Battling Gazalighting

"We have to understand who our enemies are. And our enemy now is Canada."

"[Canada has failed because of its] recognition of a nonexistent entity [and] not doing enough to combat antisemitism." 

"I will come up to Canada. I will defend [Israeli President Benjamin] Netanyahu, and I will go after everybody who has tried to arrest him."

"Every element within the Palestinian movement has encouraged terrorism. Not a single one has essentially renounced it."

"Palestinianism is not about building a country. It's about destroying Israel. There isn't a single pro-Palestine demonstration that I have seen that calls for a two-state solution. Not a single one."  

American lawyer Alan Dershowitz, professor emeritus Harvard Law

 

"The first and most important thing that we need to do collectively is to listen [to] what they [Islamists] themselves say."

"[Islamists] want to dominate and take control of Western countries and they're not shy in achieving it."

"They are politically organized and disciplined. They are funded. They have powerful mouthpieces some of them very eloquent and fluent in King's English."

"[Elected officials] need to understand that Israel is the Off-Broadway show. The real show, the real Broadway, from a Muslim Islamist perspective, is the West."

Jonathan Conricus, former international spokesperson, Israel Defense Forces 

Demonstrators calling upon the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to take action for the release of hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 and currently held in the Gaza Strip, outside the ICRC offices in Tel Aviv on November 9, 2023. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP)

 

At a recent conference produced by the Israel Law Center, Israel-supporters gathered to take impressions from one another and offer support in a demoralizing atmosphere of the West, the very former allies of the State of Israel having turned against the legitimacy of the sovereign state, castigating it for its actions in Gaza against the Palestinian terrorist groups that, led by Hamas, had barraged into southern Israel two years ago October 7 to slaughter Israeli civilians, foreign farm workers, rape and mutilate Israeli girls and women, and take children, entire families, the elderly, young people enjoying a music festival and others back to Gaza as hostages to be used as prisoner-exchange barter.

 

The Israel Defense Forces was challenged by the very fact that Hamas terrorists operate on the theory that the greater number of Palestinian civilians are wounded, and even better killed by the IDF as collateral damage in its attempts to reach and destroy the terrorist operatives, their weapons caches, operations and communications centres, deliberately installed within densely populated areas, with tunnels channeled deep underground as weapons depots and operative havens, leading from and into and beneath mosques, hospitals, schools and private homes. Making every effort to avoid harming civilians under these devised circumstances regardless, the Hamas public relations machinery used those numbers as fodder to convince the world of a genocide unfolding in Gaza.

 

 

 

The Israel Law Center was established for the very purpose of holding to account all those that tarnished their moral compass by circulating slander to harm the reputation of the Jewish state, and by extension all Jews. The founder and president of the Center is Israeli lawyer Nitsana Darshan-Leitner who spoke of the lawfare, legal action that takes place worldwide to support Israel, and highlight the lies and false stories of Israel purportedly intent on genocide to solve the dilemma of Palestinian 'statehood'. "The New York Times is aiding and abetting Hamas", she explained as she intended to make it her next target of litigation, to take them to court for "blood libel and defamation".

 

Targets of the Center include Al Jazeera, related to its Hamas ties. Another is a lawsuit lodged against the Palestinian Authority and PLO in the United States; initially resulting in a US$655 million award for victims of terrorism (which was overturned). Facebook is seeing legal action with respect to incitement and hate speech. Thematically the conference revolved around combating lies, to communicate the reality of Israel's existence, and overall to be constantly on alert over what the country's enemies are plotting.

 

Jonathan Conricus, senior fellow at the think tank based in Washington, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, spoke of prevention of radicalization, through what he calls "the battle of narratives" and his regret that "Israel isn't yet really fighting this battle well". What Israel is fighting is a many-pronged front, from Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Iran. Add to that countering the contentions of its heretofore allies leaning heavily on the only democracy in the Middle East, to ease up on its battle with Hamas, which some among them consider 'defenders' of 'Palestinian rights'.

 

"People have fallen for the Palestinian argument", pointed out Professor Dershowitz. "Instead of just defending Israel, we have to expose the lies of Palestiniansm and stop pandering to pro-Palestinian people. Pro-Palestinian is pro-hate", he adds. And to that adds former Israeli spokesman Eylon Levy, that the "anti-Zionist grip on institutional power hoodwinked the world into believing their libel, and they use that power to commit an industrial act of gaslighting", or as he really put it: "Gazalighting".

 

All of which has been made palatable to all too many, from government authorities to the ordinary person on the street, since much of it boils down to that ancient curse of Jew-hate, where those who innately subscribe to antisemitism as a knee-jerk reaction, find it entirely plausible that accusations of human rights violations slathering Israel by a well-organized campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state are well founded, and the founding of Israel itself a curse to humanity.  

  

 

 

"[Israel's enemies] have been able to hijack the language and weaponize the West's post-truth, post-moral culture, to push their agenda that Israel and the Jews are on the  wrong side of just about everything that is good and right and true."

"[The] big lie that we are all up against [is the notion that] peace and justice in the Middle Est [will come with a Palestinian state]."

