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September 2018

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The Misrepresentation of Israel’s Democracy Matthew Continetti

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/misrepresentation-israels-democracy/

Early in the morning of July 19, after eight hours of debate, the Knesset passed by a vote of 62–55 (with two abstentions) a law codifying Israel’s status as the national home of the Jewish people. First introduced in 2011 by the centrist Kadima Party, the so-called nation-state bill joined more than a dozen “Basic Laws” that now function as Israel’s unwritten constitution. Its 11 paragraphs mostly restate long-operative principles of Israeli democracy: Hebrew is the national language, “Hatikvah” is the national anthem, the menorah is the national emblem, Jerusalem is the nation’s capital, and Israel is where the self-determination of the Jewish nation is exercised.

One might find it surprising that such generalities would provoke a global outcry. Then again, Israel and selective indignation seem to go together like peanut butter and jelly. Criticisms run the gamut from saying the law is unnecessary and provocative to saying it’s racist and anti-democratic. The Israeli left, in alliance with Israel’s minority Arabs and Druze, has marched in the streets. Institutions of the Jewish Diaspora have called for the law’s repeal. They have found themselves, rather uneasily, on the same side of the debate as anti-Zionists and Israel-haters in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in Muslim capitals, and in the EU and UN. “The spirit of Hitler, which led the world to a great catastrophe, has found its resurgence among some of Israel’s leaders,” said Turkey’s Recep Tayip Erdogan.

Leaving aside anti-Semites such as Erdogan, reasonable people and friends of Israel may disagree about the necessity and utility of the nation-state law. Such disagreement, however, ought to be based on facts. And facts have been sorely lacking in recent discussions of Israel—thanks to an uninformed, biased, and one-sided media. Major journalistic institutions have become so wedded to a pro-Palestinian, anti–Benjamin Netanyahu narrative, in which Israel is part of a global trend toward nationalist authoritarian populism, that they have abdicated any responsibility for presenting the news in a dispassionate and balanced manner. The shameful result of this inflammatory coverage is the normalization of anti-Israel rhetoric and policies and widening divisions between Israel and the Diaspora.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Journalist Paralyzed, Gravely Ill in Turkish Prison by Uzay Bulut

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12943/turkey-journalist-prison

Medeni Duran wrote that his imprisoned brother Metin “cannot walk, speak, or eat and does not recognize anyone anymore. He can only breathe.”

Mistreatment and even torture of journalists and media employees, along with arbitrary arrests, are getting alarmingly commonplace in Turkey.

At least 183 journalists and media workers in Turkey in are being held, either in pretrial detention or serving a prison sentence, according to the Platform for Independent Journalism.

Dissident journalists and writers in Turkey increasingly face government threats and arbitrary arrests for their work and opinions, but for Metin Duran, the punishments have been even more grotesque.

Duran, 37, has been jailed on terrorism-related charges in Sincan Prison, near Ankara, since March 30, 2018. But he is not aware of where he is or what the court decided about him.

A former journalist for Radyo Rengin, a radio station in the city of Mardin in southeastern Turkey, Duran lost part of his memory, along with his ability to walk and speak, after a stroke that followed a heart attack on October 10, 2015. Yet despite these crippling disabilities, he was sent to prison on March 30 and remains there, the Mezopotamya news agency (MA) reported.

Ahmet Kanbal, the journalist who covered Duran’s imprisonment for Mezopotamya, told Gatestone:

“Duran’s trial got started in 2015 and lasted for more than a year. He was eventually sentenced to a prison term of three years, one month, and fifteen days. His lawyer then appealed to the Supreme Court; this proceeding also lasted for more than two years. When Duran’s punishment was finally approved, he was arrested on his sickbed on March 30.”

Duran’s radio station was shut down by emergency decree following an attempted coup in 2016 against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

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MOVIES AND TELEVISION Comments turned off

Missing in Action: The American Flag on the Moon by David C. Stolinsky

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12958/american-flag-moon-gosling

Ryan Gosling admits he sees things as a Canadian. So it is all right for Gosling to see himself as a Canadian, but it is not all right for Neil Armstrong to see himself an American?

During the Second World War, Oskar Schindler escaped the clutches of the Gestapo by claiming that “his” Jews were doing essential war work. But Schindler also did something that, had it been discovered, he would have been tortured and executed. He stole guns and gave them to “his” Jews, so that they could defend themselves.

The film “Schindler’s List” ran 3 hours 15 minutes, yet somehow there was no time to include this incident. An anti-gun agenda was apparently more important to the filmmakers than the depiction of this dramatic and revealing incident.

