Category: moslems & jihadis

How Biden Allowed Iran to Save Its Terror-Supporting Officers in Syria

Following the deadly Iran-backed attack on American troops in Jordan on January 28, President Biden and his Pentagon brass pledged a “multi-tier” response for the brazen assault that killed three U.S. service members.

The retributive strikes saw at least one senior leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah — one of the handful of Iran-backed terrorist organizations that have been coordinating scores of attacks on U.S. troops in the Middle East since October — in Baghdad, but there was a notable lack of punishment for the source of all the chaos in the region: the regime in Tehran. It appears that was by Biden’s design.

Instead of acting swiftly and decisively, however, the administration telegraphed its considerations and likely targets for days on end. Waiting until after the fallen heroes had returned to the United States for a dignified transfer in Dover, Delaware, the Biden administration finally began launching strikes in the region.

According to reporting from the Financial Times, “Iran pulled senior commanders of its Revolutionary Guard out of Syria days before the US launched strikes against Iranian-linked targets in the Arab state to prevent the elite force suffering further casualties.” Conveniently, the IRGC “officers had left Syria by the time Washington launched air strikes five days” after Biden promised to launch a response to the attack that killed U.S. troops.

Reminding that the Biden administration said it “directly targeted Revolutionary Guard facilities in Syria,” that means the agents of Tehran operating in support of Iran’s terror proxies were able to get away, thanks to Biden’s delays and ample warnings.

As Joe Truzman, senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), noted, Iran saving its officers’ hide was “exactly what the Biden administration intended” to happen.

Even worse — and proving that Biden’s strikes in response to the killing of U.S. Army Sgts. Kennedy Sanders, William Rivers, and Breonna Moffett won’t prevent future attacks on American troops — is this nugget, also reported by the Financial Times.

Iranian officials, calling the decision to withdraw IRGC commanders merely a “change in tactics,” received notice from the U.S. “through indirect channels that it did not seek a conflict with Iran.”

That is, after Iranian patronage to terrorist organizations saw more than 170 attacks launched at U.S. troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan and took the lives of three American service members, the U.S. told Tehran we didn’t seek a conflict.

That also means, as an “Iranian analyst affiliated to the Islamic regime” told the Financial Times, “[o]nce there is relative calm, these forces will return to Syria.” And Tehran’s support of terrorist proxies in the region will resume at full strength.

The age of glorifying Greta Thunberg is over
‘We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project,’ said Thunberg with her now familiar keffiyeh around her neck

Greta Thunberg spent her weekend in France supporting two environmental campaigns. On Sunday she appeared at a rally in Bordeaux against an oil drilling project; twenty-four hours earlier the twenty-one-year-old Swede was further east, adding her voice to those activists opposed to the construction of a new stretch of motorway between Toulouse and Castres. “We are here in solidarity with those who are resisting this project and this madness,” said Thunberg in English, her now familiar keffiyeh around her neck.

Some French media described Thunberg as an “anti-global warming icon” and the “figurehead in the fight to protect the planet.” She might have been once.

Now, however, in her ubiquitous keffiyeh, appearing to chant “Crush Zionism” or endorsing slogans such as “Palestine will be free” she has become — perhaps unwittingly — the figurehead for what conservative commentators in France call “the green alliance.”

Three years ago Jean Messiha, the spokesman for Éric Zemmour during his 2022 presidential campaign, wrote of this strange coalition between Islamists and ecologists: “They share one color: green. But not only that. They also share a totalitarian approach to society.”

Continue reading “”

Israel Rescues Two Hostages In Rafah.

We have been covering how Israel is preparing to capture the last remaining Hamas stronghold, where Hamas has four battalians, the city of Rafah on the Egyptian border. Hamas leadership surrounded by hostage human shields, is believed to have fled to Rafah, where they further could hide behind large numbers of Gazans who fled to Rafah from the north.

There is fierce international opposition to such an Israeli move, but as Vijeta covered earlier, Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to push forward to “total victory”.

Tonight there were Israeli bombardments of the outskirts of Rafah.

But those bombardments may have been cover for a more important operation, the rescue of hostages. The Times of Israel reports:

In only the second such successful operation of its kind since October 7, the IDF announces it has managed to safely rescue two hostages from Hamas captivity in Gaza.

