Grammy-Nominated Artist Releases 10/7 Protest Song ‘We Are Not Ok’by Ari Blaff

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/grammy-nominated-artist-releases-10-7-protest-song-we-are-not-ok/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Grammy-nominated recording artist John Ondrasik, known by the stage name “Five for Fighting,” released a protest song condemning skyrocketing antisemitism across America and the glorification of Hamas and its atrocities committed on October 7.

“We are not all right,” the song opens, “When we see young girls pulled from their homes, and dragged to the streets; when we see grandmothers being pulled away to children shot in front of the family.”

“We are not all right when right here in the city of New York you have those who celebrate at the same time when the devastation is taking place,” the music video continues showing footage of violent pro-Palestinian protesters spliced with Hamas atrocities against Israeli civilians.

“This is a time for choosing,” Ondrasik sings against bodycam footage of Hamas terrorists committing atrocities on October 7. “This is a time to mourn. The moral man is losing,” the song continues.

Moshe Dann: Can Israel win the war against terrorism? As long as Palestinian Arabs engage in terrorism and advocate murder and genocide, their demands for a state are immoral and irrelevant, and those who ignore this are complicit.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/383932

Most (if not all) countries go to war to win; Israel, however, is different. First, neither Israel nor the PLO conceives of the conflict as a war, since they have mutual ongoing political, security, and economic interests; terrorism, therefore, is seen as part of an ongoing relationship.

Until Oct 7, Israeli leaders assumed that this was also true for Hamas.

This leads to the second reason: Before October 7, Israel was not fighting Hamas to destroy terrorism, but to prevent attacks, neutralize or arrest terrorists, and then, temporarily, return to a “status quo.” That’s why warnings about what Hamas was doing were ignored by Israel’s political, military and security leaders; they duped themselves.

Hope-doped, drugged by self-assurance, and seeking to appease the Obama/Biden administrations, the EU, the UN and the international community, some of them accepted “the two-state-solution” (2SS) . They failed to understand that the conflict is not over territory, but is – as Hamas proclaims – a religious war to eliminate Israel. That explains why Palestinian Arab leaders consistently reject offers of statehood in return for recognizing Israel’s right to exist, and why they continue to launch terrorist attacks against Jews. They are engaged in a “holy war” against Jews and Zionists as “invaders” and “occupiers of Palestine” – all of it.

That is a call for genocide.

Attempts to reduce, or “manage the conflict” by making concessions, therefore, failed because of an unwillingness to understand what the PLO, Hamas and other terrorist organizations want. Despite ongoing terrorism during the 1990’s, Israeli, European, and American leaders promoted a “peace process,” the Oslo Accords.

As Yasser Arafat admitted, it was only a step towards his goal of destroying Israel.

Although the Abraham Accords were a sign of hope, they had no effect on the terrorist war against Israel. Meanwhile, Iran, Qatar, Turkey, and other Muslim countries poured billions into Hamas’ war efforts. Distracted, Israeli leaders ignored what was going on in Gaza. Self-assured, they refused to accept reality

‘We Have to Kill Those Who Preach Christianity’: The Persecution of Christians, December 2023 (Christmas Edition) by Raymond Ibrahim

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20322/persecution-of-christians-december

“About 37 [Christian] individuals, primarily women, children and the disabled, were burned to death in their homes…. ” — christianpost.com, December 30, 2023, Nigeria.

“Christian leaders in Nigeria have said they believe herdsmen attacks on Christian communities in the Middle Belt are inspired by their desire to forcefully take over Christians’ lands and impose Islam….” — morningstarnews.org, December 26, 2023, Nigeria.

“[I]t is also the existence of disbelief itself that is a ‘grievance’,” — Aymenn Jawad al Tamimi, December , 2023, Philippines.

[I]n Austria, on Dec. 9, Heiligenkreuz Abbey received a bomb threat by phone. Police later confirmed that it had an “Islamist overtone”. The caller had said “Convert to Islam, or I’ll bomb you away!”…. Father John Paul commented: “[I]t encourages us even more to pray and work for peace, healing and reconciliation.” — puls24.at, December 11, 2023.

“Reports include statements like, ‘We have to kill those who preach Christianity, and these Christians have no place in Mauritania.'” — persecution.org, December 13, 2023.

