COMMENTARY / OPINION
Druze update in Syria with Julia [1:25:04] Mansur Ashkar
August 11, 2025
Mind-reading technology is here and it’s poised to go off the rails LEO HOHMANN
Big Tech companies’ marketing of ‘wearables’ is already preparing us for the next big step… reading our minds. Enter the department of pre-crime…. imagine a company like Palantir with this tech…
AUG 11, 2025
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Last month, I reported on a company that produces a wristband called the Bee that logs everything you say — to your friends, your family, your roommate, even what you say out loud to yourself. Its maker is in buyout talks with Amazon as the Bee seems like an upgrade from the Amazon Alexa.
But what will be the next so-called “upgrade” in the realm of wearables? I suggested in my article that it would be a type of technology that’s capable of recording not only your words but your unspoken thoughts.
Little did I know, it’s already in the works. The technology already exists.
In her weekly podcast Going Rogue, former mainstream journalist Lara Logan sat down recently with Brandy Smith, an expert in computer interfaces and information security, to discuss the fast-approaching frontier of brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, where technology can read and interact with our thoughts.
Logan introduces her topic as follows:
“From wearable devices like Apple Watches and Fitbits to advanced neurotech in gaming, medicine, and defense, Smith explains how innovations in BCIs could transform lives—and potentially compromise them. The conversation raises urgent concerns about privacy, neurological warfare, and the ethics of mind-reading technology.”
Through advances in brain-computer interfaces, they can not only read our thoughts, but they can send thoughts into our brains, Smith said.
The potential for abuse is limited only by the imagination. We are close to making the Hollywood movie Minority Report starring Tom Cruise a reality, where officers in the Department of Precrime hunt down perpetrators of crimes before the crimes are actually committed. They can do this because people’s thoughts are being monitored in real time.
But what about taking MK Ultra-style mind control to the next level by implanting thoughts in people’s minds? Now we’re really entering dangerous territory. It’s all done via sensors and electromagnetic frequencies.
Smith said that even our phones will be able to interact with our bodies’ electro-magnetic frequencies when 5G gets upgraded to 6G.
“It’s highly advanced…They’ve been doing extensive studies on this for years. So we just don’t hear much about it in the United States,” Smith said. “Apple is coming out with some devices that are wearables, and they require something a little bit different, but this technology is coming out with the 6G where our phones will be able to interact with our frequencies, in our brains.”
“We are all energy, so this is interacting with our bodies and our central nervous system, from a natural standpoint,” she continued. “The frequencies are set to interact with our brains, to the exact positions where our thought processes come from, so that leads us to believe that if our thoughts can be read, then they should be able to send thoughts back into our brains.”
WIRED FOR CONTROL: Brain-Computer Interfaces with Brandy Smith | Episode 30 [1:17:21]
Sixth generation wireless communication, or 6G, started initial developments and standardization processes this year. The first lab testing and pilot programs are anticipated to begin in 2028, leading to a full launch in 2030.
You want to really get down to the brass tacks? Imagine what a company like Palantir could do with this technology. Palantir, co-founded by global technocrat Peter Theil and run by CEO Alex Karp, collects and analyzes the personal data on Americans and hands it over to the state, local and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as intelligence agencies, the FBI and CIA, and the U.S. Department of Defense. The state of Israel uses Palantir to identify enemies and kill targets in Gaza. The Ukrainian government uses Palantir to target Russians and disloyal Ukrainians.
Within the next couple of years, Palantir will have access to mind-reading technology, count on it. And with no regulations in place, you can bet it will be abused.
Also, imagine how the government and various private-sector operations could use this technology. Some companies are already requiring facial recognition scans for employees to enter onsite workplaces, and airports are pressuring passengers to submit to these types of biometric scans.
It was reported Monday by the New York Post that a Garment District clothing company in New York is forcing workers to submit to facial-recognition scans for building access, infuriating staff who blasted the mandate as “invasive” and questioned how their biometric data will be stored and used.
When companies like this are offered the newest security “upgrade,” what’s to stop them from requiring a brain scan of their employees or customers before entering the workplace, or entering a stadium or concert venue? It’s all for our safety, right? Why not check everyone entering the venue for any ill-conceived thoughts that could lead to a mass shooting or other violent event?
Most people will go for it. Don’t be among the gullible and naive. Now is the time to push back, against all forms of biometric scanning and invasive technology.
In Europe, a Wind from the Right Ex Ponto Blows By Hugh Fitzgerald
August 10, 2025
Europeans of the right and center met recently in Vienna to discuss shared fears over the threat to Europe of a rapidly increasing Muslim population, and to express their appreciation for both the Trump administration and Israel for the ways they are dealing with Islamic threats. More on this meeting, and its significance, can be found here.
While Europe’s attention since February 2022 has been fixed on Russia’s aggression on Ukraine, and the implied threat of further aggression against NATO countries, the attendees at this conference believe that the real threat to their wellbeing comes from within, from the tens of millions of Muslim migrants who have so negligently been permitted to settle in the midst of non-Muslims, whom the Qur’an teaches Muslims to regard as “the most vile of created beings.” The demographic threat from Muslims is a result not only of continuing immigration, legal and illegal, but also from the much higher fertility rates of Muslim women. In 1974, at the U.N., the Algerian leader Houari Boumédiène predicted that Muslims would conquer Europe peacefully, “through the wombs of our women.” And it is happening, as the Muslim women in Europe keep producing babies at a higher rate than the indigenous non-Muslims.
Israel was praised at this meeting, in a remarkable display of moral and geopolitical intelligence by these European political figures of the center-right and right who know that Israel’s war against jihadists, both Sunni and Shi’a, is their war as well. For Muslims would never be satisfied were Israel to disappear, to be replaced by a 23rd Arab state. They know, as Muhammad said, “Islam is to dominate and not to be dominated.” The destruction of Israel would not sate, but whet Muslim appetites to conquer, through both demography and violence, the countries of Europe where 50 million Muslims now live.
The conference in Vienna reflected what might be called a Great Awakening, as the indigenous people of Europe look around at what the Muslim invasion has already meant for their lives. They now realize, or rather are finally beginning to realize, that the 50 million Muslims that they have allowed to settle in their midst cannot possibly integrate into societies fashioned by those who, as Infidels, are despised by Muslims as “the most vile of created beings.” Muslims are further taught not to take “Christians and Jews as friends, for they are friends only with each other.” Why would anyone expect such people to assimilate? They are willing to batten on the benefits the European states still lavish upon them, but they are not grateful; such support is interpreted as a kind of proleptic jizyah. The anti-immigrant parties, which are really anti-Muslim-immigrant parties, are everywhere surging in the polls. These include, in France, the National Rally headed by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, in Germany the Alternative für Deutschland headed by Alice Weidel, in the U.K. the Reform Party of Nigel Farage, in Italy the Fratelli d’Italia headed by the current Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, and in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party of Geert Wilders. The people of Europe, or many of them, have come to realize that the former German Chancellor Angela Merkel was wrong when, in 2015, opening her country to nearly a million immigrants that year, assured her countrymen that “Wir schaffen das!” — “We can do this!”— meaning that yes, we can handle such an immigrant influx. It turned out that neither the Germans nor any other peoples in Europe have successfully integrated Muslims into their societies. Instead, the large-scale presence of Muslims has led to a situation that is more unpleasant, expensive, and physically dangerous than would be the case without that Muslim presence.
