Wake up and smell the Islamic invasion of the West



Over the course of a single day this month, a pattern repeated itself across the West. Two Muslims murdered at least 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney. Five Muslims were arrested for plotting an attack on a Christmas market in Germany. French authorities canceled a concert in Paris due to credible threats of an Islamist terror attack. Two Iowa National Guardsmen in Syria were murdered by an Islamist while we play footsie with an illegitimate regime.

None of this represents an anomaly. It represents the accumulated failure of a strategy best summarized as “invade the Muslim world, invite the Muslim world.”

This conflict has never been about Jews alone. Jews are the first target, not the last. Islamist ideology ultimately targets all non-Muslims and any society that refuses submission.

That doctrine has produced neither peace abroad nor safety at home.

A contradiction the West refuses to resolve

Western governments spent the better part of a generation importing millions of migrants from unstable regions while simultaneously deploying their own soldiers to those same regions to manage sectarian civil wars.

The contradiction remains unresolved: We accept the risks of mass migration while risking our troops to contain the same ideologies overseas.

Islamist movements do not confine themselves to national borders. Whether Sunni or Shia, whether operating in Syria, Europe, or North America, the targets remain consistent: Jews, Christians, secular institutions, and Western civil society.

Yet our policy treats these threats as isolated incidents rather than the expression of a coherent ideology.

Strategic incoherence in Syria

Nowhere does this incoherence appear more starkly than in Syria.

On one hand, the Trump administration has moved toward normalizing relations with Syria’s new leadership. In June, President Trump signed an executive order terminating U.S. sanctions on Syria, including those on its central bank, in the name of reconstruction and investment. Last month, Syria’s new leader, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani — a former al-Qaeda figure rebranded as a statesman — visited the White House, where Trump publicly praised developments under the new regime and said he was “very satisfied” with Syria’s direction.

At the same time, Trump floated the idea of establishing a permanent U.S. military base in Damascus to solidify America’s indefensible presence and support the new government.

This would be extraordinary. The United States would be embedding troops deeper into one of the most volatile theaters on earth, effectively placing American soldiers at the mercy of a regime whose leadership and allies only recently emerged from jihadist networks — including factions accused of massacring Christians and Druze.

Simultaneously, the White House pressures Israel to limit its defensive operations in southern Syria, including its buffer-zone strategy along the Golan Heights, even as Israeli forces do a far more effective job degrading jihadist threats without sacrificing their own soldiers.

The result is perverse: America risks lives to stabilize an Islamist-adjacent regime while restraining the one ally actually capable of enforcing order.

Wars abroad, chaos at home

The contradiction deepens when immigration policy enters the picture.

Despite Syria remaining one of the world’s most unstable countries, with no reliable vetting infrastructure, the United States continues admitting Syrian migrants while maintaining roughly 800 troops inside Syria with no clear mission, no defined end, and no defensible supply lines.

Worse, U.S. forces increasingly find themselves aligned with terrorist factions tied to al-Jolani’s coalition to manage rival Islamist groups — placing American soldiers in the same position they occupied in Afghanistan, where “allies” repeatedly turned on them.

That dynamic produced deadly ambushes then. It is happening again.

Qatar’s fingerprints all over

The common thread running through Syria, Gaza, immigration policy, and Islamist indulgence is Qatar.

Qatar (along with our NATO “ally,” Turkey) invested heavily in Sunni Islamist factions during Syria’s civil war and backed networks tied to the Muslim Brotherhood for more than a decade. Qatar hosts Islamist leaders, bankrolls ideological infrastructure, and operates Al Jazeera, a media outlet that consistently amplifies anti-Western and anti-Israel narratives.

Yet Qatari preferences increasingly shape Western policy. We remain in Syria. We soften pressure on Islamist factions. We tolerate Muslim Brotherhood networks operating domestically. We allow Al Jazeera to function with broad access and influence inside the United States.

These choices do not occur in isolation. They align consistently with Qatari interests.

