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Squeezing the World’s Vulnerable Peoples Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://victorhanson.com/squeezing-the-worlds-vulnerable-peoples/

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/09/squeezing-the-worlds-vulnerable-peoples/

The population of Israel is about 10 million. This represents about half of the world’s Jewish people.

The founding idea of modern Israel was to offer a sanctuary for Jews in their biblical home in the Middle East, in the aftermath of Nazi Germany’s mass murder of 6 million Jews. Yet currently, 78 years after the Holocaust, anti-Israel protestors throughout the Middle East, the great cities of the Western world, and iconic American universities chant death threats and “Palestine will be free from the river to the sea.” Their signature slogan is shorthand for the erasure of the Jewish state and everyone in it.

There would currently be zero chance that Jews could live peaceably under any current Middle Eastern government. In the postwar era, nearly a million Jews were persecuted, ethnically cleansed, and forcibly expelled from all the major Arab countries— Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Syria, and Yemen—despite hundreds of years of residence.

Anti-Israel hatred still remains a staple in most of the nearly-500-million-person Arab world, and indeed is commonplace among the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims and their countries at the United Nations.

And Israel is only one of a number of small, vulnerable states. Most of them are in the volatile Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. All are surrounded by hostile neighbors. The others have also suffered a long history of persecution and periodic genocide—catastrophes that are not necessarily permanently relegated to their ancient pasts.

Bitter proxy fighting between Armenian- and Azerbaijan-allied forces in the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh corridor recently ended with the defeat of Armenian supported forces. As a result, shortly before the Hamas massacre of Jews on October 7, some 120,000 Christian ethnic Armenians were expelled from the region by Muslim and Turkish-speaking Azerbaijan.

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To absolutely no one’s surprise, the pro-Hamas activist who killed a 69-year-old, pro-Israel Jewish man, turns out to be a Muslim

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://barenakedislam.com/2023/11/09/caliphornia-to-absolutely-no-ones-surprise-at-all-the-pro-hamas-activist-who-killed-a-69-year-old-pro-israel-jewish-man-turns-out-to-be-a-muslim-after-all/

Muslim college professor, Loay Alnaji, has been identified as the pro-Hamas activist ‘who killed Jewish protestor Paul Kessler’ with a megaphone that knocked him to the ground when rival rallies clashed in Thousand Oaks, California.
Daily Mail (h/t Charlotte)  The man who police have questioned in relation to the death of a Jewish man during a clash with pro-Palestinian protestors is 50-year-old college professor,  Loay Alnaji, who teaches computer science at Ventura Community College in California allegedly hit Paul Kessler with a megaphone knocking him to the ground, resulting in a fatal blow to the head.
Records show that Alnaji came to the United States in the 1990s – he had previously taught in the United Arab Emirates. He married Palestinian economics professor Nada Al Hammouri on Christmas Eve 2015. They have three children.
On his Facebook page he has posted several messages in Arabic supporting the Palestinian cause. In his most recent from three weeks ago, he wrote: ‘O Allah, release the captivity of the Al-Aqsa Mosque… Sooner than later……..Oh Allah, don’t deprive us of praying in it before we die… ‘Oh God, give victory to your weak servants in Palestine, and everywhere…O Allah, bind their hearts with the bond of patience and faith..’
Tensions have been growing between supporters of Israel and the Palestinians since Hamas’s October 7 surprise raid on the Jewish state in which some 1,400 people were killed. Alnaji’s stand against Israel’s actions took him to the streets of Thousand Oaks on Sunday afternoon, where the pro-Palestinian group was confronted by another supporting Israel.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Remaking Gaza: A Harsh And Necessary Road Map By Michael Widlanski

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

Gaza is a knife aimed at Israel. Just look at the map. It’s not an accident.

The Gaza Strip was created by Arab states who attacked and lost to Israel in the first Arab-Israeli war of 1947-48. It became a narrow festering laboratory where humans were turned into monsters, encouraged and trained to commit atrocities.

