COMMENTARY / OPINION
Snap Out of It, Mr. Trump AYNAZ ANNI CYRUS
This Is the Islamic Republic You’re Undermining Us Fo
OCT 27, 2025
Just in case you missed it:
While the Trump Administration keeps lying to the American people:
“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”
— Donald J. Trump, June 21, 2025
“The last thing on Iran’s mind is building a nuclear weapon. They want to recover… They’re not going to have a bomb and they’re not going to enrich.”
— Donald J. Trump, June 22, 2025
“I think they’re scared… [Iran is] very frightened… their defense is pretty much gone.”
— Donald J. Trump, February 11, 2025
“We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.”
— Pete Hegseth, June 22, 2025
The Islamic Republic is becoming bolder and more dangerous. They mock Trump and his “Blabbermouth” publicly. They’ve sent soldiers and arms to the Houthis and Hamas just last week, and now straight up tell the agency:
“The Cairo agreement is no longer relevant for our cooperation with the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency),”
—Iran Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi
Don’t take it from me, take it from Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador to the U.S. In an interview this week, he warned that the Islamic Republic is not retreating. It’s reloading.
The Islamic regime may feel it has nothing left to lose so it’s ready to reignite hostilities.
— Michael Oren, Iran International Podcast
You read that right. A veteran diplomat just told the world that the Iranian regime is in the mood for a death match.
Not diplomacy. Not trade. Just the hunger to kill
Here’s what Oren said about the aftermath of the recent 12-day war:
“Iran doesn’t think it lost. That illusion is precisely what makes it so dangerous. The regime believes it adapted to Israeli missile defense and started learning how to bypass it.”
— Michael Oren
Translation? The Islamic regime saw that as a victory. It learned, adapted, and bled the region. That’s what emboldened them.
But Trump is still peddling the myth of diplomacy.
“President Trump truly wants Iran to flourish…”
— JD Vance, Vice President, Jerusalem speech
Flourish? With 400kg of 60% enriched uranium, enough to make 10 bombs with a quick upgrade?
And while JD Vance praises the idea of “no nukes,” Trump’s team has no problem sitting on expired UN resolutions, ignoring Iran’s open defiance, and pretending this regime can be reasoned with.
Oren disagrees. He says:
“We’re at a historical turning point. The regime is dangerous precisely because it’s isolated and because it sees an opportunity.”
— Michael Oren
In case that wasn’t clear:
Isolation makes tyrants braver, not weaker.
Inside Iran, the mosques aren’t praying for peace. They’re preaching vengeance.
This week’s Friday sermons were packed with hardline messages. Clerics praised the regime’s “resistance” and called the U.S. a “wild beast.”
One senior cleric, Ahmad Khatami, declared:
“We will break the horn of this wild cow!”
— Ahmad Khatami, Friday Sermon
Another proudly thanked Khamenei for “breaking the pride of the American president.”
That’s not religious rhetoric. That’s jihadist war doctrine dressed in robes.
So again, someone explain to me how this regime is on the verge of “flourishing” or “freedom.” Because from where I stand and where I’ve lived, those sermons sound a lot more like preparation for martyrdom and mass destruction.
Trump’s own former allies in Israel are warning that the Islamic Republic is getting stronger, bolder, and more confident about bypassing Western defense systems.
But Washington is still playing diplomat dress-up.
Even Oren, who rarely criticizes Israeli caution, warned:
“Tehran believes it can inflict heavy damage. That belief forced Israel to accept an early ceasefire.”
— Michael Oren
Let that sink in:
Iran was winning by simply surviving and adapting.
They’ve turned war into a learning lab.
And the West is funding the tuition.
Oren ended with a cautious note of optimism: if the cards are played right, the Middle East could look different in two years.
But that “if” depends on something no U.S. leader seems capable of doing:
Calling the Islamic Republic what it is.
Rejecting the lie that diplomacy will tame jihad.
Admitting that peace comes only through strength, and that strength must start with moral clarity.
And that includes Trump.
It’s time to stop pretending Iran is a misunderstood lion waiting to lie down with the lamb.
It’s time to snap out of it, Mr. Trump.
Because the people of America don’t need you to help the regime “flourish.”
They need you to start focusing on America’s strength and stand on the world stage.
Remember “America First”? We do!
Help me keep this fight alive before silence becomes policy.
All of my handmade art pieces are 30% off right now. Every order helps me keep fighting. Become a paid subscriber and help keep this work alive. The peace lies are free. The truth costs $8/month.
Bachmann: Qatar’s Money Behind Gaza “Deal” [12:38] Yishai Fleisher
October 26, 2025
[Ed.: Bachmann for President!]
Twenty Minutes to Midnight in Judea and Samaria BY MORDECHAI SONES
More than 20 years ago, a grassroots proposal sought to empower civilian defense in Judea and Samaria. Its relevance has never been greater
OCTOBER 27, 2025
When I wrote the “Yesha Defense Initiative” over two decades ago, I began not with a statistic, but with a scenario.
Contents
The Anatomy of My Scenario
The Precedents That Drove Me
A Pattern of Neglect
A Phased Solution: The Three-Layered Shield
Phase 1: Immediate Asymmetric Self-Reliance
Phase 2: The Full Interceptor Shield
An Obligation of Self-Defense
A Warning Vindicated
It is 2:45 a.m. on a Tuesday in Israel. The streets of Judea and Samaria—our biblical heartland, Yesha—are quiet. But in the IDF war rooms, there is chaos. Confirmation has just arrived: forty platoons of Palestinian mechanized armor are on the move. They are headed for the yishuvim, our homes.
