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Ah, how easy it is for our political and media elites, living safely in the West, to lecture embattled Israel, now engaged in a seven-front war (in Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Iran), on its need to exercise “self-restraint.” It’s especially grotesque advice when the fons et origo of so much of the region’s strife comes from Iran, through its malignant proxies — Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen — and the Islamic Republic is now not only seeing those proxies being crushed, but has itself proven incapable of landing a successful counterpunch. Its latest volley of 180 rockets flung at Israel in early October were aimed at military bases and Mossad headquarters.
Several rockets did hit their intended target, the Netavim airbase, but instead of damaging planes or military infrastructure, the attack resulted in minor damage, mainly to housing. Another target was Mossad headquarters, which remained unscathed. There was only one casualty from this volley of rockets — an Arab hit by shrapnel in the village of Ne’ima, near Jericho. This second Iranian volley of rockets — after the 300 rockets launched towards Israel in April, almost all of which were shot down, with the handful that did get through causing no damage — was even more humiliating for the Iranians than the first.
While Biden and so many others are counseling Israel to “exercise restraint” in its confrontation with Iran, the London journalist Brendan O’Neill is having none of it. He smites these self-satisfied simpletons telling Israel that it needs to “de-escalate” hip and thigh here: “Is this the death rattle of Iranian tyranny?,” by Brendan O’Neill, Spiked, October 2, 2024:
So now we know it is possible for something to be both horrific and farcical. The known death toll of the wave of missiles fired by Iran into Israel yesterday is as follows: Israelis 0, Palestinians 1. Yes, the Islamic Republic, in its preening, violent display of solidarity with Palestine and Lebanon against the Great Satan of the Jewish State, laid waste to just one life. That of a 37-year-old labourer from Gaza who’d been living near Jericho in the West Bank, brutally slain by the falling shrapnel from one of Iran’s missiles. The Israelophobes of social media who salivated over Iran’s attack were cheering a military operation that killed yet another Gazan. You couldn’t make it up.
Of course, the merciful lack of Israeli fatalities should not detract from the fact that that was clearly Iran’s aim: to maim and kill the Jews of this nation that it hates above all others. When you fire 180 ballistic missiles at a state, with little advance warning, you know, and in Iran’s case hope, that death may very well ensue. That it didn’t, that only one, poor Palestinian perished under Iran’s rockets, is a testament to the extraordinarily high value Israel places on the lives of its citizens. Its Iron Dome intercepted much of Iran’s lethal arsenal, while its vast network of bomb shelters shielded civilians from the Iranian terror. It would appear that the Jewish desire to survive prevailed over the mullahs’ urge to kill.
And yet even as we grapple with the seriousness of what Iran did, with the criminality of its onslaught, it is important to clock Iran’s weaknesses, too. Are we witnessing the death rattle of Iranian tyranny? It is impossible to overstate the size of the blow Iran has experienced this past week, and this past year. The ruthless theocracy’s entire proxy strategy, its use of Islamist armies like Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis to shore up its influence to its west, lies virtually in tatters. For now, at least….
It is such self-satisfied cant. How easy it is for Biden officials who live in leafy DC, and Britain’s liberal scribes who rarely venture from their East London bubbles, to insist that Israel patiently deter Iran rather than clash with it. Missiles paid for by Tehran are not dropping on Shoreditch or Martha’s Vineyard day in, day out. Militants backed by Iran did not recently swarm London or New York City to rape, kidnap and kill civilians. There aren’t Iran stooges mere miles from our towns threatening to excise our ‘cancerous’ presence from our own lands….
