Hamas Shifting the Goalposts for Releasing Hostages

Hamas Had to Stop Palestinians From Murdering Hostages on Their Way Out of Gaza

A fifth round of hostages were released by Hamas in the Gaza Strip Tuesday on day five of an extended, six day ceasefire. Twelve people were released, none of them were Americans.

But before they gained their freedom after being held for more than 50 days by the Iranian backed terror group, hostages were confronted by Palestinian civilians who shouted “Allahu Alkbar” and blocked Red Cross vehicles from quickly exiting. According to local reporting, the Egyptians had to essentially rescue the hostages as they were being harassed and threatened with death.

Meanwhile, recent polling from the Arab World for Research & Development shows the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank approve of the October 7 massacre of more than 1400 Israeli civilians in their homes, at a music festival, in bomb shelters and elsewhere.

HOW HAMAS BECAME AN ENVIRONMENTALIST AND GUN CONTROL CAUSE

From Queers for Palestine to marchers carrying signs reading, “Palestine is a Reproductive Justice Issue”, the Hamas cause has been vertically integrated throughout the Left. Greta Thunberg was booed after injecting anti-Israel chants into environmental rallies. The BLM movement was a longtime foe of Israel, but Asian Studies departments recently joined in.

The leaders of March for Our Lives and the Sunrise Movement, a gun control group and an environmental protest group, signed a letter to Biden warning that young people wouldn’t vote for him unless he forced Israel to stop attacking Hamas.

How better to promote gun control than by defending mass murderers who used machine guns to kill innocent people and how better to champion the environment than by supporting terrorists who deliberately start fires in Israel. What does Hamas have in common with gun control advocates, environmentalists and abortion activists?

“I think something very bad is happening on the left,” Israel’s Labor leader Merav Michaeli complained. “People who consider themselves to be democratic, progressive, are supporting a totalitarian terror regime that oppresses women, the LGBTQ+ community… The more you go to the left, the more there’s a big mix-up. Something went very wrong on the way.”

The ‘something’ that went wrong is called ‘intersectionality’. That’s why abortion protesters, gay activists, environmentalists, gun control activists and the entire Left have to support Hamas. But intersectionality is also bait and switch. While gay activists have to support Hamas, the Islamic terrorist group doesn’t have to stop throwing them off buildings. Making sure Hamas has enough fuel to fire rockets at Israeli kindergartens may be a reproductive justice issue, but no one expects masked men armed with RPGs to shout, “Allahu Akbar” at a Planned Parenthood rally.

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Biden Just Kneecapped Israel and Gave Hamas New Life on Ceasefire

Even as hostages were finally released on Friday, marking the start of a four-day ceasefire, President Joe Biden was already hard at work kneecapping Israel and giving Hamas new life.

Hours after a press conference in which he claimed Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th because he was about to secure peace in the Middle East, Biden spoke to reporters again. This time, he directly stated that the first ceasefire was “just a start” and claimed that there was a “real” chance the truce could be extended.

US President Joe Biden said Friday’s release of a first group of hostages taken by Hamas was just a “start” and that there were “real” chances to extend a temporary truce in Gaza.

Speaking to reporters in Nantucket, Massachusetts, where he was spending the Thanksgiving holiday with his family, Biden also said it was time to “renew” work on creating a two-state solution to achieve peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In other words, Biden is now pushing for an outcome that would allow the remnants of Hamas to escape Northern Gaza and regroup to carry out new attacks. Any long-term truce is simply a new lease on life for the terrorist government.

Biden’s choosing to promote such nonsense has given Hamas the green light to pursue a strategy of trickling out hostages in order to keep a one-sided ceasefire going for possibly months. The ultimate goal would be for the fighting to stop long enough that international pressure would prevent Israel from reigniting the fight to finish off Hamas.

Long story short, Biden is a coward. He does not have the stomach to finish off Hamas, and he wants to prevent Israel from doing so in order to secure his domestic political fortunes. His base of far-left, pro-Hamas lunatics has been screaming bloody murder for a month-and-a-half, and the president is trying to find a way to give in to them but save face at the same time. A prolonged ceasefire that preserves Hamas gives him the out he needs.

