FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden’s Red-Line Moment With Iran Blinken promises a swift and decisive response, but will Biden back it up?

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-red-line-moment-with-iran-9e1bbf5a?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Tuesday that the U.S. would respond “swiftly and decisively” to any attack on American forces from Iran or its proxies. That’s a welcome message aimed at deterring the mullahs in Tehran and their agents. But will the President enforce the red line he appears to be drawing? He hasn’t so far.

“The United States does not seek conflict with Iran,” Mr. Blinken said at the United Nations. “We do not want this war to widen. But if Iran or its proxies attack U.S. personnel anywhere, make no mistake. We will defend our people.” Mr. Blinken’s remarks are the sharpest U.S. warning to Iran so far, and from the most senior U.S. official. They go beyond President Biden’s previous vague warnings of “don’t” to discourage Hezbollah or Iran from getting involved in the Hamas-Israel war.

Clearly the White House is worried, and it should be. Even the Administration has been obliged to acknowledge that Iranian clients have used drones and rockets to attack U.S. forces in the Middle East more than a dozen times in the past week.

White House spokesman John Kirby said Monday that Iran is “in some cases, actively facilitating these attacks” on U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria. Mr. Kirby also acknowledged that “Iran’s goal is to maintain some level of deniability here, but we’re not going to allow them to do that.” A senior defense official noted this week that “when you see this uptick in activity and attacks” in the Middle East, “there’s Iranian fingerprints all over it.”

The obvious implication of Mr. Blinken’s remarks is that if American forces are attacked, the U.S. will respond with military force. Multiple reports suggest that Iran’s clients are planning more attacks on U.S. positions in the Middle East. The Pentagon has dispatched more air defenses and on Tuesday announced an F-16 deployment to complement other fighter aircraft in the region. One carrier strike group is already operating in the area and another is on the way. So when will the swift and decisive U.S. response arrive?

ISRAEL Comments turned off

THE GAZA GREENHOUSE EFFECT-RUTH KING 2006

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

November 2006  Outpost – Monthly Publication of Americans for a Safe Israel.During the summer of 2005, cheered by both left and right, Israel would leave Gaza. Many saw the
area as a drain on Israeli military forces and not crucial for Israel’s long-term security. And doubters relied on Ariel Sharon: if he proposed it, then it must be right. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice gushed: “This is an historic moment for both sides, and the commitment of both sides to a successful disengagement process has been impressive.”

American philanthropists, buoyed by the possibility that Gaza’s Arabs would continue the prosperous agricultural businesses created by Jews (a major source of export income) purchased existing farms, greenhouses and agricultural equipment from Jewish residents to give them to the Arabs.

This would give the Arabs, who were ostensibly ready to get down to the business of disciplined self-rule, a big economic boost. Inspired by this notion, Mortimer Zuckerman, a staunch supporter of Israel,
persuaded other moguls, not proven friends of Israel, to ante up $14,000,000 for this noble enterprise.

Just think, …the world would see how generous the Jews were…how flexible…..how devoted to
peace. Global warming was just around the corner. Right? Well, not exactly. In short order the Arabs of
Gaza ransacked, looted and destroyed the homes and farms. They turned their energies to more congenial enterprises, like digging tunnels for smuggling weapons and showering the village of Sderot with missiles.

They elected the unapologetically terrorist Hamas oneof whose leaders declared “The jihad and the resistance are the only ways to liberate our homeland, not negotiations and agreements.”

Nonetheless, the media quickly put out the spin that Hamas won because of its “humanitarian”
work in providing food, shelter, band-aids and bubblegum to the Palestinian Arabs.
And while the administration tirelessly avers that the peaceful “Palestinian people” yearn only to
live in a democratic state beside Israel, Ehud Yaari (Jerusalem Report, October 16) offers this sober assessment of the facts on the ground in Gaza. (Yaari, author of Toward Israeli-Palestinian Disengagement is currently an associate of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, hardly a right-wing group.)

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Qatar’s War for Young American Minds The same country now protecting Hamas’s senior leaders has donated billions to American universities. Here’s why. By Eli Lake

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/qatars-war-for-young-american-minds?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Right now, senior leaders of Hamas, the perpetrators of the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust, are huddled in Qatar. They’ve been there for years. But American foreign policy has turned a blind eye. Why? One reason might be that for the last 25 years, this small, energy-rich state has pumped billions into America to purchase influence and good favor. 

The Qataris have spent their lavish fortune at American law firms, on lobbying contracts with former senior officials, and on junkets and partnerships with big media companies. The biggest recipients of Qatari largesse, though, have been major universities and think tanks. 

