that
Hezbollah fired 100 rockets towards Haifa and the Upper Galilee, however
the IDF claimed it was ten.
At around 2am, Hezbollah reported Israeli air force jets over southern Lebanon.
Smuggling weapons, people, etc. is a very profitable business
"Before el-Sissi, but
also during his tenure, cars, motorcycles, clothes, drugs, medicines,
alcoholic beverages, and weapons were smuggled through the Philadelphi
Corridor over the years, lots of weapons: improved RPG-29 rockets that
killed our soldiers in the Iron Swords War, hidden rocket parts, machine
guns, mines, and more." — Nadav Shragai, Israeli author and journalist,
Israel Hayom, July 10, 2024.
"[E]ven those who trust President el-Sissi now cannot guarantee
that a new [former Egyptian President] Mohammed Morsi from the Muslim
Brotherhood won't rise to power in the future, as we saw happen in 2012
presidential elections in Egypt. Israel must, therefore, remain in
Philadelphi [gateway between Egypt and Gaza].... Foreign monitoring
forces have failed in Lebanon over the years, and they also failed at
the Rafah crossing from which European Union monitors fled in 2007." —
Nadav Shragai, Israel Hayom, July 10, 2024.
"Even today the city of Rafah [near the border with Egypt] is
full of smugglers who bribe the Egyptian police and run a business
sector with a turnover in the billions. The smuggling still continues
during wartime, as war materiel and other goods flow from Sinai into
Gaza every day. And there is fear that such smuggling is, or will be,
accompanied by smuggling in the other direction. Senior Hamas figures
are likely to try to escape into Egyptian territory, with hostages, and
from there to Iran." — Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi, March 4, 2024.
"Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes to
brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory
through Egypt... Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza
through the Rafah border crossing, but those trying to get their names
on the list of people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked
to pay large 'coordination fees' by a network of brokers and couriers
with alleged links to the Egyptian intelligence services.... a network
of brokers, based in Cairo, helping Palestinians leave Gaza has operated
around the Rafah border for years.... The Guardian has spoken to
a number of people who have been told they would have to pay between
$5,000 and $10,000 each to leave the strip, with some launching
crowdfunding campaigns to raise the money. Others were told they could
leave sooner if they paid more." — The Guardian, January 8, 2024.
"A company owned by an influential Egyptian businessman and ally
of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is making around $2m a day from
Palestinians fleeing Israel's war on Gaza... Hala Consulting and Tourism
Services, a firm owned by Sinai tribal leader and business tycoon
Ibrahim al-Organi, has been charging Palestinians crossing from Gaza's
Rafah to Egypt at least $5,000 per adult and $2,500 for children under
16. It has a monopoly on providing transfer services at the Rafah
crossing...." — Middle East Eye, May 1, 2024.
Anyone who believes that the Egyptians would act differently if
and when Israel withdraws from the border area must be living on another
planet. If the IDF leaves, Hamas will swiftly return to the border, and
the Egyptians will continue looking the other way.
Anyone who believes that the Egyptians would act differently
if and when Israel withdraws from the border area must be living on
another planet. If the IDF leaves, Hamas will swiftly return to the
border, and the Egyptians will continue looking the other way. Pictured:
Egyptian soldiers sit on a tank on the Egyptian side of the Gaza-Egypt
border, near Rafah, on July 8, 2013. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty
Images)
Egyptian Minister of Foreign Affairs Badr Abdelatty said on September
18 that his country will never accept any Israeli security presence at
the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. "Abdelatty asserted that
Egypt maintains complete opposition to any military presence at the
[Rafah border] crossing or the Philadelphi Corridor [between Egypt and
the Gaza Strip]," according to Egypt's Al-Ahram newspaper.
The Egyptian minister made his remarks during a joint press
conference with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken following a meeting
in Cairo. "These remarks echo previous Egyptian statements asserting
its rejection of any Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor on the
Egypt-Gaza border and the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing, which
has been under Israeli control since May," Al-Ahramadded.
The Egyptians are actually saying that they prefer to have Palestinian terrorists on their border rather than Israel.
The Philadelphi Corridor is a ribbon of land about nine miles in length and 100 meters wide along the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt.
After the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005, control
over the Rafah crossing and Philadelphi Corridor was handed over to
Egypt and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The two parties were therefore
responsible for preventing smuggling of weapons and other goods from
Egyptian territory into the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, Egypt and the
PA failed to stop the smuggling activities along the border.
In 2007, the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas staged a
coup against the Palestinian Authority and seized full control of the
Gaza Strip, including the Gazan side of the border with Egypt. Following
this, Hamas and other terror groups increased their smuggling
activities through the border and the dozens of tunnels they dug beneath
it.
Since the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) retook control of the Rafah
crossing and Philadelphi Corridor last May, Egypt has been voicing
strong opposition to Israel's presence in these areas. This is the same
Egypt that failed to stop the flow of weapons from its territory into
the Gaza Strip over the two decades.
"Experts have suggested technological solutions including
surveillance and ground sensors could effectively control efforts to
rebuild Hamas's smuggling tunnels. History suggests, however, that a key
component is the political will on Cairo's part to crack down on
smuggling on the Egyptian side, which has sometimes been notably absent,
creating problems on both sides of the border."
As Israeli author and journalist Nadav Shragai noted in July 2024:
"For nearly 20 years, Hamas has smuggled enormous
quantities of weapons and building materials through and under the
Philadelphi Corridor, significantly advancing the construction of
underground Gaza – the world's largest terror city. Anyone who still
believes the Egyptians were unaware of this is deluding themselves.
"The Egyptians not only knew, but for years they were complicit –
knowingly ignoring the situation, turning a blind eye, and even actively
facilitating it. While under President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi they have
taken some significant action against the tunnels, proposing to involve
them now in any arrangement concerning the Philadelphi Corridor and
trusting them is not just foolish and grossly irresponsible, but
self-deception and public fraud.