Unfettered immigration kills

Which brings us to the attack in Sydney that killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens more, when two Muslim terrorists opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration — using weapons supposedly banned in a country that prides itself on gun control, but not border control.

The alleged attackers, Sajid Akram and Naveed Akram, were a father-and-son pair of Pakistani origin. Sajid Akram entered Australia from Pakistan in 1998 on a student visa, converted it to a partner visa in 2001, and later received permanent residency through resident return visas.

In other words, this was not a transient or marginal figure. Akram was educated, had lived in Australia for more than 25 years, raised an Australian-born son, and still became radicalized enough to murder Jews in his adopted country.

Pakistan is one of the countries the Trump administration continues to treat as an ally, allowing large numbers of its nationals into the United States. Over the past decade, roughly 140,000 Pakistanis have received green cards, with tens of thousands more entering on student and work visas.

RELATED: Political Islam is playing the long game — America isn’t even playing

Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images

The same pattern appears elsewhere. In Germany, five terrorists arrested for plotting an attack on a Christmas market came from Morocco, Syria, and Egypt. In the U.S., we have issued green cards to approximately 38,000 Moroccans, more than 100,000 Egyptians, and over 28,000 Syrians.

This problem is not confined to ISIS or a handful of extremists in distant war zones. It is systemic. It explains why thousands took to the streets celebrating the Sydney massacre and why Islamist mobs now routinely surround synagogues in American cities, blocking worshippers and daring authorities to intervene.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter which Islamic country they hail from, how friendly that government may be to the West, or the tribal dynamics on the ground there. All of them, when they cluster in large numbers and form independent communities run by the Musim Brotherhood organizations, are incompatible with the West.

The problem is with Islam itself and the mass migration and Western subversion promoted by the Muslim Brotherhood through Qatari and Turkish gaslighting.

A choice we keep postponing

This conflict has never been about Jews alone. Jews are the first target, not the last. Islamist ideology ultimately targets all non-Muslims and any society that refuses submission.

The West must decide whether it intends to defend its civilization or continue subsidizing its erosion — through mass migration without assimilation, foreign entanglements without strategy, and alliances that demand silence in exchange for access.

Rather than building up Syria, risking the lives of our troops, and continuing to appease our enemies in Qatar, why not pull out, let Israel serve as the regional security force, while we focus on closing our border to the religion of pieces?

Protecting the country requires clarity. That means ending immigration from jihadist incubators, dismantling Islamist networks operating domestically, withdrawing troops from unwinnable sectarian conflicts, and empowering allies who actually fight our enemies.

Anything less is not “compassion” or sound foreign policy. It is criminal negligence.

How NFL football became a Thanksgiving holiday tradition



Before the NFL had three Thanksgiving games — or any games at all — the tradition was already under way in one part of the country.

The northeast is credited with creating the Thanksgiving game tradition. But, no, it wasn't the New York Giants or the New York Jets that started it. Rather, the tradition began in the upscale setting of Princeton and Yale.

'People in this area ... are used to having football with their turkey.'

Back in 1876, the two schools played what is considered to be the first college football game on Nov. 30. Just 1,000 fans sat through a 2-0 Yale victory in Hoboken, New Jersey, that would start a tradition for the ages.

Over the next two decades, the annual game grew in popularity, with Princeton winning 6-0 in front of more than 50,000 fans in 1892, according to History. While this was the last time the schools met on Thanksgiving, the tradition was in full swing as colleges, high schools, and clubs played around 5,000 games on Thanksgiving Day throughout the 1890s.

Thanksgiving Pros

While most associate the start of the Thanksgiving tradition in the NFL with the Detroit Lions, there was more than a decade of games on the holiday before it became a fixture in the Motor City.

On Thanksgiving 1920, teams like the Akron Pros and the Dayton Triangles shut out the Canton Bulldogs and Detroit Heralds, 7-0 and 28-0, respectively. Even non-league teams like the Elyria Athletics and Chicago Boosters played that Thanksgiving.

