03/17 Links Pt2: How to fight the lunatic haters: don’t get scared — get smart; What Jurgen Habermas Knew; Mamdani accuses Israel of genocide on St. Patrick’s Day stage

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: How to fight the lunatic haters: don’t get scared — get smart

Today, Jews are at the sharp end of this onslaught — but all those seeking to defend Israel and America must also begin to make themselves heard.

The security of all Americans is in peril if we refuse to grasp the threats of Islamism at home and of Iran abroad.

My home country of Britain should stand as a warning.

The United Kingdom’s traditional freedoms and liberties have been all but lost amid its leaders’ supine appeasement of a politically powerful Muslim community.

That community has made steady progress toward its goal of Islamizing the country — just as Mayor Zohran Mamdani appears to be attempting in New York.

The Islamists are only able to make such inroads because of their all-too-willing accomplices on the left.

They are bound together by their shared goal of bringing down Western society — despite diametrically opposed views of what should replace it — and their mutual hatred of Jews and Israel.

We aren’t merely witnessing a rise in antisemitism, but a global madness that threatens the West as a whole.

Not just the Jews, but all who are desperate to defend civilization against barbarism need to fight back.

Seth Mandel: What Jurgen Habermas Knew

For the past 96 years, cynicism had few greater enemies than the super-famous philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the former leader of the Frankfurt School of critical theory, who died on Saturday. Among the numerous ways Habermas stood out from his peers in modern social theory was that this former Hitler Youth went to his grave defending Israel’s right of self-defense.

This meant breaking with the post-October 7 manufactured consensus in academia that the Jewish state was guilty of the same category of crimes committed against the Jewish people by Nazi Germany. Yet Habermas’s philosophy made his objection to this calumny inevitable: He believed in the power of engagement—his most famous idea arguably remains his belief that societal problems can and should be solved in the public square—and by the time of his death, that made him an outsider among intellectuals.

Indeed, his peers’ turn against Israel was inseparable from their turn against Enlightenment ideals. Official and unofficial speech codes in academia cast the Jewish state out of the public square: BDS became not just a boycott-focused tactic against Israel but a way of life. You simply did not talk to those who held insufficiently hostile opinions about the Jews.

Habermas understood precisely where that attitude can lead. But his critics on the left misunderstand the way his Germanness informed his fairmindedness on Israel. The last great intellectual controversy of his life is instructive.

In November 2023, Habermas and three co-authors published the following:
“The Hamas massacre with the declared intention of eliminating Jewish life in general has prompted Israel to strike back. How this retaliation, which is justified in principle, is carried out is the subject of controversial debate; principles of proportionality, the prevention of civilian casualties and the waging of a war with the prospect of future peace must be the guiding principles. Despite all the concern for the fate of the Palestinian population, however, the standards of judgement slip completely when genocidal intentions are attributed to Israel’s actions.”

In retrospect, of course, Habermas was well-served by his reluctance to join the mob. As we now know, the “genocide” accusation against Israel has no basis and has been revealed as a bad-faith libel constructed by supporters of a “global intifada.” That Habermas wasn’t fooled by it remains unforgivable to his progressive critics.

Ivan Jablonka, historian: 'The use of last names is a particular trait of antisemitism'

A history professor at Université Sorbonne-Paris Nord and a member of the Institut universitaire de France, a French academic honorary institution, Ivan Jablonka has published several works on the history and memory of the Holocaust. He is the founder of the Traverse series and co-director of the La République des Idées ("The Republic of Ideas") series at the Seuil publishing house. He is also the author of A History of the Grandparents I Never Had (2016).

The leader of La France Insoumise (LFI, radical left), Jean-Luc Mélenchon, made a sarcastic remark during a meeting in support of his movement's candidates for the municipal elections in Lyon on February 26, about the name of the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He suggested that the American pronunciation of Epstein's last name [Epsteen] was intended to hide his Jewish identity by making him seem Russian. The Socialist leader, Olivier Faure, condemned what he called a drift into "the dark waters of antisemitism." How do you interpret the remarks made by the LFI leader?

Jean-Luc Mélenchon recently joked about the pronunciation of two Jewish names, Jeffrey Epstein and [on March 1] Raphaël Glucksmann [a French member of the European Parliament]. These remarks are part of a consistent series of statements dating back to 2020. According to him, Jesus was crucified "by his own compatriots." Eric Zemmour [far-right figure] is said to reproduce the "cultural scenarios" of Judaism that are hostile to creolization and Yaël Braun-Pivet [president of the Assemblée Nationale] allegedly "went camping in Tel Aviv to encourage the massacre" in Gaza. La France Insoumise also boycotted the march against antisemitism [in November 2023] and published a poster of Cyril Hanouna [a French TV personality] using Nazi iconography from the 1930s [in March 2025].

