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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

God Said, ‘Be Fruitful and Multiply’ Israelis are taking Genesis 1:28 seriously. The Jewish state’s fertility rate is 3.1, far above replacement. Robert C. Hamilton

By on September 12th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/god-said-be-fruitful-and-multiply-1536705344

I was heading for the final leg of my flight to Tel Aviv when something curious happened. As I crossed the Brussels airport, I was joined by other travelers. At each corridor, the crew swelled in size. Kippah-capped men carrying heavy briefcases, young couples wearing Star-of-David embroidered backpacks, older Hasidic rabbis who looked like Moses, families with infants in strollers and several toddlers trudging behind—we were all heading to the same place.

At the gate, I felt as if I’d crashed a family party. A couple of young boys zipped through the crowd on scooters like dive-bombers on a mission, with tzitzis (knotted fringes) and peyes (long side-curls) flying in the air.

Where I had started, the airport was hushed and gray, a space designed for efficiency. Its unadorned industrial motif was utilitarian, if not nihilistic. At my departure gate, I found a vibrant and chaotic scene, alive with color, noise and frolicking kids. I relaxed. As a pediatrician, I recognized the messiness; I work in that universe each day.

My experience vividly displayed how two countries, Belgium and Israel, view children. Israel treasures them. According to a 2018 report from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, the fertility rate for Israeli women stands at a robust 3.1, nearly double the level of most European nations. The Belgian fertility rate is 1.7, well below the replacement rate of 2.1.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

DISPATCHES FROM TOM GROSS-MP OF PALESTINIAN DESCENT CONDEMNS CORBYNITE POSTERS AS “BLATANTLY ANTI-SEMITIC”

By on September 12th, 2018

https://wp.tomgrossmedia.com/mideastdispatches/
MP OF PALESTINIAN DESCENT CONDEMNS CORBYNITE POSTERS AS “BLATANTLY ANTI-SEMITIC”

Britain’s first MP of Palestinian descent told the BBC that the defacing of London bus-stops with “Israel is a racist endeavour” posters was “blatantly anti-Semitic”.

Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrat MP for Oxford West and Abingdon, said: “I’m a Palestinian. The fact that this has come from a group that purportedly is speaking for Palestinians, I take great offence at myself, because I think it is blatantly anti-Semitic.”

Moran was responding to comments by Labour Shadow Chancellor and key Corbyn ally John McDonnell who had told the BBC “It is not at all anti-Semitic to describe Israel as a state as racist.”

The posters were meant to mock the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of Jew-hate, which says that comparing Israel to Nazi Germany or singling out only one country, Israel, and calling it “a racist endeavor” are examples of modern anti-Semitism.
MUSLIM MAYOR OF MONDAY CONDEMNS ANTI-ISRAEL POSTERS

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, condemned the “Israel hate” posters on the city’s bus stops as “offensive” and said that any posters found would be rapidly removed.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Education Dept. Reopens Rutgers Case Charging Discrimination Against Jewish Students By Erica L. Green

By on September 12th, 2018

The new head of civil rights at the Education Department has reopened a seven-year-old case brought by a Zionist group against Rutgers University, saying the Obama administration, in closing the case, ignored evidence that suggested the school allowed a hostile environment for Jewish students. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/us/politics/rutgers-jewish-education-civil-rights.html

The move by Kenneth L. Marcus, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights and a longtime opponent of Palestinian rights causes, signaled a significant policy shift on civil rights enforcement — and injected federal authority in the contentious fights over Israel that have divided campuses across the country. It also put the weight of the federal government behind a definition of anti-Semitism that targets opponents of Zionism, and it explicitly defines Judaism as not only a religion but also an ethnic origin.

And it comes after the Trump administration moved the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, moved to cut off aid to the Palestinian Authority and announced the closing of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington.

In a letter to the Zionist Organization of America, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Marcus said he would vacate a 2014 decision by the Obama administration and re-examine the conservative Jewish group’s cause not as a case of religious freedom but as possible discrimination against an ethnic group.

