ISRAEL Comments turned off

Tensions Mount at Israel-Gaza Border as Talks Stall Hamas militants organize protests amid worsening conditions that end with several Palestinian deaths in clashes with Israeli forces By Felicia Schwartz in Tel Aviv and Abu Bakr Bashir in Gaza City

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/tensions-mount-at-israel-gaza-border-as-talks-stall-1537548967

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, is stepping up protests at its border with Israel to signal frustration with stalled talks with its neighbor, prompting new deadly clashes with Israeli forces.

In recent days, the Palestinian group has organized more frequent protests, including one involving 10,000 people on Friday in which one person was killed and 41 injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Two Palestinians were killed on Tuesday during a protest against Israel and Egypt’s longstanding economic blockade on Gaza. A demonstrator was killed Wednesday in a separate demonstration.

Israel’s military defends its response to the protests, saying it is necessary to defend its borders from explosive devices, flaming kites, rocks thrown at Israeli forces and attempts to breach the border security fence.

Abdelateef Al Kano, a Hamas spokesman, said Israel is “burning time” and that the uptick in protests is aimed at demonstrating frustration in the Gaza Strip, as prospects dim for a long-term calm with Israel and an easing the blockade.

Talks this summer between Israel and Hamas—with Egypt as an intermediary—aimed at calming tensions that have bubbled up after relative calm since the end of the 2014 war between them haven’t yielded results. The two sides remain at an impasse over a prisoner exchange and other issues.

The Palestinian Authority, which leads Palestinians in the West Bank and is the international community’s only recognized negotiating partner, has refused to engage in a peace process led by the Trump administration, which they say is biased toward Israel and has taken unduly harsh measures against them.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Is Trump Creating New Republicans? Much of the media is trying to persuade Latinos to dislike the GOP but it’s a tougher sale than expected. By James Freeman

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/is-trump-creating-new-republicans-1537560515

Current polls suggest that Republicans could be in for a rough November, but not as rough as one might expect among a key voting constituency.

Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report writes today that Democrats are confident about their support among suburban women, but enthusiasm among female Democratic voters “isn’t being replicated among another group of voters that theoretically should be as motivated — or more — to vote for Democrats: Latino voters.”

Ms. Walter explains:

Latino voter drop-off in midterm elections is nothing new, but the thinking was that President Trump’s rhetoric and policies around immigration, especially the issue of separating children from their parents at the border, would be a catalyst for higher Latino engagement in 2018. At this point, however, recent polling by New York Times Upshot/Siena College and Monmouth University, suggests that’s not the case.

In California’s 39th district — a racially diverse district that Hillary Clinton carried 52 to 43 percent — a Monmouth poll out this week found Republican Young Kim leading Democrat Gil Cisneros 46-42 percent.

Meanwhile on the right coast of the country, it seems that voters are also stubbornly refusing to play the roles they’ve been assigned in the conventional media narrative. Ms. Walter elaborates:

Republicans in Latino majority districts in South Florida are holding up better than their underlying infrastructure suggests they would. In a district Hillary Clinton carried with almost 57 percent, Republican Carlos Curbelo (FL-26) has a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent in the NY Times Upshot/Siena poll. And, in the 27th district, where moderate GOPer Ileana Ros-Lehtinen is retiring, private polls show former Clinton administration HHS Director Donna Shalala struggling to open a lead in a district Clinton carried by more than 58 percent.

In the sprawling southern Texas 23rd district — a district that is more than 70 percent Latino and voted narrowly for Clinton in 2016, Republican Rep. Will Hurd had a solid 51-43 percent lead over his Democratic opponent in the latest NY Times Upshot/Siena poll.

Finally, in the Los Angeles County 25th CD, a district that is majority minority and which Clinton won with 50 percent of the vote in 2016, the NY Times Upshot/Siena poll found Republican Steve Knight with a narrow lead over his Democratic opponent.