This way of referring to Jews reminds me of [late far-right leader] Jean-Marie Le Pen. The daughter [Marine Le Pen] has made people forget the father's misdeeds, but he was a specialist in antisemitic mockery about last names. In 1985, he listed the names of four Jewish journalists – Jean-François Kahn, Jean Daniel, Ivan Levaï and Jean-Pierre Elkabbach – before referring to "all the liars of the press." A few years later, he made the grim pun "Durafour crématoire" [a play on the name of then minister Michel Durafour, alluding to cematorium].

That is where Jean-Luc Mélenchon now stands. He does not advocate an anti-Jewish agenda, as some politicians did between the late 19th century and the Vichy regime, but he offers an interpretive framework typical of antisemitic thinking: Jews are pulling the strings and leading the world into war.

Read More

03/17 Links Pt1: Pres. Herzog: Europe Should Back Effort to Eradicate Hizbullah; Ali Larijani’s elimination signals a turning point in Iran; Iranian attack kills man and woman in Ramat Gan; Joe Kent Was a Problem of Trump’s Own Making

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Read More

03/16 Links Pt2: Profiles in Terror; Bob Vylan and the rise of ayatollah chic; Drop Site News Called Michigan Synagogue Attack Self-Defense

From Ian:

Profiles in Terror

For those who need reminding, the late 1970s were a truly awful stretch for the United States of America: from stagflation at home to the Soviet Union and friends on the march in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America, to the Khomeini revolution in Iran. David Frum's account of the period, How We Got Here, should be required reading for anyone under 40 now complaining that Ronald Reagan's conservatism didn't amount to a hill of beans in staving off national disaster. We were, as they say, thisclose.

Now comes Jason Burke, a veteran journalist for the United Kingdom's Guardian, with a timely reminder that the early 1970s also stank. The Revolutionists is an extensively reported chronicle of the leading figures of the time in violent pursuit of radical change, whether communist revolutions in Europe and elsewhere or the eradication of the state of Israel. Burke makes a plausible but understated case that the terrorism problem that seized the world by the lapels on September 11, 2001, has to be understood in the context of its origins and evolution over the previous 30 years.

Burke's subtitle is "The Story of the Extremists Who Hijacked the 1970s." The operative word is "hijacked," not in a metaphorical sense but literally, as in smuggling guns and bombs aboard commercial airplanes, commandeering them shortly after takeoff, forcing pilots to fly to hijacker-friendly Middle East destinations, and demanding of governments the release of previously captured and incarcerated extremists plus millions in ransom. Mostly, the hostages survived, but only after being thoroughly terrorized by the hijackers' threat to blow up the airplane and its passengers, sometimes seat-belted for days in their own excrement on a blisteringly hot tarmac with little food or water, sometimes subjected as well to deranged lectures on the justice of the Palestinian cause or the class conflict leading inevitably to proletarian revolution. It is astonishing now to read of the seeming ease with which armed extremists passed themselves off as ordinary passengers through minimal security.

There were literally hundreds of such attempted hijackings, the vast majority of them successful, in the period from 1968 to 1980—that is, in the wake of the stunning Israeli victory over massed Arab armies in the 1967 Six-Day War, which landed Israel control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula, the Golan Heights, and Jerusalem. In Burke's telling, Palestinians who cheered the onset of the war wept at its conclusion—feeling "grief equivalent to a bereavement," as he writes. One was Leila Khaled, who would go on to join George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, where she won fame as an early female perpetrator of hijackings and other terror attacks in Europe. The "armed struggle" was on.

Without making a polemic of it, Burke destroys any lingering doubt about the interconnectedness of the violent extremists of the time. Most terrorists in the Palestinian cause were homegrown, but their training camps and havens in the Middle East hosted communist radicals from West Germany, Central America, and Japan. Fusako Shigenobu, leader of the communist Japanese Red Army, became so concerned about security in her homeland she moved her base of operations to Beirut under the PFLP umbrella. The notorious "Carlos the Jackal" was born Ilich Ramírez Sánchez from Caracas, Venezuela. In the Arab world, he was known as Saleem Mohammed. His surge to global notoriety began in London in 1973 with his assassination attempt on Joseph Edward Sieff, the Jewish president of the retail chain Marks & Spencer.

Andrew Pessin: Tobias Gisle, We Need to Talk About the Most Influential Academic Fraud of the 20th Century

The Middle East is not the only part of the world that endlessly complains about being hard done by the West, and nurses and nurtures a culture of revanchism and militarism against the mean West from inside dictatorships. This is an apt description of Russia. This is exactly Putin’s ideology. All poor Russia needs is a little more space. A little more Lebensraum for the biggest country in the world. Therefore, justice demands that it should be free to invade its neighbours at will. Most people in the West alternate between disbelief and fear at this ludicrous suggestion. Yet this is exactly what the Arab-led activism championed by Said suggests. The reasoning is equally absurd. The reason that the Arabs and Muslims have such rubbish lives is that Arab lands used to be colonized long ago and that there is that terrible humiliation of there being a tiny Jewish state covering 0.17% of “Arab lands.” Instead of laughing in disbelief, we give Said and all his acolytes the best professorships in the lands of the West. Incidentally, when Said tried to claim victimhood for the Arabs, he missed something fundamental about Israel and Zionism. Israel may have been established by desperate refugees fleeing persecution, but the secret of Israel’s success is precisely that it is not revanchist. If I would go around complaining all day that the Nasser regime stole my children’s grandfather’s house in Alexandria, all Israelis would tell me to get a life and move on. Of course, we remember the Holocaust and the persecution, but this is not the focus. We are looking to the future, not looking for revenge.

