The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.
From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."
The innovative unit utilized during World War II may have prevented the deaths of as many as 30,000 soldiers.
An inflatable “dummy” M4 Sherman tank used during World War II. Credit: U.S. Army via Wikimedia Commons.
After a decade-long lobbying effort, soldiers in a top-secret, World War II disinformation division (only revealed in 1996) have been presented with the top award that Congress can bestow.
The “Ghost Army”
unit included men from both the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops and
the 3133rd Signal Service Company who used creative means of deceiving
Nazi forces.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) was
among Congress members who addressed the March 21 Congressional Gold
Medal ceremony honoring those whose efforts may have saved as many as
30,000 other soldiers’ lives. Quoting from an army report, he said:
“Rarely, if ever, has there existed a group of such few men which had so
great an influence on the outcome of a major military campaign.”
Three of seven surviving members of the
Ghost Army attended: Bernard Bluestein, John Christman and Seymour
Nussenbaum. Others who spoke at the event included Senate Minority
Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries
(D-N.Y.).
The Ghost Army sought to recruit its
members from creative fields, aiming for those skilled in art,
advertising or architecture, including a significant number of Jewish
Americans. They were sworn to secrecy.
Innovative deceptions the unit utilized to
feed falsehoods to the enemy employed missions to signal fake troop
movements or phony signs of upcoming attacks. The group put out radio
signals intended for the Nazis to discover and used loudspeakers to put
out the sounds of vehicles in motion, as well as used ploys like “dummy”
inflatable tanks and fraudulent generals.
The division also used costumes to imitate
generals with Nussenbaum comparing their efforts to “putting on a big
production.” While the Ghost Army comprised about 1,000 men, they had
developed the techniques to imitate two divisions of 30,000.
Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth said
the Ghost Army “helped change the course of the war for thousands of
American and Allied troops, and contributed to the liberation of a
continent from a terrible evil.”
Even as Israel is castigated for genocide, along with the demand that she surrender to Hamas, she fights her war with exceptional humanity.
In the topsy-turvy world of 2024, when good is bad and bad is good,
Israel is fighting an existential war with exquisite concern for the
well-being of enemy civilians—and the world responds by castigating
Israel as a genocidal monster and demanding her surrender. What’s worst
of all is the fact that the Biden administration is leading this evil
parade. But Israel answers to a higher standard than the opinion of a
fallen world.
Israel is a tiny, Jewish, liberal democracy in a sea of 250 million
Muslims, most of whom are hostile to her in ways that range from mere
hate to genocidal fury. Jews have occupied that same land continuously
for 4,000 years. For around 1,900 of those years, they were colonized by
imperial forces, usually Muslim. Barring the Druze and Bedouins, almost none of the Muslim Arabs in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank have roots deeper than the 1830s.
On October 7, Hamas, which controls Gaza (land from which Israel
withdrew in 2005, although Donkey Chompers AOC and her ilk seem unaware
of that fact), launched a military attack against civilians in Israel.
The goal wasn’t just to kill people. It was to torture them to death,
especially women. Hamas did so with the full (and continuing) approval of a huge majority of Gaza residents.
Because October 7 was a military invasion, Israel responded in a
military way by going into Gaza to destroy Hamas—which, incidentally, is
an Iranian puppet army. Iran is an enemy of the U.S., openly dedicated
to its destruction, something that’s not obvious given Biden’s fealty to
Iran’s needs.
Almost immediately, the world’s antisemites started screaming that
any war that affected civilians—and the Gaza war does because Hamas is
embedded among civilians—was “genocide.” They were helped by the fact
that everyone, including the Biden administration, accepted uncritically
the manifestly faked mortality numbers that Hamas published. Indeed, much of what we get from Gaza is theater:
"The grieving Palestinian mother" Was shot in multiple locations with different support actors.
While there is no question that civilians are suffering and dying in the Gaza war, there is also no question that there is a strategy of cognitive warfare coined Pallywood: Watch, as reused dolls resembling infants, are held up by the same actor in Hamas cognitive domain… pic.twitter.com/5PsoUJjciH
The reality is that Israel is fighting the war with an exquisite
regard for civilian safety. First, it’s shipping in massive amounts of
supplies to support the people in Gaza—who, again, support Hamas. Indeed, when Israel raided Shifa hospital, a significant Hamas headquarters, the military brought along doctors to treat patients in the hospital.
I don’t know of any other military in history that does this. But
Israel does so because she has a military doctrine called “Purity of
Arms” that means that Israeli troops, whenever possible, must put the
safety of enemy civilians ahead of themselves:
A fantastic John Spencer article
(in Newsweek, of all places) explains how this doctrine plays out on
the ground. I urge you to read the whole thing, but here’s a sampling:
In many ways, Israel has had to abandon this established playbook in
order to prevent civilian harm. The IDF has telegraphed almost every
move ahead of time so civilians can relocate, nearly always ceding the
element of surprise. This has allowed Hamas to reposition its senior
leaders (and the Israel hostages) as needed through the dense urban
terrain of Gaza and the miles of underground tunnels it's built.
[snip]
Israel gave warning, in some cases for weeks,
for civilians to evacuate the major urban areas of northern Gaza before
it launched its ground campaign in the fall. The IDF reported dropping
over 7 million flyers,
but it also deployed technologies never used anywhere in the world, as I
witness firsthand on a recent trip to Gaza and southern Israel.
Israel has made over 70,000 direct phones calls,
sent over 13 million text messages and left over 15 million
pre-recorded voicemails to notify civilians that they should leave
combat areas, where they should go, and what route they should take.
They deployed drones with speakers and dropped giant speakers by
parachute that began broadcasting for civilians to leave combat areas
once they hit the ground. They announced and conducted daily pauses of all operations to allow any civilians left in combat areas to evacuate.
