CAN'T RECALL THE SAUDI INVASION OF SEPT 11?
'Holy' War Against Israel
On October 7, 2023, Hamas launched a religious, "holy" war against Israel, known as Jihad.
The principle of Jihad rejects all laws of the Old World of infidels and calls for a revolutionary struggle for the triumph of Islam. At the same time, Jihad is interpreted as the use of violence in various forms to achieve a religious ideal.
Hamas called this war the Al Aqsa Flood after the name of Jerusalem's Al Aqsa Mosque.
This war was not started under the slogan of liberating Palestine, but as a war with a religious goal at its core.
Hamas is a Sunni organization belonging to the Muslim Brothers current. The goal of the Muslim Brothers is to remove non-Islamic governments and establish Islamic rule on a worldwide scale by recreating a Great Islamic Caliphate. The terrorist organization Hamas, a branch of the Muslim Brothers, has turned the Palestinian struggle into a religious struggle. Hamas's goal is not so much the creation of a Palestinian state as the destruction of the Jewish state, which is an obstacle to the establishment of a Great Islamic Caliphate.
Hamas is dissolving the Palestinian struggle into a sea of Islam. Instead of reinforcing national motives, it makes the Palestinian national movement a small insignificant but extremist factor in Islam's struggle against secular rule. The confluence of a Palestinian rivulet into the mighty river of Islam means little to that religion's victory march. Instead of the long-anticipated victory over Israel, the Arab world has received in the form of Hamas fanatics, whom it has been fighting for decades in its territories and who threaten the existence and sustainability of the regimes of secular, moderate Arab countries. From a banner and symbol of the struggle against Israel, the Palestinians have become part of the conflict between the secular and the religious in the Arab world.
According to Arab propaganda, Jewry is only a religion, not a nation. Therefore, Hamas is waging a religious, "holy" war, a Jihad, against Israel. The day after Hamas' aggression, the Shiite terrorist organization Hezb'allah began military action against Israel. Since this Shiite organization is also a religious organization, and it too, in fact, is waging a "holy" war, a Jihad against Israel. Unlike Hamas, which seeks to export a Sunni Islamic revolution, Hezb'allah is busy exporting a Shiite Islamic revolution, the ideology of which contradicts that of Hamas, which Hezb'allah considers heretics. In its 1985 manifesto, Hezb'allah stated that its primary goal was the destruction of Israel and the elimination of Western influence in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East. Hezbollah's goal is the widespread establishment of an Iranian-type Islamic regime. Hezb'allah's version of fundamentalism incorporates the principles of Iran's Islamic ideology, including an emphasis on fighting secularism.
Thus, both organizations are waging a religious war with Israel in which there can be no compromise, for such wars are regarded as God-ordained wars that do not allow deals with Allah. Such wars can only be stopped by destroying the aggressors. The Western method of fighting such wars, based on stopping hostilities through negotiations and treaties, does not work here. Belief in the Western "progressive" resolution of such conflicts is an illusion, a wishful thinking. This illusion does not dissipate despite the chain reaction of violence against Israel in the Middle East and its affiliates on other continents since October 7, 2023.
Although the wars in the Middle East are still categorized as "conventional" (non-nuclear) wars, they represent humanity's distant past in which religious wars raged. These wars are not just being waged by terrorist organizations without adhering to any civilized methods of warfare, they are funded by criminal sources. In addition to the flow of petrodollars going to terrorists from Iran and Qatar, they support their religious wars in ways that are gross violations of the law in any country.
One way of financing terror in Lebanon is through drugs. Since the 1970s, Lebanon has been one of the world's leading drug producers. By 1997, the civil war had virtually destroyed all other areas of the economy, but marijuana production became the dominant import, involving almost every ethnic community and force active in Lebanon. It is Hezb'allah that controls the Bekaa Valley, where a large percentage of the country's plantations are concentrated.
Since the 1980s, Hezb'allah sympathizers have been involved in cocaine production and trafficking in Colombia, in the triple border zone where the borders of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil meet, and eventually in Venezuela and other parts of South America. There have also also indications of Hezb'allah's ties to the Mexican Los Zetas cartel, which shipped up to $200 million worth of cocaine to the United States every month.
Hezb'allah's spiritual leader believes that "drug trafficking is morally acceptable if the drugs are sold to Western infidels as part of the war against the enemies of Islam."
However, Hezbollah's secretary general has repeatedly denied involvement in drug production, although supporters of the organization have been apprehended with large amounts of contraband around the world at various times over the years. Hezb'allah, which is one of the world's leaders in the manufacture and sale of drugs, is officially part of Lebanon's parliament and government. Israel's neighbor Lebanon, is a country run by terrorists and drug dealers.
