COMMENTARY / OPINION
The Mess Tom Barrack Is Creating Hussain Abdul-Hussain
August 19, 2025
Tom Barrack met with Ahmed al-Julani. (Photo by Ambassador Tom Barrack – X, Public Domain, Wikipedia)
US Ambassador to Turkey and Envoy to Syria Tom Barrack is creating a mess in the Middle East, seemingly unaware of the repercussions. Working with the Lebanese government, he crafted a five-page plan outlining steps for Lebanon to disarm the Iran-backed militia Hezbollah and reciprocal actions for Israel. The fatal flaw? Barrack failed to consult Israel before committing it to this Lebanese-American proposal, expecting the Jewish state to adhere to a plan it never reviewed. This, Barrack believes, is diplomacy. It is not.
On Monday, Barrack visited Beirut, shortly after Iran’s National Security Advisor Ali Larijani demanded Lebanon abandon its policy of disarming Hezbollah. Lebanese officials rebuffed Larijani, urging Tehran to respect international norms and stay out of Lebanon’s affairs.
Hezbollah and its media, rattled by the abysmal outcome of Larijani’s visit, unleashed a frenzy of attacks on the United States for pushing Lebanon to disarm the militia. But then, surprisingly, Hezbollah’s outlets celebrated Barrack’s visit, particularly his statement that Lebanon had fulfilled its role and that Israel must now cease policing Hezbollah. For a mere Lebanese cabinet vote endorsing the American-Lebanese Hezbollah disarmament plan, Barrack criticized Israel for its targeted strikes that continue to eliminate Hezbollah operatives as they attempt to rebuild their militia’s capabilities.
Israel’s operations against Hezbollah’s operatives and arms depots align with the American-Lebanese plan to disarm the militia by year’s end, especially when compared to Lebanon’s endorsement plan that remains toothless, with no evidence that Beirut has the will or capacity to force Hezbollah to surrender its weapons to the state.
As they received Barrack, Lebanese President Joseph Aoun and Prime Minister Nawaf Salam both demanded Israel reciprocate the cabinet’s vote. Barrack blamed Israel for not adhering to a plan it neither saw nor agreed to.
Barrack’s brand of diplomacy creates problems rather than solving them. With unchecked authority, this US official risks escalating tensions the longer he meddles in matters beyond his mandate. Barrack is, after all, America’s ambassador to Turkey and envoy to Syria – his title does not encompass Lebanon or Lebanese-Israeli relations. Yet he shuttles between Ankara and Beirut, attempting to resolve a conflict between Beirut and Tel Aviv.
Barrack’s approach echoes the flawed diplomacy of former President Barack Obama, whose policies often praised adversaries like Iran and Hezbollah while criticizing allies like Israel. Obama’s diplomacy failed spectacularly, committing unforced errors and creating avoidable problems through a lack of regional expertise.
Today, however, thanks to Israel’s blood and treasure, the Middle East has a rare opportunity for positive change that aligns with the interests of the US and its allies. But such change demands seasoned diplomats, not those who expect allies to follow plans they never approved of.
America’s diplomacy in the Middle East rides on Israel’s success in weakening Iran and dismantling Hezbollah and Hamas. Long disengaged from the region’s complexities, America negotiates with Middle Eastern factions bolstered by Israeli strength, not American prowess. US diplomats must recognize that those wielding real power – not the messengers – are the ones who call the shots.
Excluding Israel from discussions on Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, as Barrack has done, is uncharacteristic of US diplomacy. His praise for Hezbollah’s ally, Lebanese Speaker Berri, during Monday’s visit, stunned observers in Washington.
Barrack emerged on the Middle Eastern stage mere months ago and may remain for three years at most. But those with decades of experience in the region see his diplomacy as a recipe for trouble. The mess he is creating will take Washington many years to clean up after his tenure ends.
If the US does not swiftly correct course in Lebanon, Syria and Turkey, it will regret these missteps for years to come. As often happens, America may throw its hands in the air, blaming the Middle East’s complexity for its failures.
The US has numerous competent envoys who grasp the region’s intricacies. Washington need only deploy those with expertise and sideline those who are better suited to touring the region’s historic sites than navigating its diplomatic challenges.
The situation involving Lebanon, Israel and Hezbollah is clear. Hezbollah, an armed militia, launched an unprovoked war against Israel. Disarming Hezbollah would resolve the conflict. Expecting Israel to offer concessions when Lebanon has provided nothing beyond a cabinet vote is absurd. If Barrack fails to see this error, he should be counseled to correct course. If he recognizes it yet continues his flawed diplomacy, it might be in US interest for him to step aside and let more experienced diplomats take over.
Hussain Abdul-Hussain is a research fellow at The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD).
The Truth About The Arab World – A Solution To The Arab-Israeli Conflict Rooted In Reality [23:26] Mordechai Kedar
Aug 18, 2025 Pulse of Israel
Dr. Mordechai Kedar spoke at the 2025 Pulse of Israel conference about the need to understand the Arab world and how that can translate into a real and lasting peace. Listen to his proposal!
Back to the Mandate? Jonathan Pollard
Jordan is filled with unrest, their attitude to Israel is hostile and we owe them nothing. Perhaps it is time for a big change in the area.
Aug 21, 2025, 7:36 PM (GMT+3) Israel National News
Recent insults aimed at Israel by the Jordanian Prime Minister should not be treated as meaningless populist rhetoric. Rather, his degrading epithets should be seen as yet one more example of Jordan’s implacable hostility toward us. Indeed, despite all the good faith efforts we’ve made to try to to help Jordan with supplies of affordable gas and lifesaving water, Jordan’s behavior towards us has, nevertheless, become increasingly hostile.
Although the Hashemite’s diplomatic war against Israel may be motivated by a desire to placate their restive “Palestinian” majority, their degrading treatment of Jewish visitors is a manifestation of something far more sinister within their impoverished, antisemitic society. Granted, the Jordanian government has outlawed the Moslem Brotherhood. But the King has not really done anything to eradicate the movement, perhaps out of fear that this would spark an outbreak of uncontrollable violence against his regime.
More troubling, though, is the fact that the Jordanians have done next to nothing to stop the flow of illegal weapons across our common border. This situation represents a clear and present danger not only to our citizens in Judea and Samaria, but also to our citizens within the so-called Green Line.
And now, to add insult to injury, the Jordanians are categorically refusing to open a humanitarian corridor to help the Druze in Swaida. Their excuse that such a corridor would prompt their own Bedouin to attack the Druze might be true, but the Jordanian Army could easily seal the border with Syria and prevent this from occurring. It’s likely, though, that the Jordanian Army, which is largely composed of Bedouin, would not exactly be keen to confront their kinsmen and would simply look the other way as mobs of Jordanian Bedouin crossed the border to slaughter defenseless Druze civilians.
Taking this all into account, it’s likely that rising instability in Jordan may spiral out of control, forcing the government to cancel its peace treaty with us. While this may seem to be an extreme assessment of the situation, the Jordanian regime may feel that it is a measure they have to adopt in order to placate their increasingly radicalized citizenry.
But does this peace treaty really mean anything? It was supposed to facilitate the acceptance of peace with Israel within Jordanian society and yet it has done nothing to bring this about. In fact, a recent review by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education found that Jordanian school textbooks for the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years legitimize Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, celebrate Jihad, demonize Jews, and advocate the ethnic cleansing of Jews. If that’s an example of how the Peace Treaty between Jordan and Israel is being implemented by the Jordanian government, could a declaration of war be any worse?
So, what should we do about this deteriorating situation? Here’s one solution.
Given the fact that “Palestinian” Arabs make up the majority of the people living in Jordan, I’ve long subscribed to the belief that “Jordan is Palestine”. Assuming we formally made this claim, we would be forced to take several measures to underscore our commitment to it.
These would include such things as formally renouncing the Oslo Accords, which the PLO never actually ratified. Arranging the move of the residents of Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Jericho and Nablus to Syria, then destroying these now empty cities, might prompt many other Arabs in Judea and Samaria, who don’t accept our existence, to leave. We should also offer the PA a one time opportunity to reestablish themselves in Jordan, before we finally eliminate them from the pages of history.
There’s no question that this process will be messy and extremely complicated, but I really don’t see any alternative. Any Arab who wants to remain in Judea and Samaria will be allowed to do so as a resident alien, whose taxes will pay for his education, welfare and medical expenses.
The ideas expressed by the 5 Sheiks of Hebron concerning the creation of a clan based “Emirate” should also be considered.
While the Hashemites, who largely control the Jordanian army and security services, may not agree with this kind of bleak outcome, I really don’t know how long they can reasonably expect to survive as a minority ruling over a mass of resentful citizens.
They may try to turn Jordan into a truly repressive police state, but many observers claim that’s actually what Jordan is today. At some point, though, the violence may simply be too much for the Royal Family to tolerate, and they’ll opt for a comfortable exile either in Europe or Saudi Arabia. The King may actually prefer this type of outcome to the one that happened to his royal cousins in Iraq.
In the event this is how events play out, we can expect the PA and Hamas to enter into a short term peace agreement eventually, while regional states force their troublesome Palestinian Arab refugees to leave for their new homeland. The Iranians will undoubtedly try to deploy troops in order to protect Hamas, which will start the countdown for our intervention.
At some point, though, a vicious civil war will break out between the PA and Hamas over which side inherits the new state of Palestine, formerly Jordan. It’s entirely likely that the violence will spill over into Israel, which will be obliged to wipe the new Palestinian Arab terror state off the map before the Iranians decide to base a large expeditionary force there.
If our government decided at that point to force the Palestinian Arabs into Iraq, we would be left holding the original Palestine Mandate, which would be an outcome both I and many other Israelis could live with.
From Baseless Hatred to a World at War: Reversing Tisha B’Av By Mordechai Sones
The uncanny parallels between the fall of Jerusalem and the spark that ignited the Great War
August 21, 2025 Jewish Home News
A Shot Heard Across Time
It began, as world-changing events sometimes do, with a single act of violence on an obscure side street. On June 28, 1914, in the provincial city of Sarajevo, a young Serbian nationalist named Gavrilo Princip fired two shots, killing Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the sprawling Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Contents
The Dinner Party That Doomed a Nation
From Political Plot to Catastrophe
Nineteen Centuries Later, The Same Mistake
The act was local, fueled by a bitter ethnic grudge against an imperial power. Yet, it was the spark that lit the fuse of a global powder keg. Within weeks, the intricate web of European alliances had pulled the continent’s great powers into a catastrophic war that would redraw maps, topple empires, and claim more than 16 million lives.
https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1p6rlDCxq0
Historians have meticulously documented the political and military blunders of the July Crisis that followed—the rigid ultimatums, the failed diplomacy, the inexorable march of mobilization schedules. But to view the outbreak of World War I solely through a modern political lens is to miss a deeper pattern that reveals an historical pattern.
For those who track the rhythms of history through a different calendar, the date of the assassination was not just another summer day. It was the Ninth of Av, or Tisha B’Av, the most solemn day of mourning in the Jewish calendar, the anniversary of calamities that have befallen the Jewish people. Among them: the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in 70 C.E.
That the first shot of the “war to end all wars” was fired on this specific day of remembrance is a “coincidence” that Jewish thinkers have long found significant. It suggests an echo, an historical resonance. Jewish sources that describe the fall of Jerusalem reveal a chain of events that bears an uncanny resemblance to the spiral of 1914. It is a cautionary tale, preserved for two millennia, that seems to have played out again, on a global scale, in the capitals of modern Europe.
The Dinner Party That Doomed a Nation
The poignant account of the Temple’s destruction, found in the Talmud, does not begin with Roman legions. It begins at a dinner party, an event that became a tool for political sabotage. The story tells of a wealthy man in Jerusalem who, intending to invite his friend Kamtza, mistakenly sends the invitation to a certain Bar Kamtza—a known member of the pro-Roman “peace party” of King Agrippa.
When Bar Kamtza arrives, the host, likely seeing him as a collaborator, publicly ejects him. Desperate to avoid shame, Bar Kamtza pleads, offering to pay for the entire feast, but the host refuses. The sages and leaders present sit in silence, helpless to de-escalate the politically charged scene.
Humiliated, Bar Kamtza and his political faction seized upon the incident. It was not mere personal revenge; it was a calculated political maneuver. He went to the Roman emperor, claiming the Jews were in revolt. As proof, he engineered a provocation: he would bring a sacrificial calf, supposedly from the emperor, which he had secretly blemished. When the Temple authorities inevitably rejected the invalid offering, it would be presented to Rome as an act of rebellion.
The plan worked perfectly. The blemished calf arrived, and the Jewish leadership was thrown into paralysis. Some argued for accepting the illegal offering to preserve the nation. But one influential sage, Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkilus, prevailed. A man of meticulous, unwavering devotion to religious law, he argued that accepting the animal would set a dangerous precedent. His rigid adherence to principle, in the face of a political trap, led to a fatal deadlock. As Rabbi Yochanan would later lament, “The piety of Rabbi Zechariah destroyed our Sanctuary.”
From Political Plot to Catastrophe
The Romans, their offering rejected, interpreted it as rebellion. The incident, intentionally manufactured by an internal faction, escalated. Emperor Nero dispatched his general, Vespasian, to quell the supposed uprising. The legions marched on Judea.
This history diagnoses the sickness that brought down Jerusalem. The catastrophe was not simply a matter of Roman might; it was the result of internal political rot. A public incident was weaponized by a collaborationist faction to paint their own people as rebels. A leadership, trapped by its own principled rigidity, was outmaneuvered and failed to de-escalate.
The external enemy, Rome, was merely the instrument of a destruction made possible—and even initiated—from within. Historical accounts, including those of Josephus, confirm the broader theme: Jerusalem was besieged not only by the Romans but by its own warring internal factions, zealots who burned the city’s food supplies to force a fight, ensuring that famine would ravage the population before the Romans ever breached the final wall.
Nineteen Centuries Later, The Same Mistake
Nearly nineteen centuries later, the curtain rose on a strikingly similar drama. The assassination in Sarajevo was the modern equivalent of the Bar Kamtza incident—a localized act of political hatred, carried out by a nationalist faction to deliberately provoke a crisis. What followed was a month-long diplomatic standoff that mirrored the rabbinic paralysis in Jerusalem. Austria-Hungary, backed by Germany, issued an ultimatum to Serbia, a series of demands designed to be impossible to accept. Like Bar Kamtza offering to pay for the feast, Serbia conceded to almost every point but balked at the most intrusive one.
It was a moment for compromise. But the leaders of Europe, much like Rabbi Zechariah, were trapped by situation and principle. Their minds were governed by an unforgiving system of alliances, mobilization timetables, and national pride. Russia, the protector of the Serbs, began to mobilize. Germany, bound by treaty to Austria-Hungary, declared war on Russia and its ally, France. Its war plan required invading neutral Belgium, bringing the British Empire into the fray.
Each step was logical within the flawed framework of the time, yet each step led closer to the abyss. The spirit of principled inflexibility in the face of provocation was present in every capital. The generals insisted on their timetables, the diplomats on their ultimatums, and the kaisers and kings on their honor. The internal divisions of Europe—the rivalries and deep-seated suspicions—ensured that a regional crisis, sparked by a political faction, could not be contained. They created a chain reaction that no one could stop.
The Fire This Time
The parallels are as clear as they are chilling. A local spark, ignited by a political faction, creates a crisis. The leadership fails to act creatively, paralyzed by a principle that is exploited by provocateurs. The situation escalates, drawing in larger imperial powers in a domino effect. And crucially, the internal divisions and baseless hatreds within the community—or the continent—are the fatal weakness that allows the external forces of destruction to prevail.
But what if this pattern of self-destruction is not an iron law of history, but a choice? What if the same dynamic—a small spark igniting a world-altering conflagration—could work in reverse?
Jewish tradition, which so carefully preserves the memory of its own failings, also preserves a powerful counter-dynamic, a prophecy of hope that acts as an inverse image of the catastrophe. In the Tanach, in the short, searing book of Ovadiah, a different kind of fire is foretold.
The prophet directs his vision against Edom, the nation that celebrated Judah’s destruction and who became synonymous with the Roman empire that would later burn the Second Temple. While history saw Rome act as the fire and Jerusalem as the kindling, Ovadiah prophesies a stunning reversal: “And the house of Yaacov shall be a fire, and the house of Yosef a flame, and the house of Esav for stubble… and they shall kindle them, and devour them.”
Here, the chain reaction is not one of hatred leading to ruin, but of redemption leading to triumph. The oppressed become an unstoppable fire, and the seemingly mighty oppressor is revealed to be as vulnerable as dry straw. It is the same historical mechanic, the same exponential spread, but fueled by a different energy. The prophecy suggests that the catastrophic patterns we have known are not destiny. They can be inverted.
This ancient message of hope is not a passive promise of a distant future; it is a call to action. The sages who blamed the Temple’s fall on baseless hatred taught that its rebuilding would come through its opposite: baseless love.
