Let's look at two cities that have a great deal in common. Both were under British rule for extended periods. Both were, as recently as 1950, backward regions with little or no economic activity; one was a "barren island" whose 600,000 residents had been left stripped by four years of WW2 occupancy by Imperial Japan, while the other was part of a territory administered by Egypt for a period before being taken by Israel in 1967, part of a larger package with no real economy and only 120,000 residents.

Today, one of these cities remains (despite, not because of, being re-absorbed into China) an economic powerhouse, a major global banking center, a place with a fully modern technological society and a high standard of living. The other remains a Third World hell-hole, governed by maniacs, ruled by hatred.

These two cities, of course, are Hong Kong and Gaza.

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/18/why-couldnt-gaza-be-another-hong-kong/

A mainline Israeli news station is reporting that the bodies of 40 babies have been found in the town of Kfar Aza following the invasion by Hamas militants on Saturday.

According to i24 news, the babies were being carried out on gurneys, with some of them having been beheaded. //

I'm talking to some of the soldiers, and they say what they've witnessed as they've been walking through these different houses, these different communities. Babies, their heads cut off, that's what they said. Gunned down, families completely gunned down in their beds. You can see some of these soldiers right now comforting each other.

The reporter goes on to describe the house-to-house fighting that is still ongoing, with the bodies of those murdered being found every hour. Booby traps are also set in the area, worsening the recovery efforts for those that were massacred.

The kibbutz in question is positioned near the Southern border with the Gaza Strip and was one of the places hit by Hamas.

These segments produced no shortage of drama and gripping visuals, but they also delivered some harsh reality, namely that these incidents each took place inside of Israel. Trey Yingst was indicating how the Hamas rockets were of such volume as to hopefully overwhelm the famed Iron Dome anti-rocket system Israel has developed for its protection. All the reporters were experiencing attacks from Hamas, something a few of their own networks were striving to gloss over.

What we saw, as gripping as it was to experience from the vantage of a reporter, is a reality many residents inside Israel have had to contend with for years. These evasive actions are commonplace for many as these types of attacks from Palestinians are persistent. And, despite the agitprop delivered by “Tulkarm Rose” on CNN, those targets are frequently — almost exclusively — civilian in nature.

It is rather galling to see these news outlets try to paint Israel as the unreasonable aggressor in these conflicts (as they attempt to bypass the significance of phrases such as “military response” and “retaliatory strikes”) while their own reporters are detailing the very aggression leading to Isreal’s reactions. It is one thing to attempt to gaslight the globe about the threats to the nation, but it turns pathetic when your own people are displaying the harsh reality faced by the Israelis.

The fact is, no amount of appeasement short of total capitulation will ever satisfy Armenia’s powerful Muslim neighbors, Azerbaijan and its “big brother,” Turkey.

Appropriating Artsakh has always been only the first step of a larger project. As Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev once openly proclaimed, “Yerevan [the capital of Armenia] is our historical land and we Azerbaijanis must return to these historical lands.” He has also referred to other ancient Armenian territories, including the Zangezur and Lake Sevan regions, as “our historic lands.” Taking over those territories “is our political and strategic goal,” Aliyev maintains, “and we need to work step-by-step to get closer to it.”

But as Tigran Balayan, spokesman for Armenia’s foreign ministry, responded: “The statement about territorial claims of the president of Azerbaijan, a state appearing on the political map of the world only 100 years ago … yet again demonstrates the racist character of the ruling regime in Baku.”

This is a rather restrained and diplomatic way of saying that, not only are Azerbaijani claims absolutely false but they are also — as most falsehoods nowadays tend to be — the exact inverse of the truth.

Armenia is one of the oldest nations in the world. Armenians founded Yereyan, their current capital, in 782 BC — exactly 2,700 years before Azerbaijan came into being in 1918. And yet, here is the president of Azerbaijan waging war because “Yerevan is our historical land and we Azerbaijanis must return to these historical lands.” //

Fast forward nearly a millennium to Azerbaijan’s war on Armenia in 2020, a Muslim fighter was videotaped triumphantly shouting “Allahu Akbar!” while standing atop an Armenian church chapel where the cross had been broken off.

