By Hugh Fitzgerald | Feb 3, 2025

Danny Danon is Israel’s ambassador to the UN. He’s not as suave as such eloquent predecessors as Abba Eban and Chaim Herzog. He’s pugnacious. But at times like this, Israel needs someone pugnacious to punch back at the kangaroo court of the UN General Assembly, with Israel permanently in the dock. Danon has just given an interview to a journalist on radio station Kol Barama’s program News of the Week. Danon may be a diplomat, but he has given voice most undiplomatically, and indispensably, to Israeli alarm about Egypt’s military buildup. After all, Egypt has no enemies that threaten it, so why does this poor country continue to take delivery of billions of dollars worth of American weapons and spend more billions of dollars in American economic aid to buy still more weapons? More on Danon’s alarm, that he hopes will be echoed by Israel’s supporters in Washington and lead to a cutback in both American weapons and money sent to Egypt, can be found here: “Israeli UN envoy warns of Egypt’s military buildup: ‘Why all the submarines and tanks?,’” Jerusalem Post, January 31, 2025:

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Peloni: The US has to end its long established policy of funding terrorists.  Funding to Lebanon is funding Hezbollah, which is a terror group.  It is unseemly, unreasonable and unacceptable that there exists a bipartisan push to support them, and yet they do.  It was the single point of policy failure in the region during the Trump first term that they continued to support Hezbollah thru their Lebanese aid package, and they actually increased the funding even after pausing to reflect on whether they should do so.  This remains an intollerable aspect of US foreign funding, and it must be stopped.  It undermines regional security, US allies and the safety of American citizens around the world, as Hezbollah poses a world wide threat specifically to America, even in America’s own backyard.

Worse than we even knew.

by Daniel Greenfield | Feb 3, 2025

Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Islamic terrorist group in control of Lebanon, used to boast that it was unbeatable because of its arsenal of over 100,000 missiles and rockets.

That arsenal, which was severely depleted by Israel before the Biden imposed ceasefire, relied heavily on a large collection of anti-tank missiles that could also be used against civilian targets, shelters and even, in the case of a Hamas attack in 2011 with a Russian Kornet, a school bus.

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Peloni:  I am in total agreement with Honigman.

By Gerald A. Honigman

I was so afraid this sort of thing would happen…

Munich 1938, all over again, with Israel being sold out for “peace for our time” so others could profit the same way by coercing Czechoslovakia to let itself become a sacrificial lamb to Hitler for Neville Chamberlain and Great Britain’s allies in WWII. Please check out the following…

https://search.app/XPofuN6ZDb2bVjwNA

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By Alex Grobman PhD

No one can realistically be expected to know everything about the Palestinian Arab/Israeli conflict, yet there are recurring canards that one should be prepared to address with some level of knowledge.

In order to delegitimize the Jewish state, Arabs often deny the Jewish historical connection to the land, especially the city of Jerusalem.

Denying the Historical Connection of Jews to the Land of Israel

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By Victor Sharpe | Feb 2, 2025

Over the centuries in Islam, there developed basic ideas which are critical to understanding the Middle East conflict today, but especially the Israel – Palestinian dispute. One is that all lands once conquered by the followers of Islam are to be subjected to Allah and that once a land is thus subjected, it must forever remain in Allah’s dominion. Thus Jihad (Holy War) becomes an urgent necessity in order to reclaim all lands which have been lost to Islam.

This, of course, is the dire situation facing modern reconstituted Israel today. But it is also the same condition for other sovereign territories freed from Islamic conquest in the past, including Spain, Portugal, Sicily, parts of France, Greece, the Balkans and southern Russia, which all fell at one time under the yoke of Islamic occupation and Sharia Law.

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Peloni:  Another very thoughtful and well informed commentary by Pandavar.  Highly recommended.

Seizing land is the penalty which will chastise the barbarians, creating deterrence and any possible lasting peace.  Failing to do this will leave the Pals with a strong insentive to do October 7 over and over again.  The result of this will not be costly for Israel alone, but for the entire Western world.

To understand them, it is useless to start from us. To understand them, we need to start from them. A Palestinian state, something that only the Jews ever wanted, the Palestinians can no longer dangle as a carrot before them.

ANJULI PANDAVAR | 03 Feb 2025

October 7, 7/7, 9/11. In context, the date in US format is enough to fix in the mind a particular act of Muslim holy mass murder, or, as one immigrant especially undeserving of US generosity famously said of the first of these religion-defining incidents of savagery, “some people did something,” a trivial incident not worth remembering, long-forgotten. “Forget about last week!” barked Mohamed Hijab a few days after his fellow Muslims “did something” on October 7. Why do we, that is, the West, “keep banging on” about workers dying in Qatar, demanded an exasperated Qatari spokesperson, “Death is part of life”. “Life is not precious,” said a triumphant Gazan mother whose baby’s life Jewish doctors in an Israeli hospital had just saved, to a Jewish journalist who had gone out of his way to arrange funding to save her baby. Her dream for her baby was that he should become a suicide bomber in Jerusalem.

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Peloni:  This is a very intense conversation as Mike and Gadi both come to yelling and pointing fingers at each other.  The conversation begins with a discussion of the insane seizure of power by the Supreme Court President to basically appoint himself, and later moves towards a discussion of Trump’s new policy on removing the Gazans from Gaza.  This gives way to a discussion of the future of Gaza without Trump’s relocation plan, which is where tempers peak and the shouting begins.  An entertaining and thoughtful discussion on these topics and more, including some interesting commentary on Presidents Andrew Jackson and Harry Truman.

