Tag Archive for: terrorism

Anti-Semitic and Pro-Hamas Rallies Reveal the Need to Teach Truthful History

Since October 7, many of us have been deeply impacted and heartbroken seeing imageshearing news, and realizing what has happened to thousands of individuals and families in Israel. In addition to sympathizing with our brothers and sisters, it has been eye-opening and tragic to see how many college students sympathize with — not the Israeli victims — but the Hamas terrorists who delighted in brutally attacking and murdering them. This reality brings to light the importance of teaching children accurate history, natural law, and, for Christians, a biblical worldview.

The United States is a unique, blessed nation that was founded upon prayer and the wisdom of men such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Jay, Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton. These men shared Judeo-Christian values which they referred to as “self-evident truths” in the Declaration of Independence. Political philosophers refer to America’s founding political philosophy as “classical liberalism”: limited representative government and the protection of basic rights and freedoms under the rule of law. The Founders’ understanding that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness” results from the Jewish and Christian understanding that “God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

Tragically, in recent decades, America’s mainstream media and public education system have devalued our country’s relationship with Israel and our shared, Judeo-Christian values based on the Ten Commandments in favor of viewing history and current affairs in the Middle East from the perspective of Palestinians and even radical Islamist terrorists such as Hamas. While it is important to view the Palestinian people as human beings made in the image and likeness of God, we must also defend and declare the sacredness of the Jews’ lives and their right to defend their homeland of Israel.

In 2021, FRC’s Chris Gacek and Lela Gilbert detailed how anti-Semitism and Marxism have tragically spread throughout America, especially on college campuses. They described how there is an aggressive antisemitic outlet among foreign and U.S.-born students on American campuses via the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions Movement (BDS).

BDS targets Israel for isolation and economic ostracism because Israel is “purported to be an ‘apartheid state’ akin to South Africa with Zionism being its supporting ‘racist’ ideology,” Gacek and Gilbert write. “Worse yet, the BDS Movement has extensive ties to Islamic radicalism in the Middle East including Hamas. To promote BDS on campus, the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) was founded in 2010, but numerous individual campus chapters existed for at least a decade prior. The BDS/SJP movement accepts nothing about Zionism or the State of Israel. …Now, SJP has over 200 college and university chapters which are administration sanctioned. …Jewish students are intimidated from public displays of religious or Zionist belief …”

“This modern adaptation of antisemitism is a manifestation of [Marxist] critical race and ethnic theories that cast Jews ‘uniformly as powerful white oppressors.’ This ‘critical’ variation ‘doesn’t single Jews out, ethnically or otherwise, as distinct categories.’ Instead, by lumping Jews together with other ‘dominant majorities,’ it ‘effectively creates an erasure, diminishing the Jewish voice in defining Jewish identity,’” the duo warns.

On the October 19 episode of “Washington Watch,” Dean of the Regent University School of Government Michele Bachmann explained, “There’s a real change that’s happened in the United States Congress, and there’s a real change that’s happened throughout America, and that’s where Christians need to wake up, too, and take stock of what’s going on because our … Christian young people are being targeted with this propaganda … that really Israel and Hamas, they’re coequal partners. [Or that] Israel’s just as much at fault as Hamas. This is an absolute lie.”

Bachmann continued, “And so we’re swimming in a sea of lies, and it’s important that churches, that Christian schools and universities teach the truth about what the Bible says about Israel and also the historic truth, the political truth, the legal truth about Israel’s right to her land. And there is never any justification … for what Hamas has done and is doing even today to Israel.”

To help your kids learn the history of Israel and Palestine, PragerU has some very helpful videos at prageru.com.

WATCH: History Gaza Explained

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Senator to Biden: ‘You Can’t Be Pro-Israel and Pro-Iran. You Have to Choose.’

A month ago, the idea of U.S. troops doing live-fire exercises in Iraq would have seemed like something out of 2002. But almost three weeks removed from one of the bloodiest days in the modern Middle East, war is closer than it’s ever been. With more than 18 separate attacks launched at American soldiers last week, it’s clear: Israel is no longer the only target.

“My warning to [Iran],” President Biden said Wednesday, was “be prepared.” “If they continue to move against those troops, we will respond.” Whether the Ayatollah takes the message seriously is anyone’s guess. After all, Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) pointed out, it’s not like this White House’s position has been one of strength.

“Iran does not know if this president has any red lines,” the Kansan argued on “Washington Watch,” “and I’m afraid that they could be right. And that’s why I’m saying we need to retaliate and teach them a lesson. We need to hit the bully across the nose really hard the next time they do anything whatsoever. As long as we have ships in harm’s way, which we do, it’s very possible that one of those drones or one of those underwater attacks get through. So of course, I’m very, very concerned about the situation there.”

And it’s not just Republicans who are sounding the alarm. After 24 Americans were wounded on bases in Iraq and Syria, hard-core Democrats like Senator Chris Coons from the president’s own state have expressed frustration with Biden’s lack of spine. “There needs to be pressure back against Iran,” he insisted to Fox News’s Bret Baier. “… Iran funded, supplied, and trained the fighters of Hamas and is behind these other proxies that are in the north of Israel, in the south of Lebanon, in Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula, in Iraq. So, we need to be striking back — and we need to be prepared for the very real prospect that this will get harder before it gets easier.”

In conversations with some of the Syrian rebel commanders, Biden’s weakness is only feeding Iran’s aggression. “There has been absolutely no response to these attacks,” one told a Washington Post reporter, “which has resulted in the fact that the Iranian-backed militias are getting much braver.”

Much as this White House has tried, you can’t be “pro-Israel and pro-Iran,” Marshall insisted. “You have to choose one or the other.” But if we think back to what’s happened under Biden, the senator explained, “… [H]e’s empowered their nuclear weapon program. He’s unfrozen this $6 billion [dollars] … three months ago. He unfroze $10 billion [dollars]. And he’s now allowing them to sell $1 billion [dollars] of oil every week.” Under this administration, Iran’s reserves have climbed from $6 billion dollars to $60 billion dollars.

“This is what’s happening under Joe Biden’s watch,” Marshall shook his head. “He’s allowed Iran to once again be a force, to be a power. And again … You have to choose Israel or you have to choose Iran. Iran is the one that says, ‘Death to Israel. Death to America.’”

If Biden doesn’t act, Family Research Council President Tony Perkins asked, could we see this escalate into a “global conflict?”

“Absolutely,” Marshall answered. “We’re [all] looking [for] some type of clarity from this president, some type of priorities. [No one understands] what the president’s priorities [are] under this situation. To me, the priorities should be very, very clear. Number one, we want to get all the Americans back safely. We need to secure our southern border. By the way, we need to cut the head off the snake of Iran, and we need to eliminate Hamas. … We need a president who’s going to put our first, our best, best foot forward to stand with peace through strength.”

Frankly, Perkins pointed out, “I wish this president had the same clarity on issues such as this, as he does for abortion, the whole LGBTQ agenda, and climate change. [Those seem] to be the only three issues this administration has clarity on. It’s frightening.”

And look, the senator replied, we’re not “warmongers.” “I don’t want this war,” he admitted. “But let’s face it — over the next days, weeks, and months, it’s going to get really ugly there in the Gaza Strip. And Israel needs to know that we have their back, that unequivocally we’re going to stand with them.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Should SPLC List Its Own Employee Union as a Hate Group?

After weeks of silence from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) on Hamas’s October 7 terror attack that killed more Jews than any event since the Holocaust, the SPLC employee’s union released its own statement via X, formerly known as Twitter, claiming to stand “strongly in solidarity with the Palestinian people.” The statement may cause the SPLC union to meet SPLC’s own criteria for an anti-Semitic hate group.

“What we see in Gaza is the violent imperialist desecration of a people — the beginnings of a genocide,” alleged the SPLC union, which claimed to stand for “anti-oppression and decolonization” and accused Israel of “occupation” and “apartheid.”

“How is Israel occupying Gaza? They’ve turned the keys over to them. There aren’t any Jewish people living in Gaza,” said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch.” “They were forced out. They had to leave their homes, their businesses, and they gave complete control lock, stock, and barrel to Hamas — well, to the Palestinians, who elected Hamas as their leaders.”

“They’re simply rewriting history,” responded Jewish Rabbi Yaakov Menken on “Washington Watch.” “There are no Jews in Gaza except for [dozens of] hostages, right? Those are the only Jews allowed in the country.” The SPLC union made no mention of the hostages taken captive by Hamas.

While no Jews are allowed in Gaza, Arabs are allowed in the rest of Israel. In fact, Arabs comprise approximately 20% of Israel’s population, and they enjoy full rights as citizens. The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip “had their own government [Hamas], and they’re the ones that have facilitated this terror that is now running Gaza and has spilled over into Israel, attacking innocent civilians,” said Perkins. If there is a system of “apartheid” — race-based segregation — it isn’t carried out by Israel.

“Palestinian Lives Matter. Palestinian families matter. Palestinian histories matter,” the SPLC union protested.

“Just calling Arabs Palestinians is racist and exclusionary,” Menken replied. “It says that Jews are not Palestinians, where that’s kind of inverting 2,000 years of world history. Ever since the Romans applied that European, colonialist name [‘Palestine’] to the Land of Israel, it was primarily Jews who were known by that title. So, the whole thing is fiction from beginning to end.”

“We support the ongoing call for a ceasefire and an end to the occupation,” continued the SPLC union. “We hope to move toward peace and freedom.”

“Exactly what does a cease fire mean in this context?” asked Menken. “It means allowing Hamas to regroup and rearm without releasing the hostages — so that further atrocities can happen. It’s very clear that what they’re after is not peace, but actual barbarism.”

In a speech Friday, President Biden stated, “Hamas — its stated purpose for existing is the destruction of the State of Israel and the murder of Jewish people.” A note found on the body of Hamas terrorist encouraged him that “the enemy is a disease that has no cure, except beheading and removing the hearts and livers.” Since Hamas will never accept peace, the SPLC union’s call for a ceasefire implicitly applies only to the nation of Israel.

By denying Israel the right to self-defense against an adversary devoted to their destruction, the only peace the SPLC union can “hope to move toward” would be one succeeding the destruction of the state of Israel. This is also implied in their use of the word “freedom,” evoking the chant at pro-Palestinian rallies, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” National Review Online Editor Philip Klein argued that anyone who utters this phrase “is advocating genocide,” as it implies the elimination of Israel and the killing of millions of Jews — half the world’s Jewish population, in fact.

Biden went further, “Hamas does not represent the Palestinian people. Hamas uses Palestinian civilians as human shields, and innocent Palestinian families are suffering greatly because of them.” Yet when the SPLC union chanted, “Palestinian Lives Matter,” “Palestinian families matter,” they were blaming the nation of Israel, not Hamas.

