Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Lawrence Kadish • December 10, 2023 at 5:00 am
Iran largely funded and helped plan the savage invasion of Israel by an estimated 3,000 Gazans under the direction of Iran's proxy, the terrorist group Hamas, on October 7. Pictured: Iran's "Supreme Leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (right) greets Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on February 12, 2012. (Image source: khamenei.ir/AFP via Getty Images)
Iran's militia groups have initiated more than 82 attacks -- just since October 17 -- on US forces and assets in Syria and Iraq. The latest, on the US Embassy in Baghdad, is an attack on US sovereign territory. During Biden's presidency, Iran has initiated 151 attacks against the US. Forty-six US service members have so far been wounded, 19 seriously, with traumatic brain injury. These strikes do not include Iran's having largely funded and helped plan a savage invasion of Israel by an estimated 3,000 Gazans under the direction of Iran's proxy, the terrorist group Hamas, on October 7. Once there, they murdered 1,200 people; raped and tortured an untold number, and kidnapped around 240, about 100 of whom -- women and children -- have been released. Several hostages have reportedly been murdered (here, here and here).
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by Amir Taheri • December 10, 2023 at 4:00 am
Using terror operations on a small scale is an effective means of making life difficult for a much stronger opponent and may even force it to offer some concessions. But grand dramatic attacks such as 9/11 against the US, the Mumbai campaign and the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel raise the stakes to symphonic level that those targeted cannot simply grin and bear it. 9/11 forced the US to invade Afghanistan and destroy al-Qaeda, something it had not contemplated doing even after the massacre of 241 US military personnel in Lebanon. After the Mumbai attacks, India made sure something like that could never happen again. In those cases, an initial victory for the attacker proved to be a prelude to his annihilation.
Using terror operations on a small scale is an effective means of making life difficult for a much stronger opponent and may even force it to offer some concessions. But grand dramatic attacks such as 9/11 against the US, the Mumbai campaign and the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel raise the stakes to symphonic level that those targeted cannot simply grin and bear it. Pictured: Islamist terrorists crash a jetliner into the South Tower of the World Trade Center in New York, on September 11, 2001. (Photo by Seth McAllister/AFP via Getty Images)
The history of terrorism in pursuit of political aims is as long as history itself. However, the past two decades have witnessed important, and needless to say worrying, developments in what could be seen as a zoological version of political activism. The old versions saw disgruntled individuals assassinating powerful enemies. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by 53 Senators led by his closest friends, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Nizam al-Mulk, he powerful Grand Vizir of Seljuks in Iran, suffered the same fate at the hands of 18 Nizari hashasheen (assassins) including a Russian slave. The Qajar Nasseredin Shah was dispatched with a single bullet while mumbling "Son of a Donkey!"
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by Majid Rafizadeh • December 9, 2023 at 5:00 am
Not surprisingly, billions from the West have enabled the Iranian regime to help plan, finance and support, among other aggressions, the invasion of Israel and genocidal massacre of Jews perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Western money gifted to Iran is also helping the regime advance its nuclear weapons program to near-completion by "a few weeks or less, after which they can make as many bombs as they like. The more money the Iranian regime is handed, the more trouble it causes. Compared to the tens of billion the US delivers to Iran, the US government's annual $3.8 billion investment in Israel -- which invariably inspires extensive howling from some quarters -- is proportionately bus fare. It is high-time for the Biden administration to learn from previous administrations -- inconveniently for them, Republican -- that only economic and military pressure work on rogue and predatory regimes such as Iran. Appeasement, regrettably.... just ignites conflict.
It is high-time for the Biden administration to learn from previous administrations that only economic and military pressure work on rogue and predatory regimes such as Iran. Appeasement, regrettably, just ignites conflict. (Image source: iStock)
The Biden administration's policy towards the expansionist regime of Iran has been anchored in appeasement policies, including handing over billions of dollars in a seeming effort to bribe Iran's mullahs not to cause even further trouble in the Middle East before the US presidential election on November 5, 2024. Not surprisingly, billions from the West have enabled the Iranian regime to help plan, finance and support, among other aggressions, the invasion of Israel and genocidal massacre of Jews perpetrated by Hamas on October 7. Western money gifted to Iran is also helping the regime advance its nuclear weapons program to near-completion by "a few weeks or less, after which they can make as many bombs as they like. From the Iranian regime's dispiriting record of cheating (such as here, here and here), no "deal" will stop them. The more money the Iranian regime is handed, the more trouble it causes.
