ISRAEL Comments turned off

Six Myths About Hamas ‘Hamas seeks peace.’ ‘Their rockets are harmless.’ And more lies we’ve been told for years that keep getting repeated today. By Alan Johnson (2014)

Posted By on October 29th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/six-myths-about-hamas

Alan Johnson gave this speech in 2014, after the 50-day military conflict between Israel and Hamas. We’re publishing it today, lightly edited for clarity, because we believe the myths are still with us and are still poisonous, radically misshaping the Western understanding of Hamas, Israel, and the history of the conflict, especially on the liberal left.

The horror of the 50-day conflict between Israel and Hamas is known to everyone here. You didn’t just watch it on TV. You had anguished conversations with your family and friends at home and in Israel.

You knew it was a legitimate act of self-defense by Israel against the rockets and the tunnels and the antisemitic hate of Hamas.

You knew Israel had offered Hamas “quiet for quiet” day after day in early July, holding back as the Hamas rockets rained down on Israeli civilians.

You knew that no one in Israel wanted this war. You knew Israel accepted an Egyptian cease-fire proposal seven days into the conflict while Hamas rejected it, fired more rockets, and used the terror tunnels to try and murder Israelis.

But on TV, we were presented with something quite different: a motiveless assault by a cruel IDF on Palestinian children. For a week or so, Israel’s right to self-defense was acknowledged. But then, as the number of casualties rose, Israel’s actions were called “disproportionate,” then “unjustifiable.” Then Israel was accused of “deliberately targeting civilians,” and a “slaughter of the innocents.” Before the conflict was over, the terms child killers and war criminals could be heard.

Make no mistake. Israel took a blow to the solar plexus when it came to global public opinion.

We saw several large demonstrations in London: criticism of Hamas was nowhere, but the demonization of Israel was everywhere.

We saw the National Union of Students vote to boycott Israel.

We saw the Labour Party abandon its balanced position. Ed Miliband “differentiated” the Labour Party from the Conservatives, condemning Israel’s necessary ground operation to deal with Hamas’s terror tunnels as “unacceptable and unjustifiable.” He attacked David Cameron day after day “for not condemning Israel’s unacceptable and unjustified killing of civilians in Gaza.” One of his MPs, Grahame Morris, asked the Prime Minister why returning lone IDF soldiers were not being treated in the same way as returning ISIS jihadis.

The low point was perhaps when Labour’s John Prescott, the former deputy prime minister of this country for many years, used his Daily Mirror column, twice, to say Gaza was akin to a “concentration camp” and Israel was akin to the guards.

We saw “Holocaust inversion” everywhere. You know the kind of thing—Bibi morphs into Hitler, the IDF into the SS, and so on.

And we had Vince Cable calling for a review of arms exports to Israel if. . . Israel responded one more time to those Hamas rocket attacks.

The point is this: we mostly lost the war to interpret the war.

Why?

I want to suggest that one important reason was that six myths about Hamas and Gaza took hold. These myths gave people a framework of understanding that hurt Israel, badly. Many people could not see Israel plainly. They could only see the evil caricature constructed by the six myths.

First Myth: The Israeli Blockade of Gaza Is Motiveless and Cruel, and It Is the Cause of the Hamas Rockets.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Thanks, to a Politician Who Did His Job When the IRS visited my home, Jim Jordan actually did something about it. Why couldn’t I call a Democrat? Matt Taibbi

Posted By on October 29th, 2023

https://www.racket.news/p/thanks-to-a-politician-who-did-his

A new report about IRS home visits has just been released by the House Weaponization of Government Committee, chaired by Ohio congressman Jim Jordan. It outlines disturbing issues, including confirmation that IRS agents making home visits may come without warning, using aliases, and without informing local enforcement agencies of their presence.

One of the cases outlined is my own. My home was visited by the IRS while I was testifying before Jordan’s Committee about the Twitter Files on March 9th. Sincere thanks are due to Chairman Jordan, whose staff not only demanded and got answers in my case, but achieved a concrete policy change, as IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel announced in July new procedures that would “end most” home visits.

