Tag Archive for: Israel

VIDEO: Interview with Brian Slater, Founder of Abundant Bread of Salvation Ministry in Israel

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The conversation you are about to hear is full of meaning and implications that will touch your heart.

Brian Slater, Founder of Abundant Bread of Salvation Ministry in Israel is my guest.

You will enjoy learning how Brian’s ministry is unique, in that, feeding and caring for Holocaust survivors in Netanya, Israel along with serving over 500 children, 350 families along with providing for IDF soldiers.

I pray you sincerely are moved to look into Brian’s ministry, consider supporting him and his faithful and unpretentious work.

Segment II with Brian will be forthcoming in a few days, and I believe that, too, will prove insightful and touching.

ABOUT ABUNDENT BREAD OF SALVATION MINISTRY

Based in Netanya, Israel

Brian Slater was raised in a traditional but non-religious Jewish family in the San Fernando Valley in California. Before reaching his teens, however, he fell into drug and alcohol abuse. As Brian reached the end of high school, God rescued him out of the darkness to begin a new life of recovery and spiritual discovery with his Messiah Yeshua-(Jesus), in 1987.

As a result of his new faith, Brian felt called to reach those with similar afflictions. He received his certification as a Drug and Alcohol Counselor as well as his nursing license in Los Angeles. During this whole time, Brian spent most of his days working and ministering in drug and alcohol rehabilitation centers as well as locked down psychiatric units. His heart towards those suffering grew as he reached out to those in need of healing and deliverance, drawing on his life experiences and his study of the Bible and its power to change lives.

In 1996, Brian immigrated to Israel where he permanently resides, reaching out to God’s Chosen People.

Brian is CEO/Director of Abundant Bread of Salvation and has managed and established several others of the same works in Tel-Aviv. He has also established an additional new Food Pantry in the center of Netanya that serves many Holocaust Survivors amongst the 350 families he serves on a monthly basis. This same facility now also houses the ministry headquarters. He works at times as a nurse, giving free medical care and assists in directing the day-to-day operations as well as counseling in a Messianic drug and alcohol treatment center in Netanya. Over the last several years, Brian also has worked closely on many projects serving two local orphanages that house over 500 poor and needy children.

Key Verses:

Isaiah 61:1, Psalm 146:7-10, 1 Tim.6:18-19, James 1:27 and 2Cor.1:3-7

When we bless, feed and clothe the poor, addicted, foreigner and Holocaust Survivors, we glorify God and call attention to the truth of Messiah Yeshua!

Key Prayer Points:

  • Please pray for more volunteers, intercessors and finances to keep this expanding momentum.
  • Pray for the establishment of many more outreach centers that provide for the needy.
  • Pray for abundance of food, clothing, furniture and other much needed materials.
  • Pray for protection of all of our volunteer workers on the front line.

Contact info:

Abundant Bread of Salvation

C/O – Brian Slater
P.O. Box 548
Netanya, 4210401, Israel
OR Email: Brian@AbundantBread.com

©2023. Lyle J. Rapacki, Ph.D. All rights reserved.

Here Are All The Times US Troops Have Shot Down Drones And Missiles Launched By Iran-Backed Groups Since October

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  • U.S. forces in the Middle East have shot down at least 50 drones and 11 missiles since the Oct. 17 escalation in attacks by Iran-backed militias, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation tally.
  • U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria have come under attack at least 106 times, a Department of Defense official told the DCNF.
  • Meanwhile, naval forces in the Red Sea have defended against 46 attack drones and saved commercial shipping vessels from ballistic missiles the Yemen-based Houthi rebel group fired.

U.S. troops in the Middle East have engaged more than 50 drones and at least 11 missiles, including ballistic missiles, fired by Iranian proxy groups, since the Oct. 17 escalation in attacks, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation tally.

The Iran-backed militias conducting drone and missile attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria and on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have framed their activities as a means of opposing Israel in its war on the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza, and Washington’s alleged underwriting of the conflict that began Oct. 7. In the process of defending against those attacks, U.S. forces have downed dozens of drones and missiles targeting or nearing American personnel, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) statements, media reports and claims by the militia groups show.

The Pentagon says it aims to prevent a wider war from cascading across the Middle East and has moved to bolster air defenses at bases throughout the region.

A Department of Defense (DOD) official told the DCNF on Friday afternoon the Pentagon has counted at least 106 attacks on U.S. forces Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17. CENTCOM has confirmed only six drones successfully intercepted during those attacks, but media reports suggest the number could be much higher.

The Islamic Resistance of Iraq, a coalition of various Iran-backed militant groups, through its semi-official Iraq War Media social media channel issued another claim on Friday accompanied by footage of rocket launches.

The first attack took place on Oct. 17, when the U.S. military and coalition forces fended off three explosive-laden drones bearing down on U.S. troops stationed in Iraq in two different incidents, CENTCOM said in a press release. The next day, two sites in Syria hosting American and partner troops came under attack; one of the drones was shot down before it could cause damage, while the other one caused minor injuries to personnel at the al-Tanf coalition garrison.

Kataib Hezbollah, a powerful Iran-backed Iraqi militia, had threatened to attack U.S. military bases with missiles, special forces and drones if the U.S. intervened militarily in support of Israel, Reuters reported.

Rockets and drones pummeled the Ain al-Asad air base near Baghdad later on Oct. 19. On Oct. 23, U.S. troops shot down two more kamikaze drones in Syria with unspecified defensive systems, Pentagon officials confirmed. Rockets rained down at Iraq’s Ain al-Asad again on Oct. 24, Reuters reported, citing two Iraqi security sources.

The Pentagon warned Iran and its proxy militias in the Middle East intended to further escalate conflict by attacking U.S. troops based in the region.

Dozens of troops have sustained minor injures, and one American contractor died during a false alarm.

On Oct. 25, one attack was recorded at a location in northern Syria on Wednesday, The Washington Post reported, citing U.S. officials. Three rockets were aimed at the outpost and one landed inside, although no troops were injured.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed dozens of attacks, not all of which have been verified as successful. They continued through November and December.

Christmas day saw the most significant casualty of all the attacks when an explosive drone apparently crashed into Erbil Air Base in Iraq, wounding two American service members and leaving a third in critical condition, the Pentagon said. In retaliation, President Joe Biden ordered airstrikes on “Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups focused specifically on UAV activities,” damaging facilities used to make drones and likely killing or wounding multiple militants.

It was the fourth round of airstrikes Biden ordered on facilities associated with the militant groups and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which oversees Tehran’s proxy operations, since Oct. 27.

Additionally, U.S. and coalition forces have defended bases as militants were planning or in the process of conducting strikes, recording casualties.

Separately, U.S. Naval forces in the Red Sea have downed at least 46 attack drones and 11 missiles the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched, according to a DCNF tally. The USS Carney guided-missile destroyer intercepted three land-attack cruise missiles and eight drones that appeared intended to strike Israel on Oct. 19, USNI News reported, citing a preliminary Pentagon after-action report.