Such is an idea of what the Turkic peoples did to Christian Armenians — not during the Armenian Genocide of a century ago when some 1.5 million Armenians were massacred and even more displaced — but one thousand years ago when the Islamic conquest of Armenia first began.

This unrelenting history of hate makes one thing perfectly clear: all modern-day pretexts and “territorial disputes” aside, true and permanent peace between Armenia and its Muslim neighbors will only be achieved when the Christian nation has either been conquered or ceded itself into nonexistence.

Nor would it be the first to do so. It is worth recalling that the heart of what is today called “the Muslim world” — the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) — was thoroughly Christian before the sword of Islam invaded. Bit by bit, century after century after the initial seventh-century Muslim conquests and occupations, it lost its Christian identity. Its peoples were lost in the morass of Islam so that few today even remember that Egypt, Iraq, Syria, etc., were among the first, oldest, and most populous Christian nations.

Armenia — the first nation in the world to adopt Christianity — is a holdout, a thorn in Islam’s side, and, as such, will never know lasting peace from the Muslims surrounding it — not least as the West has thrown it under the bus.

For the longest time after the Camp David Accords, relations between Israel and Egypt could only be described as “coldly correct,” each side exactingly adhering to the terms of that particular treaty. It took the Persian threat along with that posed by Al Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, to move both Egypt and Israel from coldly correct to active, positive, nay enthusiastic (if covert) intelligence sharing and full cooperation. This brings us to the recently changed relationships between Israel and United Arab Emirates & Bahrain—and Saudi Arabia. //

You can easily imagine how difficult it is for the Royal Family to make open and notorious gestures towards a nation that many of their religion believe has no right to exist. This new set of diplomatic advances was accompanied by the Saudi government publicly allowing (and announcing that fact) direct flights starting or ending in Israel to overfly its territory. That is a far cry from clandestine meetings between the Saudi Intelligence Service Agents and Mossad Operatives. //

There was something different about Tuesday’s event. I was watching the faces…and also the body language…especially during the part where each party had to sign multiple copies of the treaty…one in English, one in Hebrew and one in Arabic (2nd ceremony had two in Arabic). Netanyahu was asked by his Arabic counterparts where to sign on the Hebrew version, while he in turn asked them the same on the Arabic one. The same thing occurred on President Trump’s end of the table, except he needed help from both an Israeli and an Arab.

I realize that I’m not a State Department Professional, but there was something different. The vibe I was getting was almost that of 4 or 5 guys who get together regularly for poker or golf. These leaders looked happy to be there, doing what they were doing and most importantly, doing it with others they wanted to be doing it with. I credit President Trump for this.

With the Camp David Accords, President Carter was the only one who was trusted by all sides, hence the long period of coldly correct relations. In fact, one of the Egyptian demands, was that every two years, the United States must conduct military exercises in Egypt as a deterrent to possible Israeli attack. Thus was born operation BRIGHT STAR. This agreement starts at a point decades further than Camp David. //

There is important reason these are called the Abraham Accords. Christians, Jews and Muslims are all descendants of Abraham. This breakthrough, if followed by a majority of the Arab League (especially Saudi Arabia) is a giant leap towards bringing about a lasting peace between Judeo-Christianity and the Arab world.

From Mozambique on Africa’s East Coast to Nigeria, Niger, Mali, and Burkina Faso in West Africa, Christians in the region are under jihadi attack.

Ghana's chief imam is a man of few words, but the 100-year-old Muslim cleric certainly knows how to make waves - by attending a Catholic Church service as part of his birthday celebrations.

Pictures of Sheikh Osman Sharubutu, sitting attentively in the pews of Accra's Christ the King Catholic Church for an Easter service, went viral on social media.

The grand mufti, leader of Ghana's minority Muslim community, wants to ensure that his legacy is peace - the fruit of inter-faith harmony.
Image caption Sheikh Sharubutu (in green) attended the Easter Sunday service

His church attendance was given even more resonance as on the day he was being pictured alongside parish priest Father Andrew Campbell, Islamist suicide bombers unleashed attacks in Sri Lanka, killing more than 250 people at churches and hotels.