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Dear Jews: It’s never too late-until it is too late Diane Bederman

Posted By on December 28th, 2023

https://dianebederman.com/dear-jews-its-never-too-late-until-it-is-too-late/

Dear Israel, you are the body of Judaism and we, in the Diaspora, are the soul of Judaism. We need a strong, safe Israel. And Israel needs a strong, safe Diaspora. The time is late. You, Dear Israel, are the physical protection of the Jews, all over the world: we, in the Diaspora, are here to fight the Propaganda War which is attacking the soul of Judaism.

Just give us one more day and we will perform miracles. We need you to declare an official holy-day: San Remo: the anchor to debunking the Occupation Lie/Fabrication. The Jewish people are such a small minority in the world. There are 8 billion people: 2 billion Muslims; 2 billion Christian/Catholics and 15 million Jews. We have been on the receiving end of prosecutions, persecutions, pogroms, inquisitions, expulsions,  auto–da-fés, and then the Holocaust where the modern world not only CHOSE to ignore the Nazi death camps, they denied them.

Here we are in the 21st century, back in our homeland, and the modern world turns against us again. Why? Because we are Jews. Yet, God is always with us. And He has given us a gift that we must not let go to waste. He has given us San Remo. The official world declaration of the Jewish homeland in the Biblical Lands of the Jews – Israel. San Remo ended the occupation and colonization of Israel by the British (1918-1948),  the Arabs, and the Ottomans.

Yet, Israel is still occupied by Muslims – in Gaza and Judea/Samaria. Why are Muslims in our country; making demands of the Jews? Denying our rights? Denying our history.

Archaeologists unearthed a Seleucid fortification destroyed 2,100 years ago by the Hasmoneans in Lachish Forest. Our Chanukah story on the ground.

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Barack’s Lieutenant: The Racism, Revenge, and Ruin of Claudine Gay – Barack’s CRT Legacy :Scott McKay

Posted By on December 28th, 2023

https://spectator.org/baracks-lieutenant-the-racism-revenge-and-ruin-of-claudine-gay/

You’ve no doubt seen a lot of discussion of the fact that, despite her manifest lack of qualifications, Claudine Gay got the big job at Harvard because she checked all the boxes: black, female, dedicated heart and soul to the vileness of DEI.

And that’s all true. Claudine Gay got that job running Harvard on the strength of identity politics and identity politics alone. This is a woman who is now under suspicion for some 40 allegations of plagiarism. Far from being the “distinguished scholar” she was advertised as, Gay is essentially a serial academic rapist. And Harvard, for having installed her atop its hierarchy, deserves to be deposed from the ranks of elite, or even noteworthy, universities.

Harvard has been utterly corrupted and defiled. It’s now an institution without honor or quality. Its reputation has been exposed as a fraud.

That’s the effect Claudine Gay has already had on Harvard. The only potential fix for it is her immediate resignation, along with that of all of the people involved in hiring her.

And that won’t happen.

Why? Claudine Gay also checks another set of boxes, not coincidentally the ones set out in the very title of my new book: Racism, Revenge and Ruin: It’s All Obama.

Indeed, there is no more apt poster child for the America Obama left us than the pathetic Ms. Gay. In a time when not just race but adherence to noxious neo-Marxism govern hiring decisions everywhere from the campus to the “entertainment” world, (and, increasingly, Fortune 500 boardrooms), no one better exemplifies the ruinous legacy of our 44th president.

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Hamas – Palestinians: disjointed or interwoven? Yoram Ettinger

Posted By on December 28th, 2023

http://bit.ly/489Wxpq
*The Western attempt to distinguish between Hamas terrorists and the majority of Gaza Arabs defies Middle East reality, which documents that Hamas terrorists and most Gaza Arabs are interwoven with each other, socially, educationally, culturally, ideologically, and religiously.

*Moreover, Middle East reality highlights Hamas as a terror state (Gaza and potentially the West Bank), not as merely a terror organization.

*Therefore, most of the Arabs in Gaza enthusiastically celebrated the October 7, 2023 Hamas ISIS-like slaughter, rape, torture and mutilation of (mostly) civilians, heralding it as role model of sacrifice and heroism in the service of a Holy Islamic War and a demonstration of national liberation fortitude.

*The fact that the Arab population of Gaza lends itself to terrorism was underscored by a June 29, 1967 memorandum, submitted to the US Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara by General Earle G. Wheeler, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. The memorandum presented a map of Israel’s minimal security requirements, including Gaza, which “serves as a salient for introduction of Arab subversion and terrorism, and its retention would be to Israel’s military advantage…. It has served as a training area for [Palestinian terrorists]…. Occupation of the Gaza Strip by Israel would reduce the hostile border by a factor of five and eliminate a source for raids and training of [terrorists]….”   

*The terroristic potential of the population of Gaza has been leveraged since 1947 by the Muslim Brotherhood – the largest Sunni terror organization, which established Hamas in 1988 – when it established Gaza as one of its five centers in British Mandate Palestine (Haifa, Jaffa, Nablus, Jerusalem and Gaza). The Gaza branch collaborated closely with the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, the birth place of the Muslim Brotherhood. Initially, Hamas’ popularity was limited to the Gaza middle class, such as the religious establishment, lawyers and businessmen. However, since the 1990s, Hamas has increasingly evolved into a focal point of social, ideological and religious cohesion with the Gaza population at-large.

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Who Supports Hamas? by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on December 28th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20261/who-supports-hamas

Many of the protests that now demand a unilateral ceasefire — including the attempts to shut down Christmas celebrations — are orchestrated by some of the same radical groups that organized the pro-Hamas demonstrations before Israel went into Gaza.

Demonstrations and protests by groups such as the Students for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace or the National Lawyers Guild seem anything but spontaneous and grassroots responses to “Israel’s military actions in Gaza.” They are not demonstrations against what Israel does; they are protests against what Israel is, namely the democratic nation-state of the Jewish people.

Recall that these protests began before Israel counterattacked against Hamas. They were in full bloom on October 8, even while the bodies of 1,200 murdered Israelis, including babies burned alive, were still being gathered and counted, and the roughly 240 hostages taken by Hamas to Gaza identified.

The protests are exclusively anti-Israel, anti-American, pro-Hamas, and pro-terrorism.

Where are the calls for anything that would actually help the Palestinians or make their lives better: freedom of speech, equal justice under the law, freedom of the press, better job opportunities, and an end to government corruption and abuse?

So when you watch an anti-Israel demonstration on television, please understand who is behind it and what are their ultimate goals, because the next target is American democracy — and you.
The main groups that comprise the bulk of organizers and demonstrators who have supported the Hamas barbarism against Israel are:

1) Radical Islamic groups that, like the Islamic Republic of Iran after the 1979 revolution, regard Israel as the “Little Satan” and America as the “Big Satan.”

2) American revolutionary groups who used to be affiliated with Communism but now call themselves radical socialists or workers parties. Their goal is to overthrow our government and they attach themselves to every disruptive movement in the hope of garnering support and creating distrust for American democracy.

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China’s Increased Bullying of Philippines to Test US Resolve by Lawrence A. Franklin

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20259/china-bullying-philippines

Despite the allegedly warm atmosphere of the San Francisco Summit between China’s Communist Party leader Xi Jinping and US President Joseph Biden, the Chinese dictator reportedly told Biden, “that Beijing will reunify Taiwan with mainland China but that the timing has not yet been decided,” and “that China’s preference is to take Taiwan peacefully, not by force.”

It is clear that Xi is doubling down on his claim of sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, starting with Taiwan, and understands that he might have only a few “good” months left.

American and Chinese military leaders have communicated by video link on December 21, after a hiatus of more than a year. Hopefully, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Charles Brown took the opportunity to raise the issue of China’s bullying of Philippine vessels in the South China Sea with his Chinese counterpart, General Li Shang-fu.

The latest aggressive move by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took place when a Chinese Coast Guard boat deluged three Philippine vessels with water cannon on December 9 and 10. This assault resulted in severe engine damage to one of the Philippine vessels necessitating it to be towed to home port.

Another vessel found itself rammed by a Chinese boat. That incident took place near the Second Thomas Shoal, an island in waters also claimed by China. CCP bullying in 2023 also included threatening maneuvers by Chinese ships against Philippine maritime exploration for hydrocarbons and natural gas, as well as frequent harassment of Filipino fishermen. In a more serious encounter in February 2023, a Chinese patrol boat lasered Filipino sailors. China’s maritime aggression against Philippine efforts to resupply a military contingent on a marooned vessel on an island in disputed waters of what Manila calls the West Philippine Sea.

China’s repeated targeting of the Philippines appears possibly related to Manila’s decision to grant the US expanded military presence in the Philippines, by granting the US military access to four additional air and naval facilities, raising the number to nine. The newly installed Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. reversed the his predecessor’s policy: appeasing China.

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Hitler Wasn’t Available: New York Times Runs Article by Hamas Official Robert Spencer

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/robert-spencer/2023/12/25/hitler-wasnt-available-new-york-times-runs-article-by-hamas-official-n4925006

The New York Times wants you to weep for the people of Gaza, and for what Hamas’ massacre of 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7, which Gazans cheered in large numbers, has brought upon them. In service of that goal, on Christmas Eve the Paper of Record ran a weepy piece by a prominent Gazan, someone who has witnessed the Israeli incursion firsthand. Did the Times give this plumb editorial space to a “moderate” Gazan, a known foe of the Hamas regime, one of those “innocent Palestinians” who have nothing, nothing whatsoever, to do with Hamas? Uh, not quite.

“I Am Gaza City’s Mayor. Our Lives and Culture Are in Rubble,” was written by Yahya R. Sarraj and published in the Times on Sunday. The Times identifies the author in terms that make him sound like an airy, inoffensive intellectual: “Dr. Sarraj is the mayor of Gaza City and a former rector of the University College of Applied Sciences there. He wrote from Gaza City.” 

Yahya R. Sarraj, you see, is no terrorist, he’s a mild-mannered professor. But what the Times doesn’t bother to remind its hapless readers about is the fact that Hamas controls Gaza, and no one can hold the position of being mayor of the largest city in the Gaza Strip without being either an active Hamas member or entirely sympathetic with the terror group’s outlook and goals. Sarraj even alludes to this matter-of-factly in his piece, writing: “One of my major goals after the Hamas administration appointed me mayor in 2019 was to improve the city’s seafront and foster the opening of small businesses along it to create jobs.”

Sarraj spends the bulk of his article doing his best to move the reader to rage against Israel. “As a teenager in the 1980s,” he says, “I watched the construction of the intricately designed Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Center in Gaza City, named after one of Gaza’s greatest public figures, and its theater, grand hall, public library, printing press and cultural salon.” 

MEDIA, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Fight This Information War with KISSes By J.B. Shurk

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/12/fight_this_information_war_with_kisses.html

I believe in the KISS principle: keep it simple, stupid.  I do my best to boil events down to their essential truths and then hammer those truths again and again.  Repetition is my weapon of choice.

The reason I stick to this strategy has nothing to do with who is reading.  It has to do with the nature of the war we are already fighting.  Never before in human history have people been so bombarded by lies and propaganda from their own political leaders.  The information warfare that the U.S. government and other Western nations use against their own peoples is meant to conquer minds with direct programming instead of directed bullets.

How do you counter-program people who have been indoctrinated for years, if not decades?  You KISS them, so that they’ll KISS others, and a steady flow of simple truths can begin to crack the glass of our invisible cage.  The whole thing sounds quite dirty and promiscuous, but constantly reminding ourselves what is actually true in a blizzard of lies is an admirable pursuit.  Crafty French diplomat Talleyrand, who managed to keep his head through both the French Revolution and the reign of Napoleon, observed, “Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.”  The Marxist globalists who use censorship and propaganda as shield and sword are Talleyrand’s ardent disciples.

The size of the information war being conducted against us is astounding, and because the formerly free press has been conquered and conditioned to support the State, news outlets willing to report the truth are few.  When the corporate news cartel controls 95% of the information flow and the Department of Homeland Security is effectively censoring the remaining 5%, it becomes essential for those of us who see this war as it really is to sound a little like broken records.  Using labels such as “Deep State,” “Uniparty,” “Marxist globalists,” “ruling class,” and “elites” is a form of subversive branding meant to align us against a common enemy.  “Make American Great Again” is more than a jingle or campaign slogan; it is an attempt to cut through artificial political divisions so that abused citizens can find common purpose.  Rejecting “woke” dogma, “political correctness,” and other Marxist distortions of truth is a form of mental armor that defends against the government’s unabating propaganda.  Repetition of simple truths must meet the repetition of outrageous lies head-on.

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Israel in the Shadow of American Decline The real existential danger to Israel. David Goldman

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/israel-in-the-shadow-of-american-decline/

Strictly speaking, Israel’s Gaza war is not a tragedy, but rather a hideous accident. Many wars wait for years to happen until they can’t be stopped. Those are the tragedies. This one never should have happened. Israeli intelligence had the plans for the October 7 Hamas attack a year in advance, as well as urgent warnings from lower-echelon officers just before the event. But the top military and political leadership brushed them off.

This fits a venerable pattern. Stalin had the plans for Operation Barbarossa from his spy Victor Sorge; U.S. Naval Intelligence had warnings about the attack on Pearl Harbor; and the FBI had the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of 9/11, but failed to fit them together. Intelligence services are not rewarded for timely warnings, but for serving their masters’ political agendas, and Israel’s fabled spies turned out to be no different than their counterparts in other countries. Believing that $40 million a month in subsidies from Qatar and other economic concessions would keep Hamas quiet, the Israeli government refused to consider anything else.

There simply is no contest between 300,000 regular troops from the Israel Defense Forces and 30,000 to 40,000 lightly armed Hamas irregulars, any more than there was a contest between ISIS and the American army and its proxies. Whether Hamas is entirely or largely extirpated from Gaza depends on the extent to which Israel can resist American pressure to vitiate its operations. The outcome will not be much different in any case. Whatever happens, most of Gaza’s two million residents will spend the next couple of years in tent camps while the rest of the world dickers about what to do with them. Their living conditions will be similar to those of the more than 200,000 Jewish refugees who lived in tent cities for up to two years after they were expelled from Arab countries following the 1948 war.

For all the horrors of the October 7 attacks, they did not constitute an existential crisis for a country with the region’s most powerful military and an extraordinary capacity for national solidarity in the face of external threat.

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U.S. Power of Deterrence is Disappearing Only one thing will restore it. by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/u-s-power-of-deterrence-is-disappearing/

Since the savage attack on Israeli civilians on October 7, one of Iran’s terrorist proxies, the Houthi, have launched drones and ballistic missiles 100 times against our military and commercial shipping in the Red Sea, through which 10% of global trade passes. Twenty-five crewmen of one ship have been held hostage for over a month.

The U.S., with two Carrier Battle Groups in the region, has not responded with significant force, content to play defense by knocking down missiles and drones, but not destroying the launch sites, stores of missiles and drones, or other military assets. Such hesitation bespeaks in part a fear of “escalation,” a scare-word redolent of the appeasing “Vietnam syndrome.” But why aren’t Iran and its proxies afraid to escalate against an enemy many orders of magnitude more powerful?

Of course, we all know that electoral political calculations are hamstringing the Biden team, already fretting over the president’s tanking poll numbers and the Biden family pay-to-play scandals circling the DNC like buzzards. But to restore our power of deterrence, we must start destroying military assets, especially Iran’s, the funder and director of several terrorist groups responsible for most of the region’s mayhem.

These attacks by Iran’s proxies, moreover, are not spurred by outrage over the Israelis’ existence or right to defend themselves. They are opportunistic tactical moves against the U.S. and the West, and their “rules-based international order” that protects global trade and security. Iran and its new BFFs Russia and China are exposing the West’s weaknesses and failure of nerve.

It’s also showing the rest of the world that their triumvirate of tyranny is a better bet to take over global hegemony than suicidal Western nations that skimp on defence spending, splurge on redistributing money, obsess over apocalyptic “climate change,” and dismantle its vital energy industry that provides cheap, abundant fossil fuels.

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It’s DEI or Bust for the American College of Surgeons By Richard T. Bosshardt

Posted By on December 27th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/12/its-dei-or-bust-for-the-american-college-of-surgeons/

The organization has launched a diversity, equity, and inclusion tool kit to ‘help’ doctors, advocating principles that have no place in medicine.

America’s surgeons are not woke enough, according to the American College of Surgeons (ACS). Such is the message of the leadership to fellows of the ACS. In a previous column on this site, I described how the ACS doubled down on anti-racism and DEI at its annual Clinical Congress in Boston this October with courses in its educational program for surgeons. To underscore its ongoing commitment to anti-racism and DEI, the ACS just launched its DEI Toolkit and continues to promote this ideology as though its life depended on it.

To say this is puzzling is an understatement, especially given recent trends. Diversity, equity, and inclusion departments throughout the country are being shut down, DEI administrators are being handed their walking papers, and the ideologies of anti-racism and DEI are being increasingly recognized for their illiberal, divisive, and fraudulent nature. Take anti-racism. Even Ibram X. Kendi, who coined the term, is incapable of defining this in a coherent manner. When asked to define anti-racism, he offered: “Antiracism is a collection of antiracist policies leading to racial equity that are substantiated by antiracist ideas.” This is a classic circular argument that no critically thinking person would accept.

And, yet, the American College of Surgeons has grabbed onto the ideology of structural racism and just won’t let go. After embracing anti-racism and DEI in 2020 and promoting the ideologies at the 2023 annual Clinical Congress in October, the leadership of the ACS is seeking to further embed anti-racism and DEI in the college and into surgical practices. The tool kit is an exhaustive, some might say exhausting, compilation of everything related to pushing the narrative of systemic and structural racism as the source of disparities including minority representation within the ACS and clinical outcomes in minority surgical patients. If it promotes anti-racism and DEI, it is in the tool kit. Time and space do not permit a thorough dissection of the entire tool kit, but a few examples will suffice to demonstrate the profound ideological tone.