RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/iran-tries-to-make-a-stand-in-jenin/?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–

The future of Gaza depends to some extent on what’s happening in Jenin this week.

The West Bank city is a hotbed of Iranian-backed militias who have spent years carving out a separatist haven there. It is a significant challenge to Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority. Both Israel and the Palestinians who want self-determination share an interest in preventing the Iranian colonial project from accomplishing its primary aim in the West Bank: Palestinian civil war and the disintegration of the Palestinian Authority.

Since Oct. 7, 2023, that has only become more urgent. At some point, the PA is expected to take over the administration of the Gaza Strip after Hamas is removed from power. If Abbas cannot maintain control over the West Bank, the PA cannot take on Gaza as well.

And so Abbas’s decision to send Palestinian security forces into Jenin is a crucial test for the aging autocrat and his government.

“The gunmen in Jenin are not resistance fighters, but mercenaries serving the dubious agenda of an outside party,” declared PA spokesman Anwar Rajab.

The New York Times describes the riddle that the PA, Israel, and the U.S. are trying to solve. Israel has been stepping up its security raids in Jenin because Abbas is barely able to step foot in the city. Israel does not want an Iranian terror-and-tunnel project in the West Bank to match the one currently undergoing disassembly in Gaza. The U.S. wants Israel to back off a bit, to enable the Palestinian security forces to gather the strength to take back Jenin. But if Israel backs off too much or for too long, the PA will fail when it does try to restore order there.

That happened last week, in fact. According to Axios, Palestinian security forces fumbled a mission in which they were trying to arrest “several PIJ and Hamas militants who stole Palestinian security forces vehicles and used them for an armed parade through the refugee camp.” The mission failure, then was a double humiliation.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21230/south-africa-failed-state

South Africa… has an active and influential Muslim sector supportive of Hamas and Palestinian land claims. Coupled to its pathetic intelligence services, and its lamentable military and police forces, South Africa is ill-equipped to counter Islamist infiltration from neighboring regions or its growing internal extremist movements.

Apart from succeeding in overcoming Apartheid, all that the ANC and allies have put their minds to since, ends in dismal failure. Every state-owned enterprise is broke and/or dysfunctional…. The same applies to government departments….

As a mineral-rich country… South Africa is a prime target for a hostile takeover by opportunistic authoritarian state players. Russia, China and Iran are strongly positioned already…

Of the three, China, with its vast financial and political investments in Africa, carries the most influence, and this will no doubt increase beyond the West’s capacity to match it as time passes. At this moment, with its primary focus on the Middle East and Ukraine, the West is unable or unwilling to match China’s multi-faceted influence in the region and thus offers China unbounded freedom to accelerate pursuit of its interests there.

[T]he West’s loss of influence in the region might be greatly regretted for decades to come.

Although the African National Congress (ANC) remains the dominant political party in South Africa after the 2024 national elections, its power is significantly diminished in addition to its reduced parliamentary representation. After failing to command a majority, the ANC is the largest faction of South Africa’s so-called Government of National Unity – although there is little unity among its large number of members. To describe the government as a fragile coalition would be more accurate.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, an ardent critic of Israel, is the authority behind South Africa’s actions condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Ramaphosa is also a leading figure in BRICS – a group of nations seeking to bypass America’s dominance of world trade, and global financial and monetary control. As part of South Africa’s realignment from the West towards BRICS, the ANC has adopted Russia and Iran as replacement benefactors, and has strengthened ties with China.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-trudeau-tariffs-border-fight-canada

The problem with criticizing Justin Trudeau is not where to begin but where to end. Trudeau’s proclivity for gaffes and vulgarity was established long before he became prime minister. And this fluffy, insubstantial side even seemed like it might have an upside as he formed a government: as long as Trudeau focused on annoying stunts and virtue-signaling, he would have little time for screwing up the country. Sadly, however, his government’s long procession of scandals and missteps has proven that theory wrong.