Since then, CENTCOM has documented 23 attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, according to a statement. U.S. destroyers and fighter jets from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower aircraft carrier scrambled to respond.

In the latest incident, Houthi rebels on four small boats fired small arms and crew-served guns at U.S. helicopters while attempting to board a Maersk container ship early Sunday, the first time the Pentagon has confirmed Houthi militants directly targeted American military personnel. U.S. helicopters fired back, killing militants and sinking three of the skifs, the military said.

Saturday night, the Gravely shot down two more anti-ship ballistic missiles fired by the Houthis, according to CENTCOM.

The Pentagon is documenting attacks on international shipping on a case-by-case basis, the DOD official told the DCNF.

“Often times if multiple munitions are fired in quick succession, that would count as once ‘incident.’ However, it really depends on the timing and sequence of events during a period of time,” the official said.

U.S. warships downed drones twice in November and responded to an attempted strike on commercial ship with anti-ship ballistic missiles, CENTCOM has said. Incidents increased in frequency in December; on one occasion, the USS Carney shot down 14 attack drones that came at the destroyer in a wave, without any evidence of warship nearby.

Dec. 3 proved an especially tense day as the UUS Carney guided-missile destroyer responded to three separate distress calls as the commercial ships came under attack from an onslaught of drones and ballistic missiles from areas occupied by the Iran-backed militant group, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement. In the process of rendering support to the ships, the Carney downed three Houthi drones but CENTCOM said it was too early to determine whether a U.S. Navy vessel was also a target.

“These attacks represent a direct threat to international commerce and maritime security. They have jeopardized the lives of international crews representing multiple countries around the world. We also have every reason to believe that these attacks, while launched by the Houthis in Yemen, are fully enabled by Iran,” CENTCOM said in the statement.

U.S. naval assets downed a dozen suicide drones, three anti-ship ballistic missiles and two land-based cruise missiles the Houthis fired toward the Red Sea over a 10-hour period on Dec. 26, the military said in a statement.

In a statement, the Houthi military spokesperson affirmed the group’s “continued support and support of the Palestinian people as part of their religious, moral and humanitarian duty” and reiterated intentions to attack any commercial vessel tied to Israeli owners or destined for Israel.

Shipping in the Red Sea has decreased dramatically to the Houthi threat, as successful strikes have sparked fires on board merchant vessels and tankers, while U.S. forces continue to take down missiles.

The Pentagon announced Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational task force aimed at safeguarding shipping through the critical waterway, on Dec. 18. Major freight companies say they still plan to reroute around Cape of Good Hope, CNN reported.

So far, the Pentagon has not confirmed whether the Houthis aimed for any drones heading directly for U.S. warships to impact on those ships, reportedly to avoid provoking further tensions as the region is simmering over the war between Israel and Gaza. The Biden administration has also refrained from directly targeting Houthi launch sites.

“President Biden’s perceived weakness by our enemies is leading to escalating attacks against our servicemembers and lawful commercial shipping. These attacks will continue until these terrorists understand that their actions will have severe consequences.” Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, who chairs the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Investigative reporter, defense.

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US Troops Kill Houthi Militants In Red Sea Firefight After Rebels Attempt To Board Commercial Ship

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Jordan As Collateral Damage of the Israel-Hamas War

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The war in Gaza has already had a terrible effect on Jordan’s economy. Since the war started, visitors have been cancelling trips to the country, out of worries about spillover violence, not just from the fighting in Gaza, but also the possibility of a major conflict between Israel and Hezbollah on the Israel-Lebanon border, and from the upsurge in violence in Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank. By dint of repetition, beginning immediately in 1950 with all the Arab and Muslim delegates using “the West Bank” speeches at the UN, the rest of the world quickly chose to forget the venerable toponyms that had been in constant use for 3000 years, not just by the Jews, but by the entire Western world. Take a look at any American, British, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Russian maps of the area up to 1950, and you will see “Judea” and “Samaria” clearly marked. And nowhere will you find “West Bank.” But here we are, in 2023, and practically everyone now uses, without giving it a thought, “West Bank” for “Judea and Samaria.”)

No one likes to visit what is a war zone, and the result has been a body blow to the tourism sector in Jordan. The country is losing about $250 million each month in revenue from tourism. More on this loss to Jordan’s economy can be found here: “Jordan Losing Over $250 Million Per Month Due to Israel-Hamas War,” Algemeiner, December 27, 2023:

The Israel-Hamas war is having devastating effects on the Jordanian economy, according to the kingdom’s Minister of Tourism Makram Mustafa Queisi.

Queisi said on Tuesday that the rate of tourist cancellation since the beginning of the war in October is around 60 percent, which translates to over 200,000 visitors, according to Al-Arab, a pan-Arab newspaper published in London.

Can you blame those tourists cancelling trips to Jordan? It’s not just the violence in Gaza, though that would by itself be enough to dissuade many tourists, but that exchange of fire across Israel’s northern border between the Jewish state and Hezbollah in Lebanon. And there is also the continuing threat of Houthi drones being fired at ships in the Red Sea, with the Americans successfully shooting down most of those drones, and just now creating a naval task force, consisting of ships from major maritime nations, under American leadership, able to answer the Houthi threat — taking the fight if necessary to Yemen itself — in order to make the Red Sea safe again for commercial shipping. All of these stories that dominate the news, about Israel and Hamas fighting in Gaza, Hezbollah and Israel trading blows across the Lebanese-Israeli border, the Iran-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah attacking American bases in Syria and Iraq, quite understandably lead hundreds of thousands of tourists to cancel trips to Jordan. And there is another worry that puts would-be tourists off. Given that the majority of the population in Jordan is Palestinian, and angry at the Americans for continuing to stand by their Israeli ally, attacks on American tourists in Jordan are another source of justified concern.

If we want to reflect this number on income, we are talking approximately 180 to 200 million dinars [$253 to $281 million] per month,” which represents “a loss to the overall economy,” Queisi said.

“There will be significant losses to the economy, which means that every month there will be cancellations in hotel reservations and a decrease in the number of visitors by up to 60 or 70 percent,” he said.

The violence in the region will not soon die down. The Israelis have already said that they expect their campaign to destroy Hamas as a military threat will take “months,” and so the reluctance of visitors to come to Jordan will last at least as long.

In recent years, Jordan and Israel have considered cooperating on multiple joint economic and tourism initiatives including the Jordan Gateway Industrial Park, the construction of solar-power and desalination facilities in Israel, and joint tourism in the Gulf of Eilat-Aqaba….

All of those plans about “joint tourism initiatives” promoted by both Israel and Jordan, where package tours would include both countries’ offerings, and allow Jordan, whose main tourist attractions are the rose-red city of Petra, built by the Nabataeans, and Jerash, one of the best-preserved Roman cities in the world, to benefit from the attractiveness of Israel as a world destination for both religious (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim) and cultural tourists. Now, as long as the Gaza war lasts, all talk about joint Israeli-Jordanian tourism initiatives has stopped cold.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

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

‘Shredded Into Pieces’: Witnesses Share Graphic Details Of Hamas’ Sexual Violence Against Israeli Women

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A witness to the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks shared her account of Hamas’ graphic rape and torture of Israeli women at the Supernova Music Festival, The New York Times reported on Thursday.

