Tag Archives: Iran

A Year of War

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In early March, the new IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir said that 2025 would be “a year of war.” After intensifying the war against Hamas and ongoing fighting with Iran’s five other arms that surround it like a ring of fire (plus the Iran-run international propaganda campaign on campuses and streets throughout the world) Israel has begun its long delayed massive assault on the head of the octopus—or septopus to be exact—itself. Israel has at last brought the fight to the monster’s head. Zamir’s words were true. The words he said today were also true: “This is a critical operation to prevent an existential threat, by an enemy who is intent on destroying us…. We are at the point of no return.”

This is the largest-ever Israeli attack on the genocidal Iranian tyranny, and it has only just begun. After two years of war the “ring of fire” has been sputtering as Israel has decimated Hamas, neutralized Hezbollah, ended Iran’s control of Syria, and severely damaged the other Iranian tentacles, reshaping the Middle East for the better, but now it is time for the last, largest reshaping: neutralization of Iran as the reigning head of the region, with or without regime change, with or without a residue of nuclear capability.

The Israeli pager and walkie-talkie operation against Hezbollah, followed by systematic decapitation of its hierarchy, was likely the cleverest military subterfuge since the Trojan Horse. But it was followed in a number of months by Ukraine’s brilliant infiltration of Russia with hidden armaments that destroyed half of that dictatorship’s military aircraft in a day. And a few weeks late Israel’s vast, brilliant, multilevel, game-changing assault on Iran began yesterday. Brains, not brawn, shattered these three modern tyrannies, each far more deserving of destruction than Troy.

Not so Gaza, where Israel’s unpreparedness for Hamas and Qatar’s own trickery put the boot on the other foot and forced Israel to fall back on sheer power—that is, ordinary war. That is not an oxymoron. It is a plain fact. Ordinary. War.

The photo shows the Modern War Institute at West Point, where John Spencer serves as the chair of urban warfare studies and a founding member of both the Institute and the International Working Group on Subterranean Warfare. He served 25 years in the army in ranks from private to sergeant first class and second lieutenant to major. In two combat deployments to Iraq he served as an infantry platoon leader and company commander. He is the author of three books and many articles on urban warfare and leadership. And he’s a prize-winning West Point teacher.

Given his expertise, it’s not surprising that he has closely followed and taught about Israel’s war since October 7, 2023. He has visited Gaza several times and (among many other articles and interviews) wrote in late April a remarkable piece called “Top 7 Lies about Israel and the IDF Pertaining to  Gaza.” Here they are.

“1. Lie: Israel is committing genocide in Gaza; 2. Lie: Israel intentionally targets civilians in Gaza; 3. Lie: The civilian-to-combatant ratio proves Israel is committing war crimes. 4. Lie: Israel is starving Gaza’s population; 5. Lie: Israel indiscriminately attacks hospitals and schools; 6. Lie: Israel is illegally occupying Gaza; 7. Lie: Israel violates Hamas prisoners’ rights under the Geneva Conventions.” In each of these sections Spencer provides not just persuasive but decisive evidence that those who perpetrate these bald-faced falsehoods are morally bankrupt deceivers. He concludes, “In a just world, Israel’s efforts would be recognized for what they are: the very definition of lawful and moral warfare.” This is what he is teaching America’s future officers right now at West Point: Israel is a military and moral model for our own future wars.

Or, consider Richard Kemp, a retired British Army Colonel who commanded an infantry battalion in Afghanistan and also took part in the Bosnian, Gulf, and Iraq Wars. He has spent most of his time in Israel since the current war began. He said many times, most recently on May 30th in the Daily Telegraph: Israel has killed many terrorists and would have killed “many more”….”had the IDF not been so determined to avoid killing the hostages and where possible to avoid harm to civilians with their scrupulously observed obligations under International Humanitarian Law.” Already today, he gave a detailed interview about the new Israeli attack: “Iran was threatening Israel ever since 1979, and now we’ve seen Israel carrying out what so far seems to be the most brilliant operation you can imagine. I doubt if any other country could do it. And it’s an historic occasion because, ultimately, as long as it goes to plan, then a major threat not just to Israel but to the whole region and the whole of the world will have been removed.”