“Anybody who really cares about Palestinian Arabs would not want them under totalitarian rule,” urged Menken. “In Gaza, they can’t choose what to believe. They can’t choose what to say. They can’t choose whom to marry. Everything is controlled for them by Gaza’s rulers.” He said Hamas is “not promoting the rights of Palestinian Arabs or anything good for them. They’re just promoting further killing of Jews and Christians.”

The SPLC union added one final absurdity to their statement, “Already, the horrors of Gaza have fueled aggression in our own country in the forms of attacks against Muslims and Sikhs, and outbursts of antisemitism.”

The cause-and-effect hypothesized here is pure fantasy. The triggering event for increased threats against Jews and Muslims was not “the horrors of Gaza” but “the Hamas attack on Oct. 7,” as the left-wing New York Times said earlier this month. (Sikhs, meanwhile, are a religious group based in India, with no connection to the land of Israel, and recent anti-Sikh attacks bear no particular relation to the events in Palestine.)

A review of recent anti-Semitic incidents further undermines the SPLC’s theory. Left-wing activists glorified Hamas’s terrorist paratroopers. Activists tore down posters showing the Israeli hostages captured by Hamas. Mainstream media immediately accused Israel of bombing a hospital, when the U.S. intelligence community now assesses “with high confidence that Israel was not responsible for the explosion at the hospital and that Palestinian militants were responsible.” Most anti-Semitic incidents seem to be inspired by radical Islamic militants, including a former Hamas chief who called for a worldwide “Day of Jihad [Holy War].”

Much of the anti-Semitism was expressed on university campuses.

Ironically, the SPLC defines anti-Semitism as a feature that “undergirds much of the far right,” although university campuses are often hotbeds of radical leftism. “The same people who are oppressing Jews on campus are the ones pushing Christian organizations off of campus,” said Menken. Perkins agreed, “Anti-Semitic behavior is the canary in the coal mine … when it comes to religious freedom.”

Speaking of the SPLC, their definition of “anti-Semitism” includes “efforts to subvert and misconstrue the collective suffering of Jewish people,” as well as “racialize” and “vilify” them. Surely their employee union qualifies under this definition.

The SPLC union’s Palestinian solidarity statement made no mention of a brutal terrorist attack against Jewish people in Israel that involved more than 1,400 lives lost, more than 200 hostages captured, and untold amounts of burning, rape, destruction, and suffering. “Over here you have people justifying rape on a mass scale that also included crimes like beheading, not only beheading soldiers, but beheading babies,” said Menken. That sounds like subverting and misconstruing Jewish suffering.

Adding insult to injury, the SPLC brands Israel as oppressors, imperialists, and occupiers — not to mention committing genocide — all because they dared to respond to this unprovoked barbarity and fought back against an extremist group pledged to annihilate them. That sounds like a vilification campaign.

Why did the SPLC union side with Palestine — actually, Hamas — instead of Israel, when any honest observer knows Israel is the aggrieved party? According to their statement, because “SPLC Union is and will always be rooted in the legacy of anti-oppression and decolonization led by Black and Indigenous leaders.” (On a side note, do Jews not count as indigenous to Palestine, having been there 3,500 years?) In other words, it comes down to skin color, and Arabs have a slightly darker tint. That sounds like an effort to “racialize” the Jewish people.

Elsewhere, SPLC defines a “hate group” as an “organization that … has beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.” It sounds like their employee’s labor union attacks and maligns the nation of Israel solely for being Jewish.

Not that the SPLC’s hate group definitions or designations should be taken too seriously. It’s notorious “hate map,” which lists mainstream conservative organizations and just about anybody it hates, has been linked to at least one anti-religious terrorist attack of its own — against Family Research Council in 2012. And the organization lost even more credibility in 2019 when its founder Morris Dees faced “complaints of workplace mistreatment of women and people of color” — a discrimination scandal which led to the ousting of all its (predominantly white) top leadership.

“Logically, a ‘hate group’ should be defined as one whose members 1) actually say that they hate a particular group of people; and/or 2) engage in or condone violence or other illegal activity toward such a group,” an FRC issue brief explained in 2012. “The SPLC, however, uses much broader criteria,” acknowledging that “alleged ‘hate group’ activities include constitutionally protected activities such as ‘marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing.’” Furthermore, SPLC “do[es] not distinguish between racist or violent groups and legitimate organizations that participate peacefully in the political process — tarring all with the same label.”

The SPLC union’s Palestine solidarity statement was constitutionally protected speech under the First Amendment. In America, people have the right to be wrong, and to let others know how wrong they are. The fact that the SPLC union’s constitutionally protected statement could conceivably be grounds for putting the organization on their employers’ own “hate group” list — if they were so inclined — only serves to further undermine the organization’s credibility and expose its bizarre definition of “hate” for the fraud that it is.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Israel Screens Raw, Unseen Hamas Footage for Reporters to Understand ‘What We’re Fighting For’

You didn’t have to be in the roomful of international journalists to understand the sheer horror of what they saw. For all of the grisly, stomach-turning images posted online, nothing compared to the 43 minutes of torture screened for reporters on an Israeli military base Monday. Afterward, many, including Breitbart’s Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollack, could only lean against a wall and weep. Replaying the victims’ terrified screams in his mind, he writes, “There is no moment of redemption in the footage. We do not see the end, when the good guys arrive and save the victims.” The only comfort, Pollack admits, “is the knowledge that the footage, at least, was retrieved from the terrorists after they were killed or captured.”

Like so many Israelis, government official Eylon Levy is appalled his country has to prove that terrorists brutalized innocent Jews when the evidence lies in morgues across the country. “I can’t believe we as a country are having to do this,” he shook his head, “… [but] we are witnessing a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time as people are casting doubt on the magnitude of the atrocities that Hamas committed against our people and, in fact, recorded in order to glorify that violence.”

With just pen and paper, dozens of journalists sat frozen through the raw and agonizing scenes from October 7 — videos Levy called “gruesome and as yet unseen.” Pollack was ready to quit 17 minutes in. “Make it stop,” he heard a reporter whisper, as others openly cried. In one of the most heart-wrenching moments, a boy whose father was just butchered by Hamas sobs, “Why am I alive?” — a haunting echo Pollack couldn’t shake.

In stunned silence, reporters filed out of the room to retrieve their laptops, phones, and other electronic devices they weren’t allowed to bring in. Pollack kept replaying the moment two sons became fatherless in front of their very eyes, one wailing, “Daddy, Daddy.” The killings were savage enough to make one journalist heave. It was, as The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood wrote, “pure, predatory sadism … an eagerness to kill nearly matched by eagerness to disfigure the bodies of the victims.”

Incredibly, Pollack pointed out, what these reporters witnessed is “just a small part of what the IDF still possesses.” And while Major General Mickey Edelstein admitted the government has evidence of brutal rape, “we cannot share it,” he told them somberly.

Still, the question that lingered in everyone’s minds was Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari’s: “Why does a person take a GoPro [to such an attack]?” he asked the press later. “Because he’s proud of what he does.”

As difficult as the decision was to play the footage for reporters, Hagari believes it was important, because “we want to understand, ourselves, what we are fighting for.” It is their duty, he said, to build a “collective memory,” so that when Israel is challenged, it can point back to these atrocities.

Already, the global pressure is on to back off the ground invasion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been preparing. “Israel’s the only country that has a stopwatch on it when it needs to defend itself,” CBN News’s Chris Mitchell warned from the ground.

But, as Chuck Holton reported from Israel on Friday’s “Washington Watch,” the fighting “really has not stopped in the last two weeks.” “It’s not like they just attacked on October 7th and then nothing’s happened since then. The Hamas terrorists and Hezbollah terrorists have been attacking Israel nonstop every day since then.”

While so many international outlets are focused on the Palestinian casualties, Holton explained that the Israel’s enemies are actively shelling innocent people. “There was just a massive rocket attack in Ashdod and Ashkelon out on the coast — and that’s quite a ways from Gaza. So they are still firing rockets and they’re firing them out of civilian areas.”

In talking to IDF soldiers, Holton says that every one of them agrees that there is only one option at this point, “and that is to go in and to absolutely demolish and dismantle the entire organization of Hamas.” Of course, Hamas “is working very hard to hide behind the civilian populace, to weaponize the civilians against Israel and the West, and to weaponize whatever aid comes in there so that they can continue to fight.”

As to whether the ground campaign is imminent, “that is one of the most closely guarded secrets,” the freelance correspondent told guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice. “But I’ll just say this. This is going to be a massive, absolutely massive, combined arms operation on the scale of the Shock and Awe campaign into Iraq in 2003. We’re talking about up to a half a million troops that will likely be engaged in combat before too long — and this is not planned over a course of years or even months. This is going from a standing start just two weeks ago. The logistics alone behind this kind of an operation are absolutely mind-boggling.”

As to why more boots aren’t already on the ground in Gaza, Holton explained, “You’re talking about having to coordinate all the moving parts of aviation and armor and artillery and infantry and signal and intelligence — and figure out what targets to hit and figure out who’s supposed to hit them and figure out how they’re not going to shoot each other in the process. This is an absolutely unbelievable undertaking that they’re about to do. And they realize that the more time they spend preparing, the less time they’ll have to spend fighting.”

In the meantime, fears of an even bigger conflict are spreading with the news that China is sending six warships to the Middle East. In the U.S., Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is prepping the troops for possible deployment. “What we’re seeing is a prospect of a significant escalation of attacks on our troops and our people throughout the region. We’re going to do what’s necessary to make sure that our troops are in that position and they were protected and that we have the ability to respond,” he said over the weekend, adding, “We won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”

“If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see. Our advice is don’t,” Austin warned. “We maintain the right to defend ourselves…” If that happens, Secretary of Antony Blinken echoed, “we’re ready for it.”

For now, Israelis struggle to cope — not just with the nightmare of such enormous loss, but with the world’s perception that they are somehow to blame. “I can tell you that we are already used to it, unfortunately,” Idan Rakovsky said regretfully. Still, “seeing the coverage outside of Israel is very, very hard,” he admitted.

Maybe what Pollack and others saw will help change minds. But even if it doesn’t, “At the end of the day, we know it’s a war between the light and the darkness,” the former IDF soldier insisted. “And we know that life will prevail — even though people might say differently.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Perkins, Leaders Call Believers to Pray and Stand for Israel ‘Until We See Victory’

RELATED VIDEO: The full Shin Bet interrogation of Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7th.

Middle

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Biden Pact Would Force U.S. Soldiers to Die for Saudi Arabia

Even before anti-American ideologues held public rallies justifying terrorist violence in the name of “decolonization,” Joe Biden sought to hammer out an agreement that could force American soldiers to fight and die for Saudi Arabia. The terms could also give the Saudis, the world’s foremost funders of radical Islam, access to a “civilian” nuclear program and rein in Israel’s response to terrorist attacks.

The Biden administration has sought to build on President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords by getting Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel. But in exchange, the Gulf states hope to receive an “ironclad” mutual defense agreement: If they are attacked, the U.S. will come to their aid. The Saudis also seek increased arms sales and U.S. assistance in developing “peaceful” nuclear technology. Each step would be counterproductive — as would unequally yoking Washington with Riyadh.

