Saturday, February 22, 2025

Can Bounty Hunters Solve Our Immigration Crisis?


In an era where federal inertia and urban chaos threaten the fabric of our republic, two visionary state leaders — Missouri senator David Gregory and Mississippi attorney general Matthew Barton — have dared to propose a solution as bold as it is American: deploying bounty hunters to track down criminal illegal aliens.  Their legislation, Senate Bill 72 and House Bill 1484, offers a $1,000 reward per deportation, a concept now rippling across the heartland.  To the timid, it’s a provocation; to the resolute, it’s a reclamation of sovereignty.  As conservatives, we must not only embrace this idea, but elevate it as a cornerstone of our renewed commitment to law, order, and the pioneering spirit that forged this nation.

Let us first confront the crisis with unflinching clarity.  Illegal immigration is no mere administrative hiccup; it is a breach of our sacred borders, often shielding those who flout our laws with impunity.  The Department of Homeland Security estimates over 11 million illegal aliens reside here, a figure stagnant yet festering since the mid-2000s.  Among them lurk not just the weary laborer, but also the predator — cartel enforcers, human-traffickers, and recidivist felons.  ICE’s 2023 report notes 170,000 encounters with criminal aliens, including 1,300 homicide offenders.  These are indictments of a federal system too bloated to act and too cowed to prioritize American lives.

Enter the bounty hunter, a figure as old as the Republic, reborn for this modern fray.  Critics — often cloistered in coastal salons — scoff, conjuring dystopian fantasies or historical ghosts like the Fugitive Slave Act.  Such hand-wringing misses the mark.  This is not about rounding up the innocent, but targeting the guilty: illegal aliens with rap sheets, warrants, or deportation orders defied.  Gregory’s and Barton’s plans harness a regulated, incentivized force to augment an overwhelmed ICE and understaffed sheriffs.  Missouri’s bond agents and Mississippi’s certified hunters are extensions of the law, licensed and vetted, answering a clarion call the feds have ignored.

The conservative case for this innovation is threefold: it restores state authority, revives individual initiative, and reasserts the moral clarity of justice over sentimentality.  First, consider sovereignty.  The Constitution vests Congress with immigration powers, yet decades of dereliction — amnesty flirtations, sanctuary cities, and porous borders — have left states to fend for themselves.  Texas strings razor wire; Missouri and Mississippi summon bounty hunters.  This is federalism in action, not overreach — a rightful flexing of the Tenth Amendment when Washington abdicates its duty.  The Supreme Court’s 2011 Chamber of Commerce v. Whiting upheld state immigration measures that complement federal goals.  Bounty hunters do just that, easing ICE’s burden as it begs for help, per Gregory’s testimony.

Second, this proposal resurrects a distinctly American virtue: the rugged individual, unbound by bureaucracy, solving problems the state cannot.  Bounty hunters trace their lineage to the posses of the Old West, where citizens, not desk-bound clerks, upheld justice.  Today, urban police forces bleed officers — St. Louis down 30% since 2020 — while rural sheriffs juggle meth labs and migrant-smuggling.  A $1,000 bounty turns patriots into partners, not parasites.  Imagine a veteran in Joplin or a farmer in Tupelo, trained and deputized, tracking a cartel mule who slipped ICE’s net.  This is a public-private pact, echoing the militias that birthed our independence.

Third, it draws a line in the sand: lawbreakers forfeit sympathy.  The left peddles tales of “undocumented dreamers,” blurring the distinction between the law-abiding and the lawless.  Conservatives must reject this sophistry.  An illegal alien who robs, assaults, or kills isn’t a victim of circumstance — he’s a criminal twice over, violating entry and ethics alike.  Bounty hunters target this subset, not the broader “undocumented” mass, ensuring precision over prejudice.  Mississippi’s tip-based vetting, likened to “Crime Stoppers on steroids,” and Missouri’s bond agent framework promise accountability.

