Latest Analysis and Commentary
by Robert Williams • October 22, 2024 at 5:00 am
[T]he West's political "elites" condemned Israel for defending itself by targeting Hezbollah's leadership. There was no mention of international law for Hezbollah's unprovoked, year-long attacks: bombardments of missiles and attack drones every day at a country smaller than New Jersey. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell lamented Israel's continued successful attempts at destroying one of Iran's proxy armies. When Israel took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the world's most dangerous arch-terrorists, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres could barely hold back his disappointment, counterfactually calling Hezbollah's unprovoked war against Israel and the IDF's response a "cycle of violence." Only Argentina's President Javier Milei displayed a reaction fitting the removal of a terrorist mass murderer... Israel, as has been noted, is doing the entire world an enormous service by taking out Hezbollah. Iran, just since October 2023, through its militias in Syria and Iraq, has launched more than 160 attacks on the US forces in the Middle East. [W]hen Israel killed Ibrahim Aqil, the mastermind of the 1983 attacks and a member of Hezbollah's Jihad Council, its highest military body, the US could not even bring itself to thank its ally. The world's political elites apparently cannot forgive Israel for seeking to defend itself, and rid the world of terrorists working to destroy both America and Western civilization. Could these elites, wittingly or not, be working towards the same result?
The world's political elites apparently cannot forgive Israel for seeking to defend itself, and rid the world of terrorists working to destroy both America and Western civilization. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has lamented Israel's continued successful attempts at destroying one of Iran's proxy armies. When Israel took out Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, one of the world's most dangerous arch-terrorists, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres could barely hold back his disappointment. Pictured: Borrell (L) and Guterres at the UN headquarters in New York, September 18, 2022. (Photo by Craig Ruttle/Pool/Getty Images)
It took the world community nearly a year to condemn the war in Lebanon, but they got the wrong mark. Instead of condemning Hezbollah, the world's largest Iranian proxy terrorist army, with an estimated 40,000 - 50,000 fighters, for starting a year-long war on October 8, 2023 in support of the terrorist organization Hamas, the West's political "elites" condemned Israel for defending itself by targeting Hezbollah's leadership. The UN Security Council called an emergency session on September 20, during which UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk told ambassadors that he was "appalled by the breadth and impact" of the attacks on Hezbollah pagers and walkie-talkies.
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by Gordon G. Chang • October 21, 2024 at 5:00 am
The world's two most dangerous states, Xi Jinping's People's Republic of China and Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation, have been growing closer in part, it seems, because they see there is no cost to ignoring the warnings of the Biden administration. "Mr. Biden can either enforce his red line through sanctions or other means, or he can signal a collapse of American resolve by applying merely symbolic penalties. Beijing and its strategic partners in Moscow, Tehran, Pyongyang, and Caracas would surely interpret half-hearted enforcement as a green light to deepen their campaign of global chaos. Mr. Xi sees a historic opportunity here to undermine the West." – Matt Pottinger, wsj.com, April 30, 2024 Since then, the Biden administration has done little but impose meaningless sanctions on Chinese parties, such as the ones announced on October 17 on two companies. The American inaction today brings to mind President Obama's infamous red-line failure in Syria in 2013. We should not be surprised: Biden, then vice president, was Obama's foreign policy advisor. Britain and France [last century] issued a series of threatening words to Berlin. German leaders, from the remilitarization of the Rhineland in 1936 to the eve of the invasion of Poland in late summer 1939, ignored them. "Warnings were crafted in such a way so they could not be enforced and understood as not intended to be enforced." — Arthur Waldron, retired Lauder Professor of International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania, to Gatestone Institute, October 17, 2024. China's aggressive leader apparently believes he can with impunity do just about anything. Hollow warnings lead to war.
The world's two most dangerous states, Xi Jinping's People's Republic of China and Vladimir Putin's Russian Federation, have been growing closer in part, it seems, because they see there is no cost to ignoring the warnings of the Biden administration. Pictured: Putin meets with Xi at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Astana, Kazakhstan on July 3, 2024. (Photo by Pavel Volkov/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
"These are not dual-use capabilities," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell told reporters in Brussels on September 10, describing China's aid to Russia for use against Ukraine. "These are component pieces of a very substantial effort on the part of China to help sustain, build, and diversify various elements of the Russian war machine." The Beijing-Moscow cooperation, Campbell argued, is "not a tactical alliance." It is, instead, "a fundamental alignment." The Chinese-Russian hook-up was "orchestrated at the highest levels" in the two capitals, he said. With Campbell's words, the Biden administration for the first time accused China of providing Moscow with direct support for its war. At the same time, U.S. officials detailed Russia's technical assistance to China's submarine and missile programs.