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by Raymond Ibrahim • December 8, 2023 at 5:00 am
"Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them." — Osama bin Laden, "Al-Qaeda's Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema." "There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, thereby physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live." — Osama bin Laden, "Al-Qaeda's Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema." In his "Letter to the American People," however, bin Laden portrays Islam as "the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted." When clarifying to the Saudis what Islam really has in store for infidels, bin Laden quoted many of the most militant verses, such as Koran 9:29: "Fight those among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] who do not believe in Allah, nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued."
Today, young Americans are eating up the old and discredited words of Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the murder of 3,000 Americans — all thanks to TikTok and its Chinese Communist Party owners. Pictured: A video still taken from Qatar's Al Jazeera television on June 10, 1999 shows Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. (Photo by Al Jazeera/AFP via Getty Images)
As the war between Israel and Palestinians rages on, an old "Letter to the American People" from the terrorist Osama bin Laden, who masterminded the murder of nearly 3,000 people in the United States on September 11, 2001, after his first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center in 1993 failed, recently went viral on TikTok, where it is apparently "opening eyes" based on the sorts of reactions it has been receiving, such as:
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by Robert Williams • December 7, 2023 at 5:00 am
Many pro-Hamas demonstrations that have been taking place on US campuses since Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, when more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded and raped, pillaged, murdered and kidnapped their way through the small communities of southern Israel, have reportedly been led by a radical organization known as National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP). According to a 2018 monograph... NSJP was founded in 2010 by leaders of American Muslims for Palestine and the US Palestinian Community Network, two organizations linked to US-designated terror organizations. The letter [to nearly 200 university presidents] cites the NSJP toolkit document: "The toolkit refers to the Hamas-led terrorist attack in Israel as 'the resistance.' This was followed by statements at campus events where students proudly declared 'We are Hamas,' and 'We echo Hamas.'" Material support for a terrorist organization is a serious matter, too dangerous to leave for university presidents to solve. They frequently appear more concerned about placating the radical elements on their campuses. Many of these academic institutions receive federal funding. However, Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance." Title IV also covers "violations based on religion." If a university allows material support for a terrorist organization, or discrimination against Jews, its federal financial assistance should be cancelled at once.
Many pro-Hamas demonstrations have been taking place on US campuses since Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, when more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded and raped, pillaged, murdered and kidnapped their way through the small communities of southern Israel. Pictured: Students participate in a demonstration in support of Hamas outside Columbia University campus on November 15, 2023 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Many pro-Hamas demonstrations that have been taking place on US campuses since Hamas launched its war on Israel on October 7, when more than 3,000 Hamas terrorists invaded and raped, pillaged, murdered and kidnapped their way through the small communities of southern Israel, have reportedly been led by a radical organization known as National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP), which, according to a report in The Atlantic, announced a "national day of resistance". "The National Students for Justice in Palestine released a 'toolkit' which refers to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as 'the resistance' and unequivocally states: 'Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.'"
