As protesters gathered outside the Chinese Embassy on April 10 in Manila, to express their outrage at China's naval aggression, U.S. and Filipino troops conducted a joint military exercise in the South China Sea, aimed at preparing the Philippines to "deal with any potential island invasion."

Any such shift on the part of Manila towards Moscow should cause Washington to step up its engagement with the Philippines, to prevent Chinese and Russian attempts at controlling the South China Sea's rich resources and China possibly seizing it as a maritime chokepoint.

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar's threats serve as a reminder that Hamas and other Palestinian terror group consider Israel one big settlement that needs to be annihilated. Above all, Hamas has never accepted the "two-state solution" or changed its charter, which explicitly states: "When our enemies usurp some Islamic lands, Jihad [holy war] becomes a duty binding on all Muslims.... We must spread the spirit of Jihad among the [Islamic] Umma, clash with the enemies and join the ranks of the Jihad fighters."

Hamas cannot reach any political deal with Israel because it does not agree to Israel's right to exist. This is the message that Sinwar and leaders of all Palestinian terror groups want the world to hear. For the terrorist leaders, the only peace they will accept is one that results in the elimination of Israel and the evacuation of all Jews from their homes.

The Hamas Charter is a straightforward, unambiguous message that says: "[Peace] initiatives, the so-called peaceful solutions, and the international conferences to resolve the Palestinian problem are all contrary to the beliefs of the Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas]....There is no solution to the Palestinian problem expect by Jihad."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has undoubtedly read the Hamas charter. He knows that if he accepts any peace plan that does not include the expulsion of all Jews from their homes, he will be denounced by his rivals in Hamas as a traitor. Abbas is also aware of Hamas's threats to shower Israel with rockets. He knows that at the same time as Hamas attacks Israel, it will seek to flatten him for "betraying" Arabs and Muslims in "allowing" Jews to continue living in "their" state. This is the Palestinian reality that the "Deal of the Century" is about to be dealt.

Supporting one-sided resolutions against Israel is not Germany's only unfriendly act against the Jewish state. Chancellor Angela Merkel has put pressure on other European Union states so that they do not transfer their embassies to Israel's capital. Stopping the murder of Israelis is also not on the German government's agenda.

Last year the Palestinian Authority (PA) allocated $330 million to pay terrorists, and Germany paid $100 million to the PA. So it is fair to say that Germany pays the PA to reward the murder of Jews.

While Chancellor Angela Merkel talks about "Germany's special historical responsibility for Israel's security", her government channels German taxpayer money to murderers of Jews, and President Steinmeier sends congratulatory telegrams to those who plan the annihilation of the Jewish state.

"We must no longer let Israel down at the UN. It is madness that we are constantly on the side of countries like Saudi Arabia, Iran or Yemen against Israel" — Frank Müller-Rosentritt, member of the German parliament's committee on foreign relations for the opposition Free Democratic Party (FDP).

After President Trump's visit to the region, the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, have ratcheted up their efforts to fight extremism. The UAE and other Gulf states have been participating with the US in a multinational mission.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been encircling Saudi Arabia with the apparent goal of taking over Saudi oil fields and holy sites, and the major international shipping lanes on either side of the Arabian Peninsula: the Bab al Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has also been occupying Syria and Iraq; running Lebanon by means of Iran's terrorist proxy group, Hizballah, and funding yet another terrorist group, Hamas, in the Gaza Strip, presumably in the hope of destroying Israel.

Even more alarming, by far, is that Iran is on the threshold of obtaining nuclear weapons and the ballistic missiles to deliver them. Iran, in short, has adopted a dangerous, expansionist ideology that needs to be taken seriously.

America must stop Iran from taking over Yemen.

In the 1980s, the Social Democrats had formed a committee to examine the results of immigration. The negative findings that emerged were rejected by the party's leaders, who instead released a pro-immigration report.

