The BDS Movement of Israel's 'Allies'

"[The situation in the West Bank is] rapidly deteriorating amid unprecedented levels of settler violence and settlement expansion, including the unacceptable decision to publish tenders for theE1 settlement project."

"[The Israeli government must] immediately halt the expansion of settlements and civilian administrative powers, ensure accountability for settler violence and investigate allegations against Israeli forces."

Joint statement: Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden United Kingdom  

An Israeli settler works at a winery at the settlement of Yitzhar, south of the Palestinian city of Nablus. The U.K. government plans to implement a comprehensive trade ban and targeted sanctions on goods and services from Israeli towns in Judea and Samaria. (Getty Images)

 

"Today, France and Canada are announcing alongside Britain that they will also ban the import of goods from illegal settlements."

"The Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium, Spain and Norway, which have either banned goods or are in the process of doing so, with many other countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Poland, Portugal and Sweden, [are] pledging today they will support further action."

"[The U.K. will also take action] against specific companies and individuals who provide services such as construction, infrastructure, financing or real estate for settlement expansion."

"The British government agrees that there is ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in areas of the West Bank, perpetrated by settler terrorists."

U.K. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband 

Israel is a liberal democracy with a fully independent judiciary. It has internal problems, just as every other state has. It also has external-derived problems that no other state must cope with. Within Israel's population there is a multitude of ethnic and cultural and religious groups, from Christians to Druze and Kurds, Circassians, Bedouin, Baha'i and Muslims with full citizenship. The Israeli-Palestinian segment of the population alone represents 18 percent of the population, with full citizen rights. Not a single Jew is permitted to live in the Palestinian Territories.

 

In a world other than the Middle East, the prospect of a Jewish state living alongside that of a Muslim state has been a problem for a century and more. With the decision of 1947 by the UN that Arabs calling themselves Palestinians and Jews could live side-by-side in sovereign states of their own, Israel declared  

itself reborn in 1948 in an excess of joy, while Palestinians rejected the offer that partitioned the allotted territory for a state of its own. It has never, in the 80 years since then, moved to become a state through an agreement by which it would recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state.

 

Simply put, it awaited an opportunity that would see the destruction of Israel, with the Judean ancestral land declared theirs and theirs alone. An expectation and reality that is held by Palestinians but which remains unrevealed to the Western democracies that remain convinced that a two-state 'solution' will bring peace and security to both purported states. This, while Palestinian leaders have never stopped inciting their people toward terrorism which they call martyrdom. And to ensure that those martyrs are rewarded on earth, not only in Paradise attended by 72 virgins, payment goes out from the Palestinian Authority to those who commit violence against Jews.

 

Palestinian children are taught from elementary school forward to value martyrdom and to conceive of themselves as avengers against Jewish 'occupation' of Palestinian land. This grooming had the assistance of UNRWA, the UN agency devoted to the welfare of Palestinian victimhood, and respected by the very same countries that now insist Israel must put an end to reclaiming their historical geography squatted on by colonialists from Egypt and Jordan. None of these European nations condemning Israel for territorial 'expansionism' claiming a plot to disentitle and cleanse Palestinian from their proposed state have ever had to face the violent hatred that Israel does that results in horrific atrocities against its population.

 

When orthodox Jews 'settle' on their ancestral heritage in Judea and Samaria which the West has titled the West Bank, the Western community is outraged. When youth among those 'settlers' behave like the Palestinians constantly attacking Jews, Israel is outraged. Never so much however, as the international community which lingers solely on Jewish violence committed by a relative handful of Jewish hooligans and never on the institutionalized Palestinian mass-indoctrinated jihadists who are the pride of their leadership forever inculcating the lust of sadistic savagery on their youth.

 

Foreign interference in the affairs of another country is unsupportable by international standards of nation-to-nation diplomatic decorum. When it comes to Israel, all hindrances to bullying are withdrawn. The states that would bridle with indignation should any other country attempt to inform them what they should and must do internally to handle difficult situations, feel it is perfectly legitimate to consign the Jewish state to an entirely different level of expectations.  

 

A drone view shows a factory belonging to Israeli company Libi Construction and Infrastructure in Shilo, an Israeli area in Judea and Samaria. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)

 

 By coincidence most of these countries have themselves been colonized by a gradual influx of immigrants, refugees and economic migrants from Muslim countries. The Koran states quite clearly that it is the  religious obligation of the ummah -- all those faithful to Islam worldwideeee, to convert non-believers, to broaden the base of Islamic followers, to do their utmost to ensure that Islam eventually overtakes all other religious devotion on Earth, in a grand conquest that will see it sweep to the position it was meant by Islam's prophet to attain to.

 

One by one, the countries that have aligned themselves with the forces devoted to degrading Israel's security will find themselves in the final death throes of their culture, laws, values and heritage. Their confusion over the changes already taking place, challenging their way of life, beliefs and customs turns them instead to blaming the very nation that despite its faith in democracy will not allow itself to be destroyed by the overwhelming forces of political Islam. That face of Islam that other Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East and North Africa are now protecting themselves from, even as the West falls. 

 

These are also the countries, ironically and incidentally, that stood by and watched without intervention when Europe under Nazi occupation methodically and institutionally scheduled a Final Solution to dispose of the unwanted presence of Jews among them who had lived among them for centuries as undervalued citizens who contributed far more than their share to the prosperity and and cultural identity of any country they lived in, throughout the diaspora.  

 

The British consulate in East Jerusalem. Israel has ordered the closure of the consulate after London led Western sanctions over violence by Israeli settlers against Palestinians in Judea and Samaria. (Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/Getty Images)

 

Canadian Hypocrisy at the United Nations

Canada’s misleading denial that it nominated Iran to UN body addressing women’s rights & terror prevention   UN Watch

 

"There have been incorrect reports on social media about Canada’s position on the nomination of Iran to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Committee for Programme and Coordination – an advisory body with no decision-making role. Iran was nominated as part of the Asia-Pacific Group."

"Canada is not a member of the group and did not endorse or vote for this nomination. There was no vote, as per established procedures."

"Canada does not support Iran for positions of influence within the United Nations. We will continue to actively work with partners to counter Iranian candidacies."

Global Affairs, Canada  

 

"Canada’s foreign ministry made a misleading statement on X.com to mask the fact it allowed the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN committee that addresses critical issues including women’s rights and terrorism prevention — failing to object as the US did, and as Canada and EU states have done in the past."

"The fact is that Canada, as a member of the 54-nation UN Economic and Social Council, participated in the consensus nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the UN Committee for Programme and Coordination on April 8, 2026."

