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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Gaza, Israel Reach Cease-Fire After Days of Deadly Clashes Calm descends after a weekend of rocket fire from Gaza and explosions on both sides of the border By Felicia Schwartz

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-israel-reach-cease-fire-after-days-of-deadly-clashes-11557133042

TEL AVIV—Militant groups in Gaza said Monday they had reached a cease-fire with Israel after two days of the deadliest fighting since the 2014 war.

Israel lifted security restrictions in the south near Gaza in a sign that it expected calm, though it didn’t officially confirm the truce. Four Israelis and 27 Palestinians were killed since Friday evening after militants launched nearly 700 rockets, and Israel said it hit more than 350 military targets in Gaza in response.

The latest conflagration sparked fears of a wider war after a year of violent flare-ups and periodic cease-fires. But calm descended across Gaza and Israel on Monday after a weekend of rocket fire from the strip, blaring sirens over southern Israeli communities and explosions on both sides of the border.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Thomas Sowell’s ‘Discrimination and Disparities’ The book that lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences. Walter Williams

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273631/thomas-sowells-discrimination-and-disparities-walter-williams

My longtime friend and colleague Dr. Thomas Sowell has just published a revised and enlarged edition of “Discrimination and Disparities.” It lays waste to myth after myth about the causes of human differences not only in the United States but around the globe. Throughout the book, Sowell shows that socioeconomic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups and nations in ways that cannot be easily explained by any one factor, whether it’s genetics, sex or race discrimination or a history of gross mistreatment that includes expulsion and genocide.

In his book “The Philadelphia Negro” (1899), W.E.B. Du Bois posed the question as to what would happen if white people lost their prejudices overnight. He said that it would make little difference to most blacks. He said: “Some few would be promoted, some few would get new places — the mass would remain as they are” until the younger generation began to “try harder” and the race “lost the omnipresent excuse for failure: prejudice.”

Sowell points out that if historical injustices and persecution were useful explanations of group disadvantage, Jews would be some of the poorest and least-educated people in the world today. Few groups have been victimized down through history as have the Jews. Despite being historical targets of hostility and lethal violence, no one can argue that as a result Jews are the most disadvantaged people.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Islamic Terror Rocket Hits Israeli Kindergarten (VIDEO) Daniel Greenfield

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/273673/islamic-terror-rocket-hits-israeli-kindergarten-daniel-greenfield

There were no children in this room in an Israeli kindergarten when the rocket hit. But you can only get lucky so many times.

In the latest round of Islamic terror attacks on Israel, some got lucky, others did not. One man is dead. A number of others were wounded by the terror rocket attacks. And this kindergarten video of the aftermath of a rocket attack shows what might have happened.

The video shows what happened after a rocket landed in the yard of a Sderot kindergarten and shrapnel from the strike pierced the classroom.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinian Rocket Terror Against Israel High time for Israel to deal a decisive blow. Joseph Klein

By on May 6th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273678/palestinian-rocket-terror-against-israel-joseph-klein

Palestinian terrorists fired at least 650 rockets into Israel this past weekend. Although most of the rockets either landed in open fields or were intercepted by Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense system, the rocket attacks killed at least four Israelis and injured more than 100 others. Israel retaliated with airstrikes against more than 320 key targets that included an attack tunnel, an underground rocket factory, rocket launcher sites and other military facilities used by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Gaza’s second-largest terror group and a proxy of Iran. Israel also went after specific militants, including, the New York Times reported, “a man who the Israeli military said had been responsible for large transfers of cash from Iran to Hamas…”

Moreover, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) appears to be preparing for a possible land war by deploying to the Gaza area on Sunday two reinforcement brigades – the Golani Infantry Brigade and the 7th Armored Brigade. Commenting on the deployment of the 7th Armored Brigade, IDF Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus said, “An armoured brigade is ready for various contingencies but earmarked for an offensive mission being by definition a mission that goes inside enemy terrain.” The Golani Brigade is considered one of the IDF’s most highly decorated infantry units and has fought in all of Israel’s wars.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

None Dare Call It Spying (But It Was Obviously Spying) Derek Hunter

By on May 5th, 2019

https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2019/05/05/none-dare-call-it-spying-but-it-was-obviously-spying-n2545854

We used to be able to get along. We really did. We haven’t always been able to work together – it’s difficult to find common ground when you want the polar opposite of your opponent – but at the end of a long day of fighting, people were perfectly capable of eating a meal near or even with each other. Now we can’t even agree in the obvious definition of words.

Dictionary.com defines “spy” as:

1) a person employed by a government to obtain secret information or intelligence about another, usually hostile, country, especially with reference to military or naval affairs.

2) a person who keeps close and secret watch on the actions and words of another or others.

There is no possible interpretation of those definitions that does not cover what the Obama administration did to the presidential campaign of Donald Trump in 2016.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why isn’t the Iron Dome stopping these deadly rocket attacks? Yaakov Amidror tells the ‘Post’ that if a rocket is shot at a location less than a few kilometers away, “we don’t have enough time to intercept it.” By Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman

By on May 5th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Why-isnt-the-Iron-Dome-stopping-these-deadly-rocket-attacks-588823

Yaakov Amidror tells the ‘Post’ that if a rocket is shot at a location less than a few kilometers away, “we don’t have enough time to intercept it.”

Israel has a critical gap in its protection system, said Yaakov Amidror, a former head of Military Intelligence’s Research Department and currently a senior fellow at the Jerusalem Institute for Strategic Studies.

He told The Jerusalem Post that if a rocket is shot at a location less than a few kilometers away, “we don’t have enough time to intercept it.”

Amidror explained that there is nothing unique about these particular rockets – “they are within the capabilities of the Iron Dome.”