The same article has so much more about Israel’s humanitarian way of
fighting a still-brutal war. But the world doesn’t care. Prey to
propaganda, ideology and, in Biden’s case, the need to win Michigan and Wisconsin, nothing Israel can do other than surrender to Hamas is good enough.
And I say “surrender” because a unilateral ceasefire without even getting hostages back allows Hamas, with Iran’s help, to regroup and come back stronger.
This will happen even as the West, including America, refuses to honor
Israel’s need to purchase ammunition and weapons, whether by
slow-walking sales or refusing them entirely. (Ukraine, by the way, is
not buying American weapons. We just hand them over.)
So, given the fact that Israel is damned if she does and damned if
she doesn’t, why does she harm her military advantage and put her troops
in danger? Because I cannot believe that Israel is stupid enough to
sacrifice herself for a world that despises her, I’ve got a different
theory: I believe that Israel’s extraordinary humanitarian approach to
warfare is because the Jews know that they answer to something higher
than the baseness of world opinion. They are, truly, a Godly nation.
Claire Waxman: "How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying its acceptable to rape Jewish ones?"
In November 2023, it was
reported that the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against
Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to
the contrary, claimed the evidence against Hamas "was 'not solid'
enough to warrant a statement" -- to which London's Victims'
Commissioner, Claire Waxman, replied: "How can we talk about eliminating
violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying its
acceptable to rape Jewish ones?"
Alsalem, from Jordan, claims the charges against Israeli forces
are "reasonably credible," but refuses to divulge the source. In
reality, no credible or proven instance of this behaviour by Israel's
forces in Gaza since October 7 has been publicly recorded.
"Organizations that fight for LGBT rights condemned the country
that allows freedom, and marched for a terrorist organization that
punishes gay people with death." — Jared Kushner, townhall.com, March 7,
2024.
"Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals
habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come
first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas." —
Paul Johnson, historian, thepublicdiscourse.com, January 23, 2023.
Early women's liberation movements, forerunners to present
feminist activism, were founded to proclaim women's rights to social
equality. Radical feminism, as a narrow expression of the original
movement, fails spectacularly in exemplifying society's moral and
ethical precepts. Its advocates appear to prioritize narcissistic,
egocentric identity ideologies over the sanctity, dignity, and
ontological security of the individual woman.
"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never
the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." —
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, December 10, 1986.
For all advocates for women's welfare, especially in the
area of sexual violence, the crucial concern at this time should be the
terror perpetrated on defenceless females of all ages through acts of
sexual depravity, torture, and death by Hamas in Israel on October 7.
Pictured: A demonstration outside of United Nations headquarters in New
York City on December 4, 2023, labeled "#MeToo unless you are a Jew,"
protesting the UN's silence about sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas
terrorists against Israeli women and girls. (Photo by Charly
Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)
In November 2023, the UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy penned a poem,
"We See You," celebrating the triumph of female soccer players. Success
of women in traditional men's sports is certainly something to
celebrate. Even so, a Poet Laureate's task is surely also to reflect
deep contemporary issues affecting the nation. Duffy, a devoted
feminist, gender activist, and supporter of the oppressed, has yet to
address the most seminal issue of the moment for women's welfare: the
horrific and systemic gender-based violence suffered by innocent Israeli
girls and women, many raped to death, abused, tortured, massacred, with
their sexual organs carved from their bodies by Hamas murderers on
October 7, 2023. Perhaps she still might comment or pen an emotive poem,
perhaps not.
The reality is that for all advocates for women's welfare, especially
in the area of sexual violence, the crucial concern at this time should
be the terror perpetrated on defenceless females of all ages through
acts of sexual depravity, torture, and death by Hamas in Israel on
October 7.
The moral obligation of lovers of peace, and those who hold to the
sanctity of human life, is to speak out against injustice. This is
particularly so in crimes of violence against the defenceless. It is
therefore fitting to expect women's rights groups to speak out on behalf
of traumatized females of all ethnic and religious categories. This
approach was ratified in by Nobel Peace Prize winner Eli Wiesel in his
1986 acceptance speech:
"We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the
oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the
tormented."
Archbishop Charles Chaput remarked that "tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil."
By and large, citizens of many nations are outraged at the lack of
widespread condemnation of atrocities purposefully inflicted on
vulnerable females of all ages, from toddlers to seniors, by Hamas
terror squads on October 7. Particularly shocking is the paucity of
denunciation by post-modern Western feminists. To his credit, US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately issued a statement
to the effect that Hamas violence against Israeli women was "beyond
anything that I've seen." In an oblique allusion to Wiesel's principle,
Blinken questioned "why countries, leaders, international organizations
were so slow to focus on this." Blinken, however, overlooks the
inference that the Biden Administration's promotion of leftist,
neo-Marxist, identity construals, particularly that of radical feminism,
could be a pertinent factor.
In November 2023, it was reported
that the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women
and Girls, Reem Alsalem, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the
contrary, claimed
the evidence against Hamas "was 'not solid' enough to warrant a
statement" -- to which London's Victims' Commissioner, Claire Waxman, replied:
"How can we talk about eliminating violence against women
and girls if we are tacitly saying its acceptable to rape Jewish ones?"
That is the crux of the matter, namely, widespread hypocrisy,
apparently emanating from pervasive anti-Semitism, which intersects with
anti-Zionism and extreme feminist gender ideology.
The following instances clearly show the prejudice of certain women's
groups when it comes to Jewish and Israeli victims of sexual violence
arising from October 7 events:
For two months after October 7 terror, representatives of the UN Women's Agency for Gender Equality and Women's Empowerment refused
to meet with an Israeli women's group, despite the Agency's laudatory
slogans of "a global champion for women and girls" and women's "right to
live free from violence."
