COMMENTARY / OPINION
Jonathan Pollard: Hostage Deal or Welfare of the Jewish Nation? [18:02]
September 9, 2024 Machon Shilo – Watch the following discussion between Jonathan Pollard and Rabbi David Bar-Hayim on the Iranian Attack on Israel:
Iran’s Ayatollahs challenge the US in Mexico Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
September 8, 2024 – The US State Department determination to suspend and soften economic sanctions on Iran’s Ayatollahs has added – since February 2021 – some $175bn to the Ayatollahs’ national income. This added-income has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ anti-US global terrorism and drug trafficking, while the US persists in its feeble responses to the frequent assaults on US installations in the Persian Gulf, Syria and Jordan by the Ayatollahs and their proxies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. These rogue activities by the Ayatollahs have undermined the safety of the main trade route (the Red Sea) between Europe and the Far East, while causing a severe economic setback to the pro-US Egypt, and threatening the survival of all pro-US Arab regimes.
At the same time:
*Mexico’s expanding alignment with anti-US, pro-Iran Latin American governments – such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Brazil and Chile – attests to the erosion of the US strategic posture in its own hemisphere, as well as the dramatic inroads made by Iran’s Ayatollahs – in collaboration with their Hezbollah proxy – into the soft underbelly of “The great American Satan.”
*Mexico has followed in the footsteps of the tri border area of Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil, becoming an arena for Iran and Hezbollah drug trafficking and terror-financing money laundering. For example, Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah have trained Mexican drug cartels in the areas of car bombs and improvised explosive devices, supplying them equipment for the construction of underground tunnels, as well as predator unmanned aerial vehicles..
*The collusion with Mexican drug cartels has provided Iran’s Ayatollahs and Hezbollah a potent staging ground to severely undermine US homeland security, while establishing a multitude of dormant terror cells in the US.
*The Ayatollahs’ and Hezbollah’s deep involvement in Latin American terrorism and drug trafficking was initiated in the early 1980s, shortly after toppling the Shah of Iran with the ardent support of the US State Department.
*The Ayatollahs’ and Hezbollah’s penetration of Mexico and the US has been bolstered by their deep entrenchment in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, the capital of the Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil tri border area and the global epicenter of narco-terrorism, in general, and cocaine trafficking, in particular.
*According to an October 25, 2023 House Homeland Security Committee testimony by Nathan Sales, a former US Coordinator for Counterterrorism: “The United States and Israel have common enemies. For the Islamic Republic, Israel may be the Little Satan, but America is the Great Satan, and the Iranian terror proxies that want to slaughter Israelis want to slaughter Americans as well…. The Islamic Republic manifestly bears responsibility for the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack….
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. Acting through the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and numerous terrorist proxies, the regime has murdered countless innocent civilians, taken hostages remorselessly, and shed blood on an industrial scale. The threat it poses is not confined to the Middle East but extends across the entire world—including the United States….
“the Islamic Republic is actively plotting to assassinate a number of former senior US officials here on American soil. Last year, the Justice Department announced charges against an IRGC member believed to be the ringleader of a plot to murder John Bolton, the former national security advisor. The would-be assassin reportedly also was targeting former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These former officials and others like them now live under constant, twenty-four-hour government protection because of the Iranian threat to their lives….
“In the attempted assassination of John Bolton, Tehran planned to use a Mexican national with ties to drug cartels. It likewise attempted to use a Mexican drug cartel in the 2011 plot against the Saudi ambassador to the United States. There is a significant risk that Iran-backed terrorists might take advantage of these vulnerabilities again in the future. The US Customs and Border Protection field office in San Diego recently warned that [Iran-sponsored] Hamas and Hezbollah and other terrorists ‘may attempt travel to or from the area of hostilities in the Middle East via circuitous transit across the Southwest border….’
“The Iranian regime targets Americans abroad as well as at home. The IRGC was responsible for killing 603 American soldiers in Iraq…. That is one-sixth of all U.S. fatalities during the war in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the Islamic Republic reportedly paid Taliban fighters a one-thousand-dollar bounty for every American soldier they killed….