The two, Fernando Simon Marman (60) and Norberto Louis Har (70) were extracted in a joint operation by the IDF, Shin Bet and Israel Police in Rafah.

They were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on October 7.

Details:

• 2 hostages Louis Har and Fernando Marman rescued tonight in an operation from Rafah

• Their condition is determined to be good, they were transferred to Sheba Hospital

• Shayetet 13, Shin Bet, and other forces participated in the operation

• This was a hidden apartment in Rafah: “an operation that has been worked on for a long time, and until now the conditions were not there to carry it out”

• The hostages were kept in a hidden apartment on the second floor of the building

• The forces entered the building while the surrounding apartments full of armed terrorists. Air force stopped an attempt to attack the rescuers leaving the scene.

• An hour later: the rescue operation was over

 

Once again, experience is the best teacher, and the best experience is someone else’s.

Once Again, The Israel-Hamas War Shows the Futility of Gun Control

Last year, I wrote an article exploring some practical lessons from the initial attack on Israel from the Gaza strip. The biggest thing was that, as usual, a country had slid into anti-gun complacency. Everyone thought that it was somebody else’s job to protect people, so targets of all kinds were left vulnerable.

But, this time, the tables have turned. An Israeli operation at a hospital in the West Bank managed to drive the point home yet again. Instead of Hamas proving that gun control is worthless, Israel waltzed right into a hospital and proved it again.

I don’t bring this raid up because I want to comment on whether it was wrong or right to do this. Some people are saying they violated international law. Others are saying this was just a police action within their own borders to take out a threat that was using the hospital as a human shield. Everyone is entitled to either of those opinions or any other.

Instead, I want to take a look at the security situation in that hospital and compare it to most any hospital in the United States. Are there metal detectors at the doors? No. Are there armed guards who would stop people from simply walking right in with a rifle? Nope. Are there police there? Also, a big no in most places. The only thing stopping people from simply walking right in and doing whatever they want with a rifle is them choosing not to.

Sure, in many places, hospitals are off-limits to guns by some legal means or other. In this case, there may be some international agreement or something prohibiting soldiers from going in. In the case of U.S. hospitals, it’s often a sign that any private property owner can post prohibiting guns. In some jurisdictions, there’s a law on the books specifically banning guns from all hospitals.

But, do those signs have some magical quality that zaps guns into oblivion as the person carrying them crosses the threshold? Definitely not. The only thing that can stop people from hiding a rifle under a coat or in a violin case is someone who both physically checks everyone for guns and has the means to stop people should they reveal a gun and use it. Clearly this hospital (like almost all others) doesn’t have either of those things.

At the end of the day, a mixture of people’s goodness and people prepared to deal with those devoid of goodness is what keeps people safe. There are very few people who would enter a hospital with a gun and the intent to harm people. The rest of us either don’t carry a gun in or don’t do anything evil with it. For the rare person who isn’t good, there needs to be a good person (or multiple good people) ready to step in and stop bad things from happening.

In this particular hospital, the opposite was true. Instead of having good guys with guns, they were hiding bad people with guns. The Israelis, like this or not, went in there and took care of the problem before these guys could hurt any more innocent people.

Drone strike in Baghdad kills high-ranking militia commander

BAGHDAD — A U.S. drone strike blew up a car in the Iraqi capital Wednesday night, killing a high-ranking commander of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia who is responsible for “directly planning and participating in attacks” on American troops in the region, the U.S. military said.

The strike came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighborhood in eastern Baghdad, attracting a crowd as emergency teams picked through the wreckage. It came amid roiling tensions in the region, and is likely to further anger Iraqi government leaders, who U.S. officials said were not notified before the strike.

Security forces closed off the heavily guarded Green Zone, where a number of diplomatic compounds are located, amid calls for protesters to storm the U.S. Embassy.

There were conflicting reports on the number killed, with U.S. officials saying the initial assessment was one, and saying there were no civilians hurt or killed. But two officials with Iran-backed militias in Iraq said that three died, including Wissam Muhammad Sabir Al-Saadi, known as Abu Baqir Al-Saadi, the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. Kataib Hezbollah announced Abu Baqir’s death “following the bombing of the American occupation forces” in a statement.

Those officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists.