If a single act of animosity, left unchecked by a silent community, could spiral into global disaster, then perhaps a single act of reconciliation, of return—what is known in Hebrew as teshuva—could be the spark that ignites a redemptive flame.
The prophecy of Ovadiah is a reminder that history’s trajectory is not fixed. The future does not have to be an echo of the past’s darkest moments. The fire can be ours to light.
When is criticism of Israel legitimate? Dr. Alex Grobman
No democratic states should consider themselves immune to rebuke but no one should be discussing their right to exist either. Op-ed.
Feb 20, 2023, 4:14 PM (GMT+2) Israel National News
Clearly, not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. As the late American sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset explained, no democratic states should consider themselves immune to rebuke. “Israel is a liberal democratic state,” he said, recalling that, “in ancient Israel, the Biblical prophets devised the art of self-criticism.”
A useful key in determining whether the criticism in question is legitimate or just antisemitism disguised as such was offered by journalist Edward Rothstein, who suggested examining the “standards of justice.” When they are “applied in profoundly distorted fashion, when those distortions put the literal survival of a society at stake, and when murders are taking place and explicitly encouraged declarations are being made that may even fit university standards for ‘hate speech,’ it is safe to say the rhetoric is no longer honest criticism, but, rather, antisemitism,” he said.
Recognizing What It Is
Like pornography, antisemitism is recognized as such by those who know what it looks like.
The late-Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. did not hesitate to label anti-Zionist remarks as antisemitic. On one occasion when speaking to African-American students at Harvard, he heard an anti-Zionist remark from one of them. According to reports of the incident, Dr. King “snapped at him” and said, “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking about antisemitism.”
The late leftist literary scholar Hans Meyer understood this as well, writing that “whoever attacks Zionism, but by no means wishes to say anything against the Jews, is fooling himself and others.” “The State of Israel is a Jewish state. Whoever wants to destroy it, openly or through politics that can affect nothing else but such destruction, is practicing the Jew-hatred of yesterday and time immemorial,” he said.
Ironic Antisemitism
Josef Joffe, former editor of the German weekly Die Zeit and a former visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, saw the irony in the fact that many fine people see it as beneath their dignity “in decorous western society” to acknowledge they hate Jews, yet see nothing wrong with the open avowal of hatred “with impunity” of an Israeli prime minister or any other Israeli leader.
“Lashing out at an Israeli leader does not risk the raised eyebrows that demonizing his people, let alone Jews as such, would do in a post-racist age. The irony in such a statement is the current worldwide imperative to deem everything in racial jargon, meaning that we are clearly not in a ‘post-racist age.’ Israel is constantly the focus of outrage in the media, while other countries who repress their minority populations or engage in widespread human rights violations are rarely condemned or become front-page news,” he said.
Joffe saw this clearly when haters of Israel engage in the “fleeting” denunciation of Palestinian-Arab terrorism, which they then justify by condemning Israel’s alleged “occupation” and tyranny.
Calling this an “obsessive need for moral denigration,” Joffe said it indicates that, for people who engage in this rhetoric, “Israel has assumed a special place in contemporary demonology,” one in which facts do not determine judgment, but, rather, are selected based on prejudices.
Hatred “Only” Towards the Jewish State
Often anti-Zionists argue that they harbor no ill will towards Jews, but “only” against the Jewish state. New York Times columnist, Thomas Friedman, a well-known harsh critic of Israel, termed the effort to equate criticizing Israel with antisemitism “vile.”
However, he said, “singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction—out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East—is antisemitic, and not saying so is dishonest.”
Per Ahlmark, the late deputy prime minister of Sweden and a renowned writer, compared this approach to an individual who says he is “only” against the existence of Great Britain but is not anti-British, or really loves the Swedes but believes Sweden should be eliminated. Anyone who would make such remarks would not be believed, said Ahlmark, because “you cannot love or respect a people and hate their state.” The logic in Ahlmark’s explanation is lost on those who imagine they can separate the two feelings when it comes to Israel.
“I Support the Right of Britain to Exist?”
Even some seemingly banal statements of support for Israel may betray more sinister undercurrents. Daniel Taub, a former Israeli ambassador to Great Britain, admitted he frequently heard people say, “I’m a friend of Israel and I support its right to exist.”
It made the ambassador wonder: “Can you imagine anyone saying that in relation to any other country? I support Australia’s right to exist, or Guatemala’s right to exist—as though that somehow makes me a friend of Guatemala. In relation to what other country does a discussion or policy descend into a question mark over the very existence of that state?”
Former Canadian Minister of Justice and Chair of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, Law Professor Irwin Cotler has frequently spoken about the enduring threats to Israel. He said he finds “the silence, the indifference, and sometimes even the indulgence” the most disturbing in the face of such genocidal antisemitism.
Fooling No One
The only glimmer of light is that those who are crossing the line from criticizing Israel into blatant antisemitism are increasingly no longer allowed to do so with equanimity.
In an address to Parliament shortly before he died, the late former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, pointed out that antisemites rarely admit to hating Jews. On the contrary, he said, throughout history, many antisemites insisted they liked or even loved Jews.
“In the Middle Ages, they said, we don’t hate the Jews, we just hate their religion. In the 19th and 20th centuries, they said, we don’t hate the Jews, we just hate their race. Today, they say, we don’t hate the Jews, we just hate their nation-state. It’s the same antisemitism dressed up in a different gown,” he said.
And this time, they are fooling no one.
Dr. Grobman is the senior resident scholar at the John C. Danforth Society and a member of the Council of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. Copyright. Alex Grobman
Trump’s Military Moves Near Venezuela | Anti-Drug Operation 2025 [VIDEO 4:22] JEROME R. CORSI, PH.D.
AUG 21, 2025
In this hard-hitting episode of Corsi Nation, Dr. Jerome Corsi explains President Trump’s bold decision to deploy U.S. warships near Venezuela. Is this the opening move in a larger fight against international drug cartels—or something more strategic on the global stage?
Idols of Excess: How Cheap Obscenity and Hyperbole Are Breeding a Violent, Soulless Society By Mordechai Sones
Why ‘literally’ has literally become a four-letter-word in the new age of absurdity
August 21, 2025
The Age of Absurdity
Something is broken in the way we talk, think, and feel. It is a subtle fracture, a deep cultural decay that manifests in a series of seemingly unrelated, bizarre phenomena. A satirical headline is flagged as “misinformation” because it sounds too plausible. The President of the United States’ casual profanity barely raises an eyebrow.
Contents
The Endless Search for a Thrill
This is not just sloppy speech; it reflects a poverty of expression, where speakers compensate for limited vocabulary or nuance by co-opting a term of precision for exaggeration. Dictionaries have actually adapted (surrendered?) to this shift: Merriam-Webster, for instance, includes a secondary definition acknowledging “literally” as an intensifier equivalent to “virtually” or “figuratively,” based on widespread informal usage.
These are not isolated quirks; they are symptoms of a semantic apocalypse, a moment where the symbols and language that structure our reality have become unmoored from anything real.
This decay is pushing us through a destructive cycle of exaggeration, inversion, and desensitization. The once-clear distinctions between absurdity and reality, restraint and excess, have blurred into an unrecognizable mess.
As a result, our communication is losing its power to convey truth, our emotions demand ever-greater and more primitive outlets, and our society is spiraling toward a coarseness and barbarism that feels eerily reminiscent of the historical decline of ancient Rome.
When Reality Kills the Joke
Satire used to be a cultural scalpel, thriving on exaggeration to expose folly, relying on a shared understanding of what constitutes the “absurd” versus the “rational.” However, in contemporary culture—particularly amid extreme ideological expressions on the political left (e.g., “Woke” behaviors)—this line has dissolved. Attempts to parody, say, demands for “safe spaces” from microaggressions or redefinitions of gender norms often fail because real-world examples mirror the parody so closely that audiences mistake satire for sincere advocacy.
This is not mere coincidence; it is a symptom of a society where ideological fervor normalizes the bizarre, rendering irony impotent. Poe’s Law—the internet adage that extreme views cannot be parodied without being mistaken for the real thing—encapsulates this perfectly, as the absurd has become mainstream, leaving no room for rhetorical distance.
Actually, the absurd has not only become mainstream; it has become a protected, and often celebrated, ideology.
The Inflation of Outrage
There was a time when obscenity was a linguistic nuclear option. Its power came from its rarity, its transgression of a clear social contract of restraint. That time is gone. Donald Trump’s casual and frequent deployment of profanity in public fora is a stark example of how this restraint has evaporated, even at the highest levels of authority.
When such language is normalized by leaders, it inevitably cascades downward, permeating all levels of society and cheapening obscenity’s currency. What was once shocking becomes commonplace, and what was once a marker of extreme emphasis becomes mere conversational filler.
This linguistic inflation forces a dangerous escalation. If profane language, once the verbal equivalent of a slap in the face, becomes everyday parlance, individuals seeking to convey genuine intensity must resort to stronger expressions. This often leads to the use of more targeted slurs, dehumanizing language, overt threats, or, ultimately, physical violence.
The result is a coarsening of public life, visible in the vitriol of online comment sections and the increasing frequency of public confrontations, where the guardrails of civil discourse have been completely dismantled.
The Post-Truth Dictionary
A word meant to signify absolute truth—”literally”—is now routinely used to mean its exact opposite. It denotes exact, non-metaphorical truth—a boundary marker for precise communication. Its modern misuse, where it amplifies hyperbole (e.g., “I literally died laughing” to mean intense amusement without actual death), inverts this meaning entirely.
This is not just sloppy speech; it reflects profound poverty of expression, where speakers, unable to convey emotional weight through nuanced vocabulary, co-opt a term of precision for the sole purpose of exaggeration. That major dictionaries now include a secondary definition of “literally” as an intensifier is not a validation of its new meaning, but rather a documentation of its corruption.
This linguistic decay is a symptom of a “post-truth” mindset, where the boundary between objective fact and subjective feeling is intentionally blurred. Like the debasement of obscenity, this corruption erodes the foundational boundaries of language and signals a broader cultural laziness in upholding semantic integrity. When the very word meant to anchor us to reality is used to describe a fiction, we lose a critical tool for distinguishing truth from exaggeration.
The Endless Search for a Thrill
Societies immersed in hedonism, as was the case in late-stage ancient Rome, inevitably experience diminishing returns on pleasure. What once thrilled required constant escalation to maintain its stimulating effect—a spiral that culminated in widespread violence and social decay. Today, the West mirrors this trajectory. The ubiquity of online pornography desensitizes intimacy, pushing consumers toward ever more extreme content. Social media platforms, engineered to deliver dopamine hits from outrage, demand ever-more polarizing and shocking content to keep users engaged.
This feedback loop, where eroded boundaries necessitate greater transgressions to evoke feeling, fosters a form of cultural barbarism as the ultimate outlet. Consumer excess breeds a profound boredom, pushing individuals toward thrill-seeking in political extremism, destructive social trends, or real-world violence. When all lesser boundaries have been crossed, the final frontiers of transgression—violence, cruelty, and self-destruction—become normalized as the only remaining avenues for potent experience.
We Are What We Worship
Unifying these phenomena is a profound cultural inversion: the systematic breakdown and reversal of the distinctions that once anchored human expression in truth and restraint. This is an holistic decay, driven by philosophical currents where objective meaning dissolves into subjective hyperbole, amplified by technology that structurally rewards extremes. The outcome is what one ancient text might call a society of “dead stones”—lifeless, unfeeling, and prone to violence as the final, crude means of assertion.
The Torah offers a timeless and startlingly relevant antidote to this decay. Psalms 115 and 135 both declare, “Those who fashion them [idols], all who trust in them, shall become like them.” This is a profound psychological and spiritual diagnosis: people conform to what they worship.
Idols, described as mute, blind, and lifeless stones, are the ultimate symbol of empty, man-made constructs. When a society idolizes fleeting and empty excesses—ideological absurdities, profane language, hyperbolic expression—it takes on the characteristics of those idols, becoming similarly inert, desensitized, and barbaric.
The prescription, then, is to consciously reject these modern “idols” by recentering on principles of precision, restraint, and vitality. Torah advises sparing one’s words to preserve their value, a direct counter-mandate to the culture of hyperbole. It calls for holiness, which is achieved through separation and distinction—the active, disciplined practice of not blurring lines. It warns against altering foundational truths, symbolizing the need for fidelity to an objective standard of meaning.
Practically, this means cultivating habits that actively build and reinforce boundaries. It means fostering communities grounded in ethical absolutes, not relativism.
By trusting in something vital and living rather than in dead, empty idols, individuals and societies can regain life—restoring satire’s critical bite, obscenity’s prohibitive weight, and language’s foundational precision.
As King David says, transformation begins inwardly. To heal our culture, we must first decide what is worth worshiping.
Russia-Ukraine War Talks: Why the Deep State Needs Trump to FAIL | Glenn TV | Ep 453 [48:06] Glenn Beck
August 20, 2025
From the Alaska summit with Putin to the peace talks with Zelenskyy and EU leaders at the White House, Trump has been diligently working to resolve the conflicts left by the Obama and Biden administrations. Progress toward ending the Russia-Ukraine war appears within reach, but could the deep state sabotage President Trump’s plans? The Democrats and media seemed intent on undermining these efforts from the start. Glenn Beck reveals declassified documents that prove they knew the Russia collusion narrative would harm U.S.-Russia relations. Yet they risked escalating tensions, even to the point of war — to oppose and weaken Trump. Now, unable to back down, they are actively working to derail Trump’s efforts to broker peace. Alaska Governor Mike Dunleavy (R) joins to give the inside story of the historic Trump-Putin meeting, the real reason for the B-2 bomber flyover, and the truly effective way Europe can stand with Ukraine.
President Trump targets the Narcos TIM LYNCH
As reported by the New York Times, the odds are it’s fake news
AUG 20, 2025
Last week, the New York Times released a story saying President Trump signed a directive instructing the military to prepare plans for attacking Latin American drug cartels. The story was based on “anonymous sources,” and given the track record of the NYTs, there is no reason to believe it is true. Regardless, the legacy media had a feeding frenzy of conjecture, speculation, and pretend conversations with alleged highly placed sources, allowing them to repeat and plagiarize each other during a week-long news cycle. The Rolling Stone ended the frenzy with this definitive piece of propaganda disguised to look like guidance from on high:
“Trump is eager to breach Mexico’s sovereignty to attack cartels, officials say — just don’t call it an invasion.”
President Trump is the first President in a generation who is not eager to breach any country’s sovereignty. He is also the first contemporary President able to impose his will on the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the plethora of (mostly worthless IMHO) intelligence agencies. Trump’s second-term Pentagon doesn’t leak, which is the exact opposite of his first-term experience. This is easy to understand given the feckless nature of modern general officers. When they thought the route to four-star riches and lucrative corporate board sinecures was to thwart the Bad Orange Man, they did not hesitate to undermine him. Now the route to four stars is with, not against, President Trump, so the generals have stopped leaking. It’s a miracle proving that when you get what you incentivize, and now, nobody is incentivized to talk to our Pravda Press.
There are plenty of reasons to attack Mexico, starting with the fact that it has ceded control of large sections of its territory to drug cartels. Mexico’s political class feels entitled to interfere with our elections and policies while aiding China’s retribution for the Opium Wars via fentanyl.
Unlike Americans, Mexicans are not for things like freedom, individual rights, property rights, or even treating dogs well. To be Mexican is to be against things, principally the United States, Spain, retired Westerners who move to Mexico, Colombians, and, if you’re a credentialed member of the elite, the Catholic Church.
Mexicans hate the memory of Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro Altamirano because he was an invader. They relish the memory of the Aztecs as being the real Mexicans, even though the Aztecs were also invaders. The Aztecs weren’t Mexican Amerindians; they were colonizers from the North. Their Náhuatl language is unrelated to Mesoamerican native languages but closely related to the Ute and Comanche languages.
Mexican culture mocks the European traditions that created Mexico and devalues the sacrifice of the Europeans who rescued them from the depredations of the Aztecs. Mexico has a violent crime impunity rate of 99%. The perpetual state of extreme violence is due to the ruling class’s corruption, cowardice, and gross incompetence. The Stoics tell us that rudeness, meanness, and cruelty are a mask for deep-seated weakness. Mexico is the poster child for deep-seated weakness. And they shouldn’t be based on the performance of Mexican Americans in the Marine Corps, Army, and various Special Forces units.
Mexican Americans can carry serious weight, which is why they were overrepresented in the heavy weapons platoons back in the 1980s. Try carrying 200 rounds of linked 7.62, three 60mm mortar rounds, and an extra radio battery on top of your sustainment load, and you’ll see why Marine Corps infantry officers loved having Mexican Americans in their units. They’re hard men who don’t bitch in English, so we could pretend we didn’t understand them. And they carried a variety of exotic hot sauces to spice up MRE meals – what’s not to love?
Despite Mexico being a third-world shit hole governed by kleptocrats unconcerned about the health and welfare of Mexican citizens, history has shown there is one issue that will unite all Mexicans instantly: American military action on Mexican soil. It does not matter how surgical the strike or justified the retribution, any excursion by us on their (allegedly) sovereign territory would result in massive protests.
