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Ruth King

Pro-Terror Mob Attacks Pro-Israel Activists in Canada

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/pro-terror-mob-attacks-pro-israel-activists-canada-daniel-greenfield/

As bad as things are in the United States, they’ve been worse in Canada for a while as the 2002 riot in Concordia showed. This footage of assaults on pro-Israel activists isn’t quite as bad, but it’s up there.

Material posted by Toronto Jewish Advocacy shows repeated assaults by thugs with keffiyahs over their heads. There’s also a report of a sexual assault.

Bnai Brith Canada has a statement.

“We condemn in the strongest terms these brazen acts of assault, intimidation, and hate targeting members of Toronto’s Jewish community and supporters of Israel. There is absolutely no justification for political violence in the streets of Toronto, whatever one’s cause may be. To put it bluntly: Those who hate Israel so much that it inspires them to pelt eggs and assault their fellow Canadians aren’t just a threat to Jews. They threaten the very fabric of Canadian society.

The media headline is, “Thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters gather at Nathan Philips Square to denounce violence.”

The Paranoid Style in Progressive Politics Its attempts to pathologize every instance of Republican opposition to the Democratic program say much about the Left’s own anxieties. Lee Siegel

https://www.city-journal.org/the-paranoid-style-in-progressive-politics

The other day I found myself staring at this headline in the New York Times: “GOP Focuses on Polarizing Cultural Issues in Drive to Regain Power.” For a moment, I thought the article would, in a commonsense way, explore how Republicans were confronting the polarizing cultural issues that had been created by liberals. That is to say, I thought the article would be about the hardball nature of American politics.

Instead, it presented Republican opposition to explosively controversial questions like packing the Supreme Court, defunding the police, and giving legal status to illegal immigrants as part empty cynicism, part mental imbalance. The reporter, Carl Hulse, portrayed the Republican resistance to such extreme Democratic initiatives as a determined effort to appease the “conservative base.” That’s a phrase that has become a Democratic mantra signifying chthonic forces of disorder, and it has the effect of halting in its tracks any political argument or debate.

Nowhere in Hulse’s report was there an acknowledgment that the Republican focus on these matters was a legitimate form of democratic politics—as robust, and constitutional, as the calculating Democratic manipulation of same. What’s more, Hulse noted that “Republicans are also hammering at issues of race and sexual orientation, seeking to use Democrats’ push to confront systemic racism and safeguard transgender rights as attack lines.” The article treats “systemic racism” as a settled historic fact, as though it were the institution of slavery in the antebellum South. But systemic racism—the assumption that white racism is fundamental to American identity—is not a settled historical fact, having been discredited by, among others, at least a score of distinguished liberal historians. And transgender rights are a complex matter, extending from protection of transgender people under the law to the question of transgender athletes—on which there is no consensus on the right—and the issue of sexual-reassignment surgery for children. But Republicans violently “hammer” at such settled questions “in a drive to regain power,” while Democrats gently “push to confront” and “safeguard” them in a spirit of truth and justice.

Arizona Senate considers expanding audit of Maricopa County ballots to all races Robert Anglen Ryan Randazzo

https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2021/05/14/arizona-senate-considers-expanding-audit-maricopa-county-ballots-all-races/5100735001/

The Arizona Senate is considering expanding its audit of Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 election to include all contests, not just for president and U.S. Senate.

Audit organizers now say they want to test county voting machines by examining results from all of the races.

“We are looking with other companies to do a machine tabulation of all the races on the ballot to compare with the Dominion tabulation back in November,” said Ken Bennett, who is serving as the Senate’s audit liaison.

“We will be looking at the images of all 2.1 million ballots.”

The examination would not involve a physical recount like the one underway at Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum. Rather, it would be a separate audit using digital images of each ballot, Bennett said.

The effort would, however, require a reexamination of the nearly 500,000 ballots that auditors have gone through since the audit began April 23. 

Bennett said the Senate is considering hiring a California company to conduct the digital tabulation, but he declined to name it. He said the imaging would be done “in the time of the rest of the counting.”

Auditors said in April the recount of ballots would be completed by May 14, when its lease on the coliseum expired. But with less than 24% of the ballots counted as the audit takes a week’s break for high school graduations, auditors have indicated the recount of the races for president and senator could last into July. 

Republican state senators launched the audit after questioning the validity of the general election results in Maricopa County, where President Joe Biden defeated former President Donald Trump by 45,109 votes. 

Senate President Karen Fann says the results will not be used to attempt to overturn the election results but instead will be used to ensure election integrity in future races

Election audit in small New Hampshire town could have implications for 2020 results statewide In tiny Windham, a November hand recount in a state legislative race revealed vote count discrepancies up and down the ballot — all benefiting Democrats.By Sophie Mann

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/hold-new-hampshire-election-audit

An audit team sent to conduct a forensic examination of the 2020 election results in Windham, N.H. started the process off well enough on Tuesday. But by Wednesday, they hit a major snag: The live stream cameras that had been broadcasting the audit room around the clock went offline for close to 90 minutes, potentially obscuring any problematic intervention. 

