By Edward Spalton, Freenations  June 27, 2024

Back in 1999 few people seemed to notice what had happened to NATO. Under the leadership of President Clinton and Tony Blair, it converted itself from a very successful defensive alliance into an organisation with the self-awarded power of pro active interventions around the world on behalf of an undefined “international community”.

Its first target was Serbia which had been in the sights of the USA since the early Nineties.

It was with a feeling of doom-laden deja-vu that I recently heard on the news that Croatian and Albanian football fans at the Euro competition had been chanting “Kill the Serbs!” There is an old Austrian saying “Im Balkan stirbt niemand” – Nobody dies in the Balkans (not of natural causes, that is). In 1999 people certainly were dying in Kosovo in fighting between the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and Yugoslav federal forces. Statistics from before the war suggested that an Albanian in Kosovo was about as likely to meet a violent death as an ordinary inhabitant of Washington DC at the same period whereas a Serb was several times more likely to come to an untimely end.
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By J. Robert Smith, AM THINKER

This past weekend, the Ukrainians fired missiles at Russia. It’s not the first time. U.S. fingerprints are all over this attack, too. It was yet another provocation to war with Russia. A war with Russia wouldn’t be a limited affair, despite the conceits emanating from Washington. And it wouldn’t revolve around Ukraine’s future. It would center on the fate of the American empire.

Reported CNN:

The Russian Ministry of Defense said in a post on Telegram that Ukraine carried out the attack using “US-supplied ATACMS operational-tactical missiles equipped with cluster warheads.”

According to Reuters, the attack “killed at least four people and injured 151.” The missiles weren’t just U.S. supplied. Russia charged that the “U.S. military had aimed them and provided data.” The technology used would have included a U.S. Global Hawk surveillance drone. An unconfirmed report from Pravda via Newsweek is that Russia just downed a Global Hawk over the Black Sea. The U.S. contests the claim.
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As Western pressure mounts on nations like Israel and Armenia to recalibrate ties with Moscow amidst Ukraine tensions, geopolitical alliances are swiftly evolving.

By MORDECHAI KEDAR JUNE 27, 2024 00:40

UKRAINE’S PRESIDENT Volodymyr Zelensky attends the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, in Switzerland, earlier this month. Russia was absent from the summit, but Israel was present and voted with the West, the writer notes. (photo credit: Michael Buholzer/Reuters)

Last February, the prominent American think tank Brookings Institute stated that “NATO allies must manifest their support for Ukraine through bilateral security arrangements.” Since the publication of that report, the United States and other Western countries have exerted pressure on several nations to be more supportive of the Ukraine.

It has become evident that this Western pressure on countries to abandon their ties with Moscow is beginning to bear fruit.

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The entire idea is just a ploy to impose a Palestinian state on the Israelis.

MOSHE PHILLIPS

Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas speaks during a meeting in Ramallah, July 25, 2019. Credit: Flash90.

Peloni:  This was an excellent discussion.

Michael Doran of HDD hosts Daniel Schwammenthal, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Transatlantic Institute; Ilan Berman, the vice president of the American Foreign Policy Council; Professor Paul Caresse of Arizona State University; and Senior Fellow Liel Leibovitz in a thoughtful discussion on the recently coordinated antisemitc assaults on Jews carried across the Western world.

T. Belman. Blinken is trying to leverage the Gaza War into the creation of a Palestinian State in Gaza and much of the West Bank and probably all of it.  This is far from a done deal as the article reports and Netanyahu is adamantly against it.

Blinken informs counterparts that Cairo and Abu Dhabi are conditionally on board, as US seeks to recruit other allies before rolling out plans for ‘day-after’ management of Strip

By JACOB MAGID 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, front left, attends a meeting with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud, Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Secretary General of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Hussein al-Sheikh, during a day of meetings about the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas, in Amman, Jordan, Saturday, Nov. 4, 2023. (Jonathan Ernst/Pool photo via AP)

WASHINGTON — Egypt and the United Arab Emirates are prepared to participate in a postwar Gaza security force, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken informed counterparts during his recent visit to the region, three officials familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel on Tuesday.

The US has been looking to recruit Arab allies for the initiative, as it readies to roll out its vision for the postwar management of Gaza, even though a ceasefire between Israel and the Hamas terror group remains elusive.

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Peloni:  This was a deeply concerning event.  The threat being raised against the Jews of America could not be more clear.

They brought bear spray, weapons and masks.

Daniel Greenfield | June 26, 2024

After the hate and violence outside Congregation Adas Torah, a synagogue in the Pico Robertson Jewish community of Los Angeles went viral and became a national news story, the perpetrators and their political allies, including those in the media, scrambled to justify it.