The security coordinator of a target community, the ravshatz, is notified. He has twenty minutes. Twenty minutes before three Palestinian BRDM2 armored vehicles smash through the community’s simple yellow sliding gate. Twenty minutes to decide whether to activate his civilian rapid response team or accept the official recommendation to prepare for evacuation. I wrote the stark truth: “Either way many of your neighbors will be killed. And the ravshatz is utterly powerless to do anything… And he knows it better than anyone.”
This grim scenario was my opening salvo. As a resident of Nachaliel, I circulated this draft briefing book in the shadow of the Second Intifada as a desperate plea and a detailed strategic proposal. My core argument was that our entire security doctrine was fatally flawed, leaving our communities totally vulnerable to a catastrophic, coordinated “first strike.”
At the time, our vision was dismissed by officials as alarmist. But read today, the document I wrote resonates with a chilling prescience. It was my meticulous, passionate, and detailed articulation of a strategic nightmare, one that foresaw a specific mode of attack that the official consensus deemed impossible.
More importantly, it was my comprehensive, community-based solution built on the principles of self-reliance, layered defense, and challenging the very assumptions of our national security establishment.
Two decades later, those pages serve as a powerful, haunting case study in strategic foresight and the timeless, agonizing debate over civilian defense.
The Anatomy of My Scenario
My central thesis was simple: our defense establishment was preparing for the wrong war. The prevailing wisdom, which dictated policy and equipment, was focused on “anti-terrorist” scenarios: a small cell of gunmen infiltrating a home, a lone bomber, or a hostage situation. I argued this was a fatal miscalculation. I posited that the true, existential threat was not piecemeal terrorism but a sudden, overwhelming, and coordinated military assault, a “first strike” designed to achieve the “swift, irrevocable collapse of Yesha.”
In the document, I methodically detailed the vulnerability. The lynchpin of the threat, as I saw it, was armor. The Oslo Accords, I noted, permitted the Palestinian Authority to possess “up to 45 wheeled armored vehicles.” My colleagues and I believed the number was actually much higher, supplemented by smuggling. These vehicles, like the BRDM2, were not tanks, but they were more than enough to “easily smash their way through yishuv gates.”
This single point was the crux of the failure. The communities, I wrote, were “totally helpless” against this specific threat because they had been systematically denied the one weapon that could counter it: anti-tank weapons. My investigation led me to claim that the gates, the fences, and the armaments of the yishuvim were “designed, selected, and controlled universally to be uniquely vulnerable to a specific tool that has been then semi-secretly given to the PA—armored vehicles.”
This was a devastating accusation, and I did not make it lightly. It suggested not mere incompetence or budgetary neglect, but a deliberate, systemic policy of engineered vulnerability. I argued that this policy was meant to maintain a “back-door option” for the “easy removal” of settlements, ensuring that in a final status agreement or a political crisis, our communities could not meaningfully resist an evacuation order. My conclusion was stark: our residents, in effect, were being prepared for evacuation, not for defense.
The Precedents That Drove Me
To understand the profound concern that motivated me, you must look to the hard lessons of Israel’s recent past. For me and my neighbors, these events were not history; they were precedent. They were the templates for “betrayal.” I explicitly invoked two actions by Israel: the 1982 eviction of Yamit and the other 17 Jewish communities in the Sinai, and the chaotic 2000 withdrawal from the South Lebanon security zone.
I recalled in the initiative how Ariel Sharon, the architect of the Yamit eviction, had first “initiated the establishment of tiny outposts” in the Sinai, earning the settlers’ trust before turning to evict them. This created a deep-seated suspicion in our community: that a right-wing leader ostensibly “with us” could, and would, use that trust to execute a politically devastating withdrawal.
Even more potent was the fresh wound of South Lebanon. I recounted in detail the “surprise abandonment” of the South Lebanese Army (SLA), Israel’s long-time ally. I quoted an SLA soldier’s bitter realization: “We could have stopped them with our weapons, but the IDF did not shoot and would not allow the SLA to shoot, either.” The lesson I drew was that the IDF high command was capable of using “trust to produce the paralysis and surprise needed to accomplish a betrayal effectively.”
I then made a direct and explosive connection in the text. I noted that the general who oversaw the South Lebanon abandonment, Moshe Kaplinsky, had just been appointed as the OC Central Command, with jurisdiction over Judea and Samaria. “The perpetrator of Yamit is now working together with the perpetrator of Southern Lebanon,” I wrote. “Yesha is apparently their target.”
This context is crucial to understanding my mindset. The Yesha Defense Initiative was not just about a Palestinian threat; it was about a profound crisis of faith. I posited a “double shock” scenario: a sudden Palestinian armored attack occurring simultaneously with an IDF order to stand down and evacuate. The ravshatz in my 2:45 a.m. scenario wasn’t just outgunned; he was being paralyzed by his own side.
A Pattern of Neglect
I built my case by synthesizing nine distinct government policies that, taken together, formed what I saw as an undeniable pattern of induced vulnerability. Whether this was born of a deliberate, malicious “back-door option” for evacuation—my most profound fear—or from a catastrophic, systemic bureaucratic failure, a simple “failure of imagination” within the institution, the result was the same. The system was broken.
My analysis grouped these policies into several broad categories of failure. The most critical, in my view, was doctrinal obsolescence; I lamented the IDF’s “insistence on obsolete anti-terrorist scenario” training—preparing for a few gunmen in a house—which provided the doctrinal basis to deny anti-tank weapons and limit civilian defense forces to a “handful of small arms,” leaving us defenseless against a military assault.
This was compounded by active information suppression, where I alleged official channels actively suppressed the truth. When we residents reported night-time gunfire—which we believed to be PA forces training for night attacks—IDF officials repeatedly dismissed it as “weddings.” These “false IDF ‘wedding’ claims,” I argued, were disinformation designed to “keep Yeshans in the dark.”
This pattern was made tangible through resource denial, as I detailed the “denial of sufficient amounts of ammunition,” which I claimed was “only enough for several minutes of combat.”
