RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20599/us-qatar-iran-gaza-hostages

The United States, France, Germany, Russia and Argentina, who had dual nationals taken hostage, did not try to bomb Hamas infrastructure and places where Hamas hid. Instead, they let Israel do it and then accused Israel of destroying the Gaza Strip.

Rather than putting any pressure on Qatar and demonstrating in front of Qatari-owned hotels in France, the United States and elsewhere in Europe, the families of the hostages have been putting pressure on the Israeli government, thereby doing exactly what Hamas would presumably like them to do. They are “working” for Hamas — and against their own interests — in the hope of seeing more hostages released. By their actions the value of the hostages only increases.

The demonstrators are doing what Hamas cannot do by itself: they are dividing Israel so that the unity government loses its strength in the negotiations, as well as any ability to bring the hostages home sooner — a triumph that was successfully accomplished by the IDF, left unfettered.

The hostages are not the Israeli government’s to deliver. They are unfortunately under the total the control of Hamas, Qatar and Iran –which is where the pressure should be applied, not on the government of Israel.

The only way a new Israeli government might negotiate the release of hostages would be by placing Israel’s entire population in incalculable danger. Any new Israeli leader hand-picked and pushed through by the current US administration would most likely be expected to agree to a terrorist Palestinian state next to Israel — meaning that the Israel would not be able to cross its border, if necessary, in “hot pursuit” of terrorists, and that the new state would soon be militarized, officially or not. Even if a new, sovereign Palestinian state were supposedly demilitarized, it would still be free to form alliances with any other entity it liked, including Iran, Al Qaeda or ISIS.

Qatar said it would invest in France 10 billion euros and in exchange France said it would be happy to try to save the terrorist group Hamas…. Everyone wins — except the hostages held by Hamas.

Without the US military base there, Qatar knows that it would be a rich, targetable oil-rig. America, “in exchange,” it seems, agreed to let Hamas continue its terrorist activities support the US quest for a Palestinian state. No remaining hostages were released; perhaps they were not even talked about.

Even though American citizens are among those still held hostage in Gaza, the US appears to have sided with the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, and their terrorist-supporting patrons, Qatar and Iran.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/25/irans-nightmares/

Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.

Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance.

The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed Iran it could take out the very anti-missile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped. By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.

Moreover, it was reported that more than 50 percent of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s non-stop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.

Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.

Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the US, the UK, and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20598/qatar-mediator

The idea that Qatar has been acting as a mediator in the negotiations between Israel and Hamas is nothing short of laughable. Qatar has actually long been staunchly aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood organization, of which Hamas is an offshoot.

The Muslim Brotherhood — according to a hearing at the U.S. House Subcommittee on National Security on July 11, 2018 — is a militant Islamist organization with affiliates in over 70 countries, including groups designated as terrorist organizations by the US.

“”Qatar has huge influence over the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian affiliate, Hamas…. For too long, Doha has danced between its Islamist allies and its Western and Arab partners.” — Hussein Ibish, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, The Atlantic, October 20, 2023

Qatar has a long history of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and its radical terrorist offshoots…. Qatar has also provided political and financial support to Hamas. In 2008, Doha reportedly pledged $250 million to Hamas, one year after the terror group violently seized control of the Gaza Strip. In 2012, Qatari Emir Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani became the first head of state to visit Gaza, pledging $400 million to Hamas. Since then, the Qatari government has continued to send money to Hamas.

Qatar’s goal is to keep Hamas in power. Qatar has no reason to care if thousands of Palestinians die in the Gaza Strip, so long as Hamas is permitted to continue ruling the coastal enclave.

Recently, the rulers of Qatar demonstrated that they not only serve as gracious hosts to the leaders of the Palestinian Hamas terror group, but that they also have a sense of humor.

The Gulf state’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani announced during a press conference in Doha that his country is reassessing its role as a mediator between Israel and Hamas after facing criticism.

“Qatar is in the process of a complete re-evaluation of its role,” al-Thani said. “There is exploitation and abuse of the Qatari role,” he said, adding that Qatar had been the victim of “point-scoring” by “politicians who are trying to conduct election campaigns by slighting the State of Qatar.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20590/china-world-war-iii

China is swarming the waters of the Philippines, hoping to intimidate Manila into surrendering territory. US President Joe Biden and the State Department keep on issuing warnings, but Chinese President Xi Jinping continues to ignore them, suggesting deterrence is failing….

[R]ecently, China took Scarborough Shoal …. Washington then brokered an agreement for both sides to withdraw their craft, but only Manila complied. Beijing has been in firm control of Scarborough ever since.

When Chinese leaders, generals and admirals saw Washington’s failure to act, they began moving against Second Thomas Shoal and other Philippine reefs and islets in the South China Sea, went after Japan’s islets in the East China Sea, and began reclaiming and militarizing features in the Spratly chain. Biden as vice president legitimized the worst elements in the Chinese political system by showing everyone that aggression works.

Beijing has been waging proxy wars on three continents: Europe in Ukraine, Africa across its northern rim, and Asia in Israel and surrounding areas.

