COMMENTARY / OPINION
CDC Shooter: Police Contacted Weeks Before Shooting JOHN LEAKE
Another case of law enforcement knowing about a troubled young man well in advance.
AUG 15, 2025
This morning I woke up to a front page story in the Dallas Morning News about police body cam footage, captured during the May 24, 2022 Uvalde., Texas (Robb Elementary School) shooting.
The footage reveals heartbreaking scenes of parents begging police officers to intervene to stop the shooter from killing their children. The hesitation to stop the shooting at the scene came on the heels of an agonizingly slow response time to get law enforcement to the school.
The report immediately reminded me of Matthew Crooks—the Trump shooter in Butler, Pennsylvania—whose father called law enforcement five hours before the shooting and expressed grave concern about his son.
I have news for law enforcement: When a young man’s father calls you expressing grave concern about his son, and he emphasizes that the boy is a member of a local shooting club, you had better take the father seriously and start looking for the boy.
Parents don’t enjoy contacting the police about their troubled sons. They don’t do it for kicks. When they call you, it is because they are EXTREMELY CONCERNED.
On December 24, 2009, I passed through the Amsterdam airport and was subjected to a surprising line of questioning by passport control just before I boarded a flight to the United States.
Immediately I sensed that Dutch security personnel had received a tip that someone was planning to board a plane in Amsterdam to the United States and try to blow it up. I sense they must have received a tip along these lines, but apparently with no specifics.
The next day, I saw the news that Nigerian citizen Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to detonate explosives in his underwear on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit.
His father, Umaru Abdulmutallab, had repeatedly contacted law enforcement and intelligence agencies to express concerns about his son’s radicalization.
According to and ABC report:
Specifically, Umaru Abdulmutallab, a prominent Nigerian banker, went to Nigerian and US officials in November 2009, weeks before the attempted attack, to warn them that his son had been radicalized by Islamic militants in Yemen and had broken contact with the family.
He met with CIA officers at the US Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria, and reported his son’s “extreme religious views,” expressing concern that Abdulmutallab might be planning a suicide mission in Yemen. This information led to Abdulmutallab’s name being added to a US counterterrorism database.
Despite these warnings, Abdulmutallab was not placed on the no-fly list and was able to board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 on Christmas Day 2009, where he attempted to detonate an explosive device.
Hey, CIA — when a young man’s father goes out of his way to meet you at a U.S. Embassy to express his grave concern about his son planning an attack, he’s not kidding!
I’ve been following and cataloguing these stories for a long time, and I don’t believe that law enforcement and the CIA are that stupid. They may be stupid, but they’re not that stupid.
The persistent pattern in these incidents raises the strong suspicion that these incidents are allowed to happen because such incidents seemingly justify further expansion of the national security state and may be used by certain political interests to further their agendas.
Now comes the news—presented in multiple media reports—that CDC shooter Patrick Joseph White “had recently verbalized thoughts of suicide, which led to law enforcement being contacted several weeks before the shooting.”
Notice the vagueness of the wording in this particular PBS News report.
Patrick Joseph White was a thirty-year-old white male who lived with his parents. He had recently complained of suffering from depression, and he had expressed thoughts of suicide—that is, “suicidal ideation” in psychiatric parlance.
QUESTIONS:
1). What exactly was law enforcement told when officers were “contacted several weeks before the shooting”?
2). Why was law enforcement, and not a psychiatric counselor, contacted?
3). What did law enforcement ascertain about the young man’s mental health, and why was his mental health a matter of law enforcement or public safety?
4). Did the young man offer any specifics about his depression and “thoughts of suicide”?
5). Was the young man electronically corresponding with others about his thoughts and feeling?
6). Did others encourage him to express his anger by attacking the CDC? If so, what is their identity? (See my essay Textbook Case of FBI Grooming a Troubled Young Man to Commit Violent Crime).
These are obvious questions that anyone actually interested in the background of the shooting would want answered.
Instead, the corrupt media and politicians like Senator Richard Blumenthal have used the shooting to change the subject from the exponentially growing body of evidence that COVID-19 vaccines cause a staggering array of physical and neurological harms.
Body Language Analysis of Trump and Putin’s HISTORIC Handshake [9:58] Jesus Enrique Rosas
Augusts 15, 2025 The Body Language Guy
Jewish Comedian EXPOSES Tucker Carlson So Badly He May Never Recover! Yishai Fleisher
Aug 15, 2025
Yishai’s take on Tucker’s interview with an Orthodox Nun featuring Ami Kozak’s comedic interpretation.
RICO TIERNEY’S REAL NEWS
AUG 15, 2025
Some people wonder why Trump doesn’t just arrest all the coup plotters (starting at the top) and frog march them on TV for all the world to see. Well, there’s a logical reason for what he’s doing and the way he’s doing it. I have personal experience with that.
I once took a massive fraud case to the District Attorney & he said it was too complicated for a jury to understand. A “respected” client had stolen a significant sum of money from my company (and other companies as well) in an elaborate and multi-faceted scheme – I had proof of it all.
The DA said that I definitely had a criminal case, that I had skillfully connected all the dots and had the evidence to prove it BUT he said it was very complicated and it would take years to investigate it, document it and explain it to a jury. He said he’d never get a conviction because there were too many moving parts in this criminal conspiracy. So, I ended up suing them myself and publicizing their fraud to others to educate their current victims and future victims – to recoup at least some of my loss. It worked.
That’s why I believe that Team Trump is leaking one piece of this RICO grand conspiracy case at a time and empaneling several grand juries around the country to deal with different parts of the case. If you can’t get an indictment because the case is too complicated, you have no hope of justice. There are way too many players involved, way too many facets to the crimes and way too many ringleaders of deceit – they need to be peeled back one layer at a time.
Not only that but the DA said part of the problem was convincing the average juror that people could be THAT sinister and that evil. That was half the battle. Most people refuse to believe our leaders could be that manipulative.
So, please tell all the fake influencers and fake pundits who want it all released NOW to let Trump be Trump and stop second-guessing his every move. I believe he has a plan and he’s implementing it step by step. He’s had 9 years to work on this with some of the smartest minds in the country.
THERE IS NO OTHER WAY. YOU NEED TO EAT THE ELEPHANT ONE BITE AT A TIME AND WORK YOUR WAY UP. PARTICULARLY IF YOU WANT THE PUBLIC TO ACCEPT THE OUTCOME. You can’t start with Obama and expect the rest to fall in line – it doesn’t work that way. [Emphasis added]
So, let’s look at some pieces of the puzzle.
WILL SHIFTY ADAM SCHIFF BE THE FIRST TO BE INDICTED FOR THE RUSSIA RUSSIA CONSPIRACY? WE SHALL SEE.
ONE OF BIBI’S MOST BRILLIANT RESPONSES EVER GIVEN AT A PRESS CONFERENCE [6:53] by Phil Schneider
August 12, 2025
What would England, France, and Australia do if they were attacked by a Muslim minority in their country who massacre, rape, and destroy entire communities? It is sad to say, but that day is inevitable as these countries have taken an appeasement-type attitude towards their Muslim minorities living in their midst. But the chutzpah that they have in insisting that other countries, specifically Israel, take on their short-sighted ideas on dealing with terror is truly annoying and pathetic.
