Peloni:  Another highly granular review, this time on the recent events in Ukraine.

Seth J. Frantzman | FDD | Dec 23, 2024

Latest Developments

• Netanyahu Promises Strong Response Against Houthis: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel will strike hard against the Houthi rebels in Yemen after the Iran-backed terrorist group launched multiple ballistic missiles and drones at Israel during the previous week. “Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arm of Iran’s axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis,” Netanyahu said on December 22, alluding to Israel’s dismantling of Iranian proxies Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Hezbollah in Lebanon since Hamas’s mass atrocities on Israel on October 7, 2023.  

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Barbara Diamond | Dec 4, 2024

(Shutterstock)

Yossi Baum tweeted the following:

What is the Gun Threatening the Judges in the “Thousands Cases”?

The judges are attempting to apply significant physical pressure on the defense to expedite Netanyahu’s testimony. Before this, the judges—through an act that stirred the nation—refused to reduce the frequency of his testimony, despite the war. As someone closely following the judges, this seemed strange.

Here’s the likely explanation:

• According to estimates, before Netanyahu’s testimony, the trial was expected to continue until the end of 2027 or even 2028 (see Grintzayg’s article on Channel 7).
• After progressing through part of Netanyahu’s testimony, the calculation has inflated. From an estimate of about 80 trial days to about 120 trial days. That’s an additional 16 weeks, approximately four months. Meaning: the reasonable estimate now is that the case won’t conclude before April-May 2028.

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Sundance | Dec 25,  2024

The surveillance state is an outcropping of the Fourth Branch of Government, which is, essentially, the unelected intelligence community in control of our government.

The surveillance state comes from the creation of the Dept of Homeland Security (DHS) which is an entirely inward-looking agency. Prior to the Patriot Act, the surveillance sweep searching for terror threats focused outward, looking outside the U.S borders. The Patriot Act took the surveillance sweep a full 360 degrees and looked inside the Homeland for terror threats. Hence, DHS was created.

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As Iran begins the countdown toward the collapse of the Ayatollah regime, Turkey is heading in the opposite direction, gradually being overtaken by Islamism. Years ago, Bernard Lewis, the preeminent Middle East scholar of our time, remarked that the day would come when ‘Iran will become Turkey, and Turkey will become Iran.’

A market in Istanbul, Photo: Avi Cohen

Over recent decades, Iran has spared no effort in advancing its flagship regional project: establishing dominance in the Fertile Crescent, a stretch spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Iran’s proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, have sought to encircle Israel in a ring of fire and suffocation as the first step toward its destruction.

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Peloni:  If the Druze are able to take their lands and voluntarily cede them to the Jewish State, how might we prevent such a voluntary movement of lands at the will of an ethnic minority when it is next applied to the Pals amid their claims of genocide in Gaza or in J&S?  I would be curious to read the comments of others on this point.

As jihadist forces march through the region, minority communities know that aligning with Israel is their only chance for survival. Opinion.

Avi Abelow | Dec 25, 2024

IDF soldier with Druze flag   iStock

A stunning and historic development has emerged in southern Syria: Six Druze villages have formally requested to be included as part of the Jewish State of Israel. Let that sink in. At a time when Israel faces demonization on the world stage and lies about “apartheid” and “oppression” dominate global headlines, minorities in the Middle East are making their voices heard.

Why would these Druze communities—non-Jewish minorities—want to join Israel?

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By Moshe Phillips – national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel (www.AFSI.org), a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education organization

Earlier this month many news outlets reported that in the aftermath of the fall of Assad and the Ba’athist party Israel was searching for the remains of the Mossad agent Eli Cohen who was executed in Syria nearly 60 years ago.

The story of Eli Cohen’s life should be recalled today even if he had never gone undercover in Syria.

When Eli Cohen was publicly executed by the government of Syria on May 18, 1965, it was clear to Israelis and Syrians that he had succeeded in becoming a friend of the president of Syria, and had penetrated the innermost Syrian government circles. What was not yet known, however, was that he had gathered the intelligence that would later save the State of Israel from being destroyed.

More than any other one man, Eli Cohen, an Egyptian-born Jew, earned the Mossad its reputation as one of the best intelligence services in the world, and paved the way for Israel to win on the Golan front in the Six-Day War in June 1967.

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By Daniel Greenfield | Dec 25, 2024

Miracles can still happen here.

On this Chanukah, menorahs will be lit not only in the land of Israel, from Jerusalem to Gaza, but in Lebanon and on the heights of Mt. Hermon overlooking Syria. Vacationing families will visit the waterfalls of the Hermon Stream in the Golan Heights from which the Syrian Greek armies had descended thousands of years ago to conquer Israel leading to the events of. Chanukah.

