COMMENTARY / OPINION
Millions of Christians Are Under Islamist Assault, so Pope Francis Targets the Jews by Charles Jacobs and Uzay Bulut
Perhaps he believes that pointing a finger at the Jews will divert Muslim rage from the Vatican.
December 25, 2024 at 4:00 am
- The Jews are not committing genocide against Muslims in Gaza, whose population grew almost 3% last year. Muslims, however, are committing mass murder via jihad against Christians in Africa. Yet the Pope cowers from defending his own flock.
- The number of Christians intentionally murdered, let alone tortured, raped, kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam far exceeds the number of Gazans killed unintentionally as Israel directs its fire at terrorists who hide behind civilians. Indeed, Israel is defending its population from the very same jihadist assaults faced by African Christians.
- Ahsan Raja Masih, a young Pakistani Christian, has been sentenced to hang for his faith over false “blasphemy” charges. The Catholic Bishops of Pakistan have recently joined the Christian community’s outcry against the death sentence. Where is the Pope?
- By turning reality on its head, the Pope’s shameful defamation of the Jews complements his passivity in the face of Islamic jihad against Christians. Perhaps he believes that pointing a finger at the Jews will divert Muslim rage from the Vatican. Surely, it distracts the world from his own cowardice and failure to protect Christians.
“Nigeria is the most violent country in the world for Christians. Every two hours, a Christian is killed in Nigeria,” according to Open Doors. Pope Francis has not called for an investigation of the jihadists and their sponsors. Pictured: State officials walk past wounded survivors of a jihadist attack on St. Francis Catholic Church in Ondo State, Nigeria, in which they murdered 50 Christians, on June 5, 2022. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)
Christians face persecution, discrimination, forced conversion and even mass murder for their faith in many parts of the Muslim world, yet Pope Francis, in his upcoming book called Hope, calls for an investigation to see if the Jews are committing a “genocide” against Palestinian Muslims in the Gaza Strip.
The Jews are not committing genocide against Muslims in Gaza, whose population grew almost 3% last year. Muslims, however, are committing mass murder via jihad against Christians in Africa. Yet the Pope cowers from defending his own flock.
Africa has become the epicenter of radical Islamic terrorism. Murderous jihad attacks against Christians abound in Nigeria, Mali, Burkina Faso, Egypt, Niger, the Central African Republic, Mozambique, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Cameroon.
The number of Christians intentionally murdered, let alone tortured, raped, kidnapped and forcibly converted to Islam far exceeds the number of Gazans killed unintentionally as Israel directs its fire at terrorists who hide behind civilians. Indeed, Israel is defending its population from the very same jihadist assaults faced by African Christians.
Thousands of homes, shops and businesses belonging to Christians, in addition to churches and other Christian buildings such as schools, hospitals and cemeteries in those African nations, have been attacked, damaged, bombed, looted, closed, destroyed, burned down and/or confiscated by jihadists, whose declared goals are to conquer and rule over Christian communities. According to a 2024 report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, the number of African refugees, internally displaced persons and asylum seekers grew by 14% in the past year to more than 45 million people. There is no call from the Pope to investigate.
An abbreviated roll call illustrates the problem.
“Nigeria is the most violent country in the world for Christians. Every two hours, a Christian is killed in Nigeria,” according to Open Doors. Raids by jihadists are a common way to terrorize Christian communities in Nigeria. Christian women and girls are raped, forced into sexual slavery, kidnapped for ransom or murdered. More than 150,000 people, mostly Christians, have been murdered since 2009 by jihadist forces, including Boko Haram, according to a report by the International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law. The Pope has not called for an investigation of the jihadists and their sponsors.
Religious conflict in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo has led to approximately 6 million deaths since 1996. Escalating violence in the country has displaced around 7.3 million people. Congolese Christian women in areas controlled by Islamic terrorists face persecution for their faith, including abduction, rape, trafficking, sexual slavery and forced marriage to Islamist fighters. They haven’t heard the Pope cry out on their behalf.
In Somalia, al-Shabaab, an Islamist group, has repeatedly expressed its desire to eradicate Christians from the country. If discovered, Christians in Somalia can be murdered on the spot.
In Burkina Faso, Congo DR and Central African Republic, hundreds of Christians have been raped or otherwise sexually harassed by Islamists. In Mali and Mozambique, hundreds of Christians have been physically or mentally abused for their Christian faith, including beatings and death threats.
Christians in Mali’s Mopti Region are being ordered to pay a crippling “protection tax” called jizya by Islamist groups. Local Christian leaders are told refusal to pay will result in the seizure and closure of churches. The required jizya is more than half the monthly income of many families.
In April, in Niger’s Tillabéri region, Christians were ordered by jihadists to either convert to Islam, pay their jizya tax or leave their lands. In 2021, Islamist armed groups in that country murdered more than 420 civilians and drove tens of thousands from their homes. Jihadists on motorcycles invaded villages and towns, burning and pillaging houses and granaries, and murdering civilians, including people with disabilities and numerous children.
In North Africa, too, Christians are being brutalized. In Egypt, Coptic Christians remain a target of persecution. Hundreds of young women have been kidnapped, forced to convert to Islam and coerced into marriage by Islamist men. One of the missing is 21-year-old Julia Atef, who never made it to church on the morning of Saturday, October 26. No one has heard from her since she left her family’s home on the outskirts of Cairo, headed to a meeting at St. Mark’s Coptic Orthodox Church.
The Pope does not have a “Bring Back Julia” poster anywhere in the Vatican.
Meanwhile, Algeria has closed dozens of Protestant churches. Of 47 that were once operational, only four remain, and they are under intense pressure. At least 18 Christians are facing prison sentences because of their religion. They include the Protestant Church of Algeria’s vice president, Pastor Youssef Ourahmane, who was sentenced to one year in prison for having celebrated an unauthorized worship service. Has the Pope ever said a word about Ourahmane? According to the European Centre of Law and Justice, “All Catholics who proselytize in any way are liable to criminal prosecution and deportation if they are not Algerian nationals.”
Christians face Islamist oppression outside of Africa as well. In Pakistan and Bangladesh, Hindus and Christians are murdered, kidnapped, raped and forcibly married by Islamists or unlawfully detained by police. Ahsan Raja Masih, a young Pakistani Christian, has been sentenced to hang for his faith over false “blasphemy” charges. The Catholic Bishops of Pakistan have recently joined the Christian community’s outcry against the death sentence. Where is the Pope?
In Iran, Christians are not allowed to worship or read the Bible in Farsi or have any contact with Christians who have converted from Islam. Conversion from Islam to Christianity is illegal, and anyone caught as a convert can be arrested and imprisoned. In June, a Christian convert, Yasin Mousavi, was given a 15-year prison sentence for “undermining national security and promoting Zionist Christianity.” Other Christian converts arrested last year include Hamid Afzali, sentenced to 10 years; Nasrollah Mousavi and Bijan Qolizadeh, sentenced to five years each; Zohrab Shahbazi, to nine months; and Iman Saleh, sentenced to five years. There are no “Free the Christians” posters on Vatican walls.
Many more examples of Islamist persecution of religious minorities can be given from almost every majority-Muslim country.
Pope Francis is abandoning millions of Christians to Islamic barbarism. At the same time, he supports the absurd proposition that Israel, forced to combat the scourge of Islamic savagery, is enacting the crime instead of fighting against it.
By turning reality on its head, the Pope’s shameful defamation of the Jews complements his passivity in the face of Islamic jihad against Christians. Perhaps he believes that pointing a finger at the Jews will divert Muslim rage from the Vatican. Surely, it distracts the world from his own cowardice and failure to protect Christians.
Charles Jacobs is president of the African Jewish Alliance and recipient of the Boston Freedom Award from Coretta Scott King for helping to liberate black jihad slaves in Sudan.
Uzay Bulut is a Turkish journalist formerly based in Ankara. She is a senior researcher of the African Jewish Alliance.
