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May 2019

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Barring of Eurovision from Jerusalem Is a Win for the BDS Movement By Shay Attias

By on May 14th, 2019

https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/barring-eurovision-jerusalem-win-for-bds/

The €28.5 million Eurovision Song Contest, which draws 200 million viewers from 42 countries, might seem to be just a huge pop spectacle, but it is a good deal more. In addition to serving as an entertainment vehicle, it is a powerful mechanism of soft power – a tool that is critically important to the modern State of Israel and particularly to the city of Jerusalem. Europe’s refusal to allow the contest to be held in Jerusalem, in contravention of Eurovision’s own rules, constitutes a victory for the BDS movement.

The refusal of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) to allow the 2019 Eurovision Song Contest to take place in Jerusalem shone a light on the gap that remains between Israel and Europe despite their natural affinity.

Following President Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city, the EU has led global opposition to Israel’s sovereignty. Israel is an associated state of the EU, yet its capital – alone among the capitals of all other countries – has never been acknowledged by Europe or, indeed, by most of the world’s states. The 2019 Eurovision Song Contest, which will take place in Israel this weekend, is thus underpinned with years of tension and suspicion.

Despite the fact that Israel has won the contest four times and hosted the competition in Jerusalem twice (in 1979 and 1999), Europe decided that this year it would not tolerate Jerusalem’s hosting of the contest. Israel won Eurovision last year, and according to the event’s protocol, the capital city of the winning country hosts the contest the following year. No matter: Israel’s claim to host the contest in Jerusalem, which would have been in accordance with the contest’s own rules, was rejected.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Joseph Klein: Tlaib’s Morbid Fantasies of a Palestinian “Safe Haven” for Jews Nancy Pelosi – Where are you?

By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273766/tlaibs-morbid-fantasies-palestinian-safe-haven-joseph-klein

Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., is standing by her latest hate-filled statement, which is based on a monstrous falsehood. She said that she has a “kind of calming feeling” when she thinks about the Holocaust because her Palestinian “ancestors” tried “to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time.” In the same interview by hosts Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Rep. Tlaib complained, according to her one-sided Palestinian victimhood narrative, “that it was my ancestors, Palestinians, who lost their land and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence in many ways…”

Rep. Tlaib’s Palestinian “ancestors” were in fact amongst the enthusiastic boosters of the Nazi genocide machine during World War II. Palestinian leaders sought to carry on the plan to exterminate as many of the Jews as possible who had managed to escape the Holocaust and reach the Holy Land following the war. Instead of accepting the original two-state solution proposed by the United Nations more than seven decades ago under which the Palestinians could have been living in their own independent state all this time, their leadership rejected the idea of a Jewish state existing side by side in peace with a Palestinian state.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Report: Obama White House Orchestrated Clinton Email Cover Up By Matt Margolis

By on May 14th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/judicial-watch-obama-white-house-orchestrated-clinton-email-cover-up/

According to newly released emails obtained by Judicial Watch, the Obama White House was tracking a December 2012 Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) records request concerning Hillary Clinton’s unsecured, private email server. These new emails prove that the Obama White House knew about the scandal earlier than previously admitted, and attempted to cover it up.

Months after the Obama White House got involved, “the State Department responded to the FOIA requestor, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), falsely stating that no such records existed.”

Our discovery is centered upon whether Clinton intentionally attempted to evade the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using a non-government email system and whether the State Department acted in bad faith in processing our FOIA request for communications from Clinton’s office. U.S District Court Judge Royce Lamberth ordered Obama administration senior State Department officials, lawyers, and Clinton aides, as well as E.W. Priestap, to be deposed or answer written questions under oath. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Not Suitable for Recruiting’: A Talk with Vladimir Bukovsky, Part I By Jay Nordlinger

By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/05/vladimir-bukovsky-legendary-dissident-conversation/

All Soviet dissidents are legendary, to one degree or another. Vladimir Bukovsky is especially so. He is held in awe by people whom the rest of us hold in awe. I’m speaking of his fellow dissidents. Bukovsky is a dissident’s dissident, so to speak.