In 1922, the Chicago Bears played their first of 17 consecutive Thanksgiving games. One of those games was against the Lions in 1934 after entrepreneur George A. Richards bought the Ohio Spartans for just under $8,000 and moved them to Detroit. In order to draw fans, he invited the champion Bears for the Thanksgiving game.

A record 26,000 fans watched the game at the University of Detroit Stadium, setting a record for a football game in Detroit. Even though the Bears won 19-16 — finishing with an undefeated season — it sparked a Lions tradition that continues to this day.

RELATED: Free speech and football: Why they matter and why you should be thankful for them

Photo by Jorge Lemus/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Lions and Cowboys and Cardinals, oh my!

Since the Lions became the Lions, they have hosted a Thanksgiving game every year — except between 1939 and 1944 during World War II.

The first televised game came in 1953 for the Green Bay Packers-Lions game, but fans would have to wait another 13 years for a second Thanksgiving game to come on the airwaves.

On November 24, 1966, the Dallas Cowboys became the second team to host a televised Turkey Day game. They beat the Cleveland Browns 26-14 at the Cotton Bowl in front of more than 80,000 fans that day.

The area was thirsty for the tradition to continue. Cowboys General Manager Tex Schramm remarked at the time that Texas football fans had become accustomed to the holiday game.

"People in this area, because of the Texas-Texas A&M game, are used to having football with their turkey," he said.

For nearly a decade, the Cowboys hosted the second game. However, in 1975 the NFL wanted to showcase the St. Louis Cardinals' highly-touted offense and gave the team a few years to show it off. They lost in 1975, 1976, and 1977 — including a loss to the Cowboys in '76 — before the league asked the Cowboys if they wanted to take the tradition back for the 1978 game.

"I said only if we got it permanently," Schramm told the Chicago Tribune in 1998, according to History. "It's something you have to build as tradition. He said, 'It's yours forever.'"

RELATED: NFL player apologizes over backlash for doing Trump dance: 'I did not mean to offend anyone'

Turducken and a third game

Late and great coach-turned-commentator John Madden has brought the football world so many things: Madden video games, hilarious telestrator segments, and, of course, his sideburns.

Another addition in his 85 years was bringing the joy of eating to the Thanksgiving Day broadcast.

Calling 22 straight Thanksgiving games starting in 1981, Madden's three-bird roast was born in the lead-up to the 1996 broadcast, according to ESPN. Along with his annual Turkey Leg Award for player of the game that started in 1989, the turducken became an annual staple, with Madden explaining his complex process on how to cook, cut, and even eat the birds.

In 2002, he even tore the roast open with his bare hands to create a working diagram.

"It's a deboned chicken stuffed in a deboned duck stuffed in a deboned turkey, with dressing between the chicken and the duck, and the duck and the turkey. So as you cut down that way, you go turkey, dressing, duck, dressing, chicken," he instructed.

Unfortunately, Madden retired just a few years after the NFL expanded its Thanksgiving schedule to three games in 2006, which would have offered a lot more opportunities to spread his turducken joy.

Although no specific host team is used for the third game, players have recently carried on Madden's tradition by eating turkey on the field after the game — or even just a carrot.

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Happy Thanksgiving!

The Washington Free Beacon wishes its readers a happy Thanksgiving.

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Vance Warns Hamas: Disarm or Get ‘Obliterated’

Hamas must disarm or it is "going to be obliterated," Vice President JD Vance said during a Tuesday press conference in Israel, where he galvanized support for the freshly inked ceasefire pact and laid the groundwork for an international peacekeeping force to assume control of Gaza’s security.

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University of Delaware Student-Run TV Network Offers ‘SPECIAL THANKS’ to ‘CHARLIE KIRK’S KILLER’

A student television network at the University of Delaware, which houses the Biden Institute, offered "special thanks" to "Charlie Kirk’s killer" at the end of a comedy program, then quickly and quietly removed the joke from the episode.

