NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Video Shows U.S. Capitol Police Gave Protesters OK to Enter By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/16/video-shows-u-s-capitol-police-gave-protesters-ok-to-enter/

A newly-obtained video shows United States Capitol Police officers speaking with several January 6 protestors—including Jacob Chansley, the so-called “Q shaman”—inside the Capitol that afternoon.

One officer, identified in the video and confirmed by charging documents as Officer Keith Robishaw, appears to tell Chansely’s group they won’t stop them from entering the building. “We’re not against . . . you need to show us . . . no attacking, no assault, remain calm,” Robishaw warns. Chansley and another protestor instruct the crowd to act peacefully. “This has to be peaceful,” Chansley yelled. “We have the right to peacefully assemble.”

The video directly contradicts what government prosecutors allege in a complaint filed January 8 against Chansley: “Robishaw and other officers calmed the protestors somewhat and directed them to leave the area from the same way they had entered. Chansley approached Officer Robishaw and screamed, among other things, that this was their house, and that they were there to take the Capitol, and to get Congressional leaders.”

Chansley later is seen entering the Senate chambers with a police officer behind him; he led several protesters in prayer and sat in Vice President Mike Pence’s chair. (The man in the yellow sweatshirt is William Watson, a drug dealer out on bond. He was arrested in January.)

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

How to Ensure a Middle East War in Five Easy Steps The new American Middle East policy is an extension of the new American domestic policy. Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/16/how-to-ensure-a-middle-east-war-in-five-easy-steps/

More than 2,500 rockets have landed in Israel over the past week. Some Arab Israeli citizens are terrorizing Jewish Israelis. Apparently, as the rockets fall, these citizens are to be Arab Islamic nationalists first, and Israelis last—even if they wisely prefer to live on the Israeli rather than the Palestinian side of Israel’s hated wall.

The usual Hamas sympathizers are promising death to the Jews on social media (so much for the idea that Twitter and Facebook are “shocked, shocked” by impolite expressions of the Trumpian sort). 

Iran is always Iran—hubristic and chest-thumping that an obsequious United States will ease sanctions, allowing billions of dollars into the country, and thus empowering Iran to revive former levels of funding to Hezbollah and Hamas, to restructure the terrorist weaponry pipeline to Yemen, and to sanctify the Iran-deal trajectory to an Iranian bomb. Tehran just issued a third-rate video of the Republican Guard destroying the U.S. Capitol, apparently to show the world how it plans to humiliate an appeasing Biden State Department.

But why all this violence now? Of course, experts say the pretexts are cancellations of elections in the West Bank. And there is the need for the corrupt Palestinian Authority to find an enemy to scapegoat other than corrupt rival Hamas. Of course, they say, the Jews are—for the 1,000th time—“desecrating” the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and that the Israeli government is in a mess of disunity, without a unified majority voice. Of course, they say, there is the pretext of a court case over former pre-1947 property in Jerusalem—a bitter, but nevertheless still mostly private matter handled by the courts for years without an intifada.  

Yet between 2017 and 2021 there was relatively little violence in Israel and on the West Bank. Whatever our ideologies and politics, we all know the one reason why there is chaos now and not then. And that constant in itself is a primer on the Middle East. 

Trump Provoked Peace 

The Trump Administration assumed that whenever there is perceived distance between the United States and democratic Israel, then unsavory players exploit the void and try things they otherwise would not. Israel’s enemies and even neutrals in the area see such a reset as encouragement to move in, on the assumption (correctly held) that American tensions with Israel always reflect weakness and hesitancy to be exploited.  

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Where Have All the Whistleblowers Gone? Is it now too dangerous to call out the federal government for anything? Lloyd Billingsley

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/where-have-all-whistleblowers-gone-lloyd-billingsley/

“I am reporting an ‘urgent concern’ in accordance with the procedures outlined in 50 U.S.C. §3033(k)(5)(A). This letter is UNCLASSIFIED when separated from the attachment.

In the course of my official duties, I have received information from multiple U.S. Government officials that the President of the United States is using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election. This interference includes, among other things, pressuring a foreign country to investigate one of the President’s main domestic political rivals. The President’s personal lawyer, Mr. Rudolph Giuliani, is a central figure in this effort. Attorney General Barr appears to be involved as well.”

