RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/15/how-woke-leftists-became-cheerleaders-for-iran/

How quickly the ‘Ceasefire Now!’ lobby turned into frothing warmongers. No sooner had Iran began its criminal bombardment of Israel than these phoney peaceniks were leaping up and down with delight. This is ‘true solidarity’, said one ‘pro-Palestine’ group in response to Iran’s raining down of missiles on the Jewish State. We can now glimpse the truth behind their fake pacifism. We can see their yearning for war on Israel that they cynically dress up as a campaign for peace in Palestine. It’s not a ceasefire woke Westerners want – it’s the humiliation and taming of the Jewish nation.

Iran launched its felonious assault on Saturday night. It fired hundreds of cruise missiles and aerial drones at Israel. Mercifully, Israel, with the help of Britain, America and Jordan, was able to intercept the murderous fusillade, meaning very little damage was done. But that should not detract from the seriousness of this act of war. This is the first time Iran has attacked Israel directly. Normally, the theocratic tyrants do their Israelophobic bidding through proxies: Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis. That Tehran has now turned its own war machine in Israel’s direction is profoundly concerning.

And what are our self-styled radicals saying? The kind of people who’ve been clogging up the streets of LA, New York, London and Berlin these past six months to wring their hands over war? They’re not saying ‘Ceasefire Now!’, that’s for sure. In fact, some are saying ‘War Now!’, or at least are making craven excuses for Iran’s attack. A member of the International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America went so far as to offer ‘full solidarity with Iran as it retaliates against the Zionist entity’. From solidarity with Palestine to solidarity with warmongering Islamists: it’s so clearly hate for Israel, not love for peace, that motors these people.

Asa Winstanley, the oddball who runs Electronic Intifada, described Iran’s attack as a ‘humanitarian intervention’ – it’s like Blairism with a Marxian veneer – and said ‘THANK YOU IRAN’. The Palestinian Youth Movement praised Iran for daring ‘to take action to bring an end to genocide [sic]’. The Palestine Solidarity Alliance at Hunter College in New York City offered Iran ‘solidarity’. A professor at California State University said ‘Iran did what all Arabs could not do’ – that is, teach uppity Israel a stern lesson. The cry for peace has morphed into sympathy for war – if it’s war on the ‘Zionist entity’, that is.

https://jewishworldreview.com/0424/steyn041524.php

The conventional wisdom of the media and think-tanks agreed its line around the time the two-hundredth drone was shot down: Iran’s assault on Israel was a flop.

A record number of drones, cruise and ballistic missiles were launched by the mullahs against the Zionist Entity: For the flight from Persia, a drone takes nine hours, a cruise two hours, and a ballistic missile about twelve minutes. Not a single drone or cruise missile made it to Israeli soil. A few of the ballistics penetrated the country’s air space, lighting up the sky over the Temple Mount yet killing not a single Jew. An unlucky seven-year-old girl in a Bedouin encampment in the desert was injured by shrapnel, but for Tehran that’s one lousy return on investment. For purposes of comparison, the usual West Bank bloodletting racked up a higher body count: a fourteen-year-old Israeli shepherd was found shot in the head yesterday.

Meanwhile, after six months in geopolitical Coventry, Israel is once again flush with allies:

(April 14, 2024 / JNS) The United States, United Kingdom and Jordan downed many of the over 300 projectiles launched at Israel by Iran overnight Sunday, while France also played a role in defending the Jewish state against the unprecedented attack.

The Jordanians were mostly concerned to protect their own territory from carelessly targeted incoming, the French are said to have confined their efforts to patrolling the airspace and giving a friendly head’s up, and the British dispatched jets from the RAF base at Akrotiri to take out Iranian drones over Syria and Iraq. Whether any of these efforts were militarily necessary to Israel’s defence, they’re not likely to be politically popular on their respective home fronts. Yet all were eager to be perceived as in on the operation, and their participation is being hailed as the emergence of a new Israeli-Sunni-western regional security force:

https://www.jns.org/irans-attack-was-a-casus-belli-not-a-retaliation/

Following the April 1 strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, threats of retaliation against Israel—widely assumed to have been behind the attack—promptly emerged from Tehran. Seven members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in the bombing that reportedly destroyed the building that housed them next to the embassy compound.