That’s not a reason to refrain from launching a punitive raid or two. It’s hard to take a country that allows criminal cartels to control vast swathes of territory seriously. Did you know there is a town in Mexico called Pimp City? Tenancingo is known as Pimp City in the Mexican press because, for generations, the principal industry in Tenancingo has been sex trafficking. Can you imagine an entire small city devoted to trafficking young Mexican girls into the sex trade, and nobody in the Mexican government lifts a finger to stop it? Now the pimps of Tenancingo have an unlimited supply of Venezuelan women to traffic and murder, and nobody outside of American law enforcement seems interested in this despicable trend.
I think most Americans would support a punitive raid to wipe the shit hole of Tenancingo off the face of the earth if they understood the levels of depravity masquerading as civic virtue there. But I wouldn’t recommend it, and I doubt President Trump has any interest in raiding Mexico. There is a bigger Narco State that is begging to be added to the Joint Prioritized Effects List: Venezuela.
Venezuela’s Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) was designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department last month. The group’s name comes from the collar insignia worn by Venezuelan generals, and the cartel is alleged to be a direct arm of the Venezuelan government. That is why the dictator of Venezuela has a $50 million price on his head.
There is an established precedent for going into a Latin American country to arrest the head of a narcoterrorist state. We invaded Panama to arrest President Noriega when he only had measly $1 million in reward money on his pimple-scarred pineapple face.
There are even better reasons to put a hurting on Venezuela. They host Russian military advisors, buy Russian arms like the S-400 advanced anti-air missile system, and grant port access to Russian warships. Meanwhile, China invests heavily in Venezuela’s oil and gas sector, facilitating the flow of Venezuelan crude oil despite U.S. sanctions. Iran’s involvement is equally concerning, with Quds Force operatives in the country training terrorists for operations inside the United States and supporting Venezuela’s National Guard in suppressing domestic opposition groups.
But the biggest reason to target Venezuela is that its massive proven oil reserves are now the world’s largest stranded asset.
I know what you’re thinking – that oil belongs to the people of Venezuela, which is true. But the people of Venezuela are eating their pets and losing their daughters to pudgy, low-T Mexican pimps, so that oil is not helping them. We could invade, destroy their military, everyone military adjacent, and any Iranian shit birds slinking about the place. Feed the poor, arrest the rich, extract the petrochemicals, and split the profits with the Venezuelans 50/50. Everybody comes out as a winner.
Then we could train up a force of patriotic Venezuelans in the latest Military Operations of Urban Terrain (MOUT) tactics using a replica of Tenancingo. When they’re ready, we would then explain that the Mexicans who have been murdering and abusing Venezuelan women are from Tenancingo and then let nature take its course. The Mexican political class can then start hating on the Venezuelans while we sit behind our secure Southern border and laugh at them.
Even better, President Trump could use our 50% cut in the world’s largest proven oil reserves to give every taxpayer a 10, 20, or even 50k rebate check. Then slap a 50% tax on all remittances to Mexico to punish them for interfering in our elections, having a city full of pimps, chaining dogs to their rooftops, and allowing the cartels to rape, murder, and steal from Mexican citizens without fear or consequences.
Righting an existential wrong is the modern hero’s journey, featured ad nauseam in virtually every contemporary Hollywood movie. So why not make it part of our foreign policy now that the State Department is more concerned with American interests than “responsible internationalism.”
And to prove that great minds think alike, look what just showed up on my computer mere seconds before posting this piece. I knew that all the legacy media bullshit about President Trump being ‘eager to breach Mexico’s sovereignty to attack cartels’ was wrong. Still, I didn’t expect to be proved right so quickly.
Clements: Mr. President, Look to Lincoln and Act: Arrests, Tribunals, and War Powers
Forgotten by the World: The Druze Are Being Erased in Syria [1:00:02]
August 10, 2025 Behold Israel with Amir Tsarfati
In this gripping Anchor Podcast, we hear the firsthand story of Mansur Ashkar—a Druze Israeli, former special forces officer, and believer in Yeshua—who exposes the forgotten crisis of Syria’s Druze population.
Trump’s lost cause: Why Ukraine and Europe will never make peace with Russia LEO HOHMANN
If a deal is struck, it will not lead to a lasting peace because Europe’s leaders have it in their heads that their continued existence as a global power depends on Russia’s strategic defeat.
AUG 19, 2025
Don’t be fooled by all the positioning and repositioning by America’s European “partners” with regard to the Russia-Ukraine war.
A lot has been said over the last week about how much all the parties involved want peace. Whether it’s Trump, Putin, Zelensky, Macron, Starmer, Meloni or Merz, they all claim to want the killing to stop.
But actions speak louder than words. Remember that old saying, money talks and B.S. walks?
As a journalist I learned long ago to follow the money. And I don’t see any real desires to permanently settle the score between Russia and Ukraine. Trump may want to end it but he’s kidding himself if he thinks he can. Why? Because he owes too many political favors to neocons in his own party, for whom priority number one is continuing to escalate the war with Russia. War is what makes them money and keeps them in office. It keeps them in office by enriching their donors.
At the end of the day, this is a border war between two Slavic countries. But instead of treating it as such, the collective West has been building it into a triggering mechanism for World War III. If we take him at his word, Trump seems to want to avoid World War III, but he’s rowing against the tide. All the momentum of the last four or five years has been in the direction of global war and it all boils down to economics. Be wary of commentators who always attempt to explain the world in strictly ideological terms. They will always leave you confused and deceived. It’s about power and money, and who gets to drive that money into which bank accounts.
The very fact that European and American governments chose to get involved in this war in the first place tells you that they want war with Russia on some level, and likely they want direct war between NATO and Russia at some point. But now is not the time. They know they’re not ready for that. Hence, German Chancellor Freidrich Merz pushed Monday at the White House peace summit for a “ceasefire” instead of a long-term solution to the war.
Trump, after speaking with Putin in Alaska, said he wants a long-term solution, not just a ceasefire. But my gut tells me he’ll end up with something closer to a ceasefire.
The problem is these globalist warmongers got more than they bargained for by picking a fight with Putin. The results, after three-and-a-half years of a proxy war against Russia, have not gone according to plans. Russia was supposed to be greatly weakened and on its last leg economically by this point, but that hasn’t happened. Russia is in many ways stronger militarily and economically now than it was in February 2022.
They thought Russia would be worn down and begging for an off ramp on terms totally in favor of the West. Even better, they thought Russians, weary of war, would rise up against Putin. They miscalculated because they don’t understand Russians or Russia.
At the same time, the neocons in Washington and Europe, in collusion with their friends in the lapdog corporate media, spun their fantastical propaganda narratives about the brutal dictator in Moscow. He not only brutalizes his own people, he wants to take over the whole of Europe, they say.
I saw one of these neocons, who is very popular in conservative circles, speaking last week saying that Putin plans to invade the Baltics and Poland by the end of the year. He offered zero evidence to support that wildly inaccurate claim, but it lines up with the statements of neocon politicians like Lindsey Graham, Tom Cotton, Mike Pence, John Kennedy, John Cornyn, and Marco Rubio before he became secretary of state. Those are just a few neocon names. The House and Senate are full of them. The State Department and Pentagon are run by them. These freaks still live in the 1980s in the way they view the world. Putin has been in high office in Russia since 1999 and has never showed an ounce of interest in rebuilding the “old Soviet Empire.” This group of warmongering Russophobes includes basically all of the Democrats in Congress, yet we are supposed to believe Putin is still a communist. If he were, why would the Democrats (American communists) have such hatred for the man? The only thing the Democrats and Republicans agree on is their love for war. Every warmonger needs a boogyman and Putin is their favorite character to cast in that role.
They will tell any lie to further press their case against Putin and Russia, a country they hoped would undergo a regime change and they could break up into five or more separate countries that would be demilitarized and reopened for business with the West. If you doubt that this is their goal, go read the Helsinki Commission’s report to Congress from June 23, 2022. Or, you can watch it here. They call this plan “decolonizing Russia.” The Helsinki Commission claims to be “independent,” but it is a U.S. government agency created and overseen by Congress. You can watch the full hearing below (I wonder what Americans would think if Russians held a government hearing on ‘decolonizing the United States of America’?). The arrogance of this is mind-blowing.
WATCH: Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative [1:33:05]
Trump talks like he wants to pivot away from Europe and its follies, and maybe he does, but I believe that’s a strategic ploy, more than a serious goal. By getting Europe to foot more of its own defense budgets and take responsibility for the Ukraine war, that frees the U.S. up to focus more on China and Asia. Even if he wants to, I can’t see Trump having the intestinal fortitude to truly ditch Europe and leave them to their own devices, the worst of which is warmongering against Russia. Europe is fast becoming irrelevant in today’s world. It has no resources. Its citizens are generally aging, lazy, pampered, overpaid, underworked and entitled. This all adds up to catastrophic birthrates and a dying economy. To become relevant again, Europe needs Russia’s vast resources in the form of oil, gas, precious metals and mineral wealth.
In his latest article, economist and techno-prognosticator Martin Armstrong sums it up when he says:
“The EU is looking at war as its ONLY option; otherwise, the people will be storming their parliaments with this type of massive economic contraction.”
So if Trump thinks he can go against the warmongers in Europe and the neocons in his own party here at home, he will find out soon enough that’s not possible.
Armstrong further writes with regard to the White House peace summit held on Monday:
“Trump met with the European warmongers led by Sir Keir Starmer. The leaders of France, Finland, Germany, and Italy, alongside the heads of NATO, the real leader of the pack, as well as the EU, muscled their way into this meeting. All seven leaders said they will ALWAYS be on the side of Ukraine and that the conflict with Russia must end. All my sources have warned that they will stab Trump in the back in the blink of an eye. Trump agreed with the calls for ‘long-term’ peace, but Europe is not genuine in this regard.”
Europe is on a downward spiral that is only going to speed up in a world run by AI and digital everything. AI eats up a ton of resources. The electricity and water needs of AI data centers are off the charts, unlike anything we’ve ever seen in history.
The truth is, this was always a war built on a lie: “Russia started the war.” While technically true, Russia was baited into sending its military into Ukraine and, with a weak Biden in the White House, saw an opportunity to go in and clean out the mostly Nazi Ukrainian elements that were attacking Russians in Eastern Ukraine and stoking civil war.
This was always a European/NATO war against Russia. The history bears it out. But you will always hear that it was an act of “naked aggression” by Russia. Totally unprovoked, Russia just randomly started killing Ukrainians and Ukraine is the poor victim acting in self defense. That defies all the facts going back to 2013 and 2014 with the CIA/MI6-inspired revolution that installed a Western puppet government in Kiev and began building Ukraine’s military into Europe’s largest fighting force. Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel even admitted that the West never seriously planned to honor the 2014 Minsk peace agreements with Russia, that it was only signed in order to buy time to arm and train Ukraine’s Army to fight Russia.
The only way Europe stays relevant is to defeat Russia, break it up into multiple smaller countries and steal its resources. The problem is, they can only do it with American help. We’ll see how that plays out soon enough. Even if Trump manages to avoid taking the bait, what about the next president? If the globalists in Europe and Washington get their way and we end up in a direct conflict with Russia, there will be no winners. Satan will have a heyday and the antichrist may emerge out of that devastation.
On Israel, Mamdani is no longer a Democratic outlier Jonathan S. Tobin
The anti-Zionist mayoral candidate is getting advice from former President Barack Obama, while a growing number of party leaders are echoing the genocide blood libel.
Aug. 18, 2025 JNS
In the wake of New York state assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, there was some doubt as to whether a party that still aspired to represent mainstream voters would rally behind a man who was not only a Socialist but an anti-Zionist. Eight weeks later, not only is it clear that there will be no movement on the part of national or even statewide Democrats to disassociate themselves from his candidacy, but that his position on Israel may well be closer to the mainstream of Democratic officeholders, and perhaps, many voters than his critics think.
The confirmation that Mamdani was not going to be isolated within his party was delivered last week in a column by New York Times political columnist Mara Gay when she broke the news that former President Barack Obama had called the 33-year-old mayoral candidate to offer him encouragement and advice. She reported that other key members of Obamaworld, like political guru David Axelrod, speechwriter Jon Favreau, and political advisor and podcaster Dan Pfeiffer, have also been communicating with top Mamdani advisers. She quoted Axelrod as comparing the Mamdani campaign to the “familiar spirit” of “determined, upbeat optimism” that was needed to inspire the country and relate to working people in Obama’s campaigns.
Leave aside the fact that the Mamdani campaign has little appeal to working-class Americans, who, as last year’s election results showed, increasingly look to President Donald Trump and the Republicans to represent their interests rather than progressives, who reject their values, and favor globalist economics and illegal immigration. As writer Armin Rosen recently noted in Tablet, the enthusiasm for the Democratic Socialist comes largely from white upper-middle-class or wealthy elites who, insulated from the real world, have bought into the economic and woke social fantasies of the left.
Obama redux
It is a reflection of the fact that the Democratic base does, as Axelrod sensed, see Mamdani’s foolish platform of failed Marxist economic fairytales and opposition to a Jewish state as emblematic of a revival of Obama’s “hope and change” movement that propelled him to the White House in 2008. The failure of leading Democrats, who remain clueless as to why they lost in 2024, to mount any concerted opposition to Mamdani is itself significant. Still, the legitimacy that the approval of Obama—who remains an iconic figure for Democrats even as the country embraces Trump—gives Mamdani signifies where the party is headed.
It should be remembered that Obama had to at least pretend to be a friend of Israel in 2008 and again in 2012 when his re-election campaign marked a year-long pause in his ongoing hostility to the Jewish state and its government before it resumed in full force with his appeasement of Iran. Things are very different in 2025. Mamdani’s record of opposition to Israel’s existence, membership in antisemitic organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, and refusal to disavow leftist chants in favor of Israel’s destruction and Jewish genocide (“From the river to the sea”) and in favor of international terrorism against Jews (“Globalize the intifada”) would have been disqualifying, even in deep-blue New York not that long ago. Now, the cheers from Obama and his administration’s alumni are not the only or even the primary indication of the shift among Democrats.
That Mamdani has the enthusiastic support of left-wing anti-Israel billionaire George Soros, as well as his son Alex, and their network of philanthropies and political action committees is hardly surprising. But the real indication of how Democratic opinion has shifted comes from the wide range of officeholders and office-seekers who are now adopting positions far closer to that of Mamdani on the Middle East conflict than pro-Israel stalwarts like Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) or almost the entirety of the Republican congressional caucus.
Political weathervanes
The decision of former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, a once and likely future Democratic presidential candidate, is one such example. His shift away from a stance of traditional support for Israel and to denounce the campaign to eradicate Hamas in Gaza—and to say that he would have voted, along with the majority of the Democratic caucus, for the resolution of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to halt arms sales to the Jewish state—speaks volumes about party sentiment. Buttigieg may have little chance to win in 2028, given his lack of minority support in a party where such voters dominate the primaries, coupled with his disastrous performance in former President Joe Biden’s cabinet. Yet the former think tank analyst who always crafts his positions to appeal to what he thinks is mainstream opinion is a reliable weathervane of Democratic opinion.
His bending of the knee to the Hamas propaganda narrative about “genocide” and “starvation” in Gaza demonstrates how the balance of power in the party is no longer a matter of a leftist base pushing back against party moderates and congressional leadership.
The same applies to the decisions of other congressional Democrats.
It’s one thing for House “Squad” members and open antisemites like Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) to promote blood libels against Israel. But when Minority Whip Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.)—the second-ranking House Democrat—does so by specifically endorsing the claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza (though she later contradicted herself and walked back the comment when questioned about it by JNS) or when Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) a darling of pro-Israel liberal Jewish Democrats, becomes a co-sponsor of a bill blocking arms sales to Israel in the House, it’s time to stop pretending that Mamdani is some kind of an outlier in the party on the Jewish state.
This is bad news for Mamdani’s opponents, especially former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, both Democrats running as independents in November. Their candidacies are based on the idea that most voters, even in a city dominated by Democrats, have no interest in electing a Socialist who believes in policies like expanded rent control and government grocery stores that will exacerbate rather than fix the problems facing New Yorkers, who aren’t as wealthy as the progressive elites backing Mamdani. Like Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, they have also been counting on the idea that the majority of them would be appalled by the prospect of a supporter of the sort of open antisemitism that was witnessed on campuses like that of Columbia University, Barnard College, New York University, the New School, the City University of New York and other academic institutions since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, would be too extreme to win a general election.
It remains to be seen whether their hopes of a backlash against Mamdani’s extremism will develop as Election Day approaches, or if the refusal of any among his trio of opponents to pull out of the race will enable him to win a plurality of votes even if that happens.
What we do see is that mainstream Democrats have now concluded that it’s better to join Mamdani than fight him. That Mamdani and other Democrats are embracing the cause of Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian organizer of the pro-Hamas demonstrations and encampments at Columbia, whom Trump wants to deport, is just the icing on the anti-Zionist cake. If even people like former Staten Island Rep. Max Rose, a Jewish centrist, are now saying that Obama was right to welcome Mamdani and his supporters into a big-tent version of their party, that speaks volumes about who is and isn’t an outlier among Democrats.