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by Uzay Bulut • December 6, 2023 at 5:00 am
The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years. [T]he Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly to claim that "152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey". These islands historically and legally... belong to Greece. Since its inception in Arabia in the seventh century, Islam has been spread throughout the world by means of the sword. According to the Islamic law, the entire world is divided into the "dar al-Islam" (territory of submission to Allah -- the word "Islam" is Arabic for "submission"), which denotes regions where Islam prevails, and the "dar al-harb" (territory of war), which refers to non-Muslim lands, yet to be conquered. Islamists believe that once a land has come under Islamic occupation and colonialism, the land conquered is forever Islamic... Islamic supremacists such as Erdogan believe that because Thessaloniki was once under the occupation of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, it is a Muslim land eternally and must be returned to its rightful owner. Jerusalem was under Ottoman occupation for four centuries (1517-1917). The Jewish people, however, reversing that pattern of Islamic colonialism and imperialism, re-established their homeland, now Israel, in 1948. Islamic supremacists still have not healed from the perceived affront by Israel's indigenous Jewish people to Islamic conquest. Islamists therefore say they want to reconquer Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. According to doctrine, the only religion that should rule over these lands -- or any lands, for that matter -- is Islam. Christians and Jews could be only dhimmis, second-class, tolerated subjects of an Islamic state where they are only allowed to stay alive on sufferance by paying a high "protection" tax, the jizya. Theologically, according to Islamic scriptures, Judaism and Christianity are merely distorted versions of Islam. In the Islamic view, originally there was only Islam, which the Jews and Christians later distorted into Judaism and Christianity. All history, in this mindset, is therefore originally Islamic history and all major figures of Biblical history, from Adam and Eve, are therefore Muslim. According to Islam, Abraham, David, Moses and Jesus are also Muslim. So, any place related to them, in that view, is Muslim territory. Many others see these events as the Jews, who were the indigenous population of what is now Israel, having had their land "stolen" by the Ottomans, similarly to how the Turkish military invaded the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974, or how the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire was "stolen" by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and his troops on May 29, 1453 when they stormed Constantinople and triumphantly entered the Cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, after besieging the city for 55 days. Many Islamists are therefore obsessed with conquering Israel, Spain and Portugal (Muslim-occupied al-Andalus), Greece, Cyprus and India for Allah -- then the rest of the non-Muslim world.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps increasingly referring to places outside Turkey as "our lands." The government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea for at least the past five years. Pictured: Erdogan speaks at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara on November 29, 2023. (Photo by Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan keeps increasingly referring to places outside Turkey as "our lands." In his statement following the presidential cabinet meeting on November 20, Erdogan said: "Karabakh [in the South Caucasus] has the same place in our hearts as Gaza. Just as we do not distinguish between Bosnia and Aleppo [in Syria]; Tripoli [in Libya]; Balkh [in Afghanistan]; Thessaloniki [in Greece] and Mosul [in Iraq], we see our own ancient cities and Jerusalem as the same."
"Karabakh" is the Armenian Republic of Artsakh, currently occupied by Azerbaijan after it – with the help of Turkey – seized it in September after a genocide against the indigenous Armenians there, that lasted from 2020-2023.
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by Bassam Tawil • December 5, 2023 at 5:00 am
Many of the officials managing the Palestinian Authority (PA) are the same ones who helped establish it in 1994 and were responsible for its rampant corruption. This corruption is one of the main reasons why Hamas won the PA parliamentary election in 2006, when the Islamist movement ran under the banner of "Change and Reform." Mahmoud Abbas and senior PA officials have been stirring up bloodlust for Israel both before and after Hamas's October 7 massacre. Palestinians hear these messages and vote for Hamas when given the opportunity, as we saw in the recent student council elections at a number of Palestinian universities in the West Bank. This is exactly what Abbas feared when he cancelled the PA's presidential and parliamentary elections that were slated to take place in 2021. The assumption that, three decades later, the Palestinian Authority is going to embark on any serious reforms is a mirage. Abbas and the PA leadership will not change unless they are pressured to do so... One thing is clear: the Palestinian Authority is in no way, shape or form up to this job.
The Biden administration is continuing to promote the idea of having a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority (PA) govern the Gaza Strip after the Israel-Hamas war. If the PA is permitted to take over the Gaza Strip, its anti-Israel rhetoric, which has escalated since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, will only result in another generation of radicals. Pictured: PA President Mahmoud Abbas and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meet in Ramallah on November 30, 2023. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
The Biden administration is continuing to promote the idea of having a "revitalized" Palestinian Authority (PA) govern the Gaza Strip after the Israel-Hamas war. US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken used the phrase "revitalized Palestinian Authority" to express support for placing the Gaza Strip, currently ruled by the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group, under the control of the PA, headed by Mahmoud Abbas. On December 2, Vice President Kamala Harris became the latest official to promote the idea that "we have to revitalize the Palestinian Authority" to prepare it for ruling the Gaza Strip after the war. The White House has further suggested that Palestinians "should be the determining voice" in who governs them.
