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Ruth King

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestine: A Cause or a State? by Amir Taheri

By on October 23rd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20081/palestine-cause-state

Why did Hamas trigger its attack out of the blue? Hamas apologists repeat the usual shibboleths: occupation, colonial settlements, expulsions, Apartheid, the two-state solution.

A closer look, however, shows that none of those “reasons” could explain, let alone justify, why Hamas did what it did on October 7.

The [Palestinian Authority] and Hamas have preferred to pose as guardians of the flame rather than builders of state structures…. For a brief period, 2007-2013, the PA under Prime Minister Salam Fayyad tried to promote the state-building culture as opposed to the chest-beating posture of “the cause”. But both Hamas and the PA did all they could to derail Fayyad’s project.

The “Gaza first” scheme exposed the concept of “security through evacuation” as a dangerous myth that replaced another myth: land-for-peace, which has offered what amounts to lukewarm and always reversible peace.

All along, Israeli leaders tried to jump through one hoop after another to avoid seriously dealing with the “two-state” formula, which the United States and its Western allies promoted regardless of its lack of support among Israelis and Palestinians.

[T]he “Palestinian cause” [is] used, and abused, as a means of legitimizing regimes as diverse as the Islamic Republic of Iran; the AKP in Turkey and, believe it or not, the leftist outfit in Colombia. And that not to mention “return ticket revolutionaries” in the West who draw voyeuristic pleasure from watching others kill and die for “great causes.”

Throughout the Cold War, ignoring the geopolitical dimension of the Israel-Palestine issue encouraged wild-goose diplomatic chasings most notoriously symbolized by the “two-state” formula. Today, the same error is repeated by focusing almost exclusively on Hamas without asking who is funding, training, arming and manipulating Hamas in the name of “clash of civilizations”.

The current tragedy has shattered the status quo that took shape in the aftermath of the Cold War. Attempts at reviving it in one form or another would only provide a prelude to even bigger tragedies.

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HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

China’s Proxy Wars Are ‘Encircling’ America by Gordon G. Chang

By on October 23rd, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20080/china-encircling-america

What is the Communist Party of China up to?

Xi Jinping, who reveres Mao Zedong, is taking a page from his hero’s “peasant revolution” playbook. Mao in 1949 prevailed over his enemy, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, by “encircling the cities from the countryside.”

Ukraine, North Africa, and Israel, as Beijing sees it, are parts of the “countryside” today. So, what is the “city”?

The main enemy of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the United States of America.

[T]he Party believes it must destroy the U.S. because of what America stands for. An insecure ruling organization in Beijing is worried about the inspirational impact of America’s form of governance and values on the oppressed Chinese people. This means the United States will never have amicable relations with China as long as the Communist Party rules it.

Today… the Communist Party is waging proxy wars against America, such as Russia’s campaign to annex Ukraine…. Splitting off Europe from America, in turn, would be another step in starving the U.S. Similarly, China is buying friends in, among other places, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean as a means of further isolating America.

President Joe Biden is either unwilling or unable to defend the world from malicious Chinese communism. The catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan…. signaled that American policy was in collapse.

China’s leader will continue to attack… especially as Biden pays what are essentially ransoms and thereby provides incentives for further disorder. The ransoms include the unfreezing of $6 billion in connection with a hostage swap with Iran… and the October 18th announcement of “humanitarian assistance” to Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, apparently to free Americans held by Hamas.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

War Destroys Leftist Orthodoxies Those defending Hamas in the name of anticolonialism are being discredited. By Andy Kessler

By on October 23rd, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/war-destroys-leftist-orthodoxies-6947fb06?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Wars are times of transition, when old ideologies are discredited: slavery, isolationism, appeasement, socialism. Now, like the 1,200 health professionals who claimed during 2020’s protests and riots that racism was a bigger health concern than Covid, another set of progressives touting tired orthodoxies are being discredited before our eyes.

After Hamas’s attacks on Israeli civilians, a director of diversity and inclusion at Cornell’s business school glorified terrorism, writing about “the resistance being launched by Palestinians.” Remind me why we have DEI departments? At Harvard more than 30 students groups signed a letter claiming Israel was “the only one to blame.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is worried about “the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.” Twitter is littered with tweets saying “this is decolonization in action.” All these support an oppression narrative.

Where did these people get such ideas? The universities. Here’s an introductory-level EMR (Ethnicity, Migration, Rights) class at Harvard: “Global Rebellion: Race, Solidarity, and Decolonization.” The course discusses how “to rebel against global white supremacy.” I found similar courses at Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Duke and other top schools. Another Harvard colonialism course studies “decoloniality”—which sounds like a made-up academic term that turns out to involve “anti-oppression” and “de-Westernizing.” Notice how so many grievances mimic Marxist class struggles. Why does radicalizing and dividing students over identity take precedence over, well, real inclusion?