Or, David Petraeus, who despite a romantic scandal remains one of America’s most highly decorated, experienced, and respected Generals, has consistently supported Israel throughout this war, although he has criticized the strategy of clearing areas of Gaza and then leaving them. He has strongly advised a clear and hold strategy instead, which is what Israel has been doing in Gaza for the past few months. “Only if you do that can you begin the restoration of basic services, reconstruction of damaged infrastructure, repair of schools, clinics, markets, roads, etc., and get people back into homes of some type… And they’ll identify the bad guys… And if you do this of course, then you can you can also introduce Palestinian security forces… Arab forces will come in—they’re not going to come in if there’s not security… Then you can demonstrate to the entire world that Palestinians and Israeli Jews can live side by side in harmony.”

So, leading military experts and experienced combat officers (not Jewish) support Israel in this recent process in Gaza and in this latest attack on Iran. The clear and hold strategy in Gaza has not gone smoothly, with tragic casualties occurring around food distribution, and there is little doubt that Iran’s response to today’s attack will intensify. But let us remember the names of those who outrageously and disgustingly began using the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions, thus debasing this precious and valuable word and insulting the memories of the 800,000 Tutsi, 2 million Cambodians, and of course the 6 million Jews the word was invented for—3 groups who are true victims of true genocides.

According to the UN, 160,000 homes have been destroyed in Gaza, and 276,000 damaged. Also according to the UN, about 55,000 Gazans (including terrorists) have been killed, out of a population of 2.2 million. How do you destroy 160,000 homes while killing 55,000 people? Obviously the great majority of the homes were empty—by Israel’s warnings and orders. Would anyone like to guess how long it would take for the IDF to kill all two million Gazans, if they wanted to? Instead they are moving them out of harm’s way. Gaza is at war. War is terrible. But war is not genocide. Not even close.

The collection of vile debasers and anti-Semites who have libeled Israel with “genocide” include Senators Bernie Sanders  and Elizabeth Warren, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the governments of South Africa, Ireland, and Norway, Amnesty International—yes, I once admired it too—and others now thoroughly besmirched with this blood libel of their own twisted invention. It’s interesting to notice the move made by Ireland: they’ve called for a new definition of the word “genocide” so that the Jews could be guilty of it—thus admitting that nothing Israel has done meets any definition of the word that already exists, and also admitting that they want to degrade the meaning and value of the word.

The names of these blood libelers will live in infamy. Shame on them all. Shame, shame, shame.

  • The comment below, which I am publishing in full despite its hiding behind the identity “Anonymous,” makes some fair points about Senator Sanders. He has backed off from the exact word “genocide,” in some settings. However, as “Anonymous” acknowledges, Sanders has used US taxpayers’ money to re-post on his official website statements containing the exact word without himself demurring from its use in the slightest. For example, On February 8, 2024, he republished the statement, “The US should be working to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not aiding and abetting it.” Nowhere in this government funded posting does he demur from or qualify the use of the word, in fact he promotes it. Also, he has given credence to the South Africa’s scurrilous accusation of genocide against Israel, and has said that international bodies should decide whether genocide has happened or not. More importantly, Sanders has repeatedly stated (for example in an address to the Senate on May 8 this year) that “what we are seeing niw is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death;” that Israel has “waged a full out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people;” and that “right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death.” Each of these three statements is !. a lie; 2. a blood libel; and 3. a functional equivalent of genocide. So yes, Anonymous, Sanders has equivocated or even shied away fro the word “genocide,” he has effectively, mendaciously, and in my view antisemitically accused Israel and the Jewish people of genocide, even while he refuses to name his own accusations what they are. And no, Anonymous, I will not apologize to Mr. Sanders. He, on the other hand, urgently needs to apologize to Israel and the Jewish People. (I have also corrected and properly sourced Sanders’ re-posting of the explicit “genocide” accusation in the earlier posting Anonymous criticizes. The upshot—Sanders is a blood libeler—is the same.)