The numbers are staggering. According to a 2022 study from the National Association of Scholars, Qatar today is the largest foreign donor to American universities. The study found that between 2001 and 2021, the petrostate donated a whopping $4.7 billion to U.S. colleges. The largest recipients are some of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning. These schools have partnered with the regime to build campuses in Doha’s “education city,” a special district of the capital that hosts satellite colleges for American universities: 

Since 1997, Qatar has donated more than $103 million to Virginia Commonwealth University for a fine arts campus. 

Since 2001, Qatar has donated $1.8 billion to Cornell for a medical school. 

Since 2003, Qatar has donated nearly $700 million to Texas A&M for an engineering campus. 

Since 2004, Qatar has donated $740 million to Carnegie Mellon University for a computer science campus. 

Since 2005, Qatar has donated $760 million to Georgetown University for a school of politics. 

Since 2008, Qatar has donated nearly $602 million to Northwestern University for a school of journalism. 

One might expect that scholarly institutions that have benefited from this autocracy’s money would rethink their partnership after Qatar’s foreign minister said that “Israel alone is responsible” for the pogrom perpetrated by Hamas terrorists. Or after Qatar’s prime minister on Friday declined to close the office Hamas maintains in its capital. But these universities have given no indication that they will end their profitable partnership with Qatar. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The European Union Rewards Terrorism by Robert Williams

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20090/eu-rewards-terrorism

Israel had not even buried its dead from the horrifying jihadist pogrom that Hamas terrorists unleashed on Israeli civilians in south Israel — beheading babies, burning them alive, torturing, raping, kidnapping, murdering — before the European Union decided to reward the terrorists by tripling its assistance to Gaza.

“The Commission will immediately increase the current humanitarian aid envelope foreseen for Gaza by 50 million euros,” European Commission President Ursula van der Leyen said. “This will bring the total to over 75 million euros. We will continue our close cooperation with the UN and its agencies to ensure that this aid reaches those in need in the Gaza strip.”

Oh really? How? The terrorist group Hamas, a proxy of Iran, the “worst state sponsor of terrorism,” is wholly in control of Gaza and will take what shows up and dribble it out slowly to a chosen few, mainly in their military. The idea that any of it will reach the million displaced souls who were urged by the Israelis to flee to southern Gaza to save their lives is charming, but woefully starry-eyed. Food and water — if that is really what is in the uninspected trucks, rather than weapons — will go to the Hamas foot soldiers to make sure they stay fit and loyal.

“Hamas are trying to prevent people leaving northern Gaza. And that is the point… Of course we want to minimize Palestinian casualties. We want to minimize Israeli casualties. We want everybody to respect civilians. But the real clear distinction is Israel are trying to get civilians out of danger; Hamas are trying to put civilians into danger, and that is a fundamental difference between the two.” — UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, October 15, 2023.

Sadly, massive injustices were done by the international media which, without checking, wrongly blamed Israel for firing at a hospital in Gaza, supposedly killing hundreds. Video evidence and a voice recording revealed that the real cause of the explosion at the hospital was a rocket, launched toward Israel by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, that landed in the hospital parking lot. The media, it seems, could not wait to stick it to the Jews.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Day the Delusions Died A lot of people woke up on October 7 as progressives and went to bed that night feeling like conservatives. What changed? By Konstantin Kisin

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-day-the-delusions-died-konstantin-kisin?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

When Hamas terrorists crossed over the border with Israel and murdered 1,400 innocent people, they destroyed families and entire communities. They also shattered long-held delusions in the West.

A friend of mine joked that she woke up on October 7 as a liberal and went to bed that evening as a 65-year-old conservative. But it wasn’t really a joke and she wasn’t the only one. What changed?

The best way to answer that question is with the help of Thomas Sowell, one of the most brilliant public intellectuals alive today. In 1987, Sowell published A Conflict of Visions. In this now-classic, he offers a simple and powerful explanation of why people disagree about politics. We disagree about politics, Sowell argues, because we disagree about human nature. We see the world through one of two competing visions, each of which tells a radically different story about human nature.

Those with “unconstrained vision” think that humans are malleable and can be perfected. They believe that social ills and evils can be overcome through collective action that encourages humans to behave better. To subscribers of this view, poverty, crime, inequality, and war are not inevitable. Rather, they are puzzles that can be solved. We need only to say the right things, enact the right policies, and spend enough money, and we will suffer these social ills no more. This worldview is the foundation of the progressive mindset.

By contrast, those who see the world through a “constrained vision” lens believe that human nature is a universal constant. No amount of social engineering can change the sober reality of human self-interest, or the fact that human empathy and social resources are necessarily scarce. People who see things this way believe that most political and social problems will never be “solved”; they can only be managed. This approach is the bedrock of the conservative worldview.

Hamas’s barbarism—and the explanations and celebrations throughout the West that followed their orgy of violence—have forced an overnight exodus from the “unconstrained” camp into the “constrained” one. 

