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April 2022

Al-Aqsa Is Not Now, and Never Was, ‘Under Threat’ From Israel What the British used to call “the vivid oriental imagination” is at work. Hugh Fitzgerald

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/al-aqsa-not-now-and-never-was-under-threat-israel-hugh-fitzgerald/

Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian Authority all agree: Al-Aqsa Mosque has recently been “under threat” because those wild-eyed Israeli “settlers” – madmen all – were about to engage in the ritual slaughter of a lamb on top of the Temple Mount, as part of a diabolical effort to take over Al-Aqsa, bit by bit, and convert it to a synagogue. Those Palestinians, and especially the terrorists among them, have a rich fantasy life, what the British in the Middle East used to drily call “the vivid oriental imagination.”

A report by Nadav Shragai on the Palestinians exploiting the Temple Mount conflict as an excuse for another war with Israel can be found here: “Al-Aqsa Mosque is by no means under threat,” by Nadav Shragai, Israel Hayom, April 17, 2022:

Hamas is trying—and may succeed—in dragging Israel into a conflict on multiple fronts, with the Temple Mount serving as the trigger, exactly as was the case in April 2021. This time, as on previous occasions, the cry is the modern blood libel that “Al-Aqsa is under threat.”For more than a week now, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority have been spreading online stories about how a ritual Passover sacrifice will be carried out on the Temple Mount this year.

They’re knowingly lying now, just as they were in the past. They know the Temple Mount’s history over the last 55 years. They know that Israel has never allowed such a ritual to be performed. Moreover, via a number of channels, including Jordanian, Egyptian and American, the Palestinians—the radical Muslims among them—have received clarification that this year, too, no such ritual will be allowed to take place.

There’s a B-17 Parked on My Desk It reminds me of what America was. Don Feder

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/theres-b-17-parked-my-desk-don-feder-0/

A scale model of a B-17 Flying Fortress — very detailed, with gun turrets and all — sits on my desk. It reminds me of the country we once had and what we’ve lost.

The B-17 was the most widely used strategic bomber in World War II. The Army Air Corps deployed the long-range, heavy bomber to drop 640,000 tons of bombs over Germany and Axis-occupied territory.

As much as any weapon, the B-17 won the war. By 1944, German industry was smashed. Its cities were rubble. It softened up German defenses for D-Day and the liberation of Europe.

The brave men of the Army Air Corps paid a terrible price – 18,400 aircraft were lost and 51,000 died in the skies over Europe. For comparison, that’s more than twice the number of Marines who died in WW II.

The B-17 represented a nation that knew how to defend itself and take the battle to the enemy. It was an America that was determined and unapologetic.

It was the America of the Greatest Generation that survived the Depression, won World War II and went on to create post-war prosperity that was the wonder of the world. GDP soared from $200 billion in 1940 to $500 billion in 1960.

Defending the Constitution Answering the critics who call our founding document “trash.”Jason D. Hill

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/defending-constitution-jason-d-hill/

Recently, Elie Mystal, author and “Justice Correspondent” for The Nation, went on the daytime TV show The View and stated that the U.S. Constitution is “kind of trash.” In his new book, Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to The Constitution, Mystal continues to denigrate the Constitution in chapters such as “Canceling Trash People is Not a Constitutional Crisis” and “Bigotry is Illegal Even if You’ve been Ordered by Jesus.” Msytal is not alone in his dim view of the Constitution. Repeated surveys show that college students have increasingly come to believe that the U.S. Constitution is outdated and ought to be “brought up to the contemporary era,” radically modified, or abolished altogether. In this first of a series of three articles, I aim to show, in a measured and rational manner, both the indispensability of the Constitution in its universal form and content, and the revolutionary nature of its foundation.

When the Founding Fathers turned on the light of reason over 244 years ago and wrote the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, they achieved a remarkable feat. It was not just, as hundreds have remarked, the creation of an unprecedented political achievement that was the constitutional republic of the United States of America. This republic, replete with its Bill of Rights and subsequent constitutional amendments, was a major civilizational advancement over any other political phenomena that had ever existed.

