RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/society/2024/05/otherwise-what-was-it-all-for/

My father returned from the war with ten quid in his pocket. He’d been flying Spitfires and Hurricanes over Europe and later in Burma. He was invalided out, worn out by what he’d seen and done. One dream had kept him going during the three years away from Australia—to marry his fiancée, settle down and become a farmer.

He arrived in Melbourne, with his faded RAAF uniform hanging off a lanky body scrawny from bouts of malaria and burnt near-black from the tropical sun. His aim was to buy a wedding ring, as the long-awaited event was planned for two days hence. My mother’s family was not about to allow time for any pre-marital hanky-panky!

Dad found a jeweller’s shop near Flinders Street station and went in to purchase a ring. The shop was run down and gloomy and the counters dusty. Buying jewellery had obviously not been a priority for Melburnians during the hard years of war. The elderly jeweller shuffled out from a back room.

“I need a wedding ring, please. Doesn’t have to be fancy, just something simple will do the trick.”

The old man looked at him thoughtfully. “You have been over there, to my side of the world?” 

“Yeah, just got off the boat, and I’m getting married in a couple of days. She’s been waiting three years.”

“Well,” said the jeweller slowly, setting the dust motes dancing as he pulled out a tray of rings. “I am thinking, perhaps one of these?”

Dad’s heart sank when he saw the prices.

“I only have ten quid,” he said, embarrassed.

“Let me see, this one here should suit. It’s excellent quality, and wide enough to last a lifetime or more. That’s what you want, is it not? One day your great-great granddaughter will wear it.”

Dad shifted from one foot to another. “It’s just fine. In fact, it’s more than just fine. It’s a beautiful ring, but …”

“I’ll wrap it for you then.” The jeweller polished the ring carefully and found a small box.

“I can’t afford it,” said Dad loudly.

“You see my name up there, on the sign? Ezra Lieberman. You know what that means? Of course you do. So this ring is a gift, an offering of thanks, from someone who was too old to go and fight for his people. Now leave me, my friend, and get married and live happily ever after. Otherwise, what was it all for?”

And so Dad left, with the tiny box in his pocket. He married my mother as planned, brought up a large family and eventually owned the farm they so desired.

Eighty years later, as shrieking ghouls from earlier times rise up to stalk our streets, his great-granddaughter will wear this ring when she marries her beloved. And that is just as it should be. Otherwise, what was it all for?

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/04/28/humza-yousaf-is-everything-thats-wrong-with-modern-politics/

For me, the most notable thing about the Scottish first minister Humza Yousaf is his haughtiness. Rarely has a man’s arrogance been so out of proportion to his intellect. He has honed to perfection the Diane Abbott style of addressing both the media and the masses as if they were special-needs children. Remember the time he told a striking nurse to stop being patronising? All she’d said is that politicians like him are not listening to nurses’ concerns. ‘Let’s not patronise each other’, he snapped. A man with great power telling an underpaid health worker to check her patronising tone is, ironically, patronising beyond comprehension.

If this were just a personality trait, I could live with it. (Kind of.) If his ‘snide, arrogant and patronising’ demeanour – as one Scottish observer described it – was just the way he is, I’d be a tad more forgiving. We can all be wankers at times. But with Yousaf, something else is at play. His condescending style is directly reflective of his condescending politics. His conceited bemusement at journalists’ questions and pompous disdain for the Scottish throng are less personality tics than core tenets of his identitarian belief system. It is not an accident that a man beholden to the ideology of woke should be such a neo-aristocratic arse.

As Yousaf heads for a no-confidence vote – following his dissolving of the coalition between his Scottish National Party and the Greens – it’s worth reflecting on what his time in office has told us about politics in the 21st century. It is unlikely his first ministership will bother the history books much – though his recent batty claim that men experience misogyny might be included in a future tome on Stupid Shit Politicians Say. And yet there is something noteworthy about his rule. It’s shown us what wokeness in government looks like. It has given us a grisly glimpse of what will become of public life once the grievance-mongers of identitarianism seize the reins of power.

Fundamentally, Yousaf’s is a government not for the people, but against them. It’s an administration devoted less to unleashing Scotland’s potential than to taming its bigotries. It’s concerned less with meeting Scots’ needs than with policing their feelings. This is why his speech on the unbearable whiteness of Scottish politics was so important. You remember it. It’s gone viral about a hundred times since he first made it in the Scottish parliament during the BLM madness of June 2020. He reeled off various ruling-class positions – lord advocate, solicitor general, Police Scotland chief constable – and barked the word ‘white’ after each one. A country where 96 per cent of people are white has mostly white rulers? I’m shocked.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20605/persecution-of-christians-march

[O]n March 25, the Lahore High Court in Pakistan awarded custody of a 13-year-old Christian girl to her Muslim kidnapper.

Charges were filed, “but instead of arresting the two suspects, police tipped them off …. Since that time, they have been threatening me and my mother to withdraw the case or face the consequences.” – Morning Star News, March 8, 2024, Pakistan.

“Christians are obviously a despised minority [in Yemen]… Christians are often last in line as it relates to being able to receive the care and attention there as war and as these things continue to escalate. That has a ripple effect … while Christians were already last [in] line, that line becomes even further elongated.” — Open Doors USA CEO Ryan Brown, Christian Broadcasting Network, March 8, 2024.

“I thought it only happened elsewhere.” — Mayor of Clermont d’Excideuil, France, March 11, 2024.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Russia: On March 22, Muslim terrorists armed with automatic weapons launched an attack on Crocus City Hall near Moscow, massacring at least 139 people and wounding more. Boasting of “killing Christians,” ISIS quickly claimed the attack in a statement that said the assault was intentionally designed to target “thousands of Christians.” Two months earlier, ISIS issued a communique to the “Lions of Islam” — presumably Muslim “avengers” around the world — to terrorize and slaughter Christians and Jews, including by targeting churches and synagogues.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20602/iran-speeding-up-nuclear-weapons

By backing, arming and training Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, Iran launched a proxy war against Israel, leveraging the conflict in part to divert attention from its nuclear ambitions.

The calculated move not only serves Iran’s immediate interests in destabilizing its adversaries – the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Bahrain and most of all the United States, which it would like to see out of the region, so Iran could presumably have the Middle East all to itself. The diversion of the Gaza war also aligns with its goal of eradicating Israel.

These barbaric perversions [by Hamas on October 7, 2023] underscore Iran’s leaders’ comfort, if not pleasure, in employing any means at hand to achieve their objectives. They most likely do not look at their devastation abroad as triggering instability, but, on the contrary, as a means to attaining its hegemony, after which there will be peace — for themselves, at least.

From Iran’s perspective, acquiring nuclear weapons is the easiest way to significantly complete its takeover of the region and “export the revolution”: “We shall export the revolution to the whole world. Until they cry, ‘there is no god but God [Allah]’ resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle.”

Unfortunately, the plan poses an existential threat not just to regional stability, but to global security. Iran has been moving into Latin America, possibly to target the “Great Satan,” the United States.

In the midst of the Hamas-Israel conflict — while the world’s attention is fixed on the war Iran and Hamas began — Iran’s ruling mullahs have seized the opportunity to advance their nuclear program.

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.”