Xi apparently now believes he is boss of the world. “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years,” the Chinese leader told Russian President Vladimir Putin after their 40th in-person chat, in Moscow on March 22 last year. “And we are driving this change together.”

Biden is now trying to reestablish deterrence. Britain and France desperately attempted to do that in late summer 1939 when they warned Germany that they would declare war if it invaded Poland. Then, German leaders did not believe the British and the French would in fact fight because for three years they had failed to make good on previous warnings.

China is swarming the waters of the Philippines, hoping to intimidate Manila into surrendering territory. On March 5, China wounded four Filipino sailors at Second Thomas Shoal, in the South China Sea. Unfortunately, the Biden administration’s words and displays of solidarity with the Philippines have not impressed Chinese President Xi Jinping. His maritime militia, coast guard, and navy have stepped up aggressive tactics. Pictured: A China Coast Guard ship (top) sails dangerously close to Filipino fishermen aboard two wooden boats (center), as a Philippine Fisheries and Aquatic Resources inflatable boat observes, near the Scarborough Shoal, in the South China Sea, on February 16, 2024.

https://www.jns.org/uk-jewish-leaders-to-meet-london-police-chief-amid-row-over-anti-israel-protests/

(April 21, 2024 / JNS) The U.K. Board of Deputies of British Jews will meet later this week with Mark Rowley, commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police, after requesting an urgent meeting “to repair a grievous loss of confidence” over his mishandling of anti-Israel protests in the capital, The Sunday Times reported.

“The Metropolitan Police have made a series of high-profile errors in their responses to these demonstrations,” the Board of Deputies said after the leader of a group that fights antisemitism was stopped from crossing a street by a Metropolitan Police officer for appearing “quite openly Jewish.”

“The entirely avoidable mistakes have had a devastating effect on the previously high level of trust held by the U.K.’s Jewish community in the police,” the Board of Deputies said.

On April 13, Gideon Falter, who heads the U.K.-based Campaign Against Antisemitism was prevented by a policeman from crossing a street as an anti-Israel protest passed.

“This is a pro-Palestinian march. I am not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence,” the officer told him in a video Falter’s group posted to X on April 18.

“I don’t want to stay here. I want to leave,” Falter explained to the officer, who nevertheless blocked him when he attempted to get by.

Another officer told Falter he would be arrested if he remained in the vicinity “because your presence here is antagonizing them.”

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/19/hamas-apologism-has-taken-australia-by-storm/

Since the 7 October pogrom in Israel, it has become increasingly clear that hostility towards Israel is no longer confined to its Islamist enemies. It is increasingly prevalent in Western democracies, too.

This has certainly been true in Australia. Indeed, just days after Hamas committed atrocities in southern Israel, mobs stood on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, chanting ‘Gas the Jews!’. It set the tone for subsequent pro-Palestine protests, each one serenaded by the hateful chant, ‘From the river to the sea’. Israel has rarely been more threatened, and it has certainly never been so alone.

Of course, there have been anti-Israel pile-ons from activists over the years. But what had been less apparent in Australia was Hamas apologism, or a refusal to condemn the terrorists. Until now, that is.

This month, the Labor government, panicked about the prospect of losing seats to the pro-Palestine Greens, said that it intends to recognise a Palestinian state. Speaking last Tuesday, foreign-affairs minister Penny Wong said that statehood is ‘the only hope to break the endless cycle of violence’. She also said this was the best way to damage Hamas.

The response from Nasser Mashni, president of the Australia Palestine Advocacy Network, to Labor’s position was revealing. He was provided with four opportunities by Sky News host Tom Connell to repudiate Hamas and agree that its involvement in the future governance of Gaza would be intolerable. Mashni dodged and equivocated on each occasion.

‘What we need to do is move beyond this fascination or infatuation with Hamas’, Mashni said, seemingly bewildered that a group that had carefully planned and executed the murder, kidnapping and rape of 1,200 defenceless civilians – ranging from babies to the elderly – was somehow relevant to a discussion on the future of Palestine. Towards the end of the interview, Mashni laid his cards squarely on the table: ‘The problem is not Hamas – the problem is Zionism, it’s settler colonialism.’

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shutting-down-the-political-right-0ab4ead6?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

The movement known as national conservatism is a disparate group that includes many thoughtful thinkers and more than a few cranks. But nothing they stand for justified the decision this week by Belgian authorities to send in the cops to break up a conference in Brussels. It’s another example that today’s censors are more on the left than right.

The Edmund Burke Foundation, a U.S. public-affairs institute, sought to hold its latest National Conservatism Conference in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union. The agenda included “the perils of ever-closer union” regarding political integration in the EU, “faith and family in crisis,” and EU immigration policy (which is as dysfunctional as America’s if not more so). Guests included British champion of Brexit Nigel Farage, French conservative Eric Zemmour, and of course Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Cue outrage from the political left. The conference’s organizers said they had to scramble after their first two venues canceled on short notice amid political pressure. When a third venue agreed to host the meeting, the mayor of the Saint-Josse-ten-Noode district in Brussels, Emir Kir, issued a four-page decree banning the event. Mr. Kir was expelled by the Socialist party in 2020 for holding meetings with Turkish nationalist politicians.