"There is no such thing as Palestine. There is no such thing as the Palestinian people. The indigenous people of the land of so-called Palestine are the Jews; the Jews are the only people who have any entitlement to any of this land, an entitlement based in law, in history and morality."

British journalist Melanie Phillips, The Times columnist 

 

Rio de Janeiro ... Echoes of the Philippines' Rodrigo Duterte's Anti-Drug Campaigns

"The succession of lethal operations that do not result in greater safety for the population, but that in fact cause insecurity, reveals the failure of the policies of Rio de Janeiro."

"[These deaths are a] tragedy."

"The public prosecutor's office must open its own investigations and clarify the circumstances of each death."

César Muñoz, director of Human Rights Watch in Brazil 

 

"We saw executed people: shot in the back, shots to the head, stab wounds, people tied up."

"This level of brutality, the hatred spread—there’s no other way to describe it except as a massacre."

"This cannot b e considered public safety." 

Raull Santiago, local activist

 

"The terrible conditions in Candido Mendes prison, on Ilha Grande island in the state of Rio de Janeiro, pushed inmates to band together to survive within the system."

"[Within the last two years, Red Command has been able to take back control of Rio, now] ruling more than half of the city."

InSight Crime, think tank studying organized crime 

 

"We fully understand the challenges of having to deal with violent and well-organized groups such as Red Command." 

"[But Brazil is called on to] break this cycle of extreme brutality and ensure that law enforcement operations comply with international standards regarding the use of force."

United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Marta Hurtado 

 

"They [Rio police] slit my son’s throat, cut his neck, and hung the head from a tree like a trophy."

"They executed my son without giving him a chance to defend himself. He was murdered."

"Everyone deserves a second chance. During an operation, police should do their job, arrest suspects, but not execute them."

Raquel Tomas, mother of 19-yr-old alleged gang member 

Police said that among those detained were key members of the Red Command gang   ANTONIO LACERDA/EPA/Shutterstock

 

The public defender's office in Rio de Janeiro, stated that 132 people had died as a result of the Brazilian capital's bloodiest police raid on record as drug gangs were targeted in a ferocious, warlike raid with no  holds barred. The bodies of dozens of victims were laid out in the streets by grieving residents. The Rio state public defender's office which provides legal assistance to the poor announced: "The most recent update is 132 dead". 

 

Governor Claudio Castro, Rio state governor, put the toll of dead from the violence on Tuesday at around 60, cautioning that the real figure was without doubt higher, as bodies were beginning to be taken to a morgue. Among the dead were four police officers, killed during the military-type operation. No fewer than 2,500 police officers were assigned to the raids on the city's powerful criminal organization, the Comando Vermelho (Red Command). 

 

At one of two densely populated working-class neighbourhoods that had been targeted in northern Rio -- Penha Complex -- residents assembled a line of corpses, at least fifty in number, early Wednesday, and wept over the loss of life. One woman screamed, hunched over the body of a victim. The bodies were covered in makeshift shrouds, stained with blood. A sombre urban landscape of wasted lives.

 

"The state came to massacre, it wasn't a [police] operation. They came directly to kill, to take lives", one woman shouted as she touched the face of one of the victims. Two girls, faces tear-streaked, caressed the face of a dead man wrapped in a sheet. They then turned helplessly to one another, and hugged tightly, their bodies convulsed in grief. 

 

People stand next to the bodies with a sign that reads "Claudio Castro (Rio de Janeiro governor) assassin and terrorist" in the Penha neighborhood a day after a massive anti-gang police operation took place at the Complexo da Penha and Alemao favelas on October 29, 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Wagner Meier—2025 Getty Images

 

"Sixty criminals", according to authorities, had been killed in fighting that resulted during the drug raids in the Penha Complex and the Alemao Complex, both located nearby Rio's international airport. They died, furious residents responded, the victims of police summary killings.  

 

Albino Pereira Neto, a lawyer representing three families with lost relatives, described "burn marks" on some of the bodies, and among those killed, some had been tied up. Some, he said, were "murdered in cold blood". Armoured vehicles, helicopters and drones backed up the police officers during the operation, as the streets of the favelas became scenes of war.

 

The 'suspects' were accused by authorities of using buses as barricades and drones to attack police with explosives. "This is not ordinary crime, but narcoterrorism" wrote Rio state Governor Claudio Castro, on the social media platform X. 

 

 

 

Does The Jewish Faculty Network Represent Jewish Introspection?

"[The ACLA {Arab Canadian Lawyers Association} defines anti-Palestinian racism in part, as] failing to acknowledge Palestinians as an indigenous people with a collective identity, belonging and rights in relation to occupied and historic Palestine."

"Defaming Palestinians and their allies with slander such as being inherently antisemitic, a terrorist threat/sympathizer or opposed to democratic values."

Arab Canadian Lawyers Association 

 

"[The Jewish Faculty Network {JFN}'s] assessment of antisemitism in Canada is misleading."

"[His own research and that of the Anti-Defamation League {ADL}, found low levels of antisemitic views in Canada compared to many other countries, but that] Eight percent of Canada's population is 3.3-million people."

"Canada's Jewish population is about 410,000."

"Therefore, there are eight times more antisemites than Jews in Canada."