It is fitting that this meeting on the threat of Muslim ingravescent immigration to the survival of Europe was held in Vienna. In 1683, the Ottoman Muslims lay siege to the city, but it did not surrender, and the Ottoman troops, their numbers much diminished, retreated back to the Ottoman domains. And that unsuccessful siege was the high-water mark of the Ottoman invasion of Europe. It is pleasant to think that this 2025 congress in Vienna will again mark the high-water mark of a new attempt at a Muslim “conquest,” and that, from here on out, for the Muslims in Europe, it will be downhill all the way.
[Ed.:
Antisemitism is the reason Zionism exists. JOSHUA HOFFMAN
Like all domino effects, the results have been a mix of tragedy, resilience, and unexpected opportunity.
AUG 11, 2025
History is not a static timeline of dates and events. It is a living organism — one decision, one action, one chance occurrence bumping into the next, each setting off ripples that stretch across years, continents, and generations.
Sometimes the chain is obvious, like watching a neat row of dominoes fall. Other times, the connection between cause and effect is subtle, hidden under layers of politics, culture, and memory.
For Jews and for Israel, this chain-reaction nature of history is not an abstract idea; it’s the air we breathe. Our story is full of moments where the choice or misstep of one era reshaped the next — from ancient exile birthing the Talmud, to modern wars that rewrote the political map.
And like all domino effects, the results have been a mix of tragedy, resilience, and unexpected opportunity.
The early Zionist movement itself, dating back to the 1800s, was fueled by the relentless dominoes of Jewish persecution — pogroms in Eastern Europe, expulsions from Western Europe, and legal restrictions across the diaspora — which convinced leaders like Theodor Herzl that sovereignty was the only safeguard for the Jewish future.
(Side note: Herzl was a secular, assimilated Viennese journalist who believed Jews could thrive in Europe — until he covered the antisemitic show trial of Alfred Dreyfus in France. The humiliation and injustice he witnessed convinced him that Jewish safety required sovereignty, catalyzing the political Zionist movement.)
In the late Ottoman era, much of the land in what was then called “Palestine” was owned not by local peasants, but by absentee landlords — wealthy Arab and Ottoman elites living in Beirut, Damascus, and Istanbul. When Jewish pioneers began arriving in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many of these landlords, eager for profit, sold large tracts to Jewish organizations. The sales were legal and often at above-market prices, but the result was that Arab tenant farmers, who had no formal ownership rights, were sometimes evicted or displaced.
This created a potent source of resentment. Local Arab peasants, who would later be rebranded in the 20th century as “Palestinians,” began to see Jewish immigration not as a neighborly coexistence, but as a threat to their livelihoods. That resentment was stoked by local leaders and nationalist agitators, some of whom saw in it an opportunity to rally political opposition.
What began as a series of private land transactions under the Ottoman legal system became one of the early sparks of the Arab-Jewish conflict, a domino whose effects would echo into the British Mandate period, the 1948 war, and the modern debate over land and sovereignty.
In the 1920s, following the Ottoman Empire’s collapse in World War I, Jewish pioneers in British-era Palestine undertook massive efforts to drain swamps and eradicate malaria, particularly in areas like the Jezreel Valley and Hula region. These projects transformed previously uninhabitable land into fertile farmland, while Jewish agricultural settlements and urban development created new economic opportunities.
The improved living conditions and growing job market attracted a surge of Arab migration from surrounding regions — Syria, Lebanon, and Transjordan — drawn by the prospect of work in Jewish-founded enterprises. Ironically, the very development work intended to secure a Jewish foothold in the land also swelled the local Arab population, planting demographic and political seeds that would later factor into the intensifying conflict.
Then came Nazi Germany’s genocide of European Jewry, which not only wiped out centuries-old communities, but also accelerated international consensus on the need for a modern Jewish homeland. The horrors of the Holocaust tipped the moral and political balance toward the 1947 United Nations partition vote, creating the modern State of Israel.
In another striking example of history’s chain reactions, the Soviet Union was among the first nations to support the creation of the State of Israel in 1948, even providing crucial backing for the UN Partition Plan and allowing Czechoslovakia to supply arms that proved vital in Israel’s War of Independence.
At the time, Moscow saw Israel as a potential socialist ally in the Middle East. But as Israel aligned itself with the Western bloc during the Cold War, the USSR pivoted dramatically. In the 1950s and 1960s, the Soviets began courting the Arab states, supplying them with arms, training, and diplomatic backing.
This shift wasn’t only about geopolitics; it helped reframe the Arab-Israeli conflict itself. The USSR amplified and exported the narrative of the Arab refugees from 1948, promoting the term “Palestinians” as a distinct national identity in global diplomacy and media. This ideological and linguistic rebranding was part of a broader Soviet strategy to position Israel as a “Western colonial outpost” and the Palestinians as an “anti-imperialist” cause.
The Soviet turn didn’t just redraw alliances; it redefined the conflict, ensuring that the Palestinian question became a permanent fixture in Middle East politics for decades to come.
In 1973, Israel was caught off guard by a coordinated Arab attack, known today as the Yom Kippur War. The shock to national security doctrine was profound, but it also jolted both Israel and Egypt into a different strategic reality. Within a few years, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat would come to Jerusalem, and the first Arab-Israeli peace treaty was signed. A bloody war domino led, unexpectedly, to peace.
Then came the 1973 oil crisis, triggered in part by the Arab states’ retaliation for Western support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War, sending shockwaves far beyond the Middle East. By imposing an oil embargo, OPEC weaponized energy on a scale the world had never seen, quadrupling prices almost overnight.
For the first time, Western nations felt their economies hostage to Middle Eastern politics, and the experience permanently altered their foreign policy calculus. Energy security became a central plank of national security, prompting major investments in alternative energy and new exploration.
Diplomatically, Europe in particular sought to placate Arab oil producers, often by taking more critical positions on Israel in international forums. The embargo also forced the United States and the Soviet Union to recalibrate their regional strategies, understanding that alliances in the Middle East now carried direct economic consequences.
The 1973 oil embargo didn’t just send shockwaves through Western economies; it transformed Saudi Arabia into a regional superpower almost overnight. As oil prices quadrupled, the kingdom’s coffers exploded with petrodollars, giving it unprecedented financial and political clout. With this windfall, the Saudis were able to modernize rapidly, fund vast infrastructure projects, and — perhaps most significantly — project their influence across the Muslim world through religious, political, and economic channels.
This new wealth allowed Riyadh to become the de facto leader of OPEC, shaping global oil policy and using energy as a diplomatic lever. It also funded the global spread of Wahhabi Islam, which influenced movements and ideologies far beyond the Middle East.
For Israel, the rise of Saudi Arabia as an oil-fueled powerhouse meant dealing with an Arab state whose influence in Washington, London, and other capitals was now backed not just by strategic geography, but by economic necessity.
In September 1970, tensions between Jordanian King Hussein’s government and the Palestine Liberation Organization exploded into open war after Palestinian factions hijacked multiple airliners and defied Jordanian authority. In what became known as Black September, the Jordanian army crushed the Palestine Liberation Organization and expelled its fighters, forcing them to relocate to Lebanon. That relocation destabilized Lebanon and set the stage for the Lebanese Civil War, a chain reaction that led to Hezbollah’s rise.
