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Ruth King

The Coming Democrat Civil War By Stephen Green

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/the-coming-democrat-civil-war/

“I’m not a member of any organized political party — I’m a Democrat,” Will Rogers is supposed to have quipped nearly a century ago, but his assessment has never been truer than it is right now.

Early polls show former Vice President Joe Biden — who first ran for president when I was a freshman in college; I’m now 50 — with a commanding lead, and that has some Democrats very upset. A recent Fox News poll shows Biden up 2-to-1 over nearest rival (and fellow Old White Dude) Bernie Sanders, 35-17. That puts Biden up a couple of points and Bernie down six since March.

But is Biden really the candidate Democrats crave?

Writer and Progressive activist Touré went on quite the Twitter rant this morning, arguing that “it’s a mistake to take progressive voters for granted and think they’ll all come out based on Trump-hatred.” He’s calling for a more radical approach than Seemingly Safe Joe is willing to offer, and that the nominee needs to excite the party’s Progressive wing: “Thinking ‘the left is in the bag,’ is a path to defeat. Serving the base has got to be priority #1. Not winning over the middle.”

And Touré is hardly alone.

Growing International Movement to Boycott Israel Is Condemned by Germany Support for the BDS initiative is broad-based across Europe’s center-left, but Berlin’s resolution says its methods recall Nazi-era campaigns By Bojan Pancevski

https://www.wsj.com/articles/growing-international-movement-to-boycott-israel-is-condemned-by-germany-11558108099

BERLIN—The German parliament condemned as anti-Semitic a growing international movement that targets Israel and called on the government to withdraw funding for events or institutions affiliated with the initiative.

The Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions movement, which originated in Palestinian circles, calls for academic, cultural, economic and academic boycotts of Israel. Support for BDS is broad-based across the European center-left, but it also has backing among segments of the far-right and the far-left as well as in some Islamist groupings. It has also gained traction in the U.S.

On Friday, a broad majority of German legislators supported a resolution titled “Decisively Oppose the BDS Movement and Fight Anti-Semitism” that strongly condemned the initiative and compared its methods to Nazi-era campaigns targeting Jewish businesses in Germany.

The resolution will immediately stop funding and other forms of support for BDS-related events from the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, but it isn’t binding on the government. A spokesman for the German government didn’t immediately comment on whether it would follow parliament’s lead.

When Did the Spying Begin? U.S. Attorney General William Barr says he’s going to find the answer. By James Freeman

https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-did-the-spying-begin-11558105067

Americans are getting closer to learning how the surveillance tools of the U.S. government were turned against the party out of power during the 2016 presidential campaign. This morning the Journal’s Sadie Gurman and Aruna Viswanatha report on their interview with the head of the U.S. Department of Justice:

Attorney General William Barr said his review of the origins of the Russia investigation is focused on U.S. intelligence gathering before the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened its formal inquiry in July 2016 and could lead to rule changes for counterintelligence investigations of political campaigns.

“Government power was used to spy on American citizens,” Mr. Barr told The Wall Street Journal, in his first interview since taking office in February. “I can’t imagine any world where we wouldn’t take a look and make sure that was done properly.”

He added: “Just like we need to ensure that foreign actors don’t influence the outcome of our elections, we need to ensure that the government doesn’t use its powers to put a thumb on the scale.”

We absolutely do. And to ensure that this never happens in the future, it’s important to learn precisely when and how government spying powers were directed against associates of the Trump campaign—and by whom.

AYAAN HIRSI ALI WARNS OF ISLAMIC ANTI-SEMITISM By Janice Arnold,

https://www.cjnews.com/

“Ali described “Islamist-driven anti-Semitism as the reigning anti-Semitism of the day,” and said that it’s distinct from the “classic” European variety, or today’s white supremacy movement.“Little attention is paid (to it) and that is a pity because it is the most zealous, most potent Jew hatred,” she said. “It both condemns Jews wholesale and seeks to destroy the State of Israel.”

Islamic anti-Semitism is of a “scale and scope” that most people in the West do not understand and is therefore all the more insidious, the controversial critic of the Muslim religion, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, told a capacity audience at the Jewish Public Library (JPL) in Montreal on May 13.

The Somali-born Ali, 49, grew up being told that Jews were evil and reflexively hated them, even though she had never met one. In her teens, she joined the Muslim Brotherhood, in which she was indoctrinated to believe that Jews were a sub-human enemy and that their state occupies Muslim lands and must be destroyed.