Mel, you should know that your Bernie Sanders quote here, “The US should be working to end Israel’s genocide in Gaza, not aiding and abetting it,” is not something Bernie ever said in the Senate or anywhere else. It comes from this tweet from the Institute for Middle East Understanding:

https://x.com/theIMEU/status/1755305910556332185

I noticed you mentioned Bernie in your newest post and came back to see what your source was. You are smearing Bernie as an anti-Semite blood libeler largely based on something he never said that you didn’t bother to fact check with a simple google search. Bernie has never used the word genocide about Gaza and has gotten confronted by protesters over that fact as recently as late May:

https://www.irishtimes.com/politics/2025/05/25/sanders-israel-gaza-genocide

Maybe an apology to Bernie is in order?

    • See my extensive reply above. Sanders is indeed a blood libeler who consistently lies about Israel, even while shying away from the word genocide.

The Time of Our Freedom?

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Today is the thirtieth Sabbath of the Gaza War. It is also the Sabbath of Passover, the holiday called z’man cherutenu—the time of our freedom—since it celebrates the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt. This comes from the Haggadah, the service read at the Passover seder, or sacred—and ordered—meal.

The service also contains the words, “In each generation they have stood against us to destroy us.” So many generations. So many different they’s. The Haggadah in some form has existed for at least two thousand years, and I don’t know when these exact words first appeared, but they are the same in my facsimile edition of The Copenhagen Haggadah of 1739, exactly two centuries before the Holocaust. And my friend Dr. Shlomit Finkelstein found the same words in a Haggadah dated to the late 1330s in Catalonia.

Thus, centuries before the Holocaust, before even the Cossack attempted genocide against Jews in 1648, Jews said every Passover, “In each generation they have stood against us to destroy us.” In this generation, the grotesque mass atrocities committed against Jews by Hamas—who soon promised to do the same a thousand times, as their charter pledges them to do—easily serve to confirm the Haggadah’s grim words. (For details of what Hamas did, see my description and this moving film starring Sheryl Sandberg.)

In the past week or two, US college campuses have imploded with demonstrations and encampments in favor of Palestinians and often Hamas, and virulently anti-Israel and often antisemitic. I say imploded rather than exploded because although they have spread throughout the country, they are implosive because they have mainly damaged themselves. Many have crossed the line from free speech to illegal action, inviting local and state police suppression. Ironically, they have risen up just as deaths in Gaza have reached their lowest levels ever. (See chart.)

Deaths in Gaza as counted by Hamas’s Health Ministry and reported by the UN (OCHA).

Continue reading →

Gaza: The Goebsie Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards

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Today, I will reveal the honorees for First Annual—okay, they might have to be more frequent—Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, for the individuals or collectives who have done the most recently to promote the Big Lie and the Blood Libel against the Jewish people (see chart for hints).

Timeline of deaths with blood libelers

But first: Just as the holy, peaceful, month of Ramadan—including four sacred Fridays and the feast of Eid-al-Fitr—blessedly passed with none of the predicted Islamic violence on the Temple Mount (the Noble Sanctuary), in the Middle East, and throughout the world, so the martial, belligerent, massive, unprecedented attack on Israel last night passed with virtually no damage. The coalition that completely blocked the attack included the US, the UK, France, and Jordan shooting down Iranian missiles and drones and Saudi Arabia providing logistic support. Imagine the degree of cooperation that such coordinated response must have involved. Now imagine the formidable coalition that will follow the war, annealed by alliance against this attack. My brother likens the attack to an amateur boxer throwing a hundred punches none of which lands, then waiting with tired arms for the professional blow that will pop his lights out. Now we’ll see what punch Israel uses. Its stock market finished higher today.

