Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a speech for the ages from the Acropolis in Athens, Greece. Listen to the entire speech to understand the dangers the West faces. It's critical to our survival.

Three years after the catastrophic day Hamas unleashed on Israelis and on the Palestinian people in Gaza, the majority of the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex still refuses to utter a single word of condemnation or assign any responsibility to the Islamist terror group that destroyed the Gaza Strip and triggered the most calamitous chapter in modern Palestinian history. Today alone, I have seen dozens of posters and announcements for rallies, protests, and a so-called “week of rage.” Endless groups across the Western world, including the United States, whether community-based, campus-based, nonprofit, or cultural, are celebrating and commemorating “three years of resistance and genocide.” In almost comical language, many declare October 7 as the beginning of genocide in Gaza while making no mention of the bloodshed, murder, beheadings, torture, mutilation, burning people alive, executions, sexual assault, and hostage taking that initiated the disaster which befell the Palestinian people. It is as if Israeli and Jewish lives are invisible. As if civilians were not slaughtered in their homes while they slept. As if partygoers were not massacred. As if the attack was not entirely unprovoked while a ceasefire was in place between Israel and Hamas. It is a complete erasure of cause and effect and a refusal to grasp that choices and actions produce consequences. I have yet to see a mainstream Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim American organization, let alone prominent “pro-Palestine” academics, journalists, community groups, or notable individuals, issue a statement acknowledging Hamas’s responsibility and culpability for the devastation inflicted on Gaza. Even within the imbalance of power and the overwhelming suffering caused by Israeli decisions, there is still ample space to acknowledge the humanity of Israeli victims and the injustice of what happened to them. More importantly, there is immense space to speak honestly about the horrendous damage caused to Palestinians by the Jihadi fascism of Hamas, which has devastated Gazans over the two decades of its rule. Three years later, Israelis, Jews, and Zionists are commemorating the anniversary while engaging in introspection, critique, and calls for accountability for leaders, security services, and other political players. In contrast, instead of using the grim third anniversary of October 7 to learn and evolve, significant elements of the “pro-Palestine” industrial complex remain one of the most embarrassing and backward hate-driven movements in contemporary political activism. This is not a real pro-Palestine movement. It is a virulent anti-Israel bloc built on ignorance, mob mentality, open sympathy for terrorism, and sabotage of the Palestinian people’s legitimate pursuit of freedom and prosperity. Its regressive and poisonous rhetoric will not evolve into anything constructive. It should be treated with contempt, stripped of relevance, and isolated until it collapses and makes room for a serious effort that actually cares about Palestinians rather than the fantasies of wannabe revolutionaries.

12:00 כעת בתל אביב, בכיכר החטופים. יום הזכרון 7.10 - דקת עצירה לאומית צילום: נבט כהנא

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss. The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.

“So it wasn’t an open-air prison?” That is one of the most common comments under photos of Gaza before October 7. Apparently, a beach, a restaurant, or a beautiful building is supposed to prove that people were free. “Open-air prison” describes restrictions on people’s freedom, not how nice their surroundings look. Those photos also rarely show Gaza’s overcrowded refugee camps or the poverty in which so many people lived. Before October 7, Israel controlled Gaza’s airspace and its crossings. And they controlled what entered Gaza. Leaving to study, work, or receive medical treatment depended on permissions many people could not obtain, and it required bribing Hamas to put their name on the list of those who were allowed to travel. Israel’s control even extended to calculating Gaza’s food needs in calories. That calculation is documented, not simply an allegation. Recognizing Israel’s responsibility does not excuse Hamas’s role in making life unbearable in Gaza. Hamas imposed exorbitant taxes on people, prompting repeated protests against its policies. These abuses deserve attention too. People who call Gaza an open-air prison should also be willing to address Hamas’s role in making it one. But yes, Gaza was an open-air prison. When external powers control your life, severely restrict your ability to leave, and determine what goods and food are allowed in, a beautiful shoreline does not make you free. Palestinians finding moments of happiness under those conditions never meant those conditions were acceptable.

Imagine doing this outside a Jewish organisation on October 7 and the thinking you are good people.

Nearly three years ago the day after October 7th I went to the Israeli Embassy in London to pay my respects to those murdered in the Hamas attacks. I was met by a mob celebrating the death of Jews. I will never forget what I saw that day. We must never normalise hatred

lol Macron’s first response to the October 7 massacre was to tell Israel to surrender:

“From the river to the sea” isn’t so fun when it’s the Seine to the Mediterranean, huh?

Ukrainian rescue-workers pulls out an 8-year-old boy from under the rubble of a residential building hit by a Russian missile in Pryluky this morning. The boy and 4 other civilians were killed in the strike

I am familiar with the Hannibal Directive. It is real, and so is the reason it exists. What it is not: a plot to kill Israelis for sympathy, a pretext for war, or a license to murder civilians and blame Hamas. What it is: cold arithmetic, written in the summer of 1986 after Hezbollah ambushed an IDF convoy in south Lebanon and dragged off two Givati sergeants, Yosef Fink and Rahamim Alsheikh, both 20. Hezbollah kept them. In 1991 Israel declared them dead. Their corpses came home in 1996, traded for 45 prisoners and 123 Hezbollah bodies. That's is what the order was written to stop. The order is simple, and it only applies in certain places at certain times: stop the abduction even at risk to the captive. Because once a Jew disappears into enemy territory, their odds collapse. In 2006, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev were ambushed inside Israel after Hezbollah crossed the fence. Their bodies came back in 2008. The price included Samir Kuntar, who in 1979 landed a dinghy at Nahariya, shot a policeman, and dragged Danny Haran and his four-year-old daughter Einat to the shore. He shot Danny in the back of the head at close range in front of the child, then smashed Einat's skull against the rocks with his rifle butt until her brain came out. Brain tissue was found on the rifle. Her two-year-old sister Yael was smothered in a crawlspace by their mother, trying to keep her quiet so the terrorists would not find them. A normal society locks a man like that away. Shia Hezbollah gave him a hero's welcome. This is the abject evil we are dealing with. Weeks earlier, Sunni Palestinian Hamas stole Gilad Shalit and held him 1,941 days. No Red Cross. No family. He came out gaunt, pale, and malnourished, kept alone underground. The price was 1,027 prisoners. One of them was Yahya Sinwar serving four life sentences. He went home to Gaza and built October 7. October 7 was live-streamed in 4K for the whole world to see. Hostages shot in the back of the head in tunnels when the Palestinians were not given what they wanted. The Bibas boys murdered in captivity, the corpses ransomed for rapists and murderers they name streets after. Crowds of men, women, and children cheering dead Jewish babies. Hostages raped, then murdered. And if they were one of the lucky one, not in that order. So the math is simple. A car full of terrorists and a hostage racing for the border: you shoot to stop it. The chance of surviving the attempt, inside Israel, is higher than the chance of surviving what waits on the other side. If you were in that car, which bet would you take? If lunatic Muslims returned captives unraped, unstarved, unmurdered, this doctrine would not exist. Anyone who raises Hannibal is confessing to the savagery it answers. Most of the dead on October 7 were killed by Hamas. Every one of them is Hamas's fault. The scandal is not the calculation, but the Muslims who made the calculation necessary by waging a 1,400-year war of extermination against the Jews. The Hannibal Directive is the lesson that there are fates worse than death.