The Iconoclast

by Hugh Fitzgerald The Palestinian Authority is thoroughly alarmed. It likes to get lots of money – billions and billions of dollars – from European and other Infidel donors. And it likes to spend it just as it wishes, without any conditions. Until now, that view seems to have been accepted by ...Read More...

America’s Middle East policy has been disastrous since Ike, with the exception of the Nixon-Kissinger days. by Conrad Black President Trump entered office having promised to smash ISIS, avoid endless Middle Eastern wars, counteract terrorism, and support Israel. He has been accused of lurching ...Read More...

by Michael Curtis Whatever Meghan wants, Meghan gets. Take off your coat, don’t you know you can’t win. Gloom and misery everywhere, stormy weather.  On January 8, 2020 Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex startled the British Royal Family by announcing that he and his wife the Duchess, Meghan Markle ...Read More...

A friend asked me to accompany her to this exhibition at the British Museum recently. The Museum website says Artistic exchange between East and West has a long and intertwined history, and the exhibition picks these stories up from the 15th century, following cultural interactions that can still ...Read More...

by Michael Rectenwald When Vince Vaughn uttered a few sentences then shook Trump’s hand at a championship college football game, a woke member of the crowd recorded the transgression and tried to cancel the Wedding Crasher’s career with a tweet. On Monday night, Hollywood star Vince Vaughn ...Read More...

by Hugh Fitzgerald As unrest and anger at the regime continue in the Islamic Republic of Iran, it is illuminating to recall a report last year from Radio Farda, which shows that the Islamic revolution wasn’t doing too well even then, and clearly its situation has not improved since then. Ayatollah ...Read More...

From Tolo News, the Afghan TV News station and Khaama Press an English language news service for Afghanistan. An imam in the western province of Herat has installed billboards around Herat city to encourage women to wear the hijab--a headscarf--and has allegedly instructed his followers to punish ...Read More...

From the Manchester Evening News Children were raped and abused by up to 100 members of a Manchester grooming gang sixteen years ago - but despite police and social workers knowing what was happening they weren’t stopped. At least 57 young girls are thought to have been exploited by a paedophile ...Read More...

by Hugh Fitzgerald Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas, was in Tehran for the funeral of Qassem Soleimani. He was the only non-Iranian speaker at the funeral. The details are here: The leader of the Hamas terror group spoke at the Tehran funeral of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani on Monday, ...Read More...

by Theodore Dalrymple Sir Roger Scruton, the British conservative philosopher who was preeminent for nearly half a century, died on January 12, after an illness that he had borne for six months. He was 75. He showed great moral courage throughout his career, swimming against the intellectual ...Read More...

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant Iranian defector Alireza Soleimanpak and Georgian PM Giorgi Gakharia It is not often that an Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix interview and New English Review (NER) article triggers a national investigation. But that is what occurred on January ...Read More...

by Hugh Fitzgerald The Iraqi Parliament has just passed a resolution calling for all American troops -– there are now 5,000 in Iraq — to be withdrawn from the country. I quite agree. We should never have entered Iraq in the first place, but left Saddam, monstrous as he was, as a counterweight ...Read More...

by Howard Rotberg European nations do not have a good history when it comes to dealing with their Jews. I find that even today, Europe is being less than helpful to its own Jews and to those Jews living in the Jewish State of Israel. With respect to its own Jews, what were Europeans thinking ...Read More...

On the death of Roger Scruton we are posting this article by Douglas Murray in the Spectator: Sir Roger Scruton has died. Diagnosed with cancer last summer, he passed away peacefully on Sunday surrounded by his family. There will be a lot of things written and said in the coming days. But ...Read More...

by Hugh Fitzgerald Junaid Hafeez was sentenced to death in Pakistan for making social media posts "insulting" Islam when he was a university lecturer in 2013. The American government announced in mid-December that Pakistan is a country “of particular concern” given its record on religious freedom. ...Read More...