Anticipating criticism for expressing public thanks to a Republican congressman, I’d like to ask Democratic Party partisans: to which elected Democrat should I have appealed for help in this matter? The one who called me a “so-called journalist” on the House floor? The one who told me to take off my “tinfoil hat” and put greater trust in intelligence services? The ones in leadership who threatened me with jail time? I gave votes to the party for thirty years. Which elected Democrat would have performed basic constituent services in my case? Feel free to raise a hand.

If silence is the answer, why should I ever vote for a Democrat again?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Amy Klobuchar, You Are the Worst By Matt Taibbi

Posted By on October 29th, 2023

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/10/28/amy_klobuchar_you_are_the_worst.html

Note: The following is reprinted with permission from Racket News.

Minnesota Senator and Hindenburg presidential candidacy Amy Klobuchar sent a letter (h/t ReclaimTheNet.org) to Jeff Bezos demanding that he enjoin Alexa from citing “unvetted sources,” specifically Substack and Rumble. No hell is hot enough for this person.

Referring to a Washington Post story complaining that Alexa cited Substack, she wrote: “When asked about the 2020 presidential election, it appears that some answers were provided by contributors instead of verified news sources.”

Amy Klobuchar is the absolute fave of the national media consensus. They love her so much, they speak in italics. “Oh, my God. She’s great. And funny, too!” gushed a cameraman to me in Winterset, Iowa, birthplace of John Wayne, four years ago. He was standing astride an AMY AMY AMY banner in a diner packed with press admirers, who are legion, everywhere. The “funny” legend came courtesy mostly of one joke she repeated everywhere she went, over and over, clinging to the one time Donald Trump bothered to mention her, tweeting about her looking like a “Snow woman.” Funny Amy’s retort?

“I wonder how your hair would fare in a blizzard,” she’d say, in a nasal voice, laugh-snorting at her own joke. In my time following her I heard the joke about five times. By the last I was ready to drive a railroad spike through my foot.

National press tried endlessly to sell the public on “funny” Amy, always emphasizing her geographic origin, as if she were the media’s running mate. The New York Times, in an interview over “dumplings” in which Klobuchar talked about how she thinks about “her own humor and power,” described her act as a “clean, ‘aw, shucks’ approach that conveys her own background as a Midwesterner.” The paper noted: Klobuchar could remember many times when people laughed at her jokes! “She laughs easily… and can recall dozens of her successful zingers.”

NPR did a segment on how “Amy Klobuchar Turns To Humor To Distinguish Herself Among Candidates,” with Mary Louise Kelly abasing herself with the intro, “In the 24-person Democratic presidential field, Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota has distinguished herself as a comedian.” U.S. News and World Report went with, “How Amy Klobuchar’s Humor Sets Her Apart,” and claimed her ability to “savagely deploy a zinger” would be a “critical element in taking on Donald Trump” (!). Barack Obama gushed that Al Franken was now Minnesota’s “second-funniest Senator,” while the hometown Minnesota Post went with “Amy Klobuchar is Hilarious,” adding — this is real — the following deck:

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Amy Klobuchar can legislate, but can she tell a joke? The answer is a resounding “yes” — as in bring-down-the-house, my-stomach-hurts-from-laughing, “yes.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Stronger Action Needed Against Iran by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20102/stronger-action-needed-against-iran

Removing even just one oil refinery might also “send a message” and persuade Iran’s ruling mullahs to rethink their plans.

The Biden administration, it appears, has been funding both sides of two wars: Hamas’s invasion of Israel, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

When the Iranian regime says, “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” they mean it. The US, by trying to bribe Iran not to carry out at least the American part of that threat, has, in reality, been financing Iran’s ability to do exactly that. Instead of neutralizing the avowed murderers of Americans, the US is bankrolling them.

