EDUCATION Comments turned off

An Open Letter to Butler University’s Students for Justice in Palestine and the Group’s Fellow Travelers Butler’s time to look in the mirror. Richard L. Cravatts

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/open-letter-butler-universitys-students-justice-richard-l-cravatts/

Your group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), has a long history since its founding in 1993 of bringing vitriolic anti-Israel speakers to their respective campuses.

And your recent invitation to the Marxist, former Black Panther, Angela Davis (pictured above), a supporter of the destructive Boycott Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, to speak at Butler affirms your group’s radicalism and its history of creating a hostile climate on whatever campus you have a chapter. SJP members apparently wish to live in a world where only your predetermined virtues and worldview prevail, and feel quite strongly that, in the case of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, at least, the answers are black and white, there is a moral side and an immoral side, and that anyone who does not, or cannot, see things as clearly and unambiguously as you woke students do is a racist, an oppressor, or a supporter of an illegal, apartheid regime trampling the human rights of the blameless, hapless Palestinians.

Your former president at Butler even promoted conspiracy theories about a Zionist cabal working behind the scenes to have the Angela Davis speech canceled. “Days before Butler University’s shameless censorship of Angela Davis,” wrote Roua Daas, the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Student Government Association at Butler University, “the Student Government Association was bombarded by pressure from Zionist students [emphasis added] who claimed to oppose Davis’ event because of her support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement — a grassroots demand for nonviolent economic pressure against Israel’s illegal military occupation of Palestine.”

In her letter in the Butler Collegian, Daas wrote that “This is not the first time this school year that these students [emphasis added] have attempted to silence free speech and prevent political events on campus,” continuing her denigration of Zionists on the Butler campus. “Many will recall failed attempts this past fall to use student senate resolutions to cancel student organization events and place limits on topics that could be discussed,” she added, referring to the debate on campus last fall over the adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism. 

“This is also not the first time that Zionists have attempted to deplatform Angela Davis for her supportive stance on Palestine,” Daas added, and “institutions which silence the voices of Black radicals such as Davis are complicit in the systems of racism and oppression which hurt BIPOC people within and beyond Butler University.”

Apparently, it is irresistible for SJP to avoid inviting controversial speakers to speak against Israel, even murderers, as long as they are willing and able to defame Israel, attack Zionism, point to the alleged racism of the Jewish state, and find common ground of oppression between the Palestinians and people of color on campus and elsewhere.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Russian Bounty Story Falls Apart after Being Used to Slam Trump Admin By Ryan Mills

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/russian-bounty-story-falls-apart-after-being-used-to-slam-trump-admin/

The credibility of last summer’s bombshell report alleging the Russian government was paying bounties to Taliban fighters to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan took another hit this week when a senior Biden administration official told reporters they only have “low-to-moderate confidence” in the intelligence behind the story.

The intelligence was based on notoriously unreliable “detainee reporting,” the official said on the call, meaning that it came from militants looking to get out of jail.

News of the alleged bounties was first reported last June by The New York Times, which reported that “American intelligence officials have concluded that a Russian military intelligence unit secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan – including targeting American troops.” The story, based entirely on unidentified sources, claimed that the U.S. had actually known about the alleged bounties for months.

Media outlets across the country rushed to find their own anonymous sources to “confirm” the story. Then-President Donald Trump called it “fake news” and a “Hoax started to slander me & the Republican Party.” He denied that he’d been briefed on it, and did not discuss the alleged bounties on a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin in July.

Democrats jumped on the report and used it to attack Trump in the run-up to the 2020 election. Joe Biden said Trump’s “entire presidency has been a gift to Putin, but this is beyond the pale. It’s betrayal of the most sacred duty we bear as a nation to protect and equip our troops when we send them into harm’s way.” House speaker Nancy Pelosi said “This is as bad as it gets,” and John Kerry weighed in at the Democratic Convention, saying that Trump did “nothing about Russia putting a bounty on our troops.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s Reckless Moral Equivalency By Isaac Schorr

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/linda-thomas-greenfields-reckless-moral-equivalency/

Does Linda Thomas-Greenfield understand the purpose of, and duties associated with, her position as United States ambassador to the United Nations? I’m sure she has her own conception of the job, and it’s her right to act on the basis of that conception; she’s the one who’s been selected for and confirmed to the role. But judging from her recent comments made while addressing Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, I don’t think that conception bears much resemblance to that which Americans have of her mission:

Of course, when we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale, we have to approach them with humility. We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union and have been since the beginning. And every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect and more just. In a diverse country like ours, that means committing to do the work. It means learning and understanding more about each other. It means engaging trailblazing groups like yours, to teach, to grow, to include, to improve. It means not forgetting our past or ignoring our present, but keeping both firmly in mind as we push for a better future. I tried to do this recently in the U.N. General Assembly when I spoke on the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Thomas-Greenfield shared a few moving examples of the horror that she and other African Americans experienced in the Jim Crow South before going on:

I’ve seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved  white supremacy into our founding documents and principles . . .

. . . Racism is not the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist. And in today’s world, that’s every society. In America, that takes many forms. It’s the white supremacy that led to the senseless killing of George Floyd. Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and so many other black Americans. It’s the spike in hate crimes over the past three years against Latino Americans, Sikh, Muslim Americans, Jewish Americans,  and immigrants. And it’s the bullying, discrimination, brutality, and violence that Asian Americans face every day,  especially since the outbreak of COVID-19. That’s why the Biden-Harris administration has made racial equity a top priority across the entire government. And I’m making it a real focus of my tenure at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

For Mahmoud Abbas, a Last Hurrah? Abbas’ pretend-game of elections backfires. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/mahmoud-abbas-last-hurrah-hugh-fitzgerald/

Mahmoud Abbas originally thought it was a good idea. There was a new administration in Washington, one most favorably inclined to the Palestinians. The Biden people were ready to undo what the “unfriendly” Trump Administration had done. Trump had closed the PLO office in Washington, Biden promised to open it. Trump had folded the consulate to the Palestinians in east Jerusalem into the Embassy in Jerusalem; Biden promised to reopen it. Trump had ended both direct aid to the Palestinians and American contributions to UNRWA.

Biden announced that he was again turning on the spigot of aid, starting with a $15 million contribution, then another one of $80 million, with more – much more – to come. As for the Taylor Force Act, which prohibits American aid to the Palestinians as long as they continued to provide subsidies to terrorists and their families, in what is grimly known as the “Pay-For-Slay” program, nothing has been said about Biden’s renewal of aid constituting a clear violation of Taylor Force. Apparently it was enough that such aid was described as “humanitarian” to exempt it from the application of Taylor Force, but there is no such exemption in the language of the act. Nonetheless, no one in Congress said anything, no one insisted that such aid, even if called “humanitarian,” should be halted; possibly politicians were fearful that if they did so, they would. be painted as depriving the “poor Palestinians” of diapers and baby formula. But money is fungible; “humanitarian” aid money given to the Palestinians frees up other sums that can then be spent on weapons for terrorists.

These initial deliveries of aid were being given, members of the Administration let it be known, to “earn the trust” of the Palestinians. Why the Americans felt they needed to win the “trust” of the endlessly meretricious Palestinians remains unclear. But no one asked for a clarification. In any case, the largesse lavished upon the Palestinians will not win their “trust” but merely confirm their belief in the gullibility of the Americans, or at least of the Americans who have now assumed power in Washington.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Canada: J-Space Supports NDP Party’s BDS Resolution to Actively Campaign Against “Illegal Settlements” A “progressive” Jewish voice advances the agenda against Israel. Christine Douglass-Williams

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/canada-j-space-supports-ndp-partys-bds-resolution-christine-douglass-williams/

J-Space is known as a “respectable,” “Progressive” Jewish voice in Canada. It is more or less the counterpart to J-Street in America. Several days ago, the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada passed an anti-Israel, BDS-supporting Resolution, 04-10-20 (Justice and Peace in Israel-Palestine), at its 2021 Convention. J-Space supported it. See its official statement HERE.

A little background about the NDP for Americans who may be unfamiliar with it: the NDP is a far-Left, Progressive Party, with now only 24 out of 338 seats in the House of Commons. The NDP actually served as Canada’s official opposition party from 2011 to 2015, but its support has dwindled. It is worthwhile to note that the NDP also founded an “unofficial” New Democratic Party Socialist Caucus in 1998.

Last year, NDP leader Jagmeet Singh stated that his party does not support BDS, as reported by the Canadian Jewish News:

He unequivocally condemned BDS, stating that it “creates tensions and divisions,” and “does not advance peace.” Singh stated that neither he nor the NDP support BDS, believing that it is not “the right path forward.”

Singh is regarded with distaste in many circles. He ostensibly supports Sikh separatism and was banned from India for insulting its human rights record and accusing it of genocide. But despite his condemnation of BDS a year ago, to an astute observer, his declarations were suspicious, given his party’s prior ambivalence about BDS. But now, Singh has taken the gloves off to  expose his real views of Israel. The new resolution just passed by the NDP states:

…Therefore BE IT RESOLVED THAT the NDP actively campaign in support of the demand of Palestinian unions, civil society and unions across Canada and around the world for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions against the Israeli state…

Ending all trade and economic cooperation with illegal settlements in Israel-Palestine
Suspending the bilateral trade of all arms and related materials with the State of Israel …

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The New Plan to Oust Netanyahu And the dire implications for Israel. Caroline Glick

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/new-plan-oust-netanyahu-caroline-glick/

In a discussion with associates on Tuesday, Yamina chairman Naftali Bennett spoke candidly about his political plans, which, according to media reports, he is closely coordinating with New Hope party leader Gideon Sa’ar. Both Bennett and Sa’ar hail from the ideological right and both are outspoken opponents of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and seek to unseat him as premier.

Although Bennett refused to recommend that President Reuven Rivlin confer the mandate to form a government on Netanyahu last week, he has made clear that he will join a Netanyahu-led governing coalition if Netanyahu is able to secure the two seats he lacks to build a 61-member government. In contrast, Sa’ar refuses to join a Netanyahu-led government. And for now, Sa’ar’s five colleagues in his six-member Knesset faction are boycotting Netanyahu with him.

Sa’ar has tried twice to oust Netanyahu in elections—first in the Likud’s internal leadership race and then as head of his new party in the last election. Both of his electoral bids flopped. Despite massive media support both times, the voters wouldn’t go along.

Although Bennett told his associates on Tuesday that “we’re in” if Netanyahu manages to find two more lawmakers to join a government under his leadership, he is convinced Netanyahu will fail. “It’s wishful thinking” that any members of Sa’ar’s party will return to Likud, he said. “It won’t happen.”

Netanyahu’s mandate to form a government is good for 28 days. From Bennett’s perspective, the real coalition talks will only begin after Netanyahu fails.

At that point, he asserted confidently, “Someone else in Likud will be the prime minister.”

Israel Katz, Nir Barkat or Naftali Bennett are all possible candidates to replace Netanyahu, in Bennett’s view. Each of them will be able to form a coalition because Sa’ar will join them—and he won’t join Netanyahu.

In other words, Sa’ar’s plan, which Bennett has joined, is to do to Likud members what late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did to Likud voters in 2004.

BOOKS, POLITICS Comments turned off

Stacey Abrams, Fount of Disinformation By Rich Lowry

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2021/05/03/stacey-abrams-fount-of-disinformation/?utm_source=recirc-

She says there’s a new Jim Crow. Here’s the truth.

Stacey Abrams opens her book, Our Time Is Now, with an anecdote about talking to her grandmother in 2018 when she was making her run for governor.

The Georgia Democrat’s grandmother grew up in Jim Crow Mississippi and, according to Abrams, told her how when she got her first opportunity to vote, in 1968, she was too frightened to go to the polling place. Abrams writes that this “perversion of democracy continues to play out across our country every day.”

“Voter suppression,” she continues, “works its might by first tripping and causing to stumble the unwanted voter, then by convincing those who see the obstacle course to forfeit the race without even starting to run.”

The problem with using her grandmother’s story to illustrate this point is that, after her initial hesitation, her grandmother indeed went and voted — just as pretty much all the people Abrams alleges are being scared away from the polls today are going to vote, too.

When Abrams writes that “across America, would-be voters continue to turn away like my grandmother did,” it’s literally true — because they aren’t turning away at all.

This isn’t in any way to discount her grandmother’s fear, born of living for so long under a system of racial tyranny. But the contemporary relevance of her experience is almost nil. In the old Jim Crow era, most blacks were barred from voting in the South by transparently pretextual measures, and sometimes by outright intimidation and violence; in what is supposedly the new Jim Crow era, blacks are full participants and often determine the outcome of races, as they did in the Georgia runoffs last January.

Spot the contradiction in this sentence that evidently escaped Abrams and her editors at Henry Holt. She writes of her experience running for governor: “I watched in real time as the conflicts in our evolving nation became fodder for racist commercials, horrific suppression — and the largest turnout of voters of color in Georgia’s history.”

Stacey Abrams is one of the great founts of disinformation in contemporary American political life. She’s managed to convince almost all Democrats to accept her ridiculous contention that she was the rightful winner of her 2018 gubernatorial race against Brian Kemp, which she never conceded. Her framework of looking at disputes over voting rules not as matters reasonable people can disagree about, or as fights for partisan advantage, but as an existential struggle over the attempted imposition of a new system of racist repression has prevailed on the center–left. Finally, she’s led the way in characterizing the new Georgia electoral law as the onset of Jim Crow 2.0, prompting denunciations of her state from corporate America and leading Major League Baseball to pull the All-Star Game from Atlanta.

She’s paid no price for her dishonesty and hysteria; rather, she’s been celebrated in verse and song. She’s been featured in Vogue (“Can Stacey Abrams save American democracy?” the headline asked) and was somewhere in the very outer orbit of Joe Biden’s VP short list. The way that Senator Elizabeth Warren slammed the new Georgia law is typical of her party’s Abrams-centric view of Georgia: “The Republican who is sitting in Stacey Abrams’ chair just signed a despicable voter suppression bill into law to take Georgia back to Jim Crow.”

Abrams is treated as an authority on all matters related to voting, when, in reality, the beginning of wisdom on such questions is realizing how utterly wrong she is.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Western Fashion Brands Sued for Using Forced Labor in China by Soeren Kern

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17287/fashion-brands-forced-labor-china

The suit accuses Spain-based Inditex (whose brands include Zara, Bershka, Massimo Dutti, Oysho, Pull and Bear and Stradivarius), France-based SMCP (comprised of Parisian brands, Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot and De Fursac), U.S.-based footwear company Skechers, and the U.S. subsidiary of the Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo, of being “accomplices in serious crimes,” including “concealment of the crime of forced labor, the crime of organized human trafficking, the crime of genocide and crimes against humanity.”

The plaintiffs are asking the French judiciary to rule on the “possible criminal liability” of the companies. The stated aim is to “end impunity” for the brands, which are accused of “offloading on their subcontractors their responsibility for human rights.”

“In fact, many companies in the sector are likely, at one stage or another of their production, to profit, consciously or not, from the coercive policy pursued by Beijing towards the Turkic peoples, whether in Xinjiang or in factories in other regions of China where Uyghur workers are sent.” — French newspaper Liberation.

“China’s systematic campaign against the Uyghur population is characterized by mass detention, forced labor, and discriminatory laws, and supported through high-tech manners of surveillance. There are reasonable grounds to believe that China is responsible for crimes against humanity. It is important to recall that crimes against humanity were born out of the experience of the Holocaust and first were prosecuted at Nuremberg. Every government has committed to protect their populations from crimes against humanity.” — Naomi Kikoler, Director, Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Four major European and American apparel and footwear manufacturers have been sued in a French court for allegedly using forced labor in Xinjiang, a mostly Muslim region in northwestern China.

Human rights groups, academic researchers and journalists have increasingly been sounding the alarm that the Chinese government is forcing more than 500,000 Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic and religious minorities to pick cotton in Xinjiang, one of the largest cotton-producing regions in the world.

On April 9, the European Uyghur Institute, in collaboration with a French human rights NGO called Sherpa, the Ethics on Labels Collective (Collectif Ethique sur l’étiquette), and a Uyghur detention camp survivor, all represented by Bourdon & Associés, a prestigious Paris-based law firm, filed the lawsuit at the Judicial Court of Paris (Tribunal judiciaire de Paris).

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s bad foreign-policy deals His diplomats, like former President Barack Obama’s, give without getting Clifford May

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/bidens-bad-foreign-policy-deals/

Because Barack Obama struck me as a clever fellow, I never understood why, when negotiating with despots, he failed to utilize the leverage available to him.

For instance, he might have said to Russian President Vladimir Putin: “I want to reset our relations, but many Americans haven’t forgotten the Cold War. So, I need you to make clear that Russia today isn’t just the USSR 2.0.”

To Raul Castro, he could have said: “It’s high time for us to open diplomatic relations, but you know the Miami crowd! If you’ll just ease up on dissidents a little, we can meet and go to a baseball game together in Havana, and maybe I’ll even have my picture taken under a portrait of Che Guevara!”

To Iran’s rulers, he should have said: “Many members of Congress, even within my own party, won’t approve the deal you want me to sign off on. So, at a minimum, I need you to demonstrate—verifiably—that you’re permanently out of the nuclear weapons business and won’t threaten your neighbors anymore.”

Instead, of course, Obama gave without getting and then postured as though he’d achieved spectacular victories. President Joe Biden is now doing likewise. A few examples follow.

In February, the Biden administration lifted the foreign terrorist designation of the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Since then, they’ve been launching missiles and armed drones at Saudi cities and oil facilities, and have turned down proposals for ceasefires. Mission unaccomplished.

The United Nations Human Rights Council has become a club for chronic human rights abusers—China, Russia and Cuba among them. The Trump administration withdrew from it. The Biden administration plans to return. What reforms have been undertaken in exchange for the United States again lending its legitimacy to the UNHRC? None.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Israel Prize is a privilege, not a right – opinion By Ruthie Blum 

Posted By on April 16th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/the-israel-prize-is-a-privilege-not-a-right-opinion-665274

  

The brouhaha surrounding this year’s Israel Prize serves as a prime example of the way in which the Left falsely decries being denied free speech.

The controversy began last month, when Education Minister Yoav Gallant asked the committee that selected Prof. Oded Goldreich, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, to win the country’s highest civilian honor in the category of math and computer science to reconsider its choice. Gallant pointed to a May 2019 letter that Goldreich had signed – along with many other “Jewish and Israeli scholars” – calling on the German Bundestag not to pass legislation equating the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement with antisemitism.

The missive reads, in part, “The opinions about BDS among the signatories of this statement differ significantly: Some may support BDS, while others reject it for different reasons. However, we all reject the deceitful allegation that BDS as such is antisemitic…. We also call on all German parties not to exclude NGOs that endorse BDS from German funding. As also confirmed by the European Union, statements and actions in the context of BDS are protected by freedom of expression and freedom of association, as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU…. The equation of BDS with antisemitism has been promoted by Israel’s most right-wing government in history. It is part of persistent efforts to delegitimize any discourse about Palestinian rights and any international solidarity with the Palestinians suffering from military occupation and severe discrimination.”

Gallant said that it would be “absurd and unacceptable” to award the Israel Prize to someone who promotes the BDS movement that undermines the very existence of the state. The selection committee disagreed. They argued that Goldreich was chosen for his work on computational complexity theory, which has nothing to do with politics, and that he has the right to voice his views.