Marching to Mecca?

History proves an enlarged U.S. military presence provides a tantalizing target for Muslim terrorists. In a prelude to 9/11, al-Qaeda killed 19 American servicemen by blowing up the Khobar Towers in 1996. Osama bin Laden later said he intended the bombing “to drive out the enemy who has occupied our land … and to rid the land of the two Holy Mosques from their presence.” Increasing the U.S. military footprint would present no less incitement or excitement for the region’s bountiful extremists 25 years later.

America certainly does not need a defense pact with the Saudis because we lack opportunities to intervene in irrelevant or counterproductive foreign wars. According to Tufts University professor Michael Beckley, by 2015 the U.S. had some form of defense pact with 69 nations around the world, requiring the U.S. military to protect two billion people, or one-quarter of the Earth’s population. Yet the pronoun-obsessed U.S. military cannot fight two wars at the same time.

Remember, too, that any U.S. military conflict in the Middle East will be presided over by President Biden, who considers the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan one of his foreign policy successes, who abandoned U.S. civilians in Afghanistan, and who has taken exacting time in rescuing American citizens from war-torn Israel. After miring the military in a fruitless proxy war with Russia in Ukraine that depleted our munitions stockpile, Biden now seeks to open a second front in the Middle East. China may determine it has become an opportune time to open a third front in the South China Sea, possibly punctuated by a North Korean nuclear explosion over the Sea of Japan. This could be followed by the attack of a Hamas sleeper cell in the American heartland.

While a Biden defense pact might fall short of a NATO-style agreement, it could resemble Barack Obama’s plan to confer Major Non-NATO Ally status. Among other things, that would make Muslim states “eligible for consideration to purchase depleted uranium ammunition.”

Revving Up the Mideast Nuclear Arms Race

Biden’s negotiators are more likely to approve the Saudis’ request for help with their nuclear program — purportedly intended to provide nuclear power for a nation that sits atop 259 billion barrels of untapped oil. History should be a guide here, as well. The Saudis could violate the agreement’s strictures to develop nuclear weapons, as North Korea did after Bill Clinton agreed to a 1994 deal hammered out by former President Jimmy Carter giving Pyongyang two light water nuclear reactors. Barack Obama incorporated a similar model into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) for Iran. Now Biden would like to widen the circle by furnishing Saudi Arabia with access to fissile nuclear material, bolstering the Saudis’ nuclear arms race against Iran … and Israel.

‘Can Two Walk Together, Except they be Agreed?’

To sustain such potentially catastrophic risks, this agreement would have to promote significant U.S. interests. Yet it is unclear how enhancing Saudi aims advances U.S. values. No fewer than 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9/11 hailed from Saudi Arabia. While the State Department classifies the kingdom as “a full partner and active participant” in counterterrorism efforts, Saudi Arabia is also the world’s leading funder and exporter of Wahhabi Islam — the fundamentalist Islamic ideology that fueled the terrorism of Osama bin Laden, al-Qaeda, and ISIS. Saudi Arabia has reportedly spent $86 billion promoting Wahhabi Islam globally over the last 50 years, funding 24,000 madrassas in Pakistan in 2016 alone.

Although then-candidate Pete Buttigieg branded Islamism as “not unlike Christianity,” wiser analysts understand no president should risk U.S. troops to promote Saudi interests. “Saudi Arabia is actively undermining American interests in the Middle East while the United States continues to provide security for the kingdom,” writes Jon Hoffman of the Cato Institute. “Unwavering U.S. support has emboldened Riyadh to pursue reckless and destabilizing policies because it is comfortable in the assurance that the United States will come to its aid and not hold it responsible for its actions.”

Why would the U.S. enter a pact with such a nation? “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3). What fellowship hath the Land of the Pilgrim’s Pride with the cradle of al-Qaeda?

Subverting the Will of the People

No wonder a majority of Americans (58%) say a mutual defense agreement with the Saudis would be a “bad deal for the U.S., and there is no justification for committing U.S. soldiers to defend Saudi Arabia,” according to a Quincy Institute/Harris poll taken last month. Pollsters found “no significant differences on views of this deal among political affiliation.” But then, the will of the American people rarely rules anything, especially foreign policy. Most Americans opposed our undeclared wars and military interventions against SerbiaKosovoLibya, and Syria, as well as additional foreign aid to Ukraine. All proceeded apace.

President Biden has already subverted democracy by pursuing a policy 180-degrees away from his 2020 campaign promises. “I would make it very clear we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to” Saudi Arabia, Biden assured Democratic primary voters during a 2019 debate. “We were going to in fact make them pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are.” But Biden has since announced that he will not, in fact, do that. Last July, Biden fist-bumped the blood-soaked hand of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), who ordered his military to murder Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi and dismember him with a bone saw inside the Saudi consulate in Turkey.

The Biden administration seems ready to sideline the American majority once again. When Biden officials signed a similar defense agreement with Bahrain last month, they did not submit it for Senate ratification. The agreement, which an administration official described as “legally binding,” requires the U.S. to “implement appropriate defense and deterrent responses as decided upon by” the two nations. Instead, Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the document, and perhaps its adoption process, as “a framework for additional countries” to follow.

Sapping U.S. Strength for Saudi Success

History, too, should make us realize that needless foreign military interventions degrade America’s power and prestige. On Monday, The Wall Street Journal ran an article titled “How the Israel-Hamas War is Tilting the Global Power Balance in Favor of Russia, China.” It explained the Israeli conflict is already “affecting the global balance of power, stretching American and European resources while relieving pressure on Russia and providing new opportunities to China.” That came before the United States tapped 2,000 U.S. troops for possible deployment to the Middle East — and sent an additional 2,000 members of the Marine Expeditionary Unit moving toward Israel via the Red Sea. The ground forces are poised to join two U.S. aircraft carriers, the USS Ford and the USS Eisenhower, in patrolling the region.

If this is true of a war that had not yet formally embroiled U.S. troops, imagine a war fought alongside a member of BRICS. In August, Saudi Arabia and five other nations asked to join BRICS — the Chinese-led global coalition intended to become a regional counterweight and eventual successor to U.S. global hegemony. The new members will form “BRICS plus six” on January 1, 2024.

A treaty with Saudi Arabia fulfills the typical leftists’ criteria for waging war: It serves no U.S. interests; it pursues Marxist “decolonization”; it advances fundamentalist Islam; and it increases the power of the president and/or international bodies at the expense of constitutional checks-and-balances and American sovereignty, respectively. But, in true progressive fashion, this treaty would go further: It would force U.S. soldiers to actively war against American interests.

A Tool of Left-Wing Foreign Policy

The Left also hopes to use the Saudi defense agreement as an additional locus of pressure against Israel. Two weeks ago, 20 Democratic senators — including Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Raphael Warnock, and John Fetterman — signed a letter tentatively opposing the measure. “A high degree of proof would be required to show that a binding defense treaty with Saudi Arabia — an authoritarian regime which regularly undermines U.S. interests in the region, has a deeply concerning human rights record, and has pursued an aggressive and reckless foreign policy agenda — aligns with U.S. interests,” they wrote. But they eventually got around to their real concern: the fear that the Biden administration would be too pro-Israeli. “[T]he agreement should include meaningful, clearly defined and enforceable provisions” aimed at “preserving the option of a two-state solution,” especially “a commitment by Israel not to annex any or all of the West Bank.”

The U.S. has no formal treaty commitment to defend Israel from military attacks. Should we sign such a treaty with Saudi Arabia, U.S. soldiers could one day fight in the Middle East to “defend” Riyadh against Tel Aviv.

The Israeli-Hamas conflict has momentarily scuttled the Saudis’ interest in pursuing the agreement as it stands. MBS kept Blinken “waiting several hours” Sunday night, according to The Washington Post, arriving the next morning. Instead, the Saudis entered talks with Iran. But Biden officials remain optimistic they can foist this pact on the American people. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told “Meet the Press” on Sunday, “There’s not some kind of formal pause” in the talks,” because “the long-term goal” of inking a mutual security defense pact with the Saudi kingdom “remains very much a focus of U.S. foreign policy.”

A U.S. defense pact with Saudi Arabia would be a ludicrous policy under any president, worthy of being invalidated by any Congress. Should Biden’s team approve the pact, Congress should pass legislation annulling it at once. U.S. soldiers should never become the janissaries of the Wahhabi Islamic kingdom.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Companies like McDonalds and Starbucks Become another Front of the Israeli Conflict

As officers stood outside the Texas Capitol Thursday evening, waves of people flooded the area for rallies. One group was clad in black, white, green, and red — the colors of Palestine — and the other with white and blue, standing for Israel. While no violence broke out between the two groups, it was a clear demonstration of the increasing division around the world caused by the ongoing war between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.

In Israel, a McDonalds has given away thousands of free meals to support Israel Defense Forces soldiers (IDF). They posted on Instagram, “[W]e donated 4,000 meals to hospitals and military units, we intend to donate thousands of meals every day to soldiers in the field and in drafting areas.” While it has received support and praise for its generosity, some have expressed their disapproval of McDonalds’ support for Israel and have called for people to boycott.

In America alone, there have been several marches celebrating Hamas’s terrorist attacks on Israel. Somewhat surprisingly, there are a significant number of voices openly supporting the terrorism taking place, including Black Lives Matter, various lawmakers, as well as progressive students across college campuses. However, a CNN poll revealed there is far more support for Israel than what may meet the eye.

Despite the large number of anti-Semitic protests, the poll reported 71% of Americans “harbor deep sympathy for Israelis,” with at least 50% indicating that they believe Israel’s response to the Hamas attacks is “fully justified.” Twenty percent see it as “partially justified,” and 21% are uncertain, with only 8% claiming it is “not justified at all.” The report also noted that 96% of Americans “express at least some sympathy” regarding the October 7 attacks.

Meanwhile, members of Starbucks Workers United, a worker-led labor union, expressed support of terror attacks on Israel on Instagram. Senator Rick Scott (R-Fla.) shared on X, “Every American should condemn the atrocities that Iran-backed Hamas terrorists committed in Israel. Boycott Starbucks until its leadership strongly denounces and takes action against this horrific support of terrorism.” And the call to boycott is spreading. Starbucks has denounced the sentiments of the union, stating that they “do not represent the company’s views, positions or beliefs.”

As further example to the backlash pro-Hamas groups are receiving, according to Breitbart, BBC News is “under fire” for reporters who have “praise[d] Hamas terror attacks on Israel.” The British new network has a history of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content, and now face criticism for their unwillingness to call Hamas terrorists. For instance, a recent BBC article titled “What is Hamas?” dodged the term “terrorist” by saying “Palestinian militant group.” BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson shared, “It’s simply not the BBC’s job to tell people who to support and who to condemn — who are the good guys and who are the bad guys.”

