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November 2023

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Jihad against the West Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger,

By on November 1st, 2023

https://bit.ly/479MlfKThe Iran-Hamas-US connection

*National Security advisor Jake Sullivan said in an October 10, 2023 White House press briefing: “Iran is complicit in this attack in a broad sense because they have provided training, they have provided capabilities, they have provided support, and they have had engagement and contact with Hamas over years and years. And all of that has played a role in contributing to what we have seen [on October 7].”

*Iran’s Ayatollahs, who have been courted and appeased by the West, are committed to bring the West – and especially “the Great American Satan” – to submission. They are the chief architects and enablers of the Israel-Hamas and Israel-Hezbollah wars, determined to escalate them into a regional pandemonium, which would undermine Western interests.

*Iran considers its military and financial support of Hezbollah and Hamas terrorists – as well as many terror entities in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Latin America – as a means to fueling instability, toppling pro-US regimes, and severely downgrading the US’ strategic posture. Therefore, Iran has been – since the 1980s – an epicenter of global, anti-US terrorism, drug trafficking and proliferation of advanced military systems. Iran’s rogue foreign and national security policy has been matched by its rogue domestic policy, which has been replete with ruthless oppression and suppression of the population, in general, and religious and ethnic minorities and especially women, in particular.

However, irrespective of this rogue policy, the US adheres to the diplomatic option, which has bolstered the Ayatollahs’ global posture since their ascension to power in 1979. Moreover, the US’ response to sustained Iranian attacks on US installations in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Syria has been restrained, further eroding its posture of deterrence. Furthermore, the US has lifted most sanctions against the rogue Ayatollahs and is eagerly seeking another nuclear accord with Tehran.

*The lifting of most sanctions without Congressional consent – especially on the exportation of oil and natural gas – has enabled Iran to supply Hezbollah, Hamas and additional terror organizations and drug traffickers more advanced military systems (e.g., missiles, drones, electronics and explosives) to the detriment of the US and its allies, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan and Israel.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

How I Became a Zionist: How I came around to support and understand Israel’s cause. By Dan McLaughlin

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/how-i-became-a-zionist/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=article&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-from-author&utm_term=first

I was not always a Zionist.

That is perhaps not a surprising statement for an Irish Catholic born in the 1970s. Nor for conservatives in general above a certain age. But how I got there is a journey others have taken, and it bears lessons for those taking a fresh look at Israel after October 7.

Out of the Cold War

Israel was for many years a socialist country, and more socially liberal than the United States. Our government has, since 1948, consistently recognized Israel as a sovereign state and supported its right to exist, but that commitment in the past was far less certain than it is today. Early Israeli governments had, for a time, fairly warm relations with the Soviet Union, before the USSR decided that Israeli democracy was a greater liability than Israeli socialism was an asset. For the first three decades of Israel’s existence, America often had more of an arm’s-length relationship with Israel than an alliance.

The overriding imperative of American foreign policy between 1947 and 1990 was the Cold War. That was the foreign-policy framework I grew up with in the 1980s. Rose-colored retrospectives may paint the Reagan era as a time of pristine moral clarity, pitting the Free World against the Evil Empire. And so it was, in its essential character and in important aspects of the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and his administration. But there was continual agitation over the unsavory anti-communist allies (dictators, human-rights abusers) who made their home under the umbrella of “the Free World.”

This was practically necessary, but it also required us to steel ourselves to a foreign policy that was not always morally pure. Some de facto allies, such as apartheid-era South Africa or Mao’s China after 1972, were sufficiently odious that the United States didn’t quite acknowledge them as allies. Famous neoconservatives such as Jeanne Kirkpatrick argued for the necessity of alliances with authoritarians.

So, it was fashionable, or at least necessary, for Reagan-era Cold Warriors to make their peace with the fact that the choice of allies and enemies around the world was not always just about the fellowship of liberal democracies. It was, like our wartime alliance with Josef Stalin himself, sometimes simply a matter of the enemy of my enemy — in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famous phrase, an SOB, but our SOB.

If you looked at things in the coldest light of realpolitik, it seemed strange that we would ally ourselves with Israel at the cost of alienating its many enemies. Israel was one small state, of little or no economic importance at the time, and with no oil. The Arab and Muslim states were numerous, populous, oil-rich, and covering many strategically important corners of the map. Even in spite of their obvious military inefficiency in comparison with the Israelis, it would seem that one would prefer them as allies in a global war if choosing between the two.