"This committee deals with budget priorities and program coordination on critical issues, and will meet soon, May 14-21, to address women’s rights, human rights, and terrorism prevention."

"At a minimum, Canada should have taken the floor to object that it is wrong to nominate a regime that only months ago massacred thousands of protesters, and that brutally oppresses women, tortures political prisoners, and systematically violates basic human rights."

"This is exactly what the United States did in that meeting. It was the only country that formally objected and disassociated itself from the consensus decision, citing Iran’s appalling record on women’s rights.

Canada and other Western democracies, however, remained silent and allowed the consensus to pass in ECOSOC, a body of which Canada is a member."

UN Watch

 

"The United States disassociates from consensus on the nomination of Iran to the Committee on Program and Co-ordination."

"The regime threatens its neighbours and has for decades infringed on the Iranian people's ability to exercise their basic human rights."

"Due to these and other concerns, we believe Iran is unfit to serve on a body advising member states on program and budgetary matters."

U.S. Ambassador Dan Negrea 

The Security Council chamber at the United Nation in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt /Getty Images

 

Canada obligingly assisted  in the approval of a motion for the Islamic Republic of Iran -- that would be the Iranian regime that just a few months earlier responded to nation-wide protests against the regime by dispatching police, the IRGC and Basij to violently disband the protests by all and any means, leading to the killing of an estimated 30,000 Iranians and the arrests and death sentences of untold numbers of 'enemies of the Islamic Republic' -- to a position on the UN's Committee for Program and Coordination.

 

Iranian-Canadians who desperately wish for the Ayatollah-led, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-enforced Republic to fall, and yearn for the freedom from oppression that would mean for their families in Iran, would have reacted to the news of this incredible betrayal with disbelief. While at the same time, the infiltrated members of the regime and the IRGC that have made a home for themselves in Canada would have beamed with pleasure. Just as Hamas has on occasion congratulated the ruling Liberal government for some of its decisions, now the Iranian regime was given the same opportunity.

 

Officially, for internal consumption, the Liberal government of prime minister Mark Carney denied any such reports; that they did no such thing. The actual facts belie that assertion. Canada gave aid and comfort to a regime under the duress of a conflict brought by the State of Israel and the U.S. military launching an aerial war on the regime, its military, the IRGC, their weapons depots and rocket launchers and nuclear sites. While the Iranian regime presents a distinct danger with its nuclear ambitions and its sponsorship of terrorist groups to the world at large and the Middle East in particular, Canada's government calls for a ceasefire so the regime can survive.

 

Canada's decision at the April 8 meeting of the UN Economic and Social Council enables Iran to have an advisory and oversight role on programs as diverse as gender equality and terrorism prevention, as well as 'peaceful uses of outer space'. Global Affairs Canada's insistence that Canada's role in the event has been misunderstood, is an evasive and shameful tactic in a bid to shield the government from the shame and blame it most certainly deserves for betraying the most elemental foundations of human rights against tyrannical rule. 

 

Official video from the UN Economic and Social Council, most recently chaired by Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the UN, showed an official chairing a plenary session of the council where the Islamic Republic of Iran was included on a list of countries set to be appointed to a three-year term on the Committee for Program and Co-ordination. With no objections from the representatives of the assembled countries, the officiating individual bangs a gavel and declares: "It is so decided". 

 

And Canada helped in that decision; not a word of doubt expressed of the inappropriateness of a corrupt, terror-promoting, nation known for persecuting its own people -- much less its violence visited upon Iranian women who dare to oppose strictures placed upon their most basic of human rights -- sitting on such a committee from Canada.

 

Screenshot from a UN live stream showing the precise moment that a plenary session of the UN Economic and Social Council approved the nomination of the Islamic Republic of Iran to a UN oversight committee. Photo by UN

 

Depends on Whose Ox Is Being Gored

"There are two rumours afloat tonight, but we can confirm nothing. One, that the German fleet has sailed into the Kattegat, north of Denmark, west of Sweden and south of Norway, and is heading for the Skagerrak. Two, that a German expeditionary force is forming at the Baltic pots and that dozens of passenger ships have been hurriedly collected to transport it to Scandinavia."

April 9, 1940

"Hitler this spring day has occupied a couple more countries. At dawn Nazi forces invaded the two neutral states of Denmark and Norway in order, as an official statement piously puts it, 'to protect their freedom and independence'. After twelve swift hours it seems all but over. Denmark, with whom Hitler signed a ten-year non-aggression pact only a year ago, has been completely overrun, and all important military points in Norway, including the capital, are now in Nazi hands. The news is stupefying. Copenhagen occupied this morning, Oslo this afternoon, Kristiansand this evening. All the great Norwegian ports, Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, Stavanger, captured."

"The Fuhrer has given his answer ... Germany has occupied Danish and Norwegian soil in order to protect those countries from the Allies, and will defend their true neutrality until the end of the war." 

"A special communique of the High Command said Copenhagen had been completely occupied by eight a.m. The German forces, it said, had been transported in ships from Baltic ports during the night, landed at Copenhagen at dawn, and had first occupied the citadel and the radio station."

"It was clear that the Danes had offered no resistance whatsoever. The Norwegians, it appeared, had, though the Germans were confident it would cease by nightfall."

"The Danish Minister here had protested in the Wilhelmstrasse early this morning, but had added quickly that Denmark was not in a position to fight Germany. The Norwegians were not supposed to fight, but apparently did. There are reports of German naval losses. All the Danish and Norwegian correspondents were fished out of their beds at dawn this morning and locked up at the Kaiserhof. It was the first they knew that their countries had been 'protected'.

"Tomorrow the Volkische Beobacter, Hitler's own pride (and money-maker) will bannerline in red ink: "GERMANY SAVES SCANDINAVIA!"

Berlin Diary, William L. Shirer 

Arrival of a transport of Dutch Jews in the Theresienstadt ghetto. Czechoslovakia, February 1944.

"...Thanks to the proximity of Sweden 7,200 Jews and some 700 of their non-Jewish relatives were transported to safety in the course of three weeks in October 1943. In some cases Jews were caught by the local authorities; some did not want to leave; others had no means or connections enabling them to embark on the journey. A total of 482 Jews, mostly elderly and sick, were caught and deported to the camp of Theresienstadt."

"The rescue operation by the Danish underground is exceptional because of the widespread agreement and resolve of many Danes from all walks of life – intellectuals, priests, policemen, doctors, blue-color workers – to save the Jews. While some Danes were pro-Nazi and even joined the Waffen SS and participated in war crimes, the underground members implemented the unique rescue. They viewed it as a national refutation of Nazi Germany and a reaffirmation of democratic and humanistic values. It should be noted that since the 1990’s historians have uncovered new perspectives of this operation. Danish scholars have shown that in many cases big sums of money were paid to the seamen who brought the Jews across to Sweden."

