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August 2023

Standing with the next generation of pro-Israel leaders We were proud to attend a summit with young people determined to stand up for Israel despite resistance.Rep. Alma Hernandez And Daniel Hernandez

https://www.jns.org/column/israel/23/8/23/312985/?_se=cm9sYW5kLm0uaG9ybkB0LW9ubGluZS5kZQ%3D%3D&utm_campaign=Evening+Syndicate+Wednesday+8232023&utm_medium=email&utm_source=brevo

Siblings Alma Hernandez and Daniel Hernandez Jr. are current and former Democratic members of the Arizona House of Representatives.

One of the privileges of serving in elected office is the opportunity to stand up for what we most passionately believe in. We are the youngest woman ever elected to the Arizona House of Representatives and co-founder of the first LGBTQ caucus in the Arizona legislature, respectively.

Long before we began our service in the Arizona House, we were shaped by our heritage as Jewish- and Mexican-Americans. We are proudly progressive and proudly pro-Israel, and we are thrilled to have had a chance to share that message with 400 student leaders at the Israel on Campus Coalition National Leadership Summit earlier this month. The young people we met there deeply inspired us. We saw a new generation of diverse pro-Israel leaders rising to meet the demands of our times, answering the same call we heard at their age.

We grew up in a vibrant Latino family in Tucson, Arizona just 60 miles from the southern border. Our mother was born in Nogales, Mexico, giving us deep roots in the immigrant experience. Our identity is layered, as our maternal grandfather was Jewish. Alma converted in 2015 and celebrated her adult bat mitzvah two years later. Daniel has not taken that step but has been active in Jewish community life, attending synagogue on the High Holidays and preparing family meals for Passover and Hanukkah.

Israel – a mega-billion-dollar battle-tested laboratory for the US Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ9nS6GBsEU&t=1s

Israel’s use of the F-35 benefits the US

A recent mega-billion-dollar increase in the export of Lockheed-Martin’s F-35 combat aircraft is due to overcoming a series of pivotal glitches. This was achieved by Lockheed-Martin, as well as by Israel’s air force and aerospace industries (especially the innovative Israel Aerospace Industries – IAI), known as the cost-effective and battle-tested laboratory of the US defense and aerospace industries and armed forces.

In June 2016, Israel became the first country to use the highly-computerized F-35 operationally. Israel soon became successful in solving initial glitches, that caused concern among prospective buyers.  

The battle-tested Israeli laboratory – which communicates 24/7 with Lockheed-Martin (as it does with a litany of US defense contractors) – solved most of the operational and maintenance glitches by marshalling its intrinsic features, which have been the derivatives of the uniquely challenging and threatening Middle East environment: optimism, patriotism, defiance of odds, out-of-the-box thinking, risk-taking, do-or-die state of mind, can-do and frontier-pioneering mentality.  

The scores of Israeli solutions to the F-35 glitches – in the area of data gathering and processing, electronic warfare and firing control accuracy – have been shared with the US manufacturer and the US Air Force, sustaining the F-35 superiority over its global competition; sparing Lockheed-Martin mega-billions of dollars in research and development; enhancing the manufacturer’s competitive edge; increasing exports by a few additional billions; and expanding the employment base of Lockheed-Martin and its multitude of subcontractors.

The critical upgrades in the current F-35 – achieved by the manufacturer and its Israeli battle-tested laboratory – have produced a combat aircraft, which is substantially superior to the original generation.

In fact, the enhanced performance of the F-35 demonstrates Israel’s role as an important source of US’ weaponry modernization, reduction of the unit cost, and expanding job creation in the US.

Similar mega-billion-dollar benefits to the US economy and defense have been generated by the hundreds of Israeli solutions and add-on, which have upgraded the performance of the technologically less-challenging F-16 (Lockheed-Martin) and F-15 (Boeing).  In fact, all US manufacturers of military systems employed by Israel have benefited in a similar manner.

Moreover, some 250 commercial US high-tech giants (e.g., John Deere, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Texas Instruments, Intel, Nvidia, General Motors, Microsoft, AT&T, IBM, Dell, Google, Facebook, Intuit, etc.) have established research and development centers in Israel, leveraging Israel’s brain power and innovative spirit, in order to sustain their global lead, yielding a consequential increase in global sales.

Similarly, the US defense and aerospace industries established their own Israeli research and development centers through the hundreds of US military systems, which are employed – and systematically improved – by the Israel Defense Forces, yielding to the US consequential benefits to its economy and defense.

US-Israel mutually-beneficial two-way-street

Navy veteran Hung Cao enters GOP race to challenge Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine in 2024

A Vietnamese immigrant who spent 25 years in the Navy, including service in combat zones around the world, Cao pledged to be a “fighter” at a time when he said the country had taken a “dark turn.”