The challenge is that sometimes, such as in the case of the rocket that hit the vehicle near Kibbutz Yad Mordechai, “from the point of view of the system, this was an open area without people. We don’t intercept such rockets.”

Amidror said that the rockets currently being fired at Israel had either been smuggled into the Gaza Strip before the 2013 regime change in Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood to General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, or are being produced on the Gaza side but using a manufacturing system that was built during that same time frame.

“Before the change of regime,” Amidror explained, “Egypt informally but practically allowed terrorist groups to bring in all the facilities needed to produce these rockets.”

He said that the rockets are paid for by Iran.

How can Islamic Jihad manage to launch so many rockets in one day?

According to Amidror, “It is very easy to launch rockets when you are launching them at close range and you don’t really need to be accurate.”

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Check Out These Pathetic Prices For ‘An Evening With The Clintons’ By Matt Margolis

By on May 5th, 2019

https://pjmedia.com/trending/check-out-these-pathetic-prices-for-an-evening-with-the-clintons/

Tonight is the final night of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s speaking tour “An Evening with the Clintons” and as much as it might be amusing to see Bill and Hillary pretend to stand each other for the duration of the event, I can’t imagine spending my hard earned money to listen to them talk about current events, or to whine about Hillary’s defeat.

But, if you’re so inclined, their event tonight in Las Vegas is not yet sold out, and as Hot Air reported earlier today, you could get tickets for $15—though I’m now seeing tickets for as low as $10 at StubHub.

And guess what? That’s not the lowest they’ve gone for.

The Clinton’s show moved to California Saturday night and tickets went for as little as $2.00. Wow. Imagine that. Some California Democrats listened to Bill and Hillary, a former president and a former Secretary of State (and the leader of pantsuits nation) in person for a couple of bucks That makes the $15.00 tickets in Las Vegas look over-priced, doesn’t it?

I’d rather spend $2.00 on a cup of coffee than listen to them myself. Not all tickets were that low (some seats are a couple hundred bucks, and some were over thousand dollars) but sales were slow and were quickly discounted—though it hasn’t exactly succeeded in boosting attendance to the levels you’d expect for an event featuring a former U.S. president and Secretary of State.

Perhaps they should take it as a sign that they should just go away. The Clinton Era is long gone.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Weeding Out Dubious Marijuana Science Researchers find ways to minimize increases in crime and traffic deaths that followed legalization. By Alex Berenson

By on May 5th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/weeding-out-dubious-marijuana-science-11557090088

Academics depict the peer-review process as the gold standard for intellectual honesty, ensuring published scholarly work is unbiased and accurate. But ideological conformity makes peer review a far thinner defense than advertised.

In January I published a book about the mental-health and violence risks of cannabis. Several dozen scholars signed a petition expressing in unison their objection to my work. Thus I’ve recently spent an inordinate amount of time reading papers seeking to prove that marijuana is a cure-all whose deleterious consequences are a figment of our collective imagination. The shoddiness of much of the work has shocked me.

Example: Driving deaths have risen more than 30% in Colorado and Washington, the first states to legalize marijuana for recreational use, since dispensaries opened there in 2014. That rise is more than double the national change. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety reported in October that the number of vehicle accidents overall were up faster in legalized states than the rest of the nation.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Liberals Nod as Comey Begs the Question If you’re smart, why consider opinions other than your own? By Barton Swaim

By on May 5th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-nod-as-comey-begs-the-question-11557090274

Former FBI director James Comey published an op-ed last week asserting that President Trump has “eaten” Attorney General William Barr’s “soul.” Mr. Comey’s piece is a remarkable exercise in question-begging—a series of bald assertions that assume their own truth.

It begins with this rhetorical question: “How could Mr. Barr . . . start channeling the president in using words like ‘no collusion’ and FBI ‘spying’?” If you don’t already agree that Mr. Barr’s words are outrageous and borderline-criminal, Mr. Comey makes no effort to bring you along. So it goes for another 800 words. The argument of the piece is identical to its premise: that Mr. Trump is a loathsome person and those who work for him—with a few exceptions, including of course Mr. Comey—are made corrupt. Media-savvy savant that he is, Mr. Comey knows that the typical reader of the New York Times, where the piece appeared, requires no persuasion on this point.

In that sense, Mr. Comey’s op-ed nicely captures what ails present-day American liberalism. Its defining characteristic is a labored ignorance of the other side. Liberals frequently neither know nor care to learn what nonliberals think. Their own views predominate in the universities and media; why bother considering lesser ones? Liberals take the other side seriously mainly when it has the bad manners to win an election and hold power.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

The Burdens of BernieCare Congress’s budget gnomes tip-toe around single-payer’s reality.

By on May 5th, 2019

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-burdens-of-berniecare-11557091123

Bernie Sanders sells Medicare for All as a simple idea: “You will have a card which has Medicare on it, you’ll go to any doctor that you want, you’ll go to any hospital that you want.” So the Congressional Budget Office provided a public service last week by describing, albeit in thick and cautious bureaucratese, what it would really take to float BernieCare.

Democrats asked CBO to lay out some parameters of how to set up single-payer, hoping to elude analysis of any one bill in Congress. The latter would carry political accountability—and a price tag. Instead CBO walks through “key design components and considerations” in a report that aims to bore and deploys the word “could” 209 times.

Yet even this limited analysis is instructive about the “major undertaking” of single payer, as CBO puts it in hilarious understatement. CBO acknowledges, for example, that a transition that includes moving 160 million people from employer-sponsored coverage to single payer would be “complicated, challenging, and potentially disruptive” to health care and the economy. You don’t say.

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