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by Bassam Tawil • October 20, 2024 at 5:00 am
"Again and again we see that Israel absolutely made the right call in not heeding the Biden administration and the rest of the world's insistence that the IDF not invade Rafah." — Lahav Harkov, Israeli journalist, X, October 17, 2024. "Pretty rich after a year of undermining Netanyahu, saying he MUST go to a ceasefire, MUST deescalate, trying to stop Israel from going into Rafah WHERE SINWAR WAS KILLED, and Kamala boycotting his joint address to Congress - now Biden & Harris have the nerve to congratulate him for setting the path to peace. I'm sure the phone call sounds something like 'You were right Bibi [Netanyahu], we apologize,'" — US Rep. Mike Waltz, X, October 18, 2024 Israel's killing Sinwar and destroying Hamas's military infrastructure in Rafah sadly show how steadfastly the Biden-Harris administration was trying to prevent Israel from achieving victory over the Iran-backed Islamist murderers and rapists responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Netanyahu deserves credit for ignoring the warnings and threats by Biden and his senior officials. Thanks to Netanyahu, Hamas has been significantly debilitated and Sinwar has been eliminated, making the Middle East a safer place. It now remains to be seen whether the Biden-Harris administration will reconsider its failed foreign policies and apologize to the Israeli prime minister for attempting to undermine his efforts to combat terrorism and bring more security and stability not only to Israel, but the entire Middle East as well.
Israel's killing Yahya Sinwar and destroying Hamas's military infrastructure in Rafah sadly show how steadfastly the Biden-Harris administration was trying to prevent Israel from achieving victory over the Iran-backed Islamist murderers and rapists responsible for the deadliest attack against Jews since the Holocaust. Pictured: Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explains the importance of Rafah's Philadelphi corridor during a press conference in Jerusalem on September 4, 2024. (Photo by Abir Sultan/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
Earlier this year, the Biden-Harris administration spent weeks warning Israel not to enter the city of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where many of the leaders of the Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas were believed to be hiding. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had prepared to enter the city as part of a counterterrorism offensive to destroy Hamas's military capabilities and rescue some of the Israeli hostages kidnapped by the terrorist group on October 7, 2023. The October 17 killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in the Rafah area proved that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did the right thing in ignoring the warnings of the Biden-Harris administration. The IDF eventually entered Rafah, where it succeeded in killing hundreds of Hamas terrorists and recovering the bodies of some of the hostages. In addition, the IDF managed to rescue one of the hostages held in a Hamas tunnel in the Rafah area.
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by Amir Taheri • October 20, 2024 at 4:00 am
What interests us here is the division of Americas into "us" and "not-us," a shady game of alterity that reduces the competition of ideas in a modern democracy into a primitive expression of fear and loathing. Trump voters were also classified as TV-watchers rather than readers of newspapers, let alone books. The subtext was that if such lower species could decide the fate of the world's only superpower, then something must be wrong with electoral democracy. "We're all Americans!" might sound trite. On closer examination, however, it is the wisest expression of a shared desire for coexistence in a system that thrives on diversity, competitive otherness, creative tension and enlightened trust in the rules of the game. Thus, whether she likes or not, Harris, though the American-ness of her family is of recent nature, represents and owns the whole of the United States' history and identity. Rather than nursing old chagrins and grievances often inherited from generations long gone and using them as a prop for fake "otherness" she should defend her own vision of America's future while acknowledging the right of the "deplorable" to do the same. Harris may yet ride her MAGA-bashing horse to victory. But even then, she wouldn't be able to provide effective leadership of a nation she has divided into "us" and "not-us." There is still time, very little time, for Harris to realize that "This is not who we are" is a misleading and dangerous sentence. She, Trump and all others Americans are "who we are" together. They are heirs to the great achievements and the regrettable injustices of their nation's history, and jointly responsible for shaping the future.
