ISRAEL Comments turned off

Arab Clan Leader in Gaza Declares Open War on Hamas He’s blaming Hamas, not Israel, for the Gaza War – and the misery it has brought. by Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/arab-clan-leader-in-gaza-declares-open-war-on-hamas/

Yasser Abu Shabab is the leader of one of the largest clans in Gaza, and is fighting against Hamas. More on him can be found here: “‘No stopping a civil war against Hamas,’ Gaza militia chief Abu Shabab tells KAN,” Jerusalem Post, July 7, 2025:

Yasser Abu Shabab, leader of the allegedly Israel-backed, anti-Hamas Popular Forces group, revealed to Israeli public broadcaster KAN on Sunday that his militia is actively working against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, particularly operating in the Rafah area.

“There is no stopping a civil war against Hamas,” Abu Shabab said in the interview.

He told KAN that those who comprise his militia do not belong to any political or organizational ideology. However, Abu Shabab told Army Radio in an interview last month that he denied working with Israel and confirmed his group’s relationship with the Palestinian Authority. In that interview, he said that he wouldn’t rule out cooperating with the IDF on issues such as humanitarian aid distribution in the future….

Abu Shabab may deny working with Israel, but he is believed to have accepted weapons from the IDF; for obvious reasons, he keeps quiet about that. And he knows that his forces, and the IDF, share a common goal: to fight against and destroy Hamas. He has also said that he could see his group cooperating with the IDF on the distribution of humanitarian aid and similar issues, no doubt including the rebuilding of hospitals and schools. He claims to be open to people of all ideologies — except for Hamas, which is the Gazan branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. He also said that he has a relationship to the Palestinian Authority, which is Hamas’ bitter enemy, but offered no details.

He’s blaming Hamas, not Israel, for the Gaza War, and the misery that the war that Hamas started on October 7, 2023 has brought to so many people in Gaza. The “aggression” he deplores is that of Hamas, not the IDF. It’s a remarkable statement from a Palestinian leader in Gaza.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Against All Expectations, Georgetown University Actually Does the Right Thing Why should American universities continue to be incubators of leftism, Marxism, jihad and treason? by Robert Spencer

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/against-all-expectations-georgetown-university-actually-does-the-right-thing/

Jonathan Brown, a professor at Georgetown University, is a living, breathing illustration of a great deal that’s wrong with academic life today. His public statements give the strong impression that he hates America and has contempt for those who live in it, or at least for those who aren’t on the far left. In fact, his hatred doesn’t stop with America alone; as a convert to Islam, Brown has allied himself with a force that has tried to destroy Western civilization for 1,400 years and has even enthusiastically embraced the most noxious aspects of that force, endorsing slavery, including the sex slavery of infidel women.

Given the state of the American intelligentsia, you’d expect such a man to become a cosseted and celebrated member of the academic scene, and you’d be right. Brown stands for so much that is not only un-American but anti-American, that it was inevitable that he would become a rising star on campus, despite the intellectual poverty of his actual output. And sure enough, Georgetown not only gave Brown tenure but made him chair of its Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies and Alwaleed bin Talal chair of Islamic Civilization in the School of Foreign Service.

Now, however, Brown appears to have crossed the line even for Georgetown. It would have been less surprising if university officials had made him president of the university after he called on the Islamic Republic of Iran to carry out a “symbolic strike” against a U.S. military base, but instead, against all expectations, Georgetown has actually placed him on leave and removed him as chair of the Department of Arabic and Islamic Studies. Is sanity returning to American academia? Well, no. But this certainly is a welcome step in that direction.

Georgetown University interim President Robert M. Groves told a congressional hearing Tuesday: “Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown, the tweet was removed [and] we issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department and he’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

‘No Kings’ in America—Unless They Answer to ‘Your Honor’ The left chants “No kings!” in the streets—then cheer judges who rule like monarchs, imposing policy from the bench with all the subtlety of a royal decree. By Samantha Flom

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/07/16/no_kings_in_america__unless_they_answer_to_your_honor_153051.html

“In America, we don’t do kings.”

That was the message of the leftist protesters who swarmed the streets nationwide on June 14 in opposition to President Donald Trump and his agenda.

