ISRAEL Comments turned off

Here on Island Israel, Bewilderment and Tough Questions It’s been a rough week and it’s not over yet. P. David Hornik

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?

It was reported Thursday evening that Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and heads of Israeli airlines were holding an emergency meeting on what to do about thousands of Israelis who have been stranded abroad since Sunday—the day a Houthi ballistic missile from Yemen penetrated both Israeli and American air defenses and hit the perimeter of the main terminal of Ben Gurion Airport, injuring six people.

Those Israelis have now been stranded all that time because the Houthi airstrike prompted almost all foreign airlines to immediately cancel flights to Israel. Many of them now say their flights to Israel will be suspended until at least mid-May; for British Airways, at this point, it’s until June 14.

The two Israeli ministers and the airline chiefs were discussing ways to help the far-flung, stranded Israelis get home; the option of the local carriers, for the time being, reducing ticket prices; and “emergency plans in case of another wave of cancellations.”

Since October 7, 2023, the feeling of being isolated on Island Israel is not new to Israelis; many of the international airlines had suspended flights to Israel since that day and only resumed them in March or April this year.

Indeed, there was something almost bizarre about what happened on Sunday. Since March 18, when Israel resumed fighting in Gaza, the Houthis had launched 26 ballistic missiles and several drones at Israel, and all had crashed into the sea before getting here or been shot down.

Yet Sunday’s missile, aimed at the airport, managed to evade both Israel’s Arrow defense system and the US THAAD defense system, deployed to Israel amid heightening tensions with Iran.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Probe the foreign influence behind these terror-loving, anti-Jew college agitators By Douglas Murray-

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/05/08/opinion/probe-foreign-influence-behind-terror-loving-anti-jew-college-agitators/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

I wonder how Columbia University would behave in the following scenario. A bunch of students and outside agitators descend on their campus. They are dressed in the gear of the Ku Klux Klan, being careful to conceal their faces so as to avoid any personal criticism. They then enter the university’s library and other sacred spaces of learning and chant for the lynching of black Americans.

Would Columbia University sit by while this happened? Would Democrat prosecutors and left-wing activists claim that this was simply a case of people exercising their free-speech rights? And would conservative pundits wishing to appear as being “on the right side of history” insist that the hooligans should be allowed to continue their threatening actions with impunity?

I would guess that the answer to these questions would be “no,” “no” and “no” again.

So why do so many people think that a movement which dedicates itself to intimidating and threatening another minority group in America — specifically Jews — find itself so cosily protected?

The thought occurs after a friend at Columbia sent me footage from the university’s Butler library — the main library on campus — from earlier this week. The Butler library is a beautiful building, intended as a sacrosanct place of study and education. Which was what places like Columbia were once for.

But on Wednesday those students who did want to study had to put up with a mob of fascists descending on their place of learning. Scores of students and others came in dressed in their terrorist chic. Their heads were wrapped in Palestinian terrorist scarves and some of them — as ever — decided to mix this up with COVID-19 protective masks.

OPINION, RELIGION Comments turned off

Fear of freedom leads us to vote for more government Diane Bederman

Posted By on May 9th, 2025

https://dianebederman.com/fear-of-freedom-leads-us-to-vote-for-more-government/

The Jewish people gave the world the ethic of freedom some 3500 years ago. God said to all present and future:

All people are born with equal intrinsic value, all life is sacred and most importantly and most frightening – we have free-will.

God told us what is good and what is evil

God gave us the blessing and the curse; life and death; choose life. Choose Good over Evil.

Unheard of until that moment. It was the first time people were told they had the right to their own views and the responsibility to make decisions. They were no longer under the control of a supreme leader. This was the first time in history that people were given freedom: and it is frightening. And, too often, fear leads to submission. Today, that submission is to governments in so-called freedom-loving countries in the West.

On the sixth day, God created man and woman: not from an utterance, not from a word, but from His hands and His breath; we are created in His image, capable of reason, moral thinking, and free will. He created Adam and Eve, the first children, the first of His children. And He placed them in the lush Garden of Eden. And He told them to eat and enjoy all that was before them in the Garden of Eden, all but the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree—right there in the middle of the garden. That sensual tree with luscious fruit. That tree. Don’t eat from that tree.

But, like all children, the admonishment not to eat piqued their curiosity, their childishness, and their innocence. How could they not try the fruit? It’s not as if it were hidden in a corner of the garden behind a fence. It was right there. In front of them. So easy to access. So forbidden. It is too much to bear. And the first children that ate of the fruit now exist in all of us, as does the first breath…

We naturally bemoan the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Had they not disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, we would all be living in paradise. And the story of the human journey would have ended. But they chose to eat of the fruit and condemned—or gifted—all of us with free will.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why Hamas Wants To Control Gaza’s Humanitarian Aid by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21598/hamas-gaza-humanitarian-aid

Palestinians… say that if anyone is stealing the humanitarian aid and food, it is Hamas.