Hezb'allah's sponsor and spiritual leader, the Islamic Republic of Iran, has repeatedly declared its desire to destroy Israel, a U.N. member state.
This state is doing everything in its power to achieve this goal. However, the U.N., which was created to bring peace to the world, passes many times more resolutions blaming Israel than Iran. Since 2006, the U.N. General Assembly has adopted 297 anti-Israel resolutions out of a total of 761 resolutions, a 39% rate.
During that time it has passed only two (!) anti-Iran resolutions, which is 0.26%. This data shows that the U.N. considers Israel 150 times more dangerous to "world peace" than nuclear Iran, the organizer and mastermind of world terror. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has organized terrorist activities in Germany, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Kenya, Bahrain, Turkey, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, U.S.A., Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Libya, Nigeria, Somalia, Congo, North Caucasus, Algeria, Indonesia, Lebanon, Pakistan, Tunisia, Philippines, Albania, India and Israel. Iran is in the business of exporting the Islamic Shiite revolution to the world. Its imperial efforts will soon be supported by the manufacture of nuclear bombs. But Israel continues to be regarded as the perturber of tranquility and peace on earth and the major source of planetary woes and misery.
The fundamentalist principles of Hamas and Hezb'allah are different, as opposing Sunnis and Shiites should be, but they are united by their desperate struggle against secularism, against Western civilization, and against the Jewish state, highlighting the difference between the two civilizations.
According to the historian of Islam Daniel Pipes:
The purpose of Jihad is not so much to spread the Islamic faith as to expand the sphere of influence of sovereign Muslim power. [...] Jihad is thus inherently shamelessly aggressive, and its ultimate goal is to achieve Muslim domination of the entire world.
He also points out that Jihad has always manifested itself in the form of territorial expansion.
Western man tries to measure, evaluate and comprehend what is happening in the Middle East, but his experience, knowledge and customs limit his understanding of the aggression of Muslim terrorists against Israel and his reaction. This limitation of the West was expressed by Bernard Lewis, an expert on Islam:
Modern Western man is incapable, for the most part, of assigning a dominant and central place to religion in his own life, and incapable of imagining that other peoples elsewhere might do so. [...] Modern Western thinking cannot imagine people fighting and dying in such numbers because of mere religious differences; there must be some other - "genuine" - reasons beneath the religious veil. We are willing to accept that religious conflicts occur in rare instances, such as in Ulster, but to admit that religion can be the essence of an entire civilization is a stretch. Even the very appearance of such an idea is regarded by liberals as a gross insult to their "subjects." This is reflected in the current failure, politically, journalistically, and academically, to recognize the importance of the factor of religion in the current affairs of the Muslim world and in the subsequent resort to the language of "left" and "right," "progressive" and "conservative," and the rest of the Western terminology, the use of which in explaining Muslim political phenomena is about as relevant as a cricket commentator commenting on a baseball game.... Muslims from different countries, speaking different languages, share the same memories of a common and sacred past, the same understanding of social identity, the same sense of common destiny. It is not the nation or country, as in the West, that forms the historical basis of identity, but the religious and political community, and the imported Western idea of ethnic and territorial nationhood remains, like secularism, alien, strange and incomprehensible."
Perhaps the West's misunderstanding of the meaning of the Jihad around Israel is also due to the fact that the Jewish state is located at the point where the geopolitical fissure of the world, the "line of separation of civilizations" according to the concept of political scientist Samuel Huntington, takes place, i.e. at the point where, in the terminology of historian Arnold Toynbee, the "clash of civilizations" takes place. The "clash of civilizations" is a huge tectonic shift that is difficult to comprehend and therefore easier to ignore.
Image: Wouter Engler, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 4.0 DEEDBy Alex Gordon
NYC becomes a literal den of thieves as the ‘huddled masses’ continue to swarm in and set up shop
New Yorkers, meet your newest neighbor:
Charming fellow, isn’t he?
When addressing the “migrant” crisis (third-world invaders) flooding into America from every corner of the globe, those on the left often evoke the days of a bustling Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty with the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” words emblazoned on the pedestal, or perhaps even remind us of our Christian ancestors who landed at Plymouth Rock to escape government persecution in Europe; they assert that this country was built on “immigrants” and without immigration, the U.S. as we know it, would have never existed.