Yet balance demands we address dissent.  Missouri House speaker Jon Patterson, a fellow Republican, warns of “no appetite” for bounties, fearing optics or overreach.  His caution merits a nod — conservatism cherishes prudence — but not paralysis.  The risk of false detentions or profiling looms, yes, but safeguards can mitigate it: mandatory ICE database checks, body cams, and citizen-only complaint lines.  The left will cry “inhumane”; let it.  If urban liberals clutch pearls, rural America — the backbone of this nation — sees the necessity.  Gregory’s claim of “tremendous support” finds an echo in towns where fentanyl flows and jobs vanish, courtesy of unchecked borders.

Now let’s innovate beyond the bills.  Why stop at $1,000?  Tie bounties to crime severity — $5,000 for murderers, $3,000 for traffickers — prioritizing the worst offenders.  Fund it not just with taxes, but with seized cartel assets, turning predators’ profits against them.  Expand the model: a “Liberty Bounty Network,” where states share intel and hunters, a conservative counterweight to sanctuary coalitions.  Equip hunters with drones and A.I. to pinpoint fugitives in vast plains or urban shadows.  This is the Second Amendment meeting the 21st century: citizens armed with tech and resolve.

The naysayers — Patterson included — miss the stakes.  Illegal immigration is a hydra.  Border crossings spiked to 2.5 million in 2023, per CBP, with cartels emboldened by Biden’s dithering.  Sanctuary cities like Chicago hemorrhage tax dollars — $361 million in 2024 alone — coddling those who spurn our laws.  Federal deportations limp at 150,000 yearly, a fraction of need.  Bounty hunters aren’t a panacea, but they are a scalpel, excising the malignant while ICE rebuilds.  To do nothing, or to wait for Washington’s whims, is to surrender.

This is conservatism at its core: pragmatic, unapologetic, rooted in first principles.  We honor borders as we honor property — lines that define us.  We trust the individual over the leviathan, the doer over the dawdler.  We choose justice over excuses, knowing that mercy to the guilty is betrayal of the innocent.  Gregory and Barton have lit a fuse; it’s our duty to fan the flame.  Let bounty hunters rise — not as relics, but as vanguard — reclaiming America one capture at a time.  For if we falter, the criminal alien wins, and the Republic loses.  That’s a price no patriot should pay.




X22, On the Fringe, and more- Feb 22

 



The Trump Strategy for Ukraine

In recent days, many people who support Ukraine’s struggle against Russian aggression have found Trump’s words disappointing. As always with Trump, though, there’s more going on than seems obvious. He has a long-term strategy that can be achieved through short-term tactics that stop the bloodshed. I hope I can clarify what’s probably happening.

Preliminarily, here are several baseline considerations.

1. Trump wants to stop the bloodshed in Ukraine. Currently, he’s not seeking peace; his goal is to stop the carnage—that is, he needs a truce, which will provide a springboard to later occurring benefits. This is fundamental.

2. Trump has good reason to mistreat Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. For three years, America has been helping Ukraine with arms, money, and political support. However, Ukraine has not reciprocated, especially regarding Trump and his policies:

At the UN, Ukraine has frequently voted against Israel, a U.S. ally, placing it alongside its worst enemy, Russia.

When Trump was running for office last year, Ukraine took a distinctly pro-Biden-Harris position. When Speaker Michael Johnson demanded Zelensky recall Ambassador Oksana Markarova, Zelensky ignored him, and she continues to hold the same position.

And what about the rampant Ukrainian corruption resulting in the squandering of American aid, which, even in wartime, Zelensky failed to curb, much to the displeasure of conservative Americans?

So, why should Trump like Zelensky?

3. Trump is a master negotiator and dealmaker. He even wrote a textbook on the subject. He is a sophisticated businessman and gambler who often has a trump card hidden up his sleeve. He never reveals his strategy, either before or during negotiations, and his strategy is usually unconventional.

4. When negotiating, cunning Trump always tries to charm the opponent, but he has an iron fist in a velvet glove. So don’t take everything Trump says literally. He’s friendly when he wants something.

5. At the early stage of negotiations, Trump sees no point in involving either Zelensky or European leaders. First, it is necessary to probe Putin’s position and mood, for Putin is the opponent here, to work out the best strategy. It’s counterproductive to bring in other players, especially those who can contribute only emotions but hardly anything constructive. This is especially true of Zelensky, who, like Putin, wants only uncompromising victory.

