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Ruth King

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Beinart’s Rejection of a Jewish State What his envisioned unitary, bi-national state would mean for Israelis – and for Palestinians. Joseph Puder

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/beinart-doesnt-believe-jewish-state-joseph-puder/

The New York Times has eagerly accepted Peter Beinart’s opinion piece published on July 8, 2020, titled, “I No Longer Believe in a Jewish State.” The piece by Beinart rejects the existence of the Jewish state of Israel and calls for a bi-national state. Would the NYTimes dare solicit an opinion piece that suggested that Turkey should be a bi-national state made up of Turks and Kurds with equal rights? It’s doubtful! It is not the first time the NYTimes has published an op-ed piece that advocates the elimination of the Jewish state and the creation of a bi-national state. In 2009, the NYTimes published such an op-ed by the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, that argued for replacing the Jewish state with “Isratine,” as the name implies, an Israel-Arab-Palestinian state. In his Twitter account, NYTimes editor Max Strasser, expressed his belief that Beinart’s views might at first seem controversial, but will before long become mainstream opinion among American Jewish liberals. Strasser has obviously not considered the majority of American Jews, or the wishes of Israeli-Jews.

The arrogance of both Beinart (editor at large of Jewish Currents) and the NYTimes are clearly exposed in ignoring the will and wishes of the Israeli people. The overwhelming majority of Israeli-Jews are proud of their Jewish state and would not be compelled to share it with an Arab-Palestinian people who seek their destruction, to kill them, or displace them. A look at the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) charter, not to mention Hamas’ charter, reveals those very intentions. After two millenniums of persecution in the diaspora, both in Christian and Muslim lands, Israeli-Jews cherish their one Jewish state in the world, a state that has been a major Zionist success story. 

Frankly, few Jewish people care about Beinart “disbelief” in the Jewish State. Beinart’s views regarding the Jewish state are shared by many enemies of the Jewish state, the Palestinians in particular. These enemies couldn’t destroy the Jewish state by war, terror, or economic and political warfare. Some Palestinians might agree to a bi-national state as the first stage before eliminating Jews by sheer weight of importing Palestinians from throughout the Middle East. Once they have become a majority, they would democratically or otherwise (through terror) abolish the Law of Return, and all the symbols of the Jewish state. 

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Campus Re-Education – Maoist-Style Student Fascists demand mandatory sensitivity training. Richard L. Cravatts

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/let-re-education-begin-student-fascists-demand-richard-l-cravatts/

As campuses across the country are roiled in paroxysms of self-righteous indignation over race, some black students, enraged and emboldened by the murder of George Floyd under the knee of an abusive white police officer, have formed coalitions and presented elaborate, and breathtakingly audacious, lists of demands which they have nailed to the doors of their respective university administrations.

“The power to be found in victimization, like any power,” wrote Shelby Steele in The Content of Our Character, “is intoxicating and can lend itself to the creation of a new class of super-victims who can feel the pea of victimization under twenty mattresses.” Apparently, the new victims in the current culture of aggrievement on campus have been irritated by the ‘hard pea’ of racism and want everyone else to know and feel their pain, as well, since the lists of demands from the campus crybullies invariably includes one well-intentioned, but intellectually pernicious, item; namely, mandatory sensitivity training for all students, faculty, and staff on the topics of diversity, oppression, racism, and other maladies purportedly afflicting black students on today’s campuses.

In early June, for example, black student leaders at the University of Miami sent the administration a list of 11 recommendations, including their important goal of implementing a “mandatory university-wide diversity, social justice and cultural sensitivity training program.”