In Israel’s early decades, politics was dominated by Left-leaning Labor Zionist governments that built the state’s institutions, economy, and defense. While these leaders oversaw remarkable achievements, their socialist economic policies and centralized bureaucracy also bred inefficiency, stagnation, and public frustration. Corruption scandals, heavy-handed governance, and an overreliance on state-controlled industries created fertile ground for political change.
By the late 1970s, that frustration combined with a shift in national mood after the trauma of the Yom Kippur War, distrust of the old elite, and anger over perceived security failures. These dominos paved the way for the 1977 electoral “upheaval,” when Menachem Begin’s Right-leaning Likud party rose to power for the first time. (Likud is the party today chaired by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.)
Likud’s ascent marked a historic realignment in Israeli politics, breaking the Labor monopoly and ushering in a new era of economic liberalization, nationalism, and a different approach to the Arab-Israeli conflict — one that still shapes the country’s political landscape today.
Two of Likud’s early leaders, Menachem Begin (left) and Ariel Sharon
In the early 1990s, Israel was under enormous international and domestic pressure to make peace with the Palestinians. The Soviet Union had collapsed, the U.S. was the sole superpower, and the First Gulf War had reshuffled the Middle East. Into this environment came the Oslo Accords, a bold attempt to trade land for peace.
The promise was intoxicating: mutual recognition, security cooperation, an end to decades of hostility. But the Oslo Accords were also built on a faulty assumption: that the Palestinian leadership would abandon violence in exchange for statehood.
Instead, the very legitimacy granted to the Palestine Liberation Organization through Oslo gave it the resources, international recognition, and political space to launch the Second Intifada less than a decade later. That wave of terror reshaped Israeli politics, hardened public opinion, and cemented distrust for generations.
Across the ocean, America’s post-9/11 “War on Terror” seemed to echo Israel’s own fight against terrorism. But when the U.S. falsely claimed that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction, the entire moral architecture of fighting terrorism was undermined.
For Israel, this had its own ripple effect. The skepticism that grew out of the Iraq debacle bled into how the world viewed all counterterrorism efforts, including Israel’s. Every Israeli strike on terror infrastructure in Gaza or Lebanon is now preloaded with suspicion: Is this another “WMD moment” where the threat is exaggerated? Even legitimate warnings about Iranian nuclear ambitions are filtered through that lens of doubt. One American misstep made it harder for allies to rally the world against very real dangers.
Speaking of Iran, in 1953, the CIA, alongside British intelligence, orchestrated the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, reinstating the Shah as a pro-Western monarch. For decades afterward, Israel and Iran maintained a quiet but robust alliance — sharing intelligence, trade, and strategic interests in a turbulent region. But this foundation was far more fragile than it appeared. The Shah’s increasingly autocratic rule, coupled with rapid modernization and perceived Western puppeteering, fueled deep resentment inside Iran.
That resentment erupted in 1979 with the Iranian Revolution, toppling the Shah and replacing his regime with an Islamic Republic led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
Overnight, Israel went from a key regional partner to one of Iran’s chief enemies. The new regime recast Israel not as an ally but as the “Little Satan,” a central target in its revolutionary ideology. A covert Cold War-era maneuver had set off a chain reaction that fundamentally reshaped the balance of power in the Middle East — and created one of Israel’s most enduring and dangerous adversaries.
Fast forward to 2005, when Israel decides to unilaterally withdraw from Gaza. (Israel had taken over control of Gaza from Egypt after the 1967 Six-Day War.) The Gaza withdrawal was intended as a bold reset: a way to reduce friction, improve security, and demonstrate willingness to make painful concessions for peace. The hope was that the Palestinian Authority would govern Gaza responsibly, allowing for economic growth and a model of coexistence.
Instead, the power vacuum became the perfect opening for Hamas. Within two years, the terror group violently seized control, turning Gaza into a jihadist enclave that launched a perpetual war against Israel. What was meant to be a step toward resolving the conflict instead entrenched a far more dangerous adversary on Israel’s doorstep.
This is the nature of domino effects: They are unpredictable, but not random. They show how decisions can shape reality for decades.
For Jews, this is hardly a new lesson. Our history is one long scroll of cause and effect: from the Babylonian exile that led to the development of the Talmud, to the Holocaust that spurred the urgency of founding the State of Israel. At every junction, one event sets off another in ways the original actors could not have fully foreseen.
The Jewish story (and the story of the modern State of Israel) is ultimately one of dominos both chosen and imposed. Some were set in motion by visionaries and leaders; others were pushed by enemies and historical forces beyond our control.
But one truth runs through them all: Antisemitism created Zionism. Centuries of expulsions, pogroms, and discrimination convinced the Jewish People that safety could not be outsourced, and that only sovereignty could secure their future.
Every domino since — from statehood to wars, from peace accords to political upheavals — traces back to that fundamental reality. Without rampant antisemitism, there might never have been a Zionist movement. Without Zionism, there would be no Israel. And without Israel, the Jewish People’s story in the modern era would look very different indeed.
Hamas’s Plan to Undermine America’s Arab Allies by Khaled Abu Toameh
August 11, 2025 at 5:00 am
- Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
- Apparently, the Arab leaders understand the dangers of allowing Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, to drag their countries into war with Israel.
- That is why many Arab countries have banned or outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and recently, Jordan. These countries view the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security and political stability.
- If the Trump administration wants to promote peace and stability in the Middle East and protect its Arab allies, it must follow suit and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
- “Al-Hayya’s statement is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide with the aim of discrediting Egypt’s role and disrupting its political and humanitarian efforts to stop the war and alleviate the suffering of [Palestinian] civilians.” — Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridi, Sky News Arabia, July 28, 2025.
- The Hamas leader’s goals are “completely in line with the main objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood: toppling the Egyptian regime and turning Egypt into a quagmire of chaos…. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the current economic situation in Egypt could be an opportunity to pressure the Egyptian people by mixing religious sentiments with economic conditions, thereby destabilizing the country’s domestic situation.” — Saeed Okasha, Egyptian expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, almashhad.com, July 28, 2025.
- Hamas leaders, who claim they were betrayed by their Arab brothers, now seek to export their group’s own crisis and place the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians on other parties, especially the Arab countries.
- They are doing so from their safe villas and luxury hotel suites in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.
- Were it not for Qatar’s backing, Hamas leaders would not have had the courage to incite unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the Trump administration not only to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but also finally to call out Qatar and its Al-Jazeera TV network for promoting Islamist terror groups that target Israel and America’s Arab allies.
Recently, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who together with his family moved from the Gaza Strip to Qatar before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, called on Arabs to “march toward Palestine by land and sea and besiege the [Israeli embassies in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan].” Pictured: Al-Hayya speaks at a meeting of the Permanent Secretariat of the International Conference in Support of the Palestinian Intifada, in Tehran, Iran on April 28, 2022. (Image source: Tasnim News/CC by 4.0)
After rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire-and-hostage deal, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Recently, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who together with his family moved from the Gaza Strip to Qatar before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, called on Arabs to “march toward Palestine by land and sea and besiege the [Israeli embassies in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan].”
Addressing the Egyptian people, al-Hayya said: “O people of Egypt, how can you allow your [Palestinian] brothers near your border to die?” The Hamas official was referring to Egypt’s refusal to open the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip to allow in humanitarian aid.
