(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Las caídas del guindo)

This has been a week of revelations. And surprises. It is often said that a revelation that puts an end to a deception makes one “fall from the cherry tree.”

In Spain many are falling from the same cherry tree permanently, and one gets the impression that hours later they miss the branches and rush to climb back up the tree, once again conveniently deceived, awaiting the next hard knock.

That this fondness for the sigh and the “what a disappointment” or “I would never have expected it” is a specialty of the ridiculousness of the center-right in Spain is already known by everyone.

They have been falling from the cherry tree for 35 years, but no blow diminishes their love of self-deception. But let us go first to a revelation from which hundreds of foreigners who do not know the saying fell from the cherry tree.

The greatest revelation of all, at least the one that may have the most positive consequences for the honest Spaniards who want to end the nightmare of a coup-plotting head of government, occurred in Strasbourg on Wednesday.

And it is the revelation had by the vast majority of the 706 members of the European Parliament from 26 countries and their respective governments, who believed that Pedro Sánchez was a bungling and frivolous social democrat but who, given what circulates today around Europe and the world, asked to be taken as a reasonably acceptable character to keep pulling this carriage, already held together with rusty screws when not pins, that is the European Union.

Suddenly they have understood that what they would have accepted as an ordinary, common and acceptable being governing in Spain is not that, not by a long shot.

He is an extraordinary being in the worst sense of the term, a person one rarely encounters in his intensity of coarseness and perfidy at once, a lying man, without scruples, but above all with an inner violence that cannot promise or portend anything good.

He arrived at his star appearance in Strasbourg with his nerves frayed, because he takes setbacks very badly and his plans to stage a coup d’état without attracting too much attention had blown up in the air.

Spaniards have not only realized that with the amnesty for the criminals of the coup-plotting of 2017 in exchange for seven votes he is perpetrating the destruction of the constitutional regime of 1978.

But moreover many of them have decided that they are going to confront the coup-plotter Pedro Sánchez and make his life impossible wherever they can and whenever they can.

And the coup-plotter will now only be able to resort directly to repression, because the capacity for deception that he has had, much of it to be sure, has run out.

In Strasbourg he arrived nervous, his mask fell off, and he has at last shown his true stony face to the European political and journalistic class that had let itself be deceived so easily.

It had let itself be deceived by the greatest swindler and liar in the history of Spain, first because he is a great swindler and liar.

And second because it is more comfortable not to see the unpleasant truths on the European stage, of which there are plenty, and ignoring them is usually a good recipe for a harmony that always reverts into well-remunerated continuity.

Also because treating well the head of government of a large country like Spain always turns out to be profitable in the kitchen of Brussels, however dreadful the opinion one has of him.

Even more so if, as with Ursula von der Leyen, a relationship of mutual favors has been established that has worked to unheard-of and who-knows-if-fraudulent levels when one asks about the destination of some European funds that have reached Spain without any questioning whatsoever.

We do not know what Von der Leyen really knew about Sánchez before, she who will be, as soon as things improve a little, the next figure to disappear down the drain from the European stage.

Many things are going to happen in Europe in the next six months, no doubt, ahead of the June 9 elections, and what is clear is that some are going to be good too for those of us who believe that there has been no management more catastrophic, freedom-killing and harmful to the interests of Spaniards than the Commission of Ursula von der Leyen.

The other revelation has been to see how easily the PP digests a coup d’état. Multitudes of its adherents have again fallen from their respective cherry trees. “How is it possible?” they said.

The PP spends weeks calling on the population to take to the streets because the homeland is in danger, which it is, on account of the amnesty law that is a coup d’état against the Constitution.

It calls for mobilization and maximum alert against Sánchez, the unworthy coup-plotter, and the PSOE, against the communists and the separatists and the terrorists and the rest of the malefactors.

And the day after directing every possible diatribe at the criminals who want to destroy the democratic regime, it makes a pact precisely with those criminals over all the parliamentary committees.

With which they legitimize the coup-plotters of all the parties implicated in the crime. The Partido Popular makes a pact with the PSOE, with Sumar, with Junts and with Bildu and the PNV and the whole lot of them.

That, of course, and then it goes to Strasbourg and says that what Sánchez and his band are doing with this total dismantling of the institutions and the destruction of Nation and State in agreement with the worst enemies of Spain is intolerable.

It is possible that the omnipresent propaganda against VOX, and also very legitimate convictions, prevent all of them from voting for VOX.

But there are ever more Spaniards of all ideological sectors, some greet it, others regret it, who understand that the PP leadership has entered the path of a “loyal opposition” that amounts to a “satellite opposition” of the socialist power and that it is going to be incapable of getting out of it.

And that this path, which Mariano Rajoy had already set out on, only surprised by the economic catastrophe that defeated Rodríguez Zapatero so as to return placidly to the assigned place, leaving the Soraya-style handbag on his bench, cements and legitimizes the regime without alternation that Sánchez, the separatists and terrorists and the immense international interests that have been in this totalitarian project in Spain for twenty years now are gestating with this coup d’état.

If the coup-plotters of the criminal alliance that Sánchez has forged for his majority manage to get the PP to take on this last great step of the transformation of the regime with the same meek attitude of servitude as all that went before, the whole task of confronting the new regime will fall on a single opposition of conservative forces, today still a minority, defamed, harassed and mistreated in a minority party.

But it would not be the first time that happens. Nor the first time that that minority ends up moving the majority to put an end to the tyranny.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

This article was written for the Capitol Institute and can be found https://www.thecapitolinstitute.org/2023/12/12/unmasking-the-alarming-surge-of-antisemitism-a-global-perspective/

The alarming surge of antisemitism has cast a dark shadow over societies, echoing a historical trend that has persisted since time immemorial. In February 2020, the Gold Institute for Policy Research convened a crucial briefing in the U.S. Senate, shedding light on the disturbing idea that antisemitism might be the prevailing terrorism of our time.

The catalyst for renewed concern came from the heinous and barbaric acts committed by Hamas against Israeli civilians. The unintended consequences of these actions have unveiled the true extent of the antisemitic virus that has long lingered beneath the surface of global consciousness. Antisemitism, once debatable in its scope, now stands exposed as a systemic issue within various spheres of society.

Traditionally, antisemitism on college campuses was often attributed to a fringe minority of professors and what some deemed as “enlightened” students. However, recent congressional hearings with Ivy League university presidents have made it clear that antisemitism is deeply ingrained in our higher education system.

In response to Representative Elise Stefanik’s question to Harvard’s Claudine Gay, if “calling for the genocide of Jews violates Harvard’s Code of Conduct.” “It depends on the context,” Gay said. This realization forces us to confront the uncomfortable truth that this form of hate is not isolated but rather woven into the very fabric of institutions that shape future leaders.

The acknowledgment that some members of Congress harbor antisemitic sentiments is not new. Still, the shift from financial motivations to a desire for the destruction of the Jewish people is alarming. It is now clear as a climate utopian day this is no longer about the Benjamins; it’s a manifestation of a deeply rooted hatred that transcends monetary concerns. Confronting this issue goes beyond symbolic gestures like purchasing carbon credits; it demands a meticulous dismantling of the systemic biases ingrained in our society.