Videos posted on social media have shown Hamas thugs brutally beating Palestinians suspected of stealing food for their families.

A day earlier, Hamas announced that three Gazans will soon be slaughtered with knives for allegedly “collaborating” with Israel. Others will have their limbs hacked off with blades for supposed “theft” of food.

“Since October 7, I’ve said it without hesitation: Hamas is ISIS – only with better PR. And that PR machine runs on Qatari money, through media outlets that spin terrorism into heroism and wash blood with propaganda.” — Hamza Howidy, Gaza-born peace and human rights advocate, X, May 4, 2025.

“There is no government, no law, no order – just fear. And as Palestinians dare to speak out, Hamas hunts them down, kidnaps them, threatens their families and silences them by force… They offer no protection, no aid, no leadership – only guns, terror, and slogans.” — Hamza Howidy, X, May 3, 2025.

“Hamas relied on criminal elements to create pandemonium that generated mass looting events which provided some cover for the terror group to commit the organized theft of what remains of food supplies in Gaza.” — Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Gaza native and senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, X, May 2, 2025.

This criminality is precisely why the international community needs to back Israel’s effort to prevent Hamas from monopolizing and embezzling humanitarian supplies sent into the Gaza Strip.

The international community should support any initiative aimed at ending Hamas’s rule over the Gaza Strip and destroying its military capabilities. Both Israel and the Palestinian people, who are paying a heavy price as a result of Hamas’s decision to commit the biggest massacre against Jews since the Holocaust, will only gain from this.

The Iran-backed Palestinian terrorist group Hamas has reconstituted its “Executive Force” as part of an effort to control humanitarian aid and “impose law and order” in the Gaza Strip.

The 5,000-strong force, originally established in 2006, has been entrusted with preventing the “theft” of food and “deterring thieves and thugs responsible for anarchy and lawlessness.”

Members of the “Executive Force” have been deployed throughout the Gaza Strip and given orders to “take all necessary measures, including the use of excessive force,” to restore security and stability to the coastal strip, according to Palestinian sources.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

George Soros: The Man and His Empire By Hayden Ludwig

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://tomklingenstein.com/george-soros-the-man-and-his-empire/

He’s the universal symbol of progressive tyranny, the image of Davos despotism. He’s the immigrant who broke the Bank of England and hedge fund master who plundered Wall Street. He’s a globe-trotting globalist active in dozens of countries, yet loyal to none. He’s the embodiment of philanthropy’s decay from its biblical pedigree into cultural Marxism. He’s a narcissist out to remake the world in his own cynical image. To those familiar with his “open society” ideology, he’s a menace bent on killing the West. 

For millions across the world, George Soros is simply the face of evil.

But much of the notorious mega-donor’s life and legacy is complicated and hazy. Even at 94, Soros wields enormous influence over the institutional Left — the armada of activist, lobbying, policy, and litigation groups that really run the modern Democratic Party — something he aims to pass on to his 39-year-old playboy son and heir, Alexander, who took control of his father’s hedge fund and foundations less than two years ago.

This writer began reporting on George Soros’s dark money spigot at its zenith in the early Trump years, when it seemed money could buy anything in Washington. Fast forward to 2025, and Soros’s open society vision is itself on the ropes — and that’s stunning.

For decades, Soros shaped the Left into the emerging totalitarian force Americans roundly rejected in November 2024. Billions of his dark money dollars launched Washington’s professional activist class from the fringe to the heart of the Democratic establishment. Now, however, even Democratic strategists are complaining that the party takes too many directives from the woketariat: the “college-educated elites” guilty of “placing a hard ceiling on Democrats’ appeal and fatally wounding them in the places they need to win,” as one operative groused after Election Day. 

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“The only Democrat group that is not actually proud of their country to a large extent at this point is progressive activists,” says liberal pollster Ruy Teixeira, who once predicted the rise of a permanent Democratic majority. “If you are trying to sell to people the idea that…America is fundamentally a benighted, almost dystopian place that was born in slavery, marinaded in racism, and white supremacists of this very day, and, you know, runs around oppressing the world’s people[,] I don’t see why anyone would sign up with you.”

For anyone familiar with the Democratic machine’s inner workings, that’s tantamount to rebellion, and utterly unprecedented. For two decades, Beltway activists — and the multi-billion-dollar foundations behind them — have ruled America’s liberal party with an iron fist. Yet in his twilight years, George Soros may live to see that once unshakeable legacy collapse. 

