These [Palestinian poll] findings contradict claims by some Western media outlets that a growing number of Palestinians were disillusioned with Hamas because of the death and destruction it has brought on its people as a result of its October 7 attack.

"The conclusion from these [Palestinian] numbers is that the past two years have led to greater support for Hamas rather than the opposite," according to the poll.

Asked if Hamas had committed the atrocities seen in the videos shown by international media displaying atrocities committed by Hamas members against Israeli civilians, 86% said the terror group did not commit such atrocities. Only 10% said Hamas did commit them.

A majority of Palestinians, the poll showed, are extremely supportive of Iran, Hezbollah, Qatar and the Houthi militia in Yemen, a terror group that fired dozens of missiles and suicide drones at Israel during the war.

If elections for the presidency of the Palestinian Authority (PA) were held today, Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal would win 63% of the votes, as opposed to 27% for incumbent PA President Mahmoud Abbas.

According to the poll, dissatisfaction with Abbas stands at 75%, while 80% want him to resign.

If parliamentary elections were held today, 44% of the Palestinians say they will vote for Hamas, 30% for Fatah, and 10% for third parties.

Also unexpected is the ongoing Palestinian support for the "armed struggle" (terrorism) against Israel.

The results of the poll also show the challenges facing the implementation of the Trump plan, especially disarming Hamas and deradicalizing Palestinian society. Most Palestinians are openly opposed to disarming Hamas – a situation that will make it effectively impossible for any Arab or foreign party to confiscate the terror group's weapons by force.

Any Palestinian or Arab leader who sees that most Palestinians oppose the disarmament of Hamas will think twice before he undertakes such a mission: he would not want to act against the wishes of the Arab street -- such a move would be regarded as treason.

As for deradicalization, it is clear from the poll that Palestinians are moving in the opposite direction.

Many Palestinians are afraid to speak out for fear of being labeled as traitors or collaborators with Israel. We have seen how Palestinians who challenged Hamas were tortured and executed in public squares in the Gaza Strip as soon as the ceasefire went into effect.

Radical change in Palestinian society will come only when Palestinians rise up against destructive leaders who, over the past few decades, have been dragging them from one disaster to another.

Since 2011, Islamic violence against Nigerian Christians has escalated.

"Our reporters have documented that mass kidnappings of women in Kaduna state in 2023 were in fact aimed at capturing scores of women in Southern Kaduna and selling them as sex slaves in the Fulani bandit community." — Douglas Burton, managing editor of "Truth Nigeria," interview with Gatestone Institute, October 2025.

"The chief reason there is so little media attention is that the Nigerian media themselves have deliberately failed to give a clear picture of who is doing the violence and why.... Most media appear to be controlled by cash payments from government spokesmen or others offering 'courtesy gifts.' When the army holds a presser, every reporter who shows up gets a cash envelope, the more influential his paper, the bigger the reward -- still the practice in many countries, I believe. TV reporters get better incentives, and TV executives are said to receive parcels of real estate in Kaduna State. TruthNigeria reporters tell me that in previous years they used to take those 'courtesy gifts,' too. Our reporters find it very hard to get Nigerian public affairs officers to answer their calls...." — Douglas Burton, October 2025.

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz has introduced the Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act of 2025.

"Nigerian Christians are being targeted and executed for their faith by Islamist terrorist groups, and are being forced to submit to sharia law and blasphemy laws across Nigeria. It is long past time to impose real costs on the Nigerian officials who facilitate these activities, and my Nigeria Religious Freedom Accountability Act uses new and existing tools to do exactly that. I urge my colleagues to advance this critical legislation expeditiously." — Senator Ted Cruz, September 11, 2025.

Many in the U.S. are urgently expecting the Senate to follow Cruz's lead.

The events of October 7, 2023, one recalls, began on a quiet, peaceful holiday morning. Innocent Israelis near the Gaza Strip were either still asleep in their homes, had just started going about their day, or were enjoying the Supernova music festival. All at once, thousands of rockets launched from Gaza came raining down, terrorists flew in on motorized paragliders, and bulldozers crashed through the Gaza border fence, followed by pickup trucks and motorcycles pouring over the border carrying murderous hordes intent on slaughtering them. As a result, Israelis of all ages, babies included, were cut down, raped, burned alive, and beheaded – for no reason other than living in Israel.

