The Islamist attack on Aleppo, Syria, could present strategic advantages for Israel, according to Daniel Rakov, a senior research fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security (JISS) and a reserve lieutenant-colonel in the IDF. In a post on X, Rakov analyzed the implications of the assault on northern Syria and its potential impact on Iran, Hezbollah, and regional powers.
“The fall of northern Syria to the rebels damages the infrastructure of the Iranians and Hezbollah there and will make it difficult for them to work to restore Hezbollah,” Rakov wrote. He argued that the conflict would force Syrian President Bashar Assad to focus on preserving his regime rather than aiding Iranian and Hezbollah efforts in Lebanon. This shift, Rakov suggested, might expand Israel’s freedom of action in Syria.
Rakov also highlighted the broader geopolitical implications, noting the embarrassment the developments are for Russia, a key ally of Assad. “The Russians were surprised by the rapid advance of the rebels from Idlib,” he wrote, adding that Russia’s limited military presence in Syria is focused on its own strategic interests rather than supporting Iran and Hezbollah.
Russia’s response has included airstrikes, diplomatic efforts to restrain Turkish support for the rebels, and propaganda downplaying the incident while exaggerating Assad’s capacity to recover.
Despite these efforts, Rakov pointed out that Russian state media has largely ignored the Aleppo conflict. Russian commentators have reportedly shifted blame for the defeat, distancing Moscow from Assad’s failure while noting Turkey’s reduced involvement in northern Syria.
The conflict has also drawn international attention, with reports suggesting that Ukraine has sent aid to Syrian rebels amid its ongoing war with Russia. However, the extent and impact of this aid remain unclear.
Rakov speculated that the instability in Syria could leave Assad vulnerable to attacks from Kurdish forces, southern rebels, or even ISIS, further weakening his regime. He also warned that while the chaos might open the door for greater Iranian military involvement in Syria, it could also lead to significant security threats for Israel if Assad’s regime collapses.
“Assad’s loss of Aleppo damages Russia’s image as a power capable of projecting influence beyond the post-Soviet space,” Rakov argued, noting that this undermines Russia’s strategic assets, including its military bases in Syria.
Concluding his analysis, Rakov stated that the rapid fall of Aleppo has exposed the fragility of both Assad’s regime and Russia’s influence in the region. However, he cautioned that this instability might bring new challenges for Israel, as the power vacuum in Syria could pave the way for the rise of new military threats.
President-elect Donald Trump on Saturday threatened 100% tariffs against a bloc of nine nations if they act to undermine the U.S. dollar.
His threat was directed at countries in the so-called BRIC alliance, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates.
Turkey, Azerbaijan and Malaysia have applied to become members and several other countries have expressed interest in joining.
While the U.S. dollar is by far the most-used currency in global business and has survived past challenges to its preeminence, members of the alliance and other developing nations say they are fed up with America’s dominance of the global financial system.
The dollar represents roughly 58% of the world’s foreign exchange reserves, according to the IMF and major commodities like oil are still primarily bought and sold using dollars. The dollar’s dominance is threatened, however, with BRICS’ growing share of GDP and the alliance’s intent to trade in non-dollar currencies — a process known as de-dollarization.
Trump, in a Truth Social post, said: “We require a commitment from these Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs, and should expect to say goodbye to selling into the wonderful U.S. Economy.”
At a summit of BRIC nations in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of “weaponizing” the dollar and described it as a “big mistake.”
“It’s not us who refuse to use the dollar,” Putin said at the time. “But if they don’t let us work, what can we do? We are forced to search for alternatives.”
Russia has specifically pushed for the creation of a new payment system that would offer an alternative to the global bank messaging network, SWIFT, and allow Moscow to dodge Western sanctions and trade with partners.
Trump said there is “no chance” BRIC will replace the U.S. dollar in global trade and any country that tries to make that happen “should wave goodbye to America.”
Research shows that the U.S. dollar’s role as the primary global reserve currency is not threatened in the near future.
An Atlantic Council model that assesses the dollar’s place as the primary global reserve currency states the dollar is “secure in the near and medium term” and continues to dominate other currencies.
Trump’s latest tariff threat comes after he threatened to slap 25% tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, and an additional 10% tax on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to do more to halt the flow of illegal immigration and drugs into the U.S.
He has since held a call with Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who said Thursday she is confident that a tariff war with the United States can be averted. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returned home Saturday after meeting Trump, without assurances the president-elect will back away from threatened tariffs on Canada.
Lev Podvitsky and his girlfriend Stav’s love story began five and a half years ago at an IDF base in the Golan Heights. The two quickly became close friends and recently Lev had already chosen the perfect ring to propose before he was called into battle and seriously injured in southern Lebanon, suffering leg and eye injuries.
Recovering slowly at Sheba Medical Center’s rehabilitation wing after four surgeries at Jerusalem’s Shaare Tzedek hospital, Lev, a fourth-year civil engineering student at the Technion Israel Institute of Technology was determined to go forward with his original intention and propose to Stav, with the help of the staff at the medical center.