Yad Vashem 

 

That was then. This is now. Now, Denmark and Sweden suggest that Israel be booted out of the United Nations. This would be the United Nations that has, over the years, sanctioned Israel on hundreds of occasions while studiously overlooking the human rights abuses of two members of the permanent Security Council, China and Russia, and obliging Iran with critical UN positions and rarely sanctioning any Islamic-majority states for their institutionalized human rights crimes. Denmark has, while declaring itself a friend of Israel and is a home to 7,000 Danish Jews, consistently voted against Israel at the UN.

 

Statement on behalf of Denmark, France, Greece, Slovenia and the United Kingdom.We welcome the important progress that has been made in recent months to end the bloodshed in Gaza, secure the release of the hostages and turn the page on two tragic years of conflict.While the international community is focused on building a peaceful and prosperous future for Gaza, we must not forget what is happening in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

 

Israel has suffered 80 years of grievous violence committed against it and its people through lethal attacks by the Palestinian community in its unrelenting war against the Jewish State. While European countries talk incessantly of a 'two-state solution', and Israel was willing to make an agreement with the leaders of the Palestinians, each one was refused, even when Israel's outreach sought to make accommodations for all the demands of the Palestinians. To no avail. To this day, no Palestinian leader will agree to recognize Israel. Without that formal concession there is no two-state solution. For Palestinians anticipate that only Israel's destruction is acceptable, leaving the Palestinians to claim Judean ancestral land for their own.

 

The fiction of Palestinians living in 'occupied' territory cannot stand up to scrutiny. Without Israel's constant military oversight of the Palestinian territories, lethal attacks would simply proliferate as they once did, before Israel took steps to materially separate itself from the Palestinian side, making it difficult for terrorists and ordinary Palestinian citizens to enter Israel with the intention to murder Jews. With no intention to live in peace and mutual security with Israel, the Palestinians still manage to convince the West that they wish to live in peace. October 7, 2023, punctured that fantasy, but not convincingly enough for Israel's detractors.

 

Denmark has assembled the support of the European Union and other allies in its resistance to President Donald Trump's determination to coerce, threaten, and bully Greenland and Denmark into agreeing to hand over the strategic Arctic island to the United States for 'security' purposes. Denmark is outraged that the Kingdom's protectorate status of long standing of Greenland is under pressure from the United States. There is no end of support for its refusal to succumb to either blandishment or raging accusation from President Donald Trump.

 

Yet the blood shed of thousands of Israeli Jews by Palestinians and the reality that the Palestinian leadership which has groomed its population since 1948 to consider Jews and Israel their enemy needing to be vanquished by any means in an ongoing territorial battle with a country that wants and deserves to live in peace is of total disinterest to Israel's critics -- among them nations that had long been considered by Israel to be among its allies. Immense oil wealth in Arab sheikdoms has enabled states like Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Iran to invest heavily in Western universities, in concert with the Muslim Brotherhood whose agenda is Israel's destruction.

 

Yet such transparent ploys fail to penetrate the logic-oblivious mind of Western governments, which  give heed to slanderous accusations against Israel, in the process to delegitimize the Jewish State whose presence is an assurance of defence of Jews throughout the world now facing a mind-wrenching ambush of virulent antisemitism fuelled by the Middle Eastern enemies of Israel who manipulate wider public opinion on charges of 'genocide' against a nation that has never been free of violent deadly attacks seeking its annihilation.

 

Greenlanders as the original inhabitants of their Arctic island, can be defended against the territorial-acquisitive manoeuvering of a powerful nation's president, with an outraged world looking on and Denmark surrounded with sympathetic allies. Israel, on the other hand, facing existential dilemmas, is viewed as an instigator of violence against a population that claims its territory as their own while perfecting terrorism to a fine degree of barbarity.

 

 

Jihad: From Lethal Violence to Stealth Persuasion

"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means."

"The Ikhwan must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating the destroying the western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions."

"It is a Muslim's destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is and wherever he lands until the final hour comes, and there is no escape from that destiny." 

An Explanatory Memorandum for the Muslim Brotherhood's Goals in North America  

Jihad: Holy or Unholy War?
John L. Esposito
The concept and practice of jihad have been critical in the history of
Islam.1 From the rise of Islam and the creation and expansion of the Muslim
community, jihad has played a central role in Islam. Jihad (exertion or struggle)
is sometimes referred to as the Sixth Pillar of Islam. Throughout history, (as in
other faiths) sacred scripture has been used and abused, interpreted and
misinterpreted, to justify resistance and liberation struggles, extremism and
terrorism, holy and unholy wars.
The importance of jihad is rooted in the Quran’s command to struggle (the
literal meaning of the word jihad) in the path of God and in the example of the
Prophet Muhammad and his early Companions. In its most general meaning,
jihad refers to the obligation incumbent on all Muslims, individuals and the
community, to follow and realize God’s will: to lead a virtuous life and to extend
the Islamic community through preaching, education, example, writing, etc.
Jihad also includes the right, indeed the obligation, to defend Islam and the
community from aggression. Throughout history, the call to jihad has rallied
Muslims to the defense of Islam.
Since the late 20th century, the word jihad has gained remarkable
currency: used by resistance, liberation, and terrorist movements alike to
legitimate their cause and motivate their followers. The Afghan Mujahiddin, the
Taliban and the Northern Alliance, have waged a jihad in Afghanistan against
foreign powers and among themselves; Muslims in Kashmir, Chechnya,
Daghestan and the southern Philippines, Bosnia and Kosovo have fashioned
their struggles as jihads; Hizbollah, HAMAS, and Islamic Jihad Palestine have
characterized war with Israel as a jihad; Algeria’s Armed Islamic Group has
engaged in a jihad of terror against the government there and Osama Bin Laden
and al-Qaeda have waged a global jihad against Muslim governments and the West.

The Muslim Brotherhood, the century-old Egypt-based totalitarian, political, exterminationist leader in Islamist conquest for the universal elevation of Islam and the subjugation of all people on the globe -- to submit to a religion conceived by an Arab businessman in the 7th century Mecca of the Middle East who diligently mined the prophets, holy concepts, and sacred human values of the Hebrew Holy Book to freely lift those precepts and philosophical, historical antecedents to be used in the conceiving of Muhammad's own rendition of a holy scripture, the Koran, which he held to supercede those of two predecessor religions; Judaism and Christianity, as God's 'final word' -- must be recognized for the danger it is.