“We are losing our country. You know it. But you also know you can’t say it. We’re forced to say that wrong is right,” he said in a video announcement that took aim at President Joe Biden.

Cao will join an increasingly crowded field of Republican contenders — at least eight other candidates have filed paperwork — aiming to run next year against Kaine, who so far faces no primary opponent. See this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBUE5uft_9k&t=201s

MY SAY: IN DEFENSE OF VIVEK RAMASWAMY

At the risk of incurring some anger from valued readers, I wholeheartedly approve of Ramasamy’s reflections on ending aid to Israel in 2028.

Aid to Israel has historically been a cudgel to force Israel’s acceptance of policies inimical to its independence. Examples abound:

In the shuttle diplomacy following the October Yom Kippur War of 1973 Israel bowed to the demands for withdrawal made by the aggressor Anwar Sadat of Egypt after a crude warning by Kissinger that failure to do so would lead to a” reassessment” of aid. Again, during the Camp David Accords of 1978, Vice President Mondale pressured Menachem Begin to accept all Sadat’s demands for territorial concessions by hinting at a reduction in aid. In 1992 Secretary of State James A. Baker III gave Israel’s Prime Minister Itzhak Shamir a blunt public warning that unless Israel halts building Jewish settlements in so-called occupied territories, it would not get $10 billion in U.S. loan guarantees. In October of 1998 after the Oslo Accords failed to get Israel’s full commitment to abandon the cities of Judea and Samaria to the PLO, a meeting was held at the Wye River in Maryland where Secretary of State Madeleine Albright hinted that aid would be reconsidered if Prime Minister Netanyahu did not accede to Arafat’s demands.

Ramaswamy recognizes the value of the Abraham accords to ensure peace and deterrence to Iran’s genocidal agenda.  A defense agreement with sharing of intel is far superior to aid at a time that America’s economy, military and infrastructure are failing.

I’m saving my opprobrium for the trio of rats- Matti Friedman, Daniel Gordis, Yossi Halevi who are issuing a call to world Jewry to “support Israel but not its present government”…..How does one do that? By threatening to cut off aid unless the democratically elected government is toppled? rsk

Liz Peek: Vivek Ramaswamy could surprise everyone at first Republican debate

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/vivek-ramaswamy-surprise-everyone-first-republican-debate

Republican presidential hopeful Nikki Haley is going after Vivek Ramaswamy. She’ll have plenty of company Wednesday night; Ramaswamy is surging in the polls making him, like Ron DeSantis, an obvious target at the GOP debate. 

My guess: Ramaswamy will hold his own and then some. Why? Because Ramaswamy is super smart and is talking common sense. Boy does this country need a big dose of common sense!

Haley pillories Ramaswamy for pledging to cut off aid to Israel in 2028, saying he’s “walking away from America’s special alliance with Israel” – a headline-grabbing accusation. But Vivek would only do so, he explained in an interview, if his plan to negotiate peace between Israel and other Middle East nations is successful. If he fails, then Vivek would continue to support Israel’s defense. Common sense.

The political novice, who was virtually unknown six months ago, traffics in controversial statements (Haley also jumps on him for saying he would defund the FBI, for instance) but seems to say what a lot of Americans are thinking.  As he recently told Fox Business’ Neil Cavuto: “I’d rather lose this race and speak truth at every step than to win by saying what I’m ‘supposed to.’”

An Emerson poll shows Ramaswamy at 10 percent of the vote, tied with DeSantis for second place. Five months ago he did not even register on the Real Clear Politics average of polls. Vivek is still miles away from catching up to Donald Trump, who in that poll has 56 percent of the vote.   

Asked a few months ago how he might secure the nomination, the long-shot candidate said winning in Iowa and New Hampshire would be key. Currently, he is trailing far behind in both states.

But, like Bernie Sanders and other improbable political stars, Ramaswamy has authenticity – a vital attribute that money cannot buy. (Just ask Hillary Clinton.) Also, he is carrying zero political baggage and owes no one, having mostly financed his own campaign.

Ramaswamy recently introduced these ten bold “truths,” as he calls them:

“1. God is real. 2. There are two genders. 3. Human flourishing requires fossil fuels. 4. Reverse racism is racism. 5. An open border is no border. 6. Parents determine the education of their children. 7. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to mankind. 8. Capitalism lifts people up from poverty. 9. There are three branches of the U.S. government, not four. 10. The U.S. Constitution is the strongest guarantor of freedoms in history.”

Liberals hate these opinions, because they shred the progressive double-think that is destroying our country. The kind of idiocy that says letting criminals go free will reduce crime. Or that an open border which allows deadly drugs to flood our nation is “humanitarian.”