Hamas Has Left Netanyahu with No Option but to Occupy Gaza by Con Coughlin
August 15, 2025 Gatestone Institute
- Hamas’s terrorist leadership has demonstrated unequivocally it has no interest in agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.
- One of the main sticking points in the Qatar talks was Hamas’s insistence that it remains in control of Gaza, despite a number of Arab states issuing a joint declaration for the terrorist organisation to disband and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
- Hamas’s terrorist leadership was encouraged to adopt this hard-line position after a succession of naive Western leaders announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state at next month’s meeting of the UN Security Council, even though there is actually no such Palestinian state in existence.
- The pitfalls of this completely unnecessary diplomatic grandstanding, which may well effectively cause the murder of the remaining 50 hostages who might still to be alive, were clearly evident when Hamas responded to Starmer’s pledge by publicly hailing it as a “victory.”
- It is unclear how recognizing a terrorist state committed to obliterating its neighbour will bring about any kind of “peace.”
- US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, alluding to the novel Frankenstein, responded to Macron’s declaration: “Macron’s unilateral ‘declaration’ of a ‘Palestinian’ state didn’t say WHERE it would be. I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera & the new nation will be called ‘Franc-en-Stine.'”
- Hamas’s intransigence has left Netanyahu with little option but to maintain military operations in Gaza until Israel has achieved its ultimate objective in the war — namely the complete destruction of the terrorist organisation’s military and political infrastructure in Gaza.
Hamas’s terrorist leadership was encouraged to reject a ceasefire in Gaza after a succession of naive Western leaders announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state next month. Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau and the terror organisation’s former Gaza “Health Minister”, said that UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s move meant that “victory and liberation are closer than we expected”, and that “international support for Palestinian self-determination shows we are moving in the right direction.” Pictured: Naim in Istanbul on February 8, 2025. (Photo by Ozan Kose/AFP via Getty Images)
The international condemnation Israel has received after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced his plan to assume control of Gaza overlooks one critical fact. Netanyahu has no option other than to embark on this course of military action because Hamas’s terrorist leadership has demonstrated unequivocally it has no interest in agreeing to a ceasefire in Gaza.
From the moment he returned to the White House in January, US President Donald Trump had made resolving the Gaza crisis one of his key foreign policy objectives. To this end, his negotiating team, led by special envoy Steve Witkoff, engaged in lengthy and extensive discussions in the Gulf state of Qatar with the express intention of implementing a lasting ceasefire.
As recently as early July, hopes were running high that a deal might be possible, especially after the Trump administration indicated that Israel had agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalise a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the US would “work with all parties to end the War”.
“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE.”
Trump’s optimism, though, proved short-lived. It was not long before Hamas once again showed its true colours by showing no genuine interest in a deal, prompting the US to abruptly cut short its involvement by withdrawing its negotiating team from the Qatar talks.
Witkoff made his displeasure known, remarking that Hamas’s response to the ceasefire deal “shows a lack of desire” to reach a deal.
“While the mediators have made a great effort, Hamas does not appear to be coordinated or acting in good faith. We will now consider alternative options to bring the hostages home and try to create a more stable environment for the people of Gaza.”
One of the main sticking points in the Qatar talks was Hamas’s insistence that it remains in control of Gaza, despite a number of Arab states issuing a joint declaration for the terrorist organisation to disband and hand over its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.
Hamas’s response was to issue its own declaration, insisting that it would not disarm until a Palestinian state had been created and recognised. Rejecting suggestions made by Witkoff that the terror group had “expressed its willingness” to lay down its arms, the leadership of Hamas, which is a proscribed terror group in the US, UK and EU, issued a statement claiming its right to remain the de facto ruler in Gaza.
Hamas issued a statement arguing that it could not yield its right to “resistance and its weapons” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” was established.
As Netanyahu has been consistently clear that he will not tolerate Hamas remaining in Gaza in any shape or form, the terrorists’ intransigence has effectively brought efforts to implement a ceasefire in Gaza to a standstill.
Furthermore, it now transpires that Hamas’s terrorist leadership was encouraged to adopt this hard-line position after a succession of naive Western leaders announced their intention to recognise a Palestinian state at next month’s meeting of the UN Security Council, even though there is actually no such Palestinian state in existence.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been particularly vocal on the subject, being the first Western leader to publicly declare his intention to recognise a Palestinian state next month.
In a post on X, Macron wrote:
“Consistent with its historic commitment to a just and lasting peace in the Middle East, I have decided that France will recognize the State of Palestine.”
It is unclear how recognizing a terrorist state committed to obliterating its neighbour will bring about any kind of “peace.”
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, alluding to the novel Frankenstein, responded to Macron’s declaration:
“Macron’s unilateral ‘declaration’ of a ‘Palestinian’ state didn’t say WHERE it would be. I can now exclusively disclose that France will offer the French Riviera & the new nation will be called ‘Franc-en-Stine.'”
Other Western leaders soon followed suit. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer attempted to blackmail Israel by suggesting the UK will recognise a Palestinian state if Israel does not end its military operations in Gaza. Meanwhile, Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney joined the growing clamour among naive Western leaders to recognise a non-existent Palestinian state, and, this week, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, as well.
The pitfalls of this completely unnecessary diplomatic grandstanding, which may well effectively cause the murder of the remaining 50 hostages who might still to be alive, were clearly evident when Hamas responded to Starmer’s pledge by publicly hailing it as a “victory.”
Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau and the terror organisation’s former Gaza “Health Minister”, said that Starmer’s move meant that “victory and liberation are closer than we expected”, and that “international support for Palestinian self-determination shows we are moving in the right direction.”
Apart from encouraging Hamas to refuse to accept the ceasefire terms negotiated by the Trump administration, the rush among Western leaders to acknowledge Palestinian statehood was also condemned by the governments of the US and Israel, and by former Israeli hostages who denounced the initiative as moral blackmail and rewarding terrorism.
Emily Damari, a British-Israeli hostage freed earlier this year after 471 days in captivity, directly accused Starmer of “rewarding terror”.
“This move does not advance peace – it risks rewarding terror. It sends a dangerous message: that violence earns legitimacy,” she said.
“By legitimising a state entity while Hamas still controls Gaza and continues its campaign of terror, you are not promoting a solution; you are prolonging the conflict. Recognition under these conditions emboldens extremists and undermines any hope for genuine peace. Shame on you.”
Hamas’s intransigence has left Netanyahu with little option but to maintain military operations in Gaza until Israel has achieved its ultimate objective in the war — namely the complete destruction of the terrorist organisation’s military and political infrastructure in Gaza.
Con Coughlin is the Telegraph’s Defence and Foreign Affairs Editor and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Gatestone Institute.
A fair solution Jonathan Pollard
The writer’s proposed solution does away with locking up haredim who refuse to serve and also avoids punishing the yeshivas. Opinion.
Aug 13, 2025, 10:40 PM (GMT+3) Israel National News
I have developed what I think is a fair solution to Israel’s Haredi draft exemption problem. It does not involve locking up draft evaders or withholding government subsidies for Haredi educational institutions. Rather, it requires every Haredi and secular citizen of draft age to perform mandatory national service of their choice.
For example, after finishing basic training, a person could elect to continue in the army, Magen David Adom, KKL, the educational sector or any other type of national service agreed upon by the Knesset.
