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Patriotism is Fighting Back Reversing the demonization of American history and heroes like Christoper Columbus. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on October 13th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/patriotism-is-fighting-back/

For the first time in decades, the leftist assaults on American history and heroes are getting pushback from the renewal of patriotism fueled by Donald Trump’s return to the White House, and fulfilling his promise to Make America Great Again. Our institutions from the military to the universities are being restored to their proper functions consistent with the Constitution, as the Augean stables of DEI, open borders, unpunished rampant crime, and the politicized history and media that were besmirched by Obama’s “fundamental transformation” of our country.

Also recently cleansed by President Trump is the politically correct “Indigenous Peoples Day” moniker that replaced the traditional honorific “Columbus Day.” Trump restored Columbus Day in a proclamation reading, “Outrageously, in recent years, Christopher Columbus has been a prime target of a vicious and merciless campaign to erase our history, slander our heroes, and attack our heritage.”

Christopher Columbus has been the arch-villain in the left’s Orwellian revisionist history of the West. Especially dangerous is the common leftist lie that America from its birth, like Columbus, has been and continues to be uniquely and irredeemably evil, tainted by slavery, one of the progressive left’s favorite historical weapons for undermining the patriotic solidarity that binds us together and undergirds our Constitution and its political freedom and equality.

This animus, of course, saturates global Marxism, especially since the collapse of the Soviet Union, once the left’s specious evidence of Marx’s brilliance and success. In compensation for that loss, America’s foundations that created the richest, freest, and most powerful nation in the world must be demonized and distorted, in order to show that America’s success has come at too great a price––the institutionalization of racist oppression and inequality that created slavery, “white privilege,” and “white supremacy,” which allegedly still infect every dimension of our society

Hence the Dems’ current orgies of question-begging smears like “racism” and “fascism,” the latter completely ignorant of the fact that fascism was, like communism, a socialist political religion, both of which were sworn enemies of free market capitalism and individual rights and freedom. Fascism and communism’s affinity for tyranny made allies of Stalin and the Nazis in 1939.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Hating and Celebrating Columbus Why the Italian explorer is a lightning rod for Leftist venom. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on October 13th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/hating-and-celebrating-columbus/

“I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes,” President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social back in April. “The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”

He noted at the time that Democrats “tore down [Columbus’] Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all! Well, you’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback,” Trump continued. “I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!”
True to his word, in a White House Cabinet Meeting last Thursday, Trump signed a proclamation honoring the Italian explorer who sailed the ocean blue in 1492, to paraphrase the poem. Trump announced to applause in the room, “We’re back, Italians!” referring to the Progressive push to tarnish Columbus’ legacy in reaching the New World, an achievement in which Italian-Americans take great pride.

Columbus Day was established as a federal holiday in 1934, but in October 2021, then-President Joe Biden issued the first-ever presidential proclamation for Indigenous Peoples Day to exist alongside it. You may recall that failed presidential candidate (and possible upcoming Democrat presidential nominee) Kamala Harris expressed her support for “efforts on the federal level to change the second Monday in October from Columbus Day to ‘Indigenous Peoples Day.’”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Trump’s Israel-Hamas Peace Plan Gets A Big ‘Thumbs Up’ From U.S. Voters: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

Posted By on October 13th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/10/13/trumps-israel-hamas-peace-plan-gets-a-big-thumbs-up-from-u-s-voters-ii-tipp-poll/

President Trump’s ongoing efforts to bring peace between Israel and the terrorist Hamas group in Gaza appeared to bear fruit last week with a deal to cease hostilities and to release remaining hostages and prisoners. But will American voters back Trump’s bold plan? The answer is a resounding yes, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

After months of talks and arm-twisting, Trump was able to broker a tenuous deal that might serve as a pattern for future peace deals in the region.

