More than 30 years ago, these "elites," overwhelmingly on Israel's political "left" (think "peace," as if most people in democracies do not want peace) played a significant role in convincing the Israeli government to sign the Oslo Accord with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat. The assumption back then was that if you bring Arafat's PLO from the Arab countries to Gaza and the West Bank and help them create a government and police force, the Palestinians would renounce terrorism and give up their dream of destroying Israel.

The Palestinian Authority, established in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994, had no intention of making peace with Israel, and still has not.

Palestinian leaders continue to praise terrorists as "martyrs" and "heroes" and pay monthly salaries to their families.

Many Israeli "elites" chose to turn a blind eye to the Palestinian leaders' support for terrorism and incitement of violence and hatred against Israel. Some Israeli peace activists continued to argue that Abbas who, since 2014 has refused to resume peace negotiations with Israel, is somehow a credible peace partner.

"He [Arafat] did not negotiate in good faith; indeed, he did not negotiate at all. He just kept saying no to every offer, never making any counterproposals of his own." – Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, quoted by Benny Morris from interviews in late March and early April 2202.

The Israeli pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005 to enable the Palestinians to create a Dubai on the Mediterranean, instead enabled Hamas and other terror groups to turn the coastal enclave into a huge base for Jihad (holy war) against Israel. With the help of Iran, the terror groups smuggled weapons into the Gaza Strip from Egypt in tunnels dug under the border, and were taught to manufacture rockets and missiles. The Gazans also built a vast network of tunnels throughout the Gaza Strip, with many extending into Egypt.

It turned out the belief of Israeli "elites" that the expulsion of Jews from the Gaza Strip would contribute to peace with the Palestinians was a catastrophic mirage.

The Palestinians did not see the "disengagement" as an indication that Israel wants peace. Instead, many Palestinians viewed the withdrawal as an Israeli display of weakness and retreat in the face of rockets and suicide bombings. The thinking among the Palestinians became, "Oh, it's working! So let's do it more!"

In a similar way, Iran, Qatar, Hamas and Hezbollah have been gaining more confidence from the current anti-government protests in Israel, especially since the Biden-Harris administration began pressing Israel to make concessions, but never Hamas, Hezbollah, Qatar or Iran.

"Continue to exert psychological pressure on the families [of the hostages], both now and during the first phase [of the ceasefire] so that public pressure on the enemy government increases.... Arab forces should serve as a buffer to prevent the enemy [Israel] from entering after the war in Gaza ends, until they [Hamas] have reorganized their ranks and military capabilities." — Hamas document, written in March for the terrorist group's leader Yahya Sinwar, discovered on a computer allegedly belonging to him that was seized by the IDF.

It is wrong for Israel's anti-government demonstrators to blame Netanyahu for the deadlock in the hostages-ceasefire negotiations. As the Hamas document shows, it is actually the terror group that is not in a rush to reach a deal. Hamas and the Israeli demonstrators seem to hope that the protests will succeed in overthrowing Netanyahu, so that the Israelis can elect a new prime minister – one who will allow Hamas to rearm, regroup and attack again, and one who will allow on Israel's border a Palestinian state committed to Israel's destruction and free of Jews who might prevent further attacks.

Sadly, many demonstrating in Israel today appear unaware that they are being used by Hamas; that they have walked into Hamas's trap: to force out a leader, Netanyahu, who is finally succeeding in defeating Hamas.

Britain's new leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in the tried-and-true way of Communist dictators, has begun his first term by initiating a great purge of British dissidents.

British protesters, denounced as "far right thugs," are being put behind bars faster than the prison services can absorb.... The youngest child arrested and charged is just 11 years old.

Because the prisons, already overflowing, cannot handle the sudden influx of mass-sentenced wrongthinkers, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that to make room for the dissidents, it will be freeing early roughly 5,500 criminals... who "will include criminals convicted of violence..."

The mass arrests and trials are occurring at the same time as "Police are increasingly letting knife and sex offenders escape prosecution if they say sorry," according to an August 26 report by The Telegraph.