But, as will all arguments left, that’s all fallacious and inconsistent. First of all, in one context those Plymouth Rock pilgrims are celebrated as immigrants fleeing tyranny, in another they’re decried as colonizers who displaced native populations. Secondly, this country wasn’t just built on those immigrating (first to the New World, then the British Colonies, and eventually, the United States), it was built on Judeo-Christian principles by anyone who believed in them and lived by those values, which clearly, at one point, applied to a vast majority of newcomers.
But somewhere along the way that mindset died, and the migrants of today (largely) fall into one of two camps: terrorists, or freeloaders. Either way, neither group has any intention of assimilating or contributing to American society.
We’ve got guys like the man below, seemingly here at the behest of unidentified overlords for some not-so-clandestine objective?
(Pamela Geller speculated that this border-crosser may be known-terrorist Movsum Samadov, leader of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan.)
And then we’ve got the poverty-stricken third-worlders, some of whom can’t even read or write in their native languages, just doing what they’ve always known—crime—and New York City is the perfect case study of what life looks like when you introduce hordes of state-of-nature humans to modern Western civilization. Needless to say, “cultural enrichment” in the Big Apple isn’t going so well:
NYC migrant pickpocketing teams are the newest headache for NYPD as trio busted for string of West Village bar thefts
The NYPD is honing in on migrant pickpocketing crews that are now working the Big Apple — with nearly 100 asylum seekers already popping up on the NYPD radar, law enforcement sources tell The Post.
Also, this:
Breaking the law and barely surviving: Inside NYC’s underground migrant economy
Many new migrants are creating their own underground economy within their community — selling homemade food to other migrants or providing them services such as hair-cutting.
‘They aren’t going to a barber shop or a deli,’ Di Martino said. ‘They’re creating cash businesses and not paying taxes.’
Monica Yamaira Arias, 43, hawks roast pork, rice and fried plantains from her perch outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which the city transformed into an intake center for recent arrivals. Arias, 43, arrived in New York more than a year ago from Venezuela, and now sits every lunch hour on a blue Igloo cooler selling home-cooked meals, packed in aluminum containers, for $10 each.
‘It’s what we’re used to eating in our country,’ said Arias….
And from today, this:
NYPD seizes illegal scooters from migrant shelters amid ‘uptick’ in moped-riding bandits in NYC
The NYPD is cracking down on unregistered scooters as robberies involving moped-riding bandits have become a frequent problem across the city over the past couple months.
Officers targeted migrant facilities throughout the five boroughs Wednesday night where they seized dozens of illegal electric bikes and took them away on a flatbed, ABC7 reported.
The confiscated bikes had no registrations or had stolen plates, according to the station.
As London’s leftist mayor Sadiq Khan once quipped, crime—whether it’s jihadi bombings, acid attacks, and Islamic stabbing sprees, or tax fraudsters, pickpockets, and Mad Max moped bandits—is simply “part and parcel” of living in a (leftist) big city.
ANYWHERE THERE ARE MUSLIMS, THERE IS VIOLENCE AND DEATH. KEEP THEM IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND LET THEM STONE EACH OTHER OFF THE PLANET.
NYC becomes a literal den of thieves as the ‘huddled masses’ continue to swarm in and set up shop
New Yorkers, meet your newest neighbor:
Charming fellow, isn’t he?
When addressing the “migrant” crisis (third-world invaders) flooding into America from every corner of the globe, those on the left often evoke the days of a bustling Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty with the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” words emblazoned on the pedestal, or perhaps even remind us of our Christian ancestors who landed at Plymouth Rock to escape government persecution in Europe; they assert that this country was built on “immigrants” and without immigration, the U.S. as we know it, would have never existed.
But, as will all arguments left, that’s all fallacious and inconsistent. First of all, in one context those Plymouth Rock pilgrims are celebrated as immigrants fleeing tyranny, in another they’re decried as colonizers who displaced native populations. Secondly, this country wasn’t just built on those immigrating (first to the New World, then the British Colonies, and eventually, the United States), it was built on Judeo-Christian principles by anyone who believed in them and lived by those values, which clearly, at one point, applied to a vast majority of newcomers.
But somewhere along the way that mindset died, and the migrants of today (largely) fall into one of two camps: terrorists, or freeloaders. Either way, neither group has any intention of assimilating or contributing to American society.
We’ve got guys like the man below, seemingly here at the behest of unidentified overlords for some not-so-clandestine objective?
(Pamela Geller speculated that this border-crosser may be known-terrorist Movsum Samadov, leader of the Islamic Party of Azerbaijan.)
