Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Lawrence Kadish • September 22, 2026 at 1:00 pm
Chinese President Xi Jinping has an opportunity to extend an act of mercy that could pay significant diplomatic dividends: allowing Pastor John Cao, a U.S. lawful permanent resident suffering from late-stage prostate cancer and a spinal tumor, finally to return home. There is recent precedent for this kind of humanitarian gesture. Pastor Jin Mingri (pictured) had a similar case raised with Xi during a visit to Beijing by President Donald Trump; Jin was subsequently released and reunited with his family in the US. (Photo by Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images)
When Chinese President Xi Jinping meets US President Donald Trump in Washington this week, he will have an opportunity to extend an act of mercy that could pay significant diplomatic dividends: allowing Pastor John Cao, a U.S. lawful permanent resident, finally to return home. Cao's story is not one of an active prisoner awaiting release — he already served his full seven-year sentence for "organizing illegal border crossings;" he walked out of a Chinese prison in March 2024. His actual offense, as human rights observers — including the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — have noted, was building schools and delivering aid to impoverished children along the China-Myanmar border. Since his release, however, Chinese authorities have withheld his passport under a footnote in China's Passport Law, a provision that allows the government to withhold a released prisoner's travel documents for up to three years. Cao has now waited over two and a half years.
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by Drieu Godefridi • September 22, 2026 at 5:00 am
Even if Chinese technological theft is less frequent in Europe than in the United States —there is far less technology to steal from Europe than from the US — it is nevertheless all too present. The practice follows what the current director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, long ago called the business model of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): "Rob, Replicate, Replace." They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product's original manufacturers out of business. When the CCP believes its hold on the market share has been consolidated into something resembling a monopoly, the prices go back up. Watch out! The same will be true for computer chips. Currently, the German car industry is being potentially demolished with this practice by Chinese electric vehicles. Only US President Donald J. Trump is saving America's car industry by banning Chinese vehicles as well as by offering financial incentives to anyone planning to manufacture cars -- or just about anything else -- in the US. In Belgium, for instance, BelGaN, a flagship Belgian semiconductor company, was bought by the Chinese regime, robbed of its intellectual property, technology and know-how for the benefit of a "mirror company" in China, and then eliminated in Belgium. GaN technology makes it possible to produce electronic components that are smaller, more energy-efficient and capable of operating at higher frequencies than comparable silicon-based devices. Its applications are numerous: electric vehicles, chargers, solar-power systems, data centers, aerospace and space systems, and military applications such as radar and electronic warfare. The real "suspect" in the entire affair is, and always has been, the CCP, whose economic development model rests on one simple principle: the constant, systematic and unrelenting theft of Western intellectual property. How much of that is on us for letting them? [W]hen the Flemish government realized that a Flemish company had become Chinese, it stopped subsidizing it. BelGaN was declared bankrupt on July 31, 2024, and more than 400 employees lost their jobs. As part of the bankruptcy proceedings, BelGaN's assets were divided into approximately 1,800 auction lots — individual machines or groups of equipment and other factory assets — and sold online by court-appointed liquidators to raise money for creditors. The auction generated approximately €23 million, with Chinese companies acquiring roughly one-third of the assets, including about €8.5 million worth of high-tech equipment. The Federal Prosecutor's Office and the Federal Judicial Police of East Flanders are now investigating the matter as part of the bankruptcy case. H.L. was arrested on May 10, 2026, at Zaventem Airport as he was preparing to board a flight to Beijing. The charges against H.L. are serious: espionage, participation in a criminal organization, misuse of corporate assets, unlawful disclosure of trade secrets and bankruptcy-related offenses. The prosecutor's office states that there are serious, precise and consistent indications of unlawful transfers abroad of specialized intellectual property and trade secrets relating to the production of GaN chips. Alan Zhou, BelGaN's last CEO and a Chinese national, is currently being sought by Belgian authorities.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe long ago described the business model of the Chinese Communist Party as "Rob, Replicate, Replace." They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product's original manufacturers out of business. In Belgium, flagship Belgian semiconductor company BelGaN was bought by the Chinese regime, robbed of its intellectual property, technology and know-how for the benefit of a "mirror company" in China, and then eliminated in Belgium. Pictured: The BelGaN chip factory in Oudenaarde, photographed on March 12, 2025. (Photo by Eric Lalmand/Belga/AFP via Getty Images)
Even if Chinese technological theft is less frequent in Europe than in the United States —there is far less technology to steal from Europe than from the US — it is nevertheless all too present. The practice follows what the current director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, long ago called the business model of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP): "Rob, Replicate, Replace." They steal the technology and know-how for a product, copy it, then flood it back into the marketplace at a far lower price, thereby putting the product's original manufacturers out of business. When the CCP believes its hold on the market share has been consolidated into something resembling a monopoly, the prices go back up. Watch out! The same will be true for computer chips.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • September 21, 2026 at 5:00 am