Knowing the outline of the deal as first presented, I&I/TIPP asked voters: “Do you support or oppose the Trump peace plan for Gaza, which calls for an immediate ceasefire, hostage exchanges, and rebuilding Gaza under international supervision?”

The response was powerful: 59% said they would either support the deal “strongly” (30%) or “somewhat” (29%), while just 18% opposed the deal either “strongly” (9%) or “somewhat”. A large 23% of Americans said they were not sure.

The national online poll was taken from Sept. 30 to Oct. 2, with 1.459 adults taking part. The poll has a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points.

There were differences in support when it came to political affiliations, but all of the parties — Democratic Party (46% support, 30% oppose), Republican (78% support, 9% oppose) or independent (53% support, 18% oppose) — showed either a majority or plurality of support.

That means, as presented, it is broadly accepted by all.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Requiem for the Pro-Israel Democrat How the party of Truman became the party of Mamdani by Daniel J. Samet

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/articles/daniel-samet/democrats-break-up-with-israel/

The Democratic Party’s long-running love affair with Israel is over. Like most breakups, this one has turned ugly. The signs are omnipresent.

Washington Democrats are a case in point. Prominent Democratic politicians decry Israel’s supposed sins in Gaza and spare the culprit, Hamas. In 2024, then–Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer literally demanded the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu, the duly elected prime minister of a democratic ally in the grip of an existential war. In July 2025, 27 Democratic senators—a majority of their caucus—voted to withhold military assistance to Israel. Bernie Sanders, who led the legislative charge, bemoaned the fact that “American taxpayer dollars are being used to… support the cruelty of Netanyahu and his criminal ministers.” In August, Minority Whip Katherine Clark (the second-highest-ranking Democrat in the House) said the war in Gaza was a “genocide.”

Democratic politicians at the local level have assumed an even more venomous affect. New York City’s likely next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, refused to denounce the genocidal cry “globalize the intifada” and opposed a day of Holocaust commemoration. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who runs the third-largest city in America, has worn a keffiyeh in public and called Israel’s actions “genocidal.” Staffers for Omar Fateh, who has a good shot at being the next mayor of Minneapolis, applauded the attacks of October 7, 2023.

The anti-Israel animus in the Democratic Party could very well accelerate. Democratic politicians lag behind the party’s grass roots when it comes to the Jewish state. Activists routinely protest Democratic leaders they see as too sympathetic to Israel. The numbers indicate that the rest of the party is with the activists. According to a recent Pew poll, 69 percent of Democrats view Israel unfavorably. That’s an astounding number for a party once admiring of the Jewish state.

“I saw a Palestinian senator, his name is Schumer. He’s a great Palestinian,” President Trump said this summer of the Democratic leader. “He’s become a Palestinian, he has abandoned the Jews.” In the comment was the very Trumpian mélange of overstatement and truth. Schumer, a self-styled shomer, who dubbed himself a “guardian of the people of Israel,” was once a stalwart Zionist voice in Congress. No more.

The pro-Israel Democrat is on his deathbed. And he was, for decades, a fixture of the American political scene. His death came, in the words of Ernest Hemingway, gradually, then suddenly. Democrats were adamant Zionists for decades. In 1991, for instance, 62 percent of Democrats supported Israel. They then grew increasingly critical of Israel before becoming outright hostile. The reason? The Democratic Party has fallen more and more into the thrall of far-left theories holding that Israel is a “settler-colonialist” oppressor deserving of scorn, not succor.

_____________

The Democratic affinity for Israel was on display as early as 1948. Then it was President Harry Truman, a partisan Democrat if there ever was one, who overrode his own Department of State in recognizing the nascent State of Israel just 11 minutes into its life. Truman recognized that the Jewish state would be friendly to America, and he lent U.S. recognition accordingly. Supporting his decision were many rank-and-file Democrats who believed that it was the right thing to do.