In a statement, U.S. Central Command said “there are no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties at this time.” It added that the U.S. “will not hesitate to hold responsible all those who threaten our forces’ safety.”

The strike came days after the U.S. military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three U.S. troops in Jordan in late January.

The U.S. has blamed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a broad coalition of Iran-backed militias, for the attack in Jordan, and officials have said they suspect Kataib Hezbollah in particular of leading it.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has regularly claimed strikes on bases housing U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying that they are in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza that has killed 27,707 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Kataib Hezbollah had said in a statement that it was suspending attacks on American troops to avoid “embarrassing the Iraqi government” after the strike in Jordan, but others have vowed to continue fighting.

On Sunday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a drone attack on a base housing U.S. troops in eastern Syria killed six fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group allied with the United States.

The latest surge in the regional conflict came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected terms proposed by Hamas for a hostage-release agreement that would lead to a permanent cease-fire, vowing to continue the war until “absolute victory.”

Also on Wednesday, the media office of the Houthi rebels in Yemen reported two airstrikes in the Ras Issa area in Salif district in Hodeida province.

US retaliates after deadly drone attack on Jordan base

The U.S. on Friday began to carry out strikes against Iran-backed militants and Iranian military targets in Iraq and Syria in retaliation for a drone strike on an American base in Jordan last Sunday that killed three U.S. service members.

Dozens of other American troops were wounded in the drone attack on the Tower 22 base near Jordan’s border with Iraq and Syria. The U.S. says Iran is responsible for funding and arming the militants while Iran has denied involvement.

President Joe Biden had quickly warned that America would respond forcefully, escalating U.S. involvement in the Middle East after months of trying to contain tensions from boiling over into a broader war in the region.

Latest Developments
Feb 2, 6:45 PM
‘We believe that the strikes were successful’: Kirby
The Department of Defense is in the early stages of battle damage assessment “but we believe that the strikes were successful,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters in a call Friday.
“The initial indications are that we hit exactly what we meant to hit, with a number of secondary explosions associated with the ammunition and logistics locations,” Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, the director of the Joint Chiefs, said on the call.

Kirby said the strikes took place in the course of 30 minutes and involved over 125 precision-guided munitions. Of the seven total strike locations, three were in Iraq and four were in Syria, according to Sims.

Targeted facilities included command and control centers, intelligence centers, rocket missile and drone storage facilities, and logistics ammunition supply chain facilities, Kirby said.

Kirby noted the targets were chosen to avoid civilian casualties and because they were connected to enabling the attacks against the U.S. service members.

The administration does not know at this time if or how many militants may have been killed or wounded.

“We will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our forces, and our interests,” he concluded.

A Lack of Deterrence Leads to More American Deaths.

President Biden, and his Secretary of Defense have announced a major change in US policy: As a result of the Iranian attack on Tower 22 that killed three U.S. soldiers and wounded scores more, they are going to begin protecting US troops! Don’t believe me? Here it is from the horse’s mouth at Secretary Austin’s February 1 press conference: “The President will not tolerate attacks on American troops, and neither will I.”

Well, that’s a relief, isn’t it? After tolerating attacks on American troops since . . . oh, about January 20, 2021, we now have a dramatic change in policy. We have gone from “Don’t, don’t, don’t!” to “We are not going to tolerate this anymore, but we don’t want a wider war.”        

But, do they mean it, or is it more pablum to placate the masses? Read on and judge for yourself.

BIDEN’S PRIOR POLICY OF TOLERATION, WEAKNESS AND APPEASEMENT

Biden true believers may claim that this is not a change in policy, that his administration really has not been tolerating attacks on our troops. To test that, we should do as Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, John Mitchell, advised: Look at what they have done, not what they say. What they have done is tolerate the more than 200 attacks on our troops that have occurred on Biden watch without any kind of meaningful response. And don’t fall into the trap of accepting just the lowball statistics by counting only the 160+ attacks since October 7, 2023, as the press has been doing.

In fact, there have been far more attacks on our troops than the press is now reporting. Between the time of Biden’s inauguration and up to October 7, attacks on our troops in Iraq and Syria were commonplace. General Jack Keane pegs it at 80 from published reports.  But that figure is low because during this administration, attacks on our forces became so commonplace that all of them were not reported in the press. They have included attacks by fire using 107 mm and 122 mm rockets, as well as UAV (drone)-delivered munitions. And although it is not widely known or reported, our forces also have been targeted with cluster munitions. Disgracefully, our troops on the ground enduring these attacks have not been allowed to engage in any meaningful response.

