"[Joint statement announcing the signing of the] Mecca Joint Defence Agreement."

"[A] shared commitment to further strengthening collective security and to promoting peace, security and stability in the region and beyond."

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan 

 

"The agreement does not represent an effort to establish a military axis or a sectarian bloc."

"Nor is it linked to any nuclear ambitions or arms race. Rather it is focused on building sustainable capabilities."

"[The agreement] does not constitute a threat to the security of any country in the region."

Saudi Deputy Minister for Public Diplomacy Rayed Krimly 

 

"[The alignment] is clearly oriented toward Iran and meant to address Iran's new strategic approach which is geared toward dominance of the broader Gulf region."

"[The fact that Turkey and Pakistan border Iran means they could exercise a different kind of leverage [on Tehran]."

Umar Karim, Saudi foreign policy expert, University of Birmingham, England

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif sign a trilateral joint defense agreement Friday in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.  Murat Cetinmuhurdar / Anadolu via Getty Images

 

What an alliance. Saudi Arabia, the keeper of the holiest site in Islam; Mecca. Turkey, with its second-largest military within the membership of the North American Treaty Organization. And Pakistan, the sole Islamic country that possesses nuclear weapons. Saudi Arabia has been confronted by Iran over its custodianship of Mecca. Since Turkey is a member of NATO, should it be attacked by a regional antagonist like Iran, would that bring the NATO alliance into conflict to protect one of its members? As a nuclear power, Pakistan is not exactly the most stable of countries, beset by its own version of the Taliban. 

 

What an alliance of insecure, tribal, sectarian, ancient-antipathies-alive-to-the-present we have here. A trifecta of genuine Islamist Sunni states prepared to confront the Iranian Shi'ite Axis of 'Resistance'. Mind, they do have a lot in common. Each of those Sunni nations view the presence of a Jewish state in the Middle East as a grave offence against Islam's most sacred concept, that land once consecrated to Islam can never return to the aegis of another religion. Never mind that Judean ancestral heritage long predated the appearance of Islam by millennia.

 

As though to emphasize that the Sunni alliance is meant for the promotion of peace and stability in the region, only a few days earlier, Pakistan’s Defense Minister Khawaja Asif, stated that his country considers that "Israel is a threat to the entire Muslim world", calling for "a united military front" against it, just a day after Pakistan signed the joint defense agreement with Saudi Arabia and Turkey. "In the context of Israel, all Muslim countries must unite. I have no doubt about this" said Asif.

 

Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis attacked a Saudi Aramco refinery on Sunday, two days after Saudi Arabia forged a defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan. The alliance pledges mutual defense, which means an armed attack on any one member counts as an attack on all. But after Sunday’s attack, it was not immediately clear whether Turkey or Pakistan would respond.  Democracy Now

 

Not to be outdone by Pakistan, Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan always has an opinion about Israel, with his opinions anything but friendly in the least, despite his sanctimonious statements in support of peace and stability in the region. Obviously peace and stability does not include Israel's presence. The champion of Hamas who celebrates the terrorist group's role in 'resistance', claims that Turkey feels threatened by Israel's attacks on Syria and Lebanon. In the former event, protecting the Syrian Druze community against deadly aggression, and in the latter, fighting back against Hezbollah terrorists sending rockets into Israeli communities in the Golan.

 

But for Erdogan it is Israel that is at fault for "aggression" that poses a threat to the world, and must be stopped. "If the Israeli thuggery is not stopped, the consequences will be borne by the entire region and all of humanity", Erdogan thundered in Turkey's parliament. "Israel must be stopped; this is the duty of humanity and the humanitarian front. History must not be allowed to repeat itself", he righteously spouted.

 

And as though modelled on NATO, the foreign ministry of Pakistan explained the pact would recognize that an attack on any member would be regarded as an attack on all; a rule that was "intended to strengthen collective deterrence". One, however, "not aimed at any particular country". 

 

This image taken from video broadcast by Al-Masirah TV, a Houthi-controlled news channel, shows an explosion at the Sanaa International Airport compound during what the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen said were several Saudi airstrikes in Sanaa, Yemen, July 13, 2026. (Al-Masirah TV via AP)

 

Saudi Arabia is being attacked anew by the Houthis in Yemen. That terrorist group is yet another Iranian proxy, doing the work for the Islamic Republic, the head of the snake that calls itself the Axis of Resistance. Yet that attack has gone unaddressed by this new coalition. Saudi Arabia has responded to the Houthi attacks by counterattacking them, and not the source of their orders, which is Iran. Iran is the sole source responsible for the agitation, fear and absolute instability wracking the region.

 

Yet the regional powers that have been targeted by the Islamic Republican Guard Corps that really run the country now, while seeking to protect themselves and their geographic installations from the destructive Iranian missiles and drones sent their way, fail repeatedly to go on the offensive and counter-attack, putting an end to decades of insecurity wrought by Shi'ite Iran in its deliberate goal to entirely destabilize the region and ensconce itself as the Persian uber-nation in control of the Arab Sunni Middle East.  

"Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan are not trying to replace the United States. They are building the capacity to protect their interests when Washington cannot or will not do so."

"[Riyadh, in particular], wants several layers of security rather than one American umbrella [following the shock of the Iran war]."

Andreas Krieg, King's College London 

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, accompanied by their ministers of Foreign Affairs and Defence, pose after signing a joint defence agreement in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, August 7, 2026. Saudi Press Agency/Handout via REUTERS

"We will be a moderate country."

"I have a genuine fear of prosecution from the Qatari government. And I've faced a lot of issues being outside Qatar. [There is a] high cost [for a security detail]. If they have the chance to get me, they will get me."

"I support peace with Israel and I definitely have opened the diplomatic channels with Israel."