"Before el-Sissi, but also during his tenure, cars, motorcycles,
clothes, drugs, medicines, alcoholic beverages, and weapons were
smuggled through the Philadelphi Corridor over the years, lots of
weapons: improved RPG-29 rockets that killed our soldiers in the Iron
Swords War, hidden rocket parts, machine guns, mines, and more.
"The tunnels were dug from house basements, orchards, and olive
groves. An average tunnel costs about $100,000 to build, with a daily
turnover averaging half a million shekels. Egyptian officials and
officers pocketed bribes that allowed the weapons highway to continue.
And after all this, to say that Egypt didn't know?
"The very thought of now erasing Egypt's sins and giving them a role
again in overseeing the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah crossing is
scandalous. Egypt bears significant responsibility for what happened in
Philadelphi over the years, and even those who trust President el-Sissi
now cannot guarantee that a new [former Egyptian President] Mohammed
Morsi from the Muslim Brotherhood won't rise to power in the future, as
we saw happen in 2012 presidential elections in Egypt....
"Israel must, therefore, remain in Philadelphi. Neither Egypt, the
"bruised reed," nor other foreign forces, nor cameras – no one will do
the job for us there as needed, and it's time we stop deluding
ourselves. Foreign monitoring forces have failed in Lebanon over the
years, and they also failed at the Rafah crossing from which European
Union monitors fled in 2007."
Brig. Gen. (Res.) Amir Avivi, founder and chairman of Israel's
Defense & Security Forum (IDSF), who previously served as Deputy
Commander of the IDF's Gaza Division, pointed out that when Israel
handed Sinai to Egypt in 1982, a narrow space was created between the
Gaza Strip and Egypt and received the now well-known name Philadelphi
Corridor. "For roughly a decade, Israel controlled the Philadelphi
Corridor and the IDF operated freely in the cities of the Gaza Strip,"
Avivi wrote recently.
"That arrangement changed in the early 1990s, with the
signing of the Oslo Accords. Those agreements stipulated, among other
things, that Israel would withdraw from the cities of Gaza and not
re-enter. From the moment that Israel left those cities, a large-scale
project of tunneling began but because the Philadelphi Corridor was
still in our hands, we were able to maintain a certain level of
awareness and influence."
According to Avivi, Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 changed the picture completely:
"Despite many warnings from the security services, the
Israeli government chose to withdraw completely from the Gaza Strip and
yield control of the Philadelphi Corridor. Expectably, the scope of
smuggling there increased exponentially and reached incredible
proportions.
"The Egyptian government, newly responsible for the Philadelphi
Corridor, looked the other way and permitted copious smuggling from
Sinai into Gaza, including weaponry, commercial goods, and even people.
It was that smuggling that enabled Hamas to turn into a well-armed
terrorist army and thus brought about the disaster of October 7."
In recent years, Avivi added, smuggling from Egypt into the Gaza Strip has become central to the Gaza economy and key to the strengthening of Hamas.
"Even today the city of Rafah [near the border with
Egypt] is full of smugglers, who bribe the Egyptian police and run a
business sector with a turnover in the billions.
"The smuggling still continues during wartime, as war materiel and
other goods flow from Sinai into Gaza every day. And there is fear that
such smuggling is, or will be, accompanied by smuggling in the other
direction. Senior Hamas figures are likely to try to escape into
Egyptian territory, with hostages, and from there to Iran."
The Egyptians are apparently worried that Israel's presence at the
border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip would deny them the opportunity
to continue making a huge profit from bribes. According to an
investigation by The Guardian:
"Palestinians desperate to leave Gaza are paying bribes
to brokers of up to $10,000 (£7,850) to help them exit the territory
through Egypt...
"Very few Palestinians have been able to leave Gaza through the Rafah
border crossing, but those trying to get their names on the list of
people permitted to exit daily say they are being asked to pay large
'coordination fees' by a network of brokers and couriers with alleged
links to the Egyptian intelligence services...
"A network of brokers, based in Cairo, helping Palestinians leave
Gaza has operated around the Rafah border for years. But prices have
surged since the start of the war, from $500 for each person.
"The Guardian has spoken to a number of people who have been told
they would have to pay between $5,000 and $10,000 each to leave the
strip, with some launching crowdfunding campaigns to raise the money.
Others were told they could leave sooner if they paid more."
Earlier this year, a report by the website Middle East Eye revealed that an Egyptian businessman with close ties to President el-Sissi and the Egyptian military appears to profit from Gaza's calamities.
"A company owned by an influential Egyptian businessman
and ally of President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi is making around $2m a day
from Palestinians fleeing Israel's war on Gaza, Middle East Eye can
reveal.
"Hala Consulting and Tourism Services, a firm owned by Sinai tribal
leader and business tycoon Ibrahim al-Organi, has been charging
Palestinians crossing from Gaza's Rafah to Egypt at least $5,000 per
adult and $2,500 for children under 16.
"It has a monopoly on providing transfer services at the Rafah
crossing, the only Gaza exit not bordered with Israel and the single
route out of the coastal enclave for Palestinians.
"In the past three months alone, the company is estimated to have
made a minimum of $118m, or 5.6 billion Egyptian pounds, from desperate
Palestinians trying to leave war-torn Gaza."
As a result of the Egyptians' failure to stop the smuggling
activities at their border with the Gaza Strip, 1,200 Israelis were
murdered, with many raped, beheaded, tortured and burned alive, in the
October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Another 240 Israelis were
kidnapped by Hamas terrorists and "ordinary" Palestinians on that day.
Anyone who believes that the Egyptians would act differently if and
when Israel withdraws from the border area must be living on another
planet. If the IDF leaves, Hamas will swiftly return to the border, and
the Egyptians will continue looking the other way.
Bassam Tawil is a Muslim Arab based in the Middle
East. His work is made possible through the generous donation of a
couple of donors who wished to remain anonymous. Gatestone is most
grateful.
It is imperative for Americans to get answers as to how much of a role communist China played—and may continue to play—in building up “The Great Walz of China.”
If you blinked, you might have missed it—which is just what the collusion media and the left wanted.