Continue reading “”

The United States of Allah: It Happened in My Neighborhood, Yours Is Next

If you want to see what’s left of the house I grew up in, check out this brief video I shot a few years ago.

When I was a kid growing up in the Warrendale section of Detroit in the 1970s, the Polish presence was everywhere. Warren Avenue was “the Strip” of our turf, and it was littered with family businesses with difficult names like the Jarzembowski Funeral Home. There was the Kozy Korner, with Kozy being short for a name I can’t begin to spell. The houses were mostly small, two- or three-bedroom homes that began growing in the 1940s.

I grew up on Ashton Ave. The Herman Gardens projects were across the Southfield Freeway, easily viewable from my bedroom window. They were built to house servicemen returning from WWII. By the 1970s, Herman Gardens was becoming one of the most dangerous projects in Detroit. As kids, we would play outside at night in the dark (Detroit was too broke to install street lights). When a police chopper showed up over Herman Gardens, its searchlight beaming, looking for a “perp” — which happened frequently — we knew it was time to go inside.

FACT-O-RAMA! TV’s Judge Mathis grew up in Herman Gardens. He was a member of Detroit’s Eroll Flynns gang.

Kowalski sausages were sold everywhere. Most of the kids I knew at Saints Peter and Paul Elementary School had last names like Jablonski, Hejka, Szuper, Balinski, Zmuda, and  Polchlapek. I could name more, but as my school days friend Melissa stated, “It would be easier to say who didn’t have Polish names — Ballard and Downey.”

Many of the kids’ grandparents lived in a nearby Polish enclave called Hamtramck.

FACT-O-RAMA! I might be the only media person in the world who can pronounce the name Hamtramck (ham-TRAM-ick). Now you know.

As in Warrendale, bars dominated the street corners of Hamtramck. Paczki could be found everywhere around Easter time. Most of the town spoke Polish. Every Catholic went to church.

Dearborn is a largely Middle-Eastern-dominated city across the southern and western borders of Warrendale.

A  good friend I grew up with, whom I’ll call Hoppy, remained in Warrendale until 2015 and only moved after some gang-bangers took a potshot at him as he was shoveling snow. In true Detroit style, he snarled at them and returned to what he was doing, but the message was clear: it was time to go.

In the years since my family left, Warrendale has become a ghetto.

It was already dangerous in the ’70s. All the kids in my neighborhood had been robbed, beaten, or stabbed. Hoppy had a gun stuck in his face two different times at Cody High School.

McMURDER-O-RAMA! Detroit’s infamous “Murder Mac” McDonald’s is located on Joy Road and Ashton Ave., roughly an eight-minute walk down the street from my former home.

The last straw came in March of 1977. One day, as we were eating dinner, an ambulance pulled up in front of our house. The 19-year-old kid next door came out of his home wearing a white button-down shirt covered in blood. He’d been pummeled while on leave from the Air Force. My dad slammed his fork full of Hamburger Helper on his plate and declared, “That’s it. We’re moving!”

No less than 70% of the houses on my old block, including Hoppy’s, are gone. So is Melissa’s, which was just under a mile to the west. Most of the houses still standing, including mine, are empty.

The demographics of my neighborhood have changed in the 58 years since I was born. Warrendale went from mostly white, Polish people, to almost soundly black, to largely Muslim, most of whom are Yemeni. Ditto Hamtramck.

Many of the churches are gone. So are most of the bars. All of the Polish businesses have long since vacated. The once omnipotent Kowalski sausage has been replaced by halal meat. If you want to buy paczki today, you need to head to Sterling Heights.

Hamtramck, which was run by Poles for 100 years, is the first town in the United States to have a Muslim mayor as well as the entire city council.

FACT-O-RAMA! Hamtramck voted last year to allow animal sacrifices at home.