So reads the first paragraph of an August 12, 2019 letter to Richard Burr and Adam Schiff, of the Senate and House intelligence committees. The unnamed author was proclaimed “the whistleblower,” and the centerpiece of the 2879-word opus was President Trump’s July 25, 2019 telephone call to Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

The letter mentioned ambassadors Kurt Volker and Gordon Sondland, who would subsequently testify in public hearings along with former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. The witnesses provided ample evidence of their own incompetence but were unable to cite any crime President Trump might have committed.

As with the Russia hoax, a belch from Hillary Clinton, the impeachment attempt failed. The identity of the whistleblower, supposedly a CIA agent, was protected start to finish. As this confirmed, a government insider can advance a bogus narrative aimed at taking down the president of the United States and emerge completely unscathed. That offered hope to legitimate whistleblowers exposing actual violations and crimes in the vast reaches of the federal government.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian Propaganda Machine Cranks Into High Gear The facts don’t support the Palestinian narrative, so new “facts” have to be manufactured. Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/palestinian-propaganda-machine-cranks-high-gear-robert-spencer/

A supporter of the Palestinian jihad against Israel tweeted Thursday: “Israel is now using white phosphorus on the city of Beit Hanoun in Palestine! It can burn human flesh until it reaches to the bones. White phosphorus is prohibited globally and it’s been considered as a war crime!” Included was a gruesome photo of a woman whose hair had been partially burned off and her face severely burned as well. There was just one minor detail that the tweet omitted to mention: the photo was not from Gaza in May 2021, but from Afghanistan in 2009.

If the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were really as brutal and inhumane as the international media and supporters of the Palestinian jihad (not that there is any significant difference between those two groups) claim, it ought to be easy to find evidence of Israeli atrocities. Instead, such enormities are so thin on the ground that they have to be manufactured in order to shore up the Palestinians’ tenuous (at best) claim to victim status.

Nor is this anything new. It has been going on for years. Israelly Cool reported in February 2020 that Palestinian “journalist” Mustafa Batnain tweeted a “heartbreaking photo from Gaza” depicting a baby inside a cardboard box, presumably the little one’s only shelter amid rampaging, savage, brutal IDF forces. Once again, there was a catch: the photo was actually not from Gaza at all, but from Idomeni, Greece. It’s all in a day’s work for the Palestinian factory of Israeli atrocities.

The photo was just the latest of innumerable examples of the deception that is perpetrated on an industrial scale by Palestinian propagandists in order to make Israel seem to be an oppressive occupying power. The Palestinian Delusion: The Catastrophic History of the Middle East Peace Process details the breadth and sophistication of this deception.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Kristallnacht In Israel Muslim mobs in Lod attack Jews, burn cars and set synagogues on fire. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/kristallnacht-israel-hugh-fitzgerald/

In the middle of Israel, 16 miles outside of Tel Aviv, sits the city of Lod (Lydda). One-third of its population of 77,000 is Arab; it has been a source of local pride that Arabs and Jews have gotten along so well, and that the Arabs have flourished. Starting with an Arab population of 1,600 in Lod in 1949, the Arabs now number 25,700, a colossal increase of more than 1500%. Obviously, living in Lod agrees with them.

But in recent days, Arab mobs in Lod have been roaming the city, attacking Jews, burning cars, throwing petrol bombs into Jewish homes and shops, setting three synagogues on fire..

A report on this grim spectacle is here: “‘Kristallnacht in Lod’: State of emergency as Arab mobs set synagogues on fire,” Times of Israel, May 12, 2021:

Intense Arab rioting broke out in the central Israeli city of Lod late Tuesday, with three synagogues and numerous shops reportedly set on fire, along with dozens of cars. The government declared a state of emergency in the Jewish-Arab city, and urgently dispatched several Border Police companies to work to restore order.

Some residents reported power was cut in their homes and petrol bombs were thrown through their windows, Channel 12 news said, and police acknowledged having to escort some residents from a community center to their homes as Arab mobs marauded in the streets. A local man, 56, was seriously hurt when hit by a slab on his car, and was hospitalized. Another local resident was seriously hurt.