The post University of Delaware Student-Run TV Network Offers ‘SPECIAL THANKS’ to ‘CHARLIE KIRK’S KILLER’ appeared first on .

Qatar’s Double-Sided Diplomacy Crumbles in Israeli Airstrike

The Israeli strike in Qatar on Tuesday sent a shockwave rippling far beyond the Middle East. Qatar’s neighbors and several European states rushed to condemn the bombing. Donald Trump was more conflicted, stating, “Unilaterally bombing inside Qatar, a Sovereign Nation and close Ally of the United States … does not advance Israel or America’s goals. However, eliminating Hamas, who have profited off the misery of those living in Gaza, is a worthy goal.” The United States ultimately signed off on the U.N. Security Council statement that "expressed their condemnation of the recent strikes in Doha" and "underscored that releasing the hostages, including those killed by Hamas, and ending the war and suffering in Gaza must remain our top priority."

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Why President Trump should keep his promise to Armenia



The Armenian nation stands today at the edge of an abyss, facing the very real possibility of extinction. This is not rhetorical exaggeration. What lies just over the horizon in the South Caucasus is another long, expensive conflict that will only materially end in the death of more Christians.

So what’s going on in Armenia, and how is it relevant to larger regional and international current events?

Armenia’s survival is not simply a moral question. It is a test of whether America retains any coherent strategy to shape the balance of power.

A suicidal regime

Since the disastrous 2020 war over Nagorno-Karabakh, the government of Nikol Pashinyan has systematically dismantled every safeguard that once protected the Armenian people from foreign conquest and internal tyranny. In that war, Pashinyan presided over catastrophic military failures and rushed to surrender swaths of historic Armenian territory, granting major concessions that emboldened Azerbaijan’s ambitions and left hundreds of thousands of Armenians displaced and defenseless.

Those concessions proved to be only the beginning. In 2023, the world watched with a shrug as Azerbaijan, with open material backing from Israel and tacit approval from the United States, completed the ethnic cleansing of Artsakh, an ancient Armenian homeland populated by a Christian people whose roots in that soil predate any current Islamic inhabitants by centuries. 120,000 Armenians were forced to leave their homeland, as the Biden administration stuck its head in the sand.

A slap in the face

Today, the Pashinyan regime has shifted its focus inward. He’s not simply failing to defend Armenian sovereignty; he has actively antagonized it. Having sold off Armenia’s territorial integrity, Pashinyan and his cohorts are now targeting the last resilient pillars of Armenian identity: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the memory of the Armenian genocide, and the business leaders capable of sustaining national resistance.

In recent months, senior officials have publicly questioned the historicity of the Armenian genocide, a giant slap in the face to every Armenian who carries the memory of 1.5 million murdered ancestors. They have couched their transparent Turkophilia in euphemisms like “normalizing relations,” as if the only obstacle to peace were Armenian nationalism rather than Turkish ambition.

Most recently, in a move that should alarm every serious observer, Pashinyan met with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, only to return home and unleash an unprecedented wave of repression against the Armenian Church and civil society. Armenian authorities have brazenly arrested clergy members, harassed Church institutions, and launched politically motivated prosecutions against billionaire businessmen like Samvel Karapetyan.

Pashinyan’s campaign of intimidation is no accident. It is a coordinated attempt, in collaboration with the Turkish and Azeri governments, to complete the total disenfranchisement of the Armenian people and make room for the ambitions of bigger regional powers.

It’s all very Zelenskyy-esque.

A forgotten American commitment

To understand the situation developing in the South Caucasus and the Middle East more effectively, we need to take a step back and look at the historical context (we always need to look at the historical context).

Once upon a time, the establishment of Armenian sovereignty was not just an abstract cause or a footnote to European diplomacy. It was an explicitly declared American interest, recognized in the highest acts of U.S. foreign policy.