But the major achievement of the Founding Fathers was not political; that was a derivative achievement. They, the first and last of America’s great intellectuals, had done what no other philosopher had done in the history of mankind: they achieved a revolution in epistemology by discovering the proper application of human nature to its appropriate political configuration. For the first time, the requirements of man’s survival as a human being – that is, man’s nature as a rational and conceptual being – were grafted onto a social and political environment that supported its rational upkeep.

The political milieu that they created was a direct corollary of that nature. In other words, they were the first to understand that the endpoint of all human striving—freedom and happiness—required a specific political milieu in which human preservation and the achievement of rational happiness were possible. They were the first to integrate man’s nature with the perfect political environment. America was and remains a political application of human nature. It is a metaphysical expression in the form of a political republic derived from an unprecedented epistemological feat: the perfect integration of a discovery of man’s nature and the artificial creation of a political system that corresponds to that nature.

Human Rights Watch, ACLU, Amnesty Intl. Clutch Their Pearls in Horror At Elon Musk’s Purchase of Twitter They hate free speech and want you to think it’s dangerous. Robert Spencer

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/04/human-rights-watch-aclu-amnesty-international-robert-spencer/

There has been one salutary effect of the weeks-long efforts of Elon Musk to gain control of Twitter, and the debate over the freedom of speech that ensued: now the Left’s foremost individuals and institutions are out in the open about their hatred for the freedom of speech. The authoritarian heart of the Left has been exposed, as has their war against the foundational principle of any free society: the right to express oneself even if one’s opinions don’t coincide with those of the powerful and/or moneyed elites. Barack and Hillary hate the freedom of speech and want you to think it’s a dangerous toy, too dangerous for you to play with. And now three pillars of the unctuous and hypocritical Leftist “human rights” establishment, Human Rights Watch (HRW), Amnesty International, and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have come out against it as well.

Reuters, adopting the solemn, even funereal tone it reserves for significant Leftist setbacks, noted Monday that Musk has described himself as a “free speech absolutist” and has called the freedom of expression the “bedrock of a functioning democracy.” That’s exactly what it is, and that’s why Leftists are enraged that someone who believes such things has gained control of one of the foremost means of mass communication in our age. They had become complacent in their control of such outlets, as confident of the rightness of their power as much as any medieval king was in his divine election; but now their hegemony has been severely challenged, and so it’s time to try to shape public opinion by calling out the self-appointed and reliably Leftist “defenders of human rights” to explain to us why this is so very, very wrong.

Deborah Brown, whom Reuters describes as a “digital rights researcher and advocate” at Human Rights Watch, asserted: “Regardless of who owns Twitter, the company has human rights responsibilities to respect the rights of people around the world who rely on the platform. Changes to its policies, features, and algorithms, big and small, can have disproportionate and sometimes devastating impacts, including offline violence. Freedom of expression is not an absolute right, which is why Twitter needs to invest in efforts to keep its most vulnerable users safe on the platform.”

Biden Claims School Children Don’t Belong to Parents ‘When They’re in the Classroom’By Caroline Downey

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-claims-school-children-dont-belong-to-parents-when-theyre-in-the-classroom/

At the 2022 Teacher of the Year ceremony hosted by the White House on Wednesday, President Biden claimed that school children don’t belong to parents “when they’re in the classroom.”

“They’re all our children. And the reason you’re the teachers of the year is because you recognize that. They’re not somebody else’s children. They’re like yours when they’re in the classroom,” he said.

Later in the speech, Biden targeted Republicans and the parent movements in local school districts that have fought to remove from libraries and curricula books that promote radical gender and racial ideologies.

“There are too many politicians trying to score political points trying to ban books, even math books. Did you ever think when you’d be teaching you’re going to be worried about book burnings and banning books all because it doesn’t fit somebody’s political agenda?” Biden said.