As to this “two-state solution” nonsense that the administration keeps pushing, there can be no two-state solution with Hamas. Anyone continuing to suggest that is either a mental invalid or being deeply dishonest. The idea that Israel could allow a terrorist state to exist on its doorstep is laughable given what happened on October 7th.

Hamas leaders have pledged to keep attacking until they kill all the Jews in the area. They aren’t going to stop, and they certainly aren’t going to accept a “two-state solution,” even if Israel were dumb enough to offer it. All Biden had to do was stand strong here, but he doesn’t have it in him. He’ll always try to take the easy way out to save his own skin. Hopefully, Israel tells him to pound sand.

It’s Simple Why No Arab Countries Are Taking Palestinian Refugees. They Know Better.

When Israel began conducting airstrikes in Gaza, everyone knew there was going to be displacement. The military operation comes after Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, murdering 1,200-1,400 civilians in a coordinated assault involving well over 1,000 terrorists. The level of barbarity was unprecedented, leading to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu forming a unity government that aims to destroy Hamas. On October 28, the ground invasion began, leading to scores of Palestinians attempting to make their way south to safety. Hamas shot some who tried to flee.

As the Left rages against Israel, hurling antisemitic slurs and chanting for more Jews to die, some might want to consider why the civilians have nowhere to go. Okay, maybe these folks do know but don’t care, but liberals are historically illiterate, so who knows? It goes beyond geography. The Palestinians bring trouble and have a long, sordid history of fomenting mayhem and terrorism in other Arab nations.

Egypt is the logical destination for these Palestinians, but Cairo doesn’t want them, and for good reason: terrorism. The border crossing at Rafah remains closed, with tanks now deployed to ensure their border is secure. Egypt’s prime minister even said his country is willing to sacrifice millions to ensure no Palestinians ever enter Egypt en masse (via WSJ):

If Hamas cared about Palestinian civilians, it would encourage them to leave Gaza. But instead it is demanding that they remain. The terror group intends to use its own people and the hostages it abducted from Israel as human shields. Their hope is that either Israeli concern about causing collateral damage or global opprobrium will force Israel to scale back its counter-invasion.

Egypt is the only place to which Gaza’s civilians can flee for now. Yet Cairo insists on maintaining its strict quota for entries from Gaza via the Rafah crossing—with only 800 able to leave on Monday, and the crossing reportedly closed in recent days.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah Al Sisi bears no warm feelings toward Hamas, which is allied with the Muslim Brotherhood that tried to impose an Islamist regime in his country not too long ago. He’s concerned that Hamas terrorists might slip across the border into Egypt with a tide of civilians.

One way to reduce that possibility would be to house refugees in camps while they’re vetted for Hamas ties. The rest of the world should support a United Nations effort to help. But taking on this practical and financial burden is a risk Mr. Sisi may not want to take two months before Egypt holds what pass for elections there.

The timing is bad for Mr. Sisi, but unless he budges Egypt will become partly responsible for what could become a terrible humanitarian crisis—and that’s if Israel succeeds in rooting out Hamas. If Hamas’s strategy succeeds and Israel is forced by international pressure to scale back its defensive operations, Egypt will have to live with an entrenched and emboldened Hamas on the other side of the Rafah crossing.

If Hamas and the Palestinians aren’t freely moving into Egypt, they’ll be okay with it. Also, Israel has resisted ceasefires and has continued to chip away at the terror group’s infrastructure in Gaza, but a humanitarian crisis could still emerge.

As the tweet above mentioned, the Palestinians tried to take over Jordan in the 1970s, leading to the late King Hussein declaring war on them and driving them out. They were booted from Kuwait after collaborating with Saddam Hussein’s forces before the Gulf War. They set off a powder keg in Lebanon, a nation that has yet to recover from its brutal civil war that lasted 15 years. No Arab country wants these people because they bring instability and trouble. They’re not importing terrorism; that’s what we’re doing wholesale.

“It Will Be a Massacre of Millions of People”

I first started researching Tablighi Jamaat almost eighteen years ago, in December of 2005. That was not long after I began investigating Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The results of web searches for both organizations overlapped, due to the commonality of the word “Jamaat” — that’s how I found Tablighi Jamaat.

[“Jamaat” means “community”, or “group”, or “association”. Jamaat ul-Fuqra is the “community of the impoverished”, while Tablighi Jamaat means, roughly, “association of preachers”.]

