RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/when-irish-eyes-are-crying/

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar didn’t mince words on Sunday, when he “instructed the closure of Israel’s embassy in Ireland.”

The “actions, double standards and antisemitic rhetoric of the Irish government against Israel are rooted in efforts to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state,” he wrote in a post on X, going on to list concrete examples that led to the move.

“The Irish government recognized a ‘Palestinian state’ during attacks on Israel (a move praised by Hamas); attempted to redefine ‘genocide’ in international law to support baseless claims against Israel at the International Court of Justice; backed politically motivated cases at the International Criminal Court; promoted anti-Israel measures within the European Union; and fostered hostility toward Israel,” he stated, adding: “Notably, Ireland is one of the few European countries that has not adopted the IHRA [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance] definition of antisemitism, and its government has failed to take effective measures to combat the surge of antisemitism within Ireland.”

He concluded with a vow that Israel would “focus its resources on strengthening bilateral relations with countries worldwide, according to priorities that also take into account the attitudes and actions of these states toward Israel.”

Irish Prime Minister (Taoiseach) Simon Harris shot back at what he called “a deeply regrettable decision from the [Benjamin] Netanyahu government,” and went on to “utterly reject the assertion that Ireland is anti-Israel.”

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/22/iranian-mullahs-in-a-panic-as-their-axis-of-resistance-collapses/

Suffering a series of devastating blows, the Islamic Republic of Iran is now like a wounded beast, dangerous and unpredictable. Having seen their “axis of resistance” crumble, with the effective decapitation of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, the mullahs’ regime has now suffered its greatest catastrophe, with the fall of their closest ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s ailing and increasingly confused Supreme Leader, regarded Syria as Iran’s 35th Province.

For decades he funneled more than $50 billion and tens of thousands of Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) personnel and other Islamist militias into propping up Assad’s brutal regime. The sudden collapse of the Assad dictatorship has removed a fundamental pillar vital for the Islamic Republic’s regional strategy, creating a seismic upheaval.

The imminent arrival of Donald Trump as America’s 47th president, must seem like the final straw for Khamenei and his tyrannical mullahs. Trump unilaterally withdrew America from Barack Obama’s deeply flawed nuclear deal with Iran and introduced a campaign of ‘maximum pressure’ sanctions.

In a rambling speech last week to his senior officials in Tehran, the Supreme Leader kept repeating “Don’t be demoralized, don’t have despair”, as he tried to justify the massive loss in blood and treasure that his regime has squandered in Syria.

Western powers, gloating at the dismantling of Iran’s proxy allies, should now be wary of the theocratic regime’s next moves. Rafael Grossi, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Authority (IAEA) warned at a conference in Bahrain that the Iranian regime has dramatically increased its production of highly enriched uranium, up to 60% purity, a hair’s breadth away from weapons grade. He says the mullahs, who are no longer cooperating with his inspectors, could develop a nuclear missile very rapidly.

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/islam/meet-syrias-moderate-jihadi/

When “rebels” booted out Assad and took over Syria I surveyed a couple of people. Both, having listened to the news, probably the ABC News, indicated that they were suspending judgment on the outcome. One of the two is gay. I said to him ‘they are jihadis’. He was not convinced. I don’t know why but many, perhaps most, Westerners are naïve when it comes to Islam. Thus the metamorphosis of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the terrorist leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – which evolved out of Al Qaeda – is given some unmerited benefit of the doubt. This is probably down to all that misconceived talk of moderate Muslims; and you might recall “the religion of peace” had a run before it tested the credulity of even useful idiots.

The new top guy in Syria, al-Jolani, has swapped his nom de guerre for his birth name Ahmed al-Shara. He dresses in a suit rather than fatigues. He is every bit the model of the moderate Islamic gentleman. All part of the makeover. Antony Blinken is ready to be wooed, though we can safely bank on Netanyahu to remain locked and loaded. Penny Wong will undoubtedly and happily take any position which most harms Israel. If recent history is a guide, Tony Burke will be keen on rushing tourist-visa applications to disaffected Syrian Muslims.

To a small extent, this piece is a cautionary tale for Mr Shara. Feign being moderate too effectively and a fundamentalist henchman might well take your head. However, mainly it is a cautionary tale for those in the West whose optimism about Islam outruns their realism.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/another_islamic_terror_attack_on_a_european_christmas_market.html

This is becoming an ugly Christmas tradition, with the real question being whether Europeans will continue to put up with this madness.

Since the early 2000s, whenever there was a terrorist attack, a meme circulated showing a South Park newscaster saying some variation of “…and it’s Islam.” The point, of course, was that no matter how the media tried to hide it, the greater likelihood was that the attacker was Muslim.

What’s interesting about today’s mass terror attack on a German Christmas market is that the German authorities immediately announced that it was an Islamic terrorist attack. Maybe Europeans are finally realizing that the viper they’ve nursed at their bosom needs to be expelled.

A little background is helpful to understand today’s attack:

After WWII, Germany and Japan were completely flattened. However, this time, the Allies had learned their lesson. They were not going to let Germany become an economic basket case, out of which another Hitler could rise. America, the last great nation standing at war’s end, worked to rebuild both Germany and Japan as modern, democratic, free nations. In both cases, America was aided by the fact that these countries had cultures that were built around meticulous hard work.

As well as rebuilding its former enemies, America instituted the “Pax Americana,” which saw it spearhead the Cold War against communism and generally exert itself around the world to put out fires. This Pax Americana created a global economic boom unlike any seen before in history.

