Christopher F. Rufo On Israel-Palestine, You Don’t Need to Be an Expert to Pick a Side What the Gaza war reveals about America’s domestic politics

https://www.city-journal.org/article/israel-palestine-gaza-war-hamas-domestic-politics

Intellectuals, rarely short on opinions, often fall back on a familiar dodge when confronted with a controversy they’d rather avoid: calling the issue “complex.”

The war in Gaza is one such case. To be sure, the tangled history, religion, and culture behind the Israel–Palestine conflict make it genuinely complicated. Partisans on both sides accuse their opponents of ignorance while promoting their own preferred narratives and facts to claim authority over the subject.

I should acknowledge that I’m no expert on Israel and Palestine. I don’t speak Hebrew or Arabic. I haven’t visited either territory. For that reason, I’ve written little about the conflict and don’t claim to grasp all its intricacies.

But I do understand American domestic politics. And I can see the shadows the Gaza war has cast here at home. On one side stand Palestine’s domestic proxies: the decolonization theorists, keffiyeh-clad campus leftists, and, increasingly, the radicalized individuals now out for blood.

These elements are connected. The ideology is hatched at places like Harvard, where it trickles down to student activists who occupy campus buildings and make lithographs of Hamas paragliders. It then gets refracted on social media, flipping the switch within the minds of those predisposed to violence, giving them a rationale to lash out at Jews. Consider the recent spate of property bombings, the cold-blooded murder of two Israeli embassy employees, and the injuries inflicted by Molotov cocktails on a dozen people in Boulder, Colorado.

I don’t need to speak Hebrew or Arabic to recognize this domestic movement as an enemy. It’s enough to read its literature and observe its supporters’ actions to see that it embodies the forces of barbarism—forces that, if left unchecked, would tear down the pillars of civilization both abroad and at home.

We Don’t Need To Welcome In People Who Hate Us Francis Menton

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/

Yesterday in Boulder, Colorado, a perpetrator sprayed a flammable liquid on a group of mostly elderly Jews protesting the continued holding of hostages in Gaza. Then he threw Molotov cocktails to set several of the demonstrators on fire. The New York Post reports here that 8 were injured, ranging in age from 52 to 88 years old. Police arrested a man named named Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who was caught on video committing the acts. Oh, and also shouting slogans, including “They are killers! How many children you killed?” and “End Zionists.”

It quickly emerged that Soliman was an Egyptian illegally in the country. He had originally entered legally in 2022 on a tourist visa, but then overstayed. In 2023 he was granted a permit to work in the U.S. by the Biden administration. That expired in March 2025, after which he stayed on illegally.

Which raises the question, why was Soliman in the country in the first place, or granted permission to stay and work, or not thrown out when the permission expired? Whatever you might think about the illegal immigration situation, why on earth do we welcome into the country people who hate us? Did anybody vet this guy, even a little?

Add Soliman to a long list of Middle Easterners in the U.S. at the grace of the government who make no secret of their hatred of the U.S. and of Israel. And who are only too happy to lead groups in acts of trespass, vandalism, and violence. To refresh you on some of the names and roles, here is a May 15 piece from Al-Jazeera with a brief list of some of the most prominent:

Mohsen Mahdawi, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mahmoud Khalil and Badar Khan Suri are among the students targeted by US President Donald Trump.

These four are all student leaders of pro-Hamas, anti-Israel, and pro-BDS movements at elite university campuses — Mahdawi and Khalil at Columbia, Ozturk at Tufts, and Suri at Georgetown.

Hassan Chokr Pleads Guilty to Illegally Possessing Firearms after Antisemitic Tirade Against Parents and Preschoolers at Local Synagogue

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/hassan-chokr-pleads-guilty-illegally-possessing-firearms-after-antisemitic-tirade

For Immediate Release

U.S. Attorney’s Office, Eastern District of Michigan

DETROIT – Hassan Chokr, a convicted felon and resident of Dearborn, Michigan, pleaded guilty today to being a felon in possession of a firearm after possessing multiple firearms inside a gun store, United States Attorney Jerome F. Gorgon Jr. announced. Joining in the announcement was Cheyvoryea Gibson, Special Agent in Charge of the Detroit Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Chokr aggressively targeted Jewish parents and their preschool children at a local synagogue in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. After unleashing a menacing antisemitic tirade against them, he lied and attempted to buy to several firearms at a Dearborn gun store.  

In December 2022, Chokr, 37, drove through the parking lot of a Jewish synagogue as parents walked their preschoolers into the building, yelling profanities and attacking their support for Israel. After being asked to leave, Chokr drove to a gun store in Dearborn. While there, he possessed a Landor Arms, 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun; a Del-ton, 5.56mm rifle; and a Glock, 9mm semi-automatic pistol. He held each firearm, and at times pointed it and pulled the trigger. After deciding to purchase the three firearms, Chokr lied about his eligibility to possess firearms by indicating that he had never been convicted of a felony offense when in fact, he had been convicted of a felony several years prior. While awaiting the results of the background check, Chokr indicated that he would “even the score” and use the guns for “God’s wrath.” He ultimately was denied the purchase of the firearms after the background check.

United States Attorney Gorgon stated: “The federal government must do everything in its power to stem the rising tide of antisemitism. Chokr’s attempt to purchase several deadly firearms in an apparent attempt to follow through on his menacing threats against parents and preschoolers as they walked into a place of worship represents every American’s worst nightmare. And we will not allow anyone to terrorize our Jewish neighbors. We are committed to protecting every American and their right to live and worship free of fear.”

WHEN IRISH EYES ARE SMILING AT ISRAEL

https://www.irelandisrael.ie/

The Ireland Israel Alliance (IIA) is a grassroots, non-profit organization based in Dublin, Ireland. The aim of the IIA is to bring clarity to public perception of issues surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and to ensure such issues receive fair and impartial treatment within the Irish media. We engage with supporters and organizations from both secular and religious backgrounds across the political spectrum. We seek to engage with the Government of Ireland, the political parties, public interest groups, schools, colleges and other educational establishments. We also use social media to engage with and inform the wider public about such issues. 

Watch this video of Jamie O’Mahoney defending Israel…skip the breaks and read the responses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ci3u6JXOJUk

The Trump-Hating Left’s Worst Nightmare: Things Really Are Looking Up

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/06/04/the-trump-hating-lefts-worst-nightmare-things-really-are-looking-up/

The economy appears to be booming, consumer confidence is rising, inflation is coming in lower, and job growth higher, than expected. Normally, we’d all be celebrating good news like this. But not when Donald Trump is sitting in the White House. Then it must be ignored or explained away.

Ever since Trump took office, we’ve been treated to a steady diet of doomsaying. His tariffs would fuel inflation. He was driving the economy toward a recession. When the Commerce Department reported a slight contraction in the first quarter – so slight that future revisions could show that the economy expanded in the first three months – the same cast of characters started shouting “See, we told you so!”

But then the data started coming in, and suddenly those voices went silent. Why? Because it’s all been “unexpected” good news.

On Monday, for example, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank updated its GDPNow forecast – which projects quarterly economic growth in real time based on ongoing data releases. The current “nowcast,” as it’s called, shows growth in the second quarter of 4.6%, which is up from the 3.8% growth figure released last week.

The latest Consumer Price Index shows inflation in April was just 2.3%, marking the third consecutive monthly decline under Trump, and hitting a low not seen since February 2021, which, for those keeping score, was the month before Joe Biden went on his $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” spendathon.

The monthly jobs report for April came in higher than expected, with the creation of 177,000 jobs, after the March report came in significantly higher than expected. Yesterday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a “surprising” increase in the number of job openings.

Brussels: The Muddy Mirror of a Europe in Crisis by Drieu Godefridi

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21662/brussels-crisis

Brussels, the self-proclaimed capital of the European Union, is no longer the beacon of a united Europe, but an advanced symptom of its disintegration.

The normalization of radical Islamic and anti-Semitic discourse we are witnessing in Brussels is the result of 15 years of leaders abrogating their responsibility. Brussels, through its inability — or unwillingness — to make unpleasant but necessary choices, is setting itself up as the first potential locus of protracted European unrest.

The Islamist Team Fouad Ahidar party embodies a new situation: a political Islam that no longer hides its identity. Instead, it advocates that a religious identity be the underpinning of national cohesion. This fragmentation reflects a profound breakdown in the social contract, between the old European society, which confines religion to the private sphere, and the “new Europeans” (Muslims), who want everything to be subject to their religious doctrine.

Crime rates are rising everywhere in Brussels, particularly in an area in the spotlight for its frequent shootings: the Bruxelles-Midi Zone (Saint-Gilles, Forest, Anderlecht). Between 2022 and 2023, notes the newspaper L’Echo, robberies and extortion rose by 23%, robberies without weapons by 34%, pickpocketing by 27%, and armed robberies by a staggering 53%.

The Brussels-Capital Region is not merely on the brink of bankruptcy; it is already at the bottom of a financial abyss.

Jew-hatred, often marketed in unconvincing, transparent disguises as “anti-Zionism,” flourishes in many other Islamic-centered and radical left-wing circles…. in Brussels, Jew-hatred enjoys almost total impunity.

As of 2023, 74% of Brussels’ population is of foreign background, compared to a European average of 10%…. This demographic transformation or “great replacement,” far from being accompanied by an effective integration policy, has saturated Brussels — overcrowded schools, overwhelmed hospitals, sorely inadequate housing — and exacerbated communal tensions.

In 2022, a report revealed that 35% of young people with an immigrant background in Brussels were living in households where nobody has a job — a breeding ground for delinquency and radicalization.

Brussels is not only a city in crisis, it is a city on the brink of implosion.

Brussels, the self-proclaimed capital of the European Union, is no longer the beacon of a united Europe, but an advanced symptom of its disintegration. For the past 15 years, the signs of a deep crisis — political paralysis, an explosion in crime, fiscal bankruptcy, the rise of Islamism and migratory engulfment — have been piling up, heralding an inevitable tipping point.

MY SAY: A QUESTION FOR THE FBI

On November 9-10,1938 The Jews of Germany and Austria experienced destruction, looting and arson attacks on businesses, synagogues, cemeteries and homes. No one blamed the Jews or their leadership for what was a violent pre-organized surprise attack.

On October 7th, atrocities and barbarism occurred as Hamas attacked civilians including babies in Israel and took civilian hostages. The Israel Defense Forces attacked and invaded Gaza on October 28th after warning civilians in Gaza to move south as ground operations expanded.

How is it that “spontaneous” pro-Hamas protests and rallies with tents and placards started across the United States and globally in response to the Hamas-led attack on Israel before the IDF set foot in Gaza? How did this contribute to the gale force anti-Semitism even here in America, home to the largest Jewish population next to Israel?

Who was responsible for the swift deployment of these students? Did they have advance knowledge of the October 7 atrocities? Were faculties involved?

All the foregoing should be the subject of an investigation by the FBI Kash Patel, instead of blaming Jews and their leaders.

The real climate crisis is antisemitism Ruthie Blum

https://www.jns.org/the-real-climate-crisis-is-antisemitism/

Shouting “End the Zionists” and “Free Palestine,” Mohamed Sabry Soliman—a 45-year-old illegal immigrant to the United States from Egypt—set Jews on fire on Sunday afternoon at the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder, Colorado. Literally. With Molotov cocktails.

One of the eight mostly senior citizens who were rushed to the hospital with serious burns was a Holocaust survivor. Her crime? Participating in a peaceful weekly “Run for Their Lives” walk on behalf of the hostages still in Hamas captivity.