"The CIJA [Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs] [failed to] distinguish attitudes from behaviour [by ignoring evidence showing that antisemitic behaviour has] skyrocketed in Canada, [including his own survey, which found that in 2023] Two of 10 Canadian Jews were called offensive names because they are Jews; three of ten were made to feel unwelcome because they are Jews; and five of 10 heard someone say the Holocaust did not happen or has been exaggerated."

Robert Brym, professor emeritus, University of Toronto 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators outside the fenced in area of an encampment on the University of Toronto campus in Canada on May 2, 2024. Photo by Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images.

 

Jews are a famously argumentative lot, but it still takes many Jews themselves who support Zionism by surprise when there are other clusters of Jewish communities who are anti-Israel, and who support accusations leveled by non-Jews that a genocide is taking place in 'Palestine' through the Israeli government's and its Israel Defense Forces' campaign to eradicate the Palestinian Islamist terrorist group Hamas which has spent decades on a futile, but deadly campaign to eliminate the Jewish state from the Middle East.

 

It seems to matter far less to such groups of Jewish Israel-detractors that Jews are in the crosshairs of world opinion with a resurgence of viral antisemitism throughout the West, and that Palestinian terrorist groups such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Fatah and others of their ilk, along with Palestinian civilians marauded through Israel on 7 October 2023 in a sadistic savagery of shocking dimensions of rape, mutilations, mass killings and hostage-taking. Israel's response to the terrorists shielding themselves from retribution by installing themselves in the general Palestinian population and in the process searching out the terrorists, means civilians are caught in the crossfire.

 

That Hamas built a wildly complex underground labyrinth of tunnels for weapons storage and haven for its operatives, installed command centres and weapons depots along with communications centres in and beneath mosques, hospitals, schools and private homes, making it impossible when targeting the terror operatives to avoid sweeping in civilians as collateral damage through the military responses to the atrocity and barrages of rockets, is of no account to Israel's critics, among them Canada's New Democratic Party, and legacy media which publish whatever comes out of Hamas public relations to tarnish Israel.

 

The Jewish anti-Israel lobby alone is appalling in its astonishing complicity in demonizing Israel. It has helped to pressure the Liberal government in Canada toward an arms embargo for Israel, to vote at the United Nations against Israel's interests and finally to capriciously recognize a Palestinian state which has time and again refused to recognize the legitimacy of Israel's existence. That Jewish lobby has been agreeable to shutting down university campuses and city streets. Their actions portraying Israel negatively receive media attention as representative of Canadian Jews. 

 

People demonstrate against the participation of cyclists racing for Israel-Premier Tech at the Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec on Friday in Quebec City. (Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press)

 

And they have produced a report that anchors their antagonism against Israel's existence, citing it as an academic team professionally and expertly diminishing and delegitimizing Israel's right of existence, calling themselves the Jewish Faculty Network. They do not even blush in calling Israel 'racist' and supporting a universal boycott of Israel. They claim that there is no problem of antisemitism in Canada, regardless of protests by anti-Israel groups taking place in Jewish neighbourhoods, outside synagogues, daycare centres and seniors' residences. 

 

"Labelling critics of Israel as antisemitic, as CIJA does, is a clear example of anti-Palestinian racism" claims the 'Jewish Faculty Network', right in sync with the definition by the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association. The fact is, most Canadians are not devoutly antisemitic. Those that are, and who join arms with the part of the Canadian Muslim population that are, still represent a relatively modest proportion of the Canadian population. They are adamant, they are loud, they are bold, and they are shameless in their excoriation of Israel and their concomitant threats to Canada's social contract.

 

And the government of the day, and the day before, Liberals both, who cater to the large and growing Muslim demographic as opposed to the sedate and relatively small Jewish-Canadian population, forced to protect itself by hiring private security guards at its schools and synagogues, sees nothing amiss in the wild demonstrations that target Jewish community centres and parochial schools, more attuned to favouring the ballot box than ensuring security for the smaller demographic left to fend for themselves. 

 

 

The United-Against-Israel-Nations

"Whereas the United Nations has designated zero mandates to investigate human rights violations suffered by the one-fifth of humanity living in China -- and zero on Cuba, Turkey, Zimbabwe, and most other countries in the world -- it has a plethora of mechanisms targeting Israel."

"Every year since 1968, the UN's 'Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices' has produced annual 70-page reports with legal analyses and recommendations on Israel's alleged violations, summaries of Palestinian testimonies, and collections of statistics."

"Composed of Malaysia, Senegal, and Sri Lanka, and staffed out of the UN human rights office the Special Committee also conducts regular field missions, including to Amman, Cairo and Damascus."

"This has been going on for five decades and still continues."

Hillel Neuer, Executive Director, United Nations Watch, Geneva

The United Nations flag flies on a stormy day at the U.N. during the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey, File)

 

A UN commission of inquiry on Israel presented a report on Tuesday which accused the Jewish state of genocide. All three of the commissioners that make up this special commission resigned in July; resignations meant to be effective following their final report scheduled for Tuesday, 28 October. These resignations build on the UN's special rapporteur for Palestine, Francesca Albanese having been designated on the U.S. sanctions list, in response to her overt support for Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group whose latest atrocities on October 7, 2023, sparked a two-year war with Israel. To Ms. Albanese, Hamas are 'freedom fighters', struggling against 'oppression'. 

