Israel Under Attack – U.S. Administration Abandoning Its Ally? by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20585/israel-under-attack

Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter explicitly prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any member state, making Iran’s actions tantamount to an act of war.

The US administration’s call for Israel to refrain from responding to attacks while facing direct aggression is deeply troubling and raises significant questions about the principles of sovereignty and self-defense.

In the face of relentless attacks on Israel, Washington is sending a dangerous message of encouragement, if not outright approval, to aggressors and undermining Israel’s right to defend itself against existential threats.

Where is any real threat or pressure being paced on Hamas, Qatar or Iran, all of whom initiated the conflict in the first place? As far one can tell, nothing is even being done to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons program. If Iran had nuclear weapons, does anyone think it might hesitate to use them, even “just” as a means of coercion?

The expectation that Israel should tolerate such attacks not only undermines the principles of self-defense and sovereignty but also erodes the longstanding partnership between the United States and Israel, sending a disconcerting message to the world about the strength of any US alliance in the face of adversity.

Amid the relentless assaults from multiple adversaries — Iran’s regime, Qatar, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Houthis — Israel finds itself surrounded by Iran’s “ring of fire” on all fronts.

These coordinated attacks, originating from both neighboring states and non-state actors, pose, as clearly intended, a threat to Israel’s existence. In these dire circumstances, Israel looks to its longstanding ally, the United States, for crucial support and solidarity. However, the Biden administration’s approach has left Israel feeling isolated and abandoned at a time when it most needs unwavering backing.

Columbia Fails to Protect Its Jewish Community A toothless task force and other measures haven’t stopped antisemitism from flourishing on campus. By Michael Oren

https://www.wsj.com/articles/columbia-fails-to-protect-its-jewish-community-encampment-house-israel-f4a139a2?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Police broke up a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University Thursday, arresting more than 100 protesters for trespassing. The effort followed six months of violent anti-Israel demonstrations that left many Jewish students and faculty members feeling abandoned. Columbia, they said, has become a hotbed of antisemitism and, apart from rhetoric, the administration had done little to combat it. The question is whether Columbia President Nemat Shafik’s decision to summon the police is a one-time response to an endemic threat or a turning point in the fight against Jew-hatred, one that will set an example for universities across the U.S.

The encampment was timed to coincide with Ms. Shafik’s testimony Wednesday before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. Avoiding the mistakes of her Harvard, Penn and MIT counterparts, who in December played down the plight of Jews on campus, she affirmed that calls for the genocide of the Jews were antisemitic and pledged to punish those using violent language. “Columbia’s policies and structures were sometimes unable to meet the moment,” she admitted. Ms. Shafik listed measures Columbia had taken, including restricting anti-Israel protests to designated campus areas and appointing a task force to recommend ways to fight antisemitism at the university.

Missing was an admission of the university’s failure to enforce the measures it had enacted to protect its Jewish community. She didn’t address how, under the banner of free speech, Columbia became inhospitable to Jews. She didn’t acknowledge how incendiary demonstrations such as the encampment were the product of the university’s inaction.

For weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7 assault on Israel, Columbia’s administration looked on passively amid campus demonstrations supporting the slaughter, rape and abduction of more than 1,200 people. Expressing solidarity with Hamas’s “resistance,” members of the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), hounded Jewish passersby with chants endorsing the murder of Israel’s Jews. Protesters disrupted classes and blocked access to some academic buildings.

Nowhere was safe. Daniel Kroll, a junior, was accosted in a kosher dining area by a student shouting “F— the Jews.” Eden Yadegar, another junior, testified at a congressional roundtable in February: “We’ve been attacked with sticks outside our library, we’ve been surrounded by angry mobs, and we have been threatened.”