Earlier this month, the Empire State had a spy scandal. The alleged
perpetrator Linda Sun is a now-former aide to both New York Governors
Andrew Cuomo and his successor Kathy Hochul. She was arrested and indicted for being an unregistered agent for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Also arrested was her husband, Christopher Hu.
Ms. Sun is alleged to have used her government position to advance
the interests of communist China by deepening ties between the regime
and the New York state government; and revising official statements to
portray the PRC in a more favorable light. On his part, Mr. Hu is
alleged to have used his PRC-based to abet the “transfer of millions of
dollars in kickbacks for personal gain.”
As Michael Cunningham, a research fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, observed in the Daily Signal:
"Hochul reportedly terminated Sun and alerted law
enforcement immediately after learning of her misconduct but a CCP
[Chinese Communist Party] agent should never have gained access to New
York’s Executive Chamber in the first place… And the problem isn’t
unique to New York. Most state governments are likely unaware of how
aggressively Beijing targets them… This is partly because Beijing sees
state and local governments as potential backdoors into a U.S. political
system that is harder to infiltrate directly.
Indeed, they are not unique to the Empire State; and the means the
PRC utilizes to acquire “assets” who will knowingly and/or unwittingly
promote their interests are time-tested, in every sense of the term. Per
Mr. Cunningham: “Beijing’s agents seek to cultivate assets at all
levels, and they start targeting people early in their careers when they
have little reason to suspect they are on a foreign adversary’s radar.”
Why would the collusion media desperately want to shove the New
York-PRC spy scandal down the memory hole? Isn’t this the same media
that in league with the Democrats and the administrative state spent
years spreading the abject Russia-gate lie that Donald Trump “colluded”
with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election?
The question is rhetorical, of course, because one obvious candidate
for a closer examination of their ties to communist China is Minnesota’s
Governor Tim Walz, who also happens to be the Democrat candidate for
Vice President of the United States.
As outlets like the Washington Free Beacon and Breitbart
report, Walz makes no bones about his coziness with the genocidal
communist regime that has declared unrestricted warfare upon the United
States.
Be it his recently discovered (in the Nebraska Alliance Times-Herald)
1991 teaching lesson that in communist China “everyone is the same and
everyone shares” to his more recent remark how “one person’s socialism
is another person’s neighborliness,” Walz possesses a self-professed
“fascination” for the regime.
It began during the (then) 25-year-old National Guardsman’s first
trip to the PRC for a year-long teaching fellowship. It was a heady year
for Walz. As reported by the Free Beacon (via the original 1994 article in the Nebraska Star-Herald),
Walz “said he was paid more than other teachers, given a nicer
apartment, and spoiled with presents. ‘They gave me more gifts than I
could bring home. It was an excellent experience.’”
Little wonder Walz said the PRC treated him “like a king;” and, as he gushed to the Times-Herald upon his return to the U.S., that “no matter how long I live, I’ll never be treated that well again.”
Why any American would admire communist China can usually be boiled
down to a matter of ideology, greed, or both. The far more intriguing
query is why the Chinese Communist Party targeted Walz for such regal
treatment.
Peering into the PRC’s blood-soaked history, we glean a possible
reason. Borrowing from the Bolshevik-Soviet example, even before
attaining power the CCP understood the need for “united front work” both
inside and outside the PRC. The goal was to have ideologically and
otherwise “friendly” individuals and organizations serve to advance CCP
narratives, interests, and influence. While these individuals and
organizations would have varying degrees of association with the CCP
and, later, the PRC, in no instance did the party want them to be seen
as being directed by the regime. Importantly, this does not necessarily
mean the individuals were or are spies for the CCP. They may merely be
useful idiots unwittingly serving as assets to and advancing the
interests of the regime. Nonetheless, in any event, and to differing
extents, communist China has compromised these individuals.
Despicably but not surprisingly, in the wake of the murderous
communist regimes of students in Tiananmen Square, the CCP sought to
intensify its “united front work” both internally and internationally.
Walz first trekked to the PRC mere months after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
Walz and wife Gwen married on the fifth commemoration of the
Tiananmen Square massacre. His wife, Gwen, opines how Walz “wanted to
have a date he’ll always remember.” The couple honeymooned in the PRC.
Walz nor his wife did not say whether they were treated like royalty;
but the communist regime did facilitate their starting “a travel
company, Educational Travel Adventures Inc., which specialized in trips
to China,” per the Free Beacon. “He began bringing students over
to China with him in 1993, using his ties to CCP diplomats to secure
funding from the Chinese government to do so.” [Per Breitbart.]
Thus, at the very time the CCP spy scandal in the New York Governor’s
office erupted; and mere months after Director Christopher Ray testified to Congress
that the FBI opens a new China-related counterintelligence case every
10 hours, a trio of fundamental questions arise for both our
intelligence community and Vice President Harris, specifically:
First, is Gov. Walz’s relationship with the PRC news to you?
Two: If you knew, did you do your due diligence regarding Gov. Walz’s ties to the PRC?
Three: If so, will the Harris campaign release its non-classified findings to the public?
This is not partisan sniping. For, much as is the case with our
intelligence community’s competence, it bears directly upon Vice
President Harris’s ability to protect our national security as
commander-in-chief. She chose Walz to potentially be “a heartbeat away”
from the presidency. She did so despite all the information about ties
between Walz and the PRC which are now publicly emerging. The American
people deserve to know why.
As Mr. Cunningham cautions in his conclusion: “Continued failure to
increase scrutiny of key personnel doesn’t only pose risks for the
states and their leadership, it also threatens national security.” In
consequence, it is imperative for Americans to get answers as to how
much of a role communist China played—and may continue to play—in
building up “The Great Walz of China.”
***
An American Greatness contributor, the Hon.
Thaddeus G. McCotter (M.C., Ret.) served Michigan’s 11th Congressional
district from 2003-2012, and served as Chair of the Republican House
Policy Committee. Not a lobbyist, he is a frequent public speaker and
moderator for public policy seminars; and a Monday co-host of the “John
Batchelor Radio Show,” among sundry media appearances.