In response, groups across the U.S. and even the British government are standing up against BBC’s apparent anti-Semitism. Robert Jenrick, the United Kingdom Minister for Immigration, stated, “Let us be clear what the world has witnessed. These weren’t, as some in the media say, ‘militants’ or ‘fighters.’ They were terrorists. They were murderers.”

As the Christian Post’s Michael Brown concluded, “At this moment in history, the first thing that must be done is for all of us to stand together, Muslim and Christian and Jew (and people of other religions and non-religions), Israeli and Palestinian alike, and say, ‘What Hamas did is outright, unjustifiable evil. Plain and simple. We denounce it.’”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Conservatives Sound Alarm over Danger of Importing Palestinian Refugees

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Anguished Families Cling to Hope that Hamas Hostages Will Be Found

“I can’t describe such a moment in words where you watch your whole family get taken away from you,” Yoni Asher tried to explain. Summoning the courage to keep talking, he looked around the room of diplomats, U.N. officials, and other suffering families, and put himself back in the moment where his world changed forever.

“My wife was visiting her mother at one of the kibbutzim, and I stayed home,” Yoni stopped, as he probably had a million times in the last week, to let his decision sink in. “I got a phone call from my wife,” who was, “scared — scared,” he repeated, “whispering, terrif[ied], saying that she’s hearing gunshots and people are entering the house.” It wasn’t until later that he saw the video of his wife and two daughters on one of Hamas’s cars or trucks. “I recognized them,” Yoni said quietly of his two little girls, Raz and Aviv, and his wife, Doron.

As the tears fell freely down his face, Yoni finally got out the words that thousands of tortured families have said since October 7: “I woke up to the worst nightmare of my life.”

Others, like Yakov Argamani, pace around their houses, clutching a book of psalms. Surrounded by memories, he mourns that his beautiful teenage daughter’s smell is gone from the room. “Noa was here, there, everywhere,” he told The New York Times’s Jeffrey Gettleman. “All of a sudden, it’s gone. And I’m lost,” the broken father laments.

Other dads, like Hen Avigdori, try to comfort the one child who’s left — while slipping away to cry for his son’s missing sister and mom. “I’m in this endless loop of hope and despair, hope and despair,” he said. “I need some proof of life. I need to know where my wife and daughter are.”

From Thailand to France and America, the families of the 199 missing hostages are in an aching form of limbo. Between television interviews and underground meetings with government officials in Tel Aviv, they live hour to hour, haunted by their last conversations and the knowledge of what Hamas is capable of. To so many, captivity is a fate worse than death. As one heartbroken father told reporters, realizing his eight-year-old little girl had been killed was better than thinking of her in the terrorists’ hands. “It’s a blessing,” an emotional Thomas Hend told CNN the moment he learned Emily’s fate. “She was either dead or in Gaza,” he said after the 48-hour search. “And if you know anything about what they do in Gaza, that is worse than death.”

The number held by Hamas, which Israeli officials increased to almost 200 over the weekend, is complicating things for the soldiers on the ground. While teams of military teams search the 30-mile Gaza strip, terrorist Abu Obeida warned that his men have scattered the hostages — babies, grandmothers, young women, newly orphaned children, and soldiers — in “safe places and the tunnels of resistance” all throughout the area.

Brigadier General Daniel Hagari, a top Israeli military spokesman, insisted they have information on the location of the captives and sought to reassure families that the troops “will not carry out an attack that would endanger our people.” In the meantime, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, issued a stunning declaration, offering himself to Hamas if the terrorists would let the child hostages go. “I am ready for an exchange, anything, if this can lead to freedom, to bring the children home.”

Countless parents at the makeshift headquarters of the Families of Hostages and Missing Persons Forum would almost certainly do the same. “All we have been told is that her phone is in Gaza,” Meirav Gonen said helplessly. Romi, who was kidnapped from the music festival, stayed on the line with her mom for almost 45 minutes until her phone went dead.

“I know she was shot,” Meirav explained. “She called me at 10:15 and I was on with her until 10:58, she was fading away and I heard shooting around her coming closer to the car and then people shouting in Arabic … shouting she was alive and that they need her.”

Romi’s face is one of many lining the wall of Tel Aviv’s HaKirya government building, a horrifying reminder of the dozens of missing. “It’s so, so lonely,” Meirav chokes up. “All the thoughts and feelings that you have once you stop for a minute to listen to them.”

Lt. General (Ret.) Jerry Boykin understands the pain of hostage crises more than most. As commander of the Army’s elite Delta Force, he was one of the leaders on the failed mission to rescue Iran’s hostages in 1980. Like so many veterans, he knows the incredible lengths America will go to bring its people home. “I think most of what you see, other than the bombing and the shelling by the Israelis … is reconnaissance to try to locate the hostages,” he explained to guest host and former Congressman Jody Hice on “Washington Watch.” “This is a big issue for the Israelis because there are Americans being held. And I can assure that those people on the ground in [Gaza] include some Americans, our special operations that are experts at hostage rescue.”

But, Boykin warned, “the key thing to hostage rescue is good intelligence, and I think that’s what they’re doing [in Gaza right now]. … They’re in there looking for the hostages. And I pray that they will find them before the end of this campaign … because ultimately,” he said soberly, “these people will be killed if we can’t find them in time.”

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was cagey on Sunday about the involvement of U.S. special ops, saying only that the military “won’t rule anything in or out” about the hostage effort on the ground.

For now, Boykin insisted, the world needs to keep its eye on the ball. All of this, he argued, “is on the backs of Hamas.” “Hamas is responsible for everything that has happened up to this point. There is nothing, no one killed, nothing that Hamas is not responsible for. And we have to remember that. … What has happened here is a terrible, brutal, even demonic attack on the Israelis. … And we stand with the Jews.”

More than that, we pray for the Jews — and everyone affected by this unspeakable tragedy. For a partial list of hostages to remember in prayer, visit Pray for Israel by Name and join us in asking for God’s continued blanket of peace and protection on the innocents in the grip of Hamas.

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

America’s Adversaries Are All Connected

A day after murderous terrorists invaded Israel, critical infrastructure connecting frontline NATO allies was shut down as a “result of external activity” — possibly foreign sabotage — according to Finnish President Sauli Niinisto. “Russia sympathizes with us,” senior Hamas official Ali Baraka said in a Sunday interview on the government-controlled Russia Today TV. “One war eases the pressure in another war.”

While Finnish and Estonian officials are still investigating the disruption of a pipeline and communication cable, the timing is likely no coincidence. If it resulted from foreign action, then the foreign agents took advantage of the fact that world attention was focused elsewhere to carry out an operation they had likely already planned. Did Russia have prior knowledge of Hamas’s invasion plan?

Russia has long weaponized its monopolistic position as Europe’s oil supplier to extract political concessions from dependent neighbors by cutting off energy supplies. The Balticonnector Pipeline began operations in 2020, connecting Finland to the rest of Europe via Estonia and reducing Russia’s oil leverage over both countries.

Russia would clearly benefit from disabling the pipeline. Both countries are pro-western states on Russia’s border and view the USSR’s primary successor state as their greatest threat. In April, in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Finland officially joined the anti-Russian NATO alliance, which Estonia joined in 2004.

Yet, according to Baraka’s interview in a Russian propaganda outlet, Russia was notified prior to the assault. “In order to keep the attack secret and successful, the different factions and our allies did not know the zero hour,” he said. But Hamas did update Russia after they inquired about the Hamas attack and its intention. If Russia is responsible for the Balticonnector sabotage, they implemented the plan opportunistically.

Russia was not the only ally Hamas informed of its plans on Saturday. “After half an hour [of commencing the attack], all the Palestinian resistance factions were contacted, as were our allies in Hezbollah and Iran,” said Baraka. He added that they even notified Turkey — an increasingly rogue member of NATO — and met with them only three hours into the operation.

“Our allies are those that support us with weapons and money,” explained Baraka. “First and foremost, it is Iran that is giving us money and weapons.” For years, Western intelligence officials have known that Iran was providing military training and logistical help. Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said last year that Iran had provided the group with $70 million in military assistance. On Thursday, the U.S. government and Qatar agreed to block Iran from accessing $6 billion in funds the U.S. had unfrozen as an appeasement measure.

Baraka also pointed to Hamas’s close affinity with Hezbollah, another radical Islamic terror organization funded by Iran, but which is based in Lebanon instead of Gaza. Hezbollah fired rockets at northern Israel on Tuesday, in an effort to divide Israel’s forces and limit the safe places where refugees from southern Israel could be temporarily relocated. Baraka also boasted that “the Arab and Islamic people … are standing by us.” Even if he presumes too much when speaking for all people who identify as Muslims, these are not idle words; on Sunday, Palestinian sympathizers staged demonstrations in support of Hamas’ barbarous tactics across the West.

“Even Russia sympathizes with us,” added Baraka. “Russia is happy that America is getting embroiled in Palestine. It alleviates the pressure on the Russians in Ukraine. One war eases the pressure in another war. So, we are not alone on the battlefield.” He said that Russia, a major exporter of weapons, even gave “a Russian license to produce Kalashnikov bullets in Gaza,” allowing Hamas to procure additional ammunition for Russian-made machine guns despite international sanctions.

That’s quite the international coalition supporting a terror group, but it features the usual suspects. Nations like Iran and Russia are not friendly toward the U.S. and would jump at any opportunity to knock the U.S. down a peg.

Consequently, Hamas’ attack did not happen in isolation. “We have been preparing for this for two years,” Baraka said. In other words, Hamas began preparing to launch a major assault against Israel in the immediate aftermath of America’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. Some unconfirmed reports have even suggested that Hamas used weapons U.S. forces left behind in Afghanistan, which evidently made their way across the Middle East through illicit arms trading. When America’s foes see us as weak, they calculate that it is time to strike.

The same actors — and even more of them — are aligned on Russia’s side of the conflict in Ukraine. After Ukraine stalled Russia’s first assault and ground down its war machine with Western aid, Russia turned to other bad actors to restock its supplies. There have been reports that Iran, China, Cuba, North Korea, and even South Africa are supplying Moscow with military equipment and personnel.

In October 2022, the Pentagon said they knew that Russia was using Iranian drones in Ukraine, and they believed Iranians were on-site to help the Russians operate them. In February, the Biden administration considered releasing intelligence that showed China was supplying arms to Russia. Customs records obtained by Politico this summer show that China has shipped body armor and other military munitions to Russia. In May, the U.S. ambassador to South Africa accused the allegedly neutral country with supplying weapons and ammunition to Russia, via a sanctioned cargo ship it allowed to dock at a naval base near Cape Town in December. In September, the White House said North Korea and Russia were “actively advancing” arms negotiations, and satellite photos last week detected a near-quadrupling in rail traffic along the North Korea-Russia border. Even distant Cuba has gotten involved, smuggling hundreds of soldiers to fight in Russia’s war.