Gaza became the anti-Israel terror base, 20 minutes from Tel Aviv. Gaza’s people have got no flag, no citizenship. Their symbol became the UN refugee card known in Arabic as al-Hawiyya.

Egypt kept the refugees penned up in Gaza in poverty and 70% unemployment, refusing them citizenship, denying them statehood and independence.

Lebanon and Syria also kept their Palestinians in camps. They saw the political potential of the refugees, exploited their suffering to harden them as a knife aimed at Israel. Enmity to Israel was the heart of Qawmiyya — Pan-Arab nationalism. Gamal Abdul-Nasser and Hafez Assad built their careers around it.

Whenever Arab leaders failed their people — low literacy, poor health care, general poverty — they distracted attention, wrapping themselves in the flag of Palestinian resistance and pan-Arab nationalism.

Fighting terror from Gaza consumed Israel in its first 20 years. After winning wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, and 1973, Israel withdrew its forces from Gaza and Sinai as part of diplomatic settlements, hoping terror would end. Under the 1993 Israel-PLO accords, Israel handed military control in Gaza to Arafat’s PLO. Terror increased. Under Ariel Sharon, Israel, also evicted its civilians from Gaza in 2005.  Arab terror rose even more.

Hamas beat the PLO in the 2006 elections after its participation was encouraged by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Yes, it was a bad idea. Hamas then violently evicted the PLO. Gaza again became the main terror base against Israel. Its main domestic product was not locally grown flowers and citrus fruit pioneered by Israeli farmers, but rocket-based terror. Hamas called it muqawwama sarwakhiyya — “rocket-propelled resistance.”

Hamas used its state educational and social networks to mold thousands of hate-filled killers.  From first grade to summer camps, Hamas gave children rifles and taught them to hate Jews, as detailed in the 36-paragraph Hamas Covenant.

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Digging into Ramaswamy’s correct attack against Nikki Haley about TikToxic By Andrea Widburg

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/digging_into_ramaswamys_correct_attack_against_nikki_haley_about_tiktoxic.html

Last night, Nikki Haley, showing the wit, tact, and self-control that will, I’m sure, characterize a potential Haley presidency, called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” after he pointed out that, even as she had attacked him in September for setting up a TikTok campaign site, her daughter had a TikTok account. Her children, she said, are off limits. I’m siding with Ramaswamy on this one, though. TikTok targets America’s youth, so we conservatives should have a presence there. The reality is that TikTok is tik-toxic, especially because it’s corrupting American young people on everything from sexuality to Middle Eastern politics. Since it’s here, whether we like it or not, we ignore it at our peril.

As you may recall, way too late in his first term to make a difference, Donald Trump issued an executive order banning apps from ByteDance Ltd., the Chinese-controlled company that owns TikTok. He did so because he identified TikTok as a national security risk. Within months of gaining the White House, Joe Biden rescinded that executive order, inviting TikTok back into America…and the People’s Republic of China back into the minds of our children. China got what it paid for when Biden entered the Oval Office.

It’s long been known that, within China, TikTok ensures that people see videos about China’s might, patriotism, health and fitness, America’s perfidy, etc. It’s all pro-government stuff, whether social or political. However, in America, TikTok promotes videos about anorexia, steroids, self-harm, LGBTQ+ stuff, with a special focus on transgenderism, and anti-Americanism.

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Bari Weiss: End DEI It’s not about diversity, equity, or inclusion. It is about arrogating power to a movement that threatens not just Jews—but America itself. Bari Weiss

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/end-dei-woke-capture?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Twenty years ago, when I was a college student, I started writing about a then-nameless, niche ideology that seemed to contradict everything I had been taught since I was a child.

It is possible I would not have perceived the nature of this ideology—or rather I would have been able to avoid seeing its true nature—had I not been a Jew. But I was. I am. And in noticing the way I had been written out of the equation, I started to notice that it wasn’t just me, but that the whole system rested on an illusion.