Zamir has a long, decorated career in the IDF and is trusted by PM Netanyahu

All Israel News Staff | Published: February 2, 2025

/ IDF Spokesperson’s Unit Wikipedia Commons

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz announced the selection of Maj.-Gen. Eyal Zamir to replace Lt.-Gen Herzi Halevi when the latter steps down in March.

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) announced the decision pm Saturday evening, following the end of the Sabbath.

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Peloni:  I am so grateful to Sen. Cotton and his allies for bringing this subject to the fore and acting with a sense of historical prudence in striking the pejorative term of “West Bank” from American documents.  This term lies pregnant with the falsity that Judea and Samaria are not Jewish Lands, that Jews have no right to live there, and that they will one day be divested from Israel for yet another attempt to placate the Pals.  None of these implications are true, fair or defensible.  The reconstituted state of Israel has the only right to these lands which were stolen from the Jews in both ancient and modern times, while the indigenous rights to these lands continue to belong to the Jewish people alone.  Hence, it is a welcome sight to see the rise of the Republican legislative majority come to be coincident with the bi-partisan recognition of the truth that there is no West Bank, and never will be again.

By Hugh Fitzgerald | Feb 2, 2025

In 135 A.D., following the suppression of the revolt by the Maccabees, the Roman overlords of what was then called Judaea decided to change its name to “Syria Palaestina” — “Syria of the Philistines” — which was then shortened to “Palestine.” The Romans wanted to efface, through a change of toponym, the connection of the Jews to the land that was made obvious in the place name “Judaea.” They also attempted to change the name “Jerusalem” to “Aelia Capitolina” but, unlike “Palestine,” that place name never caught on.

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Peloni: Excellent article!

“GOD HELP US ALL”

By Joan Swirsky | February 2, 2025

For thousands of years, going back to the Bible, women have wept and grieved and pleaded to God over their miscarriages. Indeed, it took all these millennia for modern-day pharmaceutical companies to develop solutions to this ongoing nightmare.

In the 1940s, they were happy to offer doctors the ability to prescribe diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent miscarriage. “You can tell them you would give it to your wife,” the marketing mavens from Big Pharma suggested to physicians.

And with good reason. This “miracle drug” worked! Women who had experienced no trouble conceiving but were plagued by constant miscarriages were now able to carry their babies to term and deliver quite “perfect” bundles of joy!

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Peloni:  This is not meant to distract from, nor to disagree with, Kelleigh Nelson’s important recent report which we published on the topic of Tulsi Gabbard’s possible nomination as DNI.  It has occurred to me, however, that the issue and application of a well informed judgement should be a key indicator in awarding someone the position of being named to such a sensitive and influential position as the DNI, thru which Gabbard will have an awesome responsibility of making the right judgements as indicated by the sensitive intelligence which she will have to assess.  So her ability to use Good Judgement in matters related to intelligence would appear to be quite relevant to the most basic qualification of being considered for the role of which Gabbard is being considered at this time.

Peloni

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If confirmed to the position of the DNI, Tulsi Gabbard will have control of upgrading or downgrading the intelligence briefs which are handed to the president, and on which all policy decisions are gauged.  She will also have the ability to shape the intelligence gathered by focusing or quashing investigations into foreign influence peddling as might be judged by her to be relevant.

So let us look at a few things related to this fact.

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News of Israel’s Achievements and Heartwarming Stories from the Jewish State.

Michael Ordan | VGNI 

In the 2nd Feb 25 edition of Israel’s good news, the highlights include:

l  An Israeli university offers full scholarships to freed Gaza hostages.

l  An Israeli life-support system is being deployed to US hospitals.

l  The Head of Hadassah hospital saved a passenger on an El Al flight.

l  Israeli organizations saved lives in Las Angeles and Georgia.

l  See how cows are milked on an autonomous Israeli dairy farm.

l  Israeli tech will protect India and its trains.

l  You can behave like an animal at a new Israeli zoo.

l  Buy a home in Israel – while you can.  Read more…

Barbara Diamond | Jan 31, 2025

Archives New Zealand from New Zealand, CC BY-SA 2.0 

Most of us feel that we understand the spy-game intimately. We have been invited into its glamour, drama, twists and turns through the creative minds of Ken Follet, Tom Clancey, John le Carre and the Grand-daddy of them all…. Ian Fleming. There are hundreds of authors who entice us into the world of intrigue. Hollywood has made billions of dollars quenching our thirst for the excitement and the glamour.  But it is not quite like that. Certainly not here in the Middle East.

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Peloni:  It should be recalled, as explained by Mike Benz, USAID is nothing more than local and regional capacity building across the whole world of assets that can be used by either the Pentagon, the State Dept or the CIA for their own activities.  Hence, while it is good to see that the USAID program is placed under the watchful auspices of the US State Dept, it should be recalled that the ranks of the US State Dept oversaw partial funding of some of the alarming anti-Bibi protests on the streets of Jerusalem during the attempt to pursue Judicial Reform in Israel in early 2023.  So, as Greenfield describes it, rolling the USAID under the control of the State Dept is only a good first step, and the second and third steps will require significant reform from within the US State Dept, something which is not entirely likely under Marco Rubio – recall the section relating to Rubio in Part II of Nelson’s important review of  Trump’s nominees:

MR. PRESIDENT, WHO ON EARTH IS VETTING YOUR MAGA APPOINTEES? PART TWO

It’s time to get our foreign aid under control.

by Daniel Greenfield | Feb 2, 2025

United States Agency for International Development, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

USAID has been a major problem for a long time, but, under the Biden administration, it turned into a rogue agency that actively resisted the efforts of the Afghan watchdog to get information about its activities and that has directed billions of aid to terror states in ways that are completely unaccountable by moving the money through the UN and third party NGOs while making it impossible to track what they were doing with it.

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