ABC News in Australia has published a controversial report claiming elements of the Israeli military disobeyed orders and followed an outdated policy in the response to Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel:

[T]he Israeli military is coming under increasing pressure to reveal just how many of their own citizens were killed by Israeli soldiers, pilots and police in the confusion of the Hamas attack on southern Israeli communities.

Survivors and relatives have been asking not just “what went wrong”, but whether the military invoked the controversial — and supposedly rescinded — “Hannibal Directive” ….

Hannibal was the famous Carthaginian general who took poison rather than be captured by the Romans.

The doctrine, written in 1986 in response to the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers in Lebanon, gave permission for Israeli forces to fire on enemies holding their comrades hostage — even at risk to those hostages.

Its authors said the directive did not allow captives to be killed, but critics say that over time an interpretation spread through the military that it was better to kill comrades than to allow their capture. …

In July, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz revealed commanders in the IDF gave the order to fire on troops who had been captured by Hamas at three separate locations, explicitly referencing the Hannibal Directive.

One former Israeli officer, Air Force Colonel Nof Erez, told a Haaretz podcast the directive was not specifically ordered but was “apparently applied” by responding aircrews.

Panicked, operating without their normal command structure and unable to coordinate with ground forces, they fired on vehicles returning to Gaza, knowing they were likely carrying hostages.

“This was a mass Hannibal. It was tons and tons of openings in the fence, and thousands of people in every type of vehicle, some with hostages and some without,” Colonel Erez said.

Meanwhile, criticism is mounting of the impact on local Christians of Israel’s necessary offensive against the genocidal Hamas terrorist movement. The Stream’s Jason Jones wrote in Chronicles magazine of the toll which the Israeli campaign is taking on nonviolent, apolitical Christians trapped between the two sides.

Friends of Israel need to pray that a sane, humane solution can be found that keeps Israel safe and restores political stability there without rewarding the brutal methods that Hamas employs against unarmed Israeli citizens. British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore, a proud scion of a dynasty that made Jewish history, reflects on the current violence and offers his vision of “two nations, two republics” in the Holy Land in this fascinating essay. Reading it inspired me to Kindle Montefiore’s newly revised Jerusalem: The Biography.

Open Borders Brings Criminal Gangs to Our Cities

They might not be jihadists, but the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua is a highly dangerous group. And now, thanks to the Biden/Harris open borders policy, this vicious organization is now colonizing the Big Apple, as Gateway Pundit reports:

Investigative journalist James O’Keefe has obtained leaked U.S. Army documents revealing the growing threat of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua (TDA) in New York City.

The Tren de Aragua, one of Venezuela’s most dangerous gangs, has reportedly established a foothold in key neighborhoods across Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Williamsburg, with an estimated 400 members currently residing in those areas.

According to the documents, which are categorized as Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI), Tren de Aragua is actively involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, and arms dealing, posing an imminent threat not only to local communities but to law enforcement officers themselves….

The leaked documents suggest that the Tren de Aragua presence is not limited to New York. The gang is also active in Denver, where they have been instructed to target law enforcement officers.

LEAKED: U.S. Army CUI Documents Reveal Expanding Threat of Venezuelan Criminal Organization ‘Tren de Aragua’ Across NYC and Denver@OKeefeMedia has obtained Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) from the U.S. Army of the North Division, highlighting the growing presence of… pic.twitter.com/nX4hLKpllS

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII) September 6, 2024

The Stream reported last week on a video from Fox 31 Denver showing an armed group that has taken over two apartment complexes in suburban Aurora, just outside the Mile High City. The gamg had threatened to kill the property managers at one of them. 

Hungary’s Conservative Government Pushes Back Against Forced Immigration

Some countries look out for their own citizens first. See the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban. The Associated Press reports:

Hungary’s anti-immigrant government signaled Friday that it is serious about implementing a plan to provide asylum seekers free one-way travel to Brussels, a measure meant to pressure the European Union into relenting on heavy fines against the country for its restrictive asylum policies.

At a news conference in the capital Budapest, State Secretary Bence Rétvári claimed the EU wanted to force Hungary to allow “illegal migrants” across its borders, and said the country would “offer these illegal migrants, voluntarily, free of charge, one-way travel to Brussels.”

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is one of several Republican governors who has shipped migrants from his state to “sanctuary” cities, including Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts — where the migrants were herded onto a military base by the National Guard within 24 hours, as The Stream reported. Refugees can likely expect no better welcome from the EU technocrats in Brussels, whose real concern is with breaching the sovereignty of nations, using refugees as the wedge.

WEF Admits COVID Panic Was a Dry Run for Global Power Grab

In many columns here, I warned that the massive coercion employed during the COVID panic wasn’t aimed at saving human lives — and in fact, it didn’t. Instead it was a global test by our elites of how well democratic freedoms and constitutional rights could weather a power grab. Most countries and churches failed with flying colors.

Columnist Leo Hohmann writes at Substack that now the culprits are openly admitting what they were up to:

I have long said that Covid 19 was launched by design by a small number of people in the globalist predator class for one reason and one reason only — as a beta test for the coming technocratic new world order.

Now, we’ve got the World Economic Forum coming out and all but admitting that was exactly why the Covid-19 “pandemic” had to happen.

The WEF gleefully posted the following snippet to the “My Carbon” page of its website….

“COVID-19 was the test of social responsibility – A huge number of unimaginable restrictions for public health were adopted by billions of citizens across the world. There were numerous examples globally of maintaining social distancing, wearing masks, mass vaccinations and acceptance of contact-tracing applications for public health, which demonstrated the core of individual social responsibility.”

They were testing us. That’s what Covid was all about. They wanted to see how many of us would give up our individual freedom and individual sovereignty by complying with a “new normal” that consisted of restrictions bordering on the absurd. Why, for instance was it “safe” to shop at Lowe’s or Home Depot but unsafe to shop at a small business or attend church? Why was it OK to go to strip clubs in Michigan but you couldn’t buy seeds for a garden?

What the WEF is implying with its above statement is that in order to be “sustainable,” people and societies will need to be compliant with a new more authoritarian global order. Don’t ask questions. Don’t resort to logic. Just obey.

Along The Stream

Later this morning, Joseph D’Hippolito cites Bishop Joseph Strickland, who was removed by Pope Francis for his faithfulness to the Gospel, to show how profoundly a neopagan worldview has infiltrated high-ranking clergy in the Catholic Church over recent decades.

Also coming up: How should we respond to tragic, criminal attacks such as the mass shooting at a Georgia school last week? In a column that previously appeared after the Uvalde shooting in 2022, I suggest better answers than panic, rage, or desperate measures that disarm law-abiding citizens.

John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of more than 10 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.