Democrats liked much about Israel. They adored its cause. Zionism was about the rebirth of the Jewish people—and the advancement of progressive ideals.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The sinister truth about Greta’s selfie ship The Gaza-bound Global Sumud Flotilla served primarily as a stage for rampant Israelophobia. Hugo Timms

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/12/the-sinister-truth-about-gretas-selfie-ship/

After Israeli forces had detained and removed her from a flotilla supposedly carrying aid to Gaza, all-purpose activist Greta Thunberg arrived at Athens airport on Monday night to a raucous hero’s welcome.

If you listen carefully, though, the crowd seemed less interested in the plight of Gazans than in calling for the death of Israelis. Specifically, members of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). Cries of ‘Death, death to the IDF’ were so loud and protracted that they, and other chants, twice interrupted Thunberg’s press conference.

The 40-boat Global Sumud Flotilla on which Thunberg had been sailing had been intercepted by the IDF roughly 100 kilometres off the coast of Gaza. Those on board were taken to the Port of Ashdod in southern Israel, arrested and mostly flown home by Israeli authorities on Monday. Thunberg has alleged ‘abuse and mistreatment’ at the hands of Israelis – a claim that is hard to reconcile with the sight of a healthy, unharmed Thunberg, energetically addressing a crowd late at night after an international flight. Then again, she could hardly have told the crowd that she had been rescued by the very people they wanted to kill.

The crowd’s intense loathing for Israel was evident from the moment Thunberg arrived. A supporter who introduced the Swedish activist to the crowd emphasised the importance of her giving a speech ‘the day before Israelis use 7 October to lick their wounds’ – which is one way to talk about the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. These were hardly the words of someone who ‘believes in human dignity and power of nonviolent action’ – a core principle of the flotilla, at least according to its website.

Other members of the flotilla have expressed views even more repugnant. The public comments of activist Sarah Wilkinson afford a glimpse of the kind of small talk that might have been on offer below deck. ‘The Israelis are not human’, Wilkinson said. ‘They have hands, they have faces, but they are not one of us. They are monsters.’ She described Hamas fighters who took part in the 7 October attack as ‘heroes’, and celebrated the news of Israelis ‘fleeing their homes’. She posted these comments along with a picture of an Israeli woman running for her life from Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival.

There is a distinct possibility that Wilkinson’s views were the rule, rather than the exception, among flotilla members. This week, an Israeli government department published a report linking several of the armada’s ‘steering members’ with Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The evidence includes members of the flotilla being photographed at meetings with senior members of Hamas and attending the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah, the former leader of Hezbollah.

One thing the flotilla appeared to have no interest in, despite its public objective, was delivering aid to Palestinians. Israeli police claimed that none of the ships on the flotilla was carrying food, water or medical supplies. Not an ounce, they said, could be detected of the purported 300 tonnes of vital supplies that the media told us the flotilla was so gallantly conveying to Gaza.

Israel’s claims aren’t without credibility, even before we consider the footage taken by police on board the ships, who found them empty. This might explain why Thunberg and other members of the flotilla steering committee repeatedly rejected offers from the Vatican and Cyprus to deposit aid with them, thus allowing for its distribution through organisations such as the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Paper Chase: A Global Industry Fuels Scientific Fraud in the U.S. By Vince Bielski

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/10/08/paper_chase_a_global_industry_fuels_scientific_fraud_in_the_us_1139567.html

In southern India, a new enterprise called Peer Publicon Consultancy offers a full suite of services to scientific researchers. It will not only write a scholarly paper for a fee but also guarantee publishing the fraudulent work in a respected journal.   

It is one of many “paper mills” that have emerged across Asia and Eastern Europe over the last two decades. Paper mills are having remarkable success peddling tens of thousands of bogus academic journal papers and authorships to university and medical researchers seeking to pad their resumes in highly competitive fields. 