The US needs to resume, even step up, enforcing sanctions to cut off the flow of funds to the Iranian regime. If not, the next war, when Iran has nuclear weapons, will make this one look like one of those five-star hotels in Qatar.

With the Biden administration’s deference towards the ruling mullahs of Iran, its regime — called the world’s “top state sponsor of terrorism” — is so far still the winner of Hamas’s barbaric massacre on October 7. The invaders from Gaza killed at least 1,400 people in Israel, including at least 31 Americans, wounded 4, 500 people, and abducted more than 222 people who were taken back to Gaza as hostages. Thirteen US citizens are still unaccounted for.

Iran has targeted US forces in Syria and Iraq 83 times since January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office.

When the US finally launched retaliatory strikes on Syria on October 26, Iran itself was carefully avoided.

One can only hope that a strong enough message was sent to the Iranian regime and its proxies — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hizballah, the Houthis in Yemen — many of whose leaders are tucked safely away in five-star hotels in Qatar.

It is shameful that the Biden administration continues to deny that Iran had any role in Hamas’s attempted genocide, while the leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah have themselves confessed that their paymaster, Iran’s regime, helped plan the attack.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

What Israel Needs from America … and What it is Getting from Joe Biden Netanyahu has known Biden for decades and is quite familiar with his foreign policy incompetence By Fred Fleitz

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/27/what-israel-needs-from-america-and-what-it-is-getting-from-joe-biden/

After the brutal Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, the most horrific attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Israel and the Jewish people need America’s steadfast support.

This means immediate and robust backing from our President and Congress. Israel urgently needs military, humanitarian, and financial aid to destroy Hamas and recover from the October 7 terrorist attack. It also needs America’s support in the information war, which is being relentlessly waged against Israel and the Jewish people by Hamas, other radical Islamists, the global Left, and the mainstream media.

American support for Israel must be unequivocal. There can’t be any daylight between the United States and Israel. If the Biden Administration has differences with Israel on how it plans to respond to the Hamas attack or other issues, it must relay these concerns privately. Any such private communications cannot be leaked to the press.

America also must speak plainly about who ultimately was behind the October 7 terrorist attack – Iran. The Biden Administration must halt its efforts to appease Iran and hold Tehran responsible for this atrocity.

These are the things that a President who is a true friend of Israel would do at this critical moment in its history. Sadly, President Biden’s actions and statements since the October 7 terrorist attack prove that he is far from a true friend of Israel.

The President was widely praised for stating his support for Israel after the October 7 terrorist attack in which he communicated America’s total commitment and support to Israel, that Israel has the right to respond to the slaughter of their people, and for calling Israel America’s most reliable ally in the Middle East. Biden also strongly condemned the Hamas attack as “sickening,” “pure unadulterated evil,” and a “violation of every code of human morality.”

Unfortunately, these statements were followed by a mishmash of contradictory statements, lectures to the Israeli government, and criticism by Biden and his senior officials.

Biden qualified his support for Israel defending itself against Hamas by saying any Israeli attack in Gaza must be governed by the rule of law to protect innocent Palestinian civilians. He also stated that Israel must not be consumed by rage in responding to the Hamas attack.

These are not things a U.S. president should be saying to a close U.S. ally who is at war.

As Israel grieves over the 1,300 killed in the horrendous terrorist attack and braces for the next stage of the war, President Biden has publicly dictated to Israel how to conduct the war and its aftermath. Biden has warned Israel against a full-scale occupation of Gaza. The President also called for the inept and deeply corrupt Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza and said that the Israel-Hamas conflict must end with the two-state solution, a now-dead proposal that all Palestinian parties have repeatedly rejected.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Law Enforcement Must Act against Antisemitism-Fueled Violence and Intimidation Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/law-enforcement-must-act-against-antisemitism-fueled-violence-and-intimidation/

Charlie’s post on the rising tide of antisemitism, as well as the indifference (and worse) to it in the media and on American college campuses, should be required reading. Until perusing it, I had missed the sleight of hand in the New York Times’ coverage of the appalling incident Wednesday at the Cooper Union, where Jewish students were barricaded in a library to protect themselves from a pro-Palestinian mob (many of them, as ever, young white radical leftists). Here’s the part of the Times’ report that stopped me in my tracks:

The tensions inflamed by the Israel-Hamas war that have roiled university campuses in the United States spilled into the Cooper Union in New York on Wednesday, with pro-Palestinian protesters pounding on one side of locked library doors and Jewish students on the other. [Emphasis added.]