There’s another interesting campaign update, this one from the middle of the country. This week the Texas Monthly reports that expected Hispanic support for Democratic Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Lupe Valdez, who’s running against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, hasn’t met expectations. Notes the Texas Monthly:

First came news that Valdez’s lackluster campaign is delivering equally lackluster results. A new Quinnipiac University poll on Tuesday—the first this season to measure sentiment among likely voters in Texas instead of simply registered voters—shows that Hispanics actually prefer Abbott to Valdez. Hispanic respondents, in fact, preferred the incumbent Republican by a margin of 49 percent to 45 percent over Valdez. While the 4.1 percent margin of error tightens that race a bit, the fact that Abbott leads with his substantial war chest mostly intact, suggests an election night slaughter for that race that could extend to higher than normal Hispanic support for the governor and potential coattails for people like Cruz. CONTINUE AT SITE

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Antifa Website Calls for ‘Slaughter’ of ‘Fascistic Border Patrol Dogs and Their Bosses’ By Debra Heine

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/antifa-website-calls-for-slaug

In a post Thursday at far-left antifa website Incendiary News, an activist advocated for revolutionaries to rise up and “slaughter” what he called “fascistic Border Patrol dogs and their bosses,” Far Left Watch reported on Friday.

Disturbingly, far-left activists have in recent months become more brazenly militant and violent in their rhetoric on their websites and social media, as PJ Media has documented here, here, here, here, and here.

The author of the Incendiary News piece, Ulrike Salazar, likens Border Patrol agents to SS troops who “take away young boys and girls, tear apart families, throw away undesirables into dark and cramped dungeons.”

Then, after decrying all of the so-called atrocities committed by Border Patrol against illegal immigrants, Salazar writes: “This author only hopes that this chapter in American history will also include the moment when revolutionaries rose up with the masses and slaughtered the fascistic Border Patrol dogs and their bosses, slaying them with revolutionary fire and justice.”

By “bosses,” he presumably means Carla L. Provost, the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol; her boss, Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen; and her boss, President Donald J. Trump.

In an attempt to fan the flames, Salazar adds: “Who can read this, knowing the plight of the undocumented immigrant masses who struggle daily not for supremacy but basic economic survival, and have the gall to suppress that uncontrollable rage that builds inside you?”

He also calls on fellow radicals to destroy the “settler-colonialism imperialism” of Customs and Border Protection, ICE, and the whole U.S. covernment from “without, not within,” implying through mass violence.

Salazar goes on to praise the Red Guards, a Maoist group that hopes to duplicate in the United States the anarchy and terror Chairman Mao’s Red Guards inflicted on China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. The group identifies as “antifascist” and has cells throughout the United States. According to Far Left Watch, Incendiary News is run by Red Guards – Austin (RGA).

“Revolutionary organizations throughout the country such as the Red Guards appear to be organizing among the immigrant masses in forming defense units, rallying around the shared slogan of ‘fight ICE with fire!'” he writes, adding, “the time for activism is over. Now is the time for war.”

Now is the time to mobilize the masses, particularly the immigrant masses from Central America and Mexico, to exact revolutionary vengeance and seize power. Without it, everything is just empty words. End the barbarism. End U.S. imperialism!

The Red Guards’ far-left comrades, “Serve the People L.A.,” are showing their revolutionary, anti-capitalist zeal by selling “Fight ICE with Fire” t-shirts: CONTINUE AT SITE

EDUCATION, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Refusing study in Israel is a bitter lesson in discrimination By Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://thehill.com/opinion/education/407647-refusing

Imagine a white university professor telling a highly qualified African-American student that he refused to recommend her for a year-abroad program to an African country because he disapproved of the way that country treated its white minority. That professor would be ostracized, boycotted, reprimanded, disciplined or fired.

Well, now the shoe is on the other foot: A left-wing professor at the University of Michigan, John Cheney-Lippold, has refused to recommend a highly qualified Jewish student for study in Israel. How do we know she was qualified? Because the professor already had agreed to recommend her. Then he noticed that she wanted to study in Israel, with whose policies he disagrees. So he withdrew his offer to recommend her based on his support for the boycott of Israeli universities.