In so doing, the Education Department embraced Judaism as an ethnicity and adopted a hotly contested definition of anti-Semitism that included “denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination” by, for example, “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “applying double standards by requiring of” Israel “a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

In effect, Arab-American activists say, the government is declaring the Palestinian cause anti-Semitic.

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POLITICS Comments turned off

PRIMARY IS TOMORROW- ROBERT ROSENTHAL (D)FOR CIVIL COURT JUDGE- NYC DISTRICT 2

By on September 11th, 2018

Robert Rosenthal for Civil Court Judge in 2018-

For 27 years, I have fought for justice on behalf of people who are under appreciated and overlooked. My work has been difficult, but rewarding. I look forward to a new phase of my career as a judge, in which I can continue to pursue justice from the bench.”

He would be a real asset to the bench in New York….rsk

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

“Political Islam” and “Extremist” Terrorism By Rachel Ehrenfeld

By on September 11th, 2018

http://acdemocracy.org/political-islam-and-extremist-terrorism/
Seventeen years since al Qaeda terrorists used passenger airplanes to attack New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon, Western-style liberal democracies are failing to recognize the radical Islamist threat. While, as former President Obama reminds us, “we took out [Osama] bin Laden,” neither he, nor most Western leaders have taken measures to identify the ideological underpinning that fuel radical Islamists the world over, which to make things more difficult disguises itself as just another political movement, i.e., Political Islam. But President Trump did not hesitate to call a spade a spade. He condemned “radical Islamic Terrorism” when addressing the 9/11 memorial service in Shanksville, PA, commemorating the brave passengers of Flight 93, who crashed the plane, to prevent the al Qaeda terrorists from hitting Capitol Hill.

The failure to name the jihadist is caused by an unwillingness to identify the seditious nature of Political Islam has prevented Western-style democracies to defend and counter the harmful rise of radical Islam. This failure has been hastened by the imposition of “political correctness” by leaders of the global Progressive Left movement, branding every attempt to identify the Islamist threat and stop it, as hateful, racist, and incredibly even Anti-Semitic.

The latest sad evidence of the failure to identify the jihadist ideology as the basis for Islamist terrorism is the first report of the Congressional mandated Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States, titled: “Beyond the Homeland: Protecting America from Extremism in Fragile States.” The bi-partisan committee was headed by the co-chairs of the 9/11 Commission, Rep. Lee Hamilton, and Gov. Thomas Kean, who once again, failed to identify the jihadist ideology that fuels “extremism.” Instead, the report concluded that “A comprehensive preventive strategy should target both the conditions and the actors that fuel violent extremism, focusing on alleviating real and perceived injustice; fostering political inclusion; curbing the spread and appeal of extremist ideology; and containing the spread of extremist groups.” Nothing about jihad or political Islam.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Opposition to the president is not treason By Andrew C. McCarthy

By on September 11th, 2018

http://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/405948-opposition-to-the-president-is-not-treason

POTUS ≠ US. It is a simple formula. If President Trump and his core supporters would internalize it, they’d be well served.

The presidency of the United States is the most significant, most powerful single office in our constitutional government. But, all the same, the president is a public servant. He is not the sovereign; we are. He represents the nation; he does not embody it.

Consequently, a betrayal of the president’s trust is not a betrayal of the country. It is dangerous to confound these two things.
The president is extremely agitated about an anonymous New York Times op-ed, penned by what the Gray Lady describes as “a senior official in the Trump administration.” I don’t blame him. The piece, in which the author brags about being part of a faction resisting the president from within, is dishonorable.

For an executive officer with integrity, there is a simple choice. If you object to the policies of an administration, or if you find the character of the president so objectionable that you have difficulty carrying out his directives, you can either (a) remain in the administration, do your best to veer the president toward policies you believe are in the nation’s interest, and then faithfully execute his lawful directives regardless of whether you agree with them; or (b) resign your position and engage in the public debate — in your own name, not in craven anonymity.

