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November 2024

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Flunked out: 3000% spike in campus antisemitism post-Oct. 7 “Higher education institutions have utterly failed to protect its Jewish students, allowing violent antisemitism to thrive,” StopAntisemitism founder says.

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.israelhayom.com/2024/11/20/report-reveals-3000-spike-in-campus-antisemitism-following-oct-7/

A disturbing new report from Stop Antisemitism reveals an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents on US college campuses in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, with Jewish students facing increasing harassment, exclusion, and safety concerns.

The organization’s 2024 College Report, which evaluated 25 higher education institutions across the nation, documented a staggering 3,000% increase in antisemitic incident reports compared to the previous year, forcing the watchdog group to triple its staff size to handle the flood of submissions.

The report paints a troubling picture of campus life for Jewish students, with more than half reporting direct experiences of antisemitism at their schools. According to the survey, 55% of Jewish students have been victims of antisemitism, while 43% feel compelled to hide their Jewish identity from classmates out of fear. Perhaps most concerning, 72% of students reported feeling unwelcome in certain campus spaces simply for being Jewish.

The institutional response to these challenges has been notably inadequate, with only two out of 25 surveyed schools responding to requests for information about their handling of antisemitism – a sharp decline from seven respondents the previous year. The report also found that 67% of Jewish students say they are completely excluded from their school’s DEI initiatives, while 69% report being blamed for Israel’s actions.

Several prestigious universities received failing marks in the report’s grading system. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) saw its grade drop from a C to an F following multiple incidents, including a three-week pro-Palestinian encampment where participants called for violence against Jewish students. The evaluation considered multiple criteria: protection measures, allyship initiatives, identity support, and policy implementation.

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ISRAEL, RELIGION Comments turned off

The Pope’s embrace of evil With his attack on Israel fighting for its life, the pontiff has taken the Vatican backwards into a very dark past Melanie Phillips

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/the-popes-embrace-of-evil-discourse/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

With just a few words, Pope Francis has plunged relations between Jews and Catholics into their worst crisis for decades and undone years of delicate rapprochement.

In a new book published for the Catholic Church’s jubilee year, he wrote:

According to some experts, what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide. We should investigate carefully to determine whether it fits into the technical definition formulated by jurists and international bodies.

This is far from the first time the Pope has attacked Israel over the war against Hamas and Hezbollah.

In September, he berated Israel for an immoral lack of proportion. “Defence must always be proportionate to the attack,” he said. “When there is something disproportionate, one shows a tendency to dominate which goes beyond what is moral.”

These remarks are deeply troubling. They are the accusations routinely made by the enemies of Israel in the west, and they are shameful on many levels.

The “genocide” claim is as ludicrous as it is monstrous. Genocide is the intentional annihilation of a people. Yet according to the CIA’s World Factbook, the population of the Gaza Strip has grown by 2.02 percent since the October 7 pogrom and the war that has followed.

Far from intending to wipe out the residents of Gaza, the Israel Defence Forces have been shunting them around the Strip in order to get them out of harm’s way as the IDF has pounded Hamas.

The Pope is also wrong about proportionality in warfare. Defensive military action must be proportionate not to any one attack but to the threat posed by the enemy. The threat against Israel is the stated intention to eradicate it from the face of the earth. What does the Pope believe is the proportionate response to that?

If he really is arguing that the response should be identical in scope and nature to the attack, is he therefore proposing that Israel should set out to murder, rape and mutilate 1,200 Gazans as they did to the Israelis on October 7? Or fire tens of thousands of rockets and drones at civilians in Gaza and Lebanon with the intention of murdering them, as Hamas and Hezbollah have done to Israeli civilians for years?

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Douglas Murray, Ben Shapiro tell thousands in Jerusalem: You are the ‘tip of the spear in a civilizational battle’ By David Isaac

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.jns.org/douglas-murray-ben-shapiro-pack-israels-largest-auditorium/

Two giants of political conservatism, Douglas Murray and Ben Shapiro, starred at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center on Tuesday night before a sold-out crowd of more than 3,000 in what might best be described as a mutual admiration society, with the crowd applauding its pro-Israel champions as they in turn voiced esteem for Israelis’ grit and fighting spirit.

“Thank you on behalf of Western civilization for fighting the fight the rest of the West should be fighting,” Shapiro told the audience at the “Freedom of Zion” conference.