Azaiza revealed details about how journalists operated under Hamas rule. He described an environment in which journalists were pressured to suppress criticism of Hamas and, in some cases, to stop filming when Palestinians expressed anger toward the terrorist group. These are not allegations coming from an Israeli government official or a pro-Israel advocacy organization. They are admissions by a Palestinian journalist who became internationally famous for documenting the war. When Palestinians blamed Israel, the cameras kept rolling. When Palestinians blamed Hamas, the cameras were turned off. He acknowledged that stepping outside this framework exposes journalists to intense backlash, including organized online campaigns, accusations of treason, and physical intimidation inside Gaza. He openly acknowledged that initially he struggled with whether to publish material showing Palestinians criticizing Hamas. He said he had never seen a Gaza journalist publish such material. He also disclosed that he grew up supporting Hamas and that Hamas's ideology and the culture of "resistance" were part of his childhood environment. This is a remarkable admission. It helps explain why the outside world has heard relatively little from Gaza about Hamas's responsibility for the suffering of Palestinians under its rule. It also raises an obvious question: How much of the story coming out of Gaza has been shaped not only by what journalists saw but also by what they believed they were permitted to show? Azaiza's account should therefore prompt media organizations that used his work – and the work of other Gaza-based journalists as well as journalists covering other terrorist entities and their sponsors – to examine their own reporting practices. Who supplied the information? Who was present when it was gathered? What material was not published? Were journalists pressured? Were interviews conducted freely? Were Palestinians allowed to criticize Hamas on camera? Most importantly, did international media organizations independently verify claims coming from a territory controlled by a terrorist organization? Azaiza's interview is ultimately a warning about the dangers of accepting any side's narrative without scrutiny.... It should be a wake-up call. The question is no longer simply what the cameras show. It is also what they do not show.
Palestinian journalist and photographer Motaz Azaiza recently revealed details about how journalists operated under Hamas rule. He described an environment in which journalists were pressured to suppress criticism of Hamas and, in some cases, to stop filming when Palestinians expressed anger toward the terrorist group. Pictured: Azaiza attends the 2024 TIME100 Gala at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images for TIME)
For more than two decades, the international community has been hearing that Palestinian journalists in the Gaza Strip are providing the world with an unfiltered account of what is happening there. A recent interview with Palestinian journalist and photographer Motaz Azaiza should make anyone who has accepted that claim without question think again. Azaiza is hardly an obscure figure. His images from Gaza reached millions of people around the world. He was named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People," received international awards, and became one of the most recognizable Palestinian voices documenting the Gaza war. That is what makes his recent revelations so important. Azaiza revealed details about how journalists operated under Hamas rule. He described an environment in which journalists were pressured to suppress criticism of Hamas and, in some cases, to stop filming when Palestinians expressed anger toward the terrorist group.
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by Ahmed Charai • September 20, 2026 at 7:00 am
How extensive are the transnational financial networks connecting Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, front organizations and designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas? [O]n September 1, the Justice Department announced that the FBI had seized more than $560,000 in cryptocurrency intended for Hamas while disrupting fundraising and recruitment infrastructure. What have we not yet found? The objective is straightforward: follow the money. Who raises it? Who receives it? Which charities transfer it? Which businesses and financial intermediaries move it? Where are the common directors, donors and beneficiaries? Where does the money cross jurisdictions? Most importantly, where does it ultimately end? The same questions deserve to be asked inside the United States There may be organizations and networks today that remain legal, dispersed and apparently disconnected until financial relationships, common intermediaries or organizational connections reveal a larger architecture. President Trump should give Gorka, Dahdouh and the broader counterterrorism team a larger mandate to help coordinate this effort across the U.S. government and with America's partners abroad. Follow the money. Map the networks. Establish the evidence. Expose illicit finance. Cut the financial lifelines. That is where the next phase of the fight should begin.
How extensive are the transnational financial networks connecting Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, front organizations and designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas? Follow the money. Map the networks. Establish the evidence. Expose illicit finance. Cut the financial lifelines. That is where the next phase of the fight should begin. Pictured: The logo of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Words can kill. Washington knows that radical narratives can prepare the ground for radical action. But ideology alone does not sustain organizations, build international networks or finance operations. They need money. And recent actions by the U.S. government raise a question that deserves much greater attention: How extensive are the transnational financial networks connecting Muslim Brotherhood affiliates, front organizations and designated terrorist organizations such as Hamas?
