12/11, Like 9/11, Was A Disaster For The West
An arguably more significant event in the West's slow demise occurred on Dec. 11, 2001: China joined the World Trade Organization.An arguably more significant event in the West's slow demise occurred on Dec. 11, 2001: China joined the World Trade Organization.
Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Was This Generation’s 9/11
May the 25th anniversary of our 'never forget' moment find us with something true, good, and beautiful to show for it.Saving The United States Means Becoming Unapologetically American Again
American culture is struggling not because of its first principles but because it’s accepted the lie that its first principles were evil.'It would be "hotter" than ever before': Trump teases new name for Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump has joked about possibly renaming another natural feature after recently declaring that Lake Ontario would be henceforth known as "Lake America."
On Wednesday, the official account for the Trump White House posted a statement from the president offering a new name for the Strait of Hormuz.
'We hit them very hard last night. We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz.'
"Now that we have it under U.S.A. control, should we change the name Hormuz Strait to TRUMP STRAIT??? Like America itself, it would be 'hotter' than ever before!" the quote read.
The post added an image of the strait with the president's name.
The strait is a pivotal choke point through which 20% of global petroleum liquids travel. The trade route has been significantly disrupted since February when the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began.
Trump has said that it has been reopened, but Iranian officials dispute that claim.
An Axios report documented efforts by the U.S. military to reduce the threat from Iran on oil tankers while secretly helping transport through a southern channel near Oman.
"That sucker is open. The Iranian response is very mild," said Trump to Axios. "They don't want us to go back at them. That's the whole ball game. The rest doesn't matter."
Reopening the strait would help calm spiking gas prices and ease inflation woes just ahead of the midterm elections, where Democrats hope to seize control of Congress.
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The president also announced Wednesday that the military has struck at Iran's military overnight.
"We hit them very hard last night. We took out all of the new equipment that they tried to build along the Strait of Hormuz," he said at the White House to reporters. "It was a very heavy attack last night, and we're prepared to do another one any time we want."
The president renamed the Gulf of Mexico to the "Gulf of America" shortly after retaking office during a feud with Mexico's leadership about tariffs and the illicit drug trade into the U.S.
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How a new Texas parish reminds us that the age of Christian martyrs is not over
The newest Catholic parish in Arlington, Texas, is named for Matthew Ayariga, one of 21 men murdered by Islamic State terrorists on a Libyan beach in February 2015.
Ayariga was a Ghanaian migrant worker captured alongside 20 Egyptian Coptic Orthodox Christians. Little is known about his life before then, including whether he was already a Christian. Some accounts say the faith of his fellow prisoners inspired him to convert during their captivity, while others suggest that he had previously embraced Christianity.
When they asked whether she had a weapon, Stang raised her Bible. 'This is my only weapon,' she said.
What is known is that Ayariga chose to identify himself with the Copts when their captors demanded that the men renounce Christ. “Their God is my God,” he reportedly said before he was beheaded with them.
Last week, Michael Olson, bishop of Fort Worth, announced the establishment of St. Matthew Ayariga Catholic Church, the first Catholic parish anywhere in the world placed under Ayariga’s patronage.
New martyrs
The announcement points toward a fact at times easily forgotten in the comfortable West: The age of Christian martyrs did not end with Nero, the Roman arena, or even the totalitarian regimes of the 20th century. Christians are still dying for the faith.
In 2023, Pope Francis established a Commission of New Martyrs to gather the names and stories of Christians killed during the first quarter of the 21st century. By September 2025, the commission had compiled the names of 1,624 Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant martyrs and witnesses to the faith who died between 2000 and 2025.
The catalogue includes 643 Christians killed in sub-Saharan Africa, 357 in Asia and Oceania, 304 in the Americas, 277 in the Middle East and North Africa, and 43 in Europe.
Those figures do not constitute a complete census, nor does inclusion amount to formal canonization by the Catholic Church. In fact, the Vatican has withheld the full list because publicly identifying some of the victims could endanger Christians still living in the same regions.
Living for the Eucharist
Among those remembered by the commission is Father Ragheed Ganni, a Chaldean Catholic priest who returned to his native Iraq after studying in Rome. As violence against Iraqi Christians intensified, extremists repeatedly warned him to close his parish. Ganni refused to leave while his people still needed him.
