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Dec 11, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Brendan O’Neill |Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier |Roger Kimball |Katherine Dee
So according to the modern left, killing the fascists of Hamas is “genocide,” but killing a CEO and father of two is “justice?” How else are we to make sense of the creepy idolization of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the shooting dead of Brian Thompson, chief executive of the health-insurance firm UnitedHealthcare? Seriously, the swooning over Mangione is a new low for the “very online” left.
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Dec 10, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier
There was an Israeli drone buzzing over Beirut at 8 a.m. on November 27, four hours after a ceasefire was signed and the shooting stopped. It soon disappeared and a feeling of elation set in. It was the best day we had in months. The Christmas spirit was palpable in Gemmayzeh, a Christian neighborhood in central Beirut. Christmas decorations were going up and the bars were packed that night. Lebanese in the diaspora who’d canceled their holiday trips to Beirut rebooked that day.
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Nov 7, 2024 | 
canadianaffairs.news | Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier
Retired Sergeant Tobias Miller joined the Canadian Armed Forces in 2002 and deployed to Afghanistan three times over the next decade. A survivor of childhood sexual abuse, Miller says he was already traumatized when he enlisted. But he did not disclose his history during the Forces’ initial screening process, because he did not want to ruin his chances of being admitted.
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Nov 1, 2024 | 
intellinews.com | Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier
By Fin DePencier in Beirut #bnm #Gulf #Lebanon #Beirut #Hezbollah #Israel #Palestine
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier |Niall Ferguson |Jay Mens |Daniel DePetris
West BankIt’s hard to take someone seriously when they tell you: be extremely careful, that part of the West Bank is just like Gaza now. Hyperbole, surely, but duly noted. It was late August and I was heading to the Tulkarem and Nur Shams refugee camps, two adjacent Palestinian communities in the northern occupied West Bank which are now the site of almost daily fighting between the Israeli military and Palestinian armed groups. The nearby city of Jenin has seen even worse violence.
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Oct 21, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Niall Ferguson |Jay Mens |Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier |Daniel DePetris
At home, the left sees him as cynical, conniving and corrupt, while the right sees him as tired, weak and unambitious. Abroad, he is almost universally loathed and distrusted. And yet no one can deny his Machiavellian mastery of the dirty game of politics, domestic and international. Modern history has produced only two figures who fit this description. The first is Germany’s Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck. The second is Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
intellinews.com | Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier
The plane to Beirut on October 15 was almost empty. I was sitting next to Antoine Saad, a Lebanese-Australian man making the trip to convince his stubborn mother to leave the country.
“She’s one of the lucky ones mate, she has an Australian passport. The Lebanese passport is one of the worst in the world, most people are stuck,” he said. As the city came into view, I migrated to a different window seat behind Antoine to get a clear view. Nothing looked amiss until we approached the airport.
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Oct 18, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Charles Lipson |Daniel DePetris |Limor Simhony Philpott |Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier
Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader and strategist responsible for the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, is dead, killed by the Israeli Defense Forces in a tunnel beneath his hometown of Rafah in Gaza. Although the Biden administration (rightfully) congratulated Israel, both President Biden and Vice President Harris had previously demanded Israel not stage a major military operation in Rafah, where Sinwar and other Hamas leaders were killed.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Limor Simhony Philpott |Dot Wordsworth |Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier |Teresa Mull
Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas and Israel’s top target in Gaza, may have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). The IDF has confirmed that three terrorists have been taken out in the Gaza Strip, and Israel is currently carrying out DNA tests to confirm if the Hamas chief was among the targets. According to Israeli news media, the Israeli cabinet has been informed of Sinwar’s death.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
thespectator.com | Dot Wordsworth |Fin DePencier |Fin dePencier |Cindy Yu |Ben Domenech
The singer Charli xcx (or “Ninety Ten” as my husband insists on pronouncing it) has endorsed Kamala Harris, in a way. “kamala is brat,” she tweeted. Since the slippery meaning of brat includes elements of dirtiness, drunkenness and hedonism, it might not define all that Americans want in a president. Not that Charli is American. She was born in Cambridge (England, not Massachusetts), given the names Charlotte Emma and went to a private school in Bishop’s Stortford.
