Benedictus Qui Venit in Nomini Domine, Hosanna in Excelsis, part forty-three

Although I have used the following passage from the tenth chapter of the Gospel according to Saint Matthew in many articles over the decades, I am going to do so now to make a slightly different point than I have in the past:

And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me. And he that taketh not up his cross, and followeth me, is not worthy of me. He that findeth his life, shall lose it: and he that shall lose his life for me, shall find it. He that receiveth you, receiveth me: and he that receiveth me, receiveth him that sent me. (Matthew 10: 21-40.)

As I have explained in the past, many Catholics who are trying to remain faithful to the Catholic Church within their families continue experience the sting of insults, invectives, and even rejection by their closest relatives. This is all just as Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ Himself prophesied as whatever opposition we encounter because of our fidelity to Him and His true Church is to test our fidelity to Him rather than creatures, purify us in the fire of rejection from our loved ones and thus to help us to make reparation for our sins and those of others by offering up all that we are privileged to suffer to the Throne of the Most Blessed Trinity as the consecrated slaves Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ through the Sorrowful and Immaculate Heart of Mary.

However, the person within in our own households who is the worst enemy of our salvation and even of our own temporal good in so many instances is the one whose visage we see in a mirror, namely, me, myself, I. We are usually our own worst enemies.

I know that I am the worst enemy of my own sanctification and salvation and that I have frequently done myself no favors insofar as temporal matters are concerned. As I have explained in the past, I know that I would be lost without the graces sent to me by Our Lady, not that there is any guarantee that her graces can save those who refuse to pray to her to cooperate with them. All I can do is to attempt to persevere to end by relying upon her maternal protection and intercession, especially by clinging to her through her Most Holy Rosary and using her Brown Scapular of Mount Carmel as a shield against the wickedness and snares of the adversary and his minions.

Unfortunately, though, most of those in public life today have no recognition of these simple truths of the Holy Faith and thus are lost in the abyss of ideology, idiosyncrasy, and outright egomaniacal sociopathy that blinds the foolish to the fact that they are their own worst enemies.

This applies particularly, of course, to the egomaniac named Donald John Trump, who believes in the myth of his own infallibility and invincibility to such a comprehensive extent that he cannot admit his decision to do the bidding of the mass murdering Benjamin Netanyahu seven and one-half months ago has been disastrous for himself politically, for the United States of America economically, militarily, and strategically, for the Middle East and Southwestern Asia, for the world’s energy supplies, and especially for the long suffering Palestinian people whom have always been viewed as “subhumans” worthy of extinction by the Zionists.

Donald John Trump is thus is indifferent to, if not entirely oblivious about, the fact that our own co-religionists are being killed by the genocidal actions of the Israeli Defense Forces precisely twelve months after a “ceasefire” agreement had been reached between the government of Israel and the leaders of their useful military and geopolitical “adversaries” in Gaza, Hamas:

(LifeSiteNews) — Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa extended his “deepest condolences” to the families of two Catholic women killed by an Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Gaza early Saturday morning.

Mrs. Maysa Abu Daoud and her daughter, Mrs. Mary al-Najjar, were two of at least 10 Palestinians killed over the past three days, according to reliable reports from the Gaza Health Ministry, as the Israeli army continues its constant violations of the supposed U.S.-backed “ceasefire” agreement that was penned almost one year ago.

Middle East Eye reported that the women had been staying at Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza City before recently relocating to the apartment building that was struck.

Mary’s son, Fuad, 14, was staying elsewhere with his father when the blast befell his mother and grandmother.

“The force of the explosion threw my mother against the wall, and my grandmother was engulfed in flames after the missile hit the house,” the teen told Middle East Eye. “Today I lost the most precious person in my life. There are no words to describe how I feel.”

Issuing his response to the crime with “deep sorrow and grief,” Pizzaballa spoke on behalf of the entire Catholic Church in the Holy Land, extending “deepest condolences to the families of the deceased and to the Christian community in Gaza, praying that the Lord may grant them comfort, strength, and consolation in their loss.”

For his part, Pope Leo XIV sent a correspondence to Fr. Gabriel Rominelli, parish priest at Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza, assuring the community of his prayers for Maysa and Mary along with “their families” and “the entire community of Gaza.”

“How long O Lord?” the pope asked in reference to Habakkuk 1:2 before thanking the priest for remaining with his congregation and imparting his blessing.

Killing of Christians ‘not greater or more terrible’ than deaths of other Palestinians

Several Israeli attacks on the small Christian community in Gaza over the last three years has directly killed 25 among a total of 62 who have died, some of whom also succumbed to a lack of proper medicines or medical treatment.

Following Israel’s July 2025 direct tank strike upon Holy Family Church — where hundreds were sheltering — killing three and injuring about 10, including the parish priest, the Latin Patriarchate in Jerusalem issued a statement condemning the attack and emphasizing that the killing of Christians is not more grave than killing their innocent Muslim countrymen or other Palestinians affiliated with a different religion.