“Without the Sunday Eucharist, we cannot live,” he said at a Eucharistic congress in Italy in 2005. “For us, the terrorists take life, but the Eucharist gives it back.”
On June 3, 2007, gunmen confronted Ganni outside his church in Mosul after Sunday Mass. They murdered him and three subdeacons.
Wielding a Bible
Another is Sister Dorothy Stang, an Ohio-born nun who spent nearly four decades working among poor settlers in the Brazilian Amazon. She helped farming families secure legal title to their land and promoted sustainable agriculture, bringing her into conflict with powerful ranchers and loggers.
Despite repeated death threats, Stang remained in the region. On Feb. 12, 2005, two hired gunmen stopped the 73-year-old nun on a muddy road.
When they asked whether she had a weapon, Stang raised her Bible.
“This is my only weapon,” she said.
As she began reading from the Beatitudes, the gunmen shot her six times.
Brothers in arms
The commission also remembers seven members of the Melanesian Brotherhood, an Anglican religious community devoted to evangelism and peacemaking in the Solomon Islands.
During civil unrest in 2003, militants took Brother Nathaniel Sado hostage and tortured him to death. Six other brothers went looking for him. Three were shot upon arrival; the remaining three were beaten, tortured, and killed the following day.
At their funeral, a banner preceded each coffin bearing the brother’s name and the words, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.”
Two days later, the Melanesian Brotherhood admitted 48 new members.
A child's vision
The youngest of those singled out by Pope Leo was 10-year-old Abish Masih, a Pakistani schoolboy killed in the March 2015 Taliban attacks on two churches in Lahore. In a notebook he left behind, the child had written a simple aspiration: “Making the world a better place.”
These men, women, and children belonged to different countries, cultures, and Christian communions. Their inclusion in a common memorial reflects what John Paul II called the “ecumenism of the martyrs” and Pope Francis later termed the “ecumenism of blood.”
Those who persecute Christians often make no distinction between Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant believers. Martyrdom reveals a unity that centuries of ecclesiastical negotiation have yet to restore fully.
Bearing witness
In September 2025, Pope Leo XIV gathered with representatives of numerous Christian traditions to commemorate the new martyrs. He called their witness an “unarmed hope” and warned that the persecution of Christians had not disappeared with the dictatorships of the last century.
“On the contrary,” the pope said, “in some parts of the world it has increased.”
The word “martyr” comes from the Greek word for “witness.” A martyr is not simply someone who dies tragically or becomes a victim of violence. A Christian martyr bears witness to Christ by remaining faithful when faithfulness exacts the ultimate price.
By naming the new parish for Ayariga, the Diocese of Fort Worth is helping preserve the witness of the 21 martyrs for another generation.
“Where violence seeks to erase a man’s identity, the Church remembers his name,” Bishop Olson wrote. “Where death boasts to have the final word, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ declares otherwise.”
Israeli settler who savagely attacked Catholic nun couldn't help himself, court rules
An Israeli judge concluded on Wednesday that while Yona Simcha Schreiber was apparently the man behind the savage attack on a French Catholic nun in Jerusalem on April 28, he just couldn't help himself.
Footage released by police appears to show Schreiber, a 36-year-old settler from the West Bank wearing a kippah and ritual tassels, run up behind an unsuspecting habited nun nearby King David’s Tomb and shove her to the ground.
'We understand the difficult feelings of the complainant.'
His victim — a researcher at the French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research in Jerusalem as well as a nun — writhes in pain on the ground, having struck her head against the stones, and the attacker begins to walk away, the footage shows.
However, he abruptly turns and resumes his attack, kicking the woman until a passerby intervenes, according to the video.
The nun suffered facial bruising and injuries to her leg, reported the Jerusalem Post.
Israeli authorities condemned the violent episode, which generated international outrage, and suggested that the attacker would be held to account.
"We strongly condemn this despicable attack. Violence against innocent individuals, and especially against members of religious communities, has no place in our society," the Israel Foreign Ministry said in a statement the day after the brutal assault.