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by Pierre Rehov • September 20, 2026 at 5:00 am
Every peace agreement rests on an assumption that the powers charged with enforcing it want it enforced. The current roadmap for the future of Gaza is organized around the principle of one authority, one law and one weapon. Its purpose is to strip armed factions such as Hamas of their weapons, install a single Palestinian administration and prevent Hamas from reconstituting its military machine. Whether these goals can be achieved depends less on the drafting than on those who will certify compliance. A guarantor inside that architecture is effectively a judge who confirms or denies compliance, arbitrates disputes and applies pressure to whichever party breaks its word. The relevant question is what pressure Turkey and Qatar are likely to apply to Hamas. "Qatar is at the top of funding terrorism worldwide.... Even more than Iran." — Udi Levy, former senior official of Israel's Mossad spy agency who dealt with economic warfare against terrorist organizations, YNet, April 18, 2024. "Qatar has adopted an extremely smart strategy based on the Muslim Brotherhood doctrine, which believes in gaining influence initially through financial means in order to create sympathy for them and alignment with their views... With Israel, the strategy was to develop economic, intelligence, and political relations without evolving into full diplomatic relations... It is easy to be captivated by the money, the grandeur, and the charm." — Udi Levy, YNet, April 2, 2025. Supporters of Turkey's inclusion as a guarantor on the Board of Peace appear to regard its closeness to Hamas as an asset. They argue that a government able to speak directly to Hamas is better placed to extract concessions from it. The argument holds only if one chooses not to look at what Erdogan has built at home. Since 2016, Turkey's government has closed more than 1,500 foundations and associations and replaced thousands of judges and prosecutors with loyalists. Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and Erdogan's most plausible challenger, was arrested in March 2025, days before his nomination as the opposition's presidential candidate, and was later charged with 142 offenses carrying a possible sentence of more than two thousand years in prison. A government that runs its own courts this way is an odd candidate for a supposedly disinterested judgment of somebody else's compliance. Erdogan -- who has also threatened Greece and Cyprus by announcing that "Turkey will not allow violations of its rights or what belongs to it" -- has never condemned the Hamas massacre. People who support terrorism rather than prosecute it are not likely to conclude that violence does not pay. Verification is worth exactly as much as the verifier, and Ankara has already demonstrated what it prefers to leave out. On March 22, 2026, [Ibrahim Kalin, director of Turkey's National Intelligence Organization] hosted a delegation from Hamas's political bureau in Istanbul. The published summaries of that meeting covered Israeli military operations and the rejection of any "deal" in Gaza. Disarming Hamas, the central provision of the American framework, went unmentioned. The omission is the entire problem in miniature. What the Gaza roadmap requires goes well beyond photographs of surrendered rifles and staged ceremonies before cameras of the international media. The roadmap requires the dismantling of a complete military ecosystem: command structures, logistics, financing, recruitment, weapons manufacturing, intelligence networks and the tunnels beneath Gaza's neighborhoods, schools and hospitals. Washington estimates seven to eight months for a process that will generate a dispute at every stage. When inspectors disagree over concealed weapons or continued terrorist activity, someone has to make the decision. When Hamas declares itself compliant and Israeli intelligence concludes otherwise, someone has to choose which account to certify. Turkey has spent years demonstrating which way it leans. Israel has also told the Board of Peace that it objects to Qatari and Turkish participation in verifying the roadmap's stages. An American official answered that both countries have been essential partners in holding the ceasefire together. That is a defensible claim about mediation, but quite a different claim from the one the roadmap actually advances, which is that Turkey can be trusted to certify the disarmament of a terrorist organization it has spent 15 years protecting. The plan's drafters have insisted that the framework will rest on verification rather than trust. Applied to at least two of the proposed verifiers, Turkey and Qatar, this standard should be sufficient to remove them from the panel. The first contested phase will reveal whether either country even intends to comply with the requirement, or if they see their positions as outlasting the Trump Administration to make sure that Hamas will not disarm.
For over 20 years, the governments of Turkish President (and former Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan have functioned as Hamas's principal political protectors. Days after the October 7, 2023 massacre, he told his parliamentary group that Hamas is "a group of mujahideen defending their lands." Pictured: Erdogan (right) welcomes Hamas leaders Khaled Mashaal (center) and the late Ismail Haniyeh in Ankara on June 18, 2013. (Photo by Yasin Bulbul/AFP via Getty Images)
Every peace agreement rests on an assumption that the powers charged with enforcing it want it enforced. The 15-point roadmap announced on July 30 by the US-led Board of Peace asks the world to extend that assumption to four guarantor states -- Egypt, Qatar, the United States and Turkey -- which together are to supervise the transfer of civilian and security authority in Gaza from Hamas to a committee of Palestinian technocrats. Turkey's and Qatar's presence on that list is unfathomable. For over 20 years, the governments of Turkish President (and former Prime Minister) Recep Tayyip Erdogan have functioned as Hamas's principal political protectors. Their records have drawn less scrutiny than the plan their countries are now expected to police.
