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May 2021

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel-Gulf relations pass first major test unscathed Daniel Sonnenfeld

By on May 23rd, 2021

https://www.ynetnews.com/magazine/article/BJXexxHFu

While Gaza fighting threatens to put any future agreements on hold for now, some are reassured that commerce with Emirati and Bahraini companies will progress as usual, citing relatively lukewarm reaction to violence.

With justified festivity, Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed normalization agreements and established full diplomatic relations in 2020, with the aid of American mediation. They were the first peace accords signed between the Jewish state and an Arab country since 1994, when relations were cemented with Jordan. Importantly, and in opposition to the cold nature of relations with Israel’s neighbor to the east, the ties between it and its new Gulf friends were expected to be warm and friendly in nature. And indeed, tourism and business relations between the countries soon flourished for all to see.

However, the agreements signed did not include a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which had been the barrier preventing an earlier establishment of relations. Now, with fighting between Israel and the Palestinians in Gaza erupting on May 10, relations between the Jewish state and its new Arab allies were put to a test.

“The latest conflagration between Israel and Hamas, and especially the events in Jerusalem which preceded it, constituted the first significant test of the normalization agreements and the resilience of the growing relations with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan,” Dr. Yoel Guzansky, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University and a specialist on Gulf politics, told The Media Line. Morocco and Sudan also set on a path of normalization agreements with Israel under the wider umbrella named the Abraham Accords.
Guzansky is referencing the violent clashes between Israeli police and Israeli Arabs, which first began outside Damascus Gate in Jerusalem, and later escalated and spread to Al-Aqsa Mosque compound.
Police actions on the compound, especially entering one of the mosques there, were perceived as a grave insult to Muslim sensitivities by believers in Israel, the Palestinian territories, and throughout the world. Rising tensions in Jerusalem, tied also to a legal deliberation that threatened to evict Palestinians from several houses in East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, were ultimately seized as justification by Hamas to fire rockets at Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Israel retaliated and exchanges of fire commenced.

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

A Woke Lexicon A necessarily partial compilation of woke terms and what they really mean when voiced by those on the other side of our growing political divide.  By Alexander Zubatov

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/21/a-woke-lexicon/

At this point few will deny that there is a massive failure to communicate between the minions of the woke Left and those who have managed to maintain their equilibrium in a world gone off the rails. At least some substantial portion of that failure stems from the fact that too many of us hear woke Left terminology and take it literally, ascribing to it traditional definitions of the sort that might still be found in dusty dictionaries or that are tacitly shared by all involved in dinner-table conversations in ordinary American households. 

Thus, for example, when we hear the accusation of “racism” cast about recklessly every which way, we might feel bewildered or even exasperated if we approach the matter from the standpoint of the word’s customary meaning. To clear this and other similar misunderstandings up, I have endeavored to offer below a necessarily partial compilation of woke terms and what they really mean when voiced by those on the other side of our growing political divide. 

Please understand: as this is a work of cultural anthropology presenting a snapshot of the inner workings of an anti-culture that routinely purges its own most cherished creeds and their adherents, all definitions adduced here are necessarily provisional and may change drastically, even by the time you are done reading these words.

Please note, also, that in order to steer clear of even the appearance of Western imperialist hegemony, I have studiously avoided alphabetical order and presented the terms below in a sequence informed solely by the opaque workings of pure intuition and indiscriminate whim.

racism: 