 

 

Since that inception in 1928 the Muslim Brotherhood has spread its tentacles throughout the world, with countless branches, both those dedicated to violent action -- in the Middle East, Africa and Asia -- and stealth persuasion -- in Western democracies; throughout Europe and the Americas, to use any and all methods between the two extremes to achieve the goal of Islamist domination. Recognizing its threat to their own status as governments, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood. It is past time for the West to catch up.

 

Moderate Muslim-majority countries are under attack by the Muslim Brotherhood's offshoots, just as Western countries are; the methodology differs, as do the techniques, but the end result is the same. Convert or die. Alternately, convert or live under Islam as taxed-and-tolerated inferiors. 

Islam is  now the fastest-growing religion on the globe, likely to overtake Christianity within the next several decades. Where Christianity sees slumping followings, Islam's is expanding. And as it expands it also exports itself everywhere across the world.

 

Through immigration, migration, and refugee claimants, Islam is infiltrating everywhere. Muslims have a tendency to obey Koranic instructions to hold themselves separate from those of other, or no religious affiliations. And since Islam is an entire way of life, subscribed by the strict tenets laid down for Muslims through their holy scriptures, there is no assimilation within another culture, their values, acceptance of a different history, and above all, laws, other than Sharia.

 

Observant Muslims heed their obligation to procreation. Through the scimitar, the Koran and the cradle, Islam grows its ummah unrelentingly, the global presence of Muslims, either in Muslim-majority countries or through the limitless diaspora. And wherever Muslims congregate to become part and apart of an established presence in non-Muslim countries they agitate for Sharia law, arguing that their numbers reaching majority status demands it. 

 

Oddly enough, for a strictly religious people, the incidence of crime among the Muslim population tends to be higher than for other groups. Illegal and criminal activities from human smuggling to trafficking in arms and prohibited substances such as recreational drugs go a long way to funding Islamist terrorism. Tellingly, Islamist groups have become proficient in their use of Western social and cultural concepts of fairness and equality, professing allegiance with social groups they have nothing in common with, and have no regard for, but to use them as helpful supports.

 

Appealing to the human rights due them, Islamists use the guise of victimhood to persuade social progressives abroad that they disproportionately suffer discrimination because of their religion, because of their culture and inherent beliefs, because of their skin colour, because their history is unappreciated, despite that Islam is a religion of peace. That criticism of Islam merely as a result of its proclivity to produce hordes of terrorists plaguing the world community in a violently constant replay of its founder's militancy of persuasion is 'Islamophobic', shaming the timid and the unaware to silence.

 

As the engine of Islamist totalitarianism the Muslim Brotherhood which has succeeded in inserting itself as an honourable representative of Islam throughout the West, with its machinations of its offshoots like    CAIR and its countless 'humanitarian charities' that purport to support the poor and the undertrodden in developing nations while siphoning the funds toward terrorism, it requires governments throughout the world to finally recognize its role in destroying what the Western world represents as democratic unions supporting human rights.

 

 

The Ideology of Military Training Gone Amok

 

"He [Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabber] was 100 percent inspired by ISIS."

"We're digging through more social media, more interviews ... to ascertain more about that."

"No definitive link [ has been found linking the New Orleans attack and the Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside a Trump hotel in Las Vegas the same day]."

Christopher Raia, deputy assistant director, FBI counterterrorism division 

"[In the military], I learned the meaning of great service and what it means to be responsive and take everything seriously."

Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar

"It's not lost on us that it's in front of the Trump building, and that it's a Tesla vehicle." 

"But we don't have information at this point that definitely tells us, or suggests, that [the incident] was because of a particular ideology."

Spencer Evans, FBI agent based in Las Vegas

Photo show suspects of two separate incidents that occurred on New Year's Day. To the left, a man identified as Matthew Livelsberger allegedly set off a Tesla Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas. To the right, a suspect identified as Shamsud-Din Jabbar is accused of allegedly hitting pedestrians with a truck in New Orleans, killing 14 people. Photo by LinkedIn and FBI/AFP via Getty Images

Matthew Livelsberger, 37, of Colorado, a highly decorated American soldier was awarded two Bronze stars, one with a valour device for courage under fire; a combat infantry badge, and an Army Commendation Medal with valour. Livelsberger and Jabbar both spent time at the Fort Bragg massive army base in North Carolina. An official from the base stated no overlap in their assignments ever took place.

New Orleans police and federal agents investigate a suspected terrorist attack on Bourbon Street in New Orleans on New Year's Day on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (Chris Granger/The New Orleans Advocate via AP)

The very day that U.S. Texas citizen Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar rammed into a crowd of people at 3:00 a.m. on January 1st on Bourbon Street, killing 14 and injuring 35, in New Orleans, Matthew Livelsberger fatally shot himself in the head just before the Tesla Cybertruck he was seated in burst into flames outside the Las Vegas hotel owned by Donald Trump. Speculation is that he had planned for the explosion to cause a notable level of carnage.

The vehicle as it exploded, however, due to its steel sides, absorbed most of the explosive force. A handgun was found at the dead man's feet, seated in the driver's seat. And it seemed obvious that his death was self-inflicted. The interior of the truck took most of the damage from the blast as it "vented out and up", failing to hit the Trump hotel doors a few feet distant from the truck.

"The level of sophistication is not what we would expect from an individual with this type of military experience", and presumably expertise, stated a special agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Inside the charred truck a second firearm, a number of fireworks, a passport, a military ID, credit cards, an iPhone and a smartwatch were found. Both guns had been legally acquired.

 

Livelsberger had served in the army since 2006, deploying twice to Afghanistan and serving in Ukraine, Tajikistan, Georgia and Congo, with the Green Berets, highly trained special forces working to counter terrorism abroad. The truck explosion, packed with firework, mortars and camp fuel canisters occurred hours after 42-year-old Jabbar rammed his rented truck into a French Quarter crowd in New Orleans. 

"[Livelsberger loved Trump] and he was always a very, very patriotic soldier, a patriotic American."

Livelsberger uncle 

"[Livelsberger was a] big [supporter of Trump. He voted for Trump in November's election]."

The Daily Beast

Getty Images

Mass Murder, The Vile Unspeakable

 

Map of Palestinian Arab attacks on Israeli sites

Something about this day. Was it a foreboding when we woke to a dark, heavily raining morning? And then we heard the news. Last night before I shut down my computer after posting my last blog of the night, I had a look at my Twitter feed. There was an announcement that heavy conflict had broken out after Hamas had launched hundreds of rockets into Israel. This has been a tough year for Israel, having to cope with countless terror assaults. Not only incited by the Palestinian Authority through its school curricula teaching children to hate Jews and Israel as 'occupiers' but through the emergence of new terror groups in Jenin launching attacks. As though Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad weren't enough to cope with.

