Saturday, March 21, 2026

03/21 Links: Allies in name only: Israel left alone against Iranian aggression; Over 100 injured, 11 seriously, in strikes on Arad, Dimona; What Looks Like Resilience in Iran Is Its Collapse Plan

From Ian:

Allies in name only: Israel left alone against Iranian aggression
Essentially, they say: Iran is not such a threat to global peace and security. Israel and the US may be the greater shared threat. Therefore, this is not our war. We will only defend our narrowest of interests a bare bit.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has sought to wrap repudiation of the US and Israel in highfalutin diplomatic terms. “We lack a mandate from the United Nations, the European Union, or NATO for the war,” he said. “Diplomacy and de-escalation” are the preferred route for handling Iran, he predictably added.

Yeah, sure. As if “mandates” from impotent international edifices are more important than winning the war that has been engaged. As if European-led diplomacy has ever effectively defanged or dissuaded Iran from pursuing its path of genocidal aggression.

I say that such studied neutrality in the great struggle against Iran is collusion with the enemy. All the “calm and level-headed” excuses for sitting out this war (of course, excepting “defensive assistance” to several oil-rich Gulf countries) is a grand collapse of Western spine and principle.

I also cast off anodyne sentiments about “heartfelt feelings for all victims of conflict in the region” and other such throwaway international statements. Without determination to quell Iran – and again, without specific expressed concern for Israel and Israelis too – these mushy musings equal profound moral failure.

Indeed, the frostiness exhibited by the “leaders” described above recalls the adage that you rudely discover who your true friends are (and are not) when the chips are down.

Alas, the ethical limpness and political animosity described here regarding the struggle against Iran is of a piece with the rotten global standard in relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, going back decades.

The response of UN and EU leaders to every Palestinian-Israeli conflagration long has been to condemn the “continuing cycle of violence” (and then press for endless negotiations while boosting Hamas blood libels about Israeli war crimes). As if Israel and the Palestinians each were cavalierly engaging in murder just for fun or out of comparable burning hatred. As if “both sides” were “suffering casualties” and equally responsible for the “cycle” of warfare.

What is missing from the above comments in relation to both the Iranian and Palestinian fronts is a no-nonsense diagnosis of enemy aggression. Few are willing to reference Tehran’s almost five-decade-long record of assault against non-Shi’ite Arab, Western, and Israeli interests. Nobody has the guts to remark upon the death-glorifying political culture of Palestinians that repeatedly chooses war and terrorism over peace negotiations.

This nonalignment keeps the storyline in a neat, supposedly non-judgmental, and purportedly “level-headed” comfort zone – bereft of any right-minded backbone, free from any commitment to explicitly recognize and concretely fight evil. Alas, such detachment is tantamount to betrayal of Israel and the US, and is perfidy against the future of Western civilization.
The Buenos Aires Bombings
The decades of institutional failure that defined Argentina’s response to the AMIA bombing reached an inflection point with the 2023 inauguration of President Javier Milei. Whereas Kirchner was willing to accommodate Tehran, Milei has anchored Argentina firmly within a Western–Israeli security axis, designating Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRGC’s Quds Force as terrorist organisations and joining the Combined Maritime Forces to combat Iranian-backed threats in international waters. In April 2024, Argentina’s Federal Court of Criminal Cassation, the country’s highest criminal court, formally declared the AMIA attack a crime against humanity and attributed responsibility to senior Iranian officials and to Hezbollah, thus lending the weight of the country’s highest criminal tribunal to what investigators had argued for thirty years. In 2025, Milei’s government used newly passed legislation to authorise the trial in absentia of ten Iranian and Lebanese suspects—among them former intelligence minister Ali Fallahian and Ahmad Vahidi, the former Quds Force commander who directed the unit responsible for planning the AMIA operation and who has been subject to an Interpol red notice since 2007. On 28 February 2026, US and Israeli strikes killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and decapitated much of Iran’s senior military leadership, including IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour. Vahidi, who is wanted for the murders of 85 people in Buenos Aires, now commands the IRGC.