Optimism in the face of adversity is a powerful perspective. In the aftermath of critical events like those on October 7th, the luxury of obliviousness has been stripped away, compelling individuals to choose between supporting the violent actions of groups like Hamas or advocating for peace. The deafening noise from the pro-Hamas faction on the left should not overshadow the positive momentum within pro-Jewish groups worldwide, which are becoming more emboldened and vocal.

An anecdote shared by this author provides a glimmer of hope amid the bleak landscape. A meeting with a state official and their advisor ended with a powerful statement: “I would take a bullet for you [and your people].” Such affirmations of solidarity underscore the importance of unity in combating antisemitism at the grassroots level.

The global political landscape is shifting, with European countries witnessing movements further to the right. Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, expressing concerns about Islamic migration, has seen success in recent elections, raising the possibility of becoming the next prime minister. In France, the rising prominence of Marine Le Pen signals a potential shift in leadership away from Emmanuel Macron. Meanwhile, in Argentina, the prospect of a pro-Jewish and pro-Israel leader, Javier Milei, being sworn in as president suggests a changing tide in South America.

The rise of antisemitism demands urgent attention and concerted efforts to combat its systemic roots. While the current scenario is disheartening, the emergence of solid pro-Jewish voices and shifts in political landscapes offer a ray of hope. It is crucial for individuals, communities, and nations to unite against antisemitism, recognizing that the fight against hatred requires collective action and unwavering commitment to a future free from discrimination.

Eli M. Gold is the president of the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington, DC-based think-and-do tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. US defense budget debate begins to turn ugly)

In American politics, there are many ways budget funding fights can be manifested. There is the traditional rivalry between the Republicans and the Democrats in Congress over the size of the budget and what it is to be spent on. But the most acrimonious budget battles center on the defense budget.

The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, which was unveiled last week, earmarks $886 billion for different defense spending outlays, including a 5.2 percent pay increase for members of the armed forces. However, the most controversial aspect of the proposed defense budget is the unintended unity in the positions of the left-wing progressives in Congress and the ultraconservatives, especially the group known as the Freedom Caucus. This highlights the dilemma of American politics on the nature, the scope and the methods of political debate and it represents a problem for American democracy regarding how it can function.

There are many new policies that the defense bill introduces. Among them is an elevation in the status of the top general of the US Space Force, giving the role the same rank and stature as those of the army, navy, air force and Marine Corps. It makes the vice chief of the National Guard Bureau hold a statutory rank of general while serving in that position. It establishes the procurement of up to 10 Virginia-class submarines.

Among the amendments made in the Senate are an effort to collect data on unidentified flying objects and the mandate of a two-thirds majority of members of the Senate before the president can withdraw the country from NATO.

However, what makes this defense bill unprecedented is that it embraces many aspects of the so-called culture wars in American politics. Many Republicans have stressed the need to abolish access to abortions for military troops and their families. They have attempted to remove permanent healthcare provisions for transgender service members and their family members. Both issues were left out of the draft bill. A few analysts have warned against the language of the budget, which prevents any racial equality phrases in its various items and categories.

The political implications of the defense budget are numerous. It negates the goal of striking a consensus in American foreign and defense policies. Therefore, partisan disputes will dominate any foreign policy discussion in Washington. It makes American politics very unpredictable, since the least unpredictable outcomes could happen. For instance, Republican members of the Freedom Caucus have voted with Democrats to kill off previous defense budget bills and to stop the reelection of Rep. Kevin McCarthy as the speaker of the House.

Moreover, many members of Congress have the economies of their congressional districts dependent on defense spending. With the debate on the defense budget getting more tense, the political mood inside Congress could get very bitter, demeaning and aggressive, as each member will try to secure the maximum benefits for his or her constituency from the huge and disputed budget authorization act.

President Joe Biden has also contributed to this negative partisan fight over the priorities in defense spending. Biden’s request for additional funding of more than $100 billion to help support Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan has complicated the budgetary politics. Constitutionally, the president can invoke supplementary funding measures. Nevertheless, the timing and circumstances of such a request are very unfortunate. Senate Republicans have voted against this extra funding, while insisting on the inclusion of more spending on the US border with Mexico. This ties defense spending into a complex web of items that have little to do with the US’ ability to fight wars or counter national security threats, which are the main challenges to any country’s national security policy and politics.

The Pentagon’s budget may impact the presidential election in 2024. Members of the Freedom Caucus share the same views as former President Donald Trump, with his emphasis on “America First.” Such a slogan minimizes America’s involvement in foreign wars and reduces the chances of its military getting involved in overseas missions. However, the Trump administration raised defense spending significantly.

Trump went on to criticize the large amount of money the Biden administration has been spending on aiding Ukraine militarily in its war against Russia. Perhaps a future Trump presidency could direct the Department of Defense to focus more on increasing the salaries and benefits of armed services personnel. At least this would be a policy likely to make him more popular.

Trump is very much present in the current debate on the defense spending bill, despite not being physically visible in its polemics. He will most likely make many references to the large amount of money Congress has allocated in its defense budget. Yet, there is a problem lurking for whoever wins next year’s presidential election. The nature of American politics grants Congress the right to vote on the defense budget every year. Thus, the fight over the 2024 defense budget is not the final one. The fights could turn even nastier in the years to come.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Newsmax. The Guns of December)

We Are in Grave Danger: History Makes It Explicitly Clear

In 1959, Stefan T. Possony, international security strategist, warned about the insidious attack of Communist ideology and its “paralysis” of Western society.

In a strategy lesson republished by the U.S. Department of Defense, he wrote, “We would be foolish to ignore that the Communists have made great strides in the art of psychological manipulation.

“The West does not yet understand the nature of the psychological attack that has been launched. It does not comprehend the causes of its paralysis, and often does not even notice that its freedom to act has been impeded.”

Startlingly, many Americans remain ignorant as their “freedom to act” is strangled. That’s why I wrote “Last Warning to the West: Hungary’s Triumph Over Communism and the Woke Agenda.”

Hungary succeeded in turning a Nazi- and Communist-occupied and exploited country, struggling for survival and autonomy, into an independent and prosperous nation — while maintaining their unique Magyar identity.

The story of Hungary has much to teach us, if we are willing to learn.

Today’s “progressivism” sweeping the Western World is rooted in the same Bolshevik Marxism that destroyed Eastern Europe and millions of lives, and continues to destroy our Western traditions based on human dignity and freedom.

Aspects of Bolshevism have integrated into American society: legalized abortion-on-demand trumpeted as healthcare; diminishment of parental rights and authority; liberalization of marriage and divorce leading to the ultimate decay of the family. In 1990, the USSR accounted for 10-20% of all abortions globally, with 6.5 million each year.

Progressivism seeks change for power’s sake — not for the progress of society.

On the contrary, on many issues — open borders, surgical “transitioning,” abortion on demand, promoting racial divisiveness, embracing lawlessness, suppressing free speech and political opposition, abhorring religiosity, and applauding the degradation of cities —”progressives” increase and consolidate power through the destruction of society, and with it, our national pride and security.

This quote from Chapter 10 of “Last Warning to the West” sums it up:

“The West may have defeated the Russians in the Cold War in terms of territorial expansion, but they did not win the Cold War of ideology. Instead, they perpetuated and enabled the spread of communism — and at the end of World War II, they gave the Communists the people, the land, and the power to reach this goal.