Israel is not only protecting itself when it crushes Hamas in Gaza and is now doing the same to Hezbollah in Lebanon. It is stymying Iran’s imperial designs on the entire region. Iran is an ally of Russia and China, a threat not just to Israel, and to such Sunni Arabs as the Saudis and Emiratis, but to the entire West. And because of Israel’s valiant efforts and devastating victories on so many fronts, the humiliated and confused regime in Tehran, now waiting fearfully for the Jewish state’s response to its latest failed rocket attack, is beginning to crack. Enemies within Iran of the regime are taking heart from the defeat of its proxies and its inability to land a real blow on the Jewish state. The Israelis are now determined, despite whatever discouragement emanates from the Bidenites, to exploit the Islamic Republic’s current disarray, after seeing its proxy Hamas dismantled, and its proxy Hezbollah now being subject to a similar battering that the Iranians never expected, and to destroy Iran’s nuclear program. The Biden administration, with characteristic wrongheadedness, is trying to hold Israel back from this attack. But such an attack on Iran’s nuclear program would benefit not only Israel but the entire non-Muslim world. Washington should instead be providing the IDF with whatever it thinks it needs, including delivery of its heaviest, 30,000 pound MOPs (Massive Ordnance Penetrators).
It bears repeating: as Brendan O’Neill insists, cutting to the heart of the matter, “you are either on the side of a barbarous theocratic regime that oppresses and murders women, workers and minorities and whose allies recently carried out the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, or you are on the side of Israel. It’s time to choose.”
Right on, Mr. O’Neill. And as the Protestant hymn has it — “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.”
Spurwing Plover says
Tell those Camel Jockeys to Go Pound Sand
Intrepid says
Do you know what the terms verbose, boring and longwinded mean?
Intrepid says
I want you to basically take your moronic Jew Hatred back to wherever you came from. We don’t need endless history lessons from people who know nothing.
We have enough of them here already. They (and you) are the types who some compulsive need to take over threads with their worthless opinions.
Madame DeFarge says
The academic class and the wannabe journalist types have not changed since their adoption of communism. It is quite safe currently in the US for them to whine and castigate others. The checks received make their hatred of the cool kids even sweeter. They will continue to do so unless there is pushback physically. Then they will run away.
Israel should look in the mirror and realize that they are alone. The US cannot be counted on as has been demonstrated. They should attack with everything they have before the next generation of weapons can overwhelm them.
There is little sympathy for a loser in war.
léopold says
Il faut croiser les doigts pour que TRUMP ne soit pas victime de fraudes, comme en 2020. L’avenir, non seulement des étasuniens mais de l’ensemble de l’humanité, en dépend
Terry says
It seems that the only value common to the Middle East is a hatred of Israel. This results in everyone trying to destroy them with very little coordination. Arabs are tribal people and instinctively do no trust anyone NOT of their tribe. This applies to national interests also. Thus they generally don’t depend on others and do not expect them to support them. This causes them to act on their own. Until a really strong leader rises that can unite Arabs in a war against Israel, they will continue to loose.
Walter Sieruk says
The many arrest and imprisonment of people , repeatedly, who had peacefully protested that “mullah tyranny” of Iran only further exposes the weak ,fearful and intolerant nature of those in power in the oppressive and brutal “mullah regime “ of Iran.
As a former Muslim revealed an important reality when he wrote “The Islamic republic of Iran exists and operates as what every fundamentalist dreams of, an Islamic state ruled by sharia …” He further exposes that “What followed its establishment was the inevitable consequence and inexorable logic of its Islamic premise; state terrorism, a merciless tyranny.” [1]
Furthermore, in the book entitled HOW ISLAM PLANS TO CHANGE THE WORLD, by William Wagner on page 208 the reader is informed that “The creation of the Islamic republic in Iran has had the effect that many from that country have become disillusioned with Islam and are looking to leave Iran. ” This is a point worth pondering.
[1] THE ISLAM IN ISLAMIC TERRORISM by Ibn Warraq page 347.
Barb says
The people under the Shah wanted to be free of the secret police. They did not want the ayatollah. However, the power play they went from living in the 29th century to living in the 800’s.
Look at pictures from the 1960’s to how they dress today.
Education for women ended with grade school. They used to have high schools for girls.
Walter Sieruk says
That horrendously brutal, cruel oppressive malicious and murderous Islamic regime of Iran, denies the Iranian, people their basic natural human rights.
Therefore, the Iranian people are right and righteous by engaging in bitter and strong protests against those cruel malicious and murderous tyrants in power of that cruel and oppressive Sharia based dictatorship of that Islamic regime of Iran.