This pernicious boycott tactic is designed to cut off all academic, scientific, cultural and other contacts with only one country: the nation state of the Jewish people. Many who support singling out Israel will actively encourage academic contacts with Russian, Cuban, Saudi, Venezuelan, Chinese, Belarusian and Palestinian universities, despite the horrid human-rights records of these undemocratic countries and the discriminatory policies of their universities. Israel is one of the world’s most democratic nations, with one of the best human-rights records and among the freest, most diverse universities. Yet it is the only target of this bigoted academic boycott. And the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) tactic applies only to Jewish Israelis, not Muslims.

This hypocritical professor probably would not hesitate to recommend his student to universities that discriminate against gay and transgender, women, Jewish or Christian students. Israeli universities do not discriminate against anyone; on the contrary, they have affirmative-action programs for Muslim and black students. They are on the forefront of scientific, technological and medical innovations which benefit the entire world, and would be set back by boycotts.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Menendez in Jeopardy as Senate Challenger Makes Push By Adele Malpass

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/21/menendez_in_jeopardy_as_senate_challenger_makes_push_138139.html

The New Jersey Senate race was supposed to be a done deal with incumbent Bob Menendez easily cruising to re-election. It’s rated solid or likely to remain Democratic by most election watchers, and the Democrats were certainly putting it in their win column as they mapped out plans to retake the Senate.

But someone forgot to tell New Jersey voters that this race was uncompetitive. The polls show it to be tight — Menendez simply has not shaken Republican challenger Bob Hugin in a state Hillary Clinton carried by 14 points over Donald Trump two years ago.

Part of the reason seems to be that despite his acquittal in court on federal corruption charges, Menendez has not escaped the taint that came with his 2015 trial. Another is that Hugin, the wealthy former CEO of a biopharmaceutical company, had already spent nearly $16 million in the race. Throw into this mix a state with the worst affordability index in the country and an expected increase in the gasoline tax on Oct. 1 — on top of significant increases in state taxes enacted this spring. It seems a combustible mix in which an attractive and well-funded outsider with a sterling resume can give the political establishment heartburn.

Meanwhile, Menendez has a lot of baggage to defend. In 2015, he was indicted on federal corruption charges pursued by his fellow Democrats — the first U.S. senator to be indicted by the administration of his own party in 30 years. He was accused of doing favors for Florida eye doctor Salomon Melgen, who is now serving 17 years in prison for Medicare fraud. Prosecutors presented evidence of 19 free private plane trips and campaign donations, which they asserted came in exchange for political favors. According to prosecutors, one such trip to the Dominican Republic supposedly involved underage prostitutes. Menendez strongly denied those allegations, but in the #MeToo era, any lingering suspicion is unhelpful for a politician. And though he was not found guilty by the jury, Menendez was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee.

While he may have survived his legal battles, New Jersey voters have apparently not forgotten. In a June primary, an unknown Democratic opponent who raised less than $5,000 got 38 percent of the vote against Menendez. That challenger, Lisa McCormick, didn’t have enough money to run ads reminding the electorate of Menendez’s legal troubles. But Bob Hugin did. Hugin’s campaign began running hard-hitting television spots against the incumbent in February. Menendez was pounded by ads titled “Guilty,” “Screwed” and “Dead Last.” By July, Menendez was leading Hugin by two percentage points, and in an August poll he was up by only six.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Unprincipled Boycott of Israel The demands of the politicized life. Jonathan Marks

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/foreign-policy/middle-east/i

John Cheney-Lippold, an associate professor of American Culture at the University of Michigan, has been the subject of withering criticism of late, but I’m grateful to him. Yes, he shouldn’t have refused to write a recommendation for a student merely because the semester abroad program she was applying to was in Israel. But at least he exposed what the boycott movement is about, aspects of which I suspect some of its blither endorsers are unaware.

