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Jewish Power at 70 Years Bret Stephens

Posted By on April 22nd, 2018

Adam Armoush is a 21-year-old Israeli Arab who, on a recent outing in Berlin, donned a yarmulke to test a friend’s contention that it was unsafe to do so in Germany. On Tuesday he was assaulted in broad daylight by a Syrian asylum-seeker who whipped him with a belt for being “yahudi” — Arabic for Jew.

The episode was caught on video and has caused a national uproar. Heiko Maas, the foreign minister, tweeted, “Jews shall never again feel threatened here.”

It’s a vow not likely to be fulfilled. There were nearly 1,000 reported anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin alone last year. A neo-fascist party, Alternative for Germany, has 94 seats in the Bundestag. Last Thursday, a pair of German rappers won a prestigious music award, given largely on the basis of sales, for an album in which they boast of having bodies “more defined than Auschwitz prisoners.” The award ceremony coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day.

To be Jewish — at least visibly Jewish — in Europe is to live on borrowed time. That’s not to doubt the sincerity and good will of Maas or other European leaders who recommit to combating anti-Semitism every time a European Jew is murdered or a Jewish institution attacked. It’s only to doubt their capacity.

There’s a limit to how many armed guards can be deployed indefinitely to protect synagogues or stop Holocaust memorials from being vandalized. There’s a limit, also, to trying to cure bigotry with earnest appeals to tolerance. The German government is mulling a proposal to require recent arrivals in the country to tour Nazi concentration camps as a way of engendering a feeling of empathy for Jews. It doesn’t seem to occur to anyone that, to the virulent anti-Semite, Buchenwald is a source of inspiration, not shame.

All this comes to mind as Israel this week marks (in the Hebrew calendar) the 70th anniversary of its independence. There are many reasons to celebrate the date, many of them lofty: a renaissance for Jewish civilization; the creation of a feisty liberal democracy in a despotic neighborhood; the ecological rescue of a once-barren land; the end of 1,878 years of exile.

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Israel Survives Because of an Iron Will and an Iron Wall Palestinian protests on Independence day are hopeless, thanks in large part of an essay written in 1923. by Zev Chafets

Posted By on April 22nd, 2018

In the run-up to this week’s 70th anniversary of Israel’s independence, Israeli Defense Forces chief of Staff General Gabi Eisenkot pronounced the country “invincible.”

This was a bold statement. The country faces a growing threat from Iran and its puppets in Lebanon and Gaza, and the possibility of a clash with Russia over Syria. And yet, few Israelis have disagreed with this assessment.

There is mood of confidence here, and its origin lies in a doctrine of strategic defense that has proven itself over nearly a century of intermittent warfare.

That doctrine was first enunciated in an article in 1923 entitled “The Iron Wall.” Its author was Ze’ev Jabotinsky, a visionary Zionist leader and the ideological father of the Likud.

At the time of its publication, the Jews of Palestine were a small, embattled minority. Only three years had passed since the first Arab riots in Jerusalem against them. The Jewish community’s socialist leaders hoped they could appease Arab enmity by offering economic cooperation, progress and prosperity.

Jabotinsky derided this as childish, and insulting to the Arabs, who would not barter away their homeland for more bread or modern railroads. They would, he said, resist while they had a spark of hope of preventing a Jewish state.

“There is only one thing the Zionists want, and that is the one thing the Arabs do not want,” he wrote. Nothing short of abandoning the Zionist project would placate Arab hostility and violence. If the Jews wanted to remain, they would have to come to terms with a harsh reality: This was a zero-sum game. There could be no peace until the Arabs accepted Israel’s right to exist.

Jabotinsky saw that the Arabs (in Palestine and beyond) were far too numerous to be defeated in a single decisive war. The Jews needed to erect an iron wall of self-defense and deterrence — a metaphorical wall built of Jewish determination, immigration, material progress, strong democratic institutions and a willingness to fight. Gradually, the enemy would be forced to conclude that this wall could not be breached.

The Iron Wall concept was intended to deter aggression until psychological victory was won, and extremists, “whose watchword is ‘Never!’” were replaced by more moderate leaders willing to live peacefully with a Jewish state.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: by Soeren Kern

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

Anti-Semitism is running rampant at German primary schools, according to Heinz-Peter Meidinger, president of the President of the German Teachers’ Association (Deutschen Lehrerverbandes, DL). He also said that videos of beheadings are commonplace at German schools, and that female pupils are being threatened with murder. “In chat forums like WhatsApp, movies such as ISIS beheading videos are spreading like wildfire.”

