RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20126/hamas-nazis

[B]igots hate Jews and their nation-state. This has nothing to do with support for the Palestinian people, who are horribly oppressed by Hamas. If they really wanted to support the Palestinian people, they would be demonstrating for Palestinian freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom not to be used as a human shield, due process, equal justice under law, and especially freedom from the corrupt and repressive governance of their own leaders, some now safe from the devastation they began from their five-star hotels in Qatar.

Nor does it reflect support for stateless, oppressed or occupied national groups in general. These selective bigots are silent about the stateless Kurds , the oppressed Uyghurs and other groups that deserve their support. They only focus on the Palestinians because they are allegedly oppressed by Jews. It is hatred of Jews, not love of the Palestinians or other groups that motivates these bigots.

Let us remember that these shows of support for Hamas began before Israel even responded to the Hamas barbarity. They were shows of support for what Hamas did to innocent Jews: rapes, beheadings, torture, mass murder and kidnapping.

Many university students and faculty, not only in Germany but at Harvard, Yale and Georgetown, supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s. Today’s Nazis are Hamas. Today’s enablers of Nazism are the students and others who support Hamas. History will judge them the way history has judged Nazi collaborators.

Among the groups that have supported the rapes, beheadings, burning alive, mass murder and kidnappings of Jews by Hamas have been some that purport to speak for gays, Jews, feminists and progressives. If any of these groups were actually to travel to Gaza, they would be murdered by Hamas.

Hamas has no tolerance for gays, Jews, feminists or progressives. Indeed, among the people beheaded, raped, murdered and kidnapped were gays, Jews who support Palestinians, feminists, progressives and non-Jews. None of that matters to Hamas. If you are a Jew or an Israeli or just happen to be in the way, you are a target of their barbarity.

https://melaniephillips.substack.com/p/goodbye-to-all-that?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

What you are looking at is a table set up on Saturday in London’s Charing Cross station, where people could buy poppies to be worn as a lapel pin in the days leading up to Remembrance Weekend in a few days’ time. That’s when the country commemorates British service members who have died in two world wars and other military conflicts since the onset of World War I.

The group selling the poppies are typical of the British people for whom this weekend is a solemn rite of collective memory, an affirmation of the supreme sacrifice that so many have made to defend the nation and its values.

But surrounding them are the ugly faces of the new Britain, those who have poured onto the streets in their tens of thousands to bellow their support for the annihilation of  Israel and the murder of Israeli Jews — people who call the genocide of Israeli Jews “resistance” and Israel’s resistance “genocide”. 

Yesterday saw the fourth of these weekly demonstrations, which have brought out Muslim-led mobs onto the streets of Britain and other western countries exulting at the barbaric massacre of 1400 Israelis on October 7 and demanding a ceasefire — not by Hamas, which continues its war crimes by firing volleys of rockets every day intended to murder more Israelis, but by Israel which is waging war in Gaza to destroy Hamas and end its criminal onslaught.

The image of those people surrounding the poppy sellers, whose own faces are a picture of pained stoicism, is as obscene as it is frightening. For those demonstrators stand for the barbarism and depravity that the defenders of Britain who are being commemorated by the poppy died in the attempt to defeat. 

Indeed, on one of the posters behind the poppy sellers but out of shot in this picture was a swastika, the Nazi symbol which these mobs are so grotesquely trying to pin on the Jewish nation that arose from the ashes of the Holocaust. 

In this war against Hamas and Iran, Israel is fighting for its life and the lives of its people against Palestinian Arabs whose forbears allied themselves to Hitler in the thirties and pledged to wipe out every Jew in the Middle East. Today’s Palestinian Arab genocidists display the same depravity. The spectacle of their acolytes in Britain crowding out those who wish to commemorate the British heroes who fought Nazism and aggression against the free world is beyond sickening.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/04/trans-ideology-is-messing-with-childrens-minds/

The rise of gender ideology in British schools has me fearing for my three young granddaughters. You might think that is excessive, but the trans takeover of British schools is no small matter. An unscientific belief system is now being pushed as fact, and our children are being bombarded with two ludicrous ideas – namely, that a person can change sex and that there are countless made-up genders to choose from.

Alarmingly, many teachers buy into this, or at least they toe the line with school diktats. This poses a serious problem for our children’s developing personalities. Trans ideology is exceedingly regressive and is based on old-fashioned attitudes about gender roles – that boys should wear blue and play with toy soldiers, and girls should wear pink and play with dolls. And, worryingly, if children don’t fit into these stereotypical moulds, it is assumed that something is wrong with them.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence knows that little girls and boys have various interests and behaviours, many of which might be called ‘gender non-conforming’. We should celebrate these unique behaviours, rather than constricting children with a set of fantasy labels.