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by Robert Williams • December 4, 2023 at 5:00 am
To understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with Hamas in the Gaza Strip... "The UN has 13,000 employees in tiny Gaza. They know exactly what's going on... They all knew Hamas' terror infrastructure was in the hospital compound, where Israel wouldn't attack. They lied to the world for 16 years. To paint Israel as evil." — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, November 16, 2023. [T]he UN has sustained an incessant campaign, especially on social media, that accuses Israel of deliberately targeting schools, children, civilians, hospitals and healthcare workers. While those are protected from attack during war by international law, that protection does not apply to schools, hospitals and other civilian sites that are used for military purposes. When Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was being used by Hamas terrorists, [UN Secretary-General António] Guterres expressed that he was "horrified" with Israel's action, while ignoring Hamas's war crimes. In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in crime. Above all, the UN's transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US, finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars, and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.
When a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad exploded outside Gaza's Al-Ahli hospital, Hamas claimed within minutes that Israel had bombed the hospital and falsely asserted that hundreds of people had been killed there. The United Nations rushed to blame Israel, and UN Secretary-General António Guterres used his speech at the Belt and Road Summit in China to condemn Israel for the explosion. Pictured: The parking lot of Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza on October 18, 2023 after a rocket launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad landed there. (Photo by Shadi Al-Tabatibi/AFP via Getty Images)
Since October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and massacred at least 1,200 and kidnapped another 240 Israelis and people of other nationalities, the United Nations has been acting as the unofficial propaganda arm of the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist organization. The propaganda campaign's main aim – besides smearing Israel – appears to be to build overwhelming international pressure on Israel to agree to an indefinite ceasefire , which will give Hamas the needed time to regroup and replenish to continue its terrorist activities and to avoid being eliminated by the Israeli Defense Forces.
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by Drieu Godefridi • December 3, 2023 at 5:00 am
In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad. The Palestinian Authority also lays claim over all of the territory, including all of Israel... In addition, the Palestinian Authority is counting on the Palestine Liberation Organization's 1974 "Ten Point Plan" (also known as the "phased plan") for the "comprehensive liberation" of all the land stretching "from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea" -- a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The plan calls for the PLO to use whatever territory it is offered as a base of operations to get the rest. Belgium's possible recognition of a "Palestinian State" makes no sense in terms of international law. It comes, in reality, less as the result of a desire to help the Palestinians -- whose lives will not be improved by it -- than of a fierce and increasingly undisguised hostility towards the State of Israel, and most likely also Jews. Recognizing a Palestinian state with no authority, no realistic territorial demands and no acceptable leadership -- and with a long-term, outspoken desire to militarize and destroy its neighbor Israel -- right after a jihadist pogrom against Jews, will not add to the happiness of any of the parties involved, or, for that matter, anyone else.
Pictured: Hamas terrorists with their child trainee at a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)
There are whispers in the corridors of power that Belgium, like Norway and Spain, is preparing to recognize a "Palestinian State". This move seems questionable, on both legal and political grounds. The first conditions for recognizing a state are territory and state authority. International law defines a sovereign state as an established territorial unit, within which its laws apply to a permanent population, and which is constituted by institutions through which it exercises authority and effective power. In the case of a "Palestinian State", there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas -- designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings -- calls for the "liberation" of "every inch of Palestine" through jihad.
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by Amir Taheri • December 3, 2023 at 4:00 am
[B]oth Russia and Ukraine have passed what military theoreticians call the "decimation point" when you see that you have lost at least 10% of your fighting manpower. In the West, public opinion saw the war as a means of keeping the Russian giant in chains, while anti-West forces admired Putin for challenging the American big bad wolf.