The attacks were “in light of the orgy of occupation.” Those are the words of Mohammed Deif, military commander of Hamas. Iran’s (drone-stricken) Gen. Qassem Soleimani included Hamas in the “Axis of Resistance.” The United Nations has a Special Committee on Decolonization. Sound familiar? Occupation, resistance, decolonization—progressive talking points all.

The economist Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1947 that the Soviet’s agenda was aided by korisne budale—useful fools, which has since morphed into “useful idiots.” While an overused expression, it fits this time. Those speaking of occupation, resistance and decolonizing are pure and simple useful idiots for terrorism, running interference and providing a rationale for depraved behavior. These witless nitwits have also aided Iran’s attempt to stop Saudi Arabia from joining the Abraham Accords. While many university presidents have since come out against the barbaric attacks, the damage has been done. A Great Discrediting has begun.

Jon Huntsman Jr., a former ambassador to China, emailed the University of Pennsylvania’s president saying his family foundation will “close its checkbook” based on Penn’s “moral relativism” and “race to the bottom.” I’ve heard of alumni of Harvard and elsewhere mailing $1 bills to their alma maters—as in, “That is all you’re going to get.” Hedge-fund manager Bill Ackman asked Harvard for the names of terrorist supporters so his firm could avoid hiring them. Boston University last month had an anti-antiracist backlash. “Defund the police” is becoming a distant memory.

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HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

When dummies become dhimmis.Victor Sharper

By on October 23rd, 2023

https://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sharpe/231022

Ask one hundred people in the United States what a dhimmi is and perhaps a dozen would know but most would admit ignorance. In Eastern Europe, the number would be higher because of latent memories of battles fought against invading Moslem armies and Islamic occupation over hundreds of years.

Beneath the seemingly civilized exterior of man lies tribal hatred, desperately trying to claw its way out. When it does, man can easily rationalize even the most heinous of his acts as virtuous. His target invariably becomes a demonized, marginalized group he can scapegoat as needed. No group has suffered more of this tribal hatred than the Jews.

In the early 7th century, an Arabian warlord started a new religion: Islam. Mohammed, forced out of Mecca, found refuge with three Jewish tribes in Medina. Relations deteriorated quickly as Mohammed raided and plundered Jewish trade caravans. Mohammed banished two of the tribes and defeated the third at the Battle of the Trench (627). Mohammed was merciless in victory. All men were slain, and all women and children enslaved.

Under Islam, Jews and Christians would live uneasily as dhimmis, a non-Muslim underclass, forced to pay the jizya (tax), forbidden to own arms, and required to differentiate themselves from Muslims in their dress. For them, the story was one of forced conversions to Islam, slavery, death along with the Islamic institution of dhimmitude.

This is the word that describes the parlous state of those who refused to convert to Islam and became the subjugated, non-Muslims who were forced to accept a restrictive and humiliating subordination to a superior Islamic power and live as second-class citizens in order to avoid enslavement or death. These peoples and populations were known as dhimmis, and if such a status was not humiliating enough, a special tax or tribute, called the jizya, was imposed upon them.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran: Behind Hamas’ Planned Genocide by Majid Rafizadeh

By on October 21st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20069/iran-hamas-planned-genocide

In 1930s, Britain pursued a policy of appeasing Hitler and Nazi Germany in the hope of avoiding a war. To the contrary, as we know, by empowering the Nazis to invade and attempt to take over other nations, this policy of appeasement led to World War ll.

[T]he Obama administration imagined, it seems, that enabling the expansionist, revolutionary regime of Iran, which is designated a State Sponsor of Terrorism, to possess nuclear weapons, would somehow magically transform it into peaceful, collegial member of the family of nations. President Barack Obama appeased the ruling mullahs of Iran by lifting sanctions and inventing the 2015 “nuclear deal.”

What was actually the result? The international community witnessed even more rockets launched by Yemen’s Houthis at civilian targets, the deployment of Lebanese Hezbollah soldiers in Syria, and increasing attacks by the Iranian-funded Hamas on Israel and the United States. With billions of dollars of revenue pouring into the pockets of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Tehran did not change its behavior for the better. Instead, Iran became even more empowered and emboldened… as well as to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. Iran became, in fact, according to the US State Department, “the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism.”

At the peak of these appeasement policies towards the mullahs, Iran was emboldened to publicly harass the US Navy, detain US sailors, imprison American citizens, and threaten to assassinate former US officials on US soil for a $1 million bounty. Khamenei also repeatedly vowed “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” and to “raze the Zionist regime in less than 8 minutes.”

Iran’s radical regime, whose mission is to “Export the Revolution” and bring Islamist rule to the rest of the world via its military and terror groups, will not alter its aims through policies of appeasement.