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ELECTIONS Comments turned off

The Case for DeSantis over Haley as the Alternative to Trump By Dan McLaughlin

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/10/the-case-for-desantis-over-haley-as-the-alternative-to-trump/

Like it or not, if there is a path forward from Trump right now, it still runs through Ron DeSantis, not Nikki Haley.

Nikki Haley has been increasingly consolidating a segment of the Republican primary vote, largely the most devoted anti-Trump voters, be they traditional Reaganite conservatives or moderates. This is still not close to a winning hand: In the RealClearPolitics polling averages, she is currently at 8.3 percent and third place nationally, 11.5 percent and third place in Iowa, 14.8 percent and second place in New Hampshire, and 17.7 percent and second place in her home state of South Carolina. It has, nonetheless, produced a boomlet of commentary from people who would prefer Haley to Ron DeSantis, such as Michael Strain’s “Case for Nikki Haley” in these pages. Noah Rothman has written on why he thinks Haley’s strategy of differentiating herself from Donald Trump on policy and style and focusing on appealing to voters who dislike Trump has been superior to that of DeSantis’s.

I get the instinct to be frustrated with the DeSantis campaign, and I understand why some of the traditionally Reaganite elements of the party — let alone Republican moderates — would like to use the present moment to grind axes against not only DeSantis but the whole nationalist/populist “New Right.” But the effort to promote Haley is likely to simply divide the opposition to Trump and strengthen the hand within the party of not only the nationalist/populist Right in general, but its most irresponsible elements in particular. Like it or not, DeSantis is still the best game in town — not only for any prospect of stopping Trump from winning the nomination, but for any long-term hope of restoring purpose and sanity to the Republican Party.

Moreover, in the immediate term, neither DeSantis nor Haley is dropping out of the race, so those of us looking to settle on a single opponent for Trump should first emphasize the urgent need for Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, and Asa Hutchinson — none of whom any longer has a remotely plausible case for being in the race — to follow the statesmanlike lead of Mike Pence and drop out. I’d add Vivek Ramaswamy to that list if I didn’t think he was running essentially as a stalking horse to aid Trump.

The Choices

I put my own prior assumptions on the table here up front. I would happily go into battle in the general election behind either Haley or DeSantis, and would be thrilled to see either of them as president. Both boast strong records as conservative governors. Both are prepared to be commander in chief, Haley due to her tenure at the U.N., DeSantis from his time in the House and serving as a legal adviser to Navy SEALs in Iraq and a prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay. Both represent my generation, born in the 1970s and ready to move on from the seemingly endless grip of those born in the 1940s on our politics. Both cut their teeth in politics during the Tea Party era, when there was a bumper crop of talented Republicans looking to merge populist energy with conservative principle. Either of them would be the most conservative nominee since Ronald Reagan.

As a traditional Reaganite, I probably agree more with Haley than with DeSantis on the few areas where they actually disagree. I’ve been a longtime Haley booster going back to her first campaign for governor in 2010 and was openly discussing her four or five years ago as my preferred candidate to lead the party after Trump. She managed to get out of the Trump administration on good terms with Trump and with her dignity intact — not an easy thing — and if the party had chosen a new nominee in 2018, it might well have been Haley.

I’ve soured a bit on her political judgment since then, as she has struggled to navigate the innumerable pitfalls of a political landscape dominated by Trump, exemplified by a spectacularly ill-considered (and swiftly walked-back) interview with Tim Alberta in Politico in 2021. I saw her stump speech in Iowa in August and was unimpressed with its simplistic and gimmicky proposals (a competency test?) and overreliance on her gender. The debates have been a godsend to her campaign, allowing her to sink her teeth into more serious stuff and find a foil in the haplessly shallow and irritating Vivek Ramaswamy. They have reminded many of us why we thought she was a real talent in the first place.