What Argentina’s experience reveals is not simply that Iran projects violence across continents, though it does. It also shows that such projections are more likely to succeed when a target’s state institutions are vulnerable. The lawlessness of the Tri-Border Area enabled the logistics. The corruption of Judge Galeano provided impunity. The political calculations of successive governments delayed justice. Each failure compounded the last, and for thirty years the gap between what is known and what has been adjudicated has remained almost unchanged. The names of the planners are on file at Interpol. The mechanics of the attack are documented in thousands of pages of investigative records. The dead have been counted, mourned, and memorialised. But justice has never been served.

Recent US–Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities have triggered fresh security alerts across Argentina at Jewish institutions, airports, and border crossings. The Buenos Aires bombings serve as a reminder that Iran’s willingness to strike at Israeli and Jewish targets outside the Middle East is not merely hypothetical. Argentina has already been a front in this war, and the traces of that history remain visible on its streets today. Concrete barriers line the entrances of Jewish community centres across the city, standing as a permanent physical acknowledgment that the threat that destroyed the AMIA building has never fully receded. Thirty years on, the most important question is whether the lessons of that experience have been learned by those who failed to deliver justice—and by those who may yet need it.
A Historic Moment: The Case for Ending Both the Iranian Regime and Hamas Once and for All
The critical question is whether we will stop at weakening the Iranian regime or Hamas or move toward ensuring that they can never again recover as long-term threats to their neighbors or global security. At this moment, leaving those regimes in place – the ruling mullahs in Iran or Hamas in Gaza — is probably the most dangerous option.

Authoritarian regimes such as Iran's, and terrorist groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic State and the Taliban, rarely respond to setbacks by abandoning their ambitions. Instead, they pause, regroup, and rebuild.

Russia and China, each with its own anti-American calculations, could provide political cover, technological assistance, and indirect support that would allow Iran to resume its nuclear program. China has already been supplying Iran with "almost everything but troops" during this war, and supplying Russia with military materiel for its war against Ukraine.

If Iran's regime and Hamas are allowed to recover, their primary strategic objective will likely become to rearm as quickly as possible, and we will be right back at war again.

Stopping halfway through such efforts only allows threats to reemerge dangerously in the future. History will judge whether these two opportunities presented today were seized — or allowed to slip away.


Spencer guard: What Would the Master of War Say About the U.S.-Israel War in Iran?
If Carl von Clausewitz were alive today, watching the U.S.-Israel war in Iran unfold, he would not begin with a slogan or a theory fashionable for one news cycle. He would begin where he always insisted serious analysis must begin, with critical examination grounded in facts, traced through causes, and judged against political purpose.

That is why Clausewitz, the 19th-century Prussian soldier, adviser, and military theorist, remains the master of masters.

He is not the greatest military thinker because he gave the world a checklist. He is the greatest because he gave us something far more enduring. He gave us theories that have stood the test of time and are taught in military colleges around the world. More importantly, he gave us the analytical tools to understand, study, and evaluate any war.

Clausewitz did not seek to simplify war. He sought to discipline how we think about it.

In On War, he did not offer formulas that could mechanically produce victory. He offered a framework, a method, a way to move from facts, to causes, to judgment. He understood that war is never reducible to tidy maxims detached from context. He warned against the intellectual temptation that still seduces analysts today: to invent clever models, neat escalation ladders, or fashionable syntheses of terrorism, insurgency, revolutionary warfare, and interstate conflict, and then present them as universal explanations. Much of that work collapses under rigorous historical scrutiny when the full context is applied.

Clausewitz would have had little patience for theories that collapse fundamentally different types of war into a single framework, or for analyses built on selectively chosen evidence rather than complete historical context. He would not begin with models. He would begin with disciplined inquiry.

He called this critical examination, and he outlined clear steps to critical analysis that remain unmatched in rigor. He distinguished analysis from narrative history, which merely arranges facts. Narrative describes. Critical examination explains.

He identified three intellectual activities. First, the discovery and interpretation of facts. Second, the tracing of effects back to their causes. Third, the investigation and evaluation of the means employed. Together, these form his method of critical inquiry.


