? Israel Treasury Minister Smotrich: “We are now preparing a very fundamental change in how we conduct the war in Gaza. We are preparing hell for Hams.”
“I think there should have been no negotiations with Hams, but I can't understand it even more when we will come to the table… pic.twitter.com/e0RsdzxCpg
— Raylan Givens (@JewishWarrior13) January 8, 2025
Assad prevented Syria-based proxies from opening war front against Israel, general says
A worker tears down the pictures of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, former Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, Lebanon’s late Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at a gas station in Nubl, a Shi’ite village seized by rebels, in rural Aleppo, Syria, December 11, 2024. REUTERS/Umit Bektas
Following the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria and the subsequent expulsion of the large Iranian presence, the Ayatollah regime has publicly sought to downplay the loss, but internally, power factions quickly turned on each other to assign blame.
Peloni: It should surprise no one that not only did Hezbollah enter into the cease-fire deal in bad faith, but also that the LAF is acting in coordination to provide diplomatic cover for Hezbollah which is more or less their master – ie, they have no agency of their own and never will so long as the Mullahs remain in power in Tehran. In fact, the deal was pushed forward by the Washington elites in their continued campaign to preserve as much of Iran’s hegemony over the ME as possible, regardless of its has on the people involved or the region at large. In other words, this “deal” was never intended to be anything more than diplomatic kabuki theater from the outset.
By David Daoud & Ahmad Sharawi | January 8, 2025
(Shutterstock)
A false narrative has emerged claiming Lebanese authorities searched an Iranian plane last week at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport over suspicion the aircraft was smuggling funds to Hezbollah and seized the funds. Many saw this as the long-awaited action by the Lebanese state to restrain Hezbollah and prevent its regeneration after the group’s adventurism invited yet another destructive war upon the Levantine country. One Lebanese propagandist described the event as “historic, confirming Hezbollah’s end.” However, closer inspection reveals that, though this is the impression Beirut wanted to create out of the incident, it could not be farther from the truth.
Peloni: Israel should annex one-third to one-half of northern Gaza. This would impose a penalty on Gaza for their war, one which provide a deterrance against war with Israel by any of her neighbors. So, while ending Hamas is a necessary solution to this war, it should not be the limit of the solution.
The preference for freezing wars instead of ending them is one of the more dangerous trends in Western policymaking. What was once widely recognized as an innovation of Vladimir Putin’s Russia has somehow become Plan A among a panicky Western public that refuses to look more than a few hours into the future.
And the insistence on applying this policy to Israel’s war against Hamas recalls the adage “it was worse than a crime; it was a blunder.” In this case, pressuring Israel to freeze its conflict with Hamas in place is more than immoral; it is irrational.
Peloni: Devastating report of a Ukrainian unit trained and armed in France which was significantly cannibalized and dispersed to fill vacancies among other frontline units, backfilled with raw recruits and still sent to the front as being ready to serve. The disaster which ensued was predictable, embarrassing and revealing of the gross incompetence within Ukraine’s emphasis upon optics and corruption over victory. Very tragic.
Peloni
Channel 12 reports that on Tuesday night, Defense Minister Yisrael Katz called an urgent meeting with local authorities in Judea & Samaria warning that they were on the brink of war with full scale preparations ongoing to meet the challenge. At the meeting which included commander of the Central Command, Major General Avi Balut, and the coordinator of government operations in the territories, Major General Rasan Alian, Katz revealed that the original plans for October 7 included Hamas extending their invasion into Judea and Samaria.
The wave of Palestinian Arab violence that raged from December 1987 to the autumn of 1993 featured murderous bombings, shootings and stabbings.
Moshe Phillips | Jan 7, 2025
Palestinians take part in anti-Israel protests and preparation for a third intifada in the city of Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on Oct. 13, 2015. Photo by Abed Rahim Khatib/ Flash90.
What was this intifada that protesters on college campuses and in the streets of American cities keep screaming about?
The Mossad neither slumbers nor sleeps.
by
Ismail Haniyeh was until this past July the leader of the terror group Hamas. He lived in Doha, Qatar, protected by many layers of security provided by the rulers of Qatar, the Al-Thani family. But the Israelis managed to kill him while he was on a visit to Iran. The Mossad knew when he arrived in Tehran, and where — in what room of what guest house, that was provided with the highest possible security — he would be staying. One of its operatives managed to plant a bomb in his pillow that blew the arch-terrorist to smithereens. How the Mossad accomplished this remarkable feat can be found here: “Man on the inside? Details of Haniyeh assassination in the heart of Tehran revealed,” by Mathilda Heller, Jerusalem Post, December
By Janet Levy | Am Thinker |October 15, 2022
He who controls the weather controls the world.” These ominous words were spoken in 1962, at Southwest Texas State University, by then Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson. In that Cold War era speech, he was alluding to what could happen after the “development of a weather satellite that will permit man to determine the world cloud layer and ultimately control the weather.”
Later, as president, LBJ would authorize Operation Popeye, the spraying of silver and lead iodide into monsoon storm clouds over Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam to facilitate U.S. military operations by causing landslides and washing out river crossings. This was exposed by reporter Jack Anderson (in an 18 March 1971 column in Washington Post), Seymour Hersh, and the Pentagon Papers in the New York Times. America and the world woke up to the possibility that weather engineering could be part of invisible warfare, producing cloud cover, droughts, storms, or floods.
