POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

 michael.goodnewsisrael@gmail.com

In a column “Jewish Origins of Everyday Phrases” Rabbi Dovid Campbell who lives in Israel, notes the biblical locus of the expression: “By the Sweat of Your Brow” (Genesis 3:19).

https://aish.com/the-jewish-origins-of-everyday-phrases/

“After Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, God declares: “By the sweat of your brow you shall eat bread.”

How apposite for Israel, where“ by the sweat of the brow” of tireless researchers and developers who are surrounded by enemies and victimized by war and terror on every front, contribute to every single beneficent endeavor to billions of citizens throughout the world.

Read Michael Ordman’s dazzling catalogue. rsk

POSITIVE NEWS IN A WAR
 
Daniella has bullet removed. (TY Yanky) Ex-hostage Daniella Gilboa has finally had a Hamas bullet removed from her ankle at Rabin Medical Center-Beilinson Campus. She had put off undergoing the surgery because the bullet was a daily reminder of how grateful she is to the Almighty for protecting her.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-860704 
 
A sanctuary for combat soldiers. (TY Yanky) NGO Nechama and Hatzala for Israel has dedicated Dekel House in Moshav Patish to the memory of brave Captain Dekel Swissa, who fell on Oct 7 2023. Dekel House gives combat soldiers from Gaza a place to relax, swim, eat, drink and wind down during short periods of leave.
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/bkutc0w8xl   https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-864016
https://hatzala4israel.org/
 
“Miracle” saves IDF soldiers. The recent night attack on an IDF camp by 18 Hamas terrorists near Khan Younis could have been catastrophic. But six of Hamas’ eight grenades failed to explode. They also blew up an empty building. The soldiers responded, quickly eliminating 10 terrorists and air support finished the job.
https://worldisraelnews.com/soldiers-attacked-by-hamas-last-week-call-survival-a-miracle/
https://unitedwithisrael.org/watch-soldiers-tefillin-remain-unscathed-after-hamas-attack/
 
Arab boy reunited with medic who saved him on 7 Oct. 7-year-old Atala Osma Abu Madian was shot in the stomach and his father was murdered by Hamas on 7 Oct 2023. Atala was saved by MDA paramedic Zvi. They had a very emotional reunion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpKayVLjdgg
 
Floyd is back. (TY Yanky & JNS) ) At the BAYZ restaurant on Tel Aviv’s Hilton Beach, World boxing champion Floyd Mayweather met soldiers who have fought in Gaza’s alleyways or battles against Hezbollah in Lebanon. The soldiers showered him with love. “Know that you are winners,” he told them.
https://www.israelhayom.com/2025/07/25/floyd-mayweather-to-idf-soldiers-you-are-winners-im-proud-of-you/
 
Quietly helping since 2024. You will have read here about IsraAid and its relief work in global catastrophes. But it kept quiet about its work in Gaza since early 2024, coordinating international aid organizations with the Israeli government and military. It is now publicizing its work and directly creating a logistics hub for partners.
https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/after-quietly-supporting-gaza-relief-work-since-early-2024-israaid-ceo-opens-up-and-warns-we-are-reaching-an-extreme-humanitarian-situation/?utm_source=cio
 
Famine?  Where? COGAT: “1,300 aid trucks entered Gaza during past week.” Meanwhile, almost 1,900 trucks waiting inside the Strip were collected and their supplies distributed by the U.N. and other international organizations. And more than 1,000 aid packages have been airdropped into the Strip since late last month.
https://www.jns.org/cogat-1300-aid-trucks-entered-gaza-during-past-week/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVPf-6wtDyI  https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/413974
https://www.jns.org/huckabee-slams-cbs-for-selectively-editing-interview-on-israel/
 
Hope and renewal. (TY Yanky) Hadas Loewenstern is widow of Rabbi Elisha Loewenstern, who heroically fell in Gaza. Elisha told Hadas that if anything happened to him, she was to “quickly find a new partner.” Hadas is now engaged to Hod Reichert whose wife during childbirth and they will raise their 10 children together.
https://www.jfeed.com/news-israel/widow-idf-soldier-engagement
 