 

Arab and Islamic states initiated this last inquiry at a special session they convened at the UN Human Rights council in May of 2021 during an earlier conflict between Israel and Hamas which led to a ceasefire. That inquiry made no move to investigate Hamas rockets into Israel threatening Israeli citizens, but focused on examining 'root causes' of the conflict, focusing on Israel's purported racist "systematic discrimination". In actual fact, no discrimination exists in Israel; citizenship includes Jews, Arabs, Circassians, Druze, Bedouin, Christians, Muslims. In contrast, the Palestinian Authority allows no Jews.

 

As commissioners to lead the inquiry which has no end-date, South African Navi Pillay was made chair of the commission. As the impartial chair she had openly lobbied governments to "sanction apartheid Israel" before being chosen to lead the inquiry. Another commissioner, Miloon Kothari gave an interview on an anti-Israel website, questioning Israel's right to UN membership and spoke of "the Jewish lobby controlling social media". The third of the commissioners, Chris Sidoto, claimed that Jews "throw around accusations (of antisemitism) like rice at a wedding".

 

So much for impartiality and commitment to truth, justice and reality. The commission has a staff of 18 and an annual budget over $4 million, delivering annual reports that accuse Israel of war crimes. They meet in The Hague with the International Criminal Court to render legitimacy to their reports. That's one commission, geared solely to 'investigating' Israel but there's more. No other country in the world has the distinction of being 'investigated' by a plethora of committees in the United Nations struck solely for that purpose.

 

There is a 25-nation "Committee On the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People", led by Cuba, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka, staffed by15 employees within the UN's Division for Palestinian Rights which produce legal studies, background papers and public communications materials as well as holding annual conferences and organizing global advocacy networks targeting Israel. Another based out of Geneva is the UN Human Rights Council's "Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967" with another open-ended mandate to focus on 'Israel's violations'.

 

This is the group headed by Hamas apologist Francesca Albanese who produces reports and statements on 'Israeli crimes'. A little-known entity in Vienna, the "United Nations Register of Damage Caused by the Construction of the Wall ln the Occupied Palestinian Territory", employs 19 staff under the leadership of a former Russian diplomat, financed both through the UN and by voluntary donors that include France, Austria and the Netherlands.

 

And then, of course, there's UNRWA, a billion-dollar agency employing 30,000 people with a focus supposedly on aid for Palestinians, whose senior staff also engages in public media campaigns targeting Israel. There are no staff at the United Nations mandated to critically examine or address China, for example, or Turkey, or Russia, or the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo where millions are displaced and tens of thousands are victims of mass rape and torture. Nor is there a committee to examine the bloody civil war in Sudan. 

 

Strange, isn't it, that the entire world focus as demonstrated by the actions and activities of the United Nations are focused on one tiny country located in a sea of undemocratic neighbours where sectarian and tribal conflicts break out at the drop of a pin, but it is Israel, a state for Jews located on their own ancestral, historical lands that fascinates the world, eager to condemn Jews there, and everywhere. What is it that consumes such a rabid fascination in a people that only want to be left alone, to live normal lives with respect for their human rights, just like everyone else? 

 

Partition: The Division that Arab States and Palestinians rejected time and again...

 

He's In The Driver's Seat

"President Donald Trump accumulated hundreds of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago during his presidency and the tumultuous transition of power to Biden in 2021. Officials repeatedly demanded those documents and other unclassified files back."

"Trump aides returned 15 boxes in January 2022. Prosecutors acquired another 38 classified documents in June 2022 in response to a grand jury subpoena, but were convinced more remained."

"A court-ordered FBI search in August 2022 turned up more than 100 additional classified records, including 17 “top secret” documents."

Josh Gerstein, Politico 

 

"President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to see his critics investigated, pressuring the Justice Department to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James."

"We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation and credibility," the president wrote last month in a Truth Social post."

"They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!)" he said, referencing the four criminal cases he faced after leaving the White House in 2021 and James's civil case."

"Both have since been charged, in cases that many experts have said appear to be politically motivated and difficult to win in court."

Kayla Epstein, BBC   

 

 

"An objective and thorough review will show nothing inappropriate was stored or kept by Amb. Bolton. These materials, many of which are documents that had been approved as part of a pre-publication review for Amb. Bolton’s book, were reviewed and closed years ago."

"These are the kinds of ordinary records, many of which are 20 years old or more, that would be kept by a longtime career official who served at the State Department, as an Assistant Attorney General, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, and the National Security Advisor."

Bolton's Lawyer, Abbe Lowell  

Letitia James, one of three prominent Trump critics hit with criminal charges recently had successfully prosecuted President Donald Trump as the New York attorney general. On Friday she pleaded not guilty to bank fraud charges. She entered her plea at an arraignment in a federal court in Norfolk, Virginia. A trial date of January 26 was set by the presiding judge. Facing one count of bank fraud and a second one of making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a property she purchased in 2020 in Virginia.

