Peloni: A thoughtful and perceptive conversation between Jordan Peterson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Very interesting conversation.
Downplaying the Lebanese terrorist group puts Israel in peril.
By David Daoud & Jonathan Schanzer | June 20, 2024
Let’s not mince words: The Middle East is on the precipice of the most destructive war of the region’s modern history.
This war did not begin on October 7. It actually began one day later, when Hezbollah, the most powerful proxy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, began attacking Israel. The Israelis, already on their back foot from the Hamas assault in the south of their country, struggled to gain equilibrium.
Peloni: Since the govt has chosen to partner with Hamas’ allies on American campuses rather than prosecuting them, it falls to the public, and specifically those whose rights were violated, to pursue those who are responsible for the civil rights violations which are clearly taking place, making this legal challenge against Hamas’ allies a very important case to watch.
A battle for justice.
by
There is no point in invoking morality, decency, or any suchlike stuff, in appealing to the pro-Palestinian groups that have been spewing their antisemitic venom on campuses from sea to shining sea to cease and desist. But a just-announced lawsuit against two of those groups could lead to a possible hit to their pocketbook, and that’s another matter. That will get their attention. That will fill them with anxiety. And so will another possible outcome of that lawsuit: both the groups, and those of their officers who are non-citizens, could also face expulsion from the country.
John Hannah Randi & Charles Wax Senior Fellow at JINSA’s Gemunder Center for Defense and Strategy
Lewis Libby, Former White House, Pentagon, and State Department National Security Official; Member, Vandenberg Advisory Board
Get ready for what may be the final round of President Biden’s ill-fated Gaza pier adventure. After rough seas scattered parts of the project across the Eastern Mediterranean in late May, forcing it to shut down, the pier was repaired and sent back into action.
But less than a week later, heavy swells again suspended operations. The latest report is that the entire effort may be scrapped months early.
The failure to solve the problem of Gaza’s notoriously choppy waters obscured a more fundamental challenge that has plagued all plans, Biden’s included, to surge humanitarian assistance to suffering Gazans: Hamas’s determination to ensure such efforts fail.
A “ceasefire deal” won’t end it
By Clifford D May, FDD June 19, 2024
The Nova Music Festival was billed as a celebration of “Friends, Love, and Infinite Freedom.” On Oct. 6, 2023, attendees from more than two dozen countries gathered in Israel’s Negev Desert just three miles from Hamas-ruled Gaza to sing, dance, and celebrate peace through the night.
At dawn the next day, Hamas terrorists used bulldozers and bombs to break through Israel’s high-tech fence that was thought to secure the border. Arriving at the festival grounds, they began slaughtering, raping, mutilating, and kidnapping concertgoers, exuberantly shouting: “Allahu Akbar!” – “God is greatest!”
On a visit to Israel earlier this month, I wandered through that killing field, now a makeshift memorial. Atop a small forest of poles are pictures of the more than 360 victims, most of them young, and, in these photos, smiling and full of life. Flowers and Israeli flags surround them.
Read more…
BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 2,284, June 20, 2024
by Lt. Col. (res.) Dr. Shaul Bartal
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The UN decision on May 10, 2024 to upgrade the status of the Palestinian state is not surprising. It is a direct continuation of previous UN decisions, most notably that of November 29, 2012, which granted the Palestinian Authority the status of non-member observer state. Since the 1970s, there has been an almost automatic majority for anti-Israel resolutions in the UN. This majority includes Muslim countries and countries that define themselves as part of the “Global South”, such as African countries and some South American countries, all of which are known for their invariably critical approach towards Israel. The UN’s recognition of the Palestinian Authority grants the Palestinians an independent state without a negotiated peace process or clearly defined and agreed borders between it and Israel. This is precisely the situation the PLO has been striving for since 1974. The establishment of a Palestinian state without peace with Israel is a sure recipe for instability and perpetual war in the Middle East, and those negative consequences are being deliberately fomented by the UN.