Pictured: Ukrainian soldiers from a drone-hunting team stand next to an anti-aircraft gun in the outskirts of Kyiv, on November 30, 2023. (Photo by Roman Pilipey/AFP via Getty Images)
Thirsting for a bit of good news in these bad times of war, Ukraine's media headlined what it saw as a victory: The return to Kiev of a haul of artefacts from Crimea that had been on exhibit in European cities before Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014. The return came after a ten-year legal battle in which Russia claimed that it should receive the artefacts because they were made before the 1950s when the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev "handed Crimea over to Ukraine." Ukraine counter-argued that the artefacts were loaned to a Dutch museum before Russian President Vladimir Putin's troops annexed Crimea. Well, in every war even the tiniest bit of good news could help divert attention, even momentarily, from bigger bad news.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • December 2, 2023 at 5:00 am
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Iran's regime has frequently threatened to wipe a whole country -- Israel -- off the map, and is also increasing military cooperation with Venezuela and Cuba to threaten the US. Europe, too, remains a rich target for nuclear blackmail. Iran would not even have to use its nuclear bombs; the threat would be enough. It is high time for the Biden administration and the European Union at least to stop Iran from selling its oil. If not, much of the planet will soon see itself either in World War III or a surrender. It would have been so much less costly in life and treasure to stop Hitler before he sent the German army across the Rhine in 1936. Perhaps US President Joe Biden is trying to bribe the mullahs not to create any more mayhem before next year's US presidential election – but the only result of such timidity is that the price goes up – with a worse war to follow. Biden would not have won WWII. The Iranian regime, through its proxies, has already attacked US forces in Iraq and Syria at least 74 times since October 17. US retaliation – against the proxies, not Iran – apparently could not impress Iran's regime less. Someone else takes the bullet: that is why Iran has proxies in the first place... The Biden administration is not only allowing to Iran's mullahs to create a war cost-free, it is paying them to do it.
The threat of a nuclear-armed Iran must not be underestimated. Once Iran obtains nuclear weapons, it will most likely provide some of them to its proxies, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. (Image source: iStock)
Iran is closer than ever before to obtaining nuclear bombs; meanwhile, the Biden administration's only policy toward the ruling mullahs of Iran is to keep "rewarding" them with billions of dollars. After the Iran-backed Hamas terror group launched its genocidal war against Israel and Jews, the Iranian regime ratcheted up its enrichment of uranium. The regime claims it now has enough enriched uranium to make three nuclear bombs, according to one of the two confidential reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and seen by Reuters. On November 22, 2023, IAEA Director-General Rafael Grossi warned in his latest report on verification and monitoring: "Iran's stockpiles of uranium enriched up to 5%, enriched up to 20% and enriched up to 60% – high enriched uranium – have all increased since we met in September with the increase of the 60% continuing at the same rate as I reported at the time of the last Board."
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by Gerald M. Steinberg • December 1, 2023 at 5:00 am
Two major revelations have ripped away the curtain from HRW's moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization. A week later, a second earthquake ripped through HRW's carefully manicured curtain of secrecy. In 2009, Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda. [A]n independent investigation of all financial activities covering the past 25 years is required, accompanied by the examination of possible violations by Roth, Whitson and others of the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The damage done to the moral core of human rights and to Israeli victims of Hamas terrorism is incalculable and irreversible. But an internship or work experience at HRW is no longer an asset, and being listed as a donor in HRW's glossy PR publications is worse than embarrassing.
Two recent major revelations have ripped away the curtain from Human Rights Watch's moral facade, and revealed a thoroughly corrupt organization. In 2009, then Executive Director Ken Roth and HRW started hiding the full list of donors – an early red flag for an NGO claiming a moral agenda. Pictured: Roth at a press conference at the United Nations on January 14, 2020 in New York City. (Photo by Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)
On October 7, the Palestinian Hamas terror group slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and foreign visitors in a carefully planned massacre that included the brutal torture and disfigurement of victims. Hamas abducted more than 240 other people, including more than 30 children, and took them to the Gaza Strip, holding them as hostages. Human Rights Watch (HRW), ostensibly one of the world's "most respected" moral organizations, waited more than two days to issue a statement. When this occurred, the text was not a clear and direct condemnation of this monstrous war crime. Instead, Omar Shakir (HRW's Israel and Palestine Director) framed the unfathomably evil terror attack as a justified reaction to Israeli policies, which, in HRW's list of slogans, include war crimes, unprecedented repression, unlawful closure of Gaza, inhumane acts, "domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians," and "crimes against humanity of apartheid and persecution."