6. Trump has his domestic plate full. He is revolutionizing the entire American system so that European affairs are not at the top of the agenda. Nevertheless, before the election, Trump promised to stop the war, and he is a man of his word.

Those are all factors to consider.

Now, here is a brief historical excursion. On March 3, 1918, the Brest Peace was concluded to withdraw Russia from World War 1. The Bolsheviks gave up 26% of the population and 707,000 square miles, i.e., all of Ukraine, Latvia, Estonia, and Moldova. Lenin’s strategy was to survive, keep the army from disintegration, regroup, and then, when the time was ripe, take it all back. That’s how it worked out. The Soviet Union managed to take back every one of those regions.

Of course, the current situation is not a carbon copy of the events of 100 years ago. Times are different, the situation is different, and the countries are not the same. However, the general strategic idea is the same: “One step back, and when the time is right, two steps forward.”

It seems that Trump has chosen a similar strategy. The essence of it, in my opinion, is the following:

He intends to make a ceasefire and give Russia almost everything it has already managed to seize. This will allow Putin to look like a winner and “save face.”

For Ukraine, this will be painful, but it’s better to amputate than to bleed to death. And while it will not bring peace, it will stop the bloodshed and preserve the Ukrainian army. For how long will the truce last? Who can say? North and South Korea have been in a truce for more than 70 years, and South Korea is prosperous, while North Korea is in you-know-what condition.

The ceasefire will give everybody a break: Ukraine, Russia, America, and Europe. How will Ukraine and Western countries use it? By building up armaments.

Ukraine should develop its military industry and rebuild its army. European countries will be forced to splurge on military spending, maybe not by 5% of GDP, as Trump demands, but at least by 3.5%. America will accelerate rearmament and sharply increase military production. In a few years, Ukraine and its allies will become much stronger and will not be easy prey for any aggressor.

As for Russia, there will be an arms buildup there as well, although neither the quality of these weapons nor their quantity can be compared to combined Western ones. Russia will ask China for assistance, yet with not much success. China has plenty of its own headaches, so why meddle with Russia’s problems? It’s much more beneficial for China to be “friends” and trade partners with Western countries than with aggressive, backward Russia.

There is no doubt that Russia’s innate desire for military expansion will not disappear, but its chances of future success against Ukraine or other European countries will be negligible since it will be impossible to compare the military and economic resources of Russia to the collective West. As the war in Ukraine has shown, the Russian army is ineffective, and there is no chance for it to flourish in the future. This strategy can work effectively only if the sanctions imposed on Russia continue with increased control.

In the not-so-distant future, Russia will inevitably face fundamental changes. It has already lost its intellectual potential: Most of its talented people have emigrated, universities are in deplorable condition, the Russian Academy of Sciences is dead, and high-precision equipment in factories is obsolete. In the coming years, the standard of living in Russia will sharply decline, especially in the provinces. As a result, Russia will disintegrate and break into several smaller republics. These will be the entities without any imperial ambitions.



What Democrats Really Meant About 'Saving Democracy'


In the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election, Democrats and their allies in the media repeatedly tried to make the case that President Joe Biden and then-Vice President Kamala Harris had to stay in power for the sake of “protecting Democracy.” Lawn signs in blue cities and suburbs across the country said things like, “Vote Like Democracy Depends on It! (because it does)." Warnings were issued by leftist political pundits that Trump would “end Democracy” in America if he won a second term.

“The defense of democracy, which is at stake, is more important than any title,” Biden said during an Oval Office address just days after dropping out of the 2024 race.

But it turns out that Democrats and the left weren’t warning about an end to democracy. They were panicking over an end to bureaucracy, which is a federal system that allows them to launder taxpayer funding for leftist pet projects in the United States and abroad.

“In the last 48 hours, the Department of Education terminated 70 DEI training grants totaling $373M. One trained teachers to “engage in ongoing learning and self-reflection to confront their own biases and racism, and develop asset-based anti-racist mindsets,” DOGE posted on X, one of many examples.

“In partnership with  @DOGE, I just CANCELLED 9 more wasteful @EPA DEI and Environmental Justice contracts, saving American taxpayers another ~$60 MILLION. I’m just warming up! I have ZERO tolerance for even a penny of your hard-earned tax dollars to be wasted or abused,” EPA administrator Lee Zeldin added.

But a deeper dive into the contracts reveals the true intention behind the funding.

“DOGE discovered $2 billion in taxpayer funds set aside for a fledgling nonprofit linked to perennial Georgia Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams,” the Washington Free Beacon reports. “The Environmental Protection Agency under the Biden administration awarded Power Forward Communities the grant in April 2024 as part of the agency's Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund program. Power Forward Communities received the green energy grant despite the fact that it was founded months earlier in late 2023 and never managed anywhere near the grant's dollar figure—it reported just $100 in total revenue during its first three months in operation, according to its latest tax filings.”

The rabid response to Elon Musk and his DOGE team isn’t about protecting important government programs to help people. Instead, it’s about protecting the political infrastructure subsidized by the American taxpayer under the force of the federal government.

“It tells me that people are worried that they're part of the waste, fraud and abuse,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during an interview with Fox News about the unhinged backlash. "We all think there's waste. There is abuse. I think there may be some real fraud here.”

Meanwhile, the courts are on Trump’s side regarding controlling employment and programs inside the executive branch, but that hasn’t stopped the usual suspects from protesting in the middle of the workday. 

“We'll fight against DOGE, we'll fight Elon Musk,” a dozen former federal bureaucrats sang out of tune in protest of the Department of Government Efficiency in D.C. last week. “We’ll fight from dawn till dusk.”

“Trump's coming for our unions, he wants us all to fail, he wants us all to bow to him, but we want him in jail.” 

The federal government is bloated and has been for far too long. Like President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, President Trump and Musk are working to streamline a system that works for all Americans, rather than serving leftist special interests and political power. 



🎭 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓

 


Welcome to 

The 𝐖𝟑𝐏 𝓓𝓐𝓘𝓛𝓨 𝓗𝓾𝓶𝓸𝓻, 𝓜𝓾𝓼𝓲𝓬, 𝓐𝓻𝓽, 𝓞𝓟𝓔𝓝 𝓣𝓗𝓡𝓔𝓐𝓓 

Here’s a place to share cartoons, jokes, music, art, nature, 
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No politics or divisive posts on this thread. 

This feature will appear every day at 1pm mountain time. 


AG Pam Bondi Says She Has the Epstein Client List on Her Desk


Well, this is interesting… Or then again, well, it could be just another political Bondi bondo effort.

During a segment of Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi says she has the Epstein client list on her desk, and follows up with, “I’m reviewing that.”   Meanwhile, like most non-pretending observers, Sandra Smith maintains a suspicious cat face the entire time. WATCH:


The Hamas Covenant - Understanding the Jew Hatred -

 The Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement was issued on August 18, 1988. 


The Islamic Resistance Movement, also known as the HAMAS, is an extremist fundamentalist Islamic organization operating in the territories under Israeli control. 

Its Covenant is a comprehensive manifesto comprised of 36 separate articles, all of which promote the basic HAMAS goal of destroying the State of Israel through Jihad (Islamic Holy War). 

The following are excerpts of the HAMAS Covenant:​​​​​​​​​​​​​

  •  
    Goals of the HAMAS:

    ​"The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." (Article 6)


    On the destruction of Israel:

    "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble)


    The exclusive Moslem nature of the area:

    "The land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf [Holy Possession] consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. No one can renounce it or any part, or abandon it or any part of it." (Article 11)

    "Palestine is an Islamic land... Since this is the case, the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be." (Article 13)


    The call to jihad:

    "The day the enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In the face of the Jews' usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised." (Article 15)

    "Ranks will close, fighters joining other fighters, and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty, loudly proclaiming: 'Hail to Jihad!'. This cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah's victory comes about." (Article 33)


    Rejection of a negotiated peace settlement:

    "[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)


    Condemnation of the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty:

    "Egypt was, to a great extent, removed from the circle of struggle [against Zionism] through the treacherous Camp David Agreement. The Zionists are trying to draw other Arab countries into similar agreements in order to bring them outside the circle of struggle. ...Leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism is high treason, and cursed be he who perpetrates such an act." (Article 32)


    Anti-Semitic incitement:

    The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)

    "The enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe... They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about... With their money they formed secret organizations - such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions - which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests... They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it." (Article 22)

    "Zionism scheming has no end, and after Palestine, they will covet expansion from the Nile to the Euphrates River. When they have finished digesting the area on which they have laid their hand, they will look forward to more expansion. Their scheme has been laid out in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion'." (Article 32)

    "The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism... Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews." (Article 32)



    Analysis of the Hamas Charter
    (Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center)

     

    From address by FM Avigdor Liberman to the Global Forum for Combating Antisemitism - Dec 2009


    The Hamas charter is the document which sets out the movement's ideology as it was formulated and honed by its founders. It includes its radical Islamic world view (conceived by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), which has basically not changed in the 18 years of its existence. With regard to Israel, the charter's stance is uncompromising. It views the "problem of Palestine" as a religious-political Muslim issue, and the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation as a conflict between Islam and the "infidel" Jews. "Palestine" is presented as sacred Islamic land and it is strictly forbidden to give up an inch of it because no one (including Arab-Muslim rulers) has the authority to do so. With regard to international relations, the charter manifests an extremist worldview which is as anti-Western as Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.


    That worldview brings in its wake the refusal to recognize the State of Israel's right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, the waging of a ceaseless jihad (holy war) against it and total opposition to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of the charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana,4 that "Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before."


    Overt, vicious anti-Semitism, with both Islamic and Christian-European origins, is used extensively throughout the document. The all-out holy war (jihad) against the Jewish people is legitimized by presenting the Jews in a negative light and demonizing them as wanting to take over not only the Middle East but also the rest of the world. One of the jihad's deadliest manifestations is suicide bombing terrorism, which was developed mainly by Hamas during the 1990s and has become its leading "strategy" in the ongoing violent Israeli-Palestinian confrontation.


    The Jews are also presented as worthy of only humiliation and lives of misery. That is because, according to the charter, they angered Allah, rejected the Qur'an and killed the prophets (the relevant Qur'an verse from Surah Aal-‘Imran is quoted at the beginning of the charter). The document also includes anti-Semitic myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (mentioned in Article 32) regarding Jewish control of the media, the film industry and education (Articles 17 and 22). The myths are constantly repeated to represent the Jews as responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for all world and local wars: "No war takes place anywhere without the Jews' being behind it" (Article 22). The charter demonizes the Jews and describes them as brutally behaving like Nazis toward women and children (Article 29).


    The charter views the jihad (holy war) as the way to take all of "Palestine" from the Jews and to destroy the State of Israel, and Hamas's terrorist attacks are seen as links in the jihad chain carried out during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Article 15 states that "the jihad to liberate ‘Palestine' is the personal duty" of every Muslim, an idea expounded by ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam.


    The charter emphasizes the battle for Muslim hearts and minds or "the spread of Islamic consciousness" within three main spheres: the Palestinians, the Arab Muslims and the non-Arab Muslims (Article 15). The process of fostering and spreading that "Islamic consciousness" is defined as its most important mission. Clerics, educators, men of culture, those active in the media and information services and the generally educated public all have the responsibility to carry it out.


    As part of the battle for hearts and minds, the charter places a special emphasis on education [i.e., indoctrination] in the spirit of radical Islam, based on the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood. Fundamental changes must be made, it states, in the educational system in the PA-administered territories: it must be "purified," purged of "the influences of the ideological invasion brought by the Orientalists and missionaries" (Article 15), and the younger generation should be given a radical Islamic education based exclusively on the Qur'an and the Muslim tradition (the Sunnah). The means used for ideological recruitment, as detailed in the charter, are "books, articles, publications, sermons, flyers, folk songs, poetic language, songs, plays, etc." When imbued with "correct" Islamic belief and culture, they become an important means of raising morale and building the psychological fixation and emotional strength necessary for a continuing "liberation campaign" (Article 19).


    The charter stresses the importance of Muslim solidarity according to the commands of the Qur'an and Sunnah, especially in view of the confrontation taking place between Palestinian society and the "terrorist Jewish enemy," described as Nazi-like. One of the expressions of that solidarity is aid to the needy (one of whose main manifestations is the network of various "charitable societies" set up by Hamas, which integrate social activities and support of terrorism).


    The charter makes a point of the ideological difference between Hamas, with its radical Islamic world view, and the secularly-oriented The Palestine Liberation Organization, but pays lip service to the need for Palestinian unity needed to face the Jewish enemy. It notes that an Islamic world view completely contradicts The Palestine Liberation Organization's secular orientation and the idea of a secular Palestinian state. Nevertheless, notes the charter, Hamas is prepared to aid and support every "nationalist trend" working "to liberate Palestine" and is not interested in creating schisms and disagreements (Article 27).

    The Hamas charter is the document which sets out the movement’s ideology as it was formulated and honed by its founders. It includes its radical Islamic world view (conceived by the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt), which has basically not changed in the 18 years of its existence. With regard to Israel, the charter s stance is uncompromising. It views the “problem of Palestine” as a religious political Muslim issue, and the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation as a conflict between Islam and the “infidel” Jews. “Palestine” is presented as sacred Islamic land and it is strictly forbidden to give up an inch of it because no one (including Arab-Muslim rulers) has the authority to do so. With regard to international relations, the charter manifests an extremist worldview which is as anti-Western as Al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations.


    That worldview brings in its wake the refusal to recognize the State of Israel’s right to exist as an independent, sovereign nation, the waging of a ceaseless jihad (holy war) against it and total opposition to any agreement or arrangement that would recognize its right to exist. At the beginning of the charter there is a quotation attributed to Hassan Al-Bana, that “Israel will arise and continue to exist until Islam wipes it out, as it wiped out what went before.”


    Overt, vicious anti-Semitism, with both Islamic and Christian-European origins, is used extensively throughout the document. The all-out holy war (jihad) against the Jewish people is legitimized by presenting the Jews in a negative light and demonizing them as wanting to take over not only the Middle East but also the rest of the world. One of the jihad’s deadliest manifestations is suicide bombing terrorism, which was developed mainly by Hamas during the 1990s and has become its leading “strategy” in the ongoing violent Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. 


    The Jews are also presented as worthy of only humiliation and lives of misery. That is because, according to the charter, they angered Allah, rejected the Qur’an and killed the prophets (the relevant Qur’an verse from Surah Aal-‘Imran is quoted at the beginning of the charter). The document also includes anti-Semitic myths taken from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (mentioned in Article 32) regarding Jewish control of the media, the film industry and education (Articles 17 and 22). The myths are constantly repeated to represent the Jews as responsible for the French and Russian revolutions and for all world and local wars: “No war takes place anywhere  without the Jews’ being behind it” (Article 22). The charter demonizes the Jews and describes them as brutally behaving like Nazis toward women and children (Article 29).


    The charter views the jihad (holy war) as the way to take all of “Palestine” from the Jews and to destroy the State of Israel, and Hamas’s terrorist attacks are seen as links in the jihad chain carried out during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Article 15 states that “the jihad to liberate ‘Palestine’ is the personal duty [fardh ‘ayn]” of every Muslim, an idea expounded by ‘Abdallah ‘Azzam.


    The charter emphasizes the battle for Muslim hearts and minds, or, “the spread of Islamic consciousness” (al-wa’i al-islami), within three main spheres: the Palestinians, the Arab Muslims and the non-Arab Muslims (Article 15). The process of fostering and spreading that “Islamic consciousness” (amaliyyat al taw aiyah) is defined as its most important mission. Clerics, educators, men of culture, those active in the media and information services and the generally educated public all have the responsibility to carry it out (ibid.).

     

    As part of the battle for hearts and minds, the charter places a special emphasis on education [i.e., indoctrination] in the spirit of radical Islam, based on the ideas of the Muslim Brotherhood. Fundamental changes must be made, it states, in the educational system in the PA-administered  territories: it must be “purified,” purged of “the influences of the ideological invasion brought by the Orientalists and missionaries” (Article 15), and the younger generation should be given a radical Islamic education based exclusively on the Qur’an and the Muslim tradition (the Sunnah). The means used for ideological recruitment, as detailed in the charter, are “books, articles, publications, sermons, flyers, folk songs, poetic language, songs, plays, etc.” When imbued with “correct” Islamic belief and culture, they become an important means of raising morale and building the psychological fixation and emotional strength necessary for a continuing “liberation campaign” (Article 19).


    The charter stresses the importance of Muslim solidarity according to the commands of the Qur’an and Sunnah, especially in view of the confrontation taking place between Palestinian society and the “terrorist Jewish enemy,” described as Nazi-like. One of the expressions of that solidarity is aid to the needy (one of whose main manifestations is the network of various “charitable societies” set up by Hamas, which integrate social activities and support of terrorism).


    The charter makes a point of the ideological difference between Hamas, with its radical Islamic world view, and the secularly-oriented The Palestine Liberation Organization, but pays lip service to the need for Palestinian unity needed to face the Jewish enemy. It notes that an Islamic world view completely contradicts The Palestine Liberation Organization’s secular orientation and the idea of a secular Palestinian state. Nevertheless, notes the charter, Hamas is prepared to aid and support every “nationalist trend” working “to liberate Palestine” and is not interested in creating schisms and disagreements (Article 27).​

  • https://embassies.gov.il/holysee/AboutIsrael/the-middle-east/Pages/The%20Hamas-Covenant.aspx


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth Discusses DoD Priorities, DOGE, Budget Cuts and Defense Spending Audit


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delivers a statement on current operational objectives and goals within the Pentagon. In these remarks Secretary Hegseth outlines his goal and responsibility to deliver truthful information to the American people about what is going on behind the scenes. Cool Stuff. WATCH:



The Roots of the Palestinian Sickness

 The West’s embrace of Hamas’s brutality is no accident—it was carefully cultivated over decades by intellectuals who legitimized atrocities under the guise of “resistance.”

This week, as the civilized peoples of the West once again recoil in horror at the grotesque and violent spectacle that is Hamas, it is worth remembering that the bloody, brutal, and depraved character of the Palestinian animosity toward Israel and the Jewish people did not arise from natural circumstances. The blind and merciless hatred the radical Palestinians feel toward Israel is neither normal nor accidental. It was carefully and purposefully cultivated over the course of nearly a century and has been intentionally intensified and amplified by the intellectual discourse in Europe and the United States.

The monstrous treatment of the Bibas family—the kidnapping and murder of an innocent woman and her two small children, the parading of the corpses through a celebratory rally, the apparent attempts to hide the real causes of the children’s death, and the utter refusal to return the remains of their mother, Shiri—is not the behavior one would ever expect from a conventional regime, even one that bills itself as the “resistance” to an “occupying” force. Rather, it is behavior consistent with the ugliest, vilest, most brutal sects man has ever known—the Nazis, Lenin and Stalin’s Soviets, Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge, and so on. This is no mere coincidence. The Palestinian/Hamas-nik consciousness springs from many of the same sources as the most horrific regimes of the twentieth century.

Nowhere in the world have the anti-realist philosophies of cultural Marxism been more ingrained and more destructive than in the discourse around and the practical politics of the Middle East. Arab nationalism was an early 20th-century identity movement that surfaced amidst the dying of the Ottoman Empire and which was patterned in many ways on the German nationalist undertaking. The early thinkers and founders of Arab nationalism looked to define themselves and their people and to build an independent pan-Arab state that stretched, essentially, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea. The identity the Arab nationalists created for themselves and the Arab people was defined principally in terms of who the Arabs were not, rather than who they were. And who they were not is European colonialists.

In this sense, the Arab Nationalist movement was quintessentially postmodern. It arose in opposition to the “truth” of Western cultural hegemony and obsessed over the sins and perceived slights of the colonial powers—including the Zionists. It fashioned for itself a majestic yet “lost” past of the Arab people. And it sought to restore that past through opposition to the prevalent ideas of Western liberalism.

Additionally, and more to the point, the Middle East as it exists in the mind of the Western intellectual or wannabe intellectual today is largely the creation of a narrative that was fashioned more than five decades ago, in the fevered imagination of a literary theorist named Edward Said. Said was ostensibly a professor of comparative literature at Columbia University. But he was also the man most responsible for the current Western-liberal view of the Middle East and especially of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

On November 13, 1974, Yasser Arafat, the Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, made a historic appearance and addressed the General Assembly of the United Nations. He spoke at length about the plight of the Palestinian people and especially their oppression at the hands of “colonizers.” “Our world,” Arafat began, “aspires to peace, justice, equality, and freedom. It wishes that oppressed nations, bent under the weight of imperialism, might gain their freedom and their right to self-determination. It hopes to place the relations between nations on a basis of equality, peaceful coexistence, mutual respect for each other’s internal affairs….” The problem, he continued, was that “such aspirations cannot be realized in a world that is at present ruled over by tension, injustice, oppression, racial discrimination, and exploitation, a world also threatened with unending economic disasters, war, and crisis.” The problem, in short, was the “colonizers,” chief among them the Israelis, who occupied Arab lands and forced the “oppressed peoples” of Palestine into confrontation, confrontation that was both “legitimate and just.”

Arafat’s speech was eloquent and powerful, blending intellect with emotion. It played upon sympathies and manipulated sentiments. In many ways, it shocked much of the foreign policy world and altered the way the PLO and its struggle were viewed. Arafat’s words inaugurated a decades-long reassessment of the Israel-Palestine conflict in the West and the United States in particular.

Additionally—and more to the point—Arafat’s speech was written by none other than Edward Said, a friend, confidant, and ghostwriter for Arafat for many years—right up to the moment that Arafat made nominal “peace” with Israel in 1993, a token of conciliation that the more radical Said simply could not stomach.

Said was not your average political activist, nor was he your average American of Palestinian descent. He was, among other things, a cultural Marxist, one of the most important and most influential successors to the academic world-destroyers of the Frankfurt School. Said was steeped, intellectually, in both Theodor Adorno’s critical theory and Michel Foucault’s transgressive structuralism/postmodernism. He believed deeply in the power of language to create narratives and of narratives to alter or reinforce the distribution of power. He interpreted everything—history, literature, politics—from the perspective of the world’s “oppressed” peoples, those who had, from antiquity, been subjugated by Western intellectual and physical colonization.

In a 2005 piece for World Affairs Journal, Joshua Muravchik, an American Enterprise Institute scholar and a fellow at Johns Hopkins’ School for Advanced International Studies, wrote that Said “not only transformed the West’s perception of the Israel-Arab conflict; he also led the way toward a new, post-socialist life for leftism in which the proletariat was replaced by ‘people of color’ as the redeemers of humankind.”

In other words, Edward Said took the frustration and resentment of the Palestinian people and legitimized it. He gave it intellectual heft and justified any response they might have to the Israelis, no matter how horrific or monstrous. In the words of his puppet, Yasser Arafat, he made their struggle, whatever form it might take, “legitimate and just.” He gave the green light to Arafat and his successors in Hamas to do as they wished to their “oppressors.” And just as importantly, he convinced the intellectuals of the West to hate the “oppressors” as well.

Torturing and murdering babies is behavior that is not a normal part of the human condition. It is so aberrant and so repulsive that it must be cultivated, encouraged, and deeply and profoundly ingrained by a movement so depraved as to defy understanding by morally sentient people.

But nor is it normal for men and women to witness such atrocities and then throw their support to those who commit them. That too is cultivated behavior.

There is a sickness at the heart of the Palestinian “struggle,” but it is a sickness that is shared by many in the West who profess to be on the side of the angels. Fortunately, this sickness was purposefully fostered, and its opposite can be fostered as well. That will take understanding and will, however, two things currently in short supply among global elites.

https://amgreatness.com/2025/02/22/the-roots-of-the-palestinian-sickness/