In addition to military assistance, American rivals on the world stage also cooperate economically. An organization of second-tier economic powers, known as BRICS (for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will more than double its membership in January 2024 when it officially admits Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the U.A.E. The organization, which includes some of the largest economies in Africa, Asia, and South America, is actively discussing ways to move international trade away from the U.S. dollar and towards other national currencies. BRICS expansion is significant because it indicates that even U.S. military allies, like India, or economic partners, like Saudi Arabia, are increasingly willing to cooperate with adversaries the U.S. has tried to isolate.

Such interconnection in foreign policy is not a new development. Independent powers have combined into military coalitions since at least the time of Abraham (see Genesis 14:1-2). In the century between Napoleon and World War I (1814-1919), international politics particularly focused on the alliances between five to nine so-called “great powers,” which were ever-changing to maintain a precarious balance of power. This provoked a string of conflicts, culminating in two devastating world wars.

After World War II, only two great powers remained (the U.S. and the Soviet Union), which spearheaded two worldwide coalitions (countries not aligned with either side were dubbed the “third world”). Due to the invention of nuclear weapons, the two great powers did not risk an all-out war, but they still struggled together in an economic Cold War and a series of proxy wars over influence in other countries — Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Afghanistan.

When the Soviet Union collapsed after four decades, the U.S. found itself in the rare position of a global hegemon — a world power with no equal. The conflicts of this period — two Iraq wars, Afghanistan, Serbia — reflect America’s ability to go anywhere in the world and do whatever we wanted, always dealing with asymmetric opponents. In the early 2000s, President Bush could call out by name an “axis of evil,” consisting of three countries, for the whole world to shun.

But shifting alliances and changing power balances have changed the global situation once again. China’s decades-long buildup and Russia’s resurgence have placed the U.S. on the defensive in far-flung zones of influence. Part of this is from not recognizing the threat. America has largely let China’s military buildup and global friend-buying projects go unanswered, and the U.S. has become consumed with internal divisions, which other nations may have played a role in aggravating. We stopped playing the game, while everyone else was playing harder than ever.

Whatever the reason why a growing coalition of global adversaries is arrayed against America, a world in which the U.S. is not the all-dominant power is actually just a return to equilibrium, from a historical aberration. Most Americans today can’t remember anything different, but for most of history geopolitics has been a delicate balancing act, or very bloody. American ingenuity and freedoms can go a long way, at least with good leadership. But we can’t count on always being the unchallenged champion in an adversarial arena that incentivizes the rise of challengers — especially when those challengers can combine together.

The takeaway is that America cannot afford to view one hostile power or one national crisis in isolation. What is currently happening in Israel will affect the war in Ukraine, the security of Taiwan, and even the possibility of major terror strikes against American targets.

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘What Starts in Israel Doesn’t End with Israel’

“We’re trying to pull ourselves together,” a survivor said, looking around at the rubble, the charred and bullet-sprayed houses. What was once a buzzing kibbutz is now makeshift military base, where Israeli soldiers struggle to wade through the horrors left behind by Saturday’s attack. The echoes of the massacre are all around them, in black body bags of all sizes, bloodstained walls, and the stunned look of the left behind. “We’re all like zombies here,” one young woman said.

This was not war, hardened soldiers on the ground would tell reporters later. This was an act of savages, of butchers. Worse than ISIS, many insisted. “I never imagined something like this could happen,” IDF Major General Itai Veruv told CNN of the torture and execution of innocent children, women, and whole families. “Hand-bound, shot, executed, heads cut,” babies decapitated, dazed witnesses confirmed. A slaughter.

Now, as tanks roll in and forces gather for a ground invasion of Gaza — cutting off water, power, and fuel to the two million people living on the narrow slice of land — rockets and drones have started pounding Israelis from Hezbollah in Lebanon. “The sirens are sounding in every town and city in the north,” news outlets warn, “including the Golan Heights.” As troops mass toward the south, the multi-front war that experts feared seems to have arrived.

Families whose children survived the worst of Hamas are now facing another agonizing reality — parting with their sons and daughters, as reservists are called up to the frontlines by the tens of thousands. Together, they have one common sentiment: resolve.

Dr. Ari Sacher, one of the primary architects of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, sent his own sons off to war over the weekend, amazed that the army had 150% of the people they called up show up. “And what’s [unbelievable],” he pointed out, is that “we were a country for the last better part of a year [that] was fraying. Many people felt that we were on the verge of a civil war. The government was trying to pass laws that would change judicial reform laws. And there was an outcry. People were saying, ‘We’re not going to do reserve duty anymore.’”

After Saturday’s atrocities, “all of that was thrown aside,” Sacher said. At a time of crisis like this, he pointed out, “one of two things could have happened: the country could have just imploded, or we could have been galvanized. And what happened was we became galvanized.”

He talked about dropping one son off at the unit’s meeting point, stunned by the crowd. “There were so many cars. There were thousands of cars. There was nowhere to park my car. He had to walk 15 minutes to get where he needed to get. And he was walking with throngs of people — every type of Israeli, the Orthodox, the non-Orthodox, people with sidelocks, people that are bald with tattoos. We were all going for that purpose.”

Since then, Sacher said, “There’s just been an onslaught of Israelis inundating [the troops with supplies]. My sons are sending messages [saying], ‘Stop bringing us food, stop bringing us supplies. There’s nowhere to put it anymore.’ This country has been galvanized.”

And no wonder. Talking to Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Tuesday, Sacher was somber about the task facing his people. “We have since cleared out all of the areas; we are now counting our dead. We’re burying our dead. In another half hour, one of the dead from my town up north will be taken out to be buried. We are all leaving our houses and standing on the street with Israeli flags as they take him to his to his final burial place” — a scene that will be playing out in dozens of grieving villages for weeks to come.

“And we are not looking for retribution,” Sacher insisted, “because you can’t ask for retribution for what happened. We’re looking to rid the world of Hamas.”

Others, like Carolyn Glick — Middle East expert, journalist, political advisor, and former officer in the Israeli Defense Forces — have been grateful to see the United States step up and have Israel’s back in that effort. “[President Biden] gave an important statement [Tuesday] reinstating his full support for Israel and his readiness to aid Israel in any way necessary. … So that was good.”

But what concerns her and several other Israelis are the powerful pro-Palestinian voices inside the White House.

“Just the day before the Hamas attack, Secretary of State Tony Blinken approved another $75 million in aid to the Palestinians. And advancing the cause of the Palestinians against Israel has been a central, central focus of the Biden administration,” she explained on “Washington Watch.” “People like Hady Amr, who’s the presidential envoy to the Palestinians, has a long history of supporting Palestinian terrorism against Israel, and he has [a] very senior position in the Biden administration, as does the director of intelligence and the National Security Council, Maher Bitar, and other very key people who are responsible for implementing President Biden’s Middle East policies and the National Security Council in the White House and in the State Department, among other places.”

So, yes, Glick cautioned. The support that America is showing for Israel “does empower Israel, but it’s important to realize that Biden has also made it, “until now, a key goal of their policy to what they call integrate Iran into the Middle East through nuclear appeasement. And to that end, as you mentioned, they just approved the unfreezing of $6 billion in oil revenues from the South Koreans to be transferred to Iran.”

In all honesty, she said, “Our future in this region and our existence is at stake here. … And that means recognizing that Hamas is a proxy of Iran, as is Hezbollah in Lebanon, and that Iran is directing this entire thing. They ordered the strikes. They’re paying for them. They’re providing all of the ammunition and everything that Hamas needs. Ninety-three of Hamas’s budget is paid for by Iran,” Glick told Perkins.

“We had a Holocaust-level atrocity perpetrated against the Jewish people on Saturday,” she insisted. “… And this is not just Hamas,” Glick was careful to point out. “Hezbollah has 250,000 missiles pointing at Israel. And it cannot end this war with those missiles pointing at Israel or being shot at Israel. We have to end their threat against Israel — and it goes to Iran itself.” Their regime, Glick continued, cannot be appeased by Biden. It has “to be pushed back to such a degree that they won’t ever try to do it again.”

In the end, Glick emphasized, this is not just about the Israelis. “It’s very important for … our friends abroad to [understand] that what starts in Israel doesn’t end with Israel. What starts with the Jews doesn’t end with the Jews. The United States knows what jihad is, even if it’s pretended it away. And if we don’t defeat the forces of jihad, led by Iran, here, they will be at your doorstep as well tomorrow.”

AUTHOR

Suzanne Bowdey

Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Obama and Biden’s Anti-American Policies Led to Hamas Attack, Expert Says

The ongoing, deadly attack on Israel by Hamas could never have taken place without the active support of the last two Democratic administrations, which have supported radical Islam in order to correct the legacy of Western “colonialism,” experts say.

As of this writing, more than 900 Israelis have died, 2,600 have been injured, and an estimated 150 have been taken hostage since hostilities commenced on Saturday, according to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). Hamas has killed 11 Americans and “likely” taken an unknown number of American hostages, President Joe Biden confirmed. “The safety of American citizens, whether at home or abroad, is my top priority as president,” said Biden in a press statement Monday.

But experts say Hamas could never have gained the strength and support it has without the last 14 years of Democratic presidential leadership, which has transferred billions of dollars to terrorist funders, advanced Islamists’ interests in the Middle East, and harmed U.S. interests out of radical anti-American ideology.

Most recently, the Biden administration announced on September 11 that it had “unfrozen” $6 billion in Iranian funds held by South Korea, which would go exclusively to “humanitarian” needs. But Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi declared, “This money belongs to the Iranian people, the Iranian government, so the Islamic Republic of Iran will decide what to do with this money.”

“Iran has, unfortunately, always used and focused its funds on supporting terrorism, on supporting groups like Hamas,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told “Meet the Press” on Sunday, after host Kristen Welker noted that “money is fungible.” Despite the terrorist attack, “President Biden is refusing to freeze the $6 billion ransom payment to Iran,” noted Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), who called on the administration to “freeze the $6 billion now.”

The $6 billion adds to $1.7 billion the Obama-Biden administration released to Iran in 2016.

“The Obama administration and the Biden administration — this neo-Marxist Democratic regime that has been in place since 2009 — is anti-Israeli and pro-Iranian. Their foreign policy objective is to hand over hegemony of the Middle East over to Iran,” Chris Gacek, senior fellow for Regulatory Affairs at Family Research Council, told The Washington Stand. “They have had one consistent objective: They’ve been trying for two administrations to undermine Israeli security. And they’ve lied about it.”

The pro-Teheran stance of Barack Obama, the ideological mover behind both administrations, comes from “a large mélange of ideological fragments,” Gacek stated. “In his Marxist, anti-Americananti-Westernanti-Christian cosmology, Israel fits in there as a satellite that has to be destroyed. But American power also has to be destroyed.”

Obama offered one version of his intellectual pedigree in his first autobiography, “Dreams from my Father,” saying as a college student:

“I chose my friends carefully. The more politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed neocolonialism, Franz [sic.] Fanon, Eurocentrism, and patriarchy.”