"[Under my leadership Qatar would] absolutely never [bankroll designated terror groups]."

"That's one of the main things that a lot of Qatari people actually want. Because Hamas should not be existing in Qatar, al-Qaida should not be in Doha. Taliban should not be in Qatar."

"We should not pay the salaries of Hamas leaders. We should not pay the salaries of all these terror groups."

Sheikh Khalid Al-Hail, exiled Qatari political leader

Sheikh Khalid Al-Hail, the president of the Qatari National Democratic Party, and self-proclaimed opposition leader. Photo by Handout /Postmedia

 

President of the Qatari National Democratic Party, founder and opposition leader to the current Qatari government, Sheikh Al-Hail lives in exile in London, building a government-in-waiting, for a Doha far different from the current reality. As a wealthy businessman, Sheikh Al-Hail had once served as chairman of the board of over 30 Qatari companies with large-scale ventures country-wide. He left for London in 2013 as chairman and chief executive of Qatar Investment and Development Co.

 

In the space of a year, political differences of vast dimension between himself and newly-installed Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani saw his status changed from a highly respected Qatari businessman to a political opponent no longer welcome in his country of birth. A country while ostensibly an ally of the United States, the ruling elite of Qatar shelters and bankrolls Islamist Hamas, Taliban, al-Qaida affiliates and networks of the Muslim Brotherhood as one of the world's key state jihadi terrorism enablers.

 

Al Jazeera, the state's media arm, while barred in ten Arab countries, acts as a spokespiece for the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas positions in the interests of shaping opinion through media propaganda across the West and throughout the Arab world. Formerly an associate of a previous Qatar prime minister Hamad bin Jassim, Sheik Al-Hail was once welcome within the inner circle of the ruling elite before his break with the regime. The party he now leads began in 2010 as the Qatari Youth Rescue Movement, its goal to "reform the system in Qatar".  

"[I envision a Qatar governed by a constitutional monarchy, with a] normal parliament, house of commons, house of lords -- democracy is key. We believe in freedom of speech and freedom of faith."

"[The sitting rulers, a coterie of family members, are] a gang and a mafia, that control our country and our wealth, and that's not acceptable."

"What you face in Qatar is actually the policy makers, most of them Muslim Brotherhood, and pro-Hamas. Qatari people have nothing to do with Muslim Brotherhood."

Sheikh Khalid Al-Hail 

Prager U

He first began to loom in the critical notice of the regime when he spoke publicly of "a corrupt financial system", propped up by political favouritism and patronage from the emir of Qatar. In 2014, the Sheik returned to Qatar after the assurances of Al Thani that he would be welcomed back. On his arrival back in Qatar he was taken to a "national security detention" centre, under accusations of planning a regime change. "I was surprised and shocked". In the 22 days that followed, he was tortured and bound through 20 hours of daily interrogation. 

 

He managed to escape with outside intervention, ("my people managed to smuggle me outside") -- fled to Egypt with over 9,000 documents revealing the extent of corruption by Qatari officials which included a scheme to overthrow the ruling family of Saudi Arabia. Qatar, he said "turned on Israel" in stages; cutting formal ties under regional pressure at the time of the Second Intifada; followed by  patronizing the terrorist group Hamas and its leaders. As a first act on becoming leader of Qatar, the Sheikh spoke of putting the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas on a plane to be "sent to Israel to face justice".  

 

Qatar's influence and the Muslim Brotherhood networks reach deep into Canada and other western democracies, stated the Sheikh. The largest foreign investor in US. higher education routing $6.6 billion into major universities, as a design to buy influence. Billions of Qatari dollars were infused into U.S. governmental institutions and policy-shaping systems, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies as well as a report by the Wall Street Journal.

 

Prager U

As for Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney's recent trip to Qatar and announcement of increased ties with the country -- in defence, trade and high tech -- this would have the effect of further ensnaring Canada into the same trap laid out for the United States, of a benign, trustworthy Middle East country -- despite all indications to the contrary -- with the allure of profitable bilateral trade, blinding Ottawa to the threats inherent in the presence of Qatari-aligned groups in Canada; Hezbollah and Hamas along with the Muslim Brotherhood among them. 

"The Canadian government has given tens and tens of millions of dollars to Muslim-Brotherhood-aligned groups, for Islamophobia file projects."

"For you to be Liberal is not an issue; but for you to be stupid, that's the problem."

Sheikh Khalid Al-Hail 

"We need urgent action by our government to protect all Canadians now. Designate Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization now."

"[The Muslim Brotherhood is a] real and immediate threat [to Canada's democracy]."

"Canada will undoubtedly fall [if the government does not act against] Canadian Islamist organizations connected to the Muslim Brotherhood."

Amir Epstein, Tafsik executive director

 

"Chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood purport to be legitimate civic organizations while, behind the scenes, they explicitly and enthusiastically support terrorist groups like Hamas."

U.S. Treasury Department  

The White House

"The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, has developed into a transnational network with chapters across the Middle East and beyond.  Relevant here, its chapters in Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt engage in or facilitate and support violence and destabilization campaigns that harm their own regions, United States citizens, and United States interests. "

"For example, in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023, attack in Israel, the military wing of the Lebanese chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood joined Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian factions to launch multiple rocket attacks against both civilian and military targets within Israel."

"A senior leader of the Egyptian chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood, on October 7, 2023, called for violent attacks against United States partners and interests, and Jordanian Muslim Brotherhood leaders have long provided material support to the militant wing of Hamas.  Such activities threaten the security of American civilians in the Levant and other parts of the Middle East, as well as the safety and stability of our regional partners."