During the last days of November 2023, the women's rights group, UN Women, eventually issued a statement
criticising the "numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and
sexual violence" perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. This statement was
released nearly eight long weeks after the event and, no doubt, solely
due to pressure from concerned human rights groups. A critic of UN
Women, lamented
their silence on the issue, "It seems like they forgot they fighting
for all women; and if they are not fighting for all women then they are
fighting for none."
On November 20, Miriam Schler, director of a Tel Aviv crisis center alleges international women's rights groups largely remain silent and "bend over backwards to justify atrocities and rationalize rape."
Samantha Pearson,
Director of the University of Alberta's Sexual Assault Center, "signed
an open letter denying women were raped by Hamas terrorists." She was
later fired from her post;
The UK's Sisters Uncut claimed
that allegations of sexual assault against Israeli women on October 7
were "Islamophobic and a racist weaponization of sexual violence";
The US National Women's Studies Association, while condemning gender violence in war generally, failed to mention the sexual assaults against Israeli women;
Typical of many prominent feminists, Pramila Jayapal, US
Representative (D-WA) and human right's advocate "hedged her
condemnation of Hamas' terrorists raping Israeli women" when interviewed on CNN, December 3. She refused to unconditionally censure Hamas's actions.
A month after October 7 events, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women was celebrated
by the UN internationally. At various related "conferences, roundtables
and events," not one "word against these horrible acts that have just
recently been committed on Israeli land was made, and it is a real shame
on them," claimed
Ms. Granot-Lubaton, a concerned protestor in New York. No resolution
was passed condemning Hamas's mass rape and sexual assault against the
innocent girls and women of Israel;
Despite a widely-released statement
on October 13, 2023, by the Physicians for Human Rights recounting
October 7 instances of rape and torture of females, both young and old,
the UN and feminist rights groups mostly remained silent on the issue.
In early December 2023 and due to Israeli insistence, the UN
convened a session in New York to investigate Hamas' sexual crimes.
Against much opposition, the former CEO of Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg,
together with US Democratic Senator, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, addressed
the meeting. Sandberg said, "If we can't agree that rape is wrong, then
we have accepted the unacceptable." Her colleague, Senator Gillibrand,
expressed she "nearly choked" when she saw "how many women's rights
organizations chose to stay silent."
It was only on March 4 2024, some five months after October 7, that the UN compiled a report
acknowledging, "clear and convincing information that sexual violence
including rape, sexualized torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment." Predictably, arising from interviews conducted in
Palestinian occupied areas of the West Bank, the UN asserted "cruel,
inhuman and degrading" actions by the IDF like "sexual violence in the
forms of body searches and threats of rape." It is believed the
allegation emanates
from conspiracy theorist and virulent anti-Semite Richard Falk via his
foundation, Euro-Med Monitor. The UN Rapporteur Alsalem, from Jordan, claims
the charges against Israeli forces are "reasonably credible," but
refuses to divulge the source. In reality, no credible or proven
instance of this behaviour by Israel's forces in Gaza since October 7
has been publicly recorded.
Notwithstanding the report, the UN Secretary General António Guterres has not summoned a meeting of the Security Council "to declare Hamas a terror group and place sanctions on its supporters." Foreign Minister Israel Katz responded that Israel has not heard "one word" from Guterres on the issue of sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas.
On March 6, 2024, former adviser to President Trump, Jared Kushner pointed
to the hypocrisy of progressive feminists concerning Jews and Israel:
"When women were brutally raped on October 7, most liberal women's
groups in America stayed silent." Kushner then highlighted
the irrationality and anti-Semitism of gender ideologues,
"Organizations that fight for LGBT rights condemned the country that
allows freedom, and marched for a terrorist organization that punishes
gay people with death."
On November 27, 2023, former Italian parliamentarian, Fiamma Nirenstein,suggested
that the primary cause of feminist silence -- and the absence of
feminist-led protest marches, against Hamas's sexual violence -- is
unmitigated Jew-hatred.
Hamas's diabolical stance on sexual terror was further exposed
on March 6, 2024, when spokesman Osama Hamdan denied October 7 sexual
assaults on innocent females. "[T]he woman who wrote it should be
fired", he said; then alleged that one of them underwent cosmetic
surgery because she thought that she was not assaulted because she was
not pretty enough."
To be expected, radical feminist groups rebel against criticism of
their failure to firmly condemn Hamas's sexual assaults. An article
published February 29, 2024 in Portside Magazine, by an anonymous group,
projected the blame onto Israel:
"Israel's current campaign to discredit feminists –
especially feminists of color, Arab feminists, and Jewish anti-Zionist
feminists – and others critical of its lethal offensive against
Palestinians is insulting and dishonest, but it is nothing new."
They did not write a single word condemning Hamas's use of systemic rape and mutilation as terror.
In striving for purported social justice, contemporary radical
feminists seem to perceive crucial issues like race and gender through
the lens of "critical race theory."
In terms of ethnicity, social revolutionaries allege that Western
culture is systemically biased against minorities. The feminists
themselves, however, are biased
against Jews. Typical Marxist revolutionary policy dictates that the
oppressed class, the "workers," should overthrow the masters, the
"captains of industry" who control them. For feminists, the same
principles apply to issues of gender. In their solipsistic view, a reset
society along lines that are supposedly more egalitarian is required,
thereby entrenching a bigoted form of social justice.
Marxian class-dualist theory, the foundation of identity politics,
ostensibly provides its followers with an ideological basis for viewing
Palestinians as an oppressed class. This doctrine might explain the
vociferous October 13 march in Hebron by Palestinian women, who are
often all too familiar with femicidal crimes, in support of Hamas's
attacks against Israeli females. These Palestinian feminists perhaps
identify with Hamas as social liberators irrespective of terror heaped
upon innocent females in the process, and possibly understand their own
role in the conflict as part and parcel of tribal solidarity. Even so,
their manifest Schadenfreude -- their delight at the sexual violence perpetrated upon females of a differing faith -- is there for all to witness.
