Headlines

On Bethlehem’s Manger Square, Christmas decorations and pilgrims are notably absent for a second wartime festive season in the Israeli-occupied West Bank city. The Church of the Nativity that dominates the square is as empty as the plaza outside. Only the chants of Armenian monks echo from the crypt where Christians believe Jesus Christ was born … Violence across the Israeli-occupied West Bank has surged since the war in Gaza broke out on October 7 last year, but Bethlehem has remained largely quiet … Foreign tourists, on whom Bethlehem’s economy almost entirely relies, stopped coming due to the war. An increase in restrictions on movement, in the form of Israeli checkpoints, is also keeping many Palestinians from visiting.

… It is hardly a stretch to observe that the Trump transition, co-chaired by Howard Lutnick and Linda McMahon, seems to have set for itself the goal of ensuring that the incoming president will receive the narrowest range of policy alternatives possible. What is emerging is a far cry from either the conservative “America First” nationalism many on the right hoped for, or the Eurasian-style crypto-autocracy many on the Left feared. With the honorable exception of Tulsi Gabbard, who was nominated to serve her country this time as director of national intelligence, the Trump transition has been a triumph for the neoconservative wing off the Republican Party … Thanks to Lutnick, Trump’s foreign policy has been hijacked by those who have never seen a war in which they didn’t want to embroil us.

… While Syria is groping its way in the dark, Israel has come in aggressively and forcefully, as is its wont, bombing and taking territory, a real hero against the weak and bleeding. It may benefit from its actions, but it’s possible that Syria will recover and not forget who attacked it in its difficult hour, without pretext, without legitimacy … The Syrian people will not forget who exploited its weakness and destroyed its country …  Israel is not only destroying the Syrian army; it is also taking pieces of Syrian land at an unknown depth and scope. Let’s leave aside the unbelievable arrogance and insolence of trampling the sovereignty of another country without any pretext while mocking international law. The damage to Israel resulting from seizing this territory is certain to come. These territorial swipes will be the pretext for another war.

Latest edition! / Deluxe hardcover edition of an outstanding historian’s masterful, in-depth look at Adolf Hitler, Third Reich Germany and World War II. With full color dust jacket, photos, source notes, and index. A product of 25 years of dedicated research and unmatched scholarship, written in gripping, page-turning prose, this monumental work traces Hitler’s entire epoch-making career. In this meticulously referenced work – the crowning achievement in the career of a fiercely independent, best-selling historian – Irving demolishes the familiar propaganda image of Hitler and the Third Reich, tearing apart one historical fable after another. Sumptuously illustrated with more than a hundred photographs, including 40 in color.

Vladimir Putin accused Jews of attacking the Russian Orthodox Church and suggested that they lacked family and “roots,” the latest antisemitic statement from the Russian leader since his 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Putin made the allegation during his lengthy annual press conference … Putin addressed punitive actions against the Russian Orthodox Church elsewhere in Europe. The church is considered to be closely tied to Putin’s regime … Putin said the church was “being tortured” — and blamed Jews. “They’re tearing the church apart but they’re not even atheists,” Putin said. “These are people without any beliefs, godless people, they’re ethnic Jews, but has anyone seen them in a synagogue? I don’t think so.” … He added, “These are people without kin or memory, with no roots. They don’t cherish what we cherish …”

Israeli soldiers stationed in the Netzarim Corridor in the Gaza Strip regularly shoot and kill Palestinian civilians but count them as “terrorists,” [the prominent Israeli daily] Haaretz reported on Wednesday, citing testimony from Israeli commanders and other soldiers. The Netzarim Corridor is a strip of land that separates northern Gaza from central and southern Gaza, where Israeli troops have demolished virtually every building and established military outposts. The Haaretz report says the IDF has designated the area a “kill zone,” meaning any Palestinians who try to cross a certain line are shot and killed even if they’re unarmed. “The forces in the field call it ‘the line of dead bodies,’” a commander in the IDF’s Division 252 told Haaretz.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will avoid traveling to Poland for next month’s events marking the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi concentration camp, fearing he may be arrested, according to a Polish report on Friday. The major event is planned for International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27 and is expected to be attended by dozens of leaders and heads of state, including Britain’s King Charles. Polish outlet Rzeczpospolita reported that Israeli authorities have not contacted their Polish counterparts about attending the event, and officials in Warsaw believe the reason is related to Poland’s pledge that it will adhere to the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant for Netanyahu over possible war crimes in the ongoing conflict with Hamas.

The collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s rule is an opportunity for the US to overhaul its bankrupt Syria policy. The US should have abandoned this policy years earlier, but now there are no longer any pretexts for continuing the collective punishment of the Syrian people and the illegal American military presence on Syrian soil … Congress never authorized any use of force or deployments in Syria, and there is no international mandate for US forces to operate in Syria. The US has been flagrantly violating international law and trampling on Syrian sovereignty for almost a decade. That needs to end at once … Trump has signaled that he has no interest in US involvement in Syrian affairs in the future. That is welcome news if it holds true.

Rand Paul has a long history of mounting lonely efforts to reassert the constitutionally defined responsibility of Congress to serve as a check and balance on US military adventurism — a duty that Congress has mostly abdicated for decades. And he did so again last week [Dec. 2023], with a War Powers Resolution proposal to end the American military presence in Syria. This time, however, he wasn’t quite so lonely. A dozen senators from both parties voted for Paul resolution, including some of the chamber’s leading Democrats … The unlikely coalition didn’t prevail … But that didn’t change the fact that Paul and the senators who voted with him were making an important point regarding the ill-defined and seemingly endless US mission in Syria.

Facebook has severely restricted the ability of Palestinian news outlets to reach an audience during the Israel-Gaza war, according to BBC research. In a comprehensive analysis of Facebook data, we found that newsrooms in the Palestinian territories – in Gaza and the West Bank – had suffered a steep drop in audience engagement since October 2023. The BBC has also seen leaked documents showing that Instagram – another Meta-owned platform – increased its moderation of Palestinian user comments after October 2023 … Since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war, just a few outside reporters have been allowed to enter the Palestinian coastal territory of Gaza from the outside, and they were only able to do so escorted by the Israeli army.

Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship of social media amid the hostilities between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups that began on October 7, 2023. This systemic online censorship has risen against the backdrop of unprecedented violence … Between October and November 2023, Human Rights Watch documented over 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of content Instagram and Facebook that had been posted by Palestinians and their supporters, including about human rights abuses … Hundreds of people continued to report censorship after Human Rights Watch completed its analysis for this report …

Rainer Zitelmann’s book Hitler’s National Socialism is a surprising and important contribution to our understanding of the Third Reich, and deserves to be better known. For many years after the war, most historians either misrepresented Adolf Hitler’s views on social and economic questions or dismissed them as unimportant and incoherent … The often-repeated claim that Hitler was a “far right” leader, and that National Socialism was a “right-wing” ideology is just one of the many widely-accepted historical myths that Rainer Zitelmann diligently identifies and deftly debunks … No one who is seriously interested in understanding just why Hitler and NS Germany won such broad and fervent support can afford to ignore this bold, eye-opening and admirably researched work.

The Israel Defense Forces believes that following the weakening of Iranian proxy groups in the Middle East and the dramatic fall of the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria, there is an opportunity to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, military officials said Thursday. The Israeli Air Force has therefore continued to increase its readiness and preparations for such potential strikes in Iran. The IDF also believes that Iran — isolated after the fall of the Assad regime and the weakening of its main proxy group Hezbollah in Lebanon — may push ahead further with its nuclear program and develop a bomb as it scrambles to replace its deterrence. Iran has always denied seeking nuclear weapons and says both its space program and nuclear activities are for purely civilian purposes.

