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November 2020

Palestinians living in Jordan deserve to be Jordanian citizens Palestinian Arabs living in UNRWA-administered towns in Lebanon, Syria and Jordan should be given the opportunity to become citizens in their host countries. By Moshe Dann

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/palestinians-living-in-jordan-deserve-to-be-jordanian-

Arabs who consider themselves to be Palestinians deserve a state; they have one – it’s called Jordan. Terrorist organizations, such as the PLO, Hamas, PLFP, Islamic Jihad and others, do not deserve support, or a state.

A “two-state solution,” therefore, based on a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) run by terrorist organizations dedicated to Israel’s destruction is not a solution. That only prevents peace and freedom for Palestinians.

The alternative requires a new way of thinking, one that is focused on people, not politics. Supporting the establishment of a state must be based on humanitarian principles that will allow Palestinians to exercise real self-determination that does not depend on what terrorist leaders determine.

This was the fundamental mistake of the Oslo Accords and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, which ignored the Palestinians and focused on a political solution that empowered terrorist regimes. It failed and will continue to fail because it did not offer freedom for Palestinians, but condemned them to live under terrorist dictatorships.

Most Palestinians are not terrorists and don’t support terrorism. They want to live normal, productive lives. They want to protect their children, not encourage them to become killers and suicide bombers. They want to teach them values, to improve themselves, their families and their communities, not to become self-destructive and destructive to others.

Exclusive: Victor Davis Hanson on the 2020 Election and Trump’s Prospects By Jan Jekielek

https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-victor-davis-hanson-on-the-2020-election-and-trumps-prospects_3578774.html?utm_source=news&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-11-14-4

Does President Donald Trump have a path to a second term? What would it take? And how have elections in America fundamentally changed?

In this episode, we sit down with classicist, historian, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson.

This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and I’m Jan Jekielek.

American Thought Leaders is an Epoch Times show available on YouTube, Facebook, and The Epoch Times website. It airs on Verizon Fios TV and Frontier Fios on NTD America (Channel 158).

“Even More Post-Election Thoughts” Sydney Williams

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

It may seem odd that I, a conservative, would quote Bertrand Russell in the rubric that heads this essay. But I find the sentiment expressed fitting for the world in which we live where hypocrisy and double standards are the standard. In my opinion, a hypocrite is one who professes virtues he does not possess, in the hope his words will camouflage his actions. It is a condition common to the halls of political power.

I was mocked for my prediction in my last essay – perhaps deservedly – that Trump would be as gracious in defeat as he was competitive in battle. It is still too early to know. Mr. Trump has not yet conceded, and Congress has yet to certify the election. But (and on this I am more certain) what he and his followers will not do is become the sore losers who created the “resistance” four years ago. Mr. Biden will not be subject, from the media, academia and our cultural elite, to the never-ending barrage of personal attacks Mr. Trump endured. Nor will the intelligence agencies and their flunkies in Congress try to upend his Presidency, as they attempted to do with Mr. Trump throughout his four years.

It is not easy to cast Donald Trump as the principal character in a morality tale, a “heroic but stubborn and self-fixated Antigone,” as Victor Davis Hanson, writing in National Review, described him. However, there is about Mr. Trump the possible makings of an heroic, but tragic, figure. He exposed much of Washington’s ruling class to be corrupt and self-serving, and he showed the media to be the partisan attack dogs they are. He brought to light the role universities have played in censoring conservative speech. He unmasked the hypocrisy of politicians for their refusal to accept school choice for poor and minority students, and he watched the Left’s double standards regarding masks in riot-torn streets. He ignored Chuck Schumer’s advice in 2017 about taking on the intelligence community. For this, he received no acclamation.

Elissa Slotkin (D Michigan-8)Centrist Democrat Praises Trump, Won’t Vote for Pelosi for Speaker By Rick Moran

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2020/11/13/centrist-democrat-praises-trump-wont-vote-for-pelosi-for-speaker-n1143569

Nancy Pelosi is going about her business during this post-election period, apparently oblivious to the storm that’s raging among her caucus members.