Orientalism theory is black and white thinking with the goal of fermenting victimhood and revanchism among Arabs and Muslims. This is reflected in Said’s political legacy, where he bravely stood against the chance at statehood for Palestinians in the 1990s so that we could have a few more decades of good ol’ war instead.

It’s high time we rid ourselves of this theory. Said and Foucault both explain nothing and do nothing for the Middle East. The entire field needs a new paradigm. The real Middle East needs theories that challenge each and every phenomenon that hurts the people who live here. Authoritarianism, oppression of women, reliance on oil, sectarianism, and of course political Islam and the other debunked, useless ideologies of the Middle East. We don’t need any more theories that blame Israel and the West for all the problems of the region. We certainly don’t need “orientalism.”

The idea is the theoretical equivalent to people insisting they are “anti-racist” while at the pro-Palestine demonstration with Hamas flags fluttering and “Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud” filling the Autumn breeze.

Enough with the indulgence of this poison.

Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas Crimes No One Talks About

As international attention is focused on the Iran war, Hamas has stepped up its crackdown on the Palestinian people as part of its effort to reassert control in Gaza. Hamas has murdered, arrested, assaulted, or summoned for interrogation dozens of Palestinians for allegedly speaking out against the terror group.

Gaza-born political activist Hamza Howidy wrote last week: "Since the war with Iran began, Hamas's thugs have intensified their brutal, savage, barbaric campaign against Gaza's own residents. The people in this photo are just some of many who have been executed, shot, kidnapped, or brutally tortured in recent weeks. The list of atrocities grows by the day, and the sheer sadism on display goes beyond anything comprehensible.... The 'crime' those people committed? Saying their own opinions."

"What makes this even worse than the suffering of those victims itself is the silence of the people who built entire careers screaming about Palestinian suffering. The same commentators, the same 'human rights advocates,' the same influencers, and the same media outlets that spent months positioning themselves as the moral conscience of the world, packaging Palestinian pain into clout, followers, and book deals, have gone completely dark....The Palestinians left to die under Hamas's boots are apparently the wrong kind of Palestinians."

Another Gaza-born political activist, Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, wrote on March 12: "Hamas terrorists conducted a parade in their trucks inside the al-Mawasi tent zone for the displaced. These gunmen are the same ones who are killing, kidnapping, torturing, and shooting Gazans every single day; they're making their presence known to say "shut up & pay us taxes"! They hide in tent areas and use civilians as shields to lessen the chance of being struck by Israeli drones and air strikes."

Read More

03/16 Links Pt1: Glimpsing Victory in Iran; The ‘War on Terror’ Returns; Iran war shows how ‘human rights’ groups now just play vile politics

From Ian:

Mark Dubowitz and Richard Goldberg: Glimpsing Victory in Iran

As military pressure intensifies, the political dimension becomes increasingly important. Washington is targeting its messaging to IRGC personnel, military officers, and senior officials: Surrender brings amnesty; continued loyalty risks ruin. That logic may already be visible in what appears to be Phase 2. Roughly 3,000 members of an elite protest-suppression unit reportedly received warning messages that they were being targeted. Within a day, their headquarters near Tehran’s Azadi Stadium lay in ruins.

Phase 1 degrades military power and holds hostage the regime’s economic lifelines. Phase 2 raises the cost of repression inside Iran. Drones operating over Tehran have reportedly struck and killed IRGC and Basij personnel manning checkpoint units. For the first time, repression forces may fear for their own survival just as protesters have for years.

Phase 3 could present itself in more ways than sudden collapse—perhaps looking more like sustained erosion: a weakened regime, tightening economic pressure, diplomatic isolation, and eventually internal upheaval. The announced selection of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new supreme leader may accelerate that erosion rather than stabilize it. A polished cleric in the mold of Hassan Rouhani could again provide the IRGC political cover and revive illusions of moderation abroad. Mojtaba offers no such illusion. His elevation signals a harsher, weaker, more corrupt order—and therefore a more fragile one.

Phase 3, however, belongs to the Iranian people. Without sustained American pressure, Mojtaba and the IRGC will declare victory. That cannot be allowed. The regime has always feared domestic unrest more than external attack, which is why it repeatedly shuts down internet access during protests. Restoring connectivity would give Iranians a tool that the regime understands all too well.