“This tragedy is not greater or more terrible than the many others that have befallen Gaza,” the local Catholic Church affirmed. “Many other innocent civilians have also been harmed, displaced and killed. Death, suffering and destruction are everywhere.”

Equivalent of 13 atomic bombs dropped on Gaza, over 371,000 estimated dead

Perhaps due to the presence of a culture that teaches much of its population deadly racial aggression against Arabs, the genocidal assaults on Israeli-occupied Gaza after October 7, 2023, have involved over 200,000 tons of explosives in just the first two years of the operation. This figure equates to the force of over 13 of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The overwhelming attacks have left more than 90 percent of the enclave destroyed.

Since October 2023, Israel has directly killed at least 74,228 Palestinians in Gaza, including approximately 22,000 children, at a confirmed minimum, with at least 175,188 people injured, including over 10,000 children who have lost at least one leg. These figures include at least 1,454 Palestinians killed (324 children, 140 women, 38 elderly) and 5,090 wounded by the Israeli army since the so-called ceasefire was signed in October 2025. An additional 10,000 Palestinians are missing and presumed dead and buried under the rubble.

According to a rationale presented in a Lancet study in July 2024, one can conservatively estimate total deaths in Gaza, including indirect fatalities due to causes like starvation, lack of medicine or proper medical care, to include 371,140 (163,301 children).

Israeli soldiers confess to murdering children

Furthermore, with 75% of Jewish Israelis believing “there are no innocents in Gaza,” rabbis directing young soldiers to “kill all” of the Palestinian children in the enclave, and Jewish Israeli youth enthusiastically embracing this genocidal ideology, multiple formal testimonies from large groups of American volunteer doctors in Gaza have affirmed the regular practice of Israeli soldiers sniper-shooting Palestinian children in the head and heart.

Testimonies of massive numbers of children being directly assassinated, are confirmed by many Israeli soldiers confessing to murdering children. (Click here to access tens of thousands of videos and photographs of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.)

Catholic influencers push back on American officials

In response to the killings of Maysa and Mary, Christian Palestinian and LifeSite friend Khalil Sayegh posted on X addressing Christian Zionists in the United States: “Israel just murdered another Catholic family mostly women in Gaza by bombing their apartment building. Good job to all those ‘Christians’ and ‘Catholics’ for Israel.”

Challenging her former friend President Donald Trump along with Vice President J.D. Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio was Carrie Prejean Boller, who shared Sayegh’s tweet on X announcing, “The genocidal state of Israel just murdered two Catholic women from Holy Family Catholic Church in Gaza. They bombed their apartment building. A mother and her daughter. The rest of their family is injured. DO SOMETHING NOW.”

During the same period, at least five Palestinians died from injuries sustained in earlier Israeli attacks. One body was recovered from the rubble, bringing the number of deaths over three days to 16.

The two Catholic women were killed when the Israeli bombs struck their residential building without warning at around 1:30 a.m. The funeral was held Saturday at St. Porphyrius Orthodox Church in Gaza.

Following up with a challenge to Trump administration ambassadors Mike Huckabee (Israel) and Catholic Brian Burch (Holy See) was the Vulnerable People’s Project run by human rights activist and defender of Holy Land Christians Jason Jones. In a post on X, the organization informed these officials “American Catholics expect you to immediately condemn this murderous crime, the latest of many by the state of Israel against Catholics in Gaza, and to take meaningful action to put a stop to them.”

Israel plans to ‘finish the job’ of expelling Palestinians from their ancestral lands

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to provide virtually unconditional support to Israel and its military even after Trump announced a disarmament agreement with Hamas in late July that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explicitly rejected.

In its stead, Israeli officials continue to maintain their intention to “finish the job” in accomplishing their ultimate goal of expelling the Palestinian population from Gaza.

Speaking to Middle East Eye, young Fuad clarified that “The Israeli occupation does not distinguish between Christians and Muslims” in their aggression against Palestinians. “We are all at risk of being killed in Gaza. I don’t know if I will still be alive after this interview.” (Cardinal Pizzaballa mourns deaths of Catholic women killed by Israeli airstrike.)

It is actually worse than all this as one of the former Baptist “minister” and full-time “Christian Zionist” Michael Huckabee’s deputies, David Milstein, at the American embassy in Jerusalem has been doctoring accounts of the Israeli genocide in Gaza and the West Bank to make it appear that there has been no genocidal activity and that the accusations of such have been invented by leftist supporters of Hamas and/or Catholic “anti-Semites”:

In late March, at the height of the Iran war, Israel quietly approved more settlements in the Israeli-occupied West Bank than it ever had at one time.

Staff members at the United States Embassy in Jerusalem saw the move as potentially flouting one of President Trump’s explicit red lines for Israel — no annexation of the West Bank — and drafted an urgent report intended for policy makers in Washington.