Read more…
‘We found that the food supply entering Gaza is more than sufficient to feed all 2.2 million Gazans according to what is considered a normal diet in North America”
By SETH J. FRANTZMAN JUNE 18, 2024 16:38
Trucks deliver humanitarian aid over a temporary pier on the Gaza coast, May 18, 2024(photo credit: US ARMY CENTRAL/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS)
Columbia University Professors Awi Federgruen and Ran Kivetz have analyzed available data and conducted research whose “findings demonstrate that sufficient amounts of food are being supplied into Gaza,” they noted in a summary of their findings presented to The Jerusalem Post.
They note that it is “a myth that Israel is responsible for famine in Gaza.” They argue that the International Criminal Court and UN have joined Hamas in blaming Israel for a “famine that never was, hoping to stop the war [in Gaza].”
EPOCH TIMES: Louisiana has become the first state to enact a law mandating that the Ten Commandments be prominently displayed at all public schools and colleges.
Under legislation that became law on June 18, Louisiana schools that receive state funds will have to display the Ten Commandments “in each building it uses and classroom in each school under its jurisdiction.”
The bill specifies that the text must be printed in a “large and easily readable font” and also requires a 200-word “context statement” explaining that the Ten Commandments were “a prominent part of American public education for almost three centuries.”
by Uzay Bulut, GATESTONE • June 19, 2024
Naama Levy, an Israeli woman abducted and taken to Gaza by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, when she was 19 years old. She is still being held hostage by Hamas. (Image source: Hamas)
Today, June 19, the United Nations will observe the annual International Day for the Elimination of Sexual Violence in Conflict. Yet, it took the UN five months to document and condemn Hamas’ sexual crimes on October 7.
October 7, it was widely believed that the real threat in the region was Iran and that Iran’s provision of weapons to Hezbollah was the main front that Israel should concentrate on. However, October 7 showed that Hamas could trigger a regional war by attacking Israel.
This means that it’s worth understanding now how Hamas continues to have its hand on the trigger. If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, for instance, there may be “quiet” in northern Israel. This means that Hamas’s actions may determine Hezbollah’s actions. Together, their actions are likely coordinated with Iran and also its other proxies such as the Houthis.
Peloni: The United Nations was a power construct, built by the victorious powers in WWII to maintain their political prowess in perpetuity. It was sold as being a liberal institution supporting liberal values, even as the great decisions agreed upon by the Great Powers led UNSC have the only binding authority. Its legitimacy was founded upon principles established during `the prosecution of the Nazi leaders for their war crimes, even as men such as Albert Speer, the largest holder of, and murderer of, slave laborers in history, was awarded a sentence of merely 20yrs for his extensive and significant crimes in those trials.
One of its established credos of the UN made crimes against humanity an international offence, yet, this august institution remained deafly silent as the Jews of Arabia were stripped of their holdings and forced to flee their homes in which they had lived going back a millennium in many cases.
Notably, the UN supported a blockade of the fledgling Jewish state while knowing that their defeat would mean the annihilation for every Jewish soul in Palestine. Shortly after being disappointed by Israel’s miraculous victory in 1948, the UN next created UNWRA as a subsidiary to weaponize the Pal refugees against Israel in increasing numbers, permanently into the future.
And on November 10, 1975, this corrupted and tyrannical organization betrayed its own previous stipulation to support the Zionist project in what had been Palestine by labeling Zionism as racism. Of course, at this time, the Jews had far broader support among the liberals and Democrats in that age, and we were quite well defended by the efforts of men such as Daniel Patrick Moynihan and the American people in rejecting out of hand the verdict of the vote of the General Assembly which exposed its own illegitimacy, dishonesty and depravity in passing the Anti-Zionism resolution.
Yet, in doing so, the UN established, for all to see, the grossly antisemitic and corrupt nature of that institution which holds nothing but contempt and derision for the Jewish people and their Jewish state. And in the years which have passed since then, these facts have only grown more apparent and more flagrant.
Peloni: Bibi has remained an obstacle in the path of the Iranian pivot which has been taking place in Washington going back to at least the reign of Obama. In fact, Bibi has survived the many attempts by Washington to regime change Israel by swapping the intractable Netanyahu for the more American compliant Gantz. It would appear, however that the ongoing battle between Washington and Jerusalem just stepped up a notch or two.
The goal is to abandon Israel and convince liberal American Jews to blame Israel.
Daniel Greenfield | June 19, 2024
Act 1. The stage is set. The key players are Barack Obama, who wants to manufacture a break with Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, looking to navigate a hostile administration, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Vice President Joe Biden.
During Biden’s visit to Israel, the Obama administration stages a scandal, claiming that it was deliberately insulted because the local Jerusalem municipality routed some housing that the administration belatedly opposed through an approvals process.
Shoshana Bryen | Jewish Policy Center |
President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 18, 2023. (Photo: Avi Ohayon/GPO)
According to Politico, in a piece largely overlooked, “The Biden administration is considering appointing a U.S. official to serve as the top civilian adviser to a mostly Palestinian force when the Israel-Hamas conflict ends, four U.S. officials said—a sign that the U.S. plans to be very involved in securing a post-war Gaza.”
The article added, “The civilian adviser would be based in the region and work closely with the commanding officer of the force, who would be either Palestinian or from an Arab nation, the people said.”
Peloni: Caroline discusses the circumstances and revelations related to Netanyahu’s declaration that it is inconceivable for America to withhold weapons from Israel as it is facing the forces arrayed against it.
By Ron Torossian
President Biden has repeatedly actively interfered in Israel’s democracy with public and private criticism, lectures, pressures and demands in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected Netanyahu government. America does not mask their dislike for the leaders our people have chosen to elect. American pressure helped convince Benny Gantz to leave the government, and even after this by nearly all accounts Israel’s government will remain intact with a 64-seat majority. There is a strong government in place and the Jewish State of Israel and the challenges it faces worldwide on a daily basis which must always be protected even if America doesn’t like who we elect.
President Biden has repeatedly pressured and lectured Israel, from demanding no invasion of Rafah and has lectured and warned Israel repeatedly – more times than he has Iran or Russia. Its noted and celebrated by Hamas and other enemies of the West.
Our Toronto District School Board is considering to promote an ‘anti-Palestinian’ school policy that would consider anyone opposing memes like ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’ as anti-Palestinian. In fact anyone opposing pro-Palestinians who wish to replace Jewish Israel with Muslim Palestine as anti-Palestinian hate speech. This is one more tactic to silence us.
Prof. Louis René Beres, BESA CENTER
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
For the most part, Israel’s no-choice Gaza War has been fought against sub-state terrorist adversary Hamas. But on April 13, 2024, Iran launched a first-ever direct missile and drone attack upon Israel. Though Tehran claimed the attack was permissible retaliation for Israel’s prior targeting of Iranian diplomats in Syria, the victims were in fact senior terrorist operators and the shielding consulate was being used perfidiously by Iran. Moreover, the Iranian attack was intentionally indiscriminate (displaying mens rea, or criminal intent) and thus a violation of humanitarian international law. The critical question for Israel is now this: What forms of lawful reaction should be launched against Iran, and when?
By | June 18, 2024
The Bidenites are trying to impose a deal on Israel that, if accepted, will prevent the IDF from finishing off the last four Hamas battalions in Rafah, and still leave thousands of Hamas fighters in northern Gaza who though their larger units have dissolved, have been trying to regroup. Should the Americans prevent Israel from achieving its goal of totally destroying Hamas as a military force, this would allow the terror group to claim that it has been “victorious” in the war because, despite everything that the IDF has thrown at it over eight months, it would still be standing, so that it might eventually repeat the attacks of October 7, as it has promised, “again and again.” Fortunately, Hamas now insists on major changes to the deal enunciated by Joe Biden; it demands both an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and a total withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza, something that neither Israel nor the Bidenites can possibly accept.
By Alexander G. Markovsky | June 18, 2024
Image: Ukrainian flag by ???? ???????. CC BY-SA 2.0.
In a speech delivered on August 1, 1991, in Kiev, President George H.W. Bush urged Ukraine to consider risks associated with independence. He delivered a clear warning to Ukraine, stating that “…. freedom is not the same as independence. Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”
The President’s warnings fell on deaf ears. Ukrainian leaders were not pursuing national interests. Instead, they were motivated by unfounded hostility toward Russia. The outcome proved catastrophic.