Israel has been forced to balance the safety and security of its presence in the Middle East after reclaiming its ancestral territories and human rights in its re-establishment as a Jewish state, an authentic indigenous place of haven for Jews the world over as citizens while at the same time absorbing the presence of others, non-Jews ranging from Christians to Arabs, Druze, Kurds, Bedouins, Circassians, Baha'i and Africans who have migrated to the country from their war-ravaged countries. Arab Palestinians represent over 20% of the population, with equal citizenship rights enabling them to elect members of their own to the Knesset. 

 

But the very fact of Israel's existence -- on land that Palestinian Arabs who migrated from Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East into Israel to live amongst Jews who never left to become a part of the great Jewish diaspora when Jews were forcefully dispersed during the Roman occupation thousands of years ago -- continues to see Palestinians resentful, raging against Israel's presence, declaring the land rightfully theirs, not that of Jews historically indigenous to the land. Peace has never really settled over Israel. From its legal and United Nations-supported declaration of statehood returned in 1948, it has suffered a succession of military challenges by neighbouring Arab countries, all rebuffed.

In the last several years, a number of Arab countries; the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain and Sudan; have joined Egypt and Jordan in signing peace agreements with Israel, under the Abraham Accords. It appears that Saudi Arabia is seriously considering joining them; in essence agreeing that Israel has a right to exist in its native geography. The Shi'ite Islamic Republic of Iran, the region's hot spot for aggression and violence, a major sponsor of terrorism, plans to destroy Israel, sponsoring and enlisting violently destructive actions of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah.

Inciting violence against the state of Israel with a long-range plan of its destruction, Iran views the potential of Saudi Arabia signing a formal peace agreement with Israel as a legitimization of its presence, by the most influential of the Sunni-majority Arab states in the Middle East, an agreement that could pave the way of all further resistance to Israel's presence vanishing in an accord of like minds looking toward future security and mutual prosperity. What better way to shock Arab nations away from accepting Israel's presence than to incite a war where Jews are forced to defend themselves by killing those Arabs attacking them?

This morning came the news that Hamas had lobbed thousands of rockets yet again into Israel from Gaza. That Hamas terrorist operatives had infiltrated Israeli army bases by stealth overnight, as well as Israeli border towns, to attack and kill Jewish soldiers and civilians alike, some 50 Israelis from soldiers to women, elderly and children being taken as 'prisoners' into Gaza, to be used as collateral for prisoner exchanges. Terrorists entered homes in border towns to kill the inhabitants, people in the streets and in cars were summarily shot to death. Women were caught, raped and murdered. 

Hamas' own publicity arm took countless self-congratulatory videos of shocking assaults of civilians, of people being slaughtered, of Jewish women and girls abducted after being raped, of Palestinian terrorists wielding submachine guns stalking through the streets and houses of Israeli towns, shooting wildly, dead bodies lying everywhere on the streets. Documenting, in essence, their depraved atrocities, every one of which represents a crime against humanity, genuinely shocking war crimes.

Crimes that should being shame to any community whose members might be involved in such malevolently horrible actions, but which within the Palestinian community becomes a reason for joy and jubilation, a resounding success by those who portray themselves to the world community at large as hapless victims of Jewish imperialism, who deserve compassion and support against the existence of a Jewish state. An attack on human decency, on the very concept of people of different origins, tribal affiliations and religions being able to live in decent peace among one another.

A condition of which Israel is a shining example, and of which the Palestinian enclaves of the West Bank and Gaza Strip remain a narrative of human depravity as they celebrate the deaths of those they have been inculcated with hatred toward by their leaders. For a Jew to appear in a West Bank city is to invite violence and death. Yet in Israel, over two million Arabs live in  peace and security among Jews in a Jewish state. 

https://twitter.com/i/status/1710617112094572907

Canada's Security Intelligence Agencies vs Canada's Activist Courts

"What I'm kind of starting to notice is that ... whether it's explicit or not, they can be politically motivated. There might be a trend here. It may be too early to tell, but that's ... something that I've noticed and something that I've heard."

"Our client was fortunate enough that he had the resources and the means to hire a lawyer to assist him [in] this process, but if you weren't so fortunate, I mean, he might be facing a lifetime ban."

Athena Portokalidis, immigration lawyer, Markham, Ontario

 

"It is next to impossible to challenge the advice that security intelligence agents offer to the department."

"It's really about how we interpret what constitutes a risk, and what sort of association actually renders someone inadmissible."

"[Many people are screened out based on secret evidence that can't be reviewed, which] often leads to egregious injustices."

"What I would say is that in the immigration domain, it is pretty much a Wild West."

Sharry Aiken, professor of law, Queen's University

A recent Federal Court decision suggests the Canada Border Services Agency relied on unreliable intelligence when it chose to deny permanent residency to Liping Geng. (Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press)

In Canada, a controversial discussion continues to rage around foreign interference, efforts by foreign entities in service to their governments to disrupt Canadian elections. At the same time two arms of the federal government routinely deport people suspected of engaging in espionage or terrorism. Or, they are barred from entry to Canada. Lawyers working within the immigration system anticipate a ramping up of these efforts by security officials, as a reflection of the heightened attention on the internal meddling by other countries in strictly Canadian affairs. 

But then, it is not the work of immigration lawyers to be aware of potential disruptions allied with the entry to Canada of foreign elements tasked with infiltrating Canadian academia, society, corporations and governments at all levels; their bread-and-butter is successful representation of the clients in whose service their professional credentials earn them both reputation and financial security. Their very business model is based on representing clients, not the security and welfare of Canada.

In the security screening process which determines who may enter Canada and which visa applicants may not, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada Border Services Agency and the Immigration Department are all involved. Officials are tasked with barring permanent residents or foreign nationals from entry to Canada through the Immigratuon and Refugee Protection Act, should they be engaged in terrorism or in espionage injurious to Canada's interests.

The Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada acts as the independent administrative tribunal hearing applications. Should there be red flags when people submit applications for visas, they become subject to background and security checks; CSIS and CBSA produce reports to the board, and how to manage an application then is up to the discretion of the Immigration and Refugee Board. Those applicants deemed inadmissible through this process have the right to appeal to the Federal Court.

A former Canadian citizen who had been denied permanent residence, deemed inadmissible on the basis that he taught English to Chinese spies and might be involved in espionage himself, was represented by immigration lawyer Athena Portokalidis. Liping Geng, a 68-year-old Chinese citizen's case was set out in a report prepared by the National Security Screen Division of CBSA, citing information from a CSIS report. Double-screening, in other words by two separate, but cooperative intelligence agencies.