Finally, I even pointed to strategic misdirection, re-framing seemingly supportive policies like Ariel Sharon’s call to “seize the high ground” as self-defeating instructions that served only to “strain Yesha’s overstretched defenders even further.”
This pattern of neglect extended to infrastructure. I argued there was “no means for mutual support between yishuvim.” We lacked the communication equipment and long-range weapons to coordinate a defense, allowing us to be “isolated and overrun piecemeal.” Even the “elaborate security barriers” were, in my analysis, an “indefensible trap” that restricted defenders to an inner perimeter while providing cover for attackers.
These policies, as I outlined them, painted a grim portrait of communities intentionally isolated, under-equipped, and misinformed, all while being told to trust the very system that was failing us.
A Phased Solution: The Three-Layered Shield
But my Yesha Defense Initiative was not merely a list of woes. My primary purpose was to propose a concrete, viable, and positive solution. Having defined the problem as a first strike, I presented a layered defense system.
This proposal, however, faced an immediate and obvious “operational paradox.” How could we, who were being actively denied basic ammunition, suddenly deploy sophisticated interceptor vehicles?
The solution had to be split into two distinct phases: a “policy-resistant” immediate-action plan, and a long-term “policy-reversal” goal.
Phase 1: Immediate Asymmetric Self-Reliance
This was the core, actionable plan, focusing on what we could do ourselves, right now, with what we had, to bypass the official blocks and maximize deterrence.
The first element was a “policy-resistant” early warning network. This meant trained observers using private optical and radio equipment, creating a communication net independent of official channels. Its sole purpose was to spot the massing of forces and “ruin the shock of surprise,” robbing the attackers of their chief advantage.
The second element of Phase 1 was the yishuv defense itself, focusing on asymmetric tactics. Recognizing the lack of official anti-tank weapons, I proposed adopting tactics proven by “poorly armed defenders” elsewhere—citing the 1956 Hungarian uprising and the First Chechen War. I detailed the organization of “anti-tank killer teams” composed of firebombers, a machine gunner, and a sniper. I described how to create “anti-armor ambush areas” in the narrow streets of a yishuv, “sealing off vehicles inside your pre-selected kill zone.” I provided granular detail on how to aim firebombs and where to shoot armored vehicles like the BRDM2 with rifles to “degrade the combat effectiveness” by targeting “periscopes,” “antennae,” and “externally mounted fuel tanks.” This was not theory; I intended it as a practical manual for self-defense.
Phase 2: The Full Interceptor Shield
This was the long-term goal, contingent on reversing the government’s failed policies. This phase included the “network of interceptor vehicles” I had envisioned. These teams, manned by our rapid response units, would “deploy barriers that are capable of blocking, disabling, or destroying enemy armored vehicles before they reach the yishuv.” This proactive layer was designed to break up the coordinated assault, but it required a level of equipment and operational freedom that was, at the time, being denied to us. Phase 1 was how we would survive long enough to make the case for Phase 2.
An Obligation of Self-Defense
Ultimately, for me, the Yesha Defense Initiative was more than a technical proposal. It was a philosophical and moral argument about the very nature of Israeli sovereignty and Jewish identity. I wrote it in a spirit of profound self-reliance, born from the conviction that the state could, and might, fail its citizens.
I explicitly placed the initiative in a long line of Jewish self-defense. I cited the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, noting that “each yishuv still has more weapons, ammunition, and trained personnel on hand” than they did. I invoked the 1948 battle for Kibbutz Degania, where members “halted by members of the kibbutz equipped with small arms and Molotov cocktails” stopped a Syrian tank attack. The message was clear: when the state is absent, the community must act. To do otherwise was to “acquiesce in their own betrayal by default.”
I captured this moral imperative with the Hebrew phrase emblazoned on the document: “Lo ta’amod al dam re’echa“—”Do not stand idly by your brother’s blood.” This, I argued, is our fundamental obligation. The initiative was our way to fulfill that Torah obligation.
My political analysis was equally profound, if controversial. I posited that a small but powerful “anti-Covenant” segment of Israel’s elite saw our very presence in “Biblical Israel” as an “intolerable irritant.” For this segment, I argued, “the abandonment of Yesha to an Arab Palestinian state” was the ultimate goal, even if it meant sacrificing Israel’s strategic viability. The initiative, therefore, was not just a military plan; it was a political and cultural counter-revolution, a declaration that we Yeshans would not be “irritated” away. It was my plan to “neutralize the threat of eviction” by eliminating the element of surprise and making the cost of such a “betrayal” too high to pay.
A Warning Vindicated
Reading the Yesha Defense Initiative I wrote more than twenty years ago is an unsettling experience, even for me. The document is a product of its time—the raw, chaotic, and fearful peak of the Second Intifada. My specific political anxieties about Ariel Sharon and the Oslo Accords are bound up in that historical moment.
And yet, its core content is timeless. My document was, at its heart, a study in worst-case-scenario planning. It challenged the prevailing failure of imagination that dismissed a large-scale, coordinated attack as fantastical.
I believe the paper’s greatest contribution was not my prediction of betrayal, but my meticulous diagnosis of a specific, catastrophic vulnerability: a multi-pronged, surprise assault designed to overwhelm isolated communities whose defenses were designed for a different, lesser threat.
The solution I proposed—a layered defense prioritizing early warning, proactive interception, and robust, well-armed local teams—remains a model of community-based security. It speaks to a fundamental tension that still exists in Israel and beyond: the tension between the citizen and the state, between the resident’s right to self-defense and the state’s monopoly on power.
The technologies of warfare have evolved. The specific vehicle of the threat has changed. My paper was prescient about the BRDM2s, but today the threat may come from drones, precision missiles, or cross-border tunnels.