In his superb news post on this incident, our reporter Zach Kessel includes the relevant video clip (from a post on X/Twitter by Jake Novak). Have a look at it.

I’ll wait — the clip is just six seconds long.

Now, if you just read the report in the Times, you would naturally assume that there was a locked door separating the pro-Palestinian “protesters” and the Jewish students, with both groups pounding on it. But that’s not what happened. The mob pounded on the door. The Jewish students were, as the Times states, “on the other [“side of the locked library doors”]. But they were not pounding. They were huddled and undoubtedly frightened that the mob was going to break through.

How long do you figure the Gray Lady’s reporters and editors agonized over how to frame the story so that it was literally accurate but still utterly mendacious — the “both-sides garbage” that Charlie aptly describes.

When Rich and I recorded the podcast this morning, I repeated an argument I made on X/Twitter yesterday (here): It’s not good enough for government officials (such as President Biden) to rhetorically condemn the shocking incidents of antisemitism-fueled intimidation and violence. The federal and state governments have civil-rights laws on the books that empower them to prosecute. I discussed one of them on the podcast, Section 241 of the federal penal code, which states in pertinent part:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person . . . in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States . . . they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both.

The statute has been held constitutional because there is no free-speech right to threaten and intimidate people out of the enjoyment of their basic rights. That kind of incitement, that type of extortionate and intimidating speech, is an inextricable part of mob violence — such that Section 241 provides for potential death-penalty charges or a sentence of life-imprisonment if death results from the threatening conduct, as it sometimes does.

It is atrocious in the United States of America in 2023 that Jewish people are made to live in fear and be intimidated out of enjoying the basic rights we all take for granted — to walk the public streets, move about school and attend classes, attend religious services, wear clothing that signals their adherence to their faith, and so on.

ELECTIONS, HISTORY Comments turned off

That Old Republican Brawl By Amity Shlaes

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/that-old-republican-brawl/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=capital-matters&utm_term=second

Republicans should learn from their own history to avoid a replay of the 1912 election in 2024.

If Republicans have this much trouble choosing a speaker of the House, they can’t consider policy. If they can’t consider policy, they can’t build a strong platform. And if they can’t build a strong platform, they will have nothing to stand on in the next presidential election.

The default will be a mêlée of loyalists of various stripes — traditional Republicans, the odd libertarian, Trump revivalists — and of course, Donald Trump himself. The result is that policy itself will get neglected in the crucial 2024 year, to the enormous detriment of the American economy.

The price of such a free-for-all becomes clear when you go back to another point when Republicans brawled: the year 1912.

Playing the Trump role in that period was Theodore Roosevelt, though TR hadn’t started out as a powermonger. In his early years TR was a reformer, shining a spotlight on corruption in New York state. The early TR was also an American expansionist and a warrior — the Rough Rider who breached a steep ravine to emerge victorious at the Battle of San Juan Hill. Roosevelt became president after an assassin felled William McKinley in 1901.

And the presidency went to Roosevelt’s head. As president, he electrified the nation with impulsive forays — to call some of them “policies” would be a stretch. He forced a coup in Colombia to secure the Panama Canal, a step so brazen that Senator S. I. Hayakawa of California would comment of Panama, “We stole it fair and square.” But it was on the domestic front that most Americans focused. Here Roosevelt proved equally heedless, wielding the Department of Justice like a cudgel against business leaders he branded as “malefactors of wealth.”

