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November 2024

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Why Palestinians Will Not Have New Leaders by Bassam Tawil

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21152/palestinians-new-leaders

For the past three decades, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have systematically targeted political activists, journalists, social media users, students, professors and human rights activists as part of an ongoing campaign to silence critics and deter others from speaking out against the lack of democracy and freedom of speech.

Torture included beatings, solitary confinement, feet-whipping, threats and taunts, and forcing detainees into various painful positions for extended periods. [Human Rights Watch] commented that “the habitual, deliberate, widely known use of torture, using similar tactics over years with no action taken by senior officials in either authority to stop these abuses, make these practices systematic.”

This abuse has transformed the PA-controlled areas in the West Bank and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip into Palestinian dictatorships similar to those that have long existed in most Arab countries. In addition, it has resulted in the suppression of the emergence of new leaders capable of leading the Palestinians towards security, stability and prosperity.

Palestinians still remember how political activist and human rights defender Nizar Banat, an outspoken critic of corruption in the Palestinian Authority, was beaten to death by PA security officers in Hebron in 2021. Until today, no one has been punished for the killing of Banat.

The family of the slain political activist was naïve enough to believe that the ICC or any other international agency would serve them justice.

The ICC does not care about crimes committed by Palestinians against their own people. Instead, the court’s antisemitic prosecutor is busy searching for ways to punish Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for daring to fight back in a war that was launched by Hamas on October 7, 2023.

Palestinians have not only been deprived of a large portion of the international financial aid — stolen by corrupt Palestinian leaders — but also of the right to elect new leaders and representatives through free elections.

Those who are hoping that a new (and pragmatic) Palestinian leadership will take over one day are in for a disappointment. Even after 89-year-old PA President Mahmoud Abbas is gone, his cronies and inner circle will continue to run the show. They will not, under any circumstances, share the cake with other Palestinians.

The same applies to the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. No Palestinian will agree to play any role in the administration of the Gaza Strip after the current Israel-Hamas war, as long as the Iran-backed terrorist group and its friends are still around. That is why it is necessary to eliminate Hamas completely and make sure that it loses its military, political and civilian capabilities in the Gaza Strip. This could take a few more months or years, but it is far better than ending the war in a way that keeps Hamas in power.

Palestinian leaders have a long history of cracking down on their political rivals and opponents. For the past three decades, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas have systematically targeted political activists, journalists, social media users, students, professors and human rights activists as part of an ongoing campaign to silence critics and deter others from speaking out against the lack of democracy and freedom of speech.

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Things Worth Remembering: ‘We Shall Win the Tomorrows Before Us’ Six days after JFK was assassinated, LBJ brought hope to a broken nation with a powerful Thanksgiving address. Douglas Murray

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/lyndon-johnson-jfk-thanksgiving?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

We are fast approaching Thanksgiving, and many Americans, no doubt, are wondering what they have to be thankful for. 

There’s the skyrocketing cost of pretty much everything. Rising crime. Endless wars. And perhaps worst of all, this fear that we’re falling apart—that Democrats and Republicans can’t work together, that in the middle of the turkey and stuffing a brawl might break out between the “communists” and “fascists.” (There were no communists or fascists on the ballot this year, the partisan smears notwithstanding.)

Over the past year, there has been much talk about America being more divided than ever. It’s easy to forget, in the midst of all the emotion and politicking, that this is an exaggeration—to say the very least. There was the Civil War. And, of course, the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s.

In the 1960s, political violence—including assassination—became an unavoidable fact of life in America. The first devastating and consequential assassination of the decade took place on November 22, 1963, when Lee Harvey Oswald murdered President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. 

That single act of violence has spawned countless conspiracy theories; fueled suspicion of the “military-industrial complex” (a suspicion that has morphed into antipathy toward the “deep state”); and driven what seems, at times, a permanent wedge between the government and the governed.

But, as always, events throw up remarkable people. And sometimes even people who do not seem all that remarkable become remarkable when history throws them into the fiercest fire.

Lyndon Baines Johnson was such a man. 

The Kennedy clan—aristocratic, with their Harvard pedigree and penchant for playing football at the family compound in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts—despised him. Johnson—born into a poor family in Texas Hill Country—despised them right back. JFK had tapped Johnson to be his running mate in 1960, because he needed a Protestant and a good old boy to hold the Democratic coalition together. Johnson, a masterful politician first elected to Congress in 1937, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was president, was mostly cut out of the very insular Kennedy inner circle. The relationship between the two men was purely transactional. 