Protesters also need the means of self-defense. January’s massacre of more than 30,000 Iranians by regime security forces remains a brutal reminder of what peaceful demonstrators face when confronting a coercive state. The United States should declare its commitment to Iran’s territorial integrity while arming the opposition—not only among Kurdish, Baluchi, and Arab minorities in the periphery, where local resistance could tie down security forces, but also among Persians in major cities.

With continued dominance in the air and deep penetration on the ground, Israel should continue striking the repression apparatus while America supports the political conditions for internal fracture.

The Islamic Republic has survived for 47 years because it has proved adaptive, ruthless, and willing to absorb immense pain. But it has never faced simultaneous leadership decapitation, military degradation, economic strangulation, regional isolation, and internal legitimacy collapse on this scale. That does not guarantee the regime’s end. It does mean that something once improbable is now imaginable: The long arc of the Islamic Republic may finally be bending toward an end. If that happens, military force will have created the opening.

Operation Epic Fury is only two weeks old. The campaign has already delivered major wins for American national security, and more are likely to emerge in coming days. But something much bigger and more historic is starting to come into view—something that can be unlocked with a little more patience from the American public as the United States degrades Tehran’s ability to wage war outside its borders and Israel degrades the regime’s ability to wage war against its own people.

Victory can be defined in many ways when a campaign delivers multiple layers of success in destroying capabilities that threaten the United States. But the ultimate goal should be enabling the Iranian people to rid the world of this radical, terror-sponsoring regime. And achieving that goal—total victory—seems ever more possible.

Josh Hammer: What is Victory in Operation Epic Fury?

At this point in the campaign, it is uncontested that wholesale regime change is the most desirable outcome. The pursuit of regime change as a goal unto itself is often now disparaged, coming in the aftermath of the failed neoconservative boondoggles earlier this century. But it ought to be axiomatic that there are some foreign regimes that behave in a manner that redounds to the American national interest, and there are some foreign regimes that behave in a manner that is contrary to the American national interest. It is natural and logical that we would wish for the latter types of regime to be heavily reformed or outright replaced — especially with the local populace leading the way.

Perhaps even more to the point: One does not take out a 37-year-ruling despot like Ali Khamenei, as the American and Israeli militaries did in the opening hours of the present operation, and not hope for full-scale regime change. Indeed, all people of goodwill should be hoping for that outcome — for the Iranian people to rise up like lions and throw the yoke of tyranny off their necks once and for all, delivering a long-sought victory for the American national interest in the process.

But it’s entirely possible that full-scale regime change won’t happen. The people of Iran just witnessed tens of thousands of their countrymen brutally gunned down during the anti-regime uprisings of late December and early January. They are an unarmed populace facing Nazi-esque regime jackboots, in the form of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Basij paramilitary.

All of that, then, raises one final question: Is it possible for there to be victory in Operation Epic Fury, and for the Iranian regime to be neutralized as a threat to the United States and our interests, if there isn’t full-scale regime change in Tehran?

In theory, the answer is yes. Venezuela provides a model. But in practice, the answer is murkier.

Delcy Rodriguez, the current leader, is a hardened Marxist-Leninist in the mold of her two immediate predecessors, Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro. But Rodriguez has been fully cooperative with the United States since the astonishing January operation to extract Maduro for the simple reason that she has no real choice in the matter: She remains in power, yes, but only on the condition of an “offer” presented by Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that, to borrow from Vito Corleone in “The Godfather,” she “can’t refuse.” Accordingly, Rodriguez has thus far been fully cooperative in areas such as American oil extraction and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States.

In theory, a similar arrangement is possible with a decimated, chastened regime in Tehran. And some experts predict that such an arrangement will characterize the regime in Iran a year or two from now. In practice, however, there is the ever-thorny problem that has frustrated and perplexed Westerners for decades when they attempt to reason with zealous Islamists: Radical, 72-virgins-in-heaven-aspiring Muslims do not fear death. A socialist like Rodriguez can, ultimately, be reasoned with; an Islamist like Mojtaba Khamenei (or his successor), probably not.

The cleanest solution to the Iran quagmire at this particular juncture — and the one that most clearly fulfills Trump’s “unconditional surrender” victory criterion — is indeed full-scale regime change. That is certainly the outcome that would be best for the neutralization of the Iranian threat and the corresponding advancement of the American national interest. I’m far from certain it will happen. But every alternative scenario only raises additional questions. So, like many others, I pray that the Iranian people seize this unique moment in history and take their destiny into their own hands.

Mojtaba Khamenei escaped death by seconds in same strike that killed his father

Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, survived the February 28 US-Israeli strike on Tehran’s leadership compound because he had stepped outside shortly before missiles hit his residence, according to leaked audio obtained by The Telegraph. The recording, attributed to a senior official in the office of the late Ali Khamenei, provides one of the fullest accounts yet of the strike that killed Iran’s former supreme leader and other senior regime figures.

According to the report, the compound was hit at 9:32 a.m. local time in what appeared to be a coordinated attempt to kill members of the Khamenei family and senior Iranian leadership at the same time. The Telegraph said the audio was independently verified and came from remarks delivered by Mazaher Hosseini, identified as head of protocol in Ali Khamenei’s office, during a March 12 meeting in Tehran.