Israel, Amos and the Philistines by Nils A. Haug
December 25, 2024 at 5:00 am
- Israel’s enemies in Gaza today, like the Philistines of old, constitute a mortal threat to the nation, although that threat diminishes as Israel again succeeds in overcoming its enemies.
- One hopes, with the astounding team of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-elect Donald J. Trump, who successfully initiated the Abraham Accords, that jihads, pogroms and similar events will no longer take place, and that Israel will soon herald in a new dispensation of peace and redemption, as promised to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and live once again as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Hamas has been occupying Gaza, as did the Philistines. Both tribes had a similar agenda: eliminating all Israelites, the Israelis of today. Pictured: Hamas terrorists with their child trainee at a rally in Gaza City on May 24, 2021. (Photo by Mahmud Hams/AFP via Getty Images)
The Hebrew prophet Amos lived some 2,700 years ago, during the reign of King Jeroboam II of Israel. At the time, the Israelites’ main enemies were the Philistines of Gaza, reputed to be the most menacing tribe in the region and dedicated to the destruction of Israel.
Amos predicted dire punishment for the Philistines, who had taken “captive whole communities and sold them to Edom.” The Philistines had attacked the Israelites, enslaved and sold them to another of their enemies, the tribe of Edom. According to Amos, divine retribution was at hand. Certain passages of Amos’s prophecy cite the punishment of Israel’s Gazan enemies:
“Because she took captive whole communities
and sold them to Edom,
I will send fire on the walls of Gaza
that will consume her fortresses.
I will destroy the king of Ashdod
and the one who holds the scepter in Ashkelon.
I will turn my hand against Ekron,
till the last of the Philistines are dead.”
The original tribe of Philistines were indeed eliminated from the area, never to appear again. However, their ideological successors of hate, Hamas — the jihad Islamists of Gaza — arose in recent times to attack Israel, and also “took captive whole communities.”
Hamas has been occupying Gaza, as did the Philistines. Both tribes had a similar agenda: eliminating all Israelites, the Israelis of today. Apart from the issue of territorial claims was the conflict of religions. While the Philistines worshipped Dagon and Astarte, the Israelites served the God of their ancestors Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The question of the identity of the true God became starkly apparent when the Philistines captured Israel’s sacred ark at the battle of Aphek, later placing it alongside their own god, Dagon. That night, their great idol fell on its face, broken in pieces.
Israel’s enemies in Gaza today, like the Philistines of old, constitute a mortal threat to the nation, although that threat diminishes as Israel again succeeds in overcoming its enemies. The Philistines had a long history of battles with the Israelites — including David’s encounter with Goliath, and King Hezekiah’s successful battles in which the Philistines were significantly defeated. Similarly, the warriors of modern day Israel have a long and intense history of conflict with Hamas’s jihadist forces in Gaza. The conflict commenced with the first intifada in 1987, continued through many subsequent outbreaks of violence, and culminated in the horrendous atrocities of October 7, 2023.
While Amos admonished the Israelites for their lack of faithfulness to the Torah — the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy — he prophesied the eventual destruction of their enemies. Furthermore, Amos prophesizes the eternal redemption of the Jewish people after a difficult period which the prophet Jeremiah described as the “the time of trouble for Jacob but he will be saved out of it.” As did Amos, Jeremiah predicted, after this period of immense hardship, the restoration of Israel.
Israel — while frequently undermined by the West’s weak politicians — has again been facing dire circumstances through multi-front lethal attacks by fundamentalist jihadist hordes determined to eliminate the only Jewish nation from this earth.
Renowned professor, Leon R. Kass in his work, The Beginning of Wisdom, writes that “the beginning of Genesis shows us not so much the past but what will always happen.”
Jewish interpretive methods, relating to prophecy, operate in a manner that provides guidance for both the present and future, derived from lessons of the past. “We study history,” notes R. G. Collingwood, “in order to see more clearly into the situation in which we are called upon to act.”
It might be said that the Islamist assault upon peaceful Jewish residents of Hebron, nearly 100 years ago on the Sabbath day of August 24, 1929, stimulated the subsequent pogroms of modern times. The stalwart Hitler-supporter and Muslim leader of Jerusalem, Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, incited the horrific bloodshed on the false allegation that the Jews were “plotting to destroy Al-Aqsa Mosque.” The British police, mandated to keep the peace, refused to stop the madness until some 70 Jewish men, women, and children had been slaughtered.
The events of October 7, 2023, in Israel are similar. For instance, unfounded allegations of intended Jewish destruction or control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque preceded the jihadist attack. Many kibbutzniks, like the 1929 Jews of Hebron, lived under the same illusion, that they had peaceful relationships with the Palestinians, with whom they daily worked.
Just as the British commander in Hebron charged Jews for the murderous events, saying, “You Jews are to blame for all of this,” so too British jihad-supporters accused Jews, the victims, of responsibility for the October 7 events. At a rally in Manchester on October 8, 2023, the co-founder of Palestine Action, Richard Barnard, declared:
“When we hear the resistance, the Al-Aqsa flood [the Arabic name for the attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023], we must turn that flood into a tsunami of the whole world.”
In France, shortly after October 7, French far-left parliamentarian, Daniele Obono, notwithstanding their gruesome murder of civilians from assorted nations, religions and ethnicities, described Hamas as a “resistance movement”.
Columnist Kathleen Hayes comments in her discussion of the Hebron events that “the past is but a prologue of the future” — in accordance with traditional views of prophetic events, as foretold by Amos, Zechariah, Jeremiah, Daniel and other biblical prophets during millennia gone.
One hopes, with the astounding team of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President-elect Donald J. Trump, who successfully initiated the Abraham Accords, that jihads, pogroms and similar events will no longer take place, and that Israel will soon herald in a new dispensation of peace and redemption, as promised to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and live once again as “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Retired from law, his particular field of interest is political theory and ethics interconnected with current events. He holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology. Dr. Haug is author of ‘Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity’; and ‘Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.’ His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, The James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Document Danmark, Jewish Journal, and others.
The Maccabees: The Jewish Freedom Fighters
The Maccabees were a band of Jewish freedom fighters who freed Judea from the Syrian-Greek occupiers during the Second Temple period. The word Maccabee is an acronym for the Hebrew words that mean “Who is like You among all powers, G‑d.” Led by Judah the Maccabee and his four brothers, they trounced the Greek interlopers and restored the Holy Temple in Jerusalem to the service of G‑d. Their victory is celebrated during the holiday of Chanukah.
In this article:
- The Background
- Mattityahu: The First Maccabee
- Judah the Maccabee Strikes Back
- The Maccabees Rule Judea
The Background
More than 2,000 years ago there was a period of time when the Land of Israel was part of the Syrian-Greek Empire, ruled by the dynasty of the Seleucids. In 174 BCE (3586), Antiochus IV ruled the region. He was called Epiphanes, meaning “the gods’ beloved,” but people called him Epimanes (“madman”), a title more suited to the character of this harsh and cruel king.
Wanting to unify his kingdom through common religion and culture, Antiochus tried to root out the individualism of the Jews by suppressing the practice of all Jewish law. He also meddled in the affairs of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem, installing idol-worshipping High Priests who paid him handsome tributes.
At that time, Antiochus was also engaged in a successful war against Egypt. But messengers from Rome arrived and commanded him to stop the war, and he had to yield. Meanwhile, in Jerusalem, a rumor spread that a serious accident had befallen Antiochus. Thinking that he was dead, the people rebelled against Menelaus, the corrupt High Priest, who then fled together with his friends.
Antiochus returned from Egypt enraged by Roman interference with his ambitions. When he heard what had taken place in Jerusalem, he ordered his army to fall upon the Jews. Thousands of Jews were killed. Antiochus then enacted a series of harsh decrees:
Jewish worship was forbidden, and the scrolls of the Law were confiscated and burned
Jewish worship was forbidden, and the scrolls of the Law were confiscated and burned. Sabbath rest, circumcision and the dietary laws were prohibited under penalty of death. Many brave Jews refused, preferring death.