Back then Tablighi used to skate by without being declared a terrorist group, because it never engaged in any of the wetwork itself. It was billed as an educational group, and the bombing and throat-slitting were always done by some other outfit — Jamaat ul-Fuqra, Al Qaeda, and some years later the Islamic State.

Based on the following investigative report from Italy, Tablighi Jamaat is now a rising star in the world of Islamic supremacism. It is unabashed in its assertion that Islam will eventually conquer Rome and other infidel lands, and that the conquest will require a massive amount of bloodshed.

Many thanks to HeHa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:

 

Video transcript:

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The Laws of War
Critics of Israel’s actions in Gaza should keep in mind the principles of international humanitarian law–and hold Hamas to those same standards.

Each day brings new accounts of tragedy from Israel and Gaza. Reasonable people agree that the atrocities Hamas committed on October 7—deliberate, videotaped killings of innocent civilians; maiming in the most gruesome fashion of Israeli women and children; and taking Israelis as hostages into its warren of tunnels—stand as deeply disturbing violations of human rights and the laws of armed conflict. As President Joe Biden made clear, Israel possesses a right of self-defense that legally justifies the use of force against Hamas to prevent further atrocities and missile launches against its civilians. Those who argue Israel does not have a right of self defense make two claims: First, they argue that Israel’s “inherent right” is nullified because it is the “occupying power” of the Gaza Strip; and, second, they argue that the right of self-defense in Article 51 of the UN Charter applies only to force against other states, not non-state actors like Hamas.

Both arguments are unavailing. It is highly doubtful that Israel qualifies as an “occupying” power of the Gaza Strip because once it withdrew all military forces from Gaza in 2005, it has exercised no authority over the territory, which is a requirement under international law before assuming the responsibility of an occupying power. UN groups like the Human Rights Council counter that the status of “occupier” still applies because Israel has imposed stringent limits on travel to and trade with Gaza. And yet Egypt has (mostly) sealed off Gaza’s other border without being termed an occupying power.

In any event, even if Israel were an occupying power, that status would not justify Hamas’ intentional attacks on civilian targets in Israel or prevent Israel from using force to protect itself. For example, it was not considered illegal for the United States, as the occupying power of Iraq in the immediate aftermath of the 2003 Iraq War, to use force against Iraqis who were attacking U.S. forces within Iraq.

The second argument against Israel’s right of self-defense—that it cannot invoke this right against non-state actors like Hamas—is equally untenable. Article 51 of the UN Charter states that nothing shall “impair the inherent right” of self-defense possessed by all member states. In recent years, many governments, including the United States, have adopted the view that this right of self-defense applies against non-state actors like al-Qaeda and ISIS in situations where the government of the state in which the non-state actors are operating is “unwilling or unable” to prevent attacks by the non-state actor. The case of the Gaza conflict is much stronger for Israel than the “unwilling or unable” rationale; Israel is protecting against Hamas’ direct, indiscriminate killing, beheading, torture and hostage-taking of Israeli civilians. 

Of course, Israel must exercise its right of self-defense in conformity with international humanitarian law (IHL), also known as the laws of war or armed conflict. This body of customary international law, which was codified in the 1949 Geneva Conventions and their subsequent protocols, limits the use of force to the following situations: military necessity; where a distinction is made between combatants and non-combatants; and where the use of force is proportionate to the concrete military objective sought to be achieved.

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When some jihadi makes a spectacle of himself, don’t forget to put the blame where it belongs; a goobermint and its open border policy


FBI Director Confirms Hamas-Led Threats Against Americans in the U.S. Now at ‘Whole Other Level’

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday before the House Committee on Homeland Security and revealed that, due to the Israel-Hamas war, “The threat of an attack against Americans in the United States” has been raised “to a whole other level.”

In his prepared remarks, Wray provided more context to those threats: “Since October 7th, we’ve seen a rogue’s gallery of foreign terrorist organizations call for attacks against Americans and our allies. Hizballah expressed its support and praise for Hamas and threatened to attack U.S. interests in the Middle East. Al-Qaida issued its most specific call to attack the United States in the last five years. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists to attack Americans and Jewish people everywhere. ISIS urged its followers to target Jewish communities in the United States and Europe.”

