THE WAR AGAINST THE WEST: Former CIA director (and FDD advisor) James Woolsey believes that the Islamist regime that rules Iran may soon move

decisively to dominate the Middle East. …

[N]ow, as was the case in the mid-1930s, we may have very little time left. There still may be a chance for the U.S. and at least a few of its allies to do something effective: to impose on Iran crippling economic sanctions orders of magnitude more severe than the modest ones used to date, to provide substantial and effective aid to the Iranian reformers …

We may still have an opportunity to keep “engagement” from becoming the “appeasement” of our time, a synonym for “weakness leading to war.” The key determinant is whether our leaders decide to use Chamberlain or Churchill as their model of statesmanship.

Much will hinge on their choice.

More here.

But The New York Times is

fully on board with the Obama-Brennan nameless “extremist ideologies,” please don’t call it a war, and definitely don’t call it jihad garbage.

Andy McCarthy has more here.

FDD’s Jonathan Schanzer notes that next Saturday

will mark one year since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stole a second presidential term in a rigged Iranian election. The response last year was shocking: Hundreds of thousands of angry Iranians flooded the streets. It was the worst unrest in Tehran in a decade. It was also a chance to turn the screws on the regime in Tehran, which has been sponsoring terrorism for decades, working to acquire a nuclear weapon, and repressing its own people.

Sadly, one year on, President Obama has failed to capitalize. The mullahs are ever closer to getting the bomb, have not stopped bankrolling terrorism, and have systematically brutalized dissenters.

Obama can still hold the mullahs' feet to the fire. He can unequivocally denounce the Iranian leadership. He can unleash the comprehensive sanctions that he has kept bottled up in Congress. And he can apply the full force of his presidency to persuade our world partners to impose crippling international sanctions.

Most important, he can signal to the Iranian people that America stands with them.

Two weeks ago, Ahmadinejad was heckled by a boisterous group during a speech in the city of Khorramshahr. Some 66 million more Iranians want to voice similar frustrations. They await a sign from the American president.

More here.

THE ISRAELI FRONT: Syndicated columnist (and FDD advisor) Charles Krauthammer writes that although it has

pledged itself to unceasing belligerency, Hamas claims victimhood when Israel imposes a blockade to prevent Hamas from arming itself with still more rockets. …

Oh, but weren't the Gaza-bound ships on a mission of humanitarian relief? No. Otherwise they would have accepted Israel's offer to bring their supplies to an Israeli port, be inspected for military materiel and have the rest trucked by Israel into Gaza -- as every week 10,000 tons of food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies are sent by Israel to Gaza.

Why was the offer refused? Because, as organizer Greta Berlin admitted, the flotilla was not about humanitarian relief but about breaking the blockade, i.e., ending Israel's inspection regime, which would mean unlimited shipping into Gaza and thus the unlimited arming of Hamas. …

The whole point of this relentless international campaign is to deprive Israel of any legitimate form of self-defense. Why, just last week, the Obama administration joined the jackals, and reversed four decades of U.S. practice, by signing onto a consensus document that singles out Israel's possession of nuclear weapons -- thus de-legitimizing Israel's very last line of defense: deterrence.

The world is tired of these troublesome Jews, 6 million -- that number again -- hard by the Mediterranean, refusing every invitation to national suicide. For which they are relentlessly demonized, ghettoized and constrained from defending themselves, even as the more committed anti-Zionists -- Iranian in particular -- openly prepare a more final solution.

More here. 

Hamas refuses to accept aid. More here.

The Washington Post reports:

[I]f you walk down Gaza City's main thoroughfare -- Salah al-Din Street -- grocery stores are stocked wall-to-wall with everything from fresh Israeli yogurts and hummus to Cocoa Puffs smuggled in from Egypt. Pharmacies look as well-supplied as a typical Rite Aid in the United States.

"When Western people come, they have this certain image of Gaza," said Omar Shaban, an economist who heads Pal-Think for Strategic Studies in Gaza. "We have microwaves in our homes, not only me, everybody.

More here.

View the markets of Gaza here.

National Review’s Jay Nordlinger writes:

People say, with increasing frequency, “Why should there be a Jewish state? Isn’t that kind of racist -- undemocratic?” There are 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference -- almost 60 states that identify themselves specifically as Muslim. The world has no problem with them: only with the tiny, dusty sliver that identifies itself as Jewish. The Jews were storm-tossed, homeless, for 2,000 years -- dependent on the goodwill of host nations, dependent on the kindness of strangers. And yet the world begrudges their one dinky state.