These sophisticated outfits also engage in trickery to get papers published, infiltrating journals with their own editors and reviewers and even resorting to bribery, according to investigators and a white paper from Wiley, a New Jersey-based publisher. The scale of the fraud is eye-popping: One Wiley subsidiary, Hindawi, retracted more than 8,000 articles two years ago for suspected paper mill involvement. 

U.S. universities and regulators have been able to brush off the threat of paper mills because they have mostly sold their services in China, where research integrity standards are rarely enforced, according to experts. But these rogue operators are building on their success in Asia and expanding to the U.S. and Western Europe, where the prize is the prestige of naming an author on an article from a famous university. 

“Paper mills have become a huge business,” said Jennifer Byrne, professor of molecular oncology at the University of Sydney, who studies the enterprises. “If some journals are pushing back on papers from China, and they probably are, it makes sense that paper mills will try to diversify their clientele and start working with people in different countries.” 

 As paper mills expand from the fringe to the center of research, placing professional-looking articles in high-impact journals owned by major publishers like Springer Nature, experts worry about the potential harm to scientific discovery. Researchers willing to break the rules in a Darwinian world of ‘publish or perish’ may mislead other scientists who incorporate their false findings into their own work. “We know little about the actual impact of paper mills on research,” Byrne says. “But if scientists are building on bad information, they are wasting resources and not making progress in their fields.”

Paper Mills Spread to the West

Paper mills appear to be expanding at a rapid clip, aided by AI that enables them to overwhelm journals with dozens of papers in a short period of time, adding to the challenge of detecting fakes. A study by the Committee on Publishing Ethics (COPE) revealed that, on average, journals suspected about 2% of submitted papers came from mills about five years ago. After journals published fake papers, however, the paper mills saw the opening and pounced, accounting for nearly half of new submissions. 

In a corrupt echo of Moore’s Law, a 2024 study concluded that the number of suspected paper mill articles has been doubling every 18 months, “far outpacing that of legitimate science.” 

Researchers in the West appear to be a small but important part of the expansion. Journals have retracted more than 140 papers that name a U.S. co-author because of evidence of organized fraud, and almost 200 retracted papers name a co-author from Western Europe, according to data collected by watchdog group Retraction Watch and analyzed by Cristina Candal Pedreira, an assistant professor at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Scholars at many leading U.S. universities, including the University of California, Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Texas, have co-authored papers linked to paper mills in recent years. 

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

US Paying High Price to Qatar for Deal Hamas is Already Violating Article V protection and military training to the state sponsors of Islamic terror. by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/us-paying-high-price-to-qatar-for-deal-hamas-is-already-violating/

What do you get if you back an Islamic terrorist group that launches a regional war?

If you’re Qatar, you get Article V protection, normally allotted only to NATO allies, that declares the United States has to respond to any attack on the Islamic terror state which harbored the mastermind of 9/11.

On top of that Qatar, a tiny slave state with a small military, gets to sign a high-profile agreement to have its pilots trained on a US Air Force base right here.

Turkey, fresh off putting its Al Qaeda terrorist in charge of Syria, just signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States. Considering its role in Islamic terrorism, that doesn’t seem as if it will end well either.

The timing of these obvious payoffs connects it to the Hamas ‘peace deal’ that the Islamic terror group is already violating.

Hamas has made it clear that it will not disarm. As I predicted, it’s rebranding its terrorists as ‘police officers’ and beginning a purge of anyone in Gaza it accuses of cooperating with Israel.

200 US troops are on the way to the region. Reportedly they’ll be ‘monitoring’ the ceasefire from inside Israel without entering Gaza. But either way, we’re getting more and more involved, and providing military benefits to Islamic terrorist states for getting the terrorists to sign on the dotted line of a ceasefire they keep saying they won’t abide by.

Hamas keeps insisting that it will go on to fight and destroy Israel. If so, what is all this even for? And why are we providing benefits to Qatar which promised it could get us a deal in exchange for everything it’s getting before Hamas even keeps its part of the deal?