The official who authored the op-ed took the coward’s way out. He or she did not just betray the president. To the extent this self-serving preen has prompted a predictable presidential tirade and internal investigation, the author also has betrayed the selfless, patriotic administration officials who, every day, work diligently to govern and to pursue America’s best interests.

Moreover, the author has confirmed the indictment long lodged by Trump supporters: There is an entrenched “deep state” working against the president. Euphemizing it as the “steady state,” as Anonymous does, fails to camouflage the nature of the “Resistance.” And posturing about how the “steady state” beats back the president’s worst impulses does not conceal its imperious claim to be a permanent, unaccountable regime.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Top Five Ways Obama Attacked the Free Press By Matt Margolis

By on September 11th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-five-ways-obama-attacked-the-free-press/

It’s been over a year and a half since Obama left office, but it still bothers me hearing him speak. Between his trying to take credit for the Trump economy or his claim that he, unlike Trump, didn’t “threaten the freedom of the press,” it’s hard not to get angry when he speaks because virtually everything he says is a lie. His trying to take credit for Trump’s economy was pathetic, but his claim that he was not an enemy of the free press deserves to be called out.

“It shouldn’t be Democratic or Republican to say that we don’t threaten the freedom of the press because — they say things or publish stories we don’t like,” Obama said during his speech at the University of Illinois. “I complained plenty about Fox News, but you never heard me threaten to shut them down, or call them ‘enemies of the people.’” Obama certainly had his issues with Fox News. Newsweek actually described the conflict between them as “a war.” But, Obama’s war with the media wasn’t limited to Fox News. Obama’s treatment of the media as a whole was so bad that New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan criticized the Obama administration in 2013 for its “unprecedented secrecy and unprecedented attacks on a free press.” David E. Sanger, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, said of the Obama administration in 2013, “This is the most closed, control-freak administration I’ve ever covered.” According to a report on press freedoms by the highly respected Committee to Protect Journalists, “In the Obama administration’s Washington, government officials are increasingly afraid to talk to the press.”

It’s hard to imagine, given how positive the media was toward Obama, that his administration could be so antagonistic toward them. But the evidence that Obama was an enemy of the free press is astounding. The left-leaning media today may be calling Trump’s attacks on the media unprecedented, but they pale in comparison to what happened during the Obama years. Here are five examples of Obama’s attacks on the free press.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Joe Scarborough Says Trump Is More of a Threat Than Terrorist Attacks By Alexandra DeSanctis

By on September 11th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/joe-scarborough-says-donald-trump-more-threatening-than-terrorist-attacks/

We shouldn’t be talking about Donald Trump today.

It’s been 17 years since the gut-wrenching terrorist attacks that stole the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans in New York City and in our nation’s capital and in that field in Pennsylvania. Today, we should be talking only about them, about the horror of that day, and about what our nation has done since to curb terror around the world.

We shouldn’t be talking about Donald Trump.

And yet that’s what Joe Scarborough would like us to do, today of all days. The Morning Joe host — whose Twitter bio proudly proclaims “with malice toward none” — has chosen September 11 to publish an op-ed in the Washington Post entitled “Trump is harming the dream of America more than any foreign adversary ever could.”

His evidence? The GOP is creating record levels of debt, China is projected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, and Trump himself “has savaged America’s vital alliances, provided comfort to hostile foreign powers, attacked our intelligence and military communities, and lent a sympathetic ear to neo-Nazis and white supremacists across the globe.”

Scarborough concludes the op-ed by implying that Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was somehow less of a threat to our nation than our current president is:

Osama bin Laden was killed by SEAL Team 6 before he accomplished that goal. Other tyrants who tried to do the same were consigned to the ash heap of history. The question for voters this fall is whether their country will move beyond this troubled chapter in history or whether they will continue supporting a politician who has done more damage to the dream of America than any foreign adversary ever could.

Shameful, indefensible hyperbole at best. But at worst, this is a brazen use of an American tragedy to castigate a political enemy. It’s cry for attention, at the expense of the memories of those who died and all of those who lost loved ones that day.

