Tag Archives: politics

Eden Without Snakes

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The Bible’s Garden of Eden is the prototypical paradise. God’s first hand creation of nature in balance with man is the dream of many, a place of bliss and innocence. Philosophers and biblical commentators ponder what would the world have been like had the snake never teased people into disobeying God’s command of eating from the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Would mankind be simple and peaceful, enjoying God’s grace?

Alas, the world we live in today is a product of that fateful day. Mankind was expelled from the garden and soon knew of murder, and the snake became one of the most feared and hated animals to man. A steep price to pay for the knowledge between good and evil.

There are almost no countries on Earth without snakes today, as the reptile thrives in a wide variety of climates. New Zealand, an island far removed from most inhabited locations is one of those snake-free homes. Its natural beauty is beyond comparison, with a habitat with few predators; quite a world apart from its closest neighbor Australia with crocodiles, Great White sharks and killer spiders, jellyfish, snakes and taipans.

New Zealand’s beauty and lack of lethal animals offers an initial peer into the inhabitants’ innocence. Its government makes visitors declare every food item and more upon entering the country, less its fragile environment become threatened by the introduction of new harmful elements.

This Eden Without Snakes fosters a socially conscious and environmentally-friendly culture, at least according to the European colonialists who took control of the islands from the indigenous Maori. White Europeans now constitute just shy of 70 per cent of the nation, Maori 16.5% and Asians 15.3%. The colonialists cemented their rule on February 6, 1840 with the signing of the Waitangi Treaty in which the Maori essentially handed over their land to the Europeans. The country celebrates Waitangi Day every February 6, without pausing how the European colonists importation of various animals and trees to make it resemble Scotland, destroyed the Eden that existed before their arrival, almost bringing the native flightless birds like the kiwi to extinction.

Residing thousands of miles from the nearest country – with whom it has warm bilateral relations – has insulated the country from wars. Its national assessment of the risk of terrorism is low, quite different than Australia (probable) and the United Kingdom (substantial).

The clueless New Zealanders (no admitted relationship to Ben Stiller’s Zoolander) broadcast their ignorance when they attack Israel in its defense against antisemitic genocidal jihadists who live next door. The country passed laws sniffing out Israelis visiting the country, while the actual local Kiwi colonists seek out Israelis for harassment on the streets.

Posters all over Christchurch seeking Israelis on vacation (photo: First One Through)

No Western democracy deals with threats to existence like Israel. Israel exists on one extreme, a small sliver of a country surrounded by jihadists who seek to destroy the country as a matter of open public policy, while the remote Eden of New Zealand is on the other extreme.

Wanted poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on street of Christchurch, NZ (photo: First One Through)

To watch the Kiwis stand in judgment of the Jewish State is a pathetic display of virtue signaling by naive and entitled actual colonists, about a situation thousands of miles away which has no direct bearing on their peaceful existence. One is left with concluding New Zealanders are either idiots or antisemites.

We can also let them declare their every bias before they proffer their views to avoid contaminating other democracies.

Related:

Israel’s Peers and Neighbors (March 2016)

Anchor Diplomacy

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For years, politicians tried to resolve conflicts via “shuttle diplomacy.” A senior official would act as mediator by running to one side of a conflict and take notes, then shuttle to the counterparty to relay information and take notes, all the while, attempting to bridge the gap between the parties.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry under President Obama was a classic example of this approach in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Convinced that nothing could be done that would upset the broad Palestinian Arab street, he hammered home that Israel, the stronger party, must continue to do more to placate Palestinian demands. His list of demands from Palestinians grew ever longer, never applying pressure on the Palestinian Authority.

Kerry is the prime example of a failed negotiator in shuttle diplomacy. He remained to the very end, too dense to consider how bad he approached the Middle East, making parting comments as he left office as if he had earned any credibility.

In Donald Trump’s first term in office, he immediately reversed the Kerry failed thinking of peace-making. He adopted an “outside-in” tactic of not letting the weak and ever-demanding Palestinian Authority stop broader peace in the region, and established the Abraham Accords, creating normalization agreements between Israel and several Muslim Arab countries.

Now in his second term, Trump made a bold announcement on February 5, 2025, tossing out the idea of shuttle diplomacy in the Middle East in favor of something I call “Anchor Diplomacy,” in which Trump will use the broad reach and power of the United States to impose peace between the Israelis and Palestinian Arabs. He will not run back-and-forth between the two sides, but will get the various parties to come to him, and attempt to dislodge or soften his stance in which he put the United States – not the two parties – in the center of the discussion.

Trump announced that the United States will take over the rebuilding of the demolished Gaza Strip, and Gazans will be relocated out of the area into Egypt, Jordan and other countries during the reconstruction. Gazans may return or opt to stay in the new locations with a much better standard of living.

There are many points to unpack in the Gaza statements but the practicality of one or another point is an aside. Trump is making the Arab world come to him, not the other way round. The Arab world will be forced to make Hamas disappear from the scene to prevent a U.S.-takeover, instead of the U.S. being worried whether Hamas or other terrorist groups will scuttle any progress towards calm. The United Nations will be dislodged as a biased and awful actor in the region, as the Arab street clamors for U.S. to engage monetarily but not overly intrusively.

President Teddy Roosevelt once said “speak softly and carry a big stick.” Trump has chosen a new path to waive the large stick over everyone’s head and to lay down a marker of his own. He has long built a reputation being a very loyal friend as well as a menacing enemy. He knows that the regimes of Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia have much to gain from the United States – or they can turn Trump into an enemy and run to the embrace of a new sponsor, perhaps China.

Trump has so far been able to get countries like Colombia to eat their words and reverse policies when he threatened economic hardship, and obviously feels that Arab countries will similarly get on board with at least some of his Gaza proposal. At the very least, they will learn that the days of treating the U.S. as an open faucet of money to abuse with unrealistic demands will not stand under Trump.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump at White House February 5, 2025

Anchor Diplomacy, the muscle of entrenching a position and forcing the sides to react, can only be effective by a mediator with tremendous influence on each side. While pro-Palestinians/ anti-Americans will chant “imperialism” and “empire” in exasperation at Trump’s Gaza announcement, the shadows which will swing the outcome will be China and/or Saudi Arabia, who might magnify or counter American power.

Related articles:

Abbas Failed To Capitalize on Trump’s Gift (December 2020)

Trump Secures Lowest Tally of Israeli Deaths From Palestinian Terrorism (November 2020)

Naked Trades in the Middle East (September 2020)

Taking it Straight to the People: Obama and Kushner (June 2019)

Failing Negotiation 101: The United States (January 2015)

Failing Negotiation 102: Europe (January 2015)

Disproportionate Media In Iranian Proxies-Israel War

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The New York Times, Al Jazeera and other anti-Israel media often quote the number of people killed by Hamas on October 7 and then the number of Gazans killed in an effort to show a disproportionate figure in casualties. As described on IsraelAnalysis.com “The Quantitative Shield for A Qualitative Problem,” the intentions of each side is erased, with the Palestinian Arabs seeking a genocidal ethnic cleansing of Jews, while Israel attempts to keep the jihadists from being able to commit such atrocities again.

The issue of the quantitative telling is also grossly misleading.

The New York Times deceptively frames the conflict of Israelis killed and Gazans killed

The anti-Israel propaganda uses a number of deliberately misleading tactics and phrases to inflame anger against Israel in its defensive war. The tactics include:

  • Israel’s dead are only from a single day, while Gazan dead are totaled over 15 months
  • Gazans are separated from their popular leadership of Hamas in describing the attackers as from “Hamas,” while the Gazan dead are “Palestinians”
  • Israel is described as launching the war in response to the Hamas attack, rather than Gazans launching the war
  • Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and several Palestinian Arab terrorist groups east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL) are part of the Iranian proxies war against Israel; this is not a war of one local militant group against Israel
  • Hamas is never highlighted as a declared terrorist group by the United States and several western countries
Qatar-owned Hamas propaganda outlet Al Jazeera describes the war as being launched by Israel

Many Israelis have been killed since October 7, 2023, but those hundreds of dead soldiers are excluded in the anti-Israel account. The multifront war with 10,000+ projectiles fired at Israel is completely ignored in trying to make Gaza look like the single, small party in a fight against Israel.

Hamas is not just a “group” or “militants.” They are the ruling the government of Gaza. They were popularly elected to 58% of the Palestinian parliament in 2006 and continue to hold such representation. They continue to be the most popular Palestinian political party in every poll, and a majority of Gazans supported the October 7 massacre of Israelis. The war wasn’t just led by Hamas militants but a genocidal war supported by Gazans.

And the war was also supported by jihadists around the Middle East including Hezbollah in Lebanon, the government of Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. Each launched numerous missiles against Israel in support of the Gazan genocidal war.

A proper accounting of the history of this war will show several jihadi armies attacking Israel and killing well over the 1,200 people murdered on the first day of the war, with each army routed by the Israeli Defense Forces. It will show that the initial perpetrators of the war hid like cowards underneath their families for fifteen months, and Israel managed to keep the civilian death toll much lower than the 74% of Gaza which are women and children under 18 years old.

History will also judge the socialist-jihadi alliance which waged a propaganda war against Israel, and the gross misstatements made repeatedly to fan the flames of antisemitism from Australia to Canada.

Is Gaza Anyone’s Home?

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U.S. President Donald Trump asked the governments of Egypt and Jordan to take in Gazans so the repair of the region could be expedited. Trump acknowledged that Jordan already had many Arabs who had come from Palestine in the country – over half the country’s population, including the king of Jordan’s wife – but “I said to him that I’d love you to take on more, because I’m looking at the whole Gaza Strip right now and it’s a mess, it’s a real mess…. I don’t know, something has to happen, but it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there, so I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations and build housing in a different location where I think they could maybe live in peace for a change.”

Jordan has a large Palestinian Arab population because it invaded Israel in 1948 and ethnically cleansed Jews from the west bank of the Jordan River all the way through the Old City of Jerusalem. It then illegally annexed that region in 1950 and granted all Arabs – specifically excluding Jews – Jordanian citizenship in 1954.

Statements by Egypt and Jordan dismissed Trump’s suggestion. Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that “the deportation or displacement of the Palestinian people is an injustice in which we cannot participate.” The Jordanian monarch made similar comments.

Social media lit up as well. As hundreds of thousands of Gazans moved back to their towns in northern Gaza, The call of “return!” was echoed.

It’s a strange dynamic. The United Nations and its arm in the region, UNRWA, has insisted that 73% of Gazans do NOT belong in Gaza but in towns inside of Israel where grandparents left during their war to destroy the Jewish State in 1948. Yet now they insist that these same Arabs cannot be dislodged from Gaza, after they got decimated in a war initiated by their government.

With their support.

The victim mentality is such an ingrained deformity in Palestinian Arab culture (courtesy of the United Nations), that attempts to efficiently rebuild infrastructure is met with the same tired complaint of “ethnic cleansing” as a “displacement plan” rather than a rebuilding plan.

Now is the time for Gazans to internalize that Gaza is their home, not Israel, as a condition to taking billions of dollars in aid in global charity.

Van Hollen Is Grossly Ignorant About Zionism And The Indignity Of UNSC 2334

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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) aged 66, questioned a young Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), aged 40, during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee vetting process for the United States Ambassador to the United Nations. It’s a short five-minute video and worth watching the entire exchange.

At 1:07, Van Hollen pointed his questions to adhering to UN Security Council resolutions and tied it to the Israeli-Arab conflict. Van Hollen said “long term peace must include security, self-determination and dignity for Israelis and Palestinian alike,” and added that “we should stand up and protect universal human rights and self-determination for all people, including both Israelis and Palestinians.”

He questioned Stefanik’s contention that Jews have a “Biblical right” to the land of Israel, and concluded his remarks at 4:59 by mansplaining that “when it comes to this very difficult issue [Jews living and praying in the West Bank and the Old City of Jerusalem], if the president is going to succeed at bringing peace and stability to the Middle East, we’re going to have to look at the UN Security Council resolutions – not just the ones on Lebanon, which we should enforce – but other UN Security Council resolutions [implying UNSC 2334], and it’s going to be very difficult to achieve that if you continue to hold the view that you just expressed [that Jews have a right to live and pray in Jerusalem and the West Bank], which is a view that was not held by the founders of the State of Israel who were secular Zionists, not religious Zionists.”

Some education is in order for this senator who airs his ignorance and Palestinian Arabs’ false propaganda so publicly:

  • David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and secular Zionist said to the British authorities in January 1937 before the Peel Commission which discussed limiting Jews to certain areas of Palestine that “Our right to the Land of Israel does not stem from the Mandate and the Balfour Declaration. It precedes those. The Bible is our mandate… I can state in the name of the Jewish People: The Bible is our mandate, the Bible that was written by us in our Hebrew language, and in this land itself, is our mandate. Our historical right has existed since our beginnings as the Jewish People, and the Balfour Declaration and the Mandate recognize and confirm that right.” The secular Zionist Ben Gurion explicitly tied the right of Jews in the land to the Bible.
  • Ben Gurion referenced the original Hebrew language of the Bible, which became and remains the official language of the Jewish State, the only country which speaks in the biblical tongue.
  • When Ben Gurion read Israel’s Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948 which he helped draft, the first lines were “ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) – The Land of Israel] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.” The “land of Israel” encompasses the entire Jewish Promised Land, not new borders concocted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1947.
David Ben Gurion declaring the State of Israel on May 14, 1948

Further, Van Hollen fails to comprehend that his various statements do not complement each other but CONTRADICT each other. One cannot adhere to every UN Security Council resolution and simultaneously respect the dignity and human rights of Jews.

UNSC 2334, which passed in the waning days of the Obama administration, tramples on basic human rights and dignity of Jews by denying their right to live and pray in their holiest location in the Old City of Jerusalem.

There is NO “inalienable right” for Palestinians to have a state, only self determination, and there IS an “inalienable right” for Jews to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount. Yet the United Nations and Van Hollen pretend otherwise.

If the basic parameters of Palestinian dignity is to deny Jewish dignity, then there is no scenario in which there is “dignity for Israelis and Palestinians alike” which Van Hollen ignores.

The United Nations is deeply broken and amoral, yet Senator Van Hollen seeks to prop it up as something holy, a pagan temple amongst the socialist-jihadi alliance. Rep. Elise Stefanik intends to act like the Jewish patriarch Abraham when she enters the United Nations, who shattered the false idols in his father’s store. She is poised to enter that dark chamber and shed light on its systemic depravity.

Representative Elise Stefanik at her Senate confirmation hearing. (Photo: Tom Brenner for The New York Times)

Abraham’s actions 3,700 years ago launched monotheism. Perhaps the end of the United Nations’ sacred cows will usher in a period when Jews and Judaism will be openly and widely recognized on the Temple Mount and throughout Jerusalem.

ACTION ITEM

Contact Sen. Van Hollen’s office and let him know what you think of his comments. Feel free to send this article. DC phone: (202) 224-4654. Contact your representatives as well.

Related articles:

NO Country Has A Right To Exist. Israel SHOULD Exist (January 2024)

The Green Line Through Jerusalem (May 2020)

Tolerance at the Temple Mount (November 2014)

When And Where The Wicked Stand

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“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.

Over the 2025 Martin Luther King holiday weekend, three Israeli women who had been held in captivity for 471 days by Palestinian Arab terrorists, were released in exchange for 90 Palestinians held in Israeli jails. As the Red Cross came to collect the three women, armed Hamas soldiers climbed atop the Red Cross vehicles to incite the Gazan mobs who had converged on the scene.

Mobs in Gaza surround Red Cross trucks carrying Israeli women

The parade of masked terrorists led The New York Times to comment that Hamas was still “standing”, albeit weakened and isolated, as the “dominant Palestinian power in Gaza.”

The official Palestinian Authority daily, Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, was not as generous the Times. It mocked the members of Hamas who wore civilian clothes during fifteen months of war hiding amongst women and children, who suddenly donned military uniforms once Israel signed onto a ceasefire:

“When shame ends, only insolence remains. For 15 months of harsh war, Hamas did not dare to show even one of its operatives in military uniforms (!!), but when the ceasefire agreement stipulated that the cannons be silenced, Hamas brought out its operatives in military uniforms – not only for display purposes, but also to fabricate a victory narrative!”

“Victory?” Israel has never been stronger relative to all the countries in the Middle East. Hamas is only powerful relative to the decimated Palestinians.

If the “last man standing” is only relative to YOUR OWN SIDE, then your military foe was never really the opponent. The actions were performance art, a spectacle of battered women and children wavering being sadism and masochism, aired for an antisemitic audience whom Hamas hoped would actually do the fighting against the Jews.

Hamas launched a war with genocidal intent and then hid underground with civilian hostages as well as disguised amongst civilians, only to emerge “standing” atop humanitarian trucks carrying a few female hostages.

After fifteen months of hiding, leaving women and children to bare the brunt of Israeli fire, the armed cowards of Hamas came out once the gunfire had been silenced to wave their arms as “victors” before thousands of Gazans who had watched their own lives being destroyed.

MLK once said “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” The measure of Hamas, the ruling power in Gaza is depraved, cruel and cowardly. That “support for Hamas remains the highest compared to all Palestinian factions” according to the most recent Palestinian poll, marks the Palestinian society as integrally complicit and wicked.

Related articles:

Monty Python’s Black Knight Amongst Islamic Jihadists (January 2025)

NYTimes Said Israel Killed Man Of Peace In Assassination Of Leader Of Hamas (July 2024)

NY Times Lies That Gazans Hate Hamas (June 2024)

The Hamas – Gazans Partnership (May 2024)

When Founding Fathers Are Psychopaths And Cowards (January 2024)

The Asynchronous Audience At Jihadists’ Auto-da-Fe (November 2023)

“Deformity in Palestinian Culture” Is A Permanent Feature (August 2023)

The Terrorism Of Emasculated Palestinians (June 2023)

‘The Maiming of the Jew’ (May 2021)

Gazans Support Killing Jewish Civilians (February 2021)

Next Step For Trump’s Visa Program: Gaza

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President Donald Trump issued several executive orders upon entering office on January 20, 2025 designed to protect American safety under the banner, “MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN.” One was entitled “PROTECTING THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AGAINST INVASION,” meant to stop the flow of illegal entry into the United States and deport those who have done so. Another was called “PROTECTING THE UNITED STATES FROM FOREIGN TERRORISTS AND OTHER NATIONAL SECURITY AND PUBLIC SAFETY THREATS,” which is meant to vet people entering the country, because America “must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those aliens approved for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests. (emphasis added)”

The United States does not require that every foreign citizen have a visa to enter the U.S. The Visa Waiver Program (VWP) has an agreement with many countries which exempt their citizens from requiring a visa for U.S. entry. It includes European countries, including Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as Canada, Israel and some Asian-Pacific countries including Australia, Japan and New Zealand. People who are not citizens of these countries must fill out a visa to visit the United States, giving American security personnel a chance to review the visitors’ backgrounds.

The program has an added level of scrutiny for people from VWP countries who visited countries with significant terrorism. People who had visited Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia and Yemen since March 1, 2011, or visited Cuba since January 12, 2021, need to fill out a visa as well. For example, a Canadian (who normally would not need a visa) who went to Iraq over the past decade would need a visa to enter the U.S., unless she did so for diplomatic or approved military purposes.

Conditions in America’s Visa Waiver Program.

Several countries and territories which are hotbeds of terrorism have not yet been highlighted in the VWP. Travellers to Afghanistan, Congo, Nigeria, Pakistan and the Philippines should be immediately removed from the VWP visitation list. And of course, the terrorist enclave of Gaza, ruled by Hamas, the deadliest active terrorist group in the world. Any non-American who visited Gaza since Hamas’s takeover in June 2007, should have to go through a thorough visa review process.

After those immediate actions, the Trump administration should take a similar action against countries which knowingly support and harbor Palestinian Arab terrorists, including Qatar and Turkey. A German national visiting Turkey should lose his visa exemption privilege until several – perhaps five – years after the country breaks off all relations with Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups.

Then there are also VWP travellers to countries which support state sponsors of terrorism, such as China and Russia‘s backing of the Islamic Republic of Iran, which can be also added to the vetting process.

Making America Safe Again requires not only following protocols that are already in place, but updating and expanding the list of known terrorist enclaves, such as Gaza.

ACTION ITEM

Contact the White House to immediately update the VWP country travellers list to include terrorist enclaves like Gaza.  comments@whitehouse.gov 202-456-1111 

Related articles:

The Diaspora Intifada (September 2024)

The Future Of The Evil Hamas Regime Under Trump And Harris (September 2024)

Nexus of Terrorism Hypocrisy: UN, Qatar and Hamas (June 2021)

The Civilian-Terrorist Exchange Is Emblematic Of The Conflict

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On January 19, 2025, three young Israeli women who were held in captivity in Gaza for 471 days were released in exchange for 90 Palestinian Arabs held in Israel. Among those Arabs were Khalida Jarrar, a convicted member of the Palestinian terrorist group, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) who was involved in several plane hijackings; Nawal Abed Fatiha, who stabbed a 70-year-old Israeli man in a 2020 attack in Jerusalem; and Ibrahim Zamar, who shot two people near the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood in 2023.

The gross inequality of the exchange in QUANTITY (but not quality) raised the eyebrows of the media, questioning the thirty-to-one ratio of people, while ignoring the equivalization of civilian women torn from their homes to convicted terrorists.

New York Times noting the “uneven exchange” of numbers while minimizing the qualitative difference of civilians for terrorists

But that is the story of the Middle East.

The Jewish State, is a liberal democracy which is roughly 76% Jewish, with 7.2 million Jews. It sits amongst 450 million Muslims in its immediate vicinity (about 62 times as many Muslims as Jews), in countries which are autocracies and almost completely Islamic. Just past those neighbors are another 500 million Muslims, some of whom have called Israel a “cancer” which must be removed from the planet.

The Israeli women who were freed – Romi Gonen (24), Doron Steinbrecher (31) and Emily Damari (28) – were simply living their lives when an estimated 3,000 Palestinian Arabs from Gaza stormed into Israel, killing their friends, family and pets, and then abducted them. That is in sharp contrast to the Palestinian Arab terrorists released by Israel who were waging a war of ethnic cleansing to rid the region of Jews when they were taken prisoners.

The media’s framing of the story whitewashes the difference in the nature of the exchange of innocents for criminals, asserting that they were just “accused of terrorism.” It calls out the numerical difference as rational, even while it vilifies Israel for the difference in the number of dead in the Hamas-initiated war.

New York Times describing Palestinian prisoners as simply “accused of terrorism”

The qualitative symbol of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is Neta Sorek, a Jewish feminist peace activist slaughtered by Palestinian terrorists as she walked in a forest in 2010. The quantitative symbol of the broader Jewish-Muslim Conflict in the Middle East is the grossly uneven exchange of 2025.

Related articles:

Palestinians Publicly Go Full Genocidal Jihadi (August 2024)

The Quantitative Shield For A Qualitative Problem (March 2024)

The Parameters of Palestinian Dignity (August 2016)

Donald Trump’s Orthodox Jewish Rabbis

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President Donald Trump once again turned to the Orthodox community to give a benediction on behalf of American Jewry at his inauguration. Yesterday, it was Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, President of Yeshiva University, a modern Orthodox institution. At his last inauguration in 2017, Trump called upon Rabbi Haskel Lookstein who had overseen the conversion of his daughter Ivanka, leader of Kehilat Jeshurun, a modern Orthodox synagogue in New York City, and Head of the Ramaz School, a modern Orthodox K-12 school. Liberal alumni of Ramaz objected to Rabbi Lookstein participating in the inauguration so the rabbi backed out, and was replaced by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, also an Orthodox rabbi.

Trump’s selection of Orthodox rabbis stands in sharp contrast to every other president who chose non-Orthodox rabbis. In 2021, during Joe Biden’s inauguration at the height of the pandemic in a virtual ceremony, Sharon Brous of IKAR in Los Angeles and Sharon Kleinbaum of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah in New York City spoke. The two female rabbis are on the far-left of the religious and political spectrum, with the latter being married to Randi Weingarten, the powerful far-left leader of the American Federation of Teachers which only backs Democratic politicians.

The divide between Orthodox and non-Orthodox streams of Judaism is now beyond the confines of keeping kosher and Shabbat observance. There is a clear divide politically and about Israel as well.

According to a May 2021 Pew Research poll, Orthodox Jews preferences for the Republican and Democratic parties were 75% and 20%, respectively. Conservative and Reform Jews tilted towards the Democratic Party by a mirrored amount. An incredible 81% of Orthodox Jews approved of Trump’s job performance, while a similar percentage of non-Orthodox Jews disapproved of Trump’s performance.

These sentiments are echoed in the divide in the Jewish communities’ feelings about a range of issues including Israel and the treatment of American Jews. The majority of Orthodox Jews approved Trump’s handling of immigration, the environment, Israel and his treatment of Jews in the United States, while non-Orthodox Jews were much more split.

These polls were taken well before the October 7, 2023 massacre by Palestinian Arab terrorists of civilians in Israel, and the horrifying cheers of jubilation from the socialist-jihadi alliance on American campuses and in Congress. Since then, even Conservative Jews have begun to migrate towards the Republican Party (now almost one-half from just over one-quarter 3.5 years ago), while Reform and unaffiliated Jews remain entrenched with Democrats, according to an October 2024 poll by the Manhattan Institute.

It should not come as a surprise to see Trump invite an Orthodox rabbi to Washington, D.C., even while they make up a small percentage of Jews in America. It will be interesting to see if the Jewish Conservative movement continues to shift away from the Democratic Party and become a fixture in Washington during the Trump Administration.

Related articles:

Jewish Vote For President Broke Important Threshold (November 2024)

Will Jews Pivot To Law, Order And Self-Interest? (November 2024)

Trump Secures Lowest Tally of Israeli Deaths From Palestinian Terrorism (November 2020)

Monty Python’s Black Knight Amongst Islamic Jihadists

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The signing of a ceasefire agreement in January 2025 must have been welcomed news for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Over the past fifteen months, it has watched its various proxies in the region get decimated.

  • Hamas’s leadership was killed and a majority of its fighters killed, injured, or captured, while Gaza has been largely destroyed.
  • Hezbollah’s military was soundly defeated, its leader killed, and a new non-Hezbollah aligned Lebanese president was elected.
  • Syria’s Iranian-backed government was routed, and the country’s armaments were destroyed.
  • And Iran’s defensive capabilities were eliminated by Israeli attacks, after Iran launched hundreds of missiles at Israel which caused little damage.

Over the course of the Iranian Proxies – Israel War which started on October 7, 2023, Iran went from being a regional power to an impotent joke. The ceasefire was really a call for the “mercy rule” in which one party was so decisively decimating the counterparty that third parties jumped in to save the stubborn vanquished from complete annihilation.

And yet.

The delusion of unique heavenly blessings have deeply intoxicated and blinded radical Islamic jihadi rulers. The chief cleric of Iran, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei praised the resistance of the Palestinian people” and defeat of the “Zionist regime” upon the announcement of the ceasefire. He fashions himself “leader of the Islamic Revolution,” not just in Iran but around the world, to defeat infidels everywhere.

Much like Monty Python’s delusional defeated Black Knight in the film Holy Grail, the deranged leader cannot admit his utter defeat, and yells as the world passes by.

The lunatic had company.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards said “The end of the war and the imposition of a ceasefire… is a clear victory and a great victory for Palestine and a bigger defeat for the monstrous Zionist regime.”

Hamas’s Khalil al-Hayya said “The ceasefire agreement is the result of the legendary steadfastness of our great Palestinian people and our valiant resistance in the Gaza Strip over the course of more than 15 month. The agreement to halt the aggression on Gaza is an achievement for our people, our resistance, our nation, and the free people of the world. It marks a pivotal stage in the ongoing struggle against the enemy, paving the way toward achieving our people’s goals of liberation and return.”

The Palestine Chronicle tried to rewrite history that there were “Global celebrations” for the “Victory of the Resistance.”

In the United States, Nerdeen Kiswani, the leader of Within Our Lifetime wrote on X that “Gaza has won, Palestine has won, resistance has won. Imperialism and Zionism has lost,” and then threatened the United States.

There is no negotiation possible with such lunacy. It is probable that the Iranian nuclear program must be destroyed with impunity rather than dismantled with discussions in the global community.

The sad truth is that radical jihadists who despise Jews are in the majority of the Middle East, as shown in repeated ADL polls. Coexistence will only be a reality under the “wings of democracy,” with jihadi groups and countries stripped of weaponry and capabilities to destroy religious pluralism.

Related articles:

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada (January 2024)

“Deformity in Palestinian Culture” Is A Permanent Feature (August 2023)

Opinion: Remove the Causefire before a Ceasefire (July 2014)