Among the dead were Mohammad Reza Zahedi, and his deputy, Mohammad Haj Rahimi. Zahedi was a top commander in the IRGC’s Quds Force, designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization, who oversaw all terrorist operations against Israel from Syria, Lebanon and Palestinian-run territories.

Dubbing their headquarters in Syria a “diplomatic mission,” therefore, is like calling Shifa in Gaza a hospital. Indeed, according to international law: “Any object that serves a military purpose, even if used for both military and civilian activities, is a legitimate target.”

Despite this, or because of it, most analysts were skeptical about the likelihood of a counter-offensive from the soil of the foremost state sponsor of terrorism. After all, the ayatollah-led regime has spent decades cultivating proxies to do its dirty work around the world.

And at this very moment, some of those surrogates are actively engaged in their sponsor’s aim to wipe the Jewish state off the map, while others are sporadically contributing to the effort.

Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are fighting Israeli troops and holding hostage 133 mostly Israeli civilians in Gaza, while targeting Israel with rockets; Hamas and PIJ are fighting soldiers and civilians in Judea and Samaria; Hezbollah missiles have caused the evacuation of citizens in northern Israel; and the Yemen-based Houthis occasionally join in the multi-front assault through UAVs launched at Eilat.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-has-no-choice-but-to-strike-iran-restraint-strategy-failed-on-oct-7-b8159f29?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

What if the Oct. 7 invasion had been “intercepted”? Imagine the same Hamas attack but better Israeli defense, with more than 90% of the terrorists stopped before the border or shortly thereafter, and only minor Israeli casualties. President Biden would probably have done then what he is doing now, in the aftermath of Iran’s intercepted attack: urge Israel not to respond in any serious way. Let Hamas live to try it again.

To learn the lessons of Oct. 7 is to reject that advice after the long night of April 13. Israel will respond to Iran, it announced Monday. It has learned the hard way that air defenses don’t relieve you of the duty to subdue a determined attacker. Hamas’s intent to slaughter Israelis was hardly a secret, but Israel allowed it to survive and grow stronger because its rockets could be intercepted.

It was no harm, no foul. Israel agreed to “take the win” against Hamas—as Mr. Biden now advises with regard to Iran—all the way to catastrophe.

Rocket fire from an Iranian proxy became normal, not worth a response in most cases, until it was too late. It’s the same story with Hezbollah, whose expanding arsenal and occasional rocket fire became facts of life in northern Israel. Another war would have been costly, and what damage were the rockets really doing in the meantime? As the smart set says about Iran today, Hezbollah’s attacks were merely “symbolic.”

Israel never stopped the trickle, so it became a flood. Hezbollah has fired on Israel more than 3,000 times since Oct. 7, depopulating the country’s north. Yet this, too, has become normal. “Man is a creature who can get used to anything,” writes Dostoevsky, and all the more so if it’s the other guy who has to live with the consequences. Biden administration officials now regularly implore Israel not to “escalate” with Hezbollah—that, they say, would cause a war.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-shouldnt-take-the-win-iran-mideast-conflict-0b6be756?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

“Take the win,” President Biden reportedly advised Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu after Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone attacks against Israel sputtered shambolically to an ignominious end.

As the world waits on tenterhooks for Israel’s response, two things seemed clear. It would be political suicide for Mr. Netanyahu to take the president’s advice, and it would be national suicide for any Israeli prime minister to do so. Mr. Biden is primarily worried about his re-election, a cause he conveniently if sincerely conflates with the survival of democracy in the U.S. and of freedom in the world. Israel is worried about something more tangible—the survival of the world’s only Jewish state.