Sapir, 24, was at the rave on the morning of the attacks and told Israeli police that after being shot and hiding in a bush, she watched the rape of five women by Hamas terrorists, who often tortured their victims as well, according to the NYT. The woman said one female was raped while being stabbed every time she flinched, another woman was “shredded into pieces” and yet another victim’s breast was cut off with a box cutter before slicing her face.

“One continues to rape her, and the other throws her breast to someone else, and they play with it, throw it, and it falls on the road,” Sapir said.

Sapir said that three other women were raped and that some of the terrorists were carrying around the heads of three more women, according to the NYT. Yura Karol, 22, a friend of Sapir’s also witnessed several of the women being raped and murdered.

Sapir took several photographs, that she showed the police, of where she hid and her injuries and said she thought to herself at the time that she “should remember everything,” according to the NYT.

“That day, I became an animal,” she said. “I was emotionally detached, sharp, just the adrenaline of survival. I looked at all this as if I was photographing them with my eyes, not forgetting any detail. I told myself: I should remember everything.”

Raz Cohen and Shoam Gueta, who were also at the festival, told the NYT that they watched multiple Hamas fighters get out of a van with a naked screaming woman. Gueta said that the men were “giggling” while stabbing their victim and “butchering her.”

“They all gather around her,” Cohen said. “She’s standing up. They start raping her. I saw the men standing in a half circle around her. One penetrates her. She screams. I still remember her voice, screams without words.”

Emergency responders testified to seeing the dead bodies of several women with their pants and underwear down below their knees and that one woman appeared to have had her genital area “sliced open,” according to the NYT. A film compiled by the Israeli military and previously viewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation showed photos of women at the rave missing clothes and legs bent in unnatural positions.

The Israeli military has not publicly stated how many women were sexually assaulted by Hamas on Oct. 7 and is gathering evidence, according to the NYT. However, the police admitted that in the aftermath of the attacks, conducting a thorough investigation of the scenes often did not take place due to the focus on eliminating Hamas.

AUTHOR

KATE ANDERSON

Contributor.

POST ON X:

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Second American Hostage Declared Dead In Gaza

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A second American hostage in the Gaza Strip was confirmed dead on Thursday, according to multiple reports.

Judy Weinstein Haggai, a 70-year-old American-Israeli dual citizen, was confirmed dead on Thursday, roughly a week after her husband, Gadi, was also declared to have died, Israel National News reported. There are approximately six American hostages remaining in Gaza, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Haggai and her husband were walking through Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7 when Hamas terrorists shot them both, leaving them with critical injuries that resulted in their death, according to The Times of Israel. Their bodies remain in Hamas captivity in Gaza.

The two leave behind four children and seven grandchildren, according to The Times of Israel. Judy was an English teacher who worked with special needs children, and Gadi was a musician and retired chef.

“[Judy was] a poet and an entrepreneur who loved to create and was dedicated to working for peace and friendship,” Kibbutz Nir Oz said in a statement on Thursday, according to The Times of Israel.

“[Gadi was] a musician at heart, a gifted flautist, he played in the IDF Orchestra and was involved with music his whole life,” The Hostages and Missing Persons Families Forum said in a statement reported on Friday.

Hamas is currently holding about 129 hostages in Gaza, 118 of whom are Israeli citizens or dual citizens, and 23 of whom are believed to be dead in captivity, according to The Wall Street Journal. A previous short-term truce deal between Hamas and Israel allowed for the release of over 100 hostages, but it ended after Hamas broke the terms of the deal.

Getting the remaining hostages out is “going to be a long process,” President Joe Biden said on Dec. 5, according to the WSJ. The U.S. has been working with Israel and Qatar to try and strike another temporary truce agreement with Hamas to allow for the release of the remaining hostages.

AUTHOR

JAKE SMITH

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Iran-Backed Militia Disregards US Warning, Vows To Keep Attacking Ships In Red Sea

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Israeli envoy: Hamas doesn’t want two-state solution, ‘From the river to the sea, this means genocide’

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He is right. Find out why in The Palestinian Delusion.

Israeli envoy says Palestinians don’t want two states, they want genocide

by Elise Ann Allen, Crux, December 23, 2023 (thanks to Tom):

ROME – Israel’s ambassador to the Holy See has said the Vatican’s repeated push for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict fails to consider the real agenda of the Palestinian side, especially the desire to commit “genocide” against the Israeli people….

Speaking to Crux, Israeli Ambassador to the Holy See Raphael Schutz said talk about a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine “is part of what I call the ‘shallow discourse’ surrounding this conflict.”

“I believe this conflict has nothing to do with the two-state solution. Not at all, because Hamas is not speaking about the two-state solution…In the manifestations, in the protests, ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,’ this means genocide for Israel, as simple as that,” he said, saying this is true of allegedly moderate Palestinians, and not just Hamas….

Regarding the pope’s repeated calls for peace, Schutz said that “moral considerations during war are necessary; not only important, but necessary…but this moral standing does not mean pacifism. There is a time for war and there is a time for peace, and now unfortunately is a time for war.”…

Read more.

AUTHOR

ROBERT SPENCER

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

America Must Stand With the People of Iran

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The United States, Israel, and other democracies have a huge stake in the success of the Iranian people to rid themselves of Islamic tyranny. This is not just a matter of geopolitical concern but a moral imperative rooted in the principles of democracy, human rights, and global stability. As I have continuously stated, the Mullahs are highly vulnerable.  And it is the Iranian people who continuously find themselves at the forefront of this enduring quest for freedom and justice.

A comprehensive political, moral, and economic measure by the United States and others offers the best chance of ending Mullah’s reign of terror and diffusing the existential threat it poses to the world.

We must fully engage in this great battle of hearts, minds, and ideas. Let us stop talking about unimportant issues and peripheral concerns. Let us concentrate our efforts on bringing down this foreign enemy in Iran, the Islamofascists.

The survival of the Iranian nation and its identity depends upon it. Human beings cannot create an ideal world of peace and tranquility under totalitarian, despotic, and tyrannical regimes, such as the Islamist regime in Iran. Individual freedoms would be brutally repressed. The individual would be at the mercy of the merciless despots. Based upon the general reaction among Iranian opposition groups, it is clear that the time has come to form a new brand of political opposition, a united force whose sole purpose will be a regime change in Iran and establishing the rule of law.

The moral dimension of this endeavor is underscored by the timeless wisdom embedded in the Biblical adage, “From those who are much given, much is demanded.” Perhaps it is for this reason that the people of the United States of America are again called upon to make huge sacrifices to defeat another tyranny. The United States, as a nation endowed with immense power and influence, carries the responsibility to stand against this tyranny and champion the cause of liberty.

This echoes a historical pattern where the United States has, at critical junctures, risen to the occasion to confront oppressive regimes and champion the aspirations of those yearning for freedom. It is important that this great nation stays the course and enlists its power in support of the freedom-loving Iranian people and help them topple these ruling, bloodthirsty Mullahs who are bent on wreaking death and destruction in the world.

