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Netanyahu’s ‘Houdini’ Act: Once Again at the Helm, Facing Formidable Challenges By P. David Hornik

https://pjmedia.com/columns/p-david-hornik/2020/05/15/netanyahus-houdini-act-once-again-at-the-helm-facing-formidable-challenges-n393200

Lately they’ve been calling Benjamin Netanyahu “Houdini.” In three elections since April 2019, he hasn’t won. Yet he’s come out on top—again—as prime minister, and his new government will be sworn in early next week.

In all three of those elections, Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc actually soundly defeated the left-wing bloc. Yet, for different reasons, his bloc couldn’t reach a 61-seat majority in the Knesset—first because of a renegade right-wing party that broke away from the bloc, then because of an Israeli Arab party whose electoral gains didn’t leave enough seats for a right-wing parliamentary majority.

This time, though, amid the COVID-19 crisis, with Netanyahu’s popularity soaring because of his successful handling of the crisis, opposition leader Benny Gantz finally agreed to join Netanyahu in a national unity government. In so doing he broke up his own 33-seat party, decimating what’s left of the Israeli left, and took his now only 17-seat Blue and White faction with him.

Under the deal they worked out, Netanyahu is supposed to be PM for a year and a half, followed by Gantz as PM for a year and a half. Because that political deal has no legal standing, many believe that, before his year and a half runs out, “Houdini” Netanyahu will find a way out of it and keep serving as PM. Time will tell.

Meanwhile, the 71-year-old Netanyahu, who was PM from 1996 to 1999, then foreign minister, then finance minister, and has now been PM consecutively since 2009, faces challenges that would overwhelm lesser mortals. The immediate one is—still—to form a government out of competing, clamorous individuals and factions while striving not to bruise egos or leave anyone out in the cold.

And once that incredibly difficult feat has been achieved, the real work begins.

Europe’s Anti-Lockdown Moment By Jorge González-Gallarza Hernández

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/europes-anti-lockdown-moment/

The reopening sentiment is spreading, and it’s not all right-wingers who are doing the protesting.

America’s worship of civil liberties was on display as anti-lockdown protests swept from Lansing, Mich., to San Diego, and from Madison, Wis., to Boston’s Beacon Hill. From London to Seine-Saint Denis, from Munich to Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, a similar defiance of state intrusion is now arising in parts of Europe. As in the United States, the question is still open: Will these protests channel the growing lockdown fatigue into a cogent, constructive case for reopening, or will they descend into paranoia?

A recent hotspot of anti-lockdown fuss has been Germany, where both media and the government have raised the alarm about the far right’s sway in driving people to break the quarantine and social-distancing rules. This past weekend saw radical groups co-opt protests in Dortmund and Munich, where a reporter was attacked and police had to disperse 25 vandals, respectively. A reporting crew from the center-left late-night satirical heute-show was similarly assaulted in Berlin the previous weekend, claiming the popular Moroccan-German comedian Abdelkarim as a victim. Germany’s crippling memory of extremism (so-called Vergangenheitsbewältigung) has a way of penalizing political deviance on the right to this day, and these acts of violence surely didn’t help give the protests a good name in the public eye, either.

Resistance to lockdowns has gotten a bad name in France, too, after a young local from Villeneuve-la-Garenne was thrown off his motorbike and sent to the hospital with a broken leg by a police-car door flung open. The incident sparked a wave of riots across the northern Paris suburbs reminiscent of the three-week-long émeutes in 2005 that saw 8,000 cars set ablaze by restless youths protesting police abuse. The quarantine has brought long-simmering tensions in these largely low-income, immigrant, and poorly housed suburbs to a boiling point, with locals decrying heavy-handed policing, spending cuts in public services, and the unequal impact of school closures that leave low-income kids lacking Internet access with little means to keep up with schoolwork.

World Lives vs lives: the global cost of lockdown Policies that depress the world economy put millions at risk Jayanta Bhattacharya and Mikko Packalen

https://spectator.us/lives-vs-lives-global-cost-lockdown/

‘There have been as many plagues in history as there have been wars,’ wrote Albert Camus in The Plague, ‘yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.’ So it was this time. The arrival of a new coronavirus blindsided governments of most advanced nations as they reached for a tool that few had ever really considered before: lockdown. It all happened too fast for a proper discussion about the implications. The biggest question — the extent to which lockdown will claim lives as well as save them — is one you can ask at a global level.

We know the national costs. In the United States, there is joblessness on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, with more than 33 million unemployed. The Bank of England forecasts the UK economy will fall by 14 percent this year — the steepest decline since 1706. Similar trends can be found across the industrial world. The global economy is veering toward an economic depression not seen for generations.

Yet this argument, to many, seems crass. How consequential is an economic loss in balance when lives at risk from COVID-19 are at stake? Understandably, few find such calculations compelling — and tend to side with those who advocate for prolonged lockdowns lasting for months or more. If this were about lives vs money, it would be easy to understand. But look deeper, and this is about lives vs lives — on a scale that has not, so far, been very much discussed. Lockdown will, on a global level, hit the poorest hardest.