According to court records, Geng was a member of China's People's Liberation Army as a young man. He worked as an English teacher after completing school, at an army-operated department training students in foreign languages. Everyone who attended the school was "in or was linked to Chinese military intelligence", Canadian officials stated; the teachers were actively engaged in espionage. Later, Geng spent nine years completing master's and doctoral degrees at University of Toronto.

From there he went on to teach, and his family was approved for permanent residence status in Canada, becoming citizens in 1995. Geng returned to China in 2007, choosing to renounce his Canadian citizenship, since China will not recognize dual citizenship. He continued to regularly visit his family in Canada in following years, then chose to return permanently to Canada after retirement, in 2019.

Security officials were criticized for taking their evidence from newspapers and other open sources to build their case to exclude the man, instead of acquiring hard evidence, leading Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley on appeal to find that CSIS and CBSA reports accusing Geng of espionage "drove the decision-making process". The justice then wrote a ruling that quashed the Immigration and Refugee Board's decision; that the security assessments amounted to an "overzealous effort" to establish Geng as a member of the Chinese military.

Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found the the consequences of the decision to deny Liping Geng admission were 'particularly harsh.' (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

 

But failing to take into account that China enacted a law calling on all its expatriate citizens wherever in the world they live, to be loyal to China and follow the Chinese Communist Party rules of engagement. Espionage, both commercial/scientific and military/government, along with academic, is a Chinese strategy long recognized to have robbed Western countries of trade and military secrets. Moreover, Chinese law empowers Beijing to hold Chinese who are citizens of other countries liable to China for maligning the CCP, or refusing to act on Beijing's behest.

"[A CBSA security assessment in April 2021 cited the CSIS report and other documents found on the internet to conclude that the language school falls within the organizational structure of the Chinese signals spy agency] and that many graduates are assigned to 3/PLA monitoring and control stations, including those targeting the United States and Canada."

"As a result of his employment as a lecturer with the LFLI, there are reasonable grounds to believe that the applicant is a member of an organization, the 3/PLA, that has engaged in acts of espionage that are against Canada and contrary to Canada's interests."

"There are also reasonable grounds to believe that the applicant himself has engaged in espionage."

CBSA report

 

"[The language institute where Geng taught] is a military training institute where officers and foreign affairs officials receive language training, including for the purpose of being assigned to listening posts."

CSIS report

People walk across a street near a large screen promoting the Chinese People's Liberation Army in Beijing.  Andy Wong/The Associated Press

Incentivizing Terrorism

 Mahmoud Abbas w/released terrorists(AFP Photo)

"The payments of salaries by the PA and the PLO to terrorists and to the families of dead terrorists reflect the core identity of the general Palestinian public as they see it. According to Palestinian leaders, achieving their national goal of establishing their state over all of Palestine commits them to struggling against Zionism in a wide variety of ways, including terrorism. Therefore, terrorists, even more than those who struggle through other means, are heroes fighting for the national and religious cause, and this is why they should be glorified and rewarded without any hesitation."

"The salary payments to terrorists from all Palestinian terror organizations, including Hamas as well as those who carried out terror attacks after the Oslo agreements came into effect, are made according to Palestinian Authority legislation that refers to the terrorists specifically as “fighters.” It makes clear that the Oslo accords are not considered by the Palestinian leadership and by most of the Palestinian people as a deviation from or an end to the battle against Zionism."

"The reaction of the donor community and Israel reflects the success of the Palestinians in portraying themselves as victims. The donors are uncomfortable making official Palestinian support of terror an issue of dispute with the PA."

"The donors and some in Israel are also concerned that steps against the Palestinian Authority opposing this practice may lead to further radicalization of the Palestinians that may cause a deterioration of the fragile situation. The Palestinians perceive this readiness to willfully turn a blind eye towards the payments of the salaries as a green light to continue the solicitation of terror through the payments as well as other kinds of incitement, hate indoctrination, and delegitimization of Israel and the dissemination of this ideology in the West and in Israel itself."

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs 

The family of Mohammed Tarayreh, who stabbed to death a 13-year-old Israeli girl in her bed, is now eligible for a monthly stipend from the Palestinian “Martyrs’ Fund.”  (AP Photo)

Western nations, from Canada to the U.S., the European Union and other nations dedicated to the United Nations, continue to give financial aid annually to Palestinians through the auspices of he United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), the UN refugee agency established to permanently deliver aid to Palestinian 'refugees'. It's hard to imagine that hundreds of thousands of people who chose to temporarily leave a geography in anticipation of the destruction of a state they feel has usurped them from the territory they claim, continue to claim refugee status after over 70 years of self-exile.

 

Or that the United Nations and its agencies are complicit in agreeing to regard them as refugees and to extend that designation to all their issue over the past 70 years, magnifying the original number of  an estimated 700,000 to six million at present, all claiming entitlement to UNRWA services. And in the bargain, claiming right of return to Israel. The 'refugee camps' they live in are anything but rude shelters; they're modern cities with high-rise buildings and shopping centres.

 

Diaspora 'refugees' who have settled in Arab/Muslim countries of the Middle East for generations are held by those countries to be 'refugees', never having permitted them to attain citizenship on compassionate or any other grounds, which is how most of the world's refugees are settled elsewhere than their original places of origin. Most Arabs who call themselves 'Palestinians' having wrenched that term from historical Palestinian Jews, originally hailed from Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Jordan.

Palestinian Chairman Abbas, PA Television, September 16, 2015. (Palwatch)

It is no secret that the Palestinian Authority relays 'martyrdom' funding to terrorists and their families, celebrating their attacks on Israeli Jews as acts of divine inspiration in a jihad against the presence of Jews on territory they claim to have been consecrated to Islam. And for simple, sheer hatred of Jews, normally referred to as antisemitism. If official confirmation was required, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs affirmed that the Palestinian Authority continues its program called 'pay-for-slay' payments for those who injure or kill Israelis.

 

These are generous payments made to Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for their criminal attacks against Jews; payment also goes out to families of 'martyrs' who die in attacks against Israelis, as well as to Palestinian terrorists who are injured during the course of their attacks. The payouts amount to a salary allocated to 'heroes' of Palestinian 'resistance', that is richer than the average wage of Palestinians in an enclave where unemployment hovers about 25 percent.