In truth, it isn’t so much that there is much disagreement between radical Democrats and the “moderates.” The problem, as the moderates see it, is “messaging.” The radicals make Democratic proposals sound, well, radical. Centrist Democrats want a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down. They prefer to soft-pedal some of the more extreme rhetoric coming from the radicals while embracing the ideas. They don’t want to call it “government-run health care.” They want their health care plan to be “inclusive” and “affordable” and “fair.” Thus is their real intent hidden from the voter.

It worked in a lot of districts and failed in others. But one centrist Democrat had the audacity (or stupidity) to actually praise Donald Trump and says she won’t vote for Nancy Pelosi for speaker of the House. Rep.Elissa Slotkin of Michigan thinks it’s time to rein in the radicals and bring the party down to earth. Politico posted a long, revealing interview with the congresswoman.

“You know, the one thing I will say about Donald Trump,” Slotkin began, “he doesn’t talk down to anybody. He is who he is, but he doesn’t talk down to anyone. And I think that there is a certain voter out there because of that who identifies with him and appreciates him.”

In New Memoir, Obama Accuses Netanyahu of Engaging in ‘Orchestrated’ Push Against His Administration

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/11/13/in-new-memoir-obama-accuses-netanyahu

In his own words, former US President Barack Obama regarded Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “smart, canny, tough…gifted communicator” who engaged in an “orchestrated” push against his administration.

The disclosure is contained in Obama’s presidential memoir, “A Promised Land,” which will be published on Tuesday.

In excerpts of the book released in advance, Obama wrote that Netanyahu’s “vision of himself as the chief defender of the Jewish people against calamity allowed him to justify almost anything that would keep him in power.”

On the subject of AIPAC, the US pro-Israel lobbying group, Obama claimed that its positions moved rightward in accordance with a political shift in Israel, “even when Israel took actions that were contrary to US policy.”

He lamented that politicians who “criticized Israel policy too loudly risked being tagged as ‘anti-Israel’ (and possibly antisemitic) and [were] confronted with a well-funded opponent in the next election.”

Obama said that he was the subject of a “whisper campaign” that sought to portray him as “insufficiently supportive — or even hostile toward — Israel” during the 2008 presidential race.

“On Election Day, I’d end up getting more than 70 percent of the Jewish vote, but as far as many AIPAC board members were concerned, I remained suspect, a man of divided loyalties; someone whose support for Israel, as one of [campaign manager David Axelrod’s] friends colorfully put it, wasn’t ‘felt in his kishkes’ — ‘guts,’ in Yiddish,” Obama wrote.

Austria’s New Hate Speech Law Judith Bergman

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16739/austria-hate-speech-law

Austria’s proposed law is modelled on Germany’s much criticized NetzDG law, also known as the censorship law, which came into effect in January 2018 and requires social media companies to delete or block any online unlawful content within 24 hours or 7 days at the most, or face fines of up to 50 million euros.

If the proposed law is passed, the freedom of speech of Austrians online will be subject to the arbitrary decisions of corporate entities, such as Twitter, Goggle and Facebook.

With Austria’s draft online hate speech law, yet another European country is taking another step towards making online censorship an institutionalized feature of European hate speech laws.

“We too often make bad laws with good intentions. Online platforms should not censor the freedom of expression,” said Chairman of the Senate Law Commission Philippe Bas after the decision of France’s Constitutional Council. It can only be hoped that European lawmakers eager to censor free speech online will heed the ruling of the French constitutional court.

The Austrian government has presented a draft online hate speech law, the Communication Platforms Act, which, if passed, will limit free speech in the country. The Austrian government writes in the introduction to its proposed law:

“The main reason for the development of this draft Act is the worrying development that the Internet and social media, in addition to the advantages that these new technologies and communication channels provide, have also established a new form of violence, and hate on the Internet is increasing in the form of insults, humiliation, false information and even threats of violence and death. The attacks are predominantly based on racist, xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic motives. A comprehensive strategy and a set of measures are required that range from prevention to sanctions. This strategy is based on the two pillars of platform responsibility and victim protection, with the present draft Act relating to ensuring platform responsibility”.

Obama Defames ‘Millions of Americans’ as Racists in New Memoir By Jack Cashill

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/11/obama_defames_millions_of_americans_as_racists_in_new_memoir.html

Barack Obama owes the people of America an apology.

