Horror and Hope From This Weekend’s News

In our main story today, I go back to Europe’s stunning defeat at the hands of Donald Trump and his trade negotiating team. The costs of weak European leadership have been made very clear. Europe will make sure it’s not caught out like this again.

[BRIEF]

Hamas showed off their torture of their remaining Jewish hostages over the weekend, releasing videos of Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski. Both were in the tunnels under Gaza. Both were emaciated and looked like shells of their pre-October 7 selves.

David was filmed digging a hole in the ground, claiming he was being forced to dig his own grave. “Every day, my body becomes weaker and weaker,” he said. “I’m walking directly to my grave.” Hamas claims these hostages’ condition is caused by famine in Gaza. But a still shot reveals the cameraman’s arm, which is not emaciated and looks normal.

Braslavski was in tears in his video. “I am suffering with pain,” he said, “that doesn’t look good in my foot. I can’t stand and I can’t walk to the bathroom.”

Braslavski detailed some of the starvation that brought him to his emaciated state: “If before, yes, they would give me a little bit. Today, there is nothing at all. Three pieces of falafel—that’s what I ate today. Three pieces of falafel. Yesterday I barely ate a plate of rice. I can’t sleep. I can’t live.”

“Releasing these terrible images of starved Jews, who look like inmates of the Nazi death camps, was designed to throw the Holocaust into the Jews’ faces by saying, ‘Look, here it is again, but now the world doesn’t care and is blaming you instead for being the Nazis,’” wrote Melanie Phillips. “It was a triumphant taunt that Israel was powerless to prevent the second Holocaust that Hamas never stops announcing it is planning.”

These videos come after Hamas scored some major propaganda coups with Western media lying on its behalf, accusing Israel of genocide and deliberate starvation in Gaza. Major Western leaders have taken up the same lie. “So the images of the Israeli hostages who are actually being starved in Hamas tunnels have met little more than a shrug, while Western governments and the humanitarian establishment work out ways to punish Israel for the crimes that Hamas is actually committing,” wrote Phillips. “It is the Israeli hostages who are being starved while Israel is allowing huge amounts of food into Gaza. Yet astoundingly, in the West it’s Hamas that’s gained the moral high ground.”

She also warned that Hamas released the video “to break Israeli hearts so badly they will beg their government to surrender. But the consequence of that would be yet more Israelis butchered, raped, burned alive, kidnapped and starved to death. If Israel leaves Hamas undefeated, Israelis will be unable to return safely to their homes on the Gaza border. Israel therefore has no option but to press on to destroy Hamas as a military and governing force.”

Those videos are a rebuke to the whole world. They said, “Never again,” yet Jews are being treated exactly the same way as those in concentration camps.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry in his booklet Jerusalem in Prophecy details how the Bible prophesies of more violence from the Palestinians on Israel to come. Videos like the ones released over the weekend show just how bad circumstances could get if Israel gives its terrorist enemies a lifeline.

“Look closely at the inhumane evil perpetrated by Hamas in its attack on Israel in October,” wrote Mr. Flurry in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack. “These savage beasts sought to terrify, kidnap, torture, rape and murder as many Jews as possible. They indiscriminately gunned down fleeing youths, stole innocent civilians as hostages, killed children in front of their own parents and parents in front of their own children, burned whole families alive in their homes, cut babies out of the bellies of pregnant mothers, beheaded infants, and committed other sickening atrocities.

“Then, they boasted about their evil. They uploaded graphic videos onto social media. They spread these horrifying images as far and wide as possible.

“These are demonic actions. They are inspired by Satan the devil, who hates human beings, and especially hates Jews. That is a bold statement, but you can prove it from your Bible. …

“This is important to realize; otherwise you will not grasp the significance of what has happened in the Jewish state of Israel.

“This nightmare is a foreshadowing and a sign of a time of unprecedented suffering prophesied to come upon the whole world very soon!” To understand more about this evil, as well as why it is coming, read “A Sign of Worse to Come.”

Sixteen states sued President Trump on Friday because they want to continue mutilating teens. They’re challenging a January 28 executive order that bans government funding for so-called sex-change operations. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate, who wrote memos directing the Justice Department to prosecute those who offer such treatment to minors, were also targeted by the lawsuit.

“On Day One, President Trump took decisive action to stop the despicable mutilation and chemical castration of children—which everyday Americans resoundingly support,” said a White House spokeswoman. “The president has the lawful authority to protect America’s vulnerable children through executive action, and the administration looks forward to ultimate victory on this issue.”

The harm from this is so obvious that even the ultra-woke National Health Service here in Britain has been forced to ban it. Yet this lawsuit seems to argue that taxpayers are forced by the Constitution to fund these surgeries. Federal judges have already blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds for child mutilation. The Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. CASA limited nationwide injunctions and could see this block lifted, but it still requires the Justice Department to file a motion citing that new precedent.

The fact that leaders of 16 states are so determined to continue mutilating children that they launch court case after court case says a lot about how depraved our society has become. This is why our nations need brutal correction. See our “Pride” special issue for more on what God thinks about such behavior.

The Trump administration ended positive discrimination in federal hiring on Friday. On Jan. 16, 1883, U.S. President Chester Alan Arthur revolutionized the federal government by signing a law mandating that most positions within the federal government should be awarded on the basis of merit instead of political patronage. This law was part of a bigger package of reforms that ended up creating a fourth branch of government that is neither elected by the people nor accountable to them.

Yet at least in the civil service’s early years of operation, it was fairly efficient and nonpolitical.

This changed in 1981 when President Jimmy Carter signed a law into effect prohibiting the federal government from assessing the skills and abilities of job applicants. Since some racial minorities performed worse on the Professional and Administrative Career Examination, the Luevano Consent Decree eliminated standardized testing in favor of self-assessments. The result was a less-efficient and more political “deep state” accountable not to the president but to whatever manager was assessing the self-assessments.

The Trump administration is now revoking the Luevano Consent Decree so that standardized tests can once against determine which potential hires are the most qualified for their positions—another step toward President Trump getting control over his divided government.

Finally, some inspiring news: The James Webb Space Telescope published its longer, deepest observations of anything outside our galaxy on Friday. In 2003 and 2004, the Hubble Space Telescope stunned the world with its Ultra Deep Field images, which revealed nearly 10,000 galaxies in just a tiny speck of the sky. This is Webb’s version of the same image.

Webb’s photo reveals even more light sources—mostly galaxies. It also found that many of the galaxies are older and farther away than previously realized. Its infrared camera picks up more haziness form gas clouds, making the picture look fuzzier and less sharp the Hubble’s. This transition video is a good way of comparing the two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf6A-FNW2xY

As inspiring as the extra detail and data are, I think the Hubble original looks better. But both give a powerful message.

“[W]e have a flaming hope of something very real!” writes Mr. Flurry in his booklet January 16: God’s Miracle Day. “… That is our future! And that is all thanks to the God of Elijah! That future was made even more vivid and exciting … [in] 2004—also on January 16—when the Hubble telescope concluded 114 days of taking pictures—over 800 of them—of a tiny pinprick of outer space above the Northern Hemisphere. The resulting image, called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, shows a spectacular spray of galaxies, some of them thought to be over 13 billion light-years away! Each tiny dot in this image is a galaxy—a collection of millions to hundreds of billions of stars.

“What an inspiring glimpse into the universe future God has awaiting us! God certainly wants to give us that vision to motivate us.”

Our free, full-color booklet Our Awesome Universe Potential provides many more glimpses into that future.