At the University of Pittsburgh, black students there, “Black Pitt,”  apparently “are exhausted mentally, physically, as well as emotionally[and] [each] day we find ourselves overcompensating to make up for the University’s failures at combating racism on campus, in the classroom, and amongst students.” In order to change the racist character of the Pitt campus, the audacious students seem to desire to upend the entire academic structure of the institution and to “Transform the mission of the focus of our academic curriculum to be inclusive and comprehensive regarding the plight and triumphs of Black people.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Pelosi’s Stand for Ilhan How Jew-hate became the new normal in the Democrat Party. Ari Lieberman

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/nancy-pelosi-endorses-anti-israel-agitator-ilhan-ari-lieberman/

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has endorsed Ilhan Omar over her more moderate opponent in a hotly contested primary race for Minnesota’s 5th congressional district scheduled for August 11. Despite Pelosi’s endorsement, Omar’s challenger, Antone Melton-Meaux, has managed to garner a substantial war chest and has out-funded Omar by wide margins. He draws support from more moderate Democrats who view Omar with suspicion and have been turned off by her toxic rhetoric, questionable ethics and anti-Semitic commentary.

Omar has raised the ire of moderate Democrats who view her malign commentary as a liability to the Democratic Party. She has also raised eyebrows by engaging in a pattern of ethical breaches that would have ended the careers of other politicians similarly situated.

Omar has been dogged by accusations of marrying her brother in an alleged convoluted immigration, education and marriage fraud scheme. It’s an allegation that she’s referred to as “disgusting lies” but she’s yet to rebut the charge, the evidence for which remains compelling and persuasive. The FBI is reportedly investigating the claim but has yet to confirm or deny the existence of an official criminal investigation.

She also filed joint tax returns with an individual she was living with while simultaneously legally married to another individual, to wit, her alleged brother. In addition, Minnesota campaign finance officials found that Omar had misused campaign funds in violation of state rules. She was forced to repay her campaign committee nearly $3,500 and was also required to pay a $500 penalty to the state.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

California School Boards Support Anti-Semitic Curriculum Lauding Omar, Tlaib, Sarsour Wonder why schools breed American-haters? Here’s why. Robert Spencer

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/07/california-school-boards-support-anti-semitic-robert-spencer/

A Leftist protester in Portland recently announced that the goal of the riots that have recently swept the nation is the “abolition of the United States as we know it,” to the applause of her audience (which included not just miseducated children, but a middle-aged priest who should have known better). Rioters around the country, who are overwhelmingly young, middle-class Americans, have made abundantly clear their incandescent hatred for the United States. In the midst of all this, the California Department of Education has given us a vivid illustration of how we got here. It has developed an “Ethnic Studies” curriculum that would make Josef Goebbels proud.

The Jewish News Syndicate (JNS) reported Thursday that “more than a dozen California school boards have adopted resolutions in support of the state’s proposed ethnic-studies model curriculum, despite it have come under fire for containing anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content, and not addressing issues of anti-Semitism or including Jewish Americans.”

It’s all happening under the cover of darkness, deception, and coronavirus distraction, thanks to a group called “Save CA Ethnic Studies.” A letter to the California Department of Education (CDE) protesting the curriculum states: “School board members asked to vote on the resolution are not shown the original draft curriculum, and not informed about the enormous outpouring of criticism it engendered or that a CDE process is well underway for the curriculum’s redesign.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What the coronavirus numbers are telling us By Richard Baehr

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/07/what_the_coronavirus_numbers_are_telling_us.html

There are lots of numbers flying around about the coronavirus, so here is a brief attempt to put some context to them. 

The United States daily new case volume rose to the mid 30,000 range in April, then started a slide to about half that level in mid-May. Since then, there has been a steep rise, to the mid 70,0000 level last week, down a bit this weekend to the low 60,000 level. The distribution of cases among the states has also changed. In the first surge, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Louisiana were hardest hit. In the last 6-7 weeks, Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, and a few other states in the southeast have had the highest volumes, though a large number of states have rising numbers. 

The fear surrounding the virus is, of course, most associated with its death toll. The daily number of new deaths reported is far lower now, even with the much higher daily new case levels, than at the peak of daily deaths two to three months ago. Daily deaths were regularly in the 2,000 range or higher, reaching 2,500 per day, and dropped to the 500-750 per day range in June. They are up a bit now to close to 1,000 on some days, with higher death tolls in the most severely hit states, likely to increase more since there is a lag between positive testing results and deaths associated with the new cases.  