Placing new and confusing genders on kids who are just starting to figure out who they are is not helpful – especially when these labels are simply made up by activists. For instance, one gender group (which has helped inform Irish government legislation) claims that there are 58 genders to choose from. Another offers 72. Meanwhile one 2021 BBC programme, aimed at children aged between nine and 11, said there were over 100 genders. New genders are being invented all the time.

These made-up ‘gender identities’ tend to pander to childish, fanciful minds. After all, what young child, interested in science and outer space, wouldn’t enjoy calling themselves ‘astralgender’ and feeling somehow connected to the galaxy? And I imagine many children might identify with the so-called burstgender, when they experience sudden spikes of intense emotion and liveliness. It takes only a smidgen of common sense to realise that letting children’s personalities shine through is far more sensible than assigning them a new ‘gender’.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20121/war-isnt-what-it-used-to-be

[T]his strange war [Russia’s invasion of Ukraine] is morphing into a pointless struggle that ignores the first rule of war, which is the setting of a final objective, in other words, a clear-cut victory.

Wars do not end with one protagonist declaring victory; they end when one protagonist admits defeat. In our postmodern era, however, a loser is not always allowed to accept his loss.

What Israel wanted from Hamas was for it not to launch an attack, something that Hamas could have easily offered. But what Hamas wanted, the elimination of Israel as a nation-state, was and remains impossible for Israel to contemplate let alone deliver.

Despite Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s rhetorical outbursts, the current struggle, presented as a war, may end up as a trompe l’oeil version of war. Even if possible, a return to the status quo that was shattered by the Hamas attack is undesirable, if only because of its conceptual fragility. A new status quo based on full reoccupation of the enclave is equally undesirable because, tested for decades, it provided no security for Israel.

Throughout history, at least until our post-modernist times, war was regarded as the highest of human pursuits, one that enlisted other pursuits such as politics, industry and even literature in its service. Aristotle gave war a thumbs-up because it was “the key to peace.” Neo-Platonics regarded war as the ultimate organizer and guardian of hierarchies within the polis (city-state) and among various states.

Over time, however, war, like some other human pursuits, has lost part of what the French would call its “authenticity”, leaving us with ersatz wars motivated by folie de grandeur, racial and religious hatred, and mercenary interests.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20122/iran-war-against-jews

Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon “to participate in attacks on Israel.”

Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone. The reason, presumably, is so that Biden can install some weakling who will do whatever Biden and his newly minted, extremely pro-Iran ambassador to Israel, Jack Lew, tell him. That doubtless includes approving some horrendous “nuclear deal” enabling Iran’s to have as many nuclear weapons as the mullahs like after Biden leaves office…

By effectively crippling America’s oil production his first day in office and enabling Russia to sell its oil at inflated prices, Biden has literally financed Russia’s war with up to $1 billion a day. In addition, by cancelling sanctions on Iran, Biden financed Iran’s proxy war against Israel. The Biden administration, then, has funded both sides of two wars in two years.

The Biden administration has apparently decided to totally ignore the involvement of Iran in Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel. The Iranian regime, meanwhile, has been assisting Russia militarily in its war against Ukraine and is reportedly behind the latest Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel. The Biden administration, by ignoring sanctions against Iran’s oil and gas exports, thereby enabling Iran to accumulate close to $60 billion with which to fund the Hamas war, as well as to advance its own nuclear weapons program.

Iran has not only been threatening the US with attacks, it has attacked US assets in Syria and Iraq 83 times since Biden became president, and at least 24 times in the past two weeks. Iran also recently threatened again to annihilate Israel, and has reportedly begun ordering its elite militias based in Syria into southern Lebanon “to participate in attacks on Israel.”

Worse, Biden is reportedly again trying to meddle again in the government of a sovereign democracy by strongly intimating that he wants Israel’s duly elected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gone.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20123/new-war-armenia-azerbaijan

After Azerbaijan besieged and starved 120,000 Christian Armenians in the Republic of Artsakh in the South Caucuses for nine months, on September 19, 2023, Azerbaijan bombed Artsakh’s communities.

Hundreds of civilians, including children, were murdered. Almost all the Armenians of Artsakh have fled: they know that after all military raids, Armenians who have fallen into the hands of the Azerbaijani military have been treated with maximum cruelty.

Beheading and mutilating Armenians appears to be a long-standing tradition of Azeri soldiers. These actions are promoted and rewarded by the State of Azerbaijan. Azeri soldiers who commit such ISIS-like war crimes not only escape accountability and are never prosecuted, rather they are treated as national heroes by their government.