He asked those with loved ones who had served in the Israel Defense Forces in the past year to stand up. Nearly all did. “That’s unique. It’s something that doesn’t exist in the West anymore,” Shapiro said, describing it as a “civic militarism” once common in Western societies.

Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro speaks at the Freedom of Zion Conference at the International Convention Center in Jerusalem, Nov. 19, 2024. Photo by Yaakov Nachumi/Herut Center.

“There are people here … who … put their bodies on the line defending civilization. I am merely a writer,” said Murray. “If I give you any encouragement, you should know that the encouragement you give me is 1,000-fold.”

Early reports pointed to an enormously successful event. The Jerusalem Post on Monday said that Shapiro-Murray was the hottest ticket in town, with fans “scrambling for scalped seats,” likening it to a Taylor Swift concert.

“Trying one more time. Looking for one ticket to the Ben Shapiro/Douglas Murray event in Jerusalem Tuesday evening. Willing to pay well over face value. Please DM [direct message] me,” posted a member of Secret Jerusalem, an online community of Jerusalemites.

Several Knesset members also attended the event, including Amichai Chikli, Amihai Eliyahu, Dan Illouz, Ohad Tal, Ariel Kellner and Simcha Rothman.

Murray and Shapiro are renowned in conservative circles. Shapiro, an American Jew, is host of a daily political podcast, and founder of media company The Daily Wire. He frequently speaks on college campuses and is the author of numerous books, including, “Bullies: How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans” and “The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great.”

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OPINION Comments turned off

Socio-Feudalism’s War on the Individual by Daniel Greenfield

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21136/socialism-feudalism

The transformation of the medieval world into the modern world came about with the idea that man could and should transform his lot in life. The liberal individualism of the Enlightenment however was soon countered by reactionary movements, feudal and socio-feudal, seeking to put the genie of individual autonomy back in the box through collectivist movements.

Socialism postured as progressive when it was reactionary. Its leaders, most often hailing from the upper class and upper middle class, reverted newly liberated societies in Russia and China back to feudalism under the guise of liberating them. The Bolsheviks took Czarist feudalism and rebranded it as collective farming, forbidding the “liberated” farmers from owning property or livestock, and even from leaving their farms to seek a better life in the big cities.

The empowerment of the individual had given way to the enslavement of man in the service of an ideal society. Individuals were once again worthless, except as they fit into a larger plan.

The ultimate struggle will be less about movements and more about individuals. The more the system fails, the more repressive it will become. And only millions of individuals can defeat it.

The transformation of the medieval world into the modern world came about with the idea that man could and should transform his lot in life. The liberal individualism of the Enlightenment however was soon countered by reactionary movements, feudal and socio-feudal, seeking to put the genie of individual autonomy back in the box through collectivist movements.

Among the most prominent of these was what would eventually be called socialism. While early socialist movements had been a radical Christian heresy emphasizing communal living, these experiments invariably failed on a local level, leaving behind a trail of wrecked lives.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A LETTER FROM A CANADIAN FRIEND LEON K. FROM TORONTO

By on November 22nd, 2024

The international criminal court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for the PM of Israel (Bibi) and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, for crimes against humanity. Apparently defending your country from animals who raped, murdered, tortured and kidnapped babies, Holocaust survivors and other innocent civilians constitutes a war crime.

In the ICC’s defence, in order to show how unbiased they are, they also issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Deif who the IDF killed in a raid a while back. So they’ll arrest a dead guy, great. 
And our PM here in Canada, the leader of the Liberal party said the following:

“We stand up for international law, and we will abide by all the regulations and rulings of the international courts,” Trudeau said, when asked if he would allow Netanyahu and Gallant to be arrested if they come to Canada. 

“This is just who we are as Canadians,” he said. 

I’m a Canadian and I would sooner arrest Trudeau! I sincerely doubt that most Canadians would agree with him. In fact most Canadians would consider him a vile, antisemite for saying what he just did. I certainly do. This is by far the most obscene and overtly antisemitic act he’s done to date. He previously called out Israel for creating a genocide in Gaza. How any Jewish citizen voted for him is beyond me. He can’t leave office soon enough. At this rate he’ll arrest me because I support Bibi. (As long as the ICC makes such a decree).