Mattityahu: The First Maccabee
One day, the henchmen of Antiochus arrived in the village of Modiin where Mattityahu, a respected and elderly priest, lived. The Syrian officer built an altar in the marketplace of the village and demanded that Mattityahu offer sacrifices to the Greek gods. Mattityahu replied, “I, my sons and my brothers are determined to remain loyal to the covenant that our G‑d made with our ancestors!”
Thereupon, a Hellenized Jew approached the altar to offer a sacrifice. Mattityahu grabbed his sword and killed him, and his sons and friends fell upon the Syrian officers and men. They killed many of them and chased the rest away. They then destroyed the altar.
Mattityahu knew that Antiochus would be enraged when he heard what had happened, and would certainly send troops to punish him and his followers. And so, Mattityahu and his sons and friends fled to the hills of Judea.
Judah the Maccabee Strikes Back
All loyal and courageous Jews joined them. They formed legions, and from time to time they left their hiding places to fall upon enemy detachments and outposts, and to destroy the pagan altars that were built by order of Antiochus.
Before his death, Mattityahu called his sons together and urged them to continue to fight in defense of G d’s Torah. He asked them to follow the counsel of their brother Shimon the Wise, and their leader in warfare was to be their brother Judah the Strong, or Judah the Maccabee.
The Maccabees won battle after battle, including one in which they fended off an army of more than 40,000 men.
Then the Maccabees returned to Jerusalem to liberate it. They entered the Temple and cleared it of the idols placed there by the Syrian vandals. Judah and his followers built a new altar, which he dedicated on the twenty-fifth of the month of Kislev, in the year 139 BCE (3622).
Since the golden Menorah had been stolen by the Syrians, the Maccabees now made one of cheaper metal. When they wanted to light it, they found only a small cruse of pure olive oil bearing the seal of the High Priest Yochanan. It was sufficient to create light for only one day.
By a miracle of G‑d, it continued to burn for eight days, until new oil was available. That miracle proved that G‑d had again taken His people under His protection. In memory of this, our sages appointed these eight days as a holiday of annual thanksgiving and lighting candles.
The Maccabees Rule Judea
The Maccabees and their descendants took the throne of Judea for themselves. This was a problem because they were priests, descendants of Aaron. Their job was to serve in the Holy Temple and guide the people in spiritual matters. It was the place of the descendants of King David, from the tribe of Judah, who were supposed to sit on the royal throne. Indeed, it did not take long until the monarchy of Judea was dragged down into a series of unending power grabs and bloody intrigue, with king after king trying to imitate the very same Greeks their ancestors had ousted from the land.
Yet, for all their shortcomings, the Maccabees leave us with an empowering message that resonates in all times and all places: Never cower in the face of tyranny. Do your part, trust in G‑d, and success is sure to come.
More in this section
- The Hanukkah Story
- The Story of Yehudit
- Chanah and Her Seven Sons
- 27:14
Miracle of the Maccabees - Five Brave Men and One Brave Woman
- 11 Facts About Antiochus Every Jew Should Know
[Ed.:
Jihad Never Sleeps by Bruce Thornton
Nor does our willful blindness.
December 24, 2024
The age of modern jihadism began in 1928 with the creation of the Muslim Brotherhood, itself a reaction to the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate in 1924. Eighty years later Osama bin Laden called that event a “catastrophe” and a “humiliation and disgrace,” for it marked the culmination of the infidel West’s domination of Islam, the religion of some of the greatest warriors in history.
The purpose of the Muslim Brotherhood was to restore Islam to the global power and dominance of Christendom it had wielded for a millennium; and to return Islam to its divine destiny, which founder Hasan al-Bana wrote is “to dominate not to be dominated, to impose its laws [Sharia] on all nations, and to extend its power to the entire planet.”
Most Westerners didn’t notice or think about the loss of the Caliphate and the epochal shift in the geopolitical order, especially since their secularist culture had relentlessly been diminishing the role of Christianity in our culture and civilization. By the Thirties, Hilaire Belloc could write, “Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them.”
Despite the gruesome bloody reminders on 9/11 that jihadism and Islam were still a threat, many of our credentialed cognitive elites dismissed criticism of Islam’s doctrines, especially jihad, as Islamophobic slanders and bigotry. Moreover, although the outcome of Hamas’ butchery on Oct. 7 last year seems to be a failure, it is itself an object lesson in the continuing danger of jihadist violence. The collapse of Bashar al Assad’s regime in Syria, mostly at the hands of jihadist forces, should be a warning that jihad never sleeps, and we should not blind ourselves to its nature as documented in Islam’s doctrines and historical practice.
Another signal that Islam was reviving, one louder, clearer, and globally consequential than the Muslim Brotherhood, was the Iranian Revolution begun in 1978. While Western foreign policy mavens spoke of “national self-determination,” “anticolonialism,” “democracy,” and other tenets of the “rules-based international order,” the catalyst of the revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, explicitly cast the revolution as a jihad waged to institute an Islamic state governed by Sharia law, and to fight against the Western infidels who had usurped Islam’s rightful place as what the Koran calls “the best of nations.”
In November of 1979, for example, Khomeini preached, “The Muslims must rise up in this struggle, which is more a struggle between unbelievers and Islam than one between Iran and America: between all unbelievers and the Muslims. The Muslims must rise up and triumph in the struggle” –– the very definition of “jihad.”
Yet our foreign policy establishment, with a few exceptions, dismissed Khomeini as a “beard from the fringe,” a religious crank like Jim Jones or David Koresh. Typical of secularist bias was the comments of Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who predicted that, as David Farber summarized in his book Taken Hostage, “experts and secularists of various stripes would replace Islamic fundamentalists in key decision-making posts.” Similarly, an Assistant Secretary of State said that “after a transition period common interests could provide a basis for future cooperation”––a failure of imagination and the ignorance of Islamic doctrine we saw reprised in Obama’s 2019 “nuclear deal.”
The loss of our critical Cold War ally Iran has turned out to be a geopolitical disaster for the West, one still resonating today. Iran has fomented throughout the region jihadist violence with its proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, Iraq, and Syria. They and especially their Iranian sponsor have the blood of thousands of Americans on its hands, most grievously the 241 U.S. military personnel murdered in Beirut in 1983. The mullahs have taken a giant step towards fulfilling Khomeini’s promise that “We shall export our revolution to the whole world. Until the cry ‘There is no god but Allah’ resounds over the whole world, there will be jihad.”
Worse, appeasement of that violence–– whether through a political failure of nerve, a cognitive failure of imagination, or economic interests––emboldened the theocratic regime, further encouraging the Mullahs, who have been checked only by Israel’s stout and devastating resistance. But unless the West destroys Iran’s nuclear weapons program and infrastructure, the next time might have a different ending.
Israel’s success, however, has also led to a new danger growing in Syria, which is now ruled by another jihadist outfit that many Westerners are misunderstanding or whitewashing–– Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, as the insurgents controlling Damascus are called. Uzay Bulut of the Gatestone Institute reports, “In 2022, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom . . . stated, ‘The al-Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) continues to brutalize and displace religious minority communities in the northwestern region of Idlib, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has increased its presence in eastern Syria, waging almost daily attacks and destabilizing the region for religious minorities. Opposition groups leverage their Turkish financing and military support to wage campaigns of religious and ethnic cleansing in Afrin.’”
Moreover, according to Matthew Lewis of the Los Angeles Times, “social media is replete with images of jihadist rebels in Syria describing their victory there as a first, not last, step. In one, a group of rebels appear and proclaim: ‘We entered the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus chanting Allah Akbar and with the help of Allah we will also enter the Al-Aqsa Mosque and we will also enter the Prophet Muhammad’s Mosque and the Kaaba in Mecca,’ referring to sites in Jerusalem and Saudi Arabia.”
These reports show that the jihadists in Syria think that what we call a “revolution” against a tyrant that violates his people’s rights, is in reality the continuation of the jihad that Hassan al-Banna called for, and Khomeini achieved in Iran.
