Gaza
April 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon’s Ira Stoll treats Wendy Sherman’s deep thoughts on Iran in his biting column “Obama-Biden Iran Negotiator Says Trump Doesn’t Have Enough Experts, Bemoans ‘Genocide.’” Sherman of course served as the Obama administration State Departmet official who led the negotiations with Iran resulting in the 2015 giveaway known as the JCPOA. Sherman thought her background in social work perfectly prepared her for the job. The JCPOA that
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February 14, 2026 — Scott Johnson
This past weekend the Wall Street Journal featured Tunku Varadarajan’s profile of Anthony Daniels (pseudonym Theodore Dalrymple) under the headline “The Psychiatrist to the ‘Underclass’” (“Anthony Daniels is a firsthand observer of the ‘squalor produced by the welfare state’ and by the ‘widespread abdication of personal responsibility’”). He has published brilliant, lucid, and witty essays in City Journal on a quarterly basis over the past 32 years (compiled here). The
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February 9, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Michael Herr titled one chapter of Dispatches, his Vietnam memoir, “Illumination rounds.” It’s a powerful book and a memorable chapter, separately available from the publisher. The title of that chapter serves as a useful metaphor. My flight home from DC having achieved liftoff, I would like to borrow Herr’s metaphor to fire off these illumination rounds on Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza. Round one: How many journalists, politicians, and
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November 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The IDF has just posted the video below under the caption “NEW IDF INTELLIGENCE FROM BEIT HANOUN.” The IDF writes on X: The city of Beit Hanoun is a central Hamas terror stronghold in Gaza. Underground: Beneath civilian homes, Hamas built an extensive tunnel network. Above ground: Thousands of structures served as weapons storage facilities, firing positions, and command centers for terrorists. Additionally, armed terrorists operated from inside an elementary
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November 18, 2025 — John Hinderaker
If Donald Trump were still a Democrat, this would be hailed in the press as another in a series of foreign policy triumphs, and would guarantee him a Nobel Prize: In Major Breakthrough, U.N. Security Council Adopts U.S. Peace Plan for Gaza. The United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how
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November 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Daniel Greenfield reports on a phenomenon that may not come as a complete surprise to Power Line readers. The alleged Gaza famine was mythical: After two years of barraging social media with lies about a famine in Gaza, Hamas propaganda channels are now trying to cover up their obesity by claiming that Israel is making them fat. One recent Hamas media story clamored that “they’re forcing us to gain weight,”
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November 14, 2025 — Bill Glahn
A chartered-plane full of uninvited Gazan refugees arrived in South Africa recently. This is an event that really happened. As far as I can piece together, Israeli authorities allowed 153 Gaza residents to enter Isreal, travel to a nearby airport, board a chartered jetliner and fly to Johannesburg, via Nairobi. There they sat on the tarmac for 10 hours until local South African authorities could figure out what to do.
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October 20, 2025 — Bill Glahn
I recommend reading the recent Douglas Murray book On Democracies and Death Cults (Harper, April 2025, 197 pages). It covers the war in Gaza and includes much direct coverage of the war by Murray in person. Its April 2025 publication date means that it doesn’t cover the most recent events, including the ceasefire and the war with Iran. But don’t let that put you off. The subtitle is “Israel and
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October 20, 2025 — John Hinderaker
I was on television last night with the great Rita Panahi. The segment started with Lefties Losing It, which naturally focused on the “No Kings” protests organized by the Democratic Party. I came on at about 7:49, and we talked about the administration’s mocking of those protests. We went on to discuss regime change in Venezuela, new revelations about the Gaza peace negotiations, the assault on “Big Balls,” and Karine
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October 20, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Only yesterday terrorist operatives ambushed Israeli troops in Rafah, killing Major Yaniv Kula and Staff Sergeant Itay Yavetz, and wounding three others. The IDF responded with strikes on some twenty targets, mostly in the central part of the Gaza Strip, after which it announced that it will return to abiding by the cease-fire. The IDF attributed the attack to Hamas. The linked Times of Israel stories includes photos of the
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October 18, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This is revealing: The national body of Students for Justice in Palestine backed Hamas’s grisly public executions of fellow Palestinians in Gaza on Sunday, posting “Death to the Occupation, Death to Collaborators” on Instagram. SJP’s Instagram post concluded with this: Between exploiting Gaza’s youth for money using desperately needed aid to the killing of their own people in service of Zionism, collaborators have no place in a liberated future. Death
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October 17, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This is from last night’s Rowan Dean Show on Sky News. It starts with Rowan’s “The World’s Gone Mad” segment, and I come in around two-thirds of the way through. We talked about President Trump’s success in Gaza, the prospects for peace (peace through Tomahawk missiles) in Ukraine, and the Left’s puzzling reaction to the long-awaited cease fire in the Middle East:
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October 14, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Since agreeing to, and partially carrying out, a cease fire and return of Israeli hostages, Hamas has resumed its reign of terror in Gaza, with a series of public executions of political foes. President Trump is unhappy. He told reporters today that “They will disarm or we will disarm them.” The New York Post’s editorial board has questions: “We do not need to limit ourselves to the Israeli terms and
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October 9, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Roger Simon has a Substack piece on the cease fire announcement in Gaza, to which he has added this sobering update: This is a time when I don’t particularly like being prescient. Just a few days ago, I posted “Gaza–Genuine Peace or a Hudna?” A hudna, for those who missed it, is a tactical pause to allow Islamic forces to regroup. Minutes ago, the following was posted by Amir Tsarfati
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October 9, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Amit Segal is the proprietor of the It’s Noon In Israel newsletter and one of Israel’s most knowledgeable journalists. In today’s newsletter — a few minutes old as I write — he declares “The Gaza War Is Over.” I have borrowed the thumbnail photo on the home page of a hostage family in Washington from today’s newsletter (photo credited to Amichai Stein). I thought readers might find his analysis of
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September 29, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Today President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held a joint press conference in which they announced a plan–Trump’s “Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict”–that, according to the President, would not only end the war in Gaza: I’m not just talking about Gaza. Gaza is one thing, but we’re talking about much beyond Gaza. The whole deal, everything getting solved. It’s called peace in the Middle East. Trump
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September 4, 2025 — Scott Johnson
The morning’s email roundup from Mosaic directs attention to the video jointly produced by the Center for Peace Communications/Free Press (Free Press story here, behind the FP paywall). The video depicts Al Jazeera at work. Mosaic provides this background: Because Hamas cannot overpower the IDF on the battlefield, it counts on inciting global hostility to Israel until international pressure forces Israel to stop fighting. This strategy depends both on distributing
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