ISRAEL Comments turned off

Don’t Fall for Hamas’s Numbers Game By Danielle Pletka

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/dont-fall-for-hamass-numbers-game/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_

Lloyd Austin’s recent gullibility about Hamas casualty figures lays bare the terrorist group’s goal: to use lies and propaganda to turn the world against Israel.

At a press conference in the early days of the Israel–Hamas conflict, President Joe Biden was asked about casualty numbers coming out of Gaza. He responded that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.” The next day, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was asked the same question, and in turn explained, “We all know that the Gazan Ministry of Health is just a front for Hamas. It’s a — it’s run by Hamas, a terrorist organization. I’ve said it myself up here: We can’t take anything coming out of Hamas, including the so-called Ministry of Health, at face value.”

Fast forward to February 29, when Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had no such qualms, parroting before Congress Hamas’s claim that “over 25,000” women and children have perished in Gaza. A few short hours later, the Pentagon walked back the secretary’s claim. Why? Because nobody has any idea — any honest idea — how many Gazans have died in the war that began with Hamas’s October 7 attack.

The only sources of data about casualties in Gaza are Hamas-controlled organizations. And despite a demonstrable record of manipulation designed to exaggerate the deaths of women and children (and minimize the numbers of men — the targets of Israeli military action), these numbers have become the data of record, used without qualification by the United Nations, its specialized agencies, the media, and, pace Joe Biden, one of the U.S. government’s highest officials.

As early as October, after false claims that 471 were killed by an alleged Israeli attack on al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, Hamas’s credibility should have been shot. The “attack” turned out to be a misfired missile launched by Palestinian Islamic Jihad that damaged an area adjacent to the hospital, and most experts concluded that deaths totaled half that number or even fewer. But doubts about Hamas’s honesty soon dissipated, and much of the press returned to an uncritical repetition of Palestinian statistics.

There can be little doubt that many thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have perished. The IDF says that 12,000 Hamas terrorists have been killed — and presumably most, if not all, of these casualties are men. As a proportional matter, if 12,000 men have been killed, it is possible that roughly the same number of women (who are approximately 50 percent of the Gazan population), and almost as many children under 18 (47 percent of the overall population), have also died.

On the other hand, this is not the bombing of Dresden or the carpet-bombing of Vietnam. House-to-house fighting is generally aimed at minimizing civilian casualties, and the IDF has until recently conducted much of its campaign with air support for troops on the ground. Thus, we should assume that a proportional death toll in Gaza of men, women, and children is unlikely. However, Hamas’s penchant for c0-locating their operations with mosques, schools, and hospitals means higher risks for Palestinians who are young, elderly, or infirm.

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The menacing truth about the ‘boycott Israel’ campaigns The calls to erase every trace of the Jewish State are deeply sinister. Daniel Ben-Ami

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/03/06/the-menacing-truth-about-the-boycott-israel-campaigns/

A man goes into a store to buy a can of Pepsi. The proceeds of the sale go through a chain of cash-thumbing, financial intermediaries. Eventually the money is handed over to someone to pay for the manufacture of a missile. The missile is fitted on to a combat aircraft, which closes in on its target. Eventually the missile locks on to a (presumably) Palestinian child. As it explodes, the word ‘boycott’ flashes up on screen.

This video, distributed on X by Palestine Online, is just one of countless anti-Israel clips on social media. But it bears closer examination as it helps to illustrate the nature of contemporary anti-Semitism. Here, as in many other cases today, Jews are not overtly identified. There is not even an explicit mention of Israel. Instead, the video assumes the target viewer will recognise the not-so-subtle anti-Semitic pointers, such as references to financial speculation and the age-old ‘blood libel’ of child murder. Not identifying Jews directly also gives some degree of deniability to anyone who wants to claim they are not anti-Semitic.

That’s not to downplay the existence of overt anti-Semitism. This has increased dramatically since 7 October. In the past few days alone, an Orthodox Jewish man has been stabbed in Zurich while another was beaten outside a Paris synagogue. But a great deal of Jew hatred still tends to take a disguised form.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America The wit to gall all the right enemies • Peter Smith

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/america/2024/03/the-wit-to-gall-all-the-right-enemies/

EXCERPTS

Most journalists are on the political left. They are either sinister, invested in the collapse of Western values, or they are useful idiots wedded to an ideology that has long since been taken over by Marxism, green zealotry and wokeism. Nothing can be expected from them, it seems, other an abiding compulsion never to acknowledge the positives about Donald Trump.

He seals up the southern border, he boldly deregulates, he makes America energy independent, he reduces black unemployment to its lowest-ever level, he gets NATO countries to increase their defence spending, he moves the US Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, he establishes the Abraham (peace) Accords in the Middle East, he appoints genuine judges rather than partisan hacks to the courts, and so on and so on. Achievement after achievement. All daggers in the heart of the Left. All pooh-poohed by the prissies because of Trump’s mean tweets.

President Biden had his annual medical last week. A few physical ailments aside — reflux, a stiff gait etc. — he passed with flying colours apparently. According to his White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, he didn’t need to take a cognitive test as part of his medical because he effectively passes one each day at work. Some commentators on Fox News have in the past queried Ms Jean-Pierre’s own cognitive ability. That’s unfair. You can’t spin, dissemble and lie with a straight face time after time, without respite, without having your wits about you. I mean you have to recall how you lied about something last time, and the time before, to do it again faultlessly. No mean feat.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Unlike Warmists, Numbers Don’t Lie Gabriël Moens

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/doomed-planet/2024/03/unlike-warmists-numbers-dont-lie/

There is no ‘climate emergency’, just a man-made political weapon used to scare and indoctrinate children, pollute the minds of the ill-informed and gullible and allow politicians and aspiring social engineers to pursue their not-so-hidden agendas. A new study charting CO2 level and Sydney temperatures makes the case.

A new study, conducted by lead author Ian McNaughton, formerly senior scientist at the UK Atomic Energy Authority, and John McRobert seeks to ascertain whether there is a meaningful relationship between carbon dioxide concentrations and global temperatures. The study, Temperature Measurements versus Population Growth & Carbon Dioxide Concentrations, completed in December 2023, examines the contentious claim, often made by climate change scientists, that the increase in temperatures of Planet Earth is determined by the increasing levels of carbon dioxide concentrations and other “green-house” gases.  

Controversy involving climate change continues to be widespread throughout the world.  There is no argument that the world’s climate is changing – always has, always will. The controversy centres on whether Carbon Dioxide (CO2) generated – actually recycled – by human activity is the cause of a more rapid change in climate that would not have occurred without the presence of humans, notably since  the Industrial Revolution commencing in the late 1700s.

For decades, the scientific debate about the threat of rising global temperatures from increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration has depended on estimation, the use of anomalies rather than actual and complex computer modelling of key variables.  The complexity of these calculations and reliability of the result are seen in the widely variable (and always above actual outcomes) predictive models.  The rising CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and rising surface temperatures as used by these calculations indicate a strong positive correlation, and modelling extrapolation of this relationship into the future shows alarming, exaggerated increases in global temperatures leading to widespread concern about ‘global warming’. Not unexpectedly, this has created a demand by the public for urgent action by governments to significantly reduce the concentration of atmospheric CO2 at a global level.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Academics Attend to Their Jew Diligence Timothy Cootes

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-universities/2024/03/academics-attend-to-their-jew-diligence/

Monash University lecturer Elliot Dolan-Evans, I’m pleased to report, is likely to have fewer enrolees in his courses next semester. The Herald Sun has highlighted the young academic’s recent social media activity, which, I suspect, is not part of any extracurricular load. On October 7, Dolan-Evans was joining in the general online giddiness regarding the success of Hamas’ pogrom, a revelation which has made Jewish students at Monash feel uncomfortable on campus, to put it mildly. The long-term reputational damage — fingers crossed — has now been done, and if Elliot Dolan-Evans has difficulty finding future students, we can certainly count that as a win.

Though I’m always pleased to see a public campaign of ridicule against our nation’s academics, fairness obliges me to note that Dolan-Evans’ social media transgressions are a bit tame, at least when set against those of some of his colleagues and co-thinkers. Sydney University professor of politics John Keane, for example, isn’t a mere liker of pro-terror posts; no, he takes the initiative and creates some of his own. On October 7, as the carnage got underway, Keane took to X to share an image of the green flags of Hamas. To be fair, he later attempted to clarify this post —which some might have found untimely — by haughtily denying he was a supporter of the terrorist organisation. He defended himself, for some reason, by writing that the flag was only used by Hamas’ military wing, and then he started banging on about its “sacred viridescence”, “polysemic” meanings, and some other academic wankery.

Keane’s University of Sydney colleague, linguistics lecturer Nick Riemer, on the other hand, is refreshingly forthright about his anti-Israel mania. “Resistance is the right of occupied people,” he declared, as the body count was rising at the Nova festival. “Unconditional solidarity with Gazans.” A little later, socialist student group Solidarity decided to bring at least the spirit of October 7 to the Sydney campus. The radicals began advertising an event called ‘Palestine: The Case for a Global Intifada’, with accompanying posters of Hamas bulldozers ripping through border fences. When the university cancelled the get-together on the reasonable assumption that it appeared to be terror-sympathetic, Riemer had one of his noisiest tantrums yet. Unembarrassed, he even openly published his letter to the vice-chancellor, where he whinged about this apparent affront to academic freedom.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

UCSB Black Studies faculty plan ‘day of interruption’ to protest protections for Jews Lisa Schiffrenn

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.thecollegefix.com/ucsb-black-studies-faculty-plan-day-of-interruption-to-protest-protections-for-jews/

The UC Santa Barbara Black Studies Department has organized a “day of interruption” for March 7 and subsequent “work slowdowns” to protest steps administrators recently took to support Jewish students and quell antisemitic protests on campus.

Campus leaders last week closed the Multicultural Center and suspended its social media accounts after pro-Palestinian students occupied the venue and hung a parade of antisemitic posters with statements such as “Zionists not allowed,” pictures posted on social media show.

Other signs included: “Get these Zionists out of office,” “Zionists not welcome,” “When people are occupied, resistance is justified,” and “It was never about Hamas, never will be.”

The student government president (pictured), who is Jewish, was also called out and threatened by name. One sign said, “You can run but you can’t hide, Tessa Veksler supports genocide.”

Veksler, the daughter of refugees from the Soviet Union, has been an outspoken supporter of Zionism in her year as student president. In response, she said on Instagram “I am not afraid and I’m not going anywhere.”

Campus leaders temporarily closed the Multicultural Center in response, prompting outrage from Black Studies faculty, who released a statement a few days later calling for the “day of interruption.”

The professors called the MCC closure a “displacement” of students of color, and also cite proposed policies that would allow administrators to have editorial control of UCSB departmental websites, a proposal to allow police on campus for major events, and leaders’ refusal to condemn Israel.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Columbia med DEI chief plagiarized from Wikipedia, other scholars: 55-page complaint

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.thecollegefix.com/columbia-med-dei-chief-plagiarized-from-wikipedia-other-scholars-55-page-complaint/

Plagiarized scholar says sections do amount to plagiarism

The chief diversity officer at Columbia University’s medical school plagiarized large chunks of his doctoral thesis from Wikipedia and other sources., a new complaint alleges.

Alade McKen is the latest elite university administrator to face plagiarism charges, following the downfall of Harvard University President Claudine Gay.

Harvard’s DEI chief Sherri Charleston also faces plagiarism allegations as does the school’s Extension School administrator, Shirley Greene.

McKen (pictured) “plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting entire pages of material, without attribution, from sources that include Wikipedia,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. The complaint has been submitted to the university.

The Free Beacon reported:

The allegations implicate approximately a fifth of McKen’s 163-page dissertation, “‘UBUNTU’ I am because we are: A case study examining the experiences of an African-centered Rites of Passage program within a community-based organization,” submitted to Iowa State University’s School of Education in 2021. More than two of those pages are a near-verbatim facsimile of Wikipedia’s entry on “Afrocentric education,” which is not cited anywhere in the dissertation.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

University of Virginia Spends $20 Million On 235 DEI Employees, With Some Making $587,340 Per Year It takes tuition payments from nearly 1,000 undergraduates just to pay their base salaries! Adam Andrzejewski

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

The University of Virginia (UVA) has at least 235 employees under its “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)” banner — including 82 students — whose total cost of employment is estimated at $20 million. That’s $15 million in cash compensation plus an additional 30-percent for the annual cost of their benefits.

In contrast, last Friday, the University of Florida dismissed its DEI bureaucracy, saving students and taxpayers $5 million per year. The university terminated 13 full-time DEI positions and 15 administrative faculty appointments. Those funds have been re-programmed into a “faculty recruitment fund” to attract better people who actually teach students.

No such luck for learning at Virginia’s flagship university – founded by Thomas Jefferson no less. UVA has a much deeper DEI infrastructure.

Reform or abolition must await this summer’s anticipated changes in the school’s Board of Visitors. At least until then, the very highly compensated, generally non-teaching, DEI staffers are safely embedded throughout the entire university – while costing students and taxpayers a fortune.

Our team of auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reviewed the university payroll file for 2023 to sort out the DEI position head counts, compensation, and then estimated the cost of benefits.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

US Government, Past and Present: The New ‘Sixth Columnists’ by Lawrence Kadish

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20462/us-government-sixth-columnists

We have heard of Fifth Columnists — “a group of people who support the enemies of the country they live in and secretly help them,” according to the Cambridge Dictionary.

It sometimes appears as if there are American elected officials, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Pramila Jayapal, veering in that direction. They recently made an “under the radar” (meaning secret?) visit to Cuba and returned to plead the case — not for the human rights of the starving, destitute Cuban people — but for the human rights of the dictators causing them to be starving and destitute. They also both voted “no” to House Resolution 760,
“Expressing solidarity with Cuban citizens demonstrating peacefully for fundamental freedoms, condemning the Cuban regime’s acts of repression, and calling for the immediate release of arbitrarily detained Cuban citizens.”

Increasingly, there appear to be federal employees, US Representatives and Senators, judges, political appointees, and the vice president take this sacred Oath of Office — but who then abrogate it:

“I, ___, do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The president’s oath, required by Article 2, Section 1, of the US Constitution, is:

“I do solemnly swear [or affirm] that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Hence, we see increasingly see US officials allowing open borders; more than 100,000 Americans being killed by fentanyl from China each year, a number greater than all the US service members killed in Afghanistan, the Korean War and the Iraq War combined; turning a blind eye to Chinese Communist Party espionage and purchases of nearly 400,000 acres of farmland throughout America, often next to sensitive US military bases; Iran-backed proxy groups, including the Houthis, launching more than 150 attacks on US service members just since October, with no serious adverse consequences, and Iran about to possess nuclear weapons.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Does Kamala Harris Know the Administration Needs an Israeli Victory?By Noah Rothman

Posted By on March 6th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/03/does-kamala-harris-know-the-administration-needs-an-israeli-victory/?utm_source=recirc-

Her equivocating remarks over the weekend left reason to wonder about the coherence of the White House’s strategy.

The Biden administration’s hopelessly confused approach to navigating the domestic politics of Israel’s defensive war against Hamas was reflected in Vice President Kamala Harris’s equally confused remarks on the subject over the weekend. In a speech that touched on the ongoing conflict in the Gaza Strip, Harris tried to please all sides of the issue — and succeeded only in irritating all parties equally.

In calling for an “immediate ceasefire,” Harris first put the onus on Hamas. “There is a deal on the table,” she observed. “Hamas needs to agree to that deal.” That outcome would allow the reunification of “the hostages with their families” and “provide immediate relief to the people of Gaza,” Harris noted. Fair enough. But following this throat-clearing exercise, Harris devoted the remainder of her speech to castigating Israel over its conduct of the war that erupted with the October 7 massacre. In the process, the vice president strongly suggested the true obstacle to peace was not the terrorist entity that inaugurated this war but its victim.

“People in Gaza are starving. The conditions are inhumane, and our common humanity compels us to act,” Harris said of the horrors that prevail in Gaza today. “The Israeli government must do more to significantly increase the flow of aid. No excuses.” She went on to imply that the humanitarian disaster unfolding in formerly Hamas-controlled territory is an outgrowth of Israeli cruelty. To mitigate the disaster, Israel must “open new border crossings,” “restore basic services” to and “promote order in Gaza,” and avoid imposing any “unnecessary restrictions on the delivery of aid.”

To hear Harris tell it, you could be forgiven for believing (as, surely, most of her unwitting constituents do) that Israel has gone to great lengths to deprive Gazans of access to humanitarian relief. In fact, Israel negotiated an agreement with Egypt as early as October 18 to allow the transit of humanitarian-aid convoys through the Rafah crossing — and that agreement has been in effect since October 21. Additionally, Israel reopened the Karem Shalom crossing into Gaza directly from Israeli territory in mid December, and properly inspected aid has flown uninterrupted through that checkpoint since late last year, despite “threats of sniper fire, anti-tank missile shooting, among other threats to civilian life.” Since the outset of hostilities, the Israeli government maintains that 14,545 trucks have delivered 267,970 tons of humanitarian aid to Gazans.