After fleeing to avoid a forced marriage, Ali found refuge in the Netherlands, where her views were transformed. She became an activist for Muslim women’s rights and was elected to the Dutch parliament.

She wrote the short, but incendiary, 2004 film Submission, a critique of Islam’s subjugation of women, whose director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered by a Muslim fundamentalist.

Antisemitism, migrants and integration We asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. By Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/23863

In the six countries we conducted the survey , approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

Manfred Gerstenfeld interviews Ruud Koopmans

“Antisemitism in the Netherlands has grown in the past 10-20 years like in other countries in Europe. It is difficult to prove the spread of verbal antisemitism which can hardly be quantified. The rise of social media has increased this type of abuse. It aims at many targets, including Jews, Zionists and Israel. I do not give much weight to it.

“A stronger and more severe form of antisemitism is threats and violence. We know that this violence has also grown in Europe. Sometimes it is even lethal.”

Dr. Ruud Koopmans was born in the Netherlands in 1961. In 1992 he received his Ph.D in sociology at the University of Amsterdam. He is professor of Sociology and Migration Research at the Humboldt University of Berlin and director of the research unit “Migration, Integration and Transnationalization” at the WZB Berlin Social Center.

Koopmans says: “I have done some research on antisemitism. In 2015, I studied religious fundamentalism in six European countries including the Netherlands. One question asked interviewees their opinion about the statement that Jews cannot be trusted. In the six countries concerned approximately 45% of Muslims agreed with this claim. Among non-Muslims it was eight percent.

‘Both in the Netherlands and in Germany there is good data about punishable antisemitic acts. Statistics are however rather vague about the perpetrators’ origins. The situation in Germany is even worse than in the Netherlands. It is impossible to obtain data about the share of migrants in various crimes.

The GOP’s commitment to electing talented women can help party retake the House see noteBy Rep. Carol Miller (R-W.Va.)

https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/444173-the-gops-commitment-to-electing-talented-women-can-help-party

West Virginia’s other Representatives are Republican and up for re-election in 2020 as is Rep. Miller who is in her first term. The Senators are Joe Manchin a Democrat and really good and independent person, who is up for reelection in 2024 and Shelley Capito a Republican who will be an incumbent candidate in 2020…..rsk

As the 2020 campaign season starts up, a narrative that many in the media like to discuss is a supposed problem within the Republican party with electing women. As the only new female Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, in my experience, that couldn’t be further from the truth. During my campaign, I received support from many people. I met terrific, dynamic Republican women around the country who shared my goals – to make our country a better place to live, work, and raise a family, now and for generations to come.

The one story that has not been written, is that so many talented Republican female candidates faced unprecedented opposition in order to keep us out of Congress. The hundreds of millions of dollars spent to increase the barriers for Republican women to serve their country in the U.S. House of Representatives was very calculated and effective. It was disappointing and destructive. As liberal groups replenish their coffers to once again target Republican women, the media continues to attack and undermine those working hardest and making a real difference to elect Republican women – groups like Winning for Women. Despite the constant negativity, we remain optimistic and undeterred.

Pompeo and Bolton tensions escalate as Iran debate intensifies The Secretary of State has bridled at the seasoned national security adviser’s grip on the policy process, but is more in sync with the president they serve. By Eliana Johnson

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/17/bolton-pompeo-trump-iran-1329833

Rising tensions between the U.S. and Iran are also magnifying strains among President Donald Trump’s top foreign policy advisers: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and national security adviser John Bolton.Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the mullahs in Tehran has exacerbated fissures between the two men over the tight control Bolton has tried to exert over the national security decision-making process — and introduced new ones over the direction of U.S. policy.

Pompeo and his special representative for Iran, Brian Hook, have indicated that the administration’s goal in squeezing Iran is renewed negotiations with Iranian regime, according to two sources familiar with their thinking — something Trump has expressed a desire to do. But Bolton is a deep skeptic of the value of negotiating with adversaries who, before joining the White House, called publicly for regime change in Tehran.

While Pompeo has worked to carry out the president’s foreign policy directives, Bolton has done more to try to shape them — at times contradicting the president, as when he walked back Trump’s call for a rapid U.S. troop withdrawal from Syria.