The Reality of Woke Ideology

Many people woke up on October 7 sympathetic to parts of woke ideology and went to bed that evening questioning how they had signed on to a worldview that had nothing to say about the mass rape and murder of innocent people by terrorists.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Gag Order Against Trump Is the Real Threat to Democracy Deep State is attacking our right to elect the President of our choosing By Christopher Roach

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/23/gag-order-against-trump-is-the-real-threat-to-democracy/

The reason you have not heard of a gag order on par with the one imposed on former President Trump is that it is highly unusual. Normally, in a criminal proceeding, there are no gag orders. To the extent they exist, they typically only bind the lawyers, who are admonished to adhere to the rules of professional conduct. Rarely—as in almost never—are criminal defendants forced into a gag order on such spurious grounds as they might “vilify and implicitly encourage violence against public servants who are simply doing their jobs.”

In fact, precedent almost uniformly emphasizes familiar First Amendment principles, which limit the court’s authority, including disfavor towards “prior restraints” and “content-based restrictions” on speech.

In a case involving the prosecution of a congressman, the Sixth Circuit federal court of appeals noted that “such broadly based restrictions on speech in connection with litigation are seldom, if ever, justified. Trial judges, the government, the lawyers and the public must tolerate robust and at times acrimonious or even silly public debate about litigation.”

The Sixth Circuit emphasized that criminal defendants are already very much disadvantaged vis a vis the government, and that any court restrictions must accommodate this asymmetry. “A criminal defendant awaiting trial in a controversial case has the full power of the government arrayed against him and the full spotlight of media attention focused upon him. The defendant’s interest in replying to the charges and to the associated adverse publicity, thus, is at a peak. So is the public’s interest in the proper functioning of the judicial machinery.”

Other circuits follow a less restrictive rule, but even those emphasize the need for any such orders to be narrowly tailored to accomplish a substantial government interest.

Courts typically have broad powers to enforce discipline in their courtrooms and over lawyers, but preemptively stifling a defendant from “making statements targeting prosecutors, possible witnesses and court staff” has a very broad reach. After all, isn’t every member of Congress, every January 6 defendant, and every single person Trump spoke to about the 2020 election a potential witness?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Did Biden Manage To Lose $300 Billion In Tax Revenues?

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/24/how-did-biden-manage-to-lose-300-billion-in-tax-revenues/

Friday afternoon, the Treasury Department reported that, despite a growing economy and low unemployment, the federal deficit shot up by $320 billion in fiscal year 2023. That’s unusual. But what’s really bizarre is why the deficit exploded.

According to the report, overall spending actually dropped by 2% compared with 2022 as the COVID-19 spending splurge abated.

What drove up the deficit this year was a sudden and completely unexpected 9% drop in tax revenues. Not only did revenues come up hundreds of billions lower than last year, but they were well below what everybody expected them to be.

At the start of the year, the Treasury Department and the Office of Management and Budget projected revenues for fiscal 2023 at around $4.7 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office figured it would be $4.8 trillion.

The actual amount: $4.4 trillion.

In other words, there’s between $300 billion and $400 billion worth of missing tax revenues.

Keep in mind that those forecasts assumed that nothing changed in terms of policy over the course of the year, and all were based on economic projections that turned out, if anything, to be pessimistic.

The CBO, for example, figured the nation’s GDP would be $26.3 trillion by the middle of this year. The actual number was $27.1 trillion. It projected an unemployment rate of 4.6%. The actual number was 3.6%. It expected there to be 154 million jobs; there were 155.5 million. The CBO figured inflation would be running at 4.1%. It was 3.7%.

In a normal world, a better-than-expected economy would result in more revenues for the federal government, not less.

Keep in mind, too, that it’s exceedingly rare for tax revenues to drop from one year to the next. In fact, it’s happened only eight times since 1960 – always around an economic downturn – and the average decline was just 4.7%. Even when the COVID lockdowns caused a massive recession, revenues only dipped by 1.2% in 2020. (Revenues plunged nearly 17% during the financial crisis.)

ISRAEL Comments turned off

MOSHE SHARON IN 2006: CLEAN OUT THE STABLES AND PREPARE FOR WAR

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

http://www.acpr.org.il/english-nativ/09-issue/sharon-9.htm

The second Lebanon War (the “Three Weeks of Mourning War”) of the summer of 2006 has not yet come to an end. As this is being written, one round of the war has concluded in an intermission. It is only an introduction to the prologue. Even now our enemies are aligning for another war and another one after that, for many years to come. Over the last decade and a half, ever since the foolishness of the Oslo Accords, everything has been done to erode the nation’s resolve, its strength, and its belief in the justness of its path.

Contributing to this phenomenon has been a media mobilized to the insane idea of “peace” and a “new Middle East,” various intellectuals who depicted peace as being just around the corner and prevented by the “occupation,” which, if it were only to end, the End of Days would arrive immediately and Islam would lovingly accept the Jewish state.