In publicly aligning with terrorists, these Palestinian women,
possibly feeling an obligation to their society, then go on to raise
children as indoctrinated as they are, modelling to them a future of
hatred and violence.
Erika Bachiochi, a lawyer, criticizing post-modern feminism, noted
that the "enduing moral principles" which earlier feminist movements
"employed to make a reasoned critique," no longer exist. Instead, she
said, the aims of contemporary, woke, feminists are "bereft of noble
purpose and ultimately dangerous."
Historian Paul Johnson also decried the primacy of ideology generally:
"Above all, we must at all times remember what
intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts
and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless
tyranny of ideas."
Early women's liberation movements, forerunners to present feminist
activism, were founded to proclaim women's rights to social equality.
Radical feminism, as a narrow expression of the original movement, fails
spectacularly in exemplifying society's moral and ethical precepts. Its
advocates appear to prioritize narcissistic, egocentric identity
ideologies over the sanctity, dignity, and ontological security of the
individual woman. They resent certain categories of other females,
especially those who are not supporters of gender ideology, such as
women who celebrate gender differences; women who have a high opinion of
the nuclear family and their pivotal role in fostering it; women who
understand civilization is founded on the crucial roles of wife, mother
and family; and women who celebrate their femininity.
Finding ideological origins within cultural Marxism, these feminists
seem to favour the underdogs of society, which is probably how they view
themselves. They extol victory over the oppressive establishment
whether by Hamas or any other revolutionary group. Revolutionary
movements that result in rearrangement of the culture's systemic bias
against some minority groups -- but not others -- and which are
supposedly essential for attaining equality and social justice, are, in
their view, to be glorified.
Radical feminist ideology is directed at all Western societies, with
the religious precepts underpinning society's values a prime target for
eradication. This is especially true against the Jewish people, as
custodians of foundational values and purveyors of a reliance on facts, a
trait many might find inconvenient. As in all instances where the
termination of the Jews and their ancestral homeland is sought, the
seminal issue is one of faith, land, and historical evidence. The
exclusive claim by all revolutionary movements to legitimacy, purporting
to act in the interests of fairness, freedom and economic opportunity
-- as with Lenin's Russia, Mao's China, Castro's Cuba or Chavez and
Maduro's Venezuela impoverishing their people -- makes Judaism a crucial
target.
What else can be said to these "liberators of women of the world,"
these campaigners for women's rights, these supposed opponents of
gender-based violence, these vociferous feminists allegedly in pursuit
of social justice, and self-proclaimed advocates of the "sisterhood of
all women" but, yes, "We see you" and your silence shocks all who
actually do care about justice to the core.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A trial
lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association,
the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and
Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political
theory interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in
Apologetical Theology. Dr. Haug is author of Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity; and Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age. His work has appeared in First Things, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, and Gatestone Institute.
Astoundingly, the US is feeding its beleaguered ally to its enemies
Haman convinces Ahasuerus to kill all the Jews; medieval illustration
As some of us have long feared and has now become undeniable, Israel
is fighting not one but two wars of defence against a malevolent foe.
The first is against the axis of Iran and its proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis of Yemen. The second is against America.
The
Biden administration is to construct a pier off the Gaza shore to
facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid. This week, Israeli TV’s Channel 14
reported that, astoundingly, the Americans have handed over the
financing and management of this pier to Qatar, the founder, funder and
protector of Hamas and therefore the godfather of the October 7 pogrom.
Channel 14 said the Qataris demanded that the new pier be built by a Gaza company named Al Hissi, which is controlled by Hamas.
Giving
Qatar control of this pier would ensure Hamas continues to exist,
enrich itself and attack Israel with an open route into Gaza. As Yigal
Carmon, the founder of MEMRI, has written in horror: “The US has flipped
sides, from Israel to Qatar.”
America could end this war tomorrow
by telling the Qataris that unless they instruct Hamas to surrender and
release the hostages, Qatar will forfeit its preferential treatment by
the United States and will henceforth be treated instead as an
international pariah.
Instead, America is feeding Israel into the
Qatari jaws. The outcome, writes Carmon, will be escalation into a total
regional war by Iran not only against Israel but America.
America’s
action is so preposterous it’s hard to believe. Yet in any event, the
Biden administration has already pivoted from supporting the destruction
of Hamas to working for its ultimate victory.
The administration
has been relentlessly pressuring Israel to admit more and more aid into
Gaza, accusing it falsely of stopping the trucks and ignoring the fact
that most of this aid is being stolen by Hamas to enable it to survive
at the expense of the needy civilian population.
The United States
is determined to impose rule in post-war Gaza by the Palestinian
Authority, despite the fact that the Palestinian Authority’s ruling
party, Fatah, has exulted at the October 7 pogrom and declared that it
will continue such attacks.
The administration is determined to
impose upon Israel a Palestine state, even though this would become
another “Hamastan” and place central Israel in grave danger of October
7-style attacks on steroids.
And with Israel now poised to attack
the last redoubt of Hamas in Rafah, which is key to the defeat of this
genocidal enemy, America is subjecting Israel to intense pressure to
abandon this final front of the war.
A common explanation for this
shocking American reversal is that, in this election year, President
Joe Biden has to play to the anti-Israel gallery in the Democratic
Party.
Maybe so; but rather more significant is the endemic
hostility to Israel within the administration — and above all its
pathological hatred of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, whom
the administration is astonishingly trying to push out.
New York Magazine has reported
an Israeli expert frequently consulted by US officials saying, “I have
been asked by a serious administration figure what it is that will force
the Netanyahu coalition to collapse. They were interested in the
mechanics, what can we demand which will collapse his coalition.”