The White House  

B'nai Brith and other Jewish groups have called on the government of Canada for years, to list the Muslim Brotherhood as a  terrorist organization. Those calls have increased since the terrorist attack in southern Israel of October 7, 2023, when six thousand Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the PLFP and Fatah streamed across the border from Gaza in an orgy of sadistic mass rape, torture and slaughter of 1,200 Israelis, along with the  hostage-taking of 250 children, women, the elderly civilians, soldiers and foreign farm workers.  

"Unlike Al Qaeda, the Muslim Brotherhood has evolved and learned the hard way that the use of violence will be met with superior violence by state actors. The clever thing to do, it now turns out, was to be patient and invest in a bottom-up movement rather than a commando structure that risked being wiped out by stronger forces."

" Besides, the gradualist approach is far more likely to win the prize of state power. All that Khomeini did before he came to power in Iran was to preach the merits of a society based on Islamic law. He did not engage in terrorism. Yet he and his followers took over Iran – a feat far greater than bin Laden ever achieved. In Iran the violence came later."

Ayyan Hirsi Ali, resident scholar, American Enterprise Institute, Washington 

Policy Alert: New Report Sheds Light on Muslim Brotherhood Terror Ties  Foundation for Defense of Democracies

 

More latterly, members of the Jewish advocacy group Tafsik called on Canada's Liberal government to finally follow the lead of the United States in designating the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization. While the MB does not itself act as a terrorist group, it is the founding enterprise that has launched countless terrorist groups whose violence on display with the hard power of jihad complements the MB's jihadist soft power. Hamas itself is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

 

By stealth and presenting as a reasonable alternative to democracy's secular rule, the Muslim Brotherhood portrays Islam as a gentle, peace-loving religion, omitting its instructions to the faithful to dedicate themselves to jihad, Islam's deep drive to convert the world to the worship of Islam through a type of proselytism unique to its founder, the Prophet Mohammad who launched countless wars of conquest, a heritage that encompassed the Middle East, stretched into North Africa, India, Spain, France and the Balkans.

 

Originating in the 1920s in Egypt, the century-old movement employs gentle 'suasion, establishing mosques, hospitals and social centres in the non-Muslim-majority countries it enters to extend its goodwill and influence as far as its  tentacles can reach. And they reach the very heart of governments, social welfare, elite society and the news media through operative contacts made by its adherents with key sympathizers.  

 

The U.S. took the step last month of designating the Lebanese, Egyptian and Jordanian branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, giving them the status of Specially Designated Global Terrorists. A report prepared last year by two French civil servants for the government of France issued a warning that the Muslim Brotherhood movement represented a "threat to national cohesion within the country". France is a country overrun with Muslims, and among them are ample numbers of groups hostile to French values, laws and culture. 

 

Groups linked with and originating from the Muslim Brotherhood, recognized as terrorist organizations, have been listed as such in Canada, including Hamas which, according to the listing identifies Hamas as having "emerged from the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1987". According to Middle East researcher Thomas Juneau, the Muslim Brotherhood is a complex movement with individual chapters in multiple countries worldwide. Its very complexity in relation to its offshoots makes it difficult to list the MB. 

"[Some of those offshoots are] undeniably [terrorist organizations, but others are not]." 

"Even individual chapters are often more loose movements than unified groups."

"Some Muslim Brotherhood groups are clearly not violent, they are clearly not terrorists."

"They adhere to a fairly conservative and pious version of political Islam, but they are not terrorists."

Prof.Thomas Juneau, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, University of Ottawa  

Imam Mohammad Tawhidi/Imam of Peace, while acknowledging the complexity of designating the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist entity, nevertheless pressed Canada to make the move to identify it formally as a terrorist group as a reflection of its stealth influence, its undeniable links to violent groups that reflect its totalitarian quest for dominance using the hard power of jihadist terror, while behind the scenes as an innocent, well-meaning interlocutor for Islam, the Muslim Brotherhood does its part on the 'diplomatic' front. 

 

 

"Just because they are difficult to put a finger on, and it's somewhat technically challenging to designate the entire organization ... it does not mean that we do nothing about it at all."

"Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood will be designated. The question is, when will the courageous people, the lawmakers, take this stand?"

Mohammad Tawhidi, Imam of Peace 

There are International Rules of War ... and There are International Rules of Israeli War

"Once a city of 270,000 at the southernmost area of the [Gaza] Strip, Rafah has been the focus of intense combat at various times since October 7, 2023."

"Today, the city lies in ruins. Driving on a newly paved road -- in a convoy of military vehicles with heavy protection -- we passed through piles of twisted rebar, demolished buildings and rubble."

"The intact shell of one building stood, in stark contrast to the desolation."

"After about 15 minutes we arrived at our destination -- a massive humanitarian aid complex that was near completion. The Israel Defense Forces' international spokesman, Lt.-Col. Nadav Shoshani explained that the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-based not-for profit, will operate the centre which will have the capacity to provide millions of meals daily to displaced civilians."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to IDF troops in Rafah on the Gaza-Egypt border, July 18, 2024. (Avi Ohayon/GPO

 

The location of which she writes is not far from the Egyptian border. Egypt, it should be noted, has recently accused Israel of committing 'genocide'. Egypt, it should also be noted, has steadfastly refused to open its border with Gaza to permit Palestinians fleeing the conflict in Gaza to enter the Sinai. Should that be interpreted as Egypt placing itself deliberately in a position of complicity in genocide? After all, Egypt, until it marched on Israel in 1967, occupied Gaza, and many Gazans of today trace their ancestry to Egypt.

 

Israel is now, once again, fighting for its existence. This time, not against the massed armies of its neighbours, but the terrorist groups that some of its neighbours in the Middle East have supported. Could an existential situation be more complex than that of Israel, when it has finally been able to sign peace treaties with some of its Arab neighbours, while the terrorist groups in Yemen, Lebanon and Gaza along with those in Iraq, all loyal to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and by extension Qatar, seek to demolish the Jewish state? 