 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Valve repair for heart transplant patient. Doctors at Israel’s Rabin Medical Center successfully performed an emergency mitral valve repair on a heart transplant patient. The procedure has been performed only twice in patients after heart transplantation worldwide – and never before attempted on a patient in cardiogenic shock.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-doctors-perform-1st-ever-emergency-mitral-valve-repair-on-heart-transplant-patient/
 
Promising treatment for cancer. Israel’s Silexion reported here in April that its SIL-204 reduced pancreatic tumors. Latest studies show it also works on lung cancer. Its silencing of KRAS protein mutations achieved unprecedented inhibition rates of up to 97% in pancreatic cancer cells and nearly 90% in colorectal cancer cells.
https://www.investing.com/news/company-news/silexion-reports-97-cancer-cell-inhibition-with-kras-therapy-93CH-4163541
 
The first fingerstick infection blood test. Israel’s MeMed (see here previously) has completed a multi-year development of MeMed BV Flex. The test enables accurate differentiation between bacterial and viral infections in just 15 minutes using only a few drops of capillary blood from a finger prick.
https://www.ourcrowd.com/startup-news/memed-completes-development-of-first-ever-fingerstick-host-response-test-for-rapid-differentiation-of-bacterial-and-viral-infections
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.07.21.25331877v1
 
BGU scientists return to their work. The direct missile hit on Soroka hospital in Be’er Sheva during the war with Iran also froze groundbreaking research on curing diabetes at Ben-Gurion University. Now, after two months, the scientists have returned to alternate laboratories to continue their work on life-saving medications.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFsZencAT5E
 
US FDA helps clear the airways. (TY Atid-EDI) Israel’s Synchrony Medical (see here previously) has received FDA clearance for its LibAirty™ Airway Clearance System for At-Home Respiratory Relief. It can now bring relief to millions of patients in the USA, living with chronic lung diseases.
https://sheba-global.com/synchrony-medicals-libairtytm-cleared-by-fda/
 
1,600+ more Ethiopians can now see. Dr Morris Hartstein (see here previously) led an annual delegation from Israel’s Shamir Medical Center under the auspices of his Operation Ethiopia, where they treated 1,653 patients suffering from cataracts, infections, and preventable diseases.  They also distributed 440+ pairs of eyeglasses.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/413822
 
Massive donation for “Hope Tower”. Israelis Shmuel and Anat Harlap have donated $180 million to Israel’s Rabin Medical Center for the construction of the largest cardiological and neurological center in the Middle East. It is the largest-ever single gift to an Israeli hospital and the new center is to be named “Hope Tower”.
https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/shmuel-and-anat-harlap-donate-180-million-to-rabin-medical-center-the-largest-gift-ever-made-to-an-israeli-hospital/ 

The Annunciation shooting reveals the savagery of identity politics The massacre at a Catholic school in Minneapolis speaks to the apocalyptic narcissism of our times. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/28/the-annunciation-shooting-reveals-the-savagery-of-identity-politics/

“What is most striking is the media coverage of the horror in Minneapolis. It seems muted. There’s little focus on the killer’s anti-Semitism, where we all know that if he’d been Islamophobic it would have dominated the coverage. His trans identity is not significant, say observers who would have thought it very significant indeed if the piece of shit had been an ‘incel’. And just imagine if three acts of barbarism had been carried in recent months under the rallying cry of ‘Fuck Palestine’. The left would be in up arms. But ‘Free Palestine’? Screaming about Israel before you end the lives of pensioners or praying children? They’re silent on that. Perhaps they’re mortified. They should be.”

Maybe it’s because the school has the exact same name as the first one I attended in London – the Annunciation Catholic School – that yesterday’s massacre in Minneapolis horrified me so deeply. Our school also had a church right next door, also called the Annunciation Catholic Church, like the one in Minneapolis. And just like those kids who were so savagely attacked as they clasped their tiny hands together in prayer at 8am, we, too, would make the short journey from school to church to give praise to God for our lives, our families, our friends.

It is hard to comprehend the sheer barbarism of the mass shooting of those Annunciation kids. The suspect – Robin Westman – is said to have shot through the church’s windows. He pumped bullets into innocents in their holy sanctuary. Two children, aged eight and 10, were killed. Six others are in a critical condition. More would have perished were it not for the heroism of the teachers and older pupils. As the school principal said: ‘Adults were protecting children. Older children were protecting younger children.’ Unimaginable courage in the face of unimaginable evil.