What this all means is that we can no longer afford to reprise yet again the blunders, secularist disdain for religion, feckless foreign policy idealism, and Islamophilic delusions that we’ve indulged for nearly half a century. Consider, for example, the plans for the Afghan people codified in the 2002 Bonn Conference, convened to establish the goals for rebuilding Afghanistan: “To freely determine their own political future in accordance with the principles of Islam, democracy, pluralism and social justice.”
The dangerous begged question is that the core principles of Islam and Sharia can actually be reconciled with secular Western political ideals such as the separation of church and state, or the equality of the sexes. The Islamic [N.B.] Republic of Iran has demonstrated for over forty years that such a reconciliation is not possible for devout Muslims.
Hence, we cannot, as Andrew McCarthy writes in National Review, “persist in willful blindness to what remains the most basic, incorrigible fact about the region: the predominance of sharia supremacism. Fundamentalist Islam, which has developed for over a millennium, is not merely a religious creed; it is a comprehensive legal and societal framework that is self-consciously hostile to Western liberalism and, thus, to the principles of the American republic.”
Nor, McCarthy suggests, should we delude ourselves into thinking that the leader of HTS, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani––for now the dominant leader in Syria and most likely to take control of the state–– will be a “moderate” and a “nationalist,” and create a normal state that will join the “rules-based international order.”
On the contrary, the violence against religious minorities and the Kurds will worsen. “According to the human rights organization Open Doors,” Gatestone’s Butut points out, “‘there are around 579,000 Christians in Syria. Many of them fled cities and villages seized by jihadists, to take refuge in the formerly government-controlled Wadi al-Nasara (‘Valley of Christians’). With the collapse of the Assad regime, the Valley has fallen to jihadists, and the lives of those Christians are in danger.’”
The West has for decades indulged such democracy promotion pipe-dreams about Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, yet an Islamic liberal democracy has still not come to pass. That’s because most Muslims have managed to keep their faith alive and intact, and avoided the secularism, metaphysical materialism, programmatic skepticism, relativism, and hedonism that characterize the West. As Belloc wrote, “In Islam, there has been no such dissolution of ancestral doctrine—or, at any rate, nothing corresponding to the universal break-up of religion in Europe.”
Many apologists for traditional Islam as it has existed for millennia dishonor that faith by bowdlerizing its tenets and reducing them to our own secularist political principles and assumptions. But as Belloc reminds us, Islam “is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past.”
There are 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, and not all of them share what historian Efraim Karsh calls the jihadist’s “imperial dream of world domination.” But it “has remained very much alive in the hearts and minds of many Muslims.” And as history continues to remind us, jihad never sleeps.
Bruce Thornton Bruce S. Thornton is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, an emeritus professor of classics and humanities at California State University, Fresno, and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution. His latest book is Democracy’s Dangers and Discontents: The Tyranny of the Majority from the Greeks to Obama.
UN Fakes Gaza Famine by Refusing to Deliver Food by Daniel Greenfield
Then blames Israel and demands Hamas protection.
December 24, 2024
If it’s Tuesday, then it must be time for more cries of a fake famine in Gaza.
Gaza, as you know, has been starving to death now since Oct 2023 which is the longest rate of starving to death on record.
Weeks after the brutal Hamas assault of Oct 7, Cindy McCain who heads the UN World Food Program, falsely claimed that Muslims in Gaza were “literally starving to death as we speak
Next month, McCain contended that “food and water are practically non-existent in Gaza” while CBS News reported the claim by a British NGO that “more than half a million people… ‘face death by starvation.’” In December, the UN WFP claimed 570,000 Muslims were “starving” in Gaza and at risk of “famine”. “It doesn’t get any worse,” the UN WFP’s Arif Hussein argued.
By the end of January, the UN claimed that “this is a population that is starving to death.”
A year later, Gaza is notable for having some of the fattest starvation victims around. [Emphasis added]
The Biden administration, its congressional allies and the media have continued to lambast Israel for ‘blocking food’ from entering Gaza despite undeniable evidence of a constant flow of food into Gaza.
But that only matters so much when the UN refuses to deliver it. Again.
WATCH https://twitter.com/i/status/1871269509924868401
Why isn’t the food being delivered? Because the UN only wants Hamas to be able to deliver it.
The New York Times comes closest to admitting what’s going on in its latest article.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said this month that it would no longer deliver aid through Kerem Shalom, the main border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza, because of the breakdown in law and order.
Hundreds of truckloads of relief are piling up at the crossing in part because aid groups fear they will be looted.
Remember all the claims that UNRWA, which is filled top to bottom with terrorists, is the only thing standing between the Arab Muslim colony in Gaza and death?
UNRWA won’t even deliver food. Why not?
The situation in Gaza deteriorated after the Israeli military invaded Rafah in May, seeking to oust Hamas from one of its final strongholds. Hamas’s security forces fled, and organized gangs — with no one stopping them — began intercepting aid trucks as they headed from the main border crossing into southern Gaza. They are stealing flour, oil and other commodities and selling them at astronomical prices, aid groups and residents say.
The actual choice here is between the ‘armed gangs’ (many of whom consist of the same people as Hamas) taking the aid and reselling it at astronomical prices… or Hamas seizing the aid and reselling it at astronomical prices.
And, unsurprisingly, the UN prefers that Hamas seize the aid.
A third option would be for Israel to provide security for food deliveries, but the UN rejects that.
International aid workers have accused Israel of ignoring the problem and allowing looters to act with impunity.
The United Nations does not allow Israeli soldiers to protect aid convoys, fearing that would compromise its neutrality, and its officials have called on Israel to allow the Gaza police, which are under Hamas’s authority, to secure their convoys.
Israel, which seeks to uproot Hamas, accuses the group of stealing international aid and says that the police are just another arm of the militant group
The UN refuses to allow Israel to protect aid convoys. It wants only Hamas to protect them. Then it blames Israel when the convoys are raided because its goal is to preserve Hamas authority.
Read that again.
The UN is refusing to conduct food deliveries in order to manufacture a famine in Gaza with the aim of preserving Hamas.
Daniel Greenfield Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
War W/ Houthis Explodes After Tel Aviv Attack [40:03] Josh Hasten
December 23, 2024 JNS TV | JLMinute – In the latest attack from Yemen, a Houthi missile landed in the Tel Aviv area, wounding 16. This happened only days after the Israel Defense Forces struck terrorist enclaves in Yemen in response to a missile that landed on a school in Ramat Gan.
What’s next and what do the U.S.-led strikes on the Houthis mean? JNS CEO and Jerusalem bureau chief Alex Traiman and Middle East correspondent Josh Hasten unpack this story and more, including Turkey’s incursion into Syria; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fear of being arrested in Poland; and ongoing hostage negotiations with Hamas.
Will a Weakened Iran Make a Run for Nuclear Weapons? [43:24] Caroline Glick
December 23, 2024 JNS TV – All across the Middle East, the Biden administration continues demonstrating its lack of understanding of the region.
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan says that a weak Iran makes the world a more dangerous place; Washington pledges $5 billion to Egypt even as it violates the peace treaty with Israel; and the Biden administration warms up to Syria’s jihadists.
From the donkey’s mouth TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 24, 2024
“Democrats have their heads in the sand and are absolutely committed to their own ideas, even when they’re failing.”
“Democrats are complacent and lazy.”
“Democrats are not a friend of the working class anymore.”
“What the Democratic elites and their politicians believe is often very different from what the average Democratic voter is.”
“The elites that run the Democratic Party are way too obsessed with appealing to the very far-left social progressivism that’s very popular on college campuses.”
Late deciders said that Kamala did not have good character and wasn’t very smart or capable of thinking on her own:
“Kamala was inauthentic, very dishonest and did not seem competent.”
“It seemed like a lot of what Kamala said wasn’t coming from her. Every time she talked about something, it was planned out and never her thoughts, didn’t seem genuine.”
Late deciders said that Trump came across as more honest & caring than Kamala:
“Trump, even though you never really knew what he was going to say, when he was going to say it, it was always him and genuine to what he thought, so that’s what swayed me.”
Late deciders were concerned about Democrats being too extreme:
“I didn’t agree with Kamala thinking that it’s okay for children to change their body parts.”