The team decided Thursday morning to reinspect the ballot machines on camera in an attempt to maintain observers’ faith in their process. They needed to determine whether the machines had been tampered with over night when the cameras mysteriously went down.

With the country focused on the election audit in Maricopa County, Ariz. and early headlines about election night troubles centered on cities in Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan, it comes as a small surprise that the idyllic New England town of Windham — where Republicans ultimately won each of the races now being inspected — also now finds itself under scrutiny for possible election night machine malfunctions and numbers that just don’t add up.

While the audit is focused solely on tiny Windham (estimated population: 14,853),  the results could have statewide repercussions, as the AccuVote machines used in the town are the only vote-counting machines approved for use in New Hampshire.

AN AMAZING STORY AMID THE CHAOS

There was one remarkable story amid all the chaos. A 3-year-old girl was badly wounded in a rocket attack in Holon. Her mother was also injured as well as her twin sister. But the girl’s injury was serious – her carotid artery had been partly severed by a piece of shrapnel. They were in a car at the time. The mother shouted for help and in another car a woman and her husband jumped out and rushed to their assistance. It turned out the woman was one of her customers (she was a hairdresser). The woman took her head-covering, called a mitpachat, which religious women wear, and bandaged the wound. They then started running. A moment later, they heard a loud explosion. It was the car in which the woman and her husband had been traveling. It had exploded, having been hit by shrapnel from the rocket, unbeknownst to them.

So they not only saved the little girl, the little girl saved them.

David Isaac

Americans Have the Right to Know About Biden’s Upcoming Deal with Iran’s Mullahs by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17350/biden-upcoming-iran-deal

Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed?

If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

The American public has the right to know what sanctions the Biden administration are planning to lift because this regime has been killing Americans and taking hostages for almost four decades.

“Last week, Iran’s chief diplomat allegedly admitted the IRGC calls the shots in Tehran. Now, Iran releases a fake video of the IRGC blowing up our Capitol. The Biden admin’s priority should be ensuring Iran cannot carry out such an attack, not capitulating by removing sanctions.” — US Senator Pat Toomey, Twitter, May 2, 2021.

Since the nuclear talks began in Vienna between the Iranian regime and P5+1, the Biden administration has avoided being transparent about what is going on with the negotiations and what exactly is being offered to the Iranian regime — the one that the US Department of Justice has called the “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.

Ironically, it has been easier to get information about the talks from the Russian and Iranian leaders than from the Biden administration. While Iran and Russia, for example, have been saying for weeks that they are progressing towards a deal, the Biden administration, at home and in front of the allies such as Israel, has continued to downplay the possibility of a deal with Iran. Is the effective US news blackout about the negotiations with Iran meant to keep the allies and American public in the dark to prevent an outrage that may scuttle the administration’s effort to revive the 2015 nuclear deal — which Iran by the way never signed? Or is it meant to keep the public and the Congress’s guard down to later surprise them with a deal? If the Biden administration, like the Obama administration, suddenly surprises everyone that a deal has been reached, will it then be too late for the public to act? Is a return to the nuclear deal the price Biden agreed to for Obama’s support before the November 3, 2020 election?

After the Europeans admitted around May 1 that a deal is close to being finalized, the Biden administration finally had no option other than to reveal the truth on May 8 and acknowledge that a deal is in fact on the way.

AP Had Advance Notice of Israeli Air Strike on Gaza Building, Was Able to Safely Evacuate All Journalists By Philip Klein

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ap-had-advanced-notice-of-israeli-air-strike-on-gaza-building-was-able-to-safely-evacuate-all-journalists/

On Saturday, Israel struck a building in Gaza housing Hamas assets that also happened to have offices for the Associated Press. Why the AP was sharing an office building with a U.S. State Department designated terrorist group that is known to use civilians and journalists as human shields is a subject worth exploring. But here is the full statement by the AP, which includes two important details (which I’ve highlighted in bold):

We are shocked and horrified that the Israeli military would target and destroy the building housing AP’s bureau and other news organizations in Gaza. They have long known the location of our bureau and knew journalists were there. We received a warning that the building would be hit.

We are seeking information from the Israeli government and are engaged with the U.S. State Department to try to learn more.

This is an incredibly disturbing development. We narrowly avoided a terrible loss of life. A dozen AP journalists and freelancers were inside the building and thankfully we were able to evacuate them in time.

The world will know less about what is happening in Gaza because of what happened today.

So to be clear, Israel warned the journalists, who had sufficient time to get out safely, and then proceeded to liquidate a legitimate enemy target.

Moral Clarity Versus Moral Depravity in Israel and Gaza | Opinion Josh Hammer

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/moral-clarity-versus-moral-depravity-in-israel-and-gaza-opinion/ar-BB1gI5Rz

Nationally syndicated radio host Dennis Prager has often observed that if the Israelis were to lay down their guns, Israel would be destroyed tomorrow, but if the Palestinians were to lay down their guns, there would be peace tomorrow. It has always been thus.