His path to recovery brought him to Sheba’s “Returning to Life” rehabilitation center, where the staff helped create a special moment. They laid out a red carpet replicating the path Lev had once built between his and Stav’s offices at their military base.
In the occupational therapy hall, Lev proposed, with the sign on the board reading “I may not be your superman, but will you be mine?” After Stav said yes, in a touching moment Lev rose from his wheelchair to embrace his new fiancée.
לב פודבוצקי, שנפצע בלבנון הציע נישואים לבת זוגתו שהכיר בשירות ❤️
— אורן (@oren97920179) November 27, 2024
באדיבות: ביה"ח שיבא pic.twitter.com/ZoQa3Y0ZUP
WOW: Legendary talk radio host Michael Savage, dons a Yarmulke and proceeds to wrap Tefillin on himself, live on his podcast.
— Frum TikTok (@FrumTikTok) November 29, 2024
He explains the meaning behind it, and says the Shema prayer, declaring his faith in one God.
Mazel Tov Michael! ❤️@ASavageNation pic.twitter.com/rxbNdficmk
The second-biggest loser of the 2024 election is Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who is being demoted from the powerful Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate to the largely powerless Minority Leader.
Schumer’s demotion to the minority status — which is shared by the other 46 Democrats — was smoothed by his support for President Joe Biden’s maximum-migration policy.
That Schumer-backed policy imported roughly nine million southern migrants — ensuring the defeat of Vice President Kamala Harris and the loss of three Democrat-held Senate seats. That three-seat loss created a new 53-seat Republican majority in the Senate, thus forcing Schumer to hand over the gavel and return to minority status.
Moreover, this is the second time Schumer has lost the Majority Leader job because he prefers mass migration above investment in American citizens’ prosperity, productivity, and births.
In 2014, the Democrats lost five Senate seats because President Barack Obama welcomed illegal migrants and pushed for passage of the “Gang of Eight” amnesty and cheap labor bill. Schumer supported the bill, which canceled his expected promotion to Senate Majority Leader in 2015.
By 2022, Schumer had forgotten his 2014 election disaster and was back touting the mass migration directed by Biden’s pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas:
The 2024 election was a rerun of the 2014 election, in part, because both disasters were caused by the Democrat party’s increasingly unpopular welcome for millions of migrants.
Democrat senators are blaming the Schumer-backed policy for their fall. “We destroyed ourselves on the immigration issue in ways that were entirely predictable and entirely manageable,” a Democrat senator told the Hill for a November 29 report. “That’s political malpractice. That’s not someone else’s fault. That’s not the groups pushing us around,” the senator added.
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| Syrian troops outside Aleppo International Airport,in 2016 |
Syrian rebel forces have breached Syria’s second-largest city, Aleppo, in their strongest and swiftest advance since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011.
The fighters, led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) militant group (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra), reached the city center on Friday evening after having been expelled from Aleppo nearly ten years ago by regime forces and allies of President Bashar al-Assad.
The Syrian army told Reuters on Saturday dozens of its soldiers had been killed in the attack, forcing the army to redeploy in the biggest challenge to the Assad regime in years.
The same forces also reportedly seize a Russian military armored vehicle in the northern Hama countryside, southwest of Aleppo, on Saturday evening. Local sources reported regime forces were retreating from Hama and Homs, further south from Hama. However, the reports are unconfirmed, and denied by the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
It’s not yet clear how the situation will affect the State of Israel and its recent ceasefire agreement with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon — if at all.
Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has in the past held strong ties with Al Qaeda; however, in 2016, the group’s leader Abu Mohammed al-Jawlani publicly dissolved Jabhat al-Nusra to form HTS, announcing the group had broken ties with Al Qaeda.
Nevertheless, HTS is perceived to be a threat to the lives of some 20,000 Christians living in Aleppo. The group has imposed a curfew on the city until Sunday morning.
As the national tide turns in President-elect Donald Trump’s favor, Fulton County DA Fani Willis is the last woman standing in his way — but she isn’t likely to last long.
Willis is prosecuting the only court case left against Trump before he returns to office in January, over alleged election interference in Georgia.
Federal cases into the returning president’s involvement in the January 6, 2021 insurrection in Washington DC and his alleged hoarding of classified documents were both dropped after he won the presidential election.
A lot has changed from one year ago when Willis, 53 — the first woman elected as Fulton County DA in 2021 — was riding high as the prosecutor set to take down Trump in a blockbuster high-profile RICO racketeering case.
Although Willis appears adamant she will stay the course, she could potentially be kicked off the case by a body who are investigating it or usurped by the state Supreme Court, who are likely to step in and close it, according to sources.
“Fani doesn’t see how she’s headed for a brick wall, she’s going full tilt with vengeance and emotions,” one local defense lawyer who knows her told The Post.
“She’s still so full of herself and hasn’t learned her lesson yet. She doesn’t realize she is her own demise and she’s the reason everything’s falling apart.”
Willis – who won re-election for a second term as DA in November – has remained defiant and ignored a subpoena in September from a special senate committee looking into the case, refusing to show up for a hearing when was supposed to testify.