The strategic logic, however, remains unchanged. The 3-layered shield is a concept, and it scales. Early Warning, for example, is no longer just about armor; it is about tasking those same citizen-observers to listen for the sounds of tunnel digging and to spot the low, slow signature of drones. The Interceptor Layer concept adapts; perhaps “interceptor vehicles” now deploy counter-drone jammers or serve as rapid-response teams to a known tunnel exit. And the Yishuv Defense layer evolves; the “anti-tank killer teams” are trained with new skills: sharpshooters targeting drone optics, or tactics for engaging fighters emerging from a tunnel mouth.
The Yesha Defense Initiative was my plan for a war that did not come in the early 2000s. For two decades, its core principles—its passionate call for empowerment, its warning against a catastrophic ‘failure of imagination,’ and its chillingly specific analysis of vulnerability—continued to echo in those hills.
Then, on October 7th, 2023, the nightmare scenario I had detailed became a horrific reality. The ‘worst-case-scenario’ of a multi-pronged, surprise assault designed to overwhelm isolated communities, whose defenses were tragically designed for a lesser threat, was no longer a theory. The echoes of my warning became a devastating roar.
It is a persistent, tragic warning that paralysis is a choice, and that the ultimate defense of one’s home, as I wrote then, begins at the gate.
New UN Nominee: Walk Out on Bibi & Get An Elite UN Position To Harm Israel by Moshe Phillips
October 27, 2025 Algemeiner
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has nominated former Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo to lead one of the world’s most powerful UN agencies. If confirmed, De Croo would be ensconced in a role that gives him major influence over global aid flows, development priorities, and the international narrative around humanitarian crises — including in the Middle East, where he has the potential to greatly harm Israel and its best interests.
De Croo has a long public record of hostility toward the Jewish State — including just last month, when he walked out during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. With a history of repeatedly accusing Israel of war crimes, and aligning diplomatically with Palestinian Arab extremists, he’s unfit for any UN role, and especially this one. He is not some neutral technocrat. This is a politician with a clear ideological agenda — now poised to turn that agenda into policy.
If confirmed, De Croo wouldn’t just be giving speeches — he’d have real tools to act. As head of this UN agency, he would help decide where international development funds go, which governments and NGOs get access to money, and how humanitarian reports frame ongoing conflicts. He could deprioritize Israeli-led or Israeli-partnered projects, steer international attention toward anti-Israel narratives, and use donor influence to pressure nations to isolate Israel diplomatically and economically — all without needing approval from any democratic government.
This UN position controls development priorities, shapes funding flows, and influences which narratives get amplified on the global stage. UN agencies publish reports that inform investors, guide donor funding, and affect international law enforcement decisions. A leader with a public track record of singling out Israel can tilt these levers to impose real costs, including restricted cooperation, reduced investment, and increased diplomatic isolation. This “soft power” is no less impactful than traditional diplomacy — especially for Israel, which relies heavily on international trade and partnerships.
De Croo’s history makes clear that he would weaponize this influence. He has accused Israel of using “hunger as a weapon,” demanded “no more civilian killings,” and publicly met with Palestinian Arab leaders in ways that underscore his bias. In March 2024, while Israel was at war to try and rescue its hostages from Hamas terrorists, he conducted a multi-nation “criticize Israel” tour and visited Jordan, Qatar, and Egypt, De Croo specifically avoided stopping in Israel on this trip. By walking out during a speech by Israel’s prime minister, he sent a clear message that he believes in boycotts and protests rather than dialogue, at least when it comes to the Jewish State.
This nomination is not yet final — and that matters. The United States is the largest single contributor to the UN’s development system. American taxpayers help fund these programs, and Congress has every right to demand accountability for who leads them. A UN leader who walked out on the Israeli prime minister and regularly condemns Israel while remaining silent on Iran, China, and other oppressive regimes should not be rewarded with a powerful global post.
There is still time to stop this appointment. Americans who believe in a fair and balanced approach to global development — and who reject using international institutions to bully democratic allies like Israel — should speak out. The evidence is clear. Giving De Croo a platform to turn that record into global policy at the already-hostile-to-Israel UN would be a mistake.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, US diplomats, and pro-Israel advocacy groups should make one thing clear: this nomination is unacceptable.
Moshe Phillips is national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, AFSI (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization.
178 House Democrats did the unthinkable by siding against Jewish families MOSHE PHILLIPS
They weren’t just making a policy statement, but endorsing a future where no Jews would live in Judea and Samaria—a future of erasure.
October 27, 2025 JNS
Jewish families have been banned from living in Saudi Arabia for decades. Is this the model that Democratic House leaders now support for Judea and Samaria?
When 178 House Democrats signed a letter on Sept. 25 to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposing any Israeli move to annex territory in the West Bank, they weren’t just making a policy statement, but endorsing a future where no Jews would live in Judea and Samaria. Do they believe that Jews should be barred from living in their ancestral homeland—the biblical heartland of the Land of Israel? Is it moral to declare any land off-limits to Jews—to make it Judenrein?
Let’s be clear: A future Palestinian Arab state in Judea and Samaria, as envisioned by the Palestinian Authority and now tacitly endorsed by much of the Democratic Party, would be as Judenrein as Saudi Arabia is today (and as Hitler intended Nazi Germany to be). That is not a slur; it is a fact based on what Palestinian leaders themselves say. P.A. leader Mahmoud Abbas has repeatedly insisted that not a single Israeli—not a single Jew—would be allowed to remain in a future Palestinian state.
This is the same Abbas who wrote his 1982 doctoral thesis on “The Secret Relationship between Nazism and Zionism” and who has questioned the legitimacy of the Holocaust.
While Israel was preparing to enter Gaza City to rescue hostages held by Hamas, these 178 Democrats chose that exact moment to sign a letter, declaring: “We are deeply opposed to proposals for unilateral annexation of territory in the West Bank.”