Peter Lynch, 61, a grandfather in Rotherham, a place where children have for decades been experiencing rape, other sexual abuse, and torture at the hands of mainly Muslim grooming gangs while police and the city council looked the other way, shouted at police, "you are protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them" and "scum". Judge Richardson told Lynch: "You did not yourself attack any police officer, as far as can be detected, but what you did was encourage by your conduct others to behave violently and you were part of this mob. What a disgraceful example you are as a grandfather"... [and] sentenced him to two years and eight months.

Lynch was simply telling the truth: In cities such as Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxford, Peterborough, Keighley, Newcastle and Birmingham local police and councils knowingly allowed mostly Muslim grooming gangs to rape, abuse, torture and even murder thousands of little children and teenagers for decades because they said that if they stopped the crimes, they might appear "racist".

Does the Starmer government really have so much contempt for the British? They are not even allowed to protest the rape of their children.

"At least one murder, sex assault or crime of violence is committed every two days by convicted criminals under supervision of the probation service after being released from jail, research has revealed." — The Telegraph, July 1, 2024.

"Ideas are more powerful even than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas," said Josef Stalin. Those words appear to have become Starmer's motto...

Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle recently made it clear that he thinks everything with which the government disagrees should be banned on social media. There seems to be no awareness of the essential problem: who chooses what is misinformation?

Starmer's methods were once exclusively reserved for dictatorships such as China, Russia and North Korea; Western democracies did not used to sentence people to long prison sentences for speech crimes.

The demonstrators [in Israel] are backed by assorted military and intelligence types in a treasonous attempt to lever Netanyahu out of office by creating division and demoralization while Israel is fighting for its life. Their core claim is that Netanyahu is prolonging the war and condemning the hostages to death solely to appease extremists in his coalition and thus remain in power.

Of course, everyone desperately wants the hostages brought back home. But the idea that the ceasefire deal would achieve this is sheer fantasy.

Only a few of the hostages would be released in the first phase. Hamas would then use the ceasefire to regroup and rearm, spinning out the continuing negotiation farce to keep the rest of the hostages trapped and thus retain control of the Gaza Strip.

It would only ever release all the hostages (if at all) with Israel's total surrender. That's what those calling for an immediate ceasefire deal are actually promoting.

The only way to save the hostages is through military pressure. That's one reason why it's imperative for Israel to retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, the area of Gaza that borders Egypt.

The importance of this corridor cannot be exaggerated. Israel's capture of it has uncovered deep below its surface an extensive infrastructure of giant tunnels into Egypt — thus revealing the principal route through which Hamas imported its rockets, weapons and ammunition. [Emphasis added]

Hamas needs to control the Philadelphi corridor in order to resupply itself. Without that, it will be finished. That's why it's insisting that there will be no deal while Israel remains in control.

The vast majority of the military and security officials who belong to the authoritative Israel Defense and Security Forum are adamant that Israel must not cede control of the corridor. The forum's chairman, Brig. Gen. Amir Avivi, said last week that tens of thousands of rockets and thousands of Hamas Nukhbah terrorists were waiting inside the Egyptian Sinai to go into Gaza through Philadelphi.

Even if Israel made only a short retreat, these troops and equipment could be brought in within a week. Egypt had made billions of dollars from the smuggling trade into Gaza and wants to continue.

Moreover, said Avivi, only 30 out of more than 100 hostages were slated to be released in the first phase of the deal — and Hamas reportedly planned to take the rest of them through the Philadelphi tunnels to Sinai and then to Iran.

In a security cabinet row, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant reportedly called Philadelphi "an unnecessary constraint that we've placed on ourselves." Gadi Eizenkot, a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces, said it wasn't strategically important. Former Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Israel could return to the corridor if it deemed it necessary once the hostages were home.

Other arguments have included getting Egypt to safeguard Philadelphi against Hamas and using electronic sensors to monitor it.

This is all utterly delusional. For two decades, Egypt was complicit in the construction and use of the Philadelphi tunnels; entrusting it with Israel's security would be to put the fox in charge of the henhouse. Israeli reliance on electronic sensors was one of the reasons the October 7 pogrom happened.