If someone refused to perform this obligatory service to the state, they would lose both their right to vote and their access to government financial support. These privileges could be regained if the person agreed to do national service. And there would be no age or time limit past which someone who had refused to perform national service would be permanently barred from regaining the right to vote or to secure government assistance.
This proposed system would also be applied to Israel’s Arab community which, with notable exceptions, would be barred from entering the army.
That the IDF is suffering from a major manpower crisis is not open to debate. But this shortfall in recruits is caused not only by large numbers of draft age Haredi and secular citizens refusing to serve, but also by the army’s dysfunctional organization, politically biased promotion system, and counterproductive military doctrine , which doesn’t emphasize achieving quick, decisive victories over our enemies.
I believe that my proposed draft law if coupled with a much needed comprehensive military reform program could provide Israel with sufficient troops to effectively defeat any future threat we may be faced with.
Saudi Arab Sends BRUTAL Message To Palestinians That’s Going Viral Now! [12:46] Tal Oran
August 13, 2025 TheTravelingClatt
How President Trump Can End a Lost War MICHAEL T. FLYNN LTG USA (RET)
President Trump’s Upcoming Summit in Alaska With President Putin
AUG 13, 2025
President Trump’s upcoming summit in Alaska with President Putin will be a defining moment not just in U.S. relations with the Russian Federation, but also for the safety and survival of the world. I do not believe that most Americans fully understand the gravity of the situation. My personal assessment is that if these two leaders cannot reach an agreement this weekend, then the chances increase dramatically that events could spiral out of control, leading to an unthinkable catastrophe. Zelensky appears to be trying to box in President Trump by his trip to Germany to continue funds flow to him for his war. Certainly, continued assistance from Europe could prolong the killing, but what happens this weekend, is critical to bring it to an end.
I have had many friends and colleagues on both sides of the original debate as to whether the Ukraine War was originally worth fighting. Since then, friends have disagreed as to whether it was worth the enormous financial cost to our country and whether it was worth the terrible toll of the blood of young men on both sides. Official spending figures since February 2022 total $175 billion, but other estimates range far higher when including both expenditures since the Russians moved back into Crimea in February 2014 and estimates of classified “off budget” activities. But those debates have been overtaken by events. Despite Ukrainian men often fighting valiantly, Ukraine has lost, and the dying must now be stopped. The Book of Ecclesiastes teaches that there is “a time for war,” and I believe with all my heart this is the “time for peace.”
I sometimes think that in Washington, D.C. and NATO, President Trump is just about the only person who really wants the killing to stop and stop now. He campaigned on this promise, and he says it all the time. I believe if peace is achieved, President Trump’s first and most important objective will be achieved.
There are some in our midst, particularly Neocons who really don’t want peace, as they seem to lust for war. They demand that President Trump somehow reverse the substantial battlefield victories of the Russian Federation over the Ukrainians at the bargaining table. If so, this would be the first time in military history of which I am aware that to the loser goes the spoils. History teaches us that winning on the battlefield has consequences. And, losing on the battlefield has even bigger consequences. Ignoring that reality is foolish and self-defeating. If we refuse to recognize the reality of the battlefield, there should be no need for a summit — just let the fighting continue to the last drop of Ukrainian blood — but this would be insanity.
I am about to state some hard truths for my friends, so even though I don’t think I need to state my MAGA credentials, I’m going to give you a flavor. In the 2016 campaign, I travelled nationally with President Trump. I spoke for him at the Republican National Convention. I served briefly as his National Security Advisor until the Deep State deep-sixed me with lies about my efforts to defuse a tense diplomatic situation created by Obama in my dealings with the Russian Ambassador. I lost almost everything my wife and I possessed in defending against entirely phony charges by the corrupt Obama Justice Department. But I clawed my way back, and I stayed in the game to fight for and with President Trump. And for the years President
Trump was under indictment, I travelled as many miles as anyone in America to keep his flame alive. Since then, my nonprofit has done as much as any in the country to support and defend his policies in the courts.
So, I have a message for my MAGA friends from the perspective of someone who has great personal affection for the President: You can help the President, the nation, and the world by reducing your expectations for what can be achieved. No matter how good President Trump may be at the “art of the deal,” this is one of those situations where — as he told Zelensky in the Oval office — we don’t have the cards. A man I have gotten to know who was a senior official in the Reagan Administration tells me that even President Reagan never asked the Russians to do what was against their interests — which likely explains why he was so successful in achieving American objectives.
The hand that President Trump has been dealt is largely due to the incompetence and corruption of so-called President Zelensky and the Ukrainian government. Ukraine regularly described as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe — and even the World. It was a Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden for being Joe Biden’s son. How many stories have I read about the money that has been siphoned off by Ukrainian government officials instead of meeting the needs of Ukrainian troops, all to ensure Ukrainian elites receive a soft landing when they are forced out of Kiev? Although Zelensky was once elected President of Ukraine, his term ended 15 months ago, and he declared martial law and cancelled elections to cling to power.
· This is the same man who jeopardized world peace with an insane drone attack on the Russian Federation’s strategic (i.e., nuclear) bombers.
· This is the man who one day agrees to give territory for peace and the next day says that kind of trade could never happen.
· This is the man whose key military units in his government have been using Nazi-like symbols without apology.
· This is the man who, as the Vice President explained, continued to make demands on America while never expressing any appreciation for what we have done.
The truth is, even with enormous U.S. aid for his war effort, plus more from Europe, Zelensky fumbled the ball. He is drafting, and his henchmen are now kidnapping, 60-year-old men to serve in his military, given little training, offering them up as cannon fodder. His popularity with the Ukrainian people is in the tank. Only 24 percent of the Ukrainian People want this war to continue, but he demands it grind on. Zelensky has no right to be at the table in Alaska. The adults need to take over. It is largely because of Zelensky that we are where we are.
So we, the MAGA movement, must reduce our expectations for what can be achieved from this summit. I am going to take a leaf from President Kennedy’s famous peace speech at American University when he said: “Let us reexamine our attitude toward the Soviet Union.”
Maybe you will think this is making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but let’s try to do what President Kennedy suggested.
First, if the situation were reversed, and the now-abolished Warsaw Pact was recruiting Mexico and Canada to join it, to surround the United States with friends of the now-abolished Soviet Union, how would we feel? That’s how the Russian Federation feels about being surrounded by NATO. NATO was organized to prevent a war, not to cause one. NATO expansion presents an existential threat for Russia. Many Americans believe who governs Eastern Ukraine is absolutely no concern of ours — but for sure, it is not a vital national security interest of ours.
Second, we say we believe in self-determination. People in the four Oblasts — where the Russian culture, Russian language, Russian Orthodox Church predominate — voted overwhelmingly in 2022 (in an election likely fairer than our 2020 election) to join Russia. They are part of Russia. For years, these same Oblasts begged President Putin to protect them from the Ukrainian government, which was attacking them, but he held back. If you forgot that history, for a sample watch this early CNN report. So, why is it in the vital national interest of America to thwart the will of the people who want to be part of Russia to be part of Russia?
Third, when the United States promised the Soviet Union, and then Russian Federation, it would not expand eastward, and we broke our word, should we now believe it tragic that the Russian Federation finally acted to stop this expansion when it reached its doorstep? Remember how we felt about Soviet missiles in Cuba when we were ready to go to war?