The
National Threat Assessment by the US Office of the Director of National
Intelligence presents Netanyahu’s opposition to “territorial
compromise” with the Palestinians as a threat to peace, and envisages
that public protest may oust him from power by “a different, more
moderate government”.
This is not only an outrageous attempt to
oust the democratically elected leader of a sovereign country. It’s also
based on a fundamental error.
The Biden administration doesn’t
understand that, despite widespread opposition to Netanyahu over his
domestic record, Israel is united in support of going into Rafah to
defeat Hamas. It’s also united, post-October 7, in opposition to a
Palestinian state.
But having invested Netanyahu with diabolical
qualities, American liberals believe that if only he could be removed
Israel would meekly fall into line with US demands.
This was
illustrated last week by the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. In a
shocking statement, he called for an Israeli election “once the war
starts to wind down” to oust Netanyahu.
Far worse, Schumer
parroted the blood libels being used to demonise Israel by its enemies.
Claiming to be one of the Jews who “love Israel in our bones,” he stated
in the next breath: “I’m anguished that the Israeli war campaign has
killed so many innocent Palestinians. I know that my fellow Jewish
Americans feel the same anguish when they see the images of dead and
starving children — and destroyed homes.”
Every civilian death in
wartime is tragic. But “so many innocents” is based on Hamas casualty
figures that inflate the numbers and totally omit the Hamas forces they
include.
Even more nauseatingly, Schumer smeared Israel still
further by intoning: “We must be better than our enemies, lest we become
them.”
The suggestion that Israel is no better than Hamas is a
pernicious lie spread by those who want Israel gone. In fact, Israel’s
ratio of civilians to combatants killed is fewer than 1.5 civilians for
every one combatant, far better than any other country’s army has ever
achieved.
Israel is not just fighting to defend itself against
genocide. It is on the front line of the west’s defence against its
enemies and the defence of civilisation against barbarism.
Western
liberals can’t acknowledge this because they can’t allow their
unchallengeable orthodoxies of Palestinian powerlessness, “peace
processes” and western iniquity to be destroyed. So they have turned on
the Jews. Jewish suffering has to be erased because it gets in the way
of the narrative.
That’s why the eruption of Palestinianism
throughout the west is so shattering. People wonder why the forests of
Palestinian flags at the incendiary anti-Israel demonstrations are in
themselves so intimidating.
It’s because the Palestine cause is
not two states side by side. Palestinian identity consists entirely of
the intention to eradicate Israel by the hijack and appropriation of
Jewish history. Palestinianism stands for the erasure of Jewish national
identity and wiping the Jewish people out of their own historic
homeland.
That’s why anti-Israel thugs have ripped apart a
painting in Cambridge University of Arthur Balfour, the British prime
minister who gave his name to the 1917 declaration of British support
for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It’s why people across the west have
been ripping down the posters of the Israeli hostages. They are all
trying to rip Israel and the Jews out of their headspace and their world
altogether.
That’s why the betrayal by Schumer and American Jews
who still support the Democratic Party and its Israel-bashing agenda is
so devastating.
According to the Oxford University Press
Dictionary of American Family Names, “Schumer” derives from a German
word that means a “good-for-nothing”.
Schumer claims instead that his name derives from the Hebrew shomer, or “guardian”; and so he boasts to be the shomer
of Jewish values. “What horrifies so many Jews especially,” he said,
“is our sense that Israel is falling short of upholding these distinctly
Jewish values that we hold so dear”.
How dare he. He is not a shomer.
What has horrified so many is that Schumer and other liberal American
Jews who are taking aim at Israel’s “right-wing” are using “Jewish
values” as a shield behind which they are betraying Israel and the
Jewish people and delivering them to their enemies.
Along with the shills for Israel’s surrender in the Biden administration, they present an obscene and disgusting spectacle.
“In
every generation,” say the Jews at Passover, “they rise up against us”.
To the enemies of the Jewish people today — Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran —
we must add the Biden administration, Chuck Schumer and the liberal
Jewish fifth column.
The moves come despite intensifying international opposition to a ground operation in the last Hamas stronghold, which Jerusalem says is necessary to defeat the terrorist organization.
Displaced Palestinians pitch tents next to the Egyptian border with the
city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on March 8, 2024. Photo by Abed
Rahim Khatib/Flash90.
The Israel Defense Forces has begun
isolating Rafah in southern Gaza and has started taking steps to
evacuate the city’s civilian population, Channel 12 reported on Wednesday.
The moves come despite intensifying
international opposition to a ground operation in the last Hamas
stronghold, which Jerusalem says is necessary to defeat the terrorist
organization. The final four Hamas battalions, comprising some 3,000
terrorists, are holed up in the city, according to Israel.
There are also well over a million Gazans sheltering in Rafah, causing concern regarding potential harm to noncombatants.
As part of the preparations for the
operation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the
purchase from China of 40,000 tents for Rafah evacuees, which will be
moved to the Gaza Strip from Israel, according to the report.
“Clear places will be defined in the Strip where the tents will be placed and the refugees will stay,” the article states.
U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby stressed the need to protect the noncombatants in Rafah in an interview with Channel 12 on Wednesday.
“We simply cannot support a significant
ground attack in Rafah which does not include an achievable and
verifiable plan that would ensure the security of 1.5 million Gazans who
found refuge there. And they found refuge there because of the
operations that were conducted in the north, in Khan Yunis and earlier
in Gaza City,” said Kirby.
“We need to ensure that their security is
well taken care of,” Kirby continued. “We recognize that it is necessary
to act against Hamas, we certainly recognize that Israel has the right
to do so; of course they do. Hamas still poses a real threat, and we
know that there are Hamas terrorists in Rafah. We fully understand the
need to do so, but we do not believe that entering Rafah is a good
idea—a massive entrance.”