In short, Americans are under threat both at home and abroad; not surprisingly, Jews are most at risk from these threats.

During questioning from the House panel, Wray admitted that the threats could be tied to pro-Hamas elements and global bad actors.

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT:

Certainly we’re in an environment where a number of tips and threats that are being reported to us have gone up significantly since October 7. We are already, as I testified earlier, already at an elevated threat environment even before October 7, and it’s gone to a whole other level since October 7.

The biggest chunks of the threats that have been reported in to us, but a good margin, are threats to the Jewish community. Synagogues, Jewish prominent officials, things like that. We also have a large number of tips and leads related specifically to Hamas and radicalization and recruitment.

As RedState has previously reported, Jews make up 2.4 percent of the total U.S. population but are the target of more than 50 percent of the religiously motivated hate crimes reported to the FBI. And this was before the October 7 massacre.

Worryingly, Wray also admitted at the Wednesday hearing that there are individuals on the terror watch list who may have slipped into the U.S. illegally and whose whereabouts are currently unknown. Rep. August Pfluger (R-TX) asked Wray, “Are there people that you don’t where they are that the FBI is searching for today? Yes or no?” Wray responded with a simple, “Yes.”

Despite Wray’s confirmation that threats against Americans by Hamas sympathizers have seen a dramatic rise in the past six weeks, the official threat level of the United States has not been raised since May 24:

The United States remains in a heightened threat environment. Lone offenders and small groups motivated by a range of ideological beliefs and personal grievances continue to pose a persistent and lethal threat to the Homeland. Both domestic violent extremists (DVEs) and those associated with foreign terrorist organizations continue to attempt to motivate supporters to conduct attacks in the Homeland, including through violent extremist messaging and online calls for violence.

It’s worth reading Wray’s entire prepared statement; surprisingly, there are a lot of good nuggets in there about the precise nature and targets of these threats.

Surprise, Surprise! Guess What Was Found in Yet Another Gaza Hospital

As Israel Defense Forces continued clearing out Hamas terrorists around Gaza City this week, they made their way to the Al-Shifa Hospital, long believed to be a base of operations for the Iran-backed terrorists, and found exactly what they expected: weapons caches, bastardized hospital equipment, and all the signs of a Hamas HQ hidden within a hospital to use Gazan civilians as human shields.

Jihadis R Us

IDF Spokesman Jonathan Conricus released a video of his survey of just one area inside the Al-Shifa hospital, an apparent MRI center. Explaining that the IDF had secured the area, Conricus said what the IDF found has “totally confirmed, without any doubt, that Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations in violation of international law.”

Even in just the MRI area, Conricus said “what we have found, I think, is only the tip of the iceberg.”

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Here we go again
Same old *stuff* again…..

Gunman suspected of killing Texas SWAT cop and 2 hostages was reportedly on FBI terror watchlist.

The gunman who killed Texas SWAT Officer Jorge Pastore in a shootout that also left two hostages dead was wearing body armor and night vision goggles — and was on the FBI’s terror watchlist, according to reports.

A search warrant for the suspect’s south Austin home — the scene of Saturday’s deadly shootout — unearthed bomb-making materials inside, calling for help from the FBI’s Evidence Recovery Team, according to KXAN.

“Cutting instruments, body armor and any tactical gear to include firearms were all said to be worn or used by the suspect,” reads the warrant, which noted that it’s “not uncommon for people with a gun, body armor or night vision to make homemade explosives.”

Neither the suspect nor the dead hostages had been officially identified as of early Wednesday.

However, a local organization called the Round Rock Area Muslims said they were all family members of a “beloved brother” who was well-known in the local community.

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Appears the author is also anti-Semitic, but that doesn’t mean she’s wrong about islamism

Islam is Not a Religion

What is Islam?  To answer that question, it’s more important to know what Islam isn’t.  Islam is not a religion.  It is an authoritarian, political ideology that forcibly imposes itself on all aspects of any society unfortunate enough to be under its yoke.  Islam demands complete subjugation by its adherents.  Under Islam, there is no democracy, there is no free speech, no freedom of religion, no freedom of the press, no minority rights, and there’s no right to love whoever you desire.  Islam allows no dissent.  It is a complete and total way of life that glorifies oppression, slavery, and death.  Islam has religious, legal, political, economic, cultural, and military components.  The religious component is the veil that hides the dangers of its all-encompassing ideology.

