Daniel Runde

You heard it here first: Iron Dome is essentially free for Israel, since it is now in mass production and its manufacturing is subsidised by export orders to the tune of billions. The ability of the Tamir interceptors to shoot down ballistic missiles was first seen in June, in their terminal attack phase, and it totally inverts the cost equation between Iran and Israel in the missile anti-missile war. The interceptors are much cheaper than the missiles, and so far their launch systems have proven impervious to counterattack, even agaisnt the largest ballistic missile inventory ever assembled. Rumours of Israel running short on interceptors are false. The IDF has begun using interceptors against some of the cluster munitions, itself an extraordinary feat—to be able to assess the risk of up to 80 munitions at once and fire off dozens of interceptors to hit the ones that pose the most danger. In the first weeks of this war, Israel did not attempt to intercept the small munitions, since they pose minimal risk to civilians under shelter. Their lethal blast radius is just a few metres, and many are failing to detonate. In total, the thousands of bomblets killed three people. Since videos now show Iron Dome activated against this negligible threat, the IDF clearly feels that the remaining Iranian and Hezbollah stockpiles are no match for their own interceptor stockpiles. The IDF claims to have intercepted about 93% of the 600 or so missiles fired at Israel from Iran, and while there are huge amounts of disinformation on this topic, the facts are the facts: some 500 tonnes of high explosive launched at Israel (500–1,000 kg per missile) has led to just 20 deaths, all civilians. So whatever Israel is doing, it is working.

What do you notice about Ukrainian faith? Here Ukraine's Orthodox—as well as politicians and Catholic and Jewish leaders—gathered for the Kyiv funeral of Patriarch Filaret. Filaret, who died at 97, led the successful effort, supported by the Ecumenical Patirarch in Constantinople, to restore the ancient Kyiv chuch free of the modern Moscow chains.

Liberal academic @Musa_alGharbi's observations when he moved to Manhattan: "One of the first things that stood out to me is that there’s a racialized caste system here that everyone takes for granted. You have disposable servants who will clean your house, watch your kids, walk your dogs, deliver food to you... mostly minorities and immigrants and disproportionately women... And this is basically taken for granted in New York, that this is the way society operates. And yet... this is not how things are in many other parts of the country. Most other places, the person buying a pair of shoes and the person selling them are likely to be the same race — white — and the gaps between the buyer and the seller are likely to be much smaller. Even the most sexist or bigoted rich white person in many other contexts wouldn’t be able to exploit women and minorities the same way as the typical liberal professional in a city like Seattle or New York; the infrastructure simply isn’t there. It’s these progressive bastions associated with the knowledge economy that have these well-oiled machines for casually exploiting the vulnerable, desperate and disadvantaged. And it’s largely Democratic-voting professionals who take advantage of them. A few months after I arrived at Columbia, Trump won. I expected this to happen, but for most people, that was not the expectation. So here at Columbia, the day after Trump won, a lot of the students claimed to be so traumatized that they couldn’t do tests or homework. They needed time off. Now there are two things striking about that to me. First, these are students at an Ivy League school, overwhelmingly people from wealthy backgrounds — and even if they don’t come from wealth, they’re likely to be well-positioned... [but these] students seemed to view themselves as somehow uniquely vulnerable to Trump and his regime, as being especially threatened or victimized. And so they demanded all of these accommodations for themselves. Meanwhile, there was this whole other constellation of people [mostly minorities and immigrants] around them who seemed to be literally invisible to them. The people doing all the work on the campus... these ignored laborers — the people with the most at stake in this election — [were not] saying they needed time off because they were too traumatized. They showed up to work the next day and did their jobs. They weren’t making a scene, sobbing as they scrubbed rich kids’ mess out of the toilets. The juxtaposition was sobering... When I left campus, walking around the Upper West Side, or other affluent parts of Manhattan, similar scenes were playing out. Nor was New York City unique in this regard. Other knowledge economy hubs had similar scenes playing out. And the same drama that was playing out in Columbia was unfolding at colleges and universities across the country. This is precisely what I found so troubling, so difficult to shake off: It wasn’t about my own school. It was about this broader disjuncture between knowledge-economy elites, their narratives about the world, and the realities on the ground."

🚨 IT'S OFFICIAL: After Delta Airlines canceled ALL special privileges for members of Congress while TSA is unpaid, other airlines nationwide are being pressured to follow suit This is common sense. Treat them the same as us! ALL airlines should do this!