There is still time, very little time, for Kamala Harris to realize that "This is not who we are" is a misleading and dangerous sentence. She, Donald Trump and all others Americans are "who we are" together. They are heirs to the great achievements and the regrettable injustices of their nation's history, and jointly responsible for shaping the future. Pictured: Harris shakes hands with Trump during a presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 2024. (Photo by Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
"This is not who we are!" This is one of the favorite shibboleths used by US Democrat Party's presidential nominee Kamala Harris and her supporters with the aim of portraying supporters of her Republican rival Donald Trump as not quite American, if not utterly alien. One of Harris' "progressive" supporters expresses concern that she may win a huge majority of the popular vote in the November 5 election, but still fail to get the keys to the White House because of the Electoral College rule. Another Harris admirer claims that she represents a vast majority of Americans, from Noam Chomsky to Dick Cheney, against a small Make America Great Again (MAGA) minority led by Trump. Whether or not that assertion is correct will soon be put to the test. What interests us here is the division of Americas into "us" and "not-us," a shady game of alterity that reduces the competition of ideas in a modern democracy into a primitive expression of fear and loathing.
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by Majid Rafizadeh • October 19, 2024 at 5:00 am
Little Israel is showing the world how to win again – and saving civilization and a free way of life into the bargain .... let Israel keep winning! The problem with the JCPOA was, of course, its "sunset clauses." They assured Iran that it could legitimately have as many nuclear weapons as it can produce in just a few short years. The West has left Israel to fight a war that should never have been Israel's alone. The Western nations, through diplomatic miscalculations, the need for votes, cowardice and a fear of conflict, have essentially outsourced their responsibilities for maintaining global peace to Israel, watching from the sidelines as the conflict ramps up. If the West is too fearful or reluctant to engage directly in the fight against injustice, terror, and tyranny, the very least it can do is stand with Israel and stop trying to sabotage it at every turn. Support should not be limited to words but include political, diplomatic and military backing. By failing to support Israel fully, the West is empowering exactly those countries working to revise the world order -- from one of freedom to one of tyranny -- by displacing the West. It is a grotesque reflection on the international community, particularly the Biden-Harris administration and the European Union, not to be offering unequivocal support. Israel's struggle is not just for its own survival but for the security and peace of the Free World. The West, through its passivity, is failing not only Israel, it is hollowing out its own survival.
The West has left Israel to fight a war that should never have been Israel's alone. The Western nations, through diplomatic miscalculations, the need for votes, cowardice and a fear of conflict, have essentially outsourced their responsibilities for maintaining global peace to Israel, watching from the sidelines as the conflict ramps up. Pictured: Sayad 4-B missile at a military parade in Tehran, Iran on April 17, 2024. (Photo by Atta Kenare/AFP via Getty Images)
Culminating with the dispatch of arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar this week, how many of the world's most vicious terrorists has Israel liberated the world from in a few short weeks? Little Israel is showing the world how to win again -- and saving civilization and a free way of life into the bargain. For those of us fortunate enough to live in a free society rather than in a society of fear, as the former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky calls them, let Israel keep winning!
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by Raymond Ibrahim • October 18, 2024 at 8:00 am
Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians [in Nigeria] in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year—or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours. — Report, Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa, August 29, 2024. The violence has reached the point, the report says, that many traumatized Christian children sleep in trees to try to avoid being butchered during the night, when Fulani are most prone to attack. [I]n 2014, there were 1.1 million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Nigeria; as of 2023, there are 3.4 million. — "NO ROAD HOME: Christian IDPs displaced by extremist violence in Nigeria," Open Doors, September 1, 2024. Behind all these misleading euphemisms, the facts remain: the murderers are Muslim and their victims are overwhelmingly Christian. When Muslim terrorists slaughtered nearly 200 Christians last Christmas, the Associated Press failed to mention the identities of the assailants and their victims. Rather, it presented the atrocity, as so many now do, as a regrettable byproduct of climate change — which is, ostensibly, forcing "herders" (Muslims) to encroach on the lands of "farmers" (Christians). In another AP report on the 2022 Pentecost Sunday church bombing that left 50 Christian worshippers dead, the words "Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" — never appear. Rather, readers were told, "It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church." "Muslim" and "Islam" — even "Islamist" — never appear. Rather, readers were told, "It was not immediately clear who was behind the attack on the church." To maintain this ambiguity, the AP failed to mention that Islamic terrorists have stormed hundreds of churches and slaughtered thousands of Christians "for sport" over the years in Nigeria.... "It's tough to tell Nigerian Christians this isn't a religious conflict since what they see are Fulani fighters clad entirely in black [like ISIS], chanting 'Allahu Akbar!' and screaming 'Death to Christians.'" — Sister Monica Chikwe, cruxnow.com, August 4, 2019. "Removing Country of Particular Concern status for Nigeria will only embolden the increasingly authoritarian government there." — Sean Nelson, Legal Counsel for Global Religious Freedom for Alliance Defending Freedom International, catholicnewsagency.com, November 23, 2021. For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims apparently do not matter.
Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians in Nigeria in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. For the mainstream media and politicians, Christian lives taken by Muslims apparently do not matter. Pictured: The Church of Christ in Nations building in Mangu, Nigeria, photographed on February 2, 2024, after it was torched by Islamic terrorists. (Photo by Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images) (Image source: iStock)
The "pure genocide" of Christians in Nigeria, as it has been characterized by several international observers, is reaching unprecedented levels, according to two separate reports. "Countering the myth of religious indifference in Nigerian terror (10/2019 – 9/2023)," a comprehensive, 136-page report published by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa on August 29, 2024, found that Muslim militants slaughtered 16,769 Christians in just the four years between 2019 and 2023. That comes out to 4,192 Christians killed on average per year — or one Christian murdered for his/her faith every two hours.
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by Uzay Bulut • October 17, 2024 at 5:00 am
The Central African Republic is a tragic case of what happens when Islamic radicals take over a nation. The UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA) and government security forces have also not been able to exert effective control beyond the capital city. This devastating war and its consequences need more media coverage. Why are activists and human rights groups concerned only with the Middle East? The horrific situation in CAR and elsewhere should also serve as an urgent warning about what happens to nations when Islamic radicals are not vetted or held accountable.
The Central African Republic is a tragic case of what happens when Islamic radicals take over a nation. Pictured: A boy rides a loaded donkey through a rural village in the Vakaga Prefecture, near Birao on August 11, 2024. (Photo by Amaury Falt-Brown/AFP via Getty Images)
The Central African Republic is a tragic case of what happens when Islamic radicals take over a nation. Much of the international community, human rights groups and media have ignored it, but the Central African Republic (CAR) has been struggling with an ongoing war launched by Seleka, an alliance of Islamic militias fighting against the country's Christian and officially secular government. Most of the country is today occupied by armed groups (both from within the country and foreign fighters), all of whom appear responsible for human rights abuses. Russian mercenaries from The Wagner Group also arrived in the CAR after President Faustin-Archange Touadéra asked for help to tackle rebel groups in 2018. Wagner has since been fighting on the side of the CAR military against the Islamic militias and, while "protecting" the gold mines, has, at least for the time being, delivered "peace." However, according to the BBC:
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by Bassam Tawil • October 16, 2024 at 5:00 am
On a number of occasions over the past few months, US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has declared her support for the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Last month, Harris said: "We must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve." Harris's repeated talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the October 7 atrocities against Israelis is the best gift the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group could have wished for. Harris seems to ignore that a majority of Palestinians continue to support Hamas and the October 7 atrocities.... Two-thirds of the Palestinians [in a poll conducted by Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) in June] said that the October 7 massacres were "correct." What is most disturbing about Harris's advocacy for the establishment of an Iranian-controlled Palestinian state is that it is seen by many Palestinians as a reward for the October 7 atrocities.... So, when Harris talks about the need to establish a Palestinian state, she is sending a message to Hamas and other Palestinians that terrorism against Israel pays.... If Harris really cared about the Palestinians, she should be calling on Hamas to surrender; and calling on the Palestinian Authority (PA) stop glorifying terrorists and paying their families monthly salaries, dismantle all terror groups operating in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, stop poisoning the hearts and minds of their people, and recognize Israel's right to exist. Unfortunately, she has done none of the above. Moreover, the assumption that the PA can be "revitalized" and play a role in a post-war Gaza shows that Harris and the Biden administration are unfortunately clueless.... The poll also found that if presidential elections were held today, Hamas arch-terrorist Yahya Sinwar would receive 41% of the votes, while Abbas would get only 13%. A majority of 84% of the Palestinians want Abbas to resign. Abbas is also well aware that the talk about "revitalizing" the corrupt PA is nothing but a farce. The PA was established more than 30 years ago and its leaders, first Yasser Arafat and now Abbas, have never shown any serious intention to combat rampant corruption, anarchy and lawlessness in areas under their control. Abbas and the Egyptians appear to have renewed their talks with Hamas because they sense that the Biden-Harris administration is not interested in ending the terror group's rule over the Gaza Strip. If Biden and Harris really wanted to see Hamas removed from power and the Israeli hostages released, all they need to do, is issue an ultimatum to the ruler of Qatar, who funds and hosts the terror group's leadership, that the US will withdraw its air base from the Gulf state and impose sanctions on the emirate if the issue is not resolved immediately. If the Biden-Harris administration really wanted to get rid of Hamas, they would be calling out Abbas and the Egyptians for negotiating with a terror group about ways of incorporating it in a new administration in the Gaza Strip. Talk about creating a Palestinian state emboldens terrorists everywhere and assures the world that the US is on their side.