Continue reading “”

Leave The Pews

College campuses across the country were erupting in Jew-hating outbursts, and parents were rightly worried about their Jewish college-aged kids caught up in the frenzy of hate. On Facebook, a group called Mothers Against College Antisemitism (M.A.C.A.) was founded and grew quickly to over 50,000 members. They shared information, emailed, called, and signed petitions. They stood united against the oldest hatred rearing its head again.

But just as fast, fissures formed. The cudgel of DEI – that is, “diversity, equity, and inclusion” policies that had been used against Jewish students – was the subject of feverish debate. Sure, the policies were bad for Jews, but weren’t we all good liberals after all? Shouldn’t that take precedence here? People earnestly wondered whether other minority groups would be mad at them if they fought to end DEI instead of simply fighting to get Jews included in the special identity groups recognized by the absurd system.

It wasn’t just DEI, either. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced a plan to fast-track Jewish students who were feeling unsafe in their own universities who wanted to transfer to Florida colleges where he pledged they would be protected, commenters in the group warned not to accept his kindness as he was on the wrong political side.

What became clear within that Facebook group and in so many other quarters since Oct. 7 is that much of secular Judaism, in both the Reform and Conservative branches, had become overtly political and not really religiously based at all. For many Jews, their religious identity had become so intertwined with leftist politics that they couldn’t force a separation even when they themselves were being targeted with their own bad ideas.

They pledged allyship to other groups in their tent, not to Judaism or Israel. This was evident in 2019 when daily attacks began on Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn. Activist synagogues in places like Park Slope, which would have been at the forefront of marches had any other group come under attack, spent years staying silent about it. The attackers, often caught on video, were frequently other minorities, not MAGA hat-wearing white people as they would have hoped, so it was awkward to raise a fuss. Progressive politics was the code they followed, and Judaism was an identity umbrella like all the others in their movement. “As a Jew …” they would begin their lectures. As a Jew, they were rarely interested in Judaism.

The Oct. 7 attacks in Israel woke many in the diaspora from their comfortable slumber. Jews in America and elsewhere, traumatized already from images of Jewish children stolen from their homes and Jewish teenagers mowed down while dancing at a music festival, also had to contend with a huge outpouring of hate in their own countries.

For many liberal Jews, it was hard to ignore that it wasn’t the boogeyman white supremacists that they had been warned about their entire lives. No, it was their professors, their co-workers at the nonprofit, friends of their college-aged kids calling for an end to Israel and celebrating the murder of Jews. And these hateful marches were not happening in rural Alabama, in the places they were taught to fear, but mainly in the bluest of blue cities.

The political bedfellows they had slept beside were sharply opposed to Israel doing anything but simply accepting the attacks of Oct. 7.

By Oct. 8, their “allies” had already taken to the streets, some in grotesque glee over the slaughter of Jews in their homes, others tearing down posters of kidnapped children, to say Israel should just sit down and take it.

Continue reading “”

Dr. Eli David
Dear Palestinians,

Two decades ago Israel withdrew from Gaza, and gave you full autonomy on every inch of it. Tens of billions of dollars of international aid money were given to you to build a prosperous future.

You built terror tunnels and rockets instead. You continued educating your children to become murderers. You cheered as you slaughtered 1,200 Israelis. You celebrated as hundreds were kidnapped.

You proved to the world what you are capable of. You showed how a “Palestinian state” would look like.

You don’t deserve a state. You don’t deserve autonomy. When you pursue and glorify misery and bloodshed, that’s the only thing you’ll have.

You, and you alone are responsible for your suffering.

Iran? Acta Non Verba

also; (Last paragraph:)
An Israeli strike Saturday in south Lebanon killed two members of Hamas as they were traveling in their car, three security sources told Reuters.

Israel Takes Out 5 IRGC Members in Damascus; Iran Vows Revenge

Tehran vowed to carry out revenge attacks against Israel on Saturday after a missile strike flattened a building used as a base of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards in Damascus, killing five Guards and an unspecified number of Syrian troops.

Ambulances and fire trucks gathered around the site of the strike, which had been cordoned off, a Reuters journalist at the scene said. Rescue operations for people stuck under the rubble continued through the day. A crane was in place to hoist concrete slabs off the wreckage.

A security source in a network of groups close to Syria’s government and its ally Iran told Reuters the multi-story building was used by Iranian advisers supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s government. It was completely flattened by “precision-targeted Israeli missiles,” the source said.

