FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Abraham Accords Could Be Next In Biden’s Retreat By Benny Avni

Posted By on April 30th, 2021

https://www.nysun.com/foreign/abraham-accord-could-be-next-in-bidens-retreat/91493/

As Washington retreats from prior conditions it has set to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal, Arab allies recalculate their approach to the Islamic Republic. Can reversal of the Abraham Accords be far behind?d

“We are seeking to have good relations with Iran,” Riyadh’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said on Saudi TV this week. Huh? Until recently the Kingdom’s de-facto ruler was considered one of the region’s top hardliners on Iran. Now his emissaries are reported to meet in Baghdad with top American and Iranian officials.

What changed? America.

Washington’s attitude toward the Islamic Republic is obviously much softer than it was under President Trump. But now it seems to have softened even in the course of President Biden’s first 100 days.

Gone is National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s vow to seek a “longer and stronger agreement.” Instead American negotiators in Vienna now toil to appease Tehran counterparts with the hope of merely returning to the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Yet another American condition for reinking the JCPOA is fast eroding. Washington said it would not remove sanctions before Tehran reverses all recent enrichment violations. That condition is now melting, even as Tehran is resolute, vowing to not move an inch before all sanctions are removed.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden Erased Decades of Historic Crimes in His Speech to Congress Biden’s claim that the Capitol Riot was the “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is ahistorical garbage. Glenn Greenwald and Siraj Hashmi

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://outsidevoices.substack.com/p/biden-erased-decades-of-historic?token=eyJ1c2

As President Biden wrapped up a 65-minute joint address to Congress to mark his administration’s first 100 days, what was shared in the lead-up to his speech sowed discord over the entire affair:

Jim Acosta
Biden to refer to Jan 6 insurrection as “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” in speech tonight.

Sure enough, the President delivered on this. Opening his address, Biden stated, “I took the oath of office — lifted my hand off our family Bible — and inherited a nation in crisis. The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

Yes, the January 6th siege on the U.S. Capitol building, often alluded to as an “insurrection,” was an embarrassing day for our country. But to suggest that it was “the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” is disingenuous at best. At worst, it’s a malicious attempt to whitewash the history of attacks carried out both by and on the government that have had much more catastrophic results.

Apart from the September 11th terrorist attacks that targeted the country’s financial system, Al Qaeda terrorists attacked the defenders of our democracy when a hijacked American Airlines flight 77 flew into the Pentagon. Were it not for the heroes who resisted against the hijackers of United flight 93, Al Qaeda’s attempt to fly a commercial airline into the White House or U.S. Capitol building would have come to fruition. Despite being a horrific tragedy, 9/11 has been dismissed by some as being explicitly a “foreign attack,” not one from within.

So, let’s explore attacks on our democracy from within.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Racism Suit Filed against Elite New York Private School By Brittany Bernstein

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/racism-suit-filed-against-elite-new-york-private-school/

The Ethical Culture Fieldston School in New York City is facing yet another scandal, this time involving allegations of discrimination against black students, according to a new report.

Kim Emile, the parent of one former and one current student, has filed a lawsuit against the elite private school in the Bronx claiming that her children were met with racial hostility and bias there for more than a decade, according to the New York Post.

Fieldston “proved itself not to be the bastion of educational, racial, and social justice it has long proclaimed itself to be,” claims the suit filed in Manhattan federal court.

The lawsuit alleges that the school’s administrators, including head of school Jessica Bagby, did not take appropriate action against students who participated in racist behavior. School leadership also failed to provide black students with the same academic opportunities as white students, the claim alleges.

The suit details an alleged incident in which a group of white male students participating in a challenge that prohibited masturbation for one month encouraged each other in a group chat to view pictures of black and brown female students whose photos were posted to the chat as a way to sexually ‘turn off’ the young men participating in the challenge,” according to the suit.

“This objectification and denigration of Black and Brown young women and their bodies at Fieldston are clearly rooted in racism, sexism, and classism, and serve to continue their oppression dating to the slave era, when Black and Brown women were considered subhuman,” the suit states.

Emile, who is also an alumna of the school, says two white students called her son a racial slur during an October 2020 Snapchat conversation. Those students were allegedly given leniency while Bagby retaliated against Emile’s son with an investigation into his behavior, according to the suit.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Ugly Reaction to Tim Scott’s Speech Is Telling By David Harsanyi

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-ugly-reaction-to-tim-scotts-speech-is-telling/

Tim Scott gave a competent Republican response to Joe Biden’s mendacious speech last night. And boy, the contrived, hyperbolic outrage and derision we saw from liberal talking heads was something to behold.