“Recently on a trip to Budapest, I was startled by the number of Hungarians who told me (with confused looks on their faces) that the rhetoric currently coming out of the United States reminds them of their own ‘Soviet days.’ We should pay attention — our government, corporations, and our media and political elites find it way too easy to oppress freedom of thought and speech, to ‘cancel’ those who disagree with their ideological or political agenda, and to use regular deception, ‘lawfare’ and audacious lies to take away people’s livelihoods and reputation.”

The Biden administration, and Obama before it, embraces Marxism while rejecting American principles, with “policies” that destroy America’s heart and our relations with foreign governments.

Read the Republican Platform 2016.

You’ll see that the challenges the GOP faced following eight years of Obama’s “Leading from Behind” are exactly the same America-destroying policies that Biden pushes, except his administration is more reckless and emboldened.

Like Obama, Biden uses the military for his social agenda, panders to globalists, funds Hamas terrorism, and neglects U.S. interests and security.

I had the privilege of working alongside senior Trump officials during President Donald Trump’s administration on many issues. I know firsthand how difficult it is to undo Obama’s “managed decline” of America and our leadership.

Now, more than ever, U.S. leadership is sorely needed on the global stage.

America needs the return of Donald Trump to the presidency.

Biden’s presidency has cost the U.S. hard-won prestige, credibility, and the power to deter the bad actors of Russia, China, and the Mideast — a result of his demonstrated weakness, terrible polices, and costly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Wars and unrest in Eastern Europe and the Mideast threaten to create a broader — and possibly nuclear — conflict.

U.S. national insecurity is further exacerbated by his border “policies” allowing undocumented illegal immigrants, terrorists, and deadly fentanyl to flow into U.S. communities. Are we, as Barbara Tuchman wrote in “The Guns of August,” describing the lead up to World War I, only “thirty days” from a world-wide disaster?

Global attitudes toward the U.S. are at an all-time low.

Following WWII, the world looked to the U.S. as a guiding light for freedom, prosperity, and democratic values, yet today our foreign policy and aid promotes progressive social ideology (cultural Marxism; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion (DEI); radical gender ideology; abortion), trampling on our allies’ sovereignty and religious freedom.

Trump’s constitutionally-aligned domestic policies prospered the U.S. economy and made Americans much safer, just as his foreign policies deterred an invasion into Ukraine and a terrorist attack on Israel.

Kari Lake wrote the foreword for “Last Warning to the West,” beginning “You now have in your hands one of the last warnings we may ever ger concerning the slow-motion collapse of America’s democratic republic.”

We must stop America’s collapse at all costs. Nearing the end of the cold war, former President Ronald Reagan reminded the world: ” . . . this is precisely our mission today; to preserve freedom as well as peace . . . I believe we live now at a turning point.”

The journey that Hungary took to throw off authoritarian oppression and later to say “no” to the EU’s Woke agenda is a model for us, and it is fascinating — full of hope and despair, courage and fear, unbearable brutality and great, enduring humanity. And, as Lake concludes, “the time to heed the warning is now.”

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Tormenta de oprobio)

In Israel they could not believe it. Because, like the rest of the world, they did not yet know the true face of Pedro Sánchez. After repeating day in and day out that Israel commits deliberate massacres of the civilian population and especially of children, that is, that Israel is a genocidal state.

After spreading, defending and promoting in all the media that his vassal journalistic hordes control the propaganda of Hamas, the (always false) data of Hamas and the disinformation of Hamas, Sánchez described as an anecdote the video, with all the inconceivable atrocities of Hamas on October 7, recorded by their own perpetrators, that was shown to him on his visit to Israel.

But it is not only in Israel that they have learned these days what millions of Spaniards have known since long before the head of government decided that it was worth the trouble and the risk to perpetrate a coup d’état with the amnesty that the fugitive criminal coup-plotters demanded of him in exchange for their votes. In order to obtain the majority, to remain in the government and thus to prolong his own impunity. Because the one who is being amnestied here above all is Sánchez and his hard core of already-consummated coup-plotters.

But Sánchez has not only attacked Israel these days. From Italy, the foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, who moved Spaniards at the Campoamor theater when he received the Princess of Asturias Award with a hymn to Spain, its history and its greatness that Sánchez cannot even conceive of, responded to the insults of the Spanish head of government against the Italian government, in a hostile obsession with Giorgia Meloni that blows up all courtesy, good manners and civilized relations in diplomacy. Tajani let Sánchez know that in Rome too they now know that he is dismantling the rule of law and democracy in Spain with his separatist accomplices.

Bulgaria and Romania have also learned how Sánchez-style thuggery operates, this time through the mouth of the outstanding disciple in ignominy and pettiness who is the minister Albares. He has threatened both countries with vetoing their entry into Schengen if they do not support the maneuver imposed by the separatists to do away with Spanish as the common and sole language of external representation in the European Parliament.

National diplomacy in the service of the coup-plotters, with threats to other countries, is a phenomenon so vile and base that it has probably not been seen in the long history of Spanish diplomacy. But these people never stop breaking the mold. And each day they resemble more the criminal tyrants they have as partners in the São Paulo Forum.

Insults and threats outward and repression and mass intimidation inward. It is as if the coup-plotting alliance had learned, induced by thousands of Delcy’s suitcases over the years, to copy all the ways of acting to create a new regime on the ruins of the extinct democratic institutions. With the clear warning to anyone who wishes to remember and defend the laws in force until now that there will be no scruple in destroying him. Pure socialism of the 21st century.

For the moment, Israel has already withdrawn its ambassador in Spain. It is logical. A head of government who speaks with Hamas data and has all the media under his control spreading pure Hamas propaganda is an enemy of the people of Israel, and while he is in office there can be little progress.

Because Sánchez’s repeated message accusing Israel of the deliberate slaughter of the civilian population and especially of children is a barbarity, an unbearable falsehood, proper to the mortal enemies of Israel such as the regimes of Iran or Venezuela with which Spain has not only been aligning itself. They are regimes to which the existence of this sinister alliance, which José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero already set on course, owes much, the adviser whom Sánchez shares with the greatest murderer and one of the greatest drug traffickers of America, Nicolás Maduro.

The Commission of the European Union yesterday contradicted another of the ringleaders of the band of malefactors that is the Spanish government, the three-portfolio minister Bolaños. Bolaños lied when he said there is no concern in the Commission, just as all those who three months ago charged themselves, by their current acts, are lying when they say that the amnesty is illegal, impossible and unconstitutional and therefore a crime against the State. Which is what they are perpetrating.

To think that they can distract by sowing diplomatic fires is to believe that everyone has as little information as the Spaniards who only have access to media obedient to power, with commentators and journalists who are lackeys and obsequious to the point of nausea.

And they do not understand that, although they live only for their miserable ambitions, benefits and advancements, history is in motion with immense gravity and transcendence. Israel has the duty to destroy Hamas, and to lament that it does not stop while it has not finished is to want to help the enemy. The Allies totally destroyed Berlin and Tokyo because there was an unrenounceable objective of doing away with Nazism and Japanese imperial expansionism. Well, let everyone know that October 7 was Pearl Harbor for Israel.