On the day of the assassination, Johnson was with Kennedy in Dallas—riding two cars behind the president alongside his wife, Claudia “Lady Bird” Johnson.

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POSITIVE NEWS FROM ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on November 25th, 2024

www.verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com 

As the ICC equates democratic Israel with Hamas terrorists, Israel’s positive news includes vast numbers of articles to highlight Israel’s indispensability in combating the world’s greatest problems. It is quite incredible to see the contrast. Michael Ordman

Members of the Hague’s Criminal Court should be denied all of Israel’s dazzling life saving and health enhancing technology and medicine. rsk

 
ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS
 
Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough. Tel Aviv University scientists have developed a low-cost vaccine for all Covid-19 variants that is administered as a nasal spray and can be stored at room temperature. The absence of needles means less stress for patients – a previous TAU study showed high stress made vaccines less effective.
https://www.aftau.org/news_item/nasal-covid-19-vaccine-developed-by-tau/
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/advs.202404159 (Advanced Science article)
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/21983844/2024/11/40 (Advanced Science Back cover picture)
https://english.tau.ac.il/stress_vaccines
 
Prostate cancer radiation halved. (TY WIN) Doctors at Israel’s Beilinson Hospital have demonstrated the effectiveness of treating prostate cancer with two doses of high-dose external beam radiation instead of the current five doses. Benefits include less physical and emotional toll, less side effects, and shorter wait times.
https://tps.co.il/articles/israeli-breakthrough-could-halve-radiation-sessions-for-prostate-cancer-patients/  
 
Can you change your DNA? Dr. Idit Maya, Head of the Genomic School at Beilinson Hospital explains how the body need to use different proteins to perform different functions. These proteins can be generated by making changes at the cellular level. In the future, new skills can be taught with the help of biological tools.
https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/r1gjujof1e
 
US clinics offer Israeli PTSD device. (TY ATS) the Prism electrodes-laden cap from Israel’s GrayMatters Health (see here previously) has been added to the PTSD treatments offered by two major US clinics – Home Base and Fermata. Prism helps patients control PTSD symptoms by displaying brain activity.
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/us-clinics-add-israeli-ptsd-treatment-to-roster/
 
Invisible eye surgery. Israel’s Beyeonics Vision (see here previously) has upgraded its “One” Augmented Reality digital visualization headset, with cutting-edge “invisible” infrared night-vision technology. It means that ophthalmic surgeons can now operate on patients’ eyes without causing discomfort to the patient.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beyeonics-one-revolutionizes-ophthalmic-surgery-with-invisible-light-technology-302272801.html   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLY5yM0tiwI  (eye surgery video)
 
Smart software for medical imaging. (TY ATS) Israel’s DeepDense has developed Plug-AI – smart tools to enhance the digital images produced by other medical companies. DeepDense has teamed up with US firm Spectrum Dynamics Medical to improve the quality of cardiac and spinal images and reduce scan times.
https://nocamels.com/2024/08/israeli-and-us-medical-imaging-firms-collaborate-on-ai-integration/
https://deepdense.com/  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imxTTebQExI
 
Revolutionizing women’s health. Israel’s OCON Therapeutics (see here previously) develops, manufactures and markets women’s health products based on its patented, non-invasive, intrauterine therapy delivery technology. 85% of OCON’s workforce are women. Pipeline treatments include fibroids & abnormal bleeding.
https://www.israel21c.org/new-drug-delivery-stent-could-revolutionize-womens-health/
 
Medical clowns help children with pneumonia. (TY Yanky & ATS) At last, a positive Israel story from the New Scientist. It is known that medical clown reduce stress and anxiety in hospitalized children. Now Israel’s Carmel Medical Center found that medical clowns shorten the time children with pneumonia spend in hospital.
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2446996-clown-visits-may-shorten-the-amount-of-time-children-spend-in-hospital/

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Theodore Dalrymple Britain’s Long, Hot Summer Mass immigration and an alienated working class are a combustible mix, as the nation’s recent riots showed.