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by Amir Taheri • September 20, 2026 at 4:00 am
Time will tell, but my hunch is that al-Zaidi, indeed a whole new generation of Iraqi politicians, long to free themselves from the shackles imposed by the Khomeinists in post-Saddam times. A government that cannot prevent foreign-backed militias from firing missiles and drones at another country cannot be seen as a serious partner in defense and security matters. In that context al-Zaidi's record so far is mixed at best. That is good but not good enough because the groups concerned will keep some of their weapons and a softer version of their chain of command nominally under a larger official command and control system. Three other militia groups, in fact the wildest, have wiggled out of any accord with al-Zaidi's government using the excuse of "fighting ISIS" as a fig leaf. Their dissolution is a sine qua non for Iraq being accepted as a serious partner for the European Union. Iraq also needs to reassert the authority of the central government, ensure greater harmony between the two parts of the Kurdish Region, demarcate its continental shelf line with Kuwait, forge closer ties with the Gulf Cooperation Council and Jordan, and help open and reactivate the Shatt al-Arab without necessarily adopting a hostile posture against Iran. Apart from the quixotic operations of Tehran proxies mentioned above, Iraq has managed to steer clear of the imbroglio that has led to a senseless war in the region. Can al-Zaidi seize that opportunity? The answer is: yes, if. A big if.
A key test for Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is whether he can deliver on the promise to disband militia groups that often act as a state within the state. It seems that both French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spent a good part of their meetings with al-Zaidi to hammer in that "urgent need." Pictured: Macron shakes hands with al-Zaidi during at the Élysée Palace in Paris on September 14, 2026. (Photo by Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)
"Yes, but with a big but!" This was the answer that speaking on condition of anonymity, French officials responded to our question whether they were impressed by visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi. The yes part was about finding the 41-year-old al-Zaidi, a young politician, with enough charisma to ensure a longer run in Iraqi politics where since the end of the Baathist rule meteoric rises and falls have been the norm. The but part was about whether the new boy on the block would show enough backbone to take on a motley of domestic and foreign forces determined to keep post-Baath Iraq in limbo. As is often the case, a number of gold fountain pens were used to initial a series of memoranda of understanding with both the French state and private corporations. The partly state-owned energy giant TotalEnergies agreed to increase its investments in Iraq from $12 to $16 billion without specifying a timespan.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • September 19, 2026 at 5:00 am
What Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald J. Trump have been doing is not just battling terrorist groups; they have been preventing these groups from achieving their main goal: taking over Western civilization. The core ideology of groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis -- like the Iranian regime -- is not influence, trade or partnerships; it is ideological dominance. Their efforts actually center on trying to destroy all non-Muslims, as well as other Muslims that each group considers not Muslim enough. Doctrinally, every Muslim is committed to killing polytheists (such as Hindus) and to domination over "infidels" such as Christians and Jews -- as well as the to the broader project of imposing their vision over the inferior, secular West with its man-made laws (in contrast to Islam's divine, Allah-made sharia law). Democratic institutions are an abomination to Islamists. Trump's approach — combining maximum pressure sanctions, diplomatic isolation of Tehran, and open support for Israel's right to defend itself — has sought to deny Iran's regime the resources and international legitimacy it needs to sustain its proxy network to curtail their ability to project power and ideology across the Middle East and into North America, Latin America and Europe. If there is no serious resistance, the same gradual process that transformed Iran into a hell for its people and hollowed out Lebanese sovereignty can take root in Western democracies. Demographic change, parallel legal systems, political entryism, and the systematic intimidation of critics create the conditions for a determined, incremental takeover. Even demographically, such a transformation becomes impossible to reverse. The fight that Trump and Netanyahu are presently conducting is not intended only to neutralize terrorist organizations. It is trying to prevent Western civilization, democracy, and freedom from falling under the control of an extremist ideology that openly seeks their replacement. The least that European and other Western countries can do is to support these efforts — militarily, financially and diplomatically — by refusing to disparage those countries courageously fighting to preserve their freedoms, won at the cost of so many lives, and by refusing to legitimize terror groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis, as well as the regime in Iran whose constitution and leaders have committed it to a global struggle until their vision prevails.
What Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald J. Trump have been doing is not just battling terrorist groups; they have been preventing these groups from achieving their main goal: taking over Western civilization. Pictured: Trump meets with Netanyahu at the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2025. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)
What Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald J. Trump have been doing is not just battling terrorist groups; they have been preventing these groups from achieving their main goal: taking over Western civilization. The core ideology of groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis -- like the Iranian regime -- is not influence, trade or partnerships; it is ideological dominance. Their efforts actually center on trying to destroy all non-Muslims, as well as other Muslims that each group considers not Muslim enough. Doctrinally, every Muslim is committed to killing polytheists (such as Hindus) and to domination over "infidels" such as Christians and Jews -- as well as the to the broader project of imposing their vision over the inferior, secular West with its man-made laws (in contrast to Islam's divine, Allah-made sharia law). Democratic institutions are an abomination to Islamists.