That memo never reached Washington. It was quashed by David Milstein, a top aide to Ambassador Mike Huckabee, according to three U.S. officials briefed on the process.

This was no isolated incident.

Since taking up his post in April 2025, Mr. Milstein, 36, has repeatedly suppressed or significantly revised embassy reporting on Israeli activities to present the Netanyahu government in a favorable light, according to a dozen people who work with or interact with Mr. Milstein in both Jerusalem and Washington:

• As settler violence in the West Bank surged in the spring, for instance, he stymied embassy reporting suggesting that the Israeli government was failing to take action, according to the three officials. Instead the embassy sent a cable to Washington, viewed by The New York Times, praising Israel for “cracking down” on the attacks.
• When members of Congress pushed for accountability over the killings of Palestinian Americans by Israeli settlers and security forces, he suppressed a detailed report that the embassy staff had written, effectively stonewalling lawmakers’ efforts to gain information, according to multiple officials briefed on the matter.
• Soon after arriving in Jerusalem, Mr. Milstein began insisting on approving communications from the embassy section that handles Palestinian affairs, multiple officials with direct knowledge of the process said. The flow of cables plummeted from several a week to a few a month, as some staffers refrained from writing reports for fear that Mr. Milstein would block or rewrite them, these officials said.

Mr. Milstein’s interventions go far beyond those of any recent predecessor, several officials said. They and others said they were speaking out of concern that officials in Washington were getting a distorted view of Israeli actions through core diplomatic channels.

Mr. Milstein’s efforts have helped insulate Israel’s right-wing government against potential blowback from a Trump Administration that has been its closest ally.

Among the most contentious issues on which Mr. Milstein has intervened is the accelerating expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s an inflammatory subject that has soured Israel’s relationship with some of its longtime allies. Last month, Britain, Canada and France announced sanctions on Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank in response to the Israeli policy on settlement expansion. Britain accused some settlers of “ethnic cleansing.”

It is unclear to what extent Mr. Huckabee is aware of his adviser’s actions. Both he and Mr. Milstein declined requests for an interview.

The ambassador, a longtime advocate for the Israeli settlement movement, has denounced specific attacks by settlers, calling them “Israeli terrorists,” but he has played down settler violence more broadly, saying it is being carried out by a small group.

Mr. Huckabee is required to sign off on most cables and significant decisions, but officials said Mr. Milstein sometimes acts on his own. The ambassador has also sometimes worked in concert with Mr. Milstein to suppress or recast information, these officials said. But in several cases when he believed Mr. Milstein had gone too far, they said, Mr. Huckabee has reined him in.

Earlier this month, after an article critical of Mr. Milstein for inviting wedding guests to give him money appeared in Politico, Mr. Huckabee posted on social media that he had “absolute confidence” in his aide, whom he said possesses “impeccable integrity.”

Mr. Milstein is a familiar figure in right-wing circles in the United States and Israel, and has organized meetings between Mr. Huckabee and some top Israeli officials. But he is not well known in either country, and his role as a gatekeeper of information sent to Washington has drawn little attention.

His effort to shape embassy reporting was first reported a year ago by the online magazine of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a Washington think tank that advocates de-escalation and U.S. military restraint.

But fresh reporting by The New York Times unearthed documentary evidence and previously unreported instances of Mr. Milstein’s effort to skew information to the benefit of the Netanyahu government, which has continued throughout this year.

The Times interviewed 15 U.S. officials for this article, including many in Washington, all of whom worked with Mr. Milstein in some manner. The Times also talked to nine former diplomats who provided context on the role and responsibilities of senior embassy officials. All spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. The Times also obtained or reviewed dozens of documents, cables, memos and other internal communications.

The people who spoke to The Times were career government officials and political appointees, including strong supporters of the United States-Israel relationship. Most said they were speaking out of concern that Mr. Milstein’s actions are undermining standard diplomatic work, expressing worry that, in some cases, they contradict the president’s stated policies.

The concern extended to senior administration officials in Washington, including in the White House, who have expressed frustration to colleagues over some of Mr. Milstein’s actions, according to four officials, who have either witnessed or been briefed on the dissatisfaction.

It is not clear whether Mr. Milstein’s interventions have affected White House policy. But since Mr. Trump declared a year ago that he would not allow Israel to annex the West Bank, he has said little about the issue beyond briefly reaffirming in February that he opposed annexation, even as Israel was extending more control over the territory.

In response to questions sent to the embassy about Mr. Milstein’s actions, Mr. Huckabee did not address specific instances cited by The Times. He wrote in a statement: “The elements of the story The New York Times is trying to assemble are so lacking in fact that it ranks up with other Times farcical endeavors.” He added: “I personally and categorically refute the elements of your proposed ‘story.’ ”

Asked about The Times’s reporting on Mr. Milstein, the State Department provided the following statement: “The entire team at State remains focused on advancing President Trump’s America First agenda.”

The White House referred The Times to the State Department.

