Zionism is the modern enactment of Hanukkah’s assertion of the right to Jewish independence, and the necessity of the Jewish state even for Jews outside

Posted on December 24, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

NATIONAL REVIEW
Happy Hanukkah, and Am Yisrael Chai
Jon Levin
December 25, 2024

The deep Zionism of the Hanukkah story resonates especially in this era of endemic anti-Zionism and antisemitism. Hanukkah celebrates Jews’ successful assertion of their right to live freely in their ancestral homeland with Jerusalem as its capital, and warns that without Israel, Jews cannot be truly free anywhere. That the holiday came to be celebrated as a mystical miracle instead of a military triumph illustrates how good treatment of Jews in a non-Jewish state is inherently contingent and insufficient, and only an independent Jewish state can guarantee Jewish wellbeing. READ MORE

TABLET MAG Christmas, the Greatest Jewish American Holiday In America, this promised land, Christmas is a Jewish holiday. Our Christmas soundtrack, which resounds from every mall, drugstore and grocery, was mostly composed by Jews. “Let It Snow,” “Silver Bells,” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” “Winter Wonderland,” “The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire),” “A Holly, Jolly Christmas,” “Santa Baby”—all are the work of Jewish songwriters. Hollywood, that Jewish American mecca, gave us Miracle on 34th Street and It’s a Wonderful Life. The artificial Christmas tree was invented by a World War II bomber pilot named Si Spiegel, whose crew was made up of five Catholics, two Jews and one WASP.

FREE PRESS Eli Lake: Why These Christmas Songs Could Only Be Written in America It was Jewish Americans like Irving Berlin who drew on Yiddish and the rhythms and chords of traditional cantorial music to create our most beloved Christmas tunes

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“Turkey’s rise disrupts Riyadh’s narrative depicting itself as the undisputed leader of the Sunni Muslim world, countering Shia Iran”

Posted on December 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

ATLANTIC COUNCIL
The Middle East’s shifting balance of power favors Turkey and Israel
Frederick Kempe
December 21, 2024

It’s hard to predict where the Middle East’s ongoing seismic shifts will leave the region following the collapse of the Syrian regime. What’s already clear, however, is that Israel and Turkey are the big winners, having gained in ways that were unimaginable even a few weeks ago. The Wall Street Journal’s Yaroslav Trofimov writes that now those two US allies, whose relations have grown far worse since the war in Gaza began last year, are set on “a collision course” in Syria and beyond.  Assessing what Israel hopes to get out of the dramatic geopolitical realignment of the Middle East isn’t hard, as its national interests are well known and existential in nature. Its decisions are driven by its need for security, by its desire to maintain military and technological superiority, and by its enduring need to deter, contain, and counter Iran and its proxies. READ MORE

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Druze history is “a part of the still highly disputed story of why so many Arabs left the war zone of the First Arab-Israeli War (AKA Israel’s War of Independence) in 1948”

Posted on December 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
The Big Druze News You Didn’t Hear About
Sally Prag
December 26, 2024

A few days ago, a number of Druze villages in the Syrian Golan Heights announced that they wanted Israel to annex the area of Syria in which they are located, so that they will be under Israeli rule and thus have their rights protected by Israel. This is big news. Yet it seems the story is being suppressed by Western media. And there’s great significance here…[In 1948] many Druze, concerned for the safety of their families, did leave, but not all. Some, like a small number of Muslim Arabs, decided to listen to the Jewish leaders and stay in their homes. When the war ended with Israel having claimed victory over areas previously designated to the Arabs for an Arab state within the original mandate, which they had declined on the grounds that they wanted the entirety of the mandate to remain Arab, those Arabs who had remained in their homes became Israeli citizens, while those who left became Palestinian refugees. READ MORE

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“Removing the Iranian regime, often described as the “mother of all terrorism” and the godfather of terrorist groups, would bring lasting security and prosperity to the Middle East and beyond”

Posted on December 22, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Thank You, Israel, for Saving the World, Defending Freedom and Reshaping the Middle East
Majid Rafizadeh
December 21, 2024

…In just over a year, Israel has succeeded in reducing Iran’s regional influence, effectively dismantling or weakening the pillars of its strategy—the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, and Hamas. This achievement is unparalleled. It disrupted decades of Iran’s poisonous dominance in the region. Thanks to Israel’s strategic and calculated actions, Iran’s regime, which had survived Western sanctions and interventions since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, now faces unprecedented challenges to its survival, which cannot come to an end soon enough. Israel’s efforts to eradicate terrorism and destabilize its sources have largely been accomplished without substantial assistance from Western democracies. It is now time for the West to step up and support Israel and most of the Iranian people in addressing the root of the problem: the Iranian regime. READ MORE