The Guards said an unspecified number of members of the Syrian military were killed, along with the five Iranians, whom it identified without giving their ranks. The security source said one of the slain Iranians ran the elite force’s information unit.

Continue reading “”

Gazan ‘Civilians’ Involved in Every Stage of Hamas Hostage Scheme, Freed Israelis Say

TEL AVIV, Israel—Israeli women and children have in recent weeks begun speaking publicly about what they experienced during nearly two months in Hamas captivity late last year.

In primetime Hebrew TV interviews, the released hostages have confirmed that ordinary Gazans were deeply complicit in every stage of the hostage scheme. Unarmed teens helped to abduct Jews from their homes on Oct. 7, while Gazan women and children held some of the Israelis captive. In other cases, Gazan doctors collaborated with Hamas terrorists to covertly treat kidnapped Israelis and imprison them in hospitals.

When the Israelis encountered Gazans on the streets, the results were often terrifying.

The revelations underscore the urgency of Israel’s 100-plus-day war to destroy Hamas and bring home the 132 hostages who, officials believe, remain captive in Gaza. At the same time, though, the released hostages’ accounts indicate how difficult it could be to extricate either the remaining hostages or Hamas from a radicalized population.

“The main issue is that the organization is very much melted into the social structure of Gaza,” Michael Milshtein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer and a leading expert on Hamas, told the Washington Free Beacon. “There is no way you can really know who is Hamas. Someone might have a grocery store where he sells tomatoes and water, but he might also have storehouse of weapons and give religious lessons there.”

And his wife and kids might be keeping an Israeli hostage at home.

“Hamas is not only a political matter in Gaza. It’s a way of life,” Milshtein said. “We can and should ruin Hamas militarily and change the political arena in Gaza. But ultimately the Gazan people will have to do some soul searching. And here in the Arab world, not only the Palestinians, soul searching is very rare.”

Continue reading “”

As Times Square Machete Attacker Pleads Guilty, Authorities Still Refuse to Face His Motive

When Trevor Bickford was 19 years old, on Dec. 31, 2022, he ventured to Times Square along with multitudes of New Year’s Eve revelers, but he was not interested in joining the festivities. Instead, he attacked three NYPD officers with a machete. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to three charges of attempted murder, and while his motive is abundantly clear, authorities appear to be completely indifferent about what its implications are for the future.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that Bickford, who came down to Times Square from his home in Wells, Maine, said this as he entered his guilty plea: “On Dec. 31, 2022, I attempted to kill three NYPD officers with a knife while they were working in Manhattan. I know what I did was wrong and I’m sorry.” That’s swell, but it would have been more helpful if young Bickford had explained why exactly he was sorry now for an act that he carried out in accord with his newfound beliefs and ideology.

AP added that Bickford “shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ — the Arabic phrase for God is great — before striking the officers in the head with the machete and trying to grab an officer’s gun, authorities said. One officer suffered a fractured skull.”

AP’s explanation was inaccurate: While most media outlets routinely translate “Allahu akbar” as “God is great,” it actually means “Allah is greater.” That is, the god of Islam is superior to anything that non-Muslims worship or hold dear. This declaration of superiority frequently accompanies acts that are designed to enforce the subjugation and submission of the non-believer or “infidel,” amounting to a kind of explanation of why a particular act of violence is being perpetrated.

It was unusually forthright of this far-left news service to bother to mention the politically incorrect fact that Bickford shouted this at all. AP even went so far as to add that “authorities say he had studied radical Islamic ideology and decided to wage jihad against U.S. officials.”

Yet while AP was unusually forthright about Bickford’s motive, Bickford himself may have been trying to obscure it: “At the outset of the hearing,” AP tells us, “Bickford said he was taking three medications for treatment of schizoaffective disorder.” In Europe, it is extremely common for clear cases of jihad violence to be dismissed as mental illness, with the perpetrators hospitalized rather than imprisoned.

There was no doubt, however, when Bickford was arrested. He had a handwritten note in his backpack, asking his family to “please repent to Allah and accept Islam.” To his mother, Bickford wrote: “I fear greatly that you will not repent to Allah. And therefore I hold hope in my heart that a piece of you believes so that you may be taken out to [sic] the hellfire.” To his brother, he likewise wrote: “Please repent to Allah and accept Islam. I fear for you.” To another brother in the Marines, he added: “You have joined the ranks of my enemy. And for that I can give you no kind words – return to Allah.”