This country has the highest caseload in the world, and one of the highest caseloads in the world compared to population.  But as far as deaths, many countries have higher death rates per million people than we do. In addition, there is the case fatality rate: deaths divided by positive cases. The US case fatality rate has dropped steadily for several months, from about 6% to below 4%. Death numbers are lagged, as indicated already, but back in April, new deaths were on some days 6-10% of new positive cases. The last few weeks, that percentage has been about 1-2%.  The US case fatality rate is far lower than many other countries, including our developed world peers in Europe. 

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P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

Mandated Diversity Training By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/mandated_diversity_training_.html

Most schools and businesses mandate that their employees take a “Diversity: Inclusion in the Modern Workplace” (EDU) online training course.  Under the umbrella of compassion for all, it is a well-crafted collection of leftwing radical propaganda.   Thus, one learns that “[a]n identity transition describes the process of shifting from a central identity and its associated beliefs and behaviors to the integration of another identity, e.g., a formerly childless person finds out they [sic] are going to become a parent.”

Sounds innocent enough.  And then the program turns to intersectionality which “builds on the idea of multiple identities by viewing them within their social and historical contexts of power, privilege, and discrimination, [emphasis mine] i.e., a young white woman may experience sexism because of her gender. And though she may share a ‘female identity’ with an Hispanic woman who is 62 years old and disabled, she would not share the added experiences of racism, ageism, and ableism by virtue of the race, age and disability.”

The unsuspecting reader has been subtly led to believe that being white is problematic because she is guilty of having privilege.

Under “Workplace Identity Negotiations,” Racial Identity-based Impression Management (RIM) is a process whereby individuals negotiate the way they look, act, and speak ‘in order to influence perceptions of racial identity group membership and characteristics.'”  Thus, “in a 2014 study about the work experiences of Asian American journalists, researchers identified four central strategies of RIM: Avoidance, Enhancement, Affiliation, and Racial Humor.”

In such vagueness does the Left prosper and become ubiquitous. Turgid titles and ambiguous meaning rule the day.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DAVID SOLWAY: THE AGE OF CONSPIRACY *****

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/07/the_age_of_conspiracy.html

I sometimes think that when future historians look back on our time, they will label it “The Age of Conspiracy.” And there would be some truth to that. One tends to see conspiracies, plots and secret plans galore, wherever one looks, whether from the perspective of the left or the right. The left believes that the right is conspiring to promote a fascist takeover of the nation, in line with its presumed colonial history. The right sees a socialist, if not a communist, conspiracy to ignite a coup against the body politic and its political organization. There is no possibility of moderating these views. They are frankly irreconcilable.

The issue is that some so-called conspiracies are hoaxes ginned up by those who seek to alarm a docile and pliable, low-information public. And some conspiracies are precisely what they are called, real plots that can be verified objectively. The problem is how to distinguish conspiracy-mongering from representations of fact.

“Like every successful con,” Rupert Darwall writes in Green Tyranny, “maintaining audience credulity depends on preventing the audience from noticing what the trickster is up to,” a tactic known in the trade as “defining the baseline” — that is, by deceptively touting how damaged the world would be minus whatever transformation is envisioned. In all too many instances, there is no dispositive proof that such would be the case. Much to the chagrin of our false prophets, the seas do not rise to engulf our cities and low-lying islands, famine does not fall upon the land, populations do not grow extinct, the air is not becoming unbreathable, the spring does not grow silent, and the world does not end on a given date — though it may on the next given date, or the next. We can always hope.

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CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, ELECTIONS, POLITICS Comments turned off

Trump Has Already Won the 2020 Election Roger Simon

By on July 21st, 2020

www.theepochtimes.com/trump-has-already-won-the-2020-election_3430395.html

Given the polls, you would think anyone positing Donald Trump has already won the 2020 election was some kind of blithering idiot—and maybe I am. (I’ve been called worse.)

But I can’t help but think that in current conditions the polls are not only not worth the paper they’re printed on, digital or otherwise, they’re about as accurate as a thermometer run over by a six-wheeler.