The Biden administration and the European Union have pursued this dangerous policy — not just of appeasement, but also of financing terrorists; of supporting a regime that chants “Death to America,” “Death to Israel”; that plots to push the US out of the Middle East; that is committed to uprooting and replacing Israel; that has zealously been targeting American citizens and American assets, and that is one of only four state sponsors of terrorism, as well as a leading violator of human rights. It is high time to put Iran’s regime out of business.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Government Gangsters: How the Deep State Imperils National Security By Janet Levy

By on October 21st, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/10/government_gangsters_how_the_deep_state_imperils_national_security.html

Like most Americans, Kash Patel grew up believing that the country was run as a democracy, with a government that honors the will of the people and is accountable to them. 

It was only much later, as an attorney and then as a senior advisor to former president Donald Trump, that he encountered – and confronted – what has come to be called the Deep State, people at the highest levels of government, business, and culture who subvert democracy to serve their own ends.

In his recent book Government Gangsters: The Deep State, The Truth and the Battle for our Democracy, Patel describes the Deep State in broad terms as the politicization of core American institutions and the federal government.  More specifically, this oligarchy includes elected leaders, journalists, business leaders, and NGOs with leftist ideologies.  But its most entrenched and active arm comprises “members of the unelected federal bureaucracy who think they have the right to rule America, not Congress or the president.”

Courtesy Post Hill Press

The agents of the Deep State operate through a series of networks, violating their oaths of office, weaponizing the law, and spreading disinformation for political or personal gain at the expense of equal justice and national security.  He saw them in operation as the lead investigator of the Russiagate hoax. His book is not just the story of how he battled the leviathan, but also about how the Deep State can be defeated for good.

Patel knows from where he speaks.  In his 14 years as public defender and federal prosecutor, and later as a key Trump aide, he has had ample opportunity to trace the insidious machinations of the Deep State within the Department of Justice (DoJ), the FBI, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI), the Department of Defense (DoD), the National Security Council (NSC), and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI).  He has been inside the belly of the beast.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Even CNN Gets What the Biden Administration Doesn’t By Matt Margolis

By on October 21st, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/20/even-cnn-gets-what-the-biden-administration-doesnt-n1736759

When Biden announced that he was promising $100 million in humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank, it was immediately clear to anyone with common sense that this money would end up in the hands of Hamas and not used for humanitarian purposes.

The Biden administration insists there will be safeguards in place to prevent this from happening, but no one really believes it will work—not even the pro-Biden CNN.

On Wednesday’s “Laura Coates Live,” CNN correspondent Hadas Gold and CNN military analyst Col. Cedric Leighton (Ret.) both agreed that preventing humanitarian aid from being seized by Hamas in Gaza would be extremely difficult because there are no mechanisms in place to ensure how the aid is distributed and used.

“Just, in hearing what he had to say about the conditions, really, of being in compliance or going along with what President Biden has said, the conditions about hostages being released, the ideas of how to ensure that the aid is not going to be essentially taken and siphoned off by Hamas. Is it realistic to think that could actually be a condition that could be met before aid gets there?” host Laura Coates asked.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Got $200K Payment From Family Business Tied to Islamic Terror, Hamas An envelope filled with “blood-stained currency from a Middle Eastern country” linked to terrorists and a “torture ticket” October 21, 2023 by Daniel Greenfield

By on October 21st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/biden-got-200k-payment-from-family-business-tied-to-islamic-terror-hamas/

In 2020, I dug into what was probably one of the strangest and most overlooked Biden family scandals.

James Biden, Joe’s brother, had become a principal at Americore whose business model was based on buying and turning around rural hospitals. But the turnaround was into the grave.

Obamacare had hit rural hospitals hard, forcing many of them to shut down. By Obama’s last year in office, 4% of rural hospitals had closed down, and hundreds more were on the brink. And the Bidens had figured out a way to profit from the devastation caused by Obama-Biden.

“His brother was very interested in rural health care and very interested in veterans’ health care, and it was something he really wanted to get behind,” an Americore executive recalled Biden telling him. “This would help his brother get elected.”

The hospitals were trashed and patient care fell apart, but James Biden was making money.

Hospital patients might have been able to get basic care and supplies, but the money wasn’t there. Meanwhile, James Biden had allegedly made off with $650,000.

According to the Americore CEO, “Jim Biden directed me to loan him approximately $400,000 of this money for him to use to repay a past-due personal loan.”

Later, “Biden took additional amounts totaling approximately $250,000.”

Thanks to the House Oversight Committee, we now know where some of it went.

In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.

While Joe Biden getting cash courtesy of his brother trading on his name and sending it to the ‘Big Guy’ is bad, the details lead down a very disturbing trail.