“I think that there needs to be some parameters on what’s accepted in society and what isn’t. Some of the societal norms, and I think that the Democrats have tried to open that [transgenderism] up a little too much.”
Inflation, the cost of living and immigration were the driving issues for battleground voters and late deciders.
“Inflation is too high and I didn’t understand Kamala’s plan to lower it. I don’t understand how tariffs work either – but like Trump said – wouldn’t it be better off for America by maybe having more stuff made here?”
Sums it up! Remember that words like ‘progressive’ or ‘woke’ or ‘globalist’ are just sweeter sounding words for COMMUNIST or FASCIST or SOCIALIST NAZI totalitarianism. “Joy” was just the Democrats’ devious campaign line designed to fool people and to cover up that evil truth. It didn’t work! Praise God!
[Ed.:
No honor among thieves TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
DEC 23, 2024
Every year around this time, Congress goes through the same last-minute, year-end budget trickery with the usual warning from the Democrats: “Either you give us what we want or we will shut down the Government.” On the other side, the RINOs always tell us they will fix it – we all know that never happens.
Rand Paul does his annual “Festivus” report where he mocks all the waste in the budget process. We all laugh and then cry about the corruption but nothing changes. It always ends the same way. The swamp wins and We the People lose.
Both sides throw around words like CR, debt ceiling, pork, reconciliation, etc. and, frankly, most people really have no clue what they are talking about. Including me! So I put together a little primer so we can all understand exactly what’s going on. I’ve learned that the only way I really understand a topic is if I am able to explain it to others. If I can’t do that – then I don’t get it myself!
After I studied exactly what just happened with the latest CR, including a little history lesson about how we got here, I learned that everything we are being told about it by the swamp and the fake news is a lie. I hope this newsletter helps you understand the truth about what just happened & how they play us for fools, over and over again. It’s time to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Why is this important? Because this charade has the potential to DERAIL Trump and the entire MAGA agenda in 2025 unless we are awake and aware of what’s really going on. This is complicated but very important to understand…
Who’s behind the sabotage? The swamp and their RINO saboteurs and collaborators in the FREEDOM CAUCUS. Way too many people have been conned by the so-called FREEDOM CAUCUS and the Koch Libertarians – and they believe they are on our side. No, they are NOT. They call themselves the only “true fiscal conservatives” – and I call them liars, saboteurs, false prophets and controlled opposition.
In order to understand what just happened with the CR and the budget, WHY it happened and HOW it happened – we need to go back to Trump’s first term and see how the FREEDOM CAUCUS sabotaged Trump the same way back then and how they actually HELPED Obama and Biden.
First, the FREEDOM CAUCUS is a group of politicians that was manufactured by the Kochs. They are pretend Republicans whose ONLY purpose is to disrupt, confuse and obstruct. They are controlled opposition – they pretend to be our friends while stabbing us in the back. The Kochs are social liberals who want open borders, cheap labor and freedom for themselves – not you. You can learn more about them here. It’s important that you read this article first before we go on:
[Ed.:
Trump team planning to pull US out of corrupt World Health Organization on first day in office By Pamela Geller
December 22, 2024 – The WHO is a Chinese proxy. Outside of the Democrats, the WHO did not more damage, promoted more lies and disinformation during the Covid scare. Globalsim is anti-human, anti-real, irrational.
Report: Trump team planning to pull US out of World Health Organization on first day in office
US President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is pushing to pull America out of the World Health Organization on its first day in office, the Financial Times reports, citing public health experts concerned about the potential impact.’
December 22, 2024 Times of Israel
“America is going to leave a huge vacuum in global health financing and leadership. I see no one that is going to fill the breach,” one of the experts is quoted as saying.
The US is the WHO’s largest donor, contributing about 16 percent of its funding in 2022-23, according to the Financial Times.
Trump cut ties with WHO in 2020 during his first term, charging that the UN public health agency had failed to do enough to combat the initial spread of the novel coronavirus.
He recently announced vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his nominee to run the US Department of Health and Human Services.
MAMA: Make America Moral Again by Linda Goudsmit
December 23, 2024
Every day I read chilling statistical reports on the escalating violent crime in America––murder, rape, robbery, assault. The staggering increase is horrifying, but what is most alarming to me is the percentage of young people who accept criminality as a societal solution. The Hill posted a stunning article online December 17, 2024, titled, “Shock poll: 41 percent of young voters find killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO acceptable” written by Filip Timotija. Why is this so?
The alarming decline of morality that is convulsing America today is the consequence of the globalist elite, and its relentless replacement ideology that seeks to reorder the world into one singular, planetary Unistate. The separation of Church and State that our Founding Fathers institutionalized as protection against a state religion has been exploited and perverted to allow the insertion of Marxist principles, indoctrination, and ideology to be practiced as a state religion inside America.
Primary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities across the nation have embraced American Marxism and its amoral foundation which advances its ends justify the means for the greater good principle. There is no individualism or individual morality in Marxism, only rules to follow that advance the collective. It is precisely this amoral Marxist narrative that has separated young Americans from the morality and protection of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indoctrinated young Americans have not understood the formulaic consequences of the ends justify the means principle that can and will be used against them, the moment their usefulness expires.
Marxism is a collectivist replacement ideology that has been funded, fomented, and weaponized by the globalist elite to shatter the Judeo-Christian morality and the individualism it protects. The amoral tenets of the woke Marxist narrative, including Diversity Equity Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental Social Governance (ESG) that affect education, medicine, law, investment, and corporate governance, are designed to collapse the Judeo-Christian morality and infrastructure of the United States––and they have been wildly successful. The evidence is reflected in the stupefying statistic reported in The Hill article, “A poll found 41% of adults under 30 consider the killing of Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson acceptable.” Additionally, “Since Thompson was shot, first in the back and then again as he fell to the ground, a number of social media posts from people saying they do not have sympathy for his death have gained popularity.”
Consider how communist Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward used death and destruction to create a new China, the People’s Republic of China. It is estimated that 45 million Chinese people died for the greater good in Mao’s Cultural Revolution, including his Red Guard of armed student activists. Why? Because there was no place for agitators in Mao’s new China. Likewise, there will be no place for agitators in the globalist Unistate. Mao is quoted as saying, “It is better to let half of the people die, so that the other half can eat their fill.” This is the direct consequence of Mao’s ends justify the means principle. American Marxist students whose amoral attitudes accept killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare for the greater good of society, had better realize that they will also be eliminated in the name of the greater good of society sooner or later.
There is no individual freedom in totalitarian rule whether it is religious totalitarianism, secular totalitarianism, monarchical totalitarianism etc. etc. Totalitarianism is a very descriptive word. It always and only describes the few with absolute power over the many.
Every society large or small is organized by a code of conduct. Our Founding Fathers were determined to avoid the tyranny of centralized government, specifically monarchy, and they established a nation of citizens, not subjects. The Constitution of the United States, drafted in 1787 by delegates from 12 states (Rhode Island did not send delegates) and ratified in 1788, was written to form a more perfect union that was described by Abraham Lincoln 100 years later as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
The Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was ratified in 1791 guaranteeing individual civil rights and liberties to citizens, and limiting the government’s power over them. Those rights include freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and the right to bear arms. Limitations on government include, for example, protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The first sentence of the Preamble to the Bill of Rights makes its intention explicitly clear:
THE Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution.
The foundational morality of the U.S. Constitution is the Judeo-Christian 10 Commandments. The delegates, our Founding Fathers, were Christian men who carefully drafted the 1st Amendment to both ensure freedom of religion in the United States, and prohibit the establishment of a “State” religion. Religious power and political power were merged in every society from ancient times until the United States Constitution separated them.
Historically, religious power provided the morality and political power provided the infrastructure for organizing societies and running governments. In homogenous societies the merger was not a problem, but what about today’s multi-religious and multicultural societies? What happens when the morality of religions and beliefs clash? The Judeo-Christian tradition that is the infrastructure of morality in the Western world is diametrically opposed to Islamic doctrine and to paganism. But the Judeo-Christian tradition itself is not homogenous, and has multiple internal fractures inside Judaism, inside Christianity, and between Judaism and Christianity. So, let’s examine the 10 Commandments and the possibilities for a more perfect union in a multicultural, 21st-century United States of America.