Islam was founded in the 7th century by the Prophet Mohammed.  From its beginnings, Islam never attempted or bothered to convert “non-believers” by friendly persuasion.  Instead, Islam converted non-believers by conquest and forcible conversion, or you were slaughtered.  By the mid-8th century, Islam had conquered all the lands from the Indus River, in the east, across North Africa to the Iberian Peninsula, in the west.  During that period of conquest, if subjects didn’t convert to Islam, they were put to the sword.  To this day, most of those lands are still under the control of Islam.  There are few exceptions: Spain and Portugal, which during the 15th century, managed to free themselves from the scourges of Islam, and Israel.

Modern day Islam is just as oppressive and dangerous as was 8th century Islam.  That’s because culturally, Islam still enforces the same tenets they did 1,200 years ago.  What are some of those tenets, practices, and ways of life?  Islam enforces edicts against homosexuality to the point of executing homosexuals.  As for women, of the ten worst countries for women’s rights, seven of them are Muslim.  The Quran clearly states that women are subordinate to men, and men may beat their wives (Quran 4:34).  With Islam, there’s a fine line between oppressing women and enslaving them.  Islam practices female genital mutilation, a barbaric practice (look it up and be disgusted).  Other realities for women in Islamic countries include: women must be escorted in public, largely because it’s too dangerous for them to walk alone (rape and assaults are common); women must cover their bodies from head to foot; and very few education opportunities which result in limited employment opportunities.

Today, in the year 2023, Islam practices slavery (here, and here), the actual commodification of other human beings, and the world stands silent.  It also engages in jihad, rape, and pedophilia—yes, it’s acceptable to rape children (bacha bāzī). Also, see this clip, from CNN no less:

Today, Islam beheads its enemies (Dec 27, 2019 in Nigeria), burns people alive in cages, amputates the hands of criminals, and engages in “honor” killings of female relatives (Texas 2008).  There’s nothing honorable about a father (or a brother) who kills his daughter (or his sister) because he doesn’t agree with her actions.  Adulterers (and even some female rape victims) can be stoned to death, and polygamy is allowed.  Earlier this year, an Iranian couple was sentenced to ten years in prison for dancing in public.  To say that Islam has nothing in common with Western culture is an understatement.  Islam vehemently opposes, and wants to destroy, Western society.  Proof of every vile, barbaric, and evil practice engaged in by Muslims was rolled up into one event—Hamas’s attack last month on Israel.

For much of America’s history, we didn’t concern ourselves with the evils of Islam.  We didn’t worry about it largely because we’re an ocean apart, and Islam’s 12th century society couldn’t much affect or threaten us.  Nevertheless, America’s first foreign war was fought in the early 19th century against the Islamic states along the Barbary Coast of North Africa.  Also, throughout most of the 20th century, our focus was on the evils in Europe—Nazism and communism.  It wasn’t until the 1970’s that most Americans became aware of the dangers of Islam.  That was when the Arabs used world oil markets to achieve their political goals.  Then, in 1979, Iranians seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held 52 Americans hostage for 444 days.  Ever since then, the Middle East and Islam have played a central role in America’s foreign policy.

A problem with American foreign policy is that no president, from Nixon all the way through to our current crumbling commander, has properly understood Islam, the best example being Bush’s post-9/11 statement: “Islam is a religion of peace.”  That was an idiotic statement, given that 3,000 Americans had just been slaughtered in the name of Islam.  The United States’ lack of understanding wouldn’t be a problem if we weren’t in the 21st century—but we are.  And a 12th century ideology of hatred and death is a huge problem given modern technologies which gives Islamists the ability to wander the globe killing, maiming, and enslaving in the name of their ideology.

You might wonder what I have against Islam, but let me ask this question: Knowing the profoundly immoral nature of tyrants and authoritarian regimes, would you be alright if Nazism or communism ruled over two billion people on the planet?  I’m guessing most people would say “NO” to both, because the evils of these ideologies have no place in a civilized society of unalienable rights.  Well, the evils of Islam are just as bad—perhaps worse—as the evils of any totalitarian form of rule ever devised by man.  Islam doesn’t want peace; it preaches struggle, constant struggle, because it is an ideology that uses religion.