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Last September, the group StopAntiSemitism named Thunberg “Anti-Semite” of the week and stated, “she has sadly transformed her activism into a platform for vile Jew-hatred”

Posted on December 20, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FEDERALIST
Animosity Against Jews Demonstrates Leftist Icon Greta Thunberg’s Extremism
Peter Murphy
December 26, 2024

Greta Thunberg, once the darling of the climate change movement, has revealed herself as virulently anti-Israel, which should make her a pariah in any legitimate social or political cause. Since the October 2023 Hamas slaughter of Israeli civilians, including children and infants, Thunberg, now 21 years old, has called for “crushing Zionism” and repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide.” Her latest episode of malevolence was on display earlier this month in Mannheim, Germany, when she publicly cursed out the nations of Israel and Germany. She targeted the German government with public profanity over its support for the Jewish state. READ MORE

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The village of Hader held a town meeting over the weekend, with residents heard calling for Israel to annex the Syrian community rather than coming under the rule of jihadists

Posted on December 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

I24NEWS
IDF meets Syrian Druze leaders after call to join Israel
December 15, 2024

Israeli army officers have held their first meetings with the leaders of Syrian villages captured in the Golan in recent days, following the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime last week. This comes after Druze residents of Syria’s Hader, near the Israeli border in southern Syria, called for Israel to annex the town like it did the Golan Heights. “What is our fate?” asked a speaker in a video seen on social media over the weekend. The crowd responded: “Israel.” “On behalf of all in Hader, if we must choose, we choose the lesser evil. We want to be annexed to the Israeli Golan to preserve our dignity,” the speaker added…The leader of the Syrian rebels, Ahmad al-Sharaa, also known as Abu Mohammed al-Julani, addressed Israel for the first time on Saturday, rejecting the country’s involvement in Syria. “Syria needs laws and state institutions. We have a plan to deal with all crises. We will not enter into conflict with Israel,” he said. READ MORE

WSJ A Tiny Arab Minority Stands Between Israel and Syria For decades after Israel conquered the Golan Heights, the minority Druze community that lives in this mountainside village considered themselves Syrians. But for many younger Druze in the area, Israel is the only country they have known, and they see their future there, not in Syria. “I don’t want to return,” said Nirvana Yousef, 20 years old, whose grandfathers fought for Syria against Israel in the 1967 Mideast War. “We live a much higher quality of life here.”

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Rep Foxx: “The reputation of US higher education institutions has been in “free fall” over their failure to address antisemitism on campus”

Posted on December 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Astounding’ government failures, House GOP report on Jew-hatred says
Andrew Bernard
December 19, 2024

U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) released an investigative report from six congressional committees about Jew-hatred in the United States after Hamas’s terror attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The Republican staff report, which is based on seven months of committee investigations, describes “astounding” failures on the part of federal government departments and agencies. The report, which was released on Thursday, states that universities across the country likely violated the civil rights of Jews in their handling of anti-Israel campus protests…The report’s conclusions focus largely on the failures of universities to respond to anti-Israel campus protests which began after Oct. 7 but that turned into a nationwide wave of tent encampments. READ MORE

REASON Josh Blackman: DEI Still Has An Anti-Semitism Problem In the wake of October 7, college students across the country responded by praising the resistance against settler colonialism. These elites accused Jewish people of being Zionist oppressors. And leading thinkers justified acts of violence against Jewish students as a proportional response to “genocide” in Gaza. Should any of these reactions have been surprising? No. These principles have been espoused in CRT and DEI ideologies for decades. Students were merely implementing what they were taught.

NEW YORK POST Candace Owens named ‘Antisemite of the Year’ by StopAntisemitism: ‘Poisonous hater’ Firebrand pundit Candace Owens has been named “Antisemite of the Year” by watchdog StopAntisemitism, which says she “blew the competition away” with more votes than anyone in previous years. “Candace Owens’ witch’s brew of antisemitism drew from vile medieval blood libels, including claims that Jews drink Christian blood, conspiracies that Jews are pedophiles who control the media and are ‘taking over America,’ and modern toxic anti-Israel hysteria,” StopAntisemitism’s founder, Liora Rez, told The Post. 