“It is unacceptable that non-Muslim and above all Jewish children have to be afraid of going to school in this country because they are being labeled as ‘unbelievers’ and even threatened with death…. Since autumn… Kuwait Airways is allowed to discriminate against Jews at Frankfurt Airport, and the Federal Government does not object. Let us not fool ourselves: it is the Federal Government, which, for inexplicable reasons, allows Jews in Germany to be treated like this.” — Julian Reichelt, Editor-in-Chief of Bild.

“Mass gatherings that degenerate into violence are incompatible with our understanding of democracy. Humanity, tolerance, respect and dealing with each other in a democratic way are the basic values ​​on which our coexistence is oriented. We all want to live in a peaceful, open and democratic society.” — Sören Link, Mayor of Duisburg.

March 1. The Spreewald Elementary School in Berlin’s Schöneberg district hired security guards to protect teachers and students from unruly students. Around 99% of the pupils at the school have a migration background. “Within the past year, the violence has increased so much that we now had to take this measure,” said headmaster Doris Unzeit. “The violence is widespread and we want to take countermeasures with the security service. This should improve the reputation of the school and ensure that the children can learn here again in peace.”

March 2. A 41-year-old Syrian, Abu Marwan, stabbed to death his 37-year-old wife in Mühlacker. The couple’s three children, a girl and two boys, witnessed the murder. It later emerged that immediately after the killing, the blood-stained man posted a video on Facebook warning women not to irritate their husbands: “This is how you’ll end.”

March 4. A 30-year-old man who raped at least four women at or near subway stations in Berlin turned himself in after police published surveillance photos of him. The man chose his victims while riding on subway trains. He made eye contact with them, followed them out of the station and subsequently raped them. Berlin police blacked out information about the man’s nationality. Berliner Zeitung filled in the missing details: he is from Egypt.

March 4. A group of ten migrants sexually assaulted several women at an outdoor festival in Lienen. The attack was a case of taharush, a practice in which groups of Arab males encircle females and assault them.

March 5. Middle Eastern crime families in Berlin are intimidating police by provoking officers during arrests and filming them with cell phones, according to Welt am Sonntag. They are also spreading false rumors, accusing police of seeking sexual favors from prostitutes who are pimped by the very same crime families. “This is a very observable tactic to discredit the colleagues,” said the spokesman for the GdP police union in Berlin, Benjamin Jendro. “The criminals want to show that the state is losing control. This has become a popular sport.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Want to Shut Up Leftist Professors? First Ignore Them By Bruce S. Thornton

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

These days the California State University Fresno isn’t getting attention for its world-class agricultural college or for its top-rated nursing program. Instead, it’s getting noticed for its hard-left professors tweeting outrageous insults about President Trump, or violating students’ free-speech rights. First was the adjunct history professor who last year tweeted “Trump must hang.” A month later a public-health professor got into an argument with pro-life students, then started defacing their approved chalk messages with his foot because they weren’t in a “free speech” area—an idea patently unconstitutional.

This week, an English professor tweeted that ex-First Lady Barbara Bush, who died on April 17, was a “racist” who raised a “war criminal,” and that she “was happy the witch was dead.” The predictable conservative media storm of dudgeon followed, turning an obscure academic mediocrity into a left-wing heroine and free-speech martyr.

Way to go, guys. Next time try ignoring whatever juvenile tweet-tantrum comes from someone desperate for attention and spurious “Resistance” credibility. Professors saying stupid things is a dog-bites-man story.

Nor will all the coverage accomplish anything. Forget demanding that she be fired. As she bragged in a follow-up tweet, “sweetie i work as a tenured professor. I make 100K a year doing that. i will never be fired” [sic throughout]. Apart from exaggerating her salary, she is right. Professors in the Cal State system are not just protected by tenure, but by a powerful union that the system usually doesn’t think is worth the time and money challenging. I know our provost here at Fresno State implied otherwise, claiming a tenured professor can be fired. But that’s a sophistic sop to media critics and disgruntled donors. The tweet was issued on the professor’s own twitter account, and the message is political speech of a sort long protected by the First Amendment and by the idea of academic freedom, which in the politicized university is very elastic. The only way for a tenured professor to get fired is to be convicted of a felony or to find her job eliminated by budget cuts. And firing a “woman of color” like a self-proclaimed “Palestinian” Arab is an even longer shot.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

A Very Bad Week for #TheResistance By Julie Kelly

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

Expect the anti-Trump mob to be drinking heavily this weekend. The week has been filled with lots of bad news for them.

Sadly for Trump foes, the U.S. economy is thriving: Market indicators this week continued to rise, pointing to a “robust” 2018. Jobless claims are near a 45 year-low, and “job openings are near a record high, and scattered but growing shortages of skilled labor are forcing companies to increase pay or improve benefits to attract or retain employees,” according to an assessment by MarketWatch.