If we look carefully at Commandments 5-10, we will discover all of the required moral principles for living in a free society of ordered liberty, without specifying Yahweh, Jesus, or any other godhead of the religions in the world. It is specifically the incorporation of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, applied in the framework of Commandments 5-10 that can Make America Moral Again and unify our nation. We cannot abide internal divisiveness over the identity of God in Commandments 1-4, nor can we abide any religious or secular doctrine that rejects Commandments 5-10. For me, how a citizen of the United States comes to embrace Commandments 5-10 is irrelevant, as long as that citizen abides by them, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
The 10 Commandments
1. Thou shalt have no other Gods before me
2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image
3. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain
4. Remember the Sabbath to keep it holy
5. Honor thy father and thy mother
6. Thou shalt not kill [murder]
7. Thou shalt not commit adultery
8. Thou shalt not steal
9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor10. Thou shalt not covet
Globalism in the 21st-century is by far the most dangerous of the totalitarian options because its planetary objectives are achievable through globalist elite control of the astonishing advances in science, technology, and communications. The United States of America under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump and the patriots in his administration, are the bulwark against globalism and its dystopian feudal Unistate.
President Trump’s massive 2024 election victory has established a newly invigorated and expanded Republican party. Make America Great Again (MAGA) Republicans include the participation of many disillusioned and patriotic former Democrats who want American morality restored in America. Men like Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., understand that their freedoms, business interests, and ideological hopes for a healthier, safer, prosperous, sovereign America are only possible in the patriotic MAGA Republican movement. These former Democrats understand what American socialists and today’s Marxist Democrats have failed to recognize: They will all lose their freedom in the totalitarian globalist Unistate because it is amoral, and operates on its ends justifies the means principle that uses any means to justify its own megalomaniacal ends for the greater good. Globalism is entirely hostile to the individual, individual sovereignty, and to national sovereignty. Our future as a constitutional republic is in the Make America Great Again movement because of its commitment to MAMA: Make America Moral Again 😉
The disturbing history of the ubiquitous yellow ribbon [0:59] Chananya Weissman
December 20, 2024 – Even if the yellow ribbon were entirely benign, these symbol campaigns are entirely un-Jewish. Their purpose is to brainwash and control the population. We don’t unite around weird symbols. We unite around the Torah, period. The yellow ribbons and other such un-Jewish symbols should be completely banished from our communities. Speak up and do something. Be a leader.
Extremism Masquerading as Apostasy: The Case of Taleb Al Abdulmohsen @AMUSE
DEC 22, 2024 – The blood-stained cobblestones of Magdeburg’s Christmas market in Germany serve as a stark reminder of the looming threat posed by sleeper extremists hiding in plain sight. When Taleb Al Abdulmohsen, a Saudi-born Shia refugee falsely claiming to be an ex-Muslim, plowed a black BMW into a holiday crowd, he not only shattered lives but also exposed a chilling vulnerability in Western asylum systems. How many more like Taleb might be lying in wait, using deception to embed themselves within society until the moment to strike arises? His tangled narrative of claimed apostasy, far-right affiliations, and allegations of Islamist duplicity isn’t just an anomaly—it’s a warning. Europe’s compassion paving the way for an iceberg of hidden radicals to emerge.
A History of Exploiting Asylum Systems
The notion of asylum as a sanctuary for the persecuted has been both noble but naïve. History is replete with examples of extremist elements infiltrating Western societies under humanitarian pretenses. For instance, a 2016 Europol report identified dozens of cases of individuals linked to terrorist organizations entering Europe under the guise of refugee status during the height of the Syrian crisis. Such findings underline the vulnerability of asylum systems to exploitation by those with malicious intent. During the Syrian refugee crisis, European intelligence agencies unearthed over 50 confirmed cases of jihadists posing as asylum seekers to infiltrate the continent. These incidents highlight the calculated exploitation of refugee flows by extremist groups. These precedents provide a chilling backdrop to Taleb’s narrative, suggesting that his claim of apostasy could have been a calculated move.
The Strategic Allure of Apostasy
In Europe, few identities grant more immediate legitimacy than that of an apostate fleeing persecution. Apostasy in Islam is often punishable by death, particularly in Saudi Arabia. By declaring himself an atheist, Taleb not only secured his asylum in Germany but also shielded himself from extradition despite Saudi Arabia’s requests. According to a 2022 study by the Pew Research Center, asylum claims citing religious persecution, including apostasy, rose by 35% in Europe between 2015 and 2020, highlighting the strategic use of this identity by some applicants to gain legal protection. His outspoken criticism of Islam, including appearances in documentaries and interviews, further cemented his public persona as an ex-Muslim. Yet, this very visibility raises questions: why would someone allegedly at risk of violent retribution openly flaunt their apostasy? Genuine apostates, particularly women, often remain in the shadows to avoid retribution—a discrepancy that invites skepticism.
Taqiyya: The Cloak of Concealment
The Islamic doctrine of taqiyya permits concealment of one’s faith to avoid persecution. While historically rooted in self-preservation, its misuse as a strategic tool by extremists is not unprecedented. Taleb’s accusers suggest that his public renunciation of Islam was not an act of defiance but a carefully orchestrated charade. Maral Salmassi, an Iranian-German entrepreneur, argued that Taleb’s actions align with the practice of taqiyya, allowing him to infiltrate and destabilize. This accusation gains weight from testimonies of ex-Muslims who claim he used his position to target activists and undermine their efforts.
Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens and the Danger of the Woke Right [28:19]
December 22, 2024 JNS TV | The Quad Interviews – Israeli innovation envoy Fleur Hassan-Nahoum interviews The Epoch Times’ Karys Rhea on the woke right.
Rhea points out that although antisemitism on the left poses a greater threat, there is a dangerous trend among isolationist, America First “conservatives” such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens of conspiracy theories and Jew hatred
TOM RENZ: The Omnibus CR Funding Bill —The WHO Treaty in Disguise
WE FOUND OUT WHAT THE DRONES ARE!! ft. Dr. Steven Greer | Superfly with Dana Carvey and David Spade [1:06:48]
Fly on the Wall with Dana Carvey and David Spade
Dec 20, 2024 Full Episodes | Superfly with Dana Carvey and David Spade
Recurring guest Dr. Steven Greer joins the show to discuss the recent drone sightings, what’s behind it all, and so much more. His work is riveting!
[Ed.: ‘Well isn’t that special!‘]
Mind-Boggling Backfire: By Pardoning Hunter, Joe Biden Might Be Going to Jail By C. Douglas Golden
December 22, 2024 at 4:00am The Western Journal – Conservatives are still smarting over the fact that Hunter Biden’s gun and tax charges were pardoned by his father after his father specifically said he wouldn’t use his presidential power to do so.
Mind you, anyone who really believed that promise also still believes in Santa Claus and the non-existence of the word “gullible” in the dictionary. However, it was the brazenness of it all — the language he used, the fact he dumped it at the end of the Thanksgiving weekend, and then the fact he jetted off to Angola right after it was issued — that made it particularly galling.
“No reasonable person who looks at the facts of Hunter’s cases can reach any other conclusion than Hunter was singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong,” he said in his statement on the pardon, two sentences after he praised “a carefully negotiated plea deal” that “unraveled in the court room,” he said because of pressure from his “political opponents in Congress.” (It was, in fact, because the judge was incredulous at the unusual nature of the deal, which she called potentially unconstitutional.)
“For my entire career I have followed a simple principle: just tell the American people the truth. They’ll be fair-minded. Here’s the truth: I believe in the justice system, but as I have wrestled with this, I also believe raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice — and once I made this decision this weekend, there was no sense in delaying it further,” he said in conclusion.
