Israel at the epicenter of a clash of civilizations

Events in Israel and around the world over the past week show ever more clearly that Israel is at the center of a growing global conflict between civilization and barbarity, between good and evil.

Jihadists kill Jews in Jerusalem; Israel targets Hamas leaders in Qatar

Six people were murdered Monday and 12 were wounded, six of them seriously, when a pair of Palestinian terrorists opened fire on vehicles and pedestrians in Jerusalem’s Ramot Junction.

Police and rescue personnel at the scene of a terror attack at Ramot junction | Photo: Chaim Goldberg/Flash90

A day later, the Israel Defense Forces and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) carried out a targeted airstrike against top members of Hamas’s leadership in Doha, Qatar. The results of what the IDF dubbed “Operation Summit of Fire” were not immediately clear. Hamas leaders known to be based in Doha include:

1. Khaled Mashaal,
2. Zaher Jabarin,
3. Mohammad
4. Ismail Darwish,
5. Mousa Abu Marzouk,
6. Hussam Badran and
7. Tahar Anunu.

The most recent indications received by the defense establishment are that the majority of the targets of the operation were not killed, Israel’s Channel 12 news reported.

This episode has thrust the problematic role of Qatar into the limelight. The world is faced with the reality that Qatar is a bad faith actor that has deceived the West, and undermined Israel. Qatar has infiltrated American universities and purchased massive amounts of properties and businesses in the West. All the while, it has been funding and promoting terror, including supporting Hamas. Jonathan Spyer reports:

“This week’s strike on Doha suggests that Israel has now awakened to the role played by Qatar, and no longer feels bound to indulge it. Rather, the normal rule according to which a state that domiciles a terror group may find its territory targeted by another state that is at war with said terror group, is now to be applied also to Qatar. This is an opening of daylight onto one of the strangest and murkiest corners of the opaque Middle East strategic picture. It is long overdue.”

According to analyst Hussein Aboubakr Mansour –

“Qatar built its foreign policy on the systematic cultivation of ambiguity. Lacking the military weight of its larger Gulf neighbors, it turned vulnerability into leverage by positioning itself as indispensable to all parties. By funding and hosting Islamist actors such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, it ensured it could not be bypassed when Washington, Jerusalem, or others needed a channel.”

The UK does not consider Israel’s actions in Gaza to be genocide

Until last week the UK government had maintained that the question of whether Israel had committed genocide was a matter for the courts and not for national governments to determine.

However, in a letter to the chair of the international development committee last week Foreign Secretary Lammy (who has since been replaced) said that an assessment carried out by the Foreign Office had concluded that Israel’s actions did not constitute genocide.

“When people stop talking, that’s when violence happens”
Quote by Charlie Kirk

Assassination of Charlie Kirk

Charlie Kirk, who rose from a teenage conservative campus activist to a top podcaster, culture warrior and ally of US President Donald Trump, was shot and killed Wednesday during one of his trademark public appearances at a college in Utah. He was 31. Kirk, an ardent Christian who stood firm for his belief in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was a fervent supporter of Israel. His tragic death has shocked the world, and is a huge loss. Many see the murder of this extrardinarily gifted man for simply speaking what he believes to be the truth as a turning point in history, highlighting the battle between the forces of light and darkness.

Europe turns on Israel

In a remarkable turn of events, the government in the Netherlands has suddenly announced that it will ban imports of goods from Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. The move was announced by Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel on Wednesday, after lawmakers put pressure on his caretaker government.

Earlier in the week, European Union President Ursula von der Leyen announced to E.U. lawmakers that Brussels would be putting all its bilateral payments to Israel “on hold” over the war against Hamas. “What is happening in Gaza is unacceptable,” Von der Leyen told the European parliament in Strasbourg, accusing the Israeli military of orchestrating a “man-made famine” in the Gaza Strip.

“We will put out bilateral support to Israel on hold. We will stop all payments in these areas, without affecting our work with Israeli civil society or Yad Vashem,” she said, referring to Israel’s Holocaust museum.

System Revision? Israel Targets Hamas Leaders in Doha

Hussein Aboubakr Mansour: The American-managed order built around the Israel-Palestine Conflict functioned with a single, overriding imperative: to ensure the continuity of the management game. The logic of this system was not to resolve conflicts but to maintain a sustainable equilibrium. For decades, it thrived on calibrated and controlled violence. Flare-ups in Gaza and skirmishes on the Lebanese border were less failures than mechanisms of self-regulation—contained ruptures that revalidated brokers, refreshed alliances, and allowed the choreography of crisis management to resume.

Within this order, Qatar built its foreign policy on the systematic cultivation of ambiguity. Lacking the military weight of its larger Gulf neighbors, it turned vulnerability into leverage by positioning itself as indispensable to all parties. By funding and hosting Islamist actors such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, it ensured it could not be bypassed when Washington, Jerusalem, or others needed a channel.
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A shocking watershed for America

Melanie Philips: The reaction by liberals to the murder of Conservative activist Charlie Kirk displays the same twisted thinking as their demonization of Israel.
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Dutch caretaker government to ban trade with Judea, Samaria Jews

JNS: With the E.U.’s 27 member states divided, the Netherlands’ ruling party said it now backs a Dutch embargo.
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Jerusalem terrorist attack is a new intifada

JNS: Israel understands that its survival is at stake. But the West does not. Fiamma Nirenstein: The threat is expanding. Judea and Samaria could become the next front for Hamas. The jihadists are explicit: They cannot lose. The Quran promises victory over the “infidels,” from the river to the sea. If this is still unclear to the West, it only strengthens both Sunni and Shi’ite radicals who are waging war without restraint.
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‘If Israel Won’t Defend Syria’s Christians and Druze, Who Will?’

Since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the situation has grown increasingly chaotic—and for the country’s minorities, dangerously dire. The enforcement of Sharia law has made it nearly impossible for non-Muslim communities to freely practice their faith. Druze and Christians, in particular, are struggling under immense pressure just to survive.

Meanwhile, Western leaders are seen shaking hands with former ISIS figure now dressed in suit, raising a haunting question: Why this sudden shift in politics? And are we turning a blind eye to the suffering of Syria’s minorities today?

In this interview, we are joined by Mansur Ashkar, an Israeli Druze with deep ties to the Druze communities in both Syria and Israel. A former Special Forces officer, Ashkar offers not only firsthand experience but also a rare and timely perspective on the realities unfolding in Syria right now.