The US conservative political commentator Candace Owens was refused a visa to enter New Zealand for a speaking engagement because she had been banned from another country, immigration officials said Thursday. News of the ruling came weeks after neighboring Australia also rejected her visa request, citing remarks in which she denied Nazi medical experimentation on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
Owens is scheduled to speak at a series of events in several Australian cities and in Auckland, New Zealand, in February and March next year … The commentator, who has more than 3 million followers on YouTube, is accused by her detractors of promoting conspiracy theories and antisemitism .. Australian Jewish groups had urged officials to bar her from the country.

Israel will close its embassy in Dublin over “the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government”, its foreign minister has said. Gideon Saar said the Republic of Ireland had crossed “every red line”. In a statement, he said Israel’s ambassador to Dublin had been recalled in the past following what it called Ireland’s “unilateral decision to recognise a Palestinian state”. He added that the decision followed Ireland’s announcement of its support for South Africa’s legal action against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), accusing the country of “genocide”. Mr Saar said: “The actions and anti-Semitic rhetoric used by Ireland against Israel are rooted in the de-legitimisation and demonisation of the Jewish state, along with double standards.

President Joe Biden’s administration promised a “recommitment to the highest standards of transparency,” and officials were well aware of the extent to which Donald Trump’s administration had engaged in censorship and undermined the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Despite promises, when it came to FOIA and the public’s right to know, the Biden administration was just as bad or slightly worse than the Trump administration during its last fiscal year in office. In fiscal year 2023, United States government agencies censored, withheld, or claimed that they could not find any records two-thirds of the time.

The collapse of the Assad regime has prompted a punishing military response from Israel, which has launched airstrikes at military targets across Syria and deployed ground troops both into and beyond a demilitarized buffer zone for the first time in 50 years. The Israeli military on Tuesday said it had carried out about 480 strikes across the country over the past two days, hitting most of Syria’s strategic weapon stockpiles, while Defense Minister Israel Katz said the Israeli navy had destroyed the Syrian fleet overnight, hailing the operation as “a great success.” Just a day earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had hailed the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime as “a new and dramatic chapter.” “The collapse of the Syrian regime is a direct result of the severe blows with which we have struck Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran,” he said …

After an inconceivably fast twelve day march through Syria by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in exile in Moscow, his government has fallen, the more than five decade’s long Ba’ath rule of Syria is over and a group descended from Al-Qaeda is in control of Syria. The Assad regime only survived as long as it did because of Hezbollah ground support, Russian air support and significant Iranian assistance in the first round of the Syrian rebellion over a decade ago. This time, none of that was available … The surprisingly rapid advance of the rebels was the result “more of a political collapse,” [Prof. Stephen] Zunes told me, “than a military victory.” In the end, Assad fell, not because Iran and Russia didn’t support him, but because the Syrian military and people didn’t support him.

… Chinese philosophy focuses on acceptance, hierarchical loyalty, or adherence to authority, in its respective guises of Taoism, Confucianism, and Legalism … More than anything else, imperial meritocracy holds China together … China is a ruthless meritocracy. Top officials and billionaires can buy admission to Harvard for their children, but not to Peking University. For well over two thousand years, academic achievement has been the path to success for the Chinese. It should be no surprise that China now graduates more engineers than the rest of the world combined …  Chinese civilization has roots that have endured for thousands of years, and will not change to suit our sensibilities.

Mark Weber talks with host Manuel Pasquale about the myth of World War II as the “Good War.” This view – which for years has been promoted by Hollywood and US politicians – is not only historically inaccurate, they explain, it’s dangerous because it serves as a pretext and justification for endless wars. The official US portrayal of World War II as a conflict between the “free world” and the “slave world,” Weber says, is an absurd distortion of reality. Weber, who is director of the Institute for Historical Review, and Pasquale conclude with a look at a range of recommended “revisionist” books about World War II. Runtime: one hour, 28 mins.