Hosseini said Mojtaba Khamenei had gone into the yard moments before the strike and was heading back upstairs when the building was hit. According to the report, he suffered a leg injury, while his wife, Zahra Haddad-Adel, and their son were killed instantly.

The leaked recording also described the deaths of other people inside the compound, including Mojtaba Khamenei’s brother-in-law, Misbah al-Huda Bagheri Kani, and Mohammad Shirazi, the chief of Ali Khamenei’s military bureau. Hosseini said the strikes hit multiple parts of the office complex simultaneously, including residences associated with several members of the Khamenei family.

Read More

03/15 Links: Eli Lake: One American-Israeli Battle After Another; Carlson claims CIA is ‘framing’ him as an Iranian agent; Israel rejects South Africa’s ‘blood libel’ genocide case

From Ian:

Eli Lake: One American-Israeli Battle After Another

The greatest irony of recent Israeli history is that, for all of its brilliance in penetrating and sabotaging Iran, Israeli intelligence failed to pick up the signs before October 7 that the worst pogrom against Jews since the Holocaust was in the offing. But that failure quickly led to profound changes in the scope of the mission against Iran. The senior Israeli war planner to whom I spoke put it like this: “We began rethinking the war plan in early 2023, but after October 7 we focused on a broader war against Iran, not just its nuclear program or missiles.” This represented at least a partial vindication of Dagan’s ideas a decade earlier.

And that is where things stand today. As Israel and America take out Iran’s missiles, nuclear facilities, defense industries, and its political and military leadership from the air, the hope is that after the dust settles, the remaining regime leadership will either surrender or agree to end the Islamic Republic’s war on the Great and Little Satan. As I write at the beginning of March, that may seem like a long shot, and one that invites intolerable risks. After all, without boots on the ground, neither the U.S. nor Israel will have the ability to shape the inevitable chaos that will result after the bombing stops. On the other hand, Israel has proven over the past eight months that it has eyes and ears everywhere in Iran. I wouldn’t be shocked if the Mossad has a plan for what comes next.

Here at home, what is going to come next for those who decided to blame this just American war on the little Jewish state they seem to hate so much? The populists seething about Trump’s war to Make Iran Great Again have shown that they misunderstand recent history and that their audiences are fools to listen to them. Over the past 30 years, Israel has built a capability that is on the precipice of removing a blood enemy of America. It has located and eliminated the clerics and generals responsible for 47 years of terror against our country and her allies.

Trump has not launched a war for Israel. Rather he has joined a war with Israel—a war Israel may have won even before the bombs started dropping.

Victor Davis Hanson: Trump challenged 50 years of Iran fears — and revealed the rotten, decaying truth

So here we are in 2026, watching the systematic destruction of the entire five-decade façade of a supposedly invincible Iranian military, the elimination of its theocratic leaders, and the dismantling of the Iranian military and Revolutionary Guard terrorists.

The regime has no military ability to ensure its survival.

All it has is a rope-a-dope strategy that assumes a White House attuned to domestic criticism, the looming midterms, the price of gas, and pressure from allies to end the war before the global economy sinks into recession.

We are left somewhat confused.

Why did prior presidents not hold Iran accountable for its killing, thus nourishing the myth of Iranian invincibility?

Why did Israel not respond earlier to Iran itself, rather than just its terrorist clients?

And what now are the remaining theocrats thinking? What is their strategy of survival?

They intend to ride out the bombings and, at some point in extremis, expect an armistice via “negotiations.”

They plan to wait out the tenures of both Trump and Netanyahu and hope for a sympathetic president like Obama, or a non compos mentis Biden, or someone ideologically akin to Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

With Trump and Netanyahu out of office, they dream of using their oil to re-arm and resume their role as Chinese and Russian proxies, eventually getting the bomb — and this time perhaps using it.

Theocratic Iran, in its fantasies, still believes that if it ever destroyed Israel, the world, especially given the recrudescence of Western antisemitism, would be appalled — for a day or two.

Then it would resume business as usual.

And with a dozen or so deterrent nuclear-tipped missiles at their backs, the Iranian ritual boilerplate of crazed pronouncements would follow.

Thus, we would go full circle back again to a “crazy” Iran, its murderous clients and its unhinged — but effective — threats.