Despite the thousands of people in the streets, most Israelis get this. In one opinion poll, 79% agreed that Israel needed to control Philadelphi permanently to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. When asked more emotively whether Israel should control Philadelphi "even at the expense of a hostage deal," more respondents said it should than those who balked at preventing a hostage deal.

Gantz, Eizenkot and Gallant are part of a military and security establishment whose morally and intellectually bankrupt "conception" brought about the Oct. 7 catastrophe in the first place.

...America itself bears a significant measure of responsibility for the hostages' fate.

The Biden administration forced Israel to proceed in Gaza far more slowly than the IDF judged necessary to defeat Hamas and thus save the hostages. Worse, for three months, the administration stopped Israel from entering Rafah — below which the six hostages were murdered this month. If Israel had been free to proceed at its own pace, those six captives and many others might have been saved.

Whatever happens to Netanyahu, the left will almost certainly discover that, for the second time, it has made a terrible strategic error.

The first such error was the 1993 Oslo Accord, which gave the Palestinians political power and status — with the Americans even training their security forces — on the assumption that they intended to live in peace alongside Israel.

[T]hese same types of people have been doing the work of Hamas for it by promoting Israel's surrender....

The IRGC and its appendages such as the Mobilization of the Dispossessed (Baseej), the Quds Force and at least four security and intelligence services account for less than five percent of the Iranian population. Yet they have the largest share of plum jobs in the public sector.

Rather than being the army of a nation-state, it morphed into an armed force that owns a nation-state.

Khamenei may have another more reason to tone down his usual tantrums: simmering dissatisfaction in both the IRGC and the regular army.

The favored treatment of the IRGC in terms of salaries and the latest weaponry may be the cause of discontent in the regular army....

The IRGC's discontent may be rooted in a new wave of purges planned by Khamenei, while aging generals close to him continue to warm their seats.

Iran's regime and its proxies constantly launch attacks – at Sunni Gulf States, at Israel and at US troops -- with the seeming goal of eradicating the Jewish state and driving "The Big Satan" out of the region. That way, the mullahs appear to believe, Imperial Iran would be able to enjoy the run of the corral without interference from countries they allege are imperialist, and revel in an unfettered "open season."

Iran and its proxies have attacked US troops in the region more than 150 times just since October. The US response has not exactly been a deterrent. In the meantime, the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism continues cheerfully to put the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons program.

The regime hides behind its proxies because it would rather its proxies receive retaliatory strikes instead of Tehran, Isfahan, Qom or Natanz, and it seems above all to fear losing its grip on power. The mullahs doubtless are aware that they lack broad support among the Iranian people, so it is easier to extend their influence and Islamist ideology through their proxies. Why should a country that does not treat its own people well treat others any better?

The time to put a stop to Iran's runaway aggression is long overdue – before it launches nuclear weapons.

ADL further recorded a total of 400 antisemitic incidents on college and university campuses, compared to only 33 incidents during the same period in 2022. Ugly incidents of U.S. campus antisemitism persisted throughout the spring 2024 semester year.

Routine empirical, if taboo, observation clearly indicates that often, the most vociferous and violent U.S. student campus antisemites share a common Islamic/Muslim religio-ethnic identity. A courageous, expansive Brandeis University study was just published addressing the potential validity of this anecdotal observation by analyzing U.S. undergraduate college student religious affiliation as a critical, independent factor animating their Jew-hatred.

Sadly, but with depressing predictability, the study's seminal, if corroborative findings are being ignored by media, and the most voluble talking heads and "public intellectuals," across the ideological spectrum.

The study authors concluded that although "a climate of universal anti-Jewish hatred" did not exist, Jewish student concerns about antisemitism were justified, and "driven by about a third of students who held distinct patterns of beliefs about Jews and Israel." Specifically, "Identifying as Muslim was significantly associated with being either hostile to Israel or hostile to Jews, even after controlling for other factors." Furthermore, compared to Christians, for example, Muslims were 2.6-fold more likely to harbor the most virulent antisemitism, namely, shared hostility to both Israel and Jews.

Since 2004, ADL surveys of Muslims have been conducted in Western (European and U.S.) societies, and Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries, where Islam is the state religion. MENA Muslim nations are by wide margins the 16 most antisemitic countries worldwide, where the prevalence of extreme antisemitism ranges from a "low" of 74% (in Egypt and Saudi Arabia), to 93% (among the Palestinian Muslims of Gaza, and the West Bank).