Democratic support craters
They are, after all, just reading the numbers the way all politicians must. As a recent Gallup poll showed, while a decisive 71% of Republicans endorsed Israel’s actions in Gaza, a staggeringly low 8% of Democrats agreed with them.
This illustrates, among other things, the decisive influence liberal media has on the opinions of the sector of the population that still pays attention to them. The avalanche of anti-Israel coverage of the current war—with so many mainstream corporate liberal outlets effectively echoing Hamas propaganda about Palestinian casualties, starvation and genocide—has made an impact on Democrats.
Among them, support for Israel’s actions in Gaza fell from 36% in November 2023 to the current 8% figure. One could argue that having only slightly more than a third of Democrats backing the counter-offensive against Hamas only weeks after the orgy of mass murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction on Oct. 7 already spoke volumes about the decline in support for the Jewish state. But with backing for Israel cratering and slipping into single figures, it’s unsurprising that Democratic politicians, who once hewed to a pro-Israel line, have abandoned it.
By contrast, Republicans—who in today’s bifurcated culture are highly unlikely to read, watch or listen to left-wing outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC and NPR—are giving Israel the same 71% level of support now as they did right after the current war started.
This is the culmination of a long process that has its roots in the progressive conquest of American education and liberal media, and the way toxic leftist myths about race, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that falsely labeled Israel as a “white” oppressor of Palestinians, a “people of color,” have become a new orthodoxy among liberals. As long as virtually every publication and broadcast and cable channel is mainstreaming the “genocide” lie, expecting politicians who look to the consumers of those outlets for support to stand up against these falsehoods is to engage in magical thinking.
While far-right antisemites and online Israel-bashers have become too loud and popular online to ignore, they are still a minority phenomenon and out of sync with GOP voters and Trump, the man whose opinion is the only one that truly counts among Republicans these days. Yet while their support is unlikely to shift, those who are holding onto the belief that a bipartisan pro-Israel coalition can be resurrected from the political dead are dreaming. That’s a tragedy for Israel, and even more so for the majority of American Jews. Liberal Jews who aren’t willing to abandon Israel are increasingly politically homeless.
Given the ideological motivation for their willingness to buy into Hamas blood libels, the belief that even an Israeli decision to end the war and surrender to the terrorists’ demands to hold onto power in Gaza would change things is to engage in fantasy, not sober political analysis. The focus on Mamdani among Jewish New Yorkers and pro-Israel Democrats is understandable, even if the chances of defeating him are slim. But it’s obvious that no matter what happens in New York in November, the Democrats are a lost cause for the pro-Israel community.
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.
The EU ‘Elites’, Part II by Robert Williams
Technocrats Against Democracy
August 19, 2025 Gatestone Institute
- This is technospeak for censorship, but you already knew that because this is what the “fact-checkers” at Facebook and Twitter did on behalf of the Biden administration and the FBI until Elon Musk bought Twitter and President Donald Trump was re-elected.
- Of the EU institutions, the unelected European Commission wields the most power over the EU’s 400 million citizens, with its exclusive right to propose laws (the elected MEPs, bizarrely, have no such right), implement policies… The European Commission employs no fewer than 32,000 bureaucrats to help it do all that.
- This is a closed-door technocratic and elitist coterie — the rule of the unelected few over almost an entire continent of 400 million people — meaning that EU initiatives with huge implications for Europeans get decided without a single ordinary European having a say in the matter.
- Arguably one of the most damaging of the European Commission’s initiatives that no European citizen has asked for is the European Green Deal, which is leading EU citizens to financial ruin, and transforming the EU into an economic backwater, in the quest to transform the EU into a “net-zero” region by 2050.
- Trillions of EU taxpayer euros are compelled to finance this self-destructive climate madness while Europeans continue to deal with skyrocketing energy prices — themselves the result of the climate madness — a housing crisis, sky-high prices on consumer goods and unvetted mass migration from third-world countries.
- Another catastrophic EU initiative about which no European citizen was consulted, is the EU’s new Migration Pact, which will see the further deterioration of national sovereignty and the continued influx of migrants into the European Union. The pact, instead of simply closing the EU’s external open borders, requires EU member states to distribute migrants between themselves under penalty of financial sanctions. There has been no public discussion about this.
- A third EU regulation with disastrous impacts on EU citizens is the Digital Security Act (DSA), which under the pretext of creating a “safer and more accountable digital space” strangles the pitiful remains of European free speech even further.
- The DSA, now the law of the land throughout the member states of the EU, is being weaponized against Elon Musk — whom European elites despise — and his X platform. The European Commission is reportedly preparing to impose huge fines on Musk for breaching the DSA by, among other things, refusing to allow external “fact-checkers” on his platform to flag “disinformation”. Who, of course, would be checking the EU’s “fact-checkers”?
- The European Union member states have finally arrived – while never asking the Europeans involved – at their own dystopian future.
The European Commission’s unelected president, Ursula von der Leyen, has come up with a nifty new idea in the European Union’s quest to snuff out democracy on the continent: The “European Democracy Shield.” This is technospeak for censorship. (Images source: iStock)
First proposed by von der Leyen, ironically, at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit in May 2024, von der Leyen stressed that the initiative was needed to “defend” Europe’s “democratic values” against external threats. The initiative is reportedly of the highest priority for von der Leyen. According to the European People’s Party Group:
“Its purpose is to strengthen the public’s resilience to disinformation and to combat foreign manipulation of information….
“The European Commission’s initiative states that the Democracy Shield aims to detect, analyse and proactively combat disinformation and information manipulation by setting up a European network of fact-checkers working in all the official languages of the EU. The initiative aims to build societal resilience by increasing digital and media literacy.”
This is technospeak for censorship, but you already knew that because this is what the “fact-checkers” at Facebook and Twitter did on behalf of the Biden administration and the FBI until Elon Musk bought Twitter and President Donald Trump was re-elected.
It should be noted here that few Americans are probably aware just how shockingly undemocratic the entire European Union construct already is, even before such a “Democracy Shield” has been fully implemented.
For a start, the EU’s executive body, the European Commission, led by von der Leyen, is a technocratic, elite governing body consisting of 27 Commissioners, which can best be compared to ministers. These Commissioners are not elected, but chosen in backroom deals by national governments and come from the top European political and technocratic establishment insiders. The collective European Commission is then submitted as a group for the approval of the European Parliament, which appears to function mainly as a rubber stamp in this regard, as described by Fidias Panayiotou, a Greek Member of European Parliament (MP), who has made it a point to question the undemocratic procedures in the EU.
Of the EU institutions, the unelected European Commission wields the most power over the EU’s 400 million citizens, with its exclusive right to propose laws (the elected MEPs, bizarrely, have no such right), implement policies, and everything falling under the management of the day-to-day operations of the EU. The European Commission employs no fewer than 32,000 bureaucrats to help it do all that.
The EU’s top decision-making body is the European Council, which consists of each EU member state’s head of government plus the unelected President of the European Council (Charles Michel) and the unelected President of the European Commission. This is where broad political and agenda decisions are made on everything from foreign and economic policy to more internal matters.
Although it can be argued that the European Council technically consists of elected heads of state, the decision-making takes place behind closed doors most of the time, while the European Parliament appears to be a lame duck that has zero influence on those decisions, especially as they pertain to foreign policy, defense and budget approval – major areas that are completely decided by the unelected elites.
The European Parliament, although it is the only EU institution with elected representatives, appears mainly to function as a democratic fig leaf, reduced to proposing amendments to the European Commission’s proposed legislation. In its entire history, the European Parliament has only rejected three pieces of legislation proposed by the European Commission.
This is a closed-door technocratic and elitist coterie — the rule of the unelected few over almost an entire continent of 400 million people — meaning that EU initiatives with huge implications for Europeans get decided without a single ordinary European having a say in the matter.
EU laws have to be implemented in the various EU member states, who are obliged to conform to the madness emanating from the EU and turn it into national law.
The European Commission’s own website states:
“According to the EU treaties, the Commission may take legal action – an infringement procedure – against an EU country that fails to implement EU law. The Commission may refer the issue to the Court of Justice, which can impose financial sanctions,”
Arguably one of the most damaging of the European Commission’s initiatives that no European citizen has asked for is the European Green Deal, which is leading EU citizens to financial ruin, and transforming the EU into an economic backwater, in the quest to transform the EU into a “net-zero” region by 2050.
“Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world,” the EU’s website blatantly lies.
“To overcome these challenges, the European Green Deal will transform the European Union (EU) into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, ensuring:
• no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050;
• economic growth decoupled from resource use;
• no person and no place left behind.”
Trillions of EU taxpayer euros are compelled to finance this self-destructive climate madness while Europeans continue to deal with skyrocketing energy prices — themselves the result of the climate madness — a housing crisis, sky-high prices on consumer goods and unvetted mass migration from third-world countries.
Although the EU’s “green deal” is clearly failing, and the EU knows it, instead of ditching it, the EU oligarchs are instead offering subsidies to those European industries that are struggling to stay competitive. No such subsidies, unfortunately, will be offered to the EU’s struggling citizenry, who did not ask for this, vote for this or have any say in it.
According to one report, Ewa Zajączkowska-Hernik, a Polish MEP affiliated with the conservative Europe of Sovereign Nations, “accused von der Leyen of using the Green Deal as a weapon against Europe’s economy and agriculture,” saying:
“You are the face of the European Green Deal, and this Deal is doing nothing but tearing apart Europe’s economic stability while sacrificing our agricultural lifeblood.”
Another catastrophic EU initiative about which no European citizen was consulted, is the EU’s new Migration Pact, which will see the further deterioration of national sovereignty and the continued influx of migrants into the European Union. The pact, instead of simply closing the EU’s external open borders, requires EU member states to distribute migrants between themselves under penalty of financial sanctions. There has been no public discussion about this.
In Ireland, Member of Parliament Carol Nolan said:
“Has government encouraged the voices of ordinary people to be heard on these issues? We all know the answer to that…. The pact is morally and politically bankrupt. It is the product of an EU establishment that is rotten to the core, and which treats the views of ordinary citizens as political poison.”
A third EU regulation with disastrous impacts on EU citizens is the Digital Security Act (DSA), which under the pretext of creating a “safer and more accountable digital space” strangles the pitiful remains of European free speech even further. In line with already existing crushing anti-free speech laws, as against “hate speech” in Germany, the DSA requires online platforms to follow rigid rules, including the requirement to remove vague and undefined illegal content, such as “hate speech” and “disinformation” or face fines.
The DSA, now the law of the land throughout the member states of the EU, is being weaponized against Elon Musk — whom European elites despise — and his X platform. The European Commission is reportedly preparing to impose huge fines on Musk for breaching the DSA by, among other things, refusing to allow external “fact-checkers” on his platform to flag “disinformation”. Who, of course, would be checking the EU’s “fact-checkers”?
This is George Orwell’s “newspeak” on steroids, where censorship and elitist oligarchical overreach is labeled “democracy.”
The European Union member states have finally arrived – while never asking the Europeans involved – at their own dystopian future.
The protests in Israel are not what they want you to think. JOSHUA HOFFMAN
Israelis have always been politically engaged. Demonstrations are part of the country’s DNA. But one of Israel’s enduring truths is that the silent majority is often drowned out by the street.
AUG 19, 2025 The Future of Jewish
On Sunday, Israel saw what some are calling the largest protests since the war began nearly two years ago.
Estimates claim over one million Israelis took to the streets, with half a million in Tel Aviv alone. The demonstrations coincided with a nationwide strike supported by universities, local governments, businesses, and tech firms — though notably, Israel’s largest labor union, the Histadrut, refused to join.
These images are powerful, but they also distort reality. The protests are not what their organizers — or their international amplifiers — want you to think. And they were not spontaneous. They were timed to coincide with the government’s decision to conquer Gaza City, a turning point in the war. The protests weren’t just about anguish for the hostages; they were also designed to influence battlefield decisions.
That’s a dangerous precedent. War cannot be conducted by plebiscite. No state can run a war by holding a rally to decide geopolitical strategy. Yet that is the logical outcome if mass protests are allowed to substitute for sober strategy.
And even if we accept the most generous figure — one million protesters — that represents roughly 10 percent of Israel’s population. Which means 90 percent of Israelis did not protest. Ten percent is not “the people.” It is a boisterous minority.
Israelis have always been politically engaged. Demonstrations are part of the country’s DNA. But one of Israel’s enduring truths is that the silent majority is often drowned out by the street. That does not make the street more correct; it just makes it louder.
Here are five more things you need to know:
1) The hostages are a political tool.
The most painful aspect of this war is the hostages still in Hamas captivity. Every Israeli wants them home. But the Far-Left has hijacked the hostages’ plight and turned it into a political battering ram.
The rallies are framed as “for the hostages,” but the signs, chants, and speeches quickly pivot to a political agenda that most Israelis do not share: weakening the war effort, undermining the government, and reviving failed Oslo Accords-era fantasies about Palestinian intentions.
Those fantasies — the idea that the Palestinians were ready for statehood, that longtime Palestinian leader and mega-terrorist Yasser Arafat could suddenly transform into a peace partner, that giving up land would buy security — were tested in blood and failure. The Oslo Accords process led not to reconciliation, but to suicide bombings in the heart of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, the entrenchment of Hamas in Gaza, and the indoctrination of an entire generation of Palestinian youth to hate Jews.
The promise was “peace,” but the result was more terrorism, more funerals, and more evidence that compromise with jihadist movements does not yield coexistence, only escalation. And yes, the Palestinian movement is a jihadist movement. Arafat was a jihadist. His successor Mahmoud Abbas is a more polite one. And, of course, Hamas is one too. Nevermind Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the other main event in Gaza.
When protesters chant as if returning to Oslo’s illusions is the answer, they are not offering Israelis a future; they are trying to drag the nation back into the nightmare of the Second Intifada. To pretend otherwise is disingenuous.
2) Every Israeli wants the hostages home.
There is no disagreement on the goal. The disagreement is over the means. Some believe that only military pressure will break Hamas. Others argue for a negotiated deal, even if it means freeing thousands of convicted terrorists and allowing Hamas to remain in power in Gaza.
History provides guidance. The release of over 1,000 terrorists in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal emboldened Hamas and many of those released later returned to terrorism. Conversely, Hezbollah did not release Israeli captives until it was militarily cornered in Lebanon. In other words: Jihadist groups negotiate only when they are under unbearable military pressure. To ignore that lesson is to repeat deadly mistakes.
The Far-Left insists that Israel has a moral obligation to return every hostage, even if it means releasing thousands of terrorists who will inevitably kill again. But this is a trap Hamas designed deliberately: weaponize compassion, and force Israel into suicide by morality.
True morality isn’t one-dimensional; it must balance the duty to bring hostages home with the duty to protect millions of other Israelis from more massacres and kidnappings. Releasing hardened killers for temporary relief is not morality; it is short-termism that guarantees more death later.
And yet, the protesters act as if they have a monopoly on the desire for the hostages to return. They march as though only they care about the hostages, dismissing anyone who disagrees with their strategy as heartless or indifferent. This is false and deeply insulting. The truth is that every Israeli, across the political spectrum, is tormented by the hostages’ suffering and desperate for their return. The real divide is not over whether to bring them home, but how to do so without guaranteeing more kidnappings and more funerals in the future.
The Far-Left position here, like many of their other positions, lacks foresight and critical thinking. Their argument boils down to: “Return the hostages now, and then we’ll figure it out.” But what comes after? What prevents Hamas from regrouping and rearming and carrying out more kidnappings? What deters the next round of abductions if thousands of terrorists are released in exchange for today’s hostages? To pursue immediate relief without a plan for tomorrow is not compassion; it is negligence dressed up as morality. It trades short-term satisfaction for long-term disaster.
3) Misconceptions — Then and Now
The Far-Left argues that October 7th was the government’s failure, rooted in a catastrophic misconception: that Hamas had been “contained” and did not want war. They are right; this was a devastatingly false assumption.
But here is the Far-Left’s blind spot: They are clinging to a new misconception just as dangerous as the old one. Even after the massacres of October 7th, the kidnappings, the tunnels under hospitals, and Hamas’ openly declared genocidal aims, they still believe that most of “the poor Palestinians” are “just like us” and “want to live in peace.”
This is wishful thinking at best, self-delusion at worst. The evidence since the 1930s — that’s nine decades for those counting — has been explicit: Israel’s very existence is unacceptable. Even the so-called “moderate” Palestinian Authority in the West Bank glorifies terrorists and raises children to hate Jews.
To hold the government accountable for its failed assumptions while clinging to failed assumptions of your own is not only hypocrisy; it is pure stupidity.
4) The International Amplification Effect
Part of the reason these protests seem larger than life is because of how the foreign press frames them. Photos of crowded squares in Tel Aviv are presented as if the entire nation has turned against the war. In reality, polls consistently show that a majority of Israelis still support dismantling Hamas militarily and view a negotiated “peace process” as a trap.