We are routinely told, as we were by the American Studies Association, that boycott actions against Israel are “limited to institutions and their official representatives.” But Cheney-Lippold reminds us that the boycott, even if read in this narrow way, obligates professors to refuse to assist their own students when those students seek to participate in study abroad programs in Israel. Dan Avnon, an Israeli academic, learned years ago that the same goes for Israel faculty members seeking to participate in exchange programs sponsored by Israeli universities. They, too, must be turned away regardless of their position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When the American Studies Association boycott of Israel was announced, over two hundred college presidents or provosts properly and publicly rejected it. But even they might not have imagined that the boycott was more than a symbolic gesture. Thanks to Professor Cheney-Lippold, they now know that it involves actions that disserve their students. Yes, Cheney-Lippold now says he was mistaken when he wrote that “many university departments have pledged an academic boycott against Israel.” But he is hardly a lone wolf in hyper-politicized disciplines like American Studies, Asian-American Studies, and Women’s Studies, whose professional associations have taken stands in favor of boycotting Israel. Administrators looking at bids to expand such programs should take note of their admirably open opposition to the exchange of ideas.

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Oslo Accords and the Failures of Idealistic Internationalism A reflection on a wish-fulfilling folly. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271359/oslo-accords-and-failures-idealistic-bruce-thornton

Twenty-five years ago, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO chief Yasser Arafat stood in front of Bill Clinton in the White House Rose Garden and shook hands to mark their signing of the Oslo Accords. This pact included handing part of Judea and Samaria to the control of Palestinian Arabs. A year later the Palestinian Authority was created as the controlling authority that still governs part of the so-called West Bank. These changes were celebrated as a major step toward furthering the “peace process” whose aim was to create national “self-determination” for the Palestinian Arabs, and eventually the fabled “two nations living side-by-side in peace.”

A quarter of a century later, the peace process is dead, and peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is farther away than ever. The Oslo Accord became the Oslo War, as Middle East historian Efraim Karsh calls it. Rather than peace, the lasting legacy of the Oslo Accords will be another reminder of the serial failures of idealistic internationalism.

That Oslo was a wish-fulfilling folly became obvious soon after the photogenic handshake in the Rose Garden. Terror attacks between 1994-1999 totaled 215, roughly equal to the pre-Oslo number in the early 90s. Terrorism continued to escalate in subsequent years. In 2000––a mere month after Arafat turned down Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s offer of everything the Palestinian Arabs claimed they wanted except for the suicidal “right of return” –– Arafat launched the so-called Second Intifada, which in five years murdered over a thousand Israelis. The killing didn’t start to abate until Israel walled off Judea and Samaria from Israeli territory.

Still unschooled in the dangers of relying on “parchment barriers” like Oslo, and facing intense international opprobrium and pressure to cede “land for peace,” in 2005 Israel evacuated 8,500 Jews from the Gaza Strip. The territory fell into the hands of Hamas, a terrorist gang whose genocidal intent is still encoded in its founding charter. What followed was not peace, but a continuing series of terrorist attacks, kidnappings, incursions, and nearly 20,000 rockets and mortars fired into Israeli territory. Hamas today has made no more progress than has the PA toward creating the political and economic infrastructure necessary for a viable, independent nation.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Ravages of Leftist Thought Control The “Newspeak” of Orwell’s 1984 is here. Michael Cutler

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271375/ravages-leftist-thought-control-michael-cutler

On September 12, 2018 the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) posted an article in its official website, Twitter Ads Rejects Tweets for “Hateful Content.”

The CIS article noted:

Yesterday Twitter rejected four Center for Immigration Studies tweets for use in the Center’s Twitter Ads campaign, alleging hateful content. (Several others were approved.) All four tweets use the statutory phrases “illegal alien” or “criminal alien,” and all of the tweets referenced law enforcement, either at the border or in the interior. One of the tweets contained a powerful Daily Caller video showing illegal aliens in camouflage carrying large backpacks across the border unimpeded.

Two days later, on September 14th The Daily Caller posted a report updating the situation: Twitter Allows Center For Immigration Studies To Promote Tweets About Illegal Aliens That Were Previously Rejected.

Twitter apparently reversed its decision when Mark Krikorian, the Director of CIS, appeared on Fox News to discuss the issue.

Here is an excerpt from The Daily Caller article:

The four tweets that could not get promoted, but are still on Twitter, contained the terms “alien,” “illegal alien” or “criminal alien” along with reference to law enforcement, according to a statement from CIS Wednesday.