Fourth, the Soviet Union is the world’s largest country geographically, spanning 11 time zones, with only about 140 million people. Are we really afraid they will march into Poland (which largely hates them) and then into Germany? The threat of President Putin dreaming to recreate the old Soviet Union is delusional Neocon thinking.
And, even if you disagree with all these propositions, how much is enough? War always has a prudential component. Can we really afford to continue? Luke 14 instructs: “For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? … Or what king, going to make war against another king, sitteth not down first, and consulteth whether he be able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty thousand.” Our national debt just passed $37 trillion. Wasn’t the massive amount of money already spent enough? If not, what would be enough?
Anyone who has followed me for very long knows of my admiration for President Kennedy’s quest for peace. He urged: “Let us reexamine our attitude toward the cold war, remembering that we are not engaged in a debate, seeking to pile up debating points. We are not here distributing blame or pointing the finger of judgment. We must deal with the world as it is, and not as it might have been….”
So, as for me, I am willing to leave this to President Trump. I believe he will end the war, negotiating to get the “best deal” he can get for our country and the people of Ukraine — not its government. This conflict has continued for decades, and President Biden left him with a terrible mess. I, for one, will not criticize the terms on which President Trump achieves peace.
Pollard Exposes Shocking Shift: U.S. & Bibi Silent as Russia Moves to Restrain IDF? [19:07] Avi Abelow
Aug 13, 2025
Russian media and Bloomberg (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…) report Syria has asked Moscow to resume military patrols in the south of Syria on the Israeli border, reportedly to curb Israeli operations in Syria aimed at protecting the Druze. Even more alarming: this move has the support of the US envoy to Syria and may have the quiet support of Netanyahu. In this urgent interview, Jonathan Pollard warns of this growing threat, if true. Why would Netanyahu sell out Israeli sovereignty like this? Watch now as Pollard exposes this issue and what must be done before it’s too late.
Muslims made me Islamophobic. JOSHUA HOFFMAN
Islamophobia isn’t the problem. Muslim antisemitism is.
AUG 13, 2025
A few weeks ago, I was in the United States, playing tennis with a friend at a public park.
Between points, I glanced over toward the grassy area beside the courts and saw a group of Muslim women — most of them wearing hijabs — sitting together on picnic blankets. They were chatting, laughing, enjoying the day.
And I felt it: an immediate, gut-level reaction as sharp as it was unwelcome:
I hate you — because you hate me and my people.
Then I thought, if I were visibly Jewish (wearing a kippah or a Star of David), I know I’d be taking a risk in many Western cities today. The question is: Were those Muslim women in the park feeling unsafe because they were visibly Muslim?
These are not the kind of thoughts you’re supposed to admit to. Not in polite company. Not in a society obsessed with tolerance-as-performance. But these thoughts were there, undeniable. And they didn’t come from nowhere.
When I was growing up in Los Angeles, Muslims were nowhere near the radar of Jewish life. We didn’t talk about them as part of my Hebrew School’s curriculum. Rabbis didn’t sermonize about them. Jewish summer camps made no mention of them. We had our own holidays, our own history, our own culture. Muslims were simply other people living their own lives.
Even the adults in my life didn’t talk about Muslims with suspicion or animosity, neither before nor after 9/11. If anything, we were taught to lump all people into the same moral equation: People are people. Judge individuals, not groups.
But then came the images I can’t unsee: Muslims in Western cities tearing down hostage posters of kidnapped Israelis, smirking as they ripped down the faces of our stolen children, women, men, and elderly.
Muslims marching openly under the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah (terrorist organizations whose charters explicitly call for the annihilation of Jews) while chanting “Globalize the intifada!” (a purely anti-Jewish genocidal chant) on the streets of the very countries that gave them the unprecedented right of free speech.
Muslims screaming “Death to the Jews!” and “From the River to the Sea!” in the centers of Western capitals, their voices amplified not by a few fringe extremists, but by masses.
Muslims attacking Jews — verbally, physically — on sidewalks, in schools, outside synagogues.
Muslim doctors and nurses in Western countries broadcasting online that they would eagerly refuse to treat Jewish patients, as if their professional oath meant nothing when it came to us.
Muslims claiming that October 7th didn’t happen at all, or that it was some kind of Israeli conspiracy, even though Palestinian terrorists live-streamed everything as they carried out the massacres, rapes, pillaging, and destruction in Israel.
Muslims inciting others to harass and kill Jews.
Muslims smearing the Holocaust or pretending it never happened (or didn’t happen in the way everyone knows it did), such as longtime Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas who has claimed that Adolf Hitler ordered the mass murder of Jews because of their “social role” as moneylenders. (Nevermind that Abbas received a PhD from the Soviet Union’s Institute of Oriental Studies after defending his thesis, “The Relationship Between Zionists and Nazis, 1933-1945.”)
All of this Muslim antisemitism isn’t some academic theory or political perspective. This is lived reality. And no amount of gaslighting can erase it.
The word “Islamophobia” has been twisted into meaning “irrational hatred of Muslims.” But fear and hatred aren’t always irrational.
When I was 5 years old, I was living near the epicenter of the 6.7 magnitude earthquake in 1994 Los Angeles. For years after, the slightest tremor made my chest tighten and my hands sweat. Was that irrational? Or was it the human brain learning from danger?
If someone is attacked by a dog, we don’t shame them for being wary around dogs. If someone gets food poisoning from sushi, we don’t tell them to eat more raw fish to prove they’re open-minded. We understand the cause-and-effect nature of fear.
Why, then, is it “irrational” to develop a fear of a group when significant numbers of its members are openly hostile toward your people?
And, for all the conspiracy theories that Muslims spread about Jews supposedly running the world (or some variation of that), why is it that Muslims now make up a quarter of the world’s population and control roughly a quarter of the world’s countries? If global domination were really the game, the scoreboard suggests that those spreading these rumors about Jews might just be the guilty ones.
What’s happening today isn’t some strange aberration.
For over a millennium, Jews living under Islamic rule were treated as dhimmis — second-class citizens who could live only by accepting humiliation, special taxes, and legal inferiority. Yes, there were “peaceful” periods, but peace often meant quiet submission, not equality. Pogroms, massacres, and expulsions were not rare exceptions; they were features of Jewish life under Islamic empires.
We weren’t equal neighbors in the Ottoman Empire. We weren’t equal citizens in Arab lands. My grandparents’ generation didn’t leave Morocco, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Turkey, and Egypt because they got bored and wanted a “change of scenery.” They left because Muslims forced them out.
This hostility is not only historical; it’s ritualized. In “pro-Palestinian” marches around the world, we hear Muslims chant, “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, jaish Muhammad sa ya’ud.” It means: “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews, Muhammad’s army will return.” — a reference to the 7th-century Battle of Khaybar, when Muhammad’s forces conquered the Jewish oasis of Khaybar in Arabia, killed its men, and enslaved its women and children. The chant is not subtle; it’s a threat. It’s a promise of repetition.
And it’s not whispered in some fringe corner of the internet. It’s shouted through megaphones in Paris, Berlin, London, Melbourne, and New York. It’s broadcast as a proud battle cry by people who live in democratic societies, where the Jews they are threatening are their neighbors.