The protests are thus magnified abroad far beyond their domestic weight. For anti-Israel governments, NGOs, and editorial boards, they become proof that Israel itself rejects the war. It is a distortion, but one that sticks in the global imagination. The minority is exported as the majority.
What’s more, Israel’s enemies thrive on division. Hamas and Tehran do not need to win militarily if they can watch Israel unravel politically. The protests hand them a propaganda victory: “See? Even Israelis reject the war effort.”
This narrative emboldens the enemy and weakens deterrence. At a time when Israel needs unity to project strength, internal division sends the opposite signal. The protesters may believe they are acting patriotically, but their actions play directly into Hamas’ psychological warfare.
5) The Irony of the Israeli Left’s ‘Democracy’ Argument
Protesters constantly chant the word “democracy.” But Israel is already one of the most robust democracies on earth. The current Israeli government was elected democratically.
But here’s what democracy does not mean: “rule of the loudest demonstration.” It means elections, representation, accountability, and majority consent.
Ironically, by trying to use mass street pressure to override government policy during wartime, the protesters undermine the very democratic norms they claim to defend. If the public disagrees with the government, the ballot box — not the barricade — is the proper venue.
And maybe the Israeli Left would have a chance at winning a general election if it actually updated its stale, irrelevant beliefs. (The last time the Israeli Left won a general election was in 1999.)
For decades, it has clung to outdated slogans and illusions: belief in Palestinian moderation, in concessions that magically produce peace — long after reality proved otherwise. While the Left remains stuck in the politics of the 1990s, the rest of the country has been shaped by rockets, terror tunnels, suicide bombings, and now the atrocities of October 7th. Most Israelis do not live in theory; they live in reality.
What’s more, most Israelis are proud to be Jews and want to live in a Jewish state whose first duty is to protect Jews. That is not extremism; it is the most basic expectation of any nation: to safeguard its people. A Jewish state that cannot defend Jewish lives is meaningless. And yet the Far-Left continues to act as though Jewish self-defense is an obstacle to progress rather than the very foundation of Israel’s existence.
Until the Left recognizes that the Jewish state exists not as an abstract experiment in liberal ideals, but as the world’s only guarantee of Jewish survival, it will remain irrelevant at the ballot box and distrusted by the majority of Israelis who live with the consequences of its failed ideas.
New Rule: Dear Chappell Roan… | Real Time with Bill Maher (HBO) [8:58]
Oct 11, 2024 Real Time with Bill Maher
To mark the anniversary of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Bill attempts to educate young Americans about the Middle East.
[Ed.: This is a brilliant commentary on the fallacy of Israel’s “genocide” of the poor Gazans. Apparently, Bill Maher looked carefully into what’s going on with the universal cries of “genocide” by Israel and has turned himself around 180 degrees. His astute commentary will be seen be many more than his 3 million Youtube subscribers. Millions of people will now begin to question the phony, fake, and false narrative that virtually EVERYONE has bought in to! Now, I can begin the process of turning myself around 180 degrees about Bill Maher! Gudonem.]
Time for Israel to Stop Playing by the Rules Joshua Katzen
While the Enemies Play for Keeps
AUG 5, 2025 JNS
Israel’s goal should be not to be seen as the “good guys.” It should be seen as too expensive and painful to attack.
As the war against Hamas in Gaza drags into its second year and international hostility toward the Jewish state continues to intensify, Israel must face an unavoidable truth: For decades, it has voluntarily limited its existential war against Palestinian attempts to wipe it out by self-imposed moral constraints. These constraints—designed to win favor with the global community and maintain a sense of ethical superiority—have not yielded strategic dividends. Instead, they have led to painful losses, squandered leverage and emboldened its enemies.
Israel must adopt a new strategic doctrine—one grounded in realism and not performance, in deterrence and not self-congratulation.
For decades, Israel has operated under a self-imposed doctrine of restraint. It has aimed to be “more moral” than its enemies—avoiding civilian casualties at the cost of its soldiers, releasing mass murderers in lopsided prisoner swaps, refraining from annexing land even when militarily victorious and granting privileges to terrorists in prison. The goal: to prove its ethical superiority to a world that never asked it to.
This military doctrine is entirely self-generated because Israelis want to prove that “we are not like them.” Being liked might have a necessary strategy to Jewish survival when it depended on non-Jewish largesse, but it is a bad strategy for an independent, self-respecting and increasingly self-reliant state.
Being morally superior has not brought peace. It has not earned goodwill. It has not prevented charges of war crimes. Instead, it has made Israel look weak, hesitant and unsure of its own legitimacy. Hatred of Israel has only increased.
Even worse, this moral posturing has not only been outward-facing. It has become a psychological affliction within Israel itself. Among many Israelis, there is a pervasive self-image of moral superiority—a compulsive need to believe that Israel occupies the high ground. This internal virtue-signaling, while comforting to the Israeli soul, is dangerously corrosive to national security.
Would any Israeli parent willingly sacrifice their child in order to spare a Palestinian civilian? The answer is self-evident. And yet, doing so is part of Israel’s military doctrine when soldiers are sent to clear buildings that could be better cleared by bombs or when terrorists are not hit because of the possibility of collateral “civilian” damage. War is not about moral symbolism; it is about victory.
Israel’s goal should not be to be seen as “good guys.” It should be seen as too expensive and painful to attack.
Killing terrorists is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The strategic elimination of enemy combatants has rarely deterred the next generation from taking up arms. In fact, martyrdom has often fueled the ranks of jihadist movements.
What does work? Humiliation and permanent loss.
Terrorists must be made to understand that their actions will not only fail but also result in personal disgrace and irreversible consequences for their communities.
Public humiliation upon capture and denial of burial rights designed to open the gates of heaven might do more to shatter recruitment than a thousand targeted strikes.
There must also be consequences for the communities that support terrorism. Attacks against Israeli civilians should result in the loss of territory. Not temporary checkpoints. Not administrative detentions. Permanent annexation. If a terrorist kills an Israeli, his entire village should be evacuated and absorbed into Israel. The residents must be expelled—not as a punishment but as a declaration of the principle that those who harbor terror lose land.
This approach is long overdue in Gaza. For years, Israelis have heard the threat, “One rocket from Gaza, and we’ll take it back.” But that threat was never enforced. Instead, Gaza became an autonomous Palestinian terror state, armed to the teeth with Iranian rockets, tunneling under Israeli homes and indoctrinating genocidal incitement in its youth. Israel has had the military capability to retake and resettle Gaza for years. It has simply not wanted to be “occupiers.”
That must change. Israel must reclaim Gaza—militarily, administratively and demographically. The idea that Israel owes water, electricity and food to an entity that seeks its destruction is both absurd and suicidal. Israel must annex what was once Jewish land and make clear that this territory will never again be used as a launchpad for terror. When you attack Israel, you lose land. Simple.
The same logic applies in Judea and Samaria. Areas A and B must be placed under strict construction oversight. Area C must be secured for Jewish development. All foreign-funded Arab construction projects designed to create facts on the ground should be halted. NGOs, including Jewish ones, that function as hostile actors mapping Jewish homes, lobbying international bodies and spreading libels must be shut down. These are not civil society groups; they are battlefield agents of the enemy.
Bien pensant Israelis will gag on this. Thousands of Israelis regularly demonstrate against the moral costs of “occupation” without admitting that the alternative is the destruction of Israel. These people are preening and performing for approval. They must grow up.
International backlash is also inevitable. But the backlash is already here. The International Criminal Court is already preparing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders. European countries and Canada, along with the United Nations, are already moving toward unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state. Western universities are already filled with chants of intifada. Israeli restraint has not worked.
Israel must get tough, not out of cruelty, but out of clarity. Not to match the barbarism of its enemies, but to defeat it.
The wars against Palestinian exterminationism and for public opinion will not be won with press conferences, interfaith dialogue, and hasbara (explanation). They will be won when the enemies of Israel believe that the cost of attacking the Jewish state is too high to bear.
It is long past time for Israel to stop playing by the rules of the Marquis of Queensbury when its enemies are playing by those of the Marquis de Sade. [Emphasis added]
The 21st century Crusade to Jerusalem Alexander Maistrovoy
The entire West, apart from the US & few Eastern European countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria – these modern righteous gentiles – has launched an open crusade against the state that became the victim of a massacre unheard of in modern history. Opinion.
Aug 18, 2025, 3:58 PM (GMT+3) Israel National News
Was the 7th of October a conspiracy of local elites, or something much more sinister?
In 2013 Henry Kissinger predicted that Israel would cease to exist by 2022. It seemed like the delirium of a senile old man.
In 2021 Trump said he saved Israel from destruction. It also seemed like narcissistic delirium.
Israel, a young, strong, successful state, will cease to exist?! What nonsense…
The Palestinian Arab issue had practically disappeared from the international agenda. The Abrahamic Accords were signed. The Persian Gulf sheikhs showing poorly concealed irritation at the “Palestinians”. Saudi Arabia was moving towards recognizing Israel. The idea of a “new silk road” from India via Saudi Arabia and Israel to Europe was taking shape. BDS was on the decline. Europeans were preoccupied with economic stagnation, rising migration and a bloody war in Ukraine. They were interested in Israeli gas and military technology. Americans were alarmed by growing Chinese power and the flow of illegals.
The country, despite its internal contradictions, appeared confident in its powers.
But the plan seemed to be ready and waiting for its moment. That moment was October 7th. The massacre did not lead to empathy for the victim, which could have been expected, but to fierce persecution.
It suddenly brought back to the agenda in all its fullness and power the idea of a “Palestinian Arab state,” the only declared goal of which was the complete destruction of the Jewish one. Israel was supposed to be returned to the “borders of Auschwitz,” in the words of former Israeli Foreign Minister Abba Eban.
The dismemberment of Israel was to be carried out as it was done in the 90s with Serbia – the first victim of the globalists. The crusade was carried out in three stages and began the day after the massacre.
Stage one – the “red wave”: media, academies, woke, human rights activists, trade unions.
Everyone who had not lived in Gaza for two minutes stood up for Hamas:
*The New York City chapter of the DSA and AOC (“…thousands of children eating grass as their bodies consume themselves”); political activists Cornell West, Jill Stein & Saira Sameera Rao (“Why it’s unreasonable to be afraid for Muslims who have doctors who are cheering on Israel’s genocide?”); Former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney; Ione Belarra, Spain’s social rights minister and leader of Podemos; The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan; Piers Corbyn, the brother of Jeremy Corbyn (about October 7th:“There was no killing of children. …The Israeli government admit it was a lie”); Far Left French MPs Inès Corbière (“Maybe I don’t have a soul, but they [Israeli hostages] don’t bother me at all, I even find them rather annoying, especially the kids”); feminist Code Pink: Women for Peace; Judith Butler; Samantha Pearson, Head of Sexual Assault Center at the University of Alberta; ‘Sydney Gay And Lesbian Mardi Gras’; Toronto Rape Crisis Centre; Trans-actors ; British artists; “non-binary students”; the “drag demon biracial and pansexual”.
Adin Ross, the widely recognized Kick streamer, gave $1,000,000 to ‘Palestina’, аnd Andrew Tate – $200,000;
Finnish, Icelandic musicians demanded Israel barred from Eurovision Song Contest over “Gaza genocide”;
Comedian Paul Currie with Palestinian Arab flag encouraged his audience to chant “get the f*** out” [Jews] and “free Palestine” in Soho Theatre;
A Broadway theater producer James L. Simon tearing down fliers of civilians kidnapped by Hamas terrorists;
Prayer to “Mother Earth” and “Free Palestine”, etc.
Trade unions are for “Palestine”:
CUPE Local 3906 (“Palestine is rising, long live the resistance”) and CUPE President; North Carolina Municipal Workers (“…don’t forget: black liberation and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza! Workers’ rights, and a permanent ceasefire in Gaza!”); Ontario Public Service Employees Union; Southern Poverty Law Center Union; Psychoanalysis in Solidarity with Gaza; Canadian academic workers union (Israel is “murderous colonial project”), etс.
Human rights activists are for “Palestine”:
Red Cross and Ken Roth; IfNotNow, Jewish Voice for Peace, J Street, Progressive Rabbis; Greta Thunberg, Amnesty International (whose activists are seen throwing posters about Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas into the garbage bin); Kamala Harris’ Stepdaughter Ella Emhoff; Doctors Without Borders; The Canadian Union of Public Employees (“The fate of Palestine” is a “feminist” issue”), UNICEF and UNRWA, W.H.O., etc.
“Liberal” Media are for “Palestine”:
Alan Dershowitz wrote about The New York Times (and other establishment mass media):
“*Nor do they identify how many of those who they count as “civilians” are actually Hamas collaborators who allow their homes to be used to hide rockets, tunnels, or terrorists.
*They …again failing to distinguish to indicate how many of the “children” are 14-, 15-, 16- or 17-year-old Hamas child soldiers and terrorists.
*” Nor do they identify the number of Hamas human shields who were deliberately placed in harm’s way by Hamas commanders and terrorists”.
I can add:
*They NEVER use the word “terrorists” or “jihadists” in relation to Hamas;
*They NEVER quote Hamas leaders calling for genocide of Jews;
*They NEVER talk about the multi-billion dollar fortunes of Hamas leaders
*They NEVER talk about the total support of “ordinary Palestinian Arabs” for the Hamas massacre;
*They give airtime to apologists for the genocide of Jews and even whitewash Hamas;
* Their “independent” journalists in Gaza are Hamas propagandists who even receive prestigious awards;
* BBC staff regularly attend rallies in support of Hamas;
*They reprints blood libels claim that Israel steals Palestinian Arab organs, etc.
Academies are for “Palestine”:
A wave of hate-filled mobs with slogans such as “Death to Israel,” “Long live the intifada,” and “Free Gaza from River to Sea” have flooded universities in North America and Western Europe.
The world learned from enlightened professors that:
*“Calls for genocide of Jews …will depend on the ‘context’” (presidents of Harvard, Penn and MIT on a Congress on antisemitism committee);
* The Hamas massacre was “exhilarated” and “The fundamentalism of Hamas mirrors that of Israeli leadership” (Cornell University history professor Russell Rickford);
* “Israelis are pigs … may they all rot in hell” (self-described “radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist” Mika Tosca of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago);
* Hamas is “charity organization” and “humanitarian group” (Sena Karasipahi, professor at Texas A&M University);
* The Hamas massacre was a “Military Operation” (80 professors of CUNY);
*“Hamas is not ISIS” but a “political group” (Northwestern University);
*“Trans liberation can’t happen without Palestinian liberation” (University of British Columbia);
*”Arab men have been demonized and have been marked as monstrous people who are rapists and for violence”; (Sima Shakhsari, University of Minnesota associate professor);
*Israel is operating with “genocidal intent” (Omer Bartov, Brown University Professor);
*” What is happening in Gaza today is worse than Auschwitz” (Dr Alex Pillen, University College London);
* “A free Palestine is only possible through queer, racial, gender, reproductive, and environmental justice” (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign);
*“Civilian deaths in Gaza rival those of Darfur – which the US called a ‘genocide’” (Alan J Kuperman, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin);
*That it “could be tempted to shoot up your dance party” as Hamas did at Nova Festival (Dr. Laura Mullen, Wake Forest University);
*“Oct. 7, for many of us from the region, was a beautiful day” (Dr. Rania Masri, UNC Center for Middle East and Islamic Studies);
*Already at the end of February 2024 American Association of University Professors demanded an “immediate ceasefire and end to the siege in Gaza” without any mention of the terrorist atrocities, etc.
Aaron Bushnell, a 25-year-old anarchist pilot, set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C., shouting “Free Palestine” in protest of the “genocide in Gaza”
This is just the tip of the iceberg. Western countries were gripped by a mass psychosis unseen since the Middle Ages..
Stage two: the heavy artillery of the globalist elite
* António Guterres immediately stated that 7.10 “did not happen in a vacuum” and “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”,
*Western countries almost unanimously supported the lawsuit against Israel in the ICC;
*400 government officials from 40 departments and agencies within Biden’s administration demanded a cease-fire;
*US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sad Israel was “driving” Gazans “into the arms of the enemy” and CJCS Charles Brown, said that Israel’s war in Gaza turned the average person there into “someone who now wants to be the next member of Hamas”. (Before this, the average person there dreamed of growing tulips on a farm);
*Sen. Elizabeth Warren: “Netanyahu & his right-wing war cabinet have created a humanitarian catastrophe”;
* Trudeau: “Stop this killing of women, children, babies’ in Gaza”;
* Barack Obama: “What’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable”;
*Norway’s Jonas Gahr Store: “Almost half of the thousands of people killed are children”;
Stage three and the turning point: “A Palestinian state – now!”
* Blinken gave Israel an ultimatum: to support Palestinian Arab statehood or risk demonization by the administration.
* Blinken is followed by British Cameron.
*Barak Ravid revealed that “the US State Department is considering recognition of a Palestinian state as part of an initiative for the day after the war in Gaza” …“without Israeli consent”.