Several polls this week show the double-digit lead that Democrats had in the generic congressional ballot at the end of last year is nearly gone. Issues such as immigration and gun control are backfiring, while most voters credit Trump—not Obama—with the strong economy: The Democratic Party is bitter, listless, and devoid of any winning message or policy agenda.

Which brings us to the week’s worst news for the Left and NeverTrump Republicans, who have devoted 100 percent of their energy to taking down the president via Robert Mueller’s probe into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian government before the 2016 election: The credibility of the investigation and the key players involved in the scam is disintegrating.

Let’s revisit the week’s lowest moments for the anti-Trump mob:

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Everyone Should Agree: Aliens Who Commit Crimes Shouldn’t Be in This Country By Hans A. von Spakovsky

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

A recent Supreme Court decision stopping a deportation was correct, but Congress can easily fix the law.

The Trump administration’s efforts to get convicted criminal aliens off of our streets and out of the country was dealt a setback this week, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A majority in Sessions v. Dimaya held that a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) used to deport criminal aliens was unconstitutionally “vague.” Fortunately, this is a problem Congress could easily remedy with a very simple legislative fix. Only those opposed to safeguarding the public from convicted felons could possibly oppose it.

At issue was a provision of the INA that defines what a “crime of violence” is for purposes of removal proceedings. Under federal law, if an alien is convicted of an “aggravated felony,” he is subject to deportation even if he is in the country legally. The INA has a long list of specific offenses that fit the “aggravated felony” definition, one of which is a “crime of violence” punishable by at least a year in prison.

The man at the center of this case, James Dimaya, is a lawful permanent resident alien from the Philippines. The U.S. moved to deport him after his second felony conviction for first-degree burglary under California law. An immigration court ordered Dimaya’s deportation because it found that first-degree burglary met the “crime of violence” definition.

Why? Because a “crime of violence” is further defined in federal law as any felony that poses “a substantial risk that physical force against the person or property of another may be used in the course of committing the offense.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

McCabe: Leaking and Lying Obscure the Real Collusion By Andrew C. McCarthy

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

He changed his story about the FBI and the Clinton Foundation, lying about his lies.

The Justice Department’s inspector general has referred Andrew McCabe to the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., for a possible false-statements prosecution. It was big news this week. But the story of how the FBI’s former deputy director lied to investigators, repeatedly, is mainly of interest to him. It is the story of what he lied about that should be of interest to everyone else.

He lied about leaking a conversation in which the Obama Justice Department pressured the FBI to stand down on an investigation of the Clinton Foundation.

That’s not getting much attention. The referral by Inspector General Michael Horowitz focuses us, instead, on the prospect of McCabe’s prosecution. That’s understandable. McCabe has it coming, as the IG’s 35-page report powerfully illustrates.

The report concludes that the former deputy director “lacked candor,” the standard for internal discipline at the FBI, from which McCabe was fired. It is a charge similar to those spelled out in the federal penal code’s false-statements and perjury laws. Specifically, the report cites four instances of lack of candor; more comprehensively, McCabe is depicted as an insidious operator.

About two weeks before Election Day 2016, the then–deputy director was stung by a Wall Street Journal story that questioned his fitness to lead an investigation of Hillary Clinton, the Democrats’ nominee. McCabe’s wife had received $675,000 in donations from a political action committee controlled by the Clintons’ notorious confidant, Virginia’s then–governor Terry McAuliffe — an eye-popping amount for a state senate campaign (which Mrs. McCabe lost). It was perfectly reasonable to question McCabe’s objectivity: The justice system’s integrity hinges on the perception, as well as the reality, of impartiality.

MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

My Fair Lady and HashtagMeToo By Marilyn Penn

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

With particularly myopic arrogance, Jesse Green, theater critic of the New York Times, lauds the new production of My Fair Lady as the best one ever because it serves as “an ur-text of the #MeToo movement “(NYT 4/20/18) Never mind the genius of George Bernard Shaw or the combined brilliance of Lerner and Lowe – it took director Bartlett Sher to show us “how history -even if it took 100 years – would eventually start to outgrow its brutes, and how it still might do so compassionately by teaching them a lesson.” We all know the famous quote (falsely attributed to Samuel Goldwyn) “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,” but apparently for Jesse Green, a lesson is even more valuable than a message and we can all go to school on the collective wisdom of such luminaries as Ashley Judd and Rose McGowan.