The bad news is that the Danish mainstream media and pro-immigration politicians do not tell voters the truth: that the presence of hundreds of thousands of unintegrated Muslims is endangering Danish society. Journalists have not been telling the truth out of denial; politicians possibly also for fear of losing immigrants' votes.

Despite Iran's destructive behavior, such as support for terror and militia groups across the region, the European Union has chosen to help the ruling mullahs of Iran, ostensibly to maintain the flimsy, illegal, never-signed, unratified "nuclear deal" -- but possibly even more as an embarrassingly transparent attempt, if the EU could be embarrassed, to navigate around US economic and political pressure and continue doing business with the regime.

If the EU does not change its position and continues its support of Iranian leaders and the nuclear deal, Tehran's aggressive policies in the Middle East will persist, and Tehran will keep on pursuing its subversive agenda of attacking Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States via Yemen, Israel through Syria and Lebanon, and the US via Venezuela.

While President Donald Trump may have his critics, his hard-line sanctions are the only kind of political message the Iranian leaders can understand.

Since taking office in 2013, German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen has done little to alleviate the problems in the military. The best-known projects during her tenure were kindergartens for the soldiers' families; the procurement of flat screen television sets and mini-fridges for the barracks; the announcement of efforts to make the German army "more attractive for gay, lesbian and transgender people"; buying uniforms for pregnant soldiers, and making battle tanks suitable for pregnant soldiers. As worthwhile as these efforts may be, they do little to address the core problems.

"Apparently the readiness of the Bundeswehr is so bad that the public should not be allowed to know about it." — Tobias Lindner, a Greens Party member, serving on the budget and defense committees.

In Germany, four separate churches were vandalized and/or torched in March alone. "In this country," PI-News, a German news site, explained, "there is a creeping war against everything that symbolizes Christianity: attacks on mountain-summit crosses, on sacred statues by the wayside, on churches... and recently also on cemeteries."

In virtually every instance of church attacks, authorities and media obfuscate the identity of the vandals. In those rare instances when the Muslim (or "migrant") identity of the destroyers is leaked, the desecraters are then presented as suffering from mental health issues.

"Hardly anyone writes and speaks about the increasing attacks on Christian symbols. There is an eloquent silence in both France and Germany about the scandal of the desecrations and the origin of the perpetrators.... Not a word, not even the slightest hint that could in anyway lead to the suspicion of migrants... It is not the perpetrators who are in danger of being ostracized, but those who dare to associate the desecration of Christian symbols with immigrant imports. They are accused of hatred, hate speech and racism." -- PI News, March 24, 2019

Russia has imposed the Caspian Convention it dictated, but vetoes Iran's membership in the Euro-Asian "economic family" and the Shanghai Group. Russia's interest is keeping Iran out of the international gas market, thus holding Moscow's Damocles Sword above the EU's head.

As for Turkey, its chief interest in the Islamic Republic is to secure support for killing Kurds, something that runs counter to Iran's own national interests.

As long as the Islamic Republic believes that it can do whatever it likes without risking any punishment it would make little difference through which dummy the ventriloquist utters his text.

The main purpose of the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) is to ensure that Europe -- and potentially third countries -- can continue doing business with the mullahs in Iran without risking US penalties for contravening US sanctions.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini seems strongly committed to ensuring that Iran -- and Europe -- continue receiving economic benefits from the illegal, unsigned, and unratified Iran nuclear deal. Mogherini insisted that Iran is complying with the JCPOA. It is not. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, referring to documents seized by Israel, stated that the nuclear deal was "built on lies" .

No amount of human rights abuses, however atrocious -- or terrorism, even against its own citizens; or cheating to acquire deliverable nuclear capability to unleash on Israel, the US and eventually threaten the entire West -- will, it seems, deter the EU from its criminal collusion with Iran. Europe seems determined to wade into its own destruction with its eyes wide open.

Mohammed Safi is reported to have lost his eyesight while being held in a Hamas prison. His crime: participation in demonstrations calling for an end to the economic crisis in the Gaza Strip and protesting new taxes imposed by the Hamas rulers.