Qatar played us with the Taliban in Afghanistan. Now it’s playing us all over again.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Physics and Politics of Peace: Trump’s Triumph in the Middle East Trump’s latest triumph—brokering peace between Israel and Hamas—echoes Bagehot’s truth: civilization advances only when strength learns the art of deliberate restraint. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/10/12/the-physics-and-politics-of-peace-trumps-triumph-in-the-middle-east/

Peace in the Middle East was impossible—until it wasn’t. Donald Trump started to traverse that impassable domain in his first term with the Abraham Accords. Then, just a few days ago, he managed another impossible passage when he brokered peace between the irreconcilable forces of Israel and Hamas. Almost as impressive, Trump solicited and received the support of Muslim countries from Indonesia to Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt. Amazing.

How did he do it? Well, in part, it was “the art of the deal” in practice. But stepping back, Trump’s forceful yet patient endeavor on behalf of peace reminded me of Walter Bagehot’s insights in his neglected masterpiece, Physics and Politics. First published in 1872, this curious book is partly a contribution to political history and partly an exploration of the often forgotten truism that not all things are possible at all times and in all places. If political liberty is a precious possession, Bagehot saw, it is forged in a long development of civilization, much of which is distinctly, and necessarily, illiberal.

The notion that human beings—and, by analogy, advanced human societies—had developed out of more primitive forms had been in the air for decades by the time Bagehot began Physics and Politics. Evolution—often called “descent with modification” or simply “development” in the early nineteenth century—was an Enlightenment idea par excellence. Darwin’s theories about the place of natural selection in biological evolution, published in 1859 in On the Origin of Species, gave the idea of evolution new scientific authority. But the basic idea of evolution—minus the explanatory motor of natural selection, which Darwin adopted from Thomas Malthus’s Essay on Population (first published in 1798)—was part of the mental furniture of the age. Robert Chambers’s Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, published in 1844, was one of several books on the subject that influenced Bagehot. The crudities of “Social Darwinism,” put forward most famously in the writings and speeches of Herbert Spencer and T. H. Huxley, were a natural outgrowth of these ideas.

The long subtitle of Physics and Politics—“Thoughts on the Application of the Principles of ‘Natural Selection’ and ‘Inheritance’ to Political Society”—certainly suggests that it belongs to that unpromising genre of muscular Darwinism. As always with Bagehot, however, things are not as straightforward as they at first seem. To be sure, by “physics” Bagehot meant “science,” more particularly “Darwinism.” He approvingly quoted various works by Spencer and Huxley, and indeed, such passages are among the most dated in the book. He referred on and off to the “transmitted nerve element” and other Lamarckian museum pieces (Gregor Mendel’s recent discoveries in what we have come to call genetics were unknown to Bagehot and Darwin alike). But Bagehot early on made it clear that in invoking the idea of natural selection, he was merely “searching out and following up an analogy.” As he put it at the end of his last chapter, the great theme of Physics and Politics concerns “the political prerequisites of progress, and especially of early progress.” How far Bagehot’s use of the term “natural selection” is from Darwin’s is shown by the way he links its operation to the operation of Providence—an agency conspicuously missing from any orthodox Darwinian account of evolution.

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The Palestinian Campaign to Undermine Relations between Christians and Israel by Amit Barak

Posted By on October 12th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21971/palestinian-undermine-relations-christians-israel

In recent months, we have witnessed a well-timed campaign led by the Palestinian Authority, civil society organizations and anti-Israel Christian elements – some of them declared anti-Semitic – to undermine the relations between the State of Israel and Christian communities around the world, especially evangelical and pro-Israel Christians whose long-standing support for Israel is not self-evident.

Four notable events this year indicate the tremendous power of this campaign: The blood libel falsely alleging the burning of the Church of St. George in Taybe; an episode of the Tucker Carlson Show with an American nun who presented a series of anti-Semitic claims without any factual, historical or theological basis; the Declaration of the World Council of Churches in June 2025; a Palestinian food advertisement mocking Christianity.