And then we’ve got the poverty-stricken third-worlders, some of whom can’t even read or write in their native languages, just doing what they’ve always known—crime—and New York City is the perfect case study of what life looks like when you introduce hordes of state-of-nature humans to modern Western civilization. Needless to say, “cultural enrichment” in the Big Apple isn’t going so well:
NYC migrant pickpocketing teams are the newest headache for NYPD as trio busted for string of West Village bar thefts
The NYPD is honing in on migrant pickpocketing crews that are now working the Big Apple — with nearly 100 asylum seekers already popping up on the NYPD radar, law enforcement sources tell The Post.
Also, this:
Breaking the law and barely surviving: Inside NYC’s underground migrant economy
Many new migrants are creating their own underground economy within their community — selling homemade food to other migrants or providing them services such as hair-cutting.
‘They aren’t going to a barber shop or a deli,’ Di Martino said. ‘They’re creating cash businesses and not paying taxes.’
Monica Yamaira Arias, 43, hawks roast pork, rice and fried plantains from her perch outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown, which the city transformed into an intake center for recent arrivals. Arias, 43, arrived in New York more than a year ago from Venezuela, and now sits every lunch hour on a blue Igloo cooler selling home-cooked meals, packed in aluminum containers, for $10 each.
‘It’s what we’re used to eating in our country,’ said Arias….
And from today, this:
NYPD seizes illegal scooters from migrant shelters amid ‘uptick’ in moped-riding bandits in NYC
The NYPD is cracking down on unregistered scooters as robberies involving moped-riding bandits have become a frequent problem across the city over the past couple months.
Officers targeted migrant facilities throughout the five boroughs Wednesday night where they seized dozens of illegal electric bikes and took them away on a flatbed, ABC7 reported.
The confiscated bikes had no registrations or had stolen plates, according to the station.
As London’s leftist mayor Sadiq Khan once quipped, crime—whether it’s jihadi bombings, acid attacks, and Islamic stabbing sprees, or tax fraudsters, pickpockets, and Mad Max moped bandits—is simply “part and parcel” of living in a (leftist) big city.
THE MUSLIM DESTRUCTION OF EUROPE. FIRST SWEDEN, THEN FRANCE, AND ENGLAND
Europe's Population Crisis Is About To Explode, Demographics Collapse is Here. End of EU?
Poll Reveals Brutal Gaza Reality
In the 18 years since Israel withdrew its military and civilians from the Gaza Strip, Hamas has fired approximately 30,000 rockets and mortars at Israel: about 12,000 from 2007 until 2019, another 4,360 during eleven days of war in 2021 and, over 12,000 in the current war, which has displaced over 150,000 Israelis. Since Israel’s 2005 Disengagement, Hamas has also attempted to invade aerially, navally, and through tunnels, and executed a range of other assaults, including airborne arson attacks and ecoterrorism, shootings, abductions, and the brutal massacre of about 1,200 people on October 7, 2023, leading to the fourth major Israel-Gaza war in 14 years.
Thus, by now it should be clear that mainstream policy thinking on Gaza has failed. Ignoring hard facts to nurture illusions about Gazans coexisting peacefully alongside Israelis condemns everyone to perpetual war.
The latest opinion poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PSR) reveals harsh realities that demolish any fantasies about a postwar Gaza living peacefully alongside Israel. Large majorities of respondents in both the West Bank and Gaza expressed a commitment to violence against Israel (over 60%) and support for the October 7th massacre despite the resulting war and devastation (over 70%).
The poll is based on in-person interviews of 1,231 adults (750 in the West Bank and 481 in the Gaza Strip) and was conducted during the pause in the current war (November 22nd to December 2nd).
Other key findings:
- The most popular Palestinian figure is arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah leader imprisoned by Israel after being convicted of extensive terrorist activities, including attacks that murdered five Israelis.
- After the end of the war, if the West Bank and the Gaza Strip are run by the Palestinian Authority (PA), 70% would oppose an Arab contingent helping the PA to maintain security.
- 64% oppose the idea of a two-state solution.
- When asked which party should rule the Gaza Strip after the war, 60% selected Hamas; 16% selected a PA national unity government without President Abbas; 7% selected the PA with Abbas; 3% selected one or more Arab countries; 3% selected a national unity government under Abbas, and 2% selected the Israeli army.
Hamas' disastrous governance has been obvious for decades, but shocking new examples regularly emerge. Hamas diverted billions in international aid 
for military purposes, like building an underground city of terror (including this 50-meter-deep tunnel large enough for use by vehicles). Even more evidence has surfaced, from Gaza hospital director Ahmed Kahlot, that Hamas uses hospitals and ambulances for military purposes.
And yet Gazans still support Hamas in large numbers, prefer Hamas rule over any alternative, and support the 10/7 massacre.