We have no problem with Thais in Thailand; we have no problem with Senegalese in Senegal; we have a problem with Jews in Israel -- never mind the 1.5 million Arabs who live there, enjoying rights that are unknown to most Arabs elsewhere. …

Events large and small -- Iran’s nuclear drive, the Helen Thomas outburst -- have led me to think about the unthinkable: the loss of Israel. They won’t go without a fight, I feel sure. And I know which side I’m on.

More here. 

Weekly Standard editor (and FDD advisor) Bill Kristol writes:

The Palestinian Authority owes Israel thanks for keeping Hamas at bay.

The Palestinian people owe Israel thanks for weakening Hamas. The Arab states owe Israel thanks for controlling Hamas and curbing Iranian influence. The Europeans owe Israel thanks for denying Iran a port on the Mediterranean.

Israel will not receive public thanks from any of these entities. Nor, it appears, can Israel expect a full measure of understanding and support from the government of the United States, which one would have hoped would be less timid than the Palestinian Authority, less intimidated than the Palestinian people, less hypocritical than the Arab states, and less sanctimonious than the Europeans. …

[T]he administration does not understand that its pathetic desire to split the difference between the forces of civilization and the forces of terror simply emboldens our enemies -- our enemies, not just Israel’s enemies. Our weakness makes the world more dangerous. …

The dispute over this terror-friendly flotilla is about more than policy toward Gaza. It is about more than Israel. It is about whether the West has the will to defend itself against its enemies. It is about showing (to paraphrase William Gladstone) that the resources of civilization against terror are by no means exhausted.

More here.

Christopher Caldwell writes:

There is a blockade of Gaza because Hamas, the Islamist party that runs Gaza, wants Israel destroyed. In recent years, it has launched thousands of rockets at cities in the Israeli south. …

Israel has provided evidence that its soldiers were in mortal danger when they abseiled on to the decks of the Mavi Marmara -- high-quality video footage, which was released within hours. The government has shown that the passengers brought gas masks and had pre-fabricated propaganda videos. …

The most alarming thing this week was not the raid. It was the way internet opinion fell in behind activist opinion, and then the opinions of political and journalistic elites fell into line with the web. That Israel has lost the battle for public opinion is unfortunate. More troubling is that that battle was lost before the facts of the case had even emerged.

More here. 

FDD Senior Fellow Tom Joscelyn writes in The Weekly Standard that the Muslim Brotherhood

claims, on occasion, that it has disavowed terrorism. But even a cursory look reveals that it openly espouses jihad, and has since its beginning. The Brotherhood also encourages suicide attacks against American forces in Iraq, as well as Israelis. While they have their disagreements from time to time, the truth is that the Brotherhood’s long-term goals are the same as al Qaeda’s. …

[M]any of al Qaeda’s master terrorists (Osama bin Laden, Ayman al Zawahiri, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- to name a few) were once members of the Brotherhood. …[T]hey share much in common, including deep ideological roots. To give but one example: Sayyid Qutb, a prominent member of the Brotherhood in the mid-20th century, is one of the chief ideological forefathers of al Qaeda.

Thus, it is a big deal that the Brotherhood manipulated the flotilla for its own purposes, or was even behind it from the first. And it is a big deal that most of the press has missed this obvious angle to the story. …

Two of the passengers, as revealed by the indispensable MEMRI organization, are members of the Muslim Brotherhood’s bloc in the Egyptian parliament. One of the two, Muhammad al Baltaji, is the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Brotherhood’s parliamentary contingent.

MEMRI quotes al Baltaji as saying recently, “A nation that excels at dying will be blessed by Allah with a life of dignity and with eternal paradise.” Al Baltaji also said that the Muslim Brotherhood “will never recognize Israel and will never abandon the resistance,” and that “resistance is the only road map that can save Jerusalem, restore the Arab honor, and prevent Palestine from becoming a second Andalusia.” (Andalusia is of course Spain. The Brotherhood intends to include the once conquered territory in its restored caliphate.) …

More here and here.

Kayhan, the Iranian newspaper that often speaks for Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, stated in an editorial titled that

the lives of Zionists are not safe anywhere in the world …

"Several decades ago, the Imam [Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Revolution regime] discussed... a logical, humane, revolutionary, possible, and completely practical plan, the 'eradication of Israel from the political geography in the region.' [He] stressed that the excision of this cancerous tumor from the Islamic Middle East was easily attainable …

[W]ill there remain for the Muslim nations the slightest doubt that the only breakthrough solution is the destruction of this false and blood-shedding regime and its total annihilation from the [map of] the political geography of the region?