The sheer inanity of Scarborough’s “argument” is compounded by the fact that, not very long ago, he didn’t view Trump as an enemy at all. He treated him like a close friend. At NRO last year, Sarah Quinlan skillfully chronicled the full history of the Morning Joe host’s over-the-top love for Trump, which carried on well into the Republican presidential primaries — until the sands of public opinion shifted and it became disadvantageous to do so.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Is Chaos an Impeachable Offense? By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 11th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/trump-destabilizing-status-quo-is-chaos-impeachable-offense/

Trump is destabilizing the status quo, as he promised to do. The keepers of the status quo cry foul.

Until 2017, there were certain political assumptions that most people no longer really believed but also preferred not to question — given the likely animus from the so-called bipartisan establishment, a naked entity which, by convention, we all agreed was splendidly clothed.

China could freely cheat on trade, and the U.S. could take the commercial hit, because one day its misbegotten riches would force liberalization and thereby make China a member in good standing of the family of democratic nations. After 40 years, we are still waiting on the promised democratic transformation — at great cost to the industrial and manufacturing heartland of the United States.

NATO member nations always would promise, indeed swear, that they would meet their military spending commitments, even as they had no intention at all of doing so. Fine, we shrugged, since World War II it has been the duty of the United States to lead and protect the West. What other nation had America’s inexhaustible wealth and power to subsidize rich socialist democracies, and commensurate unconcern with its own insidiously hollowed-out industrial interior? Accordingly, American presidents would lecture NATO nations about their promised obligations and meanwhile expect public nods and private snickers. In the New York and Washington corridor, the gospel was never to question the changing role or funding of NATO but always to utter “NATO is the linchpin of the West.” End of discussion.

The Palestinians will always remain “refugees” in a way that similar contemporaneously displaced people who were also forced out of their homeland — Prussians, Jews of the Middle East, or Volga Germans — no longer have refugee status, after more than 70 years. A chaotic Trump recently accepted reality and quit funding the United Nations relief organization that supposedly attends to “refugees” who in reality are a political construct deemed useful for demonizing Israel around the world.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

How 9/11 Made a European Upper-Middle-Class Radical a Conservative By Annika Hernroth-Rothstein

By on September 11th, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/09/9-11-changed-european-radical-to-conservative-president-bush-speech/

‘Freedom and fear, justice and cruelty, have always been at war, and we know that God is not neutral between them.’

On September 11, 2001, I was sitting on the floor of my sister’s living room, babysitting her one-year-old daughter. We were lazily playing, with the afternoon news on the TV in the background. The first thing I noticed was how the anchor’s voice changed. The woman was saying “Wait, wait,” while staring to the side of the camera. There had been a horrible accident, she said, as I watched the smoke pour out of the first tower. When the second plane hit, I hoped beyond hope she was right.

I had just gotten back from a year in France. A few months earlier, I’d been standing in a crowded bar on Place de Clichy, celebrating my 20th birthday. I remember that night, although several bottles of bad white wine say I shouldn’t. I was surrounded by my peers, other upper-middle-class liberals who had fled to Paris to fulfill their fantasy. We had come to this historical city to live the life of songs and books and Technicolor movies. We were radicals. We were heroes. We were going to change the world.

The people with me in that bar were a random sample of the political atmosphere of Europe at the time. Militant feminists, pro-Palestinians, members of the autonomic environmentalist movement, and your run-of the-mill anti-government thugs. Having a friend who had been jailed for rioting was as necessary as a Malcolm X T-shirt and a back-pocket paperback of Catcher in the Rye. I gladly picked up that uniform, just as I picked up rocks and banners knowing that this was the ticket to ride.

Raised in a family of academics, this was a natural evolution on my part and a result of a serious political interest. I identified as an intellectual and as a political thinker with a critical mind. What I failed to acknowledge at the time was that my country was a controlled environment and that the spectrum on which political analysis took place was limited. Not unlike The Truman Show, where the choices you think you are making were already made for you long ago, and any dreams of a different fate are swiftly corrected.

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