*Professor Guy Millière of the University of Paris: The “Palestinian state” is planned to be created immediately after the end of the war. The negotiations were taking place without any participation of Israel. (As the negotiations on Czechoslovakia in 1938 took place without the participation of Czechoslovakia – A.M.);
* White House demanded not to ‘Occupy Rafah’, not to take control of Philadelphia Corridor. Biden threatened Israel to cut off military aid. Kamala Harris called out Israel over ‘catastrophe’ in Gaza and threatened ‘consequences’ for Israel.
*Biden issued financial and travel sanctions against residents of Judea and Samaria and units of IDF;
*The White house hailed a ‘revitalized’ PA whose ministers urged Palestinian Arabs to “afflict the Jews with the worst torment” and called them “apes and pigs”;
*Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly announced a matching $1 million toward investigating allegations of sexual and gender-based violence …against Palestinian Arab women…
* Arab “Palestine” was recognized first by Spain, Iceland, Norway, and now by France, UK, Canada, Australia and others.
* Western media and politicians have almost openly taken the side of Iran and Hezbollah, calling on Israel to exercise “restraint” and urging it to “avoid regional escalation.” At same time W.H.O. and World Bank transferred a loan of 76.1 million euros to Iran to “promote the environmental and social standards” of the regime.
(Not forgetting that Iran is the chairman of the UN Human Rights Council. O, Brave New World!…);
* Western countries refuse to accept Gazans as refugees, although they readily accept migrants from everywhere, even where there are no wars or cataclysms even though millions of Syrians migrated. Gaza must remain as a stronghold of the “struggle against the Zionist entity.” The Arab narrative is accurately reproduced by the Western elite;
* No one cares about the ethnic cleansing of Turks in Syrian Kurdistan; the atrocities of the new Syrian regime against the Druze, Christians and Alawites; the Uighur camps in China; the pogroms of Hindus and Buddhists in Bangladesh; the torture and violence against women in Iran; the massacre of Christians in Africa by Islamists, the real genocide in Sudan;
* At the same time, the globalist elites have been systematically pumping money into the “fifth column” in Israel itself, represented by has-beens: former generals, heads of intelligence agencies, former politicians and current corrupt journalists.
The entire West, apart from the US & few Eastern European countries such as Hungary, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria – these modern righteous gentiles – has launched an open crusade against the state that became the victim of a massacre unheard of in modern history.
Why do globalists hate Israel so much? The reasons are obvious:
- Israel is an outpost of Western civilization and the embodiment of its success; a silent reproach to the “diversity” of the Third World with its lawlessness, rampant corruption and violence;
- Israel is the living embodiment of Old Testament prophecies, the birthplace of the Judeo-Christian civilization, so hated by the “liberal” and “progressive” elites;
- Israel is a testament to the success of a nation state that combines traditional values with technological and civilizational achievements; it is a living challenge to all progressive, neo-Marxist concepts;
- “Free Palestine” is one of the dogmas of faith of the modern “liberal” quasi-religion, along with “climate apocalypse,” gender perversion, and the rights of “non-white” minorities. Within the framework of this Manichean system, Israel is a demonic, colonial, “white,” racist entity;
- Finally, Israel is a red rag for Islamists: Muslim Brotherhood & Iran, close partners of globalists.
Therefore, Israel must disappear from the world map, and in its place a “great Palestine” must emerge – “From the River to the Sea.”
As I piece together the puzzle, I come more and more to an ominous conclusion: October 7, 2023 was not just the product of a conspiracy of local elites against ‘Bibi’ and his government leading to an obscene massacre by Hamas. It was the starting point of a crusade against the Jewish state itself, which by its very existence challenged the “new world order.” Kissinger and Trump knew very well what they were talking about.
Alexander Maistrovoy is a graduate of Moscow Univ. in Journalism, worked there in his field and made aliyah in 1988. He works at the Russian language newspaper Novosty Nedely, has had articles posted on many internet sites and authored “Ways of God” about different religious and ethnic groups in the Holy Land, Agony of Hercules or a Farewell to Democracy (Notes of a Stranger), and with Mark Kotliarsky the Russian book Jewish Atlántida.
The Individual and the State: A Shift in Power and Responsibility MORDECHAI SONES
For a populace whose only taught recourse is to pressure the authorities, a sense of powerlessness can curdle into unfocused anger and pointless turbulence
AUGUST 18, 2025 Jewish Home News https://jewishhome.news/
Historically, the classical liberal view of government was one of cautious distrust. Its role was not to provide for the people, but to maintain order so that people could provide for themselves. This doctrine of self-provision was rooted in a deep-seated aversion to the state acting as a paternalistic figure, meddling in the lives of its citizens.
While this limited-government approach certainly benefited the interests of some more than others, its core principle was to keep political interference at bay, preserving a broad sphere for individual and community action.
The most significant evolution in modern political thought has been the gradual but decisive shift away from this model towards an embrace of State provision. This change has fundamentally reshaped the relationship between the citizen and the government, with profound consequences for our understanding of freedom and power.
This transition helps explain a central paradox of our time: the simultaneous omnipotence and impotence of the people. We live in what has been called the “century of the common man,” where democracy is the prevailing ideal. In theory, this means the people, not a privileged elite, hold the ultimate power to direct their government. Yet, on an individual level, many feel increasingly powerless, caught in a web of governmental control that dictates more and more of their lives.
What accounts for this contradiction? The answer lies in the redefinition of “problems.” Where once a challenge—be it poverty, local infrastructure, or care for the vulnerable—was seen as a matter for individuals, families, charities, or local communities to solve, it is now almost automatically categorized as a “social problem.” And a social problem, by this modern definition, demands a governmental solution.
The consequence is that the primary avenue for change has been rerouted. Instead of groups of people organizing themselves to solve a problem directly, the default response is now to put pressure on the government to act. The individual’s role is no longer that of a direct problem-solver but that of a lobbyist, demanding action from a centralized authority. Every issue, from local disputes to broad economic anxieties, becomes a matter for political intervention.
This creates a cycle of dependence and frustration. When people see the government as the only legitimate agent of change, their own capacity for initiative can atrophy. And when that government fails to solve their problems to their satisfaction—an inevitability given the complexity of modern life—the resulting frustration has few outlets.
For a populace whose only taught recourse is to pressure the authorities, a sense of powerlessness can curdle into unfocused anger and pointless turbulence, as the levers of direct, meaningful action seem to have been placed out of reach.
In our current era, this shift has become so ingrained that it is often invisible. Social media amplifies calls for government fixes to everything from mental health crises to economic disparities, reinforcing the cycle. While state provision has seductive benefits—think universal healthcare or social safety nets—it risks eroding the muscles of self-reliance and community initiative.
Educating ourselves about this history encourages reflection: Are we defaulting to authorities out of habit, or necessity? Could revitalizing voluntary associations—modern equivalents of mutual aid groups or local cooperatives—restore balance?
By awareness of this dynamic, individuals can reclaim agency, fostering a liberalism that honors both collective support and personal freedom.
[Ed.:
Dear Chappell Roan [8:49] Bill Maher
🚨 BREAKING: Multiple SHOOTERS Attack Civilians In New York – Mass Casualties [24:24] Mahyar Tousi
August 17, 2025 Tousi TV
A Hero Among Us: Tim Ballard on Syria, Israel, and the Fight for Truth [49:28] Avi Abelow
August 17, 2025 – I recently had the profound honor of meeting Tim Ballard, a real-life hero whose unwavering mission to rescue children from the nightmare of sex trafficking has changed countless lives. He recently visited Israel to see what is going on in Gaza with his own eyes and to save Druze children in Syria. In a world clouded by moral confusion, his clarity, courage, and compassion shine as a beacon of truth and righteousness. If you haven’t yet seen the movie “Sound of Freedom” about Tim’s story, watch it.
Unstoppable Fires Burning All Over the World – Dane Wigington [45:22] By Greg Hunter
August 12, 2025
Renowned climate engineering researcher Dane Wigington has been warning of profound damage being done to the planet for decades. Now, he says the pace of destruction is picking up speed, and the time is short before severe climate collapse happens. Wigington has said many times that there is no serious conversation about the climate without talking about climate engineering first and foremost. Climate engineers are so desperate to cool the planet, they have literally set the world on fire to put out smoke to block the sun. Wigington says, “Are we to think that they can’t, if they wanted to, squash these fires? They are in Western North America, Siberia, Spain and Portugal. They are burning all over the world. Americans don’t know this because they are too caught up in political theater. . .. What I want to say today is the vast majority continue to arrange deck chairs on the Titanic without being able to face this near-term existential threat that is happening in our skies. It’s not just climate engineering, it’s biological and chemical warfare too. . .. There is incendiary dust that coats the forest foliage and the forest floors. You combine all that along with dry lightning . . . and we have a source of ignition. You have all the ingredients necessary for unstoppable fire storms all over the globe. Now, we have acknowledgement of what GeoEngineeringWatch.org has been saying for years, and that is they are using fire storms that they are facilitating to put enough particulate matter in the air to temporarily and toxically cool certain regions.”
What Wigington is seeing is not far off in the future. He thinks all the signs are there for a severe climate collapse. Wigington warns, “The greatest threat we face short of nuclear everything is climate engineering, otherwise known as weather, chemical and biological warfare. People do not want to face this no matter how bad it gets. Cascading collapses are occurring all over the world right now, and what are we watching on TV? Political theater, and I think it should be obvious, at this point, that those in the club are doing everything they can to protect themselves. . .. They are trying to hide the truth and not disclose it. . .. The human race will be lucky to make it beyond 2030.”
Wigington also points out the federal plans to put troops in major cities because of high crime and possibility of political unrest. People are going to panic, store shelves will empty out and there is going to be violence. Wigington says, “It’s called Mad Max with 8 plus billion people. This is not a Left/Right, red/blue, Democrat/Republican issue. You have the redistricting in Texas and Democrats heading to Illinois. All of that is part of the political theater. The public is caught up in this as if any of that theater matters when there is no food on the shelves and you can’t breathe the air because it is so toxic.”
Wigington says there is still some hope of getting climate engineering stopped. 36 states are proposing legislation banning climate engineering, following Florida and Tennessee. Congresswoman Majorie Taylor Green is proposing federal legislation to stop the spraying of toxic chemicals in the skies over America. Wigington says many have woken up to the climate engineering evil nightmare, but many more need to be brought to the fight.
There is more in the 45-minute interview.
There is an 8-minute video to explain how easy it is to ride out any terror attack or extreme storm. You can get more information on Starlink and Sat phones, too, at Sat123.com and BeReady123.com. You can also call 855-980-5830 and talk to a real human. Same goes for EscapeZone.com. where you can get Faraday bags big and small. You can also talk to a real human at EscapeZone.com by calling 702-825-0005.
Join Greg Hunter of USAWatchdog.com as he goes one-on-one with Dane Wigington, founder of GeoEngineeringWatch.org, with a huge warning of catastrophic environmental collapse for 8.12.25
Firing in the wrong direction: Defending Israel-haters isn’t noble MOSHE PHILLIPS
Free speech is not an absolute right; it comes with responsibility.
Aug. 12, 2025 JNS
A major free-speech organization made headlines this month for its advocacy on behalf of two students—Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk—claiming that their anti-Israel speech is being unfairly targeted. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) frames this as a fight for free speech, but it misses a crucial point: Not all speech should be protected, especially when it is aimed at generating violence.
FIRE’s stance may seem noble on the surface, but defending hate speech, particularly when it incites violence and calls for the vicious destruction of a specific nation, is far from noble. It’s dangerous.
Khalil’s anti-Israel extremism is protected under the First Amendment, but those rights do not mean a non-citizen should be allowed to stay as a guest in our country. FIRE has sued U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Defending this kind of antisemitism, without acknowledging its potential to incite terrorism, misses the larger picture.
The New York Post reported on Aug. 6 that Khalil endorsed terrorist violence, which went far beyond peaceful protest. In a New York Times podcast interview made public on May 5, Khalil described the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, as a “desperate attempt by Palestinians to break the cycle,” suggesting a level of sympathy for actions that resulted in the murder, beheading, rape and kidnapping of Israelis. His remarks essentially defend the violent actions of a terrorist group, blurring the line between political speech and incitement to violence.
If FIRE is defending Khalil’s “free speech,” then it’s doing so at the cost of ignoring the broader implications of that speech. Khalil said: “To me, it felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,” which is as clear an endorsement of the Hamas-armed attacks against civilians as one can make.
At Tufts University, where Öztürk co-authored a highly controversial piece for The Tufts Daily student paper, a coordinated campaign to demonize Israel had gained momentum while she was there. In October 2023, the Tufts Revolutionary Marxist Students (RMS) published an op-ed calling for the overthrow of Israel. One key line in their article read: “We therefore support the Palestinian mass-led overthrow of the colonial Zionist Israeli apartheid state.”
This wasn’t just anti-Israel opinion; it was a call for the elimination of an entire nation and its people. This type of speech has no place in civilized discourse, and defending it as a form of free expression only emboldens those who seek to delegitimize Israel and harm Jewish communities.
In the months that followed, RMS and other student groups at Tufts continued their protests and demonstrations, many of which included slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—another phrase that is unmistakably a call for the destruction of Israel. These are not isolated incidents; they are part of a broader pattern of anti-Israel and, often, antisemitic extremist talk that has become increasingly common on campuses across the country.
Yet FIRE’s defense of free speech seems to overlook the fact that this kind of hate speech can fuel violence and intimidation, particularly toward Jewish students who have good reason to feel threatened by such extremism.
It’s essential to remember that free speech is not an absolute right; it comes with responsibility. Tufts University, like many schools, has a clear policy on freedom of expression, one that acknowledges limits—speech that slanders, threatens or incites violence is not protected.
True heroism lies not in defending every form of speech but in standing against speech that causes real harm. FIRE’s defense of Khalil and Öztürk ignores the fact that some speech, especially when it seeks to destroy an entire nation or demonize a group of people, should not be protected. Defending the right of individuals to spew hate under the guise of free speech is not noble; it’s irresponsible. The idea that protecting hate speech contributes to the strength of democracy is a dangerous misconception.
We need to recognize that not all speech contributes positively to public discourse. Some spreads lies, fuels hatred and undermines society. FIRE’s defense of students who promote this kind of speech ultimately enables the forces that seek to see Israeli civilians murdered. Rather than standing in defense of those who seek the downfall of Israel and the Jewish people, we should be questioning whether the protection of harmful speech is worth the risk to the safety and dignity of others.
Defending those who advocate for violence and destruction, especially when it targets communities under siege like Jews, is not an act of justice. It’s an endorsement of hate and terrorism.
For many American Jews, FIRE’s arguments are eerily reminiscent of the arguments used in the 1970s by the American Civil Liberties Union during one of the darkest periods in American Jewish history: when neo-Nazis threatened to march in Skokie, Ill., a community that was home to an extremely large number of Holocaust survivors.
In the end, those Illinois Nazis did not murder Jews, but Hamas has. What’s more, anti-Israel extremists in America have murdered others since Oct. 7: Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, 26, in Washington, D.C., in May; Karen Diamond, 82, in Boulder, Colo., in June; and Paul Kessler, 69, in California, in May 2024. They were standing up or working for Israel—peaceful people who did nothing to incite the violence that led to their deaths.
Mahmoud Khalil is not. FIRE is aiming in the wrong direction. History will prove it.
MOSHE PHILLIPS Moshe Phillips, a veteran pro-Israel activist and author, is the national chairman of Americans For a Safe Israel (AFSI). A former board member of the American Zionist Movement, he previously served as national director of the U.S. division of Herut and worked with CAMERA in Philadelphia. He was also a delegate to the 2020 World Zionist Congress and served as editor of The Challenger, the publication of the Tagar Zionist Youth Movement. His op-eds and letters have been widely published in the United States and Israel.
Russia: Europe’s Prodigal Son by Amir Taheri
August 17, 2025
- Trump…. must have realized that Russia remains economically resilient and politically determined enough not to throw in the towel. He also realized he couldn’t expect Putin to simply walk out of Ukraine without carrying something with him. This is why Trump talks of “territorial concessions by both sides”, knowing that the “both sides” part of the phrase fools no one.
- Thus, we are faced with another “land-for-peace” conundrum that has never worked as a permanent solution to conflicts between adversaries that regard each other as existential threats.
By accepting US President Donald Trump’s summons to Alaska, Russian President Vladimir Putin acknowledged the United States’ status as the indispensable power in world politics. In other words, he admits that the days when US and Soviet summits were held in neutral venues to underline their equality in status are gone. Putin knows that the war isn’t going well for him. Pictured: Trump greets Putin on the tarmac at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15, 2025. (Photo by Andrew Caballero-Reynolds//AFP via Getty Images)
Even before Friday’s meeting between US President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Alaska had happened, conflicting views were aired about its purpose and possible outcome.
Trump-bashers, that is to say usual suspects such as the New York Times and CNN, dismissed it as another photo-op to add a brushstroke to his portrait as peacemaker deserving Nobelization.