No one sensible is talking about their political allegiance these days in public—especially to an anonymous pollster.

Instead, they’re buying guns, in record numbers.

Why wouldn’t they? Calling 911 has become about as useful as calling tech support for a transistor radio run over by the same six-wheeler.

The destroyed statues are the least of it. They’re inanimate. The actual people of Seattle, Portland, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Philadelphia and on and on are living a nightmare. Violence stalks the streets of all our major cities whose murder rates are going up stratospherically. (As I type this, the news is reporting 9 more shot in D.C.)

Have there ever been remotely as many stores and businesses smashed, many still not operating, from the Atlantic to the Pacific?

America isn’t in the midst of a civil war. It’s in the midst of a national meltdown with the banana-brained neo-Marxists of Black Lives Matter and Antifa, stoned like sophomores (if that) on Foucault or some other self-important “critical theorist,” leading the way to oblivion and mutual hatred (actually a return to tribalism).

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Can Tories Today Find A Leader Like Benjamin Disraeli? Britons are more attached to conservative principles than Boris Johnson seems to appreciate Stephen MacLean

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/can-britain-find-a-leader-like-benjamin-disraeli/91193/

“Conservatism,” wrote Disraeli in his novel Coningsby, “assumes in theory that everything established should be maintained; but adopts in practice that everything that is established is indefensible.”

Much like the Conservative Party in Britain today, the party that Disraeli joined as a young MP was suffering a crisis of faith. Would it maintain old verities at the risk of political annihilation? Or jettison them for faddish ideals and make a play for popular esteem?

This is a moment for Boris Johnson to study his famous 19th century predecessor. Disraeli’s genius was to recognize that Conservatism’s roots remained vital and cherished by the British population. Only electors were denied the best that Toryism could offer, since the party’s leading politicians either abandoned their heritage or lacked the courage to defend it.

Tories are once more at a crossroads. And, like the 1840s, a conservative disposition remains alive in the United Kingdom while its leaders choose to curry favor more with the press than with the voting public. Apostasy starts at the head. Boris Johnson, James Delingpole writes, “is going to go down as the Prime Minister who cancelled London.”

The Prime Minister’s problem, Mr. Delingpole believes, “is that he is a fundamentally unserious person.” Cometh the times, cometh the man? Not with BoJo. Resolving the political and economic crises overwhelming the UK “requires courageous, principled leadership of a kind Boris is quite incapable of providing,” is Mr. Delingpole’s assessment.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Reopening Schools and the Limits of Expertise By Charles Lipson –

By on July 21st, 2020

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/07/20/reopening_schools_and_the_limi

The last thing you want to hear from your brain surgeon (aside from “Oops”) is “Wow, I’ve always wanted to do one of these.” You’ll feel a lot better hearing, “I’ve done 30 operations like this over the past month and published several articles about them.”

Expertise like that is essential for brain surgery, building rockets, constructing skyscrapers, and much, much more. Our modern world is built upon it. We need such expert advice as we decide whether to open schools this fall, and we should turn to educators, physicians, and economists to get it. But ultimately we, as citizens and the local officials we elect, should make the choices. These are not technical decisions but political ones that incorporate technical issues and projections. We should hold our representatives, not the experts, responsible for the choices they make.

When we listen to experts, we should remember Clint Eastwood’s comment in “Magnum Force”:  “A man’s got to know his limitations.” Even the best authorities have them, and one, ironically, is that they seldom admit them, even to themselves. It is important for us both to appreciate expert advice and to recognize its limits every time we’re told to “be quiet and do what they say.” We should listen, think it over, and then make our own decisions as citizens, parents, teachers, business owners, workers, retirees — and voters.

The best way to understand why we need experts but also why we need to weigh their advice, not swallow it whole and uncooked, is to consider this illustration: Should we build a hydroelectric dam in a beautiful valley? If we construct it, we certainly need the best engineers and construction workers. We need engineering firms to project the cost and economists to project the price of its energy and potable water. Their expertise is essential.

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