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/britains-long-hot-summer

The outbreak of anti-immigrant mob violence in England this summer, in which rioters went as far as to set fire to buildings with immigrants in them—for example, an attack on a Holiday Inn near Rotherham that housed 220 such immigrants, in the course of which a masked attacker entered the building and made a gesture indicating that the residents might have their throats cut—did not surprise me. It broke out after the stabbing to death of three small children, and the injury of ten more, at a dance lesson in Southport, a seaside town north of Liverpool, by the son of Rwandan refugees.

Anyone with eyes to see, ears to hear, or the slightest imagination to exercise should have detected the undercurrent of violence long present in much of English life, a kind of magma waiting to break volcanically through the crust of normal day-to-day existence. But none are so blind as those who will not consider the evidence, because it points to a reality too painful to contemplate: the murders in Southport were the perfect pretext for the expression of semi-organized brutishness, some of the rioters with extensive criminal histories. And understandably, if hypocritically, it appalled those who had long denied that any problem could arise from two deep-seated social maladies: the coarseness of English popular culture; and years of mass immigration and the increasing formation of ghettos.

Even in times of social peace, few sounds are as terrifying to me as that of young English people enjoying themselves in a certain kind of pub. More than one such pub is located near where I live. A kind of deep-throated male baying emanates from them, punctuated by female screams, whether of laughter and amusement or of fear and distress, it is not always easy to tell. Once, in Manchester, I was woken in my hotel at about 1:30 am by what I took to be normal drunken English revelers noisily heading home. The next morning, I discovered, upon stepping out of the hotel, a police cordon around the place below my window, where a young man had been kicked into a coma (whether he ultimately died, I don’t know). The sound of these Englishmen enjoying themselves and that of committing joint murder were basically the same.

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Inside Trump’s Second-Term Mission to Dismantle the Administrative State In his second term, Donald Trump, with Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, plans to dismantle the administrative state by cutting bureaucracy, enforcing accountability, and slashing costs. By Roger Kimball

By on November 25th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/24/inside-trumps-second-term-mission-to-dismantle-the-administrative-state/

For many years, and in many places, I have been railing against the rise of what people like me have called “the administrative state,” “the deep state,” “the Syndicate.” In an essay called “The Imperative of Freedom” for the June 2017 issue of The New Criterion, I drew upon the work of the political philosopher James Burnham to point out that at least since the 1940s, real legislative power had been increasingly concentrated in what Burnham called “administrative bureaus,” not parliaments or Congress.

“‘Laws’ today in the United States,” Burnham wrote in The Managerial Revolution (1941), “are not being made any longer by Congress, but by the NLRB, SEC, ICC, AAA, TVA, FTC, FCC, the Office of Production Management (what a revealing title!), and the other leading ‘executive agencies.’”

And note that Burnham wrote decades before the advent of the EPA, HUD, CFPB, FSOC, the Department of Education, and the rest of the administrative alphabet soup that governs us in the United States today. As the economist Charles Calomiris pointed out in his short but important book Reforming Financial Regulation After Dodd-Frank (2017), we are increasingly governed not by laws but by ad hoc dictats emanating from semi-autonomous and largely unaccountable quasi-governmental bureaucracies, many of which meet in secret but whose proclamations have the force of law.

Article I of the Constitution vests all legislative power in Congress, just as Article III vests all judicial authority in the Court. The administrative state is a mechanism for circumventing both. In The Administrative Threat, the legal scholar Philip Hamburger describes this shadowy Leviathan as “a state within a state,” a sort of parallel legal and political structure populated by unelected bureaucrats. Binding citizens not through Congressionally enacted statutes but through the edicts of the managerial bureaucracy, the administrative state, said Hamburger, is “all about the evasion of governance through law, including an evasion of constitutional processes and procedural rights.” Accordingly, he concludes, the encroaching activity of the administrative state represents “the nation’s preeminent threat to civil liberties.”

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The Immorality of Illegal Immigration Democratic leaders are facing backlash over the Biden administration’s handling of illegal immigration, leading to a surge in crime, strained services, and a Trump victory focused on border security. Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 25th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/11/25/the-immorality-of-illegal-immigration/

Donald Trump will not be president for almost another two months.

Yet Democrat politicians, both federal and local, vie to be the most strident in denouncing his plans to begin deporting millions of foreign nationals who, over the last four years, have entered the U.S. illegally. Trump pledges to focus initially only on the 400,000 to 500,000 current felons and some 1.4 million additional aliens who have ignored legal summons for their deportation.