 

In responding to the violently lethal threats of Iran's proxy militias and Iran itself, Israel risks alienating its Arab neighbours with whom it has signed those peace agreements. Egypt, a case in point, has assembled its military in large numbers along its border with Israel, as though it is preparing to launch a war against a neighbour it has long since pledged peace with. And nor is Israel's plight one restrained to the Middle East. Its Western allies in Europe and elsewhere now accuse it of disproportional force against its enemies. 

Palestinians carry humanitarian aid that they gathered after an aid drop, as they walk in the al-Mawasi area of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on August 18, 2025. (AFP)

 

These are death-cult Islamists whose charters declare their purpose is to destroy Israel and to kill Jews. In responding to the deadly attack of October 7, 2023, where thousands of terrorists crossed into southern Israel to rape and to maim, to plunder and to murder, Israel had little choice but to invade Gaza to hunt down Hamas's leaders and its operatives. In doing so, its northern border with Lebanon saw another terror group, Hezbollah, rain missiles down onto the Golan Heights at Israeli communities.

 

And before long, the Houthi terrorists in Yemen responded as well, attacking shipping in the Red Sea, asserting that any vessels with any connection to Israel would be targeted; in the process upsetting marine traffic internationally. Yet Israel's traditional allies, in the full knowledge that Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Iranian Republic use their own civilian populations as shields to protect the 'mujahadeen' from Israel's military responses to their attacks, focus on the plight of the civilian population in Gaza where a 'moral' military prewarns citizens of attacks and does its utmost to minimize civilian casualties.

 

Egypt's Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty attends an Arab officials’ meeting in Riyadh on January 12, 2025. (Fayez Nureldine / AFP)

 

During an all-out conflict when a nation is forced to commit itself to a war against those who relentlessly and continually attack its citizens, the internationally acknowledged rules of war affirm that such a nation has the right to defend itself and its population and to counter-attack the offender out for its blood. By concealing themselves among the population for cover, and by using civilian infrastructure for command bases and by firing off missiles from launch sites deliberately placed in crowded civilian areas, Hamas has with intention, placed its civilian population in direct line of danger.

 

It uses the statistics it gathers on casualties among the civilian population, to convince the international community of Israel's intention to commit 'genocide', a charge that is not only a risible slander, but one that reality itself denies. What other country at war in the annals of international conflict through the ages has ever been expected to defend itself and obliterate an enemy sworn to its destruction, while also protecting a civilian population and to feed it, while its enemies are known to hijack humanitarian aid meant to avoid starvation among Gaza's civilians?

 

Hamas has in its possession, the remnants of 250 hostages it originally kidnapped from Israel and took to Gaza to torture and starve and even slaughter, because Jewish bodies, alive or dead are bargaining chips of great value to the Hamas terror machinery knowing full well that Israel attempts to move heaven and earth to rescue its people imprisoned in the underground hellscape of Gaza, including those held for ransom by Palestinian civilians in Gaza, who support the sadistic cruelty of their leaders in savaging Jewish lives.

 

 

"The Muwasi-adjacent site will be operated by GHF and offer ready access to food and other life essentials in a safe, controlled environment."

"Civilians will walk a 500-metre path, flat and secure, far from Hamas fighters or criminal gangs."

"Once inside the complex they will receive food aid to last several days and within minutes return to their temporary shelters in Muwasi."

"To avoid panics and crowd surges the centre would be operational 24/7 if necessary and supplies will be delivered by truck using the same road we took. At a minimum, basic life necessities will be available."

Vivian Bercovici, Israeli journalist 

Death of the Two-State Solution

"The framework for recognizing Palestine that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney set forth on Wednesday attempts to bring us closer to that goal [of two democratic states for two peoples, living in mutual recognition of one another], but suffers from several fatal defects -- with respect to the conditions it includes, the conditions it fails to include and, most importantly the fact that it gets the paradigm backwards, granting recognition before the necessary conditions are met, rather than after."

"If Canada moves forward with this framework, it will almost certainly be complicit -- however inadvertently -- in the creation of another authoritarian terrorist state in the Middle East, rather than a peaceful democratic one, thereby decreasing, rather than increasing, the possibility of securing a lasting peace in the region."

Irwin Cotler, international chair, Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights

Noah Lew, director of the Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights 

 

 

Originally, when the United Nations offered up their Partition Plan in 1947 the intention was that two democratic countries would result, for two different groups of people living contiguously in peace, security and mutual recognition of the legitimacy of each other. Israel accepted the UN offer and from 1948 onward has represented the only true democracy in the Middle East, amidst an array of kingdoms, sheikdoms, dictatorships and theocracies.

 

As a Jewish state, albeit an inclusive one, giving citizenship and equality to other ethnic/religious group living amongst the majority Jewish population, Israel has been forced by the hostility of its neighbours to maintain a military presence with the intention of forestalling frequent attempts to destroy its presence on its ancestral Judean landmass, now shared by edict of the United Nations with religious/ethnic factions adamant that it has no place amidst majority Islamic states.

 

Assembled armies of the Middle East attempted time and again to extirpate Israel from its heritage land, to no avail. And while at the present time, some of those originally belligerent states now have forged cordial relations -- or at the very least, tolerate Israel's presence -- the Arab contingent naming themselves Palestinians, taking on the mantle of original dwellers on the land, which they are not, has remained violently hostile, losing no opportunity to lethally attack Israeli citizens. 

 

The Palestinians embarked on a decades' long propaganda of victimhood and slander, convincing an empathetic Western audience that Israel was an illegal intruder into the Middle East, oppressing the Palestinians and taking land meant for them. Their unrestrained and violent antipathy toward Israel, the school curricula teaching Palestinian children to hate Jews and to aspire to martyrdom by killing Jews, the program of the ruling authorities to pay financial rewards to killers of Jews and violence-prone imprisoned Palestinians has ensured that no accord between the two solitudes could ever result in two states, side-by-side. 