Rewriting history and erasing images are symptoms of budding totalitarianism. The moon landing was “one giant step for mankind.” Omitting the planting of the American flag is another small step away from freedom and toward totalitarianism. Totalitarians do not really care whether you believe their lies. If you do, you help to maintain their power. If, however, you do not believe the lies, yet are forced to repeat them, you admit that you have sold your mind — and perhaps your soul.

We learn both from what we see and from what we do not see: this is especially true if we do not see something because it was intentionally deleted. This tells us something about those who deleted it. They considered it so important that they went to the trouble of trying to erase it from our national consciousness. Why? What was so contrary to their value system that they found it intolerable?

The photo above is one of the most famous images in history. In 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were the first humans to set foot on the moon: planting the American flag on the moon was an iconic event. I would bet serious money that the great majority of the 7.5 million people on earth can identify that photo. But not Hollywood. The scene was omitted from the movie “The First Man”

Ryan Gosling, who plays Armstrong, claims that Armstrong did not see himself as an American hero. Like Medal of Honor recipients, he did not see himself as a hero, but he surely saw himself as an American. As 95-year-old Chuck Yeager says, “That’s not the Neil Armstrong I knew.”

Gosling admits he sees things as a Canadian. So it is all right for Gosling to see himself as a Canadian, but it is not all right for Neil Armstrong to see himself an American?

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Irish realities Christopher Montgomery

By on September 5th, 2018

http://standpointmag.co.uk/node/7214/full

Books tell you very little about things that happened to you but a lot about the people who write them. It’s not a very original thought: I first heard something like it as a teenager watching Sir Geoffrey Howe on Newsnight after the first televised dramatisation of Mrs Thatcher’s fall. “Ah,” the great man sighed, “so that’s how it was, you think, when you see how it was in a room you weren’t in. But then you see yourself and realise, no, it wasn’t like that at all.” Journalists are rarely in written-about rooms, but, poor social eunuchs, are cursed forever to write about them. And by some distance the most baleful consequence of Brexit has been all the books about it.

The fleetest of these was Brexit Revolt, written by staff at this magazine. It being the first Brexit book launch party, I went: it was also the last I could bear. The late Helen Szamuley, a Brexiteer schismatic of the finest sort, came up to me and said, “Oh, you were a director of Vote Leave.” Eye-narrowing pause. “You didn’t deserve to win.” Only one sorrowful lot suffer more from Brexit having won than other Brexiteers and that’s the Most Oppressed People Ever. And no book is more lamentable than Brexit And Ireland (Penguin, £9.99) by RTE’s Europe Editor, Tony Connelly.

Imagining a banshee keening in your ear, forever, is an improvement on the experience of reading this dreary, repetitive book. But it, and its Northern Ireland-born author, illustrate our great problem with Ireland: our ignorance of its self-pity. It’s impossible for all but the most determined Briton to comprehend the passive-aggressive neurotic skulking to our west. But if forced to finish this book, you will benefit from yet another of Brexit’s miraculous boons and see quite how odd the Irish view of reality is.

For example, did you know that during the referendum Ireland’s European Commissioner, by his campaigning in the UK, “made a real contribution [to Remain]. He might even have swung quite a number of votes”? Since you struggle to name our own Commissioner a nagging doubt troubles you about this eccentric claim. But there’s more. Phil Hogan, for it was he who swung the votes, was not the only Irish official to campaign in our referendum: their ambassador and six ministers did likewise. Who am I to say whether this was happily counter-productive in addition to being markedly unwise, but the fact is that they did it.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

Woodward and the Mystery of Trump How does a chaotic White House get so much done? By James Freeman

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/woodward-and-the-mystery-of-trump-1536098699Bob Woodward is preparing to release the latest book describing a chaotic Trump White House led by an unhinged ignoramus. Also in the news today, the manufacturing revival promised by the alleged ignoramus is in full swing.

As is his custom, Mr. Woodward includes in his new book a great deal of material from anonymous sources. The result, according to his colleagues at the Washington Post, is a “a harrowing portrait of the Trump presidency.” The Post reports:

A central theme of the book is the stealthy machinations used by those in Trump’s inner sanctum to try to control his impulses and prevent disasters, both for the president personally and for the nation he was elected to lead.

Woodward describes “an administrative coup d’etat” and a “nervous breakdown” of the executive branch, with senior aides conspiring to pluck official papers from the president’s desk so he couldn’t see or sign them.