Jewish shops were set on fire, three synagogues burned, gasoline bombs thrown into Jewish homes. It is a miracle that no one so far has burned to death, though several Jews have been seriously wounded by Arabs, and one Arab man was shot dead while attacking Jews. Meanwhile Arab mobs for two days and nights roamed the streets, looking for Jews and Jewish property to attack. Some Jews had to be escorted home by the police, for fear of what might happen to them at the hands of the maddened Muslim marauders.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Violent Anti-Israel Demonstration Comes to Toronto Leon Kushner

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://leonupsidedown.blogspot.com/2021/05/violent-anti-israel-demonstration-comes.html

Last night I attended an anti-Israel demonstration at downtown Toronto’s city hall. I thought it was important to show a pro-Israeli presence there. While Israel continues to be attacked on all sides by rockets as well as by Israeli Arabs attacking their long time Jewish neighbours inside Israel, we must show our support of our brothers and sisters in Israel. As one of the greatest commentators of the Torah, Rashi, once said: “If not now, when? ”

Turns out I walked into a wasp nest. There were tens of thousand of pro-Palis with Hamas, Hezbolla, Fatah and other terrorist groups and about 100 pro-Israelis counter demonstrating. One can see our small group in the middle, sandwiched between 2 larger groups of anti-Israel protesters. 

Here is a good aerial shot of Nathan Phillips Square in front of city hall where this all started from our local Toronto news CP24: (I’m in there somewhere.)

CP24 News video at the scene

It started peaceful enough. I was watching fellow supporters dancing with Israeli flags and listening to them sing peaceful and uplifting songs like ‘Am Yisrael Chai’ which means the Nation of Israel Lives. The others shouted ‘From the River to the sea Palestine will be free’ which means they want to destroy Israel from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean sea.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Conned by Khan Muslim terrorists pretend reform – and the West eats it up. Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/conned-khan-raymond-ibrahim/

The degree to which Muslim terrorists can feign remorse for their crimes and convincingly pretend to have reformed—while secretly despising and plotting to murder non-Muslims—was on recent display.

After his prison evaluators had determined that Usman Khan, who was serving time for terrorist-related activities, had reformed and repented of his ways, they freed him early, in December 2018.  Less than a year later, however, he murdered two people, a man and woman, and injured three others at Fishmongers Hall near London Bridge. 

During a recent inquest, the Rev Paul Foster, a prison chaplain, admitted that he was one of those to have been “conned” by the falsely “remorseful” Khan.

Foster said that “Khan had engaged positively with programmes looking at his offending and the impact of his crimes.”  Khan, moreover, “had conversations with me about wanting to change and make a fresh start—to pay more attention to the ripple effect of his actions.”

The April 24, 2021 report continues:

Mr Foster also said Khan had spoken “openly and emotionally” during a discussion session with a victim of crime.

He added: “We were being presented with a lot of positive things about his behavior—even some of the prisoners were telling me… in one instance a chap lost his son to a murder and Usman was the person at his door offering his condolences and asking if he could help.”

The chaplain described one session with Khan in which he professed “some shame” about the impact his crime had on the Muslim community.

“He appeared to show remorse for what he had done,” Mr Foster said.

In the end, it was all a charade.  During the inquest, Foster expressed shock on learning that, during the same time period that Khan was feigning repentance, so too was he the “main inmate for radicalising others and had been involved in ‘forced conversations.’”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Israel is the Victim The lies behind the terror.

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/why-israel-victim-frontpagemagcom/

Editors’ note: Below is the text of David Horowitz’s pamphlet, Why Israel is a Victim. Frontpage editors have deemed it vital to run the pamphlet in our pages today, since it reveals the history that explains Hamas’ current terror against Israel – and the international community’s outrageous bias against the Jewish state.

The Gaza Strip is a narrow corridor of land, 25 miles long and about twice the area of Washington, D.C. situated between the State of Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, and has a small southern border with Egypt. When the U.N. created the State of Israel out of the ruins of the Turkish Empire, in 1948, eight Arab countries launched an attack on the infant regime with the stated goal of destroying it. The attackers included Egypt whose tanks invaded Israel through the Gaza land bridge. In its defensive war against the invaders, Israel emerged triumphant but did not occupy Gaza.