Largely consistent with these ADL MENA Muslim data, and strikingly concordant with the 2.6-fold excess of extreme Muslim antisemitism, relative to extreme Christian antisemitism, just revealed by the Brandeis study of U.S. college students, 2015, 2019, and 2023 ADL Western European reports, and a 2017 ADL U.S. report, found a 2- to 4-fold excess prevalence of extreme antisemitism, among Muslims versus Christians, or non-Muslims.

Discussion of the most plausible and discernible explanation for this global surfeit of Muslim Jew-hatred is also shunned: relentless inculcation of antisemitic motifs from the Qur'an itself, and other core Islamic texts, by the pre-eminent authoritative religious teaching institutions in Islam, such as Al-Azhar University, Sunni Islam's putative "Vatican."

Identical, canonically sourced Jew-hating Islamic religious indoctrination is ubiquitous, and even embellished, in mainstream U.S. mosques, a baleful practice that has intensified following October 7, 2023.

Unfortunately, monomaniacal focus on DEI racist bias has become just the latest device to avoid any serious discussion of Islam, and the global pandemic of excess Muslim Jew-hatred. Hope springs eternal publication of the landmark Brandeis study confirming this disproportionate pandemic has reached U.S. campuses, will finally initiate honest reckoning with such uniquely Muslim bigotry.

One of the reasons the Palestinian Authority (PA) is reluctant to crack down on the "battalions" is because PA officials are aware that the terrorists enjoy widespread support among the Palestinian public.

The Palestinian Authority eventually fell victim to its own passivity. In 2007, Hamas staged a violent and brutal coup against the PA in Gaza, killing dozens of PA loyalists. According to a Human Rights Watch report: "Hamas military forces captured 28-year-old Mohammed Swairki, a cook for [PA] President Mahmoud Abbas's presidential guard, and executed him by throwing him to his death, with his hands and legs tied, from a 15-story apartment building in Gaza City."

The Israeli operation aims to prevent Iran and its Palestinian proxies from opening a new front against Israel from the West Bank.

The PA, however, has constantly violated the terms of the Oslo Accords by, among other things, failing to stop armed groups from operating in its territory and from attacking Israelis. The PA has therefore become part of the problem, not the solution.

If anyone is upset with Israel for its counterterrorism operation, they need to be more upset with the PA for not standing up to the armed groups and preventing Iran from establishing a terror base in the West Bank.

[T]he fact that the EU's foreign policy chief [Josep Borrell] has even suggested imposing punitive measures against Israel, a country smaller than the state of New Jersey, when it is involved in a desperate fight defending itself against the world's largest sponsor of state terrorism, Iran, and its proxy terrorist groups -- Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iraqi militias, as well as Iran's powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps -- on at least seven fronts, shows a woeful lack of understanding of the conflict.

Borrell's constant articulation of anti-Israeli views also raises questions about his suitability to continue holding such an important position in the EU. Earlier this year, he launched a blistering attack against the "Israeli occupation authorities" for imposing punitive measures against an openly genocidal Palestinian Authority (PA).

Even so, Borrell's stance reflects the deep anti-Israel sentiment that exists within the EU bureaucracy... After Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Israelis, rather than receiving support for her gesture of solidarity by visiting Israel, during which [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen went to the Kfar Aza kibbutz (where at least 52 of 700 residents were murdered), she faced a barrage of criticism from EU insiders, with 800 EU staffers writing an official letter of complaint criticising her "uncontrolled" support of Israel.

[UN Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres's willingness to focus his criticism on Israel, and not the Iranian-backed terrorists, is yet another example of the UN's institutional anti-Israel bias. If the UN has any genuine interest in taking a balanced approach to the violence in the West Bank, then, instead of focusing its criticism exclusively on Israel, it would call on Iran to cease backing the network of terrorist groups it backs in the region, whose main goal is the destruction of Israel on the way to destroying the United States -- the main representative of the West.