… Who really won the war? Certainly, the Soviets who, after losses in the millions from the Nazi invasion, ended up occupying Berlin, having annexed the Baltic states and turned Eastern Europe into a Soviet base camp … The Americans, who stayed out longest, ended the war with the least losses of any great power. Yet, America is a part of the West, and the West was the loser of the world wars of the last century. Indeed, the two wars between 1914 and 1945 may be seen as the Great Civil War of the West, the Thirty Years War of Western Civilization that culminated in the loss of all the Western empires and the ultimate conquest of the West by the liberated peoples of their former colonies.

The late Queen Elizabeth believed every Israeli was “either a terrorist or a son of a terrorist” and refused to allow Israeli officials into Buckingham Palace, former Israeli president Reuven Rivlin has said. “The relationship between us [Israel] and Queen Elizabeth was a little bit difficult,” Rivlin told a gala event celebrating Haifa’s Technion Institute of Technology in London on Sunday night … Some have speculated that Elizabeth had a negative attitude to Israel due to the violent insurgency waged against the British mandate in Palestine by Zionist armed groups in the 1940s, before Israel’s declaration of independence … The king [Charles] has previously drawn controversy for his views on Israel … Most controversially, Charles asked: “Surely some US president has to have the courage to stand up and take on the Jewish lobby in the US?”

The United Nations General Assembly overwhelmingly voted on Wednesday to demand an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian militants Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the immediate release of all hostages. The ceasefire demand in the resolution – adopted with 158 votes in favor in the 193-member assembly – was expressed in more urgent language than one urging an immediate humanitarian truce in Gaza that the body “called for” in October 2023 then “demanded” in December 2023. General Assembly resolutions are not binding but carry political weight, reflecting a global view on the war. The United States, Israel and seven other countries voted against the ceasefire resolution, while 13 countries abstained.

Americans’ positive rating of the quality of healthcare in the U.S. is now at its lowest point in Gallup’s trend dating back to 2001. The current 44% of U.S. adults who say the quality of healthcare is excellent (11%) or good (33%) is down by a total of 10 percentage points since 2020 after steadily eroding each year. Between 2001 and 2020, majorities ranging from 52% to 62% rated U.S. healthcare quality positively; now, 54% say it is only fair (38%) or poor (16%). As has been the case throughout the 24-year trend, Americans rate healthcare coverage in the U.S. even more negatively than they rate quality. Just 28% say coverage is excellent or good, four points lower than the average since 2001 – when Gallup began the poll – and below the 41% high point in 2012.

The New York Times has killed an investigation by one of its own reporters into Israeli mob violence in Amsterdam earlier this month. In an internal Times email inadvertently shared with The Electronic Intifada, Dutch reporter Christian Triebert explained to a manager that he had pitched “a visual investigation I was conducting into the events of [6-8 November] in Amsterdam.” … Triebert appeared interested in carrying out reporting that would set the record straight, remediating the false narrative insistently advanced by his own newspaper – that the Israeli fans were victims of mob violence motivated by anti-Jewish hatred … There is still precisely zero evidence that even one anti-Semitic attack took place in Amsterdam – let alone the “pogrom” that Israeli government officials immediately claimed had happened.

… It will take more than tariffs to revive American manufacturing. There are other obstacles, including a tax system rigged against capital-intensive investment. But most important, a decades-long feeding frenzy on imports has hollowed out the labor force, depleted engineering talent, and left in a much reduced state the infrastructure and communities that once made American industry the envy of the world. A realistic plan to revive the US industrial base must take all of these factors into account … The United States has spent the past quarter-century outsourcing manufacturing, neglecting infrastructure, teaching ideology instead of basic skills, and dispersing the communities that once supported manufacturing.

Muhammad has become the most popular baby name for boys in England and Wales for the first time, new data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has revealed. The name has been among the top ten names for baby boys since 2016, but has now overtaken the previous favourite, Noah. Oliver was third in the 2023 rankings for England and Wales. For baby girls Olivia remained the most popular name for the eighth year in a row, with Amelia and Isla the second and third most popular. Each year, the ONS analyses the latest baby name data, revealing the most popular – and unpopular – names in England and Wales. The rankings were created using the exact spellings of names given at birth registration, meaning similar names with different spellings were counted separately.