The White House favors a limited operation aimed at high-value targets and securing the Gaza-Egypt border, instead of a large-scale ground operation.
An Israeli official told JNS that the
White House has contacted Israel to reschedule a canceled
ministerial-level delegation to Washington to discuss the Rafah
operation.
Shortly thereafter, White House Press
Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said during a White House press briefing
that “The Prime Minister’s Office has agreed to reschedule the meeting
dedicated to Rafah,” which she called “urgent.”
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron
Dermer, National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi and an Israel Defense
Forces official had been slated to arrive in Washington on Tuesday for
meetings with U.S. counterparts.
Washington had said the discussion would
focus on alternatives to a military operation in Rafah, amid reports
that Biden is considering conditioning military aid to Israel if Jerusalem moves ahead with it.
Netanyahu announced on Monday that he was
canceling the delegation’s trip, after the United States failed to veto a
ceasefire resolution at the U.N. Security Council earlier in the day.
Netanyahu said that Biden’s move “hurts
the war effort and the effort to release the hostages” by giving Hamas
hope that international pressure will bring about a ceasefire without
freeing the 134 remaining captives.
The premier told Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.)
on Wednesday that his decision to cancel Dermer and Hanegbi’s visit to
Washington “was a message to Hamas: ‘Don’t bet on this pressure. It’s
not going to work.’”
While the Israeli official told JNS that
Washington initiated the request to reschedule the meeting, multiple
U.S. media outlets cited a U.S. official as stating that the request had
come from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
“The Prime Minister’s Office is in touch
with us to reschedule. It’s likely to be fairly soon, but I don’t have a
date to announce,” a U.S. official told Axios before Jean-Pierre formally announced the news.
Former U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo
weighed in on the matter over the weekend, tweeting that “allowing
Hamas to remain in Rafah would be like firefighters only putting out 80%
of a fire. We should support Israel’s mission to completely defeat
Hamas.”
Around three-quarters of Jewish Israelis and a majority of Israelis overall support expanding the military operations against Hamas to Rafah, according to polling conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute.
[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]
A recent article in the Jerusalem Post discusses how the Middle East, and global politics, has changed since October 7. An excerpt:
Iran’s Supreme Leader believes the US is in decline in
its influence in the Middle East. According to a statement last
week, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei claimed that the current war against
Israel, which Iran launched using proxies in the wake of the October 7
Hamas attack, has “disrupted” the US goals in the region.
The October 7 attack can be read as a turning point in the world
order, in which Iran, Russia, Turkey, China, and others see the attack
as a major shift that is taking place and seek to exploit it to achieve
their goals.
The current administration governing America and the October 7
attacks have both greatly contributed to a “turning point” in the world
order.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force Commander Esmail Qaani has also threatened
that “that the resistance front has yet to exhibit the maximum of its
capabilities in terms of military and deterrent power”. Qaani’s
reference to the “resistance” includes Hamas, jihadists in “Gaza, the
West Bank, Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and other places.” Embedded in
Qaani’s threat is that the West has seen nothing yet.
Khamenei believes
that the US has lost all influence in the region, and that it “is now
left with no option but to withdraw” altogether. With Joe Biden in the
White House, Khamenei isn’t far off regarding America’s loss of
influence. And as for withdrawing from the region, America isn’t adequately standing up for Israel nor even against its own enemies, so it has a weak presence.
The rising world powers increasingly appear to be Russia, China, and
even possibly Iran — that is, America’s foremost enemies. Recently,
Russia and China managed to broker a safe passage deal with the highly underestimated and Iran-supported Houthis, who now have the Red Sea under siege
and have expanded their activities to begin interfering with ships that
are heading to the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s Southern tip. Biden’s
Red Sea Coalition continues to struggle ineffectively against the Houthis, as the Yemen-based group has an adverse impact upon Western economic stability. Recently, Hamas and Houthi top dogs met to discuss “expanding their confrontations” with Israel.
Iran has also become a formidable presence within the powerful BRICS
alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and its
influence is growing. According to NASDAQ,
discussions about the potential impact of a new BRICS currency are now
going on, “with experts debating” this new currency’s “potential to
challenge” the dominance of the American dollar. Should this happen,
America’s decline would accelerate, since economic clout defines global
influence and power. The American dollar is the world’s principal
reserve currency for global trade. Simply put: its purchasing power is
so influential that when when the American dollar appreciates, other
world currencies depreciate. China is now trying to lessen global
reliance on the American dollar, which would also be a major victory
for Iran. Last year, China was Iran’s main trade partner. According to
an Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration report
in May, Iran’s trade with BRICS member states between March 21, 2022
and Feb. 19, 2023 was worth $34.98 billion USD, “which excludes crude
oil exports.”
Iran’s growth has been rapid in BRICS. Last August, Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi discussed
Iran’s future membership in BRICS. A similar meeting took place in
November; it included dignitaries from Iran and Russia, who discussed
Iran’s “active role” in BRICS. Less than two months later, at the turn of the new year, Iran officially joined the China-led BRICS economic organization.
Whether or not America and the West have accepted the fact, America
(deemed the “Great Satan” by Iran) and Israel (the “Little Satan”) are
currently in a limited war with Iran, which is now likely in possession
of nuclear bombs, and which has powerful friends.
The Jerusalem Post
states that “the war in Gaza was the first shot by Iran and other
countries in a major war for the future of the world order.” One can
also see the increase in popularity of the pro-Hamas lobby, which is
operating without restraint in America, Canada and other Western
nations.
While enemies of America, Canada, Europe and Britain advance
politically and economically, America and the West continue to decline
under the catastrophic leadership of globalist regimes, while being
simultaneously invaded by multitudes of migrants, due to suicidal
open-door immigration polices. The globalist regimes have never
indicated that they care about the fact that most of the migrants do not
hold Western values.