A book of his, which originally appeared in 1995, is now being published in English for the first time. On his back patio, amid chirping birds, I talk with him about this and many other subjects.

And where is the back patio? In Cambridge, England, where Bukovsky has lived since the mid-1970s.

Bukovsky has had mighty health struggles — but he indulges his listener, his interviewer, gladly and ably.

• He was born in 1942 and quickly became dissident. Enrolled at Moscow State University for biology, he was kicked out at age 19. He had criticized the Komsomol, i.e., the Young Communist League.

I ask him, “Do you think you were born this way? Born to stick your neck out, born to get into trouble?” “Yeah,” he says. “There’s nothing you can do about it. I would feel uncomfortable if I tried to hide what I believe. It’s against my nature.”

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’s Disastrous New Answer on Medicare for All By John McCormack

By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/kamala-harris-medicare-for-all/

Soon after Kamala Harris launched her presidential campaign back in January, CNN’s Jake Tapper asked her, at a televised townhall, the following question about Senator Bernie Sanders’s Medicare for All bill (a piece of legislation that Harris is cosponsoring): “I believe it will totally eliminate private insurance. So for people out there who like their insurance, they don’t get to keep it?”

“Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on,” Harris said after making some brief comments about the problems with private insurance.

On Sunday, Harris appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” for her first interview with Tapper since January, and she insisted she had only endorsed eliminating health-care “bureaucracy” and “waste” in her previous comments.

“But the bill gets rid of insurance,” Tapper interjected.

“No, no, no, no, it does not get rid of insurance. It does not get rid of insurance,” Harris replied, insisting that “supplemental” insurance coverage would be available.

After Tapper pressed her some more on the details of the bill, Harris eventually seemed to concede that supplemental private insurance would exist only for things like cosmetic surgery that are not services covered by the government under Medicare for All.

So why did Harris insist in the first place that the Medicare for All bill doesn’t eliminate insurance? It is not a factual claim that is in dispute. As the New York Times has put it: “At the heart of the ‘Medicare for all’ proposals championed by Senator Bernie Sanders and many Democrats is a revolutionary idea: Abolish private health insurance.”

The Medicare for All bill “outlaws the market for selling insurance that covers the same services included in Medicare for All. You can only sell private insurance that covers services outside of what is covered by that bill,” James Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute tells National Review Online. Sanders wants “to fight what occurs in most other countries, which is people opting out of the [single-payer] system through private insurance and going to privately run, privately paid doctors and hospitals that are a little better than the public utility system that everybody else uses.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What ‘America First’ Means to Pompeo The secretary of state elaborates on Trump’s slogan, appealing to the Founders’ vision. By Walter Russell Mead

By on May 14th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-america-first-means-to-pompeo-11557788496

The U.S. faces a series of intractable crises and standoffs around the world. Trade talks with China have reached an impasse; North Korea has returned to threats and missile launches; the chaos on America’s southern border shows no sign of abating; relations with Germany reached new lows after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo canceled a meeting with Chancellor Angela Merkel so he could visit Iraq; Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro continues to defy U.S. pressure to stand down; and an apparent act of sabotage against ships in the Persian Gulf Monday ratcheted tensions another notch higher in the Middle East.

Against this background, Secretary Pompeo delivered his most comprehensive attempt yet to expound the core themes informing the Trump administration’s foreign policy. His speech—delivered Saturday to the Claremont Institute in Southern California—deserves careful study. Whether or not President Trump’s foreign policy is successful, the ideas laid out by Mr. Pompeo are likely to shape the Republican Party’s approach to statecraft for years to come.

From the end of the Cold War through the 2016 election, U.S. foreign policy oscillated between the liberal internationalism of the Clinton and Obama presidencies and the neoconservatism ascendant under George W. Bush. It was clear during his campaign for the Republican nomination that Mr. Trump (along with much of the Republican base) rejected key tenets of Bush-era foreign policy, but it was not clear what approach he would implement instead. He was against Mr. Bush’s approach to trade, against the war in Iraq, doubtful of the value of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and deeply skeptical of democracy promotion in the Middle East. But what was he for?

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