In the aftermath of the First World War and the Armenian genocide, President Woodrow Wilson advanced a proposal for an independent Armenian republic, not merely as an act of moral redress, but as a strategic effort to reshape the post-Ottoman order in America’s favor.

Unlike the Sykes-Picot Agreement, which carved up Ottoman lands for British and French imperial gain, Wilson’s proposal sought to establish Armenia as a stable, pro-Western buffer state at the crossroads of Russian, Turkish, British, and Persian spheres of influence. His decision reflected a clear understanding: Without a sovereign Armenian state anchoring the region, the vacuum would be filled by rival empires.

A Greater Armenia, with secure borders and access to the Black Sea, would serve American interests by containing Bolshevik expansion from the north, checking pan-Turkic irredentism from the west, and limiting European colonial dominance from the south. It was a deliberate assertion of American influence in an increasingly competitive Eurasian theater.

Bettman/Getty Images

Wilson's vision

This commitment took concrete form on November 22, 1920, when President Wilson signed the Arbitral Award of the President of the United States of America, formally delineating the frontiers of an Armenian homeland. Wilson’s award assigned to Armenia the provinces of Erzurum, Trebizond, Van, and Bitlis, along with a vital corridor to the Black Sea, territories that had formed the historic heart of the Armenian nation for millennia.

This was not a symbolic declaration. It was a legally binding arbitral decision rendered by the United States’ presidential office, independent of the unratified Treaty of Sèvres.

Yuval Mozes/r/imaginarymaps

Which means that even a century ago, America recognized that a sovereign Armenia served several crucial functions:

  • A strategic counterweight to regional hegemons.
  • A test case of American credibility.
  • A potential logistical hub in Eurasian trade.

Yet over the decades, as the world has descended into new conflicts, the White House’s commitment to Armenia has been quietly set aside. No treaty ever formally annulled the arbitral award (the Treaty of Lausanne superseded the Treaty of Sevres but did not explicitly nullify the Wilsonian arbitral award). No president ever renounced it. It simply disappeared from American memory.

The failure to enforce the award led directly to Armenia’s dismemberment and signaled America’s unwillingness to project power in Eurasia. And in that vacuum, Turkey and its allies have pursued the total subjugation of Armenia.

However, all this is to say is that since America’s push for a sovereign Greater Armenia was driven by strategic interests back then, its memory provides a precedent for realist engagement now.

Armenia as strategic imperative

It would be easy to dismiss Wilson’s arbitral award as an artifact of a vanished world. But doing so ignores the reality that the threats Wilson identified a century ago have not only returned; they’ve only compounded in complex layers of sophistication and danger.

The South Caucasus is not an irrelevant frontier. Especially now, with Iran, Israel, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and Azerbaijan all jockeying for geopolitical position, it is the epicenter of a new contest among regional powers.

Therefore, Armenia’s survival is not simply a moral question. It is a test of whether America retains any coherent strategy to shape the balance of power. Historical precedents set a century ago and current developments are now converging to create an imperative for renewed, interest-based American engagement.

Consider first the project of pan-Turanism, the ideology that envisions a unified Turkic world stretching from Anatolia to Central Asia, with Armenia standing inconveniently in the middle.

In the past decade, Turkey President Erdogan and Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev have made no secret of their ambition to dissolve Armenia’s independence once and for all. The conquest of Artsakh was not the endpoint of that campaign. It was just the beginning.

With every concession forced from Yerevan, Ankara and Baku grow bolder in their conviction that the entire Armenian state can be reduced to an even tinier vassal, stripped of all allies, and forced to “normalize relations” on Turkish terms.

Iran and Israel

Iran’s position, meanwhile, seeks to deter full encirclement by the Turkic states, Israel, and the U.S. Iran wants Armenia intact enough to buffer against Turkey and Israel, but not strong enough to become a Western base. This explains why Iran has:

  1. Denounced Azerbaijani claims that Armenia is “Western Azerbaijan.”
  2. Have reported that Israel is using Azerbaijan as a base of operations to launch drones into Iran.