Justice Requires Fair Procedures by Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19919/justice-requires-fair-procedures

“Justice, justice you shall pursue,” the Bible commands (Deuteronomy 16:20); and that, in doing justice, one must not “recognize faces.”

The late US Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter once observed that the history of liberty is largely a history of procedural fairness. Our constitution embodies that history by reading “the due process of law.”

Lately, however, many so-called progressives have been willing to ignore procedural safeguards and due process in their campaign to get former President Donald Trump — to misuse the law in an effort to prevent the leading Republican candidate from running against the incumbent candidate for president. In doing so, they are violating the second principle of justice: “Do not recognize faces.” That commandment is the basis for the blindfolded statute of justice.

Some progressives who would ignore procedural safeguards to get Trump acknowledge that this is because they regard him as especially dangerous and therefore undeserving of due process. Special injustice for an unjust man!

Injustice, once practiced against an unjust person, will serve as precedent for deploying it against just persons.

Another weapon is scheduling. They are trying to get convictions in friendly locations before the 2024 elections, and willing to risk reversal on appeal, which would occur only after the election. Accordingly, they are seeking very early trial dates…. No decent defense lawyer would agree to try a case with so little time to prepare. Yet a group of prominent “get Trump” Republican lawyers has filed a brief supporting that unconstitutional rush to injustice.

These and other “get Trump” lawyers should read the Judeo-Christian commands to do procedural as well as substantive justice, and not to recognize faces. If they follow those wise commands, they will stop trying to “get Trump” or potentially any of us. Instead, they will pursue justice without regard to the face, name or party of the person being investigated and prosecuted.

Whatever one thinks of former President Donald Trump, everyone who cares about liberty for all must oppose the weaponization of laws and procedures that are aimed at him, lest the weapons be turned on us.(Image source: iStock)

“Justice, justice you shall pursue,” the Bible commands (Deuteronomy 16:20); and that, in doing justice, one must not “recognize faces.”

The Oppenheimer File: Missing Cast and Forgotten Back Stories Crucial historical facts concealed By Lloyd Billingsley

https://amgreatness.com/2023/08/21/the-oppenheimer-file-missing-cast-and-forgotten-back-stories/

In the early going of this marathon film, J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) tells a hostile government committee that his testimony should be understood in the context of his life and work. Context also is important for movies, but Oppenheimer keeps key back stories off the screen.

Viewers see the “Hitler Invades Poland” headline from September 1, 1939, but do not see or hear anything about Josef Stalin’s Communist forces invading Poland on September 17, 1939. This joint invasion started WWII and came about because of the Stalin-Hitler pact of August 23, 1939. Viewers see nothing about the Pact, and no headline such as “Stalin Invades Finland,” marks November 30, 1939.

While the Pact was in operation, Hitler’s National Socialists (Nazis) invaded Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and took over France by the summer of 1940. Under the Pact, the Nazi and Soviet intelligence forces collaborated and Stalin handed hundreds of Jewish Communists over to the Gestapo. Jewish scientists in America would have been well aware of that deadly exchange, but not a word in Oppenheimer.

Viewers never learn that for nearly the first two years of the war, Stalin and Hitler were allies. The Communist Party USA collaborated with pro-Nazi groups in America and did everything in its power to keep the United States out of the conflict. In Oppenheimer, no Communist is asked to account for what he or she did during the Pact, and why they stayed in the Party after many others left, never to return.

The Communist Party USA was founded, funded and controlled by the USSR and members pledged loyalty to the Soviet regime. Oppenheimer portrays Party members as misguided liberals concerned about the conflict in Spain. Viewers hear about “the brigades” but no character explains that the Abraham Lincoln Brigades were a Communist Party militia that opposed anti-Franco groups such as the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista. The POUM fighters included George Orwell, author of 1984, Animal Farm, and Homage to Catalonia. See also Cecil Eby’s Between the Bullet and the Lie.

Inquiries about Oppenheimer’s “left wing” associations fail to note that the Party had an open and secret membership, as Whittaker Chambers detailed in Witness. John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr cite evidence that Oppenheimer was a member of a secret Party unit at UC Berkeley, where his friend Haakon Chevalier, a professor of French literature, was an active Communist. In the movie, Jefferson Hall plays Chevalier, and Oppenheimer resists his request to pass on information to the Soviets.

Where are the 650 children of King Kamehameha Elementary school? By Susan Daniels

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/08/where_are_the_650_children_of_king_kamehameha_elementary_school.html

Governor Josh Green, while pushing the climate change narrative on news show Face the Nation, said that King Kamehameha Elementary school burned to the ground. He said that 650 students attended the school. How many are accounted for?

Residents of the scarred island told me that everything on the news is a lie. The mayor of Maui, Richard Bissen, said that 850 people are still missing. The same day the governor said 1,100 are missing. If they actually know how many are missing, then they must know who is not. Where are the children of Lahaina?