Jake Wallis Simons: Is Iran now capable of launching missiles at London?
Has the Ayatollah gone interstellar? That is something nobody expected to be asking at the end of last year. Yet after his missile attack on Britain’s airbase on Diego Garcia, which lies an improbable 2,400 miles from Iran, that is exactly what experts are wondering.

In truth, the regime has been using space weapons for a while. That, after all, is how ballistics work. Each missile, which is the size of a London bus, is fired out of the atmosphere using a rocket engine and traces an elliptical path through space before re-entering at hypersonic speeds and descending to the target. This gives Tehran a range of up to 1,800 miles. Before the war, Iran had a stockpile of thousands. This has been significantly reduced but remains a menace.

Diego Garcia lies several hundred miles out of range. On Saturday, however, it emerged that the British base – now fully supporting American long-range bombers – had been targeted by two Iranian projectiles. One failed in flight, while the other was intercepted by a US Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer.

How did Tehran shoot that far? More importantly, if the regime rotated those same launchers 180 degrees, London may find itself in range.

According to experts, it seems unlikely that Iran has managed to develop an entirely new class of missiles with such speed and secrecy. Instead, the regime may have ingeniously repurposed rockets from its space programme. Before the war, Iran’s civilian space agency and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps had jointly developed a suite of home-grown rockets, including the Safir, Simorgh and Qased, which were paired with Russian launch services. Last year, Tehran successfully sent its heaviest-ever payload – a telecommunications satellite and space tug weighing about 300 kilograms – into orbit using two Simorghs.

On Monday, Israel announced that it had destroyed a military space facility in the Iranian capital used to develop “capacities for attacking satellites, posing a threat to the State of Israel’s satellites and to space assets of other countries around the world”. But with multiple space agency headquarters in and around Tehran and others in Shahrud and Qom, it is far from clear that the project has been put out of action.
Trump threatens to ‘obliterate’ Iran’s power plants if Strait of Hormuz not opened in 48 hours
US President Donald Trump threatens to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it doesn’t open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.

“If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST!” Trump writes on Truth Social.

The US has refrained from targeting Iran energy sites to date amid fears of such a step’s impact on the global economy. The Strait of Hormuz is a key artery for the world’s oil supply.


What Looks Like Resilience in Iran Is Its Collapse Plan
The Islamic Republic’s continued fire, street repression, broadcasting, leadership succession, muted elites, and projections of normality are not signs of strategic coherence or durability. They are the visible mechanics of a regime in its collapse phase, executing the plans built for the moment its center was hit, functioning through fragmentation, and betting that Washington will not stay in the war long enough to finish the job.

The Misleading Signs
Eighteen days after the United States and Israel launched their military campaign against Iran on February 28, 2026, many of the usual signs of state continuity are still visible. The Islamic Republic is still firing missiles and drones at Israel and other targets across the region, including advanced systems such as the Sejjil ballistic missile. State television is still broadcasting. Basij and IRGC units are still present on the streets. Mojtaba Khamenei has been installed as successor. No major elite split has yet surfaced. Parts of the regime’s regional network still exist. Shops still carry basic goods. And the nationwide uprising many expected has yet to materialize.

For many observers, these signs point to one conclusion: the regime has taken a severe blow, but it is still holding.

That reading may be fundamentally wrong.

These indicators are not false; they are simply being read through the wrong framework. They are taken as evidence that the system has absorbed the shock and remains solid. In reality, they indicate the opposite. The Islamic Republic prepared for the moment when its center would be hit, and its command structure would fracture. In that scenario, regional units keep firing, security forces keep repressing, and the state projects fragments of normality even as central control collapses. The activation of these mechanisms is evidence that the system has entered its collapse phase, not escaped it. What we are seeing is not resilience, but a regime preserving violence and surface function long enough to outlast the political patience of its adversaries.

That is the essence of Tehran’s calculation. It does not believe it can defeat the United States and Israel in a long conventional war. It believes Washington will not fight such a war for long. Its strategy, then, is not victory but endurance: keep shooting, keep coercing, keep signaling continued function, and keep imposing costs until the Americans decide the game is no longer worth the price.