All mass shootings chill the blood. Especially school shootings. But there is something distinctly heinous about firing into a church full of kids. For Catholics, the church is a holy haven from the trials and vagaries of life. If the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis is anything like the Annunciation Catholic Church in London that I attended, then to those kids it will have been a place of safety, silence, wonder. That a man clad in black violated their sacred zone with blind, mad violence is unconscionable. The scars of this will last.

As with all crazed shootings, it would be folly to try to derive hard ‘lessons’ from this atrocity. Yet it would be negligent – to the victims, to America – to not ask questions. To not ponder, at least, how such a bestial act, such a vicious clawing at the fabric of civilised society, could take place in 21st-century America. To my mind, it is possible we are witnessing the hyper-violent logical endpoint to identity politics. From what we know about the suspect, it seems his savagery was in some ways the armed wing of the apocalyptic narcissism that identity politics so often engenders and unleashes.

Westman’s atrocity is being investigated as an anti-Catholic hate crime. He’s reportedly a former pupil of the Annunciation. So he will have sat in the very pews he mercilessly fired upon. But there’s more. He was ‘trans’: he changed his name from Robert to Robin and posed as a woman. He was seemingly anti-Christian. The words ‘Where is your God?’ were written on one of his guns – a vile taunt of the children he knew he was about to massacre. And he was virulently anti-Semitic, a passionate loather of Israel. Did the hate he so brutishly visited on those kids spring from his descent into the extremities of these identitarian positions?

It would be reckless to overlook that this is not the first time a trans person has carried out a mass shooting. There was also the massacre at a Christian school in Nashville in 2023, in which six were slaughtered. And the shooting at a school in Denver in 2019. And the massacre at a warehouse in Maryland in 2018. We must not ‘villainise’ the trans community in the wake of the Annunciation shooting, says Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey. This isn’t about villainising anyone – it’s about asking whether the self-regard and self-pity so recklessly sown by the identitarian zeitgeist might be helping to nurture catastrophic levels of anti-social animus.

Westman’s ‘manifesto’ would seem to suggest he was consumed by the vanity of the victim mindset. It included the trans Pride flag and the words ‘defend equality’. He appeared to hate Christians, presumably for their trans-scepticism. He grossly imagined himself as the ‘horrible monster standing over those powerless kids’.

We have to grapple with the possibility that a culture that forces the individual ever more inwards, inviting them to obsess over their own fantasy identities and to loathe any ‘phobe’ who refuses to genuflect at their altar of the self, is wrenching people ever further and ever more violently from society itself. Sure, most identitarians merely harbour a latent contempt for the average citizen who refuses to validate their hallucinatory self-image. But perhaps some are pushed a little further. Perhaps it was more dangerous than we thought, or certainly foolhardy, to greenlight this politics of recognition that pits the self-pitying individual against the mass of society.

Then there was Westman’s anti-Semitism. It was by all accounts deep and grotesque. ‘Israel must fall’ was written on one of his guns. ‘Free Palestine’, he said. He wrote about murdering ‘filthy Zionist Jews’. ‘Six million wasn’t enough’, he said. By my calculation this is the third act of lethal violence carried out in the US at least partly under the auspices of ‘anti-Zionism’. First there was the slaughter of two Israeli Embassy workers outside a Jewish museum in Washington, DC. Then the scalding of elderly Jews with a flammable liquid in Colorado. And now the slaying of Catholic kids by a devoted Israel-hater. In all three cases, the killer either wrote or said: ‘Free Palestine.’

We need to talk about this. It speaks, surely, to the anti-civilisational bent to ‘anti-Zionism’. That innocents can be slaughtered under the banner of hating Israel, whether it’s an 82-year-old Jew burnt to death in Colorado or two Catholic kids shot to death in Minneapolis, suggests there is a deep anti-human rot to this supposedly political position.

Why Iran’s Ideology and Missiles Endanger the West: If Hitler Had Nuclear Weapons, Do You Think He Would Not Have Used Them? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21868/iran-missiles-ideology

In his latest statement, Amir Hayat-Moqaddam [member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission] openly declared that Iran is capable of striking all of Europe and even US cities such as Washington and New York with missiles launched from offshore Iranian ships.