Weekly we read of thousands of illegal immigrants arriving from areas controlled by violent Mexican cartel gangs or failed, strife-torn South American countries that have emptied their jails to send their felons northwards. Hundreds of thousands of them have been committing violent crimes while demanding still more free housing and support from strapped American taxpayers.

Big-city left-wing mayors and city councils boast that they will do all their best to nullify federal immigration laws, even as their cities face near insolvency housing, feeding, and monitoring the influx. More specifically, they brag they will continue to order local and state authorities to resist all efforts of federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. They scream about possible “massive deportations” to come under Trump, callously ignoring that their own advocacy has fueled rising crime waves of unaudited illegal aliens. And they appear absolutely indifferent to the social costs imposed by illegal immigration upon their own poor and middle-class constituents.

Virtue-signaling Democratic governors and mayors have so far not dared to utter a word of criticism about what has been the Biden administration’s truly historic “massive importation” of illegal aliens into the U.S. over the last four years.

Why?

Largely because these political grandees and media demagogues have the money, connections, zip codes, and influence to be immune from the fallout of their own performance-art advocacy of illegal immigration. They take for granted that the baleful consequences of open borders always falls upon the distant and vulnerable Other.

Again, consider the left-wing logic: it is deemed moral to dismantle the border, disrupt the social fabric of the country, and destroy federal immigration laws. But it is immoral to restore U.S. sovereignty, secure the border, stop the flux of lethal cartel-supplied fentanyl and child sex trafficking, and follow the law?

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The Folly of the ICC’s Arrest Warrants Does the U.S. have the right to take military action against the Court? by Jason D. Hill

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-folly-of-the-iccs-arrest-warrants/

The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday, November 21, 2024, issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense chief Yoav Gallant. Arrest warrants were issued also against slain Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri. All three are charged with alleged war crimes against humanity in the ongoing Gaza conflict.

The ICC judges have stated that there were plausible grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Galant were responsible for criminal acts that include murder, persecution, and starvation as a weapon of war as “part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population of Gaza.”

The judges have insisted that the blockade on Gaza that facilitates the lack of food, water, medical supplies, and fuel has “created conditions of life calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza, which resulted in the death of civilians, including children due to malnutrition and dehydration.”

Masri was charged with spearheading the mass killings during the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel that initiated the Gaza war. He is also indicted on charges of rape and the kidnapping of hostages. He is also dead, having been killed by the Israeli Defense Force.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has called on member states to execute the ICC’s arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant as well as Hamas’ military commander Mohammed Deif. Borell has said that neither side can achieve total victory in the Gaza war.

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Taxpayer Funded Censorship: How Government is Using Your Tax Dollars to Silence Your Voice $127M was spent just studying and countering Covid-related speech.

By on November 25th, 2024

https://openthebooks.substack.com/p/taxpayer-funded-censorship-how-government?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=775254&post_

Campaign season brought with it a steady stream of accusations that various parties and platforms were spreading misinformation and disinformation.

Most recently, the scandals at FEMA over avoiding homes with Trump signs was quickly slapped with a “misinformation” label…until FEMA itself admitted it had happened. MSNBC anchor Jen Psaki suggested “laws have to change” to combat the scourge.

With the misinformation category being weaponized across the political spectrum, we took a look at how invested government has become in studying and “combatting” it using your tax dollars. That research can provide the intellectual ammunition to censor people online.

Since 2021, the Biden-Harris administration has spent $267 million on research grants with the term “misinformation” in the proposal.

Of course, the Covid pandemic was the driving force behind so much of the misinformation debate. Sure enough, the feds have spent at least $127 million in grants specifically targeted to study the spread of “misinformation” — or to help people “overcome” it, so to speak — by persuading them to go along with Covid-related public health recommendations and mandates.

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‘All Churches in Egypt Should be Destroyed’: The Persecution of Christians, October 2024 by Raymond Ibrahim

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21137/churches-in-egypt-destroyed

“In sub-Saharan Africa, there are 16.2 million Christians who are displaced by violence and conflict….” — opendoorsuk.org, Nov. 1, 2024

A Muslim security guard at a private school raped a 6-year-old Christian girl. “The girl… identified the school’s security guard, Husnain, as the attacker. She said that he had covered her mouth to silence her during the assault.” When her parents… reported the matter to the principal, he… threatened them with “problems if they took any action.” — persecution.org, Nov. 15, 2024, Pakistan.