Although here we are always talking about malefactors, cowards and the indolent, there are ever more Spaniards and other Europeans who know what is at stake.

Israel’s will to defend itself is Israel’s will to exist. Gaza is one more front in a hybrid war of a totalitarian alliance against Western civilization. May the European nations show the same will to exist when decisive moments arrive.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

On Friday, the first 24 of a promised 50-hostage release by Hamas — 13 Israelis and 11 foreign nationals, none American — were delivered to the International Red Cross. In exchange for the 50, Israel will release 150 Palestinian terrorist prisoners. Israel has said that it will add one day of humanitarian pause for every 10 hostages released; this would add 19 days to the initial 4-day pause.

Photos of the Israelis released show people apparently in good shape. This figures, as it may give Hamas a “humanitarian” propaganda boost. But all hostages who survive, absent prior special resistance training, will surely suffer lasting psychological trauma from their harrowing experience. During his first press conference on the release, President Biden stated (57:10) that the Oct. 7 war was launched by Hamas in part to block further diplomatic progress on the Abraham Accords with Saudi Arabia.

The war unfolding on our video screens is unlike any Israel has faced since the 1967 Six-Day War and the 1973 Yom Kippur War. In truth, it most resembles the 1948 War of Independence, and is universally seen by Israelis to be equally existential. Alas for Israel, its allies do not appear to fully grasp this, applying an outdated “land for peace” model, in search of the two-state solution proposed in the 1993 Oslo Accords.

A Win for Hamas

The November 24 initial release of hostages taken October 7, 2023 sets in motion a series of events virtually certain to give Iran, its Hamas and Hezbollah proxies, and global jihadist movements a huge victory over Israel, the United States, and the Western democracies.

First, by suspending its military campaign for several days, in order to win release of some hostages — a move Israel initially dismissed as unacceptable — Israel has accepted political and moral primacy of winning release of all hostages before it can resume its full military campaign. This shifts the time clock in favor of Hamas, by slowing Israel’s war operations.

Second, by accepting a deal negotiated by outside parties (the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar), Israel has ceded ultimate control over its conduct of a war it has explicitly termed existential, against an opponent having openly proclaimed its ultimate genocidal goal of annihilating the Jewish state.

Third, by publicly calling upon Israel to accept the administration’s standards for protecting Palestinian civilians — clearly more stringent than Israel’s interpretation of international laws governing collateral damage — Washington, as alliance senior partner, implicitly warns that an Israeli rejection risks loss of vital logistical and military support.

David Horovitz, founding editor of The Times of Israel, summarized key details behind Israel’s capitulation: (1) Israel has abandoned its original position that excepting specific locations where the IDF knows where hostages are being held, Israel will press forward regardless of the risk to hostages; (2) Not only did one war cabinet observer privately tell hostage families that their concerns would come first, Israel war cabinet member Benny Gantz said at a press conference that Israel “has decades” to defeat Hamas; (3) “Crucial” to the 35-3 war cabinet vote was prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s pledge that the war effort would resume after the deal is completed; (4) Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Shinwar believes that a ceasefire will operate as prelude to more permanent agreements.

The U.S. warning to Israel was explicit, per NSC flack John Kirby: the U.S. will not support the IDF “moving forward with operations in the south absent a clearly articulated plan for how they’re going to protect lives of the hundreds of thousands of people.” Kirby added: “There is an obligation to factor that into their plans” that is “even more incumbent [to protect] those civilians who moved at their urging.”

In a Fox News interview, former Trump NSA John Bolton predicted: “The game that’s being played here is Hamas couldn’t care less about a humanitarian pause. What they’re interested in is getting a pause started, and then extending it to become a truce, and then extending it further to become a ceasefire. Now, that may not happen all at once, but Hamas benefits more than the Israeli Defense Forces do by having this pause.”

Trump ambassador to Israel David Friedman, referring to the pressure to secure the release of all hostages, called Israel a country of “Jewish mothers.” WSJ columnist William Galston noted that on Nov. 20, hostage families prevailed upon a Knesset committee to defer consideration of possible legislation providing the death penalty for hostage takers.

Given that my three main points collectively comprise what appears to me to be the most likely outcome of the present war, what lessons can we draw from our impending defeat? History, though not always a reliable predictor, can teach useful lessons. Per a quip attributed — perhaps apocryphally — to Mark Twain: “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”

The Road Ahead for the West

The historical examples that follow aim to clarify the range of choices confronting the West in hostage situations, and what benefits and hazards are likely to result from choices made. These can widely vary over time between the same adversaries.

Capitulation. Despite its official policy of never negotiating with hostages, Israel twice caved in to Palestinian pressure, negotiating two mega-scale lopsided hostage release deals. In May 1985, Israel released 1,150 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for three Israelis held in Lebanon; and on Oct. 18, 2011, Israel released 1,027 prisoners to win release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been kidnapped in 2006 by Hamas terrorists who infiltrated Israel territory. Such bargains were forced after massive intense political pressure from families and their supporters — amplified by hyper-sentimentalist media coverage. One consequence: Among the 1,027 prisoners exchanged was Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023 war of extinction launched against Israel.

President Biden’s Sept. 12, 2023 decision to release $6 billion to Iran to free five hostages sent the wrong signal to the wrong adversary. The upshot is that some 240 hostages were taken on Oct. 7. Biden’s response to the first five weeks of Hamas atrocities came on Nov. 14: he released another $10 billion to Iran, via waiving sanctions on Iran’s oil revenues. Meanwhile, Iran fights this war via its wholly-owned proxies: Hamas in the south, Hezbollah in the north, and with West Bank Palestinians as a silent partner. Evidence that Iran sponsored the Oct. 7 attack emerged when Iranian emissaries entered the Israel-Hamas hostage release negotiations.

Also critical to the success of the October 7 invasion was pressure from the Biden administration to allow more Gazans to work in Israel. This enabled successful mass spying by Gazans that exposed weaknesses in Israel’s defenses:

Some 20,000 “uninvolved” workers from Gaza used to enter Israel every day until the slaughter. They did so for months and months. They worked in the communities of the Gaza border, in Sderot, and in Ofakim, and some of them took detailed notes about their destinations: how many houses there were, where the living rooms, the bedrooms, and the security rooms were, how many family members lived in each house, whether they had a dog, where their cars were parked. They documented everything. And all of it went to Hamas. It was part of the infrastructure of the pogrom — the contribution of the “uninvolved” to the atrocity.

Another form of capitulation is allowing war crimes against Israelis to go unpunished, such as sexual violence against women. And then there are outsiders blaming Israel for Palestinian babies murdered by Hamas, the legal responsibility for which, writes ace law professor Alan Dershowitz, rests solely with Hamas. Such blame-shifting increases pressure on Israel to stop short of its goal of destroying Hamas.

And then there is partial capitulation, in the form of unilateral restraint, beyond that required under the laws of war. An exemplar: Israel’s Sept. 6, 2003 airstrike on a Gaza home where eight of the most senior leaders of Hamas were having lunch, what Israel’s current defense minster called “a once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity. Israeli commanders anguished over how powerful a bomb to use, as Palestinian children were playing outside the home. The result: they decided to drop a 500-pound bomb instead of a 2,000-pound bomb, because the latter would have killed the children. Under international law, collateral casualties can be lawful if the objective is sufficiently consequential. Instead of a decisive victory, Israel has had to endure a series of wars in which far more civilians — both Israeli and Palestinian — have been lost. The Oct. 7 War’s grisly tally as of Nov. 16: 1,200 Israelis, of whom 372 were soldiers, killed; at least 5,400 wounded; four hostages, one killed; 237 (11/24 update: 213) still held captive.