 

The case was brought a day after yet another Trump target, former FBI director James Comey, pleaded not guilty to charges of making false statements to Congress, and obstructing a congressional proceeding. Charges that seem eerily similar to some that were in fact brought against President Trump himself, in the past. And then there is John Bolton, who served as national security advisers in the first Trump administration before falling out with the irascible president whose ire against those who turn against him becomes an acidic maelstrom of tit-for-tat.

 

Mr. Bolton's charge was that of mishandling classified information. He too has pleaded not guilty. 'Mishandling' government documentation is a charge made against many, including former president Joe Biden who was found by a special counsel to have improperly stored classified documents from his time as vice-president. He, on the other hand, did not have criminal charges pressed against him. Just as the presidential position prevented similar charges from being pressed against Donald Trump  himself.

 

President Trump's great good friend Lindsey Halligan whom the president elevated to the position of U.S attorney following her predecessor's resignation after claiming insufficient evidence was produced, filed those cases against James and Comey. The charges were rejected by James as "baseless, nothing more than a continuation of the president's desperate weaponization of our justice system".

 

"The president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution", she responded. 

 

However, this is the president of the great United States of America. And he has used the great powers vested in him as the world's arguably most powerful political figure to stamp his personal mark in a myriad of ways, from the world economy, to strong-arming countries around the world to do his bidding in his very personal campaign to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize; not this year, but the one to follow, surely. This president's penchant for admiring the world's strong men as well as those with the aura of power that accompanies great wealth is legendary. 

 

As is his splenetic outbursts at criticism.

 

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi was recently instructed in public to take action against James, Comey and any others the president views as his personal adversaries as he escalates his campaign dedicated to  ensuring that those who cross him bear the burden of a cross of their own. 

 

And Letitia James has certainly earned that cross earmarked for her bent back, when in 2021 she brought a major civil fraud case against him that alleged he and his real estate holdings inflated his wealth unlawfully to manipulate the value  of properties with an eye to favourable bank loans or insurance terms. Mr. Trump was ordered to pay a $46 million penalty by a New York State judge, but the financial penalty was removed by a higher court which chose nonetheless to uphold the underlying judgment.

 

Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, is also in Mr. Trump's crosshairs for leading the first impeachment of the president in the House of Representatives. Seeking to have the case against the former FBI chief dismissed, Comey's lawyer characterized the charges as vindictive and selective prosecution. It certainly has that kind of whiff about it. 

"[My book,] The Room Where It Happened, [was reviewed and approved by] the appropriate, experienced career clearance officials. [The FBI was made fully aware of the 2021 email hack. In the four years of the Biden administration, no charges were filed]." 

"Then came Trump 2 who embodies what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said, ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime’."

"These charges are not just about his focus on me or my diaries, but his intensive effort to intimidate his opponents, to ensure that he alone determines what is said about his conduct."

"Dissent and disagreement are foundational to America’s constitutional system, and vitally important to our freedom. I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power."

John Bolton, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser 

 

Russia's Wagner Group Busy in the U.K.

"Anonymous recruiter proxies operating through internet chat rooms [on encrypted platforms had found young men] who were prepared to undergo a form of radicalization and betray their country for what seemed easy money."

"In past years, our parents and grandparents would have had a simple term for what Dylan Earl and Jake Reeves did: treason."

Judge Bobbie Cheema-Grubb, Old Bailey court, London 

The Ukrainian-owned warehouse in Leyton, East London was torched in March 2024   PA Media

 

A loose network of young British men were jailed, given particularly long prison terms for their part in torching a warehouse that stored supplies for Ukraine, when the Russian paramilitary Wagner group recruited them alongside the attack's orchestrator. A March 2024 fire at an industrial estate in east London, drew a focus of attention on Russia's spying and sabotage campaigns that Moscow initiated along with its European proxies.

 

The Kremlin stands accused by Western nations of masterminding a string of incidents for the purpose of undermining support for Ukraine in its battles with the Russian invaders. Counter-terrorism police in the United Kingdom have made a series of arrests related to this critical issue.  Some of the six sentenced on Friday had their lawyers charge that Russian operatives preyed on their 'unsophisticated' clients' vulnerabilities, including financial, drug and mental health issues.

 

Jake Reeves (left) and Dylan Earl (right) were among six Brits recruited by Russia’s Wagner group   Credit: PA

 

Some in the group, ages ranging from 19 to 22 at the time of the offence -- had plotted to kidnap a billionaire Russian dissident; a plot foiled by police -- as well as their involvement in the arson. Judge Cheema-Grubb declared the case highlighted "interference ... by a foreign power leveraging the greed and base instincts of unsophisticated individuals", as she went on to sentence the accused to varying, lengthy prison terms.

 

These were the first sentences handed out under the U.K.'s 2023 National Security Act, meant to counter evolving threats from hostile states. Earl, a low-level drug dealer from central England, had pleaded guilty to various offences including aggravated arson and possession of criminal property. He met, then corresponded with members of Wagner through the Telegram messaging app; a group classed as a "terrorist" organization, by Britain.