 

 

 

Israel has attempted to negotiate peace agreements that would lead to the establishment of an internationally legal and recognized Palestinian state was refused time and again by Palestinian leaders who adamantly refused to recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish state. But although the Palestinians' refusal to compromise to make it possible for the two-state solution to arise, nations that are considered allies of Israel, continue to insist that the 'two-state-solution' must be accomplished in justice to Palestinian aspirations, while setting aside the intransigence of the Palestinian insistence on Israel's destruction.

 

The Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, represented by the Fatah faction of Palestinian denial of an Israeli presence interacts through their leader and the president of the PA, Mahmoud Abbas, as a 'moderate' whose agenda remains that of challenging Israel's legitimacy as a Jewish State. The leadership of the Hamas contingent, a recognized terrorist group, is proudly overt about their intention to destroy Israel by any means possible. Time and again Israeli governments over the years have attempted to reason with both Hamas and Fatah to accept a peace accord and recognize Israel's right of existence.

 

The response has always been an Intifada, and the ongoing resolve to counter Israel's presence with unmitigated violent savagery. Yet France, Britain and Canada, among other nations of the world, insist that the Palestinians must have their recognized sovereign state bordering that of Israel's. While covertly the Palestinians in whose name the West and other geographic nations support statehood recognition, plot to attack Israel and its citizens endlessly.

 

None of the states that see it as imperative that the Palestinians have their state, are faced with the dilemma themselves of a neighbour dedicated to destroying their presence, yet they support the Palestinian entitlement to secure what they adamantly refused in 1947, and have ever since, when it would mean living in peace alongside Israel. Confoundingly enough, Muslim Arab states themselves have little real empathy at this point in the endless terror attacks against Israel for the Palestinian position. For while the West opens its welcoming arms to the presence of Palestinians, the states in the Middle East evade their presence.

 

Emigration, migration, and refugee status has seen a wide influx of Palestinians in democratic nations of the West. And there they continue their fulminations against Israel, spreading their viperous draughts of slanderous venom, reawakening historical levels of international antisemitism to fever pitch, in the process convincing those who now support their cause that Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians are pitiable victims, in a reversal of reality, but one that resonates with the uninformed, the oblivious and the Jew-haters.

 

 

Restoring Syria, Stabilizing the Middle East

"[Syria is at a] turning point [as is the rest of the Middle East]."

"If we can now all come together to support the Syrian people and the Syrian government in actually taking charge, and building a prosperous stable secure Syria, that will impact all of the region."

Prince Faisal bin Farhan, foreign minister of Saudi Arabia 

 

"[Gulf countries see an opportunity to] reshape the regional order, [as Syrians devote  themselves to rebuilding lives for themselves out of the rubble of 14 years of civil war]."

"[We still have Yemen that's in trouble -- Sudan, Libya -- but for one time in many years, one story is not one of blood and war and destruction and that's where we want to go."

"A healthy region means a healthy Gulf."

Bader Al-Saif assistant professor of history, Kuwait University 

Ahmed al-Shara and his delegation welcomed in the UAE  Stimson

 

While now-ousted Alawite Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was still barrel-bombing and chemical weapons-spraying majority Sunni Syrians, the Arab League which had banished him from their midst, did a U-turn and welcomed him back to be seated amongst them as a member in good standing. This, while Assad continued his loyalty to the Islamic Republic of Iran which sponsored Syria's persecution of its defiant majority Sunni population, when Russia had entered the civil war to aerially bombard Sunni strongholds in Syria.

 

The sectarian violence that internally displaced millions of Syrians, with millions more becoming refugees reflected traditional violent antipathy between the two major branches of Islam, Sunni and Shia. While Iran established its two-pronged 'axis of resistance' by cultivating, training and arming proxy militias in Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen and Gaza for its long-range aspiration of Shi'ite conquest of the Middle East, its plans also included the destruction of the sole non-Muslim state in the region, the Jewish state of Israel.

 

When Hamas took agency to invade southern Israel with thousands of its terrorist operatives to launch a massive bloodbath among Israeli farming communities near the Gaza border, deliberately and with detailed planning to impose a horrendous savagery of mass rape, mutilation, and widespread carnage that saw entire families burned to death in their  homes -- children, the elderly, women and foreign farm workers violently abducted to serve as hostages, an unprepared Israel while mourning its losses responded by invading Gaza to root out and destroy the Palestinian terror groups to completely neutralize their functionality.

 

Iran's related terror proxies attacked Israel in defence of Hamas; Hezbollah on the northern border, and the Houthis from Yemen. Shia militias in Iraq, and Assad's Syrian forces as well as the Islamic Republican Guard Corps al Quds division driving Iran to send missiles into Israel posed a pincer threat to the Jewish state. The Israeli military fought them all, and decimated both Hezbollah and Hamas, targeting their leaders, their command posts and their weapons caches, leaving them utterly diminished as organized fighting forces. 

 

The Israeli aerial bombardment of Iran neutralized many of the terror state's primary political, scientific and military figures, targeted military bases destroying missile production sites, and bombing the country's nuclear sites and facilities with the intention of destroying its capacity to further enrich uranium to weapons-grade state. Israel, in the course of several years militarily responding to the Hamas imposition of conflict was able to dismantle and neutralize the rabid threat of Islamist terrorism cultivated by Iran.

 

An opportunity that was grasped by a coalition of Syrian 'rebels' comprised of Syrian Islamist groups that were themselves terrorists, events leading to Bashar al-Assad fleeing to Russia for haven, and a former terrorist linked to al-Qaeda and ISIL, Ahmed al Sharaa, ensconced as Syria's new president, seeking to present as a moderate, a reformer, to take Syria into a new direction and restore it as a fulcrum of the Middle East, taking its place among the other nations with full accreditation. 