Negotiation. After the April 1980 hostage rescue attempt ordered by Jimmy Carter ended in abject failure, Carter negotiated the terms of surrender, lifting the trade embargo and releasing frozen financial assets. He thus secured the release on Jan. 20, 1981 of the 52 hostages that since Nov. 4, 1979 had been held 444 days in Tehran (several had escaped capture and others were released for health reasons). In doing so, he did an enormous favor for Ronald Reagan, who could begin his presidency without facing pressure to deal with a vexing problem that had held national center stage for 14-1/2 months.

Negotiation in the current conflict — driven by Team Biden’s constant pressure to bring an early end to the war — has allowed Hamas to dictate the battlefield rules: Israel must give sufficient notice and exercise sufficient restraint to minimize international outcry; the inevitable result is to allow Hamas terrorists to escape targeted locations, taking captives with them:

Yes, the IDF has control of northern Gaza and all of the key buildings and symbols of Hamas’s rule. Yes it has destroyed significant weapons, significant numbers of tunnels, and killed probably more than 5,000 Hamas terrorists between Gaza and the southern Israel battles.

But if Hamas has 30,000 fighters as the IDF recently said, the vast majority of Hamas’s forces have not been touched.

Worse, Hamas is psychopathic, and thus no promise made can be trusted until performance is rendered; Israel must try to calibrate (5:17) the long-term implications of its deal. Thus, after the 2011 Gilad Shalit swap, the public came to believe that it had been a mistake. Since then such deals are no longer left to the prime minister; they go to the entire Israeli Cabinet.

Rescue. The quintessential hostage rescue success story was the storied raid on Entebbe, Uganda, providentially carried out on July 4, 1976 — the date America celebrated its Bicentennial birthday. Terrorists from the

Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the West German Red Army faction hijacked a commercial jet that on June 27 had stopped in Athens, en route from Israel to France; the terrorists released 155 of the 258 passengers — those who were not Jewish or whom they thought didn’t look Jewish. The remaining 103 were taken to Entebbe. Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles in C-130 Hercules transports, freed 100 of the 103 hostages and destroyed 11 Soviet combat jets, whilst losing their commander, Yoni Netanyahu, brother of the current prime minister.

But such raids can end in tragedy, as with the May 15, 1974 massacre of 25 hostages — 22 of them schoolchildren — and wounding of 68. Three terrorists from the PFLP crossed the Israel-Lebanon border, targeting a school in the town of Maalot, in Western Galilee. The Israeli Defense Forces tried to rescue the hostages, but the operation, though carried out in 35 seconds, gave one terrorist time to toss a grenade amidst the captives. The raid was timed to coincide with the 26th anniversary of Israel’s birth.

Cyber-dystopia was created by interlocking technologies whose powerful … malignancies have outrun our ability to manage them.

To thwart the IDF, Hamas has perfected the use of tunnels — 300 miles, labyrinthine, not linear — since taking over Gaza after Israel’s 2005 exit. The result is an underground network largely invisible, within which hiding and moving hostages has been mastered. Hostages surely are clustered in groups, to enable rapid movement. To illustrate: given 10 groups, spacing can be 30 miles apart. Israel has developed specialized tools and tactics to defeat terror tunnel terrorists, and minimize collateral civilian casualties.

International Law: A Double-Edged Sword? We have no way of knowing how many civilian deaths there have been. As Hamas terrorists do not wear uniforms with identifying insignia, we will never know. What we do know is that they will always lie, inflate casualties, etc. During this war Hamas has been shockingly successful. Most Western media outlets presume Hamas casualty figures true and Israeli numbers false — what counter-terror expert Melanie Phillips calls “the legal prism through which they refract the Palestinian war against the Jews.” Further, equally depressing evidence of this phenomenon is that the Palestine Authority, which wholeheartedly supports Hamas, blames Israel, rather than Hamas, for the atrocities carried out at the Oct. 7 Nova Music Festival.

At the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, professor emeritus Louis Rene Bares presents a compact, detailed examination of applicable international legal principles. Most notable is his identifying terrorists as hostes humani generis, common enemies of humankind. These criminals are subject to universal jurisdiction and prosecution for their crimes. But another area of international law carries risk for Israel: Bound by specific contract clauses, under the doctrine of force majeure Israel could face supply-chain disruption if the conflict renders performance impossible.

Ultimatum. The classic case of an “or else” ultimatum was President Truman’s August 1945 warning after the Hiroshima atomic bomb was dropped, that unless Japan promptly surrendered it would face a “rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this Earth.”

Israel alone cannot issue a “rain of ruin” ultimatum, such as giving Hamas 24 hours to unconditionally release the hostages, else it will begin the wholesale destruction of Iran’s military infrastructure — to follow Truman, the initial warning would include taking out a key part of Iran’s military infrastructure — its deep nuclear facilities are an obvious choice. Alone, Israel can strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, to pre-empt nuclear breakout. By one estimate, Israel would need to fly 1,500 sorties to accomplish its mission. But without U.S. support for broader, more sustained action, Israel can at best only strike to pre-empt imminent Iranian nuclear breakout.

Guideposts: How many Palestinians are loyal to Hamas? Are there closet dissenters awaiting liberation? At Gatestone Institute, scholar Bassam Tawil collected a series of polls showing that most West Bank Palestinians support Hamas, desire elimination of Israel, and scorn the Palestine Authority — the latter ostensibly moderate, but in its post-Oct. 7 “pay-for-slay” stipends to families of Hamas terrorists killed in the war, equally ardent in its desire for a Jew-free “Palestine from the river to the sea.” At Frontpage Magazine Daniel Greenfield notes that when polled 20 years ago after a suicide bomber blew herself up in the midst of a Passover Seder, 74 percent supported Saddam Hussein, 82 percent called Hamas “freedom fighters” and 79 percent did not consider bombing Israeli restaurants and buses acts of terrorism. Today, only 16 percent of young West Bank Palestinians support coexistence with Israel; 81 percent don’t believe that a permanent Arab-Israeli peace will ever be achieved.

Simply put, for the foreseeable future there is no plausible lasting resolution to the conflict.

In his latest post, Greenfield adds more telling numbers: Many polls show Palestinian support for Hamas running in the 70s or 80s, some even in the 90s. Perhaps more significantly, in virtually every polling category, more residents on the West Bank support terrorism against Israel than in Gaza. Further, overwhelmingly they both hate America, its allies, other Mideast countries, and just about everywhere else. Greenfield concludes: “This isn’t a culture or a country: it’s a xenophobic death cult that hates the entire world.” He recommends that we stop giving them money and stop caring.

