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How Soros helped Hamas go mainstream Rachel Ehrenfeld

https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/how-soros-helped-hamas-go-mainstream

The left-wing billionaire and his Open Society Foundations have poured untold millions into pro-Palestinian, anti-American groups. We’re seeing the results on college campuses across the country.

George Soros, who for decades has been funding progressive, neo-Marxist leftist groups, also poured money into groups and individuals that reject the existence of Israel. So, it is not surprising that his son, Alexander, who now runs the ironically named Open Society Foundations, is now funding, directly and indirectly, pro-Hamas demonstrations and Hamas-supporters’ encampments on university campuses across the United States.

The campus “occupations” are reminiscent of Kyiv’s Maidan Square encampment in the winter of 2004-2005, when Soros helped fund the Orange Revolution. He also supported the 2014 demonstrations of the Maidan Revolution, for which he was awarded Ukraine’s Order of Freedom by the Ukrainian president he helped elect, Petro Poroshenko.

Soros is the prime mover behind a decades-long effort culminating with a tsunami of anti-Semitic attacks on Israel and Jews everywhere.

When Hamas, the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, took over Gaza in 2007, Soros criticized Israel for refusing “to recognize the democratically elected Hamas government.” He deliberately ignored the fact that the Islamist terrorist group’s explicit and well-advertised objective is the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel.

Soros has been funding, directly and indirectly — and apparently with the acquiescence of U.S. administrations — Israeli-Jewish and Israeli-Arab leftist groups, as well as media outlets, that oppose Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

‘Make Government Work’ John Stossel

https://pjmedia.com/john-stossel/2024/05/01/make-government-work-n4928660

President Joe Biden says, “I know how to make government work!”You’d think he’d know. He’s worked in government for 51 years. But the truth is, no one can make government work. 

Biden hasn’t.

Look at the chaos at the border, our military’s botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, the rising cost of living, our unsustainable record-high debt …

In my new video, economist Ed Stringham argues that no government can ever work well, because “even the best person can’t implement change. … The massive bureaucracy gets bigger and slower.”

I learned that as a consumer reporter watching bureaucrats regulate business. Their rules usually made life worse for consumers.

Yet politicians want government to do more!

NYPD Officers Storm Barricaded Columbia Building, Arrest Anti-Israel Protesters by David Zimmerman

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nypd-begins-entering-columbia-campus-moving-toward-barricaded-anti-israel-protesters/

Hundreds of New York City police officers equipped with riot gear took dozens of anti-Israel protesters into custody Tuesday evening after Columbia University called in the police to end the pro-Palestinian occupation of a campus building.

Columbia protesters occupied Hamilton Hall early Tuesday morning and blocked the entrances to claim the area as their own. Protesters were seen smashing windows and barricading themselves inside the building, one day after the university began suspending students for refusing to leave a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus.

The New York Police Department received a letter from Columbia president Minouche Shafik authorizing officers to move onto campus, marking the second time the university administration had done so. The NYPD closed off streets around Columbia while moving toward the barricaded campus location. Officers then entered Hamilton Hall through a second-floor window and began pulling people out of the building, according to Columbia radio station WKCR-FM.

Columbia’s property, including Hamilton Hall, was cleared of all pro-Palestinian protesters by around 11 p.m. Tuesday, less than two hours after the law-enforcement raid began.

Large numbers of protesters could be seen getting arrested, zip-tied, and escorted onto buses. Over 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia and the City College of New York, which saw a similar situation developing. Most of the arrests were made at Columbia, according to law enforcement.

The police department denied using tear gas when clashing with protesters; flash-bang grenades and other “distraction devices” were used instead, according to an NYPD spokesperson.

“The decision to reach out to the NYPD was in response to the actions of the protesters, not the cause they are championing,” university spokesman Ben Chang said in a statement. “We have made it clear that the life of campus cannot be endlessly interrupted by protesters who violate the rules and the law.”

The building occupation was believed to have been led by people not affiliated with the university, Chang added.

In addition to clearing out all encampments, Shafik asked city police to maintain a presence on campus for at least two more weeks.