John Podhoretz: They Should Have Listened to My Dad

Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu saw how an Iranian proxy in Gaza had set into motion a plan on October 7, 2023, with the purpose of bringing about an apocalyptic multifront assault on Israel’s existence—the very thing Ahmadinejad had said he had been seeking 18 years earlier. Iran hit Israel with ballistic missiles in 2024. Trump and Israel struck back with unprecedented force in 2025. And when they were done with the 12-day war, Trump said in no uncertain terms that he would go back to the skies if there were indications Iran was working to re-nuclearize. The Iranians had every chance during this time, and every rational reason, to stand down. They could have sued for peace after the 12-day war destroyed the Fordow nuclear facility and Iran’s air-defense system. They could have made a deal after Trump sent a gigantic armada to the waters near Iran and sent his negotiators to Geneva to talk to the Iranians. After all, they had seen Trump do what no other president would do, even though the four presidents who preceded him in office after the Soviet Union’s fall had all said Iran could not be allowed to go nuclear. The Iranians saw him go into Venezuela and extract its dictator, maybe their closest ally, like a dentist extracting a rotted tooth. But the Iranians did not stand down. Instead, they bragged to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner that they possessed enough nuclear materiel for 11 bombs. Trump had watched the Iranian people rise up and had seen the Iranian leaders shoot them down. He tried to talk and in response they boasted of their capabilities to do evil. The Israelis had told him they knew the ayatollah and his team were going to be meeting on a Saturday morning all together in one place. Trump said go. Israel went. And then America struck.

In 2007, the Iranian nuclear program was nascent and notional. But we already knew where they had located it and what they were trying to get going. Had we bombed those sites then, as Israel had bombed Iraq’s reactor in 1981, a precedent would have been established. A simple precedent. Stop. Do it again, and we will hit you again. So don’t do it.

But we didn’t. And Barack Obama tried to buy them off. Donald Trump, in his first term, tried to put the Iranians in a cage with maximum pressure. And Joe Biden, well, who knows what Joe Biden did—but he certainly didn’t scare the Iranians. Donald Trump did hit them. And they didn’t stop.

Now they will. But we needn’t have gotten to this point. One strong strike in 2007 and the world would have looked very different. Bush should have listened to my dad.

Read More

03/14 Links: The despicable disgrace of the ‘call off the war’ crowd; Michigan: a case study in the new Jew hatred; Ashab Al Yamin? New Shi’ite terror group claims synagogue attacks across Europe

From Ian:

NYPost Editorial: The despicable disgrace of the ‘call off the war’ crowd

We’d like to believe that the negative coverage of the Iran war so rampant in the media is simply more Trump Derangement Syndrome, but it’s plainly also about how the president’s firm actions expose how pathetically the same elites applauded President Barack Obama’s misbegotten Middle East policies, and not just his sad nuclear deal with Tehran.

To simplify things, consider The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, the dean of elite liberal political analysis, who’s actively sneering at the joint US-Israeli effort to defang an entity that for five decades has called them “The Great Satan” and “The Little Satan.”

“Both Washington and Jerusalem are making claims about ‘imminent’ threats that require ‘preemptive’ strikes,” he huffs, “but we should dispense with such statements: Iran is not presenting immediate danger to the United States or Israel.”

No, because the two nations took out Tehran’s nuclear program last year, as it was weeks from producing usable weapons, and they’ve acted before it could rebuild its defenses and offensive conventional forces to shield it as it recovered that capability.

The imminent threat was to become too tough to take out.

And Iran’s lunatic bombing of almost every country now within its range proves that it was and is a threat to the entire civilized world: Just imagine it with the long-range missiles and nukes that it never stopped developing.

But of course Jeff Goldberg was one of Obama’s chief media sycophants

He asked Obama how he could possibly understand the Iranian regime as both thoroughly antisemitic and “practical,” “responsive to incentive” and “rational” — and accepted without question Obama’s blithe reply that “the fact that the supreme leader is antisemitic doesn’t mean that this overrides all of his other considerations.”

What poppycock: Those “other considerations” centered on a determined drive at regional domination and a certainty that going nuclear was the only sure way to ensure the regime’s survival.

Obama & Co. simply fantasized that a mature Islamic Republic would happily become a normal power if bribed sufficiently — and fanboys like Goldberg swooned.

Jake Wallis Simons: How Israel could spark regime change from the air

In a video speech last week, Benjamin Netanyahu disclosed that the IDF had “many surprises” in store for the regime. According to insiders, these have been delayed by Israeli infighting over which agency will take the credit. But they are on their way.

These surprises, thought to number about four or five, are unlikely to feature anything on the scale of the pager operation that castrated Hezbollah in September 2024. Instead, we are likely to see a sequence of creative subversions of the foundations of the Islamic Republic.

“With one hand, we grip the regime’s throat with force,” a security official said, referring to the conventional air campaign. “With the other hand, we shake it unexpectedly, again and again and again, until its neck snaps.” The objectives are clear. If all goes well, Israeli surprises will both demoralise the regime’s troops, tempting them to desert, and embolden the Iranian people to overthrow them.

But what about boots on the ground? Never before, etc. Well, keep your eyes on the Artesh, Iran’s regular armed forces which, unlike the fanatical Revolutionary Guards, descend from the time of the Shah. These troops tend to be of a nationalistic temperament, not an Islamist one, and they have largely held back from the fighting.

If the humiliation of the regime reaches a tipping point, the Artesh may revolt. This would resemble a traditional coup, empowered by homo digitalis and the Mossad. Another first. As if by magic, the Iranian people would find themselves with a great many boots on the ground.