As the spotlight shines on the vulnerabilities of the Mullahs, a crucial moment presents itself for the international community, particularly the United States, to undertake comprehensive political, moral, and economic measures. The strategic alliance of democracies, spearheaded by the United States and Israel, can only serve as a beacon of hope for the people of Iran who seek to break free from the chains of oppression.

By doing so, the world can bestow upon the Iranian people the support they need to overcome the oppressive regime and pave the way for a new era of freedom, dignity, and self-determination. Through diplomatic efforts, economic sanctions, and moral solidarity, these nations can create a formidable front against the tyrannical rule of the Mullahs.

Furthermore, empowering the Iranian people to shape their destiny is not just a geopolitical maneuver but an enduring commitment to human rights and the dignity of every individual on this planet.

In conclusion, the challenge posed by the Mullahs in Iran is not just a regional issue; it is a global concern that demands the collective efforts of democracies worldwide. The United States, with its historical commitment to liberty, is once again called upon to lead the charge against tyranny.

By standing firmly with the Iranian people, the world has the potential to witness the triumph of freedom over oppression, signaling a new chapter in the ongoing struggle for justice and human dignity. By offering support to those on the front lines of the struggle for freedom, the international community can reaffirm its dedication to fostering a world where justice, liberty, and democracy prevail.

The United States has, in secular and free Iranians, its best friends in the entire world. It is imperative for the U.S. to help these Iranians to dislodge the vicious doomsday Mullahs, not as an act of altruism, but as a prudent measure of enlightened self-interest.

©2023. Amil Imani. All rights reserved.

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Bethlehem Church Makes Christmas All About Hating Israel

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Christmas used to be the season of joy, hope, and renewal, but all that is so pre-October 7. The new Christmas spirit is one of lies, rage, and hate. In that new spirit of the woke twenty-first century victimhood Christmas, the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem has set out a figure of the baby Jesus not in the traditional cradle in a manger, but surrounded by rubble meant to indicate buildings destroyed by the Israelis. Because nothing says Christmas more beautifully than hating Jews, right?

According to a Religion Unplugged report, the Rev. Dr. Munther Ishaq, pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, explained: “This is what Christmas looks like in Palestine.” The report adds that “his crèche featuring building debris was a gesture of solidarity with Gaza’s beleaguered civilians caught between Hamas gunmen and Israeli Defense Forces.”

The Religion Unplugged report by Gil Zohar makes no mention of the fact that Gaza’s citizens are “beleaguered” because of Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Instead, it presents the plight of Bethlehem’s Christians as entirely the fault of the terrible Israelis. Ishaq, whom Zohar further identifies as a “Palestinian theologian,” laments: “Christmas celebrations are canceled this year — for it’s impossible to celebrate Christmas while our people in Gaza are going through a genocide. Usually, it’s Jesus in the manger surrounded by the shepherds, surrounded by the Holy Family Joseph and Mary and the magi who came from the east.”

There is no indication that Zohar challenged Ishaq for his fantastically libelous claim that Israel is carrying out a “genocide” in Gaza. The source for the generally accepted casualty figures in Gaza is the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is controlled by Hamas. To take their figures at face value would be akin to trusting the word of Josef Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry for information about the conduct of World War II. Hamas has a vested interest in exaggerating the number of civilian casualties in Gaza, because it knows how effectively civilian casualties turn international opinion against Israel.

In service of that goal, Hamas has lied repeatedly. On Oct. 19, for example, the total casualty number increased by 307, from 3,478 to 3,785. Yet at the same time, the total number of children killed went from 853 to 1,524, an increase of 671. Nor was that the only time such a thing happened. On Oct. 26, the total number of casualties increased by 481, while the number of children casualties went up by 626. Clearly, the Hamas Ministry of Health in Gaza is not too concerned that people will study these numbers closely; the idea is simply to shock and appall people with Israel’s alleged inhumanity, and that is working well enough.

Munther Ishaq is not in Gaza at all, as Bethlehem is in Judea and Samaria, now known as the West Bank. But he nevertheless wanted to claim some coveted victim status for himself and his congregation. “Here we wanted to say,” he explained about his crèche, “that it is as if they are looking for Jesus in the midst of the rubble. We wanted to send a message to the world – a message that while the whole world is celebrating Christmas in festive ways, here in Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus where Christmas originated from, this is what Christmas looks like to us.” Zohar tells us that this craven cleric “preached against the IDF offensive from his pulpit at the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church in Bethlehem and at the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the adjoining town of Beit Sahour,” but doesn’t say anything about his preaching against the Oct. 7 jihad murders.

Zohar adds that “the sermon followed the IDF’s strike on Gaza City’s oldest active church, the historic St. Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church. The bombing killed 18 people, injured others and displaced about 400 civilians who were taking shelter in the church complex.” He gives no hint, however, of what even the Washington Post, never a friend of Israel, reported: “The Israel Defense Forces said in an emailed statement that a strike targeting a Hamas control center ‘damaged the wall of a church in the area’ and that it was ‘aware of reports on casualties’ and was reviewing the incident. They declined to provide further information and reiterated, ‘It is important to clarify that the Church was not the target of the strike.’”

Undaunted by facts, secure in the knowledge that his distortions would go unchallenged, Ishaq also said: “Christmas is the solidarity of God with those who are oppressed, with those who are suffering, and if Jesus is to be born again, this time this year he will be born in Gaza under the rubble in solidarity with the people of Gaza.” He doesn’t explain how he reconciles Jesus’ own recorded words with the oft-repeated genocidal statements of Hamas leaders, or the Gazans’ enthusiastic support for Hamas. In the world that Ishaq and Zohar inhabit, the facts don’t matter, only the narrative does. And the hatred for Jews and Israel that narrative is designed to elicit.

AUTHOR

Robert Spencer

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

WATCH: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump tour Kfar Aza kibbutz ravaged by Hamas during the October 7th massacre

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The daughter of former President Donald J. Trump and her husband visited Kfar Aza, where they spoke with residents and members of the security forces.

For nearly two hours, only a kilometer from Gaza City and with the sound of artillery fire in the background, Ivanka and Jared went door to door and spoke with residents of the kibbutz, Maor Morvia, Shahar Shnurman, and Hen Kotler, who shared their story and the tragic stories of their friends who were murdered and abducted by Hamas on October 7th.

At the end of the tour, Kushner and Trump thanked the residents and the security and rescue officials.

Video source – Natan Weil, Knesset Spokesperson

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EDITORS NOTE: This Newsrael News Desk column with video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

U.S. Army BG (Ret.) John Adams: Will Biden Administration continue support or obstruct Israel’s victory over Hamas in Gaza?

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Jerry Gordon, a Senior Editor of The New English Review, invited retired U.S. Army Brigadier General John Adams (Ret.) for this fourth in a series of discussions on Israel Defense Force military doctrine and strategic options in the conduct of the Jewish state’s civilizational war with Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group in Gaza. He addresses the conflict given his extensive background as a 30-year veteran of combat, staff and international military diplomatic assignments and post-service informal analysis and discussions with former Senior IDF commanders.