Mr. Green is also excited by the inclusion of male can-can dancers in drag to enlighten us as to the cleverness of “Get Me To the Church on Time.” One can only hope to read his ecstatic response when Eliza eventually reaches maximum progressive significance as played by a transsexual actor, preferably Black. And why the need to save those outmoded period costumes and set designs? Why not update the staid version of Eliza as a vehicle for Miley Cyrus while she’s still young enough to lash her tongue at Henry Higgins and morph into someone as grand as Beyonce at the Coachella Ball

The contemporary need to keep updating classics to make them relevant usually diminishes them. The main purpose it does serve is to further narrow the imaginations of people incapable of recognizing that newer does not always mean better and that historical mores do not have to duplicate our own in order to hold our attention or respect. Fortunately, the trio of Shaw, Lerner and Lowe are not here to see the debasing comparison of their creativity to the collective mash-up of hashtagMeToo.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline update By Bruce Thompson

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

As one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump signed presidential memoranda to revive both the KeystoneXL and Dakota Access pipelines by expediting the environmental review process. The Dakota Access pipeline is now in full operation. TransCanada’s annual report gives us an update on the Keystone XL pipeline.

“Keystone XL In February 2017, we filed an application with the Nebraska Public Service Commission (PSC) seeking approval for the Keystone XL pipeline route through that state and received approval for an alternate route on November 20, 2017. On November 24, 2017, we filed a motion with the Nebraska PSC to reconsider its ruling and permit us to file an amended application that would support their decision and would address certain issues related to their selection of the alternative route. On December 19, 2017, the Nebraska PSC denied this motion. On December 27, 2017, opponents of the Keystone XL project, and intervenors in the Keystone XL Nebraska regulatory proceeding, filed an appeal of the November 20, 2017 PSC decision seeking to have that decision overturned. TransCanada supports the decision of the Nebraska PSC and will actively participate in the appeal process to defend that decision. In March 2017, the U.S. Department of State issued a U.S. Presidential Permit authorizing construction of the U.S./Canada border crossing facilities of the Keystone XL project. We discontinued our claim under Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement and withdrew the U.S. Constitutional challenge. Later in March 2017, two lawsuits were filed in Montana District Court challenging the validity of the Presidential Permit. Along with the U.S. Government, we filed motions for dismissal of these law suits which were denied on November 22, 2017. The cases will now proceed to the consideration of summary judgment motions. In July 2017, we launched an open season to solicit additional binding commitments from interested parties for transportation of crude oil on the Keystone pipeline and for the Keystone XL project from Hardisty, Alberta to Cushing, Oklahoma and the U.S. Gulf Coast. The successful open season concluded on October 26, 2017. In January 2018, we secured sufficient commercial support to commence construction preparation for the Keystone XL project. We expect to commence primary construction in 2019 and construction will take approximately two years to complete.”

After seven years of delays under the Obama Administration and the then-secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Keystone XL pipeline has an approved route and a 20-year commitment for the oil it will carry from Canada to Cushing, Oklahoma, from whence it can be distributed wherever needed throughout the United States. TransCanada is negotiating with landowners along the route for the necessary easements. Those easements will put money into American landowner’s pockets.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

NORTH KOREA HALTS ICBM AND NUCLEAR TESTING AHEAD OF SUMMIT By KIM TONG-HYUNG and ERIC TALMADGE

Posted By on April 21st, 2018

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea announced that it will suspend nuclear tests and intercontinental ballistic missile launches ahead of its summits with Seoul and Washington, but stopped short of suggesting it has any intention of giving up its hard-won nuclear arsenal.

The announcement, which sets the table for further negotiations when the summits begin, was made by leader Kim Jong Un at a meeting of the North Korean ruling party’s Central Committee on Friday. It was reported by the North’s state-run media early Saturday.

Kim justified the suspension to his party by saying the situation around North Korea has been rapidly changing “in favor of the Korean revolution” since he announced last year that his country had completed its nuclear forces.

He said North Korea has reached the level where it no longer needs underground testing or test-launching of ICBMs, and added that it would close its nuclear testing facility at Punggye-ri, which was already believed to have been rendered unusable due to tunnel collapses after the North’s test of its most powerful bomb to date last year.

The announcement is Kim’s opening gambit to set the tone for summit talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, set for next Friday, and U.S. President Donald Trump, expected in late May or early June.

Trump almost immediately responded with a tweet, saying, “This is very good news for North Korea and the World” and “big progress!” He added that he’s looking forward to his summit with Kim.

South Korea’s presidential office also welcomed North Korea’s announcement as “meaningful progress” toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Presidential official Yoon Young-chan said in a statement that the North’s decision brightens the prospects for successful talks between Seoul, Pyongyang and Washington.