When you’ve heard this chanted in cities that supposedly pride themselves on inclusivity and coexistence, you understand that this isn’t about borders, policies, or “Zionists.” It’s about Jews. All of us.
I know of no Jew who will read an article critical of Muslims and then feel inspired to go harm Muslims, or cheer those who do. I know of many Muslims who, after reading something negative about Israel (true or not), will feel justified in harming Jews — or openly celebrate when someone else does.
And yet, public discourse is dominated by fears of “Islamophobia.” That’s not equality; that’s selective empathy. If you speak up about Muslim antisemitism, you’re told it’s “not all Muslims,” as if that nullifies the pattern. If you feel fear walking past a pro-Hamas march, you’re told you’re being paranoid. If you point out the antisemitism embedded in certain Islamic texts or sermons, you’re told you’re being racist.
Western leaders and intellectuals bend over backwards to protect Muslim communities from scrutiny, even when members of those communities openly call for Jewish death. They will not confront the problem because they are afraid — afraid of being called bigots, afraid of riots, afraid of losing votes.
I don’t believe all Muslims hate Jews. I’ve met kind, decent Muslims who reject antisemitism entirely. (Ironically, most of these Muslims live in Israel and would rather be an Israeli citizen than a citizen of any of the 49 Muslim-majority countries.)
But here’s the truth that polite society won’t admit: It doesn’t take all Muslims to hate Jews. If only 10 percent of Muslims are openly antisemitic, that’s still millions of people. That’s enough to dominate the streets. That’s enough to spread intimidation. That’s enough to make Jews feel unsafe.
You don’t need all dogs to bite for people to fear stray dogs. You don’t need all earthquakes to destroy cities for people to fear tremors.
In Western societies today, more and more Muslims are presenting an unspoken proposition to the public: It’s either us or the Jews. They frame it in political language — “solidarity with Palestine,” “standing against genocide” — but beneath the slogans is a tribal demand: Choose a side.
And because Muslims now outnumber Jews by a huge margin in many Western countries, they know that pure numbers give them leverage. Politicians count votes. Media outlets count clicks. Universities count enrollment and tuition. If you’re a Western leader or institution, it’s easier (and safer) to appease the larger group, even if it means throwing the smaller one under the bus.
That’s the manipulation. The pressure isn’t about justice; it’s about intimidation. It’s about making the choice feel inevitable: Side with us, or we’ll brand you as an enemy too.
Fine. If they want to turn this into an “us versus them” game, then let’s actually examine who’s brought more value to Western societies. Who’s contributed more to science, medicine, literature, business, law, technology, music, philanthropy, civil rights? Jews, who are less than 0.2 percent of the global population, have won over 20 percent of Nobel Prizes, founded some of the world’s most important companies, and played pivotal roles in advancing democracy, human rights, and modern medicine.
Meanwhile, Muslim-majority countries, collectively representing over a billion people, have contributed comparatively little to modern scientific or technological progress. Many export oil, not ideas; religious fundamentalism, not innovation. And in Western cities, Muslim political activism far too often centers not on improving their host countries, but on importing old-world conflicts and resentments.
If the choice is really “us or them” because that’s the game Muslims want to play, then Western societies need to be honest about which group has consistently enriched them and which group, in far too many cases, has treated the West as a platform for their own grievances.
Here are a few facts: It’s not the Jews storming through cities chanting for the eradication of Muslim countries. It’s not the Jews attacking mosques or Muslim-owned businesses. It’s not the Jews calling for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — where the Muslim side gets no state of their own.
It’s not the Jews circulating conspiracy theories that Muslims secretly run the world. It’s not the Jews lionizing terrorists who target Muslims. It’s not the Jews disrupting universities and vandalizing public property with the rationalization of “resistance by any means necessary.” It’s not the Jews making Muslim places of worship require extra security at all times. It’s not the Jews colonizing the Middle East, North Africa, and parts of Asia.
It’s not the Jews who submit to holy scriptures — of which more than 10 percent is blatantly anti-Muslim.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a woman from Egypt talking about her time growing up in Gaza:
“I was born and raised as a Muslim in Cairo, Egypt, but I grew up as a child in the 1950s in the Gaza Strip. And the reason I was in Gaza was because, at that time, Gaza was part of Egypt. I attended Gaza elementary schools, where we learned hatred, vengeance, retaliation. Peace was never an option.”
“We recited poetry every day in school wishing upon ourselves to die as martyrs … to go kill everybody and die as a martyr. In mosques, the sheikh would say at the end of every sermon, ‘May God destroy the Jews and the infidels and even the Christians and non-Muslims,’ and he would call non-Muslims the enemy of Allah.”
Meanwhile, I don’t know of any Jews who woke up one day and thought, “You know what would make life more interesting? Developing deep-seated theological animosity toward an entire faith.”
I didn’t start this. Israelis didn’t start this. Jews didn’t start this. But we’d be fools to pretend like it hasn’t happened — and is still happening with greater propensity. We’d be imbeciles to keep ignoring the crystal-clear writing on the wall because God forbid you “insult” a Muslim.
And that’s the part that polite society can’t handle. Because polite society wants victims to be noble, endlessly forgiving, and committed to some idealized vision of coexistence. Polite society wants me to say: “I love you, even if you hate me. I want to live alongside you, even if you don’t want to live alongside me. I won’t defend myself, even if you decide to attack me.”
But I’m done lying to make other people comfortable. I’m done pretending that decoys (“Palestine,” BDS, “anti-Zionism”) aren’t there to blind us from seeing the reality: Too many Muslims today are modern-day Nazis.
And if you’re Jewish, know this: Our fear and anger are not irrational. They’re survival instincts.
Wikipedia has been hijacked by Jihadists Prof. Phyllis Chesler
Wikipedia is a fully owned subsidiary of Islamism. Instead of being a source of information, the grassroots encyclopedia is now a propaganda screed filled with lies. Opinion.
Aug 13, 2025, 7:10 AM (GMT+3) Israel National News
Nothing–absolutely nothing–online, and especially at Wikipedia, can be trusted concerning Israel, Zionism, “Palestine,” Jihad, Hamas, Islam, etc. For example, today, I checked out Wikipedia’s entry on Zionism.
Go see it for yourself. It is 14,728 words long and is written entirely from the pro-Islamist, pro-“Palestine” point of view. It is an ugly read. The entry begins this way:
“Zionism is an ethnocultural nationalist movement that emerged in late 19th century Europe to establish and support a Jewish homeland through the colonization of Palestine, a region corresponding to the Land of Israel in Judaism and central to Jewish history. Zionists wanted to create a Jewish state in Palestine with as much land, as many Jews, and as few Palestinian Arabs as possible.”
The fact that Jews are the only indigenous people of that Land, our roots going back 3,600 years; the fact that there never was a land called “Palestine” until about 100 years ago; the fact that non-European Arab Jews, aka Mizrachi and Sephardi Jews, aka Jews of “color,” also came to the Holy Land, and are a majority of its Jewish citizens, that Jews maintained a continuous presence there–is nowhere to be found at Wikipedia.
The entry also focuses only upon the “expulsion” of “Palestinians” in 1948 without balancing that questionable “expulsion” with the fact that an equal number of Arab Jews were exiled from Arab and Muslim lands that same year and in the years to follow, and that Jews were always, always persecuted by Muslims; not only by European Christians.