“In light of the activities that occurred after the events of April 17-18, 2024, we further request that you retain a presence on campus through at least May 17, 2024 to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished,” Shafik wrote in the letter to NYPD deputy commissioner Michael Gerber. The school’s commencement is scheduled for May 15

Beware of The Deadly Progressive Touch Reflections on leftists being eaten alive by their own ideologues. Victor Davis Hanson

https://www.frontpagemag.com/beware-of-the-deadly-progressive-touch/

Recently, viral videos have highlighted the furor—and narcissism—of progressive elites when they rarely face the consequences of their own actions.

The most hilarious video was the defiant DA of New York’s Monroe County, dripping with elite condescension. She felt she had the right to go 20 mph over the speed limit, ignore a patrol car signaling her to pull over, and then in her garage dress down police officers for daring to treat her like she was a mere citizen.

Another was the Emory professor screaming (“I am a professor!”) when handcuffed and hauled off her campus by Georgia law enforcement. She exited whining to cameras that she had only “lightly” hit a policeman on the head (“I impulsively hit him on the head very lightly to get his attention and they grabbed me.”). And then there was the Bakersfield fiery leftist who bragged to the City Council about murdering them in their homes, only to flicker and weep in court when facing felony indictments.

Progressive hothouse plants assume their supposed moral superiority exempts them from living by the rules in the manner of others. But sometimes it is not just the police who anger them, but the very Frankensteinian monsters they created who do not cooperate with their degreed and elected enablers.

In California, an epidemic of crime, from theft to assault, has struck liberal politicians in the last few months, including most recently Adam Schiff, the leftwing mayors of San Jose—Matt Mahon—and Los Angeles—Karen Bass, and even the unhinged district attorney of Oakland Pamela Price. Critical legal theory, no-bail, and defund the police apparently offer no protection.

Sen. Chuck Schumer thought it a neat trick in 2020 to assemble a pro-abortion throng outside the Supreme Court doors, and threaten Justices Kavanagh and Gorsuch by name. He grandstanded that they would not know what would soon “hit” them as they reaped the “whirlwind”. Now a pro-Hamas whirlwind hit his own home, in the fashion leftists not long also did with impunity to Supreme Court Justices’ homes—then to the sudden silence of the otherwise loud Schumer.

NYPD Reclaims City College, Lowers Terror Flag, Raises U.S. Flag We will remember moments like this in the years to come. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/nypd-reclaims-city-college-lowers-terror-flag-raises-u-s-flag/

I’ve written quite a bit since 9/11 about where I expected the growing battle between America and Islamic terrorists to go, but this is still a stunning moment.

There’s the NYPD reclaiming a portion of a New York City campus, lowering a terror flag and raising the American flag again.

There are echoes here of the flag at Ground Zero and of the Star-Spangled Banner.

This is literally a battle for our country being fought on college campuses between the NYPD and Islamic terrorists and their Marxist allies.

It’s all the more stunning in contrast to what’s going on in Los Angeles at UCLA.

America’s Poisonous Antiwar Protests Have we moved the doomsday clock to the brink of midnight? by Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/americas-poisonous-antiwar-protests/

The sorry spectacles being staged at our most prestigious universities bespeak the accelerating degeneration of our future cognitive elites. How else do we describe the aggressive ignorance and moral idiocy of protestors who identify with sadistic, savage terrorists, and adopt the rhetoric and tropes of Nazi Germany? Who shamelessly smear Jews––the intended victims of Hamas’ widely publicized and celebrated genocidal aims­––the perpetrators of genocide? Who clearly know nothing of the region’s history, or that of Islam’s “settler colonialism” and millennium of imperialist depredations and slaving, or the Koranic foundations of that sanctified  aggression?

The letter of these chants and slogans is new, but the spirit goes back to Marx’s debut in history, whence it gradually migrated to Western fellow-travelers and progressives, until emerging during the Sixties to drive the protest movements against the Vietnam War.