Peloni: The slowed pace of the war, the propaganda campaign in favor of Hamas, and the international campaigns to continue feeding and thereby funding Hamas have each played a role in stabilizing Hamas in Gaza rather than displacing it. This has also had the counter effect of reducing Gazan expectation of Hamas being ultimately displaced from power, thus intimidating any locals who might have an interest of working with Israel. Thus, we are caught in a stymied mess of achieving victories without ultimate victory, while any local resistance to Hamas is in turn quashed by the limits placed upon the war, and the butcher’s bill just gets longer and more painful to achieve. There can be no end to this war without defeating Hamas, but defeating Hamas requires that the war must begin in earnest, which is currently nowhere in sight.
Despite multiple IDF campaigns, Hamas continues to recruit fighters
by Seth J. Frantzman | Jan 7, 2025
As the new year begins, Israel will need to find a strategy for the war in Gaza. Several factors are at play in this decision. First, the war has gone on for more than fifteen months since it began with the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Although Israel has fought long conflicts in the past, such as the Second Intifada and the war in Lebanon that began in 1982 and lasted for eighteen years, the war in Gaza has been of greater intensity and complexity than those other wars. This is because the war in Gaza also set off Iranian-backed attacks on Israel from multiple fronts. It is also due to the fact Hamas still holds 100 hostages captive in Gaza.
The conflict in Gaza is challenging because there is evidence Hamas continues to recruit and also controls a large swath of the area. “We are not yet at the point of defeating Hamas entirely,” Brigadier General (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser told ILTV in December 2024. A separate report at The Jerusalem Post noted that Hamas is recruiting more members.
Janet Levy: Steve Bannon, who served as the CEO of Donald Trump‘s 2016 campaign as well as a White House adviser in his former administration, and Musk, who donated over a quarter billion dollars to help get the president-elect across the finish line in 2024, are two of the Republican leader’s top allies. However, Bannon has long been critical of Musk, and routinely criticized his business ties to China.
The podcaster has previously called Musk a “stone cold liar” and said “his paymasters” are from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In a recent interview with Semafor, Bannon said that he and Musk disagree on “just about everything.”
by Gordon G. Chang | MEF | Dec 30, 2024
Elon Musk is brilliant when it comes to providing what the world needs, but he is ignorant about Taiwan. So, respectfully, Mr. Musk: China is China, Taiwan is Taiwan, and Taiwan, although close to China, is not China. Pictured: Musk meets with China’s then Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing on January 9, 2019. (Photo by Mark Schiefelbein/AFP via Getty Images)
Syria’s al-Jolani is a Muslim Brotherhood follower. And the West has not internalized the chasm yawning in front of it.
Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger, “Second Thought: a US-Israel Initiative”
According to Sir John Jenkins of University of Cambridge, a world leading expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic terrorism, and contrary to the US State Department’s worldview: “… The key to confronting the Islamist challenge is to understand what the challenge is. There is a lot of nonsense talk about the Muslim Brotherhood’s approach to violence…. In fact, violence has been constitutive of the Brotherhood ideology since its origins….
“Central to the Brotherhood’s shared ideology are the ideas of Sayyid Qutb [who was executed in Egypt in 1966 for plotting to assassinate President Nasser], a seminal figure for all Islamist movements… the foundational text of Islamism, particularly violent Islamism…. There is an interview of Al Jazeera and Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra leader in Syria. [Al Jazeera’s interviewer] says to al-Jolani: ‘Everything you’re doing and saying is straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood and Qutb’s handbook…. And al-Jolani replies: ‘Yes; you’re right that Qutb is essential, and we teach him in our schools….’ You have to understand this in order to understand the constitutive ideological challenge of Islamism….
By Walter E. Block
I am now appointing myself as a speech writer for the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu. What shall he say in this, the first communication I am now writing for him? It is a message directed to Hamas, and reads as follows:
Be very careful with those hostages you are now holding. It will be in your best interest to release, immediately, all of those who are in danger of perishing: the elderly, the sick, the weak, those of very tender years (I especially have my eye on that five year old boy who is a captive of yours). Why? Because for every hostage who is not eventually returned to us, alive, we will execute 10 Palestinians. Oh, no, do not worry, we will not pick up random Gazan civilians and kill them (not that you worry, overmuch, about them; if you did, you would not be continually using them as shields, suicide bombers). That is not our way. That is your way, vis a vis helpless Israelis.
Peloni: A very important Q&A by Trump. Trump provides extensive discussions on Hostages held in Gaza, Canada, Greenland, January 6, and a great deal more.
By Janet Levy | Jan 7, 2024
Image by Grok.
On Sunday, December 22, President-elect Donald Trump reiterated his desire for America to take control of Greenland, saying it is an “absolute necessity.” The very next day, Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, said the autonomous island, part of the Danish kingdom, was not for sale. But Trump’s plan—like that of William H. Seward, who, as secretary of state, oversaw the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867—is not without tremendous geopolitical advantage to America.
Peloni: This is long overdue. Egypt must be significantly reduce its military presence in the Sanai. Egypt’s massive military force presents a significant threat to Israel’s security along its long border with Israel, and this is not something which Israel should have ignored, even before the revelations regarding Egypt’s role in facilitating Hamas’ preparations for its offensive war with Israel.
US slightly reduces military aid to Egypt due to human rights accusations
View of the Philadelphi Corridor between the southern Gaza Strip and Egypt, July 15, 2024. (Photo: Oren Cohen/Flash90)
Israel has contacted Egypt to demand answers after the IDF has recognized a significant increase of military activity in the Sinai peninsula, violating the peace agreement between the countries, Channel 14 reported.