Al-Hayya’s statements reflect the deep disappointment among Hamas leaders with the Arab countries’ failure to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip during the war triggered by the terror group’s October 7 atrocities, in which Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and wounded of thousands. On that day, another 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 50 – alive and dead – are still held captive.
One of the declared goals of Hamas’s October 7 massacre was to thwart efforts to achieve normalization between Israel and the Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia. Another undeclared goal of Hamas was to instigate unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan, the two neighboring countries that have peace treaties with Israel.
Since the beginning of the war in the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials have been indirectly urging Egyptians and Jordanians to revolt against their governments for not cutting their diplomatic ties with Israel and allegedly failing to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Al-Hayya’s call on Arabs to “march toward Palestine by land and sea” refers to the two countries that have shared borders with Israel: Egypt and Jordan. Hamas, with its October 7 massacre, has brought death and destruction on the two million Palestinians of the Gaza Strip. According to figures from Gaza’s Hamas-controlled ministry of health, tens of thousands of Gazans have been killed and wounded since the beginning of the war. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced.
Now, frustrated Hamas leaders, leading comfortable lives in Qatar, Turkey and other countries, want to sacrifice Egyptians and Jordanians in their jihad (holy war) to murder more Jews and destroy Israel.
Fortunately, most Arab countries have refused to join Hamas’s genocidal scheme. Apparently, the Arab leaders understand the dangers of allowing Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist organization, to drag their countries into war with Israel.
That is why many Arab countries have banned or outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and recently, Jordan. These countries view the Muslim Brotherhood as a threat to national security and political stability.
If the Trump administration wants to promote peace and stability in the Middle East and protect its Arab allies, it must follow suit and designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
The Hamas leader’s call on Arabs to use the borders of Egypt and Jordan to attack Israel drew strong condemnations from both countries.
Former Egyptian Assistant Foreign Minister Hussein Haridi said:
“Al-Hayya’s statement is part of a systematic campaign orchestrated by the Muslim Brotherhood worldwide with the aim of discrediting Egypt’s role and disrupting its political and humanitarian efforts to stop the war and alleviate the suffering of [Palestinian] civilians. It’s clear that these statements are intended to cover up the failures of Hamas’s leadership and its intransigence during certain stages of the ongoing negotiations [to reach a ceasefire-and-hostage deal].”
The Hamas leader’s goals are “completely in line with the main objectives of the Muslim Brotherhood: toppling the Egyptian regime and turning Egypt into a quagmire of chaos,” said Saeed Okasha, an Egyptian expert at the Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies. According to Okasha, there are a number of reasons that prompted al-Hayya to take a hostile approach to Egypt:
“The major crisis facing Hamas, particularly since it has lost its military power, has been reduced to nothing more than planting mines in the streets of Gaza. Furthermore, Hamas is on the verge of being politically and militarily finished. Al-Hayya’s statements are an expression of despair and frustration through which he attempts to create justifications for the failure plaguing his group. The Muslim Brotherhood believes that the current economic situation in Egypt could be an opportunity to pressure the Egyptian people by mixing religious sentiments with economic conditions, thereby destabilizing the country’s domestic situation.”
Jordanians also expressed outrage over the Hamas leader’s call for escalating protests against Israel in the kingdom and using its border to “march toward Palestine.”
Mohammed al-Musalha, professor of political science at the University of Jordan, said that Jordanians rejected al-Hayya’s “shameful and disgraceful” statements.
“Such hollow speeches alienate the Jordanian people from such [Hamas] leaders who do not feel the extent of the catastrophe befalling the Palestinian people, especially the residents of the Gaza Strip. Therefore, they [Hamas leaders] are in dire need of any assistance from all Arabs. Jordan does not accept being stabbed in the back by people with political agendas that are well-known to all.”
Jordanian political analyst Khalaf al-Tahat accused the Hamas leader of issuing a call “that goes buying the limits of political absurdity to the limits of mass suicide.” Al-Tahat denounced the Hamas leader’s call as being “no less disastrous than the scene of death in the Gaza Strip, especially since he called on the peoples of the countries neighboring Palestine to march toward Palestine, besiege Israeli embassies, and severe diplomatic and trade relations [with Israel], as if these people had the luxury of engaging in adventures that lack the simplest forms of rationally and planning.”
Hamas leaders, who claim they were betrayed by their Arab brothers, now seek to export their group’s own crisis and place the responsibility for the suffering of the Palestinians on other parties, especially the Arab countries.
They are doing so from their safe villas and luxury hotel suites in Qatar, one of the leading sponsors of Islamist groups, especially the Muslim Brotherhood.
Were it not for Qatar’s backing, Hamas leaders would not have had the courage to incite unrest and instability in Egypt and Jordan. It is time for the Trump administration not only to designate the Muslim Brotherhood a Foreign Terrorist Organization, but also finally to call out Qatar and its Al-Jazeera TV network for promoting Islamist terror groups that target Israel and America’s Arab allies.
Khaled Abu Toameh is an award-winning journalist based in Jerusalem.
Caught on Camera: Syrian Forces Execute Doctor in Hospital in Al Suwayda [48:30] Mansur Ashkar
August 10, 2025
Pirates TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
AUG 10, 2025
There are LOTS of Islamo-Communist “pirates” in America right now – and some are more obvious than others.
Here’s a gang of so-called poor “refugees” in Minnesota who stole tens of millions of dollars worth of funds meant to feed hungry AMERICAN children. Aren’t they a fine looking bunch of thieves?
I guarantee these Islamo-Communist “pirates” are controlled by CAIR, the US front for the Muslim Brotherhood – just like Hamas!
Trust me, this is the same food stealing scam that Hamas runs in Gaza for the Muslim Brotherhood out of Qatar. Hamas steals the food from their own people, and pockets the money for the food for themselves, and then they blame Israel and America – and trot out pictures of starving children to deflect attention away from themselves – so you’ll feel sorry for Hamas.
Hamas is the front for the Muslim Brotherhood in Israel just like CAIR is in America. On June 24, 2025, a bill called the “Designate CAIR as a Terrorist Organization Act” was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives and perhaps that fact will finally be codified.
Abdiaziz Farah, one of the ringleaders in the food scheme, was found guilty of stealing over $47 MILLION of Federal funds intended to feed poor American children – part of a larger scam that took $400 MILLION! Farah used the money to buy luxury vehicles and overseas real estate—including properties in Kenya outside the reach of U.S. authorities. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Using the taxpayer money meant for needy kids, Farah purchased five luxury vehicles for himself in about six months, including over $300,000 for a Porsche, a GMC truck, and a Tesla. Farah purchased real estate throughout the Twin Cities and in Kentucky, which included buying two lakefront lots with the aim of building himself a multi-million-dollar home.
No wonder these “refugees” all drive around in new fancy vehicles in Minneapolis!
Farah further sent the taxpayer money he stole overseas, purchasing real estate in Kenya and a high-rise apartment building in Nairobi. Farah laundered the fraud proceeds through Communist China. This is proof of Islamo-Communist ties. This overseas money is beyond the reach of American law enforcement—neither these funds nor Farah’s international real estate holdings have been, or can be, seized or forfeited.
Farah and his associates made fraudulent claims about the number of meals served, fabricated invoices and documents, and created fake children’s identities to obtain government funds. Farah and others attempted to bribe a juror with $120,000 in cash in exchange for a not guilty verdict.