As president, Obama declared, “Iran will be and should be a regional power. They are a big country and a sophisticated country in the region.” Obama initiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), allowing Iran to develop uranium for “civilian” usage. He kept silent during the summer 2009 Iranian civilian uprising, which police put down violently.

Iran has since penetrated the highest diplomatic circles of the Obama and Biden administrations, according to a report late last month from Semafor.com. In 2014, the Iran Experts Initiative began seeking friendly experts to repeat its talking points. Three members of IEI became aides to Biden’s special envoy to Iran, Robert Malley. The administration revoked Malley’s security clearance in April but did not announce the reason until details appeared in the Iranian press. This summer, the Tehran Times published a recording of private conversations featuring the Biden administration’s White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, Brett McGurk, discussing Iranian policy and leaked “sensitive but unclassified” documents describing the controversy surrounding Malley.

Islamist influence in Democratic circles dates back to at least Obama. “At least six American Islamist activists who work closely with the Obama administration are Muslim Brotherhood operatives who enjoy strong influence over U.S. policy,” noted Investors Business Daily in 2013.

As a result, Democratic assessments of the region have faltered. “The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades,” said National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in an interview with The Atlantic less than two weeks before the attacks. “The amount of time that I have to spend on crisis and conflict in the Middle East compared today to my predecessors going back to 9/11 is significantly reduced.”

The ideological indifference or foreign influence may explain why the Biden administration spent Monday tweeting about the price of concert tickets. Similarly, Biden administration spokesperson John Kirby affirmed a previous statement from Joe Biden that climate change represents a greater existential threat than nuclear war.

Yet Israel has problems of its own, Gacek told TWS. “Its entire security apparatus appears to be anti-conservative and anti-Netanyahu. I can’t believe they haven’t known this was going on for a year.” The Times of Israel reported Monday that Egyptian intelligence warned Israel that Hamas had been planning “something big,” but its entreaties went ignored. “Israel’s defense establishment is not fit for purpose,” said Gacek — a problem that cannot be solved by foreign funding or intervention. “You can give them money, but if they’ve got stupid leftists running the government, what’s the point?”

The attack by terrorists also throws the Obama-Biden policy of lax border enforcement into stark relief, said Gacek. By June, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol had encountered 464 known or suspected terrorists at the U.S. borders. “Who knows how many tens of thousands of potential terrorists are here?” asked Gacek. “And this is only the beginning. In 2024, our own sleeper cells might start opening up.”

“We’ve got to get really tough mentally,” he said.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

7 Lies, Distortions, or Abominations in Joe Biden’s 9/11 Speech

On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, Joe Biden once again made history for all the wrong reasons — ignoring grieving families, lying to U.S. soldiers, and attempting to cut a plea bargain with terrorist masterminds while sending billions of dollars to the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism. Here are seven examples:

1. Location

Joe Biden became the first president not to take part in ceremonies in one of the three cities associated with the 9/11 attacks: New York City; Washington, D.C.; or Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Instead, he spoke at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, a location his remarks attempted to tie to the attacks. Add Biden — whom NBC News dubbed the “consoler-in-chief” — skipping this 9/11 memorial to his historic firsts of admitting the most illegal immigrants into the United States ever and the highest number of Americans to die of drug overdoses (problems which are correlated), and it paints the picture of a president who does not care about U.S. citizens or their losses.

His handlers blamed a scheduling conflict for Biden’s whereabouts — but who sets the president’s schedule? In any previous administration, the question would be rhetorical. Biden, or his handlers, felt it more important for the president to attend the G-20 Summit in India (or “the G7,” as Biden called it), followed by a trip to Vietnam — conveniently putting a younger, more “diverse” Democrat center stage during the event. (Biden’s disastrous performance at his Vietnam press conference may explain why.) Still, the president’s absence seemed anomalous enough that Biden felt required to explain the trip constituted “an essential part of how we’re going to assure the United States is flanked by the broadest array of partners and allies who will stand with us and deter any threat to our security.” If Biden thinks Vietnam will send troops to defend the United States, much less join a future U.S.-led nation-building exercise, he’s delusional — which may explain…

2. Joe Biden Lied about His Location on September 12, 2001

During his speech, Biden shared vividly invented memories of “Ground Zero in New York — I remember standing there the next day and looking at the building. I felt like I was looking through the gates of Hell, it looked so devastated.” In reality, video footage proves that Joe Biden attended a session of the Senate in Washington, D.C., on September 12, 2001. But self-aggrandizing fables hardly surprise coming from Joe Biden, who has embellished his past more than anyone since Walter Mitty. He also falsely “remembered” being “shot at” during a trip to Iraq (a shot landed outside his hotel) and searching for Osama bin Laden over “the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan where my helicopter was forced down” (due to a snowstorm), as well as being arrested in the 1980s while trying to meet future South African President Nelson Mandela (they met in 1990 in the Senate Foreign Relations executive committee room), taking part in sit-ins in the 1960s, meeting with members of the Tree of Life Synagogue after a mass shooting, and presiding over an America thriving due to Bidenomics.

3. Biden Praises the Mission to Kill Osama bin Laden — Which He Opposed

During his remarks, Biden tied himself to “heroes like the 9/11 generation … who followed Osama bin Laden to the ends of the earth and ultimately send him to the gates of Hell 12 years ago. And then last year, I made the decision to take out [Ayman al-]Zawahiri, the number two, who met the same fate.”

But Joe Biden opposed the mission that killed Osama bin Laden, as he boasted to an audience in 2012. Once again, video footage captures Biden telling a different audience a different tale:

“The president, he went around the table with all the senior people, including the Chiefs of Staff. And he said, ‘I have to make this decision. What is your opinion?’ He started with the National Security adviser, the Secretary of State, and he ended with me. Every single person in that room hedged their bet, except Leon Panetta; Leon said, ‘Go!’ Everyone else said ‘49/51,’ this …

“It got to me. He said, “Joe what do you think?” And I said, ‘Ya know, I didn’t know we have so many economists around the table. We owe the man a direct answer. Mr. President, my suggestion is don’t go. We have to do two more things to see if he’s there.’ He walked out, and he said, ‘I’ll give you my decision.’” (Emphasis added.)

Barack Obama dithered for 16 hours while the military waited for his decision. The Navy’s SEAL Team 6 succeeded in raiding bin Laden’s compound on May 2, 2011. Then-Vice President Biden blurted out that Navy SEALs killed the terrorist mastermind at a Washington dinner one day later. That August 6, a Taliban RPG blew up a Chinook helicopter in Afghanistan, killing 38 U.S. soldiers, including 17 members of SEAL Team 6. “In releasing their identity, [the Obama-Biden administration] put a target on their backs,” said the father of one of the soldiers killed that day.

4. Biden Seeks a Plea Bargain to Spare 9/11 Masterminds the Death Penalty

Just weeks before the speech, the Biden administration quietly initiated proceedings to cut a deal that would spare the death penalty for the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and four other co-conspirators currently held at Guantanamo Bay. The families of 9/11 victims expressed outrage that they learned of the impending plea deal in “a form letter.” Sparing the terrorists a trial would suppress “information that no doubt would shed light on the identity of the 9/11 conspirators — secret and hidden — not only from the 9/11 families but from the American public.” Even now, as U.S. officials have just identified two more of the victims at the Twin Towers, the Biden administration seeks to conceal the identity of its perpetrators.

5. Biden Gave $6 Billion to Iran on 9/11

As Biden rhetorically crusaded against terrorism from a military base, his administration released billions of dollars to the leading state sponsor of terrorism. Under the terms of an agreement announced last month, Biden transferred $6 billion and five imprisoned Iranian assets in exchange for five American prisoners. Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, notified Congress he had authorized the payment on 9/11.

“We used to call funding a terror state an act of treason,” said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). No one denies Iran remains the global leader in terror sponsorship — including the Biden administration. “Designated as a State Sponsor of Terrorism in 1984, Iran continued its support for terrorist-related activity in 2021, including support for Hizballah, Palestinian terrorist groups in Gaza, and various terrorist and militant groups in Iraq, Syria, Bahrain, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East,” according to the most recent terrorist report from Biden’s State Department.

Iran’s terrorism barely outdates Joe Biden’s desire to send the Ayatollah U.S. taxpayers’ dollars. Biden also wanted to send Iran a check for $200 million with “no strings attached” immediately after 9/11/2001 to prove America’s goodwill. The New Republic reported in October 2001:

America needs to show the Arab world that we’re not bent on its destruction. “Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” Biden declares. He surveys the table with raised eyebrows, a How do ya like that? look on his face.

The Obama-Biden administration went on to give Iran $1.7 billion in 2016.

6. Biden Boasts of Protecting the Troops

During his remarks, Biden reassured the troops, “I will never hesitate to do what is necessary to defend the American people, just as I will never forget our sacred duty to those of you who serve.” Can anyone believe Joe Biden will protect Americans from another Taliban attack when his precipitous withdrawal abandoned possibly thousands of U.S. citizens to the Taliban’s tender mercies, and left soldiers so vulnerable that a suicide bomber killed 13 U.S. servicemembers? The Taliban incorporated numerous terrorists into its newly minted government — much as the Obama-Biden administration’s unconstitutional war put al-Qaeda affiliates in charge of Libya and its machinations installed a regime favorable to the Muslim Brotherhood, the fundamentalist group where Osama bin Laden met Ayman al-Zawahiri, in Egypt.

Yet the Biden administration seemed more interested in firing the Marine who criticized the collapse of Kabul, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller, than the political advisers who engineered it.

To the extent Biden intends to keep a “sacred duty,” he certainly defines it differently than any of his predecessors: Pentagon spokesman John Kirby called funding abortion-related travel the “foundational, sacred obligation of military leaders.”

7. Praising ‘National Unity’ while Sowing Division

As the bipolar Biden administration frequently does, Biden mouthed the right words about “national unity” — fluffy phrases that belie his dedication to Balkanization, division, and enacting a racial spoils system for his supporters while demonizing, surveilling, and imprisoning his political opponents. Biden waxed nostalgic that after 9/11, “American flags sold out in every store and were placed in front of seemingly every home. … This day reminds us we must never lose that sense of national unity, so let that be the common cause of our time.” Americans must resist being “pulled apart by petty, manufactured grievances” inflamed by “the poisonous politics of difference and division.”

Such inspiring words make one wonder if the president remembers his “Dark Brandon” speech, flanked by soldiers, in which he denounced his political opponents as an existential threat to American survival in front of a black-and-red colored Constitution Hall. That speech flowed more naturally from the Biden administration, which has placed intersectionality and “equity” at “the center” of a “whole-of-government” plan to redistribute wealth and respect toward solidly Democratic-leaning voting blocs.