A Chilling Effect

Mr. Milstein is the stepson of the right-wing radio host Mark Levin — a close ally of both Mr. Trump and Mr. Netanyahu. That relationship is well known in Washington and the embassy, and has been a factor in how he is treated, officials in both Jerusalem and Washington said.

As an adviser to Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Milstein is one of the most senior officials in the embassy, acting as a chief of staff of sorts to Mr. Huckabee. The ambassador has empowered him to oversee much of the mission’s portfolio, particularly the West Bank and Gaza.

Previous ambassadors to Israel have had political appointees as senior advisers who, like Mr. Milstein, tried to influence the reporting back to Washington. And Mr. Milstein’s responsibilities include reviewing and amending information sent to Washington.

People who interact with Mr. Milstein professionally, however, say he goes to unusual lengths to frame Israel in a positive light. He has blocked reporting from being sent, rewritten cables to deliver a different — sometimes opposite — message from the original, and delayed approving drafts until the topic was no longer relevant, these officials said.

In the summer of 2025, for instance, dozens of Palestinians seeking food were killed near the distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, backed by Israel and the United States. American diplomats in Israel drafted a cable, viewed by The Times, warning that the foundation’s distribution process was chaotic and deadly and risked more “mass casualty events.”

Mr. Milstein rewrote the cable to declare GHF’s operation a success while overlooking the mass casualties, according to people who saw the cable and were briefed on the editing process.

Troubled by glaring discrepancies between news coverage and the embassy’s official reports, White House and State Department officials seeking a clearer picture of events bypassed standard channels at least twice to communicate directly with embassy staff, according to two officials briefed on the outreach and an internal communication from late this summer seen by The Times.

Veteran American diplomats said that withholding or twisting the information sent to Washington should raise serious concerns.

“The embassy ought to tell Washington everything — the good, the bad and the ugly,” said Dan Kurtzer, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel under President George W. Bush. “If they’re not doing so, they are damaging the policy-making process and possibly undermining the president’s policies.”

Mr. Milstein also questioned several colleagues on whether they were “pro-Israel” or “pro-Hamas,” according to four officials, who found the question inappropriate and said it made some people fearful of speaking freely.

A conservative and longtime Republican, Mr. Milstein served as an aide to Senator Ted Cruz of Texas from 2013 to 2018 before relocating to Israel to study at a Jerusalem yeshiva, a school for Jewish religious studies. In 2020, he landed a job as an assistant to David M. Friedman, Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Israel between 2017 to 2021.

During the Biden Administration, Mr. Milstein worked for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, handling outreach to pro-Israel voters.

In April 2025, Mr. Milstein was back at the embassy in Jerusalem after Mr. Trump was elected to a second term.

Questions About American Deaths

In February, Nasrallah Abu Siyam, 19, was trying to stop settlers from stealing livestock when one of them shot him dead in his West Bank village.

He was the ninth American citizen of Palestinian or Turkish heritage killed in the West Bank by Israeli settlers or soldiers in four years. Weeks later, seeking an update on the investigations into the killings, 30 members of Congress led by Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, sent a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding answers from Israel.

In response, officers in the embassy compiled a report that was completed in March detailing the status of each investigation, according to multiple officials briefed on the process.

Its central findings suggested that, in most cases, investigations had made little progress, that some cases had been closed, and that no one had been charged in any of the killings, these officials said. Instead of forwarding the report, Mr. Milstein argued that the embassy should send a letter saying that Israel was properly handling the investigations, two officials briefed on the discussions said.

On May 4, Paul D. Guaglianone, a State Department official, sent a letter responding to Mr. Van Hollen, saying that the embassy, which had reduced staff because of the Iran war, was focused on security cooperation with Israel and protecting Americans against Iranian attacks. (The intense fighting had wound down nearly a month earlier, after a cease-fire was struck on April 8.)

The letter, provided to The Times by Mr. Van Hollen’s office, said the embassy was working with Israel to “ensure accountability for these deaths.”

The response did not reassure Mr. Van Hollen.

“If you don’t get accountability, you endanger more American citizens,” he said in a phone interview.

Downplaying West Bank Expansion

In February, the Netanyahu government passed a measure that made it easier for Israelis to buy land in the West Bank, a move widely condemned internationally as speeding the way to annexation.

Any formal Israeli annexation of the West Bank, which Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, would carry immense consequences. But in embassy discussions, Mr. Milstein portrayed the government’s announcement on land purchases as a domestic matter with little significance to the outside world, according to two officials.

An embassy report sent to Washington, reviewed by The Times, said the Israeli policy was meant “to address humanitarian needs” of Israeli settlers, without detailing those needs.

A similar intervention occurred in April, when top Israeli military commanders publicly warned that West Bank settler violence could set off a new Palestinian uprising. Embassy staffers tried to alert Washington to those warnings, but Mr. Milstein prevented the reports from being sent as drafted, according to three officials.