The Blame America First crowd, in this case represented by Harvard Professor Jeffery Sachs, claimed that Trump will try to get a chunk of Russia’s oil and gas for American big business.
The European nay-sayers’ chorus, led by French President Emmanuel Macron, sang their song of “Trump kowtowing to Putin” by excluding the European Union from the rendezvous in icy Alaska.
But even if all those assertions were true, there is no doubt that the summit marks an important event.
Trump had insisted that Putin should first accept a halt in the war before there is a meeting. That hasn’t happened. If anything, Putin has increased the rhythm and tempo of his war symphony to crush Ukraine.
For his part, Putin had made the summit conditional on two exigencies: easing of sanctions and a halt to US military support for Ukraine. Again, neither of those things happened.
Trump imposed tougher sanctions on Russia and upgraded weapons supplied to Ukraine. In other words, both men have upped the ante in their gamble over the war-ravage Ukraine. All that may paint a grim prospect for anything useful coming out of Alaska.
However, seen from another angle, things may not appear that forlorn. To start with, by accepting Trump’s summons to Alaska, Putin acknowledged the United States’ status as the indispensable power in world politics. In other words, he admits that the days when US and Soviet summits were held in neutral venues to underline their equality in status are gone. Despite all the saber-rattling by his minions like Dmitry Medvedev, Putin knows that the war isn’t going well for him.
Trump, on the other hand, must have realized that Russia remains economically resilient and politically determined enough not to throw in the towel. He also realized he couldn’t expect Putin to simply walk out of Ukraine without carrying something with him. This is why Trump talks of “territorial concessions by both sides”, knowing that the “both sides” part of the phrase fools no one.
Thus, we are faced with another “land-for-peace” conundrum that has never worked as a permanent solution to conflicts between adversaries that regard each other as existential threats.
The roots of the current war might be found in the historic failure of Russia to resolve its identity crisis and the European failure to help it do so.
Since post-empire Europe was re-organized with the Westphalian treaties, the trouble-ridden continent has experienced two threats: pan-German domination by the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia and from 1870 the united German Reich on one side and pan-Slavism led by Tsarist and later Soviet Russia on the other.
The phrase “the Russians are coming!” was used as early as the 18th century to vocalize the Europeans’ fear of what Marx called “barbarians from the east”. Also, it wasn’t Winston Churchill who invented the phrase “Iron Curtain” but German writer Franz Schuselka in 1872.
All along, Russia was split between its Asiatic and European identities. Although it touches on a frozen portion of the Pacific and has some access to open seas via the Sea of Azov, Russia remains a landlocked power. This is why it never succeeded in building an empire beyond its land outreach. The European powers that divided the world into colonial trophies in the Berlin Conference left Russia out of the thieves’ family picture.
Interestingly, however, Russia never invaded Europe but was invaded by Swedish, French and German armies on a number of occasions.
Russians also boast that they acted as Europe’s rampart against the “Yellow Peril,” while cutting the Ottoman Empire and Iran, both Islamic challengers of Christian Europe, down to size.
The 19th century poet Aleksandr Blok complains in a long poem that Europeans do not appreciate what Russia has done for them as the advanced guard of civilization against “Asiatic hordes”.
At the end of the poem, he threatens Europeans that “if you don’t want us and try to keep us out, we shall come back at the head of those hordes.”
At the same time, what became Russia after Peter the Great was to a large extent a European project. Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky wouldn’t have been possible without access to English Victorian and French literature. Russian music, dance and paintings are also offspring of European art, starting with Byzantine influence.
Italians designed Petrograd, Venice of the North, and Moscow reflected French architecture.
Yet Russia, Europe’s prodigal son, bears a grudge against the West like one treated as the back sheep of the family.
Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom, but the Europeans mocked his move as a subterfuge to bolster his tyranny. They also ignored the fact that the Russian royal family was German and that French was the court language. German aristocrat Count Nesselrode was Russia’s foreign minister for half a century, but never bothered to learn proper Russian. French philosopher Voltaire got a lot of money from Empress Catherine but treated Russia with contempt.
The 1917 Russian revolutionaries were all westernized bourgeois do-nothings who carried the Marxist virus from the West but never won equal status, even from European Communists in their pay.
Part of the reason why Russia misbehaves is the feeling that whatever it does, it will always be treated as an outsider by the family of “civilized nations”.
At a time when the USSR was under an oxygen tent, President George H.W. Bush, unwittingly perhaps, showed his contempt when he asked “how could we save Russia?”
President Barack Obama showed his arrogance when he graded Russia as a “regional power” not worthy of special attention.
All that fed the pan-Slavic discourse that pits Russia against the West. The invasion of Ukraine was a symptom of the failure to find a proper place for Europe’s prodigal son.
Jeffrey Sachs’ bogus claim that Putin invaded because he feared Ukraine would join NATO is deliberately misleading. A nation with border disputes with any of its neighbors can’t even apply for NATO membership.
Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.
Gatestone Institute would like to thank the author for his kind permission to reprint this article in slightly different form from Asharq Al-Awsat. He graciously serves as Chairman of Gatestone Europe.
Here We Go Again – The West’s Palestinian State Fantasy by Nils A. Haug
August 17, 2025 Gatestone Institute
- Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension.
- “If you notice, the talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize a Palestinian state. And then you have other people come forward, other countries say, well, if there is not a ceasefire by September, we’re going to recognize a Palestinian state. Well, if I’m Hamas, I basically conclude, ‘let’s not do a ceasefire because we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.'” — US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
- The situation in Gaza could quite easily have been resolved many months ago if Hamas had laid down its weapons and released the hostages it had no business kidnapping in the first place. This did not happen. Nevertheless, Israel is blamed for trying to get its tortured and starved hostages released. What would France, Britain, Canada or Australia have done? The party responsible for Gaza’s collateral damage is Hamas.
- Israel… is doing its best in horrendously dangerous circumstances to feed the hungry people of Gaza, while Hamas deliberately starves the hostages, and has lately photographed them digging their own graves.
- A Palestinian state would, in addition, continue trying to conquer more of Israel’s historic homeland, and try to drive Jews out of it, as they openly vow to do…
- That, it seems, is Macron’s view of a “just and lasting peace”.
- “If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them: Carve out a piece of the French Riviera, and create a Palestinian state. They’re welcome to do that, but they’re not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. ” —US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, June 1, 2025.
- A further reason that Western efforts to impose a Palestinian state are inadvisable is that they ignore a warning from the Trump administration that “any country that takes ‘anti-Israel actions’ will be viewed as acting in opposition to US interests and will face diplomatic consequences.”
- “There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust. To establish a Palestinian state after October 7 is a huge prize not only for Hamas [but] for Iran.” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, February 6, 2025.
- The question remains how any rational national leader can simply discount Israel’s attitude towards an independent Palestinian (terrorist, Jihadist) state within or alongside its borders? Would those leaders countenance an uppity ISIS or Al Qaeda on their borders? Yet, Starmer and Macron (together with leaders of Spain, Norway and Ireland) are doing exactly that. Is it possible that they are endeavouring to accommodate the millions of Muslim voters they have helped infiltrate into their own broken countries?
- This irony is that many in the West who are advocating “social justice for all people” think nothing of vilifying the Jews.
- At this point in history, Israel’s legitimate actions consist in defending its people — and the stunningly ungrateful West — from a horror disguised within a veneer of fake “moral clarity,” along with false charges of a supposed genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee remarked, “If Israel is trying to commit genocide, they are really, really bad at it.” In fact, Israel is defending the West — the very people undermining them — from a genocide. Publicly expressed slogans targeting Jews simply support the murderous intent of the enemies of Israel and those apparently trying to help them finish the job.
A majority of Western leaders clearly refuse to exercise integrity when it concerns the Palestinian issue. Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension. “Are these people wicked or just very, very stupid?”, asks columnist Melanie Phillips. A valid question indeed. Pictured: UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer meets with French President Emmanuel Macron on July 10, 2025 in London. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)
A majority of Western leaders clearly refuse to exercise integrity when it concerns the Palestinian issue. Only leaders completely sold out to extremist ideologies would persist in pushing a proposal so far detached from reality and so harmful to many people — starting with the atrociously governed Palestinians — that it is almost beyond comprehension. Perhaps this phenomena is best described as a “cognitive bias” that can “lead to a person interpreting all new information as supporting their preconception.”
Connected to fatuous ideals of utopianism — especially to the dangerously mushrooming number of extremist Muslims on their shores — is these leaders’ pandering to prospective voters to ensure re-election. In so doing, they not only damage their society, culture and values, but race towards the rapid demise of Western civilization in favour of an Islamist Caliphate under Sharia law. In the UK, for instance, according to Stephen Pollard, “Open Jew hate is now the norm.” How the mighty have fallen.
On July 24, President Emmanuel Macron of France announced that “Paris would formally recognize a Palestinian state in September at the UN General Assembly.” A week later, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer made a similar announcement, and on August 11, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese joined the scrimmage.
Hamas, needless to say, was delighted:
“The Palestinian group described the declaration as ‘a positive step in the right direction ‘toward justice for the Palestinian people and support for their right to self-determination and an independent state on all occupied Palestinian land, with Jerusalem as its capital.'”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted:
“If you notice, the talks with Hamas fell apart on the day Macron made the unilateral decision that he’s going to recognize a Palestinian state. And then you have other people come forward, other countries say, ‘Well, if there is not a ceasefire by September, we’re going to recognize a Palestinian state. Well, if I’m Hamas, I basically conclude, ‘let’s not do a ceasefire because we can be rewarded, we can claim it as a victory.'”
Three countries, Spain, Norway and Ireland, have already recognised a non-existent Palestinian state in 2024. Two of them – Spain and Ireland – have a long history of passionate Jew-hate.
The Irish boast they have never had a “Jewish problem” because, as the author James Joyce noted through an anti-Semitic character in his novel Ulysses, the reason there was no antisemitism in Ireland was because they never let admitted entry to Jews in the first place. Spain’s history of the Inquisition and expulsion of Jews in 1492 is well-recorded.
Norway was home to its anti-Semitic leader, Vidkun Quisling, a traitor who supported the Nazi cause and was responsible for sending 1,000 Jews to their deaths. Other than that historic issue, Norwegians are not generally anti-Semitic but driven, rather, by uninformed and naïve perceptions of human rights, “virtue” and “humanitarianism.” According to John A. Moen:
“The governing body of Norway’s Jewish communities has on a number of occasions emphasized the fact that it does not recognize the claim that Norway is an anti-Semitic society. “
In July 2025, in line with the European Union’s incessant criticism of Israel, 28 Western nations condemned Israel’s actions in Gaza. From a humanitarian viewpoint, the situation is indeed disastrous for the multitude of innocents on both sides caught up in the conflict. Israel’s Foreign Ministry responded that much of the criticism was “disconnected from reality and would send the wrong message to Hamas.” The distasteful truth, however, is that no one ever really cares what Israel says — it is invariably judged and found guilty, without anything even resembling due process or a trial — in the world of public opinion, notwithstanding the refusal of the UN itself to distribute food in Gaza, as it is obliged to do.
The situation in Gaza could quite easily have been resolved many months ago if Hamas had laid down its weapons and released the hostages it had no business kidnapping in the first place. This did not happen. Nevertheless, Israel is blamed for trying to get its tortured and starved hostages released. What would France, Britain, Canada or Australia have done? The party responsible for Gaza’s collateral damage is Hamas. It not only started the war after Israel, in a gesture of goodwill, had granted roughly 20,000 permits for Gazans to come and work in Israel; Hamas also seems to revel in the deaths of their own civilians and fraudulently inflate the numbers to try to blame the casualties on Israel.
Israel, conversely, with US support , is doing its best in horrendously dangerous circumstances to feed the hungry people of Gaza, while Hamas deliberately starves the hostages, and has lately photographed them digging their own graves.
Europe’s aspiring powerhouses, France and the UK, nevertheless persist in their folly of endorsing a utopian terrorist Palestinian state. Such a creation – called “Franc-en-Stine” by US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee in a nod to Mary Shelley’s monster — would bring nothing but disaster to Europe, Israel and to the Palestinians themselves, considering the continuing brutality of their corrupt and dead-end governance. Huckabee stated in June:
“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I’ve got a suggestion for them: Carve out a piece of the French Riviera, and create a Palestinian state. They’re welcome to do that, but they’re not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. And I find it revolting that they think that they have the right to do such a thing.”
An independent terrorist Palestinian state would reward jihadists murdering Jewish and Arab civilians — shooting Gazans trying to flee war zones (at the urging of the Israelis), Gazans trying to take the humanitarian aid sent for them, and Gazans accused of alleged “collaboration“. A Palestinian state would, in addition, continue trying to conquer more of Israel’s historic homeland, and try to drive Jews out of it, as they openly vow to do, in the words of senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad:
“The Al-Aqsa Flood [Hamas’s name for its Oct. 7, 2023 invasion] is just the first time, and there will be a second, third and fourth… We must remove that country [Israel]… [It] must be finished. We are not ashamed to say this, with full force…. Everything we do is justified.”
That, it seems, is Macron’s view of a “just and lasting peace”.
Just the same, the West at large and the United Nations persist in striving towards a state for Palestinians, bordering, or within, Israel itself.
In late July, UNRWA ruled that Palestinians would remain permanently categorised as refugees – even if against their wishes. This sleight of hand would mean that they would be entitled to endless funding and lasting status as a people for whom a homeland needs to be established. All descendants of original Palestinian ‘refugees’ would likewise be entitled to benefits of that status.
“The enforced permanence of the Palestinian refugee issue is absurd,” wrote David May, a senior analyst at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies (FDD), and is contrary to the accepted definition of refugees.
According to May:
“UNRWA is in the business of protracting the refugee crisis, not solving it. While the UN Refugee Agency, which oversees all non-Palestinian refugees, offers a variety of solutions to help refugees improve their lives, including resettlement in a third country, UNRWA indulges the Palestinians’ desire to move to Israel en masse and overwhelm the only Jewish-majority country in the world.”
A further reason that Western efforts to impose a Palestinian state are inadvisable is that they ignore a warning from the Trump administration that “any country that takes ‘anti-Israel actions’ will be viewed as acting in opposition to US interests and will face diplomatic consequences.” There might therefore be severe financial and economic side-effects for discounting this caution. This is especially so as Trump apparently has other plans for the Gaza area. A July 25 report from FDD explains:
“The recognition of a Palestinian state as a full member of the United Nations, including the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO), would immediately trigger U.S. funding cuts to the international organization.”
These efforts disregard Israel’s position on the matter. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear in February:
“There was a Palestinian state. It was called Gaza. Look what we received. The biggest massacre since the Holocaust. To establish a Palestinian state after October 7 is a huge prize not only for Hamas [but] for Iran….
“I will not allow the State of Israel to repeat the fateful mistake of Oslo, which brought to the heart of our country and to Gaza the most extreme elements in the Arab world, which are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel and who educate their children to this end.”
Echoing this idea, David May writes:
“Recognizing a non-existent Palestinian state after Hamas’s October 7 atrocities tells the Palestinians that violence works, and rewards Hamas for immiserating Gazans.”
The question remains how any rational national leader can simply discount Israel’s attitude towards an independent Palestinian (terrorist, Jihadist) state within or alongside its borders? Would those leaders countenance an uppity ISIS or Al Qaeda on their borders? Yet, Starmer and Macron (together with leaders of Spain, Norway and Ireland) are doing exactly that. Is it possible that they are endeavouring to accommodate the millions of Muslim voters they have helped infiltrate into their own broken countries?
France has a long history of anti-Semitism, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in 1894-1906. The problem, however goes back even further, even to Voltaire (1694-1778), who wrote:
“The Jews are an ignorant and barbarous people, who have long united the most sordid avarice with the most detestable superstition and the most invincible hatred for every people by whom they are tolerated and enriched.”
This, about the small group that brought the Ten Commandments to the West, as well as its first breaths of social justice:
“You shall give him his wages on his day before the sun sets, for he is poor and sets his heart on it….”
— Deuteronomy 24:15 (NASB 1995)
“…but the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your ox, your donkey or any of your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns, so that your male and female servants may rest, as you do.”
— Deuteronomy 5:14 (New International Version)
“You shall not boil a young goat in the milk of its mother.”
— Exodus 23:19
“Do not defraud or rob your neighbor. “Do not make your hired workers wait until the next day to receive their pay.”
— Leviticus 19:13 (New Living Translation)
This irony is that many in the West who are advocating “social justice for all people” think nothing of vilifying the Jews.
It is anticipated that at the UN General Assembly September session, France will actually announce its recognition of a Palestinian state. This declaration will evidently be supported by Canada, Australia, Saudi Arabia and, probably, Britain. A US State Department spokesman curtly responded that “we will not be in attendance at that conference.”
The US not only urged other “governments to skip the event;” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in rejecting Macron’s self-indulgent nonsense , wrote:
“This reckless decision only serves Hamas propaganda and sets back peace. It is a slap in the face to the victims of October 7th.”