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. None of this is guaranteed and, as Netanyahu pointed out this week, “you can lead someone to water, but you cannot make him drink”. Donald Trump echoed these sentiments, telling Fox News on Friday that an uprising was “a big hurdle to climb for people that don’t have weapons”. He added: “It’ll happen, but it probably will be maybe not immediately.” Post-2003 Iraq always lurks around the corner.

But what was the alternative? Diplomacy had failed. Sanctions had failed. Covert action had slowed Tehran’s progress towards a bomb, but was powerless to stop it. Even after the hammering it received in June, the regime immediately began building back its missile stockpiles and proxies, like zombies knowing only death, and went on to butcher more than 30,000 people in two days, not to mention the atrocities it plots on our shores.

Seen from our rainy isles of appeasement, Mossad and homo digitalis stand like greyhounds in the slips. With or without our support, the game’s afoot. They will follow their spirit, and upon the charge, cry: “God for America, Israel and Iran!”

Brendan O'Neill: Michigan: a case study in the new Jew hatred

Dearborn is like a microcosm of the supine culture that has reigned in the post-7 October West. In the US, the UK and Europe, we’ve witnessed an explosion of the twin forces of Islamism and Islamo-censorship. We’ve seen mobs cheer anti-Semitic terrorism and wallow in the violent dream of Israel’s fiery demise. And yet you’re called ‘Islamophobic’ if you fret about it. Islamism is treated as a reasonable reaction to the behaviour of ‘the Zionist entity’ while concern about Islamism is damned as bigotry. These are Kafkaesque levels of moral deceit, where those of us worried about the rebirth of an ancient hatred are ourselves called ‘hateful’.

It remains to be seen what Ghazali thought he would achieve with his butchery at Temple Israel. Whether he fantasised that he was avenging Lebanon or whether his anti-Jewish animus flowed from the Islamist pox in Dearborn. Yet it is reasonable to ask if Dearborn’s virulent Israelophobia pushed this man deeper into the cesspit of anti-Jewish hate. A striking feature of our time is that leftists and liberals will always go looking for the ‘architecture of hatred’ that inspires racist attacks on blacks, Muslims or Latinos – but they never do that when there are attacks on Jews. In fact, they warn against it. Don’t ‘weaponise’ this attack by raising concerns about the broader public culture, they say. It’s only ever Jews who are accused of ‘weaponisation’ for wondering if their persecution might spring from social trends.

Does the cultural elite really expect us to believe there’s no link between its own frothing hysteria over the Jewish State and the march of hostility against Jewish people? It’s a childish delusion, and a dangerous one, to think you can spend your every waking hour lamenting the supposedly unique cruelty of the world’s only Jewish nation and that there will be no consequences for Jews. The ceaseless libels against the Jewish homeland, the cries for more ‘intifada’ – these have consequences. You would think an activist class that says it’s vile bigotry to call ‘transwomen’ men would understand that the bourgeois clamour for the violent dismantling of the Jewish homeland is likely to entail blowback for Jewish people.

This is why it’s sickening to hear the likes of New York mayor Zohran Mamdani mourn the events in Michigan. This is a man who refused to condemn the cry ‘Globalise the intifada’. This is a man whose wife liked Instagram posts celebrating an orgy of anti-Jewish violence far worse than Michigan’s – 7 October. Then there’s Zack Polanski, leader of the Green Party of England and Wales, wringing his hands over the ‘horrific news’ from Michigan. Mate, your deputy leader is a man who celebrated the pogrom of 7 October. A party that cheers the murder of Jews in Israel has no business lamenting the attempted murder of Jews in Michigan.

Things are getting serious. Over the past week there have been violent incidents at synagogues in Liege in Belgium, in Toronto, and now Michigan. Violent Jew hate is spreading. And the first step to tackling it is to dismantle every snivelling effort to censor public concern. The Orwellian forces who call us bigots for speaking about bigotry need to be put back in their box. The stakes are too high for such slippery, tyrannical games.

Read More

03/13 Links Pt2: Normalizing the grotesque; The Concept of Jewish Collective Guilt Goes Mainstream; US defends Israel at ICJ against South Africa’s allegation of genocide

From Ian:

Normalizing the grotesque

Provoking outrage was the point. Mamdani wanted to take the photo of his love-in with his anti-American friend and shove it into the public’s face, implying, “Suck it up, America, because you can’t do anything about it. We have the power now, and we’re getting stronger.”

Mamdani’s goal was to normalize the grotesque. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a very different kind of New York Democrat, called this “defining deviancy down” 33 years ago in an essay about American culture and society being pulled apart. That’s what Mamdani, Duwaji, and Khalil are doing — trying to pull our culture, society, moral framework, and self-assurance apart.

Like the Islamist forces they support, their deepest desire is to change — that is, destroy — who we are, what we believe, and how we conduct ourselves. That’s why Duwaji posted in joyous celebration of Hamas’s tortures, rapes, and massacres in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The point of Mamdani’s dinner and photo, of Khalil’s activism, of Duwaji’s delight in slaughter is to repudiate the norms that have always guided public speech and conduct in America.