Israel retaliated, as any normal nation would have done. Nonetheless, it was viciously blamed, starting the next day, for defending its people and homeland, and pursuing the perpetrators of atrocities.

The use of the term "global justice" for charges against Israel is therefore an artifice -- a slogan designed to deceive the public into believing an invented people is a "just cause," as the late senior Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) official, Zuheir Mohsen, admitted in 1977:

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct "Palestinian people" to oppose Zionism. Yes, the existence of a separate Palestinian identity exists only for tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan."

Israel's war against terror, if one regards it as a fight between a civilization with laws vs. seventh-century terrorism with machetes, is the quintessence of a just war. Unfortunately, for its critics, it happens to be a righteous, justifiable, act of self-defense...

If Israel is committing genocide, they're really, really bad at it. They could have had genocide on October the eighth.... It's absurd. If they were trying to commit genocide, it would not have taken them 22 months." — US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, CBS News, August 8, 2025.

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born; now is the time of monsters." — Antonio Gramsci, Italian politician, 1924.

Many of Europe's leaders, in pandering to terrorists for votes, can be considered complicit in the rise of Jew-hatred and are therefore culpable for the consequences – which, ironically, look as if they will be worse for their countries than for Israel, the country they have been trying to undermine.

According to a report by Israel's KAN News, Hamas has already selected half of the technocratic government's members, including figures sympathetic to the terror group, while the Palestinian Authority, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, chose the other half. Mediators, including Egypt, presented the full list to Hamas to ensure its approval, a move that will allow the terror group to maintain influence in the Gaza Strip after the war.

The terrorists who launched the war by committing the worst crime against Jews since the Holocaust and who brought death and destruction on their own people should not be allowed to have a say in the future governance of the coastal enclave.

If Hamas is allowed to maintain a security presence in the Gaza Strip, this means that the new government and its members would be at the mercy of terrorists and militiamen who are already carrying out extrajudicial executions against their critics, political opponents and suspected "collaborators" with Israel.

US President Donald J. Trump's plan for ending the war in the Gaza Strip states: "Hamas and other factions agreed to not have any role in the governance of Gaza, directly, indirectly, or in any form. Gaza will be governed under the temporary transitional governance of a technocratic, apolitical Palestinian committee, responsible for delivering the day-to-day running of public services and municipalities for the people in Gaza."

The factions that met in Cairo made no mention of an "international transitional body" or the proposed "Board of Peace" as outlined in Trump's plan.

Needless to say, the Palestinian factions pointedly ignored the part of Trump's plan that calls on the terror groups to lay down their weapons. Hamas leaders have repeatedly emphasized that their group has no intention to disarm before the establishment of an independent and sovereign state.

Fatah and Hamas, in short, do not want Trump's "Board of Peace" or any international body to play any role in the governance of the Gaza Strip. Each of the two factions wants the Gaza Strip to be ruled by its own loyalists, masquerading as "independent" and "apolitical" figures.

What we are currently witnessing is an attempt by both Fatah and Hamas, with the help of Egypt and Qatar (Hamas's main sponsor and funder), to circumvent the Trump plan.

Macron did not even have the decency to make his recognition of a non-existent Palestinian state contingent on Hamas releasing the hostages.

Joining Macron in this narcissistic display were other small, soft leaders with large, hard Islamist constituencies -- Britain's PM Keir Starmer, Australia's PM Anthony Albanese, and Canada's PM Mark Carney -- who followed Macron's lead in granting international legitimacy to a cause dedicated to terrorism.

The Palestinian Authority continues to operate as an unelected dictatorship, funneling millions into its infamous pay-for-slay "jobs" program -- sometimes listed as "welfare" -- which grants salaries to terrorists and their families based on how many Jews they succeed in murdering. The more Jews they murder, the higher the monthly stipend. Palestinian schoolbooks still erase Israel from maps, depict Jews as usurpers, and teach children that the ultimate aspiration is martyrdom.