"This shameful act stands in direct contradiction to the values of respect, coexistence, and religious freedom upon which Israel is founded and to which it remains deeply committed."
After Schreiber's arrest "on suspicion of an assault motivated by racism," George Deek, Israel's special envoy to the Christian world, noted that legal proceedings against the attacker were underway, demonstrating "Israel's clear commitment to enforcing the law and ensuring accountability."
Schreiber, who was formerly indicted in May for what prosecutors recognized as a religious-based assault, was acquitted on Wednesday by reason of insanity.
A government psychiatrist diagnosed Schreiber with schizophrenia and told the court that while there was no conclusive evidence to suggest that his supposedly psychotic thoughts were the cause of the attack, they were nevertheless an influence, reported the Jerusalem Post.
The psychiatrist suggested further that at the time of the attack, Schreiber could neither understand what he was doing nor stop himself from doing it.
The victim's attorney, Zaki Sahlia, cast doubt on this convenient psychiatric assessment, suggesting Schreiber's supposed illness may not have been the driving factor behind the attack and his choice of target. After all, suggested Sahlia, Schreiber singled out the nun in a street where there were multiple other would-be victims.
Ophir Tischler — the judge overseeing the case — accepted the psychiatrist's suggestion that Schreiber was psychotic when he attacked the nun such that he couldn't be held criminally accountable. The judge ordered the settler to be hospitalized for a maximum of six years.
The Post noted, however, that a psychiatric committee can bring an earlier end to Schreiber's hospitalization with a determination that his condition has improved.
Schreiber's lawyer, Idan Gamlieli, said in a statement obtained by the Times of Israel, "The district psychiatrist determined that the unfortunate incident was the result of the accused’s mental illness and that he needs to be hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, and we hope that the medical treatment will help him to function normally again."
"It is important for us to note that we understand the difficult feelings of the complainant and wish her well in overcoming the consequences of this unfortunate incident," added Gamlieli.
The French School of Biblical and Archaeological Research in Jerusalem did not immediately respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!Does Israel still have a biblical claim on the Middle East? The only honest answer is 'yes'
Does Israel still have a biblical claim on the Middle East?
That’s the title of a recent article in which a prominent Christian theologian disqualifies himself from his own argument by putting forth a pack of half-truths, innuendo, and outright lies as the foundation informing his biblical interpretation of Israel’s claim to its land.
I’ve also attended services at an evangelical church in Jerusalem, and neither going in nor coming out were we 'spit on' or accosted in any way.
Christian theologians definitely disagree on Israel’s role in the end-time and its relevance to us today.
That’s OK. We don’t have to agree on everything.
What’s not OK is undergirding your “biblical interpretation” with ignorant lies.
Michael Horton is a theology professor at California’s Westminster Seminary, and he believes the answer to the question is no; Israel has no biblical claim in the Middle East.
Honestly, I’m not going to address his biblical interpretation (see: above, “We don’t have to agree on everything”).
However, this article slyly uses almost every Jew-hating talking point to build a foundation for Horton’s point.
I’m going to talk to Mr. Horton here.
'Terrorists'
The only time you use the word “terrorist,” Mr. Horton, you’re referring to Israeli settlers, who can be unpleasant but have yet to dip into pastimes such as raping women or slaughtering children in the most hideous ways imaginable (see: October 7).
Why can’t you bring yourself to apply the word where it absolutely fits — the ongoing campaign of terrorism the Palestinians have inflicted on Israeli citizens?
Instead, you share a whopper like this:
“Since 1948, Israel has fought for its own existence, while Palestinians have also defended their homes. The only way forward was a two-state solution, which was very close in the 1970s and '80s, but is being brought to a forever-impossible point with the current Israeli government.”
Whew, that’s a lot to unpack.
So what the Palestinians have been doing since 1948 is simply “defending their homes”? How do we explain the existence then of security checkpoints and walls near freeways and all manner of other anti-terrorist setups in Israel? Were those crazy Jews just imagining the suicide bombings and knife attacks and rocks being pelted at cars? Surely you’ve heard of terrorist attacks on Israeli soil, sir?
Nor do you mention that when a two-state solution has been close, it has always and forever been nixed by the Palestinians. All they have to do is agree to stop killing Jews and live in peace. And that, Mr. Horton, has always been unacceptable to them.