 

(Left to right) Ashton Evans, Nii Mensah, Jakeem Rose, and Ugnius Asmena were all sentenced at The Old Bailey    Credit: PA

 

Earl went on to recruit Reeves -- a man he had never previously met -- to burn down the business that was supplying communications equipment to Ukraine. Fellow south Londoners Nii Mensah, 23, Jakeem Rose, 23, and Ugnius Usmena, 20, were then recruited by Reeves to torch the site, live-streaming it back to Earl. The last three were sentenced to between eight and ten years each. Dylan Earl received the longest term of 23 years, while co-defendant Jake Reeves was sentenced to 13 years. 

 

Police footage shows arson attack ringleader's arrest

 

The 111th Mayor of New York City

"A new poll shows that 74 percent of Democrats prefer Democratic socialism over capitalism."

"The poll shows that even 58 percent of Republicans agree that our economic system is 'rigged in favor of corporations and the wealthy'."

Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

"I had arrived in a society where privilege was a different color. Gone was the image of the white Christian male that I had grown accustomed to, and in its place was a darker, more familiar picture -- one that, for the first time, I fit: brown skin, black hair, and a Muslim name."

"After just a little while in Tahrir [Square, Egypt--Arab Spring] I understood the addiction of revolution, of protest."

"Those who traditionally had little say on society's direction were immediately granted the chance to speak, with the promise of an echo of thousands."
"Ideas of class and status were upturned, as men without means stood high on the shoulders of others, their voices loud. This new solidarity was founded in a widespread opposition to all that the government had grown to represent -- inefficiency, unjustness and sectarianism." 

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani

Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic front-runner in the New York City mayoral race, speaks outside a Bronx Mosque and cultural center on October 24, 2025 in the Bronx borough of New York City (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

 

"He is the candidate for Pakistanis, Indians, and Bangladeshis alike, though they are not exactly one another's friends."

"And most of them are robust supporters of the market-driven New York economy and merit-based schools. How would they like living in Zohran's socialist paradise?"

"All the while he is also cultivating his base of disaffected -- mostly white and heavily female -- underemployed college graduates."

The Spectator

 

"What Western city or country has improved as the Muslim population has increased?"

"America's largest city was attacked by radical Islam 24 years ago, and now a similar form of that pernicious force is poised to capture city hall."

Charlie Kirk

 

New York City boasts the largest populations of both Jews and Muslims of any city in the Western Hemisphere. To the present an estimated 1.1 million Jews are New Yorkers, and roughly 750 Muslims now inhabit the city. It will not be the presence of Muslims in their voting strength that will elevate 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani to the mayoralty, but that of those Jews who feel he is the right person to administer the affairs of the most influential of American cities. Jews in Brooklyn who saw fit to honour the man when a group called Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, burst into applause when he spoke of the 'genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military in Gaza'; a reported thousand in attendance. 

 

That declaration in its unadorned antisemitic slander elicited a response, however, from the political newsletter City & State: "Until recently, this kind of anti-Israel rhetoric would have been unthinkable in New York City politics". 

 

Mamdani, who only became a U.S. citizen in 2018, was born in Uganda, son of a 'progressive' filmmaker and a scholar of settler colonialism -- mother and father respectively; Shia Muslim and Hindu respectively. When Idi Amin, Uganda's dictator, expelled expatriate Indians who thrived there as business people and skilled entrepreneurs, academics and journalists among the Ugandan-Asian minorities, he enfeebled the Ugandan economy and robbed its culture. From the age of seven Zohran and his parents lived in Manhattan where Zohran was suckled on the socialist left. 

 

His campaign spiel of no-fare transit, inexpensive apartments, discount groceries and anti-Zionist bile has found wide favour among local voters, enough to catapult him as the leading contender for mayor when the vote takes place on November 4. A card-carrying Democratic Socialist to become the 111th mayor of Corporate Capitalist City. This young, bearded, confidence-smiling man won himself the June Democratic Party primary for mayor. His strident condemnation of "Israel's Genocide" won close to half of the Jewish primary vote.

 

Zohran Mamdani attends a campaign rally calling for the full enforcement of New York City's sanctuary city laws in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of Queens, New York, on 21 June 2025. Photograph: Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty Images

 

His approval rate burped upward again when he committed to arresting both Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu should either dare to ever deplane in New York City. A New York Times/Siena College poll from early September saw 57 percent of the city's Democratic vote sympathizing with Palestinians in Gaza, a mere 18 percent with Israel. Assaults on Jews in New York city have been documented by the New York Police Department at an all time high, an increase of 583 percent since 2020; over 1,400 antisemitic incidents in 2024.

 

His opponents, down to the wire, are Curtis Sliwa, Republican known 40 years ago as a subway vigilante, fighting street crime, and Andrew Cuomo, former governor of New York State. The one-and-only (thank the heavenly stars) Senator Bernie Sanders of Brooklyn, all 84 years-old of him, campaigned with Mamdani, as did Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the Bronx and Queens, at packed halls to wild applause. "Sanders said the United States should not be sending aid to 'the government of Israel that is currently starving children to death'", reported NY Jewish Week, of his statement that garnered a standing ovation.