The truth is they have no idea how many people are missing because there is no way to gauge how many tourists were in Lahaina when the fire swept through. And in 2022, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Hawaii had the fourth highest homeless rate in the nation and most of them, I am told, were in Lahaina.

Bissen was asked by reporters ten days after the disaster how many children were missing. He responded: “I don’t know.” When pushed by increasingly angry reporters he said he’d tell them if he knew. He knows or has a good idea. His body language says so.

It is now common knowledge that the schools were closed that day and children were either home alone or with grandparents since their parents were all at work.

We have all seen the hundreds of burned-up cars lining the single road in and out of Lahaina, yet the politicians claim that only 111 people have died. So where are all the elementary-aged kids? The inept mayor doesn’t want people to know.

We are told that cars melted in the heat in the 2000-degree heat. A body is cremated at between 1400-1600 degrees. The smaller the body the less time it takes. Ashes and bones were shoveled into body bags, according to residents, and they ran out of the 450 bags they had. But only 111 people died?

Stationed on the neighboring island of Oahu are 27,000 military troops who could have been sent immediately to help:10,000 Marines at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, 12,000 Navy sailors, and 5500 Air Force personnel at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam. That was not done.

Is Wokeness Taking Over and Worsening the Medical Industry? By Catherine Salgado

https://pjmedia.com/culture/catherinesalgado/2023/08/21/is-wokeness-taking-over-and-worsening-the-medical-industry-n1720871

A lot of people started to notice during COVID-19 that some doctors seemed more interested in government policies and narratives than in excellence in healthcare. But with recent stories on radical leftism in hospitals and medical education, it seems necessary to ask just how much woke has permeated the medical field and whether it will bring down the quality of healthcare in the U.S. Could individuals eventually even be denied medical care based on political affiliation?

Two recent stories illustrate the infiltration of leftist politics in the medical field. I already reported on the Mayo Clinic offering a course that examines “racial equity,” “structural racism,” and alleged “anti-Blackness.” It appears to be a course for doctors, nurses, and medical staff to be indoctrinated in critical race theory (CRT).

Robin DiAngelo, one of the guest lecturers, wrote the New York Times bestseller “White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism.” If that isn’t bad enough, her “area of research is in Whiteness Studies and Critical Discourse Analysis, tracing how whiteness is reproduced in everyday narratives.” Whatever that means. And what does any of this have to do with providing excellent medical care?

Now Campus Reform is reporting on San Diego State University (SDSU) using Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) standards to judge potential applicants for a professor of cancer biology. “Candidates must satisfy two or more of the eight Building on Inclusive Excellence (BIE) criteria,” the job listing states. What are those criteria? SDSU thoughtfully provides them—here are a few:

Candidates that meet BIE criteria: (a) are committed to engaging in service with underrepresented populations within the discipline, (b) have demonstrated knowledge of barriers for underrepresented students and faculty within the discipline…(d) have experience or have demonstrated commitment to integrating understanding of underrepresented populations and communities into research…(f) have experience in or have demonstrated commitment to research that engages underrepresented communities…and/or (h) have research interests that contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in higher education.

College Rip-Off Why it’s good that fewer people go. by John Stossel

https://www.frontpagemag.com/college-rip-off/

It’s August. Many young people head off to college.

This year, fortunately, fewer will go.

I say “fortunately” because college is now an overpriced scam.

Overpriced, because normal incentives to be frugal and make smart judgements about who should go to college were thrown out when the federal government took over granting student loans.

Why?

Because our government basically vomits money at everyone who applies.

If private lenders gave out the loans, they’d look at whether they were likely to be paid back. They’d ask questions like: “What will you study? You really think majoring in dance will lead to a job that will pay you enough to allow you to pay us back?”

Government rarely asks these questions. Bureaucrats throw money at students. Many don’t benefit. Many shouldn’t even be going to college. Today, nearly half of the students given loans don’t graduate even after six years.

Many feel like failures.

College is good for people who want to be college professors or who major in fields like engineering and computer science that might lead to good jobs. But that’s not most people. Government loans encourage everyone to go to college, even if they’re not very interested in academics.

Government’s handouts also invite colleges to keep raising tuition. Over the past 50 years, college cost rose at four times the rate of inflation. Four times!

Years ago, I reported how colleges were suddenly wasting money on luxuries like fancy gyms and even day spas. Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported that it’s gotten worse: The University of Oklahoma bought a monastery in Italy for study abroad students! The University of Kentucky built a theater where students play video games.

“Why not raise tuition?” asks the typical college president. “Uncle Sam pays the bill!”

When I went to Princeton, tuition was $2,000. Now its $60,000.