      [archaic and rarely used in this sense today] the harboring, exhibition or embodiment in practices of ungrounded views or beliefs that some racial groups are inferior or superior to others in various ways
      a generalized term of derision commonly used in a manner similar to how terms such as “jerk” or “scoundrel” might have been employed in earlier epochs
      a label deployed in order to ostracize or as a prelude to a ritualized ostracism, roughly analogous to “witch” during the Salem witch trials
      a rallying cry used to muster support for Democratic Party candidates or policies, especially for candidates or policies that stand against the interests of poor and working class Americans; also, the central tenet of contemporary Democratic Party politics that is most often deployed ironically, that is, to refer to anything and everything as “racism” or “racist” in order to institute “corrective” practices or policies that are, in reality, far closer to the traditional notion of “racism” than the practices or policies that they seek to correct; see also anti-racism
      a fail-safe retort that may be strategically deployed to stifle disagreement or shut down debate, especially when it is a debate one is losing
      a label for the emotion of BIPOC individuals when their feelings are hurt
      a word news media companies with a shrinking audience, such as CNN or the New York Times, can and should throw around frequently and indiscriminately to drum up controversy and create fleeting spikes in viewership and/or readership to stave off their inevitable sell-offs and bankruptcies
      a false charge to be publicly leveled at in-laws (ideally, during softball interviews with Oprah) by wealthy, privileged, status-seeking, profiteering, half-BIPOC C-list actresses who marry into the British royal family but find themselves, due to their thoroughgoing narcissism, unable to get along with others, whether their own family or their new in-laws, especially when said actresses become upset and disenchanted with the whole “royal” thing upon discovering that her husband likely will never become King.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden: Two-State Solution ‘The Only Answer’ to Israel-Palestine Conflict By Caden Pearson

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/biden-two-state-solution-the-only-answer-to-israel-palestine-conflict_3826072.html

President Joe Biden said on Friday there has been no shift in his commitment to the security of Israel, insisting “the only answer” was a two-state solution with Palestine.

“There is no shift in my commitment … to the security of Israel. Period. No shift—not at all,” Biden told reporters at a White House press conference with South Korea’s president. “But I’ll tell you what there is a shift in. The shift is … we still need a two-state solution. It is the only answer. The only answer.”

Biden also addressed the idea of a rift among Democrats who want his administration to rebuke Israel and end a planned arms deal between the United States and Israel, saying, “I think that my party still supports Israel.”

“Let’s get something straight here,” he added, “Until the region says unequivocally they acknowledge the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state, there will be no peace.”

On Friday, about 140 progressive groups called on the Biden administration to condemn Israel.

“We are horrified by Israel’s use of disproportionate and deadly force against Palestinians in Gaza which have already resulted in the killings of dozens of Palestinians, including children,” the statement reads (pdf).

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) also moved to block a planned weapons sale to Israel.

A ceasefire began early on Friday, ending 11 days of conflict that broke out this month after Hamas launched rockets at Israel over a court case to evict several Palestinian families in East Jerusalem. Nearly 250 people have been killed, mostly Palestinians, according to Israeli and Gaza authorities.

Biden said he spoke to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and renewed the United States’ commitment to security and economic support for the West Bank.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Trump’s 1776 Commission to Reassemble, Tackle Critical Race Theory in History Education By GQ Pan

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.theepochtimes.com/trumps-1776-commission-to-reassmble-tackle-critical-race-theory-in-history-education_3825673.html

Members of the 1776 Commission, which President Joe Biden disbanded on his first day in White House, are reportedly set to meet again with a renewed focus on combating the teaching of U.S. history based on the Marxist critical race theory.

The advisory commission was established by the Trump administration in November 2020 to celebrate and promote the principles enshrined in the nation’s founding documents. It is commonly seen as a response to The New York Times’ controversial 1619 Project, which argues that the United States was founded as, and remains today, a racist nation.

Nearly four months after its dissolution, the commission regained attention when a leading member spoke against a Biden administration’s proposal to prioritize funding education programs that promote the 1619 Project and critical race theory, an ideology rooted in Marxist class struggle but with an emphasis on race, with the goal of dismantling all institutions of American society, which it deems as tools of racial oppression.

“The Proposed Rule should be withdrawn, just as individual states, which actually have the authority over the nation’s K-12 educational system, should oppose race-based pedagogy as part of their curricula and even if attempted to be imposed by the federal government,” Matthew Spalding, the executive director of the 1776 Commission, wrote in a letter to the Education Department.

“On behalf of my fellow Commissioners, I submit and draw your attention to Appendix III of The 1776 Report,” Spalding added. The appendix explains why race-focused narratives like the 1619 Project and critical race theory are “fundamentally incompatible” with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which connects liberty-loving Americans everywhere regardless of their race.

“Proponents of identity politics rearrange Americans by group identities, rank them by how much oppression they have experienced at the hands of the majority culture, and then sow division among them,” the document reads. “While not as barbaric or dehumanizing, this new creed creates new hierarchies as unjust as the old hierarchies of the antebellum South, making a mockery of equality with an ever-changing scale of special privileges on the basis of racial and sexual identities.”