The Wikipedia entry continues:
“Criticism of Zionism often characterizes it as a supremacist, colonialist, or racist ideology or as a settler colonial movement.”
Guess who they cite for this information? None other than prominent anti-Zionists such as Peter Beinart, Ilan Pappe, Sabbagh-Koury, Sami Hadawi, etc. The citations are sometimes incomplete but where they are complete, they cite specific page numbers. It is meant to gloss over the fact that their sources are all biased. It is meant to appear as solid academic work.
Many years ago, I spot-checked the Wikipedia biographies of leading pro-Israel intellectuals and those of leading anti-Israel intellectuals. No surprise–I found that figures such as Daniel Pipes were “slimed” for their Zionism–and figures who promoted the false concept of “Islamophobia,” such as Hatem Bazian, were praised without criticism–and not only on one page but on countless other pages devoted to Students for Justice in Palestine and other anti-Israel groups.
It is maddening to have to keep repeating oneself–without access to the necessary bandwidth.
It is maddening not to have made enough of a difference after 25-50 years of heavy lifting.
It is maddening to see where we now find ourselves–as a people and as a Judeo-Christian Western culture.
And here I sigh.
I began focusing on the importance of propaganda early in the 21st century. Back then, others also exposed the Lethal Lies and the existence of Pallywood (“Palestinian” fake photos, staged atrocities), especially historian Richard Landes, journalist Nidra Poller, filmmaker Pierre Rehov, Israeli media spokesman Danny Seaman, etc.
None of us managed to persuade either the Israeli government or the American Jewish organizations to understand that the survival of a well-armed Jewish state would also depend upon fighting and winning the cognitive war. But here we are.
Jews around the world are more endangered physically, economically, and psychologically than ever before. Israel is under the most extraordinary siege–perhaps as never before, fighting for its survival on seven or eight fronts simultaneously, the eighth being the media front.
As we few argued and documented and predicted in vain, we did not stop the Islamists and their western supporters from consistently posting very huge lies on every single major search engine online. The Islamist Jew haters craftily, steadily inserted their mendacious views everywhere. Like a virus, like bed bugs, like termites in the woodwork.
In 2015, I again called for an Iron Dome against the propaganda. As yet, we have nothing like this. And now, it is probably too late to turn the tsunami of Lies around. Perhaps it was always too late.
I am not alone in this view. Bloggers Eve Barlow, Elder of Zion, Benjamin Kerstein, Melanie Phillips, John Podhoretz, Jonathan Tobin–and countless others have been covering this same waterfront, some more recently, others for a longer period of time.
And here I sigh again.
Despite everything, we can never give up. We are an eternal people with a long, long history. Jews must always fight, always defend themselves. Yes, individually and collectively. Of course, always pray to God (prayer calms us poor souls), but, as they say, also “row away from the rocks.” Keep contributing to the IDF.
Most of all, those who can, the tecchies among us, the billionnaires among us, must begin overwhelming the lies by inserting the truth online wherever and whenever possible, everywhere, 24/7, in every language on earth.
I was just in Gaza. Here’s the truth about starvation allegations. EITAN FISCHBERGER
Israel isn’t depriving Gazans of food, water, and medical supplies. The crooked United Nations, in bed with Hamas for years, is the actual culprit.
AUG 13, 2025
What I witnessed in Gaza during my brief embed with the Israel Defense Forces last weekend wasn’t a lack of aid; it was a refusal to deliver it.
Just a few kilometers inside the Strip, pallets of flour, bottled water, diapers, medical supplies, and jars of baby food — provided by the World Food Programme, UNICEF, and donor countries — sat untouched while people just miles away searched for their next meal. In total, nearly 600 trucks’ worth of aid were sitting idle. Enough to feed 1,000,000 people for nearly two weeks, or 500,000 for almost a month.
These provisions weren’t being blocked by Israel. They had already crossed into Gaza with full coordination from the Israel Defense Forces, a small portion of the over 1.86 million tons of humanitarian aid Israel has facilitated into Gaza since October 7th, an unprecedented amount delivered by a country to a population governed by its wartime enemy.
The holdup wasn’t logistics, security, or weather.
They were stalled because the United Nations refused to deliver them. Why? Because the supreme aim for the UN isn’t helping Gazans; it’s maintaining control over the humanitarian system that keeps it relevant, of the machinery that funds and justifies its existence.
The UN and its vast ecosystem of aid agencies have spent decades building a sprawling, unaccountable empire in Gaza. At the heart of this network is UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian agency that has run Gaza’s aid-state since Hamas violently wrested control of the Strip from the Palestinian Authority in 2007.
To a casual observer, UNRWA looks like the most well-intentioned humanitarian agency. It bills itself as “humanitarian, neutral, and impartial.” In fact, it is deeply tied into Hamas. The organization has formally partnered with Hamas in administering Gaza’s food, schools, and hospitals over the past two decades.
But the UNRWA-Hamas relationship goes far beyond logistics and administration. UNRWA has employed Hamas operatives, including some who took part in the October 7th massacre. In August 2024, the agency fired nine staffers over possible involvement in the attack, a move Israel condemned as grossly inadequate given that it had provided evidence linking more than 100 UNRWA employees to Hamas.
In addition, Israeli authorities published a comprehensive report in April 2025 which it claims shows that 1,462 of UNRWA’s 12,521 employees in Gaza are tied to terror groups.
UNRWA facilities across Gaza have repeatedly been found to host terrorist infrastructure. According to UN Watch, this includes testimony from former Israeli hostages who said they were held by Hamas inside UNRWA buildings; weapons caches discovered in UNRWA clinics; and Hamas compounds uncovered inside UNRWA schools and beneath its Gaza City headquarters. These violations date back to at least 2014, when the UN itself admitted that Hamas had fired rockets from inside UNRWA schools.
Who pays for all this? Western taxpayers, primarily Americans and Europeans, via billions in annual government funding. The Congressional Research Service writes that U.S. funding to UNRWA since 1950 amounts to $7.3 billion. In 2023 alone, the then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration funding accounted for nearly 30 percent of the agency’s contributions from donors. In early 2024, the Biden Administration froze funding to UNRWA after Israeli intelligence presented sufficiently credible evidence of UNRWA staff involvement in October 7th.
The Trump Administration is taking this effort one step further. According to Fox News, the State Department told Congress that “the Administration has determined UNRWA is irredeemably compromised and now seeks its full dismantlement.”
The UN’s failures in Gaza have been common knowledge for decades, but they were ignored by policymakers, diplomats, and media institutions who chose to look the other way, because acknowledging them would have meant taking on an entrenched international bureaucracy, while risking the accusation of undermining Palestinian welfare.
October 7th made ignoring all of this untenable, and not just because UNRWA employees participated in the massacre. It became abundantly clear that Hamas was actively depriving Gazans of aid, and doing so in concert with the UN.
More recently, the U.S. and Israel backed an alternative: the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new initiative designed to bypass Hamas and restore integrity to aid distribution in Gaza. Contrary to some reporting, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation claims it was never intended to replace the UN or other traditional aid organizations.
As the Foundation put it in a July 29th statement:
“A common misconception about the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is that we were established to replace the UN and traditional aid organizations. That is not the case. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s work complements, not supplants, those organizations.”