The rationalization put forward are that…

1. The terror supporters were really the victims of Jewish violence

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T. Belman.  “The (US) officials said, the terrorists ‘need to understand that Washington will help Israel defend itself’ against any counter-aggression”. Defend, not attack. Remember that the US has two battled formations in the area to enable them to do so.

Mark failed to deal with the possible escalation into a regional war.

By Mark Dubowitz, FDD  Chief Executive

Less than 72 hours before the first debate of the US presidential election, Joe Biden’s White House is bumbling.

On Sunday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Q. Brown made the extraordinary claim that America will not protect Israel in a war with Lebanon’s Hezbollah terrorists.

‘The U.S. won’t likely be able to help Israel defend itself against a broader Hezbollah war as well as it helped Israel fight off an Iranian barrage of missiles and drones,’ Brown told reporters.

By Monday, U.S. officials were backtracking, reportedly issuing a rare warning through intermediaries to the Iranian-backed terror group.

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June 26, 2024 | Israel at War Situation Report

By Jonathan Schanzer, FDD

Today’s Issue: | IAF Eliminates Hamas Weapons Smuggler Wissam Abu Ishaq in Southern Gaza | IAF Kills ‘Significant’ PIJ Operative in Gaza City Airstrike | IDF Announces Arrest of Tulkarem Resident for Shooting Attacks Against Bat Hefer | Urban Warfare Expert John Spencer: ‘Israel is Winning’ | Latest FDD Analysis

IAF Eliminates Hamas Weapons Smuggler Wissam Abu Ishaq in Southern Gaza: The IDF on Wednesday announced that the Israeli Air Force, with intelligence from Aman military intelligence, carried out a targeted strike yesterday against Wissam Abu Ishaq in the southern Gaza Strip. According to the IDF, Ishaq was involved in weapons smuggling for Hamas and in recent years, conducted smuggling through the Rafah crossing and through tunnels. The IDF also reported Wednesday that overnight, IAF aircraft, directed by the Southern Command, carried out a strike in Rafah against a launch site where rockets ready for launch were being stored. In addition, IAF drones and fighter jets struck dozens of terror targets in Gaza over the past day, including terrorist squads, military buildings, and tunnel shafts.

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— Rabbi Jacob Y. Herzog ??????? ????? ??????? ?????? (@RabbiHerzog) June 27, 2024

Peloni:  An important series of discussion.

Peloni:  As if this story were not outrageous enough already.

At Columbia, the antisemitic plot thickens.

Hugh Fitzgerald | June 26, 2024

“Three Columbia Deans Placed on Leave Pending Investigation,” by Eliana Johnson, Washington Free Beacon, June 20, 2024:

Three of the Columbia University deans caught exchanging dismissive text messages during a May 31 panel on anti-Semitism have been placed on leave as the university investigates the incident, a spokesman for the school said Thursday.

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Peloni: Today’s decision by SCOTUS to overturn the stay placed on the Murthy v. Biden case does NOT overturn the actual Murthy v. Biden case, as the injunction associated with the case was all that SCOTUS was hearing.  Also, the case which was brought to SCOTUS was criticized at the time it was brought as being poorly argued and badly presented, inviting today’s decision.  It is none the less regretful that the injunction was not upheld, and the use of standing to once again dodge an important ruling does little to raise hopes for SCOTUS, but the primary case, Murthy v. Biden continues as DC Draino explains below, and will likely come to be ultimately assessed by SCOTUS at a later date.  Hopefully when that eventuality does come to be, the presentation will be better prepared and better argued than during the case on the injunction.

There is a lot of doom and gloom about the 6-3 SCOTUS decision in Murthy v. Biden and how it impacts the 1st Amendment

I would like to quell some of those concerns

This decision reversed the injunction based on *standing*

SCOTUS said that without the plaintiffs having…

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) June 26, 2024

Reading ‘American Pastoral’ in the wake of October 7

By Irina Velitskaya, COMMENTARY

AP Photo/Richard Drew, file

The historical conundrum of the Jewish people has no clear parallel in the long chronicle of civilizations that have come and gone, and those that have survived and prevailed, in humankind’s vast history. Consider other ancient, preexisting non-Islamic tribes in the Middle East. The Samaritans today number fewer than 1,000 living individuals. The Copts of Egypt are under severe pressure. The Yazidi, subject to centuries of forced conversions to Islam and more recently massacred and sold into sexual slavery by ISIS, continue to hold on in profoundly diminished form, predominantly in Iraq. Other tribal or ethnic groups, including the Philistines, Amorites, Edomites, Lydians, Moabites, and Hittites, are long extinct. As Carl Sagan once put it in a broader context, “Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.”

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