But back to our Big Lie-Blood Libel Awards, known colloquially as Goebbsies in honor of Joseph Goebbels, the master propagandist who put it to history’s most effective use.

The chart above shows today’s Goebbsie honorees against the timeline of the dramatically declining deaths in Gaza since the war started. These are total deaths in successive two-week periods (the blue line) as provided by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry and reported by the United Nations. There are many reasons to doubt these numbers, which are almost certainly over-estimates, but I am accepting them for present purposes because I want to focus on the steep decline—by Hamas’s numbers—and the remarkable fact that the lower the number of deaths got, the bigger the Big Lie got and the Bloodier the Blood Libel got as well. Five of the six Big Lies and Blood Libels shown here were smeared on Israel and the Jews when the number of deaths was about one quarter of what it was in the first month of the war—and declining. Continue reading →

Gaza War: America’s Ramadan Bear Hug

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(Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.)

We are days from Ramadan, sacred to Muslims—30 days of strict daytime fasting ending in a celebratory feast (Eid-al-Fitr) on the last day. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, the others being ritual prayer, alms, the holy pilgrimage of the Hajj, and bearing witness to the Oneness of God and the truth of the Prophet Muhammad.

It is a bit confusing to outsiders that Ramadan rotates around the year, because unlike the Chinese and Jewish calendars, which come back to the solar cycle, the Muslim calendar is purely lunar, losing 11 days each year. So the ambience of Ramadan changes—one year wintry, another autumnal—back through the seasons. For my Muslim students, this is a time for spiritual reflection.

However, the idea that Ramadan should restrain Israel from attacking Gaza is very naive. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on Yom Kippur of 1973, the holiest day of the year when Israeli Jews were in synagogues fasting, and the mass atrocities committed by Hamas came on what was both the Sabbath and a holy day. But Muslims have never considered Ramadan a time when war must stop, because the Qur’an does not forbid it.

In the long war between Iraq and Iran, both Islamic, key assaults by each side not only coincided with Ramadan but were named for it. Iran launched Operation Ramadan, then the largest land battle since World War II, on July 13, 1982, three weeks into the fast.  100,000 troops swept into Iraq in human waves; many had signed martyrdom contracts called “Passports to Paradise.” In six weeks an estimated 80,000 were killed on both sides.

And Iraq launched Operation Ramadan Mubarak (Blessed Ramadan) the day before Ramadan began in 1988, sending 100,000 troops against Iran with heavy use of chemical weapons. Iranian resistance collapsed. Continue reading →

Gaza: What is Victory?

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Scroll down to see earlier posts in this series, beginning January 14th.

On November 11, 1918, the last day of World War I, there were higher than usual casualties, because General John J. Pershing—“Black Jack Pershing” as his men often called him—resented the Armistice. He insisted on hurting the Germans further, at high cost to his own troops, and continuing, to the last minute—the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month—to inflict German losses. He reportedly said: “They never knew they were beaten in Berlin. It will have to be done all over again.” *

A myth arose. The German generals spread the word that their army was “undefeated in the field” but was “stabbed in the back” by politicians bent on surrender. Actually, their defeat in the field was staggering. After four years of what was mostly standoff, a million Americans arrived and, with their reinvigorated allies, swept across German-occupied France and Belgium in three months. The allies occupied a small part of western Germany for a while before they went home. But in Berlin, they never knew they were beaten. Pershing, alas, had to observe in his later years the rearming of Germany and the second world war he had predicted, with all its dreadful costs. His warnings, like Churchill’s in Britain, were ignored.