During Azerbaijan’s military incursion into Armenia in September 2022, Azeri soldiers raped, mutilated and slaughtered a 36-year-old Armenian woman who served in the Armenian forces. They then posted a video demonstrating their war crime on social media. In it, the dead woman appears naked, with both of her arms and legs dismembered. One of her eyes is gouged out. A severed finger appears to be sticking out of her mouth, and another appears out of her private parts…. The Azeri soldiers videotaping can be heard laughing and joking in the background.

So, will the US finally hold the government of Azerbaijan to account? Will it cut US military aid to Azerbaijan? Will it once again watch as Turkey and Azerbaijan massacre more Armenians and invade more Armenian lands?

https://bit.ly/479MlfKThe Iran-Hamas-US connection

*National Security advisor Jake Sullivan said in an October 10, 2023 White House press briefing: “Iran is complicit in this attack in a broad sense because they have provided training, they have provided capabilities, they have provided support, and they have had engagement and contact with Hamas over years and years. And all of that has played a role in contributing to what we have seen [on October 7].”

*Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have been courted and appeased by the West, are committed to bring the West – and especially “the Great American Satan” – to submission. They are the chief architects and enablers of the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah wars, determined to escalate them into a regional pandemonium, which would undermine Western interests.

*Iran considers its military and financial support of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists – as well as many terror entities in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America – as a means to fueling instability, toppling pro-US regimes, and severely downgrading the US’ strategic posture. Therefore, Iran has been – since the 1980s – an epicenter of global, anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking and proliferation of advanced military systems. Iran’s rogue foreign and national security policy has been matched by its rogue domestic policy, which has been replete with ruthless oppression and suppression of the population, in general, and religious and ethnic minorities and especially women, in particular.

However, irrespective of this rogue policy, the US adheres to the diplomatic option, which has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ global posture since their ascension to power in 1979. Moreover, the US’ response to sustained Iranian attacks on US installations in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Syria has been restrained, further eroding its posture of deterrence. Furthermore, the US has lifted most sanctions against the rogue Ayatollahs and is eagerly seeking another nuclear accord with Tehran.

*The lifting of most sanctions without Congressional consent – especially on the exportation of oil and natural gas – has enabled Iran to supply Hezbollah, Hamas and additional terror organizations and drug traffickers more advanced military systems (e.g., missiles, drones, electronics and explosives) to the detriment of the US and its allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-deadly-wages-of-western-secularism/

The Enlightenment project to diminish faith––or as the late Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI said, “to see God eradicated once and for all from the public life of humanity and shut up in the subjective sphere of cultural residues from the past”––has nearly succeeded in the West.

Even in the U.S., long mocked by Europeans as a hotbed of religious irrationality and bigotry, the younger generations are increasingly alienated from traditional religion. This estrangement, reinforced by the Christophobia and chronocentrism of schools and most of our culture, has gotten worse over the last two generations. According to an American Enterprise Institute report, 34% of Gen Z, and 29% of Millennials are unaffiliated with any religion, compared to 18% for Boomers, and 9% for the Silent Generation (1928-45).

The wages of this historical sea-change are legion, but nowhere more deadly than the long, profound misunderstanding of Islam, gruesomely obvious in the commentary and protests concerning the current savagery of Hamas’s terrorist attacks against Israel. One effect of our diminishment of faith is that our political leaders, charged with protecting the interests and security of we the people, have failed to understand or even know the doctrines of Islam, its history, and the intensity of its adherents’ faith that all inspire and motivate the attackers.

As a consequence, policies and strategies are based on a materialist calculus that emphasizes Western goods like “national self-determination,” democracy, prosperity, or political rights like freedom and equality. Religion, a Freudian “illusion” or a Marxist “opiate,” is either ignored or, in the case of Islam, refashioned in terms that gratify the West’s parochial prejudices like identity politics based on a historical victim status.

As long ago as the Thirties, this historical amnesia and its dangers were pointed out by Catholic writer Hilaire Belloc:

Millions of modern people . . . have forgotten all about Islam. They have never come in contact with it. They take for granted that it is decaying, and that, anyway, it is just a foreign religion which will not concern them. It is, as a fact, the most formidable and persistent enemy which our civilization has had, and may at any moment become as large a menace in the future as it has been in the past. . . . The final fruit of this tenacity, the second period of Islamic power, may be delayed —but I doubt whether it can be permanently postponed.

Our ignorance and indifference reflect the long retreat of Islamic power and influence since the 17th century, and its increasing domination by the West. These have had two effects in our times: the West became uninterested in Islamic nations other than as Cold War allies and sources of the fossil fuels that have powered our rich economies; and the deep sense of grievance on the part of Muslim nations, especially after the “disaster,” as Osama bin Laden put it, of the 1923 dismantling of the Ottoman Caliphate.