Let’s translate that. They oppose Jewish communities—and that is all that settlements really are—that exist in areas Israel didn’t control before the 1967 Six-Day War. These so-called “settlements” are cities and towns with schools, synagogues and generations of Jewish families in the historic heartland of the Jewish people: Judea and Samaria.
No settlements were involved in the Oct. 7 massacre. But the Democratic letter paints Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as an obstacle to peace—not Hamas, not Hezbollah, not the P.A. or the Fatah Party, not decades of terrorism, antisemitic incitement or agreements broken by the P.A.
This isn’t just wrong. It’s morally backwards.
This hostility toward Jews living in Judea and Samaria is discriminatory. It sends a dangerous message—that Jews have no right to live in certain parts of their historic homeland. And it plays directly into the hands of those who seek not just a Jew-free Judea, but a Jew-free Jerusalem—and ultimately, Tel Aviv as well.
The very term “West Bank” is misleading. It was invented after the 1948 war to obscure the Jewish roots of the region. Parts of the so-called “West Bank” are more than 40 miles from the Jordan River—no riverbank is that wide. The historically accurate term is Judea and Samaria, as even the president of the National Religious Broadcasters, Troy Miller, has urged Christian media to use.
Jewish families in Judea and Samaria need more housing, not less. There is no moral or legal reason why any area under Israeli jurisdiction should restrict Jewish homebuilding. If Jews living peacefully in Hebron or Ariel are treated as criminals or obstacles to peace, then the basic right of Jews to live anywhere, especially in Jerusalem–something Abbas has regularly demanded for his state—is at risk.
Let’s also remember: Israel has already given up more than 23,000 square miles of land captured in the Six-Day War, despite Israel itself being just 8,000 square miles in size. From the Sinai to Gaza, Israel has made enormous territorial sacrifices in pursuit of peace—only to be rewarded with more terror, not less.
Many of the Jews expelled from Gaza in the summer of 2005 had already been uprooted once before, when Israel gave up the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982. And what did that bring? Thousands of rockets from Hamas, concrete tunnels filled with terrorists and the atrocities of Oct. 7.
If the Democrats who signed this letter truly cared about peace or the well-being of Arabs in Judea and Samaria, they would criticize Abbas and the P.A. They don’t mention him even once. Not his corruption. Not his repression. Not his refusal to hold elections. Not his failure to honor the Oslo Accords.
If Abbas, soon to be 90 years old, truly wanted peace—and as J Street, which applauded the letter the same day it was issued, loves to claim—then why does he pay terrorists salaries and refuse to recognize Israel as a Jewish state?
This is the real question Democratic lawmakers should be asking. Instead, they chose to attack Jewish communities that embody peace, history and resilience. The only thing the Jewish communities of Judea and Samaria are obstacles to is another Oct. 7-like massacre.
The letter these 178 House Democrats sent does not promote peace. It promotes erasure.
MOSHE PHILLIPS Moshe Phillips, a veteran pro-Israel activist and author, is the national chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI). A former board member of the American Zionist Movement, he previously served as national director of the U.S. division of Herut and worked with CAMERA in Philadelphia. He was also a delegate to the 2020 World Zionist Congress and served as editor of The Challenger, the publication of the Tagar Zionist Youth Movement. His op-eds and letters have been widely published in the United States and Israel.
While Jews criticize Israel, Israel looks after Jews everywhere. JOSHUA HOFFMAN
Israel is the collective insurance policy of the Jewish People, and the only one we have ever had. This is not just a heartwarming sentiment; it’s a Mossad mandate.
OCT 27, 2025 The Future of Jewish
It’s one of the quiet ironies of modern-day Jewish life: While Jews debate, criticize, and even condemn Israel from the safety of Western democracies, Israel’s intelligence agents are working behind the scenes to keep safe those Jews and others.
As petitions circulate on college campuses accusing Israel of “genocide,” Mossad operatives are intercepting Iranian terror networks plotting attacks against Jewish schools and synagogues in Europe.
As Jewish activists in New York or Toronto draft op-eds scolding the Jewish state for being “too militarized,” Israeli cyber units are tracing Hezbollah cells intent on targeting Jewish community centers abroad.
Yet, wherever Jews live, Israel is watching over them. Not in a political sense, not as a matter of foreign policy or citizenship, but as a matter of survival. The Jewish story did not end at Auschwitz; it continues in modern-day Jerusalem, in Tel Aviv, and in a thousand quiet rooms where Israeli intelligence officers have spent their lives making sure Jewish blood will never again be spilled without consequence.
On Sunday, the Mossad revealed that a transnational terror network run by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force has been orchestrating attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets across the Western world. The network, allegedly led by senior commander Sardar Ammar and composed of more than 11,000 operatives, has been coordinating efforts to harm diaspora Jews since the October 7th Hamas-led massacre.
These attacks weren’t against Israeli diplomats or soldiers; they were against synagogues, Jewish schools, and community centers. That distinction matters. It shows what Israel has long known and what the world often refuses to admit: that hatred of Israel and hatred of Jews are one and the same.
For decades, Israel’s intelligence services have served as the invisible guardians of Jews everywhere. The Mossad has (usually quietly) shared information with Western agencies to stop planned bombings and shootings at Jewish sites.
In 2022, Israeli intelligence helped European authorities thwart multiple Hezbollah and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-linked plots targeting Jewish communities in Germany, Greece, and Cyprus. In 2021, Mossad operatives tipped off Moroccan officials about an Iranian plan to assassinate a Jewish businessman in Casablanca.
In 2020, Israel passed along intelligence to Thai authorities that led to the arrest of Iranian agents plotting attacks on Israeli tourists and local Jews in Bangkok. And throughout the past decade, the Mossad has been central in helping dismantle Hezbollah’s global terror networks operating under civilian covers across Africa and Latin America.
