RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.theeditors.com/p/five-early-lessons-from-israels-strikes-against-iran?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2110503&post_i

Last night’s attack by Israel on Iran is just the beginning of what the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Yechiel Leiter, said is a “long haul” that “will be measured in days, not in hours.”

Yet it is not too soon to draw some preliminary conclusions.

First, the show of strength positions Israel as the regional superpower. Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times June 10, 2025 of Israel in a situation where “the Jewish state is a pariah state — a source of shame, not of pride.” This operation puts Israel in the opposite position. The same way that the Hezbollah pager operation won Israel respect, the technical military feat of carrying out a long-range strike with surprise against high-value targets with minimal Israeli casualties will also translate into admiration.

This was visible even in President Trump’s comments, where he associated U.S technology with Israel’s breathtaking achievements: “the United States makes the best and most lethal military equipment anywhere in the World, BY FAR, and that Israel has a lot of it, with much more to come – And they know how to use it.”

As former Pentagon analyst Harold Rhode put it, “Now, in Muslim world, they are in total shock and awe at the power and will/determination of the Jewish State. What Israel is accomplishing in this war totally negates the Muslim narrative that the Jewish people (and the Christians) are at best ‘2nd class citizens’ and abandoned by G-d.”

Rhode went on, “In the Middle East and the Muslim world in general, two things are respected: the ability and the will to win. And that is exactly what Israel is demonstrating.”

Israeli author and analyst Hen Mazzig reports that Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey, and the UAE all “participated in intercepting Iranian missiles and drones attack against Israel.” Some of that reflects Sunni Muslims siding against Shiite Muslim Iran, but some of it reflects realpolitik respect for Israeli military, economic, and scientific power, which its neighbors want to benefit from. Medium- to long-term, as David Wurmser has explained in some of his pieces for us here, a diminished Iran may allow the rise of Turkey and Qatar as a kind of Sunni Muslim Brotherhood threat, so a defeated Iran would not mean a total regional “all clear” for Israel or American interests, but that is for another day.

Second, the Iranian people, with Israeli help, will have to decide if this is a moment for regime change. Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government have oscillated between calling for a “free Iran” and emphasizing the need to keep the current regime from obtaining nuclear weapons. Netanyahu has been doing some of both, and it may ultimately be up to Iran and Iranians which direction this goes. Last night, Netanyahu spoke to the Iranian people, saying, “The day of your liberation is near….we roll back a murderous tyranny.” By far the best outcome is a regime change in Iran rather than a setback to the nuclear program and ballistic missile program that stops short of a regime change. Israelis understand that from the example of Gaza, where, between 2007 and 2023, Israel repeatedly went in and “mowed the lawn” with strikes against Hamas. Each time, Hamas rebuilt until, with Iranian backing, it ultimately launched the October 7, 2023, attack.

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ultimate-deception-how-trump?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

They died in their own beds. Hossein Salami and Ali Shamkhani—Iran’s most senior military officers and the stewards of Iran’s nuclear weapons program—had spent years threatening Israel with destruction. They issued taunts, organized terrorist attacks, and orchestrated, since October 7, the encirclement of the Jewish state in a ring of fire of their terror proxies. And they knew—without the slightest illusion—that Israel had the capability and resolve to kill them.

This cohort saw the Israeli air force bury Hezbollah’s Hassan Nasrallah in his bunker, hundreds of meters beneath the streets of Beirut. They saw Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh vaporized in a presidential guesthouse—in Tehran, no less. Yet on Thursday night, they came home as usual and went to sleep—unguarded, unworried, carefree. Like insurance salesmen and bank tellers following their daily routines, it never occurred to them that they might not wake in the morning.

But they didn’t.

In 1967, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser made a similar mistake. He moved forces to Israel’s border, declared war in all but name, and left his MiG fighter jets parked in neat rows. Israeli prime minister Levi Eshkol hesitated publicly—then struck with speed, ferocity, and total surprise. By the time Nasser understood what had happened, his air force was already in ruins.

History just repeated itself. But why did these seasoned Iranian officers—veteran warriors, intelligence chiefs, regime survivors—lower their guard so completely? How did Israel achieve strategic surprise?

The simple answer: Benjamin Netanyahu read Donald Trump better than the Iranians.

Beginning around April 12, Trump gave Iran a 60-day deadline, which ended near June 11. The Israeli strike that killed Shamkhani came on June 13—just after the deadline expired. In that interval, Trump repeatedly warned Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons infrastructure or face violent consequences. In an early May interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, the American president offered Iran’s leaders two stark options for dealing with their nuclear facilities: “blow them up nicely”—meaning under international supervision—or “blow them up viciously.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-strikes-back/

On Thursday evening, the long-anticipated Israel strikes began, targeting the Islamic Republic of Iran’s nuclear sites and other key military facilities. The objective of Operation Strength of a Lion is to end the Iranian nuclear threat once and for all, as well as to destroy, as much as possible, the Islamic Republic’s ability to continue to wage war against the Jewish state via its proxies, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Houthis. The entire state of Israel was on emergency alert; the Israeli Home Front Command issued instructions to all Israeli citizens to comply with guidelines that would be issued as part of “preparations for a significant threat.”

https://pjmedia.com/catherinesalgado/2025/06/12/breaking-israel-bombs-iran-in-preemptive-strike-n4940748?utm_source=breakingemail&utm_medium=email
The Israel Defense Forces [IDF] confirmed that it has bombed Iran’s nuclear assets in a preemptive strike against the Islamic regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.