Without the US endorsing the formation of an independent Palestinian state, it likely cannot eventuate. The same view applies to Israel: they cannot permit the establishment of yet another hostile entity alongside their communities — one determined to attack them endlessly more — especially without their participation in the decision. All this posturing is therefore meaningless; most likely designed to distract their nations from domestic woes. It does, nonetheless, indicate their malicious attitude towards Israel’s legitimate right to sovereignty, peace and security in its ancestral land.
Should pandering to extremism continue without a major correction in the near future, civilization in Western Europe, as we know it, will be significantly diminished and possibly replaced with the Islamic totalitarian law, effectively as repressive as the Nazi laws were in 20th century Germany, and elsewhere in Europe.
We could see Islamic Sharia law replacing the hallowed Western legal concepts of the rule of law, which, according to Encyclopedia Brittanica “supports the equality of all citizens before the law, secures a nonarbitrary form of government, and more generally prevents the arbitrary use of power,” and equality before the law, “which holds that no ‘legal’ person shall enjoy privileges that are not extended to all and that no person shall be immune from legal sanctions.” Amongst other legal remedies, the relief of Habeas Corpus for false imprisonment might be eliminated. The outcome would thus be similar to living under Taliban rule, with no rights for women and other extreme social measures.
By blindly ignoring the social, political and legal destruction caused by their new policies, certain Western leaders could destroy what generations have built up over many centuries.
Europe is apparently determined to destroy itself.
Possibly in the view of these leaders, sacrificing little Israel and a few presumably expendable Jews, is a small price to pay for appeasing the important radical voters that enable Starmer, Macron, Carney, Albanese and other like-minded invertebrates to remain in power.
Slogans such as “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea…” confirm the declaration in the Hamas Covenant. Its preamble states that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it.” Article 7 reads:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
At this point in history, Israel’s legitimate actions consist in defending its people — and the stunningly ungrateful West — from a horror disguised within a veneer of fake “moral clarity,” along with false charges of a supposed genocide in Gaza. As Huckabee remarked, “If Israel is trying to commit genocide, they are really, really bad at it.” In fact, Israel is defending the West — the very people undermining them — from a genocide. Publicly expressed slogans targeting Jews simply support the murderous intent of the enemies of Israel and those apparently trying to help them finish the job.
“Are these people wicked or just very, very stupid?”, asks columnist Melanie Phillips. A valid question indeed.
Nils A. Haug is an author and columnist. A Lawyer by profession, he is member of the International Bar Association, the National Association of Scholars, the Academy of Philosophy and Letters. Dr. Haug holds a Ph.D. in Apologetical Theology and is author of ‘Politics, Law, and Disorder in the Garden of Eden – the Quest for Identity’; and ‘Enemies of the Innocent – Life, Truth, and Meaning in a Dark Age.’ His work has been published by First Things Journal, The American Mind, Quadrant, Minding the Campus, Gatestone Institute, National Association of Scholars, Jewish Journal, James Wilson Institute (Anchoring Truths), Jewish News Syndicate, Tribune Juive, Document Danmark, Zwiedzaj Polske, Schlaglicht Israel, and many others.
Melania Trump’s Letter to Putin:
The hostages’ headquarters activity prolongs their hold in Hamas tunnels [5:19] Dr. Mordechai Kedar – Hebrew
[Ed.: Here, Mordechai is addressing the people marching in the streets of Israel for the return of the hostages.. He is telling them that the more they march, the stronger Hamas’ stronghold on the hostages; that street protests are playing into Hamas’ hands. He sys to think well about this point and just stop with the street protests already! I know and love this guy!]
Conservatism will collapse without support for Israel. DAN BURMAWI
To be pro-Israel is to affirm belief in moral clarity, civilizational inheritance, and national sovereignty — all core components of what makes the West great.
AUG 16, 2025 The Future of Jewish
I am not an American, at least not yet, and I’ve only been living in the U.S. for two years.
Still, it’s clear to me that in today’s America, defending Israel is inextricably bound to defending the core values that underpin the conservative movement itself: religious liberty, individual responsibility, family integrity, and reverence for Western civilization.
When support for Israel falters, that foundation begins to crack. Let me explain.
The correlation between political conservatism and support for Israel is statistical and consistent. According to a Gallup poll released in March 2025, 75 percent of Republicans sympathize more with Israelis in the Middle East conflict, while just 21 percent of Democrats do.
In contrast, 59 percent of Democrats express greater sympathy for Palestinians, the highest level ever recorded. This is not a split; it is a chasm. The favorability divide is just as stark. As of April 2025, Pew Research Center data shows that 69 percent of Democrats now hold an unfavorable view of Israel, up from 53 percent in 2022.
Among Republicans, only 37 percent view Israel unfavorably, while a majority still view it favorably. Among white evangelical Protestants, who represent the backbone of the conservative grassroots, 72 percent view Israel favorably. In sharp contrast, among the religiously unaffiliated, an overwhelmingly progressive demographic, 69 percent view Israel negatively. These aren’t mere policy preferences; they are identity markers.
Support for Israel, then, is an ideological identifier as clear and decisive as views on, for example, the role of government. It functions as a political signal, a proxy for where one stands on a host of related issues. To support Israel is to affirm belief in moral clarity, civilizational inheritance, and national sovereignty. To oppose Israel is to increasingly align with a worldview that sees Western institutions as oppressive, tradition as a tool of oppression, and religious conviction as a threat.
In American politics, there is what might be called the “bundled-values effect.” Voters do not engage politics issue by issue; they choose worldviews and vote for people, platforms, and parties that reflect a coherent moral and cultural framework. In this context, support for Israel has become a bundled value, an issue that travels with others and helps define ideological identity.
“Pro-Israel” candidates are rarely just pro-Israel. They are also pro-family values, pro-religious liberty, and pro-limited government. They defend the Constitution, they see America (and the West) as a real value-add to the world, and they speak the language of responsibility rather than grievance. In other words, they speak the language of conservatism.
Opposition to Israel, by contrast, increasingly travels with opposition to those very values. The same political movements that denounce Israel as a colonial power also denounce the American Founding as systemically oppressive. Many of the same voices that accuse Israel of “apartheid” also demand the deconstruction of the nuclear family and the suppression of religious speech in the public square. The same activists who chant “From the River to the Sea!” are marching to dismantle the Judeo-Christian moral order that made America possible.
Those attacking Israel in the American context are not merely concerned about the policies of a foreign government; they are engaged in a much broader campaign: the delegitimization of Western civilization itself. Israel is not isolated in their moral calculus; it is emblematic. It represents tradition, rootedness, strength, religious identity, and the West’s refusal to dissolve itself into guilt and self-loathing.
That is why they hate it. And that is why they target it.
“Progressive” strategists understand something many conservatives do not: If you can fracture the relationship between Israel and America, you can destabilize the very coalition that has held back the “progressive” agenda for decades. They don’t have to convince conservative voters to become Marxists; they only need to alienate them from the one issue that aligns them instinctively with pro-liberty and pro-order candidates.
Break that link, and the rest unravels. No less, it is working. Among younger evangelicals, support for Israel has dropped dramatically in recent years. In 2018, 75 percent of evangelical adults under 30 supported Israel. By 2021, that number had fallen below 35 percent. This is the result of relentless academic indoctrination, media demonization, and a social climate that portrays Israel as a pariah and any defense of it as complicity in oppression.
The goal is to shift the vote — because when voters shift away from Israel, they also drift toward candidates and parties that oppose the very foundations of conservative policy: religious freedom, parental rights, and moral education. A conservative disillusioned with Israel today may be persuaded to vote for a non-interventionist Democrat tomorrow, only to find themselves supporting a platform that includes the erosion of gender distinctions and hostility to religion. This is not just a loss for Israel; it is a loss for America and the greater West.
The ideological coalition that attacks Israel does not stop at the borders of the Middle East. Its critique extends to the very core of American society. Israel and America are, in their view, twin evils: settler-colonial powers, capitalist oppressors, and religious zealots. They chant “Free Palestine!” with one breath and “Abolish ICE1” with the next. They scream about checkpoints in the West Bank and riot over policing in Atlanta. They equate Gaza with Ferguson, the IDF with the New York Police Department, Zionism with whiteness, and Jewish survival with white supremacy.
The attack on Israel is, therefore, a disguised attack on America’s moral legitimacy. It is not about borders; it is about narratives. To delegitimize Israel is to prepare the ground for delegitimizing the Constitution, America’s founders, the church, and everything conservatives seek to preserve.
And the conservative movement cannot afford to be naïve about this. Supporting Israel is not optional. It is not symbolic. It is essential to the preservation of a coalition that can withstand the ideological onslaught of the modern Left.
For American voters, the choice is now clear. To support Israel is to vote for candidates who believe in the moral legitimacy of the West. It is to side with those who defend religious liberty, parental rights, and free speech. Voting for pro-Israel candidates is not about taking a side in a foreign conflict; it is about taking a side in a domestic war for America’s soul.
For policymakers, the message is just as urgent. Israel policy is not a line item; it is a foundation stone. Support for Israel must be linked with a broader conservative legislative agenda: school choice, tax reform, constitutional originalism, defense of conscience rights, and the curtailment of bureaucratic overreach.
Israel can no longer be treated as an isolated talking point in foreign policy platforms; it must be understood and framed as a civilizational ally in the defense of ordered liberty. Abandoning Israel is not just a betrayal of an ally; it is a surrender to the logic of the modern Left. And that surrender will not stop at the borders of Judea and Samaria; it will march straight into the homes, schools, places of worship, and courts of America.
To rebuild and protect the conservative coalition, leaders must reclaim the moral narrative around Israel. They must speak clearly and unapologetically: Israel is not the problem. Israel is the front line. It is a bulwark against Islamic jihad, totalitarianism, and the “progressive” alliance that excuses terrorism while criminalizing Biblical morality.
Religious leaders must teach the covenantal meaning of Israel. Candidates must link Israel support to every major cultural and political fight in America. Commentators must expose the rhetorical tricks used to smear Zionism, while laundering antisemitism and rebranding Islamic jihad. And voters must be reminded: This is not a marginal issue, but a defining one. If conservatives fail to defend Israel, they will soon find they cannot defend themselves.
The modern Left understands this. They know that breaking the link between Israel and conservatism is a precondition for capturing the electorate. They know that if they can portray Israel as morally illegitimate, they will win those who defend family values, believe in law and order, and dismantle the very idea of Western identity.
Trump-Putin Peace Summit EXPOSED: British War Machine Desperate for More Ukrainian Blood [9:15] Barbara Boyd
Aug 16, 2025 Promethean Updates – In this episode, Barbara Boyd delves into President Trump and Vladimir Putin’s efforts to resolve the Ukraine conflict, overcoming media portrayals and political resistance. Boyd discusses the significance of the peace talks, highlights remarks from both leaders, and critiques the impact of the Russiagate scandal. Additionally, she examines the potential of a new US-Russia relationship, proposing economic collaborations and historical ties. Boyd calls for citizen action to support the peace initiative and hold accountable those behind the Russiagate hoax.
Get our FREE newsletter 👉 https://www.PrometheanAction.com
Iran Wants Negotiations for One Reason — To Survive and Strike Later by Majid Rafizadeh
August 16, 2025
- This is the same regime that has built its entire political identity around hatred for America, branding the U.S. the “Great Satan” and chanting “Death to America” at every major gathering.
- Some of Iran’s leading scientists and engineers, who were driving its nuclear weapons effort, have been eliminated. This is not the position of strength from which Iran prefers to negotiate. This is the position of a regime struggling to keep its most prized military project afloat.
- In such a position, the leadership in Tehran is willing to agree to almost any terms if it means securing breathing space, lifting sanctions and accessing funds to rebuild. They know that negotiations can give them exactly what they need: relief from “maximum pressure” without actually abandoning their nuclear ambitions.
- The culmination of America’s empowerment of Iran was the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israelis. When you give the Iranian regime financial relief, you are funding terrorism.
- The worst mistake the West could make right now is to relieve the pressure at the very moment it has started to work. Just as in 2015, a deal will not defang this regime — it will recharge it.
- The Iranian regime has another game in mind, and that game ends with Iran as a stronger, more dangerous enemy. This is not the moment to sit at the table. It is the moment to stand unbudgeably firm.
The Iranian regime, long marked by hostility and defiance toward the United States and its allies, is suddenly portraying itself as eager to talk. This is the same regime that has built its entire political identity around hatred for America, branding the U.S. the “Great Satan” and chanting “Death to America” at every major gathering. Pictured: Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei makes a public speech in November 2022, in which vowed: “Death to America will happen. In the new order I am talking about, America will no longer have any important role.” (Image source: MEMRI)
The Iranian regime, long marked by hostility and defiance toward the United States and its allies, is suddenly portraying itself as eager to talk.
Reports confirm that Tehran is now negotiating with the EU3 — France, the United Kingdom and Germany — and has even stated that it is open to discussions with the United States. This is the same regime that has built its entire political identity around hatred for America, branding the U.S. the “Great Satan” and chanting “Death to America” at every major gathering. It is the same ruling elite that has repeatedly vowed to export its Islamist revolution far beyond the Middle East, aiming especially to destabilize and infiltrate Western nations. The question then becomes: why would such a fanatical and ideologically rigid regime suddenly want to sit at the table with its sworn enemies?
The answer is not goodwill, reform or a sudden change of heart. It is weakness. The reality is that Iran has been dealt a series of crushing blows in recent months, and now a drought.
U.S. and Israeli strikes severely damaged Iran’s nuclear program — damage so extensive that even Iranian officials admit that key infrastructure has been disrupted. Facilities, centrifuges and stockpiles have been degraded or destroyed. Some of Iran’s leading scientists and engineers, who were driving its nuclear weapons effort, have been eliminated. This is not the position of strength from which Iran prefers to negotiate. This is the position of a regime struggling to keep its most prized military project afloat.
In such a position, the leadership in Tehran is willing to agree to almost any terms if it means securing breathing space, lifting sanctions and accessing funds to rebuild. They know that negotiations can give them exactly what they need: relief from “maximum pressure” without actually abandoning their nuclear ambitions. As history has shown, they can sign agreements, pocket the benefits, and secretly continue advancing toward a nuclear weapon, just as they did after the 2015 JCPOA “nuclear deal.”
Another critical factor is the Iran’s military and political vulnerability after the recent 12-day war. That adventure inflicted enormous costs on Iran’s military assets, its regional network of proxies, and even its core leadership. Key facilities were struck. Commanders and operatives were killed. The regime emerged battered. For the first time in years, the ruling elite must have felt that if another wave of strikes were unleashed, their survival could be at stake. That is why Tehran is now putting on a diplomatic smile and speaking of negotiating. It is a calculated survival strategy. By appearing cooperative, they hope to buy time to repair their military capabilities, rebuild their networks, and, once they are in a stronger position, exact revenge. Their goal is not to make peace — it is to live to continue fighting.
On the economic front, the picture is equally dire for the regime. Iran’s economy is collapsing under the weight of U.S. sanctions, international isolation, and structural corruption. The national currency has been in freefall, eroding the savings and salaries of ordinary Iranians. The regime is desperate for hard currency and access to the global financial system. That is most likely is why they see no risk in sitting down for talks that could repair their damaged nuclear program.
A deal that results in the expiration of UN sanctions and the lifting of U.S. measures would flood the regime with money. As history has shown, this money will not go to the Iranian people — it will go to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Hezbollah, Hamas and other terror groups. We have seen this movie. When the Obama administration signed the JCPOA, pallets of cash and billions of dollars in sanctions relief flowed into Tehran’s coffers. The IRGC used this windfall to expand its regional influence, arm its proxies, and escalate attacks on the U.S. and its allies. From 2021 until 2025, Iran attacked more than 350 U.S assets in the Middle East.
The culmination of America’s empowerment of Iran was the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre of Israelis. When you give the Iranian regime financial relief, you are funding terrorism.
That current talks are not a two-way street; they are just a one-way gift to the Iranian regime, which is the only party that benefits. By negotiating now, the U.S. would give Iran the oxygen it needs to recover from its military losses, repair its nuclear program and rearm its proxies. In return, the U.S. gets nothing but airy empty promises and unverifiable pledges. The Iranian regime has proven time and again that once it gets what it wants, it will cheat, conceal and violate any agreement. Negotiating now would be throwing a lifeline to a drowning enemy.
The sudden eagerness of the Iranian regime to engage in nuclear talks is just a sign of deception and desperation. The worst mistake the West could make right now is to relieve the pressure at the very moment it has started to work. Just as in 2015, a deal will not defang this regime — it will recharge it. The Obama-era JCPOA nuclear agreement taught us this lesson in blood and betrayal. If we empower Iran now with talks and deals, they will simply return with greater vengeance, better weapons and more aggressive proxies.
The Iranian regime has another game in mind, and that game ends with Iran as a stronger, more dangerous enemy. This is not the moment to sit at the table. It is the moment to stand unbudgeably firm.
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
Comments
Comments are closed.