Israel’s protective hand reaches back further still. In 1976, after Palestinian and German terrorists hijacked an Air France flight carrying more than 100 Israeli and Jewish passengers, Israel launched Operation Entebbe — a rescue mission that stunned the world. Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles to Uganda, stormed the terminal, killed the hijackers, and brought nearly all the hostages home. The only fatality among the commandos was Yonatan Netanyahu, the older brother of Israel’s current prime minister. The message was unmistakable: No Jew would ever be abandoned again.
In the late 1970s, thousands of Ethiopian Jews (Beta Israel) were trapped in refugee camps in Sudan, having fled famine and persecution in Ethiopia. They dreamed of reaching Israel, but Sudan — a Muslim-majority country with no ties to Israel — was hostile to the Jewish state. The Mossad launched a covert mission to rescue them and bring them to Israel. The operation’s official name was “Operation Brothers.”
To disguise their activities, Mossad agents leased an abandoned seaside hotel on the Red Sea, near the town of Arous, Sudan. They reopened it as a real, functioning diving resort — called the Arous Holiday Village — complete with brochures, scuba equipment, and European tourists.
Israeli agents actually ran the resort for years, welcoming real guests during the day. At night, Mossad agents would secretly meet groups of Ethiopian Jews in the desert, transport them to the coast, and then ferry them across the Red Sea on Israeli Navy boats to safety. Over several years, Israel managed to rescue around 12,000 Ethiopian Jews, mostly through this and related operations. Then, in 1991, Israel airlifted more than 14,000 Ethiopian Jews to Israel in just 36 hours. It was the kind of rescue that made the Book of Exodus feel alive again. Only this time, the miracle had jet engines.
Mossad officer Gad Shimron went undercover as a diving instructor at the “Arous Holiday Village.” (photo: Gad Shimron)
The pattern is consistent across time and geography. From Argentina to France, from Syria to Yemen, Israel has acted when others would not. It tracked down Nazi war criminals when international courts were still debating procedure. It rescued Jewish families from war zones and smuggled Torah scrolls out of collapsing dictatorships. It sent doctors to treat Jewish refugees in Ukraine and security teams to guard synagogues in Africa. And it continues to do so quietly, without speeches or headlines, because it understands something few nations do: that every Jew, no matter where they live, is part of one extended family, and family protects its own.
No other country on earth defends a people scattered across so many lands. Israel’s existence makes Jewish existence possible, everywhere. When a synagogue in Paris is firebombed, when a rabbi is attacked in Brooklyn, when a Jewish school in Buenos Aires receives a threat, somewhere in Tel Aviv or Herzliya, Israeli analysts are listening, watching, analyzing. They don’t wait for permission from the United Nations or the approval of Western editorial boards. They act, because history taught them what happens when no one acts.
There can be no serious question as to whether Jews around the world have a relationship with Israel. That relationship is existential, not political. Israel is the collective insurance policy of the Jewish People, and the only one we have ever had. To be hypercritical of Israel, while applying no comparable moral or strategic standard to other countries, is not only hypocritical; it’s foolish. The double standards applied to Israel reveal not a concern for justice, but a refusal to accept Jewish agency. The same world that once scolded Jews for being passive now scolds us for being strong.
No one demands that France dismantle its army to prove its morality, or that the United States allow its enemies to live to demonstrate its “restraint.” Yet Israel is held to precisely those standards every day, sometimes by Jews themselves. Behind these expectations lies something ancient: the belief that Jews should suffer nobly but never defend themselves. Powerless Jews were pitied; powerful Jews are condemned. But it was powerless Jews whom history devoured. Israel refuses that role. Its strength is not a betrayal of Jewish ethics; it is their expression.
Every Jewish family carries the memory of abandonment: grandparents who were turned away from ports, relatives who vanished when borders closed, names that exist now only on lists. “Never Again” was not a slogan; it was a vow. But “Never Again” only has meaning because Israel exists to make it real. After the Holocaust, Israel became the answer to a question that had haunted Jews for centuries: Who will protect us when the world turns away?
And indeed, the world did turn away, again and again. When Syrian Jews were trapped under dictatorship in the 1980s, Israeli and American Jewish activists worked together, covertly, to get them out. When Ethiopian Jews cried to be rescued, Israel flew them home. When Iranian Jews were imprisoned and executed on false charges of espionage, Israel used back channels to help others escape. These are not political gestures; they are moral imperatives born of memory.
For diaspora Jews, this truth carries both comfort and challenge. The comfort is knowing that somewhere, there is a Jewish army that fights for you, a Jewish intelligence service that guards your name, a Jewish homeland that flies your flag. The challenge is realizing what that means for your place in the world.
Every Jew who watches the Israeli flag rise over the ruins of a terrorist base feels something primal: a mix of pride and relief. It is not nationalism; it is the deep exhale of a people who, for the first time in two millennia, have someone to call when the mob gathers at the gate.
The Jewish People will be stronger when we stop pretending that our acceptance in Western societies is permanent or guaranteed. We are welcome guests, but guests nonetheless, so long as it is convenient. When the winds change, when populists in New York City rise or ideologues in London radicalize, we rediscover what our grandparents already knew: that safety in exile is conditional, and belonging is temporary.
Israel is not a foreign land to Jews; it is home, even for those who never set foot on its soil. It is the one place where the survival of the Jewish People is not a matter of philanthropy or tolerance, but of national policy. Its leaders are not perfect; its politics can be infuriating. But beneath the arguments and the headlines lies a singular truth: Israel is the only country that wakes up every morning thinking about how to keep Jews alive.
