Iranian commercial ship hit near Strait of Hormuz, causing one death: Iranian state media - Nicholas Ballasy

 

by Nicholas Ballasy

The U.S. military had not immediately commented on the incident, which left four wounded and one dead

 

An Iranian cargo ship was hit early Sunday near Qeshm Island in the Strait of Hormuz, leaving one person dead and four others injured, according to Iranian state media. 

The incident occurred one day before Tehran was expected to brief neighboring countries on its efforts to regulate maritime traffic through the waterway.

Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency cited the governor of Qeshm as accusing a “terrorist enemy” of carrying out the attack. The U.S. military had not immediately commented.

Meanwhile, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have emerged as a threat near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a major shipping route connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden. 

Nicholas Ballasy

Source: https://justthenews.com/world/middle-east/iranian-commercial-ship-hit-near-strait-hormuz-causing-one-death-iranian-media

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America 25 Years After 9/11 - Amir Taheri

 

by Amir Taheri

The hate-America ailment has crept even into the commemoration ritual in New York.

 

• The commission asked why it was that terrorists especially hated America but provided no answer. The answer could be found in hundreds of books, articles and sermons that make the rounds across the globe, including in the United States itself. In fact, though you might find it odd, the bulk of what the global anti-American industry produces comes from the US itself. The US is an "evil animal" because it can bite back when bitten. The 9/11 Commission failed in its mission.

• The culture war between the MAGA camp and the wokeist coalition of crypto-communists and bleeding heart liberals shows that the failure has continued for a quarter of a century. The hate-America ailment has crept even into the commemoration ritual in New York.

This year, however, there was a small but significant change in the mise-en-scène of the annual commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks, as families of victims reportedly planned to shun Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who does not endorse the generally accepted narrative of what was the biggest terror attack in history. In other words, a tragedy that initially brought all Americans together in anger and grief may now forge into another fissure along partisan lines, at least in New York. Pictured: Mamdani arrives ahead of the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial in New York on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)

On Friday morning, the great city of New York once again held a ritual ceremony that has become a fixed part of its annual agenda for a quarter of a century. The names of the 2,977 men, women and children who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center's twin towers on September 11 are read aloud while millions of Americans watch the commemoration on TV with a mixture of grief and anger.

This year, however, there was a small but significant change in the mise-en-scène of the annual event, as families of victims reportedly planned to shun Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who does not endorse the generally accepted narrative of what was the biggest terror attack in history. In other words, a tragedy that initially brought all Americans together in anger and grief may now forge into another fissure along partisan lines, at least in New York.

Reflecting on that issue, I decided to re-read the 570 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report and to my surprise, I found that even then partisan divisions had prevented a proper understanding of the tragedy and the lessons to be drawn from the start.

Reading "The Report" was like going through a French nouveau roman. It starts with the promise of uncovering an ingenious plot, but offers nothing but reheated platitudes served with a pseudo-philosophical garnish. The reader ends up asking, "where's the beef?

It all starts with what looks like a misunderstanding of the mission of the commission. The commissioners tell us that they had three aims:

• To offer "the most complete narrative" of the events. But what the report offers is a collage of numerous articles and books that have already covered the "event".
• To assemble as many personal testimonies as possible of the survivors of the attacks and their families. This, though, a laudable effort, is of little help in identifying the ideology and the machine that produced the killers in the first place.
• Making recommendations about ways and means of preventing similar attacks That should have been the "meat" of the report. It is not. It was, in fact, its Achilles heel. The reasons are not hard to imagine. The commissioners have a politico-technocratic mindset. They are the products of a political culture that assumes that all problems have technical and bureaucratic solutions. Such solutions are standard: create a new layer of bureaucracy and spend some more money.

The commission itself was a typical product of such thinking. So, it was not surprising that it came up with only two new proposals: one is to create a Cabinet post dealing with intelligence, a twin for the existing Homeland Security tsar. The other is a suggestion to spend money on "improving the lives of disaffected youths in Arab and other Muslim countries".

I am not kidding! Less than 10 percent of the report, basically its Chapter II, was devoted to the key question: who were these terrorists, where did they come from, and what made them tick?

The report said:

"We learned about an enemy who is sophisticated, patient, disciplined, and lethal. The enemy rallies broad support in the Arab and Muslim world by demanding redress for political grievances, but its hostility towards us and our values is limitless."

Leaving aside the odd syntax -- obviously someone insisted that the last phrase be added - the paragraph quoted above shows how the commission got on the wrong track. The report assumes that there was a single, readily identifiable enemy. This is the routine way of political thinking, as shaped during the Cold War.

Anyone with knowledge of the Arab countries and the Muslim world in general would know that this is not the case. The problem with the 25-year war on terror is precisely that the democracies, and those Muslims who aspire after democracy, are faced with a multi-faceted threat that assumes numerous forms.

This war has to be fought in numerous battlefields and against many enemies that, though united in their efforts to destroy democratic societies, first among them the US, use a bewilderingly wide range of weapons and tactics. The George W. Bush administration opened the military theater of this war by "liberating" Afghanistan and Iraq and seeking to destroy the terrorists nested there.