The lights of the menorahs over darkness are a reminder that miracles can still happen here.

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Peloni:  In the test of wills with its enemies, there can be but one master of the seas, and that must inevitably be the American Navy.  As such, the imposition of the Panama govt to wage a economic war against the US should be seen in the light in which it was intended, as a sign of deference to China over the US, and with the return of Trump to office, it should be understood that this early warning shot towards Panama is in fact intended to represent the Trump’s refusal to let the American economy suffer such abuses from friend or foe.

Robert Spencer | December 23, 2024

AP Photo/Alex Brandon

First, President-elect Donald Trump tweaked Canada’s far-left Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about becoming governor of the 51st state of the United States of America. Then he said that the Panama Canal should once again come under American control. Make that the 52nd state. And now, are you ready for a 53rd state? On Sunday, Trump renewed a call he made during his first term: that the United States should buy Greenland from Denmark. Could the man possibly be serious?

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Peloni:  The barbarians are inside the wire, and their savagery is already on full display with this being just the most recent assault on civilized norms, and it will clearly not the last of such assaults to come.

YouTube screen grab. ABC 7  NYC

Jason Hopkins  | Daily Caller | December 23, 2024

The man accused of burning a sleeping subway passenger to death is an illegal migrant who was previously deported from the United States, federal immigration authorities have confirmed.

The New York Police Department has detained an illegal Guatemalan migrant who they suspect is responsible for burning a woman alive Sunday morning at a New York City subway station. Investigators believe the suspect walked up to the sleeping passenger, who so far has remained unidentified, and used a lighter to set her clothing on fire, and then is believed to have stayed on scene to watch the victim succumb to her injuries.

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Peloni:  This is an important discussion of the many legal victories which have been won in recent years while challenging antisemitism in US courts, not the least of which led to the US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Peloni:  The only way to end the sway of Iranian influence and the flow of Iranian arms to the Houthis will be to end the regime in Tehran.

By Hugh Fitzgerald | Dec 25, 2024

Everyone now knows that Iran is rushing pell-mell to enrich enough uranium to the 60% level of purity, just one step below weapons-grade, to be able to produce several nuclear weapons.. Rafael Grossi, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently confirmed it. The Americans know that Iran, having seen its Axis of Resistance crumble into dust, with Hamas near total collapse, Hezbollah devastated and suing for a ceasefire with Israel, and Iran’s ally Bashar Assad, on whose regime Tehran spent $50 billion, fleeing to Moscow while Syria itself, under new management, is determined to produce nuclear weapons as its only certain defense against either the Little Satan, Iran, or the Great Satan, the United States. Syria now has gone overnight from ally to implacable enemy of Iran. And Iran itself is more susceptible to an attack by Israel than it has ever been, now that the IAF’s airstrikes on October 26 managed to destroy nearly all of Iran’s missile defenses, including the four S-300 anti-missile systems that protected Tehran. More on why Israel’s generals are now counseling an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities during this unprecedented window of opportunity can be found here: “Israel’s military leadership ‘recommends attacking Iran’ — TV report,” Times of Israel, December 22, 2024:

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His goal is to sabotage Trump’s ability to see his policy agenda implemented.

By: Thomas Gallatin | The Patriot Post | December 16, 2024

In the dying days of Joe Biden’s presidency, his administration has made it its mission to do everything possible to frustrate Donald Trump’s ability to implement his policy agenda when he arrives in the Oval Office next month.

 Unlike in 2016, when Barack Obama’s outgoing administration brazenly labeled Trump as illegitimate and promised resistance to his incoming administration, there is almost a resigned, defeated calm in Washington after Trump’s resounding victory in November. Democrats who threw everything they could at Trump and Republicans, smearing them as threats to democracy, have found that a majority of Americans have stopped listening and have rejected their foolishness.

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Amjad Taha tweeted the following:

Months ago, I highlighted in this video how the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are following the West’s playbook: donning suits, ties, and clean-shaven looks to appear as ‘acceptable’ Islamists. Notably, al-Jolani has recently adopted this approach, presenting… pic.twitter.com/AgqLeAMVdi

— Amjad Taha ???? ?? (@amjadt25) December 22, 2024

Months ago, I highlighted in this video how the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists are following the West’s playbook: donning suits, ties, and clean-shaven looks to appear as ‘acceptable’ Islamists. Notably, al-Jolani has recently adopted this approach, presenting himself in a suit and tie to signal a shift towards a more moderate image.

Read more…