The Hard Politics of U.S.-China Trade Talks: Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/05/17/the_hard_politics_of_us-china_trade_talks_140352.html

Since neither side benefits from a trade war, why are both sides threatening one?The answer is straightforward. Although both sides could benefit from a deal, one side could benefit more — a lot more — depending on the final terms.Two key issues dominate the current stalemate. The first is how many of China’s mercantilist practices will be rolled back. These include tariffs on imports from America, required partnerships with Chinese firms, forced transfers of intellectual property, and sometimes outright theft of trade secrets. The second is whether the terms are precise, enforceable, and undertaken as formal commitments by China’s highest-level institutions.China’s problem is that its economy depends on these unfair practices, and communist leaders benefit from them, politically and financially. Some, like widespread theft of Western intellectual property, help lots of local companies. Others, like the coercion of foreign firms to accept local partners, help the party most because it picks the winners. As with any patronage system, the winners are politically connected firms that share the largess with their benefactors. (Economists call this “rent-extraction” politics.)Chinese political leaders are understandably reluctant to alter these sweet arrangements. They wouldn’t change them at all without significant outside pressure, which is exactly what the U.S. is exerting. Since Beijing has to make some kind of deal, it would prefer informal commitments, the vaguer the better. Later, China could edge away from them, hoping the U.S. would not retaliate.

Why Palestinians Oppose Economic Prosperity by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14236/palestinians-oppose-economic-prosperity

To advance his goal, Ashraf Jabari recently announced the establishment of a new party that calls for focusing on economic prosperity for Palestinians. The Reform and Development Party seeks to solve the economic problems of the Palestinians, particularly high unemployment, he said. “We have an army of university graduates who are unemployed. We’ve reached a situation where a young [Palestinian] man holding a Master’s degree in law has to work as a street vendor because he can’t find work.”

Instead of giving Jabari a chance to carry out his initiative, Palestinians have waged a massive smear campaign against him, with many denouncing him as a “traitor” and “collaborator” with Israel and Jews. Some Palestinians have even gone as far as calling for his arrest or execution.

The upcoming peace plan, according to various reports, talks about giving the Palestinians billions of dollars and raising money for them from wealthy Arab countries. Yet, as Jabari’s case makes clear, the Palestinians are less invested in gaining economic stability than they are in hating Israel.

For Palestinians, the financial aid is a cynical attempt to lure them away from their struggle against Israel — and no Palestinian leader has the stomach to face the threats that Jabari is currently confronting. So, far from any “deal of the century,” the Palestinian leaders long ago struck a dirty deal of their own: they put their stock in Israel-hatred rather than in their own people.

In most normal societies, a businessman who seeks to improve the living conditions of his people by boosting the economy and creating job opportunities for the unemployed — including a host of jobless university graduates — is treated with respect. The Palestinians, however, do not seem to belong to those societies.Ashraf Jabari is a 45-year-old businessman from the West Bank city of Hebron. A member of a large Palestinian clan in the city, Jabari believes in economic cooperation and peaceful coexistence with his Jewish neighbors, including settlers living in the West Bank.

Democrats Rally Round Their Anti-Semites By Karin McQuillan

https://amgreatness.com/2019/05/16/democrats-rally-round-their-anti-semites/

Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the Democratic Party leadership defending her indefensible comments on the Holocaust are now promoting the Big Lie about Arabs as innocent victims of World War II. Nazism was widely popular among Palestinians, who played a key role in the Holocaust. Adolf Eichmann himself went to Cairo to train the Muslim Brotherhood in anti-Semitic propaganda, military sabotage, and terrorism—launching the modern jihadi movement in the process. Without Arab Nazism, 6 million Jews would not have been murdered.

This is a history Americans should know, since it is a war we are still fighting today.

Tlaib and her colleague, Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), are not on America’s side in this battle. Nor, it seems, is the Democratic Party.

Before Hitler adopted the Muslim Brotherhood, its Islamist message focused on the sexual decadence of the West, the evil of treating women as equals, and calls to reject modernity. This got them exactly nowhere, languishing with a membership of 800 cranks. With Nazi funding and training, the Brotherhood adopted the Third Reich’s obsession with anti-Semitism. Hitler’s message was fused with the Koran’s anti-Semitic teachings into a toxic mix. The Muslim Brothers grew a thousand-fold during the war, emerging triumphant with 1 million members. Thus the jihadi movement was born. The history of the Middle East was changed forever.