Mr. Biden is a lot smarter about the Middle East today than he was in January 2021, when he was still spouting inanities about isolating Saudi Arabia and pursuing the will o’ the wisp of détente with Iran. Today the president understands that he can’t simply shake hands with Iran and walk away from the Middle East. If the U.S. hopes to step back from a front-line role in the region, it must foster an alliance that can check Iran’s unrelenting and fanatical drive for hegemony. That is why Team Biden dramatically reversed its early policy of making Saudi Arabia a “pariah” and, borrowing some of the core concepts of Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, made the promotion of an Israel-Saudi alliance a cornerstone of its regional strategy.

This was an intelligent move, as far as it went. Until and unless Iran’s insatiable ambitions can be curbed, nothing but tumult and terrorism awaits the weary people of a region whose fossil fuel riches remain critical to the smooth functioning of the world economy. From an American point of view, assembling a group of American allies to take our place on the front lines at a time when we need to focus more closely on the Indo-Pacific is common sense.

What the president appears not yet to understand is that Iran has become so powerful, and America’s reputation as a source of sound policy and reliable support so weak, that only resolute American backing of our allies can turn the tide. This problem has been decades in the making. George W. Bush’s mismanagement in Iraq removed the one regional power capable of containing Iran on its own—without building an effective replacement. Barack Obama’s feckless Syria policy gave Iran and its new best friend, Russia, a commanding position in the heart of the Middle East. Mr. Trump’s support for the Abraham Accords and tough policies toward Iran pointed in the right direction, but were mostly a case of too little, too late, and too erratic. Mr. Biden’s support for Israel is appreciated in Arab capitals as well as in Jerusalem, but his vacillations with Iran have further strengthened the ayatollahs and undercut America’s much-diminished prestige.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan’s poorly timed Foreign Affairs article last October, hailing what he thought was the greatest regional stability in decades, was the cherry on the sundae of perceived intellectual incompetence by American policymakers in the region. The Washington foreign policy establishment, which former Obama staffer Ben Rhodes called “the Blob,” has never understood the Middle East very well.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20581/christians-prefer-israel-not-palestinian-authority

Among the top 50 countries in which Christians were persecuted in 2023 were Yemen, Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Morocco, Qatar, Egypt, Turkey, and other Middle Eastern and Muslim-majority countries. Israel, needless to say, was not on the list.

Despite these disturbing statistics, US television personality Tucker Carlson, in his interview with the Bethlehem pastor, chose to single out Israel, the only country where Christians feel safe and where their number is increasing every year. Carlson did not bother to ask the pastor about the persecuted Christians of Egypt.

Carlson chose to interview Isaac, who has long history of promoting falsehoods about Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict in his roles as pastor, academic dean of Bethlehem Bible College (a self-identified “Palestinian Christian Evangelical university college” that promotes a “Palestinian Christian theology”), and director of the “Christ at the Checkpoint” conferences — the infamous venue where anti-Israel libels are proclaimed in the name of Christian love, justice and peace.

“[T]hose of us who track these things know that Munther Isaac has long been the high priest of antisemitic Christianity; sadly, he spreads his hate from the city of Jesus’ birth.” — Rev. Johnnie Moore, president of the Congress of Christian Leaders, jewishinsider.com, April 11, 2024.

“We have a mafia here that is seizing Christian-owned lands. I protested against this Muslim mafia, and I even called a large gathering. I invited 80 people to my home. That same night, fliers were distributed in Bethlehem threatening to kill me. Of course, I am worried about the future of Christians here. Looking at the facts on the ground, you can see that there is no future for the Christians here. We are melting; we are disappearing. I fear the day will come when our churches will become museums. That is my nightmare.” — Samir Qumsieh, prominent Christian leader near Bethlehem, to Gatestone, April 2024.