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • November 30, 2023 at 5:00 am
Awad Darawshe, 23, an Arab-Israeli paramedic, remained behind, refusing [on October 7] to abandon the wounded. "I speak Arabic. I think I can manage," Darawshe said, supposing that he could reason with the terrorists. Perhaps he thought they would not harm a fellow Muslim Arab. He was wrong. "I never felt that I'm deprived in any way.... Stop the nonsense. It is empty whining. I don't believe in that. Everyone here can get where they want. What – the country doesn't let them study? Y'allah, be a lawyer, be a teacher. Does anyone stop you? Even in prayer. Does anyone stop you praying? We pray five times a day, five times no one stops us. Whoever wants to be successful can be successful. Whoever doesn't want to be successful blames the country, the government." — Ibrahim, an Arab-Israeli citizen, YouTube, February 23, 2014. Where in the Middle East are Arabs thriving throughout society, not just in a privileged world of favors and nepotism? Israel. "We are very proud of his actions... This is what we would expect from him and what we expect from everyone in our family — to be human, to stay human and to die human." — The family of the paramedic Awad Darawshe, apnews.com, October 15, 2023. "People from all over the country come to hug and support the family. The entire nation is one family now." — Ali Alziadna, an Arab-Israeli whose four family members are currently held hostage by Hamas, haaretz.com, November 13, 2023. Hamas has repeatedly demonstrated that it cares nothing for the well-being of Arabs and Muslims. From their luxury homes and hotel rooms in the safety of Qatar and Turkey, Hamas leaders give the orders to attack Israel and then sit back and let the world weep over the destruction they wrought upon their own people. Perhaps the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip should look at the Arab citizens of Israel and note how they enjoy equal rights, democracy, freedom of speech and a free media. If Palestinians wish to live well, like the Arab-Israelis, this is the time for them to get rid of Hamas and all the terror leaders who, for seven decades, have brought them nothing but one disaster after another.
The Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7 did not slaughter Jews alone. The terrorists also murdered and kidnapped scores of Muslim citizens of Israel. The terrorists' murder spree made zero distinction between young and old, Muslim and Jew. Pictured: Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorists share a moment of friendship for the crowds in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Stripת on November 28, 2023. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The Hamas terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7 did not slaughter Jews alone. The terrorists also murdered and kidnapped scores of Muslim citizens of Israel, including members of the Bedouin community. The terrorists' murder spree made zero distinction between young and old, Muslim and Jew. More than 1,200 Israelis were murdered in the massacre, while another 240 were kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip as hostages. Of these, scores of Arab Israelis were murdered, wounded or taken hostage. Among the kidnapped is Aisha al-Ziadna, a 16-year-old Muslim citizen of Israel. The first wave of Hamas's attack hit a music festival at Kibbutz Re'im which had an estimated 3,500 young people in attendance. The magnitude of the onslaught became apparent as bloodied and panicked people staggered into the medical tent screaming for help. Finally, the medical staff was ordered to flee along with everyone else.