Some of it was just farcical. Take MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace’s contention that the speech, in which Scott praised the Trump administration vaccines, was “delivered from a planet where facts don’t matter.” Operation Warp Speed, she claimed, “didn’t do anything to get a needle in the arms, so a lot of disinformation.” Well, it did help boost the life-saving innovation that flows through those needles – not to mention a million needles into arms every day by the time Joe Biden got his shot.

But Scott’s most controversial statement, allegedly, was to contend that, “America is not a racist country.” All the usual suspects took to social media to mock the senator for simultaneously saying the nation wasn’t racist and pointing out that he had personally experienced bigotry. Of course America is a racist nation, they wailed, before getting “Uncle Tim” trending on Twitter to try and prove it. The Left’s demeaning of any African American who strays from leftist orthodoxy is one of the ugliest acceptable smears in our political discourse.

Scott’s two claims are wholly compatible. Bad actors and ugly ideas exist among people of all nations, and always will, and yet that does not necessarily mean the nation itself is fundamentally, legally, culturally, or systemically racist. We can always do better, but by world standards, the United States is likely the least racist place.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What’s “Normal” in America? A Simon and Schuster petition reveals the confusions of the woke movement that inspired it. Lee Siegel

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://www.city-journal.org/whats-normal-in-america

A few days ago, 216 employees of Simon and Schuster, along with several thousand people from outside the trade publishing house, sent a petition to top executives of the company demanding that they stop publishing anyone who had anything to do with the Trump administration. Their rationale for making such a demand was that Trump’s presidency was a dangerous historical aberration. According to the Wall Street Journal, the letter insists that Simon and Schuster not treat “the Trump administration as a ‘normal’ chapter in American history.” 

Before I sat down to write this essay, I had to ask myself several questions. Will the opinions I express jeopardize my position at the liberal university where I teach? Will they endanger my relationship with my liberal publisher? Will they roil my relations with my neighbors in the ultra-progressive New Jersey suburb where I live? 

That I had to ask is not “normal.” 

For a long time, dictators, from the European tyrants of the 1930s to the military leaders of the Latin American juntas, skillfully used the violent excesses of dissenters to seize and preserve power. Now so-called liberal “resistance” to “fascism” justifies its attacks on freedom of speech by citing the threat posed by a former American president. Susan Sontag famously enraged the New Left by calling Communism “fascism with a human face.” The current woke movement has all the trappings of fascism with an anti-fascist face. 

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How the Left Turned Chauvin Into a Racist Killer Jack Cashill

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://spectator.org/chauvin-trial-systemic-racism-joe-biden/

Although he made up his mind before jury did, President Joe Biden quickly went public once he learned that the Minneapolis jury had, in fact, convicted former police officer Derek Chauvin on all charges.

“It was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism the vice president just referred to — the systemic racism that is a stain on our nation’s soul.” So said the only president to have given a eulogy at the funeral of an Exalted Klan Cyclops, and that just 10 years before Floyd’s death.

The comments by Biden, endorsed by the media, frame the Overton window on George Floyd’s death and Derek Chauvin’s verdict. The only acceptable public opinion is that Chauvin intentionally caused Floyd’s death. If proof were needed, former NFL great Brett Favre was tarred and feathered on Twitter for haplessly suggesting otherwise.

The only question for debate really is whether Chauvin was a bad apple or a symptom of a rotten barrel. Ignoring the fact that three of Chauvin’s fellow officers will soon face trial for the same death, Biden, Harris, and their media allies came down firmly on the side of systemic rottenness. To confirm their suspicions, the White House sent Attorney General Merrick Garland to Minnesota to root out the rot.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democratic Norms Come First Shoshana Bryen

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, with regard to elections in South America, tweeted earlier this month: “I recall @POTUS saying: ‘Democracy is fragile. That it must always be defended. That we must be ever vigilant.’ Elections are the first step. We must respect results and hold leaders accountable to sustain our democracies.”

President Joe Biden is right: Democracy IS fragile. Secretary Blinken, on the other hand, is wrong.

Elections are not the “first step” in building a democracy. And where elections are fraudulent, coercive or outright anti-democratic, the United States has no general obligation to simply “respect the results.” Consider the current Middle East electoral calendar.

Syria’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, says he’s holding an election in May with five candidates—including himself—running for president. Candidates have to be approved by 35 members of a parliament dominated by Assad’s party. They have to have lived in Syria for the past 10 years—meaning no opposition figures in exile—and be married to a citizen. This follows 10 years of Assad’s war, in which more than half a million Syrian civilians have been killed, nearly 12 million others have been displaced internally and externally, and the government has been credibly accused of using chemical weapons on its own people.

Iran has elections in June. Candidates for president, as well as for the legislature and local councils, must be vetted by the Guardian Council, an appointed panel of Islamist jurists. Candidates cannot have a criminal record, thus effectively eliminating any Iranian who has been caught protesting the fanatical regime. All must pledge to adhere to Iran’s constitution and the “guardianship of the jurist”—meaning that ultimate authority lies in the hands of Islamic Republic’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei. Iranian state television announced in January that the Council disqualified more than 6,500 of 12,213 total possible candidates.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel’s Covid-19 Economic Trends Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://bit.ly/3gMxy3D
Foreign investment in Israel’s high-tech companies surged to new heights in the 1st quarter of 2021 – $5.7bn in 172 deals – which is up 89% over the impressive 4th quarter of 2020 and double the volume of the 1st quarter of 2020.

2020 was the first year of surpassing $10bn in capital raised by the Israeli high-tech sector from investors in the US, Asia and Europe, who trust the maturity of Israel’s brain power. Investments in Israeli companies more than tripled in six years, reflecting the effective response by Israeli startups to the technological, medical, pharmaceutical, educational, social and digital challenges posed by Covid-19.

Israel’s economic performance in defiance of Covid-19 is presented by Dr. Adam Reuter, the Chairman and Founder of “Financial Immunities,” Israel’s largest financial-risk management firm, and the co-author of Israel – Island of Success:

1. Israel has led the globe in the rapid administration of Covid-19 vaccinations due to effective negotiations with Pfizer and an efficient, country-wide medical infrastructure.

2. Israel is the second lowest among OECD countries in the number of Covid-19 deaths per number of Covid-19 cases: 0.7% compared to the 2.3% OECD average. Israel features a young population (median age of 30 compared to the OECD’s 42) and an effective country-wide medical infrastructure, including top level HMOs and hospitals.

3. Israel is ranked 12th from the bottom among the 37 OECD countries in the number of deaths per million inhabitants: 645 compared to 1,145 OECD average.

4. The International Monetary Fund’s 2025 GDP growth forecast for OECD countries: Israel – 4%, OECD average – 2.2%, US – 1.8%, Australia – 2.5%, Ireland – 2.6%, France and Canada – 1.7%, the UK – 1.6%, Germany – 1.2%, etc.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

John Kerry’s anti-Israel stance speaks for itself By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/john-kerrys-anti-israel-stance-speaks-for-itself-opinion-666783

An audiotape of an “off-the-record” interview in March with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, conducted by regime-aligned journalist and economist Saeed Leylaz, has been causing a global stir.

The three-hour recording, which was leaked to London-based Persian TV channel Iran International and subsequently reported on by The New York Times, has been examined from different angles. These include questioning whether the conversation was digitally doctored, and pondering the veracity of, or motive behind, Zarif’s claims.

One ostensibly jarring revelation that Iran’s top diplomat is heard making concerns his subordinate role to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The only surprising aspect of this self-evident morsel is Zarif’s verbal acknowledgment of it. In every other respect, it’s old news. Khamenei is Tehran’s figurative puppet-master, and the IRGC calls the literal shots.

Nevertheless, Iranian theologian and former Islamic Republic vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi compared the leak of the tape to Israel’s 2018 seizure of a trove of nuclear documents from a warehouse in Tehran. While perhaps a bit overly dramatic, the analogy is apt when viewed in the context of another of Zarif’s allegations; one involving former US secretary of state John Kerry, currently the White House’s climate czar.

According to Zarif, “Kerry informed me that Israel attacked [Iranian positions] 200 times in Syria.”

Leylaz then asked, “You didn’t know?”

Zarif replied, “No, no.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Naftali Bennett – leader of the Left? David Isaac

Posted By on April 29th, 2021

http://worldisraelnews.com

Bennett appears poised to lead a National Unity government made up of some surprising bedfellows.

“The Likud will do after the election what it always does, turn immediately to the Left.”

Those words sound dissonant today, given that they were spoken by Naftali Bennett, leader of the Yemina party, a week before the elections.

On Sunday the headline of a major Hebrew paper cried out, “Yemina Breaks Leftward.” Yemina, ironically, means “rightward.” So an equally accurate translation of the headline could be: “Rightward Breaks Leftward.”

Such a nonsensical headline fits the events that are unfolding as Bennett seems poised to form a government with parties that oppose him on every principle he professes to hold dear.

That’s if he is serious. Until the deal is closed, it’s possible this adventure is all for show, an attempt by Bennett to appear statesmanlike as he proves to the Israeli public that he has exhausted every possibility before supporting a fifth round of elections.

If he is serious, it’s hard to believe his base would approve.