Former defense official says beeper attack joins other strikes that appear to be "softening up" the terrorist group ahead of future developments.
Ambulances are surrounded by people at the entrance
to the American University of Beirut Medical Center after explosions
hit locations in several Hezbollah strongholds around Lebanon on Sept.
17, 2024. Photo by Anwar Amro/AFP via Getty Images.
As the dust settles from the mass pager
and radio communication blasts that rocked Hezbollah in Lebanon on
Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively, and caused thousands of injuries
and dozens of deaths in the ranks of the Iran-backed terror army,
observers have begun to assess the damage incurred by the Islamist
group.
In a televised speech on Thursday, Hezbollah
Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah acknowledged that his organization
absorbed an unprecedented blow to its personnel and security, adding
that there was no dispute that “the enemy has technological
superiority.” Nasrallah and other Hezbollah leaders have vowed
retaliation.
The historic attack has severely disrupted
Hezbollah’s operational infrastructure by taking thousands of
commanders off the battlefield due to injuries, hundreds of them severe,
while eliminating much of its ability to communicate with field
operatives, since pagers were meant to be a safer replacement for smart
phones, which the group considers too vulnerable to espionage.
As such, the damage to Hezbollah’s command
structure, communications infrastructure and morale is considered
significant, damaging the organization’s ability to function
confidently.
According to Cmdr. (res.) Eyal Pinko, a
researcher at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan
University and a former Israeli Navy officer, who also served in an
intelligence organization, the attack struck up to 3,000 terror
operatives in “less than a second.
“If you just look at the persons who were
carrying those beepers, this is probably the senior commanders and
above. So it’s from the battalion commanders and above. So probably what
is happening now in Hezbollah is that all the commanding structure
from, let’s say, the rank of lieutenant colonel in a regular military to
the generals, the two or three generals, are totally injured or some of
them are already died. So now to get even to the time to reset and to
start to understand what is happening, it will take a few days.”
The surprise attack left Hezbollah on its
knees, he added, though the organization’s opposition in Lebanon still
does not stand a chance against the Islamist group’s armed operatives,
estimated to number almost 100,000 (including reserve forces).
“You need to have a huge army in order to,
to compete with them,” said Pinko. However, the 3,000 or so injured
operatives mean that an enormously significant number of senior
commanders are not functional—in all likelihood, “all [of the] senior
commanding level were damaged,” he assessed.
Hezbollah operatives in Syria were also hurt in the pager blasts.
And on Sept. 9, international media
reports said Israeli special forces and aircraft struck an IRGC missile
site in Hama, western Syria, which was designed to produce accurate
missiles for Hezbollah. That attack, said Pinko, harmed the group’s
ability to get hold of “kits that make their bombs more accurate—the
rocket accuracy program. So all these moves kind of look like softening
up the target before actually striking,” he said.
On July 31, the Israeli Air Force killed Hezbollah’s second in command, Fuad Shukr, considered to be the organization’s “military” chief of staff, landing another blow.
Pinko said that strike and others like it showcased “very precise, very accurate, very good intelligence, amazing intelligence.”
Meanwhile, as international media reports
focus on the pager attack, less attention has been given to how the
explosive material in them was activated.
Malicious code
Barak Gonen, senior lecturer at the
Jerusalem College of Technology and a former cybersecurity official in
the Israel Defense Forces, told JNS that in theory, “Getting a remote
device to run a malicious code requires uploading the code into the
device before execution, which is an immense task if done remotely.”
He added, “I would assume that all modern
intelligence agencies employ experts that master the skills of attacking
remote devices. However, in this event, as the details unfold it
becomes more apparent that the devices were ‘treated’ before handling
them to Hezbollah. As an attacker, holding the device in your hand makes
it far easier to attack, as you can alter the code that is running in
the device. What the attacker would need to do is have an image of the
new code, and then burn it into the device pretty much in the same
manner that the factory, or cellphone technicians, do.”
Yaakov Lappin is an Israel-based military affairs correspondent and analyst. He is
the in-house analyst at the Miryam Institute; a research associate at
the Alma Research and Education Center; and a research associate at the
Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University. He is a
frequent guest commentator on international television news networks,
including Sky News and i24 News. Lappin is the author of Virtual Caliphate: Exposing the Islamist State on the Internet. Follow him at: www.patreon.com/yaakovlappin.
While we may never know the reasons that led Hamas leaders to authorize an attack that will most likely lead to the destruction of the organization, religious certainty seems to be the key motivation.
On October 7, 2023, Hamas, the Islamic resistance movement, conducted
an unprecedented attack on Israel. This raised the legitimate question
of why Hamas did it, knowing well the expected Israeli response. In what
follows, I will stress a point that is overlooked in many instances in
the West regarding religious certainty, which provided the Hamas
leadership with the rationale and the courage to go for October 7.
The responsibility of the attack undoubtedly lies with Yahya Sinwar,
the head of Hamas. A main reason is that the belief system of a
fundamentally religious organization is binding for all, thereby
ensuring the total obedience of the military commanders, such as the
head of the military wing, Mohammed Deif, and his deputy Marwan Issa.
For a valid explanation of what happened, we need therefore to look at
no more than at Sinwar’s motivations.
Sinwar may have underestimated Hamas’s capabilities, thinking that
the Israeli casualties would be limited, thereby not warranting a large
military action. Or he may have miscalculated about the extent of the
Israeli response, thinking that it would be restrained due to the local
tensions in Israel and the expected high casualties of a large military
operation. But a point that is overlooked in many instances in the West
is that unquestionable belief in Islam was a main driver, providing the
Hamas leadership with the rationale and the courage to go for October 7.