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by Nils A. Haug • September 18, 2026 at 5:00 am
What matters most to Israelis at this time, according to Israel's former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, is a domestic matter: that of the forthcoming October elections. While many parties in Israel criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for political gain and do their best to unseat him, it is to be hoped that he will once again emerge as prime minister of a new government following the elections. There does not appear to be a candidate of his stature or experience – or Churchillian determination to protect both Israel and the West. As leader of the coalition government's largest party, Likud, Netanyahu saw that the policy of former Israeli governments towards terrorism from Gaza -- "mowing the lawn" every few years in an effort to contain constant Hamas attacks -- had proved to be a devastating miscalculation. In 1946, Israel's future founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, explained to a young Shimon Peres – a future prime minister and president of Israel himself: "A statesman must decide, one way or the other: to go for peace and pay the price, or to make war, knowing what the risks and dangers are." The second socio-political concern is that of applying Israel's compulsory military draft to Haredi ("ultra-Orthodox") men. Israel's Supreme Court, after decades of delay, finally ordered eligible Haredi men to be conscripted in line with those from all other eligible sectors of Israel's population.... The issue continues to divide society. The third concern pertains to the problematic omnipotence of Israel's Supreme Court, in a country where there is no constitution and no enumerated separation of powers.... A crucial doctrine of democracy -- the separation of powers between the three branches of government -- has been disregarded by Israel's Supreme Court, which does not require a plaintiff's standing to hear a case, and makes inroads into the domains of the executive and the legislature (the Knesset).
While many parties in Israel criticize Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for political gain and do their best to unseat him, it is to be hoped that he will once again emerge as prime minister of a new government following the elections. There does not appear to be a candidate of his stature or experience – or Churchillian determination to protect both Israel and the West. Pictured: Netanyahu addresses a session of the Knesset in Jerusalem on June 11, 2025. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
Most Americans, particularly Jews in America, might believe that the Israelis' primary concern is the never-ending military confrontations in Iran, Gaza, and Lebanon. Perhaps, perhaps not. What matters most to Israelis at this time, according to Israel's former ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, is a domestic matter: that of the forthcoming October elections. These elections will decisively direct the future of the nation, for better or worse.
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by Khaled Abu Toameh • September 17, 2026 at 5:00 am
Dr. Fadel Ashour, a [Palestinian] psychiatrist, behavioral-science professor and political analyst, has described in unusually blunt terms the psychological, social and political damage caused by Hamas and its ideology, which is rooted in Islamist principles, rejection of Israel's existence, armed struggle and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place. His message is urgent: Gaza cannot be rebuilt merely by putting up new buildings, repairing roads, or providing humanitarian assistance. The Palestinians' entire mindset must be rebuilt. "Over 20-25 years [of Hamas rule], a culture was established that normalized violence, legalized it, and glorified death as if it were a means of survival. This is extremely dangerous for an entire generation that grew up saturated with this culture." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, Palestinian psychiatrist, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026. "A society that wants to win achieves victory through building, not through death and violence... When you open a school or a university, that is a victory. When you build a prosperous society that doesn't push its youth to flee, that is a victory. Making their lives a hell that everyone wants to escape from is a defeat." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026. If Hamas is merely regarded as another political faction, then the international community will continue to accommodate a terrorist group, negotiate with a terrorist group, and incorporate a terrorist group into Gaza's political system. If Hamas, however, is understood from the outset as an Islamist armed organization that created a parallel society and subordinated Gaza's interests to its ideology and military objectives, the policy implications will be entirely different. "They [Hamas's leaders] took complete control of Gaza's economy. They crushed the commercial class, became the merchants, the importers, and the tax collectors themselves... They exploited society in a parasitic manner." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026. "Hamas controlled the incoming external aid, taking it and selling it to fund itself... In the very midst of death and extreme poverty, they were looking to fund themselves from the begging done on behalf of the people.... Fundamentalist groups like this, are obsessed with two things: gaining access to money and getting that television shot for their media." — Dr. Fadel Ashour, interview, Jusoor News, September 13, 2026. What is important is the broad picture Ashour presents: an Islamist terrorist group that claims to exist for the Palestinian people has instead become an instrument for controlling, exploiting, and indoctrinating them. His assessment should be required viewing for anyone negotiating with Hamas. The question is not whether Hamas will hand over some weapons or accept a temporary political arrangement. The question is whether Gaza can ever develop a fundamentally different political and social culture while Hamas's ideology remains embedded in its society and institutions. Ashour is warning the international community not to make the mistake of believing that Gaza's problem can be solved simply by reaching an agreement with Hamas's leaders. A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system. That is why allowing Hamas to retain a political and military role — particularly by including Hamas-affiliated political figures in future elections — would only perpetuate the problem Ashour is describing. The members of the Board of Peace and the international community need to ask themselves a basic question: Hamas's ideology has helped produce a culture of violence, death, and destruction, so can Gaza really be successfully rebuilt while that ideology — along with its institutional machinery for perpetuating it — remains intact? The answer, it would seem, is unfortunately not.
A society cannot simultaneously teach its children that martyrdom and violence are heroic and expect these same children to build peaceful institutions, prosperous businesses, universities, and a functioning political system. Pictured: A Hamas gunman stands in a crowd of human shields in Deir el-Balah, Gaza Strip on October 13, 2025. (Photo by Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
For years, politicians, activists, journalists and organizations around the world have claimed to speak on behalf of the Palestinians. Many have blamed Israel for virtually every Palestinian problem while treating the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas as legitimate "resistance" movements whose political and military role should be preserved. Now, a Palestinian psychiatrist who has lived and worked in the Gaza Strip is offering a rather different diagnosis. Dr. Fadel Ashour, a psychiatrist, behavioral-science professor and political analyst, has described in unusually blunt terms the psychological, social and political damage caused by Hamas and its ideology, which is rooted in Islamist principles, rejection of Israel's existence, armed struggle and the establishment of an Islamic Palestinian state in its place.