The Israeli Air Force launched its attack, dubbed “Operation Rising Lion,” late Thursday on Iran’s nuclear program. According to The Times of Israel. “Home Front Command spokesman says Israel could experience ‘heavy missile attack’ in coming hours, but no fire from Iran as yet and no need to go to bomb shelter.” 

Israel has declared a state of emergency, according to the Jerusalem Post, and has closed its airspace. 

It appears that an all-out war could be beginning between Iran and Israel rather than the unending wars by proxy in which Iran has been engaging. 

The Post reported, “Iran developed a plan with Hezbollah and Hamas and other proxies to destroy the State of Israel, potentially including attempts to attack via all borders, including Egypt and Jordan. This was the point of no return, according to the IDF.”

The Times of Israel stated:

The IDF confirms it has launched an aerial campaign against Iran’s nuclear program.

Dozens of targets across Iran related to the nuclear program and other military facilities are being struck by the Israeli Air Force, it says.

In a statement, the IDF said, “A short while ago, following the directive of the political echelon, the IDF launched a preemptive, precise, combined offensive based on high-quality intelligence to strike Iran’s nuclear program, and in response to the Iranian regime’s ongoing aggression against Israel.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21683/abbas-condemn-hamas

In all his speeches in Arabic since October 7, 2023, Abbas has very carefully avoided condemning the attack and the murder of a large number of Israelis and foreign nationals.

The official Palestinian news agency Wafa, which regularly reports on Abbas’s meetings, statements, and diplomatic events, also did not report about the letter, including Abbas’s alleged condemnation of the October 7 massacres against Israel.

If Abbas actually did condemn October 7 in his letter, he did so only to appease France and encourage it to recognize a Palestinian state. The Palestinian public knows absolutely nothing about the letter or Abbas’s supposed “condemnation.”

If France really wanted a condemnation of the October 7 atrocities, they should have asked Abbas to issue a statement in Arabic to his own people, and not send a letter (in French) to French President Emmanuel Macron. Such a statement should have been issued by Abbas’s office in Ramallah, not the Élysée Palace in Paris.

Macron and his government are…. are apparently trying to show the world that Abbas deserves a Palestinian state because he has purportedly “condemned” the Hamas-led massacres. Unfortunately, however, this is the same Abbas, however, who still pays salaries to families of convicted terrorists who murder Jews, and who consistently glorifies terrorists by calling them heroes and martyrs.

France and the European Union are actually planning to reward the Islamist jihadists who slaughtered hundreds of Jews by giving them a terrorist state funded and armed by Iran’s mullahs.

This conference, to recognize a genocidal terrorist state, is evidently Macron’s way of appeasing the Muslim jihadists who are now rioting on the streets of French cities. The same holds true for other European leaders: they are willing to sacrifice Jews to placate their Muslim communities.

France claimed this month that Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas had condemned the invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023 by Hamas, the Iran-backed terrorist group. During the attack, Hamas terrorists and other Palestinians murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, wounded thousands. They kidnapped another 251 people to the Gaza Strip, where 52 – dead and alive – remain in captivity.

Paris said in a statement that the purported condemnation was included in a letter Abbas sent to France on the eve of a United Nations conference in New York, scheduled for this month, to push for recognizing the establishment of a Palestinian state. The conference is to be co-chaired by France and Saudi Arabia.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/11/why-privileged-israelophobes-cant-handle-azealia-banks/

We live in an age of grotesque double standards and cloying fakery from celebs. The overwhelming majority seem to think that their job is not to entertain us, but to strike fashionable poses and shove hypocrisies down our throats.

And then there’s Azealia Banks. She is, as the kids say, a real one.

The 34-year-old rapper from Harlem has been controversial for quite some time, sounding off on social media on a variety of topics. But last week she outdid herself by bluntly standing up for Israel at a time when pretty much all of the luvvie class has gone the other way.

‘I’m a Zionist’, she posted last Wednesday. Unsurprisingly, this unleashed a torrent of largely hostile commentary. Many young, privileged Westerners now unthinkingly loathe Israel. For them, a black rapper’s refusal to toe the ‘progressive’ line just doesn’t make sense.

It’s been particularly difficult for woke, finger-snapping white girls. They’re normally only too eager to shout ‘yaaas queen!’ when a black woman speaks. But on this occasion, they’re struggling, as Banks has not stuck to the script.

It should be said that, at points, Banks’s Israel commentary has veered off into dodgier, identitarian territory. ‘BITCH DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FUCKING BLACK CHILDREN HAVE BEEN MURDERED AT THE HANDS OF ARABS?’, she tweeted last week. Then there was this: ‘I do not support the expansion of genocide of any more peoples of the world at the hands of Arab Muslims.’ Banks, it seems, was referring to the the centuries-long Arab slave trade, which involved the enslavement of millions of Africans right up until the 20th century.

No wonder Banks got progressives’ knickers in a twist. We know that blaming anyone other than the bad white / Jewish man for slavery and genocide is enough to trigger a mass-casualty event at Columbia University.

We live in an age where female celebrity takes mainly two forms: Meghan Markle’s grandiose self-delusion and manufactured virtue, or hectoring harpies with pronouns in their bios. But here comes Banks to shred her opponents openly, and with the most inventive use of swear words I have ever heard. And I grew up in Brooklyn!