The Biden administration’s advertising of its success in tamping down conflict across the region is both premature and unwarranted.

By David Adesnik, FDD

In five days of fighting that ended with a Saturday night ceasefire, terrorists in Gaza fired more than a thousand rockets into Israel—1,468 rockets to be precise. Thanks to bomb shelters and the Iron Dome missile defense system, the barrage only claimed the lives of two victims inside Israel, one of them a Palestinian construction worker from Gaza. Four Palestinians also died when rockets fell short of the border, hitting homes in Gaza, according to Israel’s military.

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America’s Middle East ‘Withdrawal’ Breathes Its Last Breath  June 24, 2022
What Does U.S. “Withdrawal” From the Middle East Mean? Dec 10, 2021

The short answer is that it hasn’t, and Washington must do more to correct this misconception

By Paul Sullivan, THE NATIONAL NEWS ,  December 29, 2022,

One of the more enduring narratives over the past few years has been America’s supposed withdrawal from the Middle East and North Africa. It’s a recurring theme in media reports and analyses, and often seeps into debates and discussions. But there appears to be plenty of daylight between perception and reality. And the fact of the matter is, the US’s business, academic, cultural, military and diplomatic partners in the region understand all too well that America has stayed. They also know how important it is for America to remain.

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By Dr. Joseph Mercola

STORY AT-A-GLANCE

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by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE  •  May 20, 2023

• At present, the ruling mullahs of Iran reportedly have enough enriched uranium to produce five nuclear bombs.
• General Hossein Salami, the chief of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has made the Iranian regime’s plans vehemently clear: “Our strategy is to erase Israel from the global political map,” he stated on Iran’s state-controlled Channel 2 TV in 2019. Khamenei has also published a 416-page guidebook, titled Palestine about destroying Israel — which Iran’s former “moderate” President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, basically referred to as a one-bomb country.

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Dershowitz argues that the named bad actors were well intentioned. He also said that he also thinks, like them, Trump was a danger to national security.  He also said that Hillary was a good friend and that he contributed to her campaign. He said the same about Obama.  He voted for him twice.

By Malcolm Dash  Mar 14, 2022

No state should invade another country. It’s morally and ethically unjustifiable. But when descending from mount Olympus, the real world of national interests obscures all virtuous modalities. From time immemorial, powerful nation-states have asserted their hegemony over other states; through military, economic, and territorial expansion.

From the age of the Czars, Russia has exercised its influence over the Baltic nations. However, regarding Ukraine, Russia considers this country and its people as one with Russia. And Ukraine serves as a buffer state for Russia; let’s not overlook that the West invaded Russia many times, the Swedes in the 1700s, Napoleon in the 1800s, the French and British during the 1917 Russian revolution, and the third Reich in WWII. It imprinted these invasions into the collective history of generations of Russians.
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T. Belman.  In my opinion, the US isn’t so much interested in helping Israel normalize with Saudi Arabia as they are in normalizing with SA themselves. They don’t want to cede the Middle East to China and they don’t want to cede Israel and SA to China. They are not going to focus their efforts elsewhere as they have been suggesting. They are going to hold on to the ME, SA and Israel for dear life.

Is Israel dependent on the US or is the US dependent on Israel?

Report: Biden pushing for Israel-Saudi deal by end of the year 

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan in Saudi Arabia to mediate.

 by Joseph Puder, FPM      19.5.23

It seems now that the Biden administration has recognized, perhaps belatedly, that the Iran-Saudi rapprochement has the potential of not only removing the US as an influencer in the Middle East region, but the Chinese might somehow replace the US dollar with the Chinese Yuan as the international currency. Already, with mega deals between China and Saudi Arabia, as well as Chinese huge deals with Iran, and potentially more deals with the remaining Arab Gulf states, US influence and prestige is bound to be eviscerated.

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by Raymond Ibrahim, GATESTONE  •  May 19, 2023

• [S]ince the Islamic uprising began in 2009, 52,250 Christians “have been butchered or hacked to death” in Nigeria. – Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
• In just the first 100 days of this year [Jan.1-April 10], “no fewer than 1,041 defenseless Christians were hacked to death by Nigeria’s Jihadists …” — Report, intersociety-ng.org, April 10, 2023
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T. Belman. It is significant that the NYT published this letter.  It supports the narrative I have been publishing.