Among the issues covered in this wide-ranging discussion are:

  1. Biden Administration attempts to force Israel to “scale down” Gaza operations conflicts with IDF objective of destroying and displacing jihadist Hamas.
  2. Biden Administration “day after” two state solution, modeled on failed 1993 Oslo Accords, is rejected by the Netanyahu government because of national security concerns. PLO – Fatah was routed by Hamas in 2006 Gaza elections and both groups share same objective: destruction of Jewish state.
  3. Discovery of massive Hamas tunnel near Israeli Erez Gaza crossings and failure of border high tech Iron Wall in Hamas breach on October 7th – Israel’s “Maginot Line” – are priorities to be investigated in post-conflict intelligence failures investigation.
  4. Hamas discussions with Egyptian intelligence on new round of pauses include release of 40 to 50 of remaining Israeli captive in exchange for longer pause and increased humanitarian aid and release of Israeli Palestinian security prisoners.
  5. Other “Day After” solutions reviewed include “One State” proposal by noted Israeli geo-political commentator Caroline Glick based on Arab Clan governance of municipalities and pathway to Israeli citizenship and New State proposal of former Senior IDF officers- an expansion of Gaza into Egyptian Sinai – “Singapore” on Mediterranean Coast.
  6. Iran is behind proxy Yemen’s Houthi rebel drone and ballistic missile attacks in support of Hamas in Gaza threaten global war and maritime risks in Red Sea and transit via Suez Canal. USS Destroyer Carney successfully repulsed Houthi drone and missile attacks.  Defense Secretary Austin announced formation of international maritime task force in Operation Prosperity Guardians composed of US, Britain, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain.
  7. Iran is also behind Hizballah as it threatens rocket and precision guided missile barrages to northern and central Israel. Hizballah has an inventory of upwards of 150,00 rickets and missiles. The IDF has conducted air attacks, in response to rocket and mortar attacks. Israel has evacuated an estimated 200,000 from both northern and southern communities. Defense Minister Gallant announced possible limited incursion of 18 kilometers to Litani river in Southern Lebanon to destroy Hizballah positions. The Biden Administration maintains one US Navy Carrier Battle Group offshore Lebanon (another CBG is in the Persian Gulf) to prevent a widening war in the Middle East.
  8. Israel needs to complete its mission of destroying or displacing Hamas without significant delays to avoid rising costs to its economy.

WATCH: Will Biden Administration continue support or obstruct Israel victory over Hamas in Gaza War?

About BG John Adams, USA (Ret.)

Brigadier General John Adams retired from the US Army in September 2007. Currently an independent defense consultant, he is also studying toward a PhD in Political Science at the University of Arizona, with a research focus on European security institutions. His final military assignment was as Deputy United States Military Representative to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Military Committee in Brussels, Belgium, the highest military authority of NATO. He worked closely with military representatives of NATO and Partnership for Peace member nations to develop policy recommendations for the political authorities of the Alliance, and helped coordinate the transfer of authority in Afghanistan from US to NATO control.

Born and raised in the Washington, DC, area, General Adams was a Distinguished Military Graduate and received a Regular Army commission from North Carolina State University Army ROTC in 1976. As a Foreign Area Officer, Military Intelligence Officer, and Army Aviator, his more than thirty years of service in command and staff assignments includes nearly eighteen years in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, including assignments with US Embassies in Belgium (1994-1997), Rwanda (1996), Croatia (1998-2001), and South Korea (2002-2003), where as an Army Foreign Area Officer and military attaché, he provided political-military advice to US Ambassadors, combatant commanders, US Government authorities in Washington, visiting US Government delegations, and represented the United States with foreign government officials regarding national and regional issues. As an Army Aviator, he has more than 700 hours as pilot-in-command in fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft including the UH-1D, OV/RV-1D Mohawk, and RU-21 Guardrail Special Electronic Mission Aircraft.

On September 11, 2001, he was stationed at the Pentagon as Deputy Director for European Policy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and directly participated in immediate disaster recovery operations at the crash site as well as coordinated international support for the US diplomatic and military response. He is a veteran of Operation Desert Storm (1991), Operation Guardian Assistance in Rwanda (1996), and served and traveled extensively on official business throughout the Balkans from 1998-2003. He traveled on temporary duty to both Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004.

General Adams holds Masters in International Relations (Boston University), English (University of Massachusetts), and Strategic Studies (US Army War College). He taught English at West Point from 1988-90. He is proficient in French, Dutch, German, and Croatian.

John and his wife, Laura Magan MD, make their home in Tucson. They enjoy sailing, hiking, and cooking. He has two daughters, the oldest who graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2008 and now works as a program coordinator with Operation Smile in Norfolk, Virginia, and the youngest who is a senior at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia.

©2023. Jerry Gordon. All rights reserved.

Goodness, What an Unpleasant Little Creature This Greta Thunberg Turns Out to Be

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Greta Thunberg has been commenting on the climate conference just held in Dubai. Her appalling remarks can be found here: “Greta Thunberg slams COP28 climate deal and Israel, waves Palestinian flag,” by Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, Jerusalem Post, December 17, 2023:

Thunberg, 20, has been “standing with Gaza” since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, not only on social media but also at rallies. She was recently filmed chanting “crush Zionism” at a pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden.

When Greta Thunberg slams the COP28 climate deal and Israel, while she waves the Palestinian flag and cries “crush Zionism,” does she have any idea that Israel is, climate-warningly speaking, on the side of the angels, and the Arabs on the side of the devils? I doubt that Thunberg is aware that Israeli scientists have made their tiny country a leader in solar technology, and Israeli solar companies work on projects all over the world; the Jewish state has done more to help the world move away from fossil fuels than all 22 members of the Arab League combined. But it probably would have no effect; Ms. Thunberg has made up her mind: Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians are the oppressed, and there’s an end on’t. Please don’t try to confuse her with facts.

Goodness, what an unpleasant little creature this Thunberg turns out to be. She’s not for a “two-state solution.” She’s not for a “ceasefire.” No, she wants to “crush Zionism,” which means she wants to put paid — violently — to the tiny Jewish state. And what about the Israeli Jews? Oh, they can scatter to the winds. Why should she care? She’s saving the world.

It takes a moral idiot to “stand with Gaza,” which means “stand with Hamas,” when that same Hamas has just provided the world with a catalogue of horrors. Hamas, the terror group that Greta Thunberg stands with, on October 7 had 3,000 of its operatives swarm into Israeli kibbutzim, where they killed more Jews than had been killed at any time since the Holocaust. But it was not simple killing. No, it was diabolical in its insensate cruelty. Hamas operatives beheaded babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, and murdered young girls, sliced the breasts off women, gouged out the eyes, and cut off the genitalia off men, murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children, sliced open the stomach of a pregnant woman, pulled out the fetus before killing the mother. They videotaped each other, as they raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered. They called home, to excitedly tell their proud parents that “I killed ten Jews with my own hands!” These are the people Greta Thunberg is “standing with” when — after October 7 — she “stands with Gaza.”