 

Mamdani has promised "affordability", vowing to freeze rents on a million municipal-operated apartments. His own residence is a one-bedroom, rent-stabilized flat in a century-old building in the Borough of Queens for which he pays $2,300 monthly, where he moved in 2018. Interesting choice for a scion of wealth and privilege. This is a man with no work experience, never having earned a real paycheque. A former rapper, and  few months served as a community organizer in Seattle and Texas.

 

Former three-term mayor Michael Bloomberg has distinguished himself by generously handing six million to Cuomo's race as an 'independent'. Prominent Jewish real estate developers financially supported opposition to Mamdani's campaign, warning "There is no more time for delay, discussion, or dithering -- we must act decisively to ensure that the next mayor of New York is Andrew Cuomo."  

"We hold a common belief in the shared dignity of every person on this planet, and the refusal to draw a line in the sand when it comes to Palestinian lives."

"Our victory in June was evidence of many things, but truly, among them, it was a lesson that so many in this city are horrified by the genocide being perpetrated by the Israeli military in Gaza."

Zohran Mamdani 

House Republicans are hammering Mamdani over his path to citizenship. Andy Ogles/ X

Canada's Pakistan-Canadian Heroine Journalist Raheel Raza

"In September 2022 Imtiaz was part of a delegation that visited Israel to know and learn with the goal of fostering interfaith dialogue and people-to-people understanding."

"Last year, he bagged the Ambassador of Peace Award for his work."

"Unfortunately, on September 17 this year, Imtiaz was ambushed by armed assailants for voicing his opinion. He couldn't survive the assault and tragically died on September 24, 2025."

"The terrorist group Lashkar e TharAllah [Al-Hsseini Resistance] claimed responsibility, explicitly citing his interfaith work and participation in the Israel peace mission."

"This act was not an act of random violence -- it was a calculated attempt to silence a voice that wanted dialogue and bridge-building."

International Religious Freedom Roundtable 

 

"They hire hundreds of people who do nothing else but track people [like me] and they're paid very well for it."

"How it connects to me [Mir's murder], is that the murderers of Imtiaz Mir were a terrorist outfit closely linked with the Iranian regime. And the day after Imtiaz Mir's assassination, my family and friends received phone calls asking for my whereabouts. Is this a coincidence? I think not."

Canadian-Pakistani journalist Raheel Raza, 75 

Raheel Raza's official Website

 

Raheel Raza is a well-known and -respected critic of Islamic fundamentalism. She had recently lost a friend and fellow journalist in Pakistan, victim of sectarian violence who was assassinated as an enemy of Islam. She heard later, from Iranian dissidents in California that her mail had been infiltrated by hackers associated with the IRGC. The hackers are known as APT35, or Charming Kitten. And they produced a report on her work. "You are on Iran's radar", one of the dissidents warned her. 

 

A profile of Raza was published on an anonymous account known as KittenBusters. Raaznet, a publication specializing in exposing mass surveillance revealed this to be the case. "The Charming Kitten leaks are more than a window into Iran's cyber command, they are a rare glimpse into the bureaucratic soul of digital authoritarianism: structured, methodical, and quietly ruthless", reported Raaznet on October 17. 

"[The IRGC profile of Raza doesn't contain any threats in terms of saying] go out and kill her', or 'we are going to kill her'." 

"But what they do is they expose you. I'm a 75-year-old grandmother who's just had a kidney transplant. Why would they want to have my photo out there?"

"It's the Salman Rushdie syndrome. They put it out there and then some young Islamist looks at it and thinks -- this woman is against Iran and against the regime. Ergo, she is against Islam, so she's a heretic, and I go to heaven if I kill her."

"That's definitely my fear." 

Raheel Raza  

The IRGC hackers' report on Raza has her photograph and explains in Farsi that it was prepared with information taken by infiltrating her emails from 2017 to 2021, noting that among the 23, 938 emails she sent in that time frame they have commented: "She is an advocate for banning the Islamic hijab and burqa in public places. In 2023 Raza called on the Canadian government to block immigration from 'terrorist' countries like Iran. She is a supporter of Islamic reform and is the author of the book Their Jihad, Not My Jihad."

 

Raza's involvement with a group called the Muslims Facing Tomorrow Association is also in the IRGC report: "The motto of this association is to create reforms in Islam, confront violence and bigotry, and defend human rights. She has introduced herself as a liberal Muslim and believes in gender equality, especially for Muslim women".

 

Contacting a senior member of the Toronto police, Raza asked what she should do. That officer told her to check in with her local division about the security breach. "They sent two officers over but they couldn't quite figure out what this ideology is about. One of them asked me: 'Have you reported this to the Iranian embassy?' I just looked at her and said, 'There is no Iranian embassy'." Mind-bogglingly, the Toronto Police Service officer had no idea that Canada has no diplomatic relations with Iran?!

 

The Islamic Republic's notoriety in its support for terrorist organizations led to Canada under the Conservative government of Stephen Harper, closing down the Iranian Embassy and its Consulates in Canada, while recalling Canadian diplomats from Iran, in 2012. Raheel Raza contacted the federal RCMP through a lawyer about the IRGC threats, but heard nothing back from them. 

"This is absolutely consistent with a much broader pattern that we see systematically with Iran."