At least 73 people have been charged so far and 51 found guilty so far in the scam.
These are the folks that Ilhan Omar brought to America from Somalia to enable their fraudulent activity. They pull this trojan horse crap all over the world. If you want to know more about the Islamo-Commie welfare racket – including daycare fraud and other schemes involving the VOLAGS and NGOs – read this:
Khamenei TERRIFIED; Body Language Expert Reveals CHILLING Details [14:58] Yair Pinto
Aug 9, 2025 TBN Israel – TBN Israel’s Yair Pinto reports on the Israel-Hamas War. Yair Pinto visits the Statue of Liberty and Columbia University on July 4th — a symbolic journey through America’s ideals of freedom and justice. But beneath the celebrations lies a deeper truth: radical ideologies are threatening those very values, from Hamas propaganda to antisemitic unrest on elite U.S. campuses. This episode of My State takes you from Ground Zero to the front lines of the information war, exposing the lies, tracing the roots of hatred, and showing how Israel and America are standing together against a common enemy. Stay up-to-date with the latest developments here on TBN Israel.
Israel Can’t Win Without Beating the Muslim Brotherhood BY DANIEL GREENFIELD
AUG 9, 2025 1:00 PM Jihad Watch
Why can’t the United States of America or Israel ever seem to win their ‘endless wars’? Because they have yet to fight the real enemy. Israel’s air strikes on Iran at least targeted the actual IRGC backers of Oct 7, while the U.S. has yet to deal with the Saudi, Qatari and Pakistani governments behind 9/11. But there is a hidden enemy that can’t just be droned.
What did Osama bin Laden and Hamas have in common? Both were part of the Muslim Brotherhood. Even more than Iran or any government, it’s the Muslim Brotherhood that binds together worldwide terrorist threats with political domestic pressure campaigns. The spectrum of Brotherhood influence combines together not only armed Jihadis, but Qatar’s Al Jazeera and other media influence operations, CAIR and other internal Democrat pressure groups and a majority of the mosques operating inside the United States. And that’s only the beginning.
Created in Egypt in the first half of the century with Nazi funding, the Brotherhood is a political Jihadist movement operating through both terrorist armies and front groups to seize power. The Muslim Brotherhood’s many arms are as comfortable setting off bombs on buses as they are meeting with members of Congress, preaching murder and pretending to be moderates.
The Brotherhood, which was strongest at universities in Egypt and parts of the Middle East, now also controls most elite campuses in America, and most Muslim organizations in America. In Israel, the Brotherhood maintains multiple front groups, including some that serve in Israel’s Knesset parliament, that run mosques across the country and effectively run all of Gaza.
After Oct 7, Hamas pulled back into its tunnels with its hostages and put up a limited fight even as its ‘civilian’ or as the media calls it ‘political arm’ continued running hospitals, the police, aid groups, local and regional media, which it used to fake a torrent of ‘atrocities’ by Israel.
Western diplomats, leaders and ‘experts’ have claimed that Israel won the war on Hamas, and should retreat and make some sort of deal, but as long as Hamas is, as the international community refers to them, the “de facto authorities’ on the ground, then nothing has been won.
After Israel reclaimed Gaza in the Six Day War, the Muslim Brotherhood, which had worked hand-in-glove with the Egyptian government to use Gaza as a base for crossing the border and carrying out massacres in Israel, pretended that it had changed and was now peaceful. It used its control over Gaza mosques and social service groups to indoctrinate the Muslim population into waging a Jihad even while the Israelis, like our governments, hoped that the Muslim Brotherhood had moderated and was willing to live and let live.
Then when the time was right, the mosques turned out to be full of weapons, the imams provided bombmaking instructions and the Brotherhood’s Mujama al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Center, became Hamas. When Hamas loses battles, it folds back and hides out in mosques.
That’s why all the talk of a ceasefire in which Hamas ‘disarms’ (that the Muslim Brotherhood terrorist group has rejected) would be meaningless because it would mean Hamas turning over its weapons to its own ‘Gaza police’ or some other political facade. And even if the weapons were turned over, as long as Hamas controls daily life in Gaza, it can organize, train, prepare, bring in more weapons and launch a new war any time it’s ready. Even if it takes years
America after 9/11 and Israel after Oct 7 focused on Jihad as ‘terrorism’ or a military conflict rather than a religious duty to kill and subjugate infidels imposed by the Koran on every devout Muslim. No matter how much money, how many soldiers or how many wars we fought against Jihadist forces, we never touched the core of their political organizations in local mosques.
Counterterrorism experts who knew better claimed that they could trick Muslims into moderating by recruiting mosques and Imams to teach them, which every Muslim child with even the lightest grounding in Islam knows better than to believe, that terrorism is against Islam.
The moderate Muslim gambit failed, but by then our counterterrorism ranks had been purged by Democrats and Republicans in thrall to Muslim Brotherhood front groups and no longer knew any better. The War on Terror became a ‘whack-a-mole’ game of taking out certain high-value Jihadists even as American cities were filled with mosques preaching Jihad against us.
The ‘experts’ pretended that the constant pace of Islamic terror attacks was the work of ‘lone wolves’ who, no matter how often they launched terror attacks and quoted the same verses, had just ‘misunderstood’ Islam and things would get better if we worked more closely with the Brotherhood’s mosques to teach the terrorists the true meaning of being moderate Muslims.
Beginning with Obama, the Israelis had negotiated a series of deals with Hamas which included, among other things, included giving the terror group economic rewards in exchange for quiet. The latest of these temporary agreements had been negotiated right before the Oct 7 attacks, and depended on the premise that the Muslim Brotherhood’s ‘civilian leadership’ was willing to moderate for economic reasons and would avoid further violence to get more money.
The catastrophic mistake led to the worst war in Israel’s modern history. And it won’t end until the Brotherhood is no longer able to operate in Israel’s territory. Just as our wars on terror won’t end until the Brotherhood and other Islamist groups are no longer able to operate in America.
Israelis are asking what the exit strategy for Gaza is. There isn’t one. Gaza is located next door to Israel. Oct 7 showed the folly of the ‘disengagement’ from Gaza and the forcible eviction of Jewish ‘settlers’ from their communities in Gaza. The only way to control territory is to physically control it. There are no shortcuts, no nation building or how to win hearts and minds with ‘three cups of tea’. Islamic terrorism does not emerge from anything except Islam. And while there are no ‘moderate’ forms of Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood is by far the most successful and dangerous Islamist operation in the world. Allowing it to exist is a suicide pact for any country.
That’s why even Arab Muslim countries have begun banning the Muslim Brotherhood, but America and Israel have yet to definitively ban and suppress all Brotherhood organizations.
To win in Gaza and eventually the West Bank, Israel has to detain and drive out every member of terrorist and terrorist adjacent groups. It’s not a new idea. In the early 90s, the Israelis deported most of the Hamas leadership to Jordan. The terrorists set up a tent camp demanding to be let back in. The UN, the Red Cross and the Bush and Clinton administrations rallied to advocate for Hamas and then demanded that Israel take Hamas leaders back. And Israel did.
The Oct 7 war should have already taught the Israelis that no matter how much they bend over backward to avoid harming ‘civilians’, they’ll still be charged with genocide. Likewise the Bush nation building efforts were smeared as a racist campaign to kill Muslims. America and Israel need to do the right thing to keep their people safe from the Brotherhood regardless of who screams about it, because going easy on the Jihadi ‘civilians’ has never worked anyway.