Why Hamas Loves Human Rights Watch by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16020/human-rights-watch-hamas

The HRW report focuses on only three Arab towns in Israel – Jisr al-Zarqa, Qalansawa and Ein Mahel, with a total population of 50,000. It deliberately ignores the other two million or so Arab Israelis. Moreover, the report fails to mention that the housing crisis affects not only Arabs, but also Jews.

In 2015, the Israeli government decided to implement the Economic Development Plan, a multi-year plan of about $12.3 billion, targeting issues such as planning, employment, transportation and education in the Arab sector. This groundbreaking plan is the largest and most comprehensive ever advanced to close gaps for Israel’s Arab society…. Hamas, meanwhile, has done virtually nothing to solve the debilitating housing crisis of the two million Palestinians living under its rule in the Gaza Strip.

This is the same Hamas that is now using the HRW report to shed crocodile tears over the alleged housing crisis in the Arab sector in Israel…. A terrorist group that has failed its own people on an epic level is pretending that it is worried about where Arabs in Israel will live.

The HRW report, which ignores Hamas’s atrocities against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, is now being used by the terrorist group as “evidence” of why Israel should be destroyed and replaced with an Islamic state.

“[The Middle East is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than any other country in the region.” – Robert L. Bernstein, The New York Times, October 19, 2009.

Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group dedicated to the destruction of Israel, is apparently very pleased with Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international organization headquartered in New York. Hamas is so pleased that this week it issued a statement praising HRW for its systematic and continuous bashing of Israel.

It is rather rare for a radical Islamic terrorist group to heap praise on a Western supposed human rights organization, particularly an American one.

Exceptions exist in all areas, however, and HRW, known for its anti-Israel bias and for peddling anti-Israel hate, stands as an especially blazing one.

UK: Illegal Migrants are the Medicine Being Imported Into a Sickly Country All while Brits remain in strict caronavirus lockdown. Katie Hopkins

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/uk-illegals-migrants-are-medicine-being-imported-katie-hopkins/

You might think Britain has enough problems right now.

Cowering in our homes like sewer rats smelling disinfectant, unemployment quietly sneaking to 20% under cover of the government’s furlough scheme and Boris apparently absent without leave under the spell of Wilfred, his newborn child.

But you would be mistaken.

According to the government and the usual suspects, what Britain needs right now as our economy collapses and our health service runs out of cash is to import a few more problems for the country to deal with. Illegal immigrants are the medicine being imported into this sickly nation.

I watched in disbelief as 50 illegals from Syria, Afghanistan and Somalia were flown into my country this week from crowded migrant camps in Greece.

We were told these were desperate people, ‘refugees’, the ‘most vulnerable’ with severe health conditions, looking to join family member in the UK. But they looked remarkably chipper as they sprang up the steps to board the plane, smiling and waving for the cameras with their new trainers and $250 Apple AirPods in their ears.

Germany’s New Coronavirus Thinking Berlin tolerates more Covid-19 spread for the sake of reopening its economy.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/germanys-new-coronavirus-thinking-11589498695?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

A strange thing happened in Germany this week: Covid-19 started spreading a bit faster and officials and the public managed to cope. It’s an important benchmark for other governments as they allow their own economies to emerge from viral hibernation.

Scientists at the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the German government’s epidemiological advisory service, calculate that the coronavirus resumed its spread through the population as the country’s lockdown started easing in late April. The reproduction rate, or R0, was above 1 for several days this week, and as high as 1.1 last weekend. That means that each person infected with the virus transmits it on average to 1.1 other people—exponential growth.

This is as much a political event as a medical one. It seems inevitable that the coronavirus will spread as rapidly as any respiratory virus as lockdowns ease. But Chancellor Angela Merkel made a transmission rate of less than 1 a central plank of her reopening plan.

In an April press conference, Mrs. Merkel instructed Germans on precisely how overwhelmed hospitals would become at each level of R0 above 1. The RKI estimated the transmission rate at around 0.8 before Mrs. Merkel started easing the lockdown. Germans were warned that restrictions might return if the disease resumed its spread.

My Days as an Outcast of the Ocean Michael Galak

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/travel-qed/2020/05/my-days-as-an-outcast-of-the-ocean/

Before my wife and I went cruising we had taken what seemed all the appropriate precautions, checked the government’s advisory website and accepted the cruise line’s assurance we’d be perfectly safe from the Wuhan wog. That proved to be true, but wandering the Pacific in search of a port to accept us was another matter.

The PA came to life: “Good evening ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. On behalf of our flight crew, I welcome you all on board the Qantas repatriation flight, Honolulu – Sydney.”

The cabin, full to the luggage racks with weary, sweaty and anxious Australians from the cruise ship Norwegian Jewel (above), exploded with cheers and clapping. The captain continued: “Every member of our crew is a volunteer. We came to Honolulu to bring you home.” The cheer was louder.

“We volunteered to come for you because we felt that our passengers might be our parents. grandparents, brothers and sisters.

“We are all Australians here”.

The cabin fell eerily quiet after that, many faces streaked with tears. “This is our last flight before most of the Qantas international fleet is grounded. All we ask is that when this is over and you start flying again – remember who came to your help in time of need and, hopefully, you will choose Qantas”.

There was silence. Then someone in the back shouted: “Three cheers for the Captain!” The entire plane responded: “Hurray! Hurray! Hurray!” Another voice, this time a female one: “Ozzie, Ozzie, Ozzie!” All 300 passengers responded with a deafening “Oi, oi, oi!”

Crew members, standing in the isles for the obligatory safety-briefing intro, were smiling indulgently and singing out themselves. There were cheers for an 18-year-old flight attendant, whose birthday was that day, and for the flight crew. 

China’s Coronavirus: How the EU is Betraying Europe by Con Coughlin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16016/china-coronavirus-how-the-eu-is-betraying-europe

Chinese ambassadors, particularly those based in Western capitals, simply resort to blackmail, threatening to deny governments vital medical supplies to cope with the pandemic if they do not comply with Beijing’s wishes.

All these countries have good reason to want to stand their ground against Beijing. Italy has been the target of a skilful fake news campaign by Beijing with cleverly edited videos that show Italians showing their gratitude for China’s help in the pandemic when no such demonstrations took place.

The French government was outraged after the Chinese embassy in Paris accused French care-workers of abandoning their posts, thereby causing elderly residents to die; while Germany has complained that Chinese diplomats tried to pressure officials to make positive statements on how Beijing was handling the coronavirus pandemic.

As the EU, by constantly capitulating to Beijing’s demands, has shown it is totally incapable of protecting the interests of member states, the governments of Europe are finally waking up to the reality that, in order to defend themselves against China’s bully-boy tactics, they will have to look after themselves.

The latest capitulation by the European Union in the face of Chinese intimidation demonstrates that, when it comes to protecting the interests of member states, the Brussels bureaucracy is no match for Beijing’s new breed of warrior diplomats.

Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the more notable features of China’s response has been the willingness of senior Chinese diplomats to intervene forcibly in defence of China’s interests.

New Nuclear Threats to the U.S.: Better to Deter Them or Play Dead? by Peter Huessy

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15995/new-nuclear-threats

At present, exactly zero percent of America’s nuclear platforms are modernized.

Worse, when, in 2017, General Hyten… warned of the Russian threat, a common counter-narrative in the U.S. arms control community – and shared by some members of Congress — was that simply by proposing to modernize a then-rusting nuclear deterrent, the United States was “leading an arms race.”

Even these critics, however, had to know that it takes years to research, develop, test, and then build highly complex nuclear forces, so that no new U.S. nuclear deployments would even be able to start until 2029.

Russia has already completed 87% of its arms race while the US is just putting on its track shoes. The door to an arms race was opened long ago — but by Russia, not the United States.

Without nuclear modernization, unfortunately, the United States cannot keep a credible nuclear deterrent against its nuclear armed enemies — not only Russia but also China, whose nuclear arsenal is scheduled to double in the next decade, according to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Now that 184 countries are grappling with the medical and economic convulsions of China’s CCP coronavirus that seems to have originated in a bio-warfare laboratory in Wuhan, what other catastrophes might be headed our way, especially ones we have been forewarned about?

What if America’s adversaries might start to believe that because the US has a Covid-19 crisis on its hands, the nation might be distracted and vulnerable, so that now might be a good time to strike? If such adversaries think the US does not have a strong deterrent, does that make it an even more tempting target?

Last month, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoygu said that by the end of 2020, Russia will have modernized 87% of its nuclear arsenal, up from its current 82%.

Tracking Down Sudan’s Secret Cash by Alberto M. Fernandez

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16015/sudan-bashir-secret-cash

Sudan’s former dictator reportedly siphoned off “millions of dollars” from one of the world’s poorest nations and sent it to bank accounts in Qatar and Iran.

Sudan’s foreign debt is estimated at $62 billion and the transitional government is desperately trying to locate funds to deal with a worsening economic crisis and treat its nation’s Covid-19 patients. Sudan has long been ranked as one of the world’s poorer nations by United Nations measurements; a quarter of Sudanese live in extreme poverty.

Sudan’s transitional government is doing its best, despite the shortcomings and contradictions, trying to improve human rights, provide greater transparency, and address many of the most odious policies of the previous regime. This fragile yet real reformist approach, coupled with Sudan’s strategic geopolitical position and importance for US national security, needs a stronger and more tangible response, in terms of assistance, from the West and especially the United States.

American pressure on Qatar and other states to seize any Bashir regime funds and return them to the Sudanese people can and should be part of a new pact to promote reform…

The overthrow of Sudanese dictator Omar al-Bashir in April 2019 brought to an end an almost 30-year regime notable for its brutality, skill in weathering political storms and adapting to be able survive for decades.

Sudan’s former dictator reportedly siphoned off “millions of dollars” from one of the world’s poorest nations and sent it to bank accounts in Qatar and Iran.

Sudan’s foreign debt is estimated at $62 billion and the transitional government is desperately trying to locate funds to deal with a worsening economic crisis and treat its nation’s Covid-19 patients. Sudan has long been ranked as one of the world’s poorer nations by United Nations measurements; a quarter of Sudanese live in extreme poverty.