"The idea of intimidation tactics to silence, tactics to smear, tactics to discredit journalists, activists, human rights militants and so on -- this is something that Iran does on a very large scale."

"[The attack on Rushdie] is an extreme case, in the sense that there was an actual fatwa from the ruler. It came from the very top."

"[But] the intensity of the tactics puts a massive toll on them [their targets] a physical toll, an emotional toll, a psychological toll. It slows down their work. It discredits them." 

Thomas Juneau, professor of public and international affairs, University of Ottawa 

And there is this, about Canada and Iran. Although there are no diplomatic relations between the two, and much hostility, and most Iranian-Canadians abhor and deplore the Islamist regime in Iran, it is well documented that Canada under its current Liberal government makes no effort to remove Iranians from Canadian soil who are connected to the regime, and who harass other Iranians, threatening them and making their lives a constant trial. Reports to the government produce no solutions, even when it has been proven that regime members live in Canada and appear in public.

 

"I have been a human rights activist all my life. My main work has been to speak out against radicalization and extremism and Islamism. This has been the constant battle", she states. Since the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel, Raheel Raza has "also been a very vocal advocate of Israel's right to exist and to defend itself. I've been there 13 times, and I work very closely with the Jewish community", she explains. Which in and of itself is enough for the Iranian regime to loathe her and work to repress her voice. 

 

  

Writings by Raheel Raza 

Title	Date
Radicalization of Kids: A Global Threat	2019/07/25
When Hate is Promoted by Religious Leaders, Why Blame the Followers?	2016/06/27
No More Hug-A-Terrorist	2016/03/23
Muslim Reform Movement	2015/12/06
The Other Face of Terrorism	2015/04/18
Maligning Malala	2014/10/19
"Boxed and Packaged Islam" Trying to Pass Itself Off as Mainstream Islam	2014/10/17
From Brunei to Boko Haram: Merely Deflection	2014/05/29
The Real Agenda Behind the Push for "Islamophobia"	2014/02/25
Canada: CAIR-CAN, The NCCM and "The Islamic Victimhood Narrative"	2014/02/04
Competing Human Rights in Canada	2014/01/16
The Danger In Our Midst	2013/09/25
What Are We Muslims Doing to Ourselves?	2013/09/06
On Israel's President's Conference	2013/06/07
A Woman's Voice at the Mosque	2013/05/23
Arab Spring vs. Women's Rights	2012/06/21
"A Sick Notion of Honor"	2012/02/06

 

The Bonds Between Hateful Antisemites

"The founding of the Jewish state in response to the indescribable evil of the Holocaust against Jewish humanity produced dispossession and domination of Palestinian peoples."

"This sad paradox of  how a terrorized and traumatized people for two thousand years -- precious Jewish people -- reproduced terror and trauma for precious Palestinian people in the last seventy-five years reveals our human wretchedness."

Dr. Cornel West, academic media commentator, failed U.S. presidential candidate; "non-Marxist socialist"

 

"[In support of] Palestinian state recognition, justice for kids facing unfair consequences for supporting Palestine, sanctions on the Netanyahu government, a two-way arms embargo on the IDF."

National Council of Canadian Muslims

The NCCM lists Cornel West as the keynote speaker for its November 1 fundraising gala in the Greater Toronto Area. (Photo: NCCM.)

 

The man who describes the United States -- where he is a citizen -- as a "racist patriarchal" state infused with white supremacy, and views the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a struggle between oppressors and oppressed, has been invited to Canada by the National Council of Canadian Muslims as a guest speaker, inviting all those interested to join them on November 1 for "an evening with Dr. Cornel West to learn, be inspired and support the fight against Islamophobia and racism in Canada". 

 

This is the man who issued a press release on October 7, 2023 addressing the attack on southern Israel by Hamas terrorists: "on the Jewish Sabbath, on the day when the festival of Sukkot reaches its conclusion and Jewish siblings around the globe celebrate Simchat Torah" when an unspeakably murderous rampage occurred...calling for an "end to the illegal occupation of Palestinians" and "immediate cessation of all violence" ostensibly committed by the Israel Defense Forces. 

 

"The painful truth is that the Israeli state -- like like the USA -- has been racist in practice since its inception", he wrote. Little wonder this man is admired and respected by the National Council of Canadian Muslims, among many if not most Muslim groups that advocate for the 'rights' of Palestinians and agitate for the destruction of the Jewish state. 

 

A man, after all, who is capable of seeming to commiserate with the Jewish community which has suffered deathly torment throughout the millennia of its existence. But, clear-eyed to the underlining racism he identifies in his great wisdom, that Jews generate in their sinister aspirations to control the world. A classic antisemite, with an interesting twist. 

 

"The U.S. government, the Israeli government and the occupied Hamas forces have blood on their hands", he avers. The October 7 mass atrocity was described by this man a day later as the "desperate language of an occupied people". Obvious to his acute reasoning that Gaza's rulers had no option but to use deathly violence to oppose the Jewish state whose military is occupied in defending its population against terrorist violence. 

 

The same kind of Byzantine reasoning that sees pro-Hamas protests since October 7, calling for globalizing the intifada, and 'death to Jews'. 

 

Cornel West Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post