Palestinians, in fact, line up daily at border crossing points for well-paid employment in Israel. Crossing over from the PA West Bank where school curricula is infused with lessons for Palestinian children on the hated Jews in Israel, encouraging children to become future terrorists. This is a well-known situation but rather than chastising and penalizing by withholding the financial wherewithal the Palestinian Authority and Hamas use for incitement and terror-incentive drives, they're rewarded by humanitarian funding through the West.

The PA spends roughly $300 million yearly on its pay-for-slay program, representing ten percent of its complete budget. This relates directly to international assistance through UNRWA, subsidizing the cost of basic government services such as health care, education and allied social services. Donor countries pretend ignorance of the use of their funding since they funnel it through a third party; UNRWA. Canada, for example, uses the disclaimer that it:

"...will remain closely engaged with UNRWA and continue to exercise enhanced due diligence for all humanitarian and development assistance funding for Palestinians."

"This work includes ongoing oversight, regular site visits, a systematic screening process and strong anti-terrorism provisions in funding agreements."

In 2014, a stockpile of Hamas rockets was discovered in an UNRWA-sponsored school. The agency's staff was charged in 2021 by UN Watch of promoting antisemitism on social media. Reports published by various groups indicate that UNRWA-funded school textbooks contain antisemitic content including student incitement toward hatred of Israel and Jews. UNRWA officials admit this to be a problem, but feel they cannot interfere with Palestinian school curricula.

In 'refugee'-hosting countries such as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, minority Palestinian populations are maintained in a holding pattern, never given equal standing as citizens, retained as a living scab whose wounds are never meant to heal until such time as Jews are dislodged from the territory on which the Jewish state sits. Canada's Department of Global Affairs issued a press lease stating that:

"In Syria, 91 percent of Palestinian refugee households live in absolute poverty."

"In Lebanon, more than 89 percent of Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria are in critical need of sustained humanitarian assistance."

In Lebanon, Syria and even Jordan where Palestinians have been given citizenship, they are restricted from advancement in society, not given rights of ordinary citizens, relegated to third-class status. In Israel, by contrast, some two million Palestinian Arabs enjoy full citizenship, serve in the Knesset and form part of the higher professions in law and medicine. The international community and the United Nations should, in fact long ago have advocated that Palestinians be integrated into their societies of origin, rather than funding an organization whose purpose is to ensure they remain refugees in perpetuity.

Palestinians attends a rally in solidarity to the escape of the six Palestinian prisoners from the Israeli prison of Gilboa on September 8, 2021, in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip. (Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90)

Victimized Palestinian Refugees

"[The spike in terrorism  happens] in part because of, over $6 billion in U.S., Canada, and European Union aid given to the Palestinian Authority [PA] and the United Nations Relief Works Agency [UNRWA] since 2008."

"The PA invests a substantial share of its budget, and hence of this foreign aid, on inciting terrorism, on glorifying terrorism and on financially rewarding terrorism."

Henry Kopel, (retired) U.S. Federal Prosecutor

"[We believe that] the unfortunate but glaring reality here is this: Decades of negotiations, agreements, promises, warnings, moral appeals, and temporary aid suspensions all have done nothing to reduce or prevent the Palestinian Authority's relentless commitment to inciting, glorifying, and financially rewarding acts of terrorism committed against innocent Israelis."

The Abraham Accord Peace Initiative

Terror attack in a synagogue in Jerusalem: This evening at around 8:30pm local time, a terrorist arrived at a synagogue in the Neve Ya'akov boulevard in Jerusalem and proceeded to shoot at a number of people in the area   Israeli Police Photo

 

Spontaneous, erratic, random terrorist attacks can take place anywhere, at any time in Israel, incited by a Palesltinian leadership commitment to convincing Palestinians that they are victims of Israeli aggression. It is a message that has a much wider audience as well, through a clever institutionalized program of 'public relations' propaganda painting Israel and Jews who support Israel, as illegal 'occupiers' of their own Biblical-era ancestral geography in the Middle East. 

The hugely aggressive and highly successful strategy used by the Palestinian Authority in what is called the West Bank (of the Jordan River) and their sectarian counterparts, Hamas in Gaza, a Western-acknowledged terrorist group has had little difficulty initiating a Western-popularized sanctions regimen popularly called the BDS Movement, Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions isolationist move against Israel. 

 

Unions and Academic institutions in particular have taken to the BDS program with great enthusiasm, all too willing to endorse the slander that Israel is actively engaged in blocking a peace agreement that would lead the way to a formally internationally recognized Palestinian state. The PA and its cohorts smear Israel with refusing to negotiate in good faith for a peace agreement, while in reality at the negotiating table Israel has time and again offered all the conditions demanded by the PA only to have them back away.

 

Palestinians celebrate a Jerusalem terror attack that killed seven Israelis near a synagogue, in Gaza City, January 27, 2023. (Mahmud Hams/AFP)

 

Israel has been forced by Palestinian Authority intransigence over negotiations and the PA's institutionalized teaching of young Palestinians from grade school forward through school curricula, social media, television and news networks that Jews are their enemies and there is no finer future for an aspiring Palestinian hero than to conspire to murder Jews. Through such achievements as delivering death to Jews, the perpetrators receive celebrity status, their families are given generous financial pensions..

 

These acts of terrorism are excused by Western allies of both the PA and Israel as inevitable, a people victimized and frustrated, fighting for their human rights. The murder of Jewish Israelis, from young children to adults to elders to soldiers and police fail to impact the conscience of the world community which has grown comfortable viewing Jews and Israelis as having the upper hand, convincing them that their sympathy is rightfully placed with the Palestinian 'victims' of Israeli 'apartheid'.

 

Should Jews venture by misadventure into a West Bank village or city (cities called 'refugee camps'), their lives are immediately endangered. No Jews may live among Arabs in the West Bank, whereas several million Arabs live in Israel as citizens with equal rights to Jews. Palestinian Arabs sit in the Israeli Knesset (parliament), are appointed judges, their youth attend Israeli universities, medical practitioners practise out of Israeli hospitals.

 

In the Jewish apartheid state, Druze, Bedouin, Arabs, Christian, Baha'i and a host of other non-Jews have citizenship with all the rights associated with that status. Most non-Jewish Israeli citizens, including Palestinians have no wish to live under PA rule, preferring to remain in Israel which speaks volumes about the assurances of justice and security guaranteed to all. Still, among those living in the West Bank, in Gaza and in Israel itself, Palestinians are readily convinced by their leaders that their finest calling is as a martyr in the 'struggle' against the 'oppressor'.

 

While the Palestinian Authority continues to reward terrorism; Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has said outright that nothing could induce him or the PA to stop what is called 'pay-for-slay', which says all that is needed to fully understand how much of a 'partner-for-peace' Israel has in the current Palestinian administration -- and it has never been any different under any previous leader. In effect, every Western power that sanctimoniously helps fund the PA in the assumption they are helping the Palestinians is complicit in their terrorist actions and the death of Jews. 