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by Guy Millière • November 29, 2023 at 5:00 am
Many Muslims living in the West remain under the influence of Islamist movements and the hatred of Israel and Jews that permeates their countries of origin. Hatred of Jews and Israel is therefore markedly present in Muslim communities in the West. In the 1960s, when the Soviet Union wanted to gain more influence in the Arab Muslim world, its leaders decided to support what was at the time a sacred cause for Arab leaders: the attempt to destroy Israel. They... chose to invent a "national liberation struggle".... The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was founded in 1964 with the task of "liberating Palestine," and the borders of "Palestine" on the maps used by the PLO showed that the goal was to erase Israel from the face of the earth. Western leftists started vocally to express hatred of "imperialist Israel" and, ironically, the hard-won democratic freedoms they were at that moment enjoying to the fullest: freedom of speech, assembly, education, sexuality, and supposedly equal justice under the law. The Oslo Accords only made everything worse. By signing them, Israel's then Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin recognized... that a terrorist organization was somehow the legitimate representative of a people invented fewer than three decades earlier, and that this invented "people" had "rights" and deserved to have territory and self-government. In reality, it was Israel that decolonized the land from the grip of the British, who governed it from 1917 until Israel's war of independence in 1948. The recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere.... These demonstrations also show that support for the "Palestinian cause" sometimes also leads Westerners to support genocidal atrocities so long as they are committed against Jews. [I]f nothing is done to respond to the forces seeking to overturn Western civilization, all in the name of "democracy" of course – and Western values such as equal justice under law, equality of opportunity rather than of result, education from facts rather than from propaganda, a media that actually challenges authority rather than allowing itself to be suborned by it, freedom of speech with which one disagrees, the sovereignty of the individual rather than of groups -- the worst is bound to come.
The recent pro-Hamas demonstrations in the US, Canada, Europe and Australia show that hatred of Jews and Israel among Muslims living in the West has reached a degree where many of them openly support genocidal atrocities not only against Jews in Israel but against Jews anywhere. Pictured: Demonstrators protest against Israel on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City on November 7, 2023. (Photo by Kena Betankur/AFP via Getty Images)
The atrocities committed by the terrorist group Hamas in Israel on October 7 aroused fear and horror throughout the West. As soon as the Israeli government decided to retaliate and announced that it seeks to destroy Hamas, "the new ISIS", fear and horror began to fade and rapidly gave way to a return of "the world's oldest hatred". The mainstream media described the demonstrations that swept through Western Europe and the United States as "pro-Palestinian". They were, in reality, anti-Jew and brimming with hatred towards Israel. The slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" -- meaning that Israel must be wiped off the map -- was shouted out and emblazoned on banners.
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by Gordon G. Chang • November 28, 2023 at 5:00 am
The new index does not include Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, so to match the assets of the I Fund to the new index, the Thrift Board will have to sell Chinese and Hong Kong stocks and not buy them in the future. Investors have noticed. More than three-quarters of the foreign cash invested in Chinese stocks in the first seven months of this year has already been withdrawn from China. In excess of $25 billion has exited the country. Chinese stocks listed in Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and New York have lost about $955 billion of market capitalization this year.... The plunge in the renminbi against the dollar this year has further eroded returns. Chinese economic news has become downright scary, and, unfortunately for China, there is no such thing as a brave money manager. China's companies for decades essentially had a free ride: As a practical matter, they did not have to meet U.S. disclosure requirements, which applied to companies from all other countries. This unjustified preferential treatment was reduced somewhat in August of last year when the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board surprisingly clinched an agreement with Chinese regulators to give the U.S. access in Hong Kong to the audit papers of Chinese companies. So why should companies continue to get special access to American equity markets just because they come from China? Or why should they have any access at all? The Chinese economy and financial markets are fragile. It is time to cut off all the blood supply to the Nazis of the 21st century.
(Image source: iStock)
They certainly cannot be happy in Beijing. An exceedingly technical administrative decision in Washington, D.C. will soon result in investors pulling tens of billions of dollars in investments from a cash-strapped China. On November 14, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board changed the benchmark for the Thrift Savings Plan's International Stock Index Investment Fund, better known as the I Fund. Previously, the I Fund tracked the MSCI Europe, Australasia and Far East Index. The Thrift Board decided on November 14th instead to track the MSCI All Country World ex USA ex China ex Hong Kong Investible Market Index. The new index does not include Chinese and Hong Kong stocks, so to match the assets of the I Fund to the new index, the Thrift Board will have to sell Chinese and Hong Kong stocks and not buy them in the future. The switch in indices of the Thrift Savings Plan, essentially the 401(k) plan for federal employees, will take place next year.
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