That too was a lie — he’d sworn that he’d not interfere with the power of the pardon — but never mind. What’s done is done, and now there’s a deeper question: Did Joe Biden sign onto a pardon that could put him in jail? [Emphasis added]
That seems like an insane question, but perhaps not so much. First, let’s look at the breadth of the pardon, which goes well beyond the federal gun and tax charges. In fact, it covers everything back to 2014 — the year when he started on the board of Burisma, quelle surprise.
Tomorrow Marks Day 444 for Hostages in Gaza by A.J. Caschetta
December 22, 2024 IPT News – On November 4, 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s henchmen stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held Americans hostage for 444 days, releasing them on January 20, 1981. On October 7, 2023, Hamas storm troopers and Gazan civilians paraglided and marched into Israel and took hundreds of American and Israeli hostages after killing over 1,200. Tomorrow, December 23, 2024, will be their 444th day in captivity.
Comparing the two situations shows how much has changed in the last four decades – none of it for the better.
Hostages, Then and Now
The Americans taken hostage by Khomeini’s followers were all adults working at the U.S. embassy. The captives in Gaza today, both male and female, range from infants to the aged. One hostage, Kfir Bibas, born on January 18, 2023, was only 262 days old when he was stolen from his bed. He celebrated his first birthday as a hostage and has spent the majority of his life as a Hamas prisoner.
Some of the American diplomats were beaten during and after the November 4 siege of the U.S. embassy. They were undoubtedly held in inhumane conditions and sometimes threatened with execution. But unlike those seized on October 7, not one was executed. Not a single one was raped.
After the first few days of their captivity, unless they were being moved from one location to another or paraded in the street, the American diplomats were not blindfolded. Aside from when they were kept periodically in a damp, windowless warehouse on the embassy grounds, which the hostages named “The Mushroom Inn,” they could see outside. Hamas’s hostages, on the other hand, have likely been kept underground in the maze of tunnels that constitute subterranean Gaza for most of their 444 days of captivity. Many have likely not seen the sun in all that time. They have been severely beaten.
On November 17, 1979, Khomeini ordered the female and African-American hostages released because “Islam has a special respect toward women” and because blacks had been forced to suffer “under American pressure and tyranny.” The women released by Hamas in the November 2023 ceasefire were sexually assaulted and constantly intimidated.
Those Americans held by Iran who were injured or ill received medical care, albeit inferior to what they deserved. One hostage, Richard Queen, the State Department’s Vice Consul, suffering the early stages of undiagnosed multiple sclerosis, was released after 250 days. His symptoms baffled the Iranian physicians who treated him, and his captors feared the consequences of his dying in captivity. Hamas has no such fears.
UN Responses, Then and Now
In 1979, the United Nations was not quite as corrupted as it is today. The Security Council responded if not quickly (on December 4) at least decisively with Resolution 457 calling for the immediate release of the hostages. On December 31, it issued Resolution 461, condemning Iran and citing an International Court of Justice order for the release of all hostages.
In 2023, after weeks of failing to reach a consensus, the Security Council finally issued Resolution 2712 on November 15, calling for the release of all hostages, but it did not condemn or even mention the October 7 attack.
[Ed.:
Alert America! Former US Air Force Engineer Warns Of Attack Of The Drones! [18:35] Kevin E. Lake
December 21, 2024
The Sunnis can smell blood Nadav Shragai
Middle East scholar Mordechai Kedar lays out the opportunities developing in Syria and the potential Sunni wave that may topple Iran—with Israeli help.
Dec 21, 2024, 8:13 PM (GMT+2) Israel National News – ( JNS) A few months ago, some of the rebel leaders in Syria contacted Mordechai Kedar, a renowned Israeli scholar of the Middle East, specializing in Arab culture (who earlier in his career, wrote a weekly op-ed for Arutz Sheva, ed.). They proposed that he come to the Idlib region in northwestern Syria, where they had been spearheading their activity and preparations for the final push towards the great revolution.
“Come to Turkey, and we’ll pick you up from there,” they suggested.
Kedar was keen to meet them. His contacts sought coordination and ties with Israel. They saw in Kedar, a feisty academic with whom they were familiar from his frequent appearances on the Qatari TV channel Al Jazeera, a potential go-between between themselves and the Israeli establishment.
However, the way to the rebel stronghold passed through Turkey, with a connecting flight from Istanbul. Kedar, who has often lambasted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in his articles, was told that it might be wiser for him to avoid getting involved in such an adventure. So he eventually decided to give up on the idea.
A few days before the rebels defeated the regime of Bashar al-Assad and the masses toppled his statues across Damascus and Homs, once again Kedar received messages from the rebel organizations. The first one came from Muhammad A, one of the members of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, who wrote to him as follows: “We shall build a relationship of friendship, love, and brotherhood with our brothers and sisters in Israel and shall be a role model for all the regional states.”
The second message was from Fahad al-Masri, a member of the Syrian National Salvation Front and one of the rebel leaders, currently in France. Al-Masri wrote that the Israeli flag would soon be flying over the Iranian embassy in Damascus and Beirut.
Kedar passed on these overtures to the political and security establishment in Israel. Only a few days later, he gazed in wonder at the lightning-fast fall of the Assad regime and the ensuing flight of its soldiers.
Did Israel play a part in the rebels’ victory? Kedar said he doesn’t know, but noted that “the routing of Hezbollah, the rebels’ biggest enemy, considerably helped them.”
‘The Sunnis can smell blood’
Mordechai Kedar is 72 years old, a reserve lieutenant colonel who served for 25 years in the Israel Defense Forces’ now famous military intelligence Unit 8200. He is now closely monitoring the developments in Syria.
Q: More than a decade ago, the current leader of the rebels, Abu Mohammed al-Julani, in conjunction with others, founded a branch of ISIL in Syria, as well as a Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra. In 2013, the United States offered a bounty of $10 million for him. This does not exactly dovetail with the spirit of moderation and reconciliation in the messages that you’ve been receiving. (Ed. Note: The US has since removed the bounty.)
A: You’re absolutely right, and so we really need to wait and judge the developments based on the reality of the situation and their actions. At least from al-Julani’s initial announcements, he appears to be trying to portray an image of a new and legitimate Syrian leader. He has asked his men not to fire in the air so as not to injure anybody. He has also asked them to refrain from burning down government ministries as these offices are “the property of the Syrian people.” He has left Assad’s government intact, cognizant of the fact that the state and its civil institutions—sewage, electricity, the health system and hospitals—need to continue to function.
So far, he has behaved in a relatively rational manner. On the other hand, there have already been incidents of rebels abducting women, murdering and abusing supporters of the fallen regime; and they even destroyed a church. We must be ready for any eventuality.
Q: You and other experts have described the recent events in Syria as another heavy blow to Iran, which has now lost an additional hub of power and influence. What should Israel do now?
A: I believe that this event will see Iran withdrawing further into itself. Iran has abandoned its proxies—Hamas, Hezbollah and Assad. The glue that has held the Shi’ite alliance together is now disintegrating, and the Sunnis can smell blood. The Sunnis are about to open a can of worms. I sense that Iraq, too, might disavow the Iranian presence there in the not-too-distant future, and we could even witness the fall of the Houthis in Yemen. The events in Syria have provided a real boost to the Sunnis everywhere, encouraging them to get organized against the Iranian presence. This ripple effect might even have an impact inside Iran too, mainly due to the active social media there and the ensuing potential for division.
Q: What is our place in the picture that you are portraying?
A: Together with others, we need to encourage the minorities in Iran to rise up against the Persian hegemony, both the religious leadership under the mullahs and also the secular leadership dating back to the period of the Shah of Iran [Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi].
In practice, there is no Iranian people. There are Persians and other large groups, such as Baluchis, Arabs, Kurds, Azeris and Turkmen, alongside an additional 40 or so smaller groups. For years, there have been a large number of separatist groups trying to dismantle the Iranian state. We should attempt to encourage a similar process as that which deconstructed Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, which were divided on an ethnic basis.