America and Israel should begin by outlawing the Brotherhood, all constituent groups, all groups that appeared in the documents seized in the post-9/11 raids and all groups whose leadership include Brotherhood members and past as well as present members of Brotherhood groups.
Membership in any Brotherhood group should be considered a basis for deportation for non-citizens and denaturalization followed by deportation if they’re citizens. America has these laws on the books, we’ve chosen not to use them. Israel certainly has the legal authority to do it, but a hostile radical leftist judiciary in both countries colluded to protect Brotherhood members (that is part of what the pre-Oct 7 leftist riots were about in Israel) and must be sidelined.
Israel must not just clean out terrorists in tunnels, but Brotherhood members in mosques, in aid groups, in hospitals, working for the UN and Al Jazeera, and the entire so-called ‘civilian’ government that controls Gaza. Those are the minimum conditions for any victory over Hamas, because the only way to defeat Hamas is to eliminate its Muslim Brotherhood parent group.
Unless they all go, the endless war will never end.
Israel is the world’s favorite double standard. NACHUM KAPLAN
From the “day after” scam to disputing Israel’s capital city, the Jewish state faces a playbook of hypocrisy written for it and it alone.
AUG 09, 2025 Future of Jewish
This is a guest essay by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
Israel is the only country expected to fight terrorism with one hand tied behind its back, blindfolded, and standing on one leg like a flamingo, while a panel of yobbo hecklers looks on yelling nonsense about “war crimes.”
Holding Israel to a double standard, along with delegitimization and dehumanization, is one of the three Ds of antisemitism. Everyone knows this double standard is as common as modern-day Nazis in Gaza, but few appreciate how many of these double standards have infected our discourse.
Let’s take a further look:
The Right to Exist
Israel is the only country asked to demonstrate that it has a right to exist. This is as perverse as it sounds. One might take issue with Russian, Chinese, or Jordanian policy, but no one argues that those states have no right to exist. That is reserved solely for Israel.
International Law
Israel is expected to adhere to the laws of war, while no such demand or expectation is placed upon Hamas. Every Palestinian civilian death is treated as an atrocity, regardless of circumstance, while the fact that Hamas operatives routinely use humans as shields, embed themselves in hospitals, and target civilians in violation of the laws of war goes virtually unremarked.
When Israel destroys the weapons, it gets accused of targeting hospitals and schools. When Israel calls ahead to evacuate civilians, the world calls it ethnic cleansing. When ISIS did this in Mosul from 2016 to 2017, U.S. airstrikes killed thousands. There was no outrage, no protests, no “war crimes” allegations. The world allows jihadists to use human shields, but demands miracles from Jews in combating this tactic.
Effects-Based Condemnation
Every military is judged by its intentions, context, and legal frameworks. Except Israel. When Israel fights Hamas, foreign leaders, the United Nations, and much of the mainstream news media judge Israel by the body count alone.
Israel makes extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties — warning civilians with leaflets, texts, phone calls, roof knocks, and drone fly-bys — yet it still gets condemned for alleged indiscriminate bombing. Hamas, meanwhile, hides beneath civilians and laughs as accusations of war crimes are leveled against Israel.
Terrorists versus Government
The world treats Hamas, a genocidal terrorist group whose founding charter calls for the annihilation of Jews, as a legitimate political actor, while questioning the democratic State of Israel’s legitimacy. This makes Israel the only country to be equated with a terrorist organization.
Proportionality
This is a misunderstood term. While there may have been some justification for that misunderstanding when the war began, almost two years on there can be no such excuse; misusing the word is deliberate and malicious.
Proportionality in warfare means civilian harm must be proportionate to the military advantage gained. It has nothing to do with relative casualty numbers. That makes it complex and highly subjective.
It is also something that applies at the commander level, who must weigh whether any attack is proportionate. The Israel Defense Forces takes this requirement so seriously that it has lawyers — who are outside any military chain of command — overseeing commanders’ target acquisition and strikes.
When people cite the questionable Hamas figure that 60,000 people have been killed in the war and then argue that it is disproportionate, they are showing you that they have no idea what they are talking about. The idea that proportionality means Israel must match Hamas rocket for rocket and corpse for corpse is absurd and macabre.
Proportionality comes up only in wars that Israel fights. America toppled regimes after 9/11, yet Israel is told that it is too much even to defend its borders. That is a double standard, for sure.
Western Hypocrisy
Bashar al-Assad kills 500,000 in Syria? Silence. China puts a million Uyghurs into concentration camps? Yawn. Hamas slaughters Jews? Within 24 hours, there are protests on Western streets and campuses against Israel, the victim of the attacks. When Arabs kill Arabs, the West shrugs. When Jews defend themselves, it is a global moral crisis.
The ‘Day After’ Scam
When the Allies invaded Germany in World War Two, no one demanded a post-Hitler reconstruction plan before the D-Day landings had even commenced. When America toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, nobody said: “Wait, who will be mayor of Fallujah?” Yet Israel is required to have a complete governance plan for Gaza before the IDF has even finished clearing Hamas bunkers and tunnels.
Aid your enemies, or else…
Israel, alone in the history of warfare, is expected to supply electricity, water, and humanitarian aid to its enemies — during battle, no less. The U.S. dropped bombs on Fallujah in 2004, not aid packages. The Allies did not send diesel to Dresden in 1944. Yet, if Israel cuts off fuel to Hamas bunkers, it stands accused of collective punishment.
When Israeli ministers make the obvious point that providing aid to Gaza is prolonging the war and suffering, and that it is absurd to be supporting the enemy’s war effort, they are branded as monsters.
You cannot use that weapon.
Israel uses 900-kilogram (2,000-pound) bombs against Hamas tunnel shafts dug under civilian areas. These tunnels are deep, meaning using large ordnance is a military necessity (and legal under the laws of armed conflict).
When the U.S. used such weapons in Mosul and Raqqa, it was urban warfare. When NATO did it in Belgrade in 1999, it was deemed precision targeting. When Israel does it, the cries of war crimes and massacre ring out.
It also happens when Israel uses white phosphorus, which the U.S. also uses, or when it uses cluster munitions (in Lebanon, not Gaza), which the U.S. happily exported to Ukraine to help it defend against Russia’s attack. Apparently, Jewish munitions have special properties that make them evil.
Every country is free to choose its capital city, except Israel. Even Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, only recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, and many countries still refuse to do so. No one tells the UK that London is not its capital. No Jews, you see.
Thou shalt not displace civilians fleeing war.
The Geneva Convention requires that civilians be allowed to flee war zones, which is why Ukrainians could flee to Poland, Syrians to Turkey, and Afghans to anywhere that was not Afghanistan.
Yet, when Israel urges Gazan civilians to evacuate — warning them early and giving them maps of where to go — the Jewish state is accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide.
While Israel gets castigated, neighboring Egypt gets a free pass for violating international humanitarian law by not letting Palestinians in to seek refuge. Imagine a house on fire, the back door locked from outside, and you blaming the firefighter — and you will have the idea.
Solve everything, right now.
Hamas attacks Israel, the Jewish state fights back, and the world demands Israel solve the entire Israeli-Palestinian conflict while it is at it. Oh, yes, and make peace with the Palestinian Authority, even though it has not held an election in about a billion years.