The Kotel (Western Wall) in Jerusalem (photo: Benjamin Istanbuli/Unsplash)
In Jewish thought, the people of Israel are described as one body, one soul scattered across the world. When one part hurts, all feel it. That is not metaphor; it is metaphysics. Israel is both a nation-state and the physical manifestation of that shared soul, the covenant made visible. To love Israel is not to idolize it, but to recognize ourselves in it: to see our history, our pain, our stubborn hope made concrete.
Israel protects the Jewish People, but the Jewish People must also protect Israel. Not only with words, but with pride, unity, and commitment. We do not all have to live there, but we must all live for our country. Because Israel’s strength is not merely military; it is moral. It is the living proof that Jewish life, once nearly extinguished, now defends itself.
In our post-October 7th world, where antisemitism rapidly spreads from campuses to municipalities to cultural institutions, where mobs chant for the eradication of the Jewish state under the euphemism of “anti-Zionism,” and where Iranian agents plot synagogue bombings on Western soil, Israel remains what it has always been: the guarantor that Jewish life will continue.
The world often asks why Jews feel bound to Israel. The better question is how could we not? When Jews are attacked in Los Angeles or London, in Melbourne or Buenos Aires, it is Israel that raises its voice, sends its agents, and demands accountability. When Jewish children hide their Star of David necklaces on college campuses, Israel reminds them that their identity is nothing to be ashamed of. When Jewish communities feel abandoned by the governments they trusted, Israel reminds them they are not alone.
Israel’s message to world Jewry is simple and eternal: Jews are not defenseless anymore. That is what distinguishes this era from every previous one in Jewish history. For the first time since the fall of Masada, the Jewish People have the capacity — and the will — to protect ourselves. That power does not corrupt our morality; it completes it.
Every nation on earth has its flaws, but Israel’s existence is not a flaw; it is a miracle sustained by necessity. To apply to Israel moral standards that no other nation could meet is to disguise old prejudices in new language. The same people who once accused Jews of disloyalty now accuse them of being too loyal — to each other. But loyalty to survival is not a crime; it is wisdom learned the hard way.
The world may never fully understand this, but Jews must. Our security in exile is not an accident of history; it is a gift sustained by the vigilance of a nation that never forgot what it means to be hunted. Israel’s survival ensures ours, wherever we live. Its strength keeps open the space for Jewish faith, culture, and thought to flourish freely. Without it, Jewish life would again be lived at the mercy of others.
And so the task for our generation is not only to defend Israel from its enemies, but to defend the idea of Israel from our own forgetfulness. We must teach our children that Israel is not just another country; it is the reason they can walk to synagogue without fear, the reason the world sees a Jewish army where once there were only refugees.
Even if some of us don’t live in Israel, Israel lives in all of us. It beats in our hearts when we say the Shema, when we light Shabbat candles, when we teach our children that being Jewish means something powerful and enduring. Israel is not merely a place on a map; it is the center of gravity for Jewish history, the shield of the Jewish present, and the promise of the Jewish future.
None Dare Call It Deliberate BY MORDECHAI SONES
The bipartisan ‘no-win’ playbook defining Israel’s endless war
OCTOBER 26, 2025
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s career is defined by a central paradox. He is the ultimate “Mr. Security,” a leader of hardline rhetoric and vows of “total victory.” Yet, his political history is a trail of stunning concessions, from the Hebron Accords to the current, grinding war in Gaza.
Contents
The Architects of Equilibrium
A Bipartisan Doctrine
October 7 and the ‘Total Victory’ Mirage
A Pattern of Abandoned Red Lines
Championing the ‘Managed’ Solution
The Mideast Union Trap
This contradiction is often explained as pragmatism. But another, less-examined framework suggests these are not compromises, but the consistent execution of a “no-win” doctrine—a policy of managed conflict designed not to defeat enemies, but to maintain a permanent “equilibrium.”
This is the playbook of an elite, bipartisan U.S. foreign policy establishment, crystallized in the organization that has shaped it for a century: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The Architects of Equilibrium
Founded in 1919 by American intellectuals and diplomats disillusioned by the U.S. rejection of the League of Nations, the CFR’s quiet, long-term mission was to guide America’s role in the world. Its influence became stated doctrine after World War II. As the Cold War began, CFR-affiliated figures like John Foster Dulles and Arthur Schlesinger Jr. architected the West’s grand strategy.
This strategy, known as “containment,” was not about defeating communism. It was about arranging an “equilibrium of forces.” The goal was stalemate, not sovereignty. The “obsolete prerogatives” of allied nations—such as their right to pursue unconditional victory—were often seen as secondary to the stability of the global system.
In practice, this meant agreeing to partitions in places like Korea and Vietnam. The “stalemates” in those countries were not accidents; they were the goal. They created unending division and simmering, low-level conflict, but they prevented a decisive outcome that could upset the global balance.
A Bipartisan Doctrine
This doctrine was always bipartisan, and its persistence is the key. One need only look at the Republican “America First” administration of Donald Trump (2025-present). While President Trump himself is not a member, his foreign policy and national security apparatus includes key figures with CFR affiliations: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Their policy for Gaza, formalized in the Trump-brokered ceasefire deal, is the very picture of this historic, multilateral globalism. An October 24, 2025, Washington Post report details the intense U.S. enforcement of this “no-win” pact. A “flurry of visits” from U.S. officials—including VP JD Vance, Jared Kushner, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio—has been dubbed “Bibi-sitting” by Israeli media, openly mocking Netanyahu’s loss of “freedom of action.”
Rubio, in Jerusalem, laid the doctrine bare, warning that this ceasefire is the “only plan” and there is “no plan B.” His words confirm the U.S. commitment is not to Israel’s victory, but to a “demilitarized Gaza” managed by “over two dozen countries, including regional Arab countries.”