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MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

VIDEO – Coverup of COVID Vax’s Severe Damage to Teens’ Hearts by Jamie Glazov

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dhfc_videos/revealed-coverup-of-covid-vaxs-severe-damage-to-teens-hearts/

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Crisis of the West Revisited: Self-Flagellation and the Great Liberal Death Wish Daniel J. Mahoney

By on November 1st, 2023

https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-crisis-of-the-west-revisited-self-flagellation-and-the-great-liberal-death-wish/

This crisis is nothing new.

From Sydney to London to untold numbers of American college campuses, we hear incendiary cries for destroying the Jewish state, for a new Jihad or Holy War, all in the name of an ostensibly noble and just “anti-colonialist” struggle. Tens of thousands march in major European cities, and with frenzied glee defend the indefensible. “From the river to the sea,” the mob of Islamists, Palestinians, activists, and radicals cry, shamelessly announcing their own genocidal sympathies and intent.

The “crisis of the West” is nothing new. In 1949, the political philosopher Leo Strauss lamented that the main currents of social science in the United States, and in the Western world more broadly, could not understand tyranny for what it was since they were blindly committed to the absurd position that “facts” had nothing to do with “values.” He added that a social science that could not speak reasonably, and forcefully, about the evil that is tyranny (especially in its modern ideological forms) was no better than a medical science that could not name and describe cancer. In the following decade, Raymond Aron and Hannah Arendt brought the full arsenal of political philosophy to bear on the “novel” form of tyranny that was totalitarianism and, in the process, lamented the indulgence of so many intellectuals toward it.

In 1964, James Burnham published a still potent and relevant book called The Suicide of the West, where he took aim at Western self-hatred, romanticism about what would soon be called the Third World (some of which came to resemble “Caliban’s kingdoms” in the striking and provocative words of Paul Johnson in Modern Times), and the degeneration of a once noble and hardy liberalism into rank sentimentality, free-floating compassion, and a suicidal preference for our murderous and tyrannical enemies over our sometimes imperfect friends and even our own country and civilization.

By 1970, the great English writer and journalist Malcolm Muggeridge could write with eloquence and biting wit about “The Great Liberal Death Wish” in a seminal 1970 essay by that name. Muggeridge saw in the decayed liberal mind a perverse preference for nihilistic self-flagellation that led to the systematic “depreciating and deprecating” of “every aspect of our Western way of life.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

More Terror Suspects Reaching the U.S.: Here Are ‘Known Unknowns’ of the Biden Border Crisis By James Varney

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2023/10/31/more_terror_suspects_reaching_the_us_here_are_the_known_unknowns_of_bidens_border_policy_989442.html

Hundreds of people on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist have almost certainly slipped into the United States amid millions of other illegal immigrants during the last three years, according to former federal officials and experts.

“You have to be extremely naïve to not be significantly concerned about this,” said Rodney Scott, former chief of U.S. Border Patrol from 2020 to 2021. “Regardless of what the Biden administration may claim, what it said during the campaign and the executive orders taken in January 2021 have been interpreted around the world as the border is open. You’re insane if you don’t think terrorists will use that to their advantage.”

In the aftermath of Hamas’ terrorist attack against Israel on Oct. 7, President Biden, without mentioning the border, told “60 Minutes” that the threat the U.S. could face from terrorists in the country had escalated.

Although the terrorist threat linked to the border crisis is impossible to quantify, some experts find the available numbers alarming. During Biden’s first three years, a record-shattering 6.5 million-plus immigrants have been “encountered” by border authorities. That pace is increasing: The most recent monthly figures, September’s, showed another record number of monthly encounters – 269,735.

At the same time, federal officials have seen an alarming increase in border crossers listed on the U.S. Terror Screening Dataset, the official name for what is commonly called the “terrorist watchlist.”

In fiscal 2023, which ends this month, Border Patrol agents have apprehended 172 such people, all but three of them along the southwest border. When all U.S. places of entry are added – by land, sea and air  – another 564 people on the watchlist were caught, bringing the total to 736.

By way of comparison, between fiscal 2017 and 2019, Border Patrol agents apprehended a total of 11 people on the terrorist watchlist. Scott sounded an alarm to Congress in the 2021 period when the total jumped to 16. “When a number doubles it gets your attention, and we’ve moved way beyond that,” he says now.

Yet the “known unknowns,” to use Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s famous phrase, indicate the problem is even worse, according to experts. For one, the “terrorist watchlist” is only as good as the information that has been entered into it.