In an interview with Washington Examiner, Spalding said that members of the 1776 Commission will convene next week in Washington on the campus of Hillsdale College. One of their topics will be critical race theory, which sees racism in all aspects of American life.

“When we start going about dividing people by groups, by social identities, and especially by identities that deal with race, and we’re starting to make those kinds of divisions, all Americans should get very nervous,” said Spalding. “It’s a departure away from the historic grounding of civil rights in America, which is that we all are equal.”

The commission’s first and last report, commonly referred to as the 1776 Report, was taken down after Biden’s inauguration. It can still be found on the publicly archived Trump White House and Hillsdale College websites.

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FOREIGN POLICY, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden’s Worst Move Yet: Giving U.S. Vaccine Tech to China by Gordon G. Chang

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17393/biden-giving-china-vaccine-tech

A TRIPs waiver will not only impede vaccine production at this moment, it will also cause long-term harm. There are two principal concerns in this regard. First, a waiver for COVID-19 vaccines will obviously decrease the incentive for companies to make vaccines for the next disease. “The recent rhetoric will not discourage us from continuing investing in science,” wrote Bourla, the Pfizer chief. “But I am not sure if the same is true for the thousands of small biotech innovators that are totally dependent on accessing capital from investors who invest only on the premise that their intellectual property will be protected.”

Second, a TRIPs waiver will eliminate the most important of the barriers to China making sophisticated vaccines: patent protection. Reuters reports that the Biden administration does not want a waiver to aid the Chinese pharmaceutical industry and believes it can address this issue “through the WTO negotiations,” but unfortunately it “did not specify how.”

Of course, the Biden administration cannot stop Chinese companies once patent protection is waived. Furthermore, Beijing is not going to adhere to the terms of the waiver. As Reuters tells us, “Enforcing limits on use of the technology could be very difficult.”

Chinese ruler Xi Jinping a year ago said China’s vaccines would be made available as a “global public good,” but Beijing has not offered them as such. Instead, China has offered its vaccines to other countries on extraneous and harsh conditions, such as de-recognition of Taiwan or the purchase of 5G networking gear from Huawei Technologies.

So why should the United States support China’s biological weapons program to enable another deadly attack? That is exactly what Biden is doing with his proposed TRIPs waiver.

President Joe Biden is moving to surrender to China U.S. patent and trade secret protections on America’s COVID-19 vaccines. Two of those vaccines, made by American-based Pfizer and Moderna, employ revolutionary mRNA technology.

Specifically, the Biden administration has agreed to support a request by India and South Africa for waivers that would permit members of the World Trade Organization to not enforce laws protecting patents and trade secrets covered under the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement (TRIPs).

“This is a global health crisis, and the extraordinary circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” declared U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai in a May 5 statement. “The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines.”

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

France, Germany offer Israel worst advice ever to deal with latest Hamas attack By David Zukerman

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/france_germany_offer_israel_worst_advice_ever_to_deal_with_latest_hamas_attack.html

“Absorb the attack”? Really?

The lead story in The New York Times, May 20, on the demand (really) on Israel that it halt its self-defense campaign against the evil Hamas criminal entity, referred to France and Germany as “strong allies of Israel.”  Whom is The New York Times kidding?  France?  Where Jews are advised not to wear yarmulkes outdoors lest they provoke a Muslim to attack them?  With a reported millions of Muslims being accepted by the countries of Europe, how long until the streets of Europe today, resemble the streets of Europe in the Middle Ages, when a Jew strolled about a city, town or village at his peril?

And consider Europe today.  Police protection is called in, for a time, after an Islamist kills Jews — not before.  The truth remains: Islamists fear no authority in Europe when a Jew is in his line of vision.  Is there outrage when an Islamist assaults a Jew in Europe?  Not at all.

And now comes Europe again to advise the government of Israel, when Hamas or Hezb’allah rockets strike Israel — to “absorb the attack.”