There too willful ignorance about the facts of the conflict filled antiwar propaganda––especially the canard that the war was a “civil war” between North Vietnamese “patriots” seeking “national self-determination,” “decolonization,” and “human rights,” just as the American colonies did in the Revolutionary War. Wasn’t Ho Chi Min just another George Washington?

On the other side were the South Vietnamese, the willing collaborators with the “racist” occupiers and oppressors, the capitalist, imperialist Americans propping up the quisling regime in Saigon in order to take control of natural resources like “tin and tungsten,” the talking point provided to Jane Fonda by her handlers when she first became an activist against the war.

And of course, ignored was the reality of the conflict––a proxy war in the U.S.’s efforts to contain Soviet communism’s imperialist ambitions to turn the world into communist satrapies like Eastern Europe. The same callow, mostly affluent youth who demonized America soldiers as the feral attack dogs of the capitalists masters, never mentioned the millions slaughtered, tortured, and enslaved by Soviet and Maoist communist tyrants.

Also then as now, the shock troops of the antiwar movement were college students, some of the most privileged young people not just in America, but the world. Like today, they were cultivated, praised, and sometimes financed by America’s enemies exploiting these “useful idiots” who couldn’t have survived for five minutes living under communist totalitarianism, any more than the pro-Hamas feminists and champions of the LGBTQ alphabet people could survive under illiberal, homophobic, misogynist Islamic sharia law that recognizes only one “human right”––the right to submit to Islam by accepting dhimmitude or converting.

Five Ways Campus Turmoil Hurts Democrats and America Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/04/30/five_ways_campus_turmoil_hurts_democrats_and_america_150863.html

Higher education is sinking lower and lower. That’s bad news for our country, which has benefited enormously from having the world’s best system of higher education. And it’s bad news for Democrats, who face a tight election. Their party is closely tied to education at all levels, especially at elite universities. It is the party of experts, after all, and the party of the left. Universities are both. Moreover, since the Democrats control the Executive Branch, the public holds them primarily accountable for ensuring social order. Their failures are obvious to the average voter. That’s bound to hurt Democratic Party candidates in November.

Parents with children in college or expected to matriculate soon have every right to expect their kids can learn in peace, hear diverse viewpoints, and speak freely without threats, intimidation, or indoctrination. That’s true whether the parents are Jewish or not. Decent Americans won’t tolerate threats against Jewish students any more than they would tolerate them against blacks, Muslims, Christians, or Asian Americans. Yet they now see those threats against Jewish students every day, and, at many universities, they don’t see administrators standing up for their rights.

Parents don’t understand why their kids aren’t being protected. They are unhappy that classes have been canceled and graduation ceremonies relegated to Zoom. They are dismayed that their tax money is being flushed down a sinkhole of anti-American propaganda. They wonder what in the world has happened to once-respected institutions. Good question.

U.S. Campuses: Grooming Terrorists by Bassam Tawil

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20606/us-campuses-grooming-terrorists

For these Arabs, including some Palestinians, there is nothing “pro-Palestinian” about supporting the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group….

Those who are chanting “we are all Hamas” on the streets of New York and U.S. college campuses are not helping the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip even slightly. They are being used as human shields by the terrorist group Hamas in its genocidal war against Israel and Jews.” — Loay Al-Shareef, social media influencer from the United Arab Emirates, X, April 23, 2024.

“You would not survive a day in Gaza under Hamas, which demands that ‘infidels’ live with dignity only if they are subordinate to Islamists…. You do not understand Arabic, nor do you know Islam well enough to comprehend what awaits you if Hamas prevails (God forbid).” — Loay Al-Shareef, X, April 23, 2024.

“[Y]ou would also be the target of hatred because radical Islamists like Hamas believe in eternal enmity towards Jews and Christians. They interpret the Quranic verse (“O you who believe, never take Jews and Christians as friends,” as timeless, applicable to all Jews and Christians forever.” — Loay Al-Shareef, X, April 23, 2024.