Confidence in Ruler: Words of Wisdom from Confucius by Lawrence Kadish

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20587/confidence-in-ruler-confucius

“Tsekung asked about government, and Confucius replied: ‘People must have sufficient to eat; there must be a sufficient army; and there must be sufficient confidence of the people in the ruler.’ ‘If you are forced to give up one of these three objectives, what would you go without first?’ asked Tsekung. Confucius said, ‘I would go without the army first.’ ‘And if you were forced to go without one of the two remaining factors, what would you rather go without?’ asked Tsekung again. ‘I would rather go without sufficient food for the people. There have always been deaths in every generation since men lived, but a nation cannot exist without confidence in its ruler.'”
— From The Wisdom of China and India by Lin Yutang.*

Americans have lately been witnessing threats to our republic, starting with election interference (here, here and here); the US abandonment of Afghanistan; an inflation that has reportedly forced people to choose between “heating and eating” and delay medical care; a 2000-mile-long open border that has allowed into the United States “1.7 gotaways” that we know about, as well as reportedly 10 million others, allegedly doubling the number already here, who serve to swell the census, which currently determines the number of seats allocated in the House of Representatives for ten years, as well as the number of delegates in the electoral college; accommodating Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has been causing “more than 112,000 deaths from fentanyl” in just a 12-month period, the equivalent of one large plane crash a day; failing to challenge the CCP’s spy balloon and discontinue TikTok, which has been called “170 million spy balloons”; attempts to criminalize parents “who protest critical race theory and other school policies,” Catholics who attend Latin Mass, and attempts generally to “criminalize dissent”; attempts to criminalize politics and political opponents; fabrications that that Hunter Biden’s laptop “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian disinformation operation”; alleged lies about involvement in family business dealings; unequal application of the law; funding both sides of both the Hamas-Israel War and Russia’s war on Ukraine; engaging in government censorship (here, here, here and here); flouting and the law (here, here and here), then “proudly admitting it,” among other activities.

Progressives, Columbia and the Anti-Israel Protesters The university finally calls in the cops to remove an anti-Israel mob on campus, in a lesson for Democratic mayors.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/columbia-university-protesters-israel-hamas-palestine-nypd-nemat-minouche-shafik-0f6feba4?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

Protesters across the country these days claim they are fighting for the rights of Palestinians but show contempt for the rights of those whose lives they disrupt. On Thursday Columbia University President Minouche Shafik had enough. When the protesters who set up a “Gaza solidarity encampment” on the university’s South Lawn ignored repeated warnings to leave, she called in the New York Police Department to have them removed.

Ms. Shafik waited too long to address the problems festering on her campus, and her move came only after she was grilled by Congress on antisemitism on Columbia’s campus. But give her credit for acting. In a statement she explains that the protesters ignored multiple warnings that they were violating university policies.

Other leaders should take heed—especially the Democrats and progressives who run America’s cities and most institutions. In recent weeks similar protests have shut down San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, blocked access to Chicago’s airport and interrupted Congressional hearings. They even crashed a fundraiser in New York to heckle President Biden, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

It is hardly surprising that the most progressive cities have seen the most protests. No surprise, either, that among those arrested at Columbia Thursday was Barnard student Isra Hirsi, daughter of anti-Israel Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.). An unbowed Ms. Hirsi tweeted that, in addition to Columbia’s divestment from Israel, she and her fellow protesters are demanding “FULL amnesty for all students facing repression.” Naturally.

Ms. Hirsi and the other protesters are fully entitled to express their view that Israel is pursuing genocide in its war with Hamas. But what the country saw Thursday at Columbia wasn’t about free expression. As President Shafik pointed out, the protest was about disrupting campus life for everyone else and creating “a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.” It’s the same for protests designed to prevent others from commuting to work, catching a flight or getting to class.