Khamenei is correct in stating that “the United States’ long-standing
ambition to dominate the region has been undermined by the resilience
of the Axis of Resistance.” But whether America under Biden will fully
abandon Israel and leave the region altogether, as Khamenei predicts, is
another question.
As stated earlier, America, in fact, is already increasingly useless to Israel as it issues threats against
its traditional ally, while virtually exonerating Hamas’ use of human
shields and Egypt’s blocking of Gazan refugees (except those refugees
whom Egypt could bribe).
Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu also just cancelled
a delegation to DC after the Biden regime allowed another UN ceasefire
resolution to pass. The tight relationship between the Organization of
Islamic Cooperation and the United Nations, not to mention the
China-brokered rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, are no less
sobering as indicators of the nature of the new world order that has
begun emerging since October 7.
Christine Douglass-Williams is Associate Editor of Frontpage, regular writer for
Jihad Watch, a nine-time award-winning journalist, past Canadian
government appointee to the Canadian Race Relations Foundation and the
Office of Religious Freedom; author of "The Challenge of Modernizing
Islam" and "Fired by the Canadian Government for Criticizing Islam".
The cover-ups, in the name of anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed the Communist regime a clear field for spying on the United States while suppressing the story, so Biden wouldn't get blamed.
When the spy balloon was
first detected, the initial response by the Biden administration had
been to suppress news about it and then to deny that the administration
had been aware of it.... But when a Montana resident's footage of the
spy balloon went viral, the Biden cover-up fell apart.
...[T]he Biden administration fully committed to covering up
"difficult subjects"... One of those difficult subjects was China's spy
base in Cuba. After the Wall Street Journal reported that China had agreed to pay Cuba billions to build a spy base, the Biden administration denied it.
And then it had to admit it anyway.
The cover-ups, in the name of anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed
the Communist regime a clear field for spying on the United States while
suppressing the story, so Biden wouldn't get blamed.
By the fall of last year, the Wall Street Journal reported on Chinese infiltrators trying to access American military bases "as many as 100 times in recent years".
[T]here is every reason to believe that the situation may be worse than we realize.
Governments normally conceal information about enemy activities
so as not to tip off foreign spies, but the Biden administration's
consistent pattern has been to hide the information from Americans
rather than from Russia and China... China can trust the White House,
but we can't.
The Biden administration's cover-ups, in the name of
anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed China's Communist regime a clear field
for spying on the United States while suppressing the story, so Biden
wouldn't get blamed. Pictured: US President Joe Biden with Chinese
President Xi Jinping meet in Woodside, California on November 15, 2023.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
"When I was director of intelligence for the Indo-Pacific Command,
for example, I watched as numerous requests to publicize Chinese malign
activities were disapproved by Washington," US Navy Rear Admiral Mike
Studeman recently warned.
The former head of the Office of Naval Intelligence had served
between 2022 and 2023, and during that time one of the suppressed
stories about China's attacks involved "Beijing's use of high-altitude
surveillance balloons over the sovereign airspaces of the US," which
came "many months before the shooting down of a Chinese balloon flying
over the US."
After the spy balloon was exposed, Biden administration officials had
claimed that there had been multiple spy balloon overflights under
Trump and only one under Biden, which went unnoticed at the time, but
the US Navy was clearly aware and had been ordered to keep quiet by D.C.
about the multiple incursions by Chinese spy balloons under Biden.
When the spy balloon was first detected, the initial response by the
Biden administration had been to suppress news about it and then to deny
that the administration had been aware of it.
"Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it
and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it," an
administration official admitted.
But when a Montana resident's footage of the spy balloon went viral,
the Biden cover-up fell apart. Once it was exposed, the official
complained that "It caused so many problems."
While the Biden administration was publicly criticizing China, the State Department was privately sidelining sanctions
and any actions against the People's Republic of China. A month later, a
top State Department official dealing with China was already looking to
"move on"
By May, Biden had resumed relations with China and was dismissing the
whole thing as a "silly balloon". In June, he claimed that the spying
was "more embarrassing" for Beijing "than it was intentional." Over a
year later, an FBI report on the balloon is still being kept secret.
With Secretary of State Antony Blinken trying to wrangle an
invitation to China, the Biden administration fully committed to
covering up "difficult subjects".
One of those difficult subjects was China's spy base in Cuba. After the Wall Street Journal reported that China had agreed to pay Cuba billions to build a spy base, the Biden administration denied it.
And then it had to admit it anyway.
To quote NBC News:
"As for why the White House, Pentagon and others all
flatly denied the Journal's reporting despite knowing that China has
been spying from Cuba for years, the official said the Journal story was
inaccurate because it called the eavesdropping a new development."
After the initial denials, the Biden administration backpedaled and
admitted that China had been spying on America from Cuba since 2019.
Much as with the spy balloon story, after a China espionage cover up
fell apart, the Biden administration tried to pass the blame on to
Trump.
Cover-ups of enemy activity had become the default mode for the Biden administration.
While Russia developed a space weapon, the Biden administration covered it up
because it was "worried that if the program became more widely known in
Congress or in the public, that might scuttle the nascent efforts to
get Russia to abort those tests."
What began with Biden's abandonment of the China Initiative in 2022 escalated into coverups.
The Justice Department had argued that "the 'China Initiative' fueled
a narrative of intolerance and bias" and that the "rise in anti-Asian
hate crime and hate incidents" made it urgent to shut down the effort to
stop PRC spies. The assaults on Asian-Americans in San Francisco and
New York City by minority street thugs had nothing to do with catching
spies. It was a cover-up.
The cover-ups, in the name of anti-racism or diplomacy, allowed
China's Communist regime a clear field for spying on the United States
while suppressing the story, so Biden wouldn't get blamed.