“For millions of Americans spooked by a Black man in the White House,” writes Barack Obama in his new memoir, A Promised Land, “Donald Trump promised an elixir for their racial anxiety.”

Rather than speak for the millions of Americans whom Barack Obama casually defamed, I am going to speak for the 130,000 or so residents of Chautauqua County, New York, a semi-rural “rust belt” county tucked away in the far southwest corner of western New York.

I know the county well.  I spend a good chunk of each year there and set my first published novel, 2006: A Chautauqua Rising, therein.  (Word to would-be writers: do not use names in book titles that no one can pronounce: sha-TAWK-wa).

In 2008, Mr. Obama, you won Chautauqua County.  In that the county is only 2 percent black, it was the white people of Chautauqua who elected you.  In that many residents have not seen a black American since the Buffalo Bills moved their training camp, “racial anxiety” is preposterously low on the list of local motivators.  You appeared just as black in 2008 as you did in 2012, and you scared no one.

High on the list of real anxieties was the economy.  The once prosperous county had been hemorrhaging jobs and people since 1970.  In 2008, with the economy collapsing, you promised “hope and change.”  People ignored the details and put their trust in you.

In October 2012, after four years of left-leaning economic amateurism, the national unemployment rate stood at 7.9 percent, the worst “recovery” in our history.  It was higher still in Chautauqua County.

Months before the election, with Congress unable to pass a law giving relief to the so-called “DREAMers” — young people brought to this country illegally by their parents — you unilaterally decided to give as many as a million people relief from deportation proceedings, as well as the right to apply for work authorization.

Raphael Warnock’s Blood Libel By David Harsanyi

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/11/raphael-warnocks-blood-libel/

What else to call claiming that the Jewish state goes around picking off God’s children as if ‘they don’t matter at all’?

Raphael Warnock, the Democratic Senate candidate seeking to unseat Republican Kelly Loeffler in Georgia’s runoff election in January, has had some interesting things to say about Israel in the past.

Here is Warnock during a 2018 sermon:

We need a two-state solution where all of God’s children can live together. We saw the government of Israel shoot down unarmed Palestinian sisters and brothers like birds of prey. . . . It is wrong to shoot down God’s children like they don’t matter at all. And it’s no more anti-Semitic for me to say that than it is anti-white for me to say that Black lives matter. Palestinian lives matter.

Warnock, senior pastor of the church once led by Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., isn’t merely being “critical” of Israel, as his defenders claim. Arguing that Israel hasn’t done enough to placate Fatah is a criticism. Arguing that Israel’s refusal to return to 1967 boundaries is misguided is a criticism. Claiming that the Jewish state goes around picking off God’s children as if “they don’t matter at all” is a blood libel. It’s the kind of rhetoric that generates the anti-Semitism unfortunately found in some corners of black communities. It is also a complete fiction.

Alito Defends the Courts The Justice calls out progressive attacks on judicial independence.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/alito-defends-the-courts-11605309587?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

Pundits and academics have worried a great deal about democratic norms in recent years, but most have gone silent when it comes to progressive assaults on judicial independence. So credit to Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for delivering a forceful repudiation of recent efforts to intimidate American courts.

Justice Alito’s Thursday address came at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention, a wide-ranging event that included spirited debate on presidential power, intellectual property law, social justice and more. The conservative-leaning Federalist Society is above all a forum for open intellectual exchange, but it’s increasingly stigmatized by progressive activists, perhaps out of resentment for its commitment to principle.

Justice Alito spoke against a recent effort to “hobble the debate that the Federalist Society fosters” by barring judges from membership. Attacks on the Federalist Society have gone along with more explicit threats to judicial independence. Earlier this year Sen. Chuck Schumer stood in front of the Supreme Court and declared, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price.”

This came after five Democratic Senators threatened in a 2019 amicus brief that the Supreme Court could be “restructured” if it didn’t rule their way in a gun case. Justice Alito addressed that directly.

COVID-19 infections are soaring. Lockdowns could be coming. A list of restrictions in your state. Grace Hauck Chris Woodyard

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/13/covid-restrictions-state-list-orders-lockdowns/3761230001/
FIND YOUR STATE
Is your state reimplementing COVID-19 restrictions? See the list below.

First, check out this map:States that are reopening or reimplementing restrictions