“Hezbollah, the Lebanese terrorist group was responsible for the 1983 attacks on the US embassy and Marine Corps barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, which killed sixty-three and 305, respectively. Today, Hezbollah is the Islamic Republic’s proxy of choice for terrorist attacks on Israelis and Jews around the world…. In the past several years, the group has been caught planning attacks or stockpiling explosives in Western Europe, Latin America, the Gulf, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere…. Between 1997 and 2020, 128 suspected Hezbollah members were arrested in the United States. In recent years the FBI arrested three suspected Hezbollah operatives who were conducting surveillance on the Panama Canal and casing potential targets in New York City, including the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, Times Square, and Rockefeller Center….
“The US should resume robust sanctions enforcement to deny Iran resources to fund terrorism around the globe. The Iranian regime is richer today than it has been in years…. The bigger problem, in my view, is the fact that the regime has been able to dramatically increase its energy exports, and thus dramatically improve its economic strength. As a result of crippling sanctions, by the end of the previous Administration, Iran’s economy was hobbled, its coffers were drained, and its ability to project power abroad was reduced. Tehran is in a substantially stronger position today. By 2021, the regime’s accessible foreign currency reserves were down to four to six billion dollars—roughly the same as Haiti…. Energy analysts assess that, since 2020, Iran’s oil exports have increased by a factor of four or five [from 500,000 barrels per day to 2-3 million barrels), with the lion’s share of sales going to China….
“Sanctions deny terrorists the money they need to plan and carry out attacks. For years, Hezbollah could count on its patrons in Tehran to provide it with upwards of seven hundred million dollars annually, and Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists received one hundred million dollars a year….”
Why don’t more Christians vote? TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
SEP 08, 2024 – I’ve only been involved in “politics” for the past 9 years. Before that, I paid little attention to what was going on in DC. I voted Republican because my Dad did. That’s about it.
One thing I have learned in the last few years is that many Christians do NOT vote at all – nor do they consider it their duty to vote. I find that very odd. I am a Christian. I know that God is in charge – His Will be done – but I don’t think He wants me to stay home and let Satan elect our leaders, shape our culture and groom our children while we pray for deliverance. If you think I have that wrong – reply to this newsletter and let me know your thoughts.
Lance Wallnau is a Christian leader who is touring across America to encourage Christians to vote AND to vote for President Trump. He says not enough Christians vote. Why?
CBS News spoke with Christian Lance Wallnau about President Trump. CBS, of course, mocked God and mocked the Christian faith but Wallnau was not swayed.
Wallnau compared President Trump to the Cyrus of Isaiah 45. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah, Chapter 45, the prophet wrote decades before about the rise of a leader named Cyrus, a Gentile, who would free the Jewish people from their Babylonian captivity around 538 B.C.
Wallnau wants people of faith to see the parallels between Cyrus and Trump and vote for President Trump.
If you are a person of faith – please listen to this clip from CBS! I also transcribed much of it below if you’d rather read it.
WALLNAU: “I’ve heard some people say, from their vantage point, that Trump is a chosen one. Others say he’s anointed. And people like me would say Trump becomes a once-in-a-thousand-year meteor that shoots over. You’re not going to find a whole lot of future politicians that come out of private enterprise, have a media background and somehow capture the popular zeitgeist and are able to actually come from the outside as a novice and then become a President.
That’s kind of where you’re getting Biblical. Like, you know, you’re praying and there emerges a person. I caught that idea in 2015 when I first met Trump. I met him at Trump Towers. At that time, I ran across Isaiah 45 and said “Oh my gosh – this guy is like Cyrus in the Bible in that he’s a deliverer who God raises up prophetically. Isaiah is prophesying a future deliverer named Cyrus.”
And he’s not even Jewish. [Emphasis added. Ha-ha-ha, LOL!] I wrote in a book that there will be Trump Derangement Syndrome, TDS will happen, I used that term before it became popular, because this guy has a Cyrus-like quality that I believe means he’s an outsider.
[Ed.: They’re not laughing in Israel, but the video is correct.]