Israel’s role is obvious. It is seeking to surveil, strike, and destabilize Iran and, therefore, will leverage its alliance with Azerbaijan to do so. Armenia’s impending destruction is collateral damage in Israel’s rivalry with Iran.

The United States, meanwhile, has sought to complicate Russian and Iranian corridors and maintain influence, which is why the U.S. has recently proposed an American-run transit corridor through Syunik (that it would take control of under a 100-year lease), signaling support for the Pashinyan regime’s “normalization” efforts with Turkey and Azerbaijan.

American engagement in the region is transactional and ambivalent rather than principled. It tolerates Israel’s arming of Azerbaijan and prioritizes the logistics of the Zangezur corridor over Armenian sovereignty.

Because all major powers see Armenia as an instrument and not an end in itself, Armenia’s position becomes uniquely precarious and subject to external manipulation and, therefore, extermination.

Yes, extermination.

RELATED: Archaeologists discover one of the world's oldest Christian churches in history's first Christian country

kosmos111 via iStock/Getty Images

Perpetual hostage

As it stands right now, Armenia is the perpetual hostage of both rival empires and its own corrupt government. One could even say the pan-Turanic empire is complete, as Turkey, Azerbaijan, and the Pashinyan-led Armenia are all aligned in their pursuit of Turkic interests, with the only obstacle standing in the way being the Armenian people and Church.

And with Pashinyan getting set to sign a “peace deal” that would hand over the Zangezur corridor running through the south of Armenian territory to the Turks and Azeris, the very survival of the Armenian people is at stake.

Anadolu/Getty Images

A threat to Christendom

Yet beyond these calculations of pipelines, corridors, and spheres of influence lies something deeper. Amenia is the world’s first Christian nation. Its survival is not simply an Armenian concern. It is a civilizational concern.

The same forces that destroyed the ancient Christian communities of Northern Syria and Iraq are now setting their sights on the Caucasus. If they succeed, the precedent will be clear: Any Christian culture that stands in the path of Turkish, Islamist, or Israeli ambitions will be erased, and the United States will do nothing.

And just for the record, this is not an abstract appeal to policy. It is a reminder of a promise personally made. Days before the 2024 election, Donald Trump spoke by phone with his holiness Aram I, catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, to discuss the crisis in Artsakh and the plight of Armenian prisoners of war. This came weeks after a post on Truth Social clarifying what was at stake:

— (@)

Today, the supreme head of the Armenian Apostolic Church, Catholicos Karekin II, faces the threat of intimidation and possible arrest by the Pashinyan regime, a traitorous act that should be recognized for what it is: the criminalization of the faith at the heart of Armenian identity.

Clarity and action

If President Trump still stands by his pledge to defend Christian communities in the Middle East, then this moment demands clarity and action. It’s not enough to speak of solidarity when the lights and cameras are on and then remain silent as the last Christian enclaves are dismantled. And any “peace deal” that tolerates Pashinyan’s continued abuse against the Church and the people is no peace deal at all.

A sensible foreign policy in the region would both protect American interests and defend Christendom from Islamic encroachment. What would this look like in the near term? Here are the steps I would suggest.

1. Recommit to the spirit of the Wilsonian award.

No policy will succeed if it begins from the premise that Armenia must accept perpetual subjugation. The U.S. should officially acknowledge that the Wilsonian arbitral award remains a foundational expression of America’s interest in an independent and territorially secure Armenia. This does not mean an immediate redrawing of borders, but it does mean recognizing that Turkey’s historic ambitions to dominate the South Caucasus have been historically incompatible with U.S. interests.

2. Establish clear red lines for Turkish and Azerbaijani aggression.

The Biden administration’s passivity has emboldened Turkey and Azerbaijan. Trump’s administration must reverse this. Washington should communicate unequivocally that any further attacks on Armenian territory, whether in Syunik, Tavush, or any other region, will trigger targeted sanctions on Turkish and Azerbaijani defense sectors, including the suspension of U.S. military assistance and the freezing of assets linked to senior officials. America did it with Russia at the onset of the Ukraine conflict without hesitation. This should be a no-brainer.