Donald J. Trump would never have yielded to pressure from Europe’s anti-Semites.  How brave he was, willing to stand apart from our “NATO allies.”  Biden has demonstrated that not only is he the puppet for the Jew-haters, but he is craven in his acceptance of their demand that the proper place for the Jew is in harm’s way — even if it means letting a few hundred Gazans, here and there, serve as collateral damage.

Have the so-called “strong allies” of Israel, Macron in France and Merkel in Germany, ever denounced Hamas for putting Gazans in harm’s way, as blood sacrifice for the primary goal: killing the Jew?  Not in the slightest.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

So, Barry, Trump Is a ‘Sexist Pig’? By Jack Cashill

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/so_barry_trump_is_a_sexist_pig.html

In his forthcoming book, Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Donald Trump, Edward-Isaac Dovere reveals a few choice words that former president Barack Obama had for his successor, Donald Trump. As reported in the Guardian, these include “madman”, a “racist, sexist pig,” “that f—ing lunatic,” and a “corrupt motherf—er.”

In his own most recent memoir, Promised Land, Obama’s fixation on Trump is manifest. In fact, it borders on obsession. In reviewing that memoir for my own forthcoming book, Barack Obama’s Promised Land: Deplorables Need Not Apply, I could not help but notice, however, just how situational is Obama’s objection to the sexual mores of others.

There is, of course, his and Michelle’s coziness with Hollywood pervert and major Democratic donor, Harvey Weinstein. In fact, their daughter Malia interned with Weinstein. Tweeted cultural critic Frank Rich after the Weinstein saga became too big to ignore, “Biggest mystery of @nytimes Weinstein story: How exemplary parents like Obamas let their daughter work there. The stories were out there.”

Said Obama long after he should have spoken out, “Michelle and I have been disgusted by the recent reports about Harvey Weinstein. Any man who demeans and degrades women in such fashion needs to be condemned and held accountable, regardless of wealth or status.”

“Any man,” that is, except those who are politically useful, and none was more useful to Obama than the late Sen. Ted Kennedy. About Kennedy, Obama cannot gush enough. The Kennedy Obama came to know, he tells us in A Promised Land, was “the closest thing Washington had to a living legend.”

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BOOKS Comments turned off

A new book from savagely attacks Obama from the left By Andrea Widburg

By on May 22nd, 2021

http://A new book from savagely attacks Obama from the left By Andrea Widburg

The book is Battle for the Soul: Inside the Democrats’ Campaigns to Defeat Trump, and it may end forever the Democrats’ Obama worship.
Something has changed lately on the left. Democrats should be riding high now because they control the federal government: They’ve got the White House; the House; the Senate (sort of, with the filibuster the fragile thread keeping them from total control); and a Supreme Court that, while ostensibly conservative, has a closet leftist Chief Justice and two remarkably cowed new “conservative” justices. Nevertheless, they are an angry, fractious party. Last week, the knives came out for Kamala Harris. This coming week, a new book launches a scathing attack on that former secular saint, Barack Obama.

Since 2008, Barack Obama has been the Democrat party. He was the president who could do no wrong. Every political attack against him was discounted as “racism.” He was more charming, more intelligent, more emotionally attuned, more effective, and more just everything good than any man who had ever occupied the White House, including Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln combined. (Of course, all of them were racists.)

When Trump came along, the Democrats and their media shills weren’t merely offended by his politics. In many ways, the gravest offense was that this loud, combative, conservative-governing orange man dared to step into a White House made hallowed by the presence of a man once hailed as a “magic negro” or another crucified Jesus.

Both Biden and Kamala got reverential treatment, but it was nothing like Obama. Biden was grandfatherly, experienced, kind, stable, and he’d learned his White House politics under Obama’s aegis. Kamala was brilliant, multi-racial and multi-cultural, female, and compassionate. Kamala was sold especially hard because everyone understood that Biden, no matter what he said, wasn’t in it for the long haul. She was obviously going to be the real president, even before Biden inevitably withdrew and she got sworn in.

But as noted, something’s been happening with the Democrats. They should be a jubilant party joyously imposing Marxism on the land but, instead, they’re angry and they’re starting to turn on each other. Just last week, Edward-Isaac Dovere, a long-standing author at The Atlantic, published a very nasty attack on Kamala, although one phased in polite terms.