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Mayorkas and Wray Refuse to Testify Publicly About National Security Threats Facing US By Debra Heine

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/21/mayorkas-and-wray-refuse-to-testify-publicly-about-national-security-threats-facing-us/

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray decided to skip an end-of-year public hearing in the U.S. Senate on Thursday, suggesting that the threats facing the country are so grave they can only be discussed in a classified setting.

Republicans and Democrats alike reacted with outrage.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters (D-Mich.) strongly rebuked the officials, stating that their refusal to appear is a “shocking departure” from the 15-year tradition of holding the annual hearing on worldwide threats.

Both the FBI and DHS released statements saying the officials had already “testified extensively” in public about the threats facing the U.S. and offered to discuss further threats in a classified briefing.

The FBI has repeatedly demonstrated our commitment to responding to Congressional oversight and being transparent with the American people,” the FBI’s statement said.

“We remain committed to sharing information about the continuously evolving threat environment facing our nation and the extraordinary work the men and women of the FBI are doing — here at home and around the world — to protect the American people and uphold the Constitution of the United States. FBI leaders have testified extensively in public settings about the current threat environment and believe the Committee would benefit most from further substantive discussions and additional information that can only be provided in a classified setting.”

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FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Russia and Ukraine Likely to Ignore Biden’s Attempts to Sabotage Trump’s Ukraine Peace Effort Given the havoc that Biden’s post-election Ukraine policy decisions have caused, Donald Trump cannot return to the Oval Office fast enough. Fred Fleitz

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/22/russia-and-ukraine-likely-to-ignore-bidens-attempts-to-sabotage-trumps-ukraine-peace-effort/

In December 1992, after the security and humanitarian situations in Somalia significantly deteriorated, the George H.W. Bush administration decided to deploy U.S. troops as part of a UN-sanctioned peace enforcement mission. Because President Bush had just lost the 1992 presidential election and would be leaving this crisis to his successor, Bill Clinton, Bush consulted with President-elect Clinton and obtained his agreement before making this major foreign policy decision.

This instance of post-election foreign policy collaboration by incoming and outgoing presidents represented the U.S. tradition of the peaceful transfer of power—and an outgoing president respecting the will of the American people who just elected a new president. Unfortunately, President Biden has chosen to ignore these crucial traditions concerning the war in Ukraine and instead appears determined to sabotage the policies of his successor.

President-elect Donald Trump has made it clear that one of his top national security priorities is swiftly ending the war in Ukraine. Trump is determined to change U.S. policy on the war by ending it instead of supporting a long war of attrition that Ukraine is sure to lose. Under the peaceful transfer of power tradition, President Biden should cooperate with the policy of his successor during his final days in office.

Unfortunately, Biden has taken a defiant approach to Trump’s new policy.

Biden decided last weekend to allow Ukraine to attack targets in Russia with the Army Tactical Missile System (ATACM). Ukraine had been asking for permission to fire these weapons at targets deep inside Russia for almost a year, but Biden refused—until after the election—because he worried this would dangerously escalate the war.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

At the University of Michigan, Getting Tough with Hamas Supporters Discouraging terror and violence. by Hugh Fitzgerald

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/at-the-university-of-michigan-getting-tough-with-hamas-supporters/

In the academic year 2023-2024, campuses across the country, beginning on October 8, 2023, were engulfed by pro-Hamas demonstrators. Their faces contorted by hate, members of these mobs waved their signs, screamed their slogans about Israeli “genocide,” and insisted that “there is only one solution/Intifada revolution,” which is an unambiguous call for violence. They demanded a “free Palestine” “from the river to the sea,” which, properly understood, means the eradication of Israel and its replacement by a twenty-third Arab state. They invaded and vandalized campus offices. They surrounded Jewish students and would not let them escape while yelling at them. Some Jewish students were physically attacked. They burst into classrooms of Israeli and Jewish faculty, interrupting their lectures.