Orientalists and Islamists swept under the rug all of the truths crying out to them from every document that they researched, from the pages of every Arab newspaper that they read. They told the nation just how peace-loving the Syrians and the Palestinians were, how their only desire was that the occupation cease and a small state be established alongside Israel; things which do not appear in any authorized or semi-authorized Arab-Islamic document.

They did not report about that which was openly stated nor did they relate to what anyone could read on the MEMRI website: That the demand to end the occupation is just a pretext to separate Israel from the few strategic assets still under its control and hold it hostage to the kassams of Hamas and the katyushas of Hizbullah.

They repressed the fact, which they knew better than anyone else, that since 1979, when the 15th century of Islam (according to the Muslim calendar) began, the majority of the Muslim world has been engulfed in the fire of messianic expectations.

From that point on, the molten lava of jihad, shot forth, poured into the Middle East and the world in general, and began to flow through the pathways and tunnels of fanatical Islamic fundamentalism, kindling half-dormant hopes and arousing the fire of hatred for everything non-Muslim everywhere. Over the course of an entire generation it has been boiling and blistering and amassing power daily. In its wake lie the Twin Towers from September 11 along with thousands of dead in Europe, the United States and in the Arab countries themselves, especially in Iraq.

Today it is clear to everyone who is prepared to confront unadorned reality, and they are the majority of people in Israeli society with the wish to live, that we have to take advantage of the short period of time left to us to prepare the army for the inevitable next war. It is already on the way.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel Needs Unconditional Surrender From Hamas The Jewish state’s goal in Gaza should be the same as the Allies’ in Germany after World War II. By Jerome M. Marcus

Posted By on October 24th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-needs-unconditional-surrender-from-hamas-c56d725d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Israel needs to declare the precise goals of its Gaza campaign—for its own citizens and soldiers, and to establish the credibility of its efforts in the world’s eyes. The “destruction” of Hamas has no meaning in international law and is too vague for Israelis being asked to sacrifice everything.

History provides an example of what Israel should do. At the end of World War II, the Allies’ goal was clear: The German Third Reich must agree to an “unconditional surrender.” The Allies’ demand of Germany should be the model for Israel now. Hamas’s war crimes are equal in depravity to those of the Nazis; their magnitude is far less only because Jews now have a fortified homeland and an Israeli army. Hamas and the Nazis also shared the goal of Jewish genocide. Following the Allies’ example, Israel should announce that it will obtain Hamas’s unconditional surrender.

In 1945, in the presence of representatives of the Allied Powers, German High Command officials signed military surrender documents—the Reims accord in France on May 7 and the Act of Military Surrender in Berlin on May 9. The documents required German soldiers to cease military operations. The Allies’ control of German territory enabled them to enforce that order, which they did.

At the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, the Allies agreed on a complete disarmament and demilitarization of Germany, the transfer of land from Germany to Poland and the Soviet Union, and the expulsion of German populations from the countries Germany had attacked. The Allies also provided for “de-Nazification”—removing Nazis from positions of authority, eliminating Nazi political organizations, and the arrest and trial of war criminals.

The Allies pursued the removal of Nazis from positions of authority only halfheartedly; but Nazi political parties and organizations were effectively suppressed, and the highest-ranking Nazi leaders were arrested, tried and punished, including by death.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why Do So Many Young People Support Hamas? Noah Rothman

Posted By on October 23rd, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-do-so-many-young-people-support-hamas/

The monthly Harvard/Harris survey conducted in the wake of the Hamas-perpetrated massacre of over 1,400 Israelis on October 7 has good news and bad news for those who look upon this act of mass murder of Jews with horror and contempt. In the good news column, the overwhelming majority of respondents believe the U.S. is justified in branding Hamas a “terrorist group,” believe it is correct to call the attack “genocidal,” do not think the slaughter was justified, and side with Israel in its war against Hamas. The bad news is, however, impossible to dismiss as inconsequential.

Younger Americans, aged 18 to 24, disagree with their elders. This demographic is split almost down the middle when asked if the slaughter of senior citizens, the rape of young women, the murder of children, and the immolation of whole families in their homes was justified. Indeed, a slight majority of respondents in this age group said the butchery could be “justified by the grievance of Palestinians.” What’s more, only a bare majority of this demographic backs Israel in this conflict. Forty-eight percent said they side not with Palestinians but explicitly with “Hamas” in this war.

The first order of business is to heap scorn on a generation that has adopted this morally bankrupt perspective and the older adults in their lives who have so maliciously led them astray. The second task at hand is for us to understand what convinced the younger generation to sacrifice their humanity upon the altar of an intellectual fad. The answer can be found, at least in part, in one odious word that has claimed the benignity of this generation and so many before them: “framework.”