Western policymakers had been hoping for decades that engagement, dialogue and economic deals could temper Tehran’s revolutionary zeal. The regime’s latest statements, however, show that such hopes are illusory: Iran is not guided by pragmatic statecraft but by an uncompromising ideology that explicitly calls for global expansion of its revolution.

Hayat-Moqaddam’s words are not vague threats. They are a boast, a proclamation of a plan decades in the making. Such statements must be taken seriously: they reveal the true intentions of the regime: to extend its deterrent power by threatening both Europe and America, and to hold the West hostage to the fear of devastating missile strikes.

Iran’s investment in its ballistic missile arsenal is not defensive; it reflects a doctrine of “deterrence by punishment,” the idea that Iran can intimidate adversaries by holding their cities, infrastructure, and populations at risk of destruction. In this sense, Iran’s missile arsenal is not just a tool of war — it is an instrument of political leverage, designed to project power far beyond Iran’s borders.

[J]ust one missile tipped with a nuclear warhead hitting a European or American city would be catastrophic. Iran is estimated to still have thousands of ballistic missiles that can reach Europe when launched from Iranians soil. If launched from ships at sea, the continental United States is also within range of Iran’s missiles, as Iran is now openly warning.

Iran’s threat is not hypothetical; it is a proven capability paired with a proven willingness to use it.

Since 1979, Iran’s leaders have always regarded the United States and Europe as enemies, even before the West imposed sanctions or intervened in regional conflicts. The hostility is not reactive; it is ideological. Like Nazism in the 20th century, the Iranian regime’s ideology cannot be appeased with compromises.

The West must abandon the false hope that diplomacy alone will alter Tehran’s course. Sanctions must be maintained and expanded, not lifted in exchange for empty promises. The United States must keep a military option on the table, making clear that if Iran crosses red lines, it will face devastating consequences.

Iranian diplomats who serve as spies or agents for the regime’s ideological mission should be expelled, embassies shuttered, and Iran’s international presence curtailed. Equally important is supporting the Iranian people, many of whom have repeatedly risked their lives in protests calling for an end to clerical rule. The collapse of the regime from within is the only real long-term solution to the threat Iran poses to the world.

Iran’s leadership openly declares its intent to spread its revolution and to target Europe with missiles. To ignore such declarations would be an unforgivable mistake.

Unfortunately, the Iranian regime’s threats are not empty rhetoric. They are a continuation of a consistent ideological vision that has driven its policies since its Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran’s leadership openly states that they seek not only the destruction of Israel but also the subjugation of the West. Iran’s missile arsenal and naval drills show that it is actively preparing for this confrontation; its ambitions for nuclear weapons underscore the urgency.

The West must not turn a blind eye or entertain illusions of “moderation.” Just as Europe once ignored Hitler’s ideology at its peril, ignoring Iran’s Islamist regime would be a historic mistake. The only path forward is to maintain relentless pressure, prepare militarily, support the Iranian people, and never allow this radical regime to realize its apocalyptic goals.

Recent remarks by a senior Iranian official, Amir Hayat-Moqaddam, a member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, once again confirmed what many in the West have feared: the Islamic Republic of Iran’s grand strategy has always included targeting not only Israel and its neighbors but also Europe and the United States.

In his latest statement, Hayat-Moqaddam openly declared that Iran is capable of striking all of Europe and even US cities such as Washington and New York with missiles launched from offshore Iranian ships.

Gaza Part Three: Root Causes and Real-World Consequences By Thaddeus G. McCotter and Andrew Zack

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/30/gaza-part-three-root-causes-and-real-world-consequences/

Rewarding Hamas with a “two-state solution” ensures more terror, fuels antisemitism, and ignores Israel’s right to defend itself against eradication.

This is the third and final installment of a three-part series on the Gaza situation, political fallout, root causes, and real-world ramifications.

Certainly, the spark of the present crisis is Hamas’ cowardly terrorist attack upon Israeli civilians. Indeed, for many people—and not only in Gaza and the Arab world—the existence and continued survival of Israel is the paramount problem. But absent Israel’s eradication and, quite likely, a genocide of its Jewish citizens, this root cause must be taken as a given. What, then, within Gaza, the Arab world, and many Western nations, are some corollary root causes exacerbating the difficulty in forging an Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist?

As patently evidenced by their customary lack of material support and unwillingness to permit resettlement, most Arab nations use the Palestinians as a pawn to deflect their own populations from focusing on liberty, democracy, and prosperity at home. This would constitute an existential crisis for these authoritarian nations, which would likely be unable to survive their failure to meet the rising expectations of their peoples. The great dilemma for these Arab nations: should a free, democratic, prosperous, and peaceful Gazan state be created, it will not be in their regimes’ best interests. Far better for them to have Palestinians’ and the Arab world’s unrest, invective, and violence directed at Israel than internally at their governments. For example, following this cynical strategy, many Sunni and Shia nations abet the propagation of hatred within the Palestinian people. This includes inculcating the young with hatred of Israel and Jews in general, which will poison the prospects for peace for generations to come.

These Arab regimes are not alone in doing so, for, despite claiming to support peace and the “two-state solution,” they have partners in international institutions and many Western nations who have their own root causes for promoting hatred of the Jewish state and its citizens, including their prejudicial ideological imperatives and domestic political aims.

In the West, particularly, an ancient hatred has melded with postmodernism to produce virulent antisemitism. Traditionally housed on the right, over the past half-century, antisemitism had been in retreat or at least dormant in this political quarter. This is no longer the case, as an influential cadre of neo-isolationists spinning many thinly veiled anti-Israel tropes has spurred a recrudescence of antisemitism on the right. Why has this not been routinely and righteously denounced by the left, which until recently had been a bastion against antisemitism?

Because, unlike yesterday’s liberals, today’s progressive movement is postmodernist. Influenced by the Baby Boomers’ old New Left that, in turn, was imbued with the radical theories of European socialists and Marxists, today’s postmodernists—including the bulk of American progressives—are secular to the core and hostile to all religion. As a result, they have rejected the Biblical notion that we are all created in God’s image and hence are all endowed with human dignity. 

When hospitals become battlefields The Nasser Hospital strike in Gaza was a tragedy, not a ‘war crime’. Andrew Fox

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/08/27/when-hospitals-become-battlefields/

The IDF’s strike on the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in Gaza on Monday, reportedly killing 20 Palestinians, including five journalists, has put Israel back at the centre of international attention. The reaction has followed a predictable pattern: a shocking video, immediate accusations of war crimes levelled against Israel, and near-ubiquitous international condemnation. But to understand what happened, and why the situation around the Nasser Hospital is so fraught, a longer and more sceptical view is required.

The first point that needs making is that the Nasser Hospital has not been a neutral space during the war in Gaza. In fact, it has repeatedly been abused by Palestinian militant groups. In February 2024, the IDF arrested more than 100 militants inside the hospital, some of whom were directly involved in the 7 October 2023 massacre. Weeks earlier, freed Israeli hostage Sharon Aloni Cunio told CNN that hostages had been held in the hospital. In April, the hospital’s own director of nursing, Mohammed Saqer, revealed in a since-deleted social-media post that Palestinian Islamic Jihad had threatened him after he reopened wards to the sick and wounded.

It is common knowledge that Hamas uses hospitals and schools as military bases, which is why Israel has had no option but to strike them at times. Mohammed Sinwar – who became the de facto leader of Hamas after the death of his brother, Yahya – was killed by the IDF at Gaza’s European Hospital in May. Nor was Monday the first time Israel has targeted the Nasser Hospital. In May, a strike on the complex killed notorious 7 October live-streamer Hassan Aslih, along with Ahmad al-Qidra, a senior Hamas militant.

The identities of some of those killed on Monday further complicates matters. Indeed, some of the journalists killed in the strike appear to have been members of, or have close ties to, Hamas. Mohammed Salama, a journalist for Al Jazeera, videoed and participated in the 7 October invasion of Israel that started the war. Mariam Abu Daqqa, who freelanced for the Associated Press, allegedly used her press credentials to protect Hamas fighters. Another, Ahmed Abu Aziz, openly celebrated the 7 October massacre. These connections do not necessarily justify their deaths, or even suggest they were knowingly targeted. But this does illustrate, once again, the way Hamas deliberately blurs the line between civilian and combatant, between journalist and operative.

Transgender Church Shooter Hated Trump, Christians and Jews And the media won’t talk about it. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/transgender-church-shooter-hated-trump-christians-and-jews/

What were the motives of Robert ‘Robin’ Westman who opened fire on a Catholic church killing 2 children and wounding 17 others? The authorities claim that they’re still looking for the motive of the transgender mass murder, but like most psychos, he was happy to scrawl it all over social media.