The Left’s Repressive Tolerance “Free speech for me but not for thee” isn’t a critique to the left.  It’s the blueprint. By Stephen Soukup

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/20/the-lefts-repressive-tolerance/

As one watches hundreds of Columbia University students march through New York demanding an end to the state of Israel and the removal of all Zionists from their presence; as one watches Loyola University’s “Anti Racism Center Fellow” demand that “all you ugly ass little Jewish people” “get the f*ck out of here;” as one watches NPR retaliate against the internal watchdog who called it out for its radical leftist bias and then watches as the watchdog’s (now former) colleagues turn on him and insist that he is a liar, two things are worth keeping in mind. First, these are all the fruits of the “tolerant” left, the people who insist that “diversity is our strength” and that narrow-mindedness is the most heinous sin of all. Second, the “tolerant” left’s manifest intolerance is not an accident, nor is it an example of hypocrisy. It is, rather, intentionally and lucidly undertaken. It is the purposeful and unapologetic manifestation of an ideology that the left adopted decades ago in its remorseless pursuit of cultural and political hegemony.

Once upon a time, the American Left was—at least in theory—thoroughly dedicated to the ideas of free speech and free expression. The leftist students of the University of California, Berkeley, spent years protesting and agitating for an end to speech codes, making their campus the home of the “Free Speech Movement.” The American Civil Liberties Union fought tooth and nail to enable neo-Nazis to exercise their First Amendment rights to march through Skokie, Illinois.  The left rallied around pornographer Larry Flynt in his fight against Rev. Jerry Falwell, who sued Flynt for libel over a crass parody. Leftists loved free speech and wanted everyone, everywhere, to enjoy its inarguable benefits. Or so they said.

The catch is that while the American Left professed a deep and abiding affection for the idea of free speech, it never really cared about that idea at all. Indeed, it never really cared too much about any ideas. One thing that has always distinguished the American Left from its European counterparts is its complete disinterest in theories and philosophy and its attendant obsession with power and the tactics necessary to achieve it.  What little philosophical thought the New Left did absorb in the 1960s was that which reinforced its non-intellectual origins and aims. “The Port Huron Statement”—the New Left’s founding charter (and a document bought and paid for by the United Auto Workers union)—was not, as it is often described, a statement of “ideas.”  Rather, it was a statement of strategies—strategies for achieving and maintaining power.

Israeli Attack Signals It Will Never Appease Iran Israel’s attack may dissuade Iran from attempting further attacks because they could be followed by more aggressive Israeli retaliation, possibly against Iran’s nuclear facilities or oil industry. By Fred Fleitz

https://amgreatness.com/2024/04/19/israel-will-not-appease-iran-after-the-april-13-attack/

 It appears that Israel fired drones at a military target—possibly an air base—near Isfahan, Iran, as part of a limited, precision retaliation to last week’s missile and drone attack on Israel by Iran.

By taking this action, Israel ignored strong pressure from many nations, especially the U.S. and Europe, to not retaliate to Iran’s missile/drone attack because this could further escalate tensions. Israel rejected this pressure and instead sent a message that it will not tolerate attacks on its territory by Iran and that it will never appease Iran.

An attack on Isfahan is significant because it is the location of Iran’s largest nuclear research complex, which employs about 3,000 scientists. According to the BBC, the Isfahan region also has major military infrastructure, including a large airbase, a major missile production complex, and several nuclear facilities.

This appeared to be a limited Israeli attack to demonstrate its ability to strike deep inside Iran. Isfahan was probably chosen because it has important and vulnerable nuclear facilities that Israel could destroy if it wanted to. Israel conducted this attack as a show of force that might not lead to further escalation and avoided civilian casualties.  We may know later today exactly what Israel attacked.

Israel’s decision to attack Iran reflected how seriously it took the April 13 missile/drone attack.

After 99% of approximately 350 drones and missiles fired by Iran on April 13 against Israel were shot down or malfunctioned, the Biden administration and other world leaders urged Israel to “exercise restraint” and not retaliate. These leaders argued that the Iranian attack was not a serious threat and Israeli leaders should therefore not risk a major war by striking back against Iran.