Without its knowledge, without wishing to, this germ of corruption [i.e. Israel] has helped to intensify the [likelihood] that the plan of Imam [Khomeini] to eradicate Israel from the political geography of the region will be implemented. …

I]t is best that the supporters of the Zionist regime distance themselves from it. This is friendly advice. History shows that if they do not take this advice, the force of the nations will put them in their place."

MEMRI has more here. 

Peter Wehner writes that the ongoing public relations assault on Israel

that we see emanating from some quarters of the American left and a few remaining pockets on the “paleo-conservative” right, in parts of Europe, in much of the Muslim world, and from international organizations like the United Nations and so-called human rights groups is too fierce, too hypocritical, too unqualified, and too preposterous to be explained by anything other than malignant motivations. These critics are far too eager to light the match -- any match -- that leads to an anti-Israeli conflagration.

More here.

Mona Charen observes that the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement

thrives for only one reason -- the complicity of the world press and the so-called “international community.”

It was the propaganda arm that staged the “Freedom Flotilla.” But there have been many previous productions: The propaganda arm was responsible for the photo-shopped images of damage to Lebanon during the 2006 war, the staged “death” of twelve-year-old Muhammad al-Durrah, the “massacre” at Jenin, and the “war crimes” in Gaza.

In each and every case, the “news” of Israeli atrocities was broadcast far and wide by organizations such as Reuters, AP, CNN, and AFP. The United Nations has offered its imprimatur to every libel. The truth seemed always to have a case of laryngitis.

[I]n the wake of the confrontation between Israeli soldiers and the provocateurs aboard the Gaza flotilla, the remarkably incurious world press is providing exactly the sort of headlines on which the organizers knew they could count. “Flotilla Attack Is Israel’s Kent State” screamed the Huffington Post. Agence France Presse carried a banner quoting the Turkish foreign minister to the effect that “Israel has lost all legitimacy.” Every news outlet I checked docilely described the flotilla as “humanitarian.”

Don’t members of the press ever resent being so used?

More here. 

More Reuters photo-shopping? Evidence here.

Elliott Abrams writes:

[T]here was really only one question once the mob began to gather. It is the question that arose repeatedly in the Bush years -- when the Hamas leaders Sheik Yassin and Abdel Aziz Rantisi were killed by Israel, when Israel acted in Gaza, when Israel put down the intifada in the West Bank, and during the 2006 war in Lebanon and the late 2008 fighting in Gaza: would Israel stand alone, or would the United States stand with her and prevent the lynching? Would the U.S., in Daniel Patrick Moynihan's memorable phrase, "join the jackals?"

More here. 

Historian Victor Davis Hanson asks:

What explains this preexisting hatred, which ensures denunciation of Israel in the most rabid -- or, to use the politically correct parlance, “disproportionate” -- terms? …

Perhaps the outrage reflects simple realpolitik -- 350 million Arab Muslims versus 7 million Israelis. Perhaps it is oil: half the world’s reserves versus Israel’s nada. Perhaps it is the fear of terror: Draw a cartoon or write a novel offending Islam, and you must go into hiding; defame Jews and earn accolades. Perhaps it is anti-Semitism, which is as fashionable on the academic Left as it used to be among the neanderthal Right.

Perhaps there is also a new sense that the United States at last has fallen into line with the Western consensus, and so is hardly likely to play the old lone-wolf supporter of Israel in the press or at the U.N.

At this point, it doesn’t much matter -- as this latest hysterical reaction reminds us, much of the world not only sides with Israel’s enemies but sides with them to such a degree as to suggest that, in any existential moment to come, the world either will be indifferent or will be on the side of Israeli’s enemies.

More here and here. 

Wall Street Journal editorial features editor Robert Pollock writes:

To follow Turkish discourse in recent years has been to follow a national decline into madness.

More here.

The Wall Street Journal editorializes:

[T]he more facts that come to light about the flotilla, its passengers and their sponsors, the more it seems clear that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan's government, far more so than Israel's, must be held to account for Monday's violent episode. …

Turkey …conducts a diplomacy of obstruction when it comes to Iran, along with a diplomacy of provocation when it comes to Israel.

Whatever this might achieve for Mr. Erdogan politically in the short run, in the long-run it means a Turkey admired only by neighboring despots, one that no responsible country can trust.