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HISTORY Comments turned off

Reflections on the Biden vs. Begin Collision For the Delaware Democrat, mean-spirited ignorance remains the rule. Lloyd Billingsley

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/bidens-begin-back-story-lloyd-billingsley/

““As over 3,000 rockets are fired into Israel, the establishment of the Democratic Party seems paralyzed over how to respond to the latest Middle East war,” Victor Davis Hanson explains in “Why Does the Left Hate Israel?” Democrats are “in terror also that anti-Israelism is becoming synonymous with rank anti-Semitism. And soon the Democratic Party will end up disdained as much as was the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn.”

Back on May 10, Hamas fired seven rockets into Jerusalem, followed in short order by 3,200 rockets into Israeli cities. Targets included homes, apartment blocks, schools, kindergartens and an oil storage tank. Israel responded with strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip, and that prompted Joe Biden’s call to Benjamin Netanyahu, pushing for “a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire.”   

Biden also encountered Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who was on record that  “apartheid-in-chief Netanyahu will not listen to anyone asking nicely.” Biden told her, “You’re a fighter and God thank you for being a fighter.” Back on June 22, 1982, Sen. Biden met a fighter of a different sort, Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin, a veteran of Israel’s war of independence and survivor of Arab wars against Israel from 1948 onward. 

Under the Camp David Accords, brokered by President Jimmy Carter, Israel returned to Egypt the Sinai Peninsula, occupied during the 1967 war. Begin and Anwar Sadat were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1978. On June 22, 1982, while Israel was tangling with the PLO in Lebanon, Menachem Begin appeared in a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. Sen. Biden told Begin that if Israel did not immediately cease building settlements in Judea and Samaria, the United States would cut off economic aid to Israel. 

“Don’t threaten us with cutting off your aid. It will not work,” Begin responded. “I am not a Jew with trembling knees. I am a proud Jew with 3,700 years of civilized history. Nobody came to our aid when we were dying in the gas chambers and ovens. Nobody came to our aid when we were striving to create our country. We paid for it. We fought for it. We died for it. We will stand by our principles. We will defend them. And, when necessary, we will die for them again, with or without your aid.”

Biden then raised his voice at Begin and banged twice on the table. 

“This desk is designed for writing, not for fists.” Begin said.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Palestinian Demonstrators Accost Jews in NYC’s Diamond District By Caroline Downey

By on May 22nd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/palestinian-demonstrators-accost-jews-in-nycs-diamond-district/?utm_source=recirc-

“While President Joe Biden signaled his support for a “ceasefire” as well as his insistence that innocent lives be spared in recent phone conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he has yet to condemn the anti-semitic comments and verbal attack on America’s greatest peacetime and military ally in the Middle East stemming from the congressional chamber.”

EXCERPTS:

Palestinian protestors paraded through the Manhattan Diamond District, a historically Jewish neighborhood, Thursday evening chanting anti-semitic language, disrupting traffic, and accosting patrons of local businesses.

Standing atop a pick-up truck waving a Palestinian flag, a demonstrator shouted, “Any Jews in here, suck my d***.”

“Get the f*** out, get the f*** out,” another reportedly told an Orthodox Jewish man hurrying away from the commotion. The demonstrators also tossed a firecracker at bystanders, sending one woman and two police officers to the hospital with injuries.

The unrest in New York City came hours after Israel and Hamas reached a ceasefire agreement, which took effect early Friday morning local time.

The latest round of violence in Gaza has divided American lawmakers. The progressive wing of the Democratic party has staunchly criticized Israel for its aggressive response to Hamas strikes on its civilian population.

The Biden administration has taken a lukewarm public stance on the existential threat posed to Israel by Hamas, although it has reiterated the nation’s right to defend itself from indiscriminate rocket assault.

Before a ceasefire was declared, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) responded to the attacks on its territory and population by launching strategic retaliatory airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, targeting weapons stockpile locations, Hamas military headquarters, and underground tunnels sheltering terrorists and supplies. Before striking an area populated by civilians, Israel notifies Palestinian civilians on the ground via multiple communication channels, warning them to evacuate to safety.

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fellow members of the progressive “squad” have pushed to cancel an arms sale to Israel, which would provide the embattled state with the mechanism to convert “dumb” bombs into precision-guided weapons.

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