The System Was Built for Decapitation
To understand why the usual indicators can mislead, it is necessary to go back to the mid-2000s. Under IRGC commander Aziz Jafari, the Revolutionary Guards reorganized around the logic of asymmetric warfare. Iranian planners understood that they could not match the United States in classic naval, air, and armored war. So they built a structure meant to survive decapitation, fragmentation, and prolonged disruption.

One key part of that design was the network of ten regional IRGC headquarters. Each sits above parts of the country’s thirty-two Guard corps and their attached Basij units. These commands were built to control local brigades, battalions, security formations, and regional military assets with substantial autonomy. Their purpose was explicit: if the command structure in Tehran were badly damaged or destroyed, the regime would still retain armed regional organs able to suppress unrest, confront internal threats, and continue fighting external enemies without waiting for the center to tell them what to do.

This was the logic of “mosaic defense”. If the chain of command broke, the system would not freeze. It would fragment into semi-independent pieces and keep operating. Regional formations would continue firing and repressing even if central coordination became weak, intermittent, or impossible.

That is why continued missile launches should be handled carefully as evidence. They do not show strategic coherence. They show that the regime has entered the phase it prepared for its worst day: preserving violence after coherent command has begun to fail. Abbas Araghchi all but admitted this when he was asked about Iranian strikes on Oman, one of Tehran’s closest regional partners. “What happened in Oman was not our choice,” he said, adding that military units were “independent and somehow isolated” and were “acting based on instructions … given to them in advance.” In other words, the missiles are still flying not because the political center is fully in control, but because the system was built to keep firing after the center’s grip had already started to fray.

That is also why the deaths of top IRGC commanders such as Salami, Rashid, Pakpour, and many others do not automatically produce silence. The machine keeps firing because it was built to outlive them. What looks like resilience is in fact the functioning legacy of a doomsday design.


22 countries say ready to help secure Strait of Hormuz
Nearly two dozen nations, most of them European, said in a joint statement on Saturday that they are ready “to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage” through the Strait of Hormuz.

“We condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces,” read the statement of 22 countries.

“We welcome the commitment of nations who are engaging in preparatory planning,” the statement added, while urging an “immediate comprehensive moratorium on attack on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations.”

The countries committed to helping the United States are: Australia, Bahrain, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, South Korea, Sweden, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom.

Some 20% of the world’s oil and gas flows routinely through the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks on oil and gas infrastructure in Iran and Gulf Arab states have led to rising energy prices globally.

Analytics firm Kpler recorded a decrease of 95% in the naval passageway from peacetime averages, AFP reported.

Meanwhile on Friday, the Trump administration announced that it had temporarily lifted sanctions on Iranian crude oil currently stranded at sea.

Explaining the decision, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote on X that sanctioned Iranian oil “is being hoarded by China on the cheap. By temporarily unlocking this existing supply for the world, the United States will quickly bring approximately 140 million barrels of oil to global markets, expanding the amount of worldwide energy and helping to relieve the temporary pressures on supply caused by Iran. In essence, we will be using the Iranian barrels against Tehran to keep the price down as we continue Operation Epic Fury.”


Over 100 injured, 11 seriously, in Iranian missile strikes on southern cities of Arad, Dimona
Over 100 people were injured by Iranian strikes in the southern cities of Dimona and Arad on Saturday, 11 of them seriously, medics said, after Israeli air defenses failed to intercept at least two ballistic missiles.

Following the strikes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir pledged to continue fighting Israel’s enemies on “all fronts,” amid the US-Israeli war with Iran that began on February 28.

Among those seriously injured in the strikes on the south were a 12-year-old boy suffering from shrapnel injuries as a result of the strike in Dimona, and a 5-year-old girl hurt in the subsequent strike in Arad. The missile fire came amid repeated Iranian attacks on the Dimona area on Saturday.

Iranian state media said the strikes were targeting Israel’s nuclear research facility, located some 10 kilometers (six miles) outside of Dimona and 30 kilometers (18.5 miles) outside of Arad, in retaliation for an alleged US attack on Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment facility earlier in the day. Iran blamed that attack on the US and Israel, though the IDF denied any involvement.

The Shimon Peres Negev Nuclear Research Center is believed to be key to Israel’s long-suspected nuclear weapons program, the existence of which Jerusalem neither confirms nor denies as a matter of policy.