And you turn this on its head, by blaming the “current Israeli government” and, later in your piece, “Christian dispensationalists.” It’s never the Palestinians’ fault. They’re the victims, and not once in this piece do you even hint at their own responsibility for so much bloodshed and hatred.
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'Horrible atrocities'
The internet is full of outlandish tales of Christians supposedly being persecuted in Israel, so the Candace Owens/Tucker Carlson fans are afraid to travel there for fear of being “spit on” at best and tortured in a dungeon at worst. You play into this nonsense by claiming you’ve talked to pastors in the Middle East (you notably don’t say where in the Middle East) who tell of “horrible atrocities” by the Israeli soldiers and the Israel Defense Forces.
Surely you are not unaware of the people who have it IN THEIR CHARTER to wipe out the Jews? The people who train their children to hate Jews? The people who pulled off October 7? Is there no place in your seemingly measured discourse to condemn actual “horrible atrocities”?
I know many Christians in Israel, and I have visited there, including non-tourist places. I’ve also attended worship services at an evangelical church in Jerusalem, and neither going in nor coming out were we “spit on” or accosted in any way, because the vast majority of Jews could not care less. The church live streams its services for Pete’s sake. It’s not an underground or persecuted church. Not to mention that the number of Christians in Israel is growing unlike any other Middle Eastern country.
'Genocide'
Of course you had to use the g-word, even though Israel has never, ever called for genocide. It is, however, precisely what the Palestinians explicitly call for (regularly, and in Hamas governing documents). But you said it is Israel’s far-right Kahanist party that is “demanding genocide wherever Palestinians now live.”
That is simply not an accurate description of Kahanism. Meir Kahane and his Kach Party advocated the forced expulsion — or “transfer” — of Arabs from Israel and the territories under its control. Whatever you want to call that policy, it is not in any way "genocide."
Words mean something, Mr. Horton.
I also grow weary of the demonization and complete mischaracterization of “dispensationalist” churches. You again:
“In the dispensationalist churches of my youth, the whole Bible centered not on Christ but on the nation of Israel, especially its reconstitution in 1948.”
Yeah. I grew up in dispensationalist churches, too. And at no time, in no way, did the nation of Israel displace Christ as the center of the Bible or anything else. I have heard this nonsense so many times lately, that Christian Zionists or dispensationalists “worship Israel.” It’s not true, outside of some weird sects that may exist, and it is frankly sinful to besmirch fellow believers in this way.
The soft-pedaling of the Palestinian/Islamic worldview that is in fact genocidal toward Jews (and the West in general) is galling. You describe what you call “horrific acts of ultra-orthodox violence” and then sympathetically offer this: “As is too often true in families and national histories, those subject to extreme violence seek revenge through a similar dehumanization of the other.”
So it’s the Israeli settlers who are extremely violent? Poor Hamas has no choice but to burn families alive in their homes? After October 7, I simply cannot see how a professed Christian can twist truth this way.
Whopper after whopper
Let’s finish with one more of your whoppers:
“Christianity in the West Bank, including Bethlehem, is being erased by ultra-orthodox settlers under the protective umbrella of the Israel Defense Forces.”
There is a kernel of truth here. There have been documented incidents of extremist Israeli settlers harassing and attacking Palestinian Christians, vandalizing Christian property, and encroaching on Christian-owned land.
But you take those incidents and spin them into something much larger: a story in which Jews are “erasing” Christianity from the West Bank under the “protective umbrella” of the Israeli military.
Where is the evidence for that sweeping claim?
And just as striking is what you leave out. Palestinian Christians have also faced documented harassment, intimidation, violence, and property disputes involving Muslim Palestinians, including incidents in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority. Christian communities have been shrinking across the Middle East for decades, including in places where there are no Israeli settlers and no IDF.
That Horton blames Jews for “erasing” Christianity in the West Bank, when said erasure precisely patterns the erasures in every Muslim country — well, it’s just the same old libel: anti-Semitic libel.
Perhaps you didn’t mean to lie. I hope so. I also hope you consider that you approached this all wrong, and you need to try again.
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