Trudeau’s latest crisis is arguably the worst. The incoming Trump administration has threatened a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods entering the U.S. unless Canada stops the flow of drugs and migrants over the border. The trade relationship between Canada and the United States is the largest between any two countries in the world. The total value of cross border trade was $926 billion in 2023, or roughly $2.5 billion a day. This reality should make any problem with border security a high priority for Canada; and any threat of tariffs is a national emergency.

How did Trudeau react? First, he had dinner with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which seems to have produced no result. Next, at the Equal Voice Gala for International Human Rights Day, Trudeau delivered a speech attacking the United States for failing to elect Kamala Harris and declaring himself a “proud feminist.” Then he executed a series of ham-fisted moves to reassign his minister of finance, Chrystia Freeland, and replace her with Mark Carney, former governor of both the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. Freeland refused this demotion and tendered her resignation.

That all happened on the same morning that Freeland was to present a budgetary update known as the Fall Economic Statement, which was already weeks overdue. Whatever disagreement unfolded behind closed doors between Trudeau and Freeland likely concerned increased borrowing and spending on two cynical vote-buying schemes: a two-month holiday from the Goods and Services Tax, and a $250 rebate to families making less than $150,000 a year. What purpose is served by shoe-horning Carney into the government is not clear. But the latest episode seems to repeat an old pattern familiar from the SNC Lavalin scandal, in which Trudeau bullied and expelled his own female (and indigenous) attorney general from his cabinet for resisting pressure to cut a deal for a politically connected corporation facing corruption charges. In the event, the “feminist” Trudeau sacked the woman and replaced her with a more obedient male.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/how-not-to-think-about-syria/

The rapid demise of the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria has taken every geopolitical analyst and self-proclaimed Middle East “expert” by storm. Following 53 years of brutal Assad family rule and 13 years of bloody civil war, the Syrian strongman abruptly fled for asylum in Moscow as rebels finalized their encircling of Damascus. In the blink of an eye, one of the two Ba’athist Arab states — along with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq before the U.S.-led 2003 invasion — was no more.

Start with the obvious: Assad was a world-historical tyrant, even by bleak Arab world standards. He led with an iron fist, incarcerating political enemies and siccing his totalitarian security apparatuses on all those whom he deemed a threat. (You can see where Democrats may have gotten some ideas.) Since the Syrian civil war began in 2011, he racked up a death toll of over half a million — the majority civilian noncombatants. He has used chemical weapons against his own people on multiple occasions. He allied with the very worst actors on the world stage, and by the time he fled, his regime had become a satrapy held in joint custody by two rogue states: Russia and Iran.

There are thus many reasons to be ecstatic that Assad, a minority Alawite in a majority-Sunni country, is no more. From a Western geopolitical perspective, it is a clear positive that Russia has lost easy access to Mediterranean ports, and Iran has a gaping hole in its “Shiite crescent” of influence, which, in the not-so-distant past, extended from Iran through Iraq and Syria into Hezbollah-overrun Lebanon. And from a humanitarian perspective, one of the very worst butchers in recent global history has been deposed.

The problem, as is so often the case, is the thorny question of what comes next. And therein lies the rub.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/do-irans-leaders-smell-the-coffee-yet/

You can say a lot of things, most of them unpleasant, about former Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. But you can’t say he didn’t have a nose for coffee.

He knew what was coming once the Syrian rebel fighters took Aleppo, more than 200 miles to the north.

He flew to Moscow the next day, on November 28, begging for Russian military support, but was given the cold shoulder. By the time the Iranian foreign minister visited him in Damascus on December 2, the rebels were moving south toward Hama and Assad knew it was only a matter of time — and not much of it — before they reached Damascus. Assad was so despondent he didn’t even ask the Iranians for help.

We now know that he secretly flew to Moscow in the wee hours of Sunday morning, December 8, after telling his top generals that help was on the way from Russia. He wasn’t going to get Qaddafied by his own people.

Now the question is, will Iran be next?

The regime’s Supreme Leader has undoubtedly already made his escape plans. Some of my Iranian sources believe he’s got a jet gassed and ready, but that could just be wishful thinking on their part.