A more optimistic note is sounded by Mideast scholar Daniel Pipes, who cites polls showing that Gazans consider their leaders corrupt and desire a ceasefire; Pipes also cites figures from the 1970s showing West Bank and Gaza Palestinians statistically outperforming many economies. But that was long before the advent of Hamas, and the wholesale indoctrination of Palestinian youth in demonizing Jews and glorifying martyrdom, economic progress be damned. There were, even then, warning signs, such as (not making this up) Gaza textbooks in 1967 asking students, “You have five Israelis. You kill three of them. How many Israelis are left to be killed?”

Implications for Israeli-Palestinian Future. Simply put, for the foreseeable future there is no plausible lasting resolution to the conflict. Bret Stephens writes that for Jews, every day must be the day after the Oct. 7 massacres; just as after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 every day henceforth was Sept. 12. for the U.S. In a later column, Stephens chides those in the West who make demands for a ceasefire now, but never demand that Hamas instantly cease terror attacks.

The “two-state” solution is dead, one writer says, for 75 to 150 years. Any Israeli government that proposed, let alone, entered into, a compact establishing a Palestinian state anywhere West of the Jordan River would fall within 24 hours. Arthur Herman writes that the assault on Israel is a proxy for an assault by the radical left on Western civilization. The clearest, most eloquent picture of the challenge posed to Jews — and the entire West worldwide — by radical Islam was given by journalist-activist Bari Weiss, in her Sept. 2023 Barbara Olson Memorial Lecture (38:35).

Regarding time not being on our side, one WSJ op-ed lists different clocks ticking at the expense of the West, citing historian Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S.: (a) the “ammo clock,” or the U.S. replacing ordnance expended by the IDF; (b) the “reservist clock,” Israel’s mobilization of reservists who are critical to Israel’s high-tech economy and other sectors; (c) the “economic clock,” collapsing foreign investment and tourism; (d) the “humanitarian clock,” killed, wounded, or displaced soldiers and civilians. Moreover, the are 200,000 Israelis displaced from the south who are in limbo in the hostage release period. Finally, Oren sees yet two bigger clocks: the time until an Iranian nuclear breakout, and the time until an Iranian missile sinks a major U.S. warship.

Enter Orwell. The rise of an Orwellian cyberspace dystopia — ubiquitous social media that cycles 24/7 what was the author’s original daily “two-minutes of hate” — means that henceforth it will be impossible for the West to win the propaganda war. Social media is driven by the loudest, most ignorant, and promiscuously mendacious voices.

Hamas can use civilians as human shields, and the largely ignorant cyberspace denizens will not even know that it is a black-letter violation of the laws of war to use human shields, or locate military assets near civilian targets — hospitals, churches etc.

Cyber-dystopia was created by interlocking technologies whose powerful, metastasizing online malignancies have outrun our ability to manage them — much like in World War I, when the technologies of destruction outran the technologies of command and control. In 1914, once the trains rolled, the armies could not be called back. Now, there is no way that the social media genie can be put back into the bottle.

We have reached the 21st century’s incarnation of Orwell’s Big Brother slogan: “War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.”

Bottom Line

Israel finds itself enmeshed in an elemental war of survival, with the fate of Western civilization inextricably intertwined with the outcome. The clocks are ticking, and on all of them time is on the side of our adversaries. To date, few leaders and only a minority of the public in the West understand this. Given our drastic inability to grasp the breadth and magnitude of challenges facing us, there seem to be more potential outcomes that accelerate Western civilizational decline than those that augur a turning of the tide against Islamic jihadism and its latest effort to perpetrate a Jewish genocide.

John C. Wohlstetter, a senior fellow at the Gold Institute for

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. Positive Chinese-American relations can promote global stability)

US President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in San Francisco last week was a good opportunity to stabilize and fix American-Chinese relations, and score a few measurable achievements. Yet, America’s foreign policy toward China will be constantly dominated by a sense of rivalry.

Historically, great strategic importance is attached to the US-China relationship. When a US administration tries to adopt a new approach on foreign policy, it is often said that critical decisions will be made regarding the course of American-Chinese relations. Nevertheless, the relationship between the US and China cannot be based solely on a state of confrontation between Washington and Beijing. It is a complex relationship that entails many areas of competition and the potential for cooperation on many issues. For instance, despite former President Donald Trump’s fiery rhetoric against China during the global pandemic, the two governments coordinated many policies to stop the spread of the virus and save lives.

The essence of Chinese-American politics is the need for a successful management of that relationship, and how to deal with pressing challenges that the two governments must handle at the present moment and in the near future.

As an example, on Nov. 21, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi welcomed foreign ministers visiting his nation from Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, Palestine, and Indonesia, as well as the head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. This was a mission to follow up the recommendations of the Riyadh Arab-Islamic summit seeking to end the war in Gaza. Wang told the visiting ministers that “the international community must act urgently, taking effective measures to prevent this tragedy from spreading. China firmly stands with justice and fairness in this conflict.” This Chinese diplomatic attitude contrasts with the endorsement of the Biden administration and the US Congress of Israel’s war against the Palestinians in Gaza.

Moreover, there is a totally different view between the US and China in reference to the character and the political standing of a number of major countries in East Asia. The US considers Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan as allies and friendly states.

China’s leaders, however, view these nations as countries that have had long historical strife with China, and as front-line states whose foreign policies and national security priorities pose a threat to Chinese sovereignty. For instance, there are disputes between China and Japan over the ownership of several small islands in the South China Sea. In addition, there are long-held claims by the Chinese government that Taiwan is part of a “one-China policy,” and that the island belongs to the People’s Republic of China.

These four Asian countries deserve credit for achieving huge economic growth and becoming viable nations on the world stage. However, their foreign policies frequently rely on seeking help from Washington to defend against an ascendant China.

The best course for the US is to adhere to the old treaties that were signed with these countries and honor its commitments to them, but also to explain to them and to the Chinese that things in world politics are changing, and such a change could allow for America’s bonds with these big countries in East Asia to evolve in a friendly direction. For instance, the US, China, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan could cooperate to break the isolation of North Korea, and convince Pyongyang to stop its nuclear tests and the firing of ballistic missiles.

The US also must be more responsible in its foreign policy toward China. Washington’s announcements of weapons sales to India and Vietnam will be viewed by China’s leaders as an encirclement strategy designed to undermine their nation.

It is also becoming more common and convenient for many American politicians to blame China for everything wrong in the US, especially alleged technology thefts and the big trade deficit between the two countries. According to a report by the US Department of Commerce, “in 2022, both US exports to China and imports from China continued to grow for a third year in a row. US exports totaled $153.8 billion, an increase of 1.6 percent ($2.4 billion) from 2021; US imports from China totaled $536.8 billion, an increase of 6.3 percent ($31.8 billion); and the trade deficit with China was $382.9 billion, an increase of 8.3 percent of ($29.4 billion.)”

There is a tacit understanding that both countries have to find a mutually beneficial formula. The US must give China choices to help them reach good outcomes in world politics. The two nations could conduct serious talks on how to end the war between Russia and Ukraine. COP28 meetings in a few days in the UAE might be a good opportunity to promote bilateral cooperation in fighting climate change. There are many avenues of mutual interests that can bring about benefits to both China and the US. Ultimately, defining Chinese-American interdependence in positive ways will lead to more regional and global stability, and make the world more integrated.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. De la resistencia al enemigo)

Millions of Spaniards are traumatized by what is happening in Spain. To a great extent the tragedy, the worst of the possible developments of our crisis that could be foreseen, has already been consummated.