The U.S. seems to think that a reformed PA could run Gaza, but that ignores two inconvenient facts:
- the latest poll shows that the PA is deeply unpopular and would likely lose any election or be promptly overthrown, and
- the PA has an abysmal track record of corruption and was too weak to prevent a Hamas-led coup in Gaza, less than two years after Israel's withdrawal. So why would the PA perform any better this next time?
No Arab government wants the thankless burden of governing Gaza. And the latest poll indicates that Gazans themselves don't want any outside Arab power to manage security.
So who would actually achieve the de-radicalization upon which a Palestinian state in Gaza is predicated? Who could be trusted to ensure that the general population is primed for peace and that the textbooks used to educate children are not full of hatred and incitement, as they have been for decades? Even the UN has been teaching hate to Gaza's children. So which political entity has the popularity, authority, and morality to educate for coexistence and to ensure that all aid money rebuilds Gaza as Singapore instead of Somalia?
Despite no answer to this fundamental question, the international community -- including the U.S., EU, and UN -- still clings to the delusional idea that if they just pressure Israel into accepting a future Palestinian state in Gaza, that impoverished, overcrowded, and radicalized territory will suddenly flourish and peacefully embrace Israel.
While Japan and Nazi Germany were successfully de-radicalized, that was only after the kind of absolute defeat and extended occupation that the international community would never allow for Gaza. Looking at the various rulers of the Gaza Strip since 1967 -- Israel (1967-2005), the PA-Hamas (2005-2007), and Hamas (2007-2023) -- nobody has successfully governed, much less de-radicalized Gaza. And the latest poll excludes any foreign Arab power from doing so.
So those who are pressuring Israel to stop fighting before Hamas has been conclusively defeated and who have no credible plan for deradicalizing the Gaza Strip are condemning Israelis and Gazans to a state of perpetual conflict, as the latest poll reveals. That is not a two-state "solution" but rather an endless-war problem.
Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic submarine thriller about Iranian nukes, Hamas, and Hezb'allah.
Houthis Claim Missile Attack on U.S. Navy Warship
The Iran-backed Houthi terrorists of Yemen said on Wednesday they fired several anti-ship missiles at a U.S. warship in the Red Sea.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said a single missile targeted the guided-missile destroyer USS Gravely and was intercepted without injuries or damage to the ship.
Houthi Brigadier General Yahya Saree gave a televised speech on Wednesday from Sana’a, the Yemeni national capital violently seized by Houthi insurgents in 2014, in which he portrayed the strike on the U.S. destroyer as a massive attack involving numerous missiles, conducted on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza.
Saree said all U.S. and British warships in the Red Sea have become “legitimate targets for Yemenis within the fundamental and inalienable right to defend their homeland and nation and in reaffirmation of their staunch support of Palestine.”
Saree said Houthi attacks on shipping would continue until Israel halts its war against the Hamas terrorists in Gaza and eases all restrictions on supplies for the Palestinian population.
Pentagon Press Secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said on Tuesday the U.S. military is equally determined to “protect international shipping and mariners that are transiting the Red Sea, as well as to degrade and disrupt Houthi capability to conduct these kinds of attacks.”
European Union (EU) High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell said on Wednesday the EU may soon join the United States and United Kingdom in patrolling the Red Sea to defend civilian ships against Houthi attacks.
Borrell said European firms are pleading for more protection so they can use the much faster and less expensive Red Sea-Suez Canal route for shipping instead of sailing around Africa. He stressed that if the EU does get involved, it will only act to defend civilian ships against Houthi attacks rather than join in punitive U.S. and UK strikes against Houthi positions in Yemen.
This photograph provided by the Indian Navy shows the U.S.-owned ship Genco Picardy, which came under attack on January 17, 2024, from a bomb-carrying drone launched by Yemen’s Houthi rebels in the Gulf of Aden. (Indian Navy via AP, File)
The attack on USS Gravely was the second Houthi missile launch at a U.S. Navy ship in less than a week. On Friday, the insurgents fired a missile at the destroyer USS Carney in the Gulf of Aden. The Carney was also able to intercept the Houthi weapon without damage or injuries.
The Houthis claimed on Monday that they targeted USS Lewis B. Puller, an expeditionary mobile base ship designed to carry personnel and equipment for both combat and humanitarian missions. The Pentagon denied the Houthi claims and said the vessel did not come under attack.
USS Lewis B. Puller was the ship that conducted a boarding operation in the Arabian Sea in January, during which two Navy SEALs were killed.