"I am 'ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria to give them a fresh start'." 

"It gives them a chance for greatness. The sanctions were really crippling, very powerful." 

"I felt very strongly that this would give them a chance. It's not going to be easy anyway, so gives them a good strong chance. And, it was my honour to do so."

"We made a speech last night, and that was the thing that got the biggest applause from the room."

U.S. President Donald Trump at Gulf Cooperation Council

In this photo released by the Saudi Royal Palace, Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, left, shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump in Riyadh. (Bandar Aljaloud/Saudi Royal Palace/The Associated Press)

 

Saudi Arabia and Qatar paid off Syria's $15.5 million World Bank debt, a pittance for them, but enabling Syria to be once more eligible for grants to fund reconstruction. The Mediterranean port of Tartus in Syria once handed to Russia as a naval base, is now to be developed by D World owned by the gulf emirate of Dubai. Once an integral part of Tehran's 'crescent of influence' along with Iraq and Lebanon, Syria is now poised to return to the Sunni Islam majority world of the Middle East. 

 

The hostility between the Sunni states and Iran, fearing that the Islamic Republic's brand of Islam could penetrate their own minority Shia populations with its  revolutionary ideology zeal leading to mass instability is being put to rest. As is the fear that Iran could succeed in its conquest aspirations to become the premier influence in the region. Iran's interference in Saudi Arabia, bombing its oil fields, its missiles shot at Qatar to hit American bases there, signed its influence death-warrant.

 

And now that the Arab majority Sunni Muslim states recognize Israel's critical role in vanquishing the aspirations of the Persian Shi'ites, and greater cooperation leading to normalization between them with Israel through membership in the Abraham Accords has been accepted, their mission to restore relations within the Arab League and to establish opportunities for economic development and political stability has sprung into action.  

 

In this photo provided by the Saudi Ministry of Media, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets Syria's interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, left, during his arrival at the royal palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025. (Saudi Ministry of Media via AP)

 

A Terrorist Group in Canada, Raising Funds for Islamist Jihad

A Palestinian girl stands near a poster of Ibrahim al-Nabulsi, a commander of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, one of the main terrorist groups present in the West Bank operating under the ruling Fatah party, who was killed by Israeli troops in August 2022. The poster bears the Samidoun logo. (Photo by JAAFAR ASHTIYEH/AFP via Getty Images) 

 

"Whereas the RCMP announced they had arrested two suspects in Toronto as they were allegedly about to commit a terrorist attack for ISIS."

"Whereas Trudeau’s government gave citizenship to an alleged terrorist with blood on his hands who allegedly dismembered a body for an ISIS film."

"Whereas Trudeau waited far too long to ban pro-terror groups like the IRGC, who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocents, including 85 people who called Canada home, and Samidoun, who are affiliated with and support listed terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP)."

"Whereas Houthi terrorists are still currently allowed to operate, organize, and fundraise in Canada."

"And whereas Justin Trudeau is not serious about Canada’s national security and disregards the safety of our citizens and it is now impossible for Canadians to have any faith in the Liberals’ ability to protect our country."

"Therefore, we the undersigned support Pierre Poilievre and common sense Conservatives in their commitment to secure our borders, ban pro-terror groups, and keep dangerous terrorists out of our country."

Parliamentary Opposition Conservative Party of Canada

 

 

The group Samidoun was added to Canada's list of terrorist groups in October of 2024 under the Criminal Code of Canada. This move by the-then Liberal government of Justin Trudeau was finally forced on the government when Canadian flags were being burned at a Samidoun Vancouver rally honouring the Hamas terrorist group following the Palestinian terrorist invasion of southern Israel that produced an orgy of sadistic savagery, raping, mutilating and slaughtering Jewish children, women and men.

 

Investigators and Jewish groups pointed out to the Liberal government Samidoun's ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of Samidoun's founding members being a leading figure in the PFLP which was already outlawed and on Canada's terror list. Samidoun leading a demonstration chanting "Death to Canada" while burning a Canadian flag did not endear the group to Canadians other than those who found merit in lionizing Palestinian terrorism.  

 

What is inexplicable is that some eight months have passed since Samidoun was placed on the terrorist list, but the group, based in Vancouver and linked to other groups which have roiled the streets of Canada's cities in ongoing violent displays of anti-Israel, pro-Hamas support, taking over major intersections in mass prayer sessions symbolic of Islamist conquest, have continued their hateful messages of Intifada, 'From the River to the Sea', and 'Final Solution', without restraint by any government agency or regional police forces.

 

A photo shows a flag of the organization 'Samidoun' during a "in solidarity with Gaza" demonstration in Duisburg, western Germany, on October 9, 2023. (Photo by INA FASSBENDER/AFP via Getty Images

 

And nor has the group's registration as a non-profit, able to continue raising charitable funds for Islamist terror groups like the PLFP and Hamas been interrupted. Continuing to operate openly in Canada despite its affiliations and activities, Samidoun makes a mockery of Canadian law. Its key figures such as co-founders Charlotte Kates and her husband Khaled Barakat go about their business of leading protests in honour of October 7 and the courageous terrorists who murdered 1,200 Jews, as 'revolutionaries' against the 'occupation' of Palestine by Israel whom they label criminal genocidaires.

 

Despite publicly declaring "I am here to express the views of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine", no legal action has been taken against Khaled Barakat who has been instrumental in establishing terrorist cells in the West Bank and areas of the West. Proudly and publicly lauding Hamas as "heroic and brave", his wife Kates attended the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut last year. The visited Iran where she was bestowed with a 'humanitarian' medal in recognition of her work on behalf of the Islamic Republic.