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Just as Iran is the Shiite “head of the octopus” whose tentacles consist of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and other assorted militias, so Erdogan is the Sunni “head of the octopus” in Syria

Posted on December 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Turkey’s Syrian Jihadists Take Over Syria: Kurds, Half a Million Christians Under Intolerable Threat
Uzay Bulut
December 16, 2024

The Assad family’s rule of Syria, which lasted more than 50 years, collapsed on December 8. Jihadist forces took control of Damascus after President Bashar al-Assad escaped to a luxurious life in Moscow. Today, roughly half a million Christians and 2.5 million Kurds in Syria face a future of persecution and abuse at the hands of jihadist terrorists. The offensive launched by the jihadists of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), formerly the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda, began on November 27. These terrorists, backed by Turkey, first captured Aleppo and a string of other towns and cities in a matter of days, before converging on Damascus. Since 2017, HTS has been the dominant Islamist militia in Syria. READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM How Erdogan’s rebel support redraws the Middle East map Assad’s fall presents a complex landscape of opportunities and challenges for Turkey. On the positive side, it delivers a significant blow to Russia and Iran, at least in the short to medium term. The Russian military withdrawal from Syria and Iran’s loss of a critical strategic node in its resistance axis represent substantial geopolitical shifts. Turkey’s southern border will be freed from Russian military presence, and Moscow’s global power projection capabilities will be considerably diminished.

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Ireland’s hostility to Israel, and the Jewish people, is nothing new, as Simon Sebag Montefiore’s family well knows

Posted on December 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
The Deep Roots of Irish Antisemitism
Simon Sebag Montefiore
December 17, 2024

On Monday, the Israeli government announced that it was making the “tough decision” to close its embassy in Ireland. Explaining the move, Israel’s ambassador to the country, Dana Erlich said Ireland has taken “a more extreme stance than any other country” against Israel. Ireland has recognized a Palestinian state and recently backed South Africa’s action against Israel at the International Court of Justice, asking the court to “broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of genocide by a state.” In other words, it is looking to redefine genocide itself in order to condemn Israel. Where does all of this come from? READ MORE

BREITBART Joel Pollak: Israeli Foreign Minister Calls Ireland President ‘Antisemitic Liar’ over Egypt Settlement Claim Israeli foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar called Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, an “antisemitic liar” on Tuesday after the latter falsely claimed that Israel is seeking to put settlements in Egypt, from which it withdrew in 1979. The latest salvo deepens a diplomatic rift that began earlier this year when Ireland, Norway, and Spain — uniquely among European nations — decided to recognize “Palestine” as a state in the wake of the October 7 terror attacks. 

NATIONAL REVIEW Michael Brendan Dougherty: Ireland’s Alarming Antisemitism Many Irish try to explain their attitudes toward Israel as a commitment to international law or as the reflex of a former colony, but as John McGuirk points out in a righteous tirade at Gript.ie, the country never got as worked up, or as active in the U.N., about Assad in Syria or about anything happening in Ethiopia right now. It didn’t raise a peep about the role of Saudi Arabia or Iran in Yemen’s civil wars, which caused an actual famine.

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CNN’s predictive data point on 2024 election: “Biden could be the last Democratic president for the foreseeable future who aligns so unreservedly with Israel”

Posted on December 19, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

COMMENTARY
The Democrats’ Anti-Israel Future: It all changed with Barack Obama
Joshua Muravchik
January 2025

…More important, after the Trump administration killed the JCPOA, Joe Biden revived efforts to install a new version of it, solidifying the idea among Democrats that the fanatical, nuclear-obsessed theocrats of Iran are amenable to diplomacy. This legacy of the Obama administration came complete with some of the same advisers who were behind the JCPOA—some of whom were mentioned in Iranian government emails about a project to cultivate sympathizers in the U.S. The Democrats’ continued interest in rehabilitating Iran led the Biden administration both to ease up on sanctioning the regime and to minimize Israel’s need to deter its sworn enemy since October 7. READ MORE

JEWISH INSIDER 77 House Democrats accuse Israel of violating arms sales laws A group of 77 House Democrats signed on to a letter to the Biden administration on Thursday accusing Israel of violating U.S. arms sales law and of failing to rectify issues, a situation that could trigger the suspension of offensive arms sales to Israel. While the letter does not make an explicit request to halt aid, it references the statute requiring the administration to cut off arms sales to countries that block delivery of humanitarian aid, and accuses Israel of deliberately restricting aid. READ MORE

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