In a cable viewed by The Times on which he is listed as the first author, Mr. Milstein praised Mr. Netanyahu’s “unprecedented new initiatives to combat” rising violence in the West Bank. The report’s title read, “Government Cracks Down on Escalating West Bank Violence.” (How a U.S. Diplomat Suppressed and Altered Reports Critical of Israel. Also see Huckabee top aide modified and suppressed US embassy reporting critical of Israel.)

Almost all the violence in the West Bank is being committed by the Israeli invaders (“settlers”) with the full approval of both the Israeli and American governments. Donald John Trump cares nothing about the suffering of people who have lived on their land peacefully for centuries as his administration’s officials, especially the warmongering “Christian nationalist” named Peter Hegseth and the aforementioned “Christian Zionist” Michael Huckabee, support Benjamin Netananyahu’s “Greater Israel” project that requires the liquidation of all non-Jews in those areas the Zionists to deemed to be theirs by “Biblical right” even though Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ used the pagan Romans to expel most of their truly Biblical predecessors from the Holy Land to serve as a chastisement to us all.

The racialist treatment of Palestinians by Israeli “settlers” in the West Bank extends to robbing framers of the olives from the olive trees they have cultivated:

Ramallah, occupied West Bank – The video shared in Israeli settler groups shows two men bashing an olive tree with long wooden sticks. Smiling and congratulating one another, they try to knock the olives to the ground. They call the result “Pure Olive Oil”.

But as Palestinian activist Bashar Qaryouti explained, the two men don’t own the land, the trees, or the olives.

They’re Israeli settlers who set up an illegal settlement outpost on private property in the village of Qaryut, in the northern occupied West Bank, and made their way into this olive grove, some 200 metres (656 feet) away from Palestinian homes.

“No one has come near here for about three years, thank God,” one of the two men in the video says in Hebrew.

Local Palestinians know the man by name, and he does little to hide. The man is Avichai Suissa, an Israeli settler sanctioned by the European Union, United Kingdom – and previously by the United States – who runs a farm on the outpost. It was established more than a year and a half ago, and videos like this help Suissa raise donations for it.

On his campaign page, he says the goal is to rebuild and expand the farm, which was once dismantled by the Israeli army, to prevent it from falling “into enemy hands”.

“We’re gradually starting to work our way into the area,” Suissa said in the video.

But the land belongs to Palestinians – residents of Qaryut – who have not been able to reach it since the genocidal war on Gaza began in October 2023. “A few months ago, farmers tried to plough their land, but the army stopped them,” Qaryouti said.

Worst year yet

“After we complained, the army declared the area a closed military zone a few days ago, so settlers are going to other lands, to other olives to steal,” Qaryouti explained.

Suissa and others are part of a growing movement of settlers who have intensified their campaign against the olive harvest. The campaign, part of a settler pogrom against Palestinians in the West Bank, has turned the olive harvest season in October into a source of fear and danger.

Many Palestinians in the occupied West Bank describe this year as the worst yet in terms of settler attacks, and the season has barely started.

On Wednesday, armed Israeli settlers on tractors raided lands between the villages of Ramin and Burqa, in the northern occupied West Bank. They opened fire on farmers heading to their trees.

Ali Bazzari, a 44-year-old farmer, was killed. His only “crime”, the family says, was trying to pick his olives.

Witnesses say the Israeli army prevented ambulances from reaching the wounded. Palestinians had to carry the injured througth the mountains to hospitals.

The Israeli Rights Group Yesh Din says it documented 109 incidents of violence directly related to the harvest in 75 Palestinian communities between September 27 and October 6, an average of 11 per day. (Israeli settlers take Palestinian olives, and their harvest traditions.)

This is all being done, of course, to dispossess Palestinians and to despoil and humiliate them in the process. No believing Catholic can be indifferent to these outrages as they have nothing to do with American national security and everything to do with the American indemnification of the Zionists’ racialist hostility to non-Jews and their genocidal intent to “finish the job” of liquidating the Palestinians once and for all.

Such liquidation, of course, is yet ongoing in Gaza:

Israeli attacks have killed or wounded a Palestinian in Gaza every 90 minutes on average since the ceasefire was announced in October last year, the aid group Islamic Relief says.

Islamic Relief, a United Kingdom-based charity, said on Thursday that at least 1,454 Palestinians were killed and more than 5,000 wounded over the year. At least 320 of those killed were children, close to one a day.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported that 1,471 Palestinians have been killed and 5,189 wounded since the ceasefire, including four killed and 28 wounded in the past 24 hours.

Israel has killed at least 74,254 people since October 2023, the ministry added.

On Thursday, Israeli forces killed a Palestinian southeast of Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, and an Israeli air strike on a house in central Khan Younis wounded several people, the Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.

In the occupied West Bank, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the foot during an Israeli raid on Yamoun, west of Jenin, the Palestinian Red Crescent said.