In an interview with Sky News Arabia last February, Esmat Mansour, a former cellmate of Yahya Sinwar in the Israeli jail,, claimed
that “if Sinwar knew what the consequences of the assault would be, he
would never have planned an operation this way." In the same vein,
speaking to Asharq Al-Awsat, Yasser Abed Rabbo, a senior PLO leader,
said that the operation was perhaps meant to be a limited one, involving
the capture of some soldiers and minor clashes. However, this view is
not consistent with the forces mobilized for the operation, the
intensive training conducted in Gaza and abroad, and the instructions
given to incur maximum casualties among the Israelis.
The forces that implemented October 7 involved about 3,000 fighters, hundreds of them received specialized combat training in Iran.
They were equipped with thermobaric grenades, which can quickly cause
massive fires in a home, and they had enough ammunition and food to keep
going for days. Also, according to some reports,
the instructions were to “kill as many people and take as many hostages
as possible.” The reasonable assumption is therefore that Hamas leaders
did intend to cause maximum casualties, but they may have
underestimated the extent of the Israeli response, anticipating a
limited engagement akin to previous wars. As an example, Musa Abu
Marzouk, a senior Hamas official, admitted that they did not anticipate
the severity of Israel’s response, even though it was consistent with the military strategy
of the Hebrew state based on built on three pillars: deterrence, early
warning, and decisive victory. A more reasonable explanation is that
Sinwar accepted the consequences, convinced that the political gains
will outweigh the losses.
With
the early successes of October 7, Sinwar can always claim that Hamas
did unprecedented damage to Israel by tarnishing the image of its army,
returning the Palestinian issue to the global stage, including through
proceedings at the International Court of Justice and the International
Criminal Court, in addition to sabotaging the negotiations concerning
normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel. These gains can hardly
outweigh the destruction of most of Hamas’s military capabilities and
its loss of control of the Gaza strip though. This leaves religious
certainty as the only convincing explanation.
As a devout Muslim, Sinwar should have no doubt about divine
intervention. According to the prevailing Islamic narrative, Muslims
have historically won key battles with the help of Allah’s angels. In
the battle of Badr, which took place in 624 AD, Koran 3:123-44 stated:
“Allah helped you at Badr when you were very weak. Be mindful of Allah,
so that you may be grateful.” And, the same happened in the battle of
Uhud one year later when the Meccans failed to capture Medina, the
Muslims’ base, which allowed them to survive, reorganize, and fight
another day until they achieved victory. Martyrdom, i.e., the fight for
Allah’s sake is also expected to boost Muslims’ willingness to fight and
die, as the Koran assured them of an afterlife: “Think not of those who
are slain in Allah's way as dead. Nay, they live, finding their
sustenance in the presence of their Lord; They rejoice in the bounty
provided by Allah.”
With these divine assurances, Hamas leadership and devout Muslims in
general will have no reasons to doubt victory, even in the face of
seemingly impossible odds. Indeed, in a letter to the political
leadership of the organization last January, Sinwar boasted about a crushing defeat of
the Israeli army, arguing that despite the tactical losses, Hamas still
had the upper hand, and that international pressure would force Israel
to end the war. In the same vein, according to a recent document published by the German newspaper Bild
dating to Spring 2024, and which has been approved by Yahya Sinwar
personally, the Hamas leadership is not seeking a quick end to the war
despite the losses incurred by the organization and Gazan civilians.
While we may never know the reasons that led Hamas leaders to
authorize an attack that will most likely lead to the destruction of the
organization, religious certainty seems to be the key motivation,
guaranteeing gains for Muslims even in the face of a military defeat.
Moreover, the recent appointment of Yahya Sinwar as head of Hamas’
Political Bureau put an end to the rivalries between the military and
political wings of the movement, and strengthened Iran’s influence.
Therefore, Sinwar is in no hurry to end the war as was reported by the
German newspaper Bild, nor will he accept Netanyahu’s recent
offer of safe passage to flee to Egypt. Like Hitler before him, he will
prefer to be killed in his bunker. Any ceasefire will only be short-term
to allow for the organization to regroup and rearm. Soon after that,
the religious certainty that was at the source of October 7 will provide
Hamas leadership with the motivation and courage to restart a new cycle
of violence.
The criticism of the tactics and the fact that it inspired some laughter from besieged Israelis speak volumes about the moral sickness afflicting many Western liberals.
Israeli soldiers evacuate wounded people who was severely injured when a
missile fired from Lebanon hit the Ramim Cliff area, near the Israeli
border with Lebanon, on Sept. 19, 2024. Photo by Ayal Margolin/Flash90.
It was the covert operation that inspired
thousands of Internet memes. The simultaneous explosion of thousands of
pagers in the possession of Hezbollah operatives followed a day later by
a similar mass explosion of terrorist walkie-talkies was the top story
across the world this week.
The strikes on Hezbollah leadership that
occurred a few days later might have been just as important in seeking
to cripple the terrorists’ ability to continue its ongoing missile
strikes on northern Israel and possible threats of a possible land
attack on the Jewish state. Nevertheless, the attack on members of the
organization (and its associated sponsors and string-pullers, like the
Iranian ambassador to Lebanon who reportedly also had a Hezbollah beeper
and lost an eye when it blew up) carrying around those relics of 1980s
technology triggered both the imagination and the indignation of
international opinion.
We can’t know for sure just how much
damage Israel has done to Hezbollah’s morale, let alone its capabilities
to inflict terror and pain on Israelis as well as Lebanese citizens.
There may be some truth to what the doomsayers among New York Times analysts and Israeli left-wingers who claimed that any harm would be superficial and transitory.
More important was the angry reaction
inspired among many Western liberals who denounced the attacks because
they don’t believe in Israel’s right to defend itself against terrorists
and because they no longer believe that any Western nation has the
right to fight even the most just wars.
The claim that this was an Israeli
“escalation” is entirely untrue since it is Hezbollah that initiated the
current round of strife. No matter how many terrorists were killed,
maimed or wounded in the strikes, the Iranian proxy shows no sign of
halting its firing on not just northern Israel but now other areas since
Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas in the south. Hezbollah’s rockets have
essentially depopulated Israeli communities along the country’s
northern border, turning tens of thousands of its citizens into evacuees
holing up in hotels in the center of the country alongside those who
were similarly affected by the assault on southern Israel.