Hamas terrorists did the same on Oct. 7, normalizing the grotesque. They didn’t just slaughter Jews, but captured their enormities on video — they hacked off the head of one victim with an agricultural hoe — and published the evidence on social media around the world. They calculated, rightly to the shock and horror of many of us, that this would attract rather than repel support.

TRUMP GETS THE LAST LAUGH
Horrors, the perpetration of which would once have revolted and alienated every sane person in the West, instead sparked mass support. Hamas terrorists, like their supporters in Gracie Mansion, defy norms to normalize what used to be utterly unacceptable. They seek to wreck the moral parameters of Western civilization. The more that extremists, especially public figures on the Left, reject the traditions of a coherent society, the more they sow doubt in the minds of the population.

It should be disqualifying for the New York mayor to sup with a terrorist sympathizer, but Mamdani wanted to jam his crowbar deeper into a fissure splitting our society. He expected this to encourage his leftist base and demoralize his foes. It probably has. It is a measure of the fantastic success the Left-Islamist alliance has had in its campaign to undermine this couvntry.

Maryland Dems propose bill targeting nonprofits tied to Judea and Samaria

Maryland Democrats introduced a bill that would prohibit certain nonprofit organizations registered to solicit charitable donations from supporting “Israeli settlement activity” in Judea and Samaria and allow lawsuits against groups that violate the measure.

Titled the “Not on Our Dime Act,” HB 1184 was introduced on Feb. 11 by Gabriel Acevero, Ashanti Martinez and Caylin Young, Democratic members of the Maryland House of Delegates. At a March 11 hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee, representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations debated with Lauren Arikan, a Republican delegate, on whether the legislation should also include charitable organizations that support Iranian-linked causes.

“We’re going to have to have these difficult conversations,” Sean Stinnett, a Democratic delegate, said at the hearing, asking supporters of the bill why Jewish advocacy groups felt it was “singling out Israel.”

“There is no other country that is currently building illegal settlements that is condemned by the United Nations, by the ICJ, by the U.S. Department of State under the Obama and Biden administration,” a CAIR representative responded, claiming that Washington is funding this activity with “billions” of dollars.

The bill says a nonprofit registered with the state “may not knowingly engage in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

It describes “unauthorized support” as aiding or abetting actions by the Israeli government or Israeli citizens in what it defines as “the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Under the proposal, Maryland’s attorney general could file civil lawsuits against nonprofit leaders accused of violating the law and seek “not less than $1,000,000 in damages.” Private individuals could also bring lawsuits seeking injunctions and damages.

Nonprofits found liable would be removed from the state’s registry of charitable solicitations. The state would be required to ensure that organizations that are no longer registered stop soliciting in Maryland, according to a policy note attached to the bill.

Turning Terror Into Context by Abe Greenwald

Via Commentary Newsletter, sign up here.
What about the part that the New York Times isn’t telling you—or at least not in bold type? Where’s the headline reading “More Than 100 Children in Temple Israel Pre-K at Time of Attack”? Or how about this for a story on the terrorist’s family back in Lebanon? “Synagogue Attacker’s Brothers Suspected of Being in Hezbollah”?

Not at the paper of record. The important thing for the Times, and many other outlets, is to bring everything back around to supposed Israeli crimes.

Even if we were to pretend that Israel is guilty of every invented charge hurled at it, what does that have to do with 100 Jewish American children sitting in classrooms in West Bloomfield, Michigan, on a Thursday afternoon? The only moral statement one need make about yesterday’s attack is that it’s right and just that the perpetrator is dead.

From October 7, 2023, to this day, every last bit of the psy-op against Israel and the Jews has relied on inverting both morality and truth. Hamas attempted a genocide, so Israel is accused of genocide. Zionism is, among other things, a means of preventing genocide, so Zionism itself is framed as a genocidal ideology. Hamas targeted innocents, slaughtered babies, and raped women, so Israel is accused of all three. Hamas kept food from Gazans, so Israel is accused of a starvation plot. Jews are indigenous to Israel, so Israel is accused of colonizing a native population. Jews are attacked across campuses and elsewhere in America, so we’re lectured on Islamophobia. The Iranian regime has been waging a half-century-long war to destroy Israel, so Israel is accused of starting a war with Iran.

Here's another regularly inverted truth: Children die in Israeli airstrikes for the simple reason that genocidal Jew-haters keep trying to rid the world of Jews. This is what liberals might call the “root cause.” If the family of the terrorist who carried out yesterday’s attack was killed in Lebanon, that’s entirely the fault of Hezbollah. That his brothers are suspected of being in Hezbollah perfectly encapsulates the larger pathological loop: In their effort to extinguish the Jews, Jew-haters kill their own—at which point they must go out and try to kill more Jews.

Whether they succeed or fail, the media will be sure to get their message out.

Read More