"You don't make peace with friends. You make it with very unsavory enemies."

That aphorism, attributed to former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, has always struck me as more hopeful than convincing.

Americans didn't make peace with the Nazis. We made peace with those we permitted to hold power in Germany after we decisively defeated the Nazis.

Today, there is no conceivable way that Israel can make peace with Hamas, a military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a Tehran-backed terrorist organization committed to jihad, the annihilation of Israel, and the genocide of Israelis.

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What a difference a year can make. Last summer, Iran appeared to be well and truly on the march. Its chief Palestinian proxy, Hamas, had succeeded in bogging Israel down in a costly ground war in Gaza – and turning global public opinion against the Jewish state in the process. The United States, under the Biden administration, didn't appear to have much of an answer to Iran's persistent pursuit of nuclear status, or to the growing regional threat posed by its other proxies, like Yemen's Houthi rebels. And vulnerable Gulf states, acutely aware of this dynamic, were increasingly seeking some sort of accommodation with Tehran. As a result, the Iranian leadership's strategic ambitions had begun to expand dramatically. That, however, was before Israel's offensive against Hezbollah in southern Lebanon left the Shi'ite militia decimated. Israel's parallel October strike on Iran succeeded in destroying Iran's air defense architecture, leaving its nuclear facilities exposed. Then, in December, Syria's Bashar al-Assad fell from power unexpectedly, overthrown by Islamist rebel forces, robbing Tehran of another regional ally. But it was not until June 2025 that the extent of Tehran's fragility was truly revealed. Beginning on June 13, Israel's "Operation Rising Lion" systematically targeted key nodes in Iran's nuclear program, as well as senior military leaders and nuclear scientists responsible for making it tick. That effort, in turn, was dramatically amplified by the Trump administration's decision to wade into the fray, using American military superiority to target hardened and buried elements of Iran's atomic effort – to devastating effect. Now that the dust has settled, the regional picture in the Middle East looks strikingly different. But, while the Islamic Republic is now down, it isn't out. The weeks ahead are liable to see some big changes within the country, as Iran's political establishment scrambles to survive.

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Nearly 25 years after the IDF ignominiously pulled out of Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, Israel may at last be on the verge of correcting that grievous affront to Jewish history and destiny.

According to a report last week in Yediot Aharonot, the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee's Subcommittee on Judea and Samaria, chaired by Religious Zionist Party MK Zvi Sukkot, convened a special session to discuss for the first time the restoration of Israeli sovereignty to the holy site.

IDF officials who participated in the meeting promised to prepare a feasibility study within six weeks, which could pave the way for the renewal of a permanent Jewish presence at the site.

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With President Donald Trump's decision to intervene in the Iran-Israel war, Iran, a country 6,500 miles away from Washington, D.C., has once again taken an outsize role in the story of an American presidency. In fact, Iran has been a big part of American presidencies for nearly a century.

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Gift or grift? The tiny Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar has just given the United States a 747 jet to serve as the new Air Force One. But what exactly is Qatar getting in return?

Qatar is an insanely wealthy country. Its citizenry is estimated to be 330,000 (with another 1.7 million foreigners serving as hired help on the peninsula). And yet the country controls more than 10 per cent of the world's energy. In other words, money is no object for Doha. Influence is the name of the game.

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Two weeks ago, a judge ordered the release of a 34-year-old named Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student detained weeks earlier by Department of Homeland Security agents in Vermont. The usual suspects, including pundits, professors, and our self-appointed intellectual and moral betters, celebrated Mahdawi's newfound freedom, arguing that detaining him—during his naturalization interview, no less—was an egregious overreach and that the Trump administration had no good case to make against Mahdawi. It was such a perfect storm of virtue signaling, complete with Mahdawi himself delivering a defiant speech from the courthouse steps, that the facts, as they usually do in such cases, were drowned out by the sound and fury.

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President Donald J. Trump failed to achieve his often repeated preelection vow to end Russia's war against Ukraine "in 24 hours," but the 47th president still accomplished something extraordinary.

In less than three months, he called into question the security architecture that not only has deterred Russian aggression, but also kept Europe relatively peaceful and prosperous for over 75 years through 14 different administrations, including his own first term.

The U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization, an alliance of 31 European nations plus Canada, has been the backbone of Europe's defense since its creation in the ashes of World War II 80 years ago.

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The Biden administration's decision to cut off weapons supplies to Israel during the war in Gaza has raised concerns that the Jewish state is overly dependent on the United States for its security. Washington has supplied Israel with more than 10,000 tons of munitions since October 7, 2023, when Hamas murdered more than 1,200 Israelis. However, the White House has threatened to suspend further arms transfers to restrain the Israeli military by conditioning how American armaments can be used against Hamas and Hezbollah, the Iranian- backed terrorist proxy in Lebanon.

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I can't believe we're having this discussion in September 2023, just as the fall respiratory virus season commences and we're experiencing a new wave of COVID-19, but the politicizers of COVID won't let up. Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) this week introduced legislation that "would prohibit any federal official, including the President, from issuing mask mandates applying to domestic air travel, public transit systems, or primary, secondary, and post-secondary schools."

There was also the ill-timed article by John Tierney in City Journal on August 27th claiming that "maskaholics are incorrigible" and everyone should reject masks because "we're rational."

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While the ongoing protests in Syria's southern province of al-Suwayda' against the Syrian government and its policies are noteworthy, the tribal uprising in the eastern countryside of the eastern province of Dayr al-Zur against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is arguably of greater significance, as it amounts to an actual armed revolt that has posed a serious challenge to the SDF's authority over the area- an authority that was only established because of the American-led campaign against the Islamic State. In turn the revolt raises very serious issues about U.S. policy in the region and the supposed ongoing American mission to ensure the "enduring defeat" of the Islamic State.

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