This is no secret. The evidence is blatantly available, even boasted of. Media in the West play deliberately into the hands of the PA media machine. Headlines never fail to emphasize the latest news from the canted perspective of the 'Palestinian cause'. When Israel Defence Forces defensively cause the death of an armed terrorist who has just killed Israelis, news headlines blare: the IDF kills a Palestinian overlooking the cause and effect.

The world -- certainly not the United Nations, and much less so, the UNRWA arm of the UN specific to the Palestinian 'situation' has no interest in removing the identification of 'refugees' from a people who left the territory in favour of returning once assembled Arab armies destroyed the nascent Israeli state after refusing the UN Partition plan for side-by-side states, Israeli and Palestinian. Remaining refugees consolidates their victimhood status.

There is no expectation that the Palestinians will be civilized, will develop the core infrastructure of a responsible state, will be capable and amenable of administering itself in a manner expected of a sovereign state with full employment for its population and a standard of living that would not include international handouts in pity of a marginalized population. 

 

The time has long passed for Palestinians to be proud of themselves as responsible, independent people. It's never too late but that time won't come as long as they're being coddled with no expectations of civilized behaviour, encouraging their victimhood.

Israeli forces, paramedic reach the site of terror attack, image via Ahmad Gharabli/AFP/ Getty Images

Inshallah, Lebanon

"[Following the Beirut port explosion of August 4, 2020 is the city beginning to heal?] ...No, it's worse. Because [there has been] no justice. Nothing."

"There are so many families that have lost their children, their parents, their aunts, their uncles that are working really hard to do something about it [looking for answers]. But I don't know if we're going to get anywhere."

"Now we have to think twice about everything, everything, everything. It's very mind-boggling. But having said that, I still love Lebanon, and I still love living here."

"It could be the most beautiful country in the world. And, unfortunately, it's not today."

"We're fed up with saying to ourselves 'We need to be resilient'. No. We need to make changes. We need drastic changes."

"It's chaotic. It's difficult. It's a transition, hopefully, to better things."

"And I say this with parentheses -- Inshallah. Meaning' hopeful', in Arabic."

Barbara Abdeni Massaad, Author, photographer

rsz_leinterviste

Oriana Fallaci, the verbally pugilistic Italian journalist who earned an admirable reputation as a hard-nosed, intrepid journalist whom Grand Ayatollah Khomeini agreed could interview him soon after the Islamic Revolution in Iran, also wrote a novel based on her experiences in Lebanon during and after the civil war which she titled 'Inshallah'. At that time too, when Beirut had been half-destroyed and Iran sent its al-Quds division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps to the country to train Shi'ite Lebanese the Islamist death cult of terrorism, there was still hope for the country.  

Fallaci succumbed to the demand placed on her to wear a face-revealing burqa to interview Khomeini for the opportunity to ask him probing, accusative questions of the route he was taking Iran toward. Finally, in the face of the Ayatollah's growing irritation with the questions she posed, she declared she was tearing the 'rags' off ("I’m going to take off this stupid medieval rag right now!”). Her novel described the dismal condition of Lebanon, its Muslim sects divided, the power struggles between Lebanese Christians, Druze and Sunnis, and the inferior status of the Shi'ites.

Shi'ite Hezbollah, Iran's terrorist proxy group is pretty well in control of Lebanon now; threat, intimidation, violence, all accomplished what originally living in a state of harmonious mutual suspicion, alternating political positions in a governing-sharing agreement between Lebanon's various communities has pretty well broken under the weight of the civil war and the inability to recover from the meddling of Syria and Iran. Hezbollah recklessly stored explosive material in dilapidated storehouses in Beirut's port.

 

Deadly port explosion rocks Beirut - Splash247

The inevitable occurred when a spark led to a massive explosion destroying part of the port infrastructure, killing over 220 Beirutis, and injuring an additional 6,500 others. Two and a half years later, bereaved families are still calling for an investigation to be launched. The originally assigned judge of the Lebanese judiciary resigned amidst threats and intimidation from Hezbollah wanting to protect itself from what would be damning conclusions of its willful neglect causing death and injury.

The February 2005 bomb-assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri's investigation was finally taken over by a UN special tribunal that found, as expected, Hezbollah agents to have planned the murder of the influential and respected Lebanese politician, their strings pulled by Iran.

Hezbollah's first atrocity took place when the newly-fledged terrorist group bombed the American UN military barracks on a UN peacekeeping mission, murdering 307 people: 241 U.S. and 58 French.

 

Over time, Hezbollah has gained in strength and influence, receiving munitions and stockpiling technologically updated missiles from Iran. It has launched attacks against Israelis and Jews internationally as Iran's terrorist proxy, and it has firmly established itself as an integrated part of the Lebanese government, while maintaining its armed forces separate and apart from the Lebanese military. It is more powerful and better armed than the Lebanese military. And under its malign influence Lebanon has faltered and become utterly dysfunctional

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Fuel shortage plunges Lebanon into darkness

Following the blast at Beirut's port, the severely troubled country's economy has been destroyed, inflation has made life impossible for its residents; people cannot withdraw their savings from Lebanon's banking system. Some desperate civilians have taken to robbing banks to the extent of their savings, badly needed to pay for surgeries for ailing family members. Food, heating oil and medical supplies are scarce and people are desperately in need.

The country, once the pride of the Middle East, its coastal 'French Riviera' and 'Swiss Alps', the playground of beautiful landscapes that drew tourists from across the Middle East and further afield is now a pathetic remnant of its former glory. The kidnappings and hostage-taking, the ransom demands and 'prisoner' exchanges, the underground incarceration of Church of England Terry Waite among others, incrementally destroyed the country. It is now on its knees, its people facing starvation.

 

People are threatened daily by economic and political threats. Some 80,000 Lebanese left their country in 2021 representing an increase of 346 percent over 2020. Political instability, economic meltdown, has led to a massive deterioration of the quality of life -- to the extent that 63 percent of Lebanese would emigrate if the opportunity arose. UNICEF reports that Lebanese children "believe emigration is their only hope".

 

According to the United Nations, 78 percent of the population lives in poverty. Lebanese Civil War survivors (1975 to 1990) claim that the crisis of today is worse than the parlous times they experienced living in dread of shelling or sniper fire. 

 

Members of Lebanon’s Hezbollah take part in Ashura commemorations in a southern Beirut suburb. Anwar Amro/AFP/Getty Images