Iran had also targeted the city of Dimona prior to the alleged attack on Natanz.

Footage posted to social media from multiple angles showed the ballistic missile hurtling out of the sky at high speed before crashing into the city. The missile carried a conventional Iranian warhead, with hundreds of kilograms of explosives, according to military assessments.


Iranian cluster bombs smash into empty daycare, several other sites in Rishon Lezion
Iran fired four ballistic missile salvos at Israel on Saturday since midnight, including one with a cluster bomb warhead that hit an empty kindergarten and other sites in central Israel’s Rishon Lezion, without any injuries reported.

The launches at southern and central Israel came as The Wall Street Journal reported that Iran fired two ballistic missiles at the Indian Ocean US-UK military base Diego Garcia, missing both times but indicating that Iran’s ballistic missile range was longer than acknowledged.

Meanwhile, Iran’s military threatened “heavy strikes” on a major Emirati cargo port should the United Arab Emirates allow attacks from its territory on two disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, near the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Kuwait also reported a missile and drone attack early Saturday and Saudi Arabia said it intercepted more than two dozen drones.

Iran has launched missile and drone strikes across the region in response to the bombing campaign that the US and Israel launched on the Islamic Republic on February 28 in a bid to destabilize its clerical regime and destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

‘There could have been kids at this kindergarten’
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks on Israel since midnight triggered sirens in parts of southern and central Israel on Saturday, sending millions repeatedly into bomb shelters. The day’s fourth strike, at about 8 a.m., targeted central Israel and included a ballistic missile carrying a cluster bomb, according to rescue services.

Footage showed craters caused by the cluster munitions in Rishon Lezion, as well as damage at an empty daycare in which children’s toys and dolls were strewn among the rubble.


Law Talk Podcast: Who’s More Libertarian? Iran, Guns, and the Limits of Law
Hosted by Charles C.W. Cooke, John Yoo & Richard Epstein
John Yoo, Richard Epstein, and Charles C.W. Cooke dive into the legal firestorm surrounding U.S. actions in Iran—debating “imminence,” anticipatory self-defense, and whether international law has any real teeth. Then, they tackle a major 2nd Amendment case testing whether drug use can justify a permanent gun ban—and whether courts or legislatures should draw that line. Finally, a heated clash over parental rights, the Constitution, and California’s school policies raises a deeper question: where do these rights actually come from?
Ricochet Podcast: To Speak Ill of the Dead
Hosted by Charles C.W. Cooke & Steve Hayward With guest H.R. McMaster
H.R. McMaster joins Steve and Charles to take stock of the war in the Middle East. Though a tank man by training, H.R. is no stranger to thinking about our capabilities and how they stack up against our foes—both the enemy in Iran and the aggressors backing them up.

Plus, Cooke and Hayward can’t help but feel a bit of relief that there’s a bit less Ehrlichian misanthropy in the world; consider newly reported accusations against Caesar Chavez that could prove fatal to the progressive hero’s reputation; and they round the necrologies out with a salute to the immortal Chuck Norris.
Eylon Levy: "No One Tells Trump What To Do" | How Israel & US Took Out Iran's Nuclear Threat
Did Netanyahu drag Trump into war with Iran — or was this always America's fight too? Eylon Levy, former Israeli government spokesman and one of the most recognised voices from Israel's wartime media operation, sits down with Harry Cole to set the record straight.

Levy is unequivocal: "It was Israel that took out the Ayatollah, not the United States. No one tells Trump what to do." But he also makes clear why the US had every reason to act — Iran was racing toward nuclear invulnerability, burying missile factories so deep that time was running out to stop them. With four times the missiles and a nuclear bomb, says Levy, "no one could stop them." So the US and Israel moved together — not as puppet and master, but as allies with shared interests.

The problem? The job isn't finished. Despite Trump's claim that Iran's nuclear programme was "obliterated," Levy reveals Iran still holds 400 kilos of highly enriched uranium — enough for a dirty bomb. And they were rebuilding, faster than ever.