No spy caper—no matter how ingenious or
expertly targeted to harm as few innocents as possible—means much if it
doesn’t contribute to Israel’s strategic goal: pushing Hezbollah forces
away from its border and ensuring safety to the north. It may be, as
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has recently hinted, that this objective may only be achieved by a cross-border offensive involving the use of land forces.
But there is no avoiding the fact that the enormous attention devoted to what analyst Michael Doran satirically called
“Operation Grim Beeper” told us not only about the role that Jews and
Israel still play in the Western imagination but also about what a great
many people in the West now think about armed conflict.
‘Magical’ Jews
One side of this reaction is not entirely
bad. As much as the still-powerful myth about Jewish power is at the
heart of antisemitism, the belief in what might be termed the “magical
Jew” who is smarter and more resourceful than other people sometimes
works to benefit Jews.
Britain’s 1917 decision to issue the
Balfour Declaration in favor of the creation of a Jewish National Home,
which gave Zionism a crucial boost at a critical time, is often ascribed
to the philo-Semitsm as well as the belief of several British
statesmen, including Prime Minister David Lloyd George’s in the
authority of the Bible, which has a thing or two to say about to whom
the land of Israel belongs. More important was their misplaced belief in
the unchecked power of the Jews (whom they were persuaded would be won
over to the Allied cause by the declaration) to ensure that the United
States stayed close to British objectives and to keep Russia an active
participant in World War I, something that was far beyond the
capabilities of either Jewish community.
Yet the heart of the deterrent power of
Israel’s defense and intelligence forces is the fact that many of the
Jewish state’s enemies see it as a mighty power that can’t be beaten.
This reputation has been honestly earned
by Israel’s many military victories and intelligence coups over the
decades. The latter, in which technology masterminds working inside
Israel’s Mossad has dispatched with ingenious methods a long list of
those working to harm Jews—Arab terrorists, German scientists working in
Arab countries to produce weapons of mass destruction, those involved
in the 1972 Munich Olympic massacre, and, in recent years, Iranians
working on building the Islamist regime’s nuclear program—are already
well-documented.
This sense of their own invincibility has
sometimes also worked against Israelis. The tragic errors made by its
intelligence establishment before Oct. 7 showed the price of such
hubris. The same geniuses that helped pull off the exploding beepers
this week were members of the organization that failed so badly to
prevent the largest mass slaughter of Jews since World War II and the
Holocaust.
The exploding pagers and walkie-talkies
(employed only because Hezbollah was already convinced that modern means
of communication involving cell phones and the Internet were inevitably
going to be compromised by the Israelis) will join that list. But as
with every Israeli achievement, including the innumerable technological
and medical innovations produced by that tiny country’s scientists, tech
specialists and engineers that have inspired great praise (and made
Jews everywhere proud of what their people have done), it will also
inspire more harmful conspiracy theories that contribute to hatred for
Jews. This proves again that although times and circumstances changed,
the Jews remain the primary boogeymen of Western thought.
Along with those more traditional tropes
of antisemitism, the reactions to what we all must presume (though
Hezbollah and Iran have many enemies, such as the United States, which
currently lacks the will to strike them and many others who don’t have
the capability) was an Israeli operation, the moral disdain it aroused
among some needs to be understood and put in context.
The attack provoked condemnation from
among supposedly high-minded people who labeled the scheme a “terrorist”
attack or claimed that it violated international law—as did Human
Rights Watch, a group that has time and again been exposed for its bias
against Israel and antisemitism. As predictably negative articles
published by NPR and The Intercept
noted, so-called experts from the United Nations agreed. Other entities
irredeemably committed to undermining Israel’s right to exist and
defend itself decried that the exploding devices were evidence of a
massive “war crime.”
An Israeli tank during military training in the Golan Heights on April 19, 2024. Photo by Michael Giladi/Flash90.
Is it acceptable to laugh at the situation?
Even more insufferable was the moral
opprobrium directed at the many Israelis and people everywhere, Jew and
non-Jew alike, who found humor in the misfortune of the terrorists, as
was made clear in a tsunami of jokes and memes about their stupidity as
well as the grievous injuries suffered by many of them.
Let’s specify that many of these jibes
were not in the best of taste. Maybe all of them were tasteless. The
notion that we should in some ways recognize the common humanity we
share with members of Hezbollah or that we are obligated by our own
faiths to grieve with our enemies, even as we resist them, is well
grounded in Jewish as well as Christian traditions.
After all, one of the highlights of a
Passover seder is the ritual of removing drops of wine from our cups at
the mention of each of the plagues sent by God to punish the Egyptians
for their enslavement of the Jews. Moses’ own sister, Miriam, was
punished for celebrating the deaths of the Egyptians who drowned when
the Red Sea reconstituted itself after letting the escaped slaves pass.
But dipping our fingers in a wine cup is
easy enough when trying to atavistically recall an event that happened
more than 3,000 years ago. Israelis have been living with the trauma of
Oct. 7 for the past year and decades of terrorism before that. Jews
elsewhere are facing a surge in antisemitism the likes of which have not
been experienced in the living memory of most people. We are all only
human and are entitled to take some satisfaction when those dedicated to
murdering Israelis, Americans and other Diaspora Jewish communities
encounter some misfortune.
This is not dissimilar to reactions to the
deaths of Nazis in the past, even though as many as a million or more
German civilians were killed in both Allied bombings and the invasions
of Germany needed to overthrow Adolf Hitler’s regime. When human beings
engage in mass murder, as members of Hezbollah have repeatedly done,
they forfeit the right to sympathy when reaping the whirlwind they have
sown. Anyone who disagrees with that has lost their moral compass.
Although the deaths of any innocent
civilian is a tragedy, there is no other example that I am aware of such
a mass-targeted killing of terrorists that was so clearly crafted to
avoid such casualties. In the past year, Israel has often been falsely
accused of making no effort to spare civilians, even though they do more
than any nation in that respect. But when it does something that is so
transparently directed only at terrorists—who else would have a
Hezbollah pager?—it is still attacked with the same unfairness charge.