But this is a war that must also be fought in diplomatic, cultural, religious, and, above all, political battlefields. In all those theaters the US needed, and could have found, allies, including among a majority of the Muslims who have been the first victims of terror. The commission made no suggestions about how to engage in those battlefields, who to choose as allies and whom to identify as neutrals or foes.

Now, this enemy does not grow on trees. He is a citizen of a state, has bases and safe havens not in space, but in real countries, and uses all the facilities of the modern global system. It was astonishing that the 9/11 Commission chose to fly over all that. It discovered extensive contacts between al-Qaeda and 24 governments in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Tom Kean, the Commission's Republican chairman, came up with his own gem of a phrase. "Although we are safer today, we are not safe," he asserted. Well, how can you be safer if you are not safe in the first place? What he meant was that Americans are less unsafe now than they were on the eve of 9/11.

The commission asked why it was that terrorists especially hated America but provided no answer. The answer could be found in hundreds of books, articles and sermons that make the rounds across the globe, including in the United States itself. In fact, though you might find it odd, the bulk of what the global anti-American industry produces comes from the US itself. The US is an "evil animal" because it can bite back when bitten. The 9/11 Commission failed in its mission.

The culture war between the MAGA camp and the wokeist coalition of crypto-communists and bleeding heart liberals shows that the failure has continued for a quarter of a century. The hate-America ailment has crept even into the commemoration ritual in New York.

Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat.

 

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22855/america-25-years-after-9-11

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More than 5,000 leaders, public figures sign letter rejecting ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel - Jessica Russak-Hoffman, Izzy Salant

 

by Jessica Russak-Hoffman, Izzy Salant

“It’s an hour of crisis,” Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told JNS. “I think it’s a time when you have to try every avenue.”

 

Isaac Herzog, the Israeli president, meets with Deborah Lipstadt, special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, in Israel, Jan. 8, 2025. Credit: U.S. Embassy Jerusalem.

More than 5,000 leaders and public figures have signed an open letter rejecting the accusation that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, calling the charge a form of anti-Jewish scapegoating that is fueling antisemitism worldwide.

“It’s an hour of crisis,” Deborah Lipstadt, former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, told JNS on Wednesday, “I don’t usually sign joint letters, but I said, ‘Why not? Let’s give it a try.’ I don’t know what else we can do, and I think it’s a time when you have to try every avenue.”

“We’re trying everything,” she said.

The letter, released by the nonprofit Creative Community for Peace, says the genocide accusation “has become a dangerous vehicle for scapegoating Jews and fueling antisemitism around the world.”

“We, the undersigned, are outraged and sickened by the latest blood libel to be inflicted on the Jewish people: the lie that Israel committed ‘genocide’ in Gaza. We reject this accusation with contempt,” the letter states.

“There is a vigorous debate within the Jewish community over aspects of how this war was fought, and that is a sign of moral health. So is our pain over every innocent life lost. But we must unite in repudiating the lie of genocide,” it reads. (JNS sought comment from CCFP.)

Lipstadt said the accusations are having a tangible effect on Jews.

“There’s a full-throated attack on Jews,” she told JNS. “When you hear of kids who are putting together their resumes not wanting to mention they were Jewish Studies majors, it’s coming down to the granular.”

“Of course the bigger things, too,” she said, pointing to violent attacks targeting Jewish communities, including the March terrorist attack at Temple Israel in West Bloomfield Township, Mich., the April stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green, London, and an August arson attack that destroyed the Nöam kosher restaurant in Montreal.

“Those are the things that grab our attention, but it’s also having a granular effect,” she said, noting that Jewish events routinely require security and describing the expense as a “tax.”

Lisptadt told JNS that while Jew-hatred “used to be seen as something that is wrong, illegitimate and prejudicial, now there’s an attack on those who will call out antisemitism.”

“No longer do we have to fight just the antisemitism, but we have to fight those who would say it’s all performative, it’s all phony, it’s not real,” she said. “We’ve seen it before with Holocaust denial.”

Lipstadt said that she hopes the letter will “reach some people.”

Other signatories include former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson; actors Mayim Bialik, Debra Messing and Patricia Heaton; and William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. 

Jessica Russak-Hoffman, Izzy Salant

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/u-s-news/more-than-5-000-leaders-public-figures-sign-letter-rejecting-genocide-accusation-against-israel

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Amid rising Jew-hatred, Britain turns its sights upon Israel - Ben Cohen

 

by Ben Cohen

No matter how much he sugarcoats his words with assurances of affection for Israel and reminders of his Jewish identity, Ed Miliband’s message to Jerusalem is an unremittingly hostile one.

 

Ed Miliband, newly appointed U.K. Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, departs Downing Street in London on July 20, 2026. Photo by Alishia Abodunde/Getty Images.

“I don’t go to synagogue.”

So said the British Foreign Secretary, Ed Miliband, during an interview with the BBC the day after he announced a package of sanctions and other punitive measures against Israel, sending relations between London and Jerusalem into a nosedive.