The war's shockwaves aren't staying in the Middle East. The Strait of Hormuz is closed, oil prices are surging, and inflation is spreading west. Levy's verdict is stark: "Iran declared war on all global consumers." This isn't just a regional conflict — it's hitting your petrol pump and your grocery bill.

Harry Cole and Levy also dig into the 'Inglourious Basterds'-style operations hunting Iranian regime fugitives, the geopolitical fallout, and what comes next for the region and the West.




Outgoing UNRWA head warns agency ‘may soon no longer be viable’ amid Israeli opposition
The outgoing head of UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, has warned that the viability of the organization is in doubt and any collapse would result in Israel taking over its humanitarian work in Gaza.

The warning from Philippe Lazzarini comes at a decisive moment for UNRWA, which has suffered from months-long funding problems, with no one set to permanently fill Lazzarini’s role when he departs on March 31.

In addition to longstanding claims that the agency helps perpetuate the conflict and foster antisemitism, Israel accuses UNRWA of widespread collusion with Hamas in Gaza, and in October 2024 passed a law banning the UN agency from operating on Israeli soil.

In a letter to the president of the UN General Assembly dated March 17, Lazzarini said challenges facing UNRWA included Israel’s repeated efforts against it, such as a raid on UNRWA’s East Jerusalem offices in December and the alleged killing of over 390 of its employees in Gaza during the war that was sparked by the October 7, 2023, Hamas massacre.

“I must inform you that UNRWA may soon no longer be viable, with potentially far-reaching consequences for Palestine refugees at a time when the region faces seismic political and security challenges,” Lazzarini said in the letter.

“I must state my horror that a United Nations entity has allowed to be crushed as UNRWA has, in violation of international law, with its staff and Palestinian communities paying an unacceptable price,” he added, saying Palestinian refugees have been “callously betrayed.”

Lazzarini said in the letter that UNRWA’s work was vital for implementing the Gaza peace plan and that Israel would have to assume responsibility for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem if UN states did not urgently provide political and financial support.


By hosting Mahmoud Khalil, Mamdani sets new rules for justifying October 7 massacre
In short, Mamdani is neither hiding his true colors nor is he endeavoring to conform to a more mainstream position, seeking to camouflage his obvious leanings towards the employment of terrorism, for the sake of publicity.

In fact, it seems to be a deliberate move, poking the Jewish community in the eye while purposely showing everyone that he will dance to his own beat without feeling the need to conform to what’s been held as the acceptable social standards of the past.

After all, politics is known for the need to shift from time to time – just for the sake of pleasing your constituency. Who cares if you don’t personally believe in whatever it is you are forced to compromise? Just so long as it keeps you in power – that’s all that matters.

But in this case, there seems to be something else at play, because you don’t self-sabotage if you think that it will adversely hurt you. Consequently, it’s very plausible that Mamdani, seeing the changing winds, has come to believe that there is a great shift in ideology.

Mamdani’s calculations and political strategy
In other words, by his reckoning, there is an ever-growing spread of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish sentiment, which is moving the electorate to a change of heart and, subsequently, values, where an invitation to an avowed Jew-hater will not be seen as the proverbial shot in the foot.

Mamdani might be banking on many factors that he hopes will mitigate his own clear prejudices as well as those of his wife. That could include the war involving Iran and its outcome.

It could also rely upon rising gas prices, the American military death toll, and a newfound isolationism that is being marketed as nationalistic patriotism, meant to shut out everyone else who is deemed irrelevant to the US.

And most importantly, when you are someone who looks upon the media as a weapon of mass destruction, as does Khalil, you understand the importance of amplified voices, such as Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, who are forging a campaign against Israel, fomenting hatred in ways that are extremely helpful to anyone who believes that their preferred end justifies the means.

When viewed from that perspective, inviting Khalil is not at all a liability, but, rather, a plus in setting the new rules by which Mamdani hopes his supporters will play!


Israel drops out of top women’s tennis tournament in Bosnia over security concerns
Israel has dropped out of the premier women’s tennis tournament in Bosnia in April due to “tangible” security concerns, the Israel Tennis Association announced Thursday, amid the wars with Iran and Hezbollah.