The failure of international bodies such as the EU and the UN to demonstrate any pretence of balance when intervening on vital international security issues such as the Iranian-sponsored conflicts taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon not only makes a mockery of their claim to be independent arbiters on the issue. It also runs the risk of making them utterly irrelevant, to the extent that they suffer the same fate as the League of Nations in the 1930s, whose inability to confront fascism condemned it to abject failure.

Hamas leaders, who are closely observing the protests, are likely to harden their stance in the hope that the Israeli government will give in to the demonstrators' demands, including an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has the Israeli public pressuring their government to allow Hamas to "live to fight another day": to rearm, regroup and continue attacking Israelis – as Hamas official Ghazi Hamad vowed.

Hamas leaders are banking on the Biden administration to compel the Israeli government to give in to the terror group's demands.... It has long been the dream of Hamas and many Palestinians to see the US turn its back on Israel.

Hamas's primary goal is to remain in power and return to the pre-October 7 era, when it built a large terror infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Hamas knows it will not be able to accomplish its aims without a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and an official end of the war.

That is why Hamas is insisting that Israel withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor along the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Israel's presence there obstructs Hamas's efforts to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip through cross-border tunnels, as it has been doing for the past two decades.

Hamas is reportedly demanding US and international guarantees that Israel will not target the terror group anytime in the future. Until then, Hamas will continue to hold on to many of the hostages as an "insurance policy."

Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 atrocities, will not release all the hostages at once. He will continue to physically surround himself with many of them to ensure that Israel does not kill him. Sinwar does not care how many Palestinians in the Gaza Strip perish, as long as he is permitted to stay alive.

Even if Hamas were to initially release 10 or 20 hostages as part of any agreement, who could ensure that the remaining captives would be released? Are we supposed to take Hamas's word for it? Are we supposed to believe that the Americans, Egyptians and Qataris would be able to force Hamas to comply with the terms of any agreement?

Hamas is only interested in a deal that would keep it in power and make Israel lose the war. Hamas does not feel under pressure, at all, to reach any deal. Why should it? If US President Joe Biden were serious about reaching a deal, all he has to do is phone the leader of Qatar and tell him, as he allegedly told Netanyahu a few weeks ago, to "stop bullshitting me!"

The hostages-ceasefire negotiations have broken down because of insufficient pressure from the Biden administration on Hamas's patrons in Qatar. The failure of the negotiations should be attributed to Qatar's lack of action against the Hamas leaders who are living in luxury in Doha. Qatar is not doing anything because it is not under any serious pressure from the Biden administration. Has the Biden administration considered using the threat of withdrawing the US Central Command from Qatar's Al-Udeid Air Base from to pressure the Gulf state's rulers into convincing their friends in Hamas to free all the hostages?

The Biden-Harris administration apparently sees no problem with a Palestinian state being yet another terrorist state, committed to annihilating Israel -- as both Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Qods Force commander General Esmail Qaani ("Israel is a cancer that must be eliminated"), and senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad have straightforwardly vowed.

A ceasefire might sound as if it is a "good thing" that benefits everyone -- understandably if a friend or family member is a hostage. The problem seems to be the Hamas demand that Israel should leave the "Philadelphi corridor" on the border between Gaza and Egypt, so that Hamas, backed by its patrons Qatar and Iran, can resume smuggling weapons and ammunition into Gaza, rearm, rebuild and attack again.

It is probably more convenient, for all those trying to overthrow Netanyahu, to look at him rather than at the real perpetrators: Hamas, Iran and Qatar.

Qatar, "the Trojan Horse in Washington D.C.," has long been financing Islamic terrorist organizations, as well as bestowing more than $6 billion on US universities to teach American youths whatever Qatar's leaders decide. Nevertheless, the Biden-Harris administration decided that these qualifications made Qatar perfect to negotiate the Gaza war on America's behalf, the same way the administration unfathomably decided to have Russia negotiate on America's behalf with Iran over restarting the nuclear deal.

The Biden-Harris administration seems to want Netanyahu gone to be able to work with "their" prime minister: one who presumably would be delighted not only to have a terrorist Palestinian state on his borders -- a state sworn to Israel's destruction -- and who would also be delighted if Iran -- also sworn to Israel's destruction -- had nuclear weapons. It is the policy embraced by Obama, so long as Iran did not acquire nuclear weapons "on his watch." Down the road, however, would be an altogether different story.