The comments struck a similar tone to that of former Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe, when he made his now infamous remark last year that parents should not be involved in K–12 public education. On the campaign trail, he declared at a debate: “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions. I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

Between the Scylla of the PA and the Charybdis of Hamas By Shoshana Bryen

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/04/between_the_scylla_of_the_pa_and_the_charybdis_of_hamas.html

Some months ago, Israeli Defense Minister Benny Ganz invited Palestinian Authority (PA) strongman Mahmoud Abbas to his home for dinner. Despite the fact that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Israel Police work with Abbas’s police force on a regular basis, the vision of a meal in Ganz’s home was disconcerting; too personal, too cozy. Dinner with a man who regularly incites violence against Israeli citizens and pays for acts of terror seemed a step too far.

There were, apparently, no flies on the wall, and nothing appears to have leaked. But as violence in Israel increases, the Israeli government’s intention has become clear.  Sitting between the PA as Scylla and Hamas as Charybdis, Israel will choose Scylla.

Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, is waging war against both Israel and the more nationalist PA. Israel’s goal is to ensure that Hamas does not oust the PA from the West Bank, putting Islamist radicals on both sides of the Jewish state. It would have been easier had Abbas been less of a corrupt dictator and had he encouraged Palestinians to work with Israel in the 16 years since his first — and last — election. But he didn’t.

In a brief and bloody civil war, Hamas threw the PA out of Gaza in 2007 and established its own crushing and corrupt version of Palestinian governance.

Filmmaker: Documentary Proves Rampant Illegal Vote Trafficking in 2020 By Steven Kovac

https://www.theepochtimes.com/documentary-will-prove-proves-rampant-illegal-vote-trafficking-in-2020-dsouza-says_4426541.html?utm_source=News&utm_

Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza believes that evidence presented in his new documentary, “2000 Mules,” proves that large-scale, illegal vote trafficking occurred in the 2020 election.

D’Souza told The Epoch Times: “2000 Mules will settle the issue beyond a shadow of a doubt by using two powerful, independent modes of investigation. The evidence is so conclusive, so decisive, that it leaves nothing to argue about.”

The film opens in 300 theaters on May 2 and May 4.

D’Souza, who is a contributor to The Epoch Times, said an investigative team used cellphone tracking and video footage to prove that unauthorized intermediaries called “mules” collected thousands of absentee ballots from voters and deposited them in drop boxes for money, which is illegal in all 50 states.

Cellphones emit a unique and identifiable signal or “ping.” Trillions of pings were analyzed by investigators to reconstruct the movements of thousands of mules as they went about their work in the weeks prior to the 2020 presidential election, the documentary claims.

“Who would have ever thought that investigators could look back in time and discover such things?” D’Souza said.

Investigators also sifted through millions of minutes of video surveillance footage and were able to capture on tape numerous mules stuffing absentee ballot drop boxes, D’Souza said. The videos show the mules taking selfies of themselves as proof of services rendered to their employers in order to be paid, he said.

Biden Unites The Country! Nobody Wants Him As President Any More

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/04/28/biden-unites-the-country-nobody-wants-him-as-president-any-more/

Last December, the I&I/TIPP poll asked registered voters who they’d like to see on the Democratic ticket in 2024. A shockingly low 37% of Democrats named President Joe Biden. If Biden didn’t run for reelection, only 16% wanted Vice President Kamala Harris to be on the ballot.  

The findings, we said at the time, are “a devastating sign of Biden’s weakening support within his own party.” (Google’s content police found the results so upsetting that they labeled our article accurately reporting the poll results as “unreliable and harmful.”) 

In the months following that poll, Biden gave his State of the Union speech, Russia invaded Ukraine, and COVID receded as a threat.  

Under normal circumstances, these events, along with ginned-up positive news from corporate media, would boost a president’s approval rating. At least they’d shore up support among his base. 