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by Grégoire Canlorbe • September 16, 2026 at 5:00 am
Stealth jihad is well advanced in the U.S., with the entire American left enabling and aiding the expansion of Muslim political power, without realizing or caring that they are supporting a radically intolerant and supremacist ideology. We see in particular [in Europe] the increase of churches being bought and transformed into mosques. Muslims in general prefer this to building new buildings: the transformation of a church into a mosque is for them a visible manifestation of Islam's victory, superiority over Christianity, and coming hegemony. Hundreds of years of jihad attacks weakened and ultimately destroyed the Roman Empire in Constantinople. The failure to get help from the West... played a large role in Constantinople's ultimate fall, as well as disunity among the leaders of the empire itself. Some were even short-sighted and self-serving enough to seek and obtain help from Muslim forces. The U.S. faces a similar threat from short-sighted and self-serving leaders of our own. The Democrats are busy encouraging the growth of Muslim political power, while insisting on ignoring the political, supremacist, expansionist and violent aspects of Sharia. Few politicians are aware of the nature and magnitude of the threat, or are resolved to do anything about it. If this continues, we will eventually face our own May 29, 1453 -- the fall of Constantinople .... [P]robably all religions are affected, even though there are some notable individuals who have not been afraid to speak out -- or prevented from doing so.
"Stealth jihad is well advanced in the U.S., with the entire American left enabling and aiding the expansion of Muslim political power, without realizing or caring that they are supporting a radically intolerant and supremacist ideology." — Robert Spencer. (Image source: Jihad Watch YouTube channel)
Robert Bruce Spencer is a Christian American scholar writing on topics including Islam, Orthodoxy, and the Byzantine Empire. The director of Jihad Watch, he is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He has led seminars on Islam and jihad for organizations like the FBI, the United States Central Command, and the U.S. intelligence community. Grégoire Canlorbe: Please tell us about the different ways of jihad. What is the extent of their work in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world? Robert Spencer: There are many forms of jihad. Besides armed jihad, there is jihad of the tongue, jihad of the pen, jihad of the pocketbook and many more. The goal of all of them is to destroy the existing order of non-Muslim states and replace that order with the hegemony of Sharia.
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by Lawrence Kadish • September 16, 2026 at 4:00 am
Pictured: US President Donald Trump displays an executive order related to artificial intelligence regulation, in the White House on December 11, 2025, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Imagine the following scenario: Albert Einstein pens his famous letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, warning him that the Nazi Germany has the scientists and the means to produce a weapon of enormous destructive power. It would be called the atomic bomb. But, in this scenario, Einstein then says it could unleash untold devastation on humanity, so do not build it. The Nazis, under no such compunction, accomplish such a challenge and the world as we currently know it is just a lengthening shadow of what might have been. That is exactly what is occurring in the debate over whether the United States' current lead in artificial intelligence should be placed in shackles. It is also why President Donald J. Trump, a student of history, recognizes that in doing so we would be handing Communist China an enormous strategic advantage in their pursuit of global dominance.
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by Gordon G. Chang • September 15, 2026 at 5:00 am
By not adopting resolute approaches, the United States and partners have allowed bad actors to bring the world closer to global conflict. Xi is apparently trying to "encircle the cities from the countryside." Today, the Chinese leader considers places like Ukraine to be countryside and America the most important city. Xi has been busy disrupting the world. "Great chaos under Heaven achieves great order under Heaven," wrote Mao Zedong in 1966 in a letter to his wife, Jiang Qing, referring to his goal of establishing worldwide Chinese rule. Xi, throughout this century, has been making references to the imperial era notion that Chinese leaders not only had the right to rule tianxia — "all under Heaven" — but had the obligation to do so. America has to confront the Chinese state wherever the Chinese state confronts the world. Every fight — Xi Jinping is now waging proxy wars on three continents — has therefore become critical if not part of an existential struggle. China and Russia have not chosen to fight the United States directly since the Korean War, but they are getting close, in both Ukraine and Iran. Both conflicts now are proxy contests. In the late 1930s separate wars merged into what we now call World War II. "The question may therefore be not whether World War III is imminent but how many simultaneous regional wars can occur before the distinction between regional conflict and world war loses strategic meaning." — David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy, to the author, September 2026.