No one demanded that Ukraine negotiate with Russia while dodging missiles. Only Israel is asked to engage in war, diplomacy, post-conflict rebuilding, and adhere to biased UN resolutions all at once.
Self-Defense
Every country has a right to self-defense and a responsibility to protect its citizens. Foreign leaders maintain this is true of Israel, but they do not act like it — and there is no evidence that they believe it. Only when Israel defends itself does the international community start measuring civilian casualties, questioning its intentions, and demanding restraint.
When France kills terrorists in Mali, it is self-defense, and civilian casualties are collateral damage. When Israel hits Hamas in Gaza, that collateral damage is now called genocide.
The United Nations of Jew-Haters
Only one country is a permanent agenda item at the UN Human Rights Council, and you win nothing for guessing correctly that it is Israel — because, well, of course it is. It is called “Agenda Item 7,” which is the UN technical term for “Agenda: Destroy Israel.”
Between 2015 and 2020, Israel was condemned 112 times. Bashar al-Assad’s now deposed regime in Syria gassed his own people at the time and was condemned only eight times. Apparently, if you are a democracy, hold elections, and have a free press — but are Jewish — you are worse than Assad, who led the vilest of regimes.
Meanwhile, the UN General Assembly is an anti-Israel resolution factory. In 2022, it passed 15 resolutions against Israel, versus just 13 for all other countries combined.
Israel, a tiny nation of no more than 10 million people, attracted more ire from the UN than China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela combined. That is more than a double standard; it is a witch trial.
The Weaponization of International Institutions
The UN is not the only international body that is anti-Israel and, let us not kid ourselves, antisemitic. The UN’s kangaroo court, the International Criminal Court, issues arrest warrants for Israel’s leaders, but not for the leaders of regimes such as China or Iran.
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International publish one-sided reports built entirely on unverifiable or Hamas-fed data. When Jews are in the dock, the burden of proof becomes incredibly low.
Ceasefire now! So Hamas can regroup.
No nation in history has been asked to absorb a pogrom, watch its babies be burned alive, and then implement a ceasefire three days later. After 9/11, America went to war for two decades. After October 7th, Israel was told to stop after 72 hours (more or less). Western lawmakers who say they oppose terrorism demand that Israel let Hamas live to fight another day. That is abject surrender and moral cowardice.
Millions of refugees were resettled after World War Two relatively smoothly, while 750,000 Palestinian refugees got their own agency: the terror-infested United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). The Palestinians alone inherit refugee status for four generations in a logical, legal, and moral absurdity. The world has solved every other refugee crisis, except this one.
The reason for this is that stateless Palestinians are a useful weapon to wield against Israel. It keeps an 80-year-old grievance alive and allows Israel’s enemies to blame Israel for existing.
Peace is exclusively Israel’s responsibility.
It is axiomatic that it takes at least two parties to fight a war, and that therefore all sides bear some responsibility for bringing peace. Yet, when the world demands a ceasefire and does not get one, Israel gets the blame. It is almost as if the Hamas psychopaths are not holding hostages and did not start this war.
Excusing terrorism against Israel.
It is impossible to fathom, but even Hamas beheading babies, raping women, and burning families alive is not enough to get more than a few mealy-mouthed statements about the “cycle of violence” out of the so-called “pro-Palestinian” mob. Some even called it “resistance,” which speaks to their deep depravity.
No one said the Bataclan massacre was “contextual,” or that 9/11 was “complex.” These dismissals are reserved only for when Israelis are murdered in cold blood, when the world starts talking gibberish about “root causes.”
The Media Propagandists
The international media quotes Hamas data in 97 percent of coverage and Israeli data in just three percent of stories, according to The Henry Jackson Society think tank. As far as the media is concerned, Israel is guilty until proven innocent — and when that proof of innocence comes, the news media have moved on to reporting and legitimizing the next lie.
I am a career journalist and have held every job in a newsroom from copy boy to editor-in-chief, so I can say with confidence that anyone who believes most of the reporting on the Israel-Hamas war is a fool.
Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS)
China interning millions of Muslims and Iran hanging gays do not spark a social movement to boycott everything from their goods to their academics and to divest from any investments. Yet, if Israel builds houses in Judea and Samaria (also known as the West Bank), suddenly every “progressive” in the Sociology Department starts demanding sanctions against Israel. Palestinians blowing things up is fine; Israel building things is not.
The BDS movement has nothing to do with justice; it is just an expression of the world’s pathological obsession with the Jewish state. There are no movements to boycott India over disputed Kashmir. It is a privilege reserved for Jews.
Religious and Ethical Double Standards
Israel is condemned for being an “ethnostate,” while no one demands Saudi Arabia stop being a Muslim state or India stop being a Hindu-majority one. Israel is accused of “apartheid” for having laws that preserve its Jewish character, while 22 Arab countries exist as ethnically and religiously defined states, many of which criminalize conversion to any other religion.
Settlement versus Occupation
Jewish settlements in the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria loom in antisemites’ minds like something terrible, despite them merely being villages. There is no outrage about Turkish settlers in Northern Cyprus, Moroccan settlers in Western Sahara, or Chinese settlers in Tibet. Only Jewish homes are the problem.
Censorship and Campus Hysteria
Criticizing China’s internment of Uyghurs or Iran’s public executions can get you in trouble with the Left. However, criticizing Hamas or defending Israel is grounds for doxxing, harassment, and cancellation at major universities. Every ideology is allowed expression, except Zionism, which is treated as hate speech.
Israel, the Jew Among Nations, is judged not by the standards of war, or law, or morality, but by the standard of exception. Its self-defense is suspect. Its existence is conditional. Its victories are crimes. Its pain is downplayed. Its enemies are victims. It is antisemitism with a human-rights face to hide its true face, which is more like the face in Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”
Remove the double standards and the fog clears. Israel is a nation like any other, with the same rights to defend itself, define itself, and exist in peace.
Iran’s Regime Is Plotting Its Comeback — Do Not Let It Happen by Majid Rafizadeh
August 9, 2025
- Iran’s regime is built on the belief that it must export its revolutionary Islamist vision, overthrow secular governments, and unify the Muslim world under a single Shiite Islamist state. This project is its purpose. It is what gives the Islamic Republic of Iran its identity. Its constitution enshrines that vision, and its institutions — from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to its intelligence services — are structured around advancing this goal.
- A regime built on these foundations does not abandon its mission when it suffers setbacks. It adapts, regroups and strikes again when the world is distracted or divided. It is important not misread its current weakness as evidence of defeat.
- This danger is not limited to the Middle East. It is now reaching deep into Europe and North America. Recently, the United States, joined by thirteen NATO members and Austria, issued a joint statement accusing Iran of carrying out a growing number of plots on Western soil…. The goal is clear: to silence critics, spread fear and expand Iran’s ability to operate with impunity on foreign soil.
- Iran is not a normal country acting in pursuit of its people’s national interest. It is a fundamentalist theocratic regime committed to conquest. It thrives on conflict. Every dollar that flows into its coffers is a dollar that funds terrorism. Every embassy it maintains abroad is a potential command post for espionage and assassination. Every day the West relaxes its vigilance is a day the Iranian regime uses to regroup and retaliate. That is why the international community must stay united and focused — not just on holding Iran to account for past behavior, but on thwarting its future plots.