Since the Palestinian Authority (PA) assumed control of Bethlehem in 1995, the Christian share of the population has dropped from 65% to only 12% today. By contrast, the Christian population in Israel has been on the rise in recent years. “Most of us 180k Christian Israelis prefer to live under Israel freely rather than under a Palestinian Islamic Authority regime controlling Bethlehem. Israel gives us freedom while living under Arabs has been genocidal for Christians all across the Middle East,” says Shadi Khalloul, a Christian Maronite who describes himself as a “patriotic Israeli.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/iran-drone-attack-israel-hamas-president-biden-ali-khamenei-91a131bd?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Iran’s drone and missile assault on Israel Saturday night into Sunday is an open act of aggression, but it isn’t the start of this conflict. It’s an escalation of the war Iran has been waging against Israel for months through its Middle East proxies. The difference now is that Iran’s imperialistic face is in the open rather than in the shadows, and that should change calculations in Washington in particular.

Supreme leader Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps have been the puppet masters of Middle East mayhem, the better to avoid direct culpability. Israel’s strike on April 1 against IRGC generals in Syria, in response to Iran’s proxy attacks against Israel, was apparently more than the mullahs could tolerate. The weekend attack is truth in advertising at last, and it is an ominous sign that Iran is willing to take new escalatory risks.

It should also be clarifying to Western leaders about Iran’s malevolent intentions. Thousands of American citizens live in Israel and could have been casualties. Iran’s bombardment wasn’t discriminate or limited to military targets, unlike Israel’s precision strike that killed the IRGC generals.

The fact that most of the drones and missiles were intercepted is a relief, but it isn’t reassuring against future swarm attacks. Israeli air defenses were a spectacular success, aided by assets from the U.S., U.K., Jordan, and perhaps others. But what happens if the next attack comes all at once from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria as well as Iran?

This is another case of failed U.S. deterrence. President Biden had warned Iran not to attack after U.S. intelligence detected signs of preparation in Tehran. “Don’t,” Mr. Biden said. But like Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Iran went ahead anyway, no doubt confident that Mr. Biden wouldn’t respond militarily. And sure enough, the word Sunday is that his main message in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Saturday was not to strike back.

White House theories of escalation management don’t work against a regime that thinks a U.S. President fears escalation more than Iran does. U.S. restraint since the Oct. 7 massacre has encouraged Tehran to see how much more it can get away with.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20569/hamas-destroys-gaza-victory

The prospect of Hamas declaring or celebrating “victory” worries not only Israel, but many Arabs — including Palestinians — who want to see the terrorist group completely destroyed and removed from power, but are often afraid to speak out for fear of retaliation.

“The continuity of Hamas’s rule in Gaza is an ultra mega major disaster for the Palestinian people’s aspirations, cause, hope for the reconstruction of the battered coastal enclave, and prospects for a new path forward to bring about progress, reconciliation, coexistence & peace.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, “Proud American from Gaza City; pro-Palestine, pro-peace, anti-Hamas”, X, April 8, 2024.

Hamas, clearly buoyed by having the US on their side, has unsurprisingly hardened its position. It is now and is saying it wants Israel to make even more concessions.

Where is any US pressure on Hamas, Iran or Qatar?

“Yes, Hamas thanked the United States. When a terrorist group is thanking you, you’re probably doing something wrong.” — Joe Truzman, senior research analyst, X, April 9, 2024.

The Hamas terrorists have only been emboldened by the Biden administration’s growing hostility towards Israel and its demand that Israel end the war, a move that would effectively be a surrender to Hamas.

“What victory are you talking about? Are you in your right mind? [Hamas has brought] complete devastation; thousands killed and displaced…. This is what the terrorist Hamas group, Iran’s puppet, brought upon the people of Gaza. The leaders of Hamas defeated the people of Gaza and exterminated them without mercy.” — Omar Shaybalras, X, April 9, 2024.