Chinese Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping has been busy disrupting the world. "Great chaos under Heaven achieves great order under Heaven," wrote Mao Zedong in 1966 in a letter to his wife, Jiang Qing, referring to his goal of establishing worldwide Chinese rule. Xi, throughout this century, has been making references to the imperial era notion that Chinese leaders not only had the right to rule tianxia — "all under Heaven" — but had the obligation to do so. Pictured: Xi arrives before the start of the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi on September 12, 2026. (Photo by Alexander Kazakov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
"No, we are not on the eve of World War III," writes Leon Hadar in Asia Times. "What's actually happening in 2026 is not the slow ignition of a single global war," he adds. "It's the slow unwinding of the postwar America-led order, playing out simultaneously in half a dozen theaters that don't yet cohere into one fight." Whether Hadar is correct or not, a friend mentioned in June that "the world is all out of control." In our out-of-control world, the pace of change is accelerating. As Vladimir Lenin reportedly said, "There are decades when nothing happens, and there are weeks when decades happen." In this period of rapid change, Hadar admits there are regional wars but finds them "a symptom of disorder rather than a step toward global war."
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by Bassam Tawil • September 14, 2026 at 5:00 am
Both Hamas and the Palestinian Authority [PA] owe the Palestinian people – as well as Israelis and other victims – countless apologies. They owe apologies for corruption and mismanagement. They owe apologies for failing to build transparent and accountable institutions. They owe apologies for suppressing dissent and freedom of expression and for persecuting political opponents, journalists, human rights activists, and critics. They owe apologies for repeatedly rejecting compromises and peace initiatives and for policies that have contributed to decades of Israeli and Palestinian bloodshed. They owe apologies for failing to use international assistance to build a functioning economy and institutions that serve ordinary Palestinians. They owe their people an honest explanation for why Palestinians remain divided between two rival governments and without a functioning democratic political system. The timing of this latest dispute is particularly significant. Hamas has decided to participate [in the upcoming PA elections on November 28]... if true, such an arrangement would allow Hamas to re-enter Palestinian politics through the back door. So, instead of changing its goals – brutally ruling Gaza and destroying Israel – Hamas will simply change its "name, structure and framework"? Changing the label does not change the organization. A Hamas-affiliated candidate does not cease to be affiliated with Hamas simply because the word "Hamas" does not appear next to his name on the ballot. Such a maneuver would turn the election into a political fiction: Hamas would be permitted to obtain parliamentary representation while avoiding the political consequences of openly running as Hamas. Allowing Hamas— in disguise or not – to run in the election would also legitimize the terrorist group without requiring it fundamentally to change. That would be a serious mistake. The Palestinians have already seen what happens when Hamas acquires political power. Hamas is bad, but who said that the PA is any better? Palestinians have experienced corruption, political repression, and an absence of meaningful political renewal. The problem is: What if one of the negotiating parties decides never to come to the table? Is the other party just supposed to hold everything in abeyance – unsettled forever – in case one day the other party might change its mind? The Palestinians need a genuine third way – not merely another faction with a different name. They need leaders who are prepared to challenge the entrenched political culture of Fatah and Hamas. They need leaders who believe that the Palestinian national interest is more important than factional interests. They need leaders willing to confront corruption, reject authoritarianism, protect freedom of expression, build functioning institutions, and end the glorification of violence. Above all, Palestinians need leaders courageous enough to tell their people an uncomfortable truth: there can be no genuine progress so long as the political choice remains confined to Fatah and Hamas, and that the primary objective of both groups remains the obliteration of Israel.
The Palestinians remain trapped between two bad choices: the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. The Palestinians have tried both. The result has been corruption, authoritarianism, political repression, terrorism, violence, division and, ultimately, immense suffering for the Palestinian people. Pictured: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal (R) and PA President Mahmoud Abbas (L) are hosted by Qatar's then Emir Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar on February 6, 2012. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The Palestinians remain trapped between two bad choices: the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority (PA) and the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group. The Palestinians have tried both. The result has been corruption, authoritarianism, political repression, terrorism, violence, division and, ultimately, immense suffering for the Palestinian people. Yet, as the Palestinians prepare for another parliamentary election, they are once again being offered essentially the same political choice. The latest quarrel between Fatah and Hamas illustrates the problem.