Last week, a Georgia appeals court abruptly canceled oral arguments scheduled for next month in the case and Trump’s lawyers are likely cite the federal end to the election interference charges against him to get the Georgia case thrown out.
“I would be shocked if it wasn’t (dismissed) but Fani has an ego bigger than the entire state so who knows,” a source close to the Willis investigations told The Post.
Representatives for Willis and Wade did respond to requests for comment from The Post for this article.
Willis, the daughter of a Black Panther-turned-criminal defense attorney, blew up her own reputation in Jan. 2024 when it came out that she had hired her boyfriend, Nathan Wade, a criminal defense lawyer with no prior experience with felony cases, to be a special prosecutor on the Trump case. Wade, who operates out of a basement office in a local industrial park, was allegedly paid thousands more than the other qualified lawyers on the team by Willis’ office.
Notoriously anti-Israel human rights group Amnesty International is set to issue a report accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” next month — a claim experts and Israel alike ripped as “fabricated.”
“Israel has committed and is continuing to commit genocide against the Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip,” the group, which critics say has a long history of anti-Israel bias, said in the report due out Dec. 5.
Israel has long maintained its offensive in Gaza is solely to eliminate Hamas terrorists who killed 1,200 and kidnapped 251 Israelis during the Oct. 7 massacre, and has said it takes great care to avoid civilian casualties with pinpoint strikes.
But genocidal intent can “co-exist” with Israel’s stated military goals, claimed Amnesty, which critics say has a long history of anti-Israel bias.
Experts said Amnesty is confused as to what a genocide really is.
“If Israel’s defense against Hamas constitutes genocide, then American wars from World War II to Obama’s campaign against ISIS do as well,” said George Mason Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich.
“An actual genocide looks completely different: In the early 2000s the Sudanese government armed Arab militias to ethnically cleanse all African groups in the Darfur region through a campaign of mass murder, rape and persecution based on the victims’ race,” said National Jewish Advocacy Center director Mark Geldfeder.
The Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health has claimed more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began. At least 17,000 of them were terrorists, according to the Israeli Defense Forces.
“Amnesty cannot point to a single instance in which Israel has purposely targeted a civilian,” Geldfeder said.
Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Oren Marmorstein told The Post: “The deplorable and fanatical organization Amnesty International has produced a fabricated report entirely based on lies.”
Amnesty International did not respond to The Post’s request for comment.
An Adams administration staffer whose mission includes fostering “unity” and bridging “cultural divides,” is under fire for ripping down an Israeli hostage poster — and then allegedly assaulting an outraged eyewitness, The Post has learned.
Nallah Sutherland, a special event coordinator for the Mayor’s Office of Special Projects and Community Events, was spotted earlier this month tearing down the poster from an Upper East Side light pole, ripping it up and dumping it in a trash bin, according to video posted online by the nonprofit StopAntisemetism.
“It’s an appalling act of antisemitism,” said the nonprofit’s founder Liora Rez, who demanded Adams immediately fire Sutherland.
But Sutherland, 25, only got a slap on the wrist by her bosses — who merely required her to take “multicultural training” and added a disciplinary note to her permanent work file, a City Hall source told The Post.
“Is there a reason you’re taking those down?” asks an eyewitness about the poster, part of a public art campaign to raise awareness of Israeli and American hostages taken captive by Hamas during its Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on the Jewish state.
“Those were hostages. They were taken by terrorists,” adds the eyewitness, according to the 20-second clip he recorded.
Sutherland then walks toward the man and swipes his phone with her right hand, briefly knocking it out of focus, the video shows.
“That’s assault actually. You know that, right?” the man responds to Sutherland, who smirks and walks away, the video shows.
Sutherland began working for Adams – a staunch Israel supporter – in 2023. She earns $61,135-a-year helping plan celebrations he hosts at Gracie Mansion and at other sites to honor the diverse city’s many ethnic groups, records show.
She’s part of a team whose job is to “bridge cultural divides … and support key city initiatives that help provide a source of strength, unity, and resilience to New Yorkers across all communities within the five boroughs and beyond,” according to her office’s website.
In May, the office organized a Jewish heritage celebration hosted by Adams at Gracie Mansion. The guest speakers included Shoshan Haran, who along with her daughter and two grandchildren, were taken hostage by Hamas and released 50 days later.
“It’s extremely hypocritical that someone who supports the murder of anyone still has a job, much less in a department that plays a vital role in our city’s diversity efforts — despite the fact that she cannot tolerate innocent Jews who were kidnapped by Hamas,” said Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) after being told about Sutherland’s action.
“Decisive action must be taken to purge this disgusting pro-jihadist sentiment from” city government “once and for all,” added Vernikov, who is Jewish.
The eyewitness, who is Jewish and didn’t report the incident to authorities, wants to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution considering antisemitism cases are soaring statewide.
“It’s a sad state of affairs when the victim doesn’t have trust in the NYPD or” soft-on-crime Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg “to properly investigate” hate crimes,” said Rez. “There’s no trust in the authorities to keep the victim safe.”