Earlier in the day, Fox News Digital aired an interview with U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee. In the course of the one-on-one exchange, Huckabee commented on a summit scheduled for June 17-20 at United Nations headquarters in New York City and hosted by France and Saudi Arabia. The purpose of the international conference, which the United States will not attend, is to promote recognition of a Palestinian state.

“It’s incredibly inappropriate in the midst of a war that Israel is dealing with to go out and present something that I think increasingly Israelis are steadfast against,” said Huckabee, adding, “Oct. 7 changed a lot of things.”

And then he let loose.

“If France is really so determined to see a Palestinian state, I have a suggestion for them: carve out a piece of the French Riviera and create a Palestinian state,” he quipped, only half-jokingly. “They are welcome to do that, but they are not welcome to impose that kind of pressure on a sovereign nation. And I find it revolting that they think they have the right to do such a thing.”

“Revolting” was an apt word, particularly in view of President Emmanuel Macron’s increasingly hostile attitude toward Israel in general and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in particular. Not to mention his growing sympathy for Hamas, which he expresses by repeatedly perpetuating the terrorist group’s propaganda.

The Jew-burning in Colorado speaks to the West’s fascistic turn If this barbaric attack does not awaken the human conscience, nothing will. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/02/the-jew-burning-in-colorado-speaks-to-the-wests-fascistic-turn/

They’re burning Jews again. Yesterday, in Boulder, Colorado, a man used a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to try to incinerate Jews. Eight people, aged 52 to 88, were injured. Their ‘crime’? They had gathered in public to call for the release of the Israeli hostages. In Europe in the 1930s it was punishable by death to assist the wretched Jews. It seems that in America in the 2020s there are people who dream of resuscitating that grim, violent punishment for Jew sympathy.

It was a truly nauseating assault. The suspect has been named as Mohamed Soliman. He’s reportedly an illegal immigrant from Egypt. He is alleged to have doused the people at the vigil in a flammable liquid and then sprayed them with flames. He ‘set people on fire’, as CNN bluntly put it. Read that again. In the US in 2025, a gathering of people expressing solidarity with the Jewish victims of neo-fascism was set on fire. Video footage shows the suspect holding a combustible cocktail in each hand as he yells ‘Free Palestine!’. At his feet lie the scorched Jews.

It is being reported that the oldest victim, who is 88, is a refugee from Nazi-era Europe. She is a ‘very loving person’, said a local rabbi. The moral enormity of that feels overwhelming. Someone who escaped the mass Jew-burning of 1940s Europe falls victim to a new kind of Jew-burning in 21st-century America. Someone whose relatives were reduced to ash by Nazis finds herself ‘set on fire’ by a supposed Palestine activist in modern-day Colorado. It will be a dark day for humanity if the American republic, once a safe haven for Jews fleeing the derangements of the Old World, becomes infected by the fiery ancient hatred for the Jewish people.

The FBI is calling it a suspected terror attack. Israel’s foreign minister, Gideon Sa’ar, says it was an act of ‘pure anti-Semitism’. We’ve tried to warn the world about chants like ‘Globalise the intifada’, said Ted Deutch of the American Jewish Committee. He says these burned Jews are the end result of that fevered cry to internationalise Hamas’s violent loathing for the Jewish homeland. Jews in America are nervous. Understandably. Just 10 days ago two people were shot dead as they left a Jewish event in Washington, DC, also by a man barking ‘Free Palestine!’. And now this.

The FBI says the suspect in the Colorado Jew-burning acted alone. It should go without saying that he’s the only one responsible for the terror and the burns inflicted on those poor people. And yet he did not strike in a vacuum. In the 20 months since Hamas’s pogrom of 7 October 2023, we’ve witnessed the savage demonisation of anyone who offers solidarity to the Israeli hostages. ‘Kidnapped’ posters featuring photos of the hostages have been defaced and destroyed. Some were graffitied with the word ‘colonialist’ and even Hitler moustaches. Yellow ribbons for the hostages have been torn down.

Calling for the freeing of the hostages has come to be seen as a suspect act. Even calling them ‘hostages’ is a risky business – they’re ‘prisoners of war’, cry the West’s legion Israelophobes. Sympathy for the hostages is a thin disguise for ‘genocidal sentiment’, say anti-Israel agitators. The hatred for the Jewish State among the activist classes has become so furious, so unhinged, that even sympathy with the Jewish State’s citizens is viewed as murderous lunacy. That people calling for the release of the hostages were so brutally assaulted in Colorado is profoundly shocking. But – and it feels gross even to say this – it is not wholly surprising.

It feels like we are living through something even worse than a resurgence of the oldest racism – it’s as if there has been a fascistic turn in the West. Consider some of the horrors of the last fortnight alone. A Jewish woman in DC slain as she desperately tried to crawl away from the man pumping bullets into her. Three synagogues and a Holocaust memorial vandalised in Paris. A Jewish schoolkid taken to hospital following a violent attack on the London Tube. A Jewish-owned business wrecked by vandals in London’s Stamford Hill. And now Jews ‘set on fire’. And throughout, that constant noise: the sound of armies of activists denouncing the Jewish nation as the wickedest nation, the spiller of babies’ blood, the nefarious controller of world affairs. The medieval echo grows louder. The darkness spreads.

Some of these grim acts involved the cry of ‘Free Palestine!’. Some said it, others spraypainted it. Isn’t it remarkable that so much of what is done in the supposed name of ‘freeing Palestine’ has the distinctive whiff of fascist hatred to it? The broken glass of Jewish businesses, the desecration of synagogues, the murder of Jews, Jews on fire. These assaulters and activists can cry ‘Free Palestine’ as much as they like – to some of us, if it looks like fascism and quacks like fascism, maybe it’s fucking fascism.

The Grand Deception of Islam as a Religion of Peace By Janet Levy

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2025/06/the_grand_deception_of_islam_as_a_religion_of_peace.html

A database search of 12 million books published in the 300 years before 9/11 reveals only one instance of the phrase “Islam is a religion of peace.” It appears in fiction and is spoken by Ayatollah Mahmoud Haji Daryaei, an Iranian leader in Tom Clancy’s thriller Executive Orders.

But the dangerous notion that Islam is peaceful has been so frequently reiterated by world leaders, clerics, and the liberal media-academia complex that it has taken on the status of COWDUNG—a facetious near-acronym for ‘conventional wisdom of the dominant group.’

Denying 1,400 years of history, these apologists would have us believe that extremist Islam is a perversion. Their sanitized version presents Islam’s prime motif of violent jihad—or religious war against infidels—as an individual’s “inner struggle” for spiritual growth.

To expose these falsehoods—which have circled the globe before the truth even got out of bed—conservative authors Tommy Robinson and Peter McLoughlin wrote Mohammed’s Koran: Why Muslims Kill for Islam. First published in 2017, the bestselling book saw a second edition and faced an Amazon ban in 2019. (Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and many terror manuals remain available.)

In light of Robinson’s early release from a British prison a few days ago, an overview of this important book seems fitting. The authors assert that the key to understanding what the Koran signifies to Muslims is naskh, an interpretive guideline indicating that in the Koran, what comes after negates what precedes it. Later verses remain valid even if they contradict earlier ones.

By presenting the Koran in reverse chronological order, the authors allow us to see how quotes on peace and the absence of compulsion in religion that Islam’s apologists cherry-pick hold little significance because they precede more violent dictates. The authors utilize a widely popular 1930 translation of the Koran by Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall, a British convert to Islam, while shedding light on a deception it created. More on that later.

Their 101-page introduction outlines the history of Mohammed’s religion and its misrepresentation after 9/11. It mentions that in the 19th and 20th centuries, authors as diverse as Winston Churchill and Samuel Huntington could openly criticize Islam as frenzied and violent. British Prime Minister William Gladstone (1809-98) proclaimed that “So long as there is this book, there will be no peace in the world.”