The Early Years

The project to fundamentally transform America may have peaked around 2020, but its most influential architect began his life in 1930 Budapest.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Principles of New Environmentalism A new environmentalism challenges climate alarmism, rejects false scarcity, and defends both ecological integrity and human freedom through practical, market-based solutions. By Edward Ring

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/05/07/principles-of-new-environmentalism/

Last month, in recognition of the annual celebration of Earth Day, it seemed appropriate to compile a list of ten common myths that constitute the major premises of modern environmentalism. That list, along with explanations of why each of these premises is unfounded and counterproductive, can be summarized as follows:

1 – There is no climate crisis.
2 – There are not too many people on Earth.
3 – We are not running out of oil/gas/coal.
4 – Biofuel is not renewable or sustainable.
5 – Offshore wind is not renewable or sustainable.
6 – Renewables are not renewable.
7 – Renewables cannot replace oil/gas/coal.
8 – Housing should not be confined to densifying existing cities.
9 – Mass transit is almost never cost-effective.
10 – Wilderness areas are not sacred.

Environmentalism, pursuant to these myths, is not a movement primarily devoted to protecting the planet’s ecosystems. It is a totalitarian political agenda that aims to consolidate power and wealth in the hands of a managerial elite that will wield absolute control over every aspect of human life. Where you live or travel, what you purchase or produce, and what you can own and consume will all be specified, monitored, and rationed. And the moral justification for this will be the “climate emergency.”

There are few examples in history that can compare to the political power grab enabled by the alleged “existential threat” of climate change. But of equal concern is the fraudulent essence of the economic and technological agenda pushed in the name of fighting climate change. It not only discredits environmentalism in the eyes of awakening millions, but, as explained in the ten myths, it also will wreak environmental havoc.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Greta Thunberg’s moral siege of Israel This is an armada of Israelophobic activists, not an aid mission. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/07/greta-thunbergs-moral-siege-of-israel/

Why isn’t Greta Thunberg sailing an aid ship to Sudan? Things are dire there. Two years of war have given rise to ‘catastrophic hunger levels’. The horrors dwarf ‘those in Ukraine, Gaza and Somalia combined’, reports Deutsche Welle. And yet the benighted Sudanese have failed to win the favour of the world’s best known eco-brat. Her boat is destined not for Africa but for the only strip of land that matters to the virtuous of the West: Gaza.

Sweden’s prophetess of doom is back in the news. She’s making waves with her plan to sail to Gaza. She and others from the turbo-smug keffiyeh classes had planned to sail on a boat called – wait for it – Conscience. Rumour has it they called it that because ‘Aren’t We Fucking Wonderful?’ was too long for the hull. But their moral expedition has been put on hold after a drone fired on their boat in waters off Malta, causing damage but no casualties.

Information is sparse. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) that’s organising this virtue-fest in the Med says 30 people were onboard at the time – the Maltese government says 16 were. Greta says Israel fired the drone, yet another ‘crystal-clear example’ that it doesn’t give a toss about ‘international law and human rights’; Israel is staying schtum.

Of course, no one wants to see Greta or her activist pals come to any harm. I’m glad that they haven’t. Yet it would be wholly wrong to describe this expedition as merely about delivering aid, as simply humanitarian. The aim of these seafaring Israelophobes is less to ‘help Gaza’ than to weaken Israel’s hold over the enemy territory it has seized in its bloody war with Hamas.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Spoiled Brats of Academe “Democracy cannot thrive without a certain diet of truth.” by Bruce Thornton

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-spoiled-brats-of-academe/

President Trump’s campaign to restore Constitutional order and common sense to our government has rightly targeted our educational institutions, keeping the pledge he made on the campaign trail “to reclaim our once great educational institutions from the radical Left.” These institutions, like a fish, rot from the head down, and so the corruption of our universities must be reduced by starting with their administrations and faculties.

That corruption became obvious during the campus protests celebrating Hamas’s brutal terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The despicable anti-Semitism of the students and faculty of some of our most prestigious universities, as well as violence directed at Jewish students, replete with genocidal chants and rhetoric, were tolerated by campus authorities and met with shameful appeasement, if not encouragement, rather than arrests and expulsions.

Trump has responded by garnishing some of the billions of dollars that taxpayers provide to universities, which use these funds to finance politicized or dubious research, create anti-American programs, and graduate majors rife with leftwing curricula filled with postmodern “higher nonsense,” but lacking any prospects of employment other than political activism. Indeed, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Wall Street Journal reports, “You have a higher chance of being unemployed these days if you go to college.”