"The interrogator hit him in the head from behind three times and told him: 'This is so you won't be able to see at all.'" — Ahmed Safi, Mohammed Safi's brother.

Safi simply sought to communicate that Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living under a brutal Islamist regime that has offered them nothing but terror -- directed towards Israel and towards themselves. He wanted the world to know that Palestinian leaders deflect the heat on the Palestinian street towards Israel.

Safi chose to speak truth to power and place the misery of the Palestinians in Gaza squarely where it belongs: at the feet of Hamas. He paid dearly for that choice. Meanwhile, Hamas leaders can now claim another "achievement" in their jihad against Israel: they managed to transform a clear-headed and courageous young man into a blind and disabled one.

"The Yemeni revolution will not be confined to Yemen alone. It will extend, following its success, into Saudi territories." — Iranian Lawmaker Ali Reza Zakani, trusted adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

"If the Shia rebels gain control of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, Iran can attain a foothold in this sensitive region giving access to the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, a cause of concern not only for its sworn rivals Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf states, but also for Israel and European countries along the Mediterranean." — IDF Lt.-Col. (Ret.) Michael Segall.

"Hard-line elements [in Iran] appear to see the continuation of the conflict [in Yemen] as a relatively low-cost and low-risk means of sustaining political, economic, and military pressure on the Saudis. Saudi Arabia's intervention has reportedly cost between $5 billion and $6 billion a month, while Iran's expenditures in Yemen probably total only millions a year." — Gerald M. Feierstein, Middle East Institute.

"The Houthis' intransigence confirms their loyalty to Iran's negotiating tactics. These usually begin with implicit approval of negotiating solutions, followed by complete retraction in order to force the international community to make more concessions and impose a fait accompli on the Yemeni government...." — Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yemany.

About 55 miles east of Palm Beach, Florida on Grand Bahama Island, a Hong Kong-based business is spending about $3 billion on a deep-water container facility, the Freeport Container Port.

The concern is that the port will become another debt-trap, like the port of Hambantota in Sri Lanka. There are concerns that Hambantota will eventually become a Chinese naval base. Will the Pentagon have to contend with Chinese warships at Freeport?

The Chinese military is already in the Caribbean, in Cuba, apparently to collect signals intelligence from the U.S. Washington splashes plenty of cash around the Middle East, for instance, but American policymakers need also to be concerned, urgently, about critical needy locations closer to home.

Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader, stands for almost everything the Women's March principles claim to deplore. He is a misogynist who wants to keep women in their traditional roles, he hates all LGBT people in an exceptionally vicious way, he is a black separatist, unlike the marchers, who call for unity between races, and has shown close support for a number of dictators, notably the late Libyan president Mu'ammar Ghadhafi, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and Cuba's Commadante Fidel Castro -- even though the Women's March progressives seek reform through democratic means achieved through working hand-in-hand as free people.

Given that most of the values are those on which most liberals and conservatives agree, one might ask how three of the four board members of the Women's March came to embrace Louis Farrakhan, praise him, and even attend his 2018 Saviors' Day rally. These three were Linda Sarsour, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez.

"Rank, vile, open, gutter-level anti-Semitism is apparently a pleasure that the progressive left is unwilling or unable to abstain from. Why?" — James Kirchick, Tablet, March 19, 2019.

The Palestinian students are being targeted because of their political affiliations and not because of any crime they committed.

While the Palestinian Authority and Hamas are busy beating up each other's supporters, "pro-Palestinian" activists on US and Canadian university campuses are busy blaming Israel for Palestinian woes.

For these alleged activists -- who are remarkably passive when it comes to truly assisting Palestinians -- their protests seem more about hating Israel than anything else. If they really cared about the Palestinians, they might stop abusing Israel long enough to notice the abuse that the Palestinian "leaders" inflict on the people under them.