Many people might disregard the dangers of Islam, as we do have Muslims here in America, and we don’t see things like Muslim men buying children, or public beatings by administrators of Sharia “justice.” But, Muslims are a small percentage of our population at this moment. Anywhere Islam is the majority, there is oppression, conflict, and struggle.  Think of the wars and conflicts being fought on this planet; then, think of the countries that have large Muslim populations, and you’ll find those two maps overlay one another.  From Nigeria in Africa, to Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Gaza, Syria, Afghanistan, and to the jungles of the Philippines, Islamic societies are engaged in armed conflicts to suppress and oppress those populations.  And also don’t forget, a small number can be very dangerous: the 9/11 attack was carried out by only 19 Muslims.

In Islamic countries, conflicts, struggles, and oppression have been ongoing for centuries; no end in sight, and it’s important to remember that above all, Islam is an ideology as dangerous and evil as any ideology ever conceived, using religion as a scapegoat.

Why I Am Now a Christian

In 2002, I discovered a 1927 lecture by Bertrand Russell entitled “Why I am Not a Christian”. It did not cross my mind, as I read it, that one day, nearly a century after he delivered it to the South London branch of the National Secular Society, I would be compelled to write an essay with precisely the opposite title.

The year before, I had publicly condemned the terrorist attacks of the 19 men who had hijacked passenger jets and crashed them into the twin towers in New York. They had done it in the name of my religion, Islam. I was a Muslim then, although not a practicing one. If I truly condemned their actions, then where did that leave me? The underlying principle that justified the attacks was religious, after all: the idea of Jihad or Holy War against the infidels. Was it possible for me, as for many members of the Muslim community, simply to distance myself from the action and its horrific results?

At the time, there were many eminent leaders in the West — politicians, scholars, journalists, and other experts — who insisted that the terrorists were motivated by reasons other than the ones they and their leader Osama Bin Laden had articulated so clearly. So Islam had an alibi.

This excuse-making was not only condescending towards Muslims. It also gave many Westerners a chance to retreat into denial. Blaming the errors of US foreign policy was easier than contemplating the possibility that we were confronted with a religious war. We have seen a similar tendency in the past five weeks, as millions of people sympathetic to the plight of Gazans seek to rationalize the October 7 terrorist attacks as a justified response to the policies of the Israeli government.

When I read Russell’s lecture, I found my cognitive dissonance easing. It was a relief to adopt an attitude of scepticism towards religious doctrine, discard my faith in God and declare that no such entity existed. Best of all, I could reject the existence of hell and the danger of everlasting punishment.

Russell’s assertion that religion is based primarily on fear resonated with me. I had lived for too long in terror of all the gruesome punishments that awaited me. While I had abandoned all the rational reasons for believing in God, that irrational fear of hellfire still lingered. Russell’s conclusion thus came as something of a relief: “When I die, I shall rot.”

To understand why I became an atheist 20 years ago, you first need to understand the kind of Muslim I had been. I was a teenager when the Muslim Brotherhood penetrated my community in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1985. I don’t think I had even understood religious practice before the coming of the Brotherhood. I had endured the rituals of ablutions, prayers and fasting as tedious and pointless.

The preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood changed this. They articulated a direction: the straight path. A purpose: to work towards admission into Allah’s paradise after death. A method: the Prophet’s instruction manual of do’s and don’ts — the halal and the haram. As a detailed supplement to the Qur’an, the hadeeth spelled out how to put into practice the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, God and the devil.

The Brotherhood preachers left nothing to the imagination. They gave us a choice. Strive to live by the Prophet’s manual and reap the glorious rewards in the hereafter. On this earth, meanwhile, the greatest achievement possible was to die as a martyr for the sake of Allah.

The alternative, indulging in the pleasures of the world, was to earn Allah’s wrath and be condemned to an eternal life in hellfire. Some of the “worldly pleasures” they were decrying included reading novels, listening to music, dancing, and going to the cinema — all of which I was ashamed to admit that I adored.