Blaming Israel’s response to Iran is the classic abuser’s stance By Andrea Widburg

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/04/blaming_israel_s_response_to_iran_is_the_classic_abuser_s_stance.html

After October 7, around the world (except amongst Hamas and its most open supporters), there was a moment of pity for Israel. However, once Israel stood up against her abuser, the pity ended, and the unprincipled victim shaming began. Although Iran seems, at least temporarily, to have backed down after Israel’s airstrike yesterday, the normal Iran enablers were immediately outraged that the Israeli worm dared turn.

Here’s the chronology: For decades, Iran has been funding Hamas and Hezbollah, which have engaged in non-step terrorist attacks from Hamas and rocket attacks from Hezbollah. It recently emerged that a general from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”) helped mastermind October 7. Israel engaged in a targeted strike against the general who was meeting at an IRGC office in Syria.

Iran retaliated with a barrage of rockets, missiles, and drones, many aimed at Jerusalem. It was only because of Israel’s superb defensive systems that Iran’s strike was unsuccessful. Israel was able to protect her citizens, who suffered no casualties, along with her civilian and military infrastructure. Ironically, one of the things she protected was the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s most sacred sites and a target, intentional or not, of Iran’s strike.

Within minutes of Iran’s attack, those who fear Iran and those who hate Israel (not always the same people, but there’s lots of overlap), instantly urged Israel to suck it up and do nothing. The fact that she survived Iran’s strike, which was an act of war, was a “victory,” they said, and this was a message that came from the White House, the UN, and European leaders. Leftists and a handful of Republicans across the media and the internet chimed in. This tweet is representative:

That Israel’s meekly taking what Iran dished out would turn her into a sitting duck for other Iranian strikes was irrelevant to these urgings.

Israel, however, refused to accept the role of sitting duck. Last night, she launched an attack against Iran. It appears that she targeted myriad sites immediately adjacent to Iran’s nuclear facilities. The message was clear: We’ve chosen not to strike into Iran’s heart, but we can if we want to. Currently, it seems that Iran got the message—as bullies often do when their victims finally push back.

Mark P. Mills When Politics and Physics Collide The belief that mandates and massive subsidies can summon a world without fossil fuels is magical thinking.

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-magical-thinking-behind-the-energy-transition

The idea that the United States can quickly “transition” away from hydrocarbons—the energy sources primarily used today—to a future dominated by so-called green technologies has become one of the central political divides of our time. For progressive politicians here and in Europe, the “energy transition” has achieved totemic status. But it is fundamentally a claim that depends on assessing the future of technology.

While policies can favor one class of technology over another, neither political rhetoric nor financial largesse can make the impossible possible. Start with some basics. It’s not just that currently over 80 percent of our energy needs are met directly by burning oil, natural gas, and coal—a share that has declined by only a few percentage points over the past several decades; the key fact is that 100 percent of everything in civilized society, including the favored “green energy” machines themselves, depends on using hydrocarbons somewhere in the supply chains and systems. The scale of today’s green policy interventions is unprecedented, targeting the fuels that anchor the affordability and availability of everything.

In the U.S., the energy-transition policies center around the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the most ambitious industrial legislation since World War II. Both critics and enthusiasts note that the budget figure advertised when the legislation was passed—$369 billion—isn’t close to the real cost. A comprehensive Wood MacKenzie analysis shows that the Green New Deal’s price tag is closer to $3 trillion.

And that’s not all. Through regulatory fiat, the Environmental Protection Agency’s newly announced rules effectively mandate that more than half of all cars and trucks sold must be electric vehicles (EVs) by 2032. That will demand, and soon, the complete restructuring of the $100 billion U.S. automobile industry. At the same time, an EV-dominated future will also require hundreds of billions more dollars in utility-sector spending to expand the electric distribution system to fuel EVs. Added to that, among other similar administrative diktats, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s newly released “climate” disclosure rules (temporarily on hold) are intended to induce investors to direct billions of dollars toward energy-transition technologies. This rule will entail tens of billions annually just in compliance costs, never mind the shifts to investments it will create.