3. Sanction those who persecute the Armenian Church.

In the Global Magnitsky Act, the U.S. has an effective tool to hold human rights violators accountable. Pashinyan and other Armenian officials involved in the arbitrary detention of clergy and the harassment of religious institutions should face immediate personal sanctions: visa bans, asset freezes, and public condemnation.

4. End the pretense of “normalization” without accountability.

It is not normalization when one side holds the knife and the other is forced to surrender everything that makes it a nation. Any U.S. support for Turkish-Armenian rapprochement must be conditioned on verifiable commitments: the recognition of the Armenian genocide, the return of prisoners of war, and the cessation of territorial encroachments.

5. Get tough on Israel.

This commitment also requires the courage to acknowledge uncomfortable facts. Chief among them is that Israel, a state Trump rightly defended as an ally, has played a decisive role in arming Azerbaijan’s aggression. No serious policy to protect Armenia can ignore this contradiction. If America is willing to tolerate the sale of drones and missiles to a regime that ethnically cleansed Artsakh, then any pledge to defend Christian heritage rings hollow.

Wife of Slain October 7 Mastermind Yahya Sinwar Fled Gaza for Turkey: Report

The wife of slain October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar fled Gaza before her husband was killed and has now gotten remarried in Turkey, according to a report Wednesday.

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Is this Noah's ark? Clues emerge at mysterious remote site



An independent researcher who has devoted his time to exploring a location near Mount Ararat that is believed by some to be the remains of Noah’s ark is speaking out.

Andrew Jones, who runs Noah’s Ark Scans, a group he described as “a loose organization of individuals interested in pursuing scientific work and promoting [the ark site],” said he became interested in the Genesis flood story when he was a child.

'We have the shape, we have the location matching, we have the length matching exactly in the Bible.'

Years later, in college, this intrigue expanded when he visited Turkey and saw the location for himself.

“I’ve been going back and forth ever since,” he said.

Jones said Noah’s Ark Scans works with scientists to explore the Mount Ararat site in an effort to take steps toward discerning whether it truly is the resting place of the massive biblical vessel.

“This last year, we had an Australian soil scientist come out there, and he suggested a soil test that we could do because we noticed, for example, that the grass growing in this boat formation was a different color than right outside the boat object,” he said. “So [he] and the local Turkish geologists designed a test, and they got the samples, and we got some ... really interesting results.”

One of the central questions surrounding the ark site is why, if it’s believed to potentially hold these remains, it has taken so long to do discernible and definitive research.

Jones said a series of issues have held up that process.

“We are just as interested as anyone else in either proving or disproving what this site is,” he said. “There’s many factors involved — some are politics. So this is Eastern Turkey. You do have issues out there that could affect doing scientific work. Then, you have religious issues.”

From Christian claims to Islamic ones, there’s a “competition” of sorts surrounding the story. Mixing that in with a lack of interest in some quarters, among other factors, has created barriers.

“If you’re going to pursue a scientific investigation to this site, you have to work with a local university, which means you need to find a university and professors who are willing to put their career on the line looking for Noah’s ark, which, even for Islamic scholars, that could be a problem,” Jones said. “People think you’re crazy looking for something like this. And so, yeah, it’s very difficult.”

But Jones said he and others continue pushing on, working with local authorities and international partners to analyze and explore the area where they believe the vessel might be located.

As for the location, Jones said the Bible gives a “very brief description” in Genesis. In fact, Genesis 8:4 reads, “And on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.”

Moses’ description, Jones said, isn’t GPS-specific.

“That’d be like me saying today, ‘Noah's ark landed in the mountains of Colorado or the mountains of Canada,'” he said. “It is a general area.”

The site where Jones and others are exploring is in this area, he said. The shape of the site reportedly first caught the attention of a Turkish military official decades ago.

“In a remote corner of Turkey, a unique geological formation, unearthed on September 11, 1959, by Turkish Army Captain Ilhan Durupinar, is raising eyebrows and piquing the interest of biblical scholars and geologists alike,” Noah’s Ark Scans writes in a description. “This boat-shaped geological curiosity, commonly referred to as the Durupinar formation, is considered by some to be the final resting place of Noah’s Ark.”

At the time, the discovery made a media splash, and people immediately began heading out to see for themselves. Eventually, though, Jones said the location was almost “forgotten about” until an American named Ron Wyatt started exploring and promoting it in the 1980s and 1990s before his death.

Jones and others have since picked up that mantle, working with experts to collect evidence. He explained the specific components that lead some to believe this is a good contender for the location of the ark.

“Number one, we have a ship shape,” Jones said, noting that the biblical size also lines up. “We have the shape, we have the location matching, we have the length matching exactly in the Bible.”

He continued, “Right now, the only tests that we can do are non-destructive-type of tests, like geophysical scans. ... GPR, which is ... ground-penetrating radar, ERT, which uses electricity and measures the resistive nature [of] what’s below the ground.”

This data is used to create models and to explore what might be inside the soil. So far, he and other researchers believe there are “angular structures” underground and even a “central tunnel” inside the structure that seems to point to something more than a mere mound of dirt.

Eventually, they hope to excavate when the conditions and parameters allow. Right now, using non-destructive means is important. Jones hopes to continue collecting samples and forging on with a plan to better discern what might be underneath the area.

“We’re hoping that before any excavations are even considered, that we could core drill the site at random locations and at some of these spots that the radar is showing to be like [an] angular structure that ... possibly won’t be considered natural, so maybe man-made-like walls,” he said. “And some of these voids, this tunnel is going down the middle about 4 meters down.”

These samples, Jones said, would give more information and context to better understand what’s happening inside the site. He’s also hoping to do additional soil testing.

Ultimately, based on the size, shape, and data, he believes that this “has to be the remains” of Noah’s ark. He doesn’t expect it will be fully preserved due to the age and time passed, but he sees the site as the “best candidate” at the current time.

This article originally appeared on CBN’s Faithwire.

Russia, Ukraine resume talks for first time in years — all thanks to Trump



Negotiators from Russia and Ukraine met in Istanbul, Turkey, on Friday, marking the first meeting between the two countries since 2022 due to mounting pressure from President Donald Trump.

Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan addressed the negotiators at Dolmabahce Palace on Friday, urging the two countries to reach a ceasefire agreement as soon as possible.

"There are two paths ahead of us: One road will take us on a process that will lead to peace, while the other will lead to more destruction and death," Fidan said. "The sides will decide on their own, with their own will, which path they choose."

'Although tensions ran high, progress has been made.'

RELATED: Trump earns unlikely praise from House Democrat: 'I got to give him some kudos there'

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

The war officially began under former President Joe Biden, but there was little movement throughout his term. Now, Trump has taken the lead to resolve the conflict.

Up until Trump's inauguration in January, Ukraine was essentially bankrolled by the United States. That all changed during the infamous Oval Office meeting with Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Although tensions ran high, progress has been made with various proposed peace deals, though none have yet been agreed to by all parties involved.

RELATED: Trump pledges to lift 'brutal and crippling' sanctions on Syria, pushes for Middle East peace talks

Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images

The Russia-Ukraine War is not the only conflict Trump is trying to resolve. The president spent the week touring the Middle East and meeting with various leaders, like President Ahmed al-Sharaa of Syria, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

During these meetings, Trump encouraged the leaders to sign onto the Abraham Accords alongside Israel in order to restore peace in the Middle East. Trump also urged the leaders to expel foreign terrorists from Syria, to deport Palestinian terrorists, to aid the United States and prevent the resurgence of ISIS, and to take responsibility for the ISIS detention centers in Syria.

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