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-834020?utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz–

The collapse of Bashar Assad’s regime, Iran’s longstanding ally in Syria, has sparked debate among observers. Some argue that Iran’s loss of faith in Assad contributed to his downfall. Yet, this view ignores the strategic logic underpinning the Islamic Republic’s alliance with Assad and its involvement in Syria. For the Islamists in Iran, Syria was not merely an ally; it was the Islamic Republic’s “strategic depth,”  its “golden ring of resistance,” and even considered “more valuable than Iran’s Khuzestan Province.” Abandoning Assad would have meant abandoning Iran’s broader ambition of dominating the Middle East, a project reliant on Assad’s continued rule in Syria.

After seizing power in 1979, the Khomeinists aimed to export their Islamic Revolution and dominate the Middle East, despite limited resources. They adopted the low-cost strategy of creating proxy groups in countries with significant Shiite populations. They created a network of 19 terrorist organizations, including Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as 16 other terror groups in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. They called this network, “the axis of resistance.”

Regime leaders recognized that sustaining the axis of resistance required incorporating Syria into the alliance as a vital conduit for transferring arms and resources to their proxies, particularly Hezbollah. They reached out to Hafez Assad, the Syrian dictator, father of Bashar, and he readily embraced the opportunity. Although Hafez Assad famously described Syria as the “beating heart of Arabism,” his economically struggling nation stood to benefit from alignment with the oil-rich regime in Tehran. Furthermore, as an Alawite leader – a minority sect within a predominantly Sunni population – Hafez Assad found it more pragmatic to collaborate with his unpopular Shiite neighbor. 

Syria became central to Iran’s regional strategy, offering a land corridor to Beirut and safe havens for Hezbollah’s training and weapons. This land corridor enabled the movement of personnel, arms, and supplies to reach Hezbollah, significantly enhancing Iran’s capacity to project power and maintain influence across the Levant.

Syria was even regarded as Iran’s “35th province.” Hujjat al-Islam Mahdi Taeb, the head of the Ammar Strategic Base – an organization established to promote “soft war tools” – and an adviser to the supreme leader, declared that Syria’s strategic importance exceeds that of Khuzestan province in southern Iran. 

Ali Akbar Velayati, Khamenei’s foreign policy aide, asserted that “Syria is a golden ring of resistance to Zionism. Iran supports it, because if Syria falls and its government collapses… the axis of resistance will collapse.”

QASSEM SOLEIMANI, the former head of the IRGC-Quds Force, called Syria “Iran’s strategic depth.” 

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/18/the-truth-about-irelands-hatred-for-israel/

Is there a politician more sanctimonious, more smug, than Ireland’s president, Michael D Higgins? His pompous scolding of Israel this week after it had the temerity to call out the anti-Israel animus of the Irish elites was a truly unedifying spectacle of false virtue and cant. Shaking with fury, every word bitterly spat out, he said it is a ‘gross defamation and slander’ to ‘brand a people’ anti-Semitic just because they ‘criticise Benjamin Netanyahu’. He seemed to be in the grip of a paroxysm of pique. I’ve never seen him quake and froth like this over anything else: not poverty, not homelessness, not war. Well, unless it’s a war being fought by Israel.

It’s hard to decide what was most grating in Higgins’s theatre of fury, which, as he knows, will have been lapped up by every scribe at the Irish Times, every patron of the wine bars of Dublin 4, every rich kid in a keffiyeh at Trinity. Let’s start with the fact that his windy invective was in large part misinformation. Israel has not accused the Irish people of anti-Semitism. It has accused ‘the Irish government’ of pursuing ‘extreme anti-Israel policies’. That’s why it took the decision to shut its embassy in Dublin: not because it thinks every Irishman is a Jew-hater but because it thinks Ireland’s ruling class is possessed of a curious abhorrence for the Jewish nation. Imagine accusing Israel of ‘slander’ even as you wilfully twist its words.

Then there’s the sanctimony. Higgins reaches for the smelling salts when an uppity nation like Israel has the brass neck to accuse people like him of possibly being bigots, yet he’s more than happy to make that accusation against others.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/who-will-protect-syrian-christians/

It started with a suicide bomber.

On Sept. 4, 2013, a terrorist group launched an attack on a profoundly symbolic Syrian village.

“The dawn assault on the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula,” reported the Associated Press, “was carried out by rebels from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra group, according to a Syrian government official and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-regime group.

“At the start of the attack, an al-Nusra fighter blew himself up at a regime checkpoint at the entrance to the village, said the Observatory, which collects information from a network of anti-regime activists,” the Associated Press reported.

A story that ran on Sept. 6, 2013, in the London Daily Telegraph carried this headline: “Village that speaks the language of Christ taken by al-Qaeda.”

“The inhabitants are mostly Melkite Greek Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who have historically lived peacefully alongside Sunni Muslims,” reported the Telegraph. “It is one of only three places in the world where Western Aramaic, a dialect of the language spoken by Christ, is still used.”

“‘They entered the main square and smashed a statue of the Virgin Mary,’ said one resident, speaking by phone and too frightened to give his name,” the Telegraph reported.

Maaloula, the Associated Press said, is “famous for two of the oldest surviving monasteries in Syria – Mar Sarkis and Mar Takla.”

“The stones are shaking,” a nun at the Mar Takla monastery told the Associated Press. “We don’t know if the rebels have left or not, nobody dares go out.”

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.