COUNTRIES SENDING FORCES TO US BASE IN KIRYAT GAT: UNITED STATES, CANADA, AUSTRALIA, UK, GERMANY, FRANCE, SPAIN, JORDAN, DENMARK, UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
The true U.S. priority was exposed when Netanyahu’s coalition partners pushed a symbolic annexation vote for Judea and Samaria. The U.S. reaction was not just disagreement; it was a threat. Vance called it a “very stupid political stunt,” and Trump himself stated that if Israel proceeded, it “would lose all of its support from the United States” because he “gave his word to the Arab countries.”
This is the globalist doctrine in its rawest form: Israel’s “obsolete prerogative”—its sovereignty over its biblical heartland—is being explicitly sacrificed for a larger regional “equilibrium” (the “word to the Arab countries”). The plan’s next phase, as detailed by Kushner, involves starting reconstruction only in the 50% of Gaza Israel controls, to “create a dynamic.” This is not a plan for victory; it is the literal partition of Korea and the “neutralism” of Vietnam reborn in the Middle East.
October 7 and the ‘Total Victory’ Mirage
This 60-year-old doctrine finds its echo in the sands of Gaza. Following the horrific Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, Netanyahu promised “total victory” and the “eradication of Hamas.”
Two years later, as of October 2025, that victory is a mirage. While the IDF has achieved tactical dominance over 75 percent of the Gaza Strip, Hamas has not been eradicated. It has adapted, surviving amid the chaos of a displaced population.
Confronted with this reality, Prime Minister Netanyahu on October 26 furiously slammed critics, insisting that “We are in control of our security” and “we will continue to control our destiny.” This is not the confident statement of a leader, but the desperate deflection of a man whose long-held, hidden script is being exposed.
As a truth begins to dawn on the nation—that the “no-win” war is a feature, not a bug—the rhetoric must become more shrill. These words appear to be a performance, completely detached from the policy his government is actively negotiating. While he speaks of victory, his government accepts U.S.-pressured ceasefires that allow Hamas to regroup and engages with the very “multilateral reconstruction” plans that guarantee his stated war aims will fail.
A Pattern of Abandoned Red Lines
This contradiction is Netanyahu’s signature. To understand his actions in Gaza, one must look back to the Wye River Summit in 1998. Netanyahu arrived with firm “red lines,” including no release of prisoners with “blood on their hands” and, most emotionally, a vow that he would not leave without securing the freedom of Jonathan Pollard.
After nine days of intense U.S. pressure, he signed the memorandum. He ceded 13 percent of Judea and Samaria and released Palestinian prisoners, but Jonathan Pollard remained in an American prison for another 17 years.
This was not simply pragmatism; it was a clear demonstration of the doctrine. National “red lines” and “obsolete prerogatives”—like freeing a national hero or refusing to cede land—were sacrificed for the “equilibrium” of the peace process, managed by U.S. negotiators steeped in the CFR framework. The system, not the leader, dictated the outcome.
Championing the ‘Managed’ Solution
This performance of caving to the system was not an anomaly; it was a prelude to him publicly championing it. Any claim that Netanyahu is a nationalist resisting globalist pressure crumbles against his own words, delivered at, of all places, a 2010 Council on Foreign Relations event.
Speaking directly to the architects of the “managed conflict” doctrine, Netanyahu articulated the very “solution” he now pretends to oppose. “The substance of my… peace is a solution of two states for two peoples,” he told the CFR audience, “in which a de-militarized Palestinian state recognizes the Jewish state of Israel.” This is the doctrine in its purest form: “de-militarized” is the illusion of security, the definition of a “managed” outcome that undermines Israel’s safety while denying its sovereignty.
A Conversation with Benjamin Netanyahu Council on Foreign Relations [1:02:23]
NETANYAHU ADVOCATES “TWO-STATE SOLUTION” IN SPEECH TO COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
When a CFR member pressed him on how he would get domestic political support to implement this vision, specifically regarding the removal of Jewish communities, Netanyahu confirmed his strategy. He spoke of defining a “clear vision” so people would see the “benefits,” and, most revealingly, of using “the dimension of time as a crucial element for implementation.”
This was not the answer of a leader beholden to his people; it was the chillingly laconic answer of a manager. He was signaling to the globalists that he understood their long-term project and was prepared to see it through, waiting for the right moment—or the right crisis—to finally execute the plan.
The Mideast Union Trap
For decades, the public has been handed individual policy “pieces,” each appearing as an innocent, safe, and familiar-looking step: a “peace process,” a “humanitarian pause,” a “two-state solution,” a “ceasefire,” an “international stabilization force.”
But this is not a pathway to peace. It is the construction of a trap, and the “managed” chaos in Gaza is not the endgame; it is the brutal initiation fee.
CFR 10/12 Virtual Public Forum: Update on the Israel-Hamas War Council on Foreign Relations [59:59]
The true, unspoken goal of this entire globalist machination is not merely a Palestinian state. That is simply the price of admission. The real prize is the creation of a “Mideast Union,” a new regional bloc modeled after the European Union, managed by the same globalist architects and financially dominated by Saudi Arabia.
In this new order, Israel is being forced to play a specific, tragic role: the muscle. Israel is shedding blood, suffering catastrophic losses, and absorbing the world’s condemnation, all to dismantle regional threats that stand in the way of Saudi and American regional interests. Israel is fighting for Saudi Arabia’s strategic future.
The Abraham Accords, sold as an historic peace, are now revealed as the diplomatic vehicle for this forced integration. The “revitalized” Palestinian Authority, planted not just in Gaza but in the heart of Judea and Samaria, is the non-negotiable sacrifice required for Israel to be “normalized” into this new bloc.
This is the final, deliberate betrayal. The “total victory” that was promised is being traded for a “total integration,” where Israel’s sovereignty is dissolved. It ceases to be a nation that “makes its own decisions” and becomes a province in a new, Saudi-led order, having paid for its own chains with the blood of its own soldiers.