 

During the October 7 slaughter of Israelis in southern Israel, some Canadians were victims of the Hamas incursion. Family members of October 7 victims in Canada filed a lawsuit against terrorists, one that includes Samidoun, Kates and Barakat. Samidoun is labelled a sham charity in the U.S., outlawed in Germany and the Netherlands, yet the government of Canada, while performatively placing it on a terror list, allows it continued charitable status, to fundraise in support of Hamas, in Canada.

 

Charlotte Kates, a co-founder of Vancouver-based Samidoun, which has been declared a terrorist entity by the Canadian government, poses for a photo at the funeral of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Lebanon in February 2025. Photo by @charlottekates/X

 

In Canada, Prosecuting Funders of Islamist Terrorism -- While the Liberal Government Funds Terrorism-Enablers

On May 12, 2025, at the Superior Court of Justice in Toronto, Khalilullah Yousuf (36), of Toronto plead guilty to two charges relating to the largest terrorism financing scheme in Canadian history.

Between September 2019 and December 2022, Mr. Yousuf used cryptocurrency and money transfers to fund terrorism overseas. Yesterday, in an agreed upon statement of facts, Mr. Yousuf admitted to the financing of terrorism, contrary to section 83.03 of the Criminal Code of Canada.

"As part of the plea agreement, Khalilullah Yousuf has admitted to raising over $15,000 through the platform "GoFundMe" and contributing over $35,000 to multiple receivers for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization."

"Regarding the second charge, Mr. Yousuf has plead guilty to participating in the activities of a terrorist group, contrary to section 83.18 of the Criminal Code of Canada. He has admitted to creating and distributing a collection of over 3,800 internet-based hyperlinks. These links were curated with the purpose of radicalizing, indoctrinating and recruiting for the benefit of Daesh, a listed terrorist organization. Between October 2020, and March 2021, Mr. Yousuf communicated with an individual in the United States who was later convicted there for attempting to provide material support to the same listed terrorist organization."

"This is the largest terrorism financing conviction to date in Canada in terms of monetary value. This conviction is also the first successful terrorism financing conviction in Canada where the accused used crypto currency and the first where they used online crowdfunding."

"The success of this RCMP-led project would not be possible without the contributions of the following Canadian partnerships: RCMP Federal Policing Central Region (Ontario) The Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FINTRAC), Forensic Accounting Management Group (FAMG), Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA), Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC), Ministry of the Attorney General (MAG), and the Toronto Police Service (TPS)."

"The RCMP would also like to recognize and thank our international partners that were instrumental in this file: The Spanish Guardia Civil Special Central Unit 2, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Maldives Police Service."

Royal Canadian Mounted Police, 15 May 2025 report 

An RCMP patch is seen on the shoulder of a Surrey RCMP Officer in Charge on Friday, April 28, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

"At its core, terrorism is violence that seeks to justify itself. But the violence needs support by advocates, recruiters, and financiers as essential parts of the cycle of intimidation and destruction."

"The verdicts and sentences… represent how Canadian society in accordance with the rule of law, emphatically holds to account those who make the violence possible."

George Dolhai, director public prosecutions, Public Prosecution Service of Canada

 A 12-year prison sentence was handed down to a man, now 36 years of age, who has Canadian citizenship and was a resident of Toronto. Khalilullah Yousuf pleaded guilty to involvement and taking part in financing a terrorist group named as the Islamic State. He admitted to crowdfunding on such sites as GoFundMe on behalf of Palestinians in Gaza and for Muslim religious events, all the while collecting the funding by Canadian contributors to send what he collected to ISIS group supporters in the United States, Spain and other countries.

 

He had applied for, and received pandemic COVID Emergency Response Benefits (CERB) and contributed that money too that he received from the government of Canada under false pretenses. Supporters, on receiving the tens of thousands he provided for ISIS benefit, forwarded to him as proof ISIS was receiving the funding, photographs of weapons and ammunition provided by the funding, along with an ISIS flag.

 

Crowdfunding, or raising money from several investors over the Internet, has made websites like GoFundMe and Kickstarter popular. Photo: Karissa Donkin/Telegraph-Journal

 

This man and his schemes do not represent the rare and only incidents of funding collected in Canada by groups and individuals portraying themselves as legitimate charities whose only concern is raising funds for charitable programs to benefit Palestinians or other so-called marginalized groups, or civilian groups caught up in conflict in the Middle East, sending funding collected in actual fact, to the very terrorist militias that cause sectarian, tribal and anti-Western, along with anti-Israel war situations. There are a multitude of such groups masquerading as humanitarian while financially supporting Islamist terror groups.

 

In this instance, Khalilullah Yousuf, who was closely embroiled in an international ISIS funding network, communicated with the group through encrypted messages online, while taking part in recruitment and creating propaganda while providing methodology to supporters on how to mount successful attacks on behalf of violent Islamist culture. A two-year investigation on this man's activities involved intelligence forces in Canada, the U.S. and Spain, leading to an arrest in July of 2023. 

 

Cryptocurrency, increasingly being used for funding terrorism, may have signalled to authorities that there was something to investigate there. Samidoun, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Hezbollah and Hamas, have all received funding through Canadian sources that have successfully exploited the Canadian public to fund terrorism both abroad and internally.

 

Popular fundraising sites encourage crowdfunding in various and mostly specific categories that include patient medical needs, support of school teams, raising funds for Palestinian children, with sky-high funding goals. And while the platforms emphasize their trust that users will collect funds only for the stated reasons and not resort to illegally collecting funding in support of proscribed terror groups, any kind of actual policing of the results is not followed as being unfeasible.  