“Gaza has been destroyed, starved, slaughtered…. The people of Gaza are cursing Hamas, [Palestinian] Islamic Jihad, and Iran…. The members of Hamas’s armed wing use children as human shields.” — Osama al-Ali ,member of the Palestinian National Council, the PLO’s parliament-in-exile, television interview, X, December 7, 2023.

“As long as [Hamas leaders Ismail] Haniyeh, [Yahya] Sinwar and [Khaled] Mashaal are alive, it is a victory for them, As for the destruction and the blood of the women and children of Gaza, it is a profitable enterprise as far as Hamas is concerned.” — Abdallah Abou Aymen, April 9, 2024.

Unlike the Biden administration and anti-Israel protestors in the West, these observers understand that Hamas, Iran and Qatar are fully and solely responsible for the mass destruction and high casualties in the Gaza Strip…. We are already seeing calls for “Death to America” in America. A ceasefire would save Hamas, allow it to continue preparing for future massacres against Israelis, and enable Iran and Qatar to “export the Revolution” even more aggressively.

Above all, a US-bestowed, fake “victory” for Hamas would assure China, Russia and other predators that belligerency works and incentivize them to put the finishing touches on what many perceive as an “ultra mega major disaster” of a presidential legacy.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas is reportedly preparing to hold “victory” rallies if and when the war in the Gaza Strip ends. Many Arabs, however, have scoffed at Hamas’s expected celebrations and accused the terrorist group and its patrons in Tehran of destroying the Gaza Strip.

“A friend in the City of Rafah told me he saw large signs and banners being printed/prepared by Hamas to hold ‘victory rallies’ that the Islamist group plans on having when a ceasefire/hostage deal is announced, highlighting the withdrawal of IDF troops from Gaza as an achievement,” said Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who describes himself as a “proud American from Gaza City; pro-Palestine, pro-peace, and anti-Hamas,” who lost 31 family members in the Israel-Hamas war.

https://www.jns.org/the-paving-of-a-former-shin-bet-chiefs-path-in-politics/

Two days before Iran attacked Israel with hundreds of drones and missiles, Channel 12’s investigative current-affairs program “Uvda” conducted an in-depth interview with former Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) director Nadav Argaman. The teasers for the broadcast, hosted by Ilana Dayan, promised bombshell revelations about the Oct. 7 massacre.
Despite the left-wing slant of the well-known TV show, viewers across the political spectrum tuned in on Thursday night to watch it. Reeling from and in the throes of Hamas’s invasion of Israel’s southern border six months ago—when its sadistic foot soldiers committed the worst atrocities against Jews since the Holocaust—everyone in the country remains hungry for any sliver of information that might shed light on the travesty.
Capabilities that Israelis had always taken for granted were intelligence-gathering and security. The failure of both prior to and during that “Black Sabbath” shook a core communal foundation.
The question of how the government and Israel Defense Forces weren’t prepared for the mass enemy onslaught, and therefore didn’t prevent or put an immediate stop to it, still lingers, unanswered. That 133 hostages have yet to be freed by their brutal captors in Gaza makes the national need to understand what happened on Oct. 7 even more pressing.
Argaman was invited by Dayan to explain it. After all, he served for decades in the Shin Bet, which he headed for more than five years, starting in 2016. And it was Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu who appointed him to the position.
Anyone hoping to be enlightened by the hyped-up dialogue was let down, however. Other than Dayan, of course, who achieved her transparent aim of having an “expert” blame Bibi for the debacle.
It was a no-brainer that Argaman would deliver the goods. He’s been an “anybody but Bibi” activist since early 2023, when he signed a letter condemning the Netanyahu coalition’s initiative to reform Israel’s judicial system.

Yes, he was one of the hysterics claiming that such a move would constitute the death of democracy and the birth of Bibi as a full-fledged dictator. Raising the issue with Dayan, he argued, “This government is ultimately responsible for Oct. 7, because the judicial overhaul is what led to the weakening of Israel in the eyes of our enemies.”