After that second war, they knew they were beaten in Berlin, and they knew they were beaten in Tokyo too, because the US and its allies took the war into those capitals and insisted on unconditional surrender. Although greatly complicated by the division of Germany and the Soviet role, the US (along with the UK and France) transitioned from military control, including denazification, dissolution of the German army, and occupiers’ rule of law, through municipal elections, to the buildup of a democratic state, officially declared four years after the war. The US State Department explicitly decreed that this governance “does not effect the annexation of Germany.” West Germany regained “near-sovereignty” in 1955, but it remained nominally occupied until 1991, after re-unification. Continue reading →

Gaza, Israel, and the United Notions

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I was born in August 1946; the first UN meetings were held in London in January that year. So the UN and I are the same age—you might say, nonidentical twins. I have followed it from an early age, and I am glad to report that—despite the small scale and limitations of my lifetime efforts—I have done better with my challenges than my twin has in its equal lifetime.

Per the UN itself, the genocides in Rwanda and the Balkans in the 1990s proved “in the worst possible way” that the UN repeatedly failed to prevent this horror, despite being able to do so. It failed to stop and even to recognize earlier genocides in Indonesia (1960s) and Cambodia (1970s) and much more recent ones in Darfur, Iraq and Syria (against the Yazidis), and Myanmar (the Rohingya). The UN rights council refused to discuss China’s ongoing genocide of Uighur Muslims.

The UN’s failure to prevent small wars—more than 200 in its lifetime and mine—speaks for itself; advocates argue that it has prevented World War III, but that is conjectural. Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution condemning its Ukraine invasion, although the General Assembly passed it overwhelmingly. The UN has done good work against hunger and slavery and promoting sustainable development, but has consistently fallen short of its own stated goals. More than 780 million people (and rising) face hunger, and there are more slaves in the world today than ever before in human history.

Continue reading →

Gaza Plus

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From the moment it moved its first aircraft carrier into the eastern Mediterranean, the US has adamantly said and said again that it wants to avoid a regional war. Despite that reluctance, regional war is here.

In a sense it has been from the start, since Iran (a non-Arab, often anti-Arab country) is on the east of the region, but its empire of vassals and proxies control Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen as well as infiltrating Iraq and Syria with its own soldiers (the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC) and arming Hamas in the occupied West Bank.

After the US accepted more than 160 attacks on its limited forces and facilities in Iraq and Syria, three US soldiers (two women and a man) were killed about two weeks ago, and the US vowed retaliation. Heavy strikes directed at key targets in Syria and Iraq occurred last Friday night, with more to come.

The Houthis, the terrorist group controlling Yemen, has for months attacked merchant ships in the Red Sea, impeding twenty percent of world commerce and decimating Suez Canal traffic. The group also attacks US naval vessels. Continue reading →

Concerning the War in Gaza

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After focusing on the Gaza war since 7:30 am on October 7th, I’ve finally decided to begin writing about it. People ask for my opinion and I will now refer them here. If you read on, that is what you will get. I will not keep saying, “In my opinion” again and again, so please assume it. Today I will give my overview, which may be followed by other, future entries.

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Israel is at war with the empire of Iran, which includes the failed state of Lebanon, the territory of Gaza, and the faltering state of Yemen. Iran rules these entities through the terror groups Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Houthis respectively. Like Iran, they are sworn to eliminate Israel. Through these and other proxies, Iran also controls parts of Syria and Iraq and has significantly infiltrated the West Bank. Since Iran is not an Arab country, this is larger than the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The question of whether Iran gives directives to these proxies on a day to day basis is irrelevant. It nurtures, trains, arms, consults, and plans with them and has done so for many years. They don’t do anything without Iran’s approval before and after the fact. Meanwhile Iran progresses steadily toward a nuclear arsenal (which Israel already has). Continue reading →

Bibi, Obama, and the Incendiary Summer

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This is a pivotal moment for Israel.

The cool breeze of the Arab Spring, about which many of us were hopeful but skeptical, is now an Incendiary Summer. This ominous anger over a trashy film has caused riots and replaced the Stars and Stripes with Islamist flags in many places. Our embassies are threatened in at least twelve Muslim capitals. In addition, a planned terrorist attack killed a U.S. ambassador and other Americans in Libya.

The eruption come against the background of Bibi Netanyahu turning up the rhetoric Continue reading →