Miliband, who is Jewish, made this admission when the BBC presenter Justin Webb asked him whether he would be attending synagogue over Rosh Hashanah, “as many British Jews will be, many of whom will feel less safe. … What do you say to them, to individuals. Are you going?”

When Miliband responded that he wasn’t, Webb countered: “Isn’t that then the point? That actually for a lot of British Jews, they really feel this; they have to have security duties at synagogues. They know that there have been violent attacks, and that is why when [UK Chief Rabbi] Ephraim Mirvis uses those words they mean an awful lot to them and perhaps, frankly, less to you.”

The chief rabbi’s words referred to by Webb were stark, issued after Miliband laid out his plans before the House of Commons. The measures marked “truly a dark day for British Jews,” Mirvis said. Webb, who is not Jewish, clearly understands that while Miliband may be “of” the Jewish community, he is not “in” it.

Had Miliband not highlighted his Jewish origins during his parliamentary speech, there would be no need to pass judgement on this exchange. In free and democratic societies, religious observance is a private matter. Whether you attend synagogue—or church, or mosque or temple—is, or should be, entirely up to you.

A “dark day” for British Jews and for Israel.

However, Miliband made sure to tell his parliamentary colleagues that he is a “proud British Jew, someone with the deepest gratitude to the State of Israel for giving a home to my grandmother after she lost her husband, my grandfather, and 60 other family members at the hands of the Nazis.” He is content to invoke his Judaism when it suits him for political purposes, but as Webb demonstrated, in a country that recorded nearly 2,000 antisemitic incidents in the first six months of this year alone, Miliband is sufficiently removed from the Jewish community to have little understanding or empathy with what its members are going through.

Mirvis was correct. Miliband’s announcement was indeed a “dark day” for British Jews and for Israel as well. For all the foreign secretary’s talk of his Jewish pride, his condemnation of the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, 2023, and his insistence that the existence of the State of Israel is not up for debate, the fact remains that his package targets Israel alone.

Goods produced by Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are being banned. Companies and individuals that provide financial or other services to these communities face sanctions. Critically—and stupidly, given the United Kingdom’s extensive use of both Israeli intelligence and Israeli weapons technology—Miliband has also said that license applications for arms exports will be rejected for as long as the “occupation” lasts.

No matter the degree to which he sugarcoats his words with assurances of his personal affection for Israel and reminders of his Jewish identity, Miliband’s message to Jerusalem is an unremittingly hostile one. It is a particularly acute example of a trend visible in other Western countries, including the United States: the insertion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, uniquely among all international conflicts, into domestic politics, powered by an extremely vocal and increasingly influential foreign-backed lobby that promotes the goals of Hamas using the slogan “Free Palestine.”

That the United Kingdom should be something of a pioneer in this regard is no surprise.

Britain has had a long and often tortuous relationship with both the land of Israel and the Jewish people since the days of the Plantagenet kings. For more than a century, it has, by turns, supported the Zionist movement only to then throw obstacles in its way.

The Balfour Declaration of 1917, which looked “with favor” on the establishment of a Jewish homeland in mandatory Palestine, was followed in 1939 by a White Paper that severely restricted Jewish immigration into the Land of Israel on the literal eve of the Shoah. In 1956, Israel was part of a tripartite alliance with France and the UK in the botched war against Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser; by 1973, when Israel was facing land invasions by Arab armies on all of its borders, the UK was declaring an arms embargo on the Jewish state, even preventing U.S. aircraft engaged in resupplying the Israelis from using British bases in Cyprus.

A fair-weather friend who cannot be trusted is not much of a friend. And there is another layer to this as well: As the scholar Anthony Julius pointed out in his indispensable history of English antisemitism, Trials of the Diaspora, the early British engagement with Zionism coupled with its League of Nations mandate over Palestine meant that “anti-Zionist positions tainted by antisemitism” had been established in British political discourse by the end of World War I. “In the matter of antisemitic anti-Zionism, then, England arrived first,” wrote Julius, “even though the more proximate origin of contemporary global antisemitic anti-Zionism may be found in the Soviet polemics of the post-World War II period.”

For now, only the United States stands apart from the United Kingdom and other democratic allies determined to cajole, harass and compel Israel into agreeing to a Palestinian state on its borders. That will likely cause transatlantic tensions, much as it did in the past.

In April 1946, according to U.S. State Department records of the meeting, then-British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin, like Miliband a Labour Party politician, complained to U.S Secretary of State James Byrnes about American Jews financially backing the efforts of the Yishuv to create an independent Jewish state. “During the course of his remarks, Mr. Bevin asserted that the Jews through their aggressive attitude were ‘poisoning relations between our two peoples,’” the record stated.

One wonders whether Ed Miliband may find himself articulating similar sentiments to American officials in the coming weeks and months. That will depend in part on how the United States reacts to the British sanctions on Israel. Weakening our key ally in the region absolutely runs counter to American interests and should be implacably opposed.

That is the message Washington should be delivering to London and all other capitals. 