“The final outcome of #COP28 is not a ‘historic win,’” Thunberg tweeted. “It is yet another example of extremely vague and watered-down texts full of loopholes that in no way is even close to being sufficient for staying within the 1.5° limit and ensuring climate justice.

“Phasing out fossil fuels is a bare minimum,” she wrote in the three-part thread. “We need drastic immediate emission cuts and binding commitments from the largest contributors of [sic]the climate crisis to finance loss and damages, adaptation and a just transition in the most affected areas.”…

Running off at the mouth, is Greta Thunberg. It’s all very well, what she says — she’s asking for the moon and sixpence — but she’s like the Miss America contestant who solemnly tells the judges that when she is not reading Camus and Dostoyevsky, she is “working for world peace” and hopes “to achieve it by the time I’m thirty.” Thunberg offers a wish list — and so can I, and so can any man — but not a single hint as to how her desired climate future will come about. She wants a “phasing out of fossil fuels.” Okay. But which ones in what order? By what date? And to be replaced by what other sources of energy? How do we choose between, say, nuclear power and solar energy? Or solar and wind? Questions, Greta, questions you are incapable of answering..

And why is it, Greta Thunberg, that you did not discuss the real obstacle at the COP28 meeting — the opposition of the Arabs to anything less vague than that adopted promise “to transition away from fossil fuels” in a “just, equitable, and orderly manner”? Or are these mere “details” too trivial for Greta Thunberg, World’s Greatest Authority, to think about?

In October, she posted a photo on X in which she and her friends held signs like “Free Palestine,” “Stand with Gaza,” “This Jew Stands with Palestine,” and “Climate Justice Now.” After that post, the Education Ministry said it would remove any mentions of the climate activist as a “role model” from the nation’s public school curriculum.

Good for the Swedish Education Ministry, that has determined that her anti-Israel remarks disqualify her from being held up as someone for schoolgirls to emulate. Keep on saving the world, Greta. Stick to that. You’ll do less damage that way. And for god’s sake, leave little Israel, now fighting for its survival, alone.

AUTHOR

HUGH FITZGERALD

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

Young Americans Think the Holocaust Is a ‘Myth,’ ‘Exaggerated,’ or Political Ploy

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Philosopher George Santayana is often attributed with coining the phrase, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” Such a well-known saying almost seems cliché. But does it have merit? Reflecting on Ecclesiastes 1:9, we know there is nothing new under the sun, and we often see history repeat itself, or even take on new meaning (for better or for worse).

As time widens the gap between the past and the present, it’s easy to forget what has occurred. Perhaps more concerning, it’s easy to remember historical events incorrectly. This begets three possible outcomes: learning the wrong lessons, fabricating lessons that push a certain narrative, or just not learning any lesson at all. The actions of our day imply we’ve experienced all three.

Osama Bin Laden, founder of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and primary perpetrator of the 9/11 terrorist attack, wrote a “Letter to America” in which he explained his motivation behind the tragic event in American history. The fall of the Twin Towers, the strike at the Pentagon, the plane that crashed in the Pennsylvania field, and the thousands of innocent people injured or killed that day, drastically changed America. Yet, last month, bin Laden’s letter exploded across the internet, and many of the viewers praised what the terrorist had to say.

“I feel like I’m going through an existential crisis right now,” some said. Others read the propaganda and insisted they “will never look at life” or “this country the same.” I believe it goes without saying that terrorists do not and will never deserve sympathy. Yet, how easy is it for lies to be perceived as truth? And the rise of social media use (TikTok in this case), and the increasing message of wokeness, has only added to the spread of deception. So, these waves of ignorance continue.

A recent poll conducted by YouGov, although not the first of its kind, revealed one in five young American adults believe the Holocaust never happened. At least 30% of the respondents, ages 18 to 29, doubt the authenticity of the event, and about a quarter of this same group claimed the retelling of this historical account has been “exaggerated.”

In 2020, the first “50-state survey of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z” was released, and the results showed a “lack of basic Holocaust knowledge.” If there was concern about how people viewed the Holocaust three years ago, it can’t be surprising that the concern has only grown worse — especially as history continues to unfold and our societal problems increase.

Anti-Semitism has grown to its highest percent in about three decades. Since the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, the question many are asking is, did the attacks spark this outburst in anti-Semitism, or did it expose what had already been building for some time?

While there’s much evidence to support the latter, this poll alone indicates that, in addition to young Americans not knowing much about the Holocaust or whether it happened, many of them have politicized the 1940s Jewish genocide. When analyzing the partisan differences, the survey demonstrated 26% of those who voted for Biden and 13% of those who voted for Trump in the 2020 election believe Israel “exploits Holocaust victimhood for its own purposes.” In other words, for some, the Holocaust is just another piece of propaganda meant to serve one party and degrade another. How unfortunate.

It’s also sad that some of America’s most prominent Ivy League school presidents won’t do anything about the anti-Semitism spreading on their campuses. Or that young Americans see no problem in calling for the eradication of the Jewish state and people. It’s hard to believe the hatred toward and rhetoric against the people of Israel has gone so far that the Hamas murderers, rapists, and brutal, stone-cold terrorists, have racked up support and sympathy.

It’s incredible that the Holocaust, where six million Jews were burned alive, starved, gassed to death, worked to death, tortured in concentration camps, ripped from their families, used as props for surgical experiments, and deprived of every basic human right known to man, has been forgotten or denied by many. Obviously, the word, “unfortunate,” does not do justice. But it’s not just “unfortunate” to forget the past. It’s dangerous, and is often driven by dangerous ideologies.

Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow for Education Studies at Family Research Council, commented to The Washington Stand, “This phenomenon is a strange combination of American youth being unchurched and uneducated.” She continued, “When people young or old are unaware of who the Jewish people are in salvation history, they will be unable to believe something like the Holocaust could happen to them or anyone else.”

Letting go of history by any means — be it misinterpretation, forgetfulness, purposeful politicization, or denial — means the future will be affected by it, and often not in a positive way. “The Marxist march through our institutions includes the church and the schools,” Kilgannon added. “And the result of this will not be a communist utopia, but rather a hellscape where terrorist attacks are normalized as ‘anticolonial.’”

She concluded, “You can only maintain such an insane narrative when historical events like the Holocaust are lost to history.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter 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.

The Moral Bankruptcy of Higher Education — and the Opportunity it Gives Christians

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In a disturbing House hearing this week, the heads of three of America’s most prestigious universities — Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — equivocated on whether calls for the slaughter of the Jewish people are acceptable.

Used to employing the artful dodges of academic jargon, these “educators” did their best to use complex sentence structures and condescending nuance to avoid answering straightforward questions. When asked by U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) — herself a Harvard grad — direct questions about massive student demonstrations condoning violence against Israel and Jews in general, Harvard president Claudine Gay said, “We embrace a commitment to free expression even of views that are objectionable, offensive, hateful — it’s when that speech crosses into conduct that violates our policies against bullying, harassment, intimidation.”

