COMMENTARY
The Palestine Firsters
Eli Lake
January 2026

…The cease-fire that [Ben] Rhodes wishes Biden had tacitly accepted would have allowed the terrorists to keep the hostages they stole and would have made sure the Middle East remained in the status quo condition of October 2023. Had Biden successfully pressured Israel to end the war in early 2024, Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah would still be alive in Lebanon today. Yahya and Mohammed Sinwar, respectively the mastermind of October 7 and his brother, would still be running Hamas. Iran would still be enriching uranium to near weapons-grade levels. Bashar al-Assad would still be ruling Syria. Nasrallah, Iran, and Sinwar all had American blood on their hands. Their violent ends served America’s interests and brought justice for those Americans they murdered. The devastation of Iran and the exiling of Assad from Syria were also just acts against American enemies. But Rhodes seems to assess the Gaza war by counting the costs incurred by the side that started it. He believes that Hamas should have been rewarded instead, or at least not forced to pay any permanent penalty for its act of evil. READ MORE

ALGEMEINER From Kanye, to Nick Fuentes and Megyn Kelly: Why J.D. Vance’s Silence Matters Now Vance’s ties to [Tucker]Carlson are not incidental. Carlson is not merely adjacent to Vance’s politics; he is a close ally, and Vance even employs Carlson’s son. Carlson’s reach — tens of millions of people each week across podcasts, clips, and social platforms — is enormous. That influence now includes the normalization of figures and ideas that were once considered politically radioactive. That is the context in which Vance’s silence must be judged. A growing cohort of influential right-wing pundits has adopted a conspiratorial style long associated with antisemitic politics. With Candace Owens as a notable exception, most avoid naming “the Jews” directly, relying instead on euphemisms — “globalists,” shadowy elites, cultural engineers, disloyal insiders. The vocabulary is coded; the architecture is unmistakable.