The group also noted that it had “secured a commitment from Israel to allow aid into Gaza under the existing mechanisms, including the UN” before launching operations. But even as a supplemental model, the Foundation posed a direct threat to the UN’s longstanding monopoly on humanitarian operations in Gaza — and that alone was enough to provoke backlash.
When the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation launched in May with a commitment to deliver millions of meals to Gazans through secure, Hamas-free distribution, it wasn’t welcomed; it was attacked. On July 5th, two Gaza Humanitarian Foundation aid workers were injured when a grenade was thrown at their vehicle while they were en route to a distribution site. The Foundation stated that the attack was carried out by Hamas-affiliated operatives seeking to disrupt the delivery of humanitarian aid.
Then, in a major incident on July 16th, 20 Palestinians were killed at a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation-run distribution site in Khan Younis, 19 of whom were trampled and one stabbed. “We have credible reason to believe that elements within the crowd — armed and affiliated with Hamas — deliberately fomented the unrest,” the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said in a statement.
Hamas has worked to undermine the foundation in other ways as well, including by placing bounties on Gaza Humanitarian Foundation personnel. The terror group’s “Health Ministry” has repeatedly issued dramatic and unverified accusations that both the IDF and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation personnel are opening fire on civilians during the daily, often chaotic, aid distributions. The ministry claims that more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed at or near Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distribution sites.
The IDF, in response, says it has only fired warning shots when individuals approached soldiers or aid convoys. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has stated that its armed contractors have used only non-lethal measures, such as pepper spray or warning shots fired in the air, to prevent dangerous crowd surges.
What this narrative ignores is that the other distribution processes employed this far are just as, if not more, chaotic and violent. Just this week, for example, the Daily Wire released a video showing swarms of Gazans overrunning multiple trucks belonging to the UN, while the IDF released footage of armed Hamas operatives looting an aid truck. “Contrary to Hamas’ false claims that the individuals in the video are security personnel,” the IDF said, “they are in fact Hamas terrorists who arrived to seize the aid from Gaza’s residents.”
But the UN, ever the willing megaphone, amplifies the Hamas Health Ministry’s narrative, with complicit media giving them generous airtime.
Even more counterproductively, the IDF claimed this past week that the UN has insisted it will only distribute aid if the process is secured by Gaza’s “Blue Police,” a sanitized way of describing Gaza’s Hamas-run police force. Back in November 2024, a UN spokesperson stated that their workers would become “an even greater target” if surrounded by “armed soldiers from one of the two parties in this conflict.”
Why then would the UN oppose another group handing out food and rely on Hamas’ police force to secure distribution, even after repeatedly accusing the terror group of stealing aid? Why would it echo Hamas’ unproven claims of “aid massacres,” despite the IDF and Gaza Humanitarian Foundation denying them, and rail against the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation for doing the very thing the UN is supposed to be doing?
Because the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s success is existentially threatening to the UN’s model. If the Foundation works, the entire paradigm collapses. No more “working through partners” who happen to be terrorists. No more junkets and photo ops for UN officials who get feted around the world for overseeing human misery. And most importantly, no more Hamas exploiting aid to fill its coffers and maintain domination.
In 2024 alone, Hamas made over $500 million from the aid racket (according to both Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson) by extorting civilians, skimming off the top, and using food as a tool for recruitment. Johnson added that this revenue accounts for half of Hamas’ annual budget.
According to a U.S. official quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Hamas made shutting down the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation the second item on its ceasefire negotiation list — which tells you everything you need to know about how UN aid fuels Hamas and how successful the initiative has truly been. Another official added that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation has “caused Hamas more fear than anything else has in the past two years.” That’s because the Foundation does what no UN body dares to do: Deliver aid directly to civilians, cutting out the Hamas middleman.
The UN’s own data reveals just how broken the system has become: Between May 19th and July 27th, only 13 percent of all aid trucks that entered Gaza actually reached their intended destinations. The rest were intercepted or diverted inside Gaza.
While the UN’s system collapses under the weight of its own dysfunction, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation distributes aid daily — and films it. Their videos show the (far from perfect) delivery of hundreds of thousands of aid packages per day, totalling nearly 100 million so far.
The humanitarian crisis in Gaza isn’t the narrow result of Israeli policy, but of the international system that treats Hamas like a partner and those trying to bypass Hamas like traitors. And while media outlets and the United Nations insist Israel is starving Gaza, it’s actually the UN that is failing to distribute aid. Not because of war. Not because of the siege. But because of pride, politics, and power.
The fight over aid in Gaza isn’t just about food, water, and medical supplies. It’s about who controls the narrative — and who profits from it.
The futility of compassion for those who want to kill you Jonathan S. Tobin
Palestinians cheered the atrocities of Oct. 7, have been complicit in the fate of the hostages and support Israel’s destruction. Do Jews owe them aid?
August 12, 2025 JNS – As far as most American Jews are concerned, it’s probably the most Jewish thing any of the numerous organizations that represent them could do. UJA-Federation New York has announced the intended donation of $1 million to help Palestinian Arabs in the Gaza Strip. This humanitarian gesture was widely applauded by many of its donors and community members.
Eric Goldstein, the group’s CEO, was careful to note that blame for the suffering of Palestinian Arabs in Gaza belongs to the Hamas terrorists who led the attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, which many Palestinian civilians joined. And he echoed the frustration that friends of Israel feel about the way mainstream media coverage of the conflict generally omits that fact while instead seeking to put the onus on the Jewish state for the suffering caused by the ensuing war. He also refuted the false claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
A moral compass
Still, Goldstein acknowledged that although much of the world has “lost its moral compass” when it comes to Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Jews shouldn’t also lose theirs.
That’s why the umbrella organization of Jewish philanthropies in greater New York—home to the largest Jewish community in the world outside of Israel—felt itself obliged to come to the aid of the people of Gaza who have been caught in the crossfire. The money will go to IsraAID—Israel’s largest nongovernmental humanitarian aid organization—to provide food, medicine and the installation of filtration systems to enable safe drinking water for displaced families in Gaza.
Helping people in need is in keeping with Jewish traditions that treat tzedakah—acts of justice and charity—as among the most important obligations and virtues to which Jews should aspire. According to Goldstein, the imperative is: “We must hold tight to what has always anchored the Jewish people: the belief that all human life is sacred.”
He’s right about that.
However, the decision to allocate Jewish philanthropic funds to aid hostile neighboring Arabs is a bad one. It may be laudable, but it is wrong.
Why?
Part of the problem is the virtue-signaling aspect of this allocation. UJA wants to do this to be seen as caring for Palestinians as well as Israelis. Still, it is more about making its donors and activists feel good about themselves than actually ameliorating any suffering in the Strip.
Billions for Gaza
A$1 million donation is a token—a drop in the bucket compared to the $186 million it has donated since Oct. 7 as part of the Jewish federation’s Israel emergency fund. It’s also insignificant compared to the global billions upon billions that have been poured into Gaza, both before and after Oct. 7.