As Bickford pleaded guilty, Assistant U.S. Attorney Sarah Kushner said that there was “‘no doubt’ that he attacked the officers because they were military-age men….She said Bickford had intended to kill ‘as many as possible’ of the men in uniform that he came across.” She added that he had “originally intended to go overseas and fight alongside terrorists there but eventually decided to carry out an attack in the United States instead. She said he told investigators that he had walked around Times Square before the attack, ‘trying to figure out the right time to kill.’”

The big question that remains is where Trevor Bickford, who converted to Islam not long before his machete attack, learned all this. Was it at a mosque? Was it from Muslims in his area? Authorities should study carefully what they are almost certainly ignoring, such as the questions of how and where this young man converted to Islam, and how he got the idea that his new religion, which non-Muslim authorities all over the Western world assure us is completely peaceful and tolerant, commanded him to consider non-Muslims enemies and violently attack them.

These questions are never asked, much less answered, despite the fact that converts to Islam turning to jihad violence is a distressingly common phenomenon. American intelligence and law enforcement officials don’t want to do anything to give the impression that they don’t accept the dogma that Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. The fact that converts to Islam such as Trevor Bickford have somehow gotten exactly the opposite idea doesn’t ever make authorities pause and reflect upon their core assumptions.

Israeli Airstrike Kills Senior Hezbollah Commander in Lebanon

According to Hezbollah officials in a statement on Telegram, an Israeli drone strike killed a top Hezbollah military commander on Monday morning near the town of Khirbet Selem in southern Lebanon. In their statement, Hezbollah named Wissam Hassan Tawil, known as “Al-Haj Jawad,” as the terrorist who was killed in the airstrike. Tawil was a commander of a unit in the Hezbollah forces called “Radwan,” which is an alleged special forces unit in the Hezbollah military. A state-run Lebanese news outlet named National News Agency reported that an Israeli drone strike killed two unnamed individuals in a vehicle.

Continue reading “”

US strike kills militia leader blamed for Iraq attacks, Pentagon says

BAGHDAD/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. military launched a retaliatory strike in Baghdad on Thursday that killed a militia leader it blames for recent attacks on U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said, a move condemned by Iraq’s government.

The U.S. strike took place at about 0900 GMT and targeted Mushtaq Jawad Kazim al Jawari, the Pentagon said, adding he was a leader of Harakat al Nujaba who was involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel.

“The strike also killed one other Harakat al Nujaba member,” said Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, describing it as a self-defense strike. “No civilians were harmed. No infrastructure or facilities were struck.”

Since the Israel-Hamas war began in October the U.S. military has come under attack at least 100 times in Iraq and Syria, usually with a mix of rockets and one-way attack drones.

The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in neighbouring Syria focused on preventing a resurgence of Islamic State militants.

Iraqi police sources and witnesses had earlier said a drone fired at least two rockets at the headquarters in eastern Baghdad of the Nujaba militia group.

Police and militia sources said the rockets hit a vehicle in the compound and killed four people, including a militia commander and one of his aides. Health sources confirmed the death toll.

Video published by pro-militia websites showed a destroyed vehicle in flames. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the footage.

Iran-aligned militia groups in Iraq and Syria oppose Israel’s campaign in Gaza and hold the U.S. partly responsible.

In a statement, the military spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani denounced the strike on the group, calling it an “unjustified attack on an Iraqi security entity” that was operating with Sudani’s authorisation.

Sudani has limited control over some Iran-backed factions, whose support he needed to win power a year ago and who now form a powerful bloc in his governing coalition.

Asked whether the U.S. military struck a member of Iraq’s security forces, Ryder said the individual targeted was a leader of an Iranian proxy group responsible for attacks against U.S. personnel.

Iraq slams US after strikes on Iran-aligned forces
Iraqi militia commanders vowed to take revenge for Thursday’s strike.

“We will retaliate and make the Americans regret carrying out this aggression,” Abu Aqeel al-Moussawi, a local Iraqi militia commander, said.

Last month, the United States carried out retaliatory air strikes in Iraq after a drone attack by Iran-aligned militants that left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two others.