Ben Cohen is a research fellow with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), specializing in international organizations, Europe-Middle East relations and global antisemitism/anti-Zionism. A London-born journalist with 30 years of experience, he previously worked for BBC World and has contributed to Commentary, The Wall Street Journal, Tablet and Congressional Quarterly. He was a senior correspondent at The Algemeiner for more than a decade and is a weekly columnist for JNS. Cohen has reported from conflict zones worldwide and held leadership roles at the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. His books include Some of My Best Friends: A Journey Through 21st Century Antisemitism.

Source: https://www.jns.org/opinion/column/ben-cohen/amid-rising-jew-hatred-britain-turns-its-sights-upon-israel

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The Human Rights Industry Has a Favorite Kind of Victim - Pierre Rehov

 

by Pierre Rehov

The hierarchy is not determined by the severity of the suffering; it is determined by the political usefulness of the victim and, even more importantly, by the identity of the "villain" supposedly committing these wrongs.

 

• The human rights industry's favorite kind of victim is the politically useful one: the victim whose suffering can be attached to an adversary — a designated "villain" — preferably one that Western activists already know how to hate, pressure and organize against.

• That is why Palestinian victims, when Israel can be cast as an alleged perpetrator of wrongs, generate an extraordinary machinery of outrage, while Sudanese victims of genocide, Afghan women under the Taliban, Iranian protesters murdered by their own regime, or persecuted Christians in Nigeria largely do not.

• The hierarchy is not determined by the severity of the suffering; it is determined by the political usefulness of the victim and, even more importantly, by the identity of the "villain" supposedly committing these wrongs.

• A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that the mass executions, gang rapes and engineered starvation... in Sudan bore the hallmarks of genocide, and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference the evidence allowed.

• The finding produced -- communiqués! No American campus has been covered with Sudanese encampments. No international campaign demands that corporations prove their innocence regarding Khartoum....

• No permanent encampment stands outside Harvard demanding freedom for Afghan women, no divestment movement has become fashionable, no symbol has reached a red carpet. UN Women warns that the repression is being normalized.... The women remain where they were; the audience has left.

• The West's response to Iran's January massacre took the form of diaspora rallies and a condemnation signed by 800 film professionals. The industry that produced five thousand signatures against Israeli film festivals produced eight hundred against a government that had just shot thousands of its own citizens in 48 hours, and its own trade press said so.

• The American students who occupied buildings for Gaza risked nothing worse than a disciplinary hearing and offered the Iranian protesters nothing.

• The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has spent seventeen years asking Washington to treat Nigeria as a country of particular concern, counts nearly 53,000 civilians killed there in targeted violence since 2009.

• [A] successful cause needs more than victims. The favorite victim is not the one who suffers most, but the one whose suffering can be put to political use. A successful cause needs a usable "villain," ideally one already circulating in the narrative. Israel serves that purpose almost perfectly. It is Western-aligned, democratic, backed by Washington and permanently accessible to journalists. Its politicians answer questions, its courts rule against its government, and all of it can be pressured.

• Western outrage has acquired a political economy: a successful cause needs more than victims. It needs a usable villain, ideally one already circulating in the narrative. Israel serves that purpose almost perfectly. It is Western-aligned, democratic, backed by Washington and permanently accessible to journalists. Its politicians answer questions, its courts rule against its government, and all of it can be pressured.

• Nothing comparable can be organized against the Taliban.

• Dictatorships make poor targets for performative activism because dictators are immune to performance. Attacking Israel connects an activist to an apparatus of campus groups, NGOs and networks assembled over decades, with the slogans pre-written and the vocabulary standardized. A 19-year-old needs to know nothing about the Middle East to take part. He needs a placard.

• Sudan requires homework, and knowing about Iran's regime would require him to concede that the enemies of American power are frequently worse than what they oppose.

• Consistency is the one thing the machinery fails to supply. A movement that really meant what it says about universal rights would mobilize for captives whose slaveholders, such as Qatar, enjoy vast assets. It would protest child trafficking and organ harvesting, and defend Afghan women and Iranian dissidents. Palestinian civilians would be defended as civilians rather than as evidence. Such a movement would be difficult to manipulate, impossible to monetize and useless to every exploiting faction, which explains well enough why nobody has built one.

A UN fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that the mass executions, gang rapes and engineered starvation in Sudan bore the hallmarks of genocide, and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference the evidence allowed. The finding produced -- communiqués! No American campus has been covered with Sudanese encampments. No international campaign demands that corporations prove their innocence regarding Khartoum. Pictured: Sudanese Armed Forces soldiers take part in a parade on August 17, 2026, in the city of Gedaref in eastern Sudan. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

The human rights industry's favorite kind of victim is the politically useful one: the victim whose suffering can be attached to an adversary — a designated "villain" — preferably one that Western activists already know how to hate, pressure and organize against.

That is why Palestinian victims, when Israel can be cast as an alleged perpetrator of wrongs, generate an extraordinary machinery of outrage, while Sudanese victims of genocide, Afghan women under the Taliban, Iranian protesters murdered by their own regime, or persecuted Christians in Nigeria largely do not.

