ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Palestinian leaders’ Al-Aqsa hoax strikes again by Ruthie Blum

Posted By on May 12th, 2021

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-palestinian-leaders-al-aqsa-hoax-strikes-again/

(May 11, 2021 / JNS) The anti-Israel response to the current Palestinian and eastern Jerusalem Arab violence was to be expected, particularly as it has been on a steady crescendo since the weeks leading up to and during Islam’s holy month of Ramadan. But, contrary to the successful dissemination and perpetuation of propaganda, it has nothing to do with Israeli behavior or its celebration of Jerusalem Day—the anniversary of the unification of the city after the 1967 Six-Day War.
Palestinian Authority leader and his Fatah faction know this full well. Ditto for Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip, and the other terrorist groups, such as Islamic Jihad, lurking in the enclave beyond Israel’s southern border.
Ironically, the real struggle taking place at the moment is between Fatah and Hamas, with Israel caught in the crossfire, yet forced to take police action against rioters in Jerusalem and launch military strikes over Gaza.
The timing of this latest round of so-called “clashes” is not coincidental. On the contrary, it was calculated and cultivated by Abbas, who rightly feared a Hamas victory in the legislative and presidential Palestinian elections—the first since 2006—ostensibly slated for the end of May. Before indefinitely postponing the vote, which he had only scheduled in the first place to appease his Western donors, the P.A. chief turned to his comfort zone of incitement against the Jews and Israel to prove to his people that he is just as stalwart and radical an anti-Semite as any of his Hamas rivals.
He is aware that one surefire method of exploiting the gullibility of and riling up young hotheads is to reiterate false claims about Israel trying to “storm” the Al-Aqsa mosque. Never mind that the house of Muslim prayer in question is located on the Temple Mount, the holiest site in Judaism. In the tradition of his predecessor—arch-terrorist and PLO chief Yasser Arafat—Abbas is a “temple denier” who rejects the Jews’ history in and connection to the city.
That this position runs counter to ancient Islamic texts is irrelevant to Abbas, who always plays fast and loose with facts as a matter of course. Nor does he have a problem simultaneously denying the Holocaust and accusing Israel of emulating the Nazis. So, distorting the reality of the Temple Mount as a tool for spurring death and destruction comes naturally to him.

BOOKS Comments turned off

Patriotic Bore: God and Country at Yale Steven Smith’s endeavor was a failure from its start when it denounced half the country as extremists. By Ken Masugi

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/10/patriotic-bore-god-and-country-at-yale/

A review of “Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes” by Steven B. Smith
(Yale University Press, 256 pages, $28)

This is a tough time to be a patriot. In “Conservatism’ is no Longer Enough,” Glenn Ellmers charges that “most people living in the United States today—certainly more than half—are not Americans in any meaningful sense of the term.” Ellmers’ shocking yet compelling argument, further elaborated at American Greatness, is the sort of “extremism” that appalls Steven Smith, who also believes that patriotism is not enough and wants to save it from Ellmers as well as from those he deems the opposite extremes at the “1619 Project” and Black Lives Matter. The problem that haunts the book is whether Smith’s positioning himself in the middle reduces patriotism into a middling mediocrity, lacking passion, conviction, and persuasiveness. 

But Smith’s middle is the not-mediocre Yale University—the book is devoted to a recent past president of the university—where Smith has taught political philosophy for over 30 years. He laments that the inscription “For God, for Country, for Yale” is now but a “quaint reminder of a benighted past,” as is his former title of “master” of Branford College. Smith sees his challenge today as saving his readers at Yale and beyond from the regnant “dehumanizing” extremes of MAGA nationalism, on the one hand, and BLM, multiculturalism, and cosmopolitanism, on the other. 

In his view, neither extreme respects “the specificity of what it is to be an American and a patriot.” Since Yale is scarcely threatened by white nationalists—as much as some students there may fancy it is—one must understand his book’s mission to focus on cosmopolitan identity politics’ threat to patriotism and its repurposing of spiritedness and minds. He thus echoes the NeverTrump and establishment academic view of patriotism as reducible to belief in an American creed. 

“This book is for this moment,” the preface warns. Smith will conclude his book with “American patriotism is aspirational,” especially in the “enlightened” form on which his book is focused. He identifies patriotism as a form of loyalty, a feeling of care for others that all human beings need to display in order to fulfil their political and social natures. 

But loyalty tests the heart as well as the head. Such loyalty resembles that of a family, with “both good and bad” creating a distinct ethos—Lincoln’s “mystic chords of memory.” Americans’ loyalty is to those twin principles of equality and liberty that make up the American creed. Yet at the same time loyalty also requires grounding in place and shared sentiments. Patriotism is thus both love of the Good and love of one’s own, it involves both philosophic striving and familial rootedness, meaning there will be both profound debates and irksome squabbles, a neverending odyssey and utter devotion to the homeland. Here the book dissolves into inchoate impressions, for it doesn’t consider America as embodying the best regime, as Harry Jaffa has urged: “The unprecedented character of the American Founding is that it provided for the coexistence of the claims of reason and of revelation in all their forms, without requiring or permitting any political decisions concerning them.” 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Why Is the Government Hiding January 6 Video Footage? The American public still doesn’t know exactly what happened on January 6—and it’s clear the government will use any means necessary to keep it that way. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/10/why-is-the-government-hiding-january-6-video-footage

Joe Biden calls it the worst attack since the Civil War. Attorney General Merrick Garland compares it to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The FBI is breaking down the doors of Iraq War veterans and small business owners who have no criminal records, and some are hauled off to rot in solitary confinement in a fetid D.C. jail, for their involvement in the alleged travesty.

The event, of course, is the roughly four-hour-long disturbance at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. As mostly nonviolent Americans dared to protest Congress’ certification of a clearly fraudulent presidential election in a place that once was considered “The People’s House,” lawmakers scurried for cover as reporters and photographers captured part of the ruckus on video and still shots to wield as political ammunition against Donald Trump and his supporters.

But have we seen a full and fair depiction of exactly what happened that day? The answer, as evidenced by an ongoing coverup by the U.S. Capitol Police and the Justice Department, clearly is no.

Almost all the January 6 video seen by the public isn’t from official government sources but by social media users and journalists on the scene. For example, the widely viewed footage of protestors occupying the Senate chamber was recorded by a New Yorker journalist.

But thousands of hours of real-time footage is in the hands of the Capitol Police—and that agency, along with government lawyers and federal judges, is using every legal trick possible to keep the trove hidden from the public even as clips are presented in court as evidence against hundreds of January 6 defendants.

According to an affidavit filed in March by Thomas DiBiase, the Capitol Police department’s general counsel, the building is monitored 24/7 by an “extensive system of cameras” positioned both inside and outside the building as well as near other congressional offices on the grounds.

The system captured more than 14,000 hours of footage between noon and 8 p.m. on January 6; the archive was made available to two Democratic-controlled congressional committees, the FBI, and the D.C. Metropolitan Police department. (After a request by Congress, the agency reportedly handed over footage from the entire 24-hour period.)

Capitol Police also produced selective clips for Democratic House impeachment managers to use in the trial against Donald Trump.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Over 120 generals and admirals warn that administration policies are ‘national security threat’ By Carol Greenwald

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/05/over_120_generals_and_admirals_warn_that_administration_policies_are_national_security_threat.html

A day before the Senate markup of HR1 on May 11, 2021,( the Democrats’ power grab to federalize election laws in favor of progressive candidates), 124 retired admirals and generals issued an open letter to the American people warning that “Our nation is in deep peril. We are fighting for our survival as a Constitutional Republic like no other time since our founding in 1776.”

Among the dangers facing the nation created by the Administration’s policies, the retired flag officers singled out H.R.1 and S.1. Without fair and honest elections, they warn that “our Constitutional Republic is lost”. Under our federal system, the states and not the federal government set the controls to ensure election integrity: that there is one legal vote cast and counted per citizen.  State legislatures are tasked by the Constitution with setting the election rules.

Using government IDs and verified signatures are just commonsense controls, the flag officers argue, to ensure honest elections.   But today, many are calling such commonplace controls “racist” in an attempt to avoid having fair and honest elections. The flag officers blasted as a “tyrannical intimidation tactic” the use of racist slurs to stop criticism of the Democrat power grab. The flag officers compared these tactics to those used by fascist and Marxist regimes to silence their critics. The flag officers warn that HR1 and S.1 , if passed, would destroy election fairness and allow Democrats to forever remain in power, “violating our Constitution and ending our Representative  Republic.”

The retired generals and admirals cited the Administration’s appeasement of China as the most important external danger, but they also decried the Administration’s determination to return to the disastrous Iran nuclear deal.

But the flag officers focused on the numerous internal threats created by Administration’s policies like the destruction of our border security, condoning anarchic violence, politicizing our military to create the illusion of rightwing threats, spreading the divisive critical race theory, and undermining our energy independence.

It is highly unusual for retired generals and admirals to engage in political actions. But these retired flag officers signed this letter because they still felt bound by the oath that they had taken “to support and defend the Constitution of the U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” The retired flag officers acted because “our Constitutional Republic is under tremendous assault coming from those believing in Socialism and Marxism which is the opposite of the freedoms, liberty and Bill of Rights that form the basis of our Constitution and our traditional values.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How White Leftist Politicians and Hipsters Have Already Killed Wokeness By William Sullivan

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/05/how_white_leftist_politicians_and_hipsters_have_already_killed_wokeness.html

White leftist politicians and hipsters have already killed wokeness in American culture.  They just don’t know it yet.

There’s been this repeating cultural joke occurring throughout my lifetime that, for some reason, never seems to be recognized by those who are ridiculed by its many iterations.  That is, when liberal white hipsters adopt any cultural fad, they manage to end the fad by making it spectacularly unpopular in no time flat.

A terrific modern example of this might be liberal white hipsters co-opting fashion and social trends that were prominent in gay culture in the early aughts.  Shows like “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” and “Sex and the City” created what was then known as the “metrosexual” fad that swept America. Up to that point, the cultural aesthetic of the urbane, somewhat androgynous fashion trends that were highlighted on the show had largely existed among men only in the gay subculture, making it a unique expression of that specific identity.  But once it was adopted by white hipsters, it became part of the cultural status quo, and the trend died almost overnight.

Which brings us to being “woke,” and how it went from being somewhat culturally subversive to being a prerequisite of participating in today’s cultural status quo.

Before 2014, “stay woke” was in common use in the black community, writes Aja Romano at Vox, but it didn’t carry all the weight it’s dragging along today.  It simply meant that one should remain “alert to the deceptions of other people” as a “basic survival tactic.” 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinians: Our True Goal is to Destroy Israel by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17361/palestinian-goal-destroy-israel

The Palestinians are upset because Jews are being permitted to tour the Temple Mount. The Palestinians do not want to see Jews visiting their holy site; they do not want to see Jews in Jerusalem, and they do not want to see any Jew at all in the land that stretches from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

No one is disputing the Palestinians’ right to protest Israeli policies. Yet when the protests turn into large pro-Hamas demonstrations, with calls for bombing Tel Aviv and killing Jews, they expose the true deadly intention of the protesters.

When thousands of Palestinians chant “We are all Mohammed Deif” they are saying that they see themselves as terrorists ready to attack and destroy Israel. They are saying that Deif is their role model because he managed to murder many Jews and remains at large, despite Israeli attempts to apprehend or kill him.

Hamas owes its growing popularity to the anti-Israel inflammatory campaign waged in the Palestinian media, especially social media platforms, the mosques and public rhetoric of Palestinian leaders. Hamas also owes its popularity to the ongoing corruption and incompetence of the Palestinian Authority and its autocratic president, Mahmoud Abbas.

The demonstrations in favor of Hamas should also sound alarm bells with the Biden administration and serve as an accurate indicator as to Palestinian priorities. The Biden administration is talking about reviving the stalled peace process between Israel and the Palestinians on the basis of the “two-state solution.” Hamas and the thousands of Palestinians who chanted slogans in support of Hamas and Deif, however, have a different solution in mind: the annihilation of Israel and the deaths of Jews — the more the merrier.

When former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel in 1991, many Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate the attacks. Many demonstrations took place in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and east Jerusalem even while Palestinians were being issued gas masks by the Israeli authorities to protect them against a possible chemical attack by Iraq against Israel.

The Los Angeles Times reported back then that “several Palestinians expressed joy at last week’s [Iraqi] missile assault on Tel Aviv and Haifa.”

When the Iranian-backed Hezbollah terrorist group launched rocket attacks on Israel from Lebanon in 2015, Palestinians took to the streets to celebrate, holding Hezbollah flags and handing out sweets to drivers and passersby.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

America Needs An Honest Debate About Red Lines In Defense Of Taiwan Politicians and military analysts should be blunt about their plans regarding the defense of Taiwan from possible Chinese invasion.By Sumantra Maitra

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://thefederalist.com/2021/05/10/america-needs-an-honest-debate-about-red-lines-in-defense-of-taiwan/

The greatest present challenge facing America and its allies is arguably a small democratic island off the coast of the biggest rising naval hegemon. Detached historians might see an amusing parallel from ancient Greek history, but history has rarely been kind to small islands caught in the middle of a great-power rivalry. The same argument has now reached Washington D.C., as China embarks on one of the fastest and largest naval build-ups in human history.

Charles Glaser writes for Foreign Affairs that China is geographically poised to take Taiwan if it so desires, yet defending Taiwan militarily is a fool’s errand — impossible to do without an uncomfortable, civilization-destroying cost. According to Glaser, the defense of Taiwan isn’t imperative to the balance of power in Asia, and unlike other allies — such as Japan and Australia — Taiwan is uncomfortably placed in a region where geography gives China an advantage.

That said, in a war the United States might be able to prevail, but the cost of that would be unbearable to generations who have no idea what a genuine great power war might look like. Therefore, Glaser argues that America shouldn’t tie its fate to Taiwan or promise to do something it cannot. Countering Glaser’s assessment in Foreign Policy, Blake Herzinger accuses Glaser of Chamberlain-esque appeasement, arguing that if the United States abandons Taiwan, all hope is lost.

Their debate frames the situation in simplistic Manichean terms, providing only two options: complete abandonment of Taiwan, or catastrophic war mounted in Taiwan’s defense. Yet such bifurcation is flawed, not least of which because it fails to mention a whole host of additional options, from deterrence by a vigorous arming of Taiwan, or by “bleeding” China by way of asymmetric escalation.

Yet the balance of power in place for the last three decades is, unfortunately, unlikely to hold. As scholarly literature suggests, the relative power difference between China and the United States has changed since the early 1990s. As such, any debate about Taiwan should start with these three questions.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Three Bystanders Shot in Broad Daylight in Times Square by a Man Named Farrakhan Muhammad By Robert Spencer

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2021/05/10/three-bystanders-shot-in-broad-daylight-in-times-square-by-a-man-named-farrakhan-muhammad-n1445762

Just before five o’clock on Saturday afternoon in Times Square, a man began firing randomly into the crowd, injuring three people, including a four-year-old girl. The “white supremacy is the biggest threat to our nation and we must have gun control” propaganda mill couldn’t even start its wheels turning before the perpetrator was identified as a 31-year-old illegal CD peddler and possible drug dealer Farrakhan Muhammad, who was still at large as of Monday afternoon.

The cops thought they had nabbed the shooter when they zeroed in on a man who matched the description of the man whose image from security cameras had been circulated, but he told them he was actually the shooter’s brother, and gave them the name of the perp. It remains unclear how the NYPD determined that they weren’t really talking with the shooter himself but instead bought his story that his brother did it.

In any case, the brother told the cops that Farrakhan Muhammad hadn’t intended to shoot random people; Farrakhan had actually been aiming at his brother, who was standing in the crowd, but he was a poor shot.

That may really be what happened, but I also can’t help but notice that Farrakhan Muhammad has a very interesting name. He appears to be named after one man who has called for 10,000 volunteers to stalk and kill white people, and after another who is generally considered to be the author of a book that three times exhorts people to “kill them wherever you find them” (Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, cf. 9:5). Might Farrakhan Muhammad’s ideology and worldview have had anything to do with these shootings, or were they all about his being angry with his brother, as has been reported?

Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe Farrakhan Muhammad is a born-again Christian or an avowed pacifist who just lost his temper. Nonetheless, his name in connection with his act does raise eyebrows. After all, the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Qaeda have repeatedly called for random jihad attacks on individuals in the U.S. and Europe of precisely the kind that Farrakhan Muhammad committed on Saturday.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran Building Precision-Guided Missiles for Hezbollah What “resisting” Israel really means. Hugh Fitzgerald

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/iran-building-precision-guided-missiles-hezbollah-hugh-fitzgerald/

Iran claims that its citizens are in Syria mainly to help with rebuilding the country’s infrastructure. Israel has good reason to think — and act — otherwise. Asked to comment on reports that Iran was building highly lethal weapons– precision-guided missiles — for Hezbollah, Iran feigned indignation. “Israel Intensifying Air War in Syria Against Iranian Encroachment,” Algemeiner, April 22, 2021:

Iran’s Foreign Ministry did not respond to requests for comment. Iran has said it has military advisers in Syria to help Assad’s forces, and will continue a policy “resisting” US and Israeli power in the wider Middle East.

Nothing says “resisting” Israeli power like shipping 150,000 missiles to Hezbollah for future launches against Israel, even though at the time those missiles were shipped Israel had not attacked a single Iranian target, inside or outside Iran.

Over the past year, Israeli warplanes, missiles and drones have hit a far wider range of targets — from suspected Iranian guided missile research and production sites to arms storage depots — than in the previous five years, said three Israeli officials and a senior Western official based in the region.

In the latest strike on Thursday, Israel hit al Dumair on the northeastern outskirts of Damascus which it has repeatedly hit in the past and where suspected Iranian-backed militias have a strong presence.

Jane’s defense news analysts said that over a three-year span Israel had used 4,239 weapons against 955 targets with 70% of Israeli pilots involved in the campaign, with the new F-35I Adir fighter jets leading dozens of missions.

It’s a fantastic record. In the last decade of bombing sites in Syria, the Israelis have lost exactly one plane, an F-16, which crashed inside Israel, as did the pilot, who has since recovered from his wounds. In the last three years alone, Israel has hit almost a thousand targets, and many of them have been hit repeatedly, as 4,239 weapons were used. Israel keeps upping both the number of targets, and the number of hits, whether by bombs, missiles, or drones.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

China Now Tops All Nations in Foreign Agent Spending in US Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on May 11th, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/china-now-tops-all-nations-foreign-agent-spending-daniel-greenfield/

Some context for these numbers.

The number of unregistered foreign agents is several times greater than the number of unregistered foreign agents. These rules are generally not enforced until the government decided that they should be enforced. The Trump administration began going after China’s unregistered foreign agents resulting in a clearer picture of how much money China is spending on its activities in the United States.

But this is still the tip of the iceberg.

New foreign-agent filings are finally detailing a massive Beijing propaganda operation that’s fueled a sixfold increase in disclosed Chinese foreign influence efforts in the United States in recent years.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Chinese foreign agent spending has skyrocketed from just over $10 million in 2016 to nearly $64 million last year.

Thanks largely to its stable of propaganda operations, China is now the top spender on foreign influence operations in the U.S.

American laws designed to force disclosure of paid foreign influence are beginning to reveal the huge sums Beijing has devoted to its effort.

Don’t let Axios kid you, this is a limited percentage of the real sum. They’ve got community groups, campus associations, scientific organizations, and a whole lot less that’s not showing up anywhere. A lot of this is just state propaganda outlets having to get legal.

CRP data show Chinese entities spent more on registered foreign agent activities in 2020 than those of any other nation.