Macron's recognition, applauded by large sections of Europe and beyond, was not the action of a statesman seeking peace. It was a pitiful lunge to hold onto power by a weakened leader, desperate to posture as a "moral arbiter" abroad while avoiding accountability at home. Macron is willing to betray the Israelis, who are fighting not only for the West but for his own people, the French.

After France's defeat at the hands of Germany in 1940 came collaboration. France's Vichy regime did not merely submit to German edicts; it embraced its own homegrown antisemitism. Vichy's machinery operated with bureaucratic zeal: statutes defining who was a Jew, the exclusion of Jews from professions, property seizures, internments, and ultimately deportations to Auschwitz. The cultivated myth of a France "shielding" Jews while Germany did the harm has long since been demolished by the historical record. Vichy was a French government, enacting French laws to persecute Jews on French soil, and in too many instances, to deliver them to their deaths.

​ The moral cost was enormous. By making stability the overriding priority, French authorities tacitly normalized contact with organizations that targeted Jews and Israelis. These back-channel accommodations blurred the line between counterterrorism and collusion — and served as an early modern example of a recurring French pattern: When domestic tranquility and influence in the Arab world collide with the safety and security of Jews, the balance is often struck in favor of tranquility.

President Chirac, during a visit to Israel in October 1996, erupted at what he called a "provocation" by Israeli plainclothes security guards during a walk in the Old City of Jerusalem — an incident that became emblematic of Paris's sensitivity to perceived Israeli slights and a readiness to dramatize grievances that resonated with the Arab and Muslim public. Whether the outburst was theatre or genuine indignation, it fed a narrative: France would hold Israel to scrutiny in a way that sometimes felt public and punitive, while remaining discreet, conciliatory, or accommodating toward Arab regimes.

[H]ow come, if Mohammad al-Durrah was shot, there was no blood at the scene? The controversy led to libel suits, heated media debates in France, and a long war of narratives: for many critics, the al-Durrah case became a test of whether French media could be trusted to report dispassionately on Palestine-Israel — or whether powerful images produced abroad would be turned into instruments of political mobilization at home.

For decades, the front pages of Le Monde, Libération, and Le Monde Diplomatique have provided disproportionate framing that vilifies Israel while sanitizing Palestinian violence. Headlines portraying Israeli counter-terrorism as "aggression," while minimizing rocket fire or suicide bombings, have shaped French public opinion, sometimes more decisively than presidential speeches.

The effect of this editorial slant is cumulative: each cover, each op-ed, each biased image is built into a narrative architecture in which Israel stands as the perennial aggressor and Palestinians as the archetypal victims. This distortion is not merely academic. It affects political choices, emboldens intellectuals who conflate anti-Zionism with moral virtue, and reinforces a climate where politicians know they can score points by signaling distance from Jerusalem. In the long run, media coverage has hardened the double standard and provided cultural cover for diplomatic betrayals.

The 21st century has added a more transactional layer to France's Arab policy: investment in the French economy. Few states have invested more aggressively in French assets and businesses than Qatar. The oil-rich emirate poured billions into Parisian real estate, media holdings, luxury firms, and sports franchises. The purchase of Paris Saint-Germain football team became a symbol of how deeply Qatari capital has embedded itself into French public life. Alongside investment came soft power: television channels, think tanks, and influence campaigns aimed at projecting Doha's narratives into French discourse.

Qatar's record is not benign. For years it has financed Hamas and sheltered its leadership. That France tolerated -- even courted -- Qatar despite these links testifies to a familiar pattern: geopolitical expediency trumping moral clarity.

Macron's post on X insisted on conditionality (Hamas must relinquish control and the Palestinian Authority must reform), yet those conditions remain unenforceable in practice. A state without concrete guarantees risks rewarding the very actors — such as Hamas and its patrons — who use terrorism as a policy. Macron's declaration looks less like statesmanship and more like firing blanks: a symbolic attempt at appeasement to placate vocal constituencies at home and reclaim the moral high ground abroad by offering up a state that someone else -- a sovereign nation, far away -- is supposed to implement, while offering Israel and the United States nothing at all.