The hierarchy is not determined by the severity of the suffering; it is determined by the political usefulness of the victim and, even more importantly, by the identity of the "villain" supposedly committing these wrongs.

There are victims who acquire a constituency. Their faces appear on banners, their names are read aloud at demonstrations, actors on red carpets wear their symbols, students occupy university buildings on their behalf, and institutions discover an urgent moral obligation to issue statements. Then there are victims who die mostly alone, counted briefly by the organizations paid to count them and noticed by no one else.

Sudan belongs to the second set. The war that erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces has produced what the UN refugee agency calls the largest displacement and humanitarian crisis in the world, with close to thirteen million people driven from their homes. Already a year ago, in late October 2025, after an eighteen-month siege, the RSF entered El Fasher and killed its inhabitants with such thoroughness that researchers at Yale identified the bloodstains in satellite imagery. A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that the mass executions, gang rapes and engineered starvation of the Zaghawa and Fur communities bore the hallmarks of genocide, and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference the evidence allowed.

The finding produced -- communiqués! No American campus has been covered with Sudanese encampments. No international campaign demands that corporations prove their innocence regarding Khartoum, or the transfers of weapons to Sudanese warlords assessed by American intelligence. Darfur now carries the word genocide, applied by the United Nations itself -- and no constituency.

The comparison with Gaza is not a competition between corpses. Palestinian civilians deserve the sympathy owed civilians anywhere. What deserves examination is the propaganda factory of war. Within months of October 7, 2023, encampments, building occupations and mass arrests had spread from Columbia to Yale to New York University and onward across Europe. In September 2025, a pledge to refuse all work with Israeli festivals, cinemas and production companies gathered more than 5,000 signatures from film professionals, including some of the industry's biggest names.

Afghanistan tests the proposition further. Five years after the Taliban returned to Kabul, UNESCO recently reported that 2.4 million Afghan girls are shut out of secondary education. Afghanistan remains the only country that formally forbids girls and women to study beyond primary school. More than seventy decrees have narrowed their lives, and since September 2025 Afghan women have been barred even from entering United Nations premises, or are able to leave their home more than once or twice a month.

Western feminism spent decades insisting that women's rights are universal. Afghanistan is the purest available test of the claim: an entire female population removed by decree from education, employment and public life, and even a public presence -- a condition UN experts call gender apartheid. No permanent encampment stands outside Harvard demanding freedom for Afghan women, no divestment movement has become fashionable, no symbol has reached a red carpet. UN Women warns that the repression is being normalized and reports a fifty percent funding gap for its Afghan work this year. The women remain where they were; the audience has left.

Iran removed whatever doubt was left. Protests that began at the end of December 2025 spread to every province, and on January 8-9, 2026, the security forces answered with rifles and shotguns fired from rooftops and the back of trucks. Amnesty International describes mass unlawful killings as on an unprecedented scale. More than 52,000 men, women and children were massacred this year alone, accompanied by a total internet blackout and tens of thousands of arrests. The UN Special Rapporteur on Iran put the toll above five thousand.

The regime already held the record. Amnesty International documented 2,159 executions in Iran in 2025, more than double the previous year, and roughly four-fifths of executions recorded worldwide, the highest national figure since 1981. At least 48 women were among the condemned, the largest number in two decades. The West's response to Iran's January massacre took the form of diaspora rallies and a condemnation signed by 800 film professionals. The industry that produced five thousand signatures against Israeli film festivals produced eight hundred against a government that had just shot thousands of its own citizens in forty-eight hours, and its own trade press said so.

Iranian students returned to campuses in Tehran, Mashhad and Isfahan in February holding photographs of classmates killed in January, many students are still being arrested and expelled for it. The American students who occupied buildings for Gaza risked nothing worse than a disciplinary hearing, and offered the Iranian protesters nothing.

In November 2025, gunmen took 303 children and 12 teachers from St. Mary's Catholic school in Papiri, Nigeria, an abduction larger than the 276 girls seized at Chibok, Nigeria, in 2014, when a hashtag circled the world and an American first lady was photographed actually holding a placard! The Papiri children came home a month later after ransom talks, having drawn no campaign at all. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has spent seventeen years asking Washington to treat Nigeria as a country of particular concern, counts nearly 53,000 civilians killed there in targeted violence since 2009. Persecuted Christians present a marketing problem: Christianity registers in the Western imagination as a historical power rather than present vulnerability.

Racism and scale also do not explain the pattern. Palestinians are neither Western nor close to the campuses where their cause became dominant, and the demonstrators advocate nothing that would truly help the Palestinians, such as freedom from torture and arbitrary arrest by corrupt leaders, freedom of speech and of the press, and an education that will prepare them for a productive and prosperous life.

