Iran and its associates have long referred to the United States and Israel as “Great Satan” and “Little Satan”, respectively. The jihadi extremists positioned themselves as the “axis of resistance” against western influence in what they perceive to be a purely Islamic Middle East.
The leading edge of the warmongering jihadists are rapidly fading.
Hamas, the Popular Islamic Palestinian Arab Terrorist Group
Hamas has been listed by the United States as a foreign terrorist group (FTO) since the US began the list in 1997. The Palestinian Arab group which ran Gaza and has a majority position in the Palestinian parliament since 2006, has the most antisemitic foundational charter of any country. It is sworn to the destruction of Israel.
Hamas invaded the Jewish State on October 7, 2023 and slaughtered 1,200 people and took over 250 hostages. In Israel’s response to the assault, it has decimated Hamas’s leadership including Yahya Sinwar, Ismail Haniyeh and Mohammed Deif. Hamas’s arsenal and tunnel infrastructure has virtually been eliminated and thousands of its members are either dead or in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah in Lebanon
Hezbollah, like Hamas, is sponsored by Iran. The Lebanese-based US FTO launched an attack on Israel on October 8, and Israel began responding more aggressively over the past few months. During this time, Israel killed much of Hezbollah’s leadership including Hassan Nasrallah, Ali Karaki, Ibrahim Qubaisi, Fuad Shukr, Ahmed Mahmud Wahbi and Ibrahim Aqil.
After Israel incapacitated much of Hezbollah’s fighting force in southern Lebanon, the group accepted a ceasefire agreement. Israel hopes that the government of Lebanon will assume military control of its territory, expunge Hezbollah from parliament and emerge from decades of being a failed state.
Hamas and Hezbollah flags, under foot
Syria
The Iranian-backed government of Bashar al-Assad has overseen a brutal civil war which has left over 600,000 dead and millions displaced since 2011. Since Hezbollah’s ceasefire, Syrian resistance forces have overtaken many of the large cities of western Syria and are closing in on Damascus. It is possible that Assad’s regime may fall as Russia is too weakened by its war with Ukraine, and Iran is too vulnerable to extend resources to its proxy.
Islamic Republic of Iran
The leading state sponsor of terrorism is fully exposed after Israel launched a massive air strike in late October. While Israel has not followed up with additional attacks to remove the Iranian nuclear weapons program at this time, Iran has pulled back on its attacks against Israel, out of fear of being highly vulnerable.
What began as a massive war of Iran and its proxies to eradicate the Jewish State and prevent its integration with Sunni Arab countries including the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is becoming a rout of the jihadi regimes. The “axis of resistance” is vanishing into the “axis of nonexistence.”
It remains to be seen if the vanquished jihadists will repeat the “three Nos” slogan from 1967, or consider accepting the basic human rights and dignity of the Jewish State. Unlike 57 years ago, the incoming US president and Saudi Arabia will be important factors in shaping the contours of the regional relationships into the future.
The New York Times, mouthpiece for progressive dreams rather than facts, once again made up news that the Islamic Republic of Iran is taking a “conciliatory tone” in the Middle East and “that it wants less confrontation,” even after the Islamic Republic’s leaders blast Israel.
Throughout the article, the Times claimed that Iran had a “shift in tone” and sought to “defuse tensions” in “recent diplomacy.” It concluded that “Without a doubt, among senior officials and ordinary people, there is a real desire to end the tensions with the West and get along…. Cooperation with the West is not viewed as a defeat.”
These comments stand in sharp contrast to those published by Hezbollah’s Al Manar which led its article with “Resistance Unbreakable: Imam Khamenei Declares Israel’s Doom, Al Aqsa Storm Unstoppable.”
The article quoted from the “Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei” who said that “regional resistance movements cannot be quelled” and that the “Zionist regime is destined for departure.” The article said that “Hezbolah hailed the operation’s [war against Israel] success” as did Hamas.
Al Manar concluded with a quote from the Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei who said that “the result of the warmongering and crimes committed by the Zionist regime, fully supported by the United States… is the martyrdom of 60,000 innocent people,” inflaming the jihadi readers to seek retribution against the West.
The editors of the Times do not want the United States or Israel to go to war remove the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons, so openly lie to its readership that Iran is a peaceful actor in the region and not the leading state sponsor of terrorism. It is publishing boldface and dangerous lies.
It begs the questions of whether The New York Times is a tool of Iran.
The New York Times does more than obfuscate the truth in its news stories and editorials; it does it with its pictures as well.
It is a plain fact that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism, as so designated by the U.S. State Department. Iran’s leaders provide material support to U.S. designated terrorist groups including Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. Those groups launched a genocidal war on Israel on October 7 and 8, 2023, while Iran put the finishing touches on its nuclear weapons program.
Pretty terrifying stuff.
But the Times doesn’t want you to think about the genocidal jihadists in a negative light. Therefore, the socialist-jihadi propaganda pages portray Iran as a sophisticated peaceful country, and cast Israel as the belligerent party.
On November 11, 2024 the Times headlined that “Iran’s new, more moderate government” might strike a deal with President-elect Donald Trump. Rather than show a picture of the Iranian leadership or its nuclear program, the Times showed a picture of a couple of women sitting quietly in a park reading the news.
New York Times on November 11, 2024
This absurdity is repeated over-and-again by the Iranian-apologist paper.
On October 28, 2024, the Times reviewed how the U.S. Biden Administration and the Israeli Netanyahu government were reviewing methods to stop Iran’s evil attacks against Israel. The Times thought that displaying a picture of “Iranian shoppers in Tehran” would be useful for readers to consider the threat posed by the terrorist regime.
The Times did this before the October 7, 2023 massacre of 1,200 people in Israel as well. On February 20, 2021, the Times penned a story about the U.S. trying to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. To give readers an appreciation for the seriousness of the matter, the paper included a large photo of two Iranian women in “a bazaar in Tehran.”
New York Times February 20, 2021
It’s reminiscent of when the Times used to offer vacation package “Journeys” to various countries including Iran and Saudi Arabia to make some coin. It marketed the country which executes gays and minors with “Persia. Iran. For 2,500 years, this powerful country has entranced, mystified and beguiled the world. Discover the ancient secrets and modern complexities of this influential land on a 13-day itinerary, visiting some of the world’s oldest archaeological sites and the family home of the religious leader who engineered Iran’s transition to an Islamic republic. Welcome to the once-forbidden land of Iran.“
It was a complete whitewashing of a regime which has more blood on its hands than almost any other country.
Not only does the NY Times not tell its readers that Hamas and Hezbollah are terrorist groups and that Iran is a state sponsor of terror, it deliberately attempts to reorient the story that Israel is a “right-wing” country waging war on peaceful female shoppers.
ACTION ITEM
Write to the Times to stop showing pictures of Iranian women shopping when writing articles about the leading state sponsor of terror building nuclear weapons.
On June 5, 1968, on the one year anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian Arab, shot and killed Senator Robert Kennedy while he was campaigning to be the president of the United States. Sirhan assassinated the American politician because of his support for Israel.
On October 7, 2023, on the fiftieth anniversary of the 1973 Yom Kippur Arab-Israeli War, the Iranian proxy of Hamas massacred 1,200 people in Israel and took over 250 people hostages. In the ensuing months, other Iranian proxies went to war with Israel including Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen, while the Islamic Republic of Iran attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump as he campaigned to be the next president.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., Saturday, July 13, 2024. (photo: Gene J. Puskar / AP)
On February 1, 2024, the FBI filed a lawsuit against members of the US designated foreign terrorist group Hamas. The suit mentions Iran 79 times as a partner for Hamas’s October 7 massacre, as well as ongoing support for the group. Beyond that gruesome day, the suit alleges that Hamas and Iran “knowingly and intentionally combined, conspired, confederated, and agreed together and with each other to kill nationals of the United States.“
The Iranian proxies are public with their threats on the U.S. On October 28, 2023, one of Hamas’s leaders broadcast “The U.S. Administration and the Western countries supporting the aggression are full partners with the occupation in the genocidal war and the cascade of blood that flows from defenseless civilians.This blood will be a curse and a volcano of fury from the masses of our Ummah [i.e., the Muslim community] and the free people of the world against these killers.” An October 18 broadcast from Hamas had a similar message that Hamas is “stating loud and clear that the American administration and the Western countries that support the aggression are full partner countries along with the occupation forces in this annihilation war.” On December 2, 2023, a Hamas official said on Hamas media that “[t]here is not a single crime that the U.S. has not committed against Gaza. May Allah settle the score with America, and may He take revenge on that criminal Nazi country.”
The jihadi war against the United States predates the October 7 jihadi massacre. For example, as stated in the lawsuit, “On or about December 22, 2017, Hamas spokesman Abd Al Qadir Al-Hawajiri spoke at a Hamas rally that was broadcast on a Hamas media outlet. In his speech, Al-Hawajiri condemned American support for Israel, proclaiming that ‘that entity [i.e. , Israel] will cease to exist, as will America.‘”
The vitriol against the United States accelerated after President’s Trump’s pro-Israel actions, specifically mentioning “the American Declaration that the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem to be the entity’s [i.e., Israel’s] capital, as well as to America’s recognition of the legality of the settlements.”
But the jihadi war against Israel is not about the “settlements” or the capital, but Jewish presence in any form. As Ismail Haniyeh, a leader of the Hamas movement said months before he was assassinated in Iran, “We do not want to see you [Jews] on this land; this land is ours, Al-Quds is ours, all of it is ours… there is no place or residing for you.” He went on to commit to waging war and never negotiating or compromising with Israel.
Iran and Hamas actively recruited monetary support from the United States and elsewhere to wage their genocidal war. In November 2020, Hamas’s Al Aqsa TV held a “First Electronic Pioneers Conference” in which Haniyeh said “We need to upgrade the support, from support through soft power to support by means of money and weapons. Yes, I would like to make it perfectly clear: I am talking about support by means of money and weapons, for the mujahideen and the murabitun [the people who harass Jews visiting the Jewish Temple Mount] in Jerusalem and its environs.” Members of South African parliament were in attendance.
Millions of dollars were routed – and continue to be routed – to Hamas via Gazan charity groups. That money is used to kill Israelis, Americans and to fund assassination attempts on American leaders.
Jihadi groups are not just waging a war on Israel but also on America. The genocidal assassins are not limited to the fanatical leaders of Iran and Palestinian groups and include members of the socialist-jihadi alliance in the United States who provide material support for the violence.
The plight of Jews today can be traced directly to President Barak Obama’s second term from 2013 to 2016. The rampant antisemitism in the United States and death and destruction in the Middle East today stem from Obama’s failed and deliberate strategies as outlined below:
Obama’s minimization of antisemitism
Enabling Iran to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons
Handing billions of dollars to Iran and its terrorist proxies
Not encouraging the Iranian revolution to topple the government
Throwing Middle Eastern allies under the bus
Changing Democratic Party position that Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) should move to Israel instead of a new Palestinian state
Stating that the presence of Jews in Jerusalem caused problems rather than Arab antisemitism
Making Jews living in Jerusalem illegal
Fostering the Islamic takeover of American universities
Bringing many refugees from Syria and Somalia to the US
Minimizing Antisemitism
Obama’s desire to minimize the problem of antisemitism stemmed from his focus on repairing relations with the Muslim world which he felt was badly damaged by the prior administration’s war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. It later extended to prioritizing other victims of preference, Blacks and other majority-minorities in the United States over Jews.
The most glaring example of Obama’s blindness to Muslim antisemitism was the February 2015 shooting in a kosher store in Paris, France. Obama said the shooting was “random” and his spokesperson then doubled down in clarifying the comment that there was no anti-Jewish motivation of the jihadi radicals.
At his final State of the Union address in 2016, Obama said nothing about antisemitism and only flagged ‘Islamophobia’ despite anti-Jewish hate crimes being 2.2 times more frequent than anti-Muslim hate crimes according to the FBI. Obama said nothing about the Islamic Republic of Iran’s rampant anti-Jewish smears and Holocaust denial contests as he cozied up to the Islamic zealots.
Enabling Iran to have a legal pathway to nuclear weapons
Despite aggressive sanctions which started under President George Bush in 2005, Obama signed an agreement which left Iran’s entire nuclear program intact including its uranium mines, milling and enrichment facilities and nuclear reactors. Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities coupled with its emerging nuclear weapon program has enabled it to act with near impunity throughout the Middle East. It has put the region on edge with Saudi Arabia now insisting on getting weapons of mass destruction to balance the Shiite-Sunni regional dominance.
While Israel had relative peace for the past fifty years as the only country with nuclear weapons, we are seeing the ramifications of large Muslim Arab countries also possessing such weaponry, courtesy of Obama.
Handing billions of dollars to Iran and its terrorist proxies
Iran has been using its proxies to kill and terrorize Jews for years, especially in the aftermath of Obama giving billions of dollars to Iran. The first installment of $1.7 billion in 2016 was sent in cash. Estimates for the amount of money that was ultimately released as part of the Iranian nuclear deal are as much as $150 billion from several countries according to FactCheck.org, with more conservative figures being $50 billion.
The funds released to Iran have helped fund Iranian proxies like Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. Each group has intentionally killed Israelis over the past year, with Hamas’s savage massacre of October 7, 2023 being the most heinous and gruesome.
Not encouraging the Iranian revolution to topple the government
The ascendency of the antisemitic genocidal regime in Iran was not a foregone conclusion. The Iranian people had started a ‘Green Revolution’ in 2009 with the expectation that Obama would give America’s support to install a moderate regime. Obama declined to do so, and thought he could negotiate a nuclear arms deal with the radical zealots. That decision led to Secretary of State John Kerry concluding one of the worst foreign policy deals in American history a few years later.
Throwing allies under the bus
As opposed to toppling genocidal regimes, Obama supported the ouster of friends.
Obama started his presidency with a trip to Cairo, Egypt in 2009, but ultimately stabbed the American ally in the back. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak faced pressure to resign in 2011, Obama let him fall. It welcomed the democratically-elected head of the terrorist group Muslim Brotherhood Mohammed Morsi instead. Saudi Arabia and other allies in the region became alarmed “with the U.S. position, publicly pushing Mubarak out. And frankly so are we—this isn’t how you handle issues in region.”
Obama made his focus on Iran known to the whole world from the outset when he first met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in May 2009 at the White House. Rather than strongly stand by his ally Israel, he used the opportunity to say “Iran is a country of extraordinary history and extraordinary potential, that we want them to be a full-fledged member of the international community and be in a position to provide opportunities and prosperity for their people.”
President Obama meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in 2009
This narrative of Iran being “extraordinary” has continued to be pushed by the liberal mainstream media. When the New York Times publishes articles about Israel and Iran, it doesn’t show images of Iranian missiles but female shoppers, making Israeli leaders look foolish for being alarmed for no reason.
Screenshot of New York Times article on October 28, 2024
The Times even had vacation packages to Iran which it advertised as “Persia. Iran. For 2,500 years, this powerful country has entranced, mystified and beguiled the world. Discover the ancient secrets and modern complexities of this influential land on a 13-day itinerary, visiting some of the world’s oldest archaeological sites and the family home of the religious leader who engineered Iran’s transition to an Islamic republic. Welcome to the once-forbidden land of Iran.” It similarly called Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Morocco amazing places to visit. But not Israel which it only promotes through a Palestinian lens as a place of “struggle” (jihad in Arabic).
Changing Democratic stance that Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) should move to Israel instead of a new Palestinian state
When Obama was elected to his first term, the official 2008 Democratic party platform had a few key statements about Israel and the region:
On Hamas: “The United States and its Quartet partners should continue to isolate Hamas until it renounces terrorism, recognizes Israel’s right to exist, and abides by past agreements.”
On “Refugees: “The creation of a Palestinian state through final status negotiations, together with an international compensation mechanism, should resolve the issue of Palestinian refugees by allowing them to settle there, rather than in Israel.”
On borders: “All understand that it is unrealistic to expect the outcome of final status negotiations to be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949.”
On Jerusalem: “Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel.”
Hamas’s current war on Israel to descend on Jerusalem, destroy the Jewish state and bring millions of SAPs into Israel was essentially blessed under the second Obama administration.
Stating that the presence of Jews in Jerusalem caused problems rather than Arab antisemitism
In October 2014, the Obama Administration’s Josh Earnest said “The US condemns the recent occupation of residential buildings in the neighborhood of Silwan by people whose agenda provokes tensions.” The message was clear: Jews buying homes and living in eastern Jerusalem is terrible because the Jews are stirring tensions, not because Arab Muslims are consumed with Jew hatred.
The New York Times followed Obama’s lead a few days later and portrayed the residents of Silwan as peaceful Arabs who were set upon by a few crazy Israelis moving next door: “An influx of right-wing Jewish settlers who have acquired property in the area in recent years have made the neighborhood a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” The Jews were the extremists and caused violence, not the other way around.
Obama’s inversion that Jews are the racist right-wing troublemakers while Palestinian Arabs (who voted the antisemitic genocidal group Hamas to a majority of parliament) as peace-seeking individuals has become mainstreamed in the media today.
Making Jews living in Jerusalem illegal
As Obama ended his second term, he decided to cap his vilification of Jews and Israel by allowing United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334 to pass in December 2016, which declared it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL), including in the Judaism’s holiest city of Jerusalem. It called for countries to treat E49AL/ West Bank as distinct from the rest of Israel, despite the Palestinian Authority signing the Oslo Accords which recognized Israeli control over parts of the region.
Fostering the Islamic takeover of American universities
While Obama was restricting where Jews could live in the Jewish holy land, he was welcoming tens of thousands of Muslims from the Middle East into American universities.
The Kennedy-Lugar Youth Exchange and Study Program was launched in 2003 to soften the image of America’s war on terror. Obama ramped up the program in 2009. By the 2015/6 academic year, 61,000 Saudi students were in American universities. That high figure represents 0.2% of the entire population of Saudi Arabia to a single country. By way of comparison, the ENTIRE American students abroad cohort all over the world is around 162,000, or 0.05% of the U.S. population. Imagine 650,000 American students all learning in India for the year!
Along with the Muslim students came billions of dollars. Qatar, Saudi Arabia and other Muslim Arab countries funded departments, handed scholarships and enabled the growth of Students for Justice in Palestine hate groups to gather strength on over 200 campuses. These groups have led the harassment and intimidation of Jews at levels over five times higher than campuses without these groups according to analyses by the AMCHA Initiative. These universities routinely teach that Israel is a “imperialist colonialist power,” as though Jews do not have thousands of years of history in the holy land.
Bringing many refugees from Syria and Somalia to the US
In addition to the influx of money and students from Muslim countries into American universities was the growth in the number of refugees from the Middle East around the United States. While prior administrations had never permitted more than 25,000 refugees into the US from the Middle East, by 2016, Obama had welcomed nearly 45,000, primarily from Syria and Somalia.
The current war on Jews in the United States and Israel, home to 85% of world Jewry, was fueled by President Obama’s push to elevate the Muslim world, and the Islamic Republic of Iran in particular. The empowerment of Iran and its proxies in the Middle East have killed thousands of Jews, while the encouragement of Islamic power in the US has fueled antisemitic hate crimes here.
After Iran fired over 180 missiles at Israel, Israel considered how to handle synagogue attendance during the Rosh Hashanah holiday. Synagogue attendance typically swells on the holy days, with even more secular Jews attending services. But most synagogues only have small mamads (safe rooms) to protect people during a shelling attack, so hundreds could be left unprotected during an attack.
The situation is even more dire at one of the largest synagogues in the world – the Western Wall Plaza at the Kotel – where thousands of Jews gather in the Old City of Jerusalem. The large outdoor location has few easily accessible places to hide from missiles.
Perhaps the grey-domed al Aqsa Mosque can be used by thousands of Jews as a safe room from jihadi missiles. The jihadists would presumably try to spare their religious building, making the mosque a potential haven for Jews.
Al Aqsa Mosque from outside Jerusalem’s Old City walls (photo: First One Through)
Hamas termed their barbaric slaughter of Israelis the “al Aqsa Flood.” Perhaps it didn’t imagine that the term would become a prophecy inverted, drawing masses of Jews onto the Temple Mount.
The Islamic Republic of Iran has many proxies surrounding Israel: Hamas which controls Gaza; Hezbollah which controls Lebanon; Syria; and farther away, the Houthis in Yemen.
Does it also have cells in the West Bank?
As Iran sent over 180 missiles into Israel on October 1, 2024, two Palestinian Arabs from Hebron shot and killed seven people in Tel Aviv and injured many others. The timing was minutes apart.
This was the first time that Palestinian Arabs shot up Tel Aviv streets during the year long war against Palestinian terrorists. Is it a coincidence that Palestinian Arabs decided to blast Tel Aviv just as Iranian missiles showered from above?
West Bank Arabs have been much more supportive of the October 7 attacks and commitment to destroying Israel than their counterparts in Gaza according to Palestinian polls. Israeli activity likely prevented a two-front war on October 7, which would have resulted in thousands of additional Israeli deaths in cities like Kfar Saba and Ra’anana which are very close to the 1949 Armistice Lines.
While the world is focused on the violent storm between Israel and Iran, Israel’s security will need to investigate how deeply Iran has integrated with the newer terrorist groups in the West Bank like Jenin Battalion, Lions’ Den and Tulkarm Brigades, to clamp down on yet another front of jihadi terrorism.
ACTION ITEM
Write White House and pro-Israel members of Congress like Ritchie Torres, Mike Lawler and Josh Gottheimer or your local representative to get the State Department to label the Jenin Battalion, Lion’s Den and the branches of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade as US designated foreign terrorist organizations.
The escalation of the war between Iranian Proxies and Israel continues to lay bare the alias armies of Iran embedded around the region.
The United Nations is demanding diplomatic negotiations commence between Israel and the Palestinian Authority while only narrowly condemning the Hamas (not Palestinian) savage massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023. For the UN, Hamas is at once distinct from Palestine, and simultaneously a legitimate Palestinian political group, as UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths said “Hamas is not a terrorist group for us, of course, as you know. It’s a political movement.”
Does the UN think that Hamas is a separate group inside of Gaza or does it acknowledge that Palestine launched a genocidal war against Israel?
In Lebanon, Hezbollah has vast military capabilities, estimated to be around 150,000 missiles. In conjunction with Hamas’s October 7 war, Hezbollah began its attack on Israel. Israel’s response to Hezbollah has been characterized as an attack on Lebanon rather than Hezbollah.
The shifting nouns makes Israel appear to be the aggressor against a neutral party: while Hamas attacks Israel, Israel attacks Gaza; while Hezbollah attacks Israel, Israel attacks Lebanon.
Hamas controls Gaza and has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian parliament. Hezbollah controls southern Lebanon and has 48% of the Lebanese government.
In no other sphere can a country claim that its military is not a functioning arm of the government. Such fictitious divide affords the government a veneer of peaceful intentions while its army wages war.
Simultaneously, both are proxy groups of the Islamic Republic of Iran, colonial outposts on the borders of Israel.
Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel are either 1) a rogue third party terrorist group attack on the Jewish State, 2) a Lebanese attack, or 3) an Iranian attack. If it is a separate entity, than a diplomatic solution must a) have the Lebanese government confiscate all its weapons, b) strip the group of all seats in parliament, and c) expel it from Lebanon. If the attacks on Israel were from Lebanon, than Israel has full right to attack all of Lebanon. If the attacks were spearheaded by Iran, than we have long been in a regional war.
Multiple countries issue a release calling for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon (people and government), making no mention of Hezbollah or Iran, tacitly accepting that Hezbollah is part of Lebanon and that Lebanon launched an unprovoked attack on Israel.
The same should hold for Hamas and Palestinian territories: Palestinians launched a war against Israel, not Iran or a limited wicked entity.
Labeling armies with unique names distances the governments and population from the violence they perpetrated. It falsely shields the attacking government and people from fault and casts the defensive response as unwarranted and sinister.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez calls members of Hezbollah “innocent civilians” and Israel’s attack a violation of “international humanitarian law,” which implies that she believes that the people and government of Lebanon started a war with Israel and Israel is acting in self defense.
The anti-Israel world does not believe that non-Hamas Gazans who are killed by Israel’s defensive war are civilians caught in a war that its government started, but defenseless targets of an Israeli initiated attack. The “Hamas attacks Israel / Israel attacks Gaza” (not Hamas) narrative obfuscates the culpability of the people and government of Gaza.
The antisemitic jihadists in Iran, Lebanon and Gaza launched a war of annihilation against the Jewish State using alias armies, attempting to shield the people and governments as uninvolved bystanders. Much of the world has ingested the red herring and is defaming Israel’s just war in the latest incarnation of a blood libel.
There are two competing narratives of the war between Lebanon and Israel, one being promoted by the liberal media, the United Nations and Muslim-majority countries (the “Anti-Israel Camp”), and the other by Israel and its supporters. How each side sees the framework of the war will continue to direct the commentary as the war unfolds.
Anti-Israel Narrative
According to one telling of the story, Hezbollah is a “Lebanese militant group” which is “supported by Iran.” The group attacked Israel on October 7, just after the Hamas massacre, “to show support for its Palestinian ally,” and will stop fighting Israel as soon as there is a “ceasefire agreed to by Hamas.”
In this telling of the events, Israel has opened up a new front against Hezbollah for virtually no reason, as the key to stopping the Hezbollah attacks is to end the fighting in Gaza. Israel’s “ferocious assault on Hezbollah” is not only unwarranted but infuriating the United States President Biden who has sought to confine the fighting to Gaza.
NY Times article bemoaning Israel’s attack on Hezbollah, creating a rift between the U.S. and Israel
Hezbollah is portrayed as only a Lebanese ally of the Palestinian group Hamas, whose mission and intentions are unstated. Israel’s mission is seemingly a folly, destined to repeat the “mistakes the United States made after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.”
Pro-Israel Narrative
The same events are seen very differently by Israel supporters and those who appreciate a truthful account of current events.
Hamas has majority support of Palestinians, with 58% of parliament. It’s goal to destroy Israel is to enable 6 million Palestinians to overtake the Jewish State. Hezbollah is slightly less popular than Hamas, with 48% of parliament and seeks to expel the 490,000 Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) who reside in Lebanon to a new state of Palestine.
Israel was attacked by both Iranian proxies of Hamas and Hezbollah on October 7, 2023 and is fighting a defensive war it does not want against each. The threat of Hezbollah is much greater than Hamas, which has an estimated 150,000 missiles aimed at Israel. Over 80,000 Israelis in the north have been internally displaced to the south because of the Hezbollah attacks and ongoing threats.
These narratives are very different. The anti-Israel camp thinks that the United States waged wrongful revenge attacks after 9/11 and Israel is going down the same ill-advised path. But the pro-Israel view is that the American response wasn’t the problem: it waged the war terribly, first by attacking Iraq which was not involved in the 9/11 attacks, and then spending twenty years in Afghanistan fighting a terrorist group that could not pose an existential threat to the US, for the action al Qaeda took on a single day. That dynamic is not remotely similar for Israel fighting two clear and obvious enemies on its borders that are constantly attacking its citizens.
If the reports you consume tell you that Hezbollah is simply helping its beleaguered Gazan allies who are being crushed by the powerful Israeli army against the wishes of the United States, know that you are absorbing a toxic anti-Israel fake account of the just defensive war Israel is waging against genocidal foes next door.
Around 2,800 members of the Hezbollah terrorist group were injured in an exploding pager incident on September 17, 2024. The tally was almost exclusively Hezbollah militants, as it would appear that the pagers had been purchased by the group some time prior and distributed to its team as a measure to avoid eavesdropping.
Scene from video of Hezbollah terrorist shopping in grocery falling to ground after pager explodes
The world has long known that the Islamic Republic of Iran is the major sponsor of Hezbollah, as well as other jihadi terrorist groups like Hamas and the Houthis in Yemen. To see that the involvement of Iran goes beyond sending money and protecting it at the United Nations, but is an integral part of the terrorist militancy is alarming.
But not surprising.
The world saw that many members of the United Nations agency for Palestinian wards, UNRWA, are members of Hamas. It makes one ask how many UNRWA employees would have been injured had similar pagers been distributed by Hamas?
The line between “legitimate” state actors and countries to murderous jihadi groups is blurred. The question is what to do with those “legitimate” agents of death.
First One Through 