RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15375/hamas-support-turkey-invasion

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade.

Hamas, like Turkey, not only seeks Israel’s destruction, but also has close ties with the Erdoğan government.

Like its terrorist counterparts across the Middle East, many of which are funded by the Iranian regime, Hamas aims to annihilate Israel not only for being a Jewish state, but for sharing American values of freedom and democracy. In Hamas’s eyes, the Kurds are an extension of that Western alliance.

In mid-October, following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a withdrawal of American troops from northern Syria, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s military invaded the Kurdish-held area.

Ankara views the Kurds in northern Syria as PKK-affiliated terrorists who, for wanting freedom, are regarded as a serious threat to Turkish national security. Eliminating Kurdish autonomy has been a key priority for Erdoğan since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011.

The American pullout from the area, which borders on Turkey, was evidently perceived by Erdoğan as a green light for an invasion, for which he had been waiting for nearly a decade. Although there is no doubt about the devastating effect that this move is having and will continue to have on the Kurds, there is a question about whether and to what extent it will affect Israel, a neighboring country that has been a supporter of Kurdish independence and rightly fears an even greater Iranian power-grab in Syria.

Israel’s enemies, unsurprisingly, immediately championed Trump’s announced exit and praised Erdoğan’s invasion. Take Hamas, the terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, for example.

https://www.city-journal.org/french-court-acquittal-of-kabili-traore

The recent decision of a French court would, if taken as precedent, in effect legalize murder—provided that the act was committed in a state of temporary madness caused by intoxication with cannabis.

In 2017, Kabili Traoré, a Muslim of Malian origin, who had no previous psychiatric history but a long criminal record, with 22 convictions—including for robbery, attempted robbery, drug-dealing, and possession of illegal arms—climbed over the balcony of the flat of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman age 66, tortured her, and then threw her over the balcony to her death. Traoré appeared to be in a state of religious excitation, for he was heard to shout “Allahu Akbar” and “I have killed Shaitan” (Satan). There is no doubt that he was psychotic at the time, or that his psychotic state was precipitated by his use of cannabis.

The court acquitted Traoré of any crime because he was psychotic when he committed the act, sending him instead to a psychiatric hospital for 20 years. Its decision caused widespread public alarm, repugnance, and derision. But from the strictly juridical point of view, the court might have been right. According to the French criminal code, a man is not to be held criminally responsible if his “discernment”—his judgment—is abolished by a psychiatric or neuropsychiatric state. The code does not make voluntary intoxication an exception to this rule.

Of course, what constitutes the abolition of discernment or judgment is itself a question of judgment. Traoré knew, for example, that his victim was Jewish (she was the only Jew on the block, and he knew this in advance); he also knew that he was killing her. He must have had at least intermittent awareness of his illegal act, for at one point he shouted that there had been a suicide and that the police should be called. On the other hand, it is unlikely that he would have acted as he did had he not been psychotic.

https://amgreatness.com/2020/01/08/what-iran-started-president-trump-will-finish/

Yes we are at war. Not it didn’t start Tuesday night with the missile attack on an air base housing American troops in Iraq. Or last week when President Trump ordered the strike against the Iranian Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani.

The war was started 40 years ago by Iran when then-Ayatollah Khomeini’s fundamentalist followers invaded our embassy in Tehran and took 55 Americans hostage. 

Over the years since then,Iran has continued to escalate the war that they started. 

For example, in 1983, Iranian-backed terrorists murdered 241 Americans in the Beirut barracks bombing which, at the time, was the greatest loss of life in one day for the U.S. Marine Corps since Iwo Jima. 

And that casualty figure would be eclipsed after the attacks of September 11, 2001, once our troops deployed to Iraq. According to a 2019 report, Iran has killed at least 603 U.S. servicemen and women through the use of the squash-head molten cooper IEDs it smuggled into the country and provided its proxy militias to use against our forces. Then there are the thousands of our brave men and women who were maimed by these coward’s weapons and who lost a limb, or multiple limbs. 

https://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/irans-options-in-showdown-with-america-are-all-bad/

After losing its top strategist, military commander and arch-terrorist, Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian theocracy is weighing responses.

One, Iran can quiet down and cease military provocations.

After attacking tankers off its coast, destroying an oil refinery in Saudi Arabia, shooting down a U.S. drone and being responsible for the killing and wounding of Americans in Iraq, Iran could now keep quiet.

It might accept that its strategy of escalation has failed to lead to any quantifiable advantage. Trump did not prove a passive “Twitter tiger,” as his critics mocked. Instead, he upped the stakes to Iran’s disadvantage and existential danger.

The chances, however, for such a logical and passive readjustment by Iran are nil.

Iran believes that Trump’s beefed-up sanctions have all but destroyed its economy and could now extend to secondary boycotts of nations trading with Iran. U.S. sanctions have also squeezed Iranian expeditionary efforts to forge a permanent hegemony and a Shiite crescent extending to the Mediterranean.If unchecked, American economic pressure could eventually lead to a popular rebellion that would topple the theocracy. In sum, a return to the status quo is unlikely.

Two, Iran can agree to re-enter talks about its nuclear program and offer a few concessions.