In 1949, Egypt annexed the Strip. In 1967, the Egyptian dictator Gamel Abdel Nasser massed hundreds of thousands of troops on the Israeli border with Gaza and closed the Port of Eilat in an attempt to strangle the Israeli State. Israel struck back and in a “Six Day War” vanquished the Egyptian armies and drove them out of Gaza. After the war, Israel refused to withdraw its armies from Gaza and the West Bank because the Arab invaders, which included Iraq, Jordan and several other states refused to negotiate a formal peace treaty. In the years that followed, a few thousand Jews settled in Gaza.

By 2005 they numbered 8,500, a tiny community compared to the 1.4 million Palestinian Arabs. While they lived in Gaza, the lives of the Jewish settlers were in constant danger, particularly after the formation in Gaza of one the world’s leading terrorist organizations, Hamas, whose stated goal is the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic state “from the [Jordan] River to the Sea.”

After the rejection of the Oslo Peace process in 2001 by Yassar Arafat and the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinians launched four years of unrelenting terrorist attacks on Israeli civilians. The attacks were led by Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, an arm of the Palestinian Authority. As a result of the Palestinian rejection of the peace process and the unrelenting terrorism, the Israeli government decided that a secure peace could probably not be negotiated with its Palestinian antagonists. It therefore built a fence along its borders both on the West Bank and Gaza to prevent further infiltration by suicide bombers, a measure which dramatically reduced the attacks. The Israeli government further decided to remove all Jews living in the Gaza Strip and to withdraw the Israeli Defense Forces which protected them. By September 2005, the Israeli government evacuated every Jew who had been living in the Gaza Strip.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

The ‘Israel Is a Monster for Bombing the Associated Press’ Office Building in Gaza’ Narrative Just Collapsed

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/05/16/israel-shared-intelligence-to-us-showing-hamas-operated-inside-building-where-ap-aljazeera-had-offices-n2589525?utm_campaign=inarticle

I can’t believe this has to be said, but if you operate out of the same building as a vicious terrorist organization, you’re putting yourself at risk. When that terrorist organization starts lobbing rockets at innocent people in Israel, pushing things towards the brink of war—the danger grows. It’s the nature of journalism in a hot zone. It’s nothing new. The Associated Press operated in Nazi Germany. We’re talking about this because Israel launched an airstrike that leveled a building in Gaza that also contained Al-Jazeera and Associated Press offices. Katie wrote about it yesterday. There’s been outrage. There have been allegations that Israel violated international law. And the news coverage has been predictably trashy (via NBC News):

Press freedom advocates have condemned Saturday’s Israeli airstrike on a Gaza building that housed offices of foreign media, including The Associated Press and Al-Jazeera.

After it was struck by missiles, the 12-story al-Jalaa tower, which was also home to apartments and other offices, collapsed in giant cloud of dust, disrupting coverage of the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip that has escalated last week, claiming dozens of lives.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or deaths, and journalists and other tenants were safely evacuated after the Israeli military gave an advance warning of an imminent strike.

Israel’s military has defended targeting the tower, saying that Hamas had a military intelligence office in the building and used journalists as human shields. It has not provided evidence of the intelligence operations in the building, and the AP cast doubt on the claim.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Police Investigating Mother’s Day Assault on Military Vet Who was Called ‘White B*tch’ in Parking Lot

Posted By on May 17th, 2021

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/landonmion/2021/05/16/police-investigating-mothers-day-assault-on-military-vet-n2589529

Louisville police are investigating an attack in a Kroger parking lot that left a disabled military veteran with a broken nose after an altercation on Mother’s Day.

Pamela Ahlstedt-Brown was beaten after she addressed the occupants of a car that were blocking her from leaving her parking spot, Wave 3 News reported.

I get out and I say, “Do you guys need any help?” and she said, “F*** you, you white b****.” I said, “Hold on, you don’t even know me.” I said, “That’s fine. If you don’t need anything, that’s fine. I’ll get back in the car.”

She said the passengers of the vehicle were four black women and that after their aggressive comments, they proceeded to throw a cup at her and beat her. 

She said she was in a fetal position during the attack, trying to protect her eyes.

Strangers were able to intervene and break up the incident, but not before Ahlstedt-Brown suffered a broken nose.