The International Tennis Federation accepted the ITA’s request to drop out, which “followed an in-depth examination of the security situation in Israel, as well as tangible concern for the players’ safety and security,” the ITA said on social media.

The decision not to compete in Bosnia took into account the threat level involved in travel to the Muslim-majority Balkan state, “which is not considered especially friendly to Israel,” as well the participation of “teams from other Muslim nations, including Egypt and Morocco,” the ITA said.

The Israeli body added that it had even considered hosting the tournament in Israel this year, but had to give up “because of the security situation.”

Ronen Morley, captain of Israel’s national tennis team, was quoted by the ITA as saying the decision to drop out of the Billie Jean King Cup was the best move “under the present circumstances” and followed “the concern expressed by the players, most of whom are very young, and the understanding that we would not be harmed professionally.”

“Had the trip been set for today, Israeli security authorities wouldn’t let us leave,” he said. “Our first and foremost responsibility is to keep the players safe.”

Earlier this month, Israel’s National Security issued a travel warning in light of a “concrete concern that terrorist elements are working to harm Israelis abroad,” after “several attempts” that were foiled since the US and Israel launched a bombing campaign on Iran on February 28.

The bombing campaign seeks to destabilize Iran’s regime and destroy its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.


NY postal worker arrested for shoving four-year-old hassidic boy to the ground
A New York postal worker was arrested for knocking a four-year-old hassidic (ultra-Orthodox) boy to the ground on Friday afternoon, police said.

Video footage showed the boy approaching the mail truck before the postal worker came out and shoved the child forcefully to the ground.

The Ramapo police department announced that the 39-year-old postal worker was arrested and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and attempted assault in the third degree.

The postal worker had reportedly been screaming at nearby children before the victim approached him.


The girl on the motorbike finds her voice in London
There are moments in journalism when a story returns to you. Not as an archived image, but as a person standing in front of you. Thursday night was one of them. Noa Argamani — the young woman the world came to know as the ‘girl on the motorbike’ – begging for her life on 7 October 2023, was at St John’s Wood Synagogue.

That 800 people came to see her at an event hosted by Ben Gurion University UK, spoke to something beyond recognition. It showed how many still carry Noa with them. Introduced by Anne Berger, president and chair of the UK Foundation, Noa was presented not simply as a former hostage, but as one of their own — an undergraduate of the university.

Her presence even brought the university’s president, Jeff Kaye, from Israel who said with pride, that there could be “no better example of the teaching DNA than in our students.” It was Noa’s friends, he reminded us, who carried her story globally, building a campaign that refused to let her be forgotten until she was rescued on 8 June, 2024, after 246 days in captivity.

When Noa walked towards the bimah – serving as a stage, the entire room rose to its feet. She looked so composed and beautiful, it was almost impossible to reconcile her with the terrified figure in the Hamas pro cam video.Until she spoke.

She described the moments when the Nova festival was stopped by rockets to saying goodbye to her friends – “I didn’t know that it would be the last time that I would see them again.”

Noa also spoke about the moment that she understood terrorists were surrounding them and they had to escape. How she stayed on the phone with friends in another car. “I heard my friend screaming… and then the terrorists shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’…”

I was listening to Noa so intently, I didn’t realise I was crying. Because the evening had become about more than her story. For me it closed a circle. On 11 October 2023, four days after the Hamas massacre, I spoke to Raz Yadai Gantz, standing on his parents’ balcony in Tel Aviv. We didn’t know one another, but I had discovered he was a DJ and reached out to him on Facebook in a moment of raw grief when he was willing to speak.

He had just come from three funerals — Matan Lior, Naor Levi, Michael Vaknin – his dearest friends who had been at the festival for peace. Raz had been up north camping, a decision that saved his life, but now he was sobbing and apologising for struggling to speak. What consumed him most was not only the friends he had lost, but those who were still missing. He told me first about Shani Louk and then… Noa Argamani. “It’s her birthday in a few days,” he said.

I wrote Raz’s story and followed the names of his friends. The tragic fate of Shani Louk was revealed on the 30 October but Noa was still one of the missing, suspended between hope and dread. But last night, Noa was sitting in front of me, telling us what we did not see. How she survived.




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