What’s sure is this: all those surrounding Khamenei and his generals have been wearing adult diapers for the past week. They are terrified that they could be next.

https://bit.ly/3ZU0Eo0

*The success of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) terrorists to topple the Assad regime is traumatizing all pro-US Arab regimes, which, for decades, have had the machetes of Iran’s Ayatollahs and the Moslem Brotherhood at their throats.

*Contrary to some Western policy makers, journalists and academics, the pro-US Arab leaders do not take HTS’ moderate statements at face value. They are aware of the fanatic, religious vision, which has guided the HTS, and are familiar with the Middle Eastern gap between the talk and the walk, and with the Islamic tactic of Taqiyya (dissimulation).  Taqiyya was also employed by Bashar Assad upon assuming power in 2000, when his moderate talk led US legislators (e.g., Senator John Kerry), Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NYT’s Tom Friedman to view him as a potentially peaceful leader. It was used by Ayatollah Khomeini in 1978/79, ahead of assuming power in Iran, convincing President Carter and the State Department that he would be “an Iranian edition of Ghandi…. preoccupied with tractors, not tanks.”  The Houthis issued moderate pronouncements that led to their delisting from the list of terror organizations in 2021 by President Biden.  Also, Arafat issued peaceful statements upon concluding the Oslo Accord, which won him the Nobel Prize for Peace, and led Tom Friedman to wonder: “Who’s Arafat? Is he Nelson Mandela or Willie Nelson?”). Etc.    

*The vision of the HTS is not limited to Syria. It aims to topple all national Islamic regimes, and establish a universal Islamic entity, as prescribed by the precepts of the Moslem Brotherhood, which has pursued its goals through politics, education, social welfare and affiliates, splinters and offshoots that engage in terrorism.

*The initial strategy of HTS, as suggested by their name (al-Sham = the Levant) is to “liberate” the Levant, which was “Greater Syria” (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Cyprus and Turkey’s Hatay province), then the entire Middle East, the “Abode of Islam,” and finally the “Abode of the Infidel,” preferably via peaceful means, or militarily, if resisted by the “infidel.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21215/turkey-syria-jihadists

A former branch of Al Qaeda, in 2018, HTS [Hayat Tahrir al-Sham] was officially designated a terrorist organization by the US government. HTS, which cooperates with the Turkish military and Turkish-backed groups in Syria, is committed to establishing an Islamist state across Syria, at least for a start.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Al-Jolani are now making all sorts of human-rightsy promises that they know the West likes to hear – just as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini did before he took over Iran, and as the Taliban did before they quickly demolished 20 years of US human rights progress in Afghanistan.

Just as Iran is the Shiite “head of the octopus” whose tentacles consist of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other assorted militias, so Erdogan is the Sunni “head of the octopus” in Syria. While everyone is busy staring at rival terrorist groups in Syria, it is crucial not to forget for a minute the country backing them: Turkey.

Erdogan’s dream has always been “the liberation of Jerusalem”…. A Sunni jihadi Syria provides a conveniently straight path to fulfill that long-term dream.

The Assad family’s rule of Syria, which lasted more than 50 years, collapsed on December 8. Jihadist forces took control of Damascus after President Bashar al-Assad escaped to a luxurious life in Moscow. Today, roughly half a million Christians and 2.5 million Kurds in Syria face a future of persecution and abuse at the hands of jihadist terrorists.

The offensive launched by the jihadists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, began on November 27. These terrorists, backed by Turkey, first captured Aleppo and a string of other towns and cities in a matter of days, before converging on Damascus.

Since 2017, HTS has been the dominant Islamist militia in Syria. A former branch of Al Qaeda, in 2018, HTS was officially designated a terrorist organization by the US government. The group’s name, Hayat Tahrir al Sham, means “Organization for the Liberation of the Levant,” meaning much of the Middle East, including Israel, Lebanon and Jordan. Since 2019, HTS, working with Turkey, has controlled northern Idlib through the so-called “Syrian Salvation Government” (SSG). Now, as Turkey and the HTS plan to “reshape Syria,” both Kurds and Christians find themselves under siege.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_M43-fAZm8

