RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.jns.org/opinion/a-palestinian-celebration-of-empress-of-terror-fusako-shigenobu/

 When “empress of terror” Fusako Shigenobu was released from Tokyo’s Hachioji prison on Saturday, Palestinian groups hailed her as a heroine and bemoaned what they called her “unjust” incarceration.
The 76-year-old co-founder of the now-defunct Japanese Red Army (JRA) had completed a 20-year jail term for her masterminding of the 1974 hostage-taking of the French embassy in The Hague and the takeover of the U.S. consulate in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 1975.

But it was her organization’s part in the 1972 massacre at Israel’s Lod (today, Ben-Gurion) Airport for which she is most celebrated by Palestinian activists. That attack, in which 26 people were killed and dozens more wounded, was perpetrated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and executed by three members of the JRA.
Among the dead were 17 Christian pilgrims from Puerto Rico, one Canadian tourist and eight Israelis, including National Academy of Sciences director Aharon Katzir, brother of Ephraim, who became the country’s fourth president in 1973.

The trio of JRA operatives was perfect for the job. Landing in Israel on an Air France flight from Rome, the Far East Asian men posing as musicians didn’t look like terrorists—certainly not of the PFLP variety. Without arousing the suspicion of security agents, they entered the terminal with ease, removed assault rifles from their violin cases and opened fire in every direction. While they were at it, they threw live grenades into the hysterical throng.
After the massacre, Shigenobu went into hiding in Lebanon. It was there, after all, that she had established the JRA in 1971.

For the nearly three decades until her arrest in 2000 in Osaka, where she had returned to reboot her “anti-imperialist” activities and commitment to the “Palestinian struggle,” she was Interpol’s most wanted terrorist.
It took years before she voiced any remorse for the JRA’s deadly assaults, which she now chalks up to youthful idealism. Upon her exit from behind prison walls, the elderly Communist with a Palestinian keffiyeh draped over her shoulders offered a pitiful apology “for the inconvenience [her] arrest caused to so many people.”
She told reporters that “it [the JRA’s terrorism] was half a century ago … but we caused damage to innocent people who were strangers to us by prioritizing our battle, such as by hostage-taking.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18568/nuclear-iran-risk

One might well wonder if the CNAS study is a “trial balloon” from the Biden Administration to begin preparing the nation and world psychologically for the advent of Iran’s “Islamic bomb.”

One might also wonder if the CNAS study is an attempt to justify consequent U.S. retreat from the Middle East, not as another humiliating defeat, but as a prudent and wise reprioritization of resources to meet the threat from China.

President Biden is defunding nuclear weapons critical to U.S. national security, such as the SLCM-N and B-83. He is also still seriously considering abolition of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and is doing nothing to accelerate desperately needed modernization of the U.S. nuclear deterrent — despite increasing nuclear threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran.

If America, the most benign and humane civilization that has ever existed in history, is capable of using nuclear weapons, what can be expected from the evil empires that are Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran?

At minimum, a nuclear Iran will be even more aggressive supporting terrorism against moderate Arab states, Israel, and the U.S.. Iran might well also arm its proxies — many of which are officially designated as Foreign Terrorist Organizations — with weapons of mass destruction, while relying on anonymity and its nuclear deterrent to escape retaliation.

Unlike North Korea, whose overt pursuit of nuclear weapons is used for atomic diplomacy and blackmail, Iran’s nuclear weapons program is clandestine and may remain covertly secret — because Iran plans actually to use its “Islamic bomb.”

Expect the Center for a New American Security to weave more fig leaves rationalizing Biden Administration blunders and irresponsible policy as a species of wisdom. Coming soon, U.S. nuclear inferiority to Russia and China will be called an “acceptable risk.”

The Center for a New American Security (CNAS), comprising largely former, mostly Democrat administration foreign policy and defense officials, in a new study — “Risk and Responsibility: Managing Future Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction Threats” — tries to sell the notion that Iran armed with nuclear, biological and chemical offensive weapons will be an acceptable risk. CNAS is a source of staff and “expertise” to the Biden Administration. Unfortunately, their idea is preposterous.