The Government of Canada itself sends mixed messages on the funding of terrorism; on the one hand decrying terrorism, and on the other continuing to fund it with taxpayer money. As with the Liberal government overturning the previous Conservative government's cutting off of UNRWA funding in recognition of its complicity in Palestinian terrorism where UNRWA-run school curricula teach Palestinian children to hate Jews and to visualize themselves as future martyrs in the 'struggle' against Israel.

 

Proven reports that UNRWA staff were actively involved in the October 7 attacks on southern Israel, and that almost two hundred were, while on UNRWA staff, also Hamas or Islamic Jihad operatives. UNRWA teachers glorify terrorism, encourage martyrdom, demonize Israelis and incite to antisemitism among their Palestinian pupils, modelling them in the vision of Hamas. Despite all of this, known and yet excused, the Liberal government continues its funding of UNRWA.

 

Photo sent by ISIS facilitator to show donated funds were going to fighters. U.S. Department of Justice

 

In Its Own Words: Hamas is a Palestinian Islamic Liberation and Resistance Movement Whose Goal is to Liberate Palestine and Confront the Zionist Project

"It's an honour to have contributed to this critically important application ... against the criminalization of Palestinian resistance in Britain, the imperial power responsible for Zionist colonialism in Palestine." 

"[Aiding and assisting on request an application to de-list Hamas in the U.K. as a] proscribed/banned [terror group]."

Charlotte Kates, leader, Samidoun

 

"The British government’s decision to proscribe Hamas is an unjust one that is symptomatic of its unwavering support for Zionism, apartheid, occupation, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine for over a century."

"Hamas does not and never has posed a threat to Britain, despite the latter’s ongoing complicity in the genocide of our people."

"Hamas is] a Palestinian Islamic liberation and resistance movement whose goal is to liberate Palestine and confront the Zionist project."

Legal Petition to the United Kingdom by Hamas 

"The legal profession is being damaged by ideologues exploiting their status to platform extremism." 

"This isn’t about free speech. It’s about a man [Riverway Law attorney Fahad Ansari], who repeatedly crosses the line into open support for terrorism — all while the authorities look away."

British Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick  

"They pose an ongoing threat to our security and to the peace and stability of the Middle East and have weapons and training facilities that put lives at risk and threaten our interests."

"They show no respect for human rights, life, and dignity and have oppressed people living in Gaza for too long."

"Those campaigning to end the proscription of Hamas fail to understand the seriousness of the threats this terrorist organization poses."

"[Hamas is an] evil Iranian-backed terrorist organization, which kidnaps, tortures, and murders people, including British nationals."

Shadow Foreign Secretary Priti Patel

Demonstrators hold Israeli and British flags outside the Law Courts, during a march against antisemitism, after an increase in the UK, during a temporary truce between the Palestinian Islamist terrorists Hamas and Israel, in London, Britain, Nov. 26, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Susannah Ireland

 

The United Kingdom classified the 'military wing' of Hamas as a terror organization in 2001; a definition expanded two decades later to encompass the entire organization, including the political arm. Hamas encourages the West to think of it as a legitimate group fighting oppression, with distinct arms: a Health Authority, a political wing, a military wing and an executive body. In reality Hamas itself scoffs derisively at the very thought that there are such executive divisions; they consider the entire group as single-mindedly focused and engaged in its singular purpose: the destruction of the State of Israel.

 

A legal group by the name of Riverway Law which is supporting Hamas in its application to the U.K. government for the terrorist designation to be rescinded, contacted Charlotte Kates, herself head of a Vancouver-based outfit that advertises itself as a support for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, and which advocates as well for the legalization of Hamas and other terrorist groups as 'freedom fighters' and is part of a group proscribed in Canada as a terrorist entity.

 

One of Samidoun's leaders, Kates's husband, has direct links to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine as a leading figure within it, another terrorist group that is proscribed as such in Canada. Riverway Law contacted Kates with a request for an "expert report" representing Samidoun that she and her husband co-founded, and Kates we happy to comply, as an ardent supporter of Hamas in Canada. Notorious for leading public chants of "Long Live October 7!"

It is such an honor to be here in Beirut today, one among a sea of over a million people in collective tribute, mourning, love and commitment to the road of resistance and liberation exemplified by Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and Sayyed Hisham Safieddine. Kates on X

 

According to Kates, the savage atrocities in Israel were "heroic and brave". So committed is she that she attended Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's public funeral that took place in Lebanon in February, memorializing him as a "great anti-imperialist leader of our day, the great Arab and international revolutionary, the beloved speaker of truth and warrior of justice". 

 

A Hamas political leader, Mousa Abu Marzouk, who lives in Qatar, rejected charges of  antisemitism: "Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious. Our struggle is not against Jewish people because of their religion but against the Zionists who occupy Palestine. Hamas is of the view that the Jewish problem of antisemitism and the persecution of the Jews are phenomena fundamentally linked to European history and not to the history of the Arabs and the Muslims or to their heritage", he wrote in a witness statement to the Riverway application.

 

"[Hamas's terror listing runs]contrary to the European Court of Human Rights [and is] disproportionate" , wrote the Riverway Law application addressed to U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as they were "instructed by Hamas" to do. "The reality is that [Hamas] poses no threat to the U.K. people and have been explicit about this" -- handily bypassing the 15 British nationals who were slaughtered in the October 7 southern Israel attack in 2023.

"A whole host of legal and mental gymnastics were provided by the head of the law firm to explain why their actions are legitimate and how this is somehow a valid pathway to ending the bloodshed in Gaza and responding to the daily scenes of murdered Palestinian children."

"None of these individuals, including those at the law firm, bothered to understand that Hamas is the very root of the destruction of Gaza and the collapse of the Palestinian national project, having served the interests of the far right and the anti-Palestinian forces within Israeli politics and society."

Palestinian American researcher Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib