The Syrian Pipeline Game: How Turkey’s Plans Affect Israel’s Regional Ambitions  

By | January 13, 2025

BESA Geo-Energy Insights No. 7, January 13, 2025

 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The fall of the Assad regime in Syria has revived Turkey’s plans to construct oil and gas pipelines through the country, turning it into a regional “energy corridor” for neighboring states. Some of these plans would offer the Arab Gulf States a more convenient land route for exporting energy to Europe through Turkey, posing a challenge to Israel’s similar aspirations. Israel has other opportunities to export its natural gas to new markets via pipeline, but they pose the risk of undermining Israel’s relationship with Greece and Cyprus. Israel should follow the “pipeline game” in Syria closely to ensure that new economic opportunities in the region don’t pass it by.

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January 14, 2025 | 3:51 pm | 1 Comment »

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Silence in the Face of Actual Genocide  

by Rafael Medoff 

The Biden administration has confirmed that Arab militias are committing genocide against black Africans in Sudan. So how will those who are falsely accusing Israel of genocide respond to the news that real genocide is underway?

It seems unlikely there will be much of a response. After all, the evidence of genocide in Sudan has been reported for many months, yet there have been no noticeable protests. 

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reported last year that “Some of the same Arab forces responsible for the genocide in [the Sudanese region of Darfur] in the 2000s are picking up where they left off…massacring, torturing, raping and mutilating members of non-Arab ethnic groups—the same victims as before—while burning or bulldozing their villages…”

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January 14, 2025 | 2:10 pm | 4 Comments »

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Lebanon’s Christian President Joseph Aoun  

Arthur A. Flower | January 12, 2025

Maronite Patriarch Cardinal Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi meeting Joseph Aoun in January 2024. (Photo: The Maronite Patriarchate)

In a significant political breakthrough, Lebanon’s parliament elected army commander Joseph Aoun as the country’s 14th president in January 2025, ending a presidential vacuum that had lasted more than two years. The 61-year-old Maronite Christian military leader ascended to the presidency with broad domestic support and international backing, particularly from the United States and Saudi Arabia.

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January 14, 2025 | 1:02 pm | 2 Comments »

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IDF faces growing threat from IEDs in northern Gaza  

By Seth Frantzman | January 13, 2025

IDF troops from the Nahal Brigade operating in northern Gaza. (IDF)

Seven Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers have been killed in two recent incidents in northern Gaza, illustrating the continued challenges Israeli troops face from terrorist cells and improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The IDF has been clearing the areas of Jabaliya, Beit Lahiya, and Beit Hanoun over the last three months. Operations recently shifted toward Beit Hanoun, where Israeli troops have encountered terrorists and booby traps.

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January 14, 2025 | 10:09 am | 3 Comments »

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Jihadi terror as religious sacrifice – pathway to a nuclear war with Iran  

Whatever differences emerge between Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its predecessors, whether suddenly or incrementally, all jihadi groups will continue to embrace terrorism as a redemptive expression of religious sacrifice.

“The death fear of the ego is lessened by the killing, the sacrifice, of the other; through the death of the other, one buys oneself free from the penalty of dying.” – Otto Rank, Will Therapy and Reality (1936)

Following the collapse of Syria’s Bashar al Assad’s regime, jihadi terror groups are being refashioned in the Middle East. Though there are evident and significant differences between these groups, all share a single overriding objective. This common goal is not geopolitical advantage or national self-determination, but “power over death.” Whatever else differentiates jihadi terror group ideologies and tactics from one another, all Islamist groups seek personal redemption through “sacred violence.”

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January 14, 2025 | 10:01 am | Comments »

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American Jewish Groups Opposing Gaza Resettlement Have Learned Nothing from History  

Avi Abelow | Jan 12, 2025

Getty Images  AFP GALI TIBBON

The Times of Israel recently reported the statements of a number of prominent centrist and liberal American Jewish organizations opposing the resettlement of Gaza by Jews, calling it a “far-right” policy. Groups opposed to the idea include the Jewish Federations of North America, the American Jewish Committee (AJC), United Reform Judaism, United Synagogue (the Conservative movement) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

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January 14, 2025 | 9:53 am | 5 Comments »

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Who is Joseph Aoun – Lebanon’s newly elected president?  

Newly-elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun poses for a picture at the presidential palace in Baabda, Lebanon, January 9, 2025. Dalati Nohra/Handout via REUTERS

The country of Lebanon ended a two year period without a president when it elected Lebanese Army commander, General Joseph Aoun, to the position last Thursday.

The 61-year-old career soldier has a reputation for no nonsense leadership and a disdain for politics. He made a name for himself by leading Lebanon’s army during a period of severe economic crisis and challenge.

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January 14, 2025 | 9:44 am | 2 Comments »

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Israeli expert believes Trump will pressure Israel to concede to Saudi conditions for peace – a Palestinian state  

Peloni:  Granting statehood to the very people who participated in October 7 and who still celebrate the savagery committed over a year ago are the price which Trump will trade for Saudi normalization?  Nonsense.  The only use of Saudi normalization is greater stability in the region, and carving a state for the Pals out of Israel will achieve the complete opposite of this, and this fact can not be wasted on anyone involved in pursuing such a deal.  The Saudi’s have always proven themselves to be excellent negotiators, but they will negotiate on behalf of their interests, not on behalf of that of the Pals, who have only ever had a destabilizing effect on the region.

An Israeli expert recently stated in an interview that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump is likely to pressure Israel to address various demands outlined by the Saudi Kingdom as prerequisites for any normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

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January 13, 2025 | 1:20 pm | 51 Comments »

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‘Need To Rectify That’: JD Vance Lays Out Administration’s Plan For J6 Pardons  

Peloni:  These were political show trials.  There was no justice involved in these prosecutions, not by intent of the investigations and not by execution of the prosecutions.  All defendants should be pardoned or have charges dropped.  What is more, something which is missing in the conversation about “committed to seeing the equal administration of law” as Vance describes it, is the pursuit of criminal investigations against those responsible for the perversion of legal standards which rendered them to be political show trials.  There can be no justice if justice is not blind, and in fact, the persecution of the Jan 6 defendants were purposefully driven to achieve a political outcome.  Lawfare is not legal, and there must be accountability for those who substituted this arbitrary derangement of legal practices in place of legal norms.

Hailey Gomez | Daily Caller | January 12, 2025

 [Screenshot/Fox News/”Fox News Sunday”]

Vice President-elect J.D. Vance said Sunday on Fox News that the incoming administration’s plan for Jan. 6 pardons will depend on whether the imprisoned protesters were violent.

President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecuted over 1,200 individuals from nearly all 50 states in connection with the attack on the Capitol. On “Fox News Sunday,” host Shannon Bream questioned Vance on where the “line” will be drawn when it comes to pardoning those punished for the riot.

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January 13, 2025 | 12:43 pm | Comments »

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Britain’s Soul Is In Lockdown – Elon Musk Sees Tommy Robinson As The Key  

Linda Goudsmit:  This is a very important article!

We are at a turning point in history. We the people in America, in Britain, in Canada, and in Israel, have the opportunity to resurrect our nations and save our souls by making our countries moral again. The globalist elite who have trampled our rights are targeting our nations’ children, because children are the future of every society on earth. “Progressive” British governments have been protecting Muslim rape gangs in Britain for decades. “Progressive” American governments have been indoctrinating American children with Marxism for decades in American schools. “Progressive” Canadian governments have been tearing Canada apart piece by piece, and “Progressive” Israeli governments have collaborated with a savage enemy to topple Netanyahu’s nationalist government. So, what do these “progressive” governments all have in common?

Each named government is being funded and fomented by the globalist elite, but to what end? Progress toward what??

Globalism is a replacement ideology and its progress is toward establishment of the globalist elite’s dystopian world government, where individual and national sovereignty is replaced with planetary feudalism. In the globalist Unistate the people’s future is humanity’s feudal past. The globalist war is a war of attrition. My generation of American patriots is dying. My children’s generation of millennials is transitional. It is my grandchildren and great-grandchildren who are the primary targets of the globalist elite. And it is the globalist elite who are funding and fomenting worldwide proxy wars to destroy the innocence of the western world’s precious children. The innocence of children is being attacked by Muslim rape gangs in England, by Marxist indoctrination in American schools, by “progressive” policies in Canada, and by “progressive” enemies of the State in Israel. Everything is connected, and the globalist elite are swinging progressivism’s coordinated wrecking ball to collapse western civilization by destroying its Judeo-Christian infrastructure, including its morality which protects the individual, individual sovereignty, and the sovereignty of the nation state.

Make no mistake, the rape of little English school girls is the key to understanding the globalist elite and their wrecking ball, and Tommy Robinson is globalism’s existential enemy. Muslim rape gangs are funded, fomented, and protected by the globalist elite, because the globalist elite are in the business of soul murder. Any society that can ignore the intentional destruction of innocent children is already dead. But the English people can Make Britain Moral Again (MBMA), the Americans can Make America Moral Again (MAMA), the Canadians can Make Canada Moral Again (MCMA), and the Israelis cam Make Israel Moral Again (MIMA).

We the people of the world must stand together and say NO! We are the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, friends, and neighbors who must protect the innocence of children. We are the family of man who must stand together and fight for the children, because the children cannot protect themselves. Elon Musk is correct––Tommy Robinson is the key to understanding the entire globalist megalomaniacal scheme to impose one world government––and it is not just Britain’s soul that is in lockdown. The western world must recognize that progressivism’s multiculturalism is the seismic humanitarian hoax that advances globalism’s population jihad, population replacement, and western societal collapse––one rape at a time.

Tommy Robinson, the undaunted, much maligned, imprisoned hero of little British schoolgirls, is the fulcrum on which the politics of the entire western world will turn––and we the people of the world must help him by simply being moral again. Let’s start by rejectting progressivism’s moral relativism and state unequivocally: Right and wrong exist. Raping little girls is simply wrong. It is wrong anywhere and everywhere and anytime it happens in the world. Period. Now, that wasn’t so hard was it?

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January 13, 2025 | 7:07 am | 9 Comments »

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NIS 3.4 Billion Resettlement Plan Aims to Return Northerners by March  

After more than a year of displacement, thousands prepare to return as Israel pledges financial aid and security guarantees.

Israfan | Jan 6, 2025

After over a year of war-driven displacement, thousands of Israelis from the north are preparing to return home in March. To support this transition, the Israeli government has announced a NIS 3.4 billion ($934 million) compensation plan aimed at easing the financial burden on returning families and ensuring long-term security in the region.

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January 13, 2025 | 12:40 am | 1 Comment »

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Exposé by #Baum_News  

Yossi Baum tweeted the following:

Exposé by #Baum_News

  • The right-wing woke up to discover that the left has taken control of “Community Notes” on Twitter.
  • @YinonMagal publishes information about left-wing organizing to amplify posts on social networks.
  • Previously, @arbelaue exposed left-wing groups focused on increasing exposure and likes.

Let’s examine how much money the New Israel Fund (NIF) has spent on online activity. Spoiler: up to $822,000, equivalent to nearly 3,000,000 NIS in 2024 alone.

Below is a breakdown of the organizations, some of which are focused on online discourse, while others include such activities. The following quotes are from the fund’s website (in Hebrew/English), shedding light on how deeply the fund invests in influencing social media discourse in a leftward direction. Read carefully, as it seems the language reveals only part of the picture, intentionally:

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January 13, 2025 | 12:30 am | 8 Comments »

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The Biden Doctrine on Israel  

By Walter Block

Mr. Tom Friedman of the New York Times is unhappy with “the inability of Israel’s right-wing government to articulate any plan for governing Gaza the morning after the war’s end with a non-Hamas Palestinian partner.” Accordingly, he supplies a “Biden Doctrine.” It consists of three tracks:

“On one track would be a strong and resolute stand on Iran… On the second track would be an unprecedented US diplomatic initiative to promote a Palestinian state — NOW… On the third track would be a vastly expanded US security alliance with Saudi Arabia, which would also involve Saudi normalization of relations with Israel…”

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January 13, 2025 | 12:20 am | 2 Comments »

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DM Katz instructs IDF to draw up plan for ‘complete defeat of Hamas’ if hostages not released by Trump’s inauguration  

Peloni:  Whereas it is true that defeating Hamas is not dependent upon a political solution for Gaza, it is also true that a political solution for Gaza is entirely dependent upon first defeating Hamas.

Katz says defeating Hamas is not dependent on political solution for Gaza

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz meets with senior IDF officers. Photo: Official Facebook page of Israel Katz.

Defense Minister Israel Katz on Friday directed Israeli military leaders to prepare a plan for the complete defeat of Hamas in Gaza if the remaining Israeli hostages are not released by U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on Jan. 20.

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January 13, 2025 | 12:10 am | 1 Comment »

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Inventing the ‘West Bank’  

By Sha’i ben-Tekoa | Am Thinker | Jan 6, 2024

Image: 1895 Map of Palestine. Library of Congress.

On December 6, 2024, Senator Tom Cotton (Republican of Arkansas) introduced a bill in the Senate to replace “West Bank” in all federal documents with “Judea and Samaria,” noting, “The Jewish people’s legal and historic rights to Judea and Samaria go back thousands of years. The US should stop using the politically charged term West Bank to refer to the biblical heartland of Israel.” His bill matches a House bill introduced earlier this year by Representatives Claudia Tenney, Randy Weber, and Anthony D’Esposito.

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January 12, 2025 | 7:18 pm | 3 Comments »

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Why Iran-backed militias in Iraq are Tehran’s most resilient proxies – analysis  

It is the Iranian-controlled Iraqi militias (Popular Mobilization Forces, PMF or PMU) that may be the most difficult Iranian proxy to degrade.

By ERIC R. MANDEL | JANUARY 11, 2025

In the last few months, no one could have imagined that Hezbollah in Lebanon, the crown jewel of the Iranian Ring of Fire, with upwards of 200,000 projectiles aimed at Israel, would have been so degraded. James Bond-like operations involving pager and walkie-talkie explosions featured on the American TV news program 60 Minutes, followed by Israel’s devastating attacks against the Hezbollah military infrastructure, changed the face of the Middle East.

No one predicted that the Turkish-backed Syrian rebels (HTS) would use Hezbollah’s weakness to start a march south from their stronghold in northwest Syria, conquering the state in days, while exposing the Russian and Iranian-backed Syrian army as just a paper tiger. HTS correctly perceived that Hezbollah fighters and the Russian air force were not going to come to the aid of Syrian president Bashar Assad as they did 10 years ago.

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January 12, 2025 | 7:10 pm | Comments »

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“Holy War: Rome And The Jews” Excerpt 1  

Peloni:  As a follow-up to our publication of excerpts from Joseph Shellim’s “Philistine-To-Palestine”, we are happy to be able to present a series of excerpts from his informative BEN HUR II – EXILE” [aka “HOLY-WAR: ROME AND THE JEWS.  Below is the first installment.

Joseph Shellim

HOLY WAR – APRIL 70 AD/CE – DAWN.  

TEMPLE LOCATION.  

Mount Moriah is the name of the elongated north-south stretch of land lying between The Kidron  Valley and the “Hagai” Valley, between Mount Zion to the west and the Mount of Olives to the  east. [103]  

Then Solomon began to build the house of the LORD at Jerusalem in Mount Moriah, where [the  LORD] appeared unto David his father; for which provision had been made in the place of  David, in the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite’. — [2 Chronicles Chapter 3] [104]  “The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of  heaven.” – Benjamin Disraeli.  

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January 12, 2025 | 6:50 pm | Comments »

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