A promoted tweet is a normal tweet bought by advertisers that can have a greater outreach on people, according to Twitter’s website.

MEDIA Comments turned off

Kavanaugh, DeSantis and the Human Cost of Fake News The media’s lies have a price. Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271388/kavanaugh-desantis-and-human-cost-fake-news-daniel-greenfield

“Its fake news techniques rely on hearsay, implication, rumor, gossip, and innuendo. These techniques are rarely subject to the media’s fact checking. They don’t make definitive statements. Instead they misleadingly connect the dots into a blizzard of conspiracy theories that can never be pinned down. There’s no way to stop them, except by calling them what they are. Fake news.”

Politico, the media outlet of choice for flacks and hacks, has declared that Ron DeSantis, the conservative Republican running for Governor of Florida, against the media’s favorite new socialist, suffered his “fifth race-related” controversy.

That fifth “controversy” is about something that somebody who isn’t DeSantis tweeted. The fourth controversy also involved a DeSantis donor. The third controversy falsely smeared the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend attended by DeSantis (and Medal of Honor winner Clinton Romesha). The second involved a GOP official who also isn’t DeSantis. And the first was that DeSantis had been added without his knowledge to a Facebook group where other people said racist things.

And the media actually dares to get offended when people call it, ‘Fake News’.

What the five “race-related” scandals have in common is that none of them involve DeSantis. They’re all guilt by association. Even by the loosest possible association, a donor, a GOP official, someone on the same Facebook page or someone in Florida.

These fake news scandals aren’t being generated because there’s any basis to the racism smear. It’s a strategic campaign decision made because DeSantis’ opponent, Andrew Gillum, is African-American. Since Gillum is black, the Democrats decided to accuse DeSantis of racism. (If DeSantis were running against a woman, he would be accused of sexism.) And the media decided to advance the smear by inventing “race-related” scandals based on the flimsiest of premises to help the Democrats win.

The fake news template is to find somebody in Florida who said something controversial, then to demand that the DeSantis campaign disavow it. And presto, there’s another “race-related” controversy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Unforgiven Those who argue that what Brett Kavanaugh allegedly did is disqualifying ​need to consider the precedent they’re setting. Kay S. Hymowitz

Posted By on September 21st, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-16176.html

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has been accused of sexually assaulting a woman. According to the accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, during a party Kavanaugh and a friend, both heavily intoxicated, pulled her into a bedroom, closed the door, and pushed her onto a bed. Kavanaugh got on top of her, and, placing a hand over her mouth to muffle her screams, groped her and tried to remove her clothing. Terrified, she was able to escape and hide in a bathroom before fleeing the house.

This happened 36 years ago, Ford says. Kavanaugh was 17 years old at the time and Ford, 15. Kavanaugh firmly denies the story.

These last facts should make all those determined to use the charge as the poison pill to kill the judge’s nomination nervous. They’re on the verge of setting a dangerous precedent that will inevitably come back to bite them.

For one thing, they are setting the stage for condemning to reputation-death not just a Roe v. Wade-threatening Supreme Court nominee but any person, man or woman, Bible-thumper or Democratic socialist, by accusation alone. Ford’s story is almost impossible to investigate, much less to corroborate. It happened either in 1982 or 1983; it was either in June or August; it was a house, but she doesn’t know whose; she can’t recall how she got home.

Despite the hazy details, many find Ford’s story is credible, and for good reason: there’s nothing extraordinary about the events she describes, unfortunately, and over the years she told two therapists about them, though it’s not clear that she ever named Kavanaugh. Still, those who caution that human memory is unreliable, especially after more than three decades, are indisputably right. Is she certain that it was Brett Kavanaugh who was on top of her during those dreadful minutes? She had reason to fear that he was going to rape her, but do we know that that’s what he was intending, and does that make a difference? Kavanaugh himself might not know the answer. Multiply 35 years by large quantities of alcohol—Ford described Kavanaugh and his buddy as “stumbling drunk”—and you’ve got a terrible formula for truth-seeking.