Dec 12, 2024 #RealSouthAfrica #UnityAndFaith #FNBStadium

At FNB Stadium, I stood before 100,000 members of the Zionist Christian Church on a national prayer day hosted by The Patrice Motsepe Foundation on Sunday, 1 December 2024. In my speech I shared core values of Judaism, Israel, and Jerusalem – values deeply rooted in Biblical truths – and witnessed an extraordinary response from the audience – a reminder that the people of South Africa stand for something far deeper than political narratives suggest. This day reaffirmed an essential truth: the South African people are not their government. While political leaders may send one message, the people of South Africa stand with us on the values we hold sacred. ✨ In this video, you’ll see: • The incredible unity of 100,000 South Africans embracing shared faith and values • A powerful example of how faith and hope transcend politics • A reminder that we have allies in the heart of South Africa 📌 Watch and experience the energy of that day for yourself. Share this moment of optimism and unity.

ttps://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21225/middle-east-definitions

After saving Syria from Assad, who will save it from the saviors?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is going on a tour to persuade the Turks and their Jihadis to establish an “inclusive” government in Syria. But inclusivity now means Sunni Jihadis, backed by Turkey, repressing and killing everyone else. This will be a fundamental liberating change from the old order, in which Shiite Jihadis, backed by Iran, repressed and killed everyone else.

Turkey bombing and displacing Kurds in Syria is considered “inclusivity”, but Israel bombing Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon is termed “genocide”.

“Genocide” is another of those many words that have different meanings in the New Middle East Dictionary. Amnesty International has come under fire for changing the definition of “genocide” in order to be able to accuse Israel of it.

War becomes genocide. But only in the case of Israel. Meanwhile, actual genocidal efforts by Hamas on October 7, 2023, and by Turkey in Syria to target ethnic groups, are redefined as “liberation”.

Over 1 million tons of food have entered Gaza since October 7, 2023. That’s half a ton for every terrorist supporter. Half a ton of food for every man, woman and child is… “starvation.”

The Arab Spring redefined Islamist takeovers as “democracy movements”.

When Muslim Jihadis commit genocide, it becomes liberation. And when anyone fights back against them, it’s genocide.

Redefinition makes everything in the Middle East factually opposite, to make it morally opposite.

Even as Islamic Jihadists are taking over Syria, ethnically cleansing Kurds and terrorizing Christians, the media is hailing the new “inclusive” regime which “liberated” Syria.

The regime is indeed inclusive if you consider bearded men with assault rifles to be the measure of inclusivity. And terrorizing minorities to be the exciting new diversity.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21207/neutralize-iran-nuclear-threat

The regime’s primary goal is, first, to stay in power; second, to acquire nuclear weapons. No amount of diplomatic engagement will deter it from pursuing these objectives. Any agreement would merely buy more time for Iran to refine its nuclear technologies while easing international pressure. The regime’s strategy is to outlast all sanctions and inspections, while continuing its covert nuclear activities, repressing it citizens, and planning its future expansion.

The international community would do the world a favor by stopping Iran from reaching both goals. If not, there will be no chance of durable stability in the Middle East. It is as simple as that.

The idea of negotiating a “deal” to limit, control or “verify” Iran’s nuclear activities has proven to be both ineffective and dangerous…. Iran has repeatedly violated international agreements and deceived global watchdogs. It seems clear that any new deal would likely meet the same fate. Trusting such a regime to honor its commitments is like trusting the cat to guard the cream.

Only by neutralizing the entire Iranian threat will the world be able to work toward a future of stability, prosperity and peace.

The highest priority in addressing the upheavals in the Middle East is to eliminate — completely — Iran’s nuclear threat.

Iran is reportedly close to being a nuclear-armed state. Such a development would have catastrophic consequences for the region as well as for global stability. Acquiring nuclear weapons would embolden Iran’s regime, re-strengthen its proxies, and enable it to resume escalating its terror campaigns across the region.

Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, it will become virtually impossible to contain or neutralize its aggression – presumably the reason the regime is so eager to have nuclear weapons in the first place. The risk of retaliation by nuclear strikes would deter even the most powerful nations from military intervention. An Iran with nuclear weapons would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East and beyond.