Vice President Kamala Harris's repeated talk about the need to establish a Palestinian state in the aftermath of the October 7 atrocities against Israelis is the best gift the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group could have wished for. Pictured: Harris and President Joe Biden on in New York City, September 11, 2024. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
On a number of occasions over the past few months, US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has declared her support for the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Last month, Harris said: "We must have a two-state solution where we can rebuild Gaza where the Palestinians have security, self-determination and the dignity they so rightly deserve."
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by Gwythian Prins • October 15, 2024 at 5:00 am
Such were the mutilations that not a single corpse of a girl or a woman was in a state fit to be shown to her family before burial. [W]ithin days of the atrocities, the global moral compass had swung 180 degrees. Starting significantly in London, and long before the IDF had marshalled itself to go into Gaza, street protests in Western cities and reporters in mainstream media were portraying Hamas as the victims and Israel as the violent aggressor.... This accusation has been the biggest lie of the past year. If one is among the modern cult "perfecti".... one's inherent virtue confers special privileges and exemptions which are not available to less-perfect people. By definition, one can do no wrong. Any respect for the integrity of history is lost. As in the former Soviet Union, but no longer a joke: the future is certain, only the past is ever-changing.... and the mandatory projection of modern values onto the past is popular among the self-righteous. [I]n Israel's war of self-defence... tactical operations show that minimisation of loss of life of everyone except the terrorist enemies has been a prime concern.... To a degree that is unmatched, the IDF routinely warns civilians to leave targeted zones before attacks. Iran's proxy groups hide their attack tunnels, command posts and weapons caches in Gaza and Lebanon under residential buildings, schools, hospitals and mosques, in an express flouting of the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.... The tunnel complexes which, in the instance of Gaza, exceed the length of the London Underground, were not built for the protection of civilians in time of conflict, but only for the protection of Hamas terrorists, as Moussa Abu Marzouk, a senior member of Hamas's political bureau, readily admits.... Not by choice, these are the circumstances under which the IDF has been forced to fight. It is all the more so because since October 7, 2023 the IDF's actions on the ground in Gaza, on the West Bank and in Lebanon show the best record of any modern armed forces in discriminate targeting, even in combat with terrorists who deliberately use civilians as human shields.... On the basis of such data, former British Army Infantry Commander Colonel Richard Kemp, CBE, has called the IDF "The World's Most Moral Army." When one's enemy has no war aim other than genocide, and has said so consistently for 90 years, there is most likely zero probability of a diplomatic route to peace. After six refusals of land offered for peace since 1922, there is now no prospect of any diplomacy this side of Israel's total victory, and the terrorists' total defeat. "Mugged by reality" is now... the realisation that, whatever else people may think about him, Netanyahu is the indispensable war leader for present times. The historian Andrew Roberts has called him "The Churchill of the Middle East." By and large the Western administrative class -- whose worldview is framed by the assumption that with enough meetings in convivial places ("diplomacy") deals can be reached that split differences -- still does not rise to a sufficient level of geopolitical and comparative historical appreciation. This weak intellectual grasp only contributes significantly to the risk of a third world war. The need for a strategy of total victory needs to be underscored. For decades, Iran and its proxies have been trying, as Iran's former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad put it, to "wipe Israel off the map." Israel's enemies are still trying. Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad warned a year ago that Hamas would repeat the October 7 attack, time and again, until Israel was annihilated. With the high probability that if Iran were to be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, it would use them on Israel, the avoidance of World War III now depends upon Israel eliminating that threat. Once again, President Joe Biden must not be obeyed. Products of the Western mind-set, as mentioned, it was the disastrous naivety of President Barack Obama and Biden in seeking to negotiate over Iran's nuclear programme (the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) -- and illegitimately, with no mandate, to boot -- that allowed Iran's regime to play the US for fools and in so doing to acquire vital foreign currency inflow – and time -- that enabled the Iranian theocracy to resume and hasten its road to nuclear weapons. "Iran is reeling... insecure and unsure how deeply its own intelligence has been penetrated. Failing to take full advantage of this opportunity to neutralize the threat is irresponsible." — Jared Kushner, advisor and son-in-law of President Donald J. Trump, X, September 29, 2024. The threat is not just to the Jews but to the world order and the West.... Israel rightly feels unleashed. This tiny nation has both moral mandate and customary international legal right (which long predates the experiment of UN-drafted papers) to be so. Like Ukraine's, Israel's victory matters to the entire free world. The world currently divides unequally into those who understand this and the majority who do not, or who may just not want to admit it.
The murder of 1,200 Israeli men, women and children, rape, torture and mutilation -- both before murder and post-mortem -- these crimes were committed by approximately 3,000 Arabs from Gaza, most of whom – but not all -- were Hamas terrorists, on October 7, 2023. Such were the mutilations that not a single corpse of a girl or a woman was in a state fit to be shown to her family before burial. Pictured: Covered bodies in front of a destroyed house in Kibbutz Be'eri, photographed on October 11, 2023. (Photo by Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images)
One year ago, in the form of armed Hamas terrorists, death arrived on the wings of the morning at the Supernova music festival in southern Israel. Three hundred and sixty-four revellers were murdered there, out of the 1,200 murdered altogether that terrible October 7. At the London memorial gathering on October 6, 2024, all those faces, overwhelmingly of young people, were projected onto a big screen. Standing in a cold English drizzle, it took more than an hour to view them all, in the knowledge that the fate of those smiling faces was one of utter depravity. Rape, torture and mutilation -- both before murder and post-mortem -- these crimes were committed by approximately 3,000 Arabs from Gaza, most of whom – but not all -- were Hamas terrorists.
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by Lawrence Kadish • October 15, 2024 at 4:00 am
A reactor unit in the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania is now scheduled, pending regulatory review, to reopen by the end of this decade, with all the power purchased exclusively by Microsoft for its AI data-centers. It is, in a word, brilliant, and reflects what the American business sector can still do when faced with a challenge and unhindered by the Washington bureaucracy. Pictured: The Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, near Middletown, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
There is no small irony that Artificial Intelligence (AI) continues to mock the Biden Administration's "green energy" policies and its flawed decision to rely on wind and solar as our nation's future sources of essential electricity. Consider: The exponential growth of AI is now powering the next generation of innovations that range from spacecraft to speech, and it is creating an enormous demand for energy to run the servers that drive this technology. Fortune believes that AI electricity requirements could consume as much as a quarter of all electrical power in the United States within six years. That is a mind-boggling amount of electricity, and it comes at the expense of every other industrial sector as well as our residential requirements. There is just so much electrical power generated in the United States to go around.
