POLITICS Comments turned off

So…Is It Ignorance Or Animus? by Gerald A. Honigman

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

Democrats had their latest debate to see who will oppose President Trump in 2020 on December 19th. Questions regarding the Trump Administration’s new policies regarding the Middle East came up–the Settlement Issue in particular. Among others, Senator Bernie Sanders and ex-VP Joe Biden offered alleged words of wisdom. Here’s some excerpts: 

“Former vice president Joe Biden said that President Trump is ‘no longer being an honest broker in Israel,’ and called promote the two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. ‘There’s no solution for Israel other than the two-state solution…It’s not possible to have a Jewish state…without there being a two-state solution. ‘Bibi Netanyahu and I know one another well. He knows that I think what he’s doing is outrageous. What we do is we have to put pressure constantly on the Israelis to move to a two-state solution.” https://www.jpost.com/American-Politics/Sanders-We-must-be-pro-Palestinian-as-well-611549 

At one time, to his credit, Senator Biden used to also talk about justice for another people—almost 40 million truly stateless Kurds, in particular. For a variety of reasons, he’s dropped that like a hot potato.

As he stated, Joe knows Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu well–along with Bibi’s earlier Likud predecessor, the late prime minister, Israeli War of Independence freedom fighter for Zion Reborn…Menachem Begin. See how that relationship went in these next excerpts:

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

The Song of Names – A Review By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

http://politicalmavens.com/

Memo to writer, director and producer: Kadish the Hebrew prayer for the dead, is not pronounced like radish; it is pronounced like Kahdish or Coddish. Though this may seem picayune, it’s a word that comes up often in a movie about the Holocaust, and particularly one that deals with showing respect for murdered Jews, it’s inexcusable to hear it constantly mispronounced by the Jewish protagonist as well as others. Imagine a movie about French people who call their capital Parees – could we take it seriously?

The Song of Names deals with a Jewish violin prodigy who is brought from Poland to London by his father in an attempt to save his son from the mounting threat of Hitler’s war. The young boy called Dovid’l lives with a non-Jewish family who have a son his age, Martin, who both admires and resents him for being his own father’s favorite. The story is told with a series of flash-forwards and back until it becomes clear that the prodigy has disappeared from London without leaving a trace, presumably leading to the foster father’s stroke and death and the resulting search by the foster brother to find him.

Dovid’l skips out on a prominent concert prior to his departure, a plot point that becomes significant later. More than 30 years elapse during Martin’s search, revealing many heart-breaking scenes that one can imagine dealing with the slaughter of six million Jews seen through the lens of one gifted “genius.” This, along with the hauntingly beautiful violin music, including Bruch’s sonata, make the movie worthwhile. Second memo to writer: the movie’s final revelation is unmoored to anything else that the viewer has seen, leaving the audience confused and uncomprehending. It’s an unnecessary tag-on that should be cut before this goes to Netflix or Amazon. It cheapens the ending and trivializes far more important points that have been made. The cast, headed by Tim Roth and Clive Owen is solid as expected.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israeli Intelligence Continues to Help Thwart Terrorist Attacks Abroad

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.investigativeproject.org/8228/israeli-intelligence-continues-to-help-thwart

Denmark’s security authorities foiled several jihadist terrorist attacksearlier this month after arresting 20 suspects in raids throughout the country. That same week, two brothers were sentenced to long prison terms in Australia after planning to down a commercial airplane on behalf of the Islamic State group in 2017. These developments point to a rising trend in thwarted jihadist terror plots.
But the two cases also share another commonality: Israel’s intelligence services reportedly played an integral role in stifling the mass-casualty plots. Denmark and Australia join a long list of countries that relied on Israeli intelligence to prevent serious violence around the world.
According to Israel’s Channel 12 news, information from Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service helped Danish authorities prevent attacks shortly before they were to be executed. Prosecutors allege that two of the suspects tried to purchase guns and ammunition “to be used in connection with one or several terror attacks in Denmark or abroad.” The Copenhagen City Court also ordered two other suspects remain imprisoned for allegedly attempting to build several explosive devices.
The relative threat posed by various terrorist actors can be skewed if analysts only look at realized attacks. Europol reports consistently show that European separatists conduct more attacks than jihadists on the continent. But these assessments misrepresent the fact that the jihadist threat is transnational, not inherently localized like separatist movements, and are more likely to generate more fatalities.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Headstones discovered vandalized at second Jewish cemetery in Slovakia

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

The aftermath of vandalism at the ancient Jewish cemetery of Námestovo, Slovakia in December 2019. (Courtesy of ZCN)

(JTA) — More than 20 headstones were vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in northern Slovakia in the second such incident in the country in a week.

The 22 gravestones vandalized at a Jewish cemetery in the country’s northern town of Rajec appear to have been damaged in mid-December, according to the World Jewish Congress. The vandalism is currently under investigation by police.

The 60 gravestones knocked down and set on fire in the Jewish cemetery of Námestovo, a town in northern Slovakia near the Polish border, were discovered on December 16.

It is not known yet whether the two incidents are connected.

Anti-Semitic incidents of this nature are extremely rare in Slovakia, according to the World Jewish Congress.

In Central and Eastern Europe, inactive Jewish cemeteries often attract vagrants because they are often located outside urban centers and out of sight of law enforcement. Some incidents of vandalism have been attributed to drunks and drug users and are not always deemed hate crimes.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Three assaults against Jews reported in New York in just over 24 hours

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/three-assaults-against-jews-reported-in-new-york-just-over-24-hours

Two blocks from Grand Central it is no longer safe to wear a yarmulke — Three assaults against Jews reported in New York in just over 24 hours DPS

(JTA) — A Jewish man wearing a yarmulke was physically and verbally assaulted in Manhattan in one of three assaults against Jews in New York just over a 24-hour period.

A Miami man was arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime for the attack late Monday morning about two blocks from Grand Central Terminal, New York Police Sgt. Lee Jones told CNN.

The alleged assailant, Steven Jorge, 28, reportedly punched the 65-year-old victim in the face, knocking him to the ground, and then kicked him repeatedly. He also allegedly yelled “F*** you, Jew” at the victim, who was looking at his cellphone when the attack began, CBS New York reported.

The NYPD Bias Unit is investigating, according to CBS.

The attack was one of three assaults against Jews in New York in 24 hours, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Getting down to IDF brass tacks By raising the issue of morality, then, Kochavi was following a long-standing tradition carried down by his predecessors. His version was to emphasize that war is always a “last resort” Ruthie Blum

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Getting-down-to-IDF-brass-tacks-612213

At a conference on Wednesday at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya, IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kochavi delivered a comprehensive address on Israel’s current military preparedness and future challenges. It was Kochavi’s first major speech since assuming his role in January as head of the Israeli military.

The novelty of his appearance was not the only reason for its prominence at the much-publicized event, held in honor of the late Amnon Lipkin-Shahak – former IDF chief of staff, Knesset member and government minister – who died in December 2012 after a long battle with cancer.

No, Kochavi’s multi-year plan – based on the motto of “readiness and change” – already was unveiled eight months ago when he hit the 100-day mark on the job. Nor was he an unknown entity beforehand, serving in various capacities and leading many operations, including those that have been carried out against Iranian targets in Syria over the past several months.
 
But his words in Herzliya were particularly significant, given their context and timing: with Israel surrounded by enemies on the one hand, and commemorating Hanukkah – the Jewish people’s historical victory over forced assimilation and physical annihilation – on the other.

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

Eric Holder and Wapo Threaten U.S. Attorney John Durham For Looking Into Spygate

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://amac.us/eric-holder-and-wapo-threaten-u-s-attorney-john-durham-for-looking-into-spygate/?campaign=daily-news-email

We’ve all heard the joke. A thuggish looking guy walks into a business he is trying to shakedown and says, “Nice little store you have here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it.” Wink, wink. The message is crystal clear; do what the bully wants or else something really bad is going to happen.

This scene has now played out in real life. In a so-called “news” article in the Washington Post recently, “Experts fear Durham’s Reputation at Risk in FBI Probe,” the newsletter for the deep state openly threatened U.S. Attorney John Durham who is looking into abuses by intelligence agencies and the Justice Department in launching the bogus witch hunt against President Donald Trump under false allegations that he and his campaign were Russian agents.

With zero news in the article, with nothing more than opinion, conjecture and rumor, the writers assert that Mr. Durham is risking “his reputation” by pressing the matter of criminality inside the FBI and the Department of Justice.

CHARLOTTE'S NEWS WEB Comments turned off

The war against Christians by Clifford May

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

http://www.cliffordmay.org/23607/the-war-against-christians

Grinch that I am, in the days leading up to Christmas I immersed myself in “The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey’s Destruction of its Christian Minorities, 1894-1924.”

The authors of this recently published, extensively researched, 500-page book are Benny Morris and Dror Ze’evi, historians at Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. “We embarked on this project in quest of the truth about what happened to the Ottoman Armenians during World War I,” they explain. What they found was “incontrovertible” proof of Turkey’s 1915-16 genocide.

Two weeks ago, the U.S. Senate voted unanimously in favor of a resolution, co-sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez, New Jersey Democrat, and Ted Cruz Texas Republican, to “commemorate the Armenian genocide through official recognition and remembrance.”

The White House disapproved, arguing that such a statement was unhelpful given the fraught state of Turkish-American relations. Ankara has maintained that atrocities happen during times of war and turmoil, but that liquidating an entire community was never the intention.

“The Thirty-Year Genocide” provides ample evidence to the contrary. But it goes further, making the case that the Ottoman Empire in its final years, the Young Turks who came to power following the Ottoman collapse, and even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, father of the modern Turkish nation, came to regard not just Armenians but all of “Asia Minor’s Christian communities as a danger to their state’s survival and resolved to be rid of this danger.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s Critical Medical Device Industry Gets A Needed Tax Cut Henry I. Miller and Erik Paulsen

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/12/26/americas-critical-medical-device-industry-gets-a-needed-tax-cut/

Medical devices may not be as glamorous as blockbuster drugs, but they include some of the genuine miracles of modern medicine: pacemakers, artificial joints, replacement heart valves, scanners, and cancer radiation-therapy machines. The U.S. has been the global leader in medical devices, one of the few major industries that both boasts a net trade surplus and is a job creator. The sector employs 400,000 Americans directly and is indirectly responsible for almost 2 million more that supply and support the highly skilled workforce. Most important, its products are essential elements of modern medical care, including everything from CT scanners and pacemakers to blood pressure cuffs and robots used by surgeons.

But Washington politics has put this made-in-America success story at risk. For years, the medical device industry was ravaged by unwise public policy, including a devastating 2.3% excise tax that took effect at the beginning of 2013 as part of ObamaCare. It was included largely as an afterthought with little debate or consideration, as one of a grab bag of taxes, fees and fines used to finance the law’s litany of new spending programs.

After a decade, the omnibus spending bill just approved by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump has finally relegated the device excise tax to the dustbin of history.

The tax, which required the payment of billions of dollars by device manufacturers, was especially pernicious because it was assessed on gross sales, not profits. To put this in perspective, imagine that you’re a manufacturer of medical devices and had a profit of $100,000 on sales of $1 million after all your costs and expenses for everything from materials and labor to research. The excise tax would be $23,000, wiping out almost a quarter of your profits.  

Think that example is extreme? Well, Signus Medical, a small Minnesota company that makes cutting-edge devices used in spinal surgery, ended up paying an effective tax rate of 79%.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

German Parliament: Its Resolution to Ban Hezbollah is Just a Legal Charade – Part II by Soeren Kern

Posted By on December 26th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15346/german-parliament-hezbollah-update

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

It is utterly implausible that Germany, one of the wealthiest and most technologically advanced countries in Europe, is unable to ascertain the organizational structure of Hezbollah within its own borders.

“Six months ago, the AfD presented a resolution in the Bundestag to ban Hezbollah, a resolution which you vehemently rejected and which since then you have blocked in caucus…. What is needed is the complete ban of Hezbollah. Hezbollah’s propaganda and terror financing in Germany must be stopped… This, by the way, is also demanded by the Bundestag’s Anti-Semitism Resolution, which expressly calls for the deportation of supporters of anti-Semitism. If this does not apply to supporters of Hezbollah, which wants to send Jews to the gas chambers, and wants to destroy Israel, then to whom could this apply?” — Beatrix von Storch MP, Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] party, to the Bundestag, December 19, 2019.

Von Storch noted that the Bundestag’s resolution, if implemented by the German government, would allow Hezbollah’s 30-plus German-based mosques and cultural centers — where the group raises funds and spreads anti-Israel propaganda — to continue to operate. Moreover, not one of the 1,050 known Hezbollah operatives now in Germany would be deported.

Gatestone Institute recently reported that a December 19 German parliamentary resolution, which claims to call for a complete ban in Germany of Hezbollah (Arabic for “The Party of Allah”), actually falls short of demanding a comprehensive ban of the terrorist organization. A senior US government official called the article “flat wrong”. It would have been nice if had been.

Gatestone Institute wholeheartedly supports U.S. President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to ban Hezbollah in Europe. The Bundestag resolution, however, calls for an incomplete ban, which appears aimed at providing the German government with political cover that would allow Berlin to claim that it has banned the group even if it has not.

The Bundestag itself has issued a statement which states that it is calling for an activity ban (Betätigungsverbot) of Hezbollah, but not an organizational ban (Organisationsverbot) — an important distinction because the activity ban is legally weaker than the organizational ban.