I see Spaniards of all ages weeping. And not only when they demonstrate, hear the national anthem or chant cheers to a homeland that some malefactors are destroying and selling off at bargain prices. Many weep for no other reason. On greeting you. On seeing you in the street. Or they tell you that they have wept in solitude or together with relatives, elderly Spanish couples who still cannot believe what they see, what they hear and are told, and who despair in the anguish and the incredulity before so much obscenity in the lie and so much contempt for everything they value, love and believe.

And they no longer weep only out of fear of an immediate future full of insecurity and threats, out of the certainty of being in the hands of a man without scruples capable of anything, however brutal and wicked. Who has surrounded himself with a troop of hitmen who have adopted all the worst characteristics of the fellow. And who has not hesitated to seek the complicity of the worst political criminals there have been in Spain in half a century in order to forge his alliance for a change of regime in Spain that assures all of them the power that includes their indefinite impunity.

They weep also for the immense humiliation of seeing Spain shaken about, vilified, plundered and scorned by beings of a baseness that was supposed to be widespread only in the underworld, the dark netherworld of corruption and the sordid channels of business and the monetization of the worst instincts. It is no wonder that so many Spaniards suffer.

One of the oldest nations in the world, along with the Roman Empire, perhaps the most decisive in the shaping of the modern world and of humanity, finds itself governed by those who seem more suited to running brothels and sauna bordellos. By those who have intimate relations with the worst bosses of organized crime, drug trafficking and human trafficking in America. But above all, by those who despise everything about the Spanish nation and plunder it and mistreat it and abuse it like squatters newly arrived in someone else’s house in which they see and suddenly enjoy goods they would never have known through merit.

How difficult it is to explain abroad, for example in the European Parliament, the monstrosity of the events that have taken place in Spain since the “pockmarked one,” as they would call him in the dens of the underworld, arrived once again. Europe does not know of the misdeeds and the political crimes that the Spanish government under Sánchez is committing, because those of us who have been recounting it for four years fight against a wall of silence from the media. And because those who would have had the greatest chance of a wider echo in the denunciation, had they joined VOX, the European People’s Party, have preferred to keep voting with Sánchez’s party in Europe on all the reforms and laws proper to Agenda 2030, the Green Deal and all the other ideological monstrosities, as if he were led by an impeccable gentleman respectful of all the rules. It is difficult to denounce someone with whom, in the end, one is so much in agreement on the important European questions.

An individual whom his party expelled from the leadership as a falsifier and a danger to democracy, and who has hijacked Spanish democracy in order to dismantle it, after having hijacked his party and turned it into an organization of cadres for falsification and the cover-up of continuous crimes. And after having held hostage for five years, of abuses, lies and unheard-of misdeeds, the entirety of the State, the treasury and practically all published opinion. The only thing that is true in him is his ambition and bad faith. All the virtues he attributes to himself since coming to power are a lie, as are all his assertions in general. Only everything he denies and covers up is true. He has no moral brakes. He has no limits. Not the slightest trace of a scruple. He cannot bear contradiction, as tends to happen with the psychopath. That is why it is easy to predict that, after reasserting himself in power by means of the open violation of the Spanish Constitution, whatever the Constitutional Court says, a court which, thanks by the way to the Partido Popular, is now merely his servant, he will soon do much harm to many people in the face of the growing resistance to his policy of repression, plunder and abuse.

Let no one say it was not foreseen. Because from the moment he arrived it was clear that he was the man who fit to carry out what his socialist predecessor and later much more than political adviser, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, had left set on course. Which was precisely the change of regime toward a system of alliances between leftist forces and separatist ones for a broad front, today we can call it the Criminal Alliance, that makes impossible the coming to power of centrist forces, let alone truly conservative forces. The end of alternation, the end of democracy.

Some of us warned at the top of our lungs that with Zapatero the bases had been laid to do away with the regime of 1978, I with two books, “Libelo contra la secta” and “Días de ira.” But the Partido Popular spent seven years in power without abolishing a single one of Zapatero’s leftist laws, in large part come out of Ibero-American Chavist workshops, which now serve, with a further turn of the screw, to keep closing the cage and doing away with freedom of expression and so many others. These mechanisms of coercion which, like serpent’s eggs, Zapatero sowed, have served Sánchez to impose legislation ever more ripe for the first regime in Europe similar to that of Nicolás Maduro.

With his methods. And we are already seeing these weeks that the police they do not have guarding our borders they already have well conditioned to the idea that they will have to devote themselves to repressing those whom the police have always protected. Because the police have come to be under the command of those who, by the needs of Sánchez’s script, must obey those who staged a coup in 2017, harassed the police, were always their declared enemies, expelled the Civil Guard from regions of Spain and murdered police and civil guards until very recently.

The repression is going to come because Sánchez has neither legitimacy nor legality, however much all his media lie, which are almost all there are. And he will have to compensate for it with the use of force, as do the other members of the São Paulo Forum and the Puebla Group, who are the political leaders most akin to Sánchez.

Because in Europe there are many lamentable politicians of that social-democratic majority that systematically steals conservative votes and whose greatest exponent is Ursula von der Leyen. But those are vegan left compared to the carnivorous left that Sánchez has been, and to the cannibal left of which Sánchez now becomes a part, with the Ortegas, Petro, Maduro and of course Lula, that secular saint of the EU who already has more than a thousand political prisoners. We will soon have them too. And this time genuine ones.

There is still a possibility of preventing the total destruction of Spanish democracy and of preventing the State in Spain, conveniently fragmented, from being left totally at the mercy of people who are closer to international organized crime than to the traditional political parties. But the resistance begins with not shaking the hand of the boss of the criminal organization that is destroying the homeland for strictly lucrative motives in the broadest sense. The resistance against a mortal enemy must be total. But absolute.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. US is the big loser in Gaza)

The war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas represents a serious challenge to the US. It is a difficult test for the network of contacts Washington has been building throughout previous decades to ensure a balance in its interests between Arab countries and Israel.

Obviously the US is failing to achieve this strategic equilibrium in its relationship between the Arabs and the Israelis. There are many accusations by most of the nations of the world, especially Arab and Muslim states, that Washington is endorsing Israel’s attacks against civilians in Gaza. They point to the US supplying Israel with the weapons being used to kill Palestinians in Gaza. They also charge the US with giving $14 billion to Israel to carry on the war, and say that the sending of two aircraft carriers to the eastern Mediterranean shields Israel from any armed assault by any power.

Arab media outlets view the US as culpable in the Oct. 7 attack. They also perceive the US as responsible for the military conflagration that the Middle East is undergoing at present. Arab media platforms refuse to believe the US is serious about making peace in the Middle East, and say it is doing nothing to end the fighting between Israel and Hamas. Accordingly, Washington is not an honest broker for peace in the Middle East. Shamefully, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s shuttle diplomacy in the region has been unable to convince the Israeli government to accept a limited cease-fire to deliver urgent humanitarian assistance.