- Iran must not be allowed to rearm under this regime. It must not be allowed to continue its campaign of terror. This objective means keeping “maximum pressure” in place. It means cutting off Iran’s oil exports. It means denying it access to the global economy. It means shutting down its diplomatic outposts, which serve as centers of espionage. It means reimposing UN sanctions and enforcing them without compromise.
- The world cannot afford another mirage of Iranian “reform” or “moderation.” Iran is rebuilding its war machine. The mission to stop it must continue, relentlessly and without apology.
Iran’s regime is built on the belief that it must export its revolutionary Islamist vision, overthrow secular governments, and unify the Muslim world under a single Shiite Islamist state. Its constitution enshrines that vision, and its institutions are structured around advancing this goal. Pictured: Khamenei gives a speech on November 1, 2023, televised on Iran’s Channel 1. (Image source: MEMRI)
The Iranian regime does not think in terms of four-year election cycles or short-term political wins. It thinks in decades and acts on long-term strategic objectives. Its leadership, unelected, is essentially permanent. Iran is ruled by a Supreme Leader, who occupies the office for life, and by a military and clerical elite who are driven not by pragmatism but by an Islamist revolutionary ideology.
Over the past 46 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has become a primary source of instability in the Middle East, a hub of global terrorism, and a headache for Western democracies. The Iranian regime’s survival has been the result of relentless ideological focus, brutal repression, and an ability to exploit the weaknesses and short-term thinking of its adversaries.
Recently, the regime suffered a significant blow. Israeli and American strikes hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure and proxy leadership networks with devastating precision. Iran’s leadership is bruised and its capabilities degraded, but this circumstance should not lull us into a false sense of security.
The damage, while significant, is not permanent. The West must resist the temptation to see this as the beginning of the end for Iran’s radical regime. Rather than force the mullahs into submission, the damage is likely to fuel a desire for revenge. The regime responds to perceived humiliations with long-term, carefully-planned vengeance. This revenge may not come tomorrow or next month — it will be calculated, methodical and likely deadlier than anything seen before, including the murderous October 7, 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, the downing of civilian airliners, or the murder of hundreds of U.S. soldiers by Iran-backed militias in Lebanon, Syria or Iraq.
To believe that the Iranian regime has learned its lesson is to engage in wishful thinking — just a Western psychological projection that mistakes tactical restraint for ideological reform. Iran’s regime is built on the belief that it must export its revolutionary Islamist vision, overthrow secular governments, and unify the Muslim world under a single Shiite Islamist state. This project is its purpose. It is what gives the Islamic Republic of Iran its identity. Its constitution enshrines that vision, and its institutions — from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to its intelligence services — are structured around advancing this goal.
A regime built on these foundations does not abandon its mission when it suffers setbacks. It adapts, regroups and strikes again when the world is distracted or divided. It is important not misread its current weakness as evidence of defeat. It is more likely a prelude to escalation.
This danger is not limited to the Middle East. It is now reaching deep into Europe and North America. Recently, the United States, joined by thirteen NATO members and Austria, issued a joint statement accusing Iran of carrying out a growing number of plots on Western soil. The statement condemned Iran’s intelligence agencies for attempting to kill, kidnap and harass individuals in Europe and North America, in direct violation of national sovereignty. The statement warned that Iranian operatives are cooperating with transnational criminal organizations to carry out acts of violence and intimidation. The targets are not only Iranian dissidents and exiled political activists, but also journalists, Jewish citizens, and even former and current officials. The goal is clear: to silence critics, spread fear and expand Iran’s ability to operate with impunity on foreign soil.
The Iranian regime’s growing campaign of terror is a sharp reminder that it does not recognize limits — not national borders, not international law, and not diplomacy. The regime continues to run its embassies and consulates abroad like outposts for intelligence operations. Its diplomats, in many instances, are nothing more than agents facilitating the regime’s foreign operations. Those undoubtedly include tracking and monitoring dissidents, plotting assassinations, and organizing campaigns of propaganda and money-laundering. Western intelligence agencies have already thwarted countless plots in countries such as France. Each successful disruption, however, is also a signal of the scale of the threat. If even a fraction of these plots were to succeed, the consequences would be devastating. This is no time to become complacent.
In response to the growing threat, under the leadership of President Donald J. Trump, the United States has rightly reimposed and expanded its “maximum pressure” campaign: sweeping new sanctions aimed at crippling the Iran’s financial and military capabilities. One of the most significant moves came on July 30, 2025, when the U.S. Treasury imposed the largest single package of sanctions against Iran since 2018. This round of sanctions targeted more than 115 vessels, companies and individuals, involved in an elaborate oil-smuggling network run by Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, a senior regime insider. That network has played a key role in exporting oil to China and laundering billions of dollars back to Tehran— funds that are then used to fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other terrorists and proxy militias across the region.
The effort to bring Iran’s oil exports down to zero must continue with full force. The regime’s lifeline is oil; China remains its most important customer. While it may be difficult to get Beijing to cooperate fully, targeted diplomatic and economic pressure on Chinese firms and shipping companies, and especially secondary sanctions on countries that do business with them, can significantly curtail the flow of Iranian crude. The Trump administration proved during its first term that when sanctions are enforced strictly and secondary sanctions used effectively, even countries such as China will reduce their purchases. What is needed now is the political will to deny Iran access to global energy markets, seize illicit oil shipments, and penalize any country or company that facilitates Iran’s oil exports.
Europe, too, has a critical role to play. European countries have long maintained diplomatic and economic relations with Iran, which uses its embassies as command centers for espionage and terrorism. If Europe is serious about defending its citizens and its sovereignty, it needs finally to take decisive action. This means suspending diplomatic relations, expelling Iranian diplomats, and shutting down all front organizations tied to the Iran. It also means ending trade: it only benefits Iran’s military and intelligence sectors.
One of the most important tools for the international community is the United Nations mechanism of “snapback” sanctions. That provision, embedded in the original 2015 “nuclear deal” (JCPOA), allows for the automatic reimposition of all UN sanctions if Iran is found to be in violation of its commitments. This mechanism is set to expire on October 18, 2025, and Iran is racing to outlast the deadline. If snapback sanctions are not reimposed now, Iran will have succeeded in outmaneuvering the international community once again. European powers must act by triggering the mechanism.
Iran is not a normal country acting in pursuit of its people’s national interest. It is a fundamentalist theocratic regime committed to conquest. It thrives on conflict. Every dollar that flows into its coffers is a dollar that funds terrorism. Every embassy it maintains abroad is a potential command post for espionage and assassination. Every day the West relaxes its vigilance is a day the Iranian regime uses to regroup and retaliate. That is why the international community must stay united and focused — not just on holding Iran to account for past behavior, but on thwarting its future plots.
Iran must not be allowed to rearm under this regime. It must not be allowed to continue its campaign of terror. This objective means keeping “maximum pressure” in place. It means cutting off Iran’s oil exports. It means denying it access to the global economy. It means shutting down its diplomatic outposts, which serve as centers of espionage. It means reimposing UN sanctions and enforcing them without compromise.
The world cannot afford another mirage of Iranian “reform” or “moderation.” Iran is rebuilding its war machine. The mission to stop it must continue, relentlessly and without apology.
Dr. Majid Rafizadeh, is a political scientist, Harvard-educated analyst, and board member of Harvard International Review. He has authored several books on the US foreign policy. He can be reached at dr.rafizadeh@post.harvard.edu