What I saw was a worldview that replaced basic ideas of good and evil with a new rubric: the powerless (good) and the powerful (bad). It replaced lots of things. Color blindness with race obsession. Ideas with identity. Debate with denunciation. Persuasion with public shaming. The rule of law with the fury of the mob.

People were to be given authority in this new order not in recognition of their gifts, hard work, accomplishments, or contributions to society, but in inverse proportion to the disadvantages their group had suffered, as defined by radical ideologues. According to them, as James Kirchick concisely put it: “Muslim > gay, black > female, and everybody > the Jews.”

I was an undergraduate back then, but you didn’t need a PhD to see where this could go. And so I watched, in horror, sounding alarms as loudly as I could.

I was told by most Jewish leaders that, yes, it wasn’t great, but not to be so hysterical. Campuses were always hotbeds of radicalism, they said. This ideology, they promised, would surely dissipate as young people made their way in the world.

It did not.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

One Person Injured in Drone Explosion at School in Eilat

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://unitedwithisrael.org/one-person-injured-in-drone-explosion-at-school-in-eilat/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&

A 20-year-old man suffered smoke inhalation.

By JNS

A drone caused a large explosion at an elementary school in Eilat on Thursday afternoon, injuring one civilian, reported the Israel Defense Forces.

“A UAV hit a civilian building in the city of Eilat, in southern Israel. The identity of the UAV and the details of the incident are under review,” said the IDF.

A 20-year-old man suffered from smoke inhalation and was evacuated to the city’s Yoseftal Medical Center, the Magen David Adom emergency response service said. In addition, paramedics treated five people suffering from anxiety.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

A brief history of Kristallnacht By Jeremy B. Kay

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/a_brief_history_of_emkristallnachtem.html

November 9th marks the eighty-fifth anniversity of Kristallnacht, the infamous “night of broken glass.”

The pretext for this part-pogrom, part state-sponsored riot was the assassination of German embassy official Ernst vom Rath in Paris. Throughout Germany and Austria, primarily in heavily Jewish areas, synagogues were destroyed, businesses gutted, and for the first time, Jews were arrested by the thousands and sent to the existing concentration camps like Dachau.  

Looking back, the mortal danger to the Jews of Germany was obvious. The Jews of Germany and Austria were concerned, of course, but many were comforted by the idea that Jews had survived calamities before and discrimination even leading to violence, was often a feature of the world they lived in. They just need to lie low, and the threat would pass.

When Hitler came to power many still did not take him seriously. One Jewish commentator in Chicago echoed what was commonly believed: Speculating that while the situation for Jews in Germany was dire, it was unlikely that Hitler would remain in power past one year.

The Nazis had made it clear that Jews were to be ostracized. The Nuremberg Laws had begun to be enforced, amounting to the isolation and exclusion of Jews from society. Physicians, professors, teachers, and civil servants all faced restrictions that often prevented them even interacting with Gentiles.

Large numbers of Jews who were able left the country. But others waited. It was Kristallnacht that left no doubt; Jewish life in Germany was at an end.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

California Schools Pursue ‘Anti-Racist’ Agenda as Majority of Students Fail Math By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/08/california-schools-pursue-anti-racist-agenda-as-majority-of-students-fail-math/

In northern California, two schools are implementing an expensive “anti-racism” leadership program, even as the school struggles with as many as 75% of students failing math classes.

As Just The News reports, two schools with the Martinez Unified School District are pursuing the six-figure “Student Leaders’ Anti-Racist Movement” (SLAM) program, which states that its goal is to “empower and mobilize” students “as catalysts for change through an anti-racist leadership youth movement.”

The SLAM program is set to serve 60 students per school, and will attempt to “deepen their personal racial understanding and elevate their racial consciousness as they develop the skills and tools to disrupt systemic racism within their schools, communities, and the larger society.” The program will also force students to “think about the social, cultural, and political aspects of their experiences, with a focus on race,” and will encourage adults to “co-conspire” with students.