Islamic Relief said Israel has used the so-called Yellow Line, which marks the area under Israeli military control, to push Palestinians out of 65 percent of Gaza, crowding its nearly 2.1 million people into the remaining 35 percent.

According to the report, an Islamic Relief aid worker in Gaza whose name is withheld for their safety said: “There is no ceasefire in reality. They target displacement camps and crowded areas, so there is still a lot of fear.”

Israel continues to block shelter materials, fuel and medical supplies, the group said.

About 82 percent of Gaza’s structures are damaged or destroyed, more than half of health services have shut down and more than 20,000 severely ill patients are denied permission to leave for treatment.

The charity urged world leaders to increase pressure to protect civilians and uphold international law.

“A ceasefire in name only cannot be an excuse for international inaction,” it said. (Israel kills or wounds Palestinian every 90 minutes in Gaza since ceasefire.)

This genocidal madness continues as the administration of President Donald John Trump continues to threaten to “hit Iran hard” while claiming that the Iranian leadership is “begging for a deal” while continuing to attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz (see Attacks on oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz surge to their highest level and Iran sets supertanker ablaze after US takes out ship breaking blockade) and while the Iranian-backed Houthis are continuing to attack Yemen as well as conducting a strike on the airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, that did extensive damage to a passenger terminal and killed twelve people, including two Americans and injuring over three hundred others (see  Houthi strike on Saudi airport kills 12, worst attack on kingdom in a decade and Saudi and Yemeni Airports Hit in New Round of Strikes). And Trump is saying now that the American military may have to “hit” the Houthis, which is exactly what the Iranians desire to create a multi-front war that will drain American munitions even more than has occurred in the past seven and one-half months (see President Trump says US may hit Houthis after American killed at Saudi airport and terror group threatens more attacks).

President Donald John Trump is responsible for this ever-widening conflict, which was predicated on the false premise that the Islamic Republic of Iran was close to developing and thus being able to deploy a nuclear weapon despite the president telling us sixteen months ago that the Iranian nuclear program had been “decimated” by American bombing then. This madness is going to cost the ever-hapless careerists in the organized crime family of the false opposite of the naturalist “right” control of one if not both Houses of the Congress of the United States of America and thus discontinue the little good that had been done in the past twenty-one months by United States Senator Charles Grassley’s investigations into the efforts by the Barack Hussein Obama and Joseph Robinette Biden administrations to use lawfare against the President and his family, which lawfare, of course, was an effort to make undermine Trump in his first term and to make his election in 2024 impossible (see Jack Smith probe tracked Melania, Barron and Wiles, Nixon compared  and In 'Plasmic Echo' Jack Smith's arrogance is on full display). A veritable potpourri of leftist kooks, Communists, and Mohammedans are likely to take seats in the one hundred twentieth Congress on January 3, 2027, all thanks to the man they hate and whose last two years in office they will cripple by means of endless investigations and impeachment hearings.

An editor at the American Conservative explained how the needless and unconstitutional war against Iran has destroyed President Donald John Trump’s presidency:

No one would claim that the Iran War has been a political godsend for President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. But some Israel-First conservatives are willing to say—and lately have been incessantly saying—that the Iran War hasn’t been a political scourge.

Those Israel-First conservatives are wrong, even if the devil is, at least partly, hidden in the details. The Iran War has damaged Trump’s approval ratings, consumed his presidency, and darkened the GOP’s prospects in the upcoming midterm elections.

A chief proponent of the argument that Trump hasn’t suffered all that much from the Iran War is Ben Shapiro of the Daily Wire. Shapiro’s political analysis is plainly motivated by the fact that he was a loud and influential proponent of the war who promised—falsely, as it turned out—that Iran couldn’t close the Strait of Hormuz, a chokepoint for the global energy trade.

These days, Shapiro seems to be implicitly acknowledging the war is very unpopular while trying to argue this fact has nothing to do with the declining approval ratings of the president who launched it. We should thank Shapiro, for he has expressed his new argument in such a way as to help us uncover those devilish details that make the Iran War a not-entirely-straightforward story of political calamity.

“There’s an op right now to pretend that the real reason for President Trump’s unpopularity is foreign policy, but that is not true, by the polling data, it is not true,” said Shapiro on a recent episode of his podcast. “The reality is that Americans have affordability concerns, President Trump came into office saying he was going to alleviate the affordability concerns. He has not in fact alleviated the affordability concerns, and therefore, his polling numbers have consistently slid since Liberation Day.”

This is a bit like me saying my wife isn’t mad at me because of the drinking, but because I drunkenly crashed the car.

The Iran War, as everyone now knows, has driven up prices at the pump—prices which, unfortunately for Trump, are prominently displayed on every major street across the country. On the eve of the war, regular gasoline averaged $2.98 per gallon. Today, at the time of writing, the average price is $4.48. Americans are notoriously averse to high gasoline prices and tend to punish presidents over the issue, sometimes even when the president can’t justifiably be blamed.