Au revoir, France: your synagogues and churches are burned Giulio Meotti
This week I read a chilling article by historian Marc Knobel about burned synagogues. Meanwhile, in France, a church burns every two weeks, while 15 mosques go up.
Sep 7, 2024, 9:45 PM (GMT+3) INN – Just a week ago, a man with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh set fire to the Beth Yaacov synagogue in La Grande-Motte, in the south of the country. In May, they burned the synagogue in Rouen.
And this week I read a chilling article by historian Marc Knobel about burned synagogues:
“It all started on October 1, 2000. What happened that day? A synagogue in the 19th arrondissement of Paris receives threats. A Molotov cocktail is thrown into the courtyard of the synagogue. The same day, a Molotov cocktail is thrown into a kosher restaurant in Paris. And, during the service, an unknown person leaves another in the courtyard of the Chnei Or school in Aubervilliers.
“The same type of explosive reached the synagogue in Clichy-sous-Bois. That day, three Molotov cocktails were thrown at the Ulis synagogue. The first level of the synagogue was completely destroyed, the rabbi went up to the first floor to escape death. In Trappes, the synagogue was completely devastated by a fire.
“A few days later, two incendiary devices were thrown at the Creil synagogue. During the night of October 12-13, 2000, one or more people broke two windows of the Bondy synagogue and threw one or more incendiary devices into the synagogue. In the capital, at 1:00 a.m., the door of a synagogue in the 20th arrondissement was set on fire. In the evening, a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the Tenoudji school in Saint-Ouen. Two incendiary bottles were thrown at the Chevilly-Larue synagogue. On the night of the 15th to the 16th, in Meudon, two Molotov cocktails were thrown at the synagogue. Someone who was there reportedly shouted ‘Allah Akbar’”.
That’s how it started, and since then dozens of synagogues have burned: from Bondy to Toulouse and Marseille to Trappes, and again and again.
Given the levels of anti-Semitism, “the Jews will not have more than a decade in France before they have to leave,” Rabbi Yaacov Bitton of Sarcelles has just denounced.
The churches fare no better.
The church of Saint-Omer, in the Pas-de-Calais, Inaugurated in 1859, has been devastated by flames. It had just been restored. The fire broke out at 4:30 in the morning. They wanted to destroy it. Despite the intervention of 120 firefighters sent to put out the flames, the bell tower and the structure collapsed. The municipality had just spent 5 million euros to restore it.
The culprit taken into custody this time is Joël Vigoureux, a left-wing militant already convicted for other attacks on churches, who published pro-Palestinian, pro-Islamic, anti-Christian and Black Lives Matter comments on his social media.
A textbook case of self-hatred.
The Coptic Jean Messiha is right when he writes: “When a slice of ham is thrown at a mosque, the media calls for the rebirth of the Republic against the return of fascism and sings the partisans’ anthem over and over again. But when 40 churches are burned in less than a year, not a word is said by the media. Self-hatred as a prerequisite for love of one’s neighbor?”.
The news is merciless: “In Martigné-Briand, between Anjou and Mauges, in the church of Saint-Simplicien, the second arson attack in two months took away the confessional. In Dannevoux, in the Meuse, the altar of the church was targeted, burned on the day of Pentecost…”.
“In France, a church burns every two weeks,” declared the president of the Observatory of Religious Heritage Edouard de Lamaze to the website 76actu. Two-thirds of religious building fires are caused by arson, Lamaze told the Catholic News Agency. He also said that in France a mosque is built every 15 days while “a Christian building is destroyed at the same rate”.
When the church of Saint Louis in Fontainebleau was burned, Le Figaro commented: “Every day in France, nearly two places of worship or Christian burials are vandalized. But what is most revolting is that this massive destruction of our heritage systematically benefits from the most total indifference, both on the part of our political leaders and the main media channels. Many great figures have passed through the church of Saint Louis over the centuries. Between 1611 and 1614, Marie de Medici and Henri IV laid the foundations of this church. In 1661, Louis XIV and Anne of Austria built a chapel there. In 1868, Napoleon III completed the site. Now it burns, silently. Will ours be a century of destruction and indifference?”.