The decree claims the conference would bring together people from the “conservative and religious right, and from the European far right”; that it would have a “provocative and discriminatory nature”; and that among the speakers would be “traditionalists, homophobes, and those who don’t respect human rights.” Yes, those ever-anarchic traditionalists. The decree said police couldn’t guarantee the safety of the event from the Antifa-style protesters the mayor was certain would show up outside.

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/18/are-irans-nine-lives-nearing-an-end/

The theocracy of Iran has been the world’s arch-embassy attacker over the last half century.

So it has zero credibility in crying foul over Israel’s April 1 attacks on its “consulate” in Damascus and the killing of Iran’s kingpin terrorists of the Revolutionary Guard Corps there.

Remember, the world was first introduced to the Iranian ayatollahs by their violent takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1980.

Iranian surrogates next bombed the American embassy in Beirut and the Marine barracks in 1983.

In fact, Iran has attacked US and Israeli diplomatic posts off-and-on for decades, most recently in 2023, when Iran helped plan an attack on the US embassy in Baghdad.

For this reason and several others, Iran’s justification for sending 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles into Israel on the grounds that Israel had bombed an Iranian diplomatic post is completely ridiculous.

One, Iran has never honored diplomatic immunity. Instead, it habitually attacks and kills embassy personnel and blows up diplomatic facilities across the world.

Two, on April 1, the Israelis attacked a pseudo-“consulate” in Damascus which was hosting grandees of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as they planned terrorist attacks on Israel.

Without Iran, the Middle East might have had a chance to use its enormous oil and natural gas wealth to lift its 500 million people out of poverty rather than to be mired in constant tribal and religious anti-Israeli, anti-American, and anti-Western terrorism.

During the Iraq War, Iran’s Shiite terrorists and its massive supplies of deadly shaped-charge explosive devices killed hundreds of Americans. It routinely hijacks container ships in the Straits of Hormuz and stages near collisions with American ships and planes.

How does Iran get away with nonstop anti-Western terrorism, its constant harassment of Persian Gulf maritime traffic, its efforts to subvert Sunni moderate regimes, and its serial hostage-taking?

The theocrats operate on three general principles.

One, Iran is careful never to attack a major power directly.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20583/jihadist-caliphate

Not only are Jews under threat, but Christians and all “unbelievers” in the radical jihadist agenda as well.

Although an “ostrich” mentality towards these genocidal objectives prevails among Western decision-makers, the reality is quite different: The driving ideology behind Hamas’s murderous intent is exemplified by the “Doomsday Clock” located in Palestine Square, Tehran, Iran. Inaugurated by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in 2017, the clock counts down the time towards Israel’s anticipated destruction in 2040, sixteen years from now. Iran’s barrage of missiles and drones launched at Israel on April 13, 2024, was presumably another step toward fulfilling that destructive intent.

Even though Iran remains essentially responsible for the actions of its agents, it has yet to suffer any consequences despite its direct attack on Israel on April 13-14. All the while, taking full advantage of US appeasement and unencumbered by meaningful sanctions, Iran races ahead with development of nuclear weapons for the sole purpose of eliminating Israel and, thereafter Jordan and ultimately the “Great Satan,” the United States from the world map.

On April 1, 2024, Abolfazl Bazargan, an Iranian international relations expert, made it clear, with a straight face, that “…for the purpose of bringing about peace – you have to create nuclear deterrence, even if only one (bomb).” Peace, however, seems to mean “after jihad has obliterated all opposition and established an Islamic Caliphate.” This objective is couched in rational terms to appease West powers, the sympathetic world leaders, who might be persuaded that it is fair and right that Iran possess a nuclear weapon just as Israel, the US, UK, North Korea, and other nations possess such weapons. The underlying jihadist ideology of world hegemony is concealed under a veneer of rationalism, social justice, victimhood, and fairness.

“It’s a belief that goes a long way in explaining the dehumanization of the Jews: It’s much easier to brutalize and slaughter, the way Hamas did on October 7, if you think that Jews are apes and pigs. In our rational Western way of thinking, all of this is unfathomable.” — Idit Bar, expert on Islamism, Times of Israel, February 2, 2024.

Refusing to directly confront Iran as the source of Middle Eastern terror — and instead rely on diplomatic “conflict resolution” that enables Iran to buy time — amounts to a form of appeasement. At this time, preparation for war is the best deterrence, especially in the current circumstances of a misguided faith in “talking.”

It was an attitude of pusillanimous appeasement by UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Nazi Germany in 1938, with the Munich Agreement, that directly resulted in Hitler’s unrestrained march on neighbouring countries, thus inaugurating WW2. In like mode, US President Joe Biden’s acolytes now appease Iran’s Ayatollahs, an approach that commenced under President Barack Obama. Once again, the consequences for the West and the world at large will be horrendous.