Western outrage has acquired a political economy: a successful cause needs more than victims. The favorite victim is not the one who suffers most, but the one whose suffering can be put to political use. A successful cause needs a usable "villain," ideally one already circulating in the narrative. Israel serves that purpose almost perfectly. It is Western-aligned, democratic, backed by Washington and permanently accessible to journalists. Its politicians answer questions, its courts rule against its government, and all of it can be pressured.

Nothing comparable can be organized against the Taliban. Columbia has no Taliban investment committee to picket, the Revolutionary Guards run no cultural exchange program to boycott, and Sudan's warlords are perfectly indifferent to a student senate in California. Dictatorships make poor targets for performative activism because dictators are immune to performance. Attacking Israel connects an activist to an apparatus of campus groups, NGOs and networks assembled over decades, with the slogans pre-written and the vocabulary standardized. A 19-year-old needs to know nothing about the Middle East to take part. He needs a placard. Sudan requires homework, and knowing about the regime in Iran regime would require him to concede that the enemies of American power are frequently worse than what they oppose.

An industry that never stops talking about "intersectionality" has built a hierarchy of compassion, in which victims and what was done to the victim count for less than who did it and what political story can be assembled around it. None of this diminishes Palestinian suffering, which was inflicted on real people. It leaves everyone else outside the door.

Consistency is the one thing the machinery fails to supply. A movement that really meant what it says about universal rights would mobilize for captives whose slaveholders, such as Qatar, enjoy vast assets. It would protest child trafficking and organ harvesting, and defend Afghan women and Iranian dissidents. Palestinian civilians would be defended as civilians rather than as evidence. Such a movement would be difficult to manipulate, impossible to monetize and useless to every exploiting faction, which explains well enough why nobody has built one.

Pierre Rehov, who holds a law degree from Paris-Assas, is a French reporter, novelist and documentary filmmaker. He is the author of six novels, including "Beyond Red Lines", "The Third Testament" and "Red Eden", translated from French. His latest essay on the aftermath of the October 7 massacre " 7 octobre - La riposte " became a bestseller in France. As a filmmaker, he has produced and directed 17 documentaries, many photographed at high risk in Middle Eastern war zones, and focusing on terrorism, media bias, and the persecution of Christians. His latest documentary, "Pogrom(s)" highlights the context of ancient Jew hatred within Muslim civilization as the main force behind the October 7 massacre.

Source: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/22846/human-rights-industry

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Israeli-Lebanese talks slated to resume in US - JNS Staff

 

by JNS Staff

Lebanese President Joseph Aoun met with local in the country’s southeast, not far from where IDF troops destroyed a major Hezbollah base.

 

Israeli Ambassador Yechiel Leiter (front left), Lebanese Ambassador Nada Hamadeh Moawad (front right) and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (rear center) participate in a Trilateral Framework Signing Ceremony between the United States, Lebanon and Israel at the Department of State in Washington, D.C., June 26, 2026. Credit: James Pan/U.S. State Department.

Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors will meet next week in Washington, D.C. “to discuss ongoing developments and the continued implementation of the Trilateral Framework,” a U.S. State Department official said on Saturday.

The official described the framework agreement as “the only viable mechanism to restore Lebanon’s sovereignty and Israel’s security.”

The next round of formal discussions will take place in Rome in October, the official continued.

The combination of the United Nations General Assembly annual session in September, the Jewish High Holidays and Jordan’s King Abdullah’s LAF (Lebanese Armed Forces) Conference in Paris made it impractical to conduct the meeting in Rome next week as initially planned, a source familiar with the subject said.

Jerusalem and Beirut signed a U.S.-brokered framework agreement on June 26, aimed at disarming nongovernmental armed forces across Lebanon, as a path toward lasting peace between the two nations. Ongoing talks have focused on the technical steps to achieve this purpose, with pilot zones designated for deployment of the Lebanese army, to test its capacity to battle Hezbollah and dismantle terrorist infrastructure.

Meanwhile on Saturday, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun visited the municipalities of Nabatieh and Zawtar al-Gharbiyah, situated in southeastern Lebanon, just north of the security zone controlled by Israel Defense Forces.

He stated that Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the return of Lebanese prisoners and the displaced to their homes, and reconstructing areas devastated by the close to three years of war are “a single goal for all,” according to the Lebanese Presidency X account in Arabic.

He commended the “steadfastness” of the local residents, saying that remaining in their homes despite the war is the “greatest message to the world.”

Aoun visited the area with the state’s security apparatus to reaffirm Beirut’s standing with locals and the country’s southern territory, the Lebanese Presidency said. 

رئيس الجمهورية في زيارة الى النبطية وزوطر الغربية:

- صمودكم أكبر وسام على صدرنا وبقاؤكم هنا مع اهلكم رغم الحرب اكبر رسالة الى العالم مفادها ان هذا المجتمع وهذا الشعب قادر على النهوض مجددا والبقاء واقفا ابدا.
- أتينا الى هنا مع قادة الأجهزة الأمنية لكي نؤكد على وقوفنا الى جانبكم،… pic.twitter.com/O9DN5qTTSn

— Lebanese Presidency (@LBpresidency) September 12, 2026

IDF destroys sprawling Hezbollah underground network

On Thursday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that the IDF destroyed a sprawling Hezbollah underground network under the Ali al-Taher Ridge in southeastern Lebanon—a few kilometers away from the Nabatieh area—completing the consolidation of the security zone along Israel’s northern border.