“Hamas’ approach, in other words, has been a disaster for Palestinians in Gaza…. If universities cannot instil their students with peaceful, tolerant, and coexistent attitudes, then they have failed as institutions of higher learning.” — John Aziz, a British-Palestinian writer, Jewish Chronicle, April 22, 2024.

“Violence has failed us for decades, and the only way to accomplish justice for Palestinians is through peace.” — Hamza Howidy, Palestinian from Gaza, X, April 25, 2024.

By blocking the three Palestinian social media influences, the SJP, which claims to seek justice for the Palestinians, is proving that it does not care about freedom of speech for the Palestinians and is as intolerant as Hamas and other terrorist groups to criticism.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is a cancer on every university campus.” – Amjad Taha, Emirati researcher and journalist, X, April 23, 2024.

While protesters at Columbia University and Yale University celebrate Hamas and its “resistance” (a euphemism for violence and terrorism), Arabs have been ridiculing the “pro-Palestinian” demonstrators on American college campuses. For these Arabs, including some Palestinians, there is nothing “pro-Palestinian” about supporting the Iran-backed Hamas terrorist group, whose members slaughtered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped more than 240 others on October 7, 2023.

Remember When Bill Clinton Stole the 1992 Election? Rich Lowry

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/04/remember-when-bill-clinton-stole-the-1992-election/

Too bad Alvin Bragg wasn’t on the case.

The Alvin Bragg case has gotten grander at trial, but also more ridiculous.

The Manhattan DA has a meaningless business-records misdemeanor wrapped within a theory about an alleged Trump conspiracy to defraud the voters by denying them disparaging information before the election and obscuring, after the fact, the payments that were used to do so.

Bragg is accusing Trump, in effect, of stealing the election.

He, thus, joins all the other progressives who have denied the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016 election, although he finds the culprit not in Russia (at least not in this case) but in the shady maneuverings around Stormy Daniels.

If this is the standard by which we judge elections, we need to go back and conclude that Bill Clinton wasn’t elected legitimately in 1992, either. The Arkansas governor’s political operation was, in part, an elaborate conspiracy to keep women who alleged to have had affairs with Clinton quiet. Hillary Clinton was an active participant in the schemes. And so, by Bragg’s logic, this Democratic power couple — dominant in the party for a decade or more and still honored today — comprises election thieves.

Clinton had the same underlying problem as Trump — namely, women with embarrassing stories to tell — but the opposite tabloid dynamic; the tabloids were trying to get Clinton, whereas the National Enquirer was trying to protect Trump.

The Clinton campaign fought to silence or discredit women as necessary. Clinton’s operatives had the foresight — there’s nothing like planning ahead — to secure affidavits of denial from women rumored to have had affairs with Clinton. The truth didn’t matter here, of course. They just wanted the exculpatory statements, and the women were usually happy to sign them. Who wants the embarrassment of such matters being aired in public?

More fromRich Lowry

Protesters take over Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall in escalation of anti-war demonstrations

https://lite.aol.com/news/story/0001/20240430/8b0d3a0cedb17f5e892c6ca43bbdf628

Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading the entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag out of a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war that have spread to college campuses nationwide.

Video footage showed protesters on Columbia’s Manhattan campus locking arms in front of Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building, one of several that was occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus. Posts on an Instagram page for protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall.

The student radio station, WKCR-FM, broadcasted a play-by-play of the hall’s takeover – which occurred nearly 12 hours after Monday’s 2 p.m. deadline for the protesters to leave an encampment of around 120 tents or face suspension. Representatives for the university did not immediately respond to emails requesting comment early Tuesday.

Universities across the U.S. are grappling with how to clear out encampments as commencement ceremonies approach, with some continuing negotiations and others turning to force and ultimatums that have resulted in clashes with police. Dozens of people were arrested Monday during protests at universities in Texas, Utah and Virginia, while Columbia said hours before the takeover of Hamilton Hall that it had started suspending students.

Demonstrators are sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll, and the number of arrests at campuses nationwide is approaching 1,000 as the final days of class wrap up. The outcry is forcing colleges to reckon with their financial ties to Israel, as well as their support for free speech. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.