“Not everybody’s on the watchlist,” said Todd Bensman, who has tracked Central American immigration routes and the southern border for years with the Center for Immigration Studies and is the author of “Overrun: How Joe Biden Unleashed the Greatest Border Crisis in U.S. History.”

“There have been thousands and thousands – tens of thousands – of people from the Middle East who have entered and it’s completely reasonable, even the president has acknowledged it, to worry that some of those could be, or could become, terrorist threats,” Bensman said.

Scott, who spent a half decade in counterterrorism at the Department of Homeland Security before moving to Customs and Border Patrol, said that as legal immigration channels dried up, criminals and terrorists began to seek people who would not appear on any intelligence agency’s datasheet.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden’s ‘Democracy Is At Risk’ Scaremongering Puts Democracy At Risk

By on November 1st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/01/bidens-democracy-is-at-risk-scaremongering-puts-democracy-at-risk/

So, when Democrats talk about how “our democracy is at risk,” what they really mean is “our socialist agenda is at risk.”

Now that they can’t use COVID to scare the public into submission, Democrats – from President Joe Biden on down – are working on Plan B. Shouting “Democracy is at risk!” every chance they get.

That’s become the default line for the left. This weekend, when CBS News reporter Bill Whitaker asked Vice President Kamala Harris about the possibility of Biden dying in office, her response was: “Let me just tell you, I’m focused on the job. Our democracy is on the line, Bill. And I frankly in my head do not have time for parlor games when we have a president who is running for reelection. That’s it.”

Notice the contradiction in Harris’ statement? If we have, as she says, “a president who is running for reelection,” how is it that “our democracy is on the line”? Aren’t elections what democracy is all about?

Let’s assume that Donald Trump wins the Republican nomination. (That’s a big assumption, since the first primary is still months away and because history is replete with presumed front runners not getting the nomination.) Let’s also assume that Biden is the Democratic candidate. (Another big assumption.)

Trump and Biden will have to campaign for the presidency, as will various third-party candidates. They will travel the country making their case. The press will spend a great deal of time covering the campaigns – mostly attacking the GOP candidate.

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ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Black Lives Matter and the World’s Oldest Hatred The group’s praise for Hamas’s ‘resistance’ comes as no surprise to those paying attention. Jason Riley

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/black-lives-matter-and-the-worlds-oldest-hatred-anti-semitism-0e0c324e?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Many who rushed to support Black Lives Matter following the death of George Floyd—professional sports leagues, Fortune 500 companies, placard-waving suburbanites—now seem shocked at how BLM reacted to the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel. Yet nothing could have been more predictable.

During the previous round of major violence between Israel and Hamas, in May 2021, BLM made its position clear. “Black Lives Matter stands in solidarity with Palestinians,” it tweeted. “We are a movement committed to ending settler colonialism in all forms and will continue to advocate for Palestinian liberation.”

After Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israeli civilians, the same activists were just as unambiguous about which side they were taking and why. While the body count was still being tallied, BLM groups in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington issued statements supporting Hamas’s tactics. “Their resistance must not be condemned but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” BLM Grassroots in Los Angeles wrote on Instagram. “As a radical black organization,” the post continued, it sees “clear parallels between black and Palestinian people.” BLM Chicago tweeted an image of a Hamas paraglider with a Palestinian flag attached to his parachute and the caption “I stand with Palestine.”

Anyone surprised by this response either hasn’t been paying attention or refuses to take the activists at their word. Organizations such as BLM have done nothing to hide or sugarcoat their animosity toward Israel. In 2016, four years before Floyd was killed by police, BLM released an official platform that referred to Israel as an “apartheid state” and declared that America is “complicit in the genocide taking place against the Palestinian people.”

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Columbia faculty is at war over antisemitism: Hundreds of professors sign new letter slamming ‘appalling’ colleagues who defended students for supporting Hamas as they demand university protects Jewish students

By on November 1st, 2023

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12695497/columbia-university-professors-letter-antisemitism-defend-hamas.html

By HARRIET ALEXANDER and MACKENZIE TATANANNI 

Almost 300 staff at Columbia University on Tuesday signed a letter condemning their colleagues for defending students who said Hamas’ terror attack of October 7 was justified.

They stressed that freedom of speech is vital – but that did not extