NATO announced more members have met the 2% defense spending requirement, but almost half of members have still failed to meet the minimum, as Russia reportedly looks to increase its presence along the alliance’s borders.
“In 2024, NATO Allies in Europe will invest a combined total of 380 billion U.S. dollars in defense. For the first time, this amounts to 2% of their combined GDP,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said at a meeting of defense ministers.
“We are making real progress,” Stoltenberg insisted. “European allies are spending more. However, some Allies still have a ways to go because we agreed at the Vilnius Summit that all Allies should invest 2%, and that 2% is a minimum.”
Collective spending will hit 2% in 2024, according to Stoltenberg, rising from 1.56% spent in 2019 and 1.85% in 2023. Poland spends the most, with 3.9% of GDP spent on defense, followed by the U.S. at 3.49% and Greece at 3.01%.
Russian President Vladimir Putin in side-by-side with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. (Getty Images)
Stoltenberg credited Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for spurring the rapid increase over the past two years, and spending could see another bump after Estonia claimed that Moscow is preparing for confrontation with the West within the next decade, starting with a buildup along the borders of NATO members. Last week, Denmark warned that an attack could occur within the next three to five years.
“Russia has chosen a path which is a long-term confrontation… and the Kremlin is probably anticipating a possible conflict with NATO within the next decade or so,” Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service chief Kaupo Rosin told reporters on Tuesday.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, center, arrives with Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, right, at the first meeting of the North Atlantic Council of foreign ministers at NATO headquarters during the first day of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels on Nov. 28, 2023. (Omar Havana/Getty Images)
Estonia claimed that Russia is looking to reform its forces following the embarrassing shortfall in Ukraine, including a change in command structure and adding new units and formations “in almost all branches” in pursuit of expanded personnel strength, aiming to double its forces to 1.5 million service members.
The reforms, which will roll out over three to four years, will include a shift in focus towards Finland’s border following its ascension to NATO and the addition of a 44th Army Corps.
Members of the U.S. Army 101st Airborne Division, 1st Battalion of the 506th Infantry Regiment are seen with Humvee vehicles near Tapa, Estonia, on May 19, 2023. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Rosin stressed that an imminent attack remains “highly unlikely as long as Russia continues its campaign in Ukraine, and could be averted if Europe matched Russia’s buildup.”
“If we are not prepared, the likelihood (of a Russian military attack) would be much higher than without any preparation,” Rosin stressed.
NATO’s announcement and Estonia’s intelligence report were released just after former President Donald Trump blasted the alliance as “busted” and said he would “encourage” Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to NATO members who did not “pay your bills.”
Reuters contributed to this report.
Peter Aitken is a Fox News Digital reporter with a focus on national and global news.
The chairman of the House intelligence committee, Rep. Mike Turner, issued an unusual cryptic statement on Wednesday saying the committee had made available to all members of Congress information about an unspecified “serious national security threat.” But sources close to ABC News report that the threat relates to Russia’s plans to place a nuclear weapon in space.
According to ABC: “This is not to drop a nuclear weapon onto Earth but rather to possibly use against satellites.”
The network said the development is “very concerning” and “a big deal.”
Turner wants the White House and Pentagon to release information about the threat.
“I am requesting that President Biden declassify all information relating to this threat so that Congress, the Administration, and our allies can openly discuss the actions necessary to respond to this threat,” Representative Mike Turner said in the statement.
Turner provided no further information, and his office did not immediately respond to requests for further comment.
Turner’s statement was released in the midst of intense debate in Congress over how the United States should be dealing with global threats from Russia and other rivals, with security hawks urging greater global involvement and some lawmakers most closely allied with former Republican President Donald Trump advocating for a more “America First” approach to world affairs.
The Biden administration has been ramping up its criticism of House Republicans for possibly blocking a $95-billion bill passed by the Senate that would supply aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Supporters of the bill argue that a major reason for the United States to back the government in Kyiv is to push back against threats from Russia that extend beyond Ukraine.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a staunch Trump ally who says he will not rush to allow a vote on the Senate bill, told reporters at the Capitol there was no need for public alarm. “Steady hands are at the wheel. We’re working on it and there’s no need for alarm,” he said.
‘NOT A CAUSE FOR PANIC’
Senators Mark Warner and Marco Rubio, the Democratic chairperson and Republican vice chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, issued a joint statement saying their panel has the intelligence in question and has been “rigorously” tracking the issue.
“We continue to take this matter seriously and are discussing an appropriate response with the administration. In the meantime, we must be cautious about potentially disclosing sources and methods that may be key to preserving a range of options for U.S. action,” the statement said.
A source familiar with the matter said Warner and Rubio had been briefed on the threat two weeks ago. The source said the issue was not unrelated to the security spending bill, but there is no direct tie between them.
Representative Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House intelligence panel, said the issue in Turner’s statement is significant, “but it is not a cause for panic.”
“As to whether more can be declassified about this issue, that is a worthwhile discussion but it is not a discussion to be had in public,” Himes said in a statement.
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, declined to provide specifics. He said he had arranged a briefing for Thursday with congressional leaders and that he was surprised by Turner’s decision to issue the statement.
“That’s been on the books so I am a bit surprised that Congressman Turner came out publicly today, in advance of a meeting on the books, for me to go sit with him alongside our intelligence and defense professionals tomorrow,” Sullivan told a briefing.
“I’m not in a position to say anything further today. Like I said, I look forward to the discussion with (Turner) and obviously from there we will determine how to proceed, but standing here at the podium today I can’t share anything further,” Sullivan said.
Sullivan made clear that he had initiated the meeting with the Gang of Eight scheduled for Thursday. The Gang of Eight refers to the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate, and the top Republican and Democrat on the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives at the U.S. Capitol to meet with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on Dec. 12, 2023. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, a group of conservative senators ran out of procedural options for debating a $95 billion funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and the Indo-Pacific. In the middle of the night, Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Rand Paul, R-Ky., Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Eric Schmitt, R-Mo., Rick Scott, R-Fla., and JD Vance, R-Ohio, articulated their opposition.
When they ran out of options, the tandem of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., moved swiftly to pass the bill on a vote of 70 to 29. That included 22 Republicans who voted for foreign aid without addressing America’s own border crisis.
The measure now moves to the House of Representatives, where Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has pledged to hold the line at the urging of conservatives.
National security expert Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal at the Marathon Initiative, spoke with The Daily Signal about what’s playing out on Capitol Hill and why he thinks this legislation misses the mark. He also explained how the United States should be prioritizing its national security. The conversation has been edited for length.
Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal at the Marathon Initiative, spoke at Heritage for the release of the 2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength on Jan. 24. (Photo: Erin Granzow/The Heritage Foundation)
Rob Bluey: Let’s start by talking about the current debate that’s taking place in Congress. What’s your perspective on the supplemental?
Bridge Colby: Americans are increasingly, and with very good reason, worried about issues like rising the rising debt, the border, the failed wars, and military interventions.
What we should be doing is having a foreign policy that concretely puts Americans interests first. It’s important to have alliances and to have an international view.
If we look at the world in that perspective and say, “What’s the biggest threat to Americans interests?” It’s the People’s Republic of China, because it’s 10 times the GDP of Russia, and Asia, where China is located, is by far more important. It’s going to be almost half of global GDP. We can’t allow China to dominate Asia. Ostensibly, that is not only the Trump administration position but also the Biden administration’s position.
When I look at the supplemental, it’s totally out of whack. We’re sending $61 billion to Ukraine, and we’re spending a couple billion extra on the Indo-Pacific when very respected institutions like Heritage and the RAND Corp. have assessed that we’re behind militarily. We should be focusing on China.
At the same time, I personally do think that Russia remains a threat. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an evil act. Obviously there’s a lot of nuance there, but that’s fundamentally the reality. I support the Ukrainians, but we live in the world of reality—just like a family making its financial plan or a business making its financial plan.
We can’t solve all the world’s problems and we have big ones ourselves. And the biggest one is China. What do we do about that? First and foremost, we move our foreign policy alliance structure from a dependency structure to a partnership structure, where we expect our allies to actually step up and meet their obligations.
This is something President Trump talked a lot about, rightly. Even President Obama talked about it. The Europeans ignored us. The reality is the Europeans can and actually are now doing a lot more for Ukraine, but they have not yet met their spending commitments.
It’s difficult, but you know what? It’s difficult for Americans. We spend over 3% of GDP on defense. We have huge influx across the border. We’re not securing the border—a lot of fentanyl, etc. We have problems, so that’s the way I look at the supplemental.
Bluey: Why doesn’t the Biden administration put more of an emphasis on China? And why do you consider it such a threat?
Colby: I actually look at it more from just how powerful China is. In fact, I communicate this to the Chinese directly whenever I have the chance. The reason that I’m so worried about China is not because I dislike China—if anything to the contrary, it’s because I have so much respect for China.
They have, according to the Office of Naval Intelligence, over 200 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States. They have the world’s largest industrial base. People talk about the arsenal of democracy, but that arsenal left and went to China, unfortunately. These people are not making toy cars anymore. They’re operating at the forefront of technology in a lot of areas.
I’m looking for a balance of power. People often say, balance of power and realism, that’s un-American. Actually, to the contrary, I reject that. Why? The fundamental idea of the American system is the separation of powers. Nobody should be trusted with too much power, and that’s the logic I take toward China. I’m saying we need a coalition. I don’t trust them just on face value when they say they don’t have expansive intent.
I don’t think there’s so much debate anymore that China is a massive challenge for the United States. The biggest problem is just walking the walk in the sense that in order to deal with something that is really on a different order of magnitude than we’ve dealt with in a really long time.
If you just look at the size of China’s economy, it’s the biggest threat the United States has dealt with since the 19th century. We were much larger than the Soviet Union. The United States alone was larger than all three major Axis states.
A lot of the politicians, especially on the establishment side, are from a different era. It’s very hard to let go of the idea of this sort of “indispensable nation,” as Madeleine Albright put it. That’s almost like an intoxicating mentality for a lot of people, both Democrats and traditional Republican types. They feel like they are somehow morally on a perch or something. They’re not really capable of grappling with how much has changed.
It’s just not true that the fate of Taiwan will be settled in Ukraine. How do we know? China’s own behavior.
I lay out why.
If we want to defend Taiwan, be straightforward and focus on defending Taiwan. Don’t engage in tortured, triple-bank shot logic. pic.twitter.com/YCGu9z4Sb3
Bluey: There are some who are making the case that the money that we’re spending in the supplemental will be a deterrent for China, specifically because they draw the connection to Ukraine. Why doesn’t that argument hold up?
Colby: It’s so convoluted it could only be a Washington rationalization.
There’s one variant that says China is going to be deterred by what we do in Ukraine. Well, just apply common sense. Here’s the thought experiment that I apply on that one: If China actually thought the future of Taiwan was going to be settled in Ukraine, it would intervene directly in the war.
Instead, it’s not doing that at all. Instead, it’s sitting back, getting us to spend more money and weapons and political capital in Europe, distracting us, tying us down in Europe and the Middle East. Meanwhile, building up its own strength. As Napoleon put it, if you want to take Vienna, take Vienna.
The other argument that you often hear is we’re going to spend a bunch of money on Ukraine and that’s going to help our defense industrial base. But that also doesn’t make sense. Why don’t you just spend the money on weapons to deal with the Chinese to deter them directly? Because you can’t use a weapon again, usually. You can’t use a missile again—it’s going to blow up. You can’t use oil. Aircraft get worn out, artillery, ammunition, etc.
I do support increased investment in the defense industrial base coupled with reforms to make it more equitable and accessible. But if we’re giving money to Ukraine, that’s not the same. And especially because a lot of these weapons will take years and years to replace.
Bluey: You talked about how the Europeans need to step up and do more, particularly in their own backyard. Former President Donald Trump has been critical of NATO. Your thoughts on his criticism and if it’s justified?
Colby: President Trump was absolutely right to urge the Europeans—and put real pressure on them—to increase their defense spending when he was president and so forth.
We’ve been trying to be as polite and nice as possible for many years and they ignored us. So I think at this point, if you actually think the situation is as grave as the Europeans and many of the neoconservatives say, then you should make it clear to the Europeans that this has to happen.
Now, my personal view is the United States should come to NATO’s aid if NATO is attacked. However, I also have said this publicly, and I’ve said this to the Europeans for many years, we should only provide that level of support that is consistent with maintaining deterrence in the Pacific.
There’s going to be a limit. This is true of a Republican administration and a Democrat administration. There has got to be a limit to how much we can provide to Europe because we don’t have what’s called a two-war force. A two-war force basically says the American military can fight two large conflicts at the same time.
We don’t have that, not because we don’t want to, but because we’re dealing with a superpower in China that we haven’t focused on. When I was in the Trump administration, we shifted to say we’ve got to get the big thing right. You’ve got to take care of your case of acute heart disease before you address your arthritis.
The Biden administration actually adopted that same fundamental approach. Their strategy is pretty much the same. But the problem is the Chinese have been moving like gangbusters, so we haven’t solved the problem. What happens if Russia moves into the Baltics? We should deter them and encourage them not to. We’re going to give them what we can, but not things that we also need to defend ourselves and our forces and our allies in the first island chain. Why? Not because we like Asia more than Europe, but because Asia is more important and China’s a bigger threat.
We can’t get that wrong. The solution to this is not to just wallow and criticize each other, but for the Europeans to step up. They’re totally capable of doing this. They have far larger economy than Russia. And by the way, they did this during the Cold War. They were all spending a ton more on defense.
Bluey: Tucker Carlson recently interviewed Vladimir Putin. What was the biggest headline coming out of that interview? And how much stock do we take in some of the things Putin said and what should we disregard as propaganda?
Colby: Let me be clear, I think Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was an evil act. Ukraine has a legitimate just cause to self-defense. On the other hand, the world is not a morality play.
The administration itself has said that this war is going to end through negotiations. So I think the biggest thing that came out, at least that I could see, was that Putin at least ostensibly said that he was open to negotiations. Now he may be disingenuous or lying, but then I think it’s incumbent upon the administration.
This relates back to the supplemental. What’s the plan for ending this war? Because I think for a long time there’s been a kind of fantastical, magical thinking sort of idea to the end of this war that like, not only that the Ukrainians are going take back all of their territory, which looks unfortunately improbable, but more that the Russians are going be fundamentally changed.
Didn’t we learn from Iraq that you can’t fundamentally change a culture? And by the way, Russia is not Iraq, right? Russia’s got thousands of nuclear weapons. It’s one of the major powers of the world.
I agreed with Tucker’s reaction to Putin’s long disquisition on the history, “Well, yeah, a lot of countries have historical disputes.” That doesn’t mean it’s OK to use military force. I think a lot of it was Russian propaganda or spinning or whatever. I don’t think it was very effective, at least in changing a lot of minds in the United States.
There’s no court of right and wrong here. Putin is never going to be dragged in front of the International Criminal Court.
So how is this war going to end? It could just go on and maybe stalemate at some point. Or it’s going to end through some kind of negotiations. Obviously, it’s best for the Ukrainians to negotiate from a position of strength. We may sadly have missed that opportunity, but I think in any case, if the Europeans step up and support the Ukrainians more, they’ll be able to negotiate from a position of strength.
The Biden administration’s position has been very strange because privately, when they leak to the press and so forth, they’ll say this war is going to end through negotiations, but they actually never have the fortitude to publicly present that case.
As we enter what looks to be a very perilous 2024, America and its allies direly need a clear-eyed, rigorous strategy. I tried to lay one out and what it entails in my book.
I believe the book is, if anything, more relevant now than it was in 2021. https://t.co/ts5AAKmY2W
Bluey: Can you share with us about the Marathon Initiative that you founded?
Colby: You can follow me at @ElbridgeColby on X, and I’ve got a book, “The Strategy of Denial,” which came out a few years ago, though I think it’s actually more current now.
My partner and I started the Marathon Initiative a few years ago as a nonprofit 501(c)(3). In the foreign policy space, we say, “We’re living in an era of great power rivalry. There are no easy answers. Let’s go without fear or favor to where the right strategies are.”
That’s what we wanted do—create a think tank in the sense it was originally conceived of in the national security space, which was to think hard about the toughest problems, produce books enable people like me to be able to take a more unorthodox or reformist or even heretical approach that reflects reality.
My concern is whether it’s happening fast enough. Because I don’t think we have so much time, given China and so forth.
President Joe Biden’s political rhetoric aimed at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues, but it also is failing to move Israel on ceasing its war on Hamas in Gaza. Despite being an ally locked in war, Biden has been reportedly unkind to his Israeli counterpart, calling Netanyahu an “a**hole” behind closed doors — all while claiming publicly he close, sources told NBC News.
A week after reports saying Biden privately considers Netanyahu a “bad f**king guy,” sources say Netanyahu is “giving him hell.” Late last week, Biden denounced the Israeli war operations in Gaza as “over the top.”
Notably, there has been no reports of Biden cursing out Hamas terrorists or the world’s No. 1 state sponsor of terror Iran, anonymously or otherwise.
This all comes as the Biden administration continues to press a two-state solution, giving Gaza a Palestinian state after the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, while Netanyahu has continued to press forward, vowing “total victory” over Hamas.
Netanyahu is Biden’s “primary obstacle” to keeping Israel from the prime minister’s secondary war objective of eradicating Hamas, officials told NBC.
But, since Israel’s war on Hamas began, Netanyahu has been steadfast in achieving three objectives:
Return all of the 250 hostages taken by Hamas terrorists as human shields and leverage for a Palestinian state, as Israeli officials told Newsmax
Eradicate the Hamas terrorist network and leadership, including worldwide
Demilitarize and deradicalize the anti-Israeli Palestinian population in Gaza
Only after those three objectives are met can there be peace in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, according to Netanyahu, who is also called “Bibi.”
But Biden remains undaunted on Israel’s war objectives, instead facing pressure in the U.S. to get nearly $10 billion in funding for Gaza and far-left agitators calling for sanctions on Israel for its strikes against Hamas.
“He did say, ‘Bibi started off great, but he’s been a pain in my ass lately’ or ‘he’s been killing me lately’ — one of those things,” a source told NBC News. “He goes, ‘But, he’s doing a disservice … of late.'”
Biden’s inability to stop Israel has been a point of contention in private conversations with two-state advocates and campaign officials, sources told NBC.
“He just feels like this is enough,” one source said. “It has to stop.”
The rejection of the Israeli prime minister over political and policy differences could be construed as anti-Israel, so Biden administration officials have tried to tamp down talk of a personal rift.
“The president has been clear where he disagrees with Prime Minister Netanyahu, but this is a decadeslong relationship that is respectful in public and in private,” a National Security Council spokesman wrote in a statement, according to NBC News.
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
Open Doors International logs an increase in persecution against Christians globally, notably North Korea, China, India, Somalia, and Nigeria. Pictured: Attendees depart a Catholic church in China after attending Sunday Mass on Jan. 15, 2023, in Dali, northwest of Yunnan province. (Photo: Noel Celis/ AFP/Getty Images)
Open Doors International, a nonprofit organization that supports persecuted Christians in over 70 countries, has released its annual 2024 World Watch List, which highlights and ranks countries in which Christians face the most severe persecution and discrimination.
Each year, the report brings vital attention to brave Christians around the world who suffer because of their faith.
Tragically, the 2024 report reveals that persecution against Christians is worsening.
The previous year’s World Watch List found that more than 360 million Christians faced severe persecution and discrimination for their faith. Today, this figure has increased to more than 365 million people, with “dangerously violent” instances of persecution taking place in listed countries.
Further, the 2024 report records a significant increase in the number of attacks on churches and Christian properties last year. According to Open Doors: “More than 14,700 churches or Christian properties such as schools and hospitals were targeted in 2023. It marked a sevenfold increase compared with attacks recorded the previous year.”
Additionally, in 2023 the total number of Christians who were forced to leave their homes for various reasons—including political instability, war, and extremism—more than doubled from the previous year. Nearly 300,000 Christians had to flee their homes and approximately 3% of Christians in sub-Saharan Africa’s most dangerous countries were displaced.
According to the report, North Korea is “the most dangerous place in the world for Christians.” If a person’s Christian faith is discovered, he or she is killed on the spot or shipped to a labor camp where the chances of survival are slim. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un sees Christianity as a threat to the dictatorship and carries out an effective death sentence on believers.
In China, General Secretary Xi Jinping similarly sees Christianity as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party’s power. Last year, at least 10,000 churches (mostly underground house churches) were closed in China; other, state-sanctioned churches were required to display signs that read “Love the Communist Party; Love the country; Love the religion.”
In Asia as a whole, 2 in 5 Christians are persecuted for their faith. Christians in India face violent attacks from Hindu extremists and are punished for violating anti-conversion laws in some states.
Rishi, a church leader in India, told Open Doors: “Though I was attacked twice, still I can feel God’s protection in my life. I was attacked, yet was not crushed. I will continue to trust my God.”
In Africa, 1 in 5 Christians are persecuted. Somalia was ranked No. 2 for countries in which Christians face the most extreme persecution. In Somalia, most Christians are Muslim converts and are consequently targeted by Islamist extremists, namely the terrorist group al-Shabaab, which has expressed its objective to eliminate Christians from the country.
Nigeria, according to Open Doors, “remains the deadliest place to follow Jesus.”
In 2023, nearly 5,000 Christians were killed for their faith, with 82% of the slayings occurring in Nigeria. Ranked No. 6 on the 2024 World Watch List, according to Open Doors: “More Christians are killed for their faith in Nigeria than in all the other countries of the world combined.”
For millions of Christians around the world, the cost of worshipping freely is high. Some even pay the price with their lives.
Open Doors’ 2024 World Watch List brings crucial attention to Christian persecution and discrimination— and is a vital tool for those who wish to help Christians around the world.
Iran has crossed the rubicon, when its proxies launched a drone attack that killed three of our soldiers in Jordan on Sunday. The strike marks a clear escalation in the de facto war launched by Iran on the United States, in response to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Tehran-backed Hamas on Israel.
Iran will almost certainly ratchet up hostilities in the coming days, weeks and probably months. The window of opportunity for President Biden to tame Iran with decisive action is closing rapidly. Here’s why.
First, Tehran highly likely views the Biden administration as extremely risk-averse and unlikely to engage with it in a direct large-scale kinetic confrontation. Despite the steady escalation of the scope and scale of Tehran-backed attacks on U.S. forces and bases in the Middle East in the past 100 days, Washington’s response has been focused on proportionality and escalation control. Rather than establishing escalation dominance by bringing war home to Iran, the White House authorized only periodic individual strikes on proxy targets.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reviews a group of armed forces cadets during their graduation ceremony, in Tehran on Oct. 10. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)
The number of attacks by Iranian militias targeting U.S. military personnel from Oct. 17 to Jan. 29 has reached 165 and the number of injured Americans has climbed to 34, most involving traumatic brain damage. And yet, the key message coming out of the administration has been “We do not seek war with Iran.”
Everyone, from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, to the National Security Council’s John Kirby, to the commander in chief himself has rushed to telegraph to Tehran that the president’s primary goal is to avoid escalation and a wider conflict, rather than to protect U.S. troops and end hostilities. A key tenet of the Western conception of warfare, proportionality, is culturally alien to Iranians. Consequently, they interpret Biden’s measured response as a sign of weakness and acquiescence to aggression.
Second, Iran’s aggression is almost certainly underpinned by its increasing confidence in the imminent viability of its nuclear deterrent. In early January, nuclear expert David Albright, who served as a weapons inspector for the United Nations in Iraq, issued a shocking new report, assessing that Iran needs as little as one week to construct its first nuclear weapon, once the leadership issues the order to do so. According to Albright, Iran has sufficient weapons-grade uranium to build six weapons in one month, and 12 weapons in five months.
The Iranian regime, therefore, probably calculates that its new status of a de facto nuclear power is a sufficient deterrent that will prevent Washington from launching a mass devastating retaliatory strike on Iran proper.
President Biden speaks at the University of Tampa on Feb. 9, 2023. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Tehran likely watched closely the Biden administration’s reluctance to fully back Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion. It is because of the threat – likely real, in my assessment – of Putin’s launching a tactical nuclear strike on the battlefield in Ukraine that President Biden ruled out the deployment of forces into the theater soon after Russia attacked Ukraine. The ayatollahs probably believe that Biden’s fear of nuclear Armageddon and of Iran’s strategic partnership with Russia will further influence the White House’s decision calculus regarding the kind of retaliatory measures it is willing to take against Iran.
Third, Iran probably believes it has a sufficient missile and drone arsenal to keep U.S. forces in the region at risk. Iran’s target list includes some 2,500 U.S. troops in Iraq, 900 in Syria and an embassy in Baghdad.
Iran has the largest and most diverse missile force in the Middle East, according to the 2019 assessment by Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) titled “Iran Military Power: Ensuring Regime Survival and Securing Regional Dominance.” Designed to “overwhelm U.S. forces and our partners in the region,” Tehran’s “substantial” arsenal includes close-range, short-range and medium-range ballistic missiles that can strike targets throughout the region as far as 2,000 kilometers from Iran’s borders, as far as Israel and southeastern Europe.
Missiles and an Iran flag are displayed at Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) National Aerospace Park in western Tehran, Oct. 11, 2023. (Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Moreover, the Iranian state has prioritized its missile modernization, focusing on improvements in range, accuracy, mobility, warhead design and survivability. The employment of improved guidance technology and maneuverability has resulted in increased lethality and precision of Iranian missiles, almost certainly emboldening the regime to act more provocatively.
In its most recent effort to further augment its ballistic missile arsenal, on Jan. 20, Iran launched an advanced satellite, named Soraya, into the highest orbit yet. Carrying a 110-pound payload, Soraya was placed in orbit 460 miles above the Earth’s surface, using a three-stage Qaem 100 rocket. The launch, which was condemned by the U.K., France and Germany in a joint statement, very likely allowed Iran to test an increased lift capacity of its space launch vehicle (SLV) technology – needed to place an object in a higher orbit in space – that is essential for the development of an indigenous long-range strike capability.
Progress in its space program could shorten Iran’s pathway to an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) because SLVs use very similar technologies. If Iran develops a booster capable of ICBM ranges, it can reach the continental United States, if configured for that purpose, warned the DIA. The fact that Iran is deepening ties, including in “the field of military-technical cooperation,” with Russia, which is the world’s leader in space launch and nuclear know-how, makes Tehran’s progress in ICBM development even more alarming.
The flag of Iran in front of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) headquarters in Vienna, Austria. (Michael Gruber/Getty Images)
On Monday, Austin vowed that the U.S. will respond to Iran-backed lethal attack “at a time and place of our choosing.” But the president doesn’t have much time to deliberate. Iran clearly doesn’t feel threatened by Biden’s “Don’t. Don’t” counter-strategy and is postured to climb the escalation ladder.
Once Iran achieves an operational capability to deliver a nuclear strike on Israel and Europe – and then, eventually, on the U.S. homeland – it will be nearly impossible to re-establish deterrence without accepting the risk of a broader war. The time to act is now.
Rebekah Koffler is a strategic military intelligence analyst and the author of Putin’s Playbook. She is Managing Editor of an e-mail newsletter for independent thinkers, CutToTheNews.com. Follow her on Twitter @Rebekah0132
I’m confident about the future of democracy after speaking at the World Economic Forum because these global elites are profoundly unimpressive. Pictured: Participants wait for a session to begin Jan. 16 at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (Photo: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images)
I recently attended the World Economic Forum’s 54th annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The theme was “rebuilding trust,” and today, I can truly say that I’ve never been more hopeful about the future of democracy.
That’s not because I was impressed by United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ shock at “the systemic undermining of principles and standards” or convinced by Chinese Communist Party Premier Li Qiang’s case for “all sides” to “treat each other with sincerity and work in the same direction.”
Nor was I particularly persuaded by Professor Klaus Schwab’s call for more “open, transparent conversations” as I watched World Economic Forum’s founder and his friends set the agenda for the Great Reset while hobnobbing in a remote town in the Swiss Alps.
The reason I am confident about the future of democracy is because these elites are profoundly unimpressive. For 72 hours, I watched speakers who supposed themselves to be the most powerful people in the world fret about a “trust” they knew they’d lost and wouldn’t get back.
They represented multinational companies and nongovernmental organizations—and had nice titles like “Undersecretary,” “Co-chairman,” and “Chief Sustainability Officer.” But few had started a successful company, taken a real risk, or even won an election. These were the managerial elite—the mediocre technocrats who held the real power in communist and leftist regimes alike.
And I am not the only one to realize the emperor has no clothes. Around the world, and in America in particular, more and more people are seeing through the façade. We know the Davoisie don’t want to “rebuild trust”—they want to control our lives. And more importantly, we know they only have as much power as we give them.
They’re old. They’re tired. They’re scared. And they should be. Their time is up. That’s what I told them, right to their faces. But they won’t relinquish their weak grip on power voluntarily. So how can we depose them from their lavish throne in the Alps? The answer is a simple, timeless motto: “Live not by lies.”
That was the title of an essay the great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn released on the day of his arrest 50 years ago this February, and it is as true today as when it was first written.
The heart of Solzhenitsyn’s essay is his insistence that it is not the corrupt elites “who are guilty, but we ourselves.” Because the people “wait inertly” for the regime to collapse while accepting and repeating the lies that give it power.
Of course, Solzhenitsyn was writing about the Soviet Union, but the time he predicted would come—“when our thoughts can be read, and our genes altered”—has arrived.
Just look at our country. Are we not constantly commanded to comply and affirm lies dished out by the ruling elite—be they in government, academia, or corporate America?
Consider how often people accept the delusion that a man can become a woman. Think about how many “gender affirming” procedures are conducted every day, how every new building features an “all gender” bathroom, or how many folks include their preferred pronouns on their resumes or in their social media profiles. The same people who affirm this farce then have the nerve to turn around and say, “Follow the science.”
Finally, to take on the favorite subject of the Davoisie, mull over how much time and money we spend trying to stop “climate change”—a meaningless term itself. Year after year, government bureaucrats, ESG fund managers, and college professors lecture us to stop innovating, stop building things, and stop having children because sea levels are going to rise dramatically, and the world is going to end in a flood.
It isn’t true. The Good Book says as much. And our leaders must stop going along like it is.
In 2024, our world will not end, but the decadent world of Davos will collapse. The global elites maintain power as long as their lies are affirmed and their surrogates elected. If “We the People” wake up and simply change course, the game is up.
This is the year we’re going to take our power back and restore self-governance once again. We’re going to reject the lie that the border is secure and that states can’t resist illegal immigration. We’re going to stop obeying the so-called “experts” for their opinions on public health, public safety, the environment, sexual ethics, and the rest. We’re going to oust bureaucrats from our government.
And we’re certainly not going to ask anyone from Davos, the European Union, the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, or the World Health Organization for their permission or advice.
Together, the American people possess more talent, drive, courage, and honesty than the managerial elite represented at Davos and in Washington, D.C. All we need to do is refuse to “rebuild trust” with those who don’t deserve it and choose to “live not by lies.”
To quote Solzhenitsyn: “We will be amazed at how swiftly and helplessly the lies fall away.”
The World Court ordered Israel on Friday to prevent acts of genocide against the Palestinians and do more to help civilians, although it stopped short of ordering a ceasefire as requested by South Africa. South Africa brought the case to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) earlier this month, asking it to grant emergency measures to halt the fighting, which has killed more than 26,000 Palestinians. It accused Israel of state-led genocide in its offensive, begun after Hamas militants stormed into Israel killing 1,200 and kidnapping more than 240. Israel sought to have the case thrown out.
In Friday’s ruling, the judges said Israel must take all measures within its power to prevent its troops from committing genocide, punish and must take steps to improve the humanitarian situation.
While the ICJ did not order a ceasefire, it said it would not throw out the genocide case, ruling that the Palestinians appeared to be a protected group under the 1948 Genocide Convention. It did not decide the merits of the genocide allegations. Israel has called South Africa’s allegations false and “grossly distorted,” and said it makes the utmost efforts to avoid civilian casualties.
The Biden administration is failing to properly track foreign ownership of U.S. farmlands and doesn’t appear to have a plan to begin tracking that data, according to an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
According to a GAO report detailing the findings of its investigation, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) has failed to consistently share timely data on foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land as required under the 1978 Agricultural Foreign Investment Disclosure Act (AFIDA). Further, Pentagon officials told investigators, according to the report, that USDA needs to regularly provide more up-to-date and specific AFIDA data.
“Sharing current data could help increase visibility into potential national security risks related to foreign investments in U.S. agricultural land,” the GAO report, which was published late Thursday, states. “USDA implements AFIDA across field offices and headquarters, but its processes to collect, track, and report key information are flawed.”
The GAO investigation concluded that USDA collects AFIDA data on paper forms filed with county or federal offices, but that its process is “unclear and challenging to implement.” And USDA also has no plans and timelines to create an online AFIDA database despite Congress mandating the agency create one by 2025.
President Joe Biden speaks during a virtual meeting at the White House alongside Agriculture Tom Vilsack in 2022. (Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images)
Finally, the government watchdog agency’s review of AFIDA data — the most recent of which is from 2021 — found the USDA has published errors such as reporting the largest land holding associated with China twice.
“This report confirms one of our worst fears: that not only is the USDA unable to answer the question of who owns what land and where, but that there is no plan by the department to internally reverse this dangerous flaw that affects our supply chain and economy,” Congressional Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse, R-Wash., said. “Food security is national security, and we cannot allow foreign adversaries to influence our food supply while we stick our heads in the sand.”
“I will, in my capacity as a member of the Select Committee on the CCP, Chairman of the Western Caucus, and as a member of the House Appropriations Committee, be working to introduce measures aimed at fixing USDA’s internal reporting and data management to identify to Congress, and the American people, exactly who is investing in the over 40 million acres of U.S. farm land reported to have ties to foreign actors,” he continued.
In recent months, Republican lawmakers and local leaders nationwide have increased scrutiny on land purchases by foreign investors. The increasing number of land purchases has sparked concern that foreign companies and investors, particularly those from China, may be establishing a stranglehold of key U.S. food and energy supplies.
“China’s ownership of U.S. farmland is a threat to our food security and national security. An affordable, reliable food supply is critical to our nation’s well-being and prosperity and we must ensure America maintains control of our nation’s resources,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in 2022 after requesting the GAO investigation. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
USDA’s most recent data suggests that, as of 2021, foreign investment in U.S. agricultural land grew to approximately 40 million acres. Additionally, Chinese agricultural investment in the U.S. increased tenfold between 2009 and 2016 alone.
The apparent trend led to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., leading a letter to GAO Comptroller General Gene Dodaro signed by nearly 130 fellow House Republicansin October 2022, requesting a probe into foreign investment in U.S. farmland and its “impact on national security, trade, and food security.”
“Growing foreign ownership of U.S. farmland, particularly by China, poses a direct threat to our food security and national security,” Thompson and Comer said in a joint statement Thursday.
“Safeguarding our farmland and food supply requires a whole of government approach and we will continue to work with the impacted agencies, related committees, and leadership to continue our robust oversight and to identify legislative vehicles to address the findings of the GAO report,” they added.
Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., delivers remarks at the Capitol on May 30, 2023. (MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images)
In February 2023, officials in Grand Forks, North Dakota, rejected a Chinese company’s proposed corn mill that received significant local pushback over concerns about its proximity to a U.S. Air Force base in the area. While the company, Chinese-owned Fufeng Group, was able to purchase 300 acres of land in the area, the local government rejected its building permits, effectively killing the project.
Air Force Assistant Secretary Andrew Hunter said prior to the Grand Forks City Council decision that the project would pose a “significant threat” to national security, but that the Committee on Foreign Investment (CFIUS) concluded it did not have jurisdiction in the case. CFIUS is an interagency taskforce overseen by the Department of the Treasury and tasked with reviewing certain foreign investments that may pose a national security threat.
In addition, a subsidiary of Chinese green energy firm Gotion High-Tech purchased 270 acres of land, including some zoned for agricultural use, in Green Charter Township, Michigan, in August. The land is slated to be used to build an electric vehicle battery component factory, but is located within 60 miles of military armories and within 100 miles from Camp Grayling, the largest U.S. National Guard training facility in the country.
Like its determination in the Fufeng Group case, CFIUS ruled in April 2023 that Gotion’s plans in Michigan are not covered transactions.
“The process to report and track foreign-owned agricultural land is complex and is governed by a 46 year-old law that depends on self-reporting by foreign buyers and sellers of U.S. agricultural land,” a USDA spokesperson told Fox News Digital. “To fulfill our obligations under the law, USDA gathers information from the more than 3,000 counties and county equivalents in the United States, each with their own county clerk and recorder’s office — or none at all — feeding information into more than 50 different state systems.”
“The GAO’s recommendations would require changes by Congress, starting with the funding needed to increase staff and modernize our processes, in addition to a change in data collection mandates down to the county level,” they said. “Any system for tracking land purchases and owners would be complicated, expensive, and create a potential risk to producer privacy, the price of agricultural land, and individual American seller interests.”
Meanwhile, the report was coincidentally published just hours after Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack met with Chinese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian.
“I look forward to further exchanges and cooperation as we continue to forge a relationship that expands and improves market access opportunities for U.S. farmers and ranchers in China, an important agricultural export market,” Vilsack said.
Thomas Catenacci is a politics writer for Fox News Digital.
An Israeli airstrike on a home killed 16 people, half of them children, in the southern Gaza town of Rafah, medics said early Thursday. The military continued to strike targets in areas of the besieged territory where it has told civilians to seek refuge.
There was meanwhile no word on whether medicines that entered the territory Wednesday as part of a deal brokered by France and Qatar had been distributed to dozens hostages with chronic illnesses who are being held by Hamas.
🚨 Breaking: Assisted by @UNRWA, Hamas terrorists again take control of aid trucks today before they reach civilians 👇
Civilians in Gaza are starving despite hundreds of aid trucks entering every day. Meanwhile most Hamas terrorists are obese. pic.twitter.com/YKUcCWFxuY
More than 100 days after Hamas triggered the war with its Oct. 7 attack, Israel continues to wage one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, with the goal of dismantling the militant group that has ruled Gaza since 2007 and returning scores of captives. The war has stoked tensions across the region, threatening to ignite other conflicts.
More than 24,000 Palestinians have been killed, some 85% of the narrow coastal territory’s 2.3 million people have fled their homes, and the United Nations says a quarter of the population is starving.
Hundreds of thousands have heeded Israeli evacuation orders and packed into southern Gaza, where shelters run by the United Nations are overflowing and massive tent camps have gone up. But Israel has continued to strike what it says are militant targets in all parts of Gaza, often killing women and children.
Dr. Talat Barhoum at Rafah’s el-Najjar Hospital confirmed the death toll from the strike in Rafah and said dozens more were wounded. Associated Press footage from the hospital showed relatives weeping over the bodies of loved ones.
“They were suffering from hunger, they were dying from hunger, and now they have also been hit,” said Mahmoud Qassim, a relative of some of those who were killed.
Internet and mobile services in Gaza have been down for five days, the longest of several outages during the war, according to internet access advocacy group NetBlocks. The outages complicate rescue efforts and make it difficult to obtain information about the latest strikes and casualties.
The war has rippled across the Middle East, with Iran-backed groups attacking U.S. and Israeli targets. Low-intensity fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in Lebanon threatens to erupt into all-out war, and Houthi rebels in Yemen continue to target international shipping despite United States-led airstrikes.
Iran has launched a series of missile attacks targeting what it described as an Israeli spy base in Iraq and militant bases in Syria as well as in Pakistan, which carried out reprisal strikes against what it described as militant hideouts in Iran early Thursday.
It was not clear if the strikes in Syria and Pakistan were related to the Gaza war. But they showcased Iran’s ability to carry out long-range missile attacks at a time of heightened tensions with Israel and the U.S., which has provided crucial support for the Gaza offensive and carried out its own strikes against Iran-allied groups in Syria and Iraq.
Israel has vowed to dismantle Hamas to ensure it can never repeat an attack like the one on Oct. 7. Militants burst through Israel’s border defenses and stormed through several communities that day, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage.
Israel has also vowed to return all the hostages remaining in captivity after more than 100 — mostly women and children — were released during a November cease-fire in exchange for the release of scores of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Family members and supporters were marking the first birthday of Kfir Bibas, the youngest Israeli hostage, in a somber ceremony Thursday in Tel Aviv.
The red-haired infant and his 4-year-old brother Ariel were captured along with their mother, Shiri, and their father, Yarden. All four remain in captivity.
The agreement to ship in medicines was the first to be brokered between the warring sides since November. Hamas said that for every box of medicine bound for the hostages, 1,000 would be sent for Palestinian civilians, in addition to food and humanitarian aid.
Qatar confirmed late Wednesday that the medicine had entered Gaza, but it was not yet clear if it had been distributed to the hostages, who are being held in secret locations, including underground bunkers.
Hamas has continued to fight back across Gaza, even in the most devastated areas, and launch rockets into Israel. It says it will not release any more hostages until there is a permanent cease-fire, something Israel and the United States, its top ally, have ruled out.
Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 24,448 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the war, with over 60,000 wounded. It says many other dead and wounded are trapped under rubble or unreachable because of the fighting. The ministry does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths but says around two-thirds of those killed were women and children.
Israel blames the high civilian death toll on Hamas because it fights in dense residential areas. Israel says its forces have killed roughly 9,000 militants, without providing evidence, and that 193 of its own soldiers have been killed since the Gaza ground offensive began.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran conducted airstrikes inside Pakistan that it claimed targeted bases for a militant Sunni separatist group.
Islamabad denounced the attack as a “blatant violation” of its airspace and said it killed two children.
Tuesday’s airstrikes in Pakistan’s restive southwestern Baluchistan province imperiled diplomatic relations between the two neighbors, but both sides appeared wary of provoking the other. Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks.
The attack raised the threat of violence spreading in a Middle East unsettled by Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran also staged airstrikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria over an Islamic State-claimed suicide bombing that killed over 90 people earlier this month. Iraq recalled its ambassador from Iran for consultations.
Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, the spokesperson for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, announced that Islamabad was recalling its ambassador to Iran over the strikes.
“Last night’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty by Iran is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the charter of the United Nations,” she said in a televised address.
Baloch added that Pakistan asked the Iranian ambassador, who was visiting Tehran, not to return.
Iran did not immediately acknowledge Pakistan’s decision.
Iranian state media reports, which were later withdrawn without explanation, said the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard targeted bases in Pakistan belonging to the militant group Jaish al-Adl, or the “Army of Justice.”
Iran’s defense minister also said Wednesday that Iran would respond to any threats against itself, the official IRNA news agency reported.
Without naming any country, Gen. Mohammad Reza Ashtiani said: “We will show reaction to threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran from any region. The reaction will be corresponding, harsh and strong.”
Jaish al-Adl, which seeks an independent Baluchistan for ethnic Baluch areas in Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, acknowledged the assault in a statement shared online.
Six bomb-carrying drones and rockets struck homes that the militants claim housed children and wives of their fighters. Jaish al-Adl said the attack killed two children and wounded two women and a teenage girl.
Videos shared by the Baluch activist group HalVash, purportedly from the site, showed a burning building and two charred, small corpses.
A Pakistani intelligence report said the two children killed were a 6-year-old girl and an 11-month-old boy. Three women were injured, aged between 28 and 35, it said. The report also said three or four drones were launched from the Iranian side, hitting a mosque and other buildings, including a house.
Iran has fought in border areas against militants, but the air attack on Pakistan is unprecedented.
A senior Pakistani security official, speaking to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to talk to reporters, said Iran had shared no information prior to the strike. He said that Pakistan reserved the right to respond at a time and place of its choosing and that any strike would be measured and in line with public expectations.
However, there were signs Pakistan was trying to contain anger over the attack. The country’s typically outspoken and nationalistic media reported on the airstrikes with unusual restraint Wednesday. Pakistan is three weeks away from an election, and politicians are focused on campaigning.
Iranian state media did not address the strikes, instead discussing a joint naval drill held by Pakistan and the Iranian navy in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. Pakistani officials acknowledged the drill but said it came earlier than Iran’s attack.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian acknowledged Tehran carried out the attack in Pakistan while speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He defended the action while repeatedly being told by the interviewer that Pakistan had condemned the attack.
“Regarding Pakistan, none of the nationals of our neighbor, brother and friend Pakistan were the target of Iran’s drones and missiles,” Amirabdollahian said. “We have discussed them with Pakistan’s high-ranking military, security and political officials. Our response is against Iranian terrorists inside Pakistani soil.”
Pakistani Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani said he received a call later from Amirabdollahian.
Jilani told the Iranian the attack seriously damaged relations and could undermine regional peace and stability, according to a statement from the Foreign Ministry in Islamabad. “No country in the region should tread this perilous path,” Jilani said in the call.
Pakistani defense analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said that the government might take some measures in response to the attacks, but that it would weigh any military retaliation carefully. He noted Pakistan’s air defense and missile systems are primarily deployed along its eastern border to respond to potential threats from India.
Jaish al-Adl was founded in 2012, and Iranian officials believe it largely operates in Pakistan. The group has claimed bombings and kidnapped members of Iran’s border police in the past. In December, suspected Jaish al-Adl members killed 11 people and wounded eight others in a nighttime attack on a police station in southeastern Iran. Another recent attack killed a police officer in the area.
In 2019, Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing targeting a bus that killed 27 members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.
Iran has suspected that Sunni-majority Pakistan is hosting insurgents, possibly at the behest of its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. However, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a Chinese-mediated detente last March, easing tensions. Pakistan, meanwhile, has blamed Iran for militant attacks targeting its security forces.
It remained unclear why Iran launched the attack now, particularly as its foreign minister met with Pakistan’s caretaker prime minister, Anwar ul-haq Kakar, the same day at the World Economic Forum.
Kakar had yet to comment publicly on the attacks.
His predecessor, Shehbaz Sharif, said he was shocked at the breach of sovereignty. Writing on X, formerly known as Twitter, Sharif said that “sincere dialogue and meaningful cooperation” between the two countries was needed.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum’s evil recipe for tyrannical Globalism. A combination of Marxism and Fascism so you will own nothing and be happy.
Nikki Haley has a World Economic Forum Problem – She’s Every Bit the Globalist We Expected
Back in 2007 Nikki Haley was a member of the South Carolina state mission to China. Even as a freshman in the state legislature, Haley was a leading ally of Republican Governor Mark Sanford, She was invited to attend the World Economic Forum conference with the governor to China. Nikki Haley’s taxpayer-funded, business class trip cost South Carolinians $6,842.
Haley put out a press release highlighting her participation at the WEF conference in China, calling it “a rare opportunity” to meet with Chinese investors looking to expand their influence in the United States.
Nikki Haley released a statement at the time. ““Making life better in Lexington and throughout South Carolina means creating new business opportunities and learning how to strengthen the job-creating potential of our existing companies. Building new relationships and finding… READ MORE…
A.F. Branco has taken his two greatest passions (art and politics) and translated them into cartoons that have been popular all over the country in various news outlets, including NewsMax, Fox News, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, and “The Washington Post.” He has been recognized by such personalities as Rep. Devin Nunes, Dinesh D’Souza, James Woods, Chris Salcedo, Sarah Palin, Larry Elder, Lars Larson, Rush Limbaugh, and President Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An armed unmanned surface vessel launched from Houthi-controlled Yemen got within a “couple of miles” of U.S. Navy and commercial vessels before detonating on Thursday, just hours after the White House and a host of partner nations issued a “final warning” to the Iran-backed militia group to cease the attacks or face potential military action.
Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of U.S. Navy operations in the Middle East, said it was the first time the Houthis had used an unmanned surface vessel, or USV, since their harassment of commercial ships in the Red Sea began after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. They have, however, used them in years past.
Fabian Hinz, a missile expert and research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the USV’s are a key part of the Houthi maritime arsenal and were used during previous battles against the Saudi coalition forces that intervened in Yemen’s war. They have regularly been used as suicide drone boats that explode upon impact.
Most of the Houthis’ USVs are likely assembled in Yemen but often fitted with components made in Iran, such as computerized guidance systems, Hinz said.
The location of this latest attack was not immediately clear, but Cooper said it took place in international shipping lanes.
Since late October, the Houthis have launched scores of one-way attack drones and missiles at commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea. U.S. Navy warships have also intercepted ballistic missiles the Pentagon says were headed toward Israel. Cooper said a total of 61 missiles and drones have been shot down by U.S. warships.
In response to the Houthi attacks, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in December announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, with the United States and other countries sending additional ships to the southern Red Sea to provide protection for commercial vessels passing through the critical Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Cooper said 1,500 commercial ships have been able to transit safely since the operation was launched on Dec. 18.
However, the Houthis have continued to launch missiles and attack drones, prompting the White House and 12 allies to issue what amounted to a final warning Wednesday to cease their attacks on vessels in the Red Sea or face potential targeted military action.
Cooper said Operation Prosperity Guardian was solely defensive in nature and separate from any military action the U.S. might take if the Houthi attacks continue.
The U.S., United Kingdom and France are providing most of the warships now, and Greece and Denmark will also be providing vessels, he said.
___
Associated Press writer Jack Jeffery contributed to this report.
Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
U.S. spy agencies verified Israeli claims that Hamas and another Palestinian terrorist group used Shifa Hospital in Gaza City as a command center and to hold hostages, The New York Times reported on Tuesday.
In late November, the Israel Defense Forces released extensive video evidence of terror tunnels under Shifa Hospital—the Gaza Strip’s largest medical facility—saying it “unequivocally” proves the modus operandi of Hamas, “which systematically operates from hospitals.”
The terrorist group held at least three of the estimated 240 hostages it kidnapped on Oct. 7 at Shifa, the IDF said. Nevertheless, critics continued to claim that the IDF had little evidence Hamas used the hospital as a command post.
“In the weeks since the operation, news organizations have continued to raise questions about Hamas’s presence at the hospital. And health and humanitarian organizations have criticized the Israeli operation. A humanitarian team led by the World Health Organization, which visited Al-Shifa immediately after Israeli forces stormed the hospital, called it a ‘death zone,'” the Times reported.
But a senior U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday that the American government was convinced that Hamas used the hospital complex to direct terrorist forces, store weapons and hold “at least a few hostages.” The official also said U.S. spy agencies had information that Hamas destroyed evidence before the IDF operation at the hospital got underway. A U.S. official expressed confidence in the intelligence assessment as it was based on information gathered independently by both Israel and American agencies.
In November, the IDF recovered the body of Cpl. Noa Marciano, who was kidnapped by Hamas, in a building adjacent to Shifa Hospital. Also found next to the hospital was the corpse of another hostage, Yehudit Weiss.
Israeli forces arrested the hospital’s director, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, on Dec. 23.
“In the hospital, under his management, there was extensive Hamas terrorist activity. Findings of his involvement in terrorist activity will determine whether he will be subject to further ISA [Israel Security Agency, i.e. Shin Bet] questioning,” the IDF said in a statement.Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.
A leaked document coauthored by American and Chinese scientists provides fresh and disturbing evidence supporting the Covid origin lab-leak theory.
Emily Kopp, an investigative journalist at U.S. Right to Know, an online publication about “Pursuing truth and transparency for public health,” reported recently that her organization has obtained a 2018 grant proposal called Project DEFUSE, coauthored by the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) and their counterparts in the United States, including EcoHealth Alliance.
According to Kopp, Project DEFUSE “proposed engineering high-risk coronaviruses of the same species as SARS and SARS-CoV-2.” The content of this proposal is concerning for several reasons. First, the proposal “involved synthesizing spike proteins with furin cleavage sites — the same feature that supercharged SARS-CoV-2 into the most infectious pandemic pathogen in a century.”
Second, the proposal publicly stated that such risky research would be done at American scientist Ralph Baric’s high-containment BSL-3 lab at the University of North Carolina. But Peter Daszak, CEO of EcoHealth, revealed in his private comments that once the project is funded, he would let the WIV conduct some of the risky research, despite knowing the WIV is only a BSL-2 lab and has “fewer safety precautions than required in the U.S.” Baric responded that “U.S. researchers would ‘freak out’ if they knew the novel coronavirus engineering and testing work would be conducted in a BSL-2 lab.”
According to Kopp of U.S. Right to Know, “Biosafety levels range from one (BSL-1) to four (BSL-4), with BSL-4 being the most stringent. … Many scientists say viruses that may be transmitted through the air should at minimum be studied in BSL-3.”
Daszak and other Americans on the project team omitted to disclose the WIV’s involvement to Project DEFUSE’s intended funder, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), “in order to evade any national security concerns about doing high-level biosecurity work in China.” Daszak didn’t provide Chinese scientists’ resumes to DARPA “to downplay the non-US focus of this proposal so that DARPA doesn’t see this as a negative.”
What’s even scarier is that these documents “also show the researchers intended to use less regulated SARS-related coronavirus research as proof of concept in order to extend their high-risk methods to more deadly viruses like Ebola, Marburg, Hendra and Nipah,” according to Kopp. Some scientists’ ongoing interest in experimenting with those contagious and lethal viruses is one of the many reasons why we must understand the origin of Covid-19 because such knowledge may help prevent the next pandemic.
Matt Ridley, a British member of Parliament and coauthor of Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19, writes at Spiked:
It was shocking enough that he [Peter Daszak] failed to tell the world about this proposal, which was leaked instead. It was still more shocking to find that it contained a specific proposal for inserting ‘human-specific cleavage sites’ into sarbecoviruses for the first time, because exactly such a feature is found in the virus that causes Covid, and in none of the other 1,500 known sarbecoviruses. That cleavage site is the reason we had a pandemic because it makes the virus more infectious in human airways and it seems uniquely suited to the human system.
Although DARPA eventually declined to fund Project DEFUSE, Daszak, who has a reputation for not taking no for an answer, likely completed the proposed work with the WIV anyway with other funding sources. Daszak’s EcoHealth has received at least $8 million in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) between 2014 and 2021. In 2021, after congressional Republicans’ repeated requests, the NIH finally admitted that it had funded the WIV “to study the risk to humans of coronaviruses circulating in bats in China” through EcoHealth.
NIH’s admission came after the Intercept made public two grant proposals submitted by EcoHealth Alliance to the NIH on gain-of-function research on coronavirus and a progress report covering June 2018 to May 2019.
These documents revealed that EcoHealth’s experiments “involv[ed] infectious clones of MERS-CoV, the virus that caused a deadly outbreak of Middle East respiratory syndrome in 2012.” EcoHealth’s data also demonstrates that “chimeric SARS-like viruses caused more severe disease in a humanized animal model than the original virus,” according to Alina Chan, a Boston-based molecular biologist and coauthor of the book Viral: The Search for the Origin of Covid-19. All this information contradicts EcoHealth’s previous repeated denials that no such high-risk experiment ever took place.
Given what we know now, a coronavirus pandemic that emerged out of Wuhan more than three years ago seems less like a coincidence. Yet Daszak of EcoHealth has been the most vocal lab-leak theory denier. Among his efforts to shut down any public discussion of the lab-leak theory, the most infamous one was that he organized a group of scientists to co-sign a letter published by Lancet, denouncing the lab-leak theory without disclosing his conflict of interest (his intimate collaboration with the WIV).
Last week, The Wall Street Journal dropped another bombshell, that Daszak’s EcoHealth is under federal investigation (civil, not criminal) about whether it double-billed U.S. taxpayers for hundreds of thousands of dollars for the dangerous gain-of-function coronavirus research in China. Daszak denied any wrongdoing.
The leaked Project DEFUSE documents are a reminder, according to Chan, who commented on X, “This is a pattern of dishonesty. Clearly, we cannot take the word of conflicted parties. It is urgently important that the public and investigators gain full access to all EcoHealth documents relating to WIV research.”
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that at least 3 million people worldwide died of Covid in 2020. Not to mention that millions more people’s lives, mental health, and economic well-being have been negatively affected by government policies. Many of us still feel the effects of those policies today. The pandemic was a life-changing event for many. Therefore, we all deserve to know how the pandemic started and be better prepared for the next one.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has suppressed any discussion of the lab-leak theory for one apparent reason — to avoid accountability. Yet it is disappointing that the Biden administration, congressional Democrats, and their corporate media allies have shown little interest in uncovering Covid’s origin. They have suppressed the lab-leak theory as shamelessly as the CCP has done, despite that “the evidence that this virus probably came from the Wuhan Institute of Virology is now voluminous, detailed and strong,” said Matt Ridley, and their collective silence “speaks volumes.”
Democrats and corporate media’s collective silence and the lack of curiosity about the virus’s origin are likely driven by two reasons. First, they cannot blame the origin of Covid on Trump because the NIH funding occurred under former President Obama. Any investigation of Covid’s origin will inevitably lead to the questionable conduct of Anthony Fauci, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, and his allies at the NIH, from underwriting the WIV’s gain-of-function research to suppressing the lab-leak theory since the beginning of the pandemic.
Second, the Democrats and corporate media’ conduct during the pandemic has shown that they were only interested in taking advantage of a crisis to grab more power and expand their control over the country and the American people. Public health prevention is their last concern. Therefore, it is up to concerned citizens and independent media to keep searching for truth and demanding accountability.
Mexican and U.S. officials have agreed to work together more closely to tackle record migration at their shared border, the countries’ governments said in a joint statement Thursday, a day after high-level talks on stemming record numbers.
Following a visit to Mexico by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the countries said they would seek to strengthen a sponsorship initiative for Venezuelan, Cuban, Nicaraguan, and Haitian migrants and look to tackle the root causes of migration.
The delegations, who are set to meet again in Washington next month, also discussed regularizing the situation of beneficiaries of the U.S. Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program – the so-called Dreamers who were brought into the country illegally as children – and long-time undocumented Hispanic migrants living in the United States.
The talks came after the U.S. temporarily shuttered some border crossings to redeploy agents toward enforcement, sparking a trade slowdown and criticism by Republicans of the Biden administration’s border policies. Immigration and the border are expected to be top issues in the U.S. 2024 elections, where President Joe Biden, a Democrat, is running for a second term.
Earlier Thursday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the two parties had agreed to keep border crossings open after the temporary closures.
“This agreement has been reached, the rail crossings and the border bridges are already being opened to normalize the situation,” Lopez Obrador told a morning press conference.
Lopez Obrador said Wednesday’s meetings with the U.S. delegation were “direct,” and he praised the Biden administration’s relationship with Mexico.
‘Faith in God’
More than half a million migrants this year crossed the dangerous Darien Gap jungle connecting South America with Central America – double last year’s record – with many fleeing crime, poverty and conflict to seek better prospects in the United States.
The latest of a series of caravans of migrants and asylum seekers, many with small children, is slowly walking across southern Mexico, heading towards the U.S border. Lopez Obrador estimated that the caravan counts some 1,500 people but some activists and local media have put the figure at 7,000.
“We have to have faith in God,” Honduran migrant Marvin Mejias said as he traveled with his son, who has had foot surgery. Mejias said he hoped the governments had reached a deal which would help him enter the U.S. and be able to work there.
Lopez Obrador said the issue of fentanyl, a powerful and deadly opioid that Mexican cartels have been trafficking into the U.S., was “hardly discussed” in Wednesday’s meeting.
The United States has been pressing Mexico to do more to combat fentanyl trafficking, while Mexico has been pushing for stronger U.S. controls to prevent U.S. firearms from reaching the powerful cartels.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week outlined three prerequisites for peace in the region following months of war with Hamas. Netanyahu, in an opinion piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, outlined the three: the destruction of Hamas, the demilitarization of Gaza, and the deradicalization of Palestinian society.
“First, Hamas, a key Iranian proxy, must be destroyed. The U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and many other countries support Israel’s intention to demolish the terror group,” Netanyahu wrote.
“Second, Gaza must be demilitarized. Israel must ensure that the territory is never again used as a base to attack it,” he added.
According to Netanyahu, this will involve creating “a temporary security zone” on Gaza’s perimeter and a border inspection system to prevent weapons smuggling. He also claimed that expecting the Palestinian Authority to demilitarize Gaza “is a pipe dream.”
“Third, Gaza will have to be deradicalized,” the prime minster continued. “Schools must teach children to cherish life rather than death, and imams must cease to preach for the murder of Jews. Palestinian civil society needs to be transformed so that its people support fighting terrorism rather than funding it.”
Netanyahu wrote that once these three goals are achieved, “Gaza can be rebuilt and the prospects of a broader peace in the Middle East will become a reality.”
The U.N. Security Council passed a new resolution that calls for speeding up humanitarian aid deliveries into Gaza, but without the original call for an “urgent suspension of hostilities” between Israel and Hamas.
The United States and Russia abstained from Friday’s vote, which was delayed for days as diplomats sought to avoid a veto by the U.S., Israel’s closest ally.
The U.N. says more than a half-million people are starving in Gaza because not enough food has entered the besieged territory as Israel keeps up its blistering campaign of airstrikes and ground operations for over 10 weeks. Tens of thousands of displaced Palestinians are crammed into shelters and tent camps as winter descends, raising fears about the spread of disease.
STOP!!!! Help Israel destroy Hamas and Hezbollah, and the people you’re wringing your hands over will get what they need. Look at the X below.
Hamas terrorists have hijacked yet another humanitarian aid convoy after it crossed over the Rafah border from Egypt.
Palestinian officials said Friday that the death toll has now exceeded 20,000 — around 1% of the territory’s prewar population. The Health Ministry in Gaza does not differentiate between civilian and combatant deaths. Israel says more than 130 of its soldiers have died in its ground offensive after Hamas raided southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and taking about 240 hostages.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has been on travel excursions to Israel since 1973, said in a new Newsmax interview that his recent tour of Kibbutz Kfar Aza, a location hit by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, really opened his eyes and he’s “witnessed a lot of things, but nothing like this.”
“I wanted to be here to say I stand with Israel,” Huckabee told Newsmax’s Daniel Cohen at the kibbutz in an interview airing on Newsmax Thursday. “I stand with the Jewish people. What happened to them should never again happen to any human beings on the face of the Earth.”
Huckabee and conservative author Joel Rosenberg together led an American evangelical delegation to the kibbutz, with the tour hosted by a Knesset member, Danny Danon, to send a “powerful message of solidarity with Israel,” Cohen reported.
“We walked there for about an hour,” said Cohen. “The bloodstains have all been scrubbed, but nothing can erase the crimes the terrorists committed there on Oct. 7.”
In all, Hamas terrorists murdered 63 people at Kibbutz Kfar Aza, and took 18 as hostages.
“It was atrocious, and they knew they were targeting children, babies, women, unarmed men, and elderly [people], Holocaust survivors,” said Huckabee. “It just reeks of the worst kind of human atrocity. I want everyone in America and across the world to say we stand with Israel.”
Cohen also reported on Iris Haim, the mother of Yotam Haim, one of three hostages who were mistakenly killed by Israel Defense Forces soldiers last week.
She sent a voice message to the soldiers who shot her son, telling them that she loves them and that she blames “only Hamas” for what happened to her son, Cohen said.
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UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Palestinians are expecting a high vote Tuesday for a U.N. General Assembly resolution demanding an immediate humanitarian cease-fire in Gaza to demonstrate widespread global support for ending the Israel-Hamas war, now in its third month. After the United States vetoed a resolution in the Security Council on Friday demanding a humanitarian cease-fire, Arab and Islamic nations called for an emergency session of the 193-member General Assembly to vote on a resolution making the same demand.
Unlike Security Council resolutions, General Assembly resolutions are not legally binding. But the assembly’s messages “are also very important” and reflect world opinion, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Monday.
The General Assembly vote is expected to reflect the growing isolation of the United States as it refuses to join demands for a cease-fire. More than the United Nations or any other international organization, the United States is seen as the only entity capable of persuading Israel to accept a cease-fire as its closest ally and biggest supplier of weaponry.
Riyad Mansour, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, told U.N. reporters Tuesday that Arab and Islamic ambassadors have been mobilizing support for the resolution and expect it will get a significantly higher number of votes than their Oct. 27 resolution, which called for a “humanitarian truce” leading to a cessation of hostilities. That resolution was the first U.N. reaction to the Gaza war, and the vote was 120-14 with 45 abstentions.
“I think it will send a message to Washington and to others,” Mansour said, adding that a demand from the United Nations, whether it’s the Security Council or the General Assembly, should be looked at as binding. “And Israel has to abide by it, and those who are shielding and protecting Israel until now should also look at it this way, and therefore act accordingly,” he said. The resolution to be voted on expresses “grave concern over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip and the suffering of the Palestinian civilian population,” and it says Palestinians and Israelis must be protected in accordance with international humanitarian law.
It also demands that all parties comply with international humanitarian law, “notably with regard to the protection of civilians,” and calls for “the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages, as well as ensuring humanitarian access.”
Mansour said the 22-member Arab Group and 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation will oppose any amendments to the resolution. The resolution makes no mention of Hamas, whose militants killed about 1,200 people and abducted about 240 in the surprise attack inside Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war.
One amendment proposed by the United States would add a paragraph stating that the assembly “unequivocally rejects and condemns the heinous terrorist attacks by Hamas.”
A second amendment proposed by Austria would add that the hostages are “held by Hamas and other groups” and should be released “immediately.”
The war has brought unprecedented death and destruction, with much of northern Gaza obliterated, more than 18,000 Palestinians killed according to the Hamas-run health ministry, 70% of them reportedly children and women, and over 80% of the population of 2.3 million pushed from their homes.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Three GOP lawmakers are pushing legislation that would have the U.S. completely withdraw from the United Nations and cut off all funding to the globalist organization. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas, and Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama are pushing the proposal, which would put the kibosh on U.S. ties to the U.N. and affiliated entities, including the World Health Organization.
“The UN doesn’t deserve one single dime of American taxpayer money or one bit of our support; we should defund it and leave immediately. I am proud to lead this critical effort alongside Mike Lee and Mike Rogers,” Roy said, according to a press release.
“No more blank checks for the United Nations. Americans’ hard-earned dollars have been funneled into initiatives that fly in the face of our values –enabling tyrants, betraying allies, and spreading bigotry,” Lee said, according to the press release. “With the DEFUND Act, we’re stepping away from this debacle. If we engage with the UN in the future, it will be on our terms, with the full backing of the Senate and an iron-clad escape clause.”
While conservatives would hail the prospect of the U.S. completely ditching the U.N., the legislation likely has no chance of advancing through Congress, as many lawmakers would probably oppose the idea of U.S. withdrawal.
“The President shall terminate all membership by the United States in the United Nations, and in any organ, specialized agency, commission, or other formally affiliated body of the United Nations,” the text of the measure reads in part.
Argentina’s President-elect, Javier Milei, gestures during a Nov. 29 session at the Argentine Congress in Buenos Aires, at which he was officially declared the winner of the runoff election. He is set to take office on Sunday. (Photo: Juan Mabromata/AFP/Getty Images)
Milei’s ideas are neither radical nor novel. They represent a move toward returning to normal and a repudiation of the economic sins Argentina has repeatedly committed.
The nation is in the throes of its fifth hyperinflation in less than five decades, with prices now rising 143% per year. It was enough to convince the Argentine electorate that it was time for a 180-degree change in economic policy. The people want to make Argentina great again, as former President Donald Trump said in congratulating Milei, 53, who takes office on Sunday.
A century ago, Argentina was the crown jewel of South America. It was one of the richest countries in the world, with a gold-backed currency and a higher per-capita gross domestic product than Austria, Italy or Spain, its former master.
But Argentina got caught up in the progressive era of the early 20th century and elected socialists around World War I. Government meddling in the economy took root with new laws controlling factory production and working hours. Major industries such as energy and transportation were nationalized. Government schools became ubiquitous.
Economic efficiency declined and output fell as the bureaucracy became bloated.
With the onset of the Great Depression, socialists in both the U.S. and Argentina found a new excuse to implement the agenda they had been advocating for decades. Argentina‘s government exploded its budget and launched an economywide industrial policy, which backfired spectacularly, just as the New Deal drove U.S. economic output lower.
To finance an expanded government, Argentina chose to print money and abandoned the gold standard, then devalued the peso by half. Agricultural output plunged, including beef, and Argentina lost its place as one of the world’s biggest beef exporters.
The political unrest that followed led to a military coup and takeover by fascist-sympathizing national socialists who doubled down on their predecessors’ failed policies. The next four decades saw more inflation and the nationalization and unionization of more industries and workers amid constant pushes for social justice.
The middle class all but disappeared, replaced by an overregulated, overtaxed underclass.
In the first of a series of hyperinflations, the peso’s value went from 42 cents American to less than three one-thousands of a cent in 1969. Argentina abandoned its throne among the pantheon of the richest nations in the world, descending to perennial economic basket cases.
Although the peso was restored in 1970, it quickly lost 99.9% of its value. It was reset again in 1981, only to lose 95% of its value thereafter. Each time government spending expanded beyond its means, Argentina printed the money to pay for it, robbing the people of their wealth.
After resetting the peso in 1983, hyperinflation was repeated yet again with a 98% devaluation. A further reset of the peso in 1985 was preceded by a collapse of the currency, losing 99.9% of its value once more.
By 1992, then-President Carlos Menem was able to restore the Argentine peso to parity with the U.S. dollar, but the feat lasted only a decade before the nation returned to its socialist credo. Government spending grew, financed by printed money, and the currency predictably lost more than 90% of its value.
Argentina returned to being persona non grata in the world of investment-grade bonds, and Argentines were once again laboring away under the yoke of hyperinflation.
This is the context that elected Milei. At long last, Argentines have had enough socialism and want their country back. Sadly, it took Argentina almost a century of chaos to learn that lesson.
The United States is following in Argentina’s footsteps, but it is running instead of walking. Relative to the size of the economy, Washington is racking up deficits twice as large as those of Buenos Aires. More than 40% of U.S. personal income taxes in America are consumed just in interest on the federal debt. If the spending is not cut soon, Argentina-style hyperinflation will follow as the only way to pay for excessive government spending.
America should skip to the end of the story of Argentina instead of reliving the whole tragedy page by page. That seems unlikely since, as our South American cousin has shown, even repeated bouts of hyperinflation aren’t always enough to wake people up to the disastrous reality of socialism.
A man hiding in a pit during the Oct. 7 Hamas assault on an outdoor music festival in Israel said he heard someone nearby screaming she was being raped. Elsewhere in the area, a combat paramedic saw the body of a young woman with her legs open, her pants pulled down, and what looked like semen on her lower back. An army reservist who was tasked with identifying those killed by the militants said some of the women were found wearing only bloodied underwear.
Such accounts given to The Associated Press, along with first assessments by an Israeli rights group, show that sexual assault was part of an atrocities-filled rampage by Hamas and other Gaza militants who killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages that day.
While investigators are still trying to determine the scope of the sexual assaults, Israel’s government is accusing the international community, particularly the United Nations, of ignoring the pain of Israeli victims.
“I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation — where the hell are you?” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told a news conference Tuesday, switching to English to emphasize the point.
President Joe Biden called the reports of sexual violence “appalling” and urged the world to condemn “horrific accounts of unimaginable cruelty.”
Two months after the Hamas attacks on the music festival, farming communities and army posts in southern Israel, police are still struggling to put together the pieces.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, priority was given to identifying bodies, not to preserving evidence. Police say they’re combing through 60,000 videos seized from the body cameras of Hamas attackers, from social media and from security cameras as well as 1,000 testimonies to bring the perpetrators to justice. It has been difficult finding rape survivors, with many victims killed by their attackers.
The group Physicians for Human Rights Israel, which has a record of advocating for Palestinian civilians in Gaza suffering under Israel’s longtime blockade of the territory, published an initial assessment in November.
“What we know for sure is that it was more than just one case and it was widespread, in that this happened in more than one location and more than a handful of times,” Hadas Ziv, policy and ethics director for the organization, said Tuesday. “What we don’t know and what the police are investigating is whether it was ordered to be done and whether it was systematic.”
Hamas has rejected allegations that its gunmen committed sexual assault.
Ron Freger fled the music festival when Hamas attacked and said he heard a woman screaming for help. “I was lying in a pit (and) I heard (a girl) yelling: ‘They’re raping me, they’re raping me!'” he told the AP.
Several minutes later, he heard gunshots close by and she fell silent, he said. “The feeling in that moment is one of complete powerlessness. I’m lying in this hole and I have no ability to do anything. I have no weapon, I have nothing, I’m surrounded by other people who are hiding with me and we’re completely powerless,” said the 23-year-old from the northern Israeli town of Netanya.
Last month, Israel’s police chief presented to the international news media videotaped testimony of a rape witness at the music festival. Her face blurred, she said she watched militants gang-rape a woman as she lay on the ground. The men then stood her up as blood trickled from her back, yanked her hair and sliced her breast, playing with it as they assaulted her. The last man shot her in the head while he was still inside her. The woman in the video described watching the militants as she pretended to be dead.
“I couldn’t understand what I saw,” she said.
A combat medic told the AP that he came across half a dozen bodies of women and men with possible signs of sexual assault when he reached one of the attacked communities.
One girl had been shot in the head and was lying on the floor, her legs open and pants pulled down, with what looked like semen on her lower back, said the medic who spoke on condition of anonymity because his unit was classified. Other bodies had mass bleeding around the groin with limbs at distorted angles, he said.
At the Shura military base where victims are being identified, Shari Mendes, a member of the army reserve unit that deals with the identification and religious burial preparation of female soldiers, said some of the women’s bodies came in with little clothing, such as parts of their pajamas. Some only had bloodied underwear.
Based on open-source information and interviews, the Physicians for Human Rights Israel report documents incidents at the music festival, homes around the Gaza Strip and an Israeli military base, all attacked by Hamas.
“It is becoming more apparent that the violence perpetrated against women, men and children also included widespread sexual and gender-based crimes,” it says.
Before this war, Hamas, an Islamic militant group sworn to Israel’s destruction, wasn’t known to use rape as a weapon, said Colin P. Clarke, director of research at The Soufan Group, a global intelligence and security consulting firm. Its tactics included suicide bombings and shooting attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians.
A country like Israel should have the means to do rigorous testing to confirm if people were sexually assaulted in a more systematic way, said Nidhi Kapur, a specialist on sexual abuse in situations of armed conflict.
“Forensic testing should have been a priority to build a full picture of the attack,” said Kapur, who has worked in the region. “In a conflict you first take care of the survivors, you don’t count bodies.”
Netanyahu and members of his war cabinet held a tense and emotional meeting Tuesday with recently released hostages and family members of hostages still held in Gaza. Some of the recently released hostages shared testimonies of sexual abuse during their time in Gaza, participants said.
Separately, a doctor who treated some of the 110 released hostages told the AP that at least 10 men and women among those freed were sexually assaulted or abused, but did not provide further details. He spoke on condition of anonymity to protect the hostages’ identities.
According to the Israeli military, 138 hostages, including 15 women, are still held by Hamas and other militant groups in Gaza. Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, a military spokesman, said the army is “absolutely” concerned about sexual violence against female hostages.
On Monday, Israel hosted a special event at the United Nations, where former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, I-Ariz., and top technology executive Sheryl Sandberg were among those who criticized what they called a global failure to support women who were sexually assaulted and in some cases killed.
But some groups say Israel isn’t making it easy to investigate.
The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said it requested access to Israel and the Palestinian territories to allow it to collect information from the events that took place on Oct. 7 and 8, and since then, but Israel has not responded to its requests, said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the U.N. Human Rights Office.
Israel says the office has preexisting biases against Israel and it will not cooperate with the body. Israeli officials said they would consider all options for independent international mechanisms to investigate.
Rights experts say the United Nations is best placed to conduct a fair, credible and impartial investigation.
“These accounts are horrifying and deserve an urgent, thorough, and credible investigation,” said Heather Barr, associate director for the women’s rights division at Human Rights Watch.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
BBC/Nik Millard “We see women of all ages… We see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused,” Captain Maayan told the BBC
The BBC has seen and heard evidence of rape, sexual violence and mutilation of women during the 7 October Hamas attacks.
WARNING: CONTAINS EXTREMELY GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS OF SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND RAPE
Several people involved in collecting and identifying the bodies of those killed in the attack told us they had seen multiple signs of sexual assault, including broken pelvises, bruises, cuts and tears, and that the victims ranged from children and teenagers to pensioners.
Video testimony of an eyewitness at the Nova music festival, shown to journalists by Israeli police, detailed the gang rape, mutilation and execution of one victim.
Videos of naked and bloodied women filmed by Hamas on the day of the attack, and photographs of bodies taken at the sites afterwards, suggest that women were sexually targeted by their attackers.
Few victims are thought to have survived to tell their own stories.
Their last moments are being pieced together from survivors, body-collectors, morgue staff and footage from the attack sites.
Police have privately shown journalists a single horrific testimony that they filmed of a woman who was at the Nova festival site during the attack.
She describes seeing Hamas fighters gang rape a woman and mutilate her, before the last of her attackers shot her in the head as he continued to rape her.
BBC/Nik Millard Hamas fighters stormed the Nova festival on 7 October and killed hundreds
In the video, the woman known as Witness S mimes the attackers picking up and passing the victim from one to another.
“She was alive,” the witness says. “She was bleeding from her back.”
She goes on to detail how the men cut off parts of the victim’s body during the assault.
“They sliced her breast and threw it on the street,” she says. “They were playing with it.”
The victim was passed to another man in uniform, she continues.
“He penetrated her, and shot her in the head before he finished. He didn’t even pick up his pants; he shoots and ejaculates.”
One man we spoke to from the festival site said he heard the “noises and screams of people being murdered, raped, decapitated”.
To our question about how he could be sure – without seeing it – that the screams he heard indicated sexual assault rather than other kinds of violence, he said he believed while listening at the time that it could only have been rape.
A statement he made through a support organisation describes it as “inhuman”.
“Some women were raped before they were dead, some raped while injured, and some were already dead when the terrorists raped their lifeless bodies,” his statement says. “I desperately wanted to help, but there was nothing I could do.”
BBC/Dave Bull Israelis are still grappling with the Hamas attack in October
Police say they have “multiple” eye-witness accounts of sexual assault, but wouldn’t give any more clarification on how many. When we spoke to them, they hadn’t yet interviewed any surviving victims.
Israel’s Women’s Empowerment Minister, May Golan, told the BBC that a few victims of rape or sexual assault had survived the attacks, and that they were all currently receiving psychiatric treatment.
“But very, very few. The majority were brutally murdered,” she said. “They aren’t able to talk – not with me, and not to anyone from the government [or] from the media.”
Videos filmed by Hamas include footage of one woman, handcuffed and taken hostage with cuts to her arms and a large patch of blood staining the seat of her trousers.
In others, women carried away by the fighters appear to be naked or semi-clothed.
Multiple photographs from the sites after the attack show the bodies of women naked from the waist down, or with their underwear ripped to one side, legs splayed, with signs of trauma to their genitals and legs.
“It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponise women’s bodies from ISIS [the Islamic State group] in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Dr Cochav Elkayam-Levy, a legal expert at the Davis Institute of International Relations at Hebrew University.
“It brings me chills just to know the details that they knew about what to do to women: cut their organs, mutilate their genitals, rape. It’s horrifying to know this.”
BBC/Dave Bull” It really feels like Hamas learned how to weaponize women’s bodies from ISIS in Iraq, from cases in Bosnia,” said Cochav Elkayam-Levy
“I spoke with at least three girls who are now hospitalised for a very hard psychiatric situation because of the rapes they watched,” Minister May Golan told me. “They pretended to be dead and they watched it, and heard everything. And they can’t deal with it.”
Israel’s police chief Yaacov Shabtai said that many survivors of the attacks were finding it difficult to talk and that he thought some of them would never testify about what they saw or experienced.
“18 young men and women have been hospitalised in mental health hospitals because they could no longer function,” he said.
Others are reportedly suicidal. One of those working with the teams around survivors told the BBC that some had already killed themselves.
Much of the evidence has come from the volunteer body-collectors deployed after the attacks, and those who handled the bodies once they arrived at the Shura army base for identification.
One of the body-collectors volunteering with the religious organisation Zaka described to me signs of torture and mutilation which included, he said, a pregnant woman whose womb had been ripped open before she was killed, and her foetus stabbed while it was inside her.
The BBC has not been able to independently verify this account, and Israeli media reports have questioned some testimony from volunteers working in the traumatic aftermath of the Hamas attacks.
Another, Nachman Dyksztejna, provided written testimony of seeing the bodies of two women in kibbutz Be’eri with their hands and legs tied to a bed.
“One was sexually terrorised with a knife stuck in her vagina and all her internal organs removed,” his statement says.
At the festival site, he says small shelters were “filled with piles of women. Their clothing was torn on the upper part, but their bottoms were completely naked. Piles and piles of women. […] When you took a closer look at their heads, you saw a single shot straight to the brain of each.”
Hundreds of bodies were collected from the attack sites by volunteers.
BBC/Dave Bull May Golan: “For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel. And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere.”
Investigators admit that in those first chaotic days after the attacks, with some areas still active combat zones, opportunities to carefully document the crime scenes, or take forensic evidence, were limited or missed.
“For the first five days, we still had terrorists on the ground in Israel,” May Golan said. “And there were hundreds, hundreds of bodies everywhere. They were burned, they were without organs, they were butchered completely.”
“This was a mass casualty event,” police spokesman Dean Elsdunne told journalists at a briefing.
“The first thing was to work on identifying the victims, not necessarily on crime scene investigation. People were waiting to hear what happened to their loved ones.”
It was staff at the army’s Shura base, where bodies arrived for identification, who have provided investigators with some of the most crucial evidence.
This evidence emerged from a makeshift hub of tents and refrigerated shipping containers set up at the base to identify the bodies.
When we visited, hospital trolleys, their iron skeletons topped with khaki stretchers, stood neatly lined up in front of the containers that housed the dead; the white plastic overalls of those on shift translucent under the floodlights.
Fighter jets roared overhead, drowning out the cicadas, as Israel’s bombardment of Gaza continued.
Teams here told us they’d seen clear evidence of rape and sexual violence on the bodies coming in, including broken pelvises from sustained violent abuse.
“We see women of all ages,” one of the reservists on the forensic team, Captain Maayan, told the BBC. “We see rape victims. We see women who have been through violation. We have pathologists and we see the bruises, we learn about the cuts and tears, and we know they have been sexually abused.”
I ask her what proportion of the bodies she’s handled show signs of this.
“Abundant,” she said. “Abundant amount of women and girls of all ages.”
BBC/Dave Bull Debris litters the ground at the Nova festival site
The number of victims is hard to define, partly because of the state of the bodies.
“It’s definitely multiple,” said another serving soldier who asked us to use only her first name, Avigayil. “It’s hard to tell. I’ve dealt with more than a few burned bodies and I have no idea what they went through beforehand. And bodies that are missing the bottom half – I also don’t know if they were raped. But women that were clearly raped? There are enough. More than enough.”
“Sometimes we are left only with a very small part of the body,” Dr Elkayam-Levy tells me. “Maybe it’s a finger, a foot or a hand that they’re trying to identify. People were burned to ashes. Nothing was left. […] I want to say that we’ll never know how many cases there were.”
Privately some of those working on this talk in terms of “dozens” of victims but quickly caution that evidence is still being gathered and pieced together.
The civil commission headed by Dr Elkayam-Levy, to collect testimony on sexual crimes, is calling for international recognition that what happened on 7 October was systematic abuse, constituting Crimes Against Humanity.
“We see definite patterns,” she told me. “So it wasn’t incidental, it wasn’t random. They came with a clear order. It was […] rape as genocide.”
Avigayil agrees there were similarities in the violence visited on the bodies that arrived at the Shura base.
“There are patterns in that groups of women from the same place were treated in a similar manner,” she said.
“There might be a set of women who were raped in one way, and we’re seeing similarities in the bodies; and then a different set that were not raped but shot multiple times in the exact same pattern. So it seems that different groups of terrorists had different forms of cruelty.”
“This was a premeditative, systematic event,” police chief Yaacov Shabtai told journalists.
BBC/Dave Bull” Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning”: police chief Yaacov Shabtai
David Katz from Israel’s cyber crime unit which is involved in the investigation, told journalists that it was too early to prove that sexual violence was planned as part of the attack, but that data extracted from the phones of the Hamas attackers suggested that “everything was systematic”.
“It would be reckless to say we can already prove it […] but everything that was one there was done systematically,” he said. “Nothing happened by coincidence. Rape was systematic.”
Israel’s government points to documents it says were found on Hamas fighters that appear to support the idea that sexual violence was planned. It’s released clips of interrogations with some captured fighters in which they appear to say that women were targeted for this purpose.
Last week, UN Women put out a statement saying it “unequivocally condemn[ed] the brutal attacks by Hamas” and was “alarmed by the numerous accounts of gender-based atrocities and sexual violence during those attacks”.
Dr Elkayam-Levy said before the statement that international women’s rights organisations had taken far too long to respond to her call for support.
“This is the most documented atrocity humanity has known,” she told me.
“Israel on 7 October is not the same country that woke up the following morning,” said police chief Yaacov Shabtai.
Amid the horror of what happened to women here, Captain Maayan from the Shura identification unit says the hardest moments are when she sees “the mascara on their eyelashes, or the earrings they put on that morning”.
Israel is considering a plan to pump seawater into Hamas’ tunnel system underneath the Gaza Strip, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday, citing U.S. officials. The Israel Defense Forces has assembled five large seawater pumps capable of transferring thousands of cubic meters of water per hour from the Mediterranean Sea into the tunnels, according to the report. Work was reportedly completed on the pumps around the middle of November. They are located roughly one mile north of the Al-Shati Camp along northern Gaza’s coastline.
Israel first informed the Biden administration of the plans in early November, the officials said, with discussions on the effectiveness of such an operation and the potential environmental impact, including on the Strip’s water supply. The officials said the reaction in Washington was mixed, with some supporting it and others privately expressing concerns, although “there wasn’t necessarily any U.S. opposition to the plan.”U.S. officials said that they didn’t know how close Israel was to carrying out the plans, with a final decision on whether to proceed still pending.
Israel has discovered around 800 tunnels so far during the Gaza ground operation that began on Oct. 27, with 500 of them destroyed or sealed. The IDF has also destroyed hundreds of miles of tunnels in addition to the shafts.
Hamas kidnapped over 200 people during the Oct. 7 massacre, with 137 still being held hostage.
A source familiar with the plan said that a flooding process over weeks would allow for Hamas terrorists and potentially hostages to move out.
“We are not sure how successful pumping will be since nobody knows the details of the tunnels and the ground around them,” the source said. “It’s impossible to know if that will be effective because we don’t know how seawater will drain in tunnels no one has been in before.”
The WSJ reached out to an IDF official, who declined to comment on the report, saying only that “The IDF is operating to dismantle Hamas’ terror capabilities in various ways, using different military and technological tools. “Republished with permission from Jewish News Syndicate.
China has used everything from warships and cutters to fishing boats to harass and intimidate the Philippines and other regional actors. Pictured: The Philippines’ coast guard takes part in a maritime exercise June 6 with the U.S. and Japan in waters facing the South China Sea. (Photo: Jes Aznar/Getty Images)
James Di Pane is a policy analyst focusing on defense policy in the Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation.
Erin Leone is a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation.
Chinese leader Xi Jinpinglast week told the communist regime’s coast guard simply to enforce maritime law, but we all know what that really means—and it has nothing to do with upholding the rule of law on the high seas.
Chinese vessels collided last month with a Philippine resupply boat and a Philippine coast guard ship within the span of a few hours. These confrontations were the latest of many between the two countries over competing territorial claims to a submerged reef called the Second Thomas Shoal, a military outpost in the Spratly Islands some 120 miles from the Philippines.
This situation underscores the need for America to adopt a robust response in the region and defend its treaty allies from Chinese bullying—before the situation escalates into the next major international conflict.
The Second Thomas Shoal is the site of a critical yet unorthodox Philippine military outpost in the form of a World War II warship run aground on the Spratly Islands, equipped with relatively few marines. The ship’s presence maintains Philippine sovereignty over the shoal, but the vessel remains a liability; its dilapidated state requires frequent resupply missions. In fact, international scrutiny has grown with the belief that the grounded ship may fall off the reef and sink, allowing China to seize the shoal.
Philippine resupply missions are fodder for increasingly aggressive Chinese vessels that attempt to isolate the post, including the two collisions last month.
It’s not new that Chinese ships operate within the Second Thomas Shoal, the Spratly Islands, and the Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone. China increasingly has used its “maritime militia” to conduct illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing as well as coercive activities against others who claim the South China Sea.
To date, China has used everything from warships and cutters to fishing boats to harass and intimidate the Philippines and other regional actors.
In October, for example, a Chinese naval vessel followed and attempted to cross in front of a Philippine resupply ship near the Spratly Islands.
In September, the Philippines accused China’s maritime militia of damaging coral reefs in the Spratly Islands.
In August, a Philippine military supply boat en route to the shoal reportedly was blocked by Chinese coast guard vessels using water cannons.
In July, the Philippines noted almost 50 Chinese fishing ships “swarming” around a reef in the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone.
And in April, a Chinese coast guard ship came alarmingly close to colliding with a Philippine patrol vessel heading toward Second Thomas Shoal.
China’s escalation from using fishing boats to deploying naval and coast guard ships and increasing the frequency of these dangerous encounters is a clear warning signal that Xi is taking off the gloves. Now that China has succeeded in physically preventing supplies from reaching the shoal, what will its next moves be?
Although the Second Thomas Shoal is over 8,000 miles from the U.S. mainland, China’s belligerent actions there have major implications for America. The Philippines, with a shared wartime experience, is a longstanding treaty ally with which we have enjoyed strong relations for over 75 years.
During Oct. 22 discussions, Manila and Washington explored the possibility of conducting joint maritime patrols in the South China Sea. The U.S. government has reiterated that any action against Philippine territory in the South China Sea, including islands and shoals claimed by China, would be covered by the U.S.-Philippines mutual defense treaty. Consistent with this, the U.S. could consider joint resupply missions and engage in a persistent, robust naval presence surrounding the shoal.
A lacking response to China’s prior provocations enabled and empowered Xi to pursue the escalations seen today. China’s illegal fishing and maritime bullying activities in neighbors’ waters are a litmus test to gauge the willingness of the United States and the international community to uphold and enforce maritime law. America must do a better job of matching Chinese aggression with steadfast deterrence while highlighting China’s blatant violations of international law.
As The Heritage Foundation has pointed out, the U.S. is in a new Cold War with China. The U.S. should help the Philippines develop better airlift capabilities for resupplying and also shadow Philippine ships to deter China from interfering during resupply missions.
What’s happening at the Second Thomas Shoal is a harbinger of events to come if the U.S. permits this multipronged Chinese pressure campaign to destabilize Indo-Pacific security and international law to go unchecked.
A temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war has been extended another day, according to mediator Qatar. The announcement Thursday morning came minutes before the cease-fire was set to expire. Hamas released two Israeli women from captivity several hours later, Israel’s military said.
Israel had agreed to extend the truce by one day for every 10 militant-held hostages who are freed. The cease-fire, which began Nov. 24 and was originally set to expire on Monday, has paused the deadliest fighting between Israel and Palestinians in decades.
Israel has vowed to resume the war in an effort to end Hamas’ 16-year rule of Gaza, but it’s facing mounting international pressure to spare southern Gaza a devastating ground offensive like the one that has demolished much of the north.
Roughly 240 hostages were captured by Hamas in its Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that ignited the war. More than 13,300 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-controlled Health Ministry in Gaza, which doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. About 1,200 people have been killed in Israel, mostly during the initial incursion by Hamas.
— Truce in Israel-Hamas war is extended by a day, minutes before it was set to expire.
— Jake Sullivan says the White House is not seeking conditions on military aid to Israel, despite Biden’s comment.
— Israel compares Hamas to the Islamic State group. But the comparison misses the mark in key ways.
— U.S. Senate Majority Leader Schumer warns that antisemitism is on the rise as he pushes for Israel aid.
— A friendship forged over 7 weeks of captivity lives on.
Here’s what’s happening in the war:
The Israeli military said Thursday that two Israeli hostages were released from captivity in the Gaza Strip. In a statement, the army said the Red Cross had transferred the two women to Israeli forces. They were to be taken to an Israeli military base. The two hostages are among a larger group of Israelis expected to be released Thursday as part of the latest extension of a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Israel was to free some 30 Palestinian prisoners later Thursday.
TEL AVIV, Israel — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is reminding Israeli leaders of the need for Israel to comply with international law as it prosecutes its war against Hamas in Gaza. Blinken also said it is imperative that Israel take great care to avoid civilian casualties if it starts major military operations in southern Gaza, where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter after fleeing their homes in the northern part of the territory. He said the U.S. places great importance on the resumption of a peace process that would eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state, something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposes.
Speaking Thursday just hours after Israel and Hamas agreed at the last minute to a third extension of their cease-fire agreement, Blinken told Netanyahu that the U.S. will continue “support for Israel’s right to protect itself from terrorist violence in compliance with international humanitarian law and urged Israel to take every possible measure to avoid civilian harm,” the State Department said.
The message aligned with the Biden administration’s shifting rhetoric on the war, which began as a full-throated embrace of Israel’s response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks but gradually tempered as the number of Palestinian civilian casualties began to rise, prompting widespread international criticism. To prevent a further exponential increase in civilian casualties, Blinken “stressed the imperative of accounting for humanitarian and civilian protection needs in southern Gaza before any military operations there and urged immediate steps to hold settler extremists accountable for violence against Palestinians in the West Bank,” the State Department said Blinken told Netanyahu.
Blinken met with Netanyahu and his war Cabinet in Jerusalem before traveling to the occupied West Bank for talks with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The Israeli army has confirmed that Ofir Tzarfati, an Israeli believed to be held hostage in Gaza, is dead. Tzarfati was thought to be among the approximately 240 people taken hostage by Hamas on October 7. He had been celebrating his 27th birthday at a music festival with his girlfriend when Hamas militants stormed into Israel and killed at least 364 people at the festival and kidnapped many others. Tzarfati’s family was originally unclear what happened to him, but a few weeks later, the army notified the family that they believed that Tzarfati was being held in Gaza, according to media reports.
The army did not specify where Tzarfati’s body was identified
TEL AVIV, Israel — Two gunman opened fire on a crowded bus station at the entrance of Jerusalem, killing at least three people and wounding several others, according to Jerusalem police.
Another blatant violation of the ceasefire. A terrorist attack, murdering people waiting for the bus. https://t.co/0Vtbse4CMB
“The bus station was very crowded, which is why so many people were wounded,” said Magen David Adom spokesperson Zaki Heller told Army Radio. According to police, the two gunmen drove toward the bus stop armed with a handgun and an M16 rifle and opened fire. Both were killed at the scene by two soldiers who were near the bus stop.
Jerusalem police chief Doron Turgeman said police believe both attackers were from east Jerusalem. It was unclear if the attack was carried out by a Palestinian militant group or individuals acting on their own, or if it would have any impact on the truce in Gaza.
One 24-year-old woman was pronounced dead at the scene and another man died later at the hospital.
A year ago, a bomb exploded at the same bus stop, killing a 16-year-old boy and wounding 18.
JERUSALEM — Israel and Hamas agreed to extend a temporary truce by another day just minutes before it was set to expire, said Qatar, which has been mediating between the two sides. The truce was set to expire Thursday morning. Negotiations on extending it came down to the wire, with last-minute disagreements over the hostages to be freed by Hamas in exchange for another day of a halt in fighting.
The Qatari Foreign Ministry said the truce was being extended under the same terms as in the past, under which Hamas has released 10 Israeli hostages per day in exchange for 30 Palestinian prisoners.
Israel released another group of Palestinian prisoners early Thursday in exchange for 16 hostages freed hours earlier by the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza. A bus carrying some of the Palestinian detainees arrived in the West Bank city of Ramallah before dawn. The releases came on the sixth day of a temporary truce in the Israel-Hamas war.
Most prominent among those freed was 22-year-old Ahed Tamimi, an activist who gained worldwide fame in 2017 after a video of her slapping an Israeli soldier went viral on social media. Israeli troops arrested her at her West Bank home on Nov. 6 for “inciting to terrorism” on her Instagram account. Her mother said Tamimi’s account had been hacked.
Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
Supermodel Gigi Hadid—seen here in New York City on Oct. 25, 2022, at the WWD Honors—posted false information about Israel, but later apologized. (Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images)
Gigi Hadid, an American fashion model of Palestinian descent, has apologized for sparking outrage last week for making numerous false claims against Israel amid its war with Hamas, claiming Israel abducts, rapes and tortures children.
“Israel is the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war. Abduction, rape, humiliation, torture, murder of Palestinians years and years and years before Oct. 7, 2023,” Hadid claimed in a since-deleted Instagram story to her 79 million followers.
The post included a picture of Ahmad Manasra, a Palestinian who stabbed two Israelis with his cousin in 2015 when he was 13 years old and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, falsely portraying Manasra as a “child prisoner of war.”
But on Tuesday, Hadid posted on Instagram apologizing for this mistake. “I used the wrong example to make that point, and I regret that,” she wrote.
Hadid, 28, faced backlash across the internet, with many claiming her post was spreading false information and was antisemitic.
“Gigi Hadid isn’t shy about spreading lies to the world! … And she writes this while Hamas still holds … children that they kidnapped, including a baby only 10 months [old]!! The Hadid family is a family of liars that instigate hatred!” Israeli activist Yoseph Haddad wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
Hadid’s anti-Israel posts came amid a deal between Israel and Hamas to release 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians detained in Israeli jails and prisons. Israel said there would be one additional day of cease-fire for every 10 additional hostages Hamas released. Hamas has released about 100 hostages as of this writing.
Hadid’s father, Mohamed Hadid, was born into a Palestinian Muslim family in Nazareth, Israel. However, Gigi Hadid was born in Los Angeles. Her sister, Bella Hadid, also a fashion model, likewise supports the Palestinians.
The state of Israel has previously responded to Hadid’s allegations against the country by writing in an infographic, “There is nothing valiant about Hamas’ massacre of Israelis. Condemning Hamas for what it is (ISIS) is not anti-Palestine, and supporting Israelis in their right against barbaric terrorists is the right thing to do.”
Hadid also reposted an Instagram Reel about Israel supposedly harvesting Palestinians’ organs on Sunday. The video was originally published by a user named Umme Murtaza, on which Murtaza said, “Watch this disturbing video, where health officials admitted that Israeli authorities had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians for years without their consent.” Hadid did not apologize for sharing that Reel.
“Gigi Hadid is the only major supermodel that keeps spreading blood libels about Jews harvesting organs,” Tamar Schwarzbard, the head of digital operations at the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote on X.
Terrorist sympathizers are out in full force spreading fake news about Israel’s treatment of its prisoners, as the country executes a swap with Hamas for hostages taken by the terrorist group on Oct. 7. Here are four of the most outrageous lies circulating on social media.
1. Israel Is ‘Only Country That Keeps Children As Prisoners’
This week, American supermodel Gigi Hadid shared a post to her more than 79 million Instagram followers condemning Israel as “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war.” The post, which has been deleted, claimed Palestinian terrorist Ahmed Mansara was “abducted” by Israeli officials at 12 years old and “has endured solitary confinement despite his severe health condition.”
According to the New York Post, Mansara went on a “stabbing rampage” in East Jerusalem with his 15-year-old cousin in 2015 that left a 20-year-old security guard and a 13-year-old boy with critical injuries. Mansara was convicted of two counts of attempted murder after his cousin was killed in the attack by a police officer.
“He initially received a sentence of 12 years in prison, which was later reduced” to nine and a half years, the Post reported. “During his incarceration, Mansara has repeatedly attempted to harm himself and others. He has been in and out of solitary confinement, drawing the ire of Amnesty International, a nongovernmental human rights advocacy group.”
Terrorist sympathizing aside, Hadid’s post claiming Israel is “the only country in the world that keeps children as prisoners of war” is fake news on its face. Roughly 30 children — some of whom still remain in captivity nearly two months later — were taken hostage by Hamas, after the terrorist group slaughtered Israeli women and children in the Oct. 7 massacre which killed at least 1,200.
Unsurprisingly, child hostages held by Hamas have been subject to physical and emotional abuse. A 12-year-old was even reportedly placed in solitary confinement for more than two weeks.
🚨 Hamas forced hostages to watch videos of the 7/10 atrocities.
This is Eitan (13), He spent 51 as a hostage of Hamas. terrorists killed his father in front of him and took him to Gaza.
While held hostage, Hamas forced him to view videos of the 7/10 Atrocities.
2. Israel at Fault for Injuries Sustained by Suicide Bomb
In another episode of terrorist-sympathizing disinformation, anti-Israel pundits spread false narratives online about Israa Jaabis, who was released from Israeli custody in a prisoner swap on Monday. They claimed Jaabis’s disfigured condition was a result of Israeli brutality after nearly a decade of incarceration.
“For those of you who don’t know who Israa is, this is a photo before and after what the [Israel Defense Forces] has done to her,”wrote one user on X. The side-by-side images show Jaabis with a permanently scarred face from severe burns. But the IDF didn’t do that to her; she did it to herself in 2015 when she attempted to kill scores of civilians by detonating a suicide bomb.
3. Hamas Held Hostages in ‘Reasonable Conditions’
Dominic Waghorn, the international affairs editor for Sky News, wrote on X that hostages held by Hamas were “held in reasonable conditions.”
“Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar met with the Israeli hostages a day after they were taken in tunnels under Gaza and told them they would not be harmed and would be returned as part of a hostage deal,” Waghorn wrote. “Undermines the Israeli Hamas = ISIS storyline.”
Testimony from released prisoners, however, has revealed “horrors” endured by those held captive. Hostages were reportedly forced to use plastic chairs for beds and were given irregular meals. One 84-year-old hostage was even hospitalized in critical condition upon being released.
4. Israeli Hostage Looks ‘Thankful’ For Captivity
Maree Campbell, who claims in her bio on X to be an international relations analyst and “journalist,” contended that a released Israeli hostage looked appreciative to her captors.
“I’m not a facial expression expert,” Campbell professed on X, “but judging by the look in her eyes and the expression on her face, I’d say that is a look of appreciation and thanks.”
“Might it be that she is saying thanks for being treated unexpectedly well whilst in captivity?” Campbell asked.
A community note on the platform clarifies that the hostage in the photo, Mia Regev, was shot by Palestinian terrorists before her abduction.
Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist and the author of Social Justice Redux, a conservative newsletter on culture, health, and wellness. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here.
Hamas has reportedly handed over a fifth group of hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to Egyptian officials, with the report coming after Israel reported the deaths of three soldiers captured during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
The group of 10 hostages was turned over to the Red Cross in Gaza, with Israeli officials expecting them to arrive in the country shortly thereafter, according to The Wall Street Journal, quoting the unnamed Egyptian sources.
Video from southern Gaza on Tuesday showed trucks and vans driving through the streets that were believed to contain some of the hostages, according to Hebrew-language media reports, noted The Times of Israel. Some of the vehicles in the video, which the site said has not been independently confirmed, had multiple gunmen hanging from their sides.
The hostages’ release comes after Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the four-day cease in hostilities for two more days while more hostages are released.
The military Tuesday declared three soldiers as being dead, identifying them as Sgt. Shaked Dahan, 19; Staff Sgt. Tomer Yaakov Ahimas, 20; and Sgt. Kiril Brodski, 19, reported The Times of Israel. They were described as being “fallen soldiers held hostage by a terror group” who were earlier reported as being abducted during the Hamas raids.
The military’s chief rabbi declared their deaths based on various findings obtained by the IDF, but reportedly, only Ahimas and Brodski can be buried according to Jewish law.
Dahan’s mother, Sigalit Gal, said on Facebook on Tuesday that she is not going to observe the traditional seven-day Jewish mourning period until her son’s body is returned to her from Gaza.
“I did for you what I needed to as a mother. I managed to keep you safe and protect you in many situations,” she said. “You’ve been taken from me forever. They took you and didn’t bother to return you, not even your body.”
Meanwhile, The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club on Tuesday published the names of 30 people to be released from Israeli prisons as part of the ongoing hostage release deal, reports Israeli newspaper Haaretz. One of those is Marwat al-Azza, a journalist living in East Jerusalem, who was indicted Monday for statements made on social media including one that mocked an elderly woman abducted by Hamas on Oct. 7.
Al-Azza, a freelancer for NBC News, has been accused of incitement to terrorism and identifying with a terrorist organization.
The latest release of hostages taken by Hamas comes after the Israeli government accused the organization of breaking the cease-fire agreement Tuesday. Several members of the Israel Defense Forces were injured when three explosive devices and gunfire targeted forces in northern Gaza.
“Over the last hour, three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations in northern Gaza, violating the framework of the operational pause,” said the military, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
Earlier Tuesday, Israel received a list of 10 hostages that were to be released, with the list being reviewed and the captives’ families being notified, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, reported the Jewish News Syndicate.
So far, 50 Israeli women and children, plus one Israeli man, have been freed since the initial four-day cease-fire started on Friday morning, along with 17 Thais, one Filipino, and one American, a child.
Meanwhile, Israel has vowed to resume the war with the “full force” needed to destroy Hamas once the prisoner releases stop, and the Biden administration has told Israel it must avoid “significant further displacement” and mass casualties among Palestinian civilians if it resumes the offensive.
The administration has also insisted that Israel must operate with more precision in southern Gaza than it has used in its strikes in the north, according to U.S. officials.
The Israeli military says 11 hostages have been released from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip and returned to Israeli territory. Military officials said late Monday that the hostages were on Israeli soil and undergoing initial medical checks before being reunited with their families.
It is the fourth such release under a cease-fire deal with the Hamas military group. Israel is to free 33 Palestinian prisoners later Monday. The cease-fire had been set to expire early Tuesday. But Qatar, which has been mediating between the sides, said they agreed to extend the truce by two more days.
The war broke out Oct. 7 when Hamas militants burst across the border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 240 others captive. Israel declared war, and over 13,000 Palestinians have been killed in weeks of Israeli strikes, according to health authorities in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
Israeli media said the hostages included two women and nine children. Two of the children are 3 years old.
The release of 11 Israeli hostages and 33 Palestinians under the original ceasefire agreement, which had been due to end Monday night, dominated the day’s flurry of truce activity. According to a Reuters report, the Israeli hostages released from Gaza on Monday include three French citizens, two Germans and six Argentinians. The news service cited a Qatari foreign ministry spokesman on social media platform X.
The White House said U.S. officials had hoped two American women would be among the latest group to be freed from Gaza, where it believes eight or nine U.S. citizens are being held.
Hamas said it had received a list of Palestinians to be released from Israeli jails. It said these included three female prisoners and 30 minors.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s newly elected president, is making headlines everywhere. He’s anti-establishment, he’s anti-woke, and he’s absolutely fearless when it comes to speaking his mind.
Dave Rubin explains how Milei is a breath of fresh air, considering Argentina has seen “massive government growth, complete devaluation of their currency … creeping socialism for a long time, [and] craziness with gender stuff and all of the woke stuff.”
Luckily, Milei “has come in to absolutely obliterate it.”
In a recent interview, Tucker Carlson asked the Argentine if he had advice for Donald Trump, who many hope will do the same thing for the United States.
“Donald Trump is running for president again in the United States, as you know,” said Tucker. “What advice would you give him?”
“He should continue his fight against socialism because he is one of the few who truly understood that we are fighting socialism, that we are fighting the statists. He understood perfectly that the generation of wealth comes from the private sector. The state does not create wealth; the state destroys it. The state can give you nothing because it produces nothing, and when it attempts it, it does so poorly,” Milei answered.
“So I’d say, if I could humbly offer advice, all I could say would be to double down on his efforts in the same direction: defending the ideals of freedom and refusing to give an inch to the socialists.”
*Insert applause*
“Argentina, after 20 years of this nonsense, is pushing back,” says Dave. “Donald Trump was pushing back; there are pockets — places like Florida — that are pushing back. You should be pushing back, and might I suggest that we all go a bit more on offense?”
Want more from Dave Rubin?
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The Israel Defense Forces shared a video of a mosque, alleging that Hamas had been using the
facility to make and store weapons.
“Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft,” the IDF tweet about the facility declared.
The post included a video with English captions as someone walked into the mosque and showed footage of it.
“In the mosque’s basement, there is a weapon storage facility, a Hamas rocket manufacturing lab, and lots and lots of explosive devices as well as explosive materials,” the captions on the video read. “Hamas built entire walls to hide the lab” the captions continued, “we had to destroy them in order to expose the lab.”
Holy places, such as mosques, should not be used as fronts for terrorism.
Hamas used this mosque as a weapons storage facility and a laboratory for Hamas’ rockets. Finding dozens of mortars, warhead missiles, thermobaric weapons, RPGs and a tunnel shaft.
The Jewish state went to war last month after Hamas perpetrated atrocities in Israel, including murders, rapes, and kidnappings. Israel has approved a temporary ceasefire with Hamas that will involve the release of some of the hostages.
“The Government of Israel is obligated to return home all of the hostages,” the Israeli government noted in a statement. “Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages – women and children – will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held,” the statement added. “The release of every additional ten hostages will result in one additional day in the pause.”
“The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza,” the statement concluded.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, this evening, at the start of the Government meeting:
While this meeting is to discuss the return of our hostages, I would like to start with something that should be self-evident: We are at war – and will continue the war. pic.twitter.com/YaICV89yEU
Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government. Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain’s socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain. By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.
The protests are organized by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and Vox, its further right, populist party. In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime “against the constitution” and “national unity.”
Ep. 40 Spain’s descent into tyranny seems eerily familiar. Opposition leader Santiago Abascal is one of the few people standing up to it. We traveled to Madrid to talk to him.
TIMESTAMPS: 1:11 Santiago Abascal 2:23 The end of democracy in Spain 8:43 “Are you ready to go to jail… pic.twitter.com/fE4zrYrqAC
But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they’re about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.
Where Are the American Demonstrations?
The problems faced by Spaniards are strikingly similar to those facing Americans. The American left hates our heritage so much they torched American cities and destroyed historical statues and monuments for an entire summer.Our corrupt president, Joe Biden, was able to take power thanks to a rigged election, and his administration has weaponized the federal government against his most prominent political adversary, former President Donald Trump, and anyone in ideological opposition to the Democrats.
The Biden administration’s disregard for border security encourages mass illegal immigration at the Southern Border, exposing the public to dangerous criminals and additional economic burdens while the middle class struggles to stay afloat amid increasing taxes, inflation, and gas prices. And despite the public’s rapidly increasing suffering, Biden prioritizes sending billions of tax dollars to foreign wars and international green energy projects.
All these things, but particularly the federal government’s targeting of conservatives and its assault on election integrity, should be sparking massive protests. Yet they aren’t. Unlike Spain, America was founded on the idea that human beings have God-given, inalienable rights. Freedom of speech and assembly are not just First Amendment givens in the United States, but part of our culture. So why aren’t conservatives protesting?
Using fear and intimidation, the left is scaring conservatives into giving up their freedom to assemble. One of the primary fear tactics is to severely punish those who, on Jan. 6, 2021, opted to protest Democrat’s election-rigging practices, such as mass mail-in balloting and Big Tech censorship. As newly-released Jan. 6 footage further reveals, many of the Jan. 6 protesters accused of rioting were peaceful.
Yet federal courts openly admitted to making examples out of peaceful protesters in order to “deter others.” J6 demonstrators have been harassed by federal agents, held in solitary confinement, and demonized by the Jan. 6 Committee, Biden, and the corporate media.
Conservatives aren’t just afraid — they’re also hopeless.After witnessing the Marxist race riots of 2020 and the erasure of their civil liberties during Covid, many Americans no longer recognize their homeland. A recent Harvard Harris poll shows that 80 percent of GOP voters feel the country is headed in the wrong direction. Meanwhile, a July 2023 poll reported that 86.92 million Americans find “somewhat” or “very” difficult to pay their household expenses, with the middle class being the most affected income bracket.
How many times have we heard friends and family members say, “The country is lost?” This fear and despair are understandable, but the stakes have never been higher. Bravery and self-sacrifice are necessary to defend a nation against forces wishing to destroy it. As Abascal explained to Tucker:
“The nation isn’t just made up of all the Spaniards here today, it’s not just the people you can see walking down the street. Our nation is our history. It’s in the cemeteries where our forebears rest. The nation is the sum of the living, the dead, and those yet to be born… I think that what we do today, even if we aren’t victorious as we hope, can make it so that others in the future, our children, future generations, can achieve that victory. [Then] it will have all been worthwhile.”
Spain Understands The Stakes
Spain has first-hand experience with communism. When communists controlled Spain, both in the lead-up to and during the civil war in the 1930s, it resulted in the persecution of Spanish intellectuals, clerics, and Christian laypeople. Spanish communists began their anti-Christian hate by banning all religious schools, removing crucifixes from classrooms, and deeming all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state. Eventually, they started burning Catholic Churches and mass executing Catholic religious and laypeople. Property rights were thrown out, and conservatives were unjustly convicted in kangaroo courts and executed. By the end of the war, a reported “13 bishops, 4,172 priests, 2,364 monks and friars and 283 nuns and sisters,” and an unknown number of laypeople were killed.
The wounds inflicted by Spanish communists are still raw. The memory has not died. So, in 2022, Spain implemented its “Democratic Memory” law, an Orwellian piece of legislation that mandates a pro-leftist view of the Spanish Civil War and the post-war period. Through “criminal and economic sanctions for dissidents,” the law effectively eradicates “academic freedom, freedom of expression and freedom of education,” writes Hermann Tertsch, a Vox Member of the European Parliament.
Like in America, Spanish leftists brand anyone who contradicts their history narratives as thought criminals. According to Abascal, leftists have also created a two-tier justice system and “are now arresting young people for protest[ing] … saying they don’t have permits.” Unfortunately for the left, these fear tactics have not been entirely effective, as the ongoing protests demonstrate, perhaps because too many Spaniards know what communist control looks like.
In America, we are blessed not to know. However, that blessing is also a curse. We don’t appreciate how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny. Unable to oppose or even recognize tyranny, younger generations have lost touch with the American revolutionary spirit after sending generations of Americans to spend their formative years in reeducation camps run by cultural Marxists (aka public school and the university system).
Perhaps a way to regain America’s lost fortitude is by watching conservative freedom fighters in Spain. We may not have the national memory of communists burying priests alive or defiling and decapitating nuns, but we can look to Spain for motivation.
Indeed, the Spanish protests should inspire Americans, and Spanish history should be a warning.If we resign ourselves to failure or allow ourselves to be intimidated into silence, the consequences will be nothing short of complete national destruction.
Evita Duffy-Alfonso is a staff writer to The Federalist and the co-founder of the Chicago Thinker. She loves the Midwest, lumberjack sports, writing, and her family. Follow her on Twitter at @evitaduffy_1 or contact her at evita@thefederalist.com.
Many Americans have seen the footage of 77-year-old American lawyer Kenneth Darlington approaching and engaging a group of demonstrators blocking the Pan-American Highway in Panama before firing his handgun. Darlington is currently in Panamanian custody for killing two people during the incident. But what most Americans don’t know is what is going on in Panama, and what has been going on here for more than a month. Yet they should, because the unrest in this Central American country — home to a canal through which 40 percent of all U.S. container traffic travels — should serve as a warning as to what might await our own nation.
Holding a Nation Hostage
Since late October, protests have roiled Panama because of a government contract with Canadian mining company First Quantum Minerals, which would grant the company rights to mine massive deposits of copper for years. The Cobre Panama mine already contributes almost 5 percent of the nation’s GDP. However, many Panamanians view the contract as unfair, too favorable to the Canadian company, and an ecological threat, especially given that almost 9 percent of national GDP comes from the tourism industry and the country’s many celebrated nature reserves. Thus the contract has united labor unions and environmental activists against the Panamanian government for negotiating the contract under what they perceive as poor terms.
These protesters are highly organized and have been quite efficient at bringing Panama’s society and economy to its knees. Major roads across the country have been routinely blocked, as have various ports. Roadblocks in certain parts of the country have prevented fresh produce grown in the agricultural region of Chiriqui from reaching the capital, where more than a third of all citizens live. Many fruits and vegetables, including bananas, have been unavailable for weeks. Thousands of Panamanians who live outside the city have been unable to commute to their jobs. Major tourist attractions — such as the World Heritage Site Casco Viejo, the historic section of the city — have often been inaccessible, affecting the hundreds of businesses located there. United Airlines even canceled flights into the city because the roads to and from Tocumen International Airport were blocked.
The alleged murder of two Panamanians by a U.S. citizen has provoked international headlines, but there has been extensive other violence and crime. Clashes have resulted in several other deaths, many stores have been vandalized, and enterprising demonstrators have established checkpoints at major thoroughfares where they shake down passersby for money.
Multiple American friends of mine have been robbed at these checkpoints, and one of them was pulled out of his car and beaten so badly he required more than a dozen stitches, including to his skull. In that example, Panamanian police stood nearby and did nothing until after the criminals had robbed my friend and left him lying on the road. (It was, if you can believe it, the second time he had been attacked and almost killed by criminals in Panama).
Panamanian police have engaged with demonstrators when they’ve congregated en masse and threatened government buildings or the financial district but have been notably absent elsewhere in the capital or broader country. Why, I’ve wondered, do the police not simply clear these roadblocks and tell protesters that even if they have the right to demonstrate, they are not free to cripple the country?
“They aren’t paid enough for that,” was the response from one American expat I asked who has lived in Panama for more than two decades. The typical response from the government and security forces to these kinds of protests, which happen fairly regularly, including last year, is to give demonstrators extensive latitude to express their frustrations. It is, authorities believe, a sort of “release valve” that will eventually lose steam.
Does Any of This Sound Familiar?
I hope I have provided enough details for readers to recognize the similarities between what is happening in Panama in the past two months and what happened in the United States more than three years ago. Between May 26 and June 8, rioters caused between $1-2 billion worth of damage in about 20 states, making it the costliest example of civil disorder in U.S. history. An estimated 25 people died in the riots. In some cities, such as Minneapolis and Chicago, police were ordered to stand down from intervening while rioters looted or destroyed businesses and even police stations.
In Panama, popular frustrations over the roadblocks are growing. Working-class Panamanians are increasingly vocal in their anger toward road closures that have lost them as much as one month’s pay — when you’re already poor, that kind of financial loss is more than an annoyance, it’s debilitating. Some clashes have already occurred between laborers and protesters, and if this crisis isn’t resolved soon, there’s likely to be more protests, and they’ll probably be more violent.
Panama’s elite, who live in tony districts such as Costa del Este — which could easily pass for downtown Miami or San Diego — have been thus far largely insulated from the damage caused by more than a month of protests. They may not have butterhead lettuce for their salads or bananas for their smoothies, but they’ll make do, much as the American elite class did in 2020. Yet, also like America, the continued wealth and success of the elite class and their neighborhoods can distract from decaying infrastructure, a massive divide between rich and poor, and systemic corruption.
How long, one wonders, will everyday citizens put up with a system so obviously biased toward those wealthy and powerful enough to shield themselves from increasingly common criminality and violence on their streets? How long will the police protect those who view them as expendable, and even as a politically expedient scapegoat? In Panama, we may learn the answer soon. Perhaps Americans should be pursuing policy options with regard to public safety and police forces that ensure we won’t have to ask that question ourselves.
Casey Chalk is a senior contributor at The Federalist and an editor and columnist at The New Oxford Review. He has a bachelor’s in history and master’s in teaching from the University of Virginia and a master’s in theology from Christendom College. He is the author of The Persecuted: True Stories of Courageous Christians Living Their Faith in Muslim Lands.
Two journalists working for a Lebanon-based TV channel and a third person were killed by a rocket strike near Lebanon’s border with Israel on Tuesday, the Lebanese state news agency reported. The agency said the incident took place near the town of Tir Harfa, about a mile from the Israeli frontier. The strike came less than a day after Hezbollah hit Israeli Defense Forces’ military positions near the border, according to reports.
“According to Israeli Media, Hezbollah has launched upwards of 40 Rockets and 3 Attack Drones against IDF Positions in Northern Israel this morning causing Significant Damage to at least 1 Military Outpost along the Border, with this being seen as a Serious Escalation,” an open-source intelligence monitor posted Monday on X.
Israeli aircraft Tuesday struck three-armed terror cells in Lebanese territory close to the border, as well as a number of Hezbollah targets, the army said, according to Jewish News Syndicate. Sirens sounded in northern Israel on Tuesday morning due to a potential hostile aircraft intrusion from Lebanon, with the IDF later giving the all-clear.
Three anti-tank missile launches from Lebanon toward the area of Metula near the Israel-Lebanon border were identified by the IDF on Tuesday morning. No injuries were reported, and the IDF struck the source of the launches. Later on Tuesday morning, the IDF reported that terrorists fired mortar shells at a military post in northern Israel.
Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen TV, which the two killed reporters were working for, said Israel had carried out the attack and deliberately targeted the journalists. Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Lebanese group Hezbollah broke out after Hezbollah’s Palestinian ally Hamas launched an attack on Israel on Oct. 7. The border violence has escalated, raising Western fears of a widening war in the Middle East that could draw in both the United States and Iran.
It is the worst violence at the border since Israel and Hezbollah fought a war in 2006 and has so far killed more than 70 Hezbollah fighters, 13 Lebanese civilians, seven Israeli troops and three Israeli civilians.
Newsmax writer Eric Mack and JNS.org contributed to this report.
President Joe Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping met this week on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. The Biden administration touted the meeting as a significant foreign policy achievement, even though it accomplished little but photo ops.
Leading up to the APEC meeting, Xi had a weak hand, while the leverage was on the U.S. side. China’s economic growth has slowed down significantly. Its once high-flying property sector crashed and exports dropped. The youth unemployment rate reached 22 percent in June 2023 before Beijing stopped publishing the data altogether out of fear of causing public panic. Foreign firms have pulled billions out of China, concerned over its weak economy, hostile regulatory environment, and geopolitical tensions with the U.S. China risks prolonged economic stagnation as consumers are unwilling to spend money due to financial and political uncertainty.
In contrast, the U.S. economy grew almost 5 percent in the third quarter despite facing its own
challenges, such as inflation and ballooning national debt. Since China needs American companies’ investments and technologies to revive its weak economy, Biden could have waited for Xi to plead for a summit and used it as leverage to demand some behavioral changes from China. Preconditions could have been that China’s military stops its harassment of Taiwan and the Philippines in the South China Sea, or no more funding Russia and Iran’s geopolitical aggressions by purchasing their oil.
Sadly, Biden and his foreign policy team are known to turn U.S. leverage into weakness by focusing on the wrong priorities. For example, they continue to believe that climate change is the world’s biggest challenge and that the U.S. needs China’s cooperation to save the planet, even though China remains the world’s biggest polluter after signing the Paris Climate Agreement.
Biden’s green initiatives have only deepened the U.S. economy’s dependency on China since the communist regime dominates the global supply chain for solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries for electric vehicles due to its willingness to exploit slave laborers (most are ethnic minorities) and the nation’s abundant supply of coal.
Biden, led by misguided policies, sent several cabinet-level officials to China, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. They practically begged Xi for a meeting. Xi, of course, played hard to get. Rather than reciprocating senior U.S. government officials’ multiple visits, Xi waited until last month to send Wang Yi, China’s minister of foreign affairs, to visit the U.S. and only recently agreed to a meeting with Biden.
A few days before the summit, China’s People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), faulted the U.S. for the deterioration of the Sino-U.S. relationship and demanded the U.S. “abandon its aggressive Cold War and aggressive mindset, fix the ‘action deficit’ with practical actions and concrete policies,” even though China is the one who has an action deficit as wide as the Grand Canyon. Remember when Xi promised President Barack Obama not to militarize artificial islands in the South China Sea and then armed those islands anyway and claimed 90 percent of the international waterway is Chinese territory?
Communist Party’s Playbook
What Xi has been doing is following the typical CCP playbook. Miles Yu, a former senior adviser to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, points out that CCP leaders, starting with Mao, love to “use international gatherings to lend legitimacy to [a] beleaguered regime at home.” By playing hard to get with the Biden administration, Xi hid his weakened hand behind a strongman image. He “seeks to send the message to his caged people — aided by the CCP’s relentless propaganda machine — that their supreme leader is respected, even revered, on the global stage,” according to Yu. Another CCP go-to tactic is to make vague and unenforceable pledges for the distant future in exchange for concessions from the other side now.
Unfortunately, the Biden team fell for the CCP’s trick. In a post-summit press conference, Biden put on a brave face and claimed the summit was “among the most constructive and productive we’ve had,” with three key agreements: to restart cooperation on controlling fentanyl, to resume direct (high-level) military-to-military contact, and to set up expert exchanges on risks and safety issues in artificial intelligence (AI).
But none of these represent any meaningful achievement, since the CCP is known for making empty promises, and the joke is on whoever believes them. On the fentanyl issue, many China observers, including Kelley Currie, a former diplomat, quickly pointed out on X, “Don’t forget that China agreed to do this exact thing in 2019 and dramatically reduced the flow of fentanyl out of China, only to switch tactics and instead supply mass amounts of precursor chemicals to Mexican cartels.”
On the AI issue, China promised nothing. Xi has made enhancing the People’s Liberation Army’s capabilities through AI a national priority and has already committed plenty of resources for AI research and development. Xi will not change his course because of some experts’ exchanges on AI with Americans. If such a discussion occurs, China will exploit it to identify which American AI expert to poach and what latest AI technology China should steal.
Military Aggression
Biden clearly believes that resuming direct, high-level military-to-military contact between the U.S. and China was a significant accomplishment. He tweeted, “Clear and open communication between our defense establishments is vital to avoid miscalculation by either side and prevent conflict.” But it was Chinese military leaders who refused to pick up phone calls from the U.S. side, and they did so under Xi’s order.
Chinese pilots frequently made dangerous maneuvers near the U.S. and its allies’ military assets in the South China Sea, not because of a lack of communication but because of Xi’s deliberate policy decision: China regards the international water as its territory and tries to block the U.S. and its allies from accessing it through intimidation. According to Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow at the Center for New American Security, “China wants the United States and its partners to feel worried about rising military and security risks in East Asia.”
It’s unlikely the Chinese military’s aggressive behavior in and above the South China Sea will stop after the Biden-Xi summit. Furthermore, Elbridge Colby, a former Pentagon official, points out that military-to-military communication is “not vital. It’s not the key issue.” Responding to Biden’s self-congratulatory tweet, Colby wrote, “The key issue is China undertaking a historic military buildup and increasingly using that military to get ready for a war, as your own appointees and generals point out. Just really nowhere near the seriousness we need.”
President Biden and his foreign policy team want Americans to believe that his meeting with Xi in San Francisco was successful. But in truth, the U.S. gained nothing from the Biden-Xi summit. Don’t expect Xi to fulfill any promises or change his policies. The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission’s recent 753-page report to Congress presented evidence that Xi is preparing his military forces and the rest of the country for war and treats diplomacy with the United States, such as the most recent Biden-Xi summit, “primarily as a tool for forestalling and delaying U.S. pressure over a period of years while China moves ever further down the path of developing its own economic, military, and technological capabilities.”
If anything, the world is becoming more dangerous after the Biden-Xi summit, and we are on Xi’s timeline.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released video on Friday showing what it says is a stash of mortar bombs hidden in the vicinity of a kindergarten classroom. The short video shows a damaged kindergarten classroom and then pans into a small storage area, revealing a pile of mortar shells.
An IDF spokesman said the mortar shells and other weapons were recovered by soldiers in schools inside the Gaza Strip.
A photo of mortar shells next to a school classroom. (IDF)
Additionally, IDF troops also found numerous Hamas weapons hidden in the Al-Karmel elementary school, the IDF said. Those weapons are understood to consist of rocket-propelled grenades and other military equipment.
U.S. and Israeli officials have said the Hamas terrorist organization uses civilian infrastructure like schools, homes and hospitals as cover for its military activities.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunition it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. The IDF says terrorists are using tunnels beneath hospitals to conduct its operations.
The IDF also released an image of a stockpile of weaponry and ammunitions it says were seized from the Al-Quds Hospital, located in the Tel al-Hawa area of Gaza City. (IDF)
The IDF also announced on Friday that it had captured a post in Gaza belonging to the Palestine Islamic Jihad, a Sunni Islamist militant group, where they seized many rockets and other weapons.
The IDF post was a major asset for weapon production used to attack Israeli civilians and train terrorist fighters, the IDF said. It was located next to a courthouse and a Turkish hospital, according to the Israeli military.
“IDF troops searched the post and removed two trucks full of weapons, including Badr-3 rocket parts (a surface-to-surface rocket), UAV parts, and intelligence materials belonging to the [Palestinian Islamic Jihad],” an IDF spokesperson said.
The Israel Defense Forces seized a large weapons cache from a post belonging to the terrorist group, the Palestine Islamic Jihad. (Israel Defense Forces)
IDF troops also found a training tank used by terrorists to train fighters on how to capture an Israeli tank, the IDF said.
“During the operation, an anti-tank missile was launched at the troops from an adjacent building. The troops directed a helicopter to strike the terrorist cell that launched the missile,” the military said. “Furthermore, a terrorist cell fired additional shots at the troops from an adjacent courthouse and was struck by an IDF tank.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Abir Sultan/Pool Photo via AP)
The seizures come as the Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several of the terrorist group’s key bases in the region.
The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
The war was sparked after Hamas launched a series of brutal terror attacks on Oct. 7.
Louis Casiano and Elizabeth Pritchett contributed to this report.
Michael Dorgan is a writer for Fox News Digital and Fox Business.
You can send tips to michael.dorgan@fox.com and follow him on Twitter @M_Dorgan.
The United Nations Security Council called for a days-long pause in fighting in Gaza on Thursday as Israeli forces continued to strike against Hamas leaders in Gaza City. Israeli forces took control of the Al-Shifa Hospital and are working to “destroy” Hamas in the region.
The Israeli military continues to target Hamas leadership in northern Gaza and has captured several the terrorist groups’ key bases in the region
There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
After weeks of gridlock, the United Nations Security Council voted to call for a days-long humanitarian pause in fighting
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IDF soldiers recover body of Hamas hostage found near Al-Shifa Hospital
IDF soldiers recover body of Hamas hostage found near Al-Shifa Hospital
Israeli Defense Forces say they found the body of a hostage taken in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Thursday.
Israeli forces say they found Yehudit Weiss’ body in a building adjacent to the Al-Shifa Hospital, which Israel says Hamas had been using as a headquarters until early this week. The IDF did not offer any details about Weiss beyond her name, but noted that her family has been contacted.
Soldiers searching the building say they also found military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and RPG’s inside.
Weiss was one of roughly 240 people taken hostage by Hamas duirng its Oct. 7 massacre in Israel. She is now among a small number of hostages confirmed to have been killed since Israel’s war on Hamas began.
Israeli troops discovered a hidden booby-trapped vehicle inside the complex of a Hamas-run hospital in Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces said Thursday.
In a video posted to X, the IDF said the vehicle contained AK-47 rifles, grenades, RPGs, sniper rifles and other explosives.
“This is what Hamas is trying to hide from you,” an IDF spokesperson said in the footage.
Near the vehicle were weapons, ammunition and other items, including handcuffs and knives displayed on the ground, the IDF said.
“And where they’re hiding all this equipment is in the hospital,” the spokesperson said. “A place that’s supposed to be for humanitarian aid. They have all this evil hidden here.”
“This is where they choose to hide everything because they know the IDF won’t attack, the air force won’t attack here,” he added. “They use the hospital as human shields.”
Israel has long claimed tat Hamas has used hospitals and other sensitive locations as cover to conceal its military operations.
On Tuesday, John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council, said that intelligence supports Israel’s claims about Hamas activities in hospitals.
“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them, to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” Kirby told reporters on Air Force One.
IDF chief of staff says Israel close to ‘destroying’ Hamas’ military system in Gaza’s north
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi talks with troops Thursday in the Gaza Strip. (Israel Defense Forces)
The chief of staff for the Israel Defense Forces on Thursday credited his troops with moving closer to destroying Hamas’ “military system” amid its weeks-long campaign against the terror group.
Herzi Halevi visited soldiers on the ground inside the Gaza Strip, where he spoke of Israel’s response to Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israeli border communities.
“As the campaign move forwards, with what you have done here with these battalions, Division 36 and 252, we are quite close to destroying the (Hamas) military system that existed in the north of the Gaza Strip,” he said, according to a press release. “We will complete it, we still have some things to do, but we are getting closer.”
He said the IDF will continue its military operations and that “as much as it depends on us, area after area, we’re going to kill the commanders and kill the operatives and destroy the infrastructure.”
“You have done it excellently so far, take what you’ve learned so far – for almost three weeks, and do it even better,” Halevi added.
Israel has battered Gaza with continuous airstrikes in the weeks since the attack, resulting in thousands dead and an escalating humanitarian crisis.
It’s highly unlikely that Israeli military operations will eliminate the ideology of Hamas, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby suggested Thursday.
Israel has pummeled the Gaza Strip for six weeks with airstrikes as Israeli leaders have vowed to eliminate the terror group.
“What we have learned through our own experiences … through military and other means, you can absolutely have a significant impact on [a] terrorist group’s ability to resource itself, to train fighters, to recruit fighters, to plan and to execute attacks,” Kirby said Thursday during a briefing.
He noted that Hamas leaders have repeatedly said they plan to attack Israel for the foreseeable future.
Military operations against a particular group, no matter how precise and targeted, cannot eliminate an idea, he said, citing the defeat of other terror groups in recent years.
“I mean, look at the shadow of itself that ISIS is right now, look at the shadow of itself that al Qaeda is right now. That doesn’t mean that the ideology also withers away and dies,” he said. “But you can absolutely have a practical, meaningful effect on a terrorist organization’s ability to conduct and execute its attacks.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Israel released video footage that purportedly shows part of a tunnel on the grounds of a hospital complex in Gaza.
The tunnel was near the Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel has said is used by Hamas to plan attacks and military operations.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces released footage showing weapons and military equipment inside the hospital, which has shelter thousands of civilians amid Israeli shelling.
Israeli officials claim that the facility is being used as cover by Hamas terrorists and that the group has set up its main command center underneath the building.
“A few of the most interesting things that we found totally confirms, without any doubt, that Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations, in violation of international law,” IDF Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus said as he walked through an MRI building at the hospital.
Shelling ramps up at Israel-Lebanon border with Hezbollah, IDF trading missile strikes: report
Smoke rises from an Israeli airstrike, left, and artillery shelling, right, on the outskirts of Aita al-Shaab, a Lebanese border village with Israel in south Lebanon on Monday. Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants and their allies have been clashing along the border since the Israel-Hamas war started five weeks ago with a bloody incursion into southern Israel by Hezbollah ally Hamas. (AP Photo/Hussein Malla)
The Israel Defense Forces and Lebanon-based Hezbollah have ramped up shelling against each other as both sides continue to trade airstrikes.
Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, said it has struck eight targets so far in Israel on Thursday, including Israeli soldiers and a military barracks, “in support of our steadfast Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip,” according to Reuters.
In response, the IDF said it hit a site in Lebanon that has tried launching anti-tank missiles toward its territory and that artillery strikes have been directed at other locations, the news agency adds.
Israel’s counterattack has impacted several villages along Lebanon’s southern border, a source told Reuters. There were no reported injuries. Both sides have repeatedly traded airstrikes since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israeli border communities.
Since Hamas launched its war on Israel, more than 70 Hezbollah fighters and 10 civilians have been killed in shelling in Lebanon, Reuters reports.
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report.
Pro-Palestinian protesters block bridges in Boston, San Francisco during rush hour
Pro-Palestinian protesters block bridges in Boston, San Francisco during rush hour
Pro-Palestinian protesters blocked traffic on bridges in Boston and San Francisco during rush hour Thursday morning to call for a cease-fire in Gaza as Israel continues to target Hamas leadership more than a month after the militant group’s deadly incursion into Israel.
On the Boston University bridge, the group IfNotNow, which says it represents members of Boston’s Jewish community, chanted “Cease-fire now!” and demanded that Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., support an immediate cease-fire and use her influence to stop the Israeli government’s military action in Gaza.
The protest slowed traffic to a trickle on the bridge, which connects Boston and Cambridge, as the group held signs that said, “Let Gaza Live,” and unfurled a banner across the roadway that read, “Jews say: Ceasefire now.”
“We care about Palestinian lives, we only want to hurt Hamas,” one protester on the bridge told NBC Boston, while another said, “There can’t be peace for Jews unless there is peace for Palestinians.”
Meanwhile, Pro-Palestinian protesters also shut down the Bay Bridge in San Francisco, where President Biden was courting world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit.
Fox News’ Stephen Sorace contributed to this report
Republicans blast pro-Palestinian protests at DNC: ‘Nation’s capital is under siege’
I am on Capitol Hill right now and it’s on lockdown. No getting in or out of our offices. We have officers that were pepper sprayed by pro-Hamas protestors with a lot of people attempting to break into the Democratic HQ. Anyone else notice how violent the so-called “ceasefire”… pic.twitter.com/UbtMmLe7Ei
The Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., saw fireworks on Wednesday night when pro-Palestinian protesters clashed with police in front of the DNC.
Republicans weighed in on the protests online, with Florida Rep. Kat Cammack posting a video of the protest while she was on Capitol Hill.
“I am on Capitol Hill right now and it’s on lockdown,” Cammack wrote. “No getting in or out of our offices.”
“We have officers that were pepper sprayed by pro-Hamas protestors with a lot of people attempting to break into the Democratic HQ,” she continued. “Anyone else notice how violent the so-called ‘ceasefire’ crowd is?”
Fox News’ Houston Keene contributed to this report
The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ after TikTok unearths pro-terror screed
The Guardian removes Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ after TikTok unearths pro-terror screed
The Guardian removed Osama bin Laden’s infamous “Letter to America” this week as the words of the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001, went viral after being unearthed by social media users.
The left-wing outlet had the anti-American and antisemitic letter published on its website since 2002 and was the first Google search result when searching for the document. But the publication deleted bin Laden’s letter amid a sudden spike in traffic.
A spokesperson for The Guardian told Fox News Digital, “The transcript published on our website 20 years ago has been widely shared on social media without the full context. Therefore we have decided to take it down and direct readers to the news article that originally contextualized it instead.”
The Guardian declined additional comment.
The 9/11 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, with many thousands more injured and suffering from long-term illnesses, after Islamic terrorists crashed four hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center, Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania; the latter was forced down by heroic passengers. In the letter to the American people translated in English, bin Laden justified al-Qaeda’s attacks against the U.S. because “you attacked us” and “you attacked us in Palestine.”
“Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation,” bin Laden alleged.
Suspect arrested in death of pro-Israel demonstrator Paul Kessler
Suspect arrested in death of pro-Israel demonstrator Paul Kessler
California police have arrested Loay Abdelfattah Alnaji, 50, in relation to the death of Jewish man Paul Kessler at an Israel protest last week.
Alnaji has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and has a bail set at $1,000,000. The arrest comes roughly a week after Kessler, 69, died in the hospital after striking his head on the concrete during an altercation with Alnaji.
Footage showed Kessler bleeding on the ground following the incident. Alnaji, a pro-Palestinian protester had allegedly manhandled Kessler and caused him to fall.
The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department stated last week that they had identified a 50-year-old suspect in the case, but they had not yet identified him nor made an arrest.
AOC leads two dozen Democrats calling for Israel cease-fire over ‘violations against children’
AOC leads two dozen Democrats calling for Israel cease-fire over ‘violations against children’
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., is leading renewed calls for President Biden to support a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas over the “grave violations” being committed against children in the war.
“We write to you to express deep concern about the intensifying war in Gaza, particularly grave violations against children, and our fear that without an immediate cessation of hostilities and the establishment of a robust bilateral ceasefire, this war will lead to a further loss of civilian life and risk dragging the United States into dangerous and unwise conflict with armed groups across the Middle East,” the progressive lawmaker wrote.
She and 23 other progressives wrote to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, asking for details on the U.S. plan to de-escalate tension in the region.
They cited figures from both Israel and the Hamas-run Ministry of Health in Gaza about how many children have been killed or abducted since Hamas militants launched a surprise attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing hundreds of civilians.
Israel has responded by bombarding Gaza with rocket fire and a ground invasion.
“We reaffirm our unequivocal condemnation of the Hamas attacks on Israel that took place on October 7th, in which Hamas killed over 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals, and captured over 200 hostages, who were subsequently taken to Gaza,” the Democrats wrote.
Massachusetts town flying Palestinian flag sparks backlash from residents, Jewish congregation
Massachusetts town flying Palestinian flag sparks backlash from residents, Jewish congregation
A local Jewish leader spoke out on “FOX & Friends” Thursday after his Massachusetts town approved a permit to allow a Palestinian flag to fly in town.
Marc Freedman, president of Congregation Ahavat Olam in North Andover, said the flag was now a “symbol of antisemitism” following the Oct. 7 attacks.
“It is a symbol to just eliminate the entire Jewish population,” he said.
Town officials approved a permit Monday allowing the Palestinian flag to be flown on the North Andover Town Common.
“I think they’re just a bunch of cowards. They took a legal initiative, a legal statement from council that said you need to follow specific guidelines and must raise this flag, when in their hearts, in their hearts, I know every single one of them did not want to raise their flag,” he said.
He said the council put personal concerns ahead of the town and added, “that’s not what leadership does.”
Fox News’ Hanna Panreck contributed to this report
IDF footage shows Hamas rockets stashed under child’s bed inside Gaza terrorist’s home
IDF footage shows Hamas rockets stashed under child’s bed inside Gaza terrorist’s home
Israeli Defense Forces released footage of troops searching the home of a Hamas terrorist in Gaza and uncovering a stash of rockets hidden under a young child’s bed on Thursday.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari says the rockets and other weapons found inside the home were destroyed soon afterward. Footage shows an Israeli soldier walking past a pink “baby girl” sign before revealing several rockets inside a compartment in the bed.
“Rockets were found inside a bed in the children’s bedroom inside the house of a Hamas terrorist during operational activity carried out by the troops of the 551st Brigade. The terrorist was a part of a Hamas terrorist cell in Beit Hanoun,” Hagari said in a statement.
“During the operational activity, the troops uncovered a significant amount of weapons including rockets, explosive devices, and dozens of kilos of explosives. The weapons were subsequently destroyed by the forces,” he added.
Rockets were found inside a bed in the children's bedroom inside the house of a Hamas terrorist during operational activity carried out by the troops of the 551st Brigade. The terrorist was a part of a Hamas terrorist cell in Beit Hanoun >> pic.twitter.com/25SneQfOkF
— דובר צה״ל דניאל הגרי – Daniel Hagari (@IDFSpokesperson) November 16, 2023
Information, photos about Hamas hostages found on laptop inside hospital: IDF
Information, photos about Hamas hostages found on laptop inside hospital: IDF
Israeli Defense Forces uncovered information about hostages taken by Hamas on a laptop found inside the Al-Shifa Hospital on Thursday.
Israel says the laptop had photos and videos taken of hostages after the Oct. 7th massacre in Israel. Israeli forces say evidence indicates Hamas was using Al-Shifa Hospital as a base of operations “within the last few days.”
“At the end of the day, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus told the BBC. “Hamas aren’t here because they saw we were coming. This is probably what they were forced to leave behind. Our assessment is that there’s much more.”
Fox News’ foreign correspondent Trey Yings and cameraman Yaniv Turgeman visited the hospital with Israeli special forces early Thursday.
Israel says Hamas took some 239 hostages on Oct. 7, though the U.S. has said there is no way to know how many of those are still alive.
Online personality and pro-Palestinian activist Lynette Adkins urged her over 175,000 TikTok followers on Tuesday to read the words of the terrorist mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks.
“I need everyone to stop what they’re doing right now and go read- It’s literally two pages. Go read ‘A Letter to America,” Adkins said the video. “And please come back here and just let me know what you think because I feel like I’m going through, like, an existential crisis right now and a lot of people are, so I just need someone else to be feeling this.”
Her video received roughly 800,000 views and over 80,000 likes on TikTok.
Fox News Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst and cameraman Yaniv Turgeman went inside the Al-Shifa hospital with Israeli special forces on Thursday, sharing images of weapons found inside the complex.
Israeli forces say the weapons are evidence that Hamas had used the facility–and tunnel systems under it–as a base of operations.
Footage from Yingst and Turgeman’s visit showed rifles stashed behind an MRI machine as well as other supplies.
President Biden says he thinks Israel’s military operation in Gaza will stop when Hamas “no longer maintains the capacity to murder, abuse, and do horrific things to the Israelis.”
Speaking at a press conference after his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden called on the Israeli military to exercise caution as they pursue Hamas military targets near civilian infrastructure. He said the Israel Defense Forces has “an obligation to use as much caution as they can in going after their targets.”
However, he added, “Hamas said they plan to attack Israelis again and this is terrible dilemma.”
Biden and his administration have remained steadfast in support for Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas. U.S. officials have strongly condemned the Oct. 7 terror attacks on Israel, in which Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state and massacred as many as 1,200 people, taking some 240 back to Gaza as hostages. Other world leaders have condemned Israel’s military actions in Gaza, specifically attacks on hospitals and other civilian infrastructure, pointing to the staggering death toll figures released by the Hamas-led Gaza Health Ministry. Israel has said, and the White House confirmed, that Hamas uses Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza City, as a military base to store weapons and plan terrorist attacks.
The U.S. government has rejected calls for a cease-fire in the conflict, insisting that Israel has a right to defend itself. At the same time, the Biden administration has pressured Israel to allow short-term pauses in the fighting so humanitarian aid, including food and medical supplies, can be delivered to the Palestinians living in Gaza.
Fox News’ Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report
Israeli military gains ‘operational control’ over Gaza harbor used by Hamas
Israeli Defense Forces have gained “operational control” over the Harbor in Gaza city, previously a Hamas stronghold.
Israeli Defense Forces have gained “operational control” over the Harbor in Gaza city, previously a Hamas stronghold.
The IDF announced its successful oepration in the harbor on Thursday, saying Hamas had used the area to train maritime forces.
“The IDF has gained operational control over the Hamas-operated Gaza Harbor,” The IF wrote in a statement. “Disguised as a civilian area, the harbor was used by Hamas as a training facility for their naval commando forces to plan and execute terrorist attacks.”
“During the operation, conducted by soldiers of the 188th Armored Corps’ Brigade and Flotilla 13, numerous terrorist tunnel entrances and terrorist infrastructures were destroyed,” the statement continued.
Israel has conducted a relentless campaign against Hamas terrorists cells in Gaza City. The terrorist group has maintained a labyrinth of tunnels beneath the population center.
The IDF has gained operational control over the Hamas-operated Gaza Harbor.
Disguised as a civilian area, the harbor was used by Hamas as a training facility for their naval commando forces to plan and execute terrorist attacks.
Hamas has agreed to release dozens of hostages from Gaza under terms of a tentative deal that the Israeli government is now considering, the Washington Post reported Thursday.
While the exact terms of the deal remain unclear, it is believed to involve the release of some Palestinian prisoners held in Israel in addition to a multi-day pause in fighting in Gaza. The deal may already have been rejected, however.
Hamas terrorists took up to 240 hostages during their Oct. 7 massacre inside Israel. That number includes 10 Americans and many other foreign nationals who were in Israel.
UN rights chief calls for international investigation into alleged Israel-Hamas war crimes
UN rights chief calls for international investigation into alleged Israel-Hamas war crimes
UN human rights chief Volker Turk appeared to call for an international investigation into alleged war crimes commited by Israel in its war against Hamas on Thursday.
Turk made the comments after returning from a visit to the Middle East, though he was not allowed to access Israel or Gaza. The official condemned Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and argued that some in Israel have no qualms about killing civilians.
“Extremely serious allegations of multiple and profound breaches of international humanitarian law, whoever commits them, demand rigorous investigation and full accountability,” he said during a U.N. briefing in Geneva, going on to decry the “intensification of violence and severe discrimination agaisnt Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”
“It is apparent that on both sides, some view the killing of civilians as either acceptable or collateral, or a deliberate and useful weapon of war,” he continued.
Driver rams barrier at Israeli embassy in Tokyo, injures police officer
Driver rams barrier at Israeli embassy in Tokyo, injures police officer
Police in Tokyo arrested a lone driver who rammed his vehicle into a barrier outside the Israeli embassy on Thursday.
Israeli ambassador to Japan Gilad Cohen confirmed the incident in a post on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. Japanese police say they arrested the suspect, a 53-year-old man who was suspected to be a member of a “right-wing organization.”
A police officer outside the embassy received minor injuries in the incident.
“Shocked by the suspected vehicular ramming attack on a police officer on guard near the Israeli embassy in Tokyo. This matter is under investigation by the local police. I would like to express gratitude to the Japanese government and Tokyo Police for their commitment to ensuring our security. Wishing a speedy recovery to the injured police officer,” Cohen wrote on social media.
Top media outlet marred by string of retractions and apologies related to Israel-Hamas war
Top media outlet marred by recent string of retractions and apologies related to Israel-Hamas wa
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been blemished with a string of apologies and retractions related to stories detailing developments in the Israel-Hamas war.
England’s premiere outlet, which celebrated its 100th anniversary last year, is the oldest and largest local and global broadcaster and has been heralded as an integral source of worldwide news.
But the broadcaster’s reputation has been questioned in recent weeks after a series of inaccurate news reports led critics and social media users to wonder why the BBC’s mistakes erred on behalf of Hamas and Palestinians.
On Tuesday, BBC News Channel aired a report that claimed Israeli forces had descended on Al Shifa hospital in Gaza and targeted “medical teams and Arab speakers” inside.
While reports did indicate the IDF had entered the hospital, no reports corroborated the claim that soldiers had targeted those inside.
The error led the BBC to issue an on-air apology, retraction and a written statement.
“As BBC News covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital, we said that ‘medical teams and Arab speakers’ were being targeted. This was incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report,” the BBC said. “We should have said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
Fox News’ Nicholas Lanum contributed to this report
Chicago college professor justifies Hamas attack ‘after 75 years of Israeli white supremacy’
Chicago college professor justifies Hamas attack ‘after 75 years of Israeli white supremacy’
A Chicagoland sociology professor sent a mass email to her students and department colleagues attempting to rally support for Palestinians who she claims have faced “75 years of Israeli White supremacy.”
Brooke Johnson, an associate professor and sociology department coordinator at Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), argued “As critical sociologists we are trained to analyze power and inequality in society” and that “this importantly comes with the responsibility to speak up when we witness harm, injustice, and violence,” stressing “What is currently happening in Palestine is one of those moments.”
“After 75 years of Israeli White supremacy, including displacement, human rights violations, and systemic violence, Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th which resulted in 1400 deaths and 240 hostages,” Johnson wrote in a Nov. 8 email obtained by Fox News Digital. “Israel is now collectively punishing Palestinians. The Palestinian death toll from Israeli airstrikes exceeds 10,000, and almost half of these are children. This number increases daily as airstrikes continue; water, food and medical aid are cut off; and demands for a humanitarian cease-fire increase.”
One student who received the email was left “really upset” by what Johnson wrote, calling the accusations she made against Israel including being guilty of “White supremacy” as “just not true.”
“I called my mom and I started crying,” the student, who did not wish to be identified, told Fox News Digital.
The student accused Johnson of “justifying” the Oct. 7 attack.
Fox News Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report
Police in the nation’s capital responded to the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters Wednesday evening as pro-Palestinian demonstrators grew violent while calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.
About 150 people were “illegally and violently protesting” near the DNC headquarters building in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., according to U.S. Capitol Police.
Six Capitol police officers were injured during the clash on Wednesday evening, according to the agency. Their injuries stemmed from minor cuts, pepper spray burns and punches thrown by protesters who turned violent alongside peaceful protesters.
Videos on social media showed protesters shoving police officers and trying to hold on to metal barricades at the DNC headquarters while officers attempted to remove them.
Capitol police and the Metropolitan Police Department, who also responded to the protest, did not immediately confirm to Fox News Digital how many arrests were made at the event.
Protesters included members of “If Not Now” and “Jewish Voice for Peace.” Both organizations have organized other demonstrations in Washington D.C. since Hamas’ unprecedented Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Fox News Digital’s Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, Adam Sabes, Kelley Kramer and Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
Israeli Air Force strikes home of Ismail Haniyeh, head of Hamas’ Political Bureau: IDF
The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday its air force conducted a strike on the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Haniyeh, who is the head of Hamas’ Political Bureau, is accused of using his residence in Gaza as terrorist infrastructure and a meeting point for Hamas’ senior leaders to direct attacks on Israel.
It’s not clear if anyone was killed in the strike as Haniyeh lives in Qatar, according to the Times of Israel.
Overnight, IDF fighter jets struck the residence of Ismail Haniyeh, the Head of Hamas’ Political Bureau.
The residence was used as terrorist infrastructure and a meeting point for Hamas’ senior leaders to direct terrorist attacks against Israel. pic.twitter.com/kljYYN6O0U
Israeli soldiers and tanks rolled into al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip and location of a major Hamas terrorist compound, according to Israel. The military is conducting a “precise and targeted operation” inside the hospitals, where hundreds of medical patients and personnel remain. Hamas has denied Israeli accusations it uses the hospital as a shield.
The Israeli military captured Hamas government buildings in Gaza and has fought its way to the gates of the region’s largest medical facility, Al-Shifa Hospital.
The Israel Defense Forces said troops killed Hamas terrorists and encountered explosive devices and terror cells during its “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital.
There remain up to 238 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 11,200 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
Israel-Hamas war: IDF finds weapons inside al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released video early Wednesday showing weapons found inside the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
“IDF troops are continuing the precise and targeted operation against Hamas in the Shifa Hospital complex, in which the troops are conducting searches for Hamas terrorist infrastructure and assets,” the IDF said in a statement.
“As the soldiers entered the hospital complex, they engaged with a number of terrorists and killed them,” the statement added. “Following this, during searches in one of the departments of the hospital, the troops located a room with technological assets, along with military and combat equipment used by the Hamas terrorist organization.”
The footage shows Israeli officers sorting through the firearms, ammunition and weapons reportedly left by Hamas fighters.
The IDF says that “technological assets and extensive intelligence information” found in the hospital are being reviewed by authorities.
Biden allies condemn far-left calls for cease-fire in Israel-Hamas war
U.S. President Joe Biden departs the White House November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
President Biden’s strong backing of Israel and his response to its war with terrorist organization Hamas speaks to the mainstream of the Democratic Party and the majority of Americans, according to supporters of the president, despite progressive Democrats publicly opposing the administration’s rejection of a cease-fire.
Multiple Biden allies told Fox News Digital that the administration’s stance against a cease-fire protects Americans and national security interests at home and abroad.
Nearly a dozen Biden allies defended the president’s policies in interviews with Fox News Digital after more than 400 government officials within the administration signed onto a letter opposing the president’s handling of the war, and demanding a cease-fire.
NYC Columbia University faculty and students protest suspension of 2 far-left groups
A protester holds a sign at a “All out for Gaza” protest at Columbia University in New York on November 15, 2023. (Photo by BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP via Getty Images)
Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters stood outside of Columbia University in New York City on Wednesday, holding signs while chanting and demanding the removal of Jewish people from Gaza, while others boycotted the suspension of two far-left student-led groups by the school’s administration.
The “emergency protest” was shared on the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, by groups such as WOLPalestine (Within Our Lifetime) and CUNYPalestine, noting the event was scheduled for Nov. 15 at 2 p.m.
“All Out for Gaza at Columbia University,” the post read. “In solidarity with Columbia SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and JVP (Jewish Voices for Peace) who were recently unjustly suspended by the university administration.
NYU hit with lawsuit for fueling ‘virus of antisemitism,’ ‘abusing Jewish students with impunity’
A New York University (NYU) flag flies outside of the NYU business school on August 25, 2020. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
New York University was hit with a groundbreaking lawsuit, the first of what is expected to be a series against elite universities, for allegedly allowing antisemitism to fester on its campus and also “deliberately” seeking to “make the campus environment even more… frightening for Jewish students,” according to court documents.
“NYU is among the worst campuses for Jewish students, and NYU has long been aware of the festering Jewish hatred permeating the school,” the suit filed by Kasowitz Benson Torres, an influential firm based in New York City, said.
It alleged that NYU was aware of “ongoing and disgraceful acts of anti-Jewish bigotry,” and refused to act in violation of Jewish students’ Title VI civil rights and sought remedial measures and financial penalties. The suit made startling allegations, including that NYU’s administration’s actions, or lack thereof throughout the years, added fuel to antisemitism on campus.
The “Outnumbered” co-hosts reacted to the rise of antisemitism and Tuesday’s March for Israel rally, as the war between Hamas and Israel continues.
Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, thanked the show for lending her support amid rampant antisemitism.
“I’m so grateful to this show, to all of you, to the producers. I’ve never cried on air,” Ortagus explained. “And a couple of weeks ago, just seeing the images and the rampant anti-Semitism, having a daughter, it has been so hard to talk about it. But I’m so appreciative of you guys for for giving us the voice, giving us the opportunity.”
“I never have felt unsafe in this country for my daughter the way I do now,” she continued, adding that she was appreciated for the 300,000 people who showed up to the March for Israel rally.
“Between October 7th and November 7th, there have been 832 anti-Semitic attacks,” co-host Kayleigh McEnany said. “Do the math, that means 28 per day. That means more than one every hour.”
Comedian Jon Lovitz blasts HBO’s John Oliver for shaming U.S. over alliance with Israel
Jon Lovitz arrives at the Mike Tyson Cares and We2Matter’s 100 Women Matter Celebrity Fundraiser Gala on August 17, 2023 in Beverly Hills, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Legendary comedian and actor Jon Lovitz blasted HBO host Jon Oliver this week after the British talk show host reprimanded the United States for supporting Israel and the “suffering” it has caused in Gaza following Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre.
Lovitz replied to a social media post from Oliver’s talk show with an X post noting how the U.S. would obviously support its “democratic ally” Israel over the radical terror group that killed 1400+ people in the country last month.
Pushing back against the British HBO host’s skepticism of America’s alliance with Israel, Lovitz declared, “God bless America. #IstandwithIsrael.”
Netanyahu’s wife writes Jill Biden a letter urging her to save ‘suffering’ Hamas child hostages
Former Israeli Prime Minister and Likud party leader Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara Netanyahu at an election-night event on November 1, 2022 in Jerusalem, Israel.
The wife of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has written a letter Wednesday to first lady Jill Biden, urging her to call for the “immediate release” of child hostages who are “suffering” in the captivity of Hamas terrorists.
Sara Netanyahu opened her plea by saying that “I’m writing to you not only as Bibi’s wife but first and foremost as a mother.”
“For over a month now, 32 children have been held kidnapped in Gaza, brutally torn from their parents and their homes,” Netanyahu said. “These children are surely suffering from untold trauma, not only by being kidnapped, but having witnessed the brutal murder of their parents and siblings on that horrific October 7th.”
Biden’s favorite columnist urges him to use Trump’s peace proposal for two-state solution
Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times columnist and bestselling author Thomas L. Friedman on February 26, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Sean Zanni/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman, one of President Biden’s favorite writers, is urging him to follow in part former President Trump’s plan for a two-state solution in the Middle East.
After visiting Israel and the West Bank, Friedman came to the conclusion that America needed an active “vision for how the Gaza war must end” in a column published Tuesday.
“The Biden plan — are you sitting down? — could actually use as one of its starting points President Donald Trump’s proposal for a two-state solution,” Friedman wrote, “because [Benjamin] Netanyahu embraced that in 2020, when he had a different coalition. (Netanyahu and his ambassador in Washington practically wrote the Trump plan.)”
‘Will & Grace’ star Debra Messing blasted for speech at pro-Israel rally in DC
Debra Messing speaks during ‘March For Israel’ at the National Mall on November 14, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)
Social media users criticized “Will & Grace” star Debra Messing after she gave a speech in defense of Israel during a pro-Israel rally in Washington, D.C., this week.
Users on both sides of the political spectrum slammed Messing for her impassioned speech condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, with pro-Israel conservatives hitting her for voting for Biden, who has given aid to Israel’s enemies, as well as pro-Palestinian leftists accusing her of defending “genocide” in Gaza.
Messing, a Jewish person and Hollywood liberal, gave the speech in front of thousands at the “March for Israel” in D.C. on Tuesday. The Jewish Federations of North America organized the event to support Israel amid its war with Hamas and to call out terror and hatred being shown towards the Jewish community.
Bipartisan lawmakers push Biden to investigate Hamas’ cryptocurrency financing
From left: House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, President Biden and Rep. Ritchie Torres (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll, Ting Shen/Bloomberg, Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call)
Top House lawmakers are investigating the breadth and depth of the digital wealth owned by terror groups like Hamas just over a month after the Gaza-based organization’s surprise attack on Israel.
“Reports indicate that Hamas-linked digital wallets received about $41 million and Palestinian Islamic Jihad-linked digital wallets received about $93 million between August 2021 and June 2023. Yet, it remains unclear how much, if any, of the publicly identified digital assets are accessible to or remains in the possession of Hamas,” the lawmakers wrote to President Biden and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
“According to reports, Hamas shut down its digital asset fundraising campaign in April 2023 citing the ability of government officials to identify and prosecute donors.”
The bipartisan letter is led by House Majority Whip Tom Emmer, R-Minn., Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry, R-N.C., Digital Asset subcommittee Chairman French Hill, R-Ark., and Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y.
“We request the White House and the Treasury to utilize the open blockchain ledger to assess the footprint of Hamas’ digital asset fundraising campaign. In doing this, Congress can better understand the United States’ available tools and capabilities to target bad actors on blockchain and support legitimate digital asset use and innovation,” Emmer told Fox News Digital.
A top United Nations humanitarian aid official is being ripped Wednesday by an Israeli ambassador after sharing an image on X showing him shaking hands with Iran’s foreign minister, who reportedly helped Hamas plan its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths posted that he held a meeting in Geneva with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian about the “devastating” situation unfolding in the Gaza Strip and the “critical” need to deliver aid to the area.
The Wall Street Journal previously reported that Amirabdollahian had taken part in at least two planning meetings in Lebanon with the terrorist groups Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad ahead of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which launched the Middle East war.
“Tell me @UNReliefChief, what role do you see Iran playing in such regard?” Israeli Ambassador to Geneva Elion Shahar wrote in response to Griffiths’ post. “What role do you see for the prime sponsors of a terrorist organization who murdered, raped, and tortured over 1,200 Israelis?”
“Did you ask him about the weapons Iran has transferred to Hamas through aid shipments, which were used to kill Israelis on October 7th?” she continued. “Did you ask him about the money Iran has transferred to Hamas, which pays for its leaders’ 5-star hotels in Qatar where they cheered when young Israelis were murdered on TV?”
“Iran is part of the problem, not the solution,” she concluded. “It is about time the U.N. starts to understand this simple truth.”
Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this update.
Destroyer USS Thomas Hudner shot down a drone from Yemen in the Red Sea
BOSTON, MA – NOVEMBER 26: The USS Thomas Hudner, named after Concord’s Medal of Honor recipient Thomas Hudner, arrives in Boston for its commissioning ceremony later in the week on Nov. 26, 2018. (Photo by David L. Ryan/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
The USS Thomas Hudner, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, shot down a drone from Yemen in the Red Sea, two U.S. defense officials confirm to Fox News.
A defense official said the drone was shot down in self-defense. “The drone was heading towards the Hudner,” the official said.
On Tuesday, during the Pentagon news briefing, Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin asked Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh about the lack of U.S. military response to the Houthis in Yemen who downed the $32 million MQ-9 drone over the Red Sea last week.
“Isn’t the lack of response by the US military inviting more actions, aggressive actions by the Houthis?” Griffin asked.
“I wouldn’t say that it’s inviting more aggressive or further response from the Houthis,” Singh replied. “We’ve seen the Houthis do this before.”
“I’m not saying that we’re not going to respond. We always reserve the right to respond at a time and place of our choosing. But I just don’t have anything to forecast for you right now,” she added.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited troops at the Zikim military base near north Gaza and said, “There is no place in Gaza that Israel will not reach.”
Netanyahu was briefed on the fighting that occurred on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists infiltrated Israel and attacked residences and military posts in southern Israel. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people in the assault, mostly civilians, and took some 240 people hostage back to Gaza.
Standing next to soldiers at the base, Netanyahu said: “Do you remember when we were told that we would not break into Gaza? We broke through. We were told that we would not reach the outskirts of Gaza City – we arrived. We were told that we won’t enter Shifa – we entered.
“There is no hiding, no shelter, no refuge for the murderers of Hamas,” Netanyahu said. “We will arrive and eliminate Hamas and return our abductees – these are two sacred missions.”
Hundreds gathered Sunday at a Ventura County, California, intersection where a week earlier, a 69-year-old Jewish man struck his head on concrete and later died after a confrontation with an unnamed pro-Palestinian protester.
Flowers, wreaths, candles and letters surrounded the spot in front of the gas station at Westlake and Thousand Oaks Boulevards, where Paul Kessler sustained his fatal injuries.
One man held a sign that read, “We want justice for Paul,” per footage shared with Fox News Digital. Others bandied Israeli flags and sang “Oseh Shalom” — a Hebrew song praying for peace for the country, its people and the world.
Blood still marked the ground where Kessler’s head struck the sidewalk in widely-shared footage from around 3:30 p.m. on Nov. 5 showing medics attending to a bleeding but alert Kessler at the scene as police questioned onlookers.
Kessler was pronounced dead at nearby Los Robles Hospital about 10 hours after the incident. Per the Ventura County Medical Examiner during a press conference Tuesday, Kessler’s non-lethal injuries were noted on the left side of his face, while internal injuries included skull fractures, swelling and bruising to the brain.
Kessler’s manner of death was determined to be homicide, Medical Examiner Christopher Young said.
Fox News Digital’s Christina Coulter contributed to this update.
BBC News Channel has apologized for an inaccurate report that claimed Israeli forces were targeting “medical teams and Arab speakers” inside of Gaza’s main hospital.
On Tuesday, a BBC News program reported that Israeli forces were carrying out an operation against Hamas forces inside Al Shifa hospital.
The news anchor then claimed that the soldiers were targeting individuals, including hospital workers and Arab speakers, inside the hospital, which would constitute a war crime. The BBC News anchor cited Reuters as the source of their information. However, reporting from Reuters on Israeli troops entering the hospital contradicted the BBC.
“Israel said its troops uncovered unspecified weapons and “terror infrastructure” inside the hospital compound after killing fighters in a clash outside. Once inside, they said there had been no fighting and no friction with civilians, patients or staff,” an article from Reuters noted.
“Witnesses who spoke to Reuters from inside the compound on Wednesday described a situation that appeared calm, if tense, as the Israeli troops moved between buildings carrying out searches,” the outlet added.
One of the most influential news organizations in the world, BBC issued an on-air apology for its claims about the Al Shifa hospital the following morning.
“BBC News, as it covered initial reports that Israeli forces had entered Gaza’s main hospital, we said that medical teams and Arab speakers were being targeted,” the anchor said. “This is incorrect and misquoted a Reuters report which said IDF forces included medical teams and Arabic speakers for this operation. We apologize for this error, which fell below our usual editorial standards.”
The anchor also noted that the correct version of events was broadcast “minutes later.”
Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum contributed to this update.
Pro-Palestinian protesters marched in Staten Island on Tuesday, chanting anti-Israel slogans and burning the Israeli flag.
“From the river, to the sea,” hundreds of people shouted, a phrase that appears in the founding charter of the terrorist group in Hamas and calls for the destruction of Israel.
Protesters were also filmed burning an Israeli flag.
Police arrested six people, including at least one minor, in connection to the pro-Palestinian rally in St. George, SILive.com reported.
The rally was organized by the pro-Palestinian group WIthin Our Lifetime and held outside of Borough Hall. NYPD officers forced the demonstration to relocate onto Richmond Terrace, disrupting traffic, the report said.
Protesters also criticized President Bident and the U.S. government’s support for Israel in th ewar against Hamas. People chanted, “Israel bombs, USA pays. How many kids have you killed today?”
“What other words can be used for this besides ethnic cleansing? Besides genocide? Words that these mainstream media outlets still refuse to use,” Nerdeen Kiswani, founder and chair of Within Our Lifetime, told SILive.com.
“There are Palestinian men, women and children, every day, on our screens begging people to look at the world and tell the world to stop this genocide. But they are not stopping it. In fact, countries like the one we live in, like the United States, are funding it,” she said.
Israeli forces continue operations inside al-Shifa Hospital, Hamas official says
Israeli soldier stands near boxes labelled “Medical Supplies” at the Al Shifa hospital complex, amid their ground operation against Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, during what they say is a delivery of humanitarian aid to the facility in Gaza City, November 15, 2023 in this handout image. Israeli Defence Forces/Handout via REUTERS
A senior official with the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry told the Associated Press that Israeli forces are still operating inside al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the territory.
Speaking by phone from the hospital, Munir al-Boursh said Israeli soldiers ransacked the basement and other buildings, including those housing the emergency and surgery departments.
“They are still here … patients, women and children are terrified,” he said. He said doctors vowed to stay with their patients “till the end.”
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Hamas terrorists are using al-Shifa Hospital and the tunnels beneath it as a base for military operations and to hold hostages. The Israel Defense Forces said earlier Wednesday it is carrying out a “precise and targeted operation against Hamas” in a specific part of the hospital away from patients and medical staff. The IDF also said it delivered medical supplies.
Al-Boursh told the AP he spoke with an Israeli official by phone on Wednesday and asked him to join the forces searching the facility, but he refused.
The IDF says it recovered weapons from the basement of the hospital.
The mood in the nation’s capital ranged from somber to jubilant Tuesday, as tens of thousands of people rallied in support of Israel and the Jewish community.
“I feel like it’s my duty right now to be here, to be advocating for my people,” Tal told Fox News.
Demonstrators draped themselves in American and Israeli flags as they congregated at the National Mall for the “March for Israel.”
“We love America, and we’re so happy that America is standing behind Israel,” Elliot from New Jersey said. “It’s really great to all be here together, show support to each other and say thank you to the country.”
A coalition of Jewish organizations planned the march to show support for Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 terror attacks in which Hamas killed around 1,200 people, primarily Israeli civilians. More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel launched its counterattack, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry.
“I came to stand with Israel during this really crazy time … and stand up for the hostages to come home, and for peace, once and for all,” Cillia from Michigan said.
Fox News Digital’s Hannah Ray Lambert and Jon Michael Raasch contributed to this update.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is part of a secret social media group in which its members have glamorized Hamas in its war battle with Israel after the terror group attacked and killed hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians last month, Fox News Digital has found.
The Michigan Democrat is a member of the Palestinian American Congress group on Facebook. The group is hidden from non-members and does not appear on the platform’s search engine, though Fox News Digital was able to gain access to it.
The group’s founder, Maher Abdel-qader, who has extensive ties to Tlaib and has also been linked to other liberal politicians, has come under fire in the past for his antisemitic social media posts, including questioning if the Holocaust ever occurred.
The Palestinian American Congress group, of which Tlaib is a member, has featured pro-Hamas posts in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
On Oct. 12, one group member posted: “We don’t want to throw you in the sea…we want you to ride it back from where you came.” The message was accompanied by a picture of an elderly Israeli woman and a Hamas fighter holding her captive.
Fox News Digital’s Joe Schoffstall and Peter Hasson contributed to this update.
UN official condemns Israeli raid on Gaza hospital, insists Hamas not use it as a ‘shield’
UN Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief, Martin Griffiths speaks during an international humanitary conference for civilians in Gaza, at the Elysee Presidential Palace, in Paris, on November 9, 2023. (Photo by LUDOVIC MARIN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
The United Nations’ top emergency relief official on Wednesday condemned the Israeli military operation in Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital and said Hamas must not use it as a ‘shield’ for their activities.
“Look, Hamas must not, should not, use a place like a hospital as a shield for their presence,” said Martin Griffiths in a video statement, adding that “hospitals should not become a place of – a war zone – of danger.”
Earlier on X, Griffiths said he was “appalled” by overnight reports of Israeli military operations inside the hospital.
The U.N. World Health Organization says Shifa patients have needs that are “well beyond basic care.” Images reportedly from the facility showed medics trying to keep newborns warm in blankets because power for incubators had failed.
“The babies have no incubators,” Griffiths said. “Some are dead already. We can’t move them out. It’s too dangerous.”
“I understand the Israelis’ concern for trying to find the leadership of Hamas, that’s not our problem,” he added. “Our problem is protecting the people of Gaza from what’s being visited upon them.”
Maryland middle school DEI teacher under investigation for Israel-Hamas comments
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion teacher at a Maryland middle school is being investigated over social media posts suggesting Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel was a hoax. (Google Maps)
A Diversity, Equity and Inclusion teacher at a Maryland middle school is being investigated over a social media posts suggesting the Hamas terrorists’ attack on Israel was a hoax and other posts about the war in the Middle East.
Sabrina Khan-Williams, a World Studies teacher and a Diversity, Equity and Inclusion team leader at Tilden Middle School, made a series of posts doubting reports about Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel, according to Facebook screenshots obtained by The Daily Wire.
“Debunked!! No music festival attack. Babies were not burned. Women were not violated,” she wrote in one post.
More than 11,000 people have been killed in Gaza and Israel since Hamas launched its largest attack against Israel in decades on Oct. 7, prompting a military response from Israeli forces. Thousands more have been wounded, and many others have been taken hostage by Hamas and raped, tortured and murdered.
Kahn-Williams suggested in another post that Hamas did not start the war against Israel.
“Hamas did not start this. They were just the perfect vehicle for Zionists to continue its apartheid,” she wrote.
Fox News Digital’s Landon Mion contributed to this update.
Turkish President Erdogan labels Israel ‘terrorist state’
ANKARA, TURKIYE – NOVEMBER 15: Turkish President and the Leader of the Justice and Development (AK) Party Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes statements as he attends his party’s group meeting at the Turkish Grand National Assembly in Ankara, Turkiye on November 15, 2023. (Photo by Emin Sansar/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan made incendiary anti-Israel comments on Wednesday, calling Israel a “terrorist state” intent on destroying Gaza and its residents.
In a speech to members of his own political party, Erdogan also vowed to bring Israeli political and military leaders before an international tribunal to be tried for war crimes.
“Israel is implementing a strategy of total destruction of a city and its people,” Erdogan said. “I say openly that Israel is a terrorist state.”
In the same speech, Erdogan referred to Hamas terrorists as “resistance fighters” trying to protect their land and people.
Turkey recently normalized relations with Israel but its war with Hamas in Gaza has again strained their ties. Israel recalled its diplomats from Turkey last month after Erdogan accused Israel of committing war crimes. Turkey later also recalled its ambassador from Israel.
Turkey has found itself at odds with its NATO allies, most of whom have backed Israel’s right to defend itself following the Hamas terrorist attack on Oct. 7, while Turkey has echoed the stances of other Middle Eastern nations in questioning Israel and defending the Palestinians.
Fox News Digital’s Peter Aitken and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
Reports of a potential hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is evidence that the terror group is reeling from the IDF’s barrage of Gaza, a top adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told FOX News Tuesday.
Hamas and Israel are reportedly close to to a deal that would exchange as many as 70 women and children held hostage by Hamas in return for the release of female Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
Mark Regev, who recently served as Israel’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and is now a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said one aspect of the deal should underline how evil Hamas truly is.
He cited a figure of 240 people estimated to be held by Hamas, including 32 children and infants.
“I always ask us to remember what sort of people kidnap babies and infants, what sort of people can kidnap a 9-month-old baby. They really are sick. They really are depraved. What more could one say about Hamas?” Regev said.
“But if they are moving towards releasing hostages, it’s not because they have suddenly become humanitarians. It’s because they’ve been on the receiving end of the IDF’s (Israeli Defense Force) military might. And they are feeling the pain, feeling the pressure.”
Regev said he is hopeful for a deal soon, while reiterating the IDF’s pressure campaign must continue in order to expedite the possibility of future prisoner releases by a potentially teetering Hamas.
Fox News Digital’s Charles Creitz contributed to this update.
IDF emphasizes hospital operation targets Hamas, not civilians
An aerial view shows the compound of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on November 7, 2023, amid the ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas. (BASHAR TALEB/AFP via Getty Images)
The Israel Defense Forces emphasized Wednesday that its forces conducting a “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza are targeting Hamas.
The White House confirmed Tuesday that Hamas terrorists are using Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, and the tunnels beneath it as a base for military operations and to hold hostages. Both Hamas and hospital officials have denied the allegation.
“Israel is at war with Hamas, not with the civilians in Gaza,” said Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces. “The IDF has publicly warned time and again that Hamas’s continued military use of Shifa Hospital jeopardizes its protected status under international law.”
Hagari said Israeli forces in Gaza included medics and Arabic speakers to try and provide assistance in the “complex and sensitive environment.”
Israel continues to attack Hamas military targets in Gaza with a relentless campaign of airstrikes. Thousands of Palestinians have moved southward toward the Rafah border crossing into Egypt as the Israeli military has urged civilians to evacuate the warzone in the north.
Fox News Digital’s Brandon Gillespie and the Associated Press contributed to this update.
An Israeli practises using a newly acquired gun, at a weapons distribution point for people allowed to carry arms, at the Ayyelet HaShahar Kibbutz, in northern Israel, near the Lebanese border on October 12, 2023. (Photo by JALAA MAREY/AFP via Getty Images)
Israeli citizens are rushing to arm themselves in the wake of the deadly Oct. 7 terror attacks.
A news release from the Ministry of National Security said more than 236,000 new requests for gun permits have been filed since the attack – a figure equal to the number filed over 20 years, the ministry said.
Israelis feel uneased after Hamas terrorists caught the country off-guard, infiltrating through the south and slaughtering more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, at a music festival and in their homes.
Armed civilian security squads entered the breach in the army’s absence to fight off some of the attackers. Shortly after, Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir said he would expand and arm such squads with 10,000 assault rifles that would be distributed particularly in border towns, mixed Jewish-Arab cities and West Bank settlements.
Some 1,700 permits are being issued daily after the Ministry of National Security eased restrictions, the report said. By comparison, an average of 94 were issued daily in November 2022, and an average of 42 a year earlier.
Israeli soldiers killed in war against Hamas rises to 49: IDF
Israel Defense Forces said captains Omri Yosef David(left) and Yedidya Asher Lev(right) were killed in Gaza on Tuesday. (Israel Defense Forces)
The Israel Defense Forces announced two more soldiers were killed on Tuesday as Israel’s war against Hamas terrorists continues.
The fallen have been identified as Omri Yosef David, 27, and Yedidya Asher Lev, 26, and their families have been notified. Both David and Lev were captains, according to the IDF’s memorial page.
As of Wednesday morning, there here have been 49 IDF soldiers killed since ground operations began in Gaza.
On Wednesday, the IDF said its forces have entered Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital after surrounding the facility earlier.
The army said its forces were carrying out “a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area” at al-Shifa Hospital. It gave no further details but said it was taking steps to avoid harm to civilians.
In a statement, the Israeli military said it had warned “the relevant authorities in Gaza once again that all military activities within the hospital must cease within 12 hours. Unfortunately, it did not.”
Fox News’ Yonat Friling and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
Israel ‘will not stop’ operations in Gaza until Hamas destroyed, hostages released: defense minister
ISRAEL – NOVEMBER 11: Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant visits the 91st Division’s base in northern Israel, November 11, 2023. (Photo by Israeli Defense Minister/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Israeli Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant said the Jewish state “will not stop its operations in Gaza” until Hamas is obliterated and hostages are back home with their families during a Wednesday meeting with U.S. Special Coordinator Brett McGurk.
The meeting between Gallant and McGurk, U.S. Special Coordinator for the Middle East, took place at the Ministry of Defense’s headquarters in Tel Aviv. The two discussed operational developments in Israel’s war against Hamas and the complexity of fighting the terrorist group given that it operates in civilian buildings.
Intelligence and additional details related to the hostages being held by Hamas and efforts to bring them home were also discussed.
The two leaders spoke on the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and how to overcome the challenges in facilitating aid to the civilian population, as well as the international community’s role in getting more urgent supplies delivered to the area.
Gallant also expressed his appreciation for America’s ongoing support and deep partnership, and the two agreed to remain in close contact.
Medical supplies provided by Israeli forces arrive at Gaza hospital
Israel Defense Forces said medical supplies provided by the force have arrived at the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza. (Israel Defense Forces/X)
The Israel Defense Forces said medical supplies, including baby food and incubators, have arrived at al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza amid the targeted attack on Hamas terrorists inside the building.
“We can now confirm that incubators, baby food and medical supplies, provided by the IDF, have successfully reached the hospital,” the IDF wrote on X.
The supplies arrived Wednesday morning after Israeli soldiers began a “precise and targeted operation” against Hamas, which operates out of the hospital. The operation remains active, according to the IDF.
Arabic-speaking soldiers and the IDF’s medical team are reportedly at the hospital to ensure the supplies make it to those in need.
The Israeli army alleges the main command center for Hamas is hidden inside the hospital, in underground tunnels beneath the structures that house hundreds of patients and medical staff. Both Hamas and al-Shifa Hospital staff deny the allegations.
More than 11,200 Palestinians — two-thirds of them women and minors — have been killed since the war began, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, which does not differentiate between civilian and militant deaths. About 2,700 people have been reported missing.
Israel Defense Forces said troops killed Hamas terrorists and encountered explosive devices and terror cells during its “precise and targeted operation” at the al-Shifa Hospital.
The area of the hospital where the operation is taking place was decided upon by intelligence indicating Hamas activity was coming from the area, the IDF said.
Before entering, troops discovered explosive devices and terrorist cells, which prompted an “engagement” that left Hamas terrorists dead, according to the IDF.
A Hamas training camp containing terror tunnel shafts, classrooms, intelligence material and dozens of weapons, including rockets and loaded RPGs, was located in the area on Tuesday by Israeli forces.
In addition, the IDF said it struck two terrorists with a UAV after it identified a terrorist cell exiting a building with an anti-tank missile launching post in the northern Gaza Strip. The terrorists were carrying suspected IEDs, which were planted in the area.
Today a Helsinki appeals court acquitted two Christians of “hate crimes” charges with potential prison sentences for tweeting Bible verses and publishing a Christian booklet about sexual ethics. This unprecedented application of Finnish law has kept Member of Parliament Paivi Rasanen and Lutheran Bishop Juhana Pohjola in court for nearly five years.
Despite today’s unanimous ruling affirming a unanimous lower-court acquittal, those five years are likely to increase. The state prosecutor told media she will appeal to Finland’s Supreme Court, and the court is likely to take the case, said Rasanen and Pohjola’s lawyer, Matti Sankamo, in a press conference from Finland this morning. An adverse ruling could effectively outlaw Christianity in Finland and damage the fundamental human rights to free speech and religious exercise across the world.
“This is a significant win … for everyone concerned with the protection of fundamental freedoms,” Rasanen said in the press conference. “While I celebrate this victory wholeheartedly, I am also saddened at the thought of the enormous state resources expended over the last four years to prosecute us for nothing more than the peaceful expression of our Christian faith. The basic human right to free speech remains under serious threat in Finland and around the world.”
Rasenen and Pohjola said they immediately texted friends and family the news of the court decision this morning, with Pohjola reading Psalm 103’s words of praise to his family, he said. He also immediately shared the news with fellow pastors, and “I got an immediate reaction that ‘We are so happy our bishop is not labeled as a criminal,’” he said.
“This is not only a cultural or legal battle but also a spiritual battle,” Pohjola said, noting their prosecution raises the “question of [whether] pastor and church can teach publicly what we understand to be the word of God and the created order and the natural law. There have been difficult moments, but I understand this is my calling as a Christian and a pastor to guard the faith and teach it publicly and carry the cross.”
That cross, he said, is not a physical cross like the one he wears around his neck, “It’s to pay the price in this age to be a witness for Christ.”
The case began in 2019, when Rasanen argued on X (then Twitter) that Finland’s state church, in which her husband is a pastor, should not sponsor an LGBT parade. She tweeted a picture of Bible verses that say non-heterosexual acts are unnatural.
Finland’s top prosecutor investigated complaints filed over Rasanen’s tweet. This led to three days of police interrogating Rasanen and an investigation into Rasanen’s 25 years as a member of Parliament and former interior minister for the nation recently admitted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
That investigation unearthed a 2004 booklet Rasanen, a medical doctor, wrote and Pohjola published as part of a church catechism series. The booklet, titled “Male and Female He Created Them,” explains basic Christian doctrines about God’s design for marriage to comprise one man and one woman for life.
Helsinki prosecutor Anu Mantila argued Finnish courts should ban from the internet the booklet, Rasanen’s tweet, and an audio recording of Rasanen defending Christian views. Mantila also seeks punitive fines. “Male and Female He Created Them” was published in 2004, several years before Finland adopted the antiterrorism laws now being used to prosecute the two Christians for “hate speech.”
“With the right police and prosecutor, we could expect to see similar cases crop up across Europe and in fact around the world,” noted Alliance Defending Freedom International lawyer Paul Coleman, who is assisting the Christians’ legal defense. Hate crimes laws like Finland’s are on the books in many European nations and American states and cities.
Rasanen said the most difficult part of her prosecution has been the prosecutor’s false accusations against her, including that Rasanen considers homosexuals inferior. She said that is “against my conviction” as a Christian. Christianity teaches that every human is made in God’s image and so beloved by God that He sacrificed His own Son to wash away every sin ever committed.
“We represent the common traditional classical understanding of family and sexual ethics, and now this has been labeled widely in our society and also in the established Lutheran church as something which is … not only offending and extremist but it’s also criminal,” Pohjola said.
Pohjola is the bishop of a small non-state church body that adheres to the Bible’s teachings, which Finland’s state church has in large part abandoned. The Federalist interviewed Pohjola in person in 2021, and Rasanen in person in 2022.
In the press conference, Pohjola and Rasanen expressed gratitude for all the prayers and messages of support they’ve received from around the world, as well as their own families’ steadfast support during their trials. They both called it a “privilege” to defend Christianity and the basic human rights of free speech and freedom of religion in court and in numerous media appearances since their prosection began.
Rasanen, whose 11 grandchildren include a newborn, highlighted a message she’d received from a 16-year-old Finnish girl who said the prosecution has encouraged her to be more public about her faith at school.
“In a free society, faith is not meant to be hidden behind closed doors,” Rasanen said today. “This is what happens in dictatorships, not democracies.”
Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include “The Read-Aloud Advent Calendar,” “The Advent Prepbook,” and “101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation.” An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include “The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids,” from Encounter Books.
“Piers Morgan Uncensored” host Piers Morgan repeatedly pressed UK member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn to label Hamas a terrorist organization during a heated exchange on Monday.
“Are Hamas a terror group? Yes or no?” Morgan asked Corbyn in a verbal battle that has since gone viral online. “I’ve asked you two questions: should Hamas stay in power and are they a terror group. You’re refusing to answer either of them. That is very telling. And you wonder why people believe you had a problem with Jewish people.”
“That is not very telling at all!” Corbyn yelled back. “What is very telling is your inability to keep quiet for 30 seconds to allow anyone to answer a question.”
“Piers Morgan Uncensored” host Piers Morgan repeatedly asked UK member of Parliament Jeremy Corbyn if Hamas was a terror group in a heated exchange on his show Monday. (Getty Images)
“On my show, I ask people questions,” Morgan responded. “Normally they answer them.”
“No, you don’t, you shout at people,” Corbyn said back.
“Only when they don’t answer the question,” Morgan said.
At one point, Corbyn repeatedly asked Morgan “are you done?”
Commentators online weighed in on the verbal battle between Morgan and Corbyn.
Journalist Yashar Ali wrote that the exchange was “extraordinary.”
“A reminder that Corbyn took payments from Press TV in the past. Press TV is funded and controlled by the Islamic Republic,” Ali told followers.
Author Hen Mazzig took Morgan’s side in the verbal battle. “I totally understand why Piers is aggravated, imagine speaking to a politician who cannot condemn a group which beheaded and burned babies alive, and violated little girls. For shame.”
Piers Morgan asks Jeremy Corbyn 15 times whether the former Labour leader thinks Hamas is a terror group.
Morgan referenced previous accusations of antisemitism against Corbyn, which have plagued him and his Labour Party for years. A 2019 poll showed that a whopping 87 percent of Jewish people in Great Britain believed Corbyn was antisemitic, pointing to many incidents and remarks, many of them involving his staunch support for Palestinians and a perceived hostility toward Israel. Recent reports also showed Jewish members of the Labour Party repeatedly expressing concerns of what they saw as growing anti-Semitism within the party.
Corbyn was eventually suspended from the Labour Party from the party over charges of antisemitism. He also once referred to “friends” from Hamas coming to address Parliament.
Corbyn did not respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Fox News’ Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
For more Culture, Media, Education, Opinion, and channel coverage, visit foxnews.com/media.
Jeffrey Clark is an associate editor for Fox News Digital. He has previously served as a speechwriter for a cabinet secretary and as a Fulbright teacher in South Korea. Jeffrey graduated from the University of Iowa in 2019 with a degree in English and History.
Evidence showing how Hamas terrorists used Gaza’s Rantisi Hospital for Children as a terror base was revealed by the Israeli army on Monday.
“Hamas hides in hospitals. Today, we will expose this to the world,” IDF Spokesman Brig.-Gen. Daniel Hagari said as he presented the evidence at a press conference.
Atypically, Hagari, himself was featured in the video footage, as he accompanied the Israeli Navy commando Shayetet 13, the unit he once commanded, on a raid deep inside the Gaza Strip, Hagari, at first, showed evidence of a weapons depot under the Rantisi Hospital that included suicide bombs, AK-47 rifles, grenades, RPGs and more.
BREAKING:
The Israeli Army took control of the Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza & found a secret tunnel leading 20 m below ground to a Hamas command & control center.
Weapons, baby bottles & motorcycles in the tunnel indicate hostages were held there pic.twitter.com/ArFWOqfkgl
On Sunday, the IDF presented footage showing terrorists firing RPGs from the entrance of al-Quds Hospital.
“Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,” Hagari confirmed while standing in front of the displayed weapons. He was standing in a room painted with trees and other children’s drawings above the weapons displayed on the floor.
Hagari then went to another room, showing motorcycles that were used by terrorists during the Oct. 7 massacre of Israel’s Gaza border communities, suggesting that the terrorists likely brought some of the Israeli hostages to Rantisi Hospital.
More evidence of this was found in the room next door, where a woman’s clothing lay on a chair with pieces of rope attached to it. Above the chair, a baby’s bottle was found and diapers lay on the floor nearby.
The IDF suspects that Israeli hostages, including small children and their mothers, were held in the complex and is analyzing the evidence to gain more clues as to the identity and the whereabouts of the hostages, Hagari said.
Army Radio later reported that a bloody knife found in the basement was also being analyzed.
This area of the hospital basement was closed off from the rest of the hospital and contained improvised sanitary installations, including toilets, showers and a kitchen, and had its own ventilation system.
Hagari also showed a list of guard shifts hanging on the wall of a room decorated like a living room, with the title “Al-Aqsa flood” (the Hamas name for the war) and began with Oct. 7.
“Our war is against Hamas, not against the people in Gaza. Especially not the sick, the women, or the children,” Hagari reiterated at the press conference. “Our war is against Hamas who uses them as human shields.”
Rantisi Hospital as well as other hospitals in northern Gaza were evacuated with the help of Israeli forces, Hagari added.
Britain’s High Court effectively executed a sick 8-month-old girl early Monday morning.
Dean Gregory and Claire Staniforth of Derbyshire fought desperately in recent weeks to see that their daughter, Indi Gregory, would continue receiving treatment for her mitochondrial disorder or potentially undergo experimental treatment abroad so that they could spend more time with her.
Hope came in the form of support from Italy, not just from the Vatican but from the government, which gave Gregory citizenship and paved the way for her to be treated at the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Children’s Hospital in Rome.
Despite international pressure, a fully comped alternative, and the parents’ desperate pleas, England’s High Court determined that Gregory would be better off dead sooner rather than later.
In a statement released by #IndiGregory 's father, Dean Gregory, during the night, he said:
"Indi's life ended at 01.45am. Claire and I are angry heartbroken and ashamed. The NHS and the Courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi's… pic.twitter.com/IdbJRuzI2k
Indi Gregory was born on February 24 with a rare degenerative mitochondrial disease that saps energy.
The staff at Queen’s Medical Center in Nottingham recently decided to give up on helping the girl and sought to take her off life support, noting that death was in the girl’s best interests, reported the BBC.
High Court Justice Robert Peel granted the medical center’s application to stop life support in October, suggesting that despite the parents’ moving “belief in Indi’s resilience, courage, and fortitude,” the medical evidence justifying termination was “unanimous and clear.”
Peel’s ruling cleared the way for the physicians’ plan to wean the girl off of intubation and let her die, “at home or at a hospice.”
Gregory’s parents were evidently unwilling to let a London judge and some masked strangers determine the fate of their daughter.
“The doctors painted a terribly bleak and negative picture of Indi’s condition during court proceedings,” said the girl’s father. “Indi can definitely experience happiness. She cries like a normal baby. … We know she is disabled, but you don’t just let disabled people die. We just want to give her a chance.”
With the backing of the British advocacy group Christian Concern, Gregory and Staniforth made repeated attempts to have their little girl moved to a hospital that might actually try to keep her alive. The parents attempted to persuade Court of Appeal judges in London as well as judges at the European Court of Human Rights in France to overturn the fatal decision, reported the Telegraph.
Italy ultimately intervened, granting Gregory citizenship on Nov. 6 and agreeing to cover the cost of Indi’s medical treatment at the Vatican’s pediatric hospital. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni pledged to do what she could to “defend her life” and pressured Britain’s lord chancellor to help facilitate the girl’s transfer to Rome.
Simone Pillon, a lawyer and former senator who helped secure a spot for Indi Gregory at the Vatican hospital, said in a statement, “A place is ready and waiting for Indi at a leading paediatric hospital, which will be funded by the Italian government. I hope there will be no further delay in the Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust cooperating with the specialist Air Ambulance Service and to work with the family rather than cruelly denying them this chance.”
On Thursday, the girl’s Italian guardian, the consul in Manchester, Matteo Corradini, reportedly made a plea to the U.K. High Court, calling on Justice Robert Peel to cede the case to him under Article Article 9§2 of the 1996 Hague Convention.
The next day, the High Court ruled that the Italian efforts to save the child from the British health care system were “wholly misconceived” and that the baby’s life support had to be removed “immediately,” reported the Catholic News Agency.
Dean Gregory responded to the ruling, saying, “Claire and I are again disgusted by another one-sided decision from the judges and the Trust. The whole world is watching and is shocked at how we have been treated.”
“This feels like the latest kick in the teeth, and we will not give up fighting for our daughter’s chance to live until the end,” added Gregory.
Justices Peter Jackson, Eleanor King, and Andrew Moylan all denied the distraught parents the ability to appeal the ruling, thereby sealing Indi Gregory’s fate.
On Sunday, Christian Concern indicated that the baby had been transferred from Queen’s Medical Care Center to a hospice, apparently with a security escort and police presence.
Indi had been moved to a hospice as opposed to home because Justice Peel reneged on his earlier order last Wednesday.
“Indi’s life ended at 01:45. Claire and I are angry, heartbroken and ashamed,” said Dean Gregory. “The NHS and the courts not only took away her chance to live a longer life, but they also took away Indi’s dignity to pass away in the family home where she belonged.”
“They did succeed in taking Indi’s body and dignity, but they can never take her soul. They tried to get rid of Indi without anybody knowing, but we made sure she would be remembered forever. I knew she was special from the day she was born,” added Gregory.
The grieving father indicated that Indi ultimately passed in her mother’s arms.
While not religious, Dean Gregory had Indi baptized in September, telling an Italian newspaper, “When I was in court, I felt as if hell pulled at me.”
“I thought that if hell exists, then heaven must exist too,” said the father, noting he wanted his daughter to go to heaven.
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“Hamas has been hit hard; it is taking blow after blow,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told reporters on Thursday night.
“Our soldiers are progressing and succeeding in their missions. I will repeat this again tonight — there will be no ceasefire without the return of hostages. We will take any action necessary for this,” said Gallant.
“Right now, there are [Israeli] children in Gaza. Some of them saw their own parents die in front of their eyes. Savages have kidnapped them and are holding them hostage. We will not stop fighting until we bring our children home. As a father, I wish to ask the whole world — what kind of father would stop searching for his children? I see these children as my own. I will not stop fighting, and I will not stop searching for them until I reach them,” added the defense minister.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Israel had agreed to observe daily four-hour “humanitarian pauses” in its operation against Hamas terrorists in the northern Gaza Strip. Gallant noted that the Israel Defense Forces are currently operating “in the heart of Gaza City. They are on the outskirts of Shati; they are near the Shifa Hospital; they are very close to the Gaza port.
“The terrorists located in the basements of Shifa [Hospital] tonight, can hear the thundering sound of our tanks and bulldozers. They [terrorists] hear it underground; they hear it and tremble with fear,” said Gallant.
The minister revealed that the military has started employing new methods to reach Hamas terrorists located in attack tunnels, as well as to eliminate the subterranean passageways.
“This will continue and improve in the coming days,” Gallant said. “Our forces are working to find unique solutions for these missions, they are working and succeeding. I repeat: We will reach every person who has acted against the citizens of Israel — anyone who kidnapped and harmed women and children. We will get to them all, whether it takes a week, a month, a year, and if necessary, even years. We will not let anyone go. We will eliminate them [terrorists] all, they have no place under the sun.”
Gallant then pivoted to the north, where Hezbollah “tries to harm the citizens of Israel, it tries and takes blow after blow. Our forces in the northern arena are prepared, the pilots are sitting in the cockpits, ready for any command, prepared and facing the north.
“This is the most justified and righteous war that the people of Israel have experienced since the establishment of the state 75 years ago,” said Gallant. “We are fighting against evil; we are fighting against an enemy who is trying to harm us; we are fighting against those who wanted to show murder and brutality in order to deter us.”
House Republicans want President Joe Biden to “challenge Beijing” when he meets Chinese President Xi Jinping next week in San Francisco. The White House confirmed Friday that Biden and Xi will meet Wednesday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. During their first meeting in nearly a year, they will discuss trade, Taiwan, and managing fraught U.S.-Chinese relations.
Republicans on the House Select Committee on China sent Biden a letter Wednesday urging the president to “challenge Beijing” to prove that it wants to improve relations with the U.S., according to multiple media reports.
The items, in the letter, that Biden should demand from Xi included:
Release all U.S. citizens deemed wrongly detained in China.
Cease all military operations in Taiwan’s air space.
Establish know-your-customer requirements on shipments of fentanyl ingredients.
Release and drop charges against Hong Kong pro-democracy campaigner Jimmy Lai and others held by China.
End near-collisions between Chinese and U.S. warships.
“If Xi fails to deliver, your administration must end its pursuit of zombie engagement and shift gears to a more assertive posture in order to defend American interests and values,” committee Chair Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., wrote, NBC News reported.
“Despite repeated concessions from Washington over the past year, Beijing has made none and continues to threaten core U.S. interests,” Gallagher said in a statement to the Washington Examiner.
“At this week’s meeting, the administration should walk away from the table if the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] proves unwilling to address even the most basic issues in the relationship, such as immediately releasing all Americans wrongfully detained in the PRC [People’s Republic of China], ceasing dangerous and unjustifiable intercepts of American forces, and halting operations in Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone east of the Median Line.”
GOP members on the China committee said they agree with the administration’s “desire to deter a devastating conflict” with China but expressed concerns that the U.S. has made too many concessions while not demanding enough. Republicans criticized Biden for not sanctioning Chinese officials for the “erosion of Hong Kong’s authority” or for its treatment of Uyghur Muslims.
Biden and Xi last met in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia, at a summit of the Group of 20 economies.
Tens of thousands of migrants are expected to flee south from Gaza City in the coming days as Israel continues its campaign against Hamas. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 10,300 Gazans have been killed in the fighting.
The Israeli military continues to tighten its grip on Gaza, working to root out Hamas terrorists in the maze of tunnels beneath Gaza city.
The U.S. says Israel has agreed to daily pauses in fighting to allow aid into Gaza, but both the U.S. and Israel oppose a cease-fire.
There remain roughly 240 Hamas hostages in Gaza, and 10 of them are believed to be Americans. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claims more than 10,300 Gazans have been killed in the fighting, though they do not distinguish between Palestinian civilians and Hamas terrorists.
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Netanyahu-addresses ‘pause’ in fighting in Israel-Hamas war
Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Fox News’ Bret Baier in a “Special Report” exclusive interview about the pauses in fighting planned to help civilians in Gaza.
When asked if he was surprised by by all the pushback happening across the world, Netanyahu did not hold back.
“Well, the river to the sea, from the river to the sea means there’s no Israel, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, which is a tiny area, by the way, that encompasses Israel. There is no Israel. And so what this congresswoman is calling for is Palestine and genocide, the elimination of the Jewish state, the one and only Jewish state of the Jewish people,” said Netanyahu. “That’s absurd. And I salute the Congress for censuring her. But it’s beyond that. I think the protest that you’re seeing, I’m sure it includes some naive people, but there are a lot of people who know exactly what they’re saying.”
FOX News Channel’s chief political anchor Bret Baier will present an exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Special Report (weekdays, 6 PM/ET) on Thursday, November 9th. The pre-taped interview will cover the latest on the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden, the potential of ceasefire and global pressure on Israel, among other topics.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained the reasoning behind sending troops into Gaza and calls for humanitarian pauses from other world leaders in an interview with Bret Baier.
“We don’t want to seek to govern Gaza. We don’t seek to occupy, but we seek to give it and us a better future in the entire Middle East. And that requires defeating Hamas. I’ve set goals. I didn’t set a timetable because, you know, it can take more time,” said Netanyahu.
When asked about the United States and how firm the push has been by President Biden and his administration for the humanitarian pauses, Netanyahu says he has not agreed with everything.
“Well, one thing we haven’t agreed to is a cease fire. A cease fire with Hamas means surrender to Hamas, surrender to terror and the victory of Iran’s axis of terror. So there won’t be a cease fire without the release of Israeli hostages,” said Netanyahu.
Netanyahu further addressed the pause pushed by the Biden administration to allow for hostages to safely exit Gaza.
“The fighting continues against the Hamas enemy, the Hamas terrorists, but in specific locations for a given period, a few hours here, a few hours there, we want to facilitate a safe passage of civilians away from the zone of fighting. And we’re doing that,” said Netanyahu.
FOX News Channel’s chief political anchor Bret Baier will present an exclusive interview with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Special Report (weekdays, 6 PM/ET) on Thursday, November 9th. The pre-taped interview will cover the latest on the Israel-Hamas war, Prime Minister Netanyahu’s relationship with President Biden, the potential of ceasefire and global pressure on Israel, among other topics.
Two Ivy League students have called out their colleges and are demanding them to stop accepting the hate speech they say is running rampant on their campuses.
“The past few weeks have been incredibly difficult. It started with, you know, the usual, the chants and the terrorist sympathies,” Talia Draw, a junior at Cornell University told Fox News.
Draw says those chants have now become death threats.
“Jewish students were truly afraid to go on campus. Students began using pepper spray to defend themselves, not being able to go to classes. People started doing classes from Zoom. I mean, it’s absurd that Jewish students right now feel like they can’t be part of the campus community,” said Draw.
Gabriel Diamond, a senior at Yale University echoed Draw’s concerns on college campuses across the U.S.
“Everywhere on campus, there are signs that say Israel is committing genocide and it says ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free’, calling for the elimination of the Jewish state,” said Diamond. “Students are, in some cases, afraid to go to classes. And overall, there’s a really, really bad sense in the air that these campuses are not safe spaces.”
Draw added what’s even worse is that it’s not just students spear heading the hate — it’s also coming from professors.
“When you have professors using their captive audience, professors telling their students these biased narratives and shouting out all of these buzzwords without giving any of the context, they are indoctrinating their students,” says Draw. “Why are we having these professors in our Ivy League institutions? This is absurd. We are having anti-Semites in our classrooms indoctrinating our students. And not only that, we’re paying a fortune for it.”
Diamond and Draw say overall, it’s a tough time on campus, a hostile environment, and many students do not feel safe right now.
“It’s time that universities really step up to the challenge and that they take action, not just issue statements, because it’s long past time for doing that and that we restore our campuses to a sense of civility and decency,” said Diamond.
The Islamic Jihad released two hostage videos showing an elderly Israeli woman and a young boy both kidnaped and taken into Gaza on Oct. 7 where they’ve been held ever since.
Richard Hecht, the lieutenant colonel and a spokesman for the Israeli military said this is psychological terrorism.
“Hamas and Islamic Jihad are trying to basically bend the arm of Israel into getting a cease fire. But we understand that it will be incredibly difficult because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says they’re going to push forward with operations inside Gaza until they destroy Hamas leadership and get rid of all of the weapons inside the strip.”
On the West Bank, the Israelis were seen operating in the city of Jenin and claim they have killed ten militants in different cells that are currently fighting inside the West Bank.
When it comes to the hostages, there is some progress taking place in Doha as Qatari negotiators are meeting with the head of Mossad and also CIA director William Burns.
An official with knowledge of that visit says the talks have been progressing well toward a deal.
As the operations continue on the ground and the fighting inside Gaza escalates, Israel is facing other fronts, and that includes a drone attack and a ballistic missile attack today from Yemen.
The Israelis say the arrow defense system was able to intercept one of those missiles that was trying to target the southern city of Bin Laden.
In his recent briefing, Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Israel will not back down.
“We will not stop the fighting until we bring the hostages back. We will do what ever it takes,” said Gallant. “As a father I want to ask the world, “I see those kids as my kids, I will not stop the fighting and I will not stop looking for them until I find them,” Gallant emphasized.
Gallant added that the IDF started using new tactics for dealing with Hamas’ tunnels and said those efforts will improve in the coming days.
“We are fighting against evil, we are fighting against an enemy who tries to harm us. We want all Palestinian out of Gaza. This is important in order for us to have freedom of action, we do not want to harm them,” said Gallant.
Gallant said that Israel shares the same goal as America: to eliminate Hamas.
“This phenomenon should stop from exist here and anywhere else. As much as the pressure on Hamas increase, the better the chances we will succeed to release hostages and bring them back home,” said Gallant.
Turkey’s Erdogan, on Israel-Hamas war, says West is ‘too weak to even call for a cease-fire’
Turkey’s Erdogan, on Israel-Hamas war, says West is ‘too weak to even call for a cease-fire’
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is accusing the West Thursday of being “too weak to even call for a cease-fire” in the Israel-Hamas war, a report says.
Erdogan, who previously has called Israel a “war criminal” for its military actions against Hamas, made the comment during a meeting of the 10-member Economic Cooperation Organization in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, according to The Associated Press.
Erdogan said Western nations and organizations are observing these “massacres by Israel” from afar but are “too weak to even call for a cease-fire, let alone criticize child murderers.”
“If we, the Economic Cooperation Organization, as Muslims, are not going to raise our voices today… when will we raise our voices?” he added.
The Economic Cooperation Organization consists of Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.
Erdogan ripped the West on the same day the White House announced the Israeli military has agreed to honor four-hour daily pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the new Israeli policy began “today.”
Pentagon confirms four new attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria following airstrike
Pentagon confirms four new attacks on US forces in Iraq, Syria following airstrike
The Pentagon say U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have faced four attacks in the hours after the U.S. carried out a retaliatory airstrike on a weapons depot in Syria.
The four new incidents bring the total for attacks on U.S. forces since October 17 to 46, the U.S. military says. Three of the attacks occurred in Syria, with two involving rockets and another being a drone attack. The attack in Iraq used drones, the Pentagon says.
The U.S. reported three minor injuries in one of the Syria attacks, but the other three attacks caused no injuries and no damage to infrastructure. The three servicemembers injured have already returned to duty.
The U.S. sough to deter Iran from entering Israel’s war on Hamas, deploying considerable assets to the region. Critics argue the dozens of attacks indicate that the operation is failing, however.
Squad Dem says humanitarian pause in Gaza not enough: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ happening ‘before our eyes’
Squad Dem says humanitarian pause in Gaza not enough: ‘Ethnic cleansing’ happening ‘before our eyes’
Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., held a press conference demanding a cease-fire in Gaza on Thursday, saying “humanitarian pauses” are not enough.
Bush railed against Israel for allegedly commiting “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians in Gaza.
“The idea that we get a break for 4 hours, a break so that we can have food–I saw someone spoke about it and they said, “thank you for giving us raisins for a few hours.” And then do we go back to bombing?” Bush said. “I never personally called for humanitarian pause, and I’m not going to call for a humanitarian pause, and I don’t want to see even though that is what’s happening. A four hour a day humanitarian pause because what we need is to stop the bombing. What we need is what does that what is that mental anguish when you know? Well, we get a break for 4 hours, but as soon as that 4 hours is over, then what? How dare we treat humans in that way?”
The White House says Israel agreed to a 4-hour daily pause in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza on Thursday. Nevertheless, both Israel and the U.S. continue to dismiss the idea of a full cease-fire.
CNN’s Van Jones praises GOP for defending ‘Jewish kids’ on campuses, claims Dems in ‘disarray’
CNN’s Van Jones praises GOP for defending ‘Jewish kids’ on campuses, claims Dems in ‘disarray’
CNN’s Van Jones praised the Republican Party for sticking up for “Jewish kids” on college campuses amid the rash of antisemitism that cropped up after Hamas’ attack on Israel last month.
During his commentary on the third GOP presidential primary debate on Wednesday night, the CNN political contributor remarked that Republicans “forcefully” defended Jewish students while claiming that Democrats found themselves in “disarray” over the issue.
Jones made the comments after complimenting former South Carolina governor and 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s performance on the debate stage that evening.
He began, “I thought Nikki Haley gave a masterclass on foreign policy. I thought she gave a masterclass on abortion. If you just took those two clips, you could teach a course on political communication, conversation. She’s a force. She’s a force.”
He began, “I thought Nikki Haley gave a masterclass on foreign policy. I thought she gave a masterclass on abortion. If you just took those two clips, you could teach a course on political communication, conversation. She’s a force. She’s a force.”
The commentator noted that members of the GOP “came very, very forcefully, saying Jewish kids shouldn’t be scared to leave their dorm rooms in this country.”
“I thought that was an important development in the conversation overall,” he added.
House Republican campaign arm accuses Dems of fueling antisemitism: ‘Cause and Effect’
House Republican campaign arm accuses Dems of fueling antisemitism: ‘Cause and Effect’
The House Republican campaign arm is accusing Democrats of fueling “Jewish hate” and antisemitism in a new ad in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent protests in the U.S.
“Extreme House Democrats’ words promoted hate,” the new ad by the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) says.
The video includes quotes from ‘Sqaud’ Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., in addition to top progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., about the Israel conflict, which began after a brutal terrorist attack by Hamas early last month.
Those Democrats, and others, have been supportive of Palestinians and critical of Israel’s military response and have called for a ceasefire. The video shows Omar standing by remarks in which she accuses Israel of committing “acts of terror.”
Meanwhile, the video references a statement by Jayapal in which she said Israel is a “racist state.” She later issued a lengthy statement clarifying those remarks, saying she doesn’t believe “the idea of Israel as a nation is racist” but that the country’s “extreme right-wing government” has engaged in racist policies.
Separately it quotes Tlaib saying that progressives cannot back Israel’s “apartheid government.”
Gen Z House Democrat says he regrets not voting to condemn Hamas support on college campuses
Gen Z House Democrat says he regrets not voting to condemn Hamas support on college campuses
Freshman Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., admitted that he should not have voted against a resolution condemning support for Hamas on college and university campuses.
“After days of reflection, multiple conversations with my constituents and local leaders, and a difficult, but important listening session with students at UCF Hillel’s chapter — I have come to realize that I should have voted differently on H.Res. 798, to send a clear message that I stand against antisemitism,” Frost said in a statement earlier this week.
The resolution, a symbolic piece of legislation, criticized “the support of Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist organizations at institutions of higher education, which may lead to the creation of a hostile environment for Jewish students, faculty and staff.”
It overwhelmingly passed in a bipartisan 396-to-23 vote last week. Only 22 Democrats, including Frost, and one Republican voted against it.
Frost said he was wary of “a few of the falsehoods” he said were in the Republican resolution and that he was hoping to be able to “vote on the Senate resolution condemning antisemitism, that passed unanimously, but didn’t include those falsehoods.”
“I truly worried that this would open the door for Republicans to infringe on the free speech of students and young people. Which is why I chose to support and co-sponsor the House version of that same Senate resolution,” Frost said.
Fox News’ Elizabeth Elkind contributed to this report
Hamas adviser tells NY Times he hopes war with Israel is ‘permanent’
Hamas adviser tells NY Times he hopes war with Israel is ‘permanent’
The Hamas terror group told The New York Times that it hopes the war with Israel will “become permanent on all the borders” and the Oct. 7 massacre “succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
A Times report headlined, “Behind Hamas’s Bloody Gambit to Create a ‘Permanent’ State of War,” featured a subhead that “Hamas leaders say they waged their Oct. 7 attack on Israel because they believed the Palestinian cause was slipping away, and that only violence could revive it.”
The terror group achieved violence, killing at least 1,400 civilians including women, children and the elderly while kidnapping hundreds of civilian hostages. Israel has responded with force, and the Times reported that “carnage is not the regrettable outcome of a big miscalculation” but instead a “necessary cost of a great accomplishment — the shattering of the status quo and the opening of a new, more volatile chapter in their fight against Israel.”
The Times spoke with Khalil al-Hayya, a member of Hamas’s top leadership body, who told the paper that the terror group “succeeded in putting the Palestinian issue back on the table, and now no one in the region is experiencing calm.”
Actress Gal Gadot’s private screening of disturbing film detailing the crimes in Hamas’ October 7 terrorist attack in Israel caused brawls outside the venue on Wednesday.
Pro- and anti-Israel demonstrators clashed outside the screening, which was held at Los Angeles’ Museum of Tolerance. The audience at Gadot’s private screening included multiple Hollywood executives.
The film, which has been shared with the press in Israel and in New York City, is roughly 47 minutes long. It is a compilation of footage from security cameras, cellphones and Hamas’ own recordings showing the brutal atrocities committed on October 7.
White House: Israel expected to begin ‘4-hour pauses’ daily in northern Gaza
White House: Israel expected to begin ‘4-hour pauses’ daily in northern Gaza
The Israeli military has agreed to honor 4-hour daily pauses in fighting to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza, the White house said Thursday.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the move on Thursday. He said the new Israeli policy began “today.”
“We understand that Israel will begin to implement 4-hour pauses in areas of northern Gaza each day, with an announcement to be made three hours beforehand,” Kirby said. “There will be no military operations in these areas for the duration of these pauses.”
The agreement comes after the directors of both the CIA and Mossad met in Qatar for negotiations surrounding such pauses. CIA Director William Burns and Mossad Director David Barnea were in talks with the Qataris for multiple days, an official with knowledge of the visit told Fox News.
Pentagon confirms ‘multi-rocket attack’ on US forces near Baghdad embassy
Pentagon confirms ‘multi-rocket attack’ on US forces near Baghdad embassy
Pentagon officials confirmed that a “multi-rocket attack” targeted U.S. and coalition forces near the U.S. embassy complex in Baghdad, Iraq on Thursday.
Military officials say the attack occurred on Wednesday and no injuries or damage to infrastructure has been reported. It was the 42nd attack on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17.
Iran-backed terrorist groups have ramped up aggression toward U.S. forces in the region amid Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in Gaza. The U.S. has transfered considerable assets to the region in an effort to deter Iran and its terror proxies from joining the conflict.x new
Israeli brigade kills 50 Hamas terrorists in Gaza City operation: IDF
Israeli brigade kills 50 Hamas terrorists in Gaza City operation: IDF
Israeli Defense Forces say a brigade of Israeli soldiers killed 50 Hamas terrorists during an operation in the heart of Gaza City on Thursday.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari says the Israeli division has been operating in Gaza city for several days. The city is the both the heart of the Gaza Strip and a key command structure for Hamas.
“Division 162 has been operating in recent days in the center of Gaza City in the area of the security quarter of the Hamas organization,” Hagari said in a statement. “Givati Brigade combat team forces eliminated over 50 terrorists.”
In addition to the 50 terrorists, Israel says “intelligence documents were found and a number of significant tunnel shafts, factories for the production of anti-tank missiles, and anti-aircraft launchers were destroyed.”
The IDF says Gaza City played host to Hamas’ central intelligence headquarters as well as its air defense headquarters.
MI couple recounts fearful escape from Gaza during war outbreak
MI couple recounts fearful escape from Gaza during war outbreak
A Detroit-area couple trapped in Gaza like hundreds of other U.S. citizens described the roar of bombs and the fear of not making it home after the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
Unable to leave, Zakaria and Laila Alarayshi hunkered down.
“I was crying,” Zakaria Alarayshi, 62, told reporters Wednesday at the Arab American Civil Rights League offices in Dearborn, Michigan. “Everyone was scared. Bombs everywhere. When I go to sleep, we cannot sleep. Maybe I’ll sleep in a chair for 30 minutes a day.”
He feared the bombs eventually would find them.
“If I’m going to die, OK, I don’t care. Die, die,” he said.
The Alarayshis were among the U.S. residents who were able to evacuate from Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas militant group surprise attack on southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli bombing campaign and ground invasion.
Some 500 to 600 U.S. citizens had been trapped in Gaza since the start of the war, according to the White House. President Joe Biden said 74 Americans with dual citizenship were evacuated on Nov. 2.
Iran launched waves of cyber attacks against key Israeli companies after Oct. 7 massacre: Report
Iran launched waves of cyber attacks against key Israeli companies after Oct. 7 massacre: Report
Iranian hacking groups launched cyber attacks against key Israeli companies in the wake of the October 7 massacre by Hamas last month, according to a new report.
Hackers linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps targeted Israeli companies with ties to transporation, logistics and technology, according to a Thursday report from the Messenger. The hacks have largely taken the form of site outages, but they have also attempted to wipe data from Israeli computers.
The hacking efforts have yet to yield any major successes for Iran, but it is yet another threat posted by the Middle East power.
The U.S. has sought to deter Iran and its proxy terrorist organizations from joining Israel’s war against Hamas, deploying an array of assets to the Eastern Mediterranean and Iraq and Syria.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton rejected calls for a cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war on “The View” Wednesday, instead throwing her support behind “humanitarian pauses.”
“Remember, there was a ceasefire on Oct. 6 that Hamas broke by their barbaric assault on peaceful civilians and their kidnapping, their killing, their beheading, their terrible, inhumane savagery,” Clinton said.
“It did not hold because Hamas chose to break it,” she added.
“Hamas is a terrorist organization,” she said, adding that Hamas has “consistently broken cease-fires over a number of years.”
Also important, Clinton emphasized, was that “Israel should conduct itself by the laws of war and do everything it can to prevent and limit civilian casualties.”
Clinton also argued that a cease-fire would not uphold the laws of war.
“But a cease-fire done prematurely benefits those who do not abide by any laws, by any rules, by any human character value about the value of life,” she said.
Fox News’ Jeffrey Clark contributed to this report
Germany marks 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht with pledge to protect Jews amid antisemitism surge
Germany marks 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht with pledge to protect Jews amid antisemitism surge
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht on Thursday, pledging to protect Jews against the current surge in antisemitism.
Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, was the anti-Jewish pogrom that preceeded the Holocaust in Germany. Scholz stated in a speech that the time to make good on the promise of “Never Again” is now, according to the Agence France-Presse.
“This is about keeping the promise given again and again in the decades since 1945,” Scholz said.
He then went on to address the rising antisemitism in Germany and the world, saying “It outrages and shames me deeply.”
The U.S. military says it destroyed an Iran-linked weapons depot with an airstrike in Syria on Thursday.
The Pentagon says Iran-backed terrorist organizations in the region had used the depot to carry out attacks on U.S. bases in Syria. Since October 17th, U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria have been attacked 42 times.
Houthi rebels in Yemen shot down a U.S. MQ-9 reaper drone in Yemen on Wednesday, the Pentagon says.
The U.S. military has carried out multiple airstrikes in Syria in retaliation against drone attacks on U.S. bases as well as attacks on Israel. The drone is believed to have been on an intelligence-gathering mission when it was shot down.
US reaper drone shot down near coast of Yemen
Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have harried Israel’s war against Hamas alongside Hezbollah.
The U.S. has warned Iran and its proxy terrorist groups not to intervene in the conflict.
Israel says it has no plans to ‘reoccupy’ Gaza after Hamas war
Israel says it has no plans to ‘reoccupy’ Gaza after Hamas war
Israel says it does not plan to “reoccupy” Gaza nor control it for long following the end of its war against Hamas.
A senior Israeli official made the comments to reporters on Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“We assess that our current operations are effective and successful, and we’ll continue to push,” the Israeli official said. “It’s not unlimited or forever.”
“It’s not Israel’s intention to reoccupy Gaza or control it for a long time. The idea behind Israel going in militarily is to destroy Hamas’ ability to threaten us,” the official added. “We understand that will take time and that, even if we complete this phase of our military operation, we’ll still have to take some action against their remaining military infrastructure.”
The statement comes after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised eyebrows earlier thiis week by stating that Israel would control Gaza’s security for an “indefinite period” following the war.
President Biden had previously warned that a full reoccupation of Gaza would be a “mistake.”
The Israel Defense Forces said Thursday soldiers found a Hamas-operated weapons production and storage facility inside a residential building next to a child’s bedroom.
The facility was used to produce and store unmanned aerial vehicles and weapons, the IDF said, and was located inside a residential building near schools in the center of the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood in northern Gaza.
Explosives and operational plans were found right next to a bedroom that belonged to children, according to the force.
Fox News Digital’s Yael Rotem-Kuriel contributed to this report.
Head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit killed in Israeli fighter jet strike: IDF
Head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit killed in Israeli fighter jet strike: IDF
Ibrahim Abu-Maghsib, the head of Hamas’ anti-tank missile unit in the Central Camps Brigade, was killed in a fighter jet strike Thursday, Israeli officials announced.
The terrorist is accused of directing and carrying out “many anti-tank attacks” against Israeli citizens and military members, the Israel Defense Forces said.
Intelligence with the IDF and the Israel Securities Authority determined Abu-Maghsib was killed in the strike.
The Israeli Navy also struck Hamas anti-tank missile launching posts used to attack IDF troops operating in the Gaza Strip as part of the assistance offered to forces on the ground.
Supporters of Palestinians demonstrate near the Israeli Consulate on May 18, 2021, in Houston. Hundreds of protesters chanted slogans of “Free, free Palestine. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” (Photo: Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle/Getty Images)
Left-wing American Jews feel betrayed by the Left.
It’s the Left that remains anti-Israel even after the greatest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and even though most Palestinians and their supporters explicitly call for the destruction of the Jewish state: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Progressive American Jews are shocked by their fellow progressives. But the only thing that is shocking is their shock. Here’s why:
The Left has been calling for an economic boycott of Israel for decades and has labeled Israel an “apartheid” state.
The Left labels America, the most tolerant, multiethnic society in history, “systemically racist.”
The Left called for “defunding the police,” supports attorneys general who abolish bail for violent criminals, and praised demonstrations against America—including many that included vandalism and violence—for more than half a year.
The Left supports all-black dorms and all-black graduations on college campuses. The Left has almost destroyed every liberal ideal regarding race. The University of California, among many other left-wing institutions, has labeled “racist” the liberal ideal of being colorblind, and labeled “racist” the beautiful anti-racist sentiment “There is only one race, the human race.”
The Left—specifically, schools of education and teachers unions—has ruined elementary schools and high schools. And it has destroyed universities as institutions that allow open dialogue.
The Left affirms the lie that men can become women and women can become men, and it
works to crush the life and career of anyone who denies that people can become the other sex. The Left supports the demise of women’s sports by fighting to allow any man who says he is a woman to compete in women’s sports. The Left supports putting children who say they are the other sex on hormone-blocking drugs and supports allowing girls under the age of 21 (and sometimes under 18) who say they are boys to have their breasts surgically removed.
The Left has been waging the most successful war against free speech in American history. As a result, almost half of America’s young people say they believe in free speech but not for “hate speech,” which, of course, means they do not believe in free speech.
The Left asserts that the human fetus at any stage of development is, literally, worthless, certainly worth less than a dog, if the woman carrying it wants an abortion.
The Left has essentially destroyed mainstream journalism. Mainstream media no longer hold truth as an ideal. They promoted the lie for nearly two years that Russia colluded with the Trump presidential campaign in 2016. (Many still do.) They continue to promote the lie that having to present an ID when voting is “racist.”
The Left has poisoned American medicine. The American Medical Association has announced that birth certificates should no longer list the sex of a child. Medical boards threaten to suspend or even revoke the medical licenses of physicians who question the efficacy of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccine or prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to patients in the early stages of COVID-19.
The Left has enthusiastically supported the America-hating and Israel-hating Black Lives Matter organization and the flag-defaming athletes who refused to stand for the national anthem.
The Left has promulgated the racist doctrine in most American schools and businesses that all whites are racist.
The Left teaches schoolchildren that they should be ashamed of their past and that their future is awful (due to carbon emissions), and that capitalism is bad and socialism good.
The Left, in short, hates the West, the most decent civilization ever created, and hates America, the most decent country ever created.
The Left, for decades, has declared Zionism racist—meaning that Israel’s existence is inherently immoral—and has charged Israel with “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Yet, now Jews on the Left are simply shocked that the people who hold all these contemptible positions either morally equate Hamas with Israel or actually support those who chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which is in fact a call to genocide. Specifically, genocide of the Jews.
Unlike the liberal Jew, the left-wing Jew—the professor, the columnist, the teacher—is a destructive fool. But the liberal Jew is inexcusably naive about the Left, nearly all of whose positions have nothing in common with liberalism, not to mention with the Torah.
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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American Family Association
American Family Association (AFA), a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization, was founded in 1977 by Donald E. Wildmon, who was the pastor of First United Methodist Church in Southaven, Mississippi, at the time. Since 1977, AFA has been on the frontlines of Ame
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