According to the book, the most senior of the President’s aides thinks the President is out of his mind:

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly frequently lost his temper and told colleagues that he thought the president was “unhinged,” Woodward writes. In one small group meeting, Kelly said of Trump: “He’s an idiot. It’s pointless to try to convince him of anything. He’s gone off the rails. We’re in Crazytown. I don’t even know why any of us are here. This is the worst job I’ve ever had.”

This afternoon, the White House released a statement from General Kelly that referenced a similar report from NBC in May:

The idea I ever called the President an idiot is not true. As I stated back in May and still firmly stand behind: “I spend more time with the President than anyone else, and we have an incredibly candid and strong relationship. He always knows where I stand, and he and I both know this story is total BS. I’m committed to the President, his agenda, and our country. This is another pathetic attempt to smear people close to President Trump and distract from the administration’s many successes.” CONTINUE AT SITE

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POLITICS Comments turned off

Democratic Activist Ousts Incumbent Massachusetts Congressman in Primary Ayanna Pressley, who beat incumbent Rep. Michael Capuano, instantly joins the ranks of new party stars in 2018 By Reid J. Epstein

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/democratic-activist-ousts-incumbent-massachusetts-congressman-in-primary-1536111132?mod=hp_lead_pos4

In the latest upset among Democrats, Ayanna Pressley, a Boston city councilor who ran as a progressive activist, beat 10-term Democratic Rep. Michael Capuano on Tuesday in a Massachusetts House primary.

Ms. Pressley becomes the second Democrat to defeat an incumbent House member in a 2018 primary. She rode energy from the party’s resistance to President Trump to topple Mr. Capuano, who Federal Election Commission records show raised about twice as much money as she did.

Ms. Pressley’s victory instantly thrusts her into the ranks of the new Democratic stars of 2018, alongside New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only other Democrat to oust an incumbent member of Congress this year, and Andrew Gillum, who last week won an upset victory to become the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida.
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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Her Too An ivory-tower “victim” is exposed as a predator. Bruce Bawer

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271241/her-too-bruce-bawer

Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, Les Moonves, Al Franken: the list of high-profile persons who’ve been accused of using their professional power to sexually exploit others continues to grow. One of the most recent additions to the roster is a woman – a lesbian, in fact – whose name may mean nothing to you but who, like Weinstein in Hollywood and Franken on Capitol Hill, has long wielded considerable power within her own professional community. Her name is Avital Ronell, and she’s a 66-year-old “superstar” professor at New York University, where she’s a member of both the Germanic Languages and Literature Department and the Comparative Literature Department, and at the European Graduate School in Switzerland, where she’s on the philosophical faculty.

Ronell’s accuser, a young gay man named Nimrod Reitman, alleges that back in 2012, when he was one of Ronell’s grad students, she sexually assaulted him at her pied à terre in Paris, proceeded to flood his in-box with scores of romantic e-mails, and then, some time later, moved into his Manhattan apartment (and bed) when Hurricane Sandy cut off the electricity to her NYU apartment. When, after his graduation, he finally began resisting her aggressive moves – he says he was too worried about professional retaliation to do so earlier – she allegedly tried to sabotage his career.

A protégée of the late Jacques Derrida, Ronell practices what is known, broadly, as postmodern theory, churning out prose – at once playful, pretentious, and deliberately obscure – that’s meant to be a shot across the bow of the rational post-Enlightenment West. Half a century or so ago, professors in English departments taught literature. Philosophy professors taught the history of philosophy. Their present-day successors, such as Ronell, whom you can put in any and all humanities and social-sciences departments, because they’re all working pretty much the same scam, view themselves as doing something infinitely more consequential than passing on the great ideas of Western civilization.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The South Africa Question Is the country going the way of Zimbabwe? Walter Williams

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271243/south-africa-question-walter-williams

South Africa has been thrown into the news because of President Donald Trump’s recent tweet that he instructed his secretary of state to “closely study” alleged land seizures from white farmers in South Africa.

Earlier this year, a land confiscation motion was brought by radical Marxist opposition leader Julius Malema, and it passed South Africa’s Parliament by a 241-83 vote. Malema has had a long-standing commitment to land confiscation without compensation. In 2016, he told his supporters he was “not calling for the slaughter of white people — at least for now” (https://tinyurl.com/y7mfmhco). The land-grabbing sentiment is also expressed by Lindsay Maasdorp, national spokesman for Black First Land First, a group that condones land seizures in South Africa. He says, “We are going to take back the land, and we’ll do it by any means necessary.” The land confiscation policy was a key factor in the platform of the new president, Cyril Ramaphosa.