“Trump must go now!” they chanted, waving signs that likened the president to a dictator and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to his Gestapo.

Their complaint was alleged despotism. But if Democrats really opposed authoritarianism, they wouldn’t be celebrating its emergence in the courts.

When U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani brazenly overstepped her authority on July 7 to block Congress from stripping Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding through the budget reconciliation bill – a clear usurpation of the legislative branch’s power of the purse – the response from the Left wasn’t outrage but praise.

“Good,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) wrote on X. “Democrats will never stop fighting this backdoor abortion ban from the Republicans.”

Schumer’s apparent admission that Medicaid funds abortions aside, his comments also belie his party’s disingenuous indignation over supposed federal overreach.

That selective outrage was on full display in April amid the arrest of a Wisconsin judge for allegedly escorting Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported, out the back jury door of her courtroom to help him evade federal immigration authorities.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

On Ukraine War, Trump Proves His Foreign Policy Is Pragmatic and That Adversaries Who Defy Him Will Face Consequences Trump’s Ukraine pivot shows pragmatic America First: weapons via NATO, sanctions on Russia, and a cease-fire ultimatum aimed at ending the war without new U.S. entanglements. By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/18/on-ukraine-war-trump-proves-his-foreign-policy-is-pragmatic-and-that-adversaries-who-defy-him-will-face-consequences/

President Trump’s announcement that he will send weapons to Ukraine through NATO and his pledge to impose crippling energy sanctions against Russia in 50 days if Russian President Vladimir Putin does not agree to a cease-fire in the Ukraine War led to the usual mocking criticism of Trump by the mainstream media.

Many reporters slammed Trump’s decision as hypocrisy and flip-flopping, claiming that it contradicted his campaign promises to quickly end the war in Ukraine and keep America out of new wars. Other reporters gloated that Trump’s decision to send additional weapons to Ukraine meant he was implementing President Biden’s Ukraine policy.

These criticisms were far from the truth. What is true about President Trump’s policy shift on the Ukraine War is that for the second time in a month, Trump demonstrated that he will adjust his America First approach to U.S. national security when circumstances change and to maintain American credibility on the world stage.

President Trump announced during a July 14 Oval Office press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte that he had decided, due to Putin’s refusal to agree to a cease-fire in the Ukraine War, to sell Patriot missile batteries to NATO to provide to Ukraine. According to press reports, the president may also have decided to sell missiles to Ukraine that could be fired deep inside Russia.

In addition, President Trump announced that the U.S. will impose “severe” 100% secondary tariffs on countries that buy energy from Russia if Putin does not agree to a cease-fire in 50 days.

President Trump expressed his growing frustration with Putin for accelerating the war despite their phone discussions about implementing a cease-fire and diplomatic efforts by Trump’s national security team officials with Russian, Ukrainian, and European officials.

Unfortunately, after six months of Trump’s intensive diplomatic efforts to stop the killing in Ukraine, Putin has shown no interest in ending the war. Putin has not only ignored President Trump’s peace efforts, but he has also disrespected him.

This is why a shift in Trump’s Ukraine policy was needed.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Forget Climate Spending, Buy Air Conditioners Instead

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/07/18/forget-climate-spending-buy-air-conditioners-instead/

More than $1 trillion is spent every year to fight a climate crisis that doesn’t exist. That’s a load of money squandered without saving a single actual life. There’s a far better use for those dollars, if saving lives is the goal, one that’s much cheaper and easier to implement, and would make an enormous difference right away. Sadly, it requires mass purchases of a modest appliance the climate zealots have been trying to kill.

According to the Climate Policy Initiative, climate finance reached an all-time high in 2021, with $1.3 trillion poured into the bottomless green hole. Yet to this group and others, that’s just not enough.

Mark Gongloff, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, says it’s a no-brainer to spend $266 trillion by 2050 “to limit and adapt to climate change.” The alternative to this splurge “is $2.3 quadrillion in accumulated damage by the end of the century.”

That, of course, is a projection, and is likely as far off the mark as the apocalyptic global warming predictions we’ve heard for more than 50 years that no one ever apologizes for making.

Far more practical than a wild spending spree is the proposal of Bjorn Lomborg, president and founder of the Copenhagen Consensus. His is a “second generation of thinking on global warming.”

“Rather than starting with the most radical procedures, Lomborg argues that we should first focus our resources on more immediate concerns, such as fighting malaria and HIV/AIDS and assuring and maintaining a safe, fresh water supply – which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost and save millions of lives within our lifetime.” 

MEDIA, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The West’s Mainstream Media: Iran’s New Mouthpiece by Robert Williams

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21734/media-iran-mouthpiece

This time the lies are being fabricated by Iran and its proxy Hamas — with the generous help of the “international community” not least the UN, the Red Cross and a variety of NGOS…

It has apparently made no difference to mainstream media reporting that there is footage showing that Hamas deliberately shoots at Gazans waiting for aid, or shoots them as punishment for receiving it; or that local Gazans working for GHF have testified that Hamas deliberately targets the aid sites where GHF operates and that 12 of its local staff have been murdered, and others tortured; or that audio has been released in which a resident in Gaza explains how Hamas operates….

It has also apparently made no difference to the mainstream media that the Al-Hayat Al-Jadida daily newspaper in the Palestinian Authority, a self-declared enemy of Israel, has, in an article, “accused Hamas of murdering Gaza residents trying to get to the American food aid distribution centers established in the Gaza Strip.”

When Iran’s proxy Hamas, on behalf of Iran, invaded Israel to carry out the worst massacre against the Jews since the Holocaust, the thin civilizational veneer that used to stop most of “elite” society from displaying the ugliest parts of its Jew-hatred completely peeled off. It is now on full display, though still cloaked in the transparent pretense of “anti-Zionism.” Its vilifications, falsely defaming the Jewish state and its inhabitants, embody echoes of Nazi propaganda.

Since Hamas launched the Gaza war in October 2023, contemporary versions of the false accusation that Jews kill non-Jews to use their blood for ritual purposes have proliferated. It is a lie that was widely spread by the Nazis, especially by Julius Streicher, the propagandist and publisher of the Third Reich newspaper, Der Stürmer.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

French, Saudi leaders bow out of own UN summit amid political headwinds David Isaac

Posted By on July 18th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/french-saudi-leaders-bow-out-of-own-un-summit-amid-political-headwinds/

A United Nations summit set for the end of the month with the goal of establishing a Palestinian state is off to a shaky start. Originally scheduled for June but delayed by Israel’s operation against Iran, it’s now reported that the co-hosts will be no-shows.

Le Monde reported this weekend that neither of the conference’s conveners, French President Emmanuel Macron nor Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, will attend, though earlier reports said they had planned to appear at the summit.

The two leaders may have encountered political headwinds, most significantly from the United States. On June 10, a week before the summit’s original scheduled date (June 17-20), the United States sent a cable warning other countries against participating, stating that those taking “anti-Israel actions” following the conference would be considered to be acting against U.S. foreign policy interests, Reuters reported.

“The United States opposes any steps that would unilaterally recognize a conjectural Palestinian state, which adds significant legal and political obstacles to the eventual resolution of the conflict and could coerce Israel during a war, thereby supporting its enemies,” the cable read.

“The United States opposes the implied support of the conference for potential actions including boycotts and sanctions on Israel as well as other punitive measures.”

It continued: “Unilaterally recognizing a Palestinian state would effectively render Oct. 7 Palestinian Independence Day,” referring to the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when the terror group indiscriminately murdered more than 1,200 people, wounded thousands and kidnapped 251 more.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The World Woke Up In half a year, the impossible became obvious: borders closed, recruits returned, Iran retreated, and elites were exposed—all because people finally said, “Enough.” By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 17th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/17/the-world-woke-up/

In less than six months, the entire world has been turned upside down. There is no longer such a thing as conventional wisdom or the status quo.

The unthinkable has become the banal.

Take illegal immigration—remember the 10,000 daily illegal entries under Biden?

Recall the only solution was supposedly “comprehensive immigration reform”—a euphemism for mass amnesties.

Now, there is no such thing as daily new illegal immigration.

It simply disappeared with common-sense enforcement of existing immigration laws—and a new president.

How about the 40,000-50,000 shortfall in military recruitment?

Remember all the causes that the generals cited for their inability to enlist soldiers: generational gangs, obesity, drugs, and stiff competition with private industry?

And now?

In just six months, recruitment targets are already met; the issue is mostly moot.

Why? The new Pentagon flipped the old, canceling its racist DEI programs and assuring the rural, middle-class Americans—especially white males—that they were not systemically racist after all.

Instead, they were reinvited to enlist as the critical combat cohort who died at twice their demographic share in Iraq and Afghanistan.

How about the “end of the NATO crisis,” supposedly brought on by a bullying U.S.?

Now the vast majority of NATO members have met their pledges to spend two percent of GDP on defense, which will soon increase to five percent.

Iconic neutrals like Sweden and Finland have become frontline NATO nations, arming to the teeth. The smiling NATO Secretary-General even called Trump the “daddy” of the alliance.

What about indomitable, all-powerful, theocratic Iran, the scourge of the Middle East for nearly fifty years?

Although it had never won a war in the last half-century, its terrorist surrogates—Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis—were supposedly too dangerous to provoke.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians’ Latest Scam: Hamas Can Become a ‘Political Party’ by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on July 17th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21759/scam-hamas-political-party

Abbas cannot have forgotten the atrocities Hamas committed against his men during the 2007 coup. Some of his loyalists were dragged to the streets and lynched, while others were thrown from the high floors of tall buildings.

In addition to the 2007 coup, Hamas, a few years later, was caught planning a second coup to try to take over the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip.

The calls for Hamas to “join political action” actually aim to legitimize the terror group and present its leaders as a bunch of politicians seeking seats in parliament and jobs in government, when the reality is anything but that.

The international community, including the Trump administration, must not fall for this scam. Hamas was not established to serve as a “political party.” Rather, the terror group was established with the main objective of murdering Jews through Jihad (holy war) and replacing Israel with an Islamist terror state.

Instead of inviting Hamas to engage in political action, Abbas and other Palestinian leaders… should have outlawed Hamas a long time ago. That would send a message to all Palestinians that there is no room for genocidal Jihadist groups in Palestinian society. Apparently, Abbas and Rajoub’s desire to destroy Israel is even stronger than their decades-long hatred of Hamas.

Destroying Hamas’s military capabilities is not enough. The group must also cease to exist as a “political” entity. The only politics Hamas is interested in is Jihad, destruction and death.

According to reports in some media outlets, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called on the Iran-backed Hamas terror group to “surrender its weapons to the Palestinian Authority.”

Abbas was quoted as saying: “Hamas will not rule the Gaza Strip.” His comment came long after the current war, which began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas terrorists and “ordinary” Palestinians invaded Israel, and murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and wounded thousands. Another 251 Israelis and foreign nationals were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip, where 50 – alive and dead – are still held captive.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Civilians Slaughtered in the Middle East: Will the American Left Even Notice?By Jessica Hornik

Posted By on July 17th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/civilians-slaughtered-in-the-middle-east-will-the-american-left-even-notice/

Some grim news out of the Middle East this morning: a community under attack by government forces, dozens slaughtered, civilians being evacuated, chaos.

The victims are the Druze residents of Sweida, a southern Syrian city, and the forces are those of the Syrian government. Don’t expect to see protests in the streets of the West on behalf of this beleaguered population. Don’t expect even so much as hand-wringing.

The Druze, a small non-Muslim minority in Syria and Lebanon, are hated by Islamists. How this group would fare under the new regime led by Ahmed al-Shara, himself once part of an Islamist group linked to al-Qaeda, has been just one question as the region’s tectonic plates keep shifting. The government moved into Sweida after clashes between Druze and Bedouins, a tribal group. Was this on al-Shara’s orders or a rogue militia action? There’s much that is still uncertain.

In Israel, too, there is a Druze minority, whose members participate fully in Israeli life and institutions, including as loyal defenders of the state by service in the police and the military. Israel is taking military action in Syria to defend the Druze, keeping its promise to the Israeli Druze community. In a particularly dramatic action, the military headquarters of the Syrian army in Damascus was bombed.

Naturally, you should also expect to see no appreciation by the activist left for Israel’s actions in defense of a minority that few in the West are even aware of, or its critical role as a bulwark against Islamist brutality.