Domestically, Macron's maneuver landed poorly. Multiple polls indicate that a large majority of the French public — roughly three-quarters — opposed immediate, unconditional recognition of a "Palestine" while Israeli hostages remained in Gaza or while Hamas remained in power. The disconnect between Macron and his electorate is striking. While he sought applause abroad, he was being widely perceived at home as indulging in moral posturing that had little chance of delivering peace and a lot of chance of making matters worse.

In the case of Machado, a case could be made to support her brave campaign to force an authoritarian regime to respect its own constitution by allowing free and fair elections according to the law of the land.

"There is no need for anyone to be poor in a country as rich as ours," Hugo Chávez asserted. "Give me four years, just give me four years!"

Well, Chávez had three times as many years and left Venezuela as poor, if not poorer, and certainly more divided than ever under Maduro, whom he called "my bus driver."

Venezuela has headed the list of Latin American nations as far as capital flight is concerned. Over the years, something like $170 billion has been transferred by Venezuelans to foreign, mostly American, banks. The "Bolivarians" also spent billions helping Cuba and distributing free or cut-price oil to several countries, including some areas of the United States.

Venezuela ended up with a shortage of gasoline, seeking emergency imports from far-away Iran.

Bolivar wanted Latin America to seek allies among Western democracies, not the potentates of the Orient.

Simón Bolívar wanted Latin America to compete with the United States by enhancing its own freedoms, improving its educational system, achieving economic growth, and developing its culture. Bolívar did not believe that seeking the destruction of the United States was a worthy goal for any sane person, let alone a nation.

Bolívar died in 1830 and is buried in next-door Colombia, but never forgot Venezuela as the "jewel" in the crown of his long campaign for liberation. Had he been here today, he would have sent a bouquet of roses to Machado for her non-violent, but no less courageous, fight for freedom.

The United Nations was founded on the promise of upholding peace, justice, and universal human rights. Today, however, it appears less like a beacon of morality and more like a stage for savagery and hypocrisy.

The UN is quick to condemn democratic nations such as the United States and Israel for defending their citizens and fighting terrorism, but goes out of its way to protect, coddle, and even elevate some of the world's most brutal and oppressive regimes — most notably Iran. The UN, which should be standing with the oppressed, is instead handing power and legitimacy to their oppressors.

It is as if the UN places arsonists in charge of the fire department and then acts surprised when the firehouse burns down.

The US should pay only for the programs it wants and get what it pays for, or at least, as US Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz has suggested, pay only commensurately for UN support. The US needs to stop smiling, drinking coffee with murderers -- and especially funding them -- and instead stand shoulder-to-shoulder with those fighting for freedom. Until that happens, the UN will remain what it has sadly become: an expensive, corrupt horror show at the expense of humanity's most courageous people.

The attack, lightning-fast and captured on surveillance video, shocked many, not merely because it was yet another terrible homicide, but because it has forced Americans to confront the failure of institutions meant to protect them -- the innocent -- as well as the cultural paralysis that prevents ordinary people from intervening, and the ideological narratives that try to erase both motive and responsibility.

Multiple reports relate that as he exited the train after the murder, he said, "I got that white girl." These words, if confirmed by law enforcement, speak to a motive. At a minimum, they reflect the lens through which many now see such events -- not only as homicidal acts by dangerously unstable people, but as anti-white racist attacks that our culture will bend over backwards not to name.

[A] responsible system would never have put him back among commuters in the first place.

Zarutska's murder -- and the murders of Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, Rachel Morin, Kayla Hamilton, and, most recently, Logan Federico, among others -- were preventable. They happened because a constellation of decisions — judicial, bureaucratic, cultural — favored the ideology of leniency and the comfort of excuses over the duty to protect the innocent.

"Bang! Dead. Gone. Why? Because Alexander Devante Dickey — who was arrested 39 Goddamn times, 25 felonies — was on the street," Stephen Federico, Logan Federico's father, testified before the US House Judiciary Committee.