I have visited South Africa several times, in 1979, 1980 and 1992. My three-month 1980 visit included lectures at nearly all South African universities. The 1992 return visit, two years after apartheid ended and two years before democratic elections, included lectures on my book “South Africa’s War Against Capitalism.” During each visit, my counsel to South Africans, particularly black South Africans, was that the major task before them was not only ridding the nation of apartheid but deciding what was going to replace it.

That’s an important question. William Hutt, the late University of Cape Town economist who was an anti-apartheid voice within the academic community, wrote in his 1964 book, titled “The Economics of the Colour Bar,” that one of the supreme tragedies of the human condition is that those who have been the victims of injustices or oppression “can often be observed to be inflicting not dissimilar injustices upon other races.” In 2001, Andrew Kenny wrote an article titled “Black People Aren’t Animals — But That’s How Liberals Treat Them.” Kenny asked whether South Africa is doomed to follow the rest of Africa into oblivion. Kenny gave a “no” answer to his question, but he was not very optimistic because of the pattern seen elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa. He argued that ordinary Africans were better off under colonialism. Colonial masters never committed anything near the murder and genocide seen under black rule in Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Nigeria, Mozambique, Somalia and other countries, where millions of blacks have been slaughtered in unspeakable ways, including being hacked to death, boiled in oil, set on fire and dismembered. Kenny said that if as many elephants, zebras and lions were as ruthlessly slaughtered, the world’s leftists would be in a tizzy (https://tinyurl.com/ybj4u9fj).

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Nike’s new romance with an America-hating racist. Daniel Greenfield

By on September 5th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271240/nike-social-justice-slave-labor-shoe-hates-america-daniel-greenfield

It’s a bad time for bad sneakers.

Nike sales have seen their slowest growth in seven years. It was the worst performing Dow stock of 2016. Americans don’t seem to want badly made overpriced shoes put together by slave labor.

The failing company tried to turn around its poor sales by doubling down on its abrasive lefty politics. Nike’s Consumer Direct Offense was supposed to stand for reclaiming American market share, instead of directly offending consumers. But if Nike can’t sell its shoddy athletic wear, it can offend Americans.

Last winter, Nike unveiled the “Pro Hijab”. Now it decided to make Colin Kaepernick, the racist black nationalist who began the trend of protesting the national anthem, into the face of its Just Do It campaign. Nike’s new contract with its America-hating racist will rush out Kaepernick shoes and jerseys. No word on whether Kaepernick’s socks showing police officers as pigs will also be part of the package.

Nike will pay Kaepernick millions every year with a deal that looks like those of “top-end” NFL players. Actually being a top-end player or having the talent to be one is surplus to social justice requirements.

The huge payday for Kaepernick clashes with Just Do It’s new tagline, “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.” Making millions of dollars for hating America without having to ever get out there and play is the opposite of “sacrificing everything.” It’s getting paid for doing nothing.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Kitchen Sink and John McCain By Angelo Codevilla

By on September 5th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/09/05/the-kitchen

Accurately, the Washington Post summed up the climax of the extravaganza that the ruling class staged on the occasion of Senator John McCain’s death: “the generals, senators, former presidents and other world leaders who filled the pews burst into applause.” Daughter Meghan, sleek, privileged, plus-sized alumna of ABC’s celebrity talk show “The View,” had just delivered the exordium: “We mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege while he suffered and served.”

For an audience headlined by Barack Obama and George W. Bush, for the countless who had felt the sting of the American people’s rejection in the previous decade’s elections, this was no subtle dog-whistle. They rose to a trumpet sounding “charge!” against the class enemy, and Donald Trump only incidentally. Essentially, the enemy is whomever might think that our rulers are anything other than the very definition of greatness and goodness.

In short, the McCain funeral had nothing to do with the deceased. If it had, the organizers would not have made a point of excluding Sarah Palin, who had given the inept McCain his only chance of winning the presidency in 2008, and had remained personally loyal to him despite political differences. But the whole point of the exercise was to stand together, throwing dirt on such as Sarah Palin, extra ecclesia, nulla salus. Those who respectability must stand with us against them. By the same token, the week-long commentary praised McCain chiefly by imputing all manner of evil to Donald Trump and inferring that McCain represented the opposite.

This had the additional convenience of sidestepping John McCain’s seamy reality.

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