By the fall of last year, the Wall Street Journalreported on
Chinese infiltrators trying to access American military bases "as many
as 100 times in recent years". Chinese nationals pretending to be
tourists did everything from trying to force their way into a base in
Alaska to scuba diving to spy on a Florida rocket-launch site. The
increasing brazenness of the Chinese efforts reflected the extent to
which the Biden administration was covering up for the spy campaign.
Over the last year, Chinese spies have been accused of looting
everything from AI secrets to tech used to detect nuclear missile
launches.
And there is every reason to believe that the situation may be worse than we realize.
The Biden administration has developed a consistent track record of
suppressing damaging information about Communist China. What we know
about the PRC's operations against us come from leaked material and
court cases. Without viral videos, like the one out of Montana, and
intelligence reports leaked to the media, we would know even less than
we do now.
Governments normally conceal information about enemy activities so as
not to tip off foreign spies, but the Biden administration's consistent
pattern has been to hide the information from Americans rather than
from Russia and China. Instead of trying to deceive our enemies, the
Biden administration instead deceives and lies to Americans.
The Biden administration has misleadingly denied reports for no
purpose other than to conceal information about enemy activities from
Americans. China knew it was spying on the United States from Cuba. And
they certainly knew that we knew it. Russia knew it was building a space
weapon and was talking about it with the Biden administration. But
Biden didn't want us to know.
After the spy balloon, the Biden administration told Americans one thing and China another.
Whom did it tell the truth to? China. The Biden administration put on
a fake show of outrage for Americans while quietly telling Chinese
Communist officials that all of this would soon pass.
When the United States government lies to Americans, but tells the
truth to an enemy dictatorship, something is very wrong. China can trust
the White House, but we can't.
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at
the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at
the Center's Front Page Magazine.
[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s newest book, Empire of God, by clicking here.]
What’s coming is as plain as day.
Our nation can hardly be said to have a southern border at all
anymore. Even if the border were magically to reappear tomorrow,
millions of people are already in the country without anyone knowing who
or what they are. One hundred sixty-nine people on the FBI’s terror
watch list were caught at the border in 2023; nobody knows how many people on that watch list got across the nonexistent border without being caught.
Four jihadis just murdered at
least 137 people in Moscow. They held the same beliefs as the Hamas
jihadis who murdered 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7. How many people
are in this country right now who aspire to be the next jihad warrior?
How many people are planning to become the next “martyr” and lay hold of
the Qur’an’s promise of a place in paradise for those who “kill and are
killed” for Allah?
No one knows, and even asking such questions is not allowed. Just last week, all of America’s many intelligence agencies received instructions
to avoid using terms such as “jihadist” so as to avoid committing the
cardinal sin of “Islamophobia.” Jihadists can quote the Qur’an and
invoke Islamic teaching all day long, but our intelligence and law
enforcement officials are not allowed to notice, or to study their
motives and goals, for such study would lead them inexorably into the
examination of Islam.
This means that the people whose job it is to protect us from these
jihad terrorists are bound as a matter of government policy not to know
or understand the motives and goals of those terrorists whom they are
trying to foil. Courting Muslim votes by tiptoeing around the reality of
the jihad threat is more important to our elected and appointed
officials than stopping the next Islamic jihad attack.
So what is to be done? Well, we can vote the bums out, but even if we
do, all too many Republicans are just as squeamish as Democrats about
incurring charges of “Islamophobia,” which can be a career killer even
in these post-Oct. 7, post-Moscow, post-44,000 jihad
attacks worldwide since 9/11 days. What’s more, cleaning up the
desperately corrupt FBI and the entire rotten intelligence apparatus is
not going to be done in a day, no matter who emerges victorious in
November.
No, our defense against the next jihad terror massacre in the United
States is up to us, and to us alone. The military is preoccupied with
studying Critical Race Theory and going to drag shows; it isn’t going to
save us. The police, understaffed, underfunded, and on the defensive
nationwide ever since a career criminal died of a drug overdose while in
the process of being apprehended, aren’t going to save us. Everyone
knows now that the feckless and politicized FBI certainly isn’t going to
save us.
One thing that distinguishes America from Russia and Western Europe
is that we still respect the right to self-defense. After 9/11, alert
citizens foiled major jihad attacks (including the Shoe Bomber and the
Underwear Bomber, who have left their mark on airport security to this
day). Only Americans who are likewise alert and aware can take lawful
steps to stop jihadis in their tracks, and they may be the only line of
defense between those jihadis and large crowds of unaware, defenseless
human beings. Of course, we are dealing with terrorists, and part of the
terror that they try to instill in us stems from our not knowing or
being able to know when, or how, they might strike. It could happen
anywhere, at anytime, to anyone. That, however, simply makes it all the
more incumbent upon each of us to keep our eyes open.
The threat we face is also a call to Americans to rediscover our
spiritual wellsprings, and to understand that no one lives forever, but
that to stand against evil, even if it means dying, is a prerequisite
for maintaining a free society. To die with courage is a thousand times
better than to live with cowardice.
But this is not a call to die. It is a call to live, to recognize
what is coming, to assess our situation realistically, and to plan
accordingly. For too long, Americans have been passively trusting in our
institutions, secure in the knowledge that the police, and the
military, and our elected officials were on the job and had our best
interests at heart.
Those days are over. Nevertheless, the jihadis have not won. The left
has not won. The socialist internationalist tide that has swept away so
much of what we used to take for granted as Americans could still be
turned back. But that is up to us. Each of us must decide, as surely as
God offered the choice to the Israelites: “I have set before you life
and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your
descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19). Jihadis love to proclaim how
much they “love death.” Let us in turn love life all the more, and stand
to counter them and their inhuman totalitarian leftist allies, secure
in the knowledge that in the end, life conquers death.