These youngsters are ignored by the political class to a degree that is almost criminal itself – after all youngsters do not vote. There never seem to be sufficient funds seriously to address problems of mental health. What our leaders, sadly, appear to be building are conveyor belts from probation to homicide.

It is not cruel to confine a dangerous, mentally ill man to a secure hospital. It is cruel to return him to a city train with a knife in his pocket and a world of demons in his head.

One can care about mental health while also insisting that dangerous people be confined. One can care about civil liberties while also admitting that leniency can kill.

In elite discourse, naming or even speaking of anti-white hatred is now the ultimate taboo. It violates the moral arithmetic of a worldview that assigns all blame in a single direction.

[T]he public are entitled to request that, when in doubt regarding to whom to afford compassion -- the suspect or the public -- in an ideal world it would be both, but in the real world, there is a case to be made for protecting the public.

If compassion for the accused is not balanced by protection for the public, it is complicity.

This double standard is not, regrettably, a figment of partisan imagination. It is a feature of a media ecosystem in which narrative precedes fact. The victims who count are those who confirm the story that powerful institutions already want to tell. Everyone else is an inconvenience. In the case of Zarutska, the media's hedging confirmed a suspicion deeply rooted in the American mind: that in the newsroom's moral calculus, and in a reverse-racism, some lives are still more equal than others.

These reforms are not revolutionary. They are restorative. They assume what America once took for granted: that the state's first duty is for the "common defense;" that rights are matched by responsibilities, and that the innocent come first.

Zarutska's murder has helped the country to remember what it had been taught to forget: that civilization is earned, every day, by people who make themselves responsible for one another.

If and when Brown said, "I got that white girl," he did more than admit hatred. He exposed the obscene double standard at the heart of elite discourse. For years, we were told that speech could be violence, that silence could be violence, that thoughts could be violence — unless one could "relativize" the crimes away. This lie should now be at an end.

"If we achieve a sovereign and independent Palestinian state that preserves the rights of the Palestinian people, then these weapons will be transferred to the Palestinian state and its army." — Abdul Jabbar Saeed, member of Hamas's political bureau, arabi21.com, October 16, 2025.

Saeed dismissed the idea of deploying international forces in the Gaza Strip.... He also rejected the idea of excluding Hamas from playing a future role in the governance of the Gaza Strip. "Completely excluding Hamas from the scene is not possible," he stressed.

The involvement of Qatar and Turkey in the Gaza Strip is problematic because the two countries have always been supportive of Hamas. Both countries continue to provide shelter to several Hamas leaders and act as if they are its attorneys by constantly defending the terror group while condemning Israel.

The Saudis and Emiratis have reportedly notified the Trump administration that they would downgrade their level of engagement in the implementation of the Trump plan. Referring to Qatar, they warned that increasing the influence of "countries that destabilize the region" would derail the momentum of prosperity Trump has touted.

A Saudi source warned that Qatar was expected to help Hamas maintain its presence and return at an opportune moment.

Notably, in 2017 several Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt and the UAE decided to cut their diplomatic ties with Qatar over the Gulf state's support for Islamist terror groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.

Saudi Arabia said it made the decision to cut diplomatic ties due to Qatar's "embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilizing the region," including the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic State (ISIS), and groups supported by Iran in the kingdom's eastern province of Qatif.

Egypt's Foreign Ministry accused Qatar of taking "an antagonistic approach" toward Egypt and said "all attempts to stop it from supporting terrorist groups failed...." Instead of insisting that Hamas lay down its weapons in compliance with Trump's plan, they are now talking about the possibility that the terror group would "freeze" its weapons.... It is worth noting that the Trump plan does not talk about a "freeze" of Hamas's weapons.

Bahrain, for its part, blamed Qatar's "media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities, and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain" for its decision to cut diplomatic ties.

Anyone who believes that Hamas will voluntarily give up its weapons is living in a dream world. For the terror group, this would be tantamount to suicide. The terms "demilitarization" and "deradicalization" do not exist in Hamas's lexicon.

Worse, anyone who believes that Qatar and Turkey will force Hamas to dismantle its military infrastructure is also living in fantasy land.

With counter-terrorism officials warning that the huge influx of illegal immigrants entering European countries could lead to further terrorist atrocities, [Elon] Musk's warning that the UK needed a "revolutionary government change" to tackle the migrant crisis could not be more timely.

The ability of the UK security authorities to tackle the problem has been undermined by London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who claims that anti-Israel protesters who chant "From the river to the sea" are not anti-Semitic.

Reportedly, supporters of Mamdani are "training 30 more people" to bring his policies to more American cities.

There have already been countless instances of such Islamic violence in Europe and the US, including both World Trade Center attacks (1993 and September 11, 2001), as well as in the UK, Germany, France, Denmark, Sweden and Spain.

The deeply disturbing trends in Europe... should serve as a warning to the US and its Western allies about the dangers of tolerating large-scale immigration, especially concerning migrants who struggle to impose Islamic sharia law and the judicial systems of the countries from which they came, rather than adopt the laws and values of the West.

"Hamas is not just at war with Israel. It is at war with Jews, Christians, and the very foundations of civilization itself.... This is not politics, this is a religious war. Its purpose is to replace Judaism and Christianity with radical Islam. If the world does not understand this, everyone will pay the price." — Mosab Hassan Yousef, eldest son of Hamas founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef, JNS, August 17, 2025.

Notwithstanding peace treaties or a tenuous cessation of hostilities between Israel and its neighbors, much of the Islamic world remains at war with the West, especially with many dedicated activists, such as Qatar, Turkey and the Palestinian Authority in its midst.

Their leaders, perhaps not wishing to get into a scrape with Trump, as well as seeing the delicious prospect of being in charge of the future Gaza chicken coop -- refuse to acknowledge this reality.

Many leaders in the West also would possibly prefer not to admit the risk, even though their societies are precipitously at risk of being overwhelmed by the mass immigration of Muslims -- who boldly practice a competing faith founded on displacing all other faiths. Western leaders appear to wish to placate the Islamist voters in their midst, despite the harm being inflicted on their citizens -- with more expected in the offing.

With the release of some 2,000 terrorists from Israel's prisons as part of the Trump peace plan, Hamas's forces received a timely reinforcement of their depleted ranks from this event, "None are expected to take up careers in high tech or humanitarian relief," writes Professor Thane Rosenbaum.

While Israel may have substantially defeated Hamas militarily in the Gaza campaign, it can fittingly be said, as by columnist Dan Schnur, that "Hamas won its war against Israel in the eyes of the rest of the world". Any success of the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic mass media can be attributed to their lies about Israel and Jews.

The escalating social and political turmoil in nations such as France, Britain, Australia, Spain, Italy and Canada can be directly attributed to domestic Islamist agitation, Muslim demographic explosion, and the spread of religious Islam throughout the infrastructure – which most leaders would rather appease than confront. With mosques being built at a rapid rate, complete with public calls to prayer over loudspeakers, and special Sharia courts, councils and schools, Islam has come to significantly dominate the landscape in the major cities of western Europe. In the UK and France, for instance, certain street scenes are reminiscent of the Muslim cities from where immigrants originated.

In Rosenbaum's words, "Hamas is not going away easily, even if some leave. The Muslim Brotherhood's lasting influence over the hearts and minds of Gazan society is ironclad."

The same may well be true for the generous leaders of the sovereign wealth fund states in the Middle East, who Trump seems to be counting on to rebuild Gaza.

Or maybe Trump can actually pull it off. The time to worry about is after he is no longer president, supervising his dream of Gaza as a Riviera at peace with Israel. What if the prevailing Middle East ideology of eliminating Israel has not changed?

Hamas, in short, has decided to eliminate any Palestinian opposed to terrorism and supportive of coexistence with Israel.

Hamas's actions also demonstrate that the terror group is determined to exploit the current ceasefire to reassert its control over the Gaza Strip.

The silence, or apathy, of the international community, including so-called pro-Palestinian groups and individuals, towards Hamas's crimes only encourages the terror group to proceed with its crackdown on its own people. The silence of the world, in addition, sends a message to the Palestinians that they should refrain from rising against Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip.