Roosevelt selected as successor his friend William Howard Taft, who had a certain Burkean incrementalism. “We are all imperfect,” Taft once intoned. “We cannot expect perfect government.” Taft was also a fine jurist who could lay out the value of the separation of powers with all the skill of Montesquieu. “Wise deliberation,” Taft said, “may constitute the salvation of our republic.”

When it came to defending the Constitution, Taft managed to convert theory into action: persuading Congress to back legislation that gave the Supreme Court more independence to set its own agenda, as well as supporting funding for a symbol of that independence, a separate Supreme Court building. It is this champion of judicial independence some of us hope to learn more of in Walter Stahr’s forthcoming Taft biography.

Meanwhile we can study the Taft whom we know — the one who, against his own nature, opted to play the loyalist in his era’s electoral theater. As Jeffrey Rosen shows in his own perspicacious biography, after his 1908 election Taft devoted his first years in office to dignifying Roosevelt’s excesses by forcing them into a constitutional corset.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

It Can Happen Here By Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/it-can-happen-here/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second

Earlier today, Charlie Cooke wrote eloquently about how Jews have been horrifyingly (and yet, alas, to us conservatives, entirely predictably) abandoned by their woke former brethren on the left even as they are now being directly persecuted on college campuses across America. In that piece, he centered the singular and wildly alarming protest/public-intimidation session that took place yesterday at Cooper Union, a college in New York City. Zach Kessel has now provided a fuller account of the latest reporting on the disgrace. Read both pieces, for I fear this story — and the school’s craven and wickedly bloodless response — represents a real escalation of danger for Jewish students nationwide. The radicals are getting bolder, and they are getting away with it. It is right to worry about where this all ends — or begins, for that matter.

The short version is that a pro-Palestinian demonstration (one composed primarily of students and instructors, though Lord knows who might be capable of worming their way into the inattentive heart of such a crowd) supposed to take place outside the urban campus of Cooper Union “somehow” veered onto campus. The chanting protesters then marched farther onward into the main building and proceeded to barricade the library once word spread that there were Jews — honest-to-goodness, in-the-flesh, kippah-wearing Jews! — available conveniently right there on the premises to bully, threaten, and terrify.

ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

Israel Screens Horrific Footage from Hamas Attacks for U.S. Media: What We Saw By Jimmy Quinn

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/israel-screens-horrific-footage-from-hamas-attacks-for-u-s-media/

NR attended the screening with other journalists in New York, as Israel tries to combat disinformation about the assault.

As Israel combats worsening denialism of the atrocities that Hamas terrorists committed on October 7, officials from the country screened footage from the attacks for reporters today in New York.

I joined about 20 other journalists in a 14th-floor Manhattan conference room to watch the horrific video, which includes footage and images from a range of sources — such as cameras that Hamas attackers wore, dash cams, traffic cameras, and the phones of terrorists, their victims, and first responders — providing evidence of the crimes that Hamas carried out in Israel this month. The footage shows gagged and bound civilians burnt to an unidentifiable crisp; the casual and summary execution of people, including children, cowering under desks in the dark as they hide from terrorists wearing headlamps; the grisly decapitation of a Thai worker already bleeding from the stomach by a terrorist using a garden hoe; and other horrors.

Today’s session was the first time that the video, which is about 45 minutes long, has been screened outside of Israel. Earlier this week, the IDF invited international journalists to watch it near Tel Aviv. Otherwise, officials told us, only President Biden and a few other top leaders have viewed the clips, which will also be taken to the U.N., where anti-Israel sentiment runs rampant.

The Israeli officials did not seem to know for certain if the video would be more widely circulated in the future. So far, it’s been shown only to journalists, under the condition that we not record any portion of it. Upon arriving, I had to leave my electronics in a locker downstairs. The primary concern is respect for the families of the victims, who have not authorized the public release of the videos, officials said. Acting Israeli consul-general Aviv Ezra said after the screening that the foreign minister has sought to share the video with specific audiences because we “can’t sugarcoat it” and because of the “conspiracy people” and the reality of Holocaust denial.