College administrators in the last year have been maddeningly slow to react. Many administrators did nothing, showing themselves to be unwilling to lay down the law to such violent troublemakers. Three university presidents, from Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, were asked at a congressional hearing if calling for the “genocide of Jews” in their view “violated their campus codes of conduct.” All three answered that “it depends.” Some universities offered slap-on-the-wrist suspensions for a handful of demonstrators who physically harassed Jewish students; some administrators, as at Brown University, even offered to meet with demonstrators to discuss their demands on cutting all ties to Israel. Nothing appeared to calm down the pro-Hamas anti-Israel demonstrators. After a long investigation into antisemitism and anti-Israel activities on campuses, conducted by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, a long report was issued on antisemitism on American campuses, a report that was damning in its evidence both of antisemitic acts by pro-Palestinian demonstrators, and of the failure of university demonstrators to take a firm stand against those demonstrators.

Now a few universities have begun to lay down the law by starting to punish Hamas supporters in a way that will have an impact. At the University of Michigan, the leading pro-Hamas group now faces a four-year suspension from the campus that should weaken its ability to conduct its anti-Israel propaganda campaign to win over impressionable students.

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BOOKS, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Crime of the Century? Naomi Wolf delivers the harrowing facts about the Pfizer jab. by Bruce Bawer

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/crime-of-the-century/

If my father had been alive, I wouldn’t have done it. He was a doctor who had a diverse background in medical research, medical writing and editing, both private and hospital practice, and pharmaceutical advertising, and he was always exceedingly wary about treatments that he considered unnecessarily dangerous or insufficiently tested. When my pediatrician wanted to have my adenoids taken out, he said no, and whenever I went to the dentist he wouldn’t let the guy give me novacaine.

But my father wasn’t alive when COVID came along, and so I got the damned Pfizer jab – twice – without giving it much thought at all. In retrospect I feel like a fool. I’ve long since been aware of just how much political propaganda we’re fed by the legacy media. And my dad, who worked closely with drug companies, taught me not to have any illusions about them. But even though I recognized the idiocy of the mask mandates and the six-foot distancing rule and other elements of COVID theater, it didn’t occur to me, I guess, that the corporate media and Big Pharma might team up with the Deep State to push life-threatening drugs on the whole world, and to impose severe punishments upon those relatively few brave souls who dared to turn them down.

Anyway, we went through the pandemic, and then it ended, and now it can seem almost as if none of it ever happened – the enforced long-term isolation, the destruction of small business and jobs and interruption of schooling, the mass violation of individual rights, and the mass demonization of vaccine skeptics. Anthony Fauci and countless others at the NIH and WHO and elsewhere should be behind bars, but I can’t remember the last time I even heard Fauci’s name. It’s as if even many of the people who were put through hell during the COVID years would prefer to try to forget about it and move on.

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NATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE Comments turned off

ISIS Plots Its Return Brian Stewart

By on November 22nd, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2025/01/isis-plots-its-return/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

The West can’t afford passivity

We are living through a momentous phase in the twilight struggle against the Islamic State. In the past year or so, the jihadist outfit has been an increasingly assertive presence in Syria’s hinterland, deploying a band of “holy warriors” to resurrect its dream of ruling a caliphate. Once more, an armed rebellion has blossomed there against the U.S.-led coalition, and, unless put down in short order, it promises to bring about an Islamic State resurgence.

The gathering of jihadist forces and the corresponding explosion of violence could prove potent enough to engulf Syria and consolidate another state with no law but God’s — a supposed kingdom of heaven on earth. This year, the pace of Islamic State attacks in Syria and Iraq has doubled. The primary targets have been U.S. garrisons in Syria and units of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), Kurdish-led troops who worked with the U.S. to defeat ISIS five years ago. The jihadists’ immediate objective has been to curtail counterterrorism patrols and free thousands of their confederates who have languished in jail since the SDF and the U.S.-led coalition swept away the final remnant of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate at Baghuz in March 2019.

Since shattering the Islamic State, the U.S. has maintained a small military footprint in Syria and Iraq to keep the peace. U.S. warplanes carry out air strikes and provide live aerial surveillance to SDF ground forces that conduct raids on suspected Islamic State cells. Occasionally, American commandos conduct missions of their own to kill or capture senior Islamic State leaders. This year, the SDF has reportedly captured 233 Islamic State fighters in 28 operations, while American aircraft have conducted three strikes on Islamic State targets in Syria and one in Iraq. This level of activity mirrors that of 2023, when the U.S. carried out four strikes against the Islamic State.

Bolstering the tepid military campaign in Syria and Iraq is a necessary precondition to staving off the ISIS resurgence.

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