But make no mistake: Virtually every sentient adult understands that 1) oil comes from the Middle East, 2) Trump started a big war in the region, and 3) gas prices shot up right afterwards. And again, even if Americans didn’t grok the connection between the war and the gas-price spike, the latter would still have hurt Trump politically, and it would still be a knock-on effect of the former.

It’s not just prices at the pump that have gone up because of the war. Groceries and other consumer goods travel across this vast land on tractor-trailers that run on diesel and get a lot fewer miles per gallon than even your Uncle Larry’s F-350. Diesel prices have smashed records and now sit at around $6.50, up from $3.76 before the war.

No wonder truckers are furious, prompting rumors of an imminent strike.

And no wonder the Iran War has contributed to general inflation in America. Anyone who has been reading the official economic reports knows the war is responsible for more than a third of recent inflation.

Before the war, inflation was trending down, only a couple ticks away from the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. It seems likely that Trump, if he hadn’t started his dumb war in the Middle East, would have garnered praise for presiding over declining inflation and that the Fed would have cut interest rates, juicing economic growth. Instead, inflation now sits at 3.4 percent.

(As an aside, this weekend I traveled to Istanbul, where many Middle Easterners of various nationalities complained to me that Americans only oppose the war because of the gas prices. That’s simply not true. The war has been unpopular since day one, when all that Americans knew was the American-Israeli strikes had killed Iranian leaders including the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.)

Shapiro, ever the neoconservative, insinuated in the quote above that the decline in Trump’s approval rating owes more to his tariffs than to his war. The data doesn’t back that up, as the conservative commentator and election analyst Ryan Girdusky noted on X in response to new survey data. “The most eye opening part of this poll is that Trump’s approval rating and the strength of the economy went up right after Liberation Day,” Girdusky said. “Fell slightly afterward and then plummeted at the start of the Iran War.”

Shapiro has unwittingly helped uncover another, subtler, way in which the Iran War has indirectly damaged Trump’s approval ratings and, by extension, the Republican Party brand. Shapiro recently went on Fox News to commiserate with the host Mark Levin—another Israel-Firster and warmonger—over all those dastardly antiwar conservatives blaming the Iran War for everything.

“Iran is a 4-percent issue with the American people,” Levin said, as Shapiro nodded in agreement. Levin was referring to Fox News polling that shows not many Americans name the Iran War as their top issue. “So, whatever happens in the midterms, it doesn’t appear that Iran’s going to drive anything one way or another.”

“I think that’s exactly right,” Shapiro replied.

Part of the problem with Levin’s analysis has already been covered above. In the Fox poll, a plurality of Americans—34 percent—named the cost of living as the most important issue, and the Iran War has made living costlier.

But the subtler problem is perhaps even more illuminating. Simply put, Americans believe Trump is too focused on foreign policy at the expense of the problem they really care about, which, in fact, his Iran War has exacerbated. This is a PR disaster for the Trump administration and the GOP. Americans don’t prioritize the war that has dominated the headlines and distracted the White House, even as Trump claims to have boldly prevented Iran from unleashing nuclear apocalypse.

It may be grotesque to find silver linings in this dumb and deadly war, but here’s one: Americans no longer buy the war narratives. That is certainly not, however, a silver lining for Republican candidates in this year’s election, no matter how cynically they try to distance themselves from the war. In fact, it’s a good bet they’ll do much worse than if Trump hadn’t launched this unnecessary war, despite what Shapiro and his ilk may tell you. (Yes, the Iran War Has Destroyed Trump’s Presidency - The American Conservative.)

As I explained in part forty-two of this series last month, I am not going to you, my readers, down the Iran War rabbit hole as there are plenty of naturalistic analyses that dig deeper and deeper into this or that rabbit hole (see Relax! Trump Says Oil Will 'Drop Like a Rock', When Will This White House Madness End?, and Pakistan-Saudi-Yemen-Iran Riddle—which details othe complexities of ages-old sectional rivalries in the Persian Gulf and in Southwestern Asia).

What are witnessing now is the continued descend into an abyss of abject diabolical madness in a world whose leaders make decisions based on pure viscera or a commitment to false religious and/or ideological beliefs are more than willing to shed the lives of innocent human beings to accomplish their goas. This madness is the result of men who either do not believe in the Sacred Divinity of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and thus have souls that are captive to the devil by means of Original Sin or who are not members of the true Faith and who are in thus in objective states of Mortal Sin, which is compounded by words and actions contrary to the binding precepts of the Divine and Natural Laws and thus injurious to their own salvation as well as to the right ordering of their own nations and the cause of a truly just peace, the Peace of Christ in the Kingship of Christ, among nations.

Obviously, this is all a chastisement for our sins and for the sins of those in public life who scoff at the laws of God and the rights of Holy Mother Church as is recounted in the prayer that is prayed after the Feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus and on the First Friday of every month:

O Sweet Jesus, whose overflowing charity for men is requited by so much forgetfulness, negligence and contempt, behold us prostrate before Thine altar eager to repair by a special act of homage the cruel indifference and injuries to which Thy loving Heart is everywhere subject.