In response, these institutions have been caterwauling like a spoiled, entitled brat whose rich father has reduced his exorbitant allowance. Typical are the comments of Princeton’s president, Christopher Eisgruber, who blustered, “The attack on Columbia is a radical threat to scholarly excellence and to America’s leadership in research . . . Universities and their leaders should speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights.”

So how did private universities with multi-billion-dollar, tax-free endowments get a “right” to taxpayer money? And how did the common-sense wisdom that “He who pays the piper calls the tune” disappear? Aren’t there conditions the feds impose on how public funds are spent? Are not politicized curricula, programs, and majors verboten?

But the left-wing’s “long march” to politicize universities is just one example of the left’s corruption of our schools. Postmodern and poststructuralist ideologies––the idiot children of Marx’s malign ideas such of “false consciousness” –– incorporate other sophistic ideas such as the simplistic, radical materialist determinism and relativism.

BOOKS, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Democracies and Death Cults Douglas Murray emerges as Israel’s fiercest non-Jewish defender. by Mark Tapson

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democracies-and-death-cults/

As faux historians, faux conservatives, and former MMA tough guys vie with each other to be the biggest antisemitic influencers in the dank sewer known as social media, one pundit stands out as the fiercest, most visible non-Jew defender of Israel’s right to exist.

Bestselling author and journalist Douglas Murray, known for his incisive observations on the embattled West, his fearlessly pro-Israel stance, and his withering verbal takedowns of Jew-hating opponents, recently released a new book: On Democracies and Death Cults: Israel and the Future of Civilization. It is both emotionally searing and intellectually rigorous, a meticulously reported deep dive into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, centered on the atrocities of October 7, 2023, and their broader implications for Western democracies. The book draws from Murray’s extensive on-the-ground reporting in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon, offering a firsthand account of the horrors perpetrated by the terror group Hamas and a trenchant critique of the West’s largely sickening response to the conflict.

Arguably the book’s greatest value is that it underscores the clash between a thriving democracy that celebrates life, and a savage ideology obsessed with death and with the eradication of Jews and their tiny Middle East state. Murray’s ability to convey the shocking horror of Palestinian brutality with understated language, combined with his warning about the dangers of the West’s perverse sympathy for Hamas, makes On Democracies and Death Cults a vital contribution to the discourse on democracy, morality, and the future of civilization.

Murray’s restrained prose manages to amplify the visceral impact of his reporting. Rather than resorting to sensationalism, he lets the grim facts of October 7 speak for themselves. The massacre, which saw Hamas terrorists and Palestinian civilians murder, rape, and abduct over 1200 Israelis in a meticulously planned assault, is recounted through the voices of survivors, victims’ families, and even captured perpetrators. Murray’s descriptions are spare yet haunting: a mother burned alive in her home, a child witnessing unspeakable brutality, a terrorist exulting in his murderous deeds.

FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Biden team sought to ‘get rid’ of Netanyahu for opposing its Gaza plans The apparent willingness of the Biden administration to consider ousting a sitting prime minister once more raises questions about U.S. interference in Israel’s internal politics. David Isaac

Posted By on May 8th, 2025

https://www.jns.org/biden-team-sought-to-get-rid-of-netanyahu-for-opposing-its-gaza-plans/

The Biden administration considered ways to “get rid” of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he wouldn’t go along with their plans for the Gaza Strip, Channel 13’s weekly investigative news show HaMakor (“The Source”) revealed on April 27.

“The White House got tired of Netanyahu and started to roll around a revolutionary idea … : how to get rid of Netanyahu,” said Raviv Drucker, who hosts the hour-long Sunday show.

The April 27 broadcast, titled “All the President’s Men,” involved in-depth interviews with nine members of former U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration, including former U.S. ambassador to Israel Thomas Nides, former national security advisor Jake Sullivan, former White House national security communications advisor John Kirby, former senior advisor for energy Amos Hochstein and former senior Biden aide Ilan Goldenberg.

Worth noting is that the program was an apologia for the Biden administration, and that Drucker is a long-time critic of Netanyahu. The episode criticized the prime minister throughout, portraying him as ungrateful, as torpedoing potential hostage deals for political reasons and missing a chance to sign a normalization agreement with Saudi Arabia, among other missteps.

According to the program, the Biden administration became aggravated by Netanyahu’s refusal to discuss the end goal of Israel’s ground invasion of Gaza, specifically, who would take charge of the Gaza Strip after Hamas had been ousted.

The Biden team proposed handing security to a foreign force, which would then turn Gaza over to Palestinian control, Goldenberg told HaMakor.