Two Christian evangelists, Joseph and Isaac, after Muslims beat them for quoting the Koran, spent Christmas Day in jail for “blasphemy.” The report does not indicate which verses were deemed so objectionable, or why. — morningstarnews.org, December 22, 2023, Uganda.

According to a January 2 report: “Three migrants who allegedly planned an attack on Cologne Cathedral are free again. A judge let them go after just one night in custody.” Pictured: Police conduct security checks on visitors at Cologne Cathedral on December 24, 2023 in Cologne, Germany, after indications of an Islamist terror threat. (Photo by Andreas Rentz/Getty Images)

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of December 2023.

Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23: Grandson of prominent Druze officer Killed in combat in Sheikh Ijlin in Gaza on November 18

https://www.timesofisrael.com/maj-jamal-abbas-23-grandson-of-prominent-druze-officer/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Maj. Jamal Abbas, 23, a company commander in the 101st Battalion of the Paratroopers Brigade, was killed in combat in Sheikh Ijlin, in the southern Gaza Strip on November 18.

Abbas was born into a family of high-ranking military officers from the Druze village of Peki’in. His grandfather, retired Col. Gideon Abbas, is among the first Druze soldiers to attain the rank of brigade commander in the IDF.

Jamal’s father, Col. Anan Abbas, followed suit and rose to the rank of colonel while serving in the Northern Command.

“I grew up with the state and I was beaten even before the establishment of the state by the legion stationed here in the area. They suspected me of passing on information. I still felt the pain in my body from back in 1948,” Gideon Abbas said.

Abbas still, however, became an active member of the Druze Scouts Association in Israel and decided to join the army in 1960, at the age of 22. He raised his children with the army, taking them to military training and occasionally the Lebanese border during his service.

“I raised them this way, that they should be fighters and officers… I always believed in their abilities and believed that they should serve the country like everyone else,” he said.

EITAN FISCHBERGER:Violent Pro-Palestine Demonstrations Are Not a Bug They’re a feature of a dangerous new politics

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/violent-pro-palestine-demonstrations?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=290654609&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-

Anarchic, pro-Palestinian rallies have continued to intensify across the United States ever since Oct. 7, when Hamas massacred 1,200 people and took another 240 hostage. These nationwide protests, marked by highly disruptive tactics, have raised critical questions about the nature of protest, the boundaries of dissent, and the willingness of Western governments to assert and protect basic social values. When one delves deeper into the protesters’ driving ideology, it becomes clear that mass disruption is not a byproduct of their agenda, but the agenda itself.

These groups’ tactics have included blocking roads to international airports on New Year’s Day; endangering passenger planes by launching balloons over the runways; blocking highways that delayed the delivery of organ transplants to hospitals; illegally occupying a House office building near the U.S. Capitol; vandalizing stores supposedly complicit in Israel’s “genocide” of Gaza; disrupting the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and Christmas tree lighting ceremonies in major cities; and storming the World Trade Center, defacing public monuments, targeting a cancer hospital, and attacking the White House gates while screaming “Allahu akbar” and “intifada revolution.”

What drives these protesters to such extremes, and convinces them to opt for such woefully misguided methods that—by disrupting the lives of ordinary people—appear to be counterproductive to their cause?

At the forefront of these demonstrations are various Islamic organizations often linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as fringe Jewish anti-Zionist groups championing progressive causes such as climate justice and women’s rights. These groups find common ground in an ideology, ostensibly influenced by works of the French Martinican psychiatrist and post-colonial writer Frantz Fanon, that sees “liberation” and “decolonization” as a global revolutionary struggle and perceives their disruptive actions as a vital component of it. They believe that by obstructing crucial social services and public spaces, they effectively challenge superstructures deemed oppressive. This worldview is predicated on the notion that any inconvenience caused to innocent individuals is justified in the pursuit of societal transformation; their obstructive protest methods aren’t a defect, but a requirement of this worldview.

The myth of ‘the Muslim world’ The Israel-Hamas War has exposed the danger of Islamic identity politics. Brednan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/01/20/the-myth-of-the-muslim-world/

This week, the idea of ‘the Muslim world’ took one hell of a beating. The notion of an ummah has been left in tatters. The fantasy of a global people with shared interests and experiences – almost an Islamic class – is now surely kaput. For while woke activists in the West might still speak of Muslims as a bloc, if not a blob, elsewhere in the world Muslims are at war. Two of the most powerful Muslim-majority nations, Iran and Pakistan, got dangerously close to all-out conflict this week. Tell me: who should the ‘Muslim community’ in Britain or the US or Canada support in this violent border skirmish?

For years, there’s been a gaping disconnect between the way Western observers speak about Muslims and the actual Muslim experience. Between our elites’ reduction of Muslims here in the West to a single entity, a throng that believes the same things and feels the same pain, and the growing Balkanisation of the Muslim-majority world. The West’s guardians of opinion often slam celebs for treating Africa as a single country, and yet they’re equally guilty of flattening out the religious, cultural and territorial complexities of the Muslim experience. Their rush to fashion a new oppressed class, a people they might marshal as part of their indictment of the wickedness of the West, has ironically denuded Muslims of their diversity, and even their humanity.

This disconnect has really come to life in recent weeks. All the talk in right-thinking circles in the West has been of Muslim unity. Both ‘the Muslim community’ over here and ‘the Muslim world’ more broadly are as one in their rage with Israel and love for Palestine, we’re told. Reuters used the sweeping term ‘Muslim animosity’ to describe the vibe in both the West and the East. Media outlets in the US and Europe frantically report that ‘Muslim voters’ might ditch Joe Biden over his support for Israel and turn against Labour in the UK, on the basis that Keir Starmer has been insufficiently pro-Palestine. That term, ‘Muslim voter’, conjures up an image of a samey, single-issue citizen, faithfully traipsing to the polling booth to register the uniform ‘animosity’ his kind feel.

Things are more complicated. They always are. Guardianistas might get a kick from reporting on the anti-Israel, anti-West fury of ‘the Muslim world’, but they’re rather more coy on the brazen failure of that world to offer assistance to civilians in Gaza. Egypt, for instance, which borders Gaza, is flat-out refusing to take refugees from the Israel-Hamas War. They’d pose a security threat, apparently. Countless lives could have been saved had Egypt permitted the construction of refugee camps in the Sinai. We hear little of Egypt’s complicity in Gazans’ suffering, however, because our activist class prefers the moral thrill of cheering on ‘Muslim animosity’ towards Israel and the West to the hard task of analysing Arab states’ fatal betrayal of the Palestinian people.

Hunter Biden’s laptop is real, but Joe’s guardians in the press are working hard to hide the truth Welcome to the latest chapter in today’s age of ‘advocacy journalism’ By Jonathan Turley

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hunter-bidens-laptop-real-joes-guardians-press-working-hard-truth

After years of suppressing the story and casting doubts over its authenticity, last year many in the media belatedly and reluctantly acknowledged that the Hunter Biden laptop is real. 

Some of us reached that conclusion years ago due to the self-authenticating emails confirmed by third parties. However, the denials and doubts have continued, including most recently by Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., in congressional hearings. The Department of Justice has now again confirmed the authenticity of the device and added details on why these denials are unsupported.

This week, the Department of Justice confirmed that the laptop had been authenticated through forensic examination and a search warrant on Hunter’s Apple iCloud. Hunter’s electronic devices were backed up on the cloud and the DOJ said that “the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.”

That is only the latest such confirmation, but many continue to desperately cast doubts about the laptop, which Hunter himself said might be the product of Russian intelligence. Once again, the last dogs in this fruitless fight are the most partisan among us. Rep. Goldman, for example, recently lambasted witnesses who referenced the laptop and challenged the credibility of a journalist who cited the laptop.

Goldman suggested that Hunter’s infamous laptop may have been “manipulated,” while speaking at a House Judiciary Committee hearing last week. 

Goldman attacked journalist Michael Shellenberger and declared:

“You have no idea, you know hard drives can be manipulated. Hard drives can be manipulated by Rudy Giuliani or Russia. There is actual evidence of it, but the point is it’s not the same thing.”

Roger Kimball: The course of the American empire Instead of frank acknowledgment and robust action, Biden and his minders have retreated into Stalinist Newspeak

https://thespectator.com/topic/course-american-empire-biden-trump/

In the 1830s, the English-born American artist Thomas Cole painted an ambitious sequence of five large rectangular canvases delineating “The Course of Empire.” He began with “The Savage State,” which depicts the rude life of humans before the advent of letters, domestication and permanent architecture. “The Arcadian or Pastoral State” is marked by harmony and some early accoutrements of civilization. “The Consummation of Empire,” at fifty-one inches by seventy-six inches, is a third larger than its fellows. Here we see a sun-drenched landscape transformed by a panoply of classical architecture counterpointed by bustling commerce and a triumphal, if overripe, stateliness. Next comes “Destruction.” The skies are dark now, the people besieged by ravening hordes, the monuments broken and burning. A distant full moon presides over “Desolation,” the last canvas. The scene is populated by shaggy, shattered remnants of human ingenuity, vast blighted columns and porticos half overgrown by vegetation, not a human soul in sight. Ozymandias would be at home.

I have thought often about Cole’s painted morality tale these past months. Where do you suppose we are on the itinerary he traced? I’d say somewhere between “Consummation” and “Destruction.” Is the process inevitable, as Cole seems to have believed? There are heartening signs to suggest not.

Unfortunately, few of those signs are patent in the United States at the moment.

But just look at Argentina. As I write, Javier Milei, the new “anarcho-capitalist” president of Argentina, has embarked in earnest on a regimen of “shock therapy” for his troubled country. You think we have runaway inflation in the US? Well, we do. But it will soon be nearly 200 percent in Argentina.

Milei had barely taken office in December before he cut the government payroll by 5,000 jobs. He has abolished whole departments. He introduced a law legalizing the use of force for self-defense and decreed that welfare benefits would be stripped from anyone blocking traffic while protesting in the streets. He also banned the use of the word “free” to describe government largesse since the services are not “free.” On the contrary, they are paid for by the taxpayer. One commentator described this as “the most sensible law in world history.” Were it implemented in America, he noted, “the Democrat Party would literally not be able to campaign anymore.” Don’t hold your breath, though. Magical thinking obviates a multitude of unpalatable realities.

Harvard’s Tragic Journey How the ousting of Lawrence Summers led to the disgrace of Claudine Gay

https://www.commentary.org/articles/ruth-wisse/harvard-lawrence-summers-claudine-gay/

Forgive me for quoting myself, but there’s no other way to begin: “History rarely issues us a red alert. But the surrender by America’s premier university to its anti-intellectual assailants marked a point of no return. Responsibility was so equally distributed among the administration, Board of Governors, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and the main players that I saw no way the damage could be repaired.”

This was my verdict on Harvard when I retired from the university a decade ago after having witnessed the ambush and dismissal in 2006 of Lawrence Summers, whose appointment as president five years earlier had given me hope that the decline I had tracked would now be reversed. From the moment Summers arrived, he showed bold leadership, addressing the main areas of my concern. But his every initiative also alerted his ideological opponents, who proved so skilled in cultural combat that they were able to damage him almost immediately and to bring him down in record time.

There was no inquiry at the time into the factions that mobilized against the president, leaving them free to further influence policy and squelch opposition. Now by curious inversion, we see that Claudine Gay, recently installed as 30th president of Harvard, has been upended by the very crisis in education Summers had tried to avert. Although opinion will vary over what led to Gay’s resignation, several of those controversies—over the university’s role in society, anti-Semitism, academic standards, and affirmative action or “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”—were precisely the ones that were “weaponized” against Summers, but for opposite ends.

Currently, at least four groups from inside and outside the university—alumni, faculty, administration, and government—are looking into what has gone wrong at Harvard. While the aborted Gay presidency is but a symptom of that damage, and the resignation itself brings no necessary change, anyone hoping to understand what is at stake in higher education would do well to study the defenestration of Lawrence Summers. He has personally transcended that debacle, but Harvard has not.

_____________

In submitting this testimony, let me clarify my role as participatory witness. Soon after I came to Harvard in 1993 as first occupant of the Martin Peretz Chair in Yiddish Literature, I was made director of the Center for Jewish Studies, which required my presence at faculty meetings I had seldom attended during my previous tenure.

Houthis Terrorists, Trump Chasers, and Rare Moments at Davos Victor Davis Hanson VIDEO

https://victorhanson.com/houthis-terrorists-trump-chasers-and-rare-moments-at-davos/