It might be worth keeping in mind Siegmund Freud’s warning: “A civilization that leaves so many of its members dissatisfied and drives them to revolt, neither has nor deserves the prospect of a lasting existence.
When the cathedrals and synagogues of a nation burn, the pillars on which it was built are shattered with them, and the void opens up in which the devils of endless political correctness sleep and stir.
[Ed.: Their ‘religion’ is that your religion must be replaced by theirs. Additionally, if you don’t convert to their ‘religion’, they must cut off your head. Their ‘religion’ must be eradicated.]
When is criticism of Israel legitimate? Dr. Alex Grobman
No democratic states should consider themselves immune to rebuke but no one should be discussing their right to exist either. Op-ed.
Feb 20, 2023, 4:14 PM (GMT+2) INN – Clearly, not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. As the late American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset explained, no democratic states should consider themselves immune to rebuke. “Israel is a liberal democratic state,” he said, recalling that, “in ancient Israel, the Biblical prophets devised the art of self-criticism.”
A useful key in determining whether the criticism in question is legitimate or just antisemitism disguised as such was offered by journalist Edward Rothstein, who suggested examining the “standards of justice.” When they are “applied in profoundly distorted fashion, when those distortions put the literal survival of a society at stake, and when murders are taking place and explicitly encouraged declarations are being made that may even fit university standards for ‘hate speech,’ it is safe to say the rhetoric is no longer honest criticism, but, rather, antisemitism,” he said.
Recognizing What It Is
Like pornography, antisemitism is recognized as such by those who know what it looks like.
The late-Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. did not hesitate to label anti-Zionist remarks as antisemitic. On one occasion when speaking to African-American students at Harvard, he heard an anti-Zionist remark from one of them. According to reports of the incident, Dr. King “snapped at him” and said, “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking about antisemitism.”
The late leftist literary scholar Hans Meyer understood this as well, writing that “whoever attacks Zionism, but by no means wishes to say anything against the Jews, is fooling himself and others.” “The State of Israel is a Jewish state. Whoever wants to destroy it, openly or through politics that can affect nothing else but such destruction, is practicing the Jew-hatred of yesterday and time immemorial,” he said.
We’re in Brazil covering the HUGE anti-censorship protests! [VIDEO 7:48] By Ezra Levant
Brazil’s authoritarian president is throwing his critics in jail and censoring his opposition, but today’s independence day and the country is fighting back!
September 07, 2024
Late last night, we landed in Sao Paulo, Brazil, one of the largest cities in the world, with a population of about 20 million- it’s really a whole country in the form of a city! We’re here because we want to see what’s going on in Brazil. There is a kind of civil war, it’s not really violent yet, but it feels like it could go that way.
Brazil is dealing with the authoritarian President Lula, and his right-hand man, a crusading judge, Alexandra de Moraes. The judge has decided to censor and silence critics of Lula, and he does this through social media. He has secret trials of political figures, of journalists and orders that their Twitter accounts be silenced, censored, banned, suspended, and deleted.
The only reason we know about this is because when Elon Musk bought Twitter and renamed it X, he decided to make it a free speech platform, not a censorship platform. And so when this out-of-control activist judge started having secret trials and saying, “You’ve got to suspend this political opponent of Lula, but you can’t say anything about this trial, we’re having a secret trial with secret evidence, and the outcome is secret,” Elon Musk said, “No, that’s not why I bought Twitter. We’re not going to go along with it, and we’re going to publicize this.”
Well, you don’t defy authoritarians in this part of the world easily, so they banned Twitter.
What’s going on here in Brazil isn’t just of interest to Brazilians, it’s of interest to everyone around the world because I promise you that other leaders, whether it’s Keir Starmer in the United Kingdom, Kamala Harris in the United States or Justin Trudeau in Canada, are all looking at Brazil to see what can they get away with.
Now, the good news is there is opposition in Brazil, that’s why we’re here. Today is the Independence Day. Brazil and the chief opposition figure, Jair Bolsonaro, the former president, is having a massive rally in the massive city of Sao Paulo.