The rapid demographic transformation taking place in Germany is perhaps best exemplified by Hamburg, both due to the city’s size and the radical pace of mass immigration there. Now, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) group leader in the Hamburg Parliament, Dirk Nockemann, warns that the city shows Germans are becoming a minority in the nation. “The numbers don’t lie: Germans are becoming a minority in their own country, and in some parts the Germans are the new minority. This is not a wild conspiracy theory, but pure statistics,” said Nockemann. The AfD politician made the statements following a report published on Tuesday by the State Statistical Office. The data shows that 40.4 percent (790,000 people) in Hamburg have a migration background. Within this figure, 20.7 percent are foreigners without German citizenship.

Amnesty International accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during its war with Hamas, saying it has sought to deliberately destroy Palestinians by mounting deadly attacks, demolishing vital infrastructure, and preventing the delivery of food, medicine and other aid. The human rights group released a report Thursday in the Middle East that said such actions could not be justified by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on Israel, which ignited the war, or the presence of militants in civilian areas. Amnesty said the United States and other allies of Israel could be complicit in genocide, and called on them to halt arms shipments. “Our damning findings must serve as a wake-up call to the international community: this is genocide. It must stop now,” Agnès Callamard, secretary general of Amnesty International, said in the report.

Amnesty International said Thursday that it had found evidence that Israel has committed genocide against Palestinians in its war in Gaza. The accusation by the human rights group is the latest in a growing list of organizations, including numerous United Nations agencies, that allege Israel’s actions during the 14-month-old conflict are consistent with genocide. It also comes as another blow to Israel’s contention that its conduct has been justifiable. The Amnesty International report adds to such claims against the government from inside and outside of Israel, including a former defense minister who said his country was committing war crimes and ethnic cleansing in Gaza, and the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Romania’s constitutional court has annulled the result of the first round of voting in the presidential election just days before the second round was due to take place. It means the process will be restarted from scratch, with the government due to decide a date for a new vote. The first round was won by Calin Georgescu, an almost unknown far-right Nato-sceptic who has previously praised Vladimir Putin. The court’s decision comes after intelligence documents were declassified, suggesting Georgescu benefitted from a mass influence operation – conducted from abroad – to interfere with the result of the vote. Hours after the court’s decision, Georgescu told a Romanian TV channel that the country’s democracy was “under attack”, describing the verdict as a “formalised coup d’etat”.

Australia on Tuesday voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking with its position of opposing the measure for two decades. In a resolution passed by a 157-8 vote, with the United States and Israel among those voting no, and seven abstentions, the Assembly expressed “unwavering support, in accordance with international law, for the two-state solution of Israel and Palestine.” The Assembly said the two states should be “living side by side in peace and security within recognized borders, based on the pre-1967 borders.”

The [United Nations] General Assembly today [Dec. 3] emphasized that a two-State solution remains the “only path to lasting peace” in the Middle East, adopting three resolutions to advance this goal … The Assembly adopted a resolution titled “Peaceful settlement of the question of Palestine,” as orally revised, with 157 votes in favour, 8 against (Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, United States) and 7 abstentions … By terms of that text … Israel, the occupying Power, must comply with international law, including ceasing all settlement activities and evacuating settlers from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, the text demanded.

British prime minister Keir Starmer accused his predecessors of intentionally designing a “one-nation experiment in open borders” after the latest statistics revealed that more than 900,000 migrants entered the U.K. last year. The Labour Party leader laid the blame on the Conservative Party for the record-high numbers, claiming the opposition failed Brexit voters on its vow to curtail illegal immigration. Brexit, which authorized the U.K.’s exit from the European Union, narrowly passed in June 2016 and formally took effect in January 2020. “Time and again the Conservative Party promised they would get the numbers down. Time and again they failed, and now the chorus of excuses has begun,” Starmer said Thursday …