On Oct. 4, a Muslim man was arrested for plotting to bomb a church in Bergamo, ansa.it, Oct. 4, 2024, Italy.

Egypt’s Mansoura University had some years earlier quietly republished a book — with Al Azhar’s complete approval — dedicated to proving that, according to Islamic law and the fatwas of learned sheikhs, all churches in Egypt should be destroyed. — copticsoidarity.org, Oct. 5, 2024, Egypt.

Somalia’s constitution establishes Islam as the state religion and prohibits the propagation of any other religion…. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to mainstream schools of Islamic jurisprudence.” — copticsolidarity.org, Oct. 24, 2024, Somalia.

The driving out of the Armenian population and destruction of ancient and medieval Christian sites has caused human rights advocates to label Azerbaijan’s actions as ‘ethnic cleansing.’ Despite this and its reputation as a significant environmental polluter, Azerbaijan was given the honor of hosting COP29 [a climate change conference].” — persecution.org, Nov.11, 2024, Azerbaijan.

Another report notes how Azerbaijani textbooks indoctrinate children to hate Armenians…. — armenianweekly.com, Oct. 30, 2024, Azerbaijan.

Muslim groups are forcing more and more Christians to pay jizya, compulsory tribute — essentially “protection” money — that Christian and Jewish subjects of an Islamic state are required to render to their Islamic overlords per Koran 9:29. — acninternational.org, Oct 29, 2024, Mali.

If the authorities do not act, the population will pay taxes directly into the coffers of the terrorists…. — acninternational.org, Oct 29, 2024, Mali.

Prime Minister Ousmane Sonko [of Senegal] is asking all schools to allow young girls to wear the Muslim veil, or hijab. This includes the nation’s Catholic schools, which actually have a ban on the hijab (due to security and other considerations). Because of this ban, the prime minister also referred to the nation’s Catholic schools as “foreign.” — fsspx.news, Oct. 3, 2024, Senegal.

On Oct. 17, police arrested a Christian man after he said on social media that the Koran was of not of divine but human origin—and that it promoted “racism” (or discrimination.) When police arrived at Rudi Simamora’s home, hundreds of angry Muslims had already surrounded it. — morningstarnews.org, Oct 22, 2024, Indonesia.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of October 2024.

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Nero Had More Class Trudeau dances at Taylor Swift concert while Montreal burns. by Robert Spencer

By on November 25th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nero-had-more-class/

Pro-Hamas demonstrators ran amok in Montreal Friday night, attacking police, burning cars, breaking windows, and in general displaying their profound understanding of Allah’s command to “strike terror in the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60). The demonstrators, secure in the certainty of their own righteousness even as they sowed chaos and destruction in the once-charming Canadian city, burned Benjamin Netanyahu in effigy and threw what Fox News described as “small explosive devices and metal items” at police. And where was Justin Trudeau amid all this? He was boogieing the night away at a Taylor Swift concert. Yes, really.

Nero had more class. Contrary to legend, he didn’t exactly fiddle when Rome burned. When the notorious fire broke out in his capital city in 64 AD, the Roman emperor who has become famous for his indifference to his people’s suffering was in Antium, a coastal city 32 miles away. Reality is usually more prosaic and less interesting than myth, and so it is in this case: far from shrugging off the fire and practicing his instrument, Nero hurried back to Rome and immediately threw himself into efforts to bring relief to the people of Rome. The city was full of people whose homes had been destroyed, and Nero offered them refuge in his private gardens and the city’s public buildings. He compelled the towns around Rome to donate grain to feed the refugees.

None of that is remembered. All people today know, if they’ve heard of Nero at all, is that he was a callous autocrat who was cavalier in the face of a catastrophe befalling his people. This claim, which may have some truth to it, goes almost all the way back to the time of Nero himself. The first-century historian Tacitus, who was around eight years old at the time of the fire, wrote much later that Nero’s “measures, popular as their character might be, failed of their effect; for the report had spread that, at the very moment when Rome was aflame, he had mounted his private stage, and, typifying the ills of the present by the calamities of the past, had sung​ the Destruction of Troy.”

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