This past week showed that sometimes events in the Middle East seem to go out of their way to prove the adage that there’s nothing new under the sun. We saw an uptick in Palestinian terrorism because Israel deigned to capture Palestinian terrorists who’d escaped from prison. We saw the Biden administration double down on a consistently failed policy in Lebanon, and we saw Iran, yet again, avoid any consequences for their malicious activities.
An Inconceivable Response
Six Palestinian terrorists escaped recently from an Israeli prison. The Israelis, contrary to the lore, are neither invincible nor above human error. But, to their credit, as of this writing, four of those terrorists have been recaptured. Many Palestinians reacted with euphoria at the news of the escape, only to be disappointed by Israel’s swift and professional response in recapturing most of the convicted terrorists.
Palestinian terrorists didn’t particularly appreciate Israel raining on their parade and launched several rockets and stabbing attacks against Israel. The Palestinian Islamic Jihad, true to form, declared this past Friday a day of rage.
The simple truth is that if one engages in terror against Israel, it should
come as no surprise that Israel will defend itself and when possible bring terrorists to justice. That’s what democracies protecting innocent people against bloodthirsty enemies do. But that seems too much for many Palestinians and their allies who would deny Israel the right to exist let alone protect its people.
An Inane Policy
Speaking of terrorists, Hezbollah’s auxiliary force, the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), is set to receive $47 million dollars in American taxpayer aid to prop up the feckless national military of Lebanon. This latest aid follows a pattern of the LAF failing to meet its mandate to secure Lebanon from corruption and terrorism and the US responding to such by doling out more cash.
The CUFI Action Fund has publicly highlighted this foolish foreign policy approach on more than one occasion, and we’ll be doing so again soon. We’ll be communicating with elected officials about it as well. But until Members of Congress are willing to take on the executive branch’s consistently failed policy towards Beirut, your taxpayer dollars will continue being flushed down the drain in Lebanon.
And we’d remind anyone arguing that things are about to change in Beirut on account of the new Government, that the “new” Prime Minister has held the post twice in the past and
the “new” Government is only able to exist because a terrorist-army, Hezbollah, allowed it to come into existence. Through Hezbollah, Iran’s tentacles continue to strangle Lebanon and no amount of shuffling the deckchairs in Beirut is going to change that.
An Irredeemable International Approach
Speaking of the Iranians, it won’t come as a surprise to regular readers of The Update that the Islamic Republic has once again managed to dodge a much-deserved rebuke by the international community.
In a nutshell, Tehran was facing censure for (yet again) ignoring its obligations to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA). The Iranians were denying the IAEA access to surveillance cameras that were put inside certain Iranian nuclear facilities to monitor activities there. In the end, Iran agreed to allow the IAEA access to the cameras, and even to service them with new memory cards.
It’s ok if your eyes have glazed over. Anytime we discuss this type of meaningless international “success” we feel the same way. The bottom line is that Iran is closer than ever to
a nuclear weapons capability because that’s always been their plan and while President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign sought to undermine Iran’s malicious effort, the Iran nuclear accord showed the Iranians exactly how easy it is to manipulate the American, European, and UN pack of paper tigers.
At this stage, the Israeli approach of killing the Iranian nuclear program with a thousand cuts may be the only way to ensure the world’s leading sponsor of terror does not acquire the world’s deadliest weapon. Whether or not one concurs with that approach, what we should be able to agree upon is
that no joint IAEA-Iranian statements or agreements are going to do the trick.
Finally, we remain committed to trying to end our weekly updates on a positive note, and despite all we’ve written, there are a few pieces of positive news worth mentioning.
First, this past week saw the first anniversary of the Abraham Accords which continues to bear new fruit. Second, in recent days we’ve seen both Arizona and New Jersey take concrete steps to divest state funds from Unilever, the parent company of pro-BDS, hippy ice cream maker Ben & Jerry’s. And finally, its looking like the CUFI-backed US-Israel Cybersecurity Cooperation Enhancement Act may be included as an amendment to the forthcoming National Defense Authorization Act.
Until next week, for those observe the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, we wish you an easy fast, and g’mar chatimah tovah. For the rest of our readers, we wish you and yours a blessed week.
Sincerely,
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