It is impossible to know the true prevalence of denial of Hamas’s atrocities. But some prominent figures have joined the deniers’ ranks. During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour this week, Queen Rania of Jordan — a U.S. ally — complained about the media’s purported “double standards” regarding the war. “Even on CNN, at the beginning of the conflict there was a headline that reported on Israeli children found slaughtered in an Israeli kibbutz. It was not independently verified,” she said, asking if CNN would publish something that was not already verified. But atrocities targeting children had already been extensively documented. Queen Rania’s understanding of the situation would benefit from viewing the video: It showed nightmarish images of dead babies and children.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

It Got Worse: Nellie Bowles

Posted By on October 28th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/tgif-it-got-worse?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Campus has fallen: Normally TGIF feels like whack-a-mole, in a fun way. The truly crazy things that the left and right do are rare enough, and we can visit them, laugh, and move along to the weekend. These days? It feels like walking through the aftermath of an earthquake. That’s especially true when it comes to American college campuses, which are now just smoking piles of rubble. Like, here’s where the library used to be and oh my god, we’ve lost the entire field of sociology. Which we have. Read on:

Nearly 2,000 sociologists signed a letter that Israel was committing “genocide” and anything Hamas does is justified by the “context.” The University of California, Berkeley Ethnic Studies Faculty Council released a statement condemning anyone who describes what Hamas did as “terrorism,” which is offensive. The student leader of a Wellesley residential house wrote to the entire dorm she oversees: “We firmly believe that there should be no space, no consideration, and no support for Zionism within the Wellesley College community.” Harvard launched a task force to help ensure the pro-Hamas protesters feel safe and can get jobs while also berating any Jews they might find. At George Washington University, students projected onto the side of the school library: GLORY TO OUR MARTYRS and FREE PALESTINE FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA. At Stanford, students are asking the school to pay for round-trip tickets for Muslim students to visit home: “Full round trip covered by University upon the signing of a ceasefire for students to visit their family and friends and grieve properly.” (Okay, fine, that one’s funny; just think of the Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine president calmly trying to explain preferred pronouns to a jihadi upon arrival. On second thought: TGIF will personally sponsor any queer activist who wants to fly to Iran. Honestly, I’m curious what would happen.)

At Cooper Union, pro-Hamas protesters chased a clutch of Jewish students into the library. Video from inside shows the young Jews standing, frightened, as the protesters pound on the doors. What exactly would they have done if they got in? Librarians reportedly offered to hide the students in the attic. The joke writes itself. 

The protesters trying to ram through those doors to beat up the Jewish students might even be up for some extra credit. Professors are starting to offer it to anyone who joins a pro-Hamas protest. 

Here’s Berkeley professor Victoria Huynh: “Hi everyone, We’re offering a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity: (1) Students can attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza (info attached below) OR (2) Students can watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative using this linktree. Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.” First of all: Who talks to college students about “field trips?” Anyway, UCLA professors are also offering extra credit for students who go to pro-Hamas rallies. 

And after graduation, the future that awaits these students trying to ram through the doors also looks golden: here are some of the hundreds of academic job postings for roles in various normal-sounding departments that say they’re only looking for people who want to push for “decolonization.”

Sensing the vibes weren’t right, Columbia postponed its annual Giving Day, which usually raises tens of millions for the school. It’s really hard to shake down Jewish alumni when your faculty and students are also trying to do a pogrom. The list of donors who are pulling their gifts keeps growing: the latest is billionaire Leon Cooperman, who declared on television: “I think these kids at the colleges have shit for brains.”

Hats off to Marc Rowan and everyone who has finally realized that the only response here is to stop funding the Ivy Intifada. Write to tips@thefp.com if you know of more. And to college students reading this: campus has fallen, you’re on your own, good luck!