One need look no further than actions taken by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security last week — again, on the eve of 9/11. The DHS doled out Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention grants, which are intended “to prevent targeted violence and terrorism,” to:

  • The Sexual Minority Youth Assistance League ($530,000) to provide “in-school” indoctrination “for LGBTQ+ youth ages 6-24” in D.C.-area schools. (You can read the details here.);
  • American University’s Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab, or PERIL ($784,276), for “teaching children in grades K-5 how to recognize harmful online content.” PERIL (get it?) partners with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, the pro-gun control Everytown for Gun Safety, and the Anti-Defamation League. To “prevent radicalization,” PERIL encourages teachers to have “classroom conversations” about “the Movement for Black Lives and protests against systemic police brutality, to the far-right insurrection at the Capitol on January 6th.” PERIL’s leader, MSNBC columnist Cynthia Miller-Idriss, also claims that young people who “are more committed to a kind of gun culture also have higher scores on racial resentment and male supremacist ideas” and worries that Americans might be “easily persuaded by false information … about why they need a gun”;
  • Boston Children’s Hospital ($820,990), which carries out transgender surgeries on children as young as 13, to train mental health practitioners how to identify and deal with people allegedly at “risk for targeted violence and terrorism”;
  • University of North Dakota ($386,682.78) for an “educational module [that] expands understanding of Indigenous culture”;
  • Columbia University ($820,332) to develop “an interactive program focused on storytelling”; and
  • Michigan State Police Michigan Intelligence Operations Center ($425,485) to “raise awareness of how the community can identify and properly refer individuals who may demonstrate behaviors that suggest they may be going down a path toward violence.” This comes after investigators exposed an alleged kidnapping plot targeting Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D), creeping with allegations of entrapment involving more than a dozen FBI agents or informants.

Such “anti-terrorism” grants seem more intended to target the soldiers Biden addressed than Osama bin Laden’s spiritual progeny.

Taken together, the picture of Joe Biden that emerges is one of an exhausted vessel shafted by his handlers, whose decades of foreign policy experience have created a more dangerous world — and whose victims will receive either his animus or indifference.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Biden Admin Violated Americans’ Free Speech Rights during Pandemic, 5th Circuit Rules

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2023 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Buttigieg Defends Harassing Conservative Justices Over Abortion

It’s never an insurrection when your side is the one doing it. Just ask good ol’ Mayor Pete.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Sunday defended protesters against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh who gathered earlier this week outside Morton’s steakhouse, where he was eating dinner.

Buttigieg’s boyfriend, Chasten, tweeted in response to the news: “Sounds like he just wanted some privacy to make his own dining decisions,” a shot toward Kavanaugh’s vote to overturn Roe v. Wade last month, ending a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion.

During an appearance on “Fox News Sunday,” moderator Mike Emanuel asked Buttigieg if his Chasten’s tweet about the incident was “appropriate.”

“Look, when public officials go into public life, we should expect two things. One, that you should always be free from violence, harassment, and intimidation,” Buttigieg replied. “And two, you’re never going to be free from criticism or peaceful protest, people exercising their First Amendment rights.”

Speaking out is a First Amendment right. Harassing people in their private life isn’t. There’s a huge difference between protesting outside the Supreme Court, and outside the homes and private gatherings of individuals.

Buttigieg isn’t very bright, despite trying to make that into his brand, but he knows the difference quite well and is being disingenuous when he pretends that he doesn’t.

“So, yes, people are upset,” Buttigieg concluded. “They’re going to exercise their First Amendment rights.”

If they were exercising “their First Amendment rights” outside Sotomayor’s cafe, the conversation would be quite different.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Iran Issues Ramadan Attack Warning in Threat to Mideast Peace

In an ominous warning to Israel and regional Sunni countries, Major General Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), on Wednesday threatened those nations that have “established political and security relations with the Zionist regime,” a reference to the Jewish State of Israel.

He added, “We explicitly declare and warn that the continuation of such relations is not acceptable at all.”

Coming three days before the start of Ramadan, the annual month of obligatory fasting and prayer for Muslims and one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the warning should be taken seriously by those specifically identified in Salami’s threat because Ramadan is also traditionally a time of Islamic terror attacks.

Those attacks may already have begun with a deadly spate of terrorism across Israel, in Be’ersheba, Hadera and Bnei Brak (just outside of Tel Aviv) that thus far have killed 11 people in the space of a single week. Assailants, two Arab-Israelis and the last one from the town of Ya’bad, near Jenin in Samaria, were armed with knives and guns, including an M-16 rifle, in the three attacks.

In HAMAS-ruled Gaza, sweets were handed out on the street to celebrate Israeli deaths, and in Lebanon, Hezbollah hailed the attacks with flags and music in the streets.

An official statement from Hezbollah referenced both the Abraham Accords indirectly and more specifically the tri-partite March 22 meeting of Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett at the Egyptian resort of Sharm e-Sheikh with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi and United Arab Emirates (UAE) Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, declaring that “All meetings of betrayal and the heights of normalization cannot give the enemy security.”

The fact that it was Maj. Gen. Salami, the IRGC commander, who issued the Iranian threat is significant, because it is the IRGC and its subordinate Qods Force unit that provide the support — arms, funding, training — for Islamic terror proxies across the Middle East.

The official statements coming from both Iran and HAMAS, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in the wake of the Israel attacks indicate an orchestrated terror offensive, timed for the start of Ramadan. As Islamic doctrine obligates that a warning be given before attack, the Tehran regime is here putting Israel and the entire region on notice that this Ramadan, as others past, will be a violent one.

The Iranian regime understands that both within and outside of the Abraham Accords, key regional players, including Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Egypt, Sudan, Morocco and others are banding together with Israel in an unprecedented recognition of the threat from an aggressive and rapidly nuclearizing Iran.

Those expanding relationships with the hated Jews, as well as the centuries-old Sunni-Shi’ite split that leaves the Sunni Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in administrative charge of Islam’s Two Holy Places — Mecca and Medina — are what’s really “not acceptable at all” to the Shi’ite Twelvers who head both Iran and the IRGC/Qods Force.

It is especially incongruous that at precisely this time, in this atmosphere, the U.S. reportedly is considering removing the IRGC from the Department of State’s Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list as one of a slew of concessions to Iran intended to revive the July 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal.

Indeed, indicative of the alarm such reports are invoking, recent articles in the Saudi press have labeled such efforts an “absurd” act and a “crime” that will threaten global security. Writing in the London-based Al-Sharq Al-Awsat on March 22, Saudi journalist Abdullah bin Bijad al-Otaibi called the idea of revoking the IRGC’s terrorist designation “a direct threat and danger not only to the Arab states but to the entire world.”

Likewise writing in Al-Sharq Al Awsat, Saudi journalist Tariq al-Homayed drew the broader implications, stating that “Removing the IRGC from the terror list will grant Iran freedom of action in the region as part of a Russian-Chinese-Iranian alliance.”

As the seasons of Ramadan, Passover and the Christian Holy Week culminating with Easter on April 16 all coincide this year, it is urgent that we understand the explicit intent of the Iranian warning to Israel and the region. It is nothing less than a declaration of war against Israel and those regional people who are choosing the pathway of peace and reconciliation with it.

©Clare Lopez. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Death toll during the holy month of Ramadan 2022

The Oldest Hatred Now Fulminates and Flourishes at 1600

In February, not two weeks into the, ahem, presidency of Joe Biden, I described in my article, “Joe’s Jews,” the appointments he made of 11 longtime Jew-haters and Israel-loathers to key positions in his cabinet/regime.

A month later, in my article “More about Joe and the Jews,” I described 12 more Jew-haters and Israel-loathers that Joe appointed to key positions in his cabinet/regime.

There have been many other alarmingly similar appointments since then, making it clear to even the most casual observer that the Biden White House has a particularly hostile––even hateful––attitude toward Jews and their ancient homeland Israel, combined with a perverse infatuation with and allegiance to any group or individual intent on destroying the Jewish state.

There is no doubt that Biden’s presence in the Oval Office has been interpreted by these career haters and organized thugs as an unmistakable nod of approval to continue and even expand on the tsunami of anti-Semitism now sweeping the entire globe––from the contamination of most American colleges and universities to brutal physical assaults of Jews in the streets of New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and around the world––a phenomenon writer Victor Rosenthal elaborates upon in chilling detail––to condemnation of Israel by the Irish parliament and other governments to the racist obscenities vomited out routinely by Democrat members of the U.S. Congress.

AND THE BEAT GOES ON

In fact, Joe Biden and his entire coterie/staff/cabinet/appointees of left-wing, blatantly anti-Semitic radicals demonstrate their noxious racism on a daily basis, notwithstanding his boilerplate pronouncements about support for Israel…at the exact same time he embraces, applauds and funds Israel’s mortal enemies. Want proof? Here is the very very short list:

  • Biden appeased and clearly agreed with the growing number of Jew- and Israel-haters in the Democrat Party by sending the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians $167 million dollars––enough to finance the recent war against Israel by Hamas terrorists.

But we really shouldn’t worry. After all, just the other day, Biden told an ABC-TV reporter that Hamas is “just an idea. It’s more of a concept, an a-a-abstract, a, the, you know, the, the, the thing. A sym––a symbol. Hamas is more of the journey, the, the destination. The real Hamas is just the, you know, just the friends we made along the way.”

“So who is launching the rockets then?” asked the interviewer.

“Come on, man!” Biden replied angrily. “Want to arm-wrestle? I took down ole Bucktooth Joe back in my college days. He was one of the best arm-wrestlers east of the Mississippi. And pow! I took him down. Right in the kisser. Let’s go, me and you, right now. Or maybe a push-up contest. You know, the — the thing about the push-ups…”

