RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thefederalist.com/2023/12/12/we-need-an-immediate-ceasefire-in-ukraine-not-israel/

It’s time to acknowledge that the U.S. isn’t going to risk World War III to maintain Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is in Washington this week, once again pressuring U.S. lawmakers to dole out tens of billions of taxpayer dollars for his war effort. At issue is a $110 billion national security supplemental the Biden administration has requested that includes about $61 billion for Ukraine, as well as more funding for Israel, humanitarian aid for Gaza, and money to secure the U.S.-Mexico border.

Senate Republicans last week sensibly blocked a vote to advance the bill because it doesn’t include changes to border policy, which is the only thing that would actually secure the border. But the border isn’t the only good reason to block the funding package. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the war in Ukraine is an unwinnable quagmire, and that for all the calls we hear for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas conflict, what’s really needed is a ceasefire in Ukraine, where the solution today is more or less what it was before Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022: a negotiated settlement.

Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio hinted at this in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper over the weekend, saying there’s no reason to think $61 billion will accomplish what $100 billion hasn’t. “The idea that Ukraine was going to throw Russia back to the 1991 borders was preposterous. Nobody actually believed it. So what we’re saying to the president and really to the entire world is, you need to articulate what the ambition is.”

So far, neither the Biden White House nor any neocon Ukraine hawk in Washington has been able to articulate what the endgame strategy in Ukraine should be. Instead, we get platitudes about the need to shovel more money into a bloody war of attrition from the likes of Mike Pompeo, who of course doesn’t bother to elaborate on what he means by “end the war.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20217/biden-helping-putin-win
• The Biden administration’s persistent failure to provide Ukraine with the military supplies it requires poses a serious danger of gifting victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
• [T]he Ukrainians… remain desperately short of key ammunition.
• [A]ny form of Russian success in Ukraine would not only spell disaster for Kyiv, but for the wider Western alliance.
• Putin has made no secret of his desire to extend Russian military aggression beyond Ukraine to include other regions of eastern Europe,
• [I]t is vital that the Biden administration not only renews its support for Zelensky during his visit to Washington this week, but also ensures Ukrainian forces receive the equipment they desperately need to defeat Russia.
• Only by making certain that Putin suffers a humiliating defeat in Ukraine will the West succeed in deterring autocratic regimes such as Russia, China and Iran from committing further acts of aggression.
The Biden administration’s persistent failure to provide Ukraine with the military supplies it requires poses a serious danger of gifting victory to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
From Abrams tanks to F-16 fighters, US President Joe Biden has constantly dithered over providing Ukraine with the equipment upgrades its forces desperately need if they are to succeed in defending themselves against Russian aggression.
The failure, moreover, to ensure that Ukraine achieves victory in its battle against Moscow’s unprovoked invasion has been a key factor in the failure of Ukraine’s long-awaited counter-offensive to achieve a decisive breakthrough of Russia’s heavily-fortified defences in Ukraine.
Even though it is a year since President Volodymyr Zelensky first made his request to the US and other Western allies to be equipped with superior heavy armour and warplanes, the equipment is only starting to become available on the battlefield now, just as the bitter Ukrainian winter takes hold, thereby severely diminishing its effectiveness.

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.