Beyond the completely psychotic rants, Westman made it clear that he hated Trump, Jews and Christians. He also hated Indians. The one religion he seemed to like was Islam and he scribbled “Mashallah”, an Islamic term, on his gun along with love notes like “Six million was not enough”, “Israel must fall” and “Kill Trump”.

The media and local authorities won’t talk about any of it.

An Anti-Israeli Activist Posing as a Nun The lies of Tucker’s peculiar guest. by Thom Nickels

https://www.frontpagemag.com/an-anti-israeli-activist-posing-as-a-nun/

A few years ago a learned Russian Orthodox priest-acquaintance of mine told me what he thought of a certain nun who was making waves in Europe with her radical political views.

The nun in question was located in Vienna, and her name was Sister Vassa, a Russian Orthodox sister educated at Fordham University, a Jesuit school noted for its progressive theological views.

“You must be careful with nuns,” the priest said, ponderously. “Many of them drift into areas that are far away from anything having to do with their original religious vocation.”

It wasn’t long before Sister Vassa’s role as political activist eclipsed her vocation as a nun; as a result, she was defrocked by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Recently, another attention-seeking Orthodox nun kicked her religious vocation to the curb to become an anti-Israel political activist.

She is a little nun with a mustache, Mother Agapia Stephanopoulus, who has lived in the Holy Land since 1996 and who created a firestorm of sorts as a result of her recent interview with Tucker Carlson on what life is like for Christians in the Holy Land.

Mother Agapia’s message: life is horrible for Christians in the Holy Land, and it’s all Israel’s fault.

Watching the show, my first thought was: who is this vintage troll doll dressed as a nun who makes controversial statements and lies with such a wide smile?

Words poured out of her effortlessly, yet Tucker did not challenge or contradict her in any way. He barely asked her anything about her background, such as why she left the United States in the mid-nineties under suspicious circumstances.

No questions about how, in 2000, when she was Sister Stephanopoulos, she barricaded herself inside a Russian Orthodox property in Jericho until she had to be forcibly removed.

Writer Daniel Mael recapped that incident for The Geopolitical Maelstrom:

“U.S. diplomats were forced to intervene after she allegedly leveraged her brother George’s White House connections. A local real-estate fight became an international incident. The method was clear even then: insert yourself into conflict, cloak it in religious language, and trust that drama and family connections would amplify the cause.”

Europe in the Balance? Europe faces a breaking point as illegal migration, welfare strain, energy crises, and defense demands collide with shrinking populations and stagnant economies. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/28/europe-in-the-balance/

Almost weekly in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France, and Germany, a sensational assault committed by an illegal migrant—often enjoying some sort of state support or with prior arrests for the same crime—surfaces.

Until recently, European politicians and the media sought to either ignore such news or accuse those who clamored for tighter borders, more police protection, and stiffer penalties of being “racists” or “xenophobes.”

Until recently, that is.

Mass protests are now common in Britain against the Labour Party’s open borders policies and generous welfare entitlements for immigrants who arrive illegally and without authentic “political refugee” status.

Greek officials, also swamped by illegal immigration, now cite President Trump’s secure border policies as new models for their own.

The majority of European immigrants now come from majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East and North Africa. Yet many arrivals seem angrier at their newfound liberal hosts than at the dictatorships they fled back home.

Europe’s immigration policies will not work in a multiethnic democracy.

Too many immigrants are arriving too quickly, without sufficient diversity, language fluency, skills, or familiarity with the customs and culture of their host nations. They often enter with separatist religious and cultural values antithetical to the very place they seek refuge.

Yet, there is no European plan of civic education to assimilate immigrants and teach them the rules, laws, and culture of their hosts.

It is then no surprise that what follows is ghettoization, resentment, and loud attacks on the very nation in which they seek sanctuary, denouncing it as decadent and godless.

In the past, Europe’s anemic military budgets, reliance on borrowed money, socialism, and a once-strong economy papered over these existential challenges of illegal immigration.

Qatar Does Not Seem Interested in Any Deal that Ends the Rule of Hamas in the Gaza Strip: What Qatar Is Saying in Arabic by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21873/what-qatar-is-saying-in-arabic

As the US and other Western countries continue to rely on Qatar to broker a ceasefire-hostage deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip, senior Qatari journalists affiliated with the Qatar’s state-run media continue to praise the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas, and are even calling for Hamas to kidnap more Israelis.

Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting similar videos from Hamas since the beginning of the war.

While the Qatari government claims to the Trump Administration that it is working to release the 50 Israeli hostages held by Hamas and other terror groups in the Gaza Strip, al-Harmi, closely associated with Qatar’s leadership, is calling for kidnapping more Israelis – whom, by the way, he described as “rats.”

“If success is not achieved this time in capturing Zionist soldiers at the hands of the heroes of Hamas Brigades, then the second, third, and fourth attempts will succeed, God willing, by adding new rats to the tally held by the heroes of the [Hamas] Brigades.” — Jaber al-Harmi, editor-in-chief of the Qatari government mouthpiece newspaper Al Sharq, X, August 26, 2025.

“I swear, the Zionist entity will inevitably disappear…. Its end is near, very near.” — Jaber al-Harmi, quoting a video by Al-Jazeera, X August 26, 2025.

“Al-Harmi’s views on Israel and the Jews are aligned with the extremist ideology of Hamas and reflect his unreserved support for this movement and for its terror against Israelis – support which is also expressed by the Qatari state.”— Middle East Media Research Institute, April 15, 2025.

If Qatar really wanted to end the war in the Gaza Strip, its representatives and propagandists would not be calling on Hamas to kidnap more Israelis.

If Qatar really wanted to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, it could do so by threatening to arrest or deport the Hamas leaders living in Doha or by seizing their financial assets.

It is time for world leaders to listen to what the Qataris are saying in Arabic, not to what they hear from them in closed-door meetings in English.

As the US and other Western countries continue to rely on Qatar to broker a ceasefire-hostage deal to end the war in the Gaza Strip, senior Qatari journalists affiliated with the Qatar’s state-run media continue to praise the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas, and are even calling for Hamas to kidnap more Israelis.

Qatar, which has long been supporting Hamas and currently hosts its leaders in Doha, already uses its Al-Jazeera television empire as a mouthpiece for Hamas and other Islamist terror groups. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, triggered by the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel, Al-Jazeera — in Arabic — has been providing a platform to Hamas leaders to praise the massacre of Israelis.

On October 7, 2023, several Hamas leaders based in Qatar appeared in a video watching the coverage of the massacre. The Hamas leaders performed the “Prostration of Gratitude.”

Al-Jazeera, in addition, has become the official mouthpiece of Hamas’s armed wing, Izaddin al-Qassam. Since the beginning of the Gaza war, Al-Jazeera has been broadcasting “exclusive” footage of Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers in the Gaza Strip. Al-Jazeera is, unsurprisingly, the only station Hamas trusts.

The War on Words: How Manufactured Euphemism Corrupts Our Common Language Jamie K. Wilso

https://pjmedia.com/jamie-wilson/2025/08/25/the-war-on-words-how-manufactured-euphemism-corrupts-our-common-language-n4943009

Words are code for the mind. Change the word, and you change the thought; change the thought, and you change the action that follows.

This was the logic behind the “person-first” language that emerged in the nonprofit world. A disabled person became a person with a disability. A homeless man became a person without shelter. At its best, this reminded us that individuals deserve dignity. At its worst, it twisted language into unwieldy shapes. But even in this early form, the seed was planted: words were not just descriptions, they were instruments of perception.

From there, the seed grew into something else entirely. What began as a courtesy metastasized into a strategy. Illegal alien became undocumented immigrant — later even person without papers. Crime was reframed as a clerical mishap, trespass as missing paperwork. The reality did not change, but the story around it did.

Examples abound:

Insane became mentally ill, then mentally challenged, then differently abled, then neurodivergent — until autism and psychosis were jumbled together in one soft word.
Poor became underprivileged, then disadvantaged, then at-risk.
Prisoner became inmate, then justice-involved individual, then returning citizen.
Prostitute became sex worker, and in some corners, even entrepreneur.

This is the euphemism treadmill. When one term wears out — when the public begins to hear the fact beneath the phrase — a new one is minted. The old word is declared harsh; the new word is declared humane. Yet within a few years, the cycle repeats, because the reality has not changed. What wears out is not the word but the illusion.