Leland Vittert’s War Notes: Evil Is Real 🚨

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NewsNation Chief Washington Anchor and On Balance host Leland Vittert was a foreign correspondent for four years in Jerusalem. He gives you an early look at tonight's 9 p.m. ET show, delivered straight to your inbox.

Weekend Recap❄️: Norman Rockwell himself could have painted the picture.

🌨️A snowy Sunday morning before Christmas at Our Lady of the Lourdes in Massapequa Park, New York.
- ⛪️Monsignor Jim Lisante invited me to speak about "Born Lucky."
  - 🎤Truthfully, his introduction was better than my speech.
  - 📺You can watch both here.
Fast forward⏭️: This morning, we started laying out the show, and I remarked to Bob Morrissey, our senior producer, how depressing everything is.
- 🎤Then, I thought back to Sunday morning and the end of my speech
  - 📺Seriously, go watch it — click here.
  - 📍Hope and love are very much alive in America. You just need to visit Massapequa Park.
- 📍I plan to return in the summer and visit the "All American Drive-in."
  - 🍔Locals say it's the best cheeseburger in all of America.

‼️Brown University Updates: We have a new lead in Providence, Rhode Island, tonight after a shooter killed two students and injured nine at the Ivy League school.

Watch tonight📺: NewsNation's Tracy Walder and Jessica Kartalija, along with retired FBI agent Bobby Chacon, join us on why it's been so hard to get good video of the person of interest.

Confronting Evil, aka Islamic Terrorism 🚨

‼️Time to be honest — much of Islam is not compatible with Western values. Many who practice Islam show no desire to embrace our values.

🤦🏼‍♂️Yet we — "we" being Australia, Western Europe, Canada and America — keep allowing in mass migration of people who have zero interest in adapting our values.
- - Note: This does not mean all Muslims endorse Jihad but at what point is it worth the risk?
- 📰The Australian magazine Quillette headlines: "Bondi Beach not a 'surprise'"
🌎This weekend must be when we change our view of political and radical Islam.
- ‼️Americans killed in Syria
- ‼️Jews targeted and 15 killed in Australia
- ‼️A mass bombing plot foiled in Los Angeles
  - ⚠️They all have one thing in common — the cause of radical Islam.
🗣️For a long time, we have been bullied into not talking about the dangers of Islamic terrorism because we were called Islamophobic.
- - 📺That continues now — watch CNN's Abby Phillip castigate those ringing the alarm bells.
- ‼️"Phobia" is an unreasonable fear — this is a very reasonable fear.
  - 📄Look at the list from Peter Lloyd of Islamic terror attacks over the past two decades
    - The Nice Attack
    - The Paris Attacks
    - The Shoe Bomber
    - The Orlando attack
    - The Beltway Snipers
    - The Fort Hood Shooter
    - The Underwear Bomber
    - The Westminster Attack
    - The 2005 Bali Bombings
    - The murder of Lee Rigby
    - The U.S.S. Cole Bombers
    - The London Bridge Attack
    - The Madrid Train Bombers
    - The Charlie Hebdo Attacks
    - The San Bernardino Attacks
    - The Surabaya bombings
    - The Minnesota Mall stabbings
    - The 7/7 bombers
    - The Moscow Theatre Attackers
    - The Boston Marathon Bombers
    - The Ankara Airport Attack
    - The Manchester Arena bombing
    - The Pan-Am #103 Bombers
    - The Iranian Embassy Takeover
    - The Air France Hijackers
    - The 2002 Bali Nightclub
    - The Batta Meena Attacks
    - The Beirut Embassy bombers
    - The Libyan U.S. Embassy Attack
    - The Yazidi Massacre of 2014
    - The Beheading of French Priest
    - The Buenos Aires bombers
    - The Israeli Olympic Team
    - The Kenyan U.S Embassy
    - The Khobar Towers Bombers
    - The Beirut Marine bombers
    - The Besian School Attackers
    - The First WTC bombers
    - The Beheading of Daniel Pearl
    - The Achille Lauro Hijackers
    - The Bombay Attackers
    - The 9/11 hijackers

🤷🏼‍♂️It's time to acknowledge that many Muslims coming to the Western world don't want to be Western — many want to bring Islam to America and the West.
- ‼️They want us to accept their values — not accept ours.
  - 🛑That's not how it works
  - ✏️"Muslims unwilling to assimilate and Western leaders who think assimilation is racism make for a dangerous combination that will keep getting people killed," Erick Erickson posted on X.
  - 🎤"If you think this is a Jew problem, you are mistaken. ... They want to destroy our entire way of life, and it will take a collective response to defeat this," says Erin Molan.
‼️If the Muslim community is not going to demonize "the radicals" and turn them in — they are part of the problem
- 👀Some members of the Muslim community in Australia had to know what this father and son were planning or at least know they had been radicalized…
  - 👎🏼Yet, they did nothing.
- 📺The response of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., to Australia's attacks this weekend was a perfect example:
  - 🎤"It is a tragedy that this has become a normal occurrence, not just in the United States, but now seeing it in Australia, who's worked really hard to create gun prevention laws, to prevent the kind of tragedy that took place today," said Omar.
    - 🤦🏼Really? It's the guns — go give a high-powered rifle to every member of the church I was at this weekend.
      - ‼️I promise NONE would go shoot up a Hanukkah celebration.
- 👀Where are the Muslims and Imams outraged?
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️Where are Medhi Hassan and CAIR saying Islam needs to have a reckoning over its people committing mass killings and the rhetoric that leads to it?
  - 🤷🏼‍♂️Where are the Islamic leaders calling out the radicalization in their own communities?
    - ‼️It's not there — it shows they don't really care, are scared of it or are OK with it.

🏃What's more scary is the politicians on the Left in America and worldwide running cover for the Islamic community

📰From The Wall Street Journal —
- ✏️"Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the suspects were driven to commit an act of antisemitism by ideology that is an 'extreme perversion of Islam,' but acted alone."
  - 🤦🏼‍♂️Isn't it amazing how many people pervert Islam?
    - 🤦🏼‍♂️Is it really a perversion of Islam?
    - If it is, why aren't all the "experts" and leaders in Islam angry?
- ✏️"'There's no evidence of collusion. There's no evidence that these people were part of a cell,' he said in an interview Monday evening with the Australian Broadcasting Corp., stressing that investigations were continuing."
  - ‼️No — this father and son never said anything radical at the mosque?
  - They never watched radical preachers online?
  - They certainly weren't at the "gas the Jews" rally in Sydney?
    - 🗣️Why is anybody who chanted "Gas the jews" allowed to stay in Australia?

Watch tonight 📺: Bill O'Reilly on why evil right now is tacit acceptance of Islamic terrorism in the Western world, and why we must confront this evil.

🤷🏼‍♂️We must be honest about it.

WATCH ON BALANCE WEEKNIGHTS AT 9P/8C

Every night during On Balance, Leland Vittert asks "why?" about the most pressing matters of the day, with an intellectual, balanced and sometimes irreverent take on the news.

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