Navy Special Warfare Operator 1st Class Christopher Chambers and Navy Special Warfare Operator 2nd Class Nathan Ingram were reported missing at sea after deploying from USS Lewis B. Puller to board a ship carrying illegal Iranian weapons for the Houthis. Chambers and Ingram were the first U.S. military personnel killed in the Middle East since the Houthis began attacking Red Sea shipping.
The ghosts of 9/11 still haunt us
As a 9/11 Pentagon “survivor” who lost twenty-seven “shipmates” on that fateful day, I view the current situation in Iran and our yet to be determined response with deep skepticism.
Prior to 9/11 and the highest loss of American lives since Pearl Harbor, our intelligence establishment had the exact location of Osama bin Laden pinpointed several times, to the point that we could have taken him out by a number of means. The only thing lacking was the political will and resolve by the National Command Authority (NCA) to give the green light to execute the mission. The trigger was not pulled, as there was always “hope” that he could be dealt with under more favorable conditions.
Fast-forward some twenty years, and we continue to appease our adversary in the Middle East: Iran. The current administration’s intransigence and hand-wringing have only exacerbated a volatile situation, and now we have needlessly lost the lives of three more American service members. As with Osama bin Laden, we may “hope” Iran’s proxies are reined in, but as I learned as a young military officer, “hope is never a strategy.”
In my office I have a photograph signed by the twenty-seven of my former office mates who were lost in the Pentagon on 9/11. When I see their faces staring back at me each day, I can only wonder: if a previous administration had taken the risk and acted decisively, would they still be here with their families and loved ones, and not standing the watch for perpetuity in the Pentagon Navy Command Center?
It was Winston Churchill who stated with steely-eyed determination, in the face of Nazi Germany in the dark days prior to World War II, that “appeasement is feeding the crocodile and hoping he eats you last.” Well, the events of recent days have proven that both appeasement and hope have led, as they did prior to 9/11, only to the loss of American lives. If the ghosts of 9/11 have taught us anything, it is to be swift, bold, and decisive.
Unfortunately, I suspect we shall see more of the same failed diplomacy and missteps responsible for the loss of lives on 9/11, Abbey Gate during our feckless retreat from Afghanistan, and now in Jordan. I can still see the ghosts of 9/11 asking me: why did they die in vain? If only a nation that was once not afraid to confront evil and spit in its eye stood tall and acted like the leader of the free world, then they could perhaps rest in peace.
Image via Picryl.
Palestinians are obfuscating history
We are currently witnessing a depraved reality. Israelis are traumatized following the massacre by Hamas — and rather than offering empathy and compassion for Israel, much of the world has turned against the country. In fact, antisemitic demonstrations have surged to new heights, engulfing world capitals as well as New York and Washington.
At the same time, a perverse phenomenon is being played out. During the recent Christmas holidays, Jesus’s name was profaned, injected into the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. U.S. representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) (D-N.Y.) drew parallels between the persecution of Jesus and modern-day Israel. On Instagram, she posted this: “Jesus was part of a targeted population indiscriminately killed to protect an unjust leader’s power.” And “the high Christian holiday is about honoring the precious sanctity of a family that, if the story were to unfold today, would be Jewish Palestinians.”
AOC ignored the sadistic murder of entire Israeli families by Hamas terrorists. The so-called “unjust leader” AOC is referring to is essentially Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. Israel’s leader and the rest of the civilized world were appalled by the Nazi-like atrocities committed by Hamas, but apparently AOC was not. And, in her ignorance, she neglects Jesus’s ministry and sense of justice, which would certainly have excoriated the Hamas butchery.
AOC was not the only one to distort history. Father Edward Beck, a Catholic priest and religion commentator, was interviewed on CNN about pain and suffering in the world during the holiday season. He noted, “What I am struck by is that the story of Christmas is about a Palestinian Jew — how often do you find those words put together? A Palestinian Jew — born into a time when his country was occupied, right? I mean, you can’t make up the parallels to our current world situation right now.”
This outrageous falsification of history was best exemplified by Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, who, according to the AP (December 23, 2013) proclaimed in Bethlehem, “Jesus was a Palestinian messenger of hope.” Abbas, a Muslim, whose regime has oppressed Christians and caused the Christians who once made up the majority population of Bethlehem to flee to Santiago de Chile, was cynically using Jesus to appeal to the Christian world.
Jesus was born a Jew and died as one. During Jesus’s time, the word “Palestine” did not even exist.
In the year 135, the Romans finally defeated the Jews revolting against them. They determined to erase all traces of Jewish indigeneity. They renamed the land of Israel Syria Palaestina and King David’s capital, Jerusalem, Aelia Capitolina. The name was derived from the Philistines, a people from the Aegean Sea who had invaded and settled the coastal region of southern Israel.