A leading demographer has warned that the white British population may become a minority by the middle of the century if current trends continue, as Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer declared this week that the “open borders experiment” was a failure imposed on the country by “design”. In an apparent confirmation of what many derided as a “conspiracy theory”, the notion of a “Great Replacement” agenda, Prime Minister Starmer said that previous Tory governments “deliberately” decided to liberalise immigration following Brexit to “turn Britain into a one-nation experiment in open borders.” … The mass migration policies of both Labour and Conservative governments have had a radical impact on the demographic make up of the UK …

… The neocon-Israel Lobby teamwork has marked one of the greatest global calamities of the 21st century. All of the countries attacked by the U.S. or its proxies — Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Syria — now lie in ruins. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza continues apace, and yet again the U.S. has opposed the unanimous will of the world (other than Israel) this week by vetoing a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution that was backed by the other 14 members of the U.N. Security Council. The real issue facing the Trump Administration is not defending Israel from its neighbors, who call repeatedly, almost daily, for peace based on the two-state solution. The real issue is defending the U.S. from the Israel Lobby.

In a stunning series of events, two leading media organizations —The New York Times and Bloomberg — abruptly shelved coverage of a groundbreaking study that raises serious concerns about the psychological impacts of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) pedagogy. The study, conducted by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) in collaboration with Rutgers University, found that certain DEI practices could induce hostility, increase authoritarian tendencies, and foster agreement with extreme rhetoric … The decision to withhold coverage raises serious questions about transparency, editorial independence, and the growing influence of ideological biases in the media.

President-elect Donald Trump said Saturday he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France … Kushner is the founder of Kushner Companies, a real estate firm. Jared Kushner is a former White House senior adviser to Trump who is married to Trump’s eldest daughter, Ivanka. The elder Kushner was pardoned by Trump in December 2020 after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations … Kushner hired a prostitute to lure his brother-in-law, then arranged to have the encounter in a New Jersey motel room recorded with a hidden camera and the recording sent to his own sister, the man’s wife, prosecutors said.

There are inevitably several jokes going around in the circles that I frequent that “MAGA” should instead be “MIGA,” as the recent US national election only allowed one to choose between two parties that tried to excel in expressing their love for the Jewish state, with the winner Donald Trump’s Republicans ending up on top to “Make Israel Great[er] Again.” … Joe Biden’s cabinet and senior appointments were overloaded with Jews, and while Trump’s choices are ethnically more mixed they all are truly dedicated to letting Israel have its way with its neighbors.

… Israel feels that the sky’s the limit for its attacks, its conquests, the killing and the destruction that it is capable of sowing. And there is no stopping it. Never before has it stood like this in front of an empty goal, convinced that it has been given the kicking opportunity of a lifetime. One after another, we have seen the houses of cards that were feared so much fall before us: Rockets from Gaza, missiles from Lebanon, cruise missiles from Yemen and ballistic missiles from Iran no longer impress anyone. The helplessness of the international community, especially the United States, reinforces the sense of intoxication. Everything is possible. It seems that Israel can continue its Genghis Khan campaigns of conquest and punishment unhindered. America begs it to stop; its pleas make no impression on the Israelis. Rightfully so.

… Both groups have been demonized by western and Israeli media and governments as ‘terrorists,’ a meaningless but effective propaganda label that reduced both movements to the status of mad dogs and criminals. The term ‘terrorist’ implies that the object of this libel can have no legitimate political or moral rights. Dropping 2,000 lb bombs on apartment buildings, as Israel is doing in Gaza and Lebanon, is ‘anti-terrorism’ to the biased western media. Today, many Americans have been fooled into believing that anyone who opposes US imperial policies abroad is a terrorist – a mad dog that must be destroyed on sight. In US media, Hezbollah, Hamas, Iranian are usually accompanied by the attached term ‘terrorist.’

In this focused, hour-long broadcast, IHR director Mark Weber and host Daniel Davis review the long record of deceit by American presidents to generate public support for war, and the complicity of politicians and the media in this deceit. Weber looks at the lies of George W. Bush and other high-ranking US officials for the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq, President Johnson’s campaign of deceit to build support for the Vietnam war, and President Franklin Roosevelt’s fear-mongering campaign for war against Germany and Japan. Runtime: 54 mins.