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by Alan M. Dershowitz • October 14, 2024 at 7:30 am
"[I]n 1933 a French premier ought to have said (and if I had been the French premier I would have said it): 'The new Reich Chancellor is the man who wrote Mein Kampf, which says this and that. This man cannot be tolerated in our vicinity. Either he disappears or we march!' But they didn't do it. They left us alone and let us slip through the risky zone, and we were able to sail around all dangerous reefs. And when we were done, and well-armed, better than they, then they started the war!" — Joseph Goebbels, Germany's Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda from 1933-1945. Obama has been the "Chamberlain" in this 21st-century version of Great Britain's and France's appeasement of an evil and dangerous regime. The Biden administration has extended Obama's destructive policy, resulting in an even stronger and more dangerous Iran. Under the Trump administration, Iran was considerably weakened economically and thus militarily. Now it is on the verge of acquiring a nuclear arsenal which will allow its proxies to operate under the protection of Iran's nuclear umbrella. The other step that Biden could take would be to work with Israel on preventing Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal. Unfortunately, this cannot be achieved by more treaties or negotiations. As recent history shows, Iran will simply cheat, as it did after Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal." The only way to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is through a military attack against its nuclear facilities, many of which are very deep underground. This can be achieved through U.S.-Israeli military and intelligence cooperation. Israel should not give up any military advantage in exchange for intangible promises. Just look at how Russia violated its commitment, in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for the latter giving up its nuclear weapons. Ukraine gave the weapons up; in 2014 and 2022, Russia invaded anyway. Although the United States, even as far back as the Obama administration, has pledged to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no reason why Iran should believe that, considering US appeasement tactics under Democratic administrations. So the only realistic alternative – the least bad among the series of not very good alternatives – is a joint military attack, as surgical as possible, on Iran's nearly-completed nuclear weapons program. To allow Iran to cross the threshold and acquire nuclear weapons would pose a catastrophic threat to world peace. Stopping Iran from having a nuclear arsenal would, on the other hand, be a great accomplishment and a lasting positive legacy for the Biden presidency. The result of inaction will be a terrorist regime with a nuclear arsenal, followed by a global nuclear-arms race. The fault for such a dangerous outcome will lie squarely with the "Chamberlain" Democrats.
The legacy of the last two Democratic presidencies – President Barack Obama's and President Joe Biden's – will be the appeasement of Iran in its efforts to dominate the Middle East and eventually expand its influence through the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. Pictured: Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the White House on July 25, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
The legacy of the last two Democratic presidencies – President Barack Obama's and President Joe Biden's – will be the appeasement of Iran in its efforts to dominate the Middle East and eventually expand its influence through the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. Obama has been the "Chamberlain" in this 21st-century version of Great Britain's and France's appeasement of an evil and dangerous regime. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain thought he had a secure peace treaty with Hitler – "Peace in our time," he promised the British -- only to have Hitler break it at the first opportunity by invading the rump Czechoslovak Republic. By the mid-1930s, Nazi Germany's plan to dominate Europe should have been clear to western leaders. As Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary:
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by Daniel Greenfield • October 14, 2024 at 4:00 am
The Israelis informed the Biden-Harris admin about the Pagergeddon attack and the attack on Hezbollah's leader once both were underway. Why did they do that? The same folks hounding Trump over classified documents leak constantly, and they do so deliberately. The goal is to sabotage any Israeli operation, much the way Obama's people sabotaged a planned Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program by leaking the information.
The Israelis informed the Biden-Harris admin about the Pagergeddon attack and the attack on Hezbollah's leader once both were underway. Why did they do that? The same folks hounding Trump over classified documents leak constantly, and they do so deliberately. The goal is to sabotage any Israeli operation. Pictured: Excavators work in a crater near the site of the assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, Lebanon, September 29, 2024. (Photo by Fadel Itani/Middle East Images/AFP via Getty Images)
The Israelis informed the Biden-Harris admin about the Pagergeddon attack and the attack on Hezbollah's leader once both were underway. Why did they do that? Here's the latest in a series of anonymous leaked stories about Israel's plans to retaliate against Iran. U.S. officials believe Israel has narrowed down what they will target in their response to Iran's attack, which these officials describe as Iranian military and energy infrastructure. There is no indication that Israel will target nuclear facilities or carry out assassinations, but U.S. officials stressed that the Israelis have not made a final decision about how and when to act. The U.S. does not know when Israel's response could come, but officials said the Israeli military is poised and ready to go at any time once the order is given.