What many Israelis seem unwilling or unable to see is, sadly, that even with a ceasefire, the hostages will not be released. Hamas will hold on to as many of them as they can for as long as they can, to keep them in play as a weapon.

With a ceasefire, Israel unfortunately will not get peace and will not get the hostages. The Israelis might see a few hostages at a time dribbled out, the living ones first, they hope, each one exchanged for hundreds, if not more, of convicted Palestinian terrorists released from Israeli prisons, whose first job would be to go right back to terrorizing.

Meanwhile, the negotiations over every hostage would allow plenty of time for Iran and Hamas to bring more weapons in through the unguarded border from Egypt into Gaza, in order to rearm. The current leader of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, is himself a convicted terrorist who confessed to murdering four people with his own hands. Sinwar was serving four life sentences in an Israeli prison when he was released, among more than 1,000 terrorists, in exchange for one Israeli hostage, Gilad Shalit, in 2011.

There is at least one way to get the hostages back quickly.... "Many Americans believe that they owe Qatar for its hosting of the U.S. CENTCOM base. The truth is precisely the opposite: It is Qatar that owes the U.S., for locating this base there. Without this base's presence in the country, Qatar would disappear within less than a week – its neighbors would eat it up." — Yigal Carmon, MEMRI, June 10, 2024.

Instead of saying, as the propagandists no doubt like, "Bring them Home," meant to sound as if Netanyahu is hiding the hostages under the Knesset, Israelis would be better off saying, "Release the Hostages" -- directed at Hamas, Qatar and Iran.

A ceasefire deal unfortunately will not bring back the hostages any time soon. Hamas will drag out each negotiation, continue attacking Israel and try to make Israelis miserable enough to give up the fight, as many seem to be doing even now.

"[T]hings don't seem to get better.... elected officials are just not interested in the welfare of the people," and are offering no protection or other practical support to the Christian communities whose homes and livelihoods have been destroyed. — Fr. Andrew Dewan, Director of Communications in Nigeria's Catholic Diocese of Pankshin, canuk.org, July 16, Nigeria.

On July 1, a young Christian man was sentenced to death for "blasphemy" in a Pakistani court. But first Ehsan Shan will need to serve a 22-year prison sentence and pay a fine of one million rupees. — July 2, Pakistan.

On July 20, a Christian man learned that a Muslim organization had offered a $20,000 reward to anyone who beheads him for "blasphemy" .....posters circulating in Pakistan in July [were] showing his picture and calling upon Muslims to hunt the infidel down and to perform, in the words of the posters, sar tan se juda—"head separated from body"—on him." He said the reason the false blasphemy accusation was leveled against him in the first place was to intimidate him from his activist work: "I have been reporting about the forced conversion and rape of minor Hindu girls and their subsequent marriages to Muslim Men." — July 26.

"The land in question has been specifically designated for religious use, but the government is discriminating against the church because it is not associated with the state's preferred religion...." — Alliance Defending Freedom, July 12, Turkey.

Plato, at least in his magnum opus The Republic, depicts the ideal society as one ruled by those who know best, with the mission to look after the populace from cradle to grave. All that people have to do is obey the rules and enjoy the good life offered by ruling philosophers.

Aristotle, in contrast, focuses on the individual who is, with the exception of occasions when gods intervene, master of his destiny.

The settlers who created the United States were closer to Aristotle's cult of the individual than to Plato's collective utopia. They came to the New World as individuals or in groups too small to try to impose a collective identity on others. They were farmers who became path-finders, trailblazers and eventually nation-builders, always operating as individuals and coming together only in emergencies and exceptional circumstances such as fighting enemies.

In his 780-page autobiography, President Barack Obama mocks critics who suggest he may be a "closet socialist." He then reveals his attachment to collectivism, praising "the collective spirit, a thing we all wish for, a sense of connection that overrides our differences." He added that the regulatory state has made American lives a lot better -- words that bring to mind Benito Mussolini's declamations about the big corporatist state that redistributes the fruits of national endeavor.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney once noted that almost half of all Americans depended on federal handouts and perks one way or another, and thus wouldn't vote for a candidate who argued for a smaller state and the cult of the individual as hero.

Well, they didn't vote for him.

Iran's runaway strides in its nuclear program have taken place largely under the watch of the Biden-Harris administration.

Will this administration allow the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism to acquire nuclear weapons? It many have been what the Obama administration wished -- so long as it was "not on my watch" -- but it was a terrible idea then, and it is a worse one now. The prospect of Iran and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps arming groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iraqi militias with nuclear weapons is bad for the world's health.

Iran's regime that has also repeatedly vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and the United States— after that, presumably, the oil-rich Gulf states. Iran already controls five other countries in the region: Syria, Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq. There are flashing neon signs that Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's dream of "exporting the Revolution" is steadily extending to America's backyard. Latin American rogue states allied with Iran could potentially be transformed into nuclear-armed threats.

After laying a white rose at the site of the Diversity Festival slashing that left three dead and eight wounded, Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised rapid action would be taken against knives.

Right now, people in Germany can carry knives up to 4.7 inches long. The law will be modified so that they can only carry knives up to 2.4 inches long. No one appears to have considered the possibility that Muslim terrorists on the way to killing as many infidels as possible might violate the law and carry a concealed knife of 4 inches or longer. Such thoughts are unthinkable.

There were 13,844 "knife crime" incidents in Germany in 2023, which the authorities are blaming on the existence of knives and not the perpetrators, who are reportedly mostly young Muslim men.

But locating the source of the problem is probably "not a very helpful insight," In the UK, people sharing such insights are being locked up even as Islamic terrorists are being freed.

The German government is more moderate than the Marxist lunatics at Whitehall. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Justice Minister Shabana Mahmood, a supporter of Islamic terrorism, have decided to ruthlessly suppress all British opposition to mass migration with raids and prison sentences.

Much like the American liberal obsession with gun control, literally objectifying the problem, talking about things so that they don't have to talk about people, and then talking about broader social and economic issues, is a useful distraction from seeing what is actually taking place.

The protests that started against the former Bangladeshi government have since descended into rampant violence against the Hindu community.

" Jamaat-e-Islami has made a list of Hindu houses and businesses, and they are systematically targeting Hindus. I am also being told that JeI has blocked several roads with mobs walking around with guns. The network is also intermittently down and they are hardly able to contact each other. Essentially, the Hindus are boxed in a situation where they are not being allowed to communicate with each other and form groups to help each other. The situation, according to them is extremely dire. There is also news of at least 3 Hindu girls being abducted by the Muslims. There are probably far more..." — Nupur J Sharma, a journalist in Delhi, X, August 7, 2024.

"That Bangladesh has violently toppled a democratically elected government and is going in the direction of Afghanistan is not news anymore.... The victims have no one to turn to, as global organizations such as the United Nations sold their souls to their Islamic masters long ago.... Bangladesh has descended into a true Islamic abyss. There are mutilated, naked, dead bodies suspended from giant structures in full public view. Islamic apologists in India have done everything in their power to whitewash the Islamic onslaught on Hindus in Bangladesh.... Leftists dub the anarchy in Bangladesh as a victory of democracy...." — Ashlyn Davis, political analyst, jihadwatch.org, August 6, 2024.

Ironically, the land that is now called Bangladesh was majority-Hindu before its Islamization, which occurred after Islamic armies invaded and conquered the Indian subcontinent beginning in the eighth century. So was Pakistan.

"[T]here has been a long history of violence and repression against Hindus in Bangladesh including genocide of an estimated two million then East Pakistani citizens (mostly Hindu), the ethnic cleansing of 10 million ethnic Bengalis (mostly Hindus) who fled to India, and the rape of 200,000 women (also mostly Hindu) in camps set up for the sole purpose of raping and terrorizing." — The Hindu American Foundation.

Terrifying videos of riots, lynchings, and arsonists setting fire to houses and offices are being shared on social media platforms. Will the United Nations or anyone intervene and stop the atrocities? Or will the world once again see and ignore yet more crimes against humanity with no accountability for those Islamists who perpetrate them?