Mindful alas! that we ourselves have had a share in such great indignities, which we now deplore from the depths of our hearts, we humbly ask Thy pardon and declare our readiness to atone by voluntary expiation not only for our own personal offenses, but also for the sins of those, who, straying far from the path of salvation, refuse in their obstinate infidelity to follow Thee, their Shepherd and Leader, or renouncing the vows of their baptism, [or even most atrociously violating the promises of their sacred ordination], have cast off the sweet yoke of Thy law.

We are now resolved to expiate each and every deplorable outrage committed against Thee; we are determined to make amends for the manifold offenses against Christian modesty in unbecoming dress and behavior, for all the foul seductions laid to ensnare the feet of the innocent, for the frequent violation of Sundays and holidays, and the shocking blasphemies uttered against Thee and Thy Saints.

We wish also to make amends for the insults to which Thy Vicar on earth and Thy priests are subjected, for the profanation, by conscious neglect or terrible acts of sacrilege, of the very Sacrament of Thy divine love; [for the terrible crimes that some among Thy sacred ministers have dared to commit]; and lastly for the public crimes of nations who resist the rights and the teaching authority of the Church which Thou hast founded.

Would O divine Jesus, we were able to wash away such abominations with our blood! We now offer, in reparation for these violations of Thy divine honor, the satisfaction Thou didst once make to Thy eternal Father on the cross and which Thou dost continue to renew daily on our altars; we offer it in union with the acts of atonement of Thy Virgin Mother and all the Saints and of the pious faithful on earth; and we sincerely promise to make recompense, as far as we can with the help of Thy grace, for all neglect of Thy great love and for the sins we and others have committed in the past.

Henceforth we will live a life of unwavering faith, of purity of conduct, of perfect observance of the precepts of the Gospel and especially that of Charity.

We promise to the best of our power to prevent others from offending Thee and to bring as many as possible to follow Thee.

O loving Jesus, through the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary, our model in reparation, deign to receive the voluntary offering we make of this act of expiation; and by the crowning gift of perseverance keep us faithful unto death in our duty and allegiance we owe to Thee, so that we may all one day come to that happy home, where Thou with the Father and the Holy Ghost livest and reignest God, world without end. Amen.

Donald John Trump, of course, continues to resist the rights and teaching authority which Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the King of all men and nations, has founded upon the Rock of Peter the Pope, especially by enabling the genocide of the preborn by refusing to enforce the Comstock Act that prohibits the mailing of abortifacients. Trump is responsible for an ongoing genocide right here in the United States of America, something very few Catholics, especially those who project into Trump’s mind their own fondest wishes and beliefs as Catholics, seem to care about or believe imperils the genuine national good and thus is a cause for Our Lord’s just chastisement.

Indeed, Randall Terry, the co-founded of Operation Rescue forty years ago, is one of the few Catholics who has the courage to call this American genocide enabled by President Trump by its proper name (see Mr. Terry’s very graphic campaign advertisement that truthfully explains what the president is doing to the preborn and to the nation itself--Graphic TV ads challenge Trump, GOP to stop abortion ‘genocide’).

Christopher Columbus planted the Holy Cross of the Divine Redeemer on the island of San Salvador on this day in 1492, five hundred thirty-five years ago, and Our Lady herself ratified his work twenty-nine years later when she appeared to Juan Diego atop Tepeyac Hill outside of Mexico City and left that miraculous image of herself on his tilma, thus converting over nine million pagan Aztecs and Mayans to the true Faith.

The work of Columbus of Christianizing the Americas, which Columbus himself did not realize he had discovered, thinking that he had a found a path to the East Indies, continued in the northern part of North America with the missionary work of Spanish and French priests, eight of whom were martyred in and around Auriesville, New York, between 1642 and 1649, a century and a half after Columbus landed on San Salvador.

The Americas are meant to be Catholic in every aspect of their laws and culture, and it will not be until they are converted back to the true Faith by means of the Triumph of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, itself to be the fruit of all the Rosaries we pray and the restoration of a true pope on the Throne of Saint Peter to properly fulfill Our Lady’s Fatima Message, that the madness of men in the Western world and everywhere else, including in the Holy Land, is replaced by the united voices of all men everywhere exclaiming:

Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus Dóminus, Deus Sábaoth. Pleni sunt cæli et terra glória tua. Hosánna in excélsis. Benedíctus, qui venit in nómine Dómini. Hosánna in excélsis.

Saint Joseph, pray for us. 

Saints Peter and Paul, pray for us.

Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.

Saint John the Evangelist, pray for us.

Saint Michael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Gabriel the Archangel, pray for us.

Saint Raphael the Archangel, pray for us.

Saints Joachim and Anne, pray for us.

Saints Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, pray for us.