On Saturday, Peter took to his podcast to cover last week’s economic news and political events. In this episode, he discusses rumors of large downward revisions in jobs numbers, the issues with and irony of a state Bitcoin reserve, and the striking resemblance between the government’s spending situation and a Ponzi scheme … Peter turns to increased optimism about the creation of a government Bitcoin reserve. He points out the irony in this situation: “If they do that, it’s great for the people who own Bitcoin, who can sell their Bitcoin to the unwilling U.S. taxpayer who is being forced to buy Bitcoin at gunpoint. Because that’s the coercive power of the state, which is the ultimate irony, right? Because Bitcoin was supposed to be anti-government.”

President-elect Donald Trump began shaping his cabinet this week, rolling out nominations that feature people deeply connected to the Jewish and pro-Israel communities, including Mike Huckabee, Steve Witkoff, and Marco Rubio. His first national security picks are die-hard Israel supporters, some of whom have denied the existence of the Palestinian people and back the annexation of the occupied West Bank. These loyalists are set to advance his “America First” and hardline populist agenda in a second term. They could signal some shifts in longstanding U.S. policy, especially regarding a possible conflict with Iran and resolving conflicts in the Middle East. Here’s a running guide to the key players and candidates in Trump’s incoming cabinet and advisory circles related to Jewish and Israel issues.

A controversial debate held by the Oxford Union that discussed whether Israel is an “apartheid state responsible for genocide” devolved into a yelling match between speakers and attendees on Thursday. The event took place under tight security, as protesters demonstrated outside the building. After the debate, the union voted on the proposition, “This House Believes Israel is an apartheid state responsible for genocide,” with 278 votes in favor and 59 votes against. The Oxford Union is a student society located in Oxford, England, and is made up almost entirely of students at the prestigious Oxford University, widely regarded as one of the best institutes for higher education in the world. Thursday’s debate featured several prominent speakers on both sides of the topic …

An overlooked factor of the Second World War is how Hitler didn’t want one at all. He is often portrayed as a mad warmonger who tried to take over the world, or at least all of Europe. In fact, Hitler did all he could – both before and during the war – to first avoid and then to stop the war. This video highlights some of his numerous proposals to prevent a repeat of the First World War. Runtime: 50 mins.

Germany’s enemies maintain today [1940] that Adolf Hitler is the greatest disturber of peace known to history, that he threatens every nation with sudden attack and oppression, that he has created a terrible war machine in order to bring misery and devastation everywhere. At the same time they intentionally conceal an all-important fact: they themselves drove the leader of the German people finally to draw the sword. They themselves compelled him to seek to obtain at last by the use of force that which he had been striving to gain by persuasion from the beginning: the security of his country. They did this not only by declaring war on him on Sept. 3, 1939, but also by blocking step by step for seven years the path to any peaceful discussion … A quick look at the most important events provides incontrovertible proof of this.

In its first report on the mass assaults on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam, the city’s municipality has accused them of chanting “hateful and racist songs against Arabs.”

This language, which appeared in the fifth sentence of the 12-page report published on Monday, marked a shift from city officials’ rhetoric so far, including Mayor Femke Halsema’s statement that “there is no excuse” for the assaults. Herman Loonstein, a prominent Dutch-Jewish lawyer, accused the municipality of victim-blaming, telling JNS that the document suggests that “the Jews did it.”

Teachers at the Friedrich Bergius School in Berlin’s Schöneberg district have issued a stark warning about escalating issues they say are exacerbated by the city’s approach to mass immigration and integration. In a seven-page letter to the district council, the staff described an environment of increasing aggression, violence, and educational struggles that has left them overwhelmed and desperate for support. The letter highlights a central issue: Many students entering the school lack not only proficiency in German but also basic academic skills, with some having never attended school before. Around 80 percent of the students speak a language other than German at home, and over 70 percent of the seventh graders admitted in 2023 were unable to even read a clock.