There is no shortage of support for aid there. The United States, which, along with Israel, co-sponsored the creation of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) to get food and staples to Palestinians without it being stolen by Hamas or held up by the United Nations, has spent more than $30 billion on aid to Gaza in the last 30 years. The European Union and its member states have given nearly 1.5 billion euros to Gaza in just the last two years since the Oct. 7 attacks initiated the current war. The United Nations has spent $2.8 billion on the coastal enclave via its Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), an agency devoted to perpetuating the conflict with Israel, as well as being compromised by its close association with and infiltration by Hamas.
If there is a food shortage problem in Gaza, it’s not for a lack of money donated for the purpose, requiring American Jews to kick in an extra million. Nor would it be improved by $100 million.
The problem in Gaza is Hamas and its allies in the international community, not because foreign donors aren’t generous.
As is well-documented (although seldom reported in the mainstream media), Hamas steals much, if not most, of the aid that has come into the Strip via UNRWA and other international agencies. It hoards most of it and sells a portion to the population at exorbitant prices. It is the high price of food—not unusual in a war-torn area—that is causing the shortage. Hamas has also made it a priority to disrupt the efforts of the GHF to distribute food, attacking Israeli soldiers guarding the sites where supplies are handed out, and attacking and killing those Palestinians who are availing themselves of a non-Hamas food source.
Moreover, claims of widespread starvation are as lacking in credibility as the exaggerated civilian casualty statistics that Hamas published and that are reported in the media as fact. There are no signs of widespread malnutrition in Gaza. Considering the massive amounts of food that have been poured into the Strip since the war began, that’s hardly surprising, even though the United Nations has obstructed the distribution of much of it.
The UJA donation, as well as other gestures, such as the American Jewish Committee’s donation toward the rebuilding of a Gaza church destroyed in the fighting, stand for a belief that Jews should be seen as demonstrating compassion—in this case, toward Palestinian Arabs and Christians.
In doing so, these liberal Jewish groups seem to want to show that they are not parochial in their concerns and can rise above loyalty to their own people to showcase that empathy.
A conflict between people
The real problem here is twofold. One is that it seems to be based on a mistaken notion that the conflict is only between Israel and Hamas, and not the Palestinian people. That is patently mistaken.
It should be remembered that many of those who crossed the border between Gaza and Israel on Oct. 7 and took part in the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction were ordinary Arab civilians. Armed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members turned out to be a minority of those who committed the unspeakable atrocities that took place in southern Israel that day.
Palestinian civilians not only supported Hamas but cheered on the terrible deeds done in their name. Even since then, they have not just been Hamas’s human shields, though they have been used in that manner. Almost all of the Israeli hostages who have been rescued or released as part of ceasefire deals that involved freeing imprisoned Palestinian terrorists report that their captors, who sexually abused, starved and tortured them, were ordinary people and not just armed cadres. It should also be noted that not a single Palestinian civilian helped an Israeli escape, not even to collect the $5 million reward—five times the amount of money now slated for charity—that Israel has offered for information as to their whereabouts.
As has long been apparent to those willing to see beyond their idealistic projection of good feelings onto those who hate Israel, the conflict is not just carried on by a few terrorists but by the Palestinian people as a whole. That this is so is a tragedy for them and the Israelis. Sadly, their national identity is inextricably tied to the century-old war on the Jewish presence in this tiny country amid actors with malign motives. That is why their leaders have rejected peace offers involving an independent Palestinian state, going back to the U.N. partition plan in 1947. The late Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban erred when he famously said that “the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.” That’s because the Palestinians never considered the many chances for peace they rejected as an opportunity to do something positive.
In this context, yet another demonstration of Jewish generosity is seen by foes as weakness and a reason to keep fighting. It’s also interpreted as an indication that Jews everywhere, including Israelis, will become lax in their resolve to resist the Palestinian war on them.
Jewish donations for Gaza should also be seen as part of the same delusional mindset that led to Hamas achieving a complete surprise on Oct. 7. There was a consensus that stretched from left to right in Israel—backed up by the defense and intelligence establishments—that thought if enough cash and assistance were pouring into Gaza, peace or at least a ceasefire could be maintained. The world now knows that Hamas and the Palestinians cannot be bought off with money or food. Their cause is not the struggle for a better life but to destroy Israel. And, as they’ve demonstrated in the last 22 months, they are willing to sacrifice as many of their own people on the altar of that cause as necessary.
Validating blood libels
Even worse, it provides Jewish validation for the mendacious Hamas propaganda campaign that alleges that Israel is committing genocide and deliberately starving Palestinians.
Too many Jewish groups, including liberal religious denominations, have chimed in to support a false narrative that the Israeli government’s resolve to continue fighting until Hamas is eradicated is unjust or an act of aggression, as opposed to a defensive war that needs to be won. Influenced by biased liberal media coverage, they take it for granted that blood libels about starvation and genocide are at least partially true, and not just canards rooted in antisemitism.
Israel’s many efforts to trade land for peace in the past didn’t solve the conflict. In fact, it only convinced its foes that their false claim that the Jewish state’s presence in Judea and Samaria, as well as Jerusalem, was valid and that the Israelis were behaving as if they were criminals holding onto stolen property.
Rather than a demonstration of Jewish morality, donations aimed at alleviating Palestinian suffering are more likely to convince the recipients and their foreign cheerleaders that they are a manifestation of Jewish guilt and an indication that these Americans feel that they are complicit in Israeli crimes against humanity. In this way, it will buttress the very same blood libel about genocide that UJA says it opposes and help encourage the surge of antisemitism that followed on the heels of the attacks on Israel.
While being charitable sounds like the right thing to do, it won’t do much to help people caught up in the war. But it will be held up as evidence that even Israel’s American Jewish supporters understand that they are part of an evil conflict.
Once the war is over and Hamas eradicated, there will be a time when aid to Gaza might do some good—provided, that is, that the Palestinians are ready to move on from their obsession with an endless, futile war to destroy the Jewish state. Until then, Jewish funds should be exclusively directed toward alleviating the very real suffering of Israeli victims of the war, the wounded and the families of those slain by Hamas, as well as the health of the hostages, and rebuilding the communities sacked by Palestinians who took part in the Oct. 7 invasion and assault.
Doing so isn’t selfish, especially when considering that foreign charities, countries and the United Nations spending so much on Gaza are indifferent to the war’s impact on Israelis.
Compassion, even for one’s enemies, may seem high-minded. And, of course, we deplore all the deaths and the suffering that this war has brought to both sides. However, when it is applied to those who wish you dead, it becomes an incentive for hate, not an act of kindness. Donating to Gaza now isn’t an indication of a healthy moral compass. It’s a particularly dysfunctional indication of having lost one.
JONATHAN S. TOBIN Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, a senior contributor for The Federalist, a columnist for Newsweek and a contributor to many other publications. He covers the American political scene, foreign policy, the U.S.-Israel relationship, Middle East diplomacy, the Jewish world and the arts. He hosts the JNS “Think Twice” podcast, both the weekly video program and the “Jonathan Tobin Daily” program, which are available on all major audio platforms and YouTube. Previously, he was executive editor, then senior online editor and chief political blogger, for Commentary magazine. Before that, he was editor-in-chief of The Jewish Exponent in Philadelphia and editor of the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. He has won more than 60 awards for commentary, art criticism and other writing. He appears regularly on television, commenting on politics and foreign policy. Born in New York City, he studied history at Columbia University.
[Ed.:
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
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