Calling for mass murder is not “bullying, harassment, (and) intimidation?” And so it went — the cowardly evasions of the ivory tower flowing from the leaders of some of the reputedly greatest institutions of higher learning in the world. So now, alarmed by the unnerving calm of a group of PhDs defending their students’ “right” to call for slaughter, the University of Pennsylvania’s board of trustees met in an apparent state of panic over Penn president Liz Magill’s refusal to condemn genocide. Magill has now “promised to review the university’s code of conduct after she faced calls to resign for declining to say whether advocating genocide was a violation of the policy.” How reassuring.

For decades, conservatives have been warning that university liberal arts faculties are run by academics who are wandering so far left that were the earth flat they would fall off. Now, we have data to prove this. In a faculty survey published last fall, the Harvard Crimson newspaper reported that “more than 80 percent of Harvard faculty respondents characterized their political leanings as ‘liberal’ or ‘very liberal.’” Less than 2% characterized themselves as conservative. More broadly, a 2016-2017 study found that 60% of university faculty identified as “left or far left.”

To be clear, being liberal and being anti-Semitic are not synonymous. Rather, it should surprise no one that in environments where young people are taught that Israel is an illegitimate state, that claiming there are moral absolutes is oppressive patriarchal nonsense, and that “heteronormativity” (i.e., the norm of being attracted to the opposite gender) is merely a repulsive social construct that should be crushed, a good number of these young men and women will be swayed.

Post-teenagers are well-known for a proneness to moral indignation. Given that many have had virtually no moral training in the home or churches (just be nice, believe in some kind of deity, and vote Democratic — this is the de facto creed of “mainline” Protestantism) and have not been taught to think carefully and critically in their public schools, it should be unsurprising that when a post-modern professor waxes on about a real or imagined problem, sprinkling his lecture copiously with calls for “justice” and presenting well-culled “facts” to buttress his case, some impressionable youth will fall for his ill-conceived blather.

There is no such thing as values-neutrality. Between Josef Stalin’s celebration of his mass killings (or as he put it, “Who’s going to remember all this riff-raff in 10 or 20 years’ time? No one”) and Jesus’s teaching that we should love our enemies, there is a great gulf fixed. While no one (to my knowledge) stands behind a university lectern actually calling for murder, thousands of my fellow PhDs take their lecture hall podiums and foster theological unbelief, ethical confusion, factual distortion, and logical fallacies day by day, week after week.

So now, as we see major college campuses awash in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic rhetoric, many university donors and political commentators are shocked by what they are hearing. Why? Have they honestly assumed you can void an education of “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” and produce men and women of character, moral bravery, and sound minds? Or, at least to some, is this the point: raise a generation for whom hopelessness, rage, and confusion confect into pre-revolutionary radicalism?

The very foundation of our country assumes the existence of a personal Creator Who, in His unmerited kindness, has endowed us with the rights He wants us to enjoy. Try asserting the truth of this claim in any secular university liberal arts faculty lounge. The response you receive will be less than pleasant.

There is another issue at play, as well: Cowardice. Saying no to an insistent child is aggravating; saying no to the insistent, demanding, and continuously outraged Left must be exhausting. But it is also needed. Some voices should not be given space to vent their cries of vicious and ignorant rage. Not every opinion deserves an equal hearing, especially if some of those opinions urge genocide. It is pure dishonesty to suggest that there’s a bright line between rhetoric and action. Fostering hatred leads to hateful actions — this is axiomatic. Evidently the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT missed that class in simple moral geometry.

We should not be surprised by the sudden eruption of indignation now rising among rich donors and many in the major media, especially given the general inattention of much of American society to what’s happening all around us. And while we might hope that the current state of astonishment and anger on the part of wealthy donors and assorted cultural elites will force an accounting of what some of America’s most talented youth are learning, don’t bet on it.

When the president of Harvard — founded as a training ground for evangelical pastors — can’t simply say that when students yell for the destruction of Israel that they have gone too far, such a belief would not be an exercise of either faith or hope but pathetic fantasy.

What we can hope in is that the God of the Bible is real. Christ’s victory over sin, death, and Satan has inaugurated a new kingdom that no power on earth can so much as dent, let alone stop. This is the message we need to bring to a generation desperate for something permanent, something that transcends time and contention and pain.

AUTHOR

Rob Schwarzwalder

Rob Schwarzwalder, Ph.D., is Senior Lecturer in Regent University’s Honors College.

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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.

‘It’s “Me Too” Unless You Are a Jew’: Why Won’t Women’s Groups Condemn Hamas’s Rapes?

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Why won’t so-called “women’s groups” condemn Hamas terrorists for raping Israeli women on October 7? This is what a growing number of people are asking, including Former Miss World and Miss Israel 1998, Linor Abargil, who gave a very moving and emotional speech before the United Nations on December 4.

Abargil appeared on Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom” on Thursday. She said, “It’s ‘Me Too’ unless you are a Jew.” She observed, “It’s not about political, it’s not about ‘Free Palestine, it’s not about which side you’re on on the map: to use rape as an act of war is unbearable. I mean, what happened to humanity?” She then became very emotional and had to take a moment to compose herself before she shared:

“One of my friends… told me a story about this young woman — that he saw a video of her — she was raped by three Hamas people, one after another raped her. . .Screaming they beat her, spit at her, they then butchered her, and one of them took her cell phone and just send everything to her mother. Her scream just haunts my friend every night he’s tried to sleep. And her screaming should be out there for all the world to shout out for this girl that is not here to shout herself. But instead, all of the organizations are just silent. …I mean, I’m telling you, I’m just speechless.”

In the second hour of Thursday’s program, Dana Perino interviewed Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) who also called out the women’s groups that are usually her political allies. They include Emily’s List, Democratic Women’s Caucus, Women’s March, I Stand With Her, and American Association of University Women.

Gillibrand said, “When I saw the list at the U.N., I couldn’t believe it. I was so aghast, I was so furious. I don’t understand how we cannot have solidarity amongst all women in the United States and globally — that using rape as a weapon of war is unacceptable. It has to be condemned. The fact that the U.N. has not called Hamas a terrorist organization and condemn[ed] the horrific violence on October 7 is unacceptable. And they’re not even enforcing international law.”

She went on to say, “I think women’s rights groups in the United States should care deeply about women around the globe and should not turn a blind eye. They should not keep their head in the sand. They have a moral responsibility to have moral clarity…”

Perino asked Gillibrand if she watched the video of the October 7 massacre that the Israeli government provided for Congress to watch. She responded, “I did. It’s unspeakable. The horrific acts that were committed in the most heinous and evil ways you can imagine: beheadings, dismemberments, mass rapes, shooting of babies and children. It’s something that should never, ever happen. And it has to be called out not only by the U.N. but by the world community. … They did not show us the victims of rape, and they did not show us the videos of rapes happening because they thought it was too horrific for Congress to see, but we should see it. And these films and these photographs should be made public because the world has to condemn this…”

Abargil’s and Gillibrand’s emotional pleas stand in stark contrast to the cold words of Congressional Progressive Caucus Chairwoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, December 3. When CNN host, Dana Bash, asked her why women’s groups are “downright silent” about Hamas raping and mutilating Jewish women on October 7, Jayapal shockingly downplayed Hamas’s evil acts, continually trying to compare those acts to Israel’s justifiable right to defend itself.