The Arabs during the early British Mandatory years, living in what is today Israel, identified themselves as Southern Syrians, not as Palestinians. For political expediency, this changed after the Jewish people declared statehood in 1948. The Jews, until statehood, were known as Palestinian Jews, and their passports identified them as such.
Jewish and Christian links to the land of Israel are being erased with the imprimatur of UNESCO, a U.N. agency. UNESCO makes a mockery of its purported mission for authentic cultural preservation. The Muslim world makes up a majority of the U.N.’s membership, and Muslim nations, coupled with the likes of AOC, are engaged in this charade. That is why in 2011 the U.S. and Israel withdrew their dues from UNESCO.
Dennis Ross, former Middle East envoy in the Clinton administration, recalled that during the Camp David Summit in July 2000 with Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) chairman, and Ehud Barak, Israel’s prime minister, Arafat told Clinton that the Temple didn’t exist in Jerusalem, but rather, it was located in Nablus. Arafat argued that there was no trace of the temple on the Temple Mount! Moreover, Arafat had disclosed to a delegation of Arab leaders that the holy Jewish temple was not in Jerusalem, but in Yemen. Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s successor, was a double-denier — he denied the existence of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and denied the Holocaust.
Israeli and Western archaeologists have discovered tangible evidence of biblical accounts. Yet Palestinian Arabs have sought to gain legitimacy and indigeneity by seeking to repudiate Jewish indigeneity in the land of Israel. To that end, Palestinian officials at the Al-Aqsa Mosque doing renovations in 1996 discarded artifacts from Solomon’s Temple. Israeli archaeologists raised their concern over how the Waqf (Islamic Council) was trying to obliterate evidence of Jewish history. Nevertheless, as Smithsonian Institute Magazine revealed, archaeologists have found various artifacts in the discarded shards from Solomon’s Temple.
The same Smithsonian Institute Magazine reported that a 1929 publication written by Waqf historian Aref al-Aref, titled “A Brief Guide to the Haram al-Sharif,” states that the Mount’s “identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute.”
The Palestinians, AOC and her “progressive” friends in Congress, and Hamas’s Western sympathizers not only lack empathy for Israeli victims, but also accuse Israel of aggression and oppression. The fact that Hamas deliberately attacked Israel, and indiscriminately targeted innocents, does not bother them. Their goal is to delegitimize the Jewish state, ultimately achieving Israel’s disappearance. But history and truth will not be obfuscated despite Palestinian political will.
Image: scottgunn via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0.
Rule of thuggery prevails in Denmark
Denmark recently capitulated, forfeiting its hard-fought freedoms to those who hate it. According to a recent report,
Denmark’s parliament has passed a bill that makes it illegal to burn copies of the Quran in public places... The bill, which prohibits “inappropriate treatment of writings with significant religious importance for a recognized religious community,” was passed with 94 votes in favor and 77 opposed... In practical terms, it will be forbidden to burn, tear or otherwise defile holy texts publicly or in videos intended to be disseminated widely. Those who break the law risk a fine or up to two years in prison… The purpose of the law is to counter “the systematic mockery” that, among other things, has contributed to intensifying the threat of [Islamic] terrorism in Denmark, the Ministry of Justice said.
There is much to say here.
First, it is interesting to note that the new bill does not single out Islam or the Koran by name, but rather seeks to protect from desecration “writings with significant religious importance for a recognized religious community.” By employing such generic wording that applies to and presumably protects every religious text and community -- though everyone knows the law exists exclusively to protect the Muhammadan creed -- the Danes appear to have copied a play from the Islamic gamebook.
As it happens, the blasphemy laws of many Muslim nations do not officially protect Islam alone but extend to other religions. (Egypt, for example, criminalizes the mockery of “heavenly” religions -- Islam, Christianity, and Judaism -- though the law is virtually exclusively used to protect Islam.) Muslim nations -- and now Denmark -- pretend to protect all religions in order to appear neutral, objective, not siding with this or that faith. Muslim nations also do it for their image: better to appear interested in protecting the sanctity of all religions rather than appear as rabid fanatics who cannot tolerate criticism.
Second, in adopting what amounts to a “blasphemy” law, Denmark has effectively declared that it is not a nation of principles, but rather one willing to compromise its ethos to appease thugs. Denmark, bear in mind, was once at the fore of zealously defending free speech and expression. No more; now Danish law is being dictated by non-Danes. What other Danish principles will need to make way for the conquerors of Europe? As Inger Stojberg, leader of the anti-immigration Denmark Democrats party said in response to this new law: “History will judge us harshly for this and with good reason… What it all comes down to is whether a restriction on freedom of speech is determined by us or whether it is dictated from the outside [meaning the Muslim world and their globalist abettors].”
Supporters of Denmark’s new blasphemy law insist that this law has been promulgated for Denmark’s security. Due to the burning of Korans in Denmark (and Sweden), violence in and threats to these Nordic nations has grown. Not only does this position ignore why Europeans are burning the Koran in the first place (because they abhor its violent teachings) and why Muslims are reacting with terrorism (because they uphold its violent teachings), but it is a fact that if the shoe was, as they say, on the other foot, Denmark would not capitulate its principles to appease its enemies.
Imagine for a moment if an atheist or Satanist burned a Bible in Denmark (and many have), and throngs of Christians responded with violence and terrorism. Would Denmark respond by banning the burning of the Bible, or would it have pontificated about the importance of safeguarding freedom of expression, grandstanded about how no religion can be singled out for preferential treatment, expressed zero tolerance, and arrested every last protesting or rioting Christian?
Some will say Christians do not react this way, but what if they did? Would Denmark respond with appeasement or force? The answer should be as clear as day.
In retrospect, rather than ban the burning of the Koran, it seems that Denmark would have served itself much better had it banned the Koran altogether.
Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.
Image: Global Panorama
WATCH: Israeli Commandos Raid Jenin Hospital, Kill 3 Terrorists
A group of Israeli commandos raided a hospital in Jenin, a Palestinian city in the West Bank, and killed three Hamas-linked terrorists before they could reach the weapons they had stockpiled there.
The stunning raid, which did not harm civilians in the hospital and had no Israeli military casualties, stunned even Israelis, who are used to daring raids to kill terrorists and rescue hostages.
According to the Times of Israel, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) noted that the terrorists in the hospital had been planning an October 7-style attack on Israel. The attack took just 10 minutes, and footage from the hospital was aired in Palestinian media.
The Times noted: “The Israeli forces reportedly entered the medical center at 5:30 a.m. dressed as doctors, nurses, and Palestinian women, headed to a room on the third floor, and shot the surprised trio dead in their beds before escaping the building unscathed. The commandos reportedly used guns with silencers in the raid.”
Video of the raid went viral on Instagram, showing IDF soldiers dressed as doctors, nurses, and even Palestinian women:
The scene was reminiscent of fictionalized Israeli operations in the TV series Fauda, which has played a role in the conflict, as one crew member on the show was killed and one cast member was wounded during the course of their reserve IDF service in Gaza.
The IDF said in a statement:
During a joint IDF, ISA [Israel Security Agency, or Shin Bet], and Israel Police counterterrorism activity overnight, Mohammed Jalamneh, a Hamas terrorist who had recently been involved in promoting significant terrorist activity and was hiding in the “Ibn Sina” Hospital in Jenin was neutralized. The wanted suspect also carried a gun, which was confiscated by the security forces.
Mohammed Jalamneh, 27, who had been in the Jenin Camp for a long period, had contacts with Hamas headquarters abroad and was even wounded when he tried to promote a car bombing attack. In addition, Jalamneh transferred weapons and ammunition to terrorists in order to promote shooting attacks, and planned a raid attack inspired by the October 7th massacre.
Along with Jalamneh, two additional terrorists who hid inside the hospital were neutralized. Mohammed Ghazawi from the Jenin Camp, a terrorist operative of the Jenin Battalions who was involved in numerous attacks including firing at IDF soldiers in the area, and Basel Ghazawi from the Jenin Camp, Mohammed’s brother, an Islamic Jihad terrorist organization operative involved in terror activities in the area.
Jalamneh planned to carry out a terror attack in the immediate future and used the hospital as a hiding place and therefore was neutralized. Israeli security forces will continue to act against any threat that would endanger the security of Israeli civilians.
For a long time, wanted suspects have been hiding in hospitals and using them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terror attacks, while they assume that the exploitation of hospitals will serve as protection against counterterrorism activities of Israeli security forces. This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organisations.
Palestinian terrorists have repeatedly used hospitals to store weapons, move hostages, hide tunnels, and launch attacks, which violates international humanitarian law and forfeits the protection normally granted to hospitals under the laws of armed conflict.
Separately, the IDF located and destroyed rocket launchers that had been used on Monday to fire a barrage of rockets at central Israel, including the Tel Aviv area, the first such attack in several weeks, as Hamas’s capacity to attack Israel has been degraded.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the 2021 e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now updated with a new foreword. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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