The initiative will last for at least three years and cost more than $37,000 per year. SLAM is led by Lori Watson, the founder of Race-Work LLC, who charges $350 per hour for her services as a “racial equity consultant and facilitator.”

Meanwhile, the two schools – Alhambra Senior High School and Martinez Junior High School – are seeing their students fall well below state averages in their math performances. Currently, a staggering 73.9% of Alhambra students are failing basic math standards, while 65.2% of Martinez students are falling. The statewide average currently sees approximately 65% of students failing math courses.

“It’s unfortunate that the Martinez Unified School Board wants to divert resources from curricula proven to work to activism that promotes racial and ethnic strife,” said Lance Christensen, the Vice President of Government Affairs at the California Policy Center. “Race hustlers are never out of ideas to trample on the dream of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. What’s worse is they don’t care about academics in our public schools.”

MEDIA Comments turned off

JOURNALIST JIHADISTS?  Employees of American news agencies apparently were embedded in plainclothes with Hamas terrorists during Oct 7th Israeli massacre

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

Thanks to Janet Levy for this explosive story….rsk

Honest Reporting is out with an absolute bombshell of a story, revealing today that Gaza-based photo journalists of the Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, who also do contract work for CNN and The New York Times, were embedded with Hamas during their killing spree across southern Israel.
Dossier Today (h/t Charlotte) The report asks many compelling questions:
What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.
It seems plausible that these “journalists” had advance knowledge of the attack and did nothing to warn authorities of the planned massacre. Not only that, the photos and videos of that horrific day show that these photojournalists were embedded with Hamas without any apparel that identifies them as press.
It seems plausible that these “journalists” had advance knowledge of the attack and did nothing to warn authorities of the planned massacre. Not only that, the photos and videos of that horrific day show that these photojournalists were embedded with Hamas without any apparel that identifies them as press.
The report even documents that one of the men, Hassan Eslaiah, who works for AP and CNN, deleted evidence of his involvement in the assault, in which Eslaiah was dressed in plainclothes.
On X.com, a photo surfaced this evening of Eslaiah embracing Yahya Sinwar, the highest ranking Hamas official in Gaza. Sinwar has been convicted of committing several murders and acts of terrorism.
While Reuters is based in London, The Associated Press, CNN, and The New York Times are all headquartered in the United States, where it is illegal to provide material support to Hamas, because the jihadist group is listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization.

MEDIA Comments turned off

How News Outlets Obtained Images of Hamas’ October 7 Terror Attack Is Soaked in Controversy Matt Vespa

Posted By on November 9th, 2023

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2023/11/08/reporters-from-major-publications-were-embedded-with-hamas-on-october-7and-knew-an-attack-was-coming-n2630973

I understand there’s a debate regarding journalists getting involved in the stories they cover. The number one rule is that you don’t become the subject. It’s a debate that’s been around for years, namely regarding the photojournalism of war-torn or poverty-stricken nations, which comes with horrid photos of death and destruction. For some, it could be disturbing that these reporters take pictures of extremely malnourished children in Africa and then go about their way, but that’s the ghoulish side of the business. 

Then, there’s having knowledge of a massive terror attack and doing nothing about it. Photographers from major publications, like The Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, and CNN, were embedded with Hamas on October 7 and followed the terrorists into Israel. There are some serious questions, though Honest Reporting, an outfit that tracks anti-Israel bias, goes so far as to accuse the photographers of potentially being complicit in a terror attack (via Honest Reporting): 

On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions. 

What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically. 

Four names appear on AP’s photo credits from the Israel-Gaza border area on October 7: Hassan Eslaiah, Yousef Masoud, Ali Mahmud, and Hatem Ali. 

Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza. 

[…] 

Masoud, who also works for The New York Times, was there as well —  just in time to set foot in Israeli territory and take more tank pictures. 

Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali were positioned to get pictures of the horrific abductions of Israelis into Gaza.