I believe that in Iran today, at least 80 million out of the 90 million people there are over the moon about what has been happening in Syria, as this is a blow to the Iranian government and its plans to spread out over the entire Middle East.
Q: Is there also room for Israeli intervention in the new Syria, which is taking shape before our very eyes?
A: The answer is yes, but everything should be done with the utmost caution. The gigantic proportions of events there are opening up opportunities for us. We already have excellent ties with the Druze in southern Syria, and they are not hiding this fact. The Kurds, too, with whom we had links in the past, are also a group with good potential.
Winners and losers
Among those set to profit from the new order in Syria and across the Middle East, which is currently being re-molded in front of our very eyes, Kedar lists the citizens of Syria, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the government of Yemen, Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Among the losers—Iran, former U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris—”I intentionally listed Obama first as he invested heavily in the Iranians and Hezbollah”—Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi’ite militias in Iraq and Russia.
Kedar wrote his PhD dissertation (which he then turned into a book, titled “Assad in Search of Legitimacy”) on Syria under Hafiz al-Assad (Bashar’s father).
“The question arose among academic scholars as to just how popular Assad was among the masses,” Kedar explained. “All that both Assad the father and his son ever did was an attempt to generate legitimacy for themselves, when it is now clear to all and sundry that all their actions were as far from legitimacy as you can get. … Many people regarded Assad as a man who succeeded in having stabilized his country. That is how he managed to buy legitimacy for himself. I bitterly disagreed with them,” he said.
Kedar mapped out the sequence of events that have taken place in the “New Middle East” that is currently taking shape, and what perhaps is yet to come.
“It began with Hamas, then progressed to Lebanon, Hezbollah, Syria, and could apparently continue to Iraq and then further inland into Iran itself, to whose eventual dissolution we too here in Israel can certainly contribute,” he said.
Nadav Shragai is a veteran Israeli journalist.
Chanukah Guide for the Perplexed, 2024 Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger
December 21, 2024
1. A bust of Judah the Maccabee is displayed at West Point Military Academy, along with those of Joshua, David, Alexander the Great, Hector, Julius Caesar, King Arthur, Charlemagne and Godfrey of Bouillon – “the Nine Worthies.” In 1777, Chanukah candles were lit during the Valley Forge encampment, the turning point of the Revolutionary War, which solidified the victory of George Washington’s Continental Army over the British monarchy. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a player in the ratification of the US Constitution, paving the road to the Boston Tea Party, 1773: “What shining examples of patriotism do we behold in Joshua, Samuel, the Maccabees and the illustrious princes and prophets among the Jews…” On December 6, 2013, Ambassador Hank Cooper, a former Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, wrote: “We need modern day Maccabees to preserve the heritage of liberty for our posterity….”
2. NBC news, December 13, 2022: “An ancient treasure trove of silver coins dating back 2,200 years, found in a desert cave in Israel, could add crucial new evidence to support a story of Jewish rebellion…. The 15 silver coins were hidden [during] the Maccabean revolt from 167-160 B.C., when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Seleucid [Syrian] Empire….”
3.Chanukah (evening of December 25, 2024–January 2, 2025) is the only Jewish holiday that commemorates an ancient national liberation struggle in the Land of Israel, unlike the national liberation holidays, Passover, Sukkot/Tabernacles and Shavu’ot/Pentecost, which commemorate the liberation from slavery in Egypt to independence in the land of Israel, and unlike Purim, which commemorates liberation from a Persian attempt to annihilate the Jewish people.
4. According to Israel’s Founding Father, David Ben Gurion: Chanukah commemorates “the struggle of the Maccabees, which was one of the most dramatic clashes of civilizations in human history, not merely a political-military struggle against foreign oppression…. Unlike many peoples, the meager Jewish people did not assimilate. The Jewish people prevailed, won, sustained and enhanced their independence and unique civilization…. It was the spirit of the people, rather than the failed spirit of the establishment, which enabled the Hasmoneans to overcome one of the most magnificent spiritual, political and military challenges in Jewish history….” (Uniqueness and Destiny, pp 20-22, David Ben Gurion, IDF Publishing, 1953).
5. Chanukah and the Land of Israel. When ordered by Emperor Antiochus IV Epiphanes of the Seleucid region to end the Jewish “occupation” of Jerusalem, Jaffa, Gaza, Gezer and Akron, Shimon the Maccabee responded: “We have not occupied a foreign land…. We have liberated the land of our forefathers from foreign occupation (Book of Maccabees A: 15:33).”
Chanukah highlights the centrality of the Land of Israel in the formation of Judaism and the Jewish people. The mountain ridges of Judea and Southern Samaria (the West Bank) – the cradle of Jewish history, religion, culture and language – were the platform for the Maccabean military battles: Mitzpah (the burial site of the Prophet Samuel, overlooking Jerusalem), Beit El (the site of the Ark of the Covenant and Judah the Maccabee’s initial headquarters), Beit Horon (Judah’s victory over Seron), Hadashah (Judah’s victory over Nicanor), Beit Zur (Judah’s victory over Lysias), Ma’aleh Levona (Judah’s victory over Apolonius), Adora’yim (a Maccabean fortress), Eleazar (named after Mattityahu’s youngest Maccabee son), Beit Zachariya (Judah’s first defeat), Ba’al Hatzor (where Judah was defeated and killed), Te’qoah, Mikhmash and Gophnah (bases of Shimon and Yonatan), the Judean Desert, etc.
6. Chanukah’s historical context is narrated in the four Books of the Maccabees, The Scroll of Antiochus and The Wars of the Jews.
In 323 BCE, following the death of Alexander the Great (Alexander III) who held Judaism in high esteem, the Greek Empire was split into three independent and rival mini-empires: Greece, Seleucid/Syria and Ptolemaic/Egypt.
In 175 BCE, the Seleucid/Syrian Emperor Antiochus (IV) Epiphanes claimed the Land of Israel. He suspected that the Jews were allies of his Ptolemaic/Egyptian enemy. The Seleucid emperor was known for eccentric behavior, hence his name, Epiphanes, which means “divine manifestation.” He aimed to exterminate Judaism and convert Jews to Hellenism. In 169 BCE, he devastated Jerusalem, attempting to decimate the Jewish population, and outlaw the practice of Judaism.
In 166/7 BCE, a Jewish rebellion was led by the non-establishment Hasmonean (Maccabee) family from the rural town of Modi’in, half-way between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean. The rebellion was headed by Mattityahu, the priest, and his five sons, Yochanan, Judah, Shimon, Yonatan and Eleazar, who fought the Seleucid occupier and restored Jewish independence. The Hasmonean dynasty was replete with external and internal wars and lasted until 37 BCE, when Herod the Great (a proxy of Rome) defeated Antigonus II Mattathias.
The reputation of Jews as superb warriors was reaffirmed by the success of the Maccabees on the battlefield. In fact, they were frequently hired as mercenaries by Egypt, Syria, Carthage, Rome and other global and regional powers.
7.Chanukah celebrates the Maccabean-led national liberation by conducting in-house family education and lighting candles – in a 9-branch-candelabrum – for 8 days in commemoration of the re-inauguration of Jerusalem’s Jewish Temple and its Menorah (candelabrum).
The Hebrew words Chanukah (חנוכה), inauguration (חנוכ) and education ((חנוך possess an identical root.
8. As was prophesized by the Prophet Hagai in 520 BCE, the re-inauguration of the Temple took place on the 25th day of the Jewish month of Kislev, which is the month of miracles, such as the post-flood appearance of Noah’s rainbow, the completion of the construction of the Holy Ark by Moses, the laying of the foundations of the Second Temple by Nehemiah, etc.
The 25th Hebrew word in Genesis is “light,” and the 25th stop during the Exodus was Hashmona (the same Hebrew spelling as Hasmonean-Maccabees).
9. Chanukah highlights the defeat of darkness, disbelief, forgetfulness and pessimism, and the victory of light, faith, commemoration, defiance of odds, can-do mentality and optimism. The first day of Chanukah is celebrated when daylight hours are equal to darkness hours – and when moonlight is hardly noticed – ushering in brighter days.
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