In other words, those vicious despots of that horrendously horrific Islamic regime have provoked the people excessively too far.
In addition, some of the people who trapped in and forced to exist in the Islamic dictatorship of Iran might not know about the intellect philosopher John Locke, but his ideas do apply to them. For Mr. Locke taught that any good government has the duty to ensure the security and safety of its citizens. Yet when a tyranny is the people in the tyrannical government do have every natural and ethical right to overthrow that terrible and oppressive tyranny/ government.
Walter Sieruk says
About that Sharia based tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran which has the official title of “The Islamic Republic of Iran” and also about the chief and head Imam, Ayatollah Khomeini, who had a strong hand in establishing this so called “Republic “
The very actual essence of that Islamic tyranny, Ayatollah Khomeini, had made in known that “The Islamic Republic of Iran would be Islamic and nothing but .He declared ‘What the nation wants is an Islamic Republic. Not just a Republic, not a democratic Republic, not a democratic Islamic Republic. Do not use the word “democratic” to describe it. That is the Western style. ‘” [1]
Furthermore, that cruel and tyrannical Islamic regime of Iran regime has severely limited to an extreme much knowledge and wisdom from the outside world. This is because that fiendish and murderous ayatollahs and mullahs in power in Iran are very much afraid the Iranian people might discover different ideas. As the idea’s and philosophy of John Locke
For example, Locke views the people living under any genuine government are people retaining their individual rights after a government has been established to protect human rights. . In other words, the securing of their rights – the protection of the life, liberty and property of all – is the sole legitimate purpose of government. If a government begins to abuse those rights it then becomes tyrannical and the governed [the people] retain the right to overthrow that government and replace it with one that does its job properly.
So that heinous”mullah regime” of Iran, greatly fears such ideas and keeps the people under his hideous control of his tyranny in and the darkness of much limited information.
[1]`THE HISTORY OF JIHAD by Robert Spencer, page 318.
Walter Sieruk says
That Islamic rough state of Iran is nothing much more than misery inflecting entity and murder machine.
It inappropriately has the word “Republic” in its title is a cruel brutal and oppressive “mullah regime.” For those in power in Iran are so thoroughly deceitful, demonic, wicked, vicious and cruel that they will not change their malicious ways. As explain in the Bible “What is crooked cannot be straightened; which is lacking cannot be counted.” Ecclesiastes 1:15. [N.I.V.]
Indeed, Those malice -filled and hateful Muslim clerics who have much power in Iran along with the other Islamic stooges who rule Iran “cannot be counted” to make any chances for the better . The ayatollahs and mullahs in their likeminded Muslim partners in total governmental control of Iran are very anti- female m as in extremely misogynistic and oppressive ruthless to both girls and woman as well as all of the Iranian people who are trapped in forced to existed in this diabolical Islamic regime. As it is written in Proverbs 15:15. “All the days of the oppressed are wretched.” Likewise, Ecclesiastes 4:1 reads “ I saw the tears of the oppressed – and they have no comforter; power was in the side of the oppressors …” Furthermore ,Proverbs 28:15 very well describes such wicked characters who rule Iran as president Rouhani and ayatollah Khamenei . For it reads “Like a roaring lion or a charging bear is a wicked ruler over a helpless people.”
Furthermore, such a vicious mindset of heinous arrogance of Rouhani, Khamenei and the other hateful and spiteful Islamic clerics in this “mullah regime” of Iran is reflected in the words from the Bible describing tyrannical villains in power of an oppressive regime. For Psalm 73:6—9 read “Therefore pride is their necklace:: they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil ;their evil imaginations have no limits. They scoff and speak with malice; with arrogance they threaten oppression. Their mouths lay claim to heaven, and their tongues take possession of the earth.”
. Now many of the disillusioned and disappointed Iranians have woke up the lies and harsh cruel brutal murderous rule of this Islamic tyranny. Most of those terribly oppressed people of Iran are trapped and forced to exist in that demonic controlled nation.