  • Biden––when it was clear that the aggressors of Hamas were getting trounced by Israel––was sent a letter by no less than 500 of his anti-Israel campaign staffers––begging him to “hold Israel accountable for its actions.” Bad Israel for fighting back!
  • Biden dispatched Michael Ratney to represent the U.S. in Israel––the same guy, according to Joel B. Pollak of Breitbart––whose role in the Obama administration was to interfere in Israel’s 2015 election with the goal of ousting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
  • Biden, instead of allowing Israel to turn Gaza into a demilitarized zone, initiated the ceasefire that Hamas was begging for and demanded that Israel––not the terrorists!––meet three demands:
    • Desist from evicting the Arabs who have been squatting on Jewish property for decades without paying rent,
    • Appease the fanatically militant Arabs who don’t allow Jews to pray at their most sacred site, the Temple Mount,
    • And stop celebrating Jerusalem Flag day which honors the State of Israel. “Imagine if another country demanded we stop celebrating the Fourth of July or Memorial Day!”
  • Biden, like Obama before him, believes in rewarding terrorists, and so has pledged billions––not millions or even multimillions, but billions!––to rebuild the breeding ground of hatred and terrorism known as Gaza. He has also committed $150 million to––as former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley describes it––the systemically corrupt United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) that was suspended under the Trump administration.
  • Biden and Kalamity Harris enthusiastically supported Rev. Raphael Warnock when he ran, victoriously, for the U.S. Senate in Georgia last year, knowing full well of his rabid anti-Semitism and hatred of whites, as spelled out here by journalist and blogger Jeff Dunetz.
  • Biden’s nominee for a top State Department position, according to writer Alana Goodman, “played a key role in assembling a book on the nefarious influence of the ‘Israel lobby’ while working for an organization that promoted claims about Jewish media control and dual loyalty to Israel.”
  • Biden chose attorney Kirsten Clarke as the Assistant Attorney General to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, she whose loathing of Jews and whites is extensively documented by the esteemed Daniel Greenfield, as well as by writer/editor David Rosenberg. Clarke has posited that “the human brain was structured in a way that makes black people superior to white people.”
  • Biden, only a year after being elected, delivered Egyptian disinformation to Israel––to the besieged country’s detriment––ahead of the Yom Kippur War in October 1973, as described by writer David Israel.
  • Biden, just the other day, ordered U.S. Embassies around the world to fly the Black Lives Matter flag to commemorate George Floyd’s murder “on May 25 and beyond.” You remember BLM––the Marxist terrorist group rampaging across the U.S. for the past year and responsible for about $2 billion in property damage, devastating arson, widespread theft, the injuries of more than 240 police officers and destruction of hundreds of police precincts, upward of 30 murders, and the defacement and vandalizing of synagogues, at which they screamed “F… the Jews and Kill the Police.” That BLM! That Joe Biden!
  • Biden’s House Democrats last week rejected–– unanimously––a Republican effort to provide Israel with emergency security funding for its life-saving Iron Dome system. A couple of days earlier, they stopped legislation that would sanction foreign entities doing business with Hamas. Getting the picture?
  • Biden & Co. fully support the World Health Organization, a toxic arm of the United Nations cesspool, which held a meeting the other day to address the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, and predictably––given their entire history of fanatical anti-Semitism––singled out Israel to condemn for violating the rights of the Arabs who call themselves Palestinians, although the charge is objectively untrue and Israel has been at the international forefront of the research and development of anti-Corona vaccines.
  • Biden has brought in Islamic activists––among them Hina Shamsi, who fought on behalf of the Holy Land Foundation, the leaders of which were convicted of providing material support to Hamas—to investigate “extremism” in the U.S. military. In essence, writes Daniel Greenfield, “American military personnel are being put at the mercy of advocates for their worst enemies. To Biden, defending Al Qaeda and Hamas terrorists is the only qualification needed for going after American soldiers.”

OLD WINE, NEW BOTTLE

One thing about Jew-haters and Israel-loathers:  they are remarkably unoriginal. While their reasons for hating Jews may have changed over the centuries, the symptoms of their racism have remained the same:

  • Thinking obsessively about Jews,
  • Fulminating with hatred,
  • Blaming everything wrong in their lives and society on Jews,
  • Joining with other racists to inflict harm,
  • In many cases, devoting their lives to this obsession.

All of it driven by pathological jealousy!

Interestingly, they never seem to wonder why it is that out of eight-billion people in the world––including 2.2-billion Christians, approximately one-billion Protestants, and 1.8-billion Muslims (the majority in 49 countries), they cannot deal with or destroy the 15-million Jews––seven-million in the U.S., seven-million in Israel, and about one million around the world.

It must make them feel immensely stupid or impotent, hence even angrier than their usual fixated state of fury.

But like every liberal, leftist, progressive––whatever they’re calling themselves these days––who thinks that the crashing failures of socialism and communism in world history were a function of bad management and that they will do it better, so the Jew-haters of the world think they will finally get the anti-Semitism thing right and once and for all get rid of the people, and their country, that make them feel so bad and inferior and stupid and impotent every minute of every day and night––including weekends and holidays!

THE FISH STINKS FROM THE HEAD

“The Biden administration has revealed the president’s long-seething hostility toward Israel,” writes former professor of political science Abraham Miller, “going back to his encounter with Israel’s then-prime minister Menachem Begin, in which Biden threatened to cut off aid to Israel.”

As Israelis were crouching in hallways and bomb shelters and Hamas launched death from the skies against them,” Miller writes, “the Biden administration’s representatives in Vienna were negotiating an overture to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal”––Iran being the foremost supplier of arms to Hamas.

Larry Gordon, editor-in-chief of the 5 Towns Jewish Times (Long Island, NY), asks: “Do Jewish Lives Matter?”

“A great deal of the recent debate [about the Hamas-Israel conflict], Gordon writes, revolved around the issue as to whether Israel has the right to defend itself….under what possible circumstances would it be acceptable or okay for Israel not to defend itself?

“Over the last several weeks Jews are being clubbed and beaten at random.” Gordon continues, “but the president so far has not found it within himself––like the Jewish Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer––to stand up and condemn these types of hate crimes. Perhaps they will see themselves as being aligned too much with Jews which may impact on their political standing….what a shameful situation!”

Economist and political commentator Valerie Sobel states that it is “entirely inexplicable how such a large caucus of American Jewry can be so irreparably injured by a presidential tweet on media bias, yet be entirely untouched by the ‘Death to Jews’ chants in the violent, politically underwritten Jew-hatred festivals of their own party and tirelessly anti-Semitic media.

“Impossible to digest how their Jewish offspring, their contaminated social justice warriors, the very grandchildren of Holocaust survivors, are so indoctrinated that they march with Black Lives Matter and the Boycott-Divest-Sanction Jew haters while holding ‘Free Palestine’ signs. And entirely irreconcilable––the supine silence of predominately liberal Jewish Community leaders on the Kristallnacht-style pogroms in L.A., London and New York.

“How can we explain this craven desire to throw ourselves onto the sword in the name of wokeness?” Sobel asks. “Who would applaud this desperation for acceptance into a club of liberal ideals that includes vile Jew-hatred? And why in the world would a political party with such a vast anti-Semitic ledger and clinically Israel-allergic membership be valued at such a premium by Jews themselves?”

Psychiatrist and historian Kenneth Levin also talks about the Congressional enablers of genocidal anti-Semitism. “Hamas is explicit in wanting to kill not only all Israelis but all Jews,” Levin writes….

“The current Administration,” Levin continues, “has stated as one of its essential goals the reassertion of American moral authority in the world…[but] the further, ugly phenomenon of a sizable segment of the Congressional delegation of a major American political party serving as supporters of or apologists for the criminal actions of a genocidal anti-Semitic terrorist group…[is] rather a demonstration of moral bankruptcy.”

Liel Leibovitz, writing in the NY Post , states: “As Jews were being pummeled, punched, spat at, intimidated with explosive devices and singled out for violence and harassment all across America this week, the righteous men and women of the Democratic Party were quick to denounce the twin scourges behind these mini-pogroms: anti-Semitism and—drumroll, please—Islamophobia.

“That’s the thing with morally muddled thinking, “Leibovitz continues. “It’s a simple principle that seems to be completely lost on nearly everyone in today’s Democratic Party. Hopefully, its Jewish voters will wise up before it’s too late.”

Journalist and author John Perazzo, in Israel’s Fake ‘Friend’––an in-depth, comprehensive timeline of Joe Biden’s relentless hostility toward Israel from 1982 to just a few months ago––describes “a long destructive track record of undermining Israeli security.”

“Joe Biden has made a habit of describing himself as a loyal, stalwart friend and ally of Israel,” Perazzo writes….but a careful examination of Biden’s track record reveals his long and extremely troubling history of undermining Israel’s security and public image.”

In his timeline, Perazzo describes eight long years of Biden’s steadfast support of Barack Obama’s deep hostility and sabotage of Israel, which Israeli lawmaker Danny Danon, chairman of Likud’s international outreach branch, said were “catastrophic.”

Writer Andrea Widburg has the last word in Biden’s ignominious role toward Israel: “Biden may say he believes Israel has a right to self-defense,” Widburg writes, “but his actions reveal that his real sympathies lie with the Islamists who seek to destroy Israel and kill every one of her inhabitants. He is an indecent excuse for a human being.”

©Joan Swirsky. All rights reserved.

STUDY: Religious Scriptures that Legitimize Violence Cause More Believers to Support Terrorism

“Study authors suspect the reason for this dramatic difference between the faiths is because a large number of Muslims adhere to a ‘fundamentalist interpretation’ of their faith.”

It’s actually because of the contents of the Islamic scriptures, which contain direct exhortations to do violence against unbelievers. Jewish and Christian scriptures contain some violent passages, but no open-ended, universal command for believers to make war against unbelievers.

Religious scriptures that legitimize violence cause more believers to support deadly extremist acts

by Chris Melore, Study Finds, April 23, 2021 (thanks to R):

BERLIN, Germany — Religious texts provide the faithful with the guiding principles to live, what their cultures consider, the best lives. Some of these ancient texts, however, come from times when violence against non-believers was an accepted practice. Although these spiritual scriptures are typically a motivating force for good, a new study finds verses which legitimize violence do cause people to support deadly extremism in today’s society.

From America, to Europe, to regions throughout the world, violent extremist incidents have been a modern plague in recent years. Researchers from the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) note many of these perpetrators quote verses from their religion’s holy scriptures during their deadly crimes.

Abdullah H., a Syrian standing trial for allegedly stabbing a homosexual couple and killing another man in Dresden, Germany last year, reportedly testified that he was inspired to commit the crime by a Quranic sura. Despite incidents like this, study authors say experts continue to doubt that religion can truly motivate people to do violence.

Dangerous influences in scripture?

Researchers Ruud Koopmans and Eylem Kanol gathered 8,000 Christians, Muslims, and Jews to determine whether or not certain scriptures can lead believers to support killing enemies of the faith. Study authors included participants from the U.S., Germany, Cyprus, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and Kenya in this experiment.

For half of the group, researchers asked if they thought lethal force against their faith’s non-believers was justified without any introduction or setup to the question. For the other half however, the team first presented them with a quote from the Bible, Koran, or Torah. These quotes endorse violence against those who allegedly do not believe in those religions.

Results reveal that referencing scriptural passages which legitimize violence noticeably increases support for deadly acts among all three faiths. The impact also remained constant across all seven countries as well. However, researchers find support of deadly extremism was weaker among Jews and Christians than among Muslims.

Specifically, nine percent of the Christians supported violence without reading any scriptures beforehand. That number rose to 12 percent among Christians seeing such a quote before hearing the question. For Jews, three percent supported violence without reading quotes and seven percent supported it after seeing such a passage.

Among Muslims, the study finds 29 percent supported violence against non-believers without any extra influence. For those referencing a Quranic quote first, 47 percent said they supported violence against religious enemies.

Fundamentalism can lead to rationalizing violence

Study authors suspect the reason for this dramatic difference between the faiths is because a large number of Muslims adhere to a “fundamentalist interpretation” of their faith. Fundamentalists typically view the holy scriptures of their religion literally. They consider the teachings and principles of their faith to still be completely valid in present day society….

The study appears in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.