Impeachment ‘Whistleblower’ Was in the Loop of Biden-Ukraine Affairs That Trump Wanted Probed By Paul Sperry

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/04/17/impeachment_whistleblower_was_in_the_loop_of_biden-ukraine_affairs_that_trump_wanted_probed_1024937.html

The ‘whistleblower’ who sparked Donald Trump’s first impeachment was deeply involved in the political maneuverings behind Biden-family business schemes in Ukraine that Trump wanted probed, newly obtained emails from former Vice President Joe Biden’s office reveal.

Eric Ciaramella: Privately expressed shock — “Yikes” — at linking U.S. aid to firing a prosecutor probing the firm paying Biden’s son. But he kept mum publicly, so was he really shocked?
Harvard University/Davis Center

In 2019, then-National Intelligence Council analyst Eric Ciaramella touched off a political firestorm when he anonymously accused Trump of linking military aid for Ukraine to a demand for an investigation into alleged Biden corruption in that country.

But four years earlier, while working as a national security analyst attached to then-Vice President Joe Biden’s office, Ciaramella was a close adviser when Biden threatened to cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine unless it fired its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Ukraine-based Burisma Holdings. At the time, the corruption-riddled energy giant was paying Biden’s son Hunter millions of dollars.

Those payments – along with other evidence tying Joe Biden to his family’s business dealings – received little attention in 2019 as Ciaramella accused Trump of a corrupt quid pro quo. Neither did subsequent evidence indicating that Hunter Biden’s associates had identified Shokin as a “key target.” These matters are now part of the House impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

“It now seems there was material evidence that would have been used at the impeachment trial [to exonerate Trump],” said George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley, who has testified as an expert witness in the ongoing Biden impeachment inquiry. “Trump was alleging there was a conflict of interest with the Bidens, and the evidence could have challenged Biden’s account and established his son’s interest in the Shokin firing.”

Ciaramella’s role – including high-level discussions with top Biden aides and Ukrainian prosecutors – is only now coming to light thanks to the recent release of White House emails and photos from the National Archives.

The emails show Ciaramella expressed shock – “Yikes” is what he wrote – at Biden’s move to withhold the $1 billion in aid from Kyiv, which represented a sudden shift in U.S. policy. They also show he was drawn into White House communications over how to control adverse publicity from Hunter taking a lucrative seat on Burisma’s board.

Ever More Audacious Efforts To Suppress Mainstream Conservative Speech Francis Menton

https://us7.campaign-archive.com/?e=a9fdc67db9&u=9d011a88d8fe324cae8c084c5&id=d08064d2fc

You are undoubtedly familiar with many efforts of the fascist left to use its control of government offices, bureaucracies, and other institutions to delegitimize and silence mainstream conservative speech: things like the Censorship Industrial Complex, otherwise known as pressure by government functionaries to induce social media platforms to shut down wrong think on topics ranging from Covid to climate change to Trump; de-monetization of perfectly reasonable sites like PJ Media or Watts Up With That; the political prosecutions of presumptive Republican nominee Trump, including locking him in a courtroom to prevent him from campaigning; and many more such.

This week along comes a new and quite extreme instance that you may have missed. A European group called the National Conservatives scheduled a two-day conference for Tuesday and Wednesday in Brussels. The signature issue of the National Conservative movement is immigration, which they want to restrict; but beyond that their Conference appeared to feature a wide range of voices from Europe’s right, including some prominent elected officials. Examples of speakers were Nigel Farage of the UK (one of the leaders of the Brexit movement, and now leading a political party in the UK called the Reform Party, that looks likely to win significant seats when the next election is held); Suella Braverman, a Conservative MP in the UK, and recently, if briefly, the Home Secretary (which is one of the top cabinet positions); Eric Zemmour of France, head of a political party called “Reconquête!”, and winner of about 7% of the votes in the last presidential election; and Viktor Orban, current (and since 2010) Prime Minister of Hungary.