RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20214/hamas-lebanon

On December 4, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas announced the establishment of a new terrorist group in Lebanon….

Hamas, in short, is saying that it is planning a similar invasion of Israel, but this time from Lebanon.

Lebanese journalist Tony Bouloss warned that Hamas’s intention is to establish a new terror group in Lebanon that could… turn it into “Hamas Land.” “Hezbollah wants to turn Lebanon into a new Afghanistan, attracting all terrorist organizations in the world so that Lebanon becomes an alternative homeland for rogue groups.” – Tony Bouloss, X (Twitter), December 4, 2023.

According to reports, Hezbollah recently permitted the deployment of 400 Palestinians affiliated with Hamas along the border with Israel. The coordination between the two terror groups is taking place under the direct supervision of their masters in Iran….

Ultimately, the war Israel is currently waging against Hamas will weaken the Iran-led axis of evil in the Middle East; embolden Arabs to speak out against Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups, and finally hugely improve the lives of all the Arabs and Palestinians in the region by working toward peace with Israel.

On December 4, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas announced the establishment of a new terrorist group in Lebanon with the goal of “liberating Jerusalem and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” In the past two months, Hamas terrorists in Lebanon have carried out rocket attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians in northern Israel.

Hamas has called on the Palestinians living in Lebanon to join the group, “Vanguards of the Al-Aqsa Flood,” the name it chose for its barbaric invasion of Israeli communities near the border with the Gaza Strip on October 7, when it massacred 1,200 Israelis and abducted 240 others to the Gaza Strip.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20208/symphonic-version-of-terror

Using terror operations on a small scale is an effective means of making life difficult for a much stronger opponent and may even force it to offer some concessions. But grand dramatic attacks such as 9/11 against the US, the Mumbai campaign and the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel raise the stakes to symphonic level that those targeted cannot simply grin and bear it.
9/11 forced the US to invade Afghanistan and destroy al-Qaeda, something it had not contemplated doing even after the massacre of 241 US military personnel in Lebanon. After the Mumbai attacks, India made sure something like that could never happen again.
In those cases, an initial victory for the attacker proved to be a prelude to his annihilation.

The history of terrorism in pursuit of political aims is as long as history itself.

However, the past two decades have witnessed important, and needless to say worrying, developments in what could be seen as a zoological version of political activism.

The old versions saw disgruntled individuals assassinating powerful enemies. Julius Caesar was stabbed to death by 53 Senators led by his closest friends, Marcus Junius Brutus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. Nizam al-Mulk, he powerful Grand Vizir of Seljuks in Iran, suffered the same fate at the hands of 18 Nizari hashasheen (assassins) including a Russian slave. The Qajar Nasseredin Shah was dispatched with a single bullet while mumbling “Son of a Donkey!”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20202/bin-laden-letter-to-the-american-people

“Battle, animosity, and hatred — directed from the Muslim to the infidel — is the foundation of our religion. And we consider this a justice and kindness to them.” — Osama bin Laden, “Al-Qaeda’s Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema.”

“There are only three choices in Islam: either willing submission; or payment of the jizya, thereby physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; or the sword—for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live.” — Osama bin Laden, “Al-Qaeda’s Declaration in Response to the Saudi Ulema.”

In his “Letter to the American People,” however, bin Laden portrays Islam as “the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted.”

When clarifying to the Saudis what Islam really has in store for infidels, bin Laden quoted many of the most militant verses, such as Koran 9:29: “Fight those among the People of the Book [Jews and Christians] who do not believe in Allah, nor the Last Day, nor forbid what Allah and his Messenger have forbidden, nor embrace the religion of truth, until they pay the jizya with willing submission and feel themselves subdued.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20203/why-are-islamists-claiming-non-muslim-land

For at least the past five years, the government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

The Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly claim that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands, however, historically and legally… belong to Greece.

Since its inception in Arabia in the seventh century, Islam has spread throughout the world by means of the sword. According to the Islamic law, the world is divided into the “dar al-Islam” (territory of submission to Allah), which denotes regions where Islam prevails, and the “dar al-harb” (territory of war), which refers to non-Muslim lands, yet to be conquered.

Islamists believe that once Islamic colonialism and occupation has taken place, the land conquered is forever Islamic…. Islamic supremacists such as Erdogan believe that because Thessaloniki was once under the occupation of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, it is a Muslim land eternally and must be returned to its rightful owner.

Jerusalem… was also under Ottoman occupation for four centuries (1517-1917). The Jewish people, however, reversing that pattern of Islamic colonialism and imperialism, re-established their homeland, now Israel, in 1948. Islamic supremacists still have not healed from the perceived affront by Israel’s indigenous people to Islamic conquest.

Islamists therefore say they want to reconquer Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. According to doctrine, the only religion that should rule over these lands – or any lands, for that matter — is Islam. Christians and Jews could be only “dhimmis”, second-class, tolerated subjects of an Islamic state where they are only allowed to stay alive on sufferance by paying a high “protection” tax, the jizya.

Theologically, according to Islamic scriptures, Judaism and Christianity are merely distorted versions of Islam. In the Islamic view, originally there was only Islam, which the Jews and Christians later distorted into Judaism and Christianity. All history, in this mindset, is therefore originally Islamic history and all major figures of history such as Adam and Eve are therefore Muslim. All Biblical figures, according to Islam, such as Abraham, David, Moses, and Jesus are also Muslim. So, any place related to them, in that view, is Muslim territory.

Many others see these events as the Jews, who were the indigenous population of Canaan and Judea, having had their land “stolen” by the Ottomans, similarly to how the Turkish military invaded the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974, or how the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire was “stolen” by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and his troops on May 29, 1453 when they stormed Constantinople and triumphantly entered the Cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, after besieging the city for 55 days.

Many Islamists are therefore obsessed with conquering Israel, Spain and Portugal (al-Andalus), Greece, Cyprus and India for Allah – then the rest of the non-Muslim world.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/2/dutch-politician-geert-wilders-aims-to-stop-invasi/

Our myna-bird media refer to Dutch politician Geet Wilders, who could be the next prime minister of the Netherlands, as “far right,” hard right,” an “anti-Islam firebrand” and a “Donald Trump clone.” They missed MAGA Republican.

Mr. Wilders won a huge victory in last week’s parliamentary elections. His Party for Freedom went from 17 seats to 37 seats in the lower house — a plurality that puts Mr. Wilders in line to form the next government.

While he ran on a broad range of issues, the Dutch Donald is best known for promising to stem the tide of Muslim immigration.

He’s also pledged to move the Dutch Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Strange how so many “far right” leaders — including the newly elected president of Argentina — want to express their solidarity with the Jewish state. Someone forgot to tell them that they’re supposed to be antisemites.

Mr. Wilders joins a hardy band of immigration skeptics, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who cheered Mr. Wilders’ victory. (“The winds of change are here!”) The Alternative for Germany party, also opposed to open borders, is now in second place in polling, with 20% support. In France, Marine Le Pen waits her turn.

The Netherlands has taken in an average of 200,000 immigrants a year since 2016, most unassimilable.

The Netherlands, whose population is only 16 million, is now home to 1 million Muslims. Since the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh for exposing the treatment of women under Islam, a growing number of Dutch have concluded that the immigrants will not end up wearing wooden shoes and planting tulips.

The Dutch aren’t the only Europeans who are nervous. In France, a new mosque is opened every two weeks, and a Catholic institution is closed during the same period. In a gesture of goodwill, the grand imam of Paris has suggested that decommissioned churches be turned into mosques.

How thoughtful.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20192/united-nations-hamas

To understand how the UN effectively runs the Hamas propaganda war, it is important to know that the UN, through its agency for Palestinian refugees, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), is effectively embedded with Hamas in the Gaza Strip…

“The UN has 13,000 employees in tiny Gaza. They know exactly what’s going on… They all knew Hamas’ terror infrastructure was in the hospital compound, where Israel wouldn’t attack. They lied to the world for 16 years. To paint Israel as evil.” — Hillel Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, November 16, 2023.

[T]he UN has sustained an incessant campaign, especially on social media, that accuses Israel of deliberately targeting schools, children, civilians, hospitals and healthcare workers. While those are protected from attack during war by international law, that protection does not apply to schools, hospitals and other civilian sites that are used for military purposes.

When Israel carried out an airstrike on an ambulance in northern Gaza, which was being used by Hamas terrorists, [UN Secretary-General António] Guterres expressed that he was “horrified” with Israel’s action, while ignoring Hamas’s war crimes. In practice, the UN and Hamas act as partners in crime.

Above all, the UN’s transparent complicity with Hamas should convince the US, finally, that much of the UN is a destructive organization that prolongs wars, and needs immediately to have its funding decimated, and be reduced in importance to the corrupt relic that it is, deserving no place in this century.

Since October 7, when Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel and massacred at least 1,200 and kidnapped another 240 Israelis and people of other nationalities, the United Nations has been acting as the unofficial propaganda arm of the Iranian-backed Hamas terrorist organization.

The propaganda campaign’s main aim – besides smearing Israel – appears to be to build overwhelming international pressure on Israel to agree to an indefinite ceasefire , which will give Hamas the needed time to regroup and replenish to continue its terrorist activities and to avoid being eliminated by the Israeli Defense Forces.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20194/recognizing-a-palestinian-state

In the case of a “Palestinian State”, there is no territory on which even the Palestinians agree. Indeed, the charter of Hamas — designated as a terrorist organization by many countries in the West, and which has reigned unchallenged in the Gaza Strip since 2007 when it forcibly expelled the Palestinian Authority, in part by throwing its members off 15-storey buildings — calls for the “liberation” of “every inch of Palestine” through jihad.
The Palestinian Authority also lays claim over all of the territory, including all of Israel…
In addition, the Palestinian Authority is counting on the Palestine Liberation Organization’s 1974 “Ten Point Plan” (also known as the “phased plan”) for the “comprehensive liberation” of all the land stretching “from the [Jordan] River to the [Mediterranean] Sea” — a euphemism for the elimination of Israel. The plan calls for the PLO to use whatever territory it is offered as a base of operations to get the rest.
Belgium’s possible recognition of a “Palestinian State” makes no sense in terms of international law. It comes, in reality, less as the result of a desire to help the Palestinians — whose lives will not be improved by it — than of a fierce and increasingly undisguised hostility towards the State of Israel, and most likely also Jews.
Recognizing a Palestinian state with no authority, no realistic territorial demands and no acceptable leadership — and with a long-term, outspoken desire to militarize and destroy its neighbor Israel — right after a jihadist pogrom against Jews, will not add to the happiness of any of the parties involved, or, for that matter, anyone else.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20193/ukraine-decimation-point

[B]oth Russia and Ukraine have passed what military theoreticians call the “decimation point” when you see that you have lost at least 10% of your fighting manpower.

In the West, public opinion saw the war as a means of keeping the Russian giant in chains, while anti-West forces admired Putin for challenging the American big bad wolf.

Thirsting for a bit of good news in these bad times of war, Ukraine’s media headlined what it saw as a victory: The return to Kiev of a haul of artefacts from Crimea that had been on exhibit in European cities before Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The return came after a ten-year legal battle in which Russia claimed that it should receive the artefacts because they were made before the 1950s when the then Soviet ruler Nikita Khrushchev “handed Crimea over to Ukraine.” Ukraine counter-argued that the artefacts were loaned to a Dutch museum before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops annexed Crimea.

Well, in every war even the tiniest bit of good news could help divert attention, even momentarily, from bigger bad news.

Though actual and sustained fighting started in February 2022, Russia’s war against Ukraine started almost a decade ago when Crimea was annexed. Since then, the fratricidal war has offered no good news for either side. Putin called the war “special operations”, implying it would be over in a matter of weeks if not days. Although not as starry-eyed, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky also dreamed that thanks to support from NATO, the biggest military machine in history, his side would quickly emerge victorious.

The bad news that didn’t get the headlines either in Moscow or Kyiv is that both Russia and Ukraine have passed what military theoreticians call the “decimation point” when you see that you have lost at least 10% of your fighting manpower.