The strategic terrorist infrastructure, built over two decades with Iranian funding and planning, was intended to serve as a staging base for Hezbollah’s planned conquest of the Galilee, according to the joint statement.

The command center on the ridge provided Hezbollah with observation and fire control over the northern Israeli communities of Metula and Kiryat Shmona.

“Their destruction completes the achievement of operational control over the Ali al-Taher Ridge, above and below ground,” Netanyahu and Katz said.

According to an Israeli military official, the underground network consisted of eight routes with a combined length of more than 5,400 meters (17,700 feet).

JNS Staff

Source: https://www.jns.org/news/israel-news/israeli-lebanese-talks-slated-to-resume-in-us

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IDF's war on all fronts: How Eyal Zamir is managing threats from Iran, Lebanon, Gaza, and West Bank - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

With China blocked by US from rapidly resupplying Iran’s ballistic missile materials, Zamir sees a shifting threat landscape across Israel’s fronts.

 

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir attends a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of Operation Entebbe at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, July 12, 2026

(photo credit: CHAIM GOLDBERG/FLASH90)

 

When IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir finished 2025, he was on track as one of the most popular IDF chiefs in recent memory.

He had stormed onto the world stage in June 2025 leading Operation Rising Lion, Israel's remarkably successful massive strike on Iran's nuclear program, radars and air defenses, top military officials, and some ballistic missile sites.

Next, he was the IDF chief in October 2025 when a deal was struck with Hamas to end the Gaza War, including the return of all remaining living and deceased hostages.

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source:

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Reshaping the Mossad: Inside Roman Gofman’s world of spies, Iran, and high-stakes strategy - Yonah Jeremy Bob

 

by Yonah Jeremy Bob

What does Gofman’s decision to fire three top Mossad officials reveal about his strategy for Iran - and will he survive as agency chief if Eisenkot becomes prime minister?

 

Mossad Director Roman Gofman.

(photo credit: Courtesy PMO/Mossad)

Roman Gofman only took office heading the Mossad on June 2 and had little time or opportunity to work a transition with his predecessor. This was because, in a wild twist, David Barnea was part of a lawsuit trying to block his appointment, which only resolved that week.

In that sense and in the sense that the Mossad operates in the shadows, it is hard to talk about Gofman’s accomplishments as the country’s new spymaster.

But in a forward-looking sense, he will likely be one of the most powerful and influential Jews in the world over the coming year. He will have a special focus on the all-important and multi-headed Iran conflict, but also with involvement in Syria, with the US and Russia more broadly, and in combating global terror. 

Yonah Jeremy Bob

Source: https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/defense-news/article-908067

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Data centers central in redrawn Ohio race - Andrew Rice

 

by Andrew Rice

Ohio’s first congressional district, under the leadership of Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, is one of the districts that was altered to yield Republicans an advantage in Congress.

 (The Center Square) -

The fight for control of Congress, focused on mid-decade redistricting, is in Ohio ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.

The Ohio legislature redrew its congressional map in October 2025 to favor Republicans. The new map, which voters will use in November, could give Republicans an additional seat in Congress.

Ohio’s first congressional district, under the leadership of Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, is one of the districts that was altered to yield Republicans an advantage in Congress. Landsman will face off against Republican Eric Conroy, a former CIA case officer.

Landsman has focused his campaign on lowering costs and reducing healthcare prices. He is the lead sponsor of the Doctors Not AI Act of 2026, legislation that would prohibit employers’ health insurers and self-insured plans from using artificial intelligence to deny health insurance claims.

The legislation would require a licensed healthcare professional to oversee any AI system that is used in reviews or denial determinations. The bill would define employer-sponsored health plan’s use of an AI system in claims reviews as a “treatment limitation.”

“We have to make sure healthcare professionals remain the decision-makers,” Landsman said.

The incumbent lawmaker has touted his support of legislation to cap the price of insulin, increasing the federal minimum wage, and lowering pharmaceutical drug costs.

Landsman has also pushed for a federal framework for AI data centers. He said he would support implementing water usage guidelines for data centers across the country.

“These data centers use a ton of water now,” Landsman said in a congressional hearing. “Almost all that water comes from public water systems, but we don’t currently have federal disclosure requirements in terms of how much water a data center is using, where they’re getting the water, how much they’re taking from the groundwater, so communities lack information.”

Conroy differed in his approach to regulating data centers. He called for local governments to take up regulations on data centers but said technology companies should pay for utility costs incurred by centers.

“We do need to keep an open mind to these AI data centers because we do need to win the AI race against China,” Conroy said. “If we lose this race, it’s like losing the war for the internet.”

Conroy has focused his campaign on cutting middle-class taxes, increasing American energy production and supporting the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

Conroy slammed Landsman’s legislative record, including his votes against funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement throughout the last Congress.