Bash said, “With respect, I was just trying to talk about the women, and you turned it back to Israel. I’m asking you about Hamas…”

Jayapal interrupted, “I already answered your question, Dana, I said it’s horrific. I think that rape is horrific — sexual assault is horrific. I think it’s horrific. I think that it happens in war situations. Terrorist organizations like Hamas obviously are using these as tools. However, I think we have to be balanced about bringing in the outrages against Palestinians…”

Bash pointed out, “And it’s horrible, but you don’t see Israeli soldiers raping Palestinian women.” To which Jayapal responded, “Well, Dana, I don’t want this to be the hierarchy of oppressions…”

Although U.N. Women finally condemned Hamas on December 1 (almost two months after the October 7 attack), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is still pleading with groups such as the United Nation’s own World Health Organization and women’s groups around the world to be vocal advocates for the many Israeli women and girls that were raped on October 7 (and for the hostages that likely continue to be abused). He said, “I heard heartbreaking stories of abuse. I heard, as you have heard, about sexual abuse and unprecedented cases of cruel rape.”

He then asked, “Did you remain silent because it was Jewish women? … I say to the women’s rights organizations, to the human rights organizations, you’ve heard of the rape of Israeli women, horrible atrocities, sexual mutilation? Where the hell are you? I expect all civilized leaders, governments, nations to speak up against this atrocity.”

Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Education Studies, Meg Kilgannon, is not surprised by women’s groups’ lack of attention to this horrific issue. She told The Washington Stand, “National women’s groups have been part and parcel of the Democratic Party for years. For women who pay attention, we know that these groups will never represent our values or the real interests of women. The example of excusing depraved behaviors of terrorists is just another of many ways the leaders of women’s groups serve the interest of progressive and authoritarian men.”

FRC’s Director of the Center for Human Dignity, Mary Szoch, agreed and added, “The terroristic actions of Hamas are pure evil and should be denounced by everyone — especially those claiming to speak for women. Failure to speak out against members of Hamas raping Jewish women is inexcusable.”

AUTHOR

Kathy Athearn

RELATED VIDEO: Hostility to Mother Mary – and the Role of Feminism

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 Targets Hamas Commanders as Terror Group’s Atrocities Are Exposed

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Israeli forces surrounded the house of Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar in southern Gaza on Wednesday, demonstrating just how quickly they have advanced southward. “Our forces can reach anywhere in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said.

The war is still far from over, with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant predicting two more months of major fighting, followed by “mop up” operations to “tak[e] out pockets of terrorist resistance.” But Israeli leaders “definitely feel that they’re racing against that clock because that pressure is mounting from all around the world,” even as further evidence of Hamas’s atrocities emerge, veteran war correspondent Chuck Holton said Thursday on “Washington Watch.”

The Israeli military is scoring military victories both high and low. Israel has begun flooding Hamas’s tunnel network in northern Gaza with seawater, with the dual aim of destroying military equipment and forcing Hamas fighters to come to the surface, Holton explained. So far, it has proved “a fairly effective strategy,” and the Israel Defense Force (IDF) is “taking prisoner many Hamas fighters who are giving themselves up,” he said.

By late November, the IDF had killed five senior Hamas military leaders, about half of the 11 depicted in a photo taken from a tunnel in northern Gaza. The IDF also believes it has “significantly degraded” at least 10 out of an estimated 24 Hamas battalions (of 1,000 or more fighters each) “by taking out midlevel commanders,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“When they say they’re going to take out Hamas, … what they are planning to do is just destroy any infrastructure that could be used for military purposes, and to kill the leadership of Hamas and replace them with something that’s a little bit friendlier,” Holton explained.

The problem is, the IDF is finding that “the whole of Gaza has been militarized in some way, shape, or form,” said Holton. “The whole of Gaza is not a bunch of civilians in cities, with some military things sprinkled around there. It’s actually a giant military base with 2.5 million civilians living in it.” This means that, “in order to destroy Hamas’s capability to make war, … they may have to just raze the whole thing and start over. And obviously that would take a much, much longer campaign to accomplish.”

But Israel needs to achieve victory as soon as possible, said Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, host of “Washington Watch.” He pointed out, “you have the international community and the United Nations repeatedly saying we need a humanitarian ceasefire, which is essentially another name for allowing Hamas to regroup.” The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres took the extraordinary step of forcing the Security Council to vote on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. The U.S. vetoed the resolution on Friday afternoon, with 13 out of 15 members voting for the measure and the U.K. abstaining.

“Definitely, they feel that they’re racing against that clock because that pressure is mounting from all around the world,” Holton agreed.

“Also, the Biden administration is really starting to show its true face,” he added. “At the beginning, they were standing up and saying, ‘We stand with Israel, they have the right to defend themselves.’ And now they’re saying, ‘Israel, you cannot take longer than the first week of January to complete this.’ ‘We will not allow you to replace the government in Gaza with anything other than Palestinian people,’ etc., etc.”

On the other hand, “the Israeli leadership is saying, ‘Well, there’s one other group of people that has more power over us than you do. That’s our own electorate.’ And the voters here in Israel are saying, ‘Absolutely not. We are not going to put up with more Palestinian Authority in Gaza or anywhere else,’” said Holton. “Israel knows that the Israeli people are not going to let up the pressure on their own politicians until they accomplish this mission.”

“I would think, if I were in Israel, there is only one thing to do. That is, to eliminate this threat,” said Perkins. “As [the hostages] come back and discuss their treatment, and [as] more and more information comes out about what happened on October 7 — the atrocities, the brutality, just demonic activity.”

“They’re hoping to be able to free more of those hostages,” Holton offered. “They found out some absolutely terrible things from the hostages that were released during the ceasefire last week. And that is, that the vast majority of those women were raped, some of them many, many times, even while the bombs were falling around them, … and even some of the men.”

As Perkins met with members of Congress on Capitol Hill this week, he said he witnessed “many of them brought to tears by the reports that they got.” Members of Congress have screened a 43-minute video that features uncut footage of the events on October 7, taken either from surveillance cameras or by Hamas militants.

“Killing the leadership of Hamas as quickly as possible is [Israel’s] quickest route to some sort of victory that they can claim,” said Holton. “And the pressure that they’re putting on the civilian population is … actually helping the IDF, because now the civilian population is starting to understand that, if Hamas would just give themselves up and lay down their weapons, all of their suffering could end. And they’re starting to blame Hamas — rightly so — [rather] than to blame the Israelis.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

WATCH: Coming out of the hospital with weapons in hand: Dozens of terrorists arrested in northern Gaza

‘It’s “Me Too” Unless You Are a Jew’: Why Won’t Women’s Groups Condemn Hamas’s Rapes?

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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.