The latest flare-up of violence between Israelis and Palestinians is no different. The proximate causes are a thorny combination of an abstruse housing dispute in northeastern Jerusalem, deceitful Palestinian slander about an ostensible threat to Al-Aqsa Mosque, the destabilizing nature of Israel’s current domestic political morass and the contemporaneous American appeasement in Vienna of the Palestinians’ preeminent jihad bankroller, the Islamic Republic of Iran. But the immediate aggressors, as per usual, are clear: Hamas, the internationally recognized Gaza-based terrorist outfit whose founding charter calls for the murder of every Jew worldwide, and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, ruled in profoundly corrupt fashion by serial jihad-inciter Mahmoud Abbas, a Holocaust denialist now in the 16th year of his four-year term.

The result has been the worst bout of bloodshed since the last full-scale Israel-Hamas war in 2014. Hamas has fired thousands of rockets into the Jewish state, seeking—and, tragically, occasionally succeeding—to inflict maximal harm upon Israel’s civilian population. Hamas’ rockets do not discriminate on the basis of age, race or religion: Victims include an Israel Defense Forces soldier, a 6-year-old boy in the oft-targeted Gaza border town of Sderot and a 32-year-old Indian national in the southern Israeli city of Ashkelon. One would be waiting in vain for Black Lives Matter, or other leading institutional wokesters and intersectional shakedown artists, to reconcile such calamities with their professed principles.

On the Hypocrites at Apple Who Fired Antonio Garcia-Martinez Much easier to ruin a career than mess with a corporate cash cow Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-the-hypocrites-at-apple-who-canceled

I’m biased, because I know Antonio Garcia-Martinez and something like the same thing once happened to me, but the decision by Apple to bend to a posse of internal complainers and fire him over a passage in a five-year-old book is ridiculous hypocrisy. Hypocrisy by the complainers, and defamatory cowardice by the bosses — about right for the Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style era of timorous conformity and duncecap monoculture the woke mobs at these places are trying to build as their new Jerusalem.

Garcia-Martinez is a brilliant, funny, multi-talented Cuban-American whose confessional memoir Chaos Monkeys is to big tech what Michael Lewis’s Liar’s Poker was to finance. A onetime high-level Facebook executive — he ran Facebook Ads — Antonio’s book shows the House of Zuckerberg to be a cult full of on-the-spectrum zealots who talked like justice activists while possessing the business ethics of Vlad the Impaler:

Facebook is full of true believers who really, really, really are not doing it for the money, and really, really will not stop until every man, woman, and child on earth is staring into a blue-framed window with a Facebook logo.

When I read Chaos Monkeys the first time I was annoyed, because this was Antonio’s third career at least — he’d also worked at Goldman, Sachs — and he tossed off a memorable bestseller like it was nothing. Nearly all autobiographies fail because the genre requires total honesty, and not only do few writers have the stomach for turning the razor on themselves, most still have one eye on future job offers or circles of friends, and so keep the bulk of their interesting thoughts sidelined — you’re usually reading a résumé, not a book.

Anti-Israel Forces Encouraged by Biden’s Weakness It has taken the Democrats all of four months in power to screw up the Middle East, and the good guys in the region are not pleased or inclined to play along.by Christian Whiton

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/anti-israel-forces-encouraged-biden%E2%80%99s-weakness-185215

Four years of relative peace in the Middle East have been shattered by a conflict between Hamas and Israel, which began when Hamas bombarded Jerusalem. The Iranian-backed force that rules Gaza then expanded its target list to other Israeli cities.

Why now? The Middle East and particularly the Levant had been on the mend since then-President Donald Trump took the handcuffs off U.S.-led forces in 2017 and allowed them to all but obliterate ISIS. Trump also knocked off balance the terrorism-exporting Iranian regime by curtailing its finances and confronting it with an aggressive military posture in the Arabian Gulf.

The biggest Trump breakthrough came with the Abraham Accords, which achieved a historic breakthrough between Israelis and Arabs, with the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.

Unfortunately, the new Biden administration refused simply to accept this new and beneficial status quo upon entering office. Biden officials set about immediately to let Iran out of the doghouse. The administration is set on resurrecting the 2015 nuclear deal that showered Tehran with money and still allowed it to keep the key parts of a nuclear program it today is using to enrich uranium far beyond what is necessary for peaceful purposes.

Biden officials also put the Palestinians, and therefore Hamas (aka, the Muslim Brotherhood), back on the payroll with $235 million in payments. Trump had cut them off in 2018, realizing they funded terrorism. In restoring the funds, the administration said it “wanted to restore credible engagement” between the Palestinians and Israelis. Certainly, it did: nothing is more credible than a rocket attack targeting civilians in one’s capital.