There is also the increase in the number of attacks against US military bases in both Syria and Iraq. The potential is high that there will be more targeting of US military facilities in both countries if the war in Gaza continues. All Arab nations are worried that the Gaza war could escalate into a wider regional crisis. Arabs are hearing the voices coming from the US that perceive the war against Hamas as a war against Iran. The strategic rationale for the Arab nations is that extending the war by attacking Iran could push the whole Middle East into a state of turbulence and chaos, causing a great deal of instability. This will force many people to label the US as the real enemy of the Arabs and Muslims.

Arab countries believe that Israel is acting in a brutal way and that the US is doing nothing to stop it. The Middle East is about to explode. The West is unethical in its attitudes toward the Middle East. It endorses Israel’s savagery against the Palestinians, while pretending it defends human rights and democracy. The Arabs assert that Western hypocrisy about freedom and liberty paved the way for their complicity in Israel’s barbarity toward the Palestinians.

Against the backdrop of Arabs’ loss of faith in the US, Russia is gaining influence in the region. Moscow can tell the peoples of the Middle East that it renounces Israel’s killing of innocent Palestinians and, therefore, is a friend of Arabs and Muslims. Other countries, such as China, can also gain prestige in the Middle East as the US is denounced by the region’s Arab population.

The war in Gaza may revive the two-state solution. However, Arab nations doubt Washington’s sincerity in creating a Palestinian state. They were dismayed by the refusal of the US Congress to give aid to the Palestinians on the grounds that it would go to Hamas. This, of course, was not true.

On the other hand, war is an uncertain development. No war in history has an assured outcome. Hence, any substantial political outcomes must take into account not only US strategic objectives, which include the defense of Israel, but also the local conditions in which the strategy for achieving those objectives must play out. Considering the US failed to effectively define its goals separate from Israel, any analyst must focus on several strategic trends operating now in the Middle East.

First, Turkiye will try to make its role more significant. Ankara and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will express greater solidarity with Hamas. This will strain US-Turkish relations further. Second, the continuation of the Saudi-Iranian detente will be inevitable. The two countries will focus on Gaza and not on their regional rivalry. Third, the role of Qatar most likely will be enhanced. Washington so far has been unable to persuade Qatar to cease its relationship with at least the political wing of Hamas. Qatar will pressure the US to force Israel to stop the war in Gaza in return for its changing relations with the leaders of Hamas.

Fourth, a fair question is how successful and decisive will the Israeli ground offensive be? Israel has not declared victory. It pulled out of previous wars, including conflicts with Lebanese Hezbollah in 1996 and 2006, before finishing its military purposes, due to political and diplomatic factors. Hamas could be hoping for the same outcome. This suggests that the group could still be operating underground and maintaining parts of its military infrastructure when the war ends.

Fifth, how much damage could be caused by several statements by Israeli officials, such as the one attributed to Minister of Heritage Amichai Eliyahu, who said dropping an atomic bomb on Gaza was “a possibility”? This could quickly invite Moscow to affirm nuclear deterrence similar to what happened on Oct. 22-23, 1973 when the US and the Soviet Union raised their nuclear preparedness during the Ramadan War.

Certainly, Arab countries will endorse such a potential nuclear strategic move by the Kremlin. Sixth, how much dispute will occur if Israel takes actions to reoccupy and govern Gaza? This could cause friction between the US and Israel. Blinken played down these prospects. Yet, it seems that Israel is determined to remain in Gaza for a long time. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told ABC News that “for an indefinite period, Israel will have the overall security responsibility” for the enclave.

The war in Gaza has seriously undermined US credibility and deterrence. Washington cannot prevail on Israel to hold off the fight in Gaza even for a few hours. In conclusion, the US will not gain any political or strategic advantage from the Gaza war. It could even lose economically if the conflict goes on for a long time and the price of oil rises to a record high.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. No hay normalidad bajo el crimen)

There are people who like to cause upsets. Even gratuitous ones. That is not my case. I like to avoid them. That is why I regret that the Spanish ambassador to Costa Rica, Eva Martínez, who had very kindly invited me on Thursday to dine with a large group of Costa Rican parliamentarians, had to suffer an unexpected disruption at the splendid residence of our embassy in San José. The first thing I did was to thank the ambassador for her invitation, which, with the impeccable professionalism of a career diplomat like her, she maintained even though the other two Spanish MEPs invited, from the PP, Antonio López-Istúriz, and from the PSOE, Ignacio Sánchez Amor, who are without doubt more akin to her than this one from VOX, had returned to Spain earlier. And they left me as the only Spanish parliamentarian with the Costa Ricans she had called to her table for this occasion.

But after the personal gratitude, I had to explain that my conscience, my responsibility and my duty as a Spaniard obliged me to leave the dinner at the residence without beginning it. Because they prevent me from any hint of institutional normality in view of the gravity of the events in Spain. There is no normality when one is witnessing a crime. And pretending normality while the affronts, abuses and crimes of this socialist power are being committed has been one of the most effective mechanisms of this government, as of Zapatero’s, to lull the whole of society with informational fodder, lies and base passions while they took, one after another, the steps toward destruction and plunder.

Pedro Sánchez’s “amnesty for criminal friends” is a crime in itself and a coup d’état that delegitimizes the democratic regime, its justice system, its security forces, its forty years of legality and even King Felipe VI. In the strict sense it also delegitimizes Pedro Sánchez, his coming to power and the elections before and after. Although he no longer needs any delegitimization, since as soon as he approves the amnesty he will be as criminal as Puigdemont and a genuine usurper of a power that will be illegal.

Given this nightmarish situation, with our Spanish institutions in the hands of individuals with the same democratic scruples as Hamas, the upset of the ambassador, who like it or not was appointed and is under the orders of the unworthy usurper who is the current caretaker head of government, was absolutely necessary. However impeccable, I insist, the ambassador’s attitude and conduct were, and they were. I had thought of simply excusing myself by telephone. But out of deference to the magnificent and dedicated Costa Rican parliamentarians I decided that I would attend in order to give them the explanation they deserved. And the explanation was necessary because not even the members of the foreign affairs committee present there, among them its chairman, know of the gravity of the Spanish evolution, or degradation.

And at the residence, as soon as I arrived, I told the parliamentarians that normality cannot be simulated when in Spain the government is destroying all the foundations of legality, security and coexistence. I explained to them there, in the presence of the ambassador, that the Professional Association of the Magistracy, the largest association of judges in Spain, holds that the amnesty for Catalan criminals is the end of the rule of law in Spain. And that eight members of the General Council of the Judiciary, what remains of the members of the justice apparatus not bought, intimidated or blackmailed by the power of the Sánchez government, have said the same. Because the delegitimization of the democratic regime and the legitimization of criminal and unconstitutional coup-plotting constitutes the greatest attack on the Spanish nation and its democracy. I said that a democratic and patriotic Spaniard cannot today accept normality in anything related to the government, already as illegitimate as it is illegal, of Pedro Sánchez.

If the ambassador experienced as an upset that I turned the embassy residence for a few long minutes into a rostrum for many truths about a criminal government, she can console herself with the fact that deep dismay, anguish, rage and fear are today the sentiments that predominate among the Spaniards who find themselves in the hands of fugitive criminals in Waterloo and others well ensconced in La Moncloa. I encourage all Spaniards not to give a single day of the appearance of normality to this usurping government if it comes to be constituted. We must all play our part, large or small, our labor and our duty, to restore legality, unity, constitutionality and democracy in Spain.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.