Yet, when we asked the same question of voters this month, Biden’s devastating numbers got shockingly lower.

Our April I&I/TIPP poll found that only 29% of Democrats want Biden on the ticket in 2024, and only 12% want Harris.  

Overall, less than one in five adults (19%) now say they want Biden on the ticket, down from 22% in December.  

Other polls show similar dismal results.  

AP Radicalism Will the College Board thwart democratically elected officials’ attempts to remove critical race theory from the classroom? David Randall

https://www.city-journal.org/ap-radicalism

When the Placentia Yorba–Linda School Board in Orange County, California, considered banning critical race theory instruction, a surprising entity stood in the way: the College Board. The nonprofit, which develops advanced-placement (AP) courses and standardized tests, has stated ambiguously: “If a school bans required topics from their AP courses, the AP Program removes the AP designation from that course and its inclusion in the AP Course Ledger provided to colleges and universities.” The Placentia Yorba–Linda school district told the school board that removing critical race theory from the classroom would risk the AP status of its courses, and that it “has no intention to proceed with any action that would inhibit its ability to continue to offer AP courses and content.”

Ultimately, the school board moved ahead with the ban, adding an exception stipulating that it did not intend to circumscribe any material appearing in AP courses. But similar difficulties may unfold nationally as more districts seek to remove divisive racial instruction from the classroom. At stake is more than just the curriculum of American high schools. Colleges frequently accept AP classes for college credit, so each class can save a student thousands of dollars in tuition. AP classes can be the difference that makes a student able to afford a college degree and all the job opportunities that depend on a college credential. That gives the College Board a tremendous amount of power—and an obligation to ensure that its policies don’t stand in the way of the determinations of democratic bodies.

Not that the group has managed to remain apolitical in the past. As the National Association of Scholars documented in a recent report, the College Board has abused its monopoly to impose on American students a politicized, progressive version of history.

Top New York court tosses redistricting map in defeat for Democrats by Ryan King

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/top-new-york-court-tosses-out-redistricting-map-in-massive-defeat-for-democrats

“If the congressional maps had stayed in effect, Democrats likely would have expanded their 19-8 majority to 22-4 under the new lines, according to experts’ testimony. The state lost a seat during the most recent census.Because Wednesday’s ruling, a 4-3 decision, came from the highest court in the state, Democrats will likely not be able to appeal.”

New York’s highest court threw out the state’s redistricting maps, dealing a massive blow to Democrats for the 2022 midterm election cycle.

The New York State Court of Appeals sided with lower courts in its determination that the three maps were unconstitutionally gerrymandered and ordered the adoption of a neutral plan to be crafted by a special master.

The maps were “procedurally unconstitutional, and the congressional map is also substantively unconstitutional as drawn with impermissible partisan purpose,” the court said. “We are confident that, in consultation with the Board of Elections, Supreme Court can swiftly develop a schedule to facilitate an August primary election, allowing time for the adoption of new constitutional maps.”

The Democratic-controlled legislature’s decision to draw its own maps when the New York State Independent Redistricting Commission failed to reach a consensus was unconstitutional, petitioners successfully argued.

“Petitioners first asserted that, in light of the lack of compliance by the IRC and the legislature with the procedures set forth in the Constitution, the legislature’s enactment of the 2022 redistricting maps contravened the Constitution,” the Wednesday ruling said. “To conclude otherwise, petitioners contend, would be to render the 2014 amendments — touted as an important reform of the redistricting process — functionally meaningless. We agree.”

Last week, the state’s maps for U.S. House seats and state legislative seats were stricken by a five-judge panel, which found that “evidence of the largely one-party process used to enact the 2022 congressional map, a comparison of the 2022 congressional map to the 2012 congressional map, and the expert opinion and supporting analysis of Sean P. Trende, met petitioners’ burden of establishing that the 2022 congressional map was drawn to discourage competition and favor Democrats.”