Lula, the communist authoritarian who’s doing all the censoring, is having his own counter-rally in the capital city of Brasilia. So in Brasilia, you’ve got the big Lula censorship rally, and in Sao Paulo, you’ve got the freedom rally for Bolsonaro. It’ll be interesting to see how important Twitter is in that conversation, I look forward to finding that out.
We just got here. We haven’t gone to the protest yet. We’re going with an open mind. I speak no Portuguese. A lot of Brazilians don’t speak English, but I’m sure we’ll find people to help us figure out what’s going on.
You can follow along with us at TheTruthAboutBrazil.com, and the only way we’re able to do that is because, in this censorship jurisdiction, where they have a China-style Great Firewall, we’re using a VPN. And I’m afraid that other tyrants around the world are watching the censorship here. It’s sort of a lab experiment.
I hope freedom rules today, and I’m glad that Elon Musk is throwing the weight of his companies and his own convictions behind the freedom side.
Is Brazil rising up against censorship? I flew overnight to Brazil to find out By Ezra Levant
Will Brazilians rise up? Or will they accept this lurch back to a dictatorship? Brazil’s democracy is very fragile; it was a military dictatorship just 40 years ago.
September 07, 2024
WATCH [3:54]
I just landed in Brazil.
Because their government is censoring political opposition and I want to see what that looks like.
Because they’re doing things Trudeau says he’s going to do to Canada under his Bill C-63 censorship bill.
Today is Brazil’s Independence Day, and it’s the day the opposition here has chosen for massive rallies against the left-wing president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva — Lula, for short.
Lula is a close ally of the world’s worst dictatorships, like Iran and China. And he’s following their example, cracking down on any opposition. You could say that, like Trudeau, China is the country he most admires.
Lula has a powerful ally: a bizarre judge with a God complex, known for wearing black capes, named Alexandre de Moraes. Moraes has been holding secret trials of Lula’s opponents and ordering the social media company Twitter to censor anyone who criticizes Lula, or Moraes himself.
These trials are held in secret; and Moraes not only orders Twitter to censor Lula’s opponents, he orders Twitter to keep the orders themselves secret.
It’s a secret trial with a secret verdict — and Twitter is ordered to do the punishment secretly.
All other social media companies have gone along with that. But not Twitter, which was recently acquired by U.S. industrialist and free speech champion Elon Musk. Not only is Musk refusing to go along with Brazil’s orders, he’s publicly releasing internal documents showing how Lula and Moraes are actually the ones breaking Brazilian law.
That has caused Lula to go berserk — banning Twitter from Brazil and threatening any Brazilian who tries to access Twitter through a technological work-around, like a VPN. They’ve even started seizing assets belonging to Musk, such as his Starlink internet company.
Will Brazilians rise up? Or will they accept this lurch back to a dictatorship? Brazil’s democracy is very fragile; it was a military dictatorship just 40 years ago.
What will happen today? And will the mainstream media report it?
I don’t know — but I want to find out. So I flew overnight from Canada with our head of video, Efron Monsanto. We’re going to spend the day in these rallies, talking to ordinary people.
And, yes, we intend to publish our findings on Twitter — even though Lula and Moraes say that’s illegal. We’ve also set up a special website at www.TheTruthAboutBrazil.com.
So tune in all day to our citizen journalism — hopefully we won’t catch the eye of authorities.
If you think this is important work, please help us cover our costs — our plane tickets were about $1,500 each, plus taxis and we have one night’s hotel, for a grand total of about $4,000.
I promise you it’s journalism you won’t find anywhere else.
And while it’s obviously about Brazil, it’s really about Canada, too. Don’t think Trudeau isn’t watching and thinking about what he can get away with, too.
The CBC has actually reported on the battle between Musk, Lula and Moraes. And it won’t surprise you, they are 100% on the side of censorship. I’m here in Sao Paolo to find out what the Brazilian people have to say.
You can follow along at www.TheTruthAboutBrazil.com. And if you can, please chip in to help crowdfund the cost of our journalism. Brazil is a laboratory for social media censorship — what happens here today could happen in Canada, the UK and even the U.S. tomorrow.