The most striking quality of the Muslim Brotherhood was their ability to transform me and my fellow teenagers from passive believers into activists, almost overnight. We didn’t just say things or pray for things: we did things. As girls we donned the burka and swore off Western fashion and make-up. The boys cultivated their facial hair to the greatest extent possible. They wore the white dress-like tawb worn in Arab countries or had their trousers shortened above their ankle bones. We operated in groups and volunteered our services in charity to the poor, the old, the disabled and the weak. We urged fellow Muslims to pray and demanded that non-Muslims convert to Islam.

During Islamic study sessions, we shared with the preacher in charge of the session our worries. For instance, what should we do about the friends we loved and felt loyal to but who refused to accept our dawa (invitation to the faith)? In response, we were reminded repeatedly about the clarity of the Prophet’s instructions. We were told in no uncertain terms that we could not be loyal to Allah and Muhammad while also maintaining friendships and loyalty towards the unbelievers. If they explicitly rejected our summons to Islam, we were to hate and curse them.

Here, a special hatred was reserved for one subset of unbeliever: the Jew. We cursed the Jews multiple times a day and expressed horror, disgust and anger at the litany of offences he had allegedly committed. The Jew had betrayed our Prophet. He had occupied the Holy Mosque in Jerusalem. He continued to spread corruption of the heart, mind and soul.

You can see why, to someone who had been through such a religious schooling, atheism seemed so appealing. Bertrand Russell offered a simple, zero-cost escape from an unbearable life of self-denial and harassment of other people. For him, there was no credible case for the existence of God. Religion, Russell argued, was rooted in fear: “Fear is the basis of the whole thing — fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death.”

As an atheist, I thought I would lose that fear. I also found an entirely new circle of friends, as different from the preachers of the Muslim Brotherhood as one could imagine. The more time I spent with them — people such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins — the more confident I felt that I had made the right choice. For the atheists were clever. They were also a great deal of fun.

So, what changed? Why do I call myself a Christian now?

Part of the answer is global. Western civilisation is under threat from three different but related forces: the resurgence of great-power authoritarianism and expansionism in the forms of the Chinese Communist Party and Vladimir Putin’s Russia; the rise of global Islamism, which threatens to mobilise a vast population against the West; and the viral spread of woke ideology, which is eating into the moral fibre of the next generation.

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Police Say ‘Terrorist’ Drove Car Into What She Thought Was Jewish School, but Made Ironic Mistake

There’s been a disturbing rise in antisemitism since the start of the Israeli-Hamas war.

We’ve seen the evidence of it from the radical rallies chanting “From the river to the sea” to the ripping down of signs for kidnapped Jewish victims of Hamas. We’ve covered multiple examples here at RedState just over the past couple of days. There were the anti-Israel marchers who stormed the front of a Jewish store, and police had to get in between them and the signs of the kidnapped Israelis they wanted to rip down that were on a pole in front of the store. There was also the Jewish guy who went undercover at one of the anti-Israel rallies in New York City and discovered a lot of the hate against Jews when he interviewed attendees.

But a woman in Indianapolis allegedly managed to put a new spin on an old hate.

The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) says that Ruba Almaghtheh confessed to purposely backing her car into the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge while there were people inside the building. The IMPD termed her a “terrorist.” There were no reports of any injuries.

Police said she told them that she was offended by the Hebrew Israelite symbol on the building and planned to attack it after watching coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. She thought it was an “Israel school.”

IMPD said she referred to “her people back in Palestine” and told officers, “Yes. I did it on purpose.”

However, the Anti-Defamation League defines the Israelite School of Universal and Practical Knowledge as an “extreme and antisemitic” sect of the Black Hebrew Israelites. 

Whoops, I guess she’s not exactly the sharpest “terrorist.”  That’s some delicious irony right there.

Not only that, but Almaghtheh also allegedly admitted to committing a “hate crime” on her one phone call to her family. Again, not exactly a smart move. But then, when you’re motivated by hate to attack other people, you’re already working with a deficit on many levels.

A local Jewish group noted the irony but also the continuing danger that people face when there are attitudes like this out there.

Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis officials wrote in a press release. “Although a Jewish facility was not targeted, solely due to ironic misidentification, this is yet another reminder to maintain security protocols, remain vigilant of suspicious activity and to (report promptly) to the appropriate authorities.”

Almaghtheh is facing a preliminary charge of criminal recklessness.

I’m willing to bet there will likely be other charges coming as they evaluate the facts further in the case.