The World Council of Churches over the years has tried to wear the mask of a supposedly “neutral” organization. In light of the campaign, it seems that in this statement, the WCC has dared to say openly what it always wanted but previously did not dare to say.

This group uses clear anti-Semitic messages, and… the expected response from the Israeli government was therefore to declare a ban on entry into Israel to any person who is a member of the WCC or to any activist in the illegal EAPPI program, which the WCC has been operating in Israel since 2002. But the government did not declare such a ban.

While the Christian population is persecuted under the Palestinian Authority, outwardly it conveys a completely opposite image.

This anti-Christian campaign in the PA areas did not reach the wider world or the international media.

The events listed above are not accidental. They are part of a sweeping campaign run well by the Palestinian Authority, BDS organizations and anti-Semitic elements in global religious institutions, aimed at harming Israel’s relations with the Christian world, weakening the support of Christians for Israel, and, through the churches, isolating Israel in the international arena.

From Taybe to Tucker Carlson, Palestinians are trying to drive a wedge between the Christian world and Israel, while Israel’s government appears to be asleep on guard duty.

In recent months, we have witnessed a well-timed campaign led by the Palestinian Authority, civil society organizations and anti-Israel Christian elements – some of them declared anti-Semitic – to undermine the relations between the State of Israel and Christian communities around the world, especially evangelical and pro-Israel Christians whose long-standing support for Israel is not self-evident.

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Israel’s war for survival is only just beginning The Jewish State has never been so isolated and demonised. Frank Furedi

Posted By on October 11th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/10/11/israels-war-for-survival-is-only-just-beginning/

Israel now has no choice but to prepare for war on two fronts. The cultural battlefield in the West is no less important than the military battlefield of the Middle East.

This was always a war that Israel could not afford to lose but could never decisively win. It remains to be seen whether the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas represents a successful outcome for the Jewish State or a Pyrrhic victory.

Egypt’s president, Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, was right to say yesterday that ‘the world is witnessing a historic moment’. But his claim that the deal opens ‘a door of hope for the peoples of the region for a future defined by justice and stability’ sounds like wishful thinking.

The war that broke out on 7 October 2023, following Hamas’s massacre of hundreds of civilians, should be seen as the latest phase of a conflict that first erupted in November 1947 – that is, when the United Nations voted for the creation of an Israeli state. Since then, Israel has had to fight three significant wars with its neighbours. These conflicts may have had different causes and raised particular issues, but what they all had in common is that they directly and indirectly called into question the very existence of Israel as a nation. Hamas’s barbaric invasion two years ago was no different. Its overriding terroristic objective was to strike a blow at the integrity of the Israeli nation state.

The war with Hamas is distinct in one important way. In its previous wars of defence, Israel has faced clearly defined nation-state enemies, such as the Egypt-led Arab-state coalition in the Six-Day War of 1967. This time, Israel did not face a state with a government capable of agreeing to surrender. As a result, it was always difficult to see what victory would look like. Even if Israel destroyed Hamas’s military capability, it could regroup elsewhere in the Middle East to plot its return. Hamas could abandon the whole of Gaza if it chose to, without having to concede defeat. The best that Israel could hope to achieve was to prevent Hamas from constituting a security threat in the short and medium term.

Wars, especially ones that are as consequential as this, have a habit of accelerating and reinforcing geopolitical and cultural trends that were already in play beforehand. The Israel-Hamas war has highlighted and reinforced Israel’s political and cultural isolation from Western societies. The speed with which Israel lost the propaganda war had little to do with what actually happened on the battlefields of Gaza. Almost from the moment Hamas launched the 7 October pogrom, Western cultural elites directed their hostility against Israel. Pro-Gaza initiatives, led by well-organised activists, swiftly mutated into a mass movement. This in turn encouraged officialdom to fall in line with the anti-Israel consensus.