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by Pierre Rehov • September 13, 2026 at 5:00 am
The human rights industry's favorite kind of victim is the politically useful one: the victim whose suffering can be attached to an adversary — a designated "villain" — preferably one that Western activists already know how to hate, pressure and organize against. That is why Palestinian victims, when Israel can be cast as an alleged perpetrator of wrongs, generate an extraordinary machinery of outrage, while Sudanese victims of genocide, Afghan women under the Taliban, Iranian protesters murdered by their own regime, or persecuted Christians in Nigeria largely do not. The hierarchy is not determined by the severity of the suffering; it is determined by the political usefulness of the victim and, even more importantly, by the identity of the "villain" supposedly committing these wrongs. A United Nations fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that the mass executions, gang rapes and engineered starvation... in Sudan bore the hallmarks of genocide, and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference the evidence allowed. The finding produced -- communiqués! No American campus has been covered with Sudanese encampments. No international campaign demands that corporations prove their innocence regarding Khartoum.... No permanent encampment stands outside Harvard demanding freedom for Afghan women, no divestment movement has become fashionable, no symbol has reached a red carpet. UN Women warns that the repression is being normalized.... The women remain where they were; the audience has left. The West's response to Iran's January massacre took the form of diaspora rallies and a condemnation signed by 800 film professionals. The industry that produced five thousand signatures against Israeli film festivals produced eight hundred against a government that had just shot thousands of its own citizens in 48 hours, and its own trade press said so. The American students who occupied buildings for Gaza risked nothing worse than a disciplinary hearing and offered the Iranian protesters nothing. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has spent seventeen years asking Washington to treat Nigeria as a country of particular concern, counts nearly 53,000 civilians killed there in targeted violence since 2009. [A] successful cause needs more than victims. The favorite victim is not the one who suffers most, but the one whose suffering can be put to political use. A successful cause needs a usable "villain," ideally one already circulating in the narrative. Israel serves that purpose almost perfectly. It is Western-aligned, democratic, backed by Washington and permanently accessible to journalists. Its politicians answer questions, its courts rule against its government, and all of it can be pressured. Western outrage has acquired a political economy: a successful cause needs more than victims. It needs a usable villain, ideally one already circulating in the narrative. Israel serves that purpose almost perfectly. It is Western-aligned, democratic, backed by Washington and permanently accessible to journalists. Its politicians answer questions, its courts rule against its government, and all of it can be pressured. Nothing comparable can be organized against the Taliban. Dictatorships make poor targets for performative activism because dictators are immune to performance. Attacking Israel connects an activist to an apparatus of campus groups, NGOs and networks assembled over decades, with the slogans pre-written and the vocabulary standardized. A 19-year-old needs to know nothing about the Middle East to take part. He needs a placard. Sudan requires homework, and knowing about Iran's regime would require him to concede that the enemies of American power are frequently worse than what they oppose. Consistency is the one thing the machinery fails to supply. A movement that really meant what it says about universal rights would mobilize for captives whose slaveholders, such as Qatar, enjoy vast assets. It would protest child trafficking and organ harvesting, and defend Afghan women and Iranian dissidents. Palestinian civilians would be defended as civilians rather than as evidence. Such a movement would be difficult to manipulate, impossible to monetize and useless to every exploiting faction, which explains well enough why nobody has built one.
A UN fact-finding mission concluded in February 2026 that the mass executions, gang rapes and engineered starvation in Sudan bore the hallmarks of genocide, and that genocidal intent was the only reasonable inference the evidence allowed. The finding produced -- communiqués! No American campus has been covered with Sudanese encampments. No international campaign demands that corporations prove their innocence regarding Khartoum. Pictured: Sudanese Armed Forces soldiers take part in a parade on August 17, 2026, in the city of Gedaref in eastern Sudan. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
The human rights industry's favorite kind of victim is the politically useful one: the victim whose suffering can be attached to an adversary — a designated "villain" — preferably one that Western activists already know how to hate, pressure and organize against. That is why Palestinian victims, when Israel can be cast as an alleged perpetrator of wrongs, generate an extraordinary machinery of outrage, while Sudanese victims of genocide, Afghan women under the Taliban, Iranian protesters murdered by their own regime, or persecuted Christians in Nigeria largely do not. The hierarchy is not determined by the severity of the suffering; it is determined by the political usefulness of the victim and, even more importantly, by the identity of the "villain" supposedly committing these wrongs.
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by Amir Taheri • September 13, 2026 at 4:00 am
The commission asked why it was that terrorists especially hated America but provided no answer. The answer could be found in hundreds of books, articles and sermons that make the rounds across the globe, including in the United States itself. In fact, though you might find it odd, the bulk of what the global anti-American industry produces comes from the US itself. The US is an "evil animal" because it can bite back when bitten. The 9/11 Commission failed in its mission. The culture war between the MAGA camp and the wokeist coalition of crypto-communists and bleeding heart liberals shows that the failure has continued for a quarter of a century. The hate-America ailment has crept even into the commemoration ritual in New York.
This year, however, there was a small but significant change in the mise-en-scène of the annual commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks, as families of victims reportedly planned to shun Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who does not endorse the generally accepted narrative of what was the biggest terror attack in history. In other words, a tragedy that initially brought all Americans together in anger and grief may now forge into another fissure along partisan lines, at least in New York. Pictured: Mamdani arrives ahead of the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial in New York on September 11, 2026. (Photo by Angela Weiss/AFP via Getty Images)
On Friday morning, the great city of New York once again held a ritual ceremony that has become a fixed part of its annual agenda for a quarter of a century. The names of the 2,977 men, women and children who died in the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center's twin towers on September 11 are read aloud while millions of Americans watch the commemoration on TV with a mixture of grief and anger. This year, however, there was a small but significant change in the mise-en-scène of the annual event, as families of victims reportedly planned to shun Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who does not endorse the generally accepted narrative of what was the biggest terror attack in history. In other words, a tragedy that initially brought all Americans together in anger and grief may now forge into another fissure along partisan lines, at least in New York.
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