As in so many other ways, this proves again that Israel is assaulted
verbally, legally and physically not so much for what it does but for
what it is.
Israel can do nothing right
At the root of this the same belief in
Israel’s illegitimacy as a “settler/colonialist” and “apartheid” state
that motivates the mobs who have marched in the streets of American
cities and on college campuses in support of Hamas’s efforts to purge
Jews “from the river to the sea.”
To such people, there is nothing that
Israelis could do to defend itself under any circumstance that would be
justified. And, as they have also shown, there is nothing that those who
wish to eradicate Israeli—even the genocidal Islamists of Hamas who
perpetrated an orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton
destruction on Oct. 7—can do that can’t be characterized as an act of
justified “resistance” against “settlers” and “white” oppressors.
Just as important as that is the way the
attack on Israel’s efforts to stop Hezbollah tells us about the way many
in the West have lost any belief that there is such a thing as a just
war.
The immediate reaction to the terrorist
attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, reminded the overwhelming majority of
Americans that there were times when you had to fight to defend yourself
and your country. That was a matter of consensus among the generation
that fought in World War II but had gone out of fashion in the Vietnam
War era. Amid the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan that followed 9/11,
it is once again being attacked by the left.
Some wars are just
That sense that there is nothing worth
fighting or dying for has been compounded by the success of the left’s
long march through our institutions in recent years as a generation of
American students were indoctrinated in the toxic neo-Marxist myths
about critical race theory and intersectionality. This is not just a war
against America and its history but against Western civilization
itself. By this means, many Americans have been intellectually disarmed
against threats to their values and their nation. Along with it comes a
belief that “white” Westerners are, like Israelis, inherently
illegitimate and should not resist those who label themselves (as does
Hezbollah) as members of a class of victims who seek to do them harm and
topple their civilization.
Unnecessary and aggressive wars are
unjust. But those waged to defend against murderous regimes and those
who seek to victimize the powerless are just. Most of all, a war waged
to defend a nation’s existence is fully defensible and should be
supported by anyone with a set of moral values.
But many contemporary Western liberals
have either forgotten that or have embraced anti-Western and Marxist
ideology that would render even the most obviously moral wars, such as
those waged against Hitler’s regime and the perpetrators of Oct. 7, as
somehow immoral. In this way, they are prepared to condemn Israel’s
exploding beepers that are clearly aimed at killing only terrorists as
much as they do anything to prevent Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis in
Yemen and their Iranian paymasters from continuing to inflict suffering
on Israel and the West. In their worldview, the terrorists should be
protected from attack, and their Israeli and Western victims deserve
none.
The issue this week isn’t so much whether
it’s OK to laugh at the predicament of terrorists who have had the
tables turned on them. It’s whether it’s ever right for Israelis or any
citizen of a Western country to defend themselves against murderers with
blood on their hands, and who wish to create more mayhem and death.
Ethical people understand that there is only one answer to that
question. The anger directed at Israel is because they have once again
shown that they are prepared to try to make the killers pay for their
crimes.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him @jonathans_tobin.
“We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse from participating in state contests,” Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer stated in the ruling.
Arizona's Supreme Court on Friday
determined that the nearly 98,000 voters who have not proved their
citizenship due to a glitch in the system can still vote in the November
elections.
Arizona law requires voters to file documents
that prove their citizenship in order to vote in state and local
elections, but not in federal ones. But an error was discovered on
Tuesday that revealed thousands of residents
had applied for driver's licenses without proving that they were
citizens. Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs has also admitted the issue and
said that the error is being fixed.
The ruling sides with Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, a
Democrat, who claimed it was too late to do anything about the November
election. Fontes also claimed that prohibiting the residents from voting
in an election they could easily be qualified to vote in, could raise
equal protection and due process concerns.
“We are unwilling on these facts to disenfranchise voters en masse
from participating in state contests,” Chief Justice Ann Scott Timmer
stated in the ruling, reported by the Associated Press.
Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer thanked the state Supreme Court for reviewing the matter and issuing an opinion on it quickly.
Misty Severi is an evening news reporter for Just The News. You can follow her on X for more coverage.
The single-stage deal presented to the United States would free all of the hostages held by Hamas and allow the terror group's leadership to exit the Strip.
Families of hostages take part in a meeting at Tel Aviv's "Hostages Square." Photo by Paulina Patimer.
Israel has submitted a new proposal to the
United States to end the war in Gaza by freeing all of the remaining
hostages held by Hamas and allowing the terror group’s leader Yahya
Sinwar to exit the enclave, Kan News reported on Thursday.
The framework for the deal, which would be
achieved all in one phase, also includes safe passage out of Gaza for
other senior Hamas terrorists, the release of Palestinian security
prisoners, demilitarization of the Strip and a new system of governance
in Gaza.
"עסקת המעבר הבטוח": גירוש סינוואר מעזה, וסיום המלחמה - בישראל הגישו מתווה חדש לארצות הברית | לכל הפרטים >>> https://t.co/z44KbwUvK4@SuleimanMas1
Israel’s Coordinator for Hostages and Missing Persons, Gal Hirsch, met with families of the hostages and updated them on the proposal, according to the report. Some of the relatives told Kan that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should present the proposal to the United Nations.
Netanyahu is scheduled to deliver a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 27.
In the meeting with the families, Hirsch
reportedly said that the proposal was presented during his meetings last
week with American officials at the White House and State Department.
The proposal has been dubbed the “Safe Passage Deal,” according to sources who met with Hirsch.
The current Israeli proposal on the table to end the conflict in Gaza calls for the safe passage of Yahya Sinwar and other terrorists--likely to Qatar or Turkey--in exchange for the return of all remaining hostages, and a declared end to the intensive phase of fighting.
