RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20660/free-world-alarming-status

Adversaries have become increasingly empowered, and allies may well be losing confidence in the West’s leadership. This week it was announced that three countries in Europe, Ireland, Norway and Spain – all of which have long, unfortunate histories of antisemitism – plan to recognizing a Palestinian State that will be terrorist.

Rogue and belligerent states such as Russia, China, Iran and North Korea, have become more emboldened. In large part, the US has funded and enabled that. The Biden administration handed over Afghanistan to a terrorist group, the Taliban; now it looks as if the Biden administration and these three racist countries in Europe are determined to hand Gaza to another terrorist group, Iran’s proxy, Hamas, which openly says it is more committed than ever to destroying its free, democratic neighbor, Israel.

US President Joe Biden assured Russia in 2022 that a “minor incursion” into Ukraine would be all right. Predators do not “do” minor. The result was the largest attack on a European country since World War II. The invasion created a devastating humanitarian crisis, with estimates of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. Additionally, as millions of Ukrainians have been forced to flee their homes in search of safety, the “minor incursion” triggered Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

Similarly, any move in maintaining or empowering Hamas, or any of Iran’s other proxies, such as Hezbollah, the Houthis or Palestinian Islamic Jihad, will not bring “peace” to the Middle East. On the contrary, a “Palestinian State” will not only explode the conflict even further, it will also threaten the cohesion of the NATO alliance — the greatest gift that the Free World could give Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On October 7th, 2023, as a newly released video reveals — a Hamas gunman, deciding whom to murder, says of captive Israeli soldiers, “Here are the girls who can get pregnant.” The terrorist group had initiated a devastating coordinated invasion of Israel. The attack began with a massive barrage of rockets. Simultaneously, after systematically disabling Israel’s warning systems, roughly 3,000 terrorists crossed the Gaza-Israel barrier, launching attacks on Israeli military bases and 22 civilian communities. The onslaught, which had been planned for years, led to the slaughter on October 7th alone of roughly 1,200 Jews, Muslims and Christians; Israelis, tourists and foreign workers. The attack was characterized by unimaginable acts of brutality — sustained gang rapes, sexual amputations, beheadings and burning alive even infants.

Hamas terrorists also seized 240 hostages in Israel, forcibly taking them into Gaza’s underground city of tunnels, created with international aid money. In the aftermath, Israel, to rescue the hostages and to defend against promised repeated attacks, finds itself engaged in the most unprecedentedly complicated urban warfare. Israel is trying to protect its citizens and maintain its sovereignty in the face of relentless aggression, while battling not only Hamas but also two illegitimate antisemitic courts (the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice), the antisemitic United Nations, antisemitic European countries, well-funded antisemitic demonstrations in the West, and the Biden administration.

The Biden administration not only seemingly whetted the appetite of Iran’s regime to attack Israel directly on April 13, 2024, by continually appeasing Iran and failing to veto an anti-Israeli resolution in the UN Security Council, the US has also been trying for years to force oust Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — “Israel’s Churchill” — for being insufficiently subservient.

The US would doubtless prefer an Israeli prime minister who would allow Hamas to remain in control of Gaza and reconstitute its military capabilities; who would allow the creation of a terrorist Palestinian state bordering Israel, and who would stand aside as genocidal Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

Since Iran’s Islamic Revolution of 1979, the regimes, in addition to brutalizing its own people, have called for “Death to Israel,” “Death to America,” and have called Israel, smaller than New Jersey, a “one bomb” country and threatened to “wipe it” from the map. This situation is compounded by Iran’s accelerating advances in its nuclear weapons program, which has surged since the Biden administration assumed office.

Propelled by clandestine activities within its heavily fortified nuclear facilities, Iran’s nuclear capabilities have reached a critical point. On Friday, Iranian lawmaker Ahmad Bakhshayesh Ardestani made a chilling declaration, stating:

“In my opinion, we have achieved nuclear weapons, but we do not announce it. It means our policy is to possess nuclear bombs, but our declared policy is currently within the framework of the JCPOA.”

It is deeply concerning that the spokesperson representing the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran has openly declared Iran’s readiness to share its expertise in nuclear weapons with other nations, especially neighboring states.

In addition, the Communist Chinese regime, seeing the Biden administration reward aggression, past, present, and presumably future, is encircling the Philippines and Taiwan and sending tens of thousands of young men of military age in packs across America’s southern border, and more than 5,000 over its northern one.

In short, the current US administration, along with its allies, Ireland, Norway and Spain, Europe’s racist supporters of terrorism, are widening the window of opportunity for China, Russia, Iran and other malign actors to pursue their objectives with increased confidence. One can only wonder which of the likely leaders of the Free World will permit — or put a stop to — these staggering negative trends of geopolitical deterioration in the future.

Dr. Majid Rafizadeh is a business strategist and advisor, Harvard-educated scholar, political scientist, board member of Harvard International Review, and president of the International American Council on the Middle East. He has authored several books on Islam and US Foreign Policy. He can be reached at Dr.Rafizadeh@Post.Harvard.Edu