“A safe nation is the foundation for prosperity,” Conroy said. “I support strong border enforcement, modernizing our immigration system, and ensuring that federal law is consistently upheld to protect American communities and sovereignty.”

Conroy spent the last week at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas. During an interview at the convention, the Air Force veteran defended the Trump administration’s continued U.S. military intervention with Iran and called for friendlier relations with global energy sources.

He said military operations against Iran should continue as air assault missions and strategic operations.

“By having friendlier governments both in Venezuela and Iran I think is a long term boon for the American economy,” Conroy said. “I don’t hear my Democratic colleague or any of the Democrats talking about long-term economic planning and how we get there.”

Landsman has repeatedly called for the Trump administration to end military conflict in Iran and has voted for several War Powers Resolutions to limit the president’s ability to continue operations.

Landsman holds a massive fundraising advantage over Conroy with more than $4.6 million in contributions and $3.6 million in cash on hand. Conroy has $1.5 million in contributions and $474,000 in cash on hand.

Landsman received $6,500 from the American Optometric Association PAC, $10,000 from the Laborers' International Union of North America PAC and $1,000 from the Stop Gun Violence PAC.

Conroy received $1,000 from the Citizens United Victory Fund, $10,000 from the SEAL PAC, a group that supports former military running for office.

Military and overseas absentee ballots in Ohio will be sent out Sept. 18. Domestic absentee ballots will be sent out Oct. 6, the same day early in-person voting begins until the Sunday before Election Day.

Polls are open in Ohio from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. on Election Day. For more information, visit the Ohio Secretary of State website, at ohiosos.gov. For more information on candidates and results on Election Day, visit thecentersquare.com/ohio. 

Andrew Rice

Source: https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/data-centers-central-redrawn-ohio-race

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Vance's big night at GOP convention spark talks of presidential 'audition,' MAGA 'heir' - Ben Whedon

 

by Ben Whedon

Vance delivered the keynote speech on Day Two of the inaugural Republican Midterm Convention.

 

Vice President JD Vance last week in Dallas at the Republican Midterm Convention appeared to make a strong case for becoming the GOP standard-bearer and the party's 2028 presidential nominee – without even having to announce a campaign.

To be sure, the race is still two years away, and Vance is a ways away from potentially launching a presidential bid. But his closing night keynote speech certainly gave him a big stage to audition for the role.

“We gotta take care of business this November, then we’ll worry about what comes next,” he said with a grin and amid chants of "48," meaning the country's next and 48th president.

"Vance got something close to a 2028 audition," ABC wrote about the vice president's performance. 

The news outlet also said his keynote speech "offered a glimpse of how he is positioning himself within the Republican Party – as a potential heir to the MAGA movement who can speak its language while attempting to broaden its appeal."

Betting odds heavily favor Vance for the nomination, with Poly Market assigning him a 50% change to winning the nomination, compared to his nearest competitor, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, at 18%. 

In a TV interview aired ahead of Vance's Thursday night address, Rubio said, "I don’t know what the future holds, but I have no plans at this time." Rubio, who is friends with Vance, ran for president in 2016 and lost the nomination to now-President Donald Trump. 

I’m 100 percent focused on my job," he also said.

Vance’s speech also saw him take the opportunity to address many disaffected Republican-leaning voters, acknowledging that the administration had lost some of their support.

“Young men, many of whom felt inspired by Charlie Kirk, but are unhappy with some of what has happened in the wake of his death, and I want to speak directly to that group because I think Charlie is a great example of how to disagree but still participate in the work of saving this country,” he said, further highlighting Kirk’s strong opposition to war.

“What I'm asking you to do is do what Charlie did. Do not throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said. “Don't give the country over to a bunch of crazy people because you happen to disagree with us on a policy issue here or there ... . What I am asking you to do is to recognize the contrast with the radicals and recognize the achievements of the last 18 months.”

Vance’s comments appear to be one of the most prominent recognitions from the administration that the war in Iran has alienated many voters who supported Trump in 2024. The outreach, moreover, seems to demonstrate Vance is trying to connect with a group of voters to whom he is far closer in age, and possibly sentiment, than is Trump.

Vance role at the convention is not his only, recent high-profile exposure that could position him for a 2028 run. 

With his appointment by Trump earlier this year as administration “fraud czar,” Rubio has take on a public-facing role responsible for cracking down on misuse of public funds. 

Trump himself highlighted Vance’s role on the final night, in a string of further pledges to his supporters, linking Vance’s prospects to the success of the administration.

“And with JD and everybody else, we will win the war on fraud," Trump said from the stage. "You know we've got billions and billions of dollars already in our coffers of money that we caught on fraud. It's going to be – I would bet – it will be over a trillion dollars by the time we're finished.”

In addition, Vance in late August spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition, in what many viewed as an opportunity for him to assuage that community’s concerns over his continued association with Tucker Carlson, who has emerged as a vocal critic of Israel.

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent for Just the News. Follow him on X.

Source: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/wkdjd-vance-auditions-president

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