We have not yet heard of a single Hamas terrorist talking about recognizing Israel's right to exist. In the eyes of Hamas leaders, the Trump peace plan is just another temporary ceasefire that should be used for rearming, regrouping, and preparing for massacring more Israelis.

In recent months, Hamas has been quoting a famous statement by its former leader, the late Ismail Haniyeh, to confirm that the terror group will never recognize Israel's right to exist: "We said it five years ago and we say it now... we will never, we will never recognize Israel."

No transitional government or "Board of Peace" will ever be able to enforce law and order as long as Hamas terrorists feel free to murder any Palestinian who wants peace and coexistence with Israel.

De-radicalization will happen only after Palestinians see that Hamas has been totally defeated, disarmed and removed from power.... Failure to eradicate Hamas will only pave the way for another October 7 massacre against Israel.

Tellingly, the most senior of the nine officers axed on the 17th was General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chairman of the Commission and Xi Jinping's No. 1 loyalist in the PLA. The general had gained prominence as Xi's top enforcer in the military.

Gen. He was not the only officer who backed Xi and has now been taken out of the military's leadership ranks. Moreover, it is difficult to identify any Xi adversary who was purged in the last 18 months.

It is unlikely, at a time Xi Jinping appears to be fighting for political survival, that he would remove his most important supporter in the military. It is far more probable that Xi has lost control of the People's Liberation Army, especially because the removals strengthen Gen. Zhang, Xi's adversary.

China, by Thursday, could have a new leader. Or a new round of purges.

Trump made a flowing speech at the Israeli parliament that was remarkable for its frankness in showing the true picture of the situation to Israelis, combined with asserting his unflinching commitment to their security.

[W]hat does peace, when poetic conceit is discarded, mean?

It means that a war has ended with one clear winner and one clear loser, effacing a status quo that had bred the war. In the new status quo that must be created, the winner ought to have the final word.

The second element in the method is to steer clear of flattering the foe rather than placating him, which would persuade him that you are acting out of weakness.

Obama's notorious speech in Cairo was one example of self-defeating flattery. He tried to flatter the Muslim Brotherhood by obliquely attacking President Hosni Mubarak. We all know what happened next.

Trump, on the other hand, used the occasion to flex his American muscles and send a clear message: We're powerful enough to make your life difficult but also ready to invite you to the table, even if offering you a side-chair. This was the message sent to the leadership in Tehran, who missed the opportunity.

The third element of the method is to go for the jugular by stating your maximum demand. In that vein, Trump made the establishment of normal relations with Israel the sine qua non of joining his New Middle East project.

Trump doesn't dance around the real issues. He demands that Tehran establish relations with Israel, end its project for long-range missiles, and scrap the military dimension of its nuclear program. In exchange, he promises to ease sanctions on Iran with a view to ending them if Tehran does its part of the deal. More importantly, perhaps, he implicitly promises to prevent another Israeli attack on Iran if Tehran accepts the deal on offer.

Once again, Europe seems to have slipped into a dangerous fantasy: that engaging in polite diplomatic parleys with promises of sugar plums will tame Iran's rapacious ambitions.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (E3), acting as the European Troika, declared their intention to revive the long-stalled nuclear negotiations with Iran.

At the core of the E3's plan lies the deeply flawed assumption that Iran can be wooed into restraint through incremental "incentives." These generally consist of easing financial pressure, lifting trade restrictions, or delaying multilateral sanctions in exchange for ephemeral commitments.

Sadly, Europe appears to be pursuing the worst lessons of appeasement: the dangerous illusion is that you can temper a ravenous aggressor by conciliation, weakness and generosity. The aggressor immediately sees that the best route for him is to demand more. The cycle becomes self-reinforcing.

By treating the Iranian regime as a legitimate negotiating partner — and by discounting the moral and strategic gulf that separates it from liberal democracies — Europe is bankrolling the terrorism industry.

President Donald J. Trump's current posture — doubling down on sanctions, refusing immediate diplomacy until leverage is secured — should jolt Europe out of its passivity.

The European Troika's charade must stop. Anything less just prolongs the threat.