According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Demons We’ve Made: Zachary R. Goldsmith

By on October 21st, 2023

https://lawliberty.org/the-demons-weve-made/

The supporters of Hamas in the West are the products of a postmodern education.

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1872 novel Demons is, at its core, a story of fathers and sons, a story of two generations typified by Stepan, the father, and Pyotr, the son. Stepan is a composite stand-in character for the Russian intelligentsia of the 1840s, who looked to fashionable Western theory and socialism as the needed tonic to cure an ailing Russia. Pyotr, on the other hand, represents the chickens coming home to roost—a nihilistic fanatic par excellence who, born in the moral and ideological morass prepared for him by his father and those of his father’s generation, endeavors for nothing less than the total overthrow of society—“quick resolution by means of a hundred million heads.”

I couldn’t help but reflect on Dostoevsky’s Demons this past week as I observed so many little “demons” descend on college campuses across the country, marching and chanting in pro-Palestine cum pro-Hamas rallies, praising the most sickening and depraved atrocities imaginable. Unfortunately, as we all know, these atrocities were not works of fiction, but all too real pogroms carried out by the fanatical terrorist group Hamas.

The national group Students for Justice in Palestine hailed the terrorist attack in Israel on October 7 that claimed the lives of more than 1,300 people and saw the kidnapping of more than 199 more “a historic win for the Palestinian people.” The group later called for a “Day of Resistance,” claiming “the Zionist entity is fragile, and Palestinian resistance is alive.” Hamas butchers are featured prominently in the promotional material of this group. At my own institution, Purdue University, the local SJP chapter hailed the massacre of Israeli civilians—the worst anti-Jewish violence since the Holocaust—by celebrating “the recent uprisings in occupied Palestine” (Israel disengaged from Gaza in 2005) and by encouraging the campus community to not “equate the violence of the oppressor” with that of “the oppressed.”

Purdue’s SJP decried “Western allies of the Zionist regime” for denouncing the massacre of innocents and claimed it as just deserts for “the decades of settler colonialism, genocide, apartheid, ethnic cleansing, forceful dispossession, military occupation, and many more atrocities happening to Palestinians on their land.” The rape of women and children before the eyes of their fathers, the decapitation of babies, the burning alive of whole families in their homes—these unspeakable acts were, in the eyes of Purdue’s SJP—nothing less than the “uprising by Palestinian freedom fighters in a direct response to the ongoing violence against innocent Palestinians.” This and other recent posts by Purdue’s SJP were “liked” on Instagram by many student groups in the Purdue community, including the Purdue Disabled Student Union, Purdue’s Latinx Student Union, the Young Democratic Socialists, and Purdue Immigrant Allies. Truly, the glories of intersectionality at work.

How is it, asks The Atlantic’s Helen Lewis, that so many “flunked the Hamas Test”? That erstwhile “Students for Palestine” turned into “Students for Pogroms in Israel,” in the words of Conor Friedersdorf?

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Convoluted, Condescending, Contradictory: Biden Defaces The Nation Bob Maistros

By on October 21st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/20/convoluted-condescending-contradictory-biden-defaces-the-nation/

In good old groups-of-three style, your correspondent could have gone several directions in describing President Joe Biden’s spiel Thursday night.

Alliterative: Cringeworthy. Crass. Craven.Assonantal: Eerie. Airy. Arrogant.Rhyming: Stumbling. Bumbling. Crumbling.

But upon review and reflection, fell back upon the tried-and-true repeat-prefix formulation: 

Condescending. Convoluted. And most of all: Contradictory.

Condescending  

Biden immediately reminded his audience that he was “the first American president to travel (to Israel) during a war,” as if that had anything to do with the price of shakshuka in Beersheba. And later, “the first American to enter a war zone not controlled by the United States military since President Lincoln.” 

The “Being There” presidency: 80% of Chance the Chief Executive’s accomplishments involve managing to show up.

Next, you’ll learn he has a “much higher IQ than you.” Or at least than the Israeli leadership he ostensibly traveled to encourage but managed instead to talk down to:

“President Netanyahu and I discussed again … the critical need for Israel to operate by the laws of war … protecting civilians in combat as best as they can.”

You mean the prime minister (not president) whose government – after his people were slaughtered, tortured, raped, abducted, and subjected to a rain of thousands of missiles in brazen violation of “the laws of war” – seeks to minimize civilian casualties by warning an entire country to get out of harm’s way rather than be used as human shields?

“As I said in Israel, as hard as it is, we cannot give up on peace. We cannot give up on a two-state solution.”

Oh. You mean the “two-state solution” that, with your predecessor’s support, Israel and several Arab states shuffled off to the side while entering into true peace accords – now possibly shattered thanks to your encouragement and financing of terrorist organizations and their sponsors? 

“Israel and Palestinians equally deserve to live in safety, dignity and peace.”

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