“In light of the difficulties in the
negotiations and the ticking clock of the hostages’ lives, we seek to
propose a ‘secondary plan’ that will shorten the stages and allow for a
quicker deal. This will happen if Sinwar leaves and brings an end to the
war. It will also allow us to meet the objectives of the war while
enabling Hamas leadership in Gaza to exit safely to a secure location,”
an Israeli official told Kan.
More than 30 families of hostages are
expected to attend next week’s U.N. General Assembly to meet with
international officials and promote the release of their loved ones.
“We welcome the new Netanyahu proposal,
which strengthens security in Israel and allows for a comprehensive
regional arrangement. The prime minister must lead this proposal with
courage, determination and speed,” said Israel’s Hostages and
Missing Families Forum.
Plaintiffs ask judge to let them add "Disinformation Dozen" including RFK Jr. as plaintiffs. White House finally condemns Brazil's ban on X when Brazilian reporter asks directly, but Democrats still calling for mass censorship, prosecution of wrongthink.
The Supreme Court set a high bar in June for states and individuals to challenge government-tinged censorship of social media, reversing a preliminary injunction against the feds because platforms were already suppressing plaintiffs' posts when public officials targeted them.
Censored doctors Jay Bhattacharya, Martin Kulldorff and
Aaron Kheriaty, activist Jill Hines and Gateway Pundit publisher Jim
Hoft, and the attorneys general of Louisiana and Missouri believe they
can meet that high bar, if a court will let them keep digging for
evidence.
The plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden returned to
the Western District of Louisiana this week to show their cards – email
conversations already obtained through their litigation, a similar case
by journalist Alex Berenson, the Twitter Files and congressional
investigations – arguing the evidence justifies more legal discovery
likely to reveal enough to satisfy SCOTUS.
That evidence strongly suggests there's more dirt on the
censorship role played by former National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci and his boss, former
National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins, they said.
It's cited in Tuesday's brief by Missouri and Louisiana AGs
Andrew Bailey and Liz Murrill and the individual plaintiffs, which also
opposes the feds' motion for dismissal.
The plaintiffs are likely to get a friendly response from U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, who issued the sweeping injunction
against "urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing" platforms to
suppress content more than a year ago based on their limited discovery.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals narrowed
the injunction but left it in place against the White House, Surgeon
General Vivek Murthy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
FBI, and Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and
Infrastructure Security Agency. The case became known as Murthy v. Missouri at SCOTUS.
"At no point did the Supreme Court find that Plaintiffs
failed to allege standing adequate to maintain the lawsuit," just that
they had not "adequately proven that their harm is traceable" to the
feds, the memo in support of further discovery
says. The New Civil Liberties Alliance is representing the individuals
except for Hoft, represented by St. Louis lawyer John Burns.
The high court's decision supports more discovery because
it doesn't rest on "those platforms’ independent decisionmaking
processes," the brief states. "In the alternative (or better yet, in
addition)," Judge Doughty should let them amend the suit to add the "Disinformation Dozen" repeatedly targeted by the White House, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a 2024 presidential candidate.
Doughty greenlit Kennedy's First Amendment suit
against the feds last month, saying he was "specifically targeted" for
removal by public officials and then suppressed and faced future
censorship as Biden's rival, before Kennedy dropped out of the
presidential race and endorsed GOP nominee Donald Trump.
Biden administration officials "relentlessly harangued and
threatened" X and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, "and
potentially other companies whose involvement remains unknown," and they
eventually "caved," the memo for further discovery says.
Dismissal would "effectively reward government actors for
flouting Americans’ First Amendment rights, provided they do so in
secret," it says, quoting the dissenters in Murthy, who warned that the majority's reasoning means that a sophisticated "coercive campaign … may get by."
The emails in the exhibit list all appear to have been
disclosed before and be related to COVID-19, either suppression of views
the government dislikes or hiding internal discussions of SARS-CoV-2's
possible origin from the public.
They include emails between Fauci senior scientific adviser
David Morens and outside scientists discussing past and future evasion
of the Freedom of Information Act, and Twitter Files showing
Bhattacharya, a co-author of the anti-lockdown Great Barrington
Declaration with Kulldorff, was placed on a "trends blacklist" when he
joined the platform.
Bhattacharya and Hines, co-director of Health Freedom
Louisiana, each submitted declarations on their experience with
censorship. Hines said she's still being censored, citing incidents from
January 2023 through this month.
Facebook added "fact check" labels that contradicted her
claims and demoted her posts, it "almost immediately" removed a post
calling America the "laughingstock of the world" because of a
gender-nonconforming White House spokesperson, and Instagram demoted and
obscured a post noting the explosion of vaccinations infants routinely
receive since the 1980s.
The legal jockeying over so-called jawboning comes amid
mixed messages from top Democrats and the White House over the proper
role of government in policing social media and strong affirmations of
free speech by the Republican ticket for the White House.
The White House broke three weeks of silence about Brazil's
ban on Elon Musk's X and its steep fines on Brazilians who circumvent
the ban when asked at a press briefing Tuesday by reporter Raquel Krähenbühl, of Brazil’s TV Globo, for its position.
"Look, I think when it comes to social media, we have been
very clear that we think that, you know, folks should have access to
social media," press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. "It’s a form of
freedom – freedom of speech."
President Biden nonetheless signed legislation to ban
TikTok unless its Chinese owner sells the platform by his term's end,
giving Trump an opening to curry favor with its American users and
accuse the now-lame duck president of trying to "help his friends over
at Facebook become richer and more dominant," the New York Postnoted.
Former President Trump said at a rally this month
he would "sign an executive order banning any federal employee from
colluding to limit speech" and "fire every federal bureaucrat who is
engaged in domestic censorship under the Harris regime." Republican lawmakers introduced a similar bill to "establish a presumption of liability" for officials that pressure platforms.
"In the last 2 days, Tim Walz repeated his call for
censorship of speech the government finds objectionable and JD Vance
issued a statement wholeheartedly in support of free expression,"
Minnesota novelist Ann Bauer said of her governor, Walz, Wednesday. "I don't love the Trump ticket, but this tells me exactly what I need to do in November."