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by Con Coughlin • October 13, 2024 at 5:10 am
Gavriel Mairone, the attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, argues that these shocking allegations demonstrate that, for more than a decade, UNRWA's aid distribution network was involved in widespread fraud and corruption. The lawsuit claims this scheme not only enriched Hamas but also funded terrorism, playing a pivotal role in the October 7 attacks. The first damning evidence of the UN's complicity in the worst terrorist atrocity committed in Israel's history emerged after Israel's military reported that 450 workers employed by UNRWA were "military operatives from Hamas and other armed groups" and has shared this intelligence with the United Nations. The dossier of "a UN crime against humanity" and its demonization of Israel is too long to list, but one can get a glimpse of it... A better idea, given the body's recent woeful record on its handling of the Middle East, would be to demolish the entire infrastructure of this corrupt and institutionally biased body.
Accusations that the United Nations funded Hamas's terrorist infrastructure by transferring $1.3 billion to the organisation, some of which was used to finance the purchase of weapons used in last year's October 7 attacks, will only add to the view that the UN is no longer fit to fulfil the role for which it was originally intended. Pictured: The UN's New York headquarters. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)
Accusations that the United Nations funded Hamas's terrorist infrastructure by transferring $1.3 billion to the organisation, some of which was used to finance the purchase of weapons used in last year's October 7 attacks, will only add to the view that the UN is no longer fit to fulfil the role for which it was originally intended. A lawsuit filed in US Federal Court by victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks makes damning accusations against the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) that it was involved in orchestrating a large-scale money laundering operation from which the terrorist organisation benefitted. The suit alleges that significant amounts of humanitarian aid intended for Gaza residents were diverted to Hamas.
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by Amir Taheri • October 13, 2024 at 4:00 am
However, it is hard to see how the October 7 attack could be categorized as an act of resistance by freedom-fighters... For Hamas, October 7 was a war of choice, not a war of necessity, and its goal wasn't just to terrorize a real or imaginary foe but to murder as many non-combatants as possible. Terror is used to persuade or force an adversary into doing something you want or stop doing something you don't want and sadly, in many instances it works. However, if an act of terror transcends certain boundaries, it could produce the opposite of what the terrorist hoped for. In other words, it is all a matter of dosage. Without the "Al-Aqsa Storm" raid, no Israeli prime minister, let alone Benjamin Netanyahu, who happened to have hit the nadir of unpopularity, would have dared to launch a total war aimed at flushing Hamas out of Gaza and Hezbollah out of Lebanon. Sinwar isn't the first victim of unintended consequences and won't be the last either. In hindsight, it seems that the late leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, understood the importance of dosage in terror and/or resistance. This is why initially, to the surprise of some, Nasrallah refused to enter the danse-macabre opened by Sinwar. We may never know what persuaded or forced Nasrallah to abandon his usual caution and join an adventure beyond his control. My guess is that he didn't jump, but was pushed. Your guess as to who pushed him.
It is hard to see how the October 7 attack could be categorized as an act of resistance by freedom-fighters. For Hamas, October 7 was a war of choice, not a war of necessity, and its goal wasn't just to terrorize a real or imaginary foe but to murder as many non-combatants as possible. Pictured: Hamas terrorists on their way into Israel from Gaza Strip, on their mission to murder Jews, on the morning of October 7, 2023. (Photo by Said Khatib/AFP via Getty Images)
These days, my two favorite bookshops in Paris and London are devoting a full shelf to books on or inspired by Hamas's "Al-Aqsa Storm" October 7 invasion of Israel. Some of these books offer various accounts of what happened on that day and could be classed as extended reportages of the kind news magazines offered in the good old days of print journalism. The most interesting of these, Trey Yingst's Black Saturday, which broadens its scope to offer a portrayal of the subsequent war in Gaza. Because the author is a television reporter, his fast-paced reportage often resembles a newsreel. That, however, does not prevent him from offering often deep insights into the mind-sets of the two adversaries.
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by Lawrence Kadish • October 13, 2024 at 3:30 am
Pictured: The Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs boson was confirmed in 2012. The section pictured is located in Echenevex, France, on the border with Switzerland. (Photo by Valentin Flauraud/AFP via Getty Images)
Few of us could master the curriculum when we were in school. Atoms, electrons, charged particles; it was a strange and alien world that few of us understood and even fewer could embrace much less master. Yet we live in a 21st Century world that has been defined by the fundamental discoveries revealed, controlled, and directed by the laws of physics. Far more than some distant and mysterious field of study, theoretical studies that began decades ago continue to yield results that few could have foreseen, touching people around the globe.
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