Signers say the conflict will be ‘our undoing’ if we don’t ‘dedicate ourselves to forging a diplomatic settlement that stops the killing.’

by Blaise Malley, RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT   17.5.23

An open letter calling for a swift diplomatic end to the war in Ukraine was published on Tuesday in the New York Times. The letter’s 14 signatories consisted mostly of former U.S. military officers and other national security officials, including Jack Matlock, Washington’s former ambassador to the Soviet Union; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and former diplomat; Matthew Hoh, a former Marine Corps officer and State Department official; and Ret. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff.  
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Galina:

Scott Ritter

In Russia, he is presented as a retired Marine Corps intelligence officer and former US Rapid Deployment Force analyst.

His military career was “put an end” after he was suspected of working for foreign intelligence. Scott married Marina Khotiashvili, a former Soviet translator who was linked to the KGB by US intelligence agencies. Ritter was fired and forced to testify before the US Senate. After those events, he immediately became an insane critic of the international policy of the United States and NATO, and later a sympathizer of the Kremlin.
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by Avi Abelow, ISRAEL UNWIRED     January 5, 2023

17,000 Scientists and Physicians warn that the COVID vaccine, which they identify as an experimental gene therapy injection must end.

These doctors are concerned because the believe the data now clearly shows that the shots cause far more harm than good, with those who get vaccinated actually being more at risk of disease and death than the unvaccinated. They are concerned because they see a huge uptick in damage to the heart, brain, reproduction, lungs, and immune system directly linked to the vaccine.

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By Mordechai Ben Menachem

I disagree with Walter Russell Mead’s arguments in

The Citizens of this Extraordinary State have every Reason to look Forward with Hope

“Disregarding Truman’s pleas and warnings from Western military leaders that they faced certain defeat, the Jews of Palestine voted for independence. They went on to win the War of Independence, thanks largely to an influx of Soviet-bloc weapons from Czechoslovakia, but 75 years later questions about its future still swirl around the Jewish state.”

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By: Z. Harel, MEMRI   18.5.23

Introduction

The Kingdom of Jordan has lately increased the level of its involvement in the Palestinian Authority (PA). There seem to be two main reasons for this. One is the security escalation that has occurred in the absence of any progress towards a resolution to the Palestinian problem, and the other is Jordan’s fear that chaos may erupt in the West Bank after the departure of 87-year-old PA President Mahmoud ‘Abbas, especially given the poor performance of the PA and the absence of a clear mechanism for the transfer of power, as well as the deep intra-Palestinian schism.

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Zelensky says Ukraine shot down 16 of the 18 missiles
Macgregor said the opposite is true. The 18 missiles were very successful.

by Alisha Rodriguez, REPUBLIC BRIEF    May 17, 2023

A project run by The Center for Tech and Civic Life, a nonprofit organization that controvertibly utilized Mark Zuckerberg’s money to increase Democratic voter turnout in the 2020 election, is buying space for regional election offices to store voting equipment and ballots.

The Alliance for Election Excellence (AEE), led by Tiana Epps-Johnson and the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), started with almost $100 million in April 2022 and is responsible for providing private funding for the nation’s election infrastructure. According to reports, the CTCL disobeyed local election officials and used mail-in voting in the 2020 campaign to boost turnout in districts that were virtually entirely Democratic. The CTCL allegedly used hundreds of millions of dollars from the founder of Facebook’s Chan Zuckerberg Initiative to get mail-in votes before the election, demonstrating the partisan conflict of interest by supporting the conversion of many election offices to vote-by-mail.

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The Christie’s auction had drawn criticism because it featured gems from the estate of a woman whose husband bought businesses from Jews pressured to sell because of Nazi persecution.

By Zachary Smal, SHURAT HADIN May 15, 2023

The jewelry sale was controversial because the fortune that helped to purchase items, such as this Bulgari colored diamond and emerald bracelet, was built in part on the discounted purchases of Jewish businesses. Credit…Christie’s, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Criticism from historians and Jewish organizations did little to dim the sale at Christie’s of jewels bought with a fortune built in part atop profits made from the Aryanization of Jewish businesses during the Holocaust.

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By Olesya Astakhova, REUTERS   and Parisa Hafezi

MOSCOW, May 17 (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi on Wednesday oversaw, via video-link, the signing of a deal to finance and build an Iranian railway line as part of an embryonic international North–South Transport Corridor.

The Rasht-Astara railway is seen as an important link in the corridor, intended to connect India, Iran, Russia, Azerbaijan and other countries via railways and sea – a route that Russia says can rival the Suez Canal as a major global trade route.Report an ad

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