WOW. King Charles III will become the first patron of the Community Security Trust, a British Jewish security group. The announcement comes in the wake of the antisemitic arson attack on four Hatzola ambulances in Golders Green. jpost.com/diaspora/antis…

New for @WSJ: An Israeli strike on a naval outpost in the Caspian Sea targeted Russia’s support for Iran in the war, hitting a supply line that the countries have used to move ammunition, drones and other weaponry, people familiar with the matter said.

Russia’s main Baltic oil export terminal at the port of Primorsk continues to burn this morning after a Ukrainian drone attack set the facility ablaze yesterday.

"BEYOND COMMON SENSE:" @SenFettermanPA blasts members of his own party over their response to the killing of an 18-year-old student by an illegal alien.

Your daily reminder that, after four years and an unfathomable waste of blood and treasure, Russia still isn't winning this war. Backing Ukraine isn't just the right thing to do - it's the prudent move.

Up next: @MikeRogersForMI. Mike will update us on his race for the open U.S. Senate seat in the state up north. The link to his campaign website is in the replies.

We’ve long known Iran has the ability to temporarily close the Strait of Hormuz. But we have the ability to reopen it—and to reopen it permanently.

“The administration’s interest in pinpointing a negotiating partner signals a desire to find some way out of the quagmire that Iran has quickly become, jolting world markets, spiking oil prices and renewing concern about inflation.” @politico Quagmire? 70 year old B-52s are lumbering across defenseless Iranian skies using precision JDAMs at will to continue pummeling the military-industrial complex of #Iran and that’s a “quagmire?” “Quagmire” was appropriately applied to Vietnam in 1968-1969 when LBJ had 538,000 American troops in the country, up from the 11,000 JFK had there in 1962. By the time RN ended deployment of American troops there in 1973, more than 58,000 troops had died there. That is a quagmire. #Iran looks like an extremely successful campaign that is achieving its military objectives in rapid fashion with near total dominance of the battlefield. It is not a quagmire in any way. Looking for a sane actor to guide the radicalized elite out of its fanaticism is not a “signal” of anything other than appropriate planning. I wonder sometimes if this sort of mumbo-jumbo is intentional anti-Trump bias (@DashaBurns if an affable panelist on @SpecialReport and does not seem to have TDS) or simple unfamiliarity with military history? But c’mon editors, display a bit of discipline in choice of nouns. That’s really ridiculous.

💥🇪🇸 | Una valiente cubana DESPEDAZÓ en vivo a un comunista español y lame botas de Pablo Iglesias, quien intentó defender al regimen cubano: "Tu no me vas a decir lo que es vivir en Cuba, mientras vives en el primer mundo". ¿Apoyan a la valiente cubana?

به فرستادن عکس‌ها و ویدئوها از هر جایی که نیروهای سرکوبگر حضور دارند ادامه دهید. با هم آن‌ها را شکست خواهیم داد و آینده‌ای تازه برای ایران خواهیم ساخت! روح ایرانِ واقعی از هر دوره و هر حکومتی قوی‌تر است. t.me/MossadMedia_bot

This is the real Mossad account. Their mission is to free Iranians from the evil islamic regime in Iran. They’re asking Iranians to send the locations of any oppressors to their Telegram. Until now, citizen tips have been used to assassinate many regime thugs. You know what to do.

Pope Leo XIV received today a delegation from Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. The institution commemorates the victims of the Shoah and safeguards their memory through research, education, and testimony.

COMMUNIST CHINA wrongfully arrested my good friend Jimmy Lai and are trying to lock him away for LIFE. Jimmy did NOTHING WRONG. His only “crime” was refusing to be silent while the CCP robbed the people of Hong Kong of their rights. @POTUS and I are watching, and we won’t give up until he’s FREE.

Italy is transforming the boat industry with massive 3D printers.

Dirigiéndose a la comunidad judía en Roma, el Papa Juan Pablo II dejó muy clara la enseñanza de la Iglesia Católica sobre la fraternidad de judíos y cristianos, la pecaminosidad del odio y el prejuicio antisemitas y la irrevocabilidad del pacto de Dios con el pueblo judío: “La religión judía no es «extrínseca» a nosotros, en cierto modo es «intrínseca» a nuestra religión. Sois nuestros hermanos predilectos y, en cierto modo, se podría decir nuestros hermanos mayores”. No se puede ser buen cristiano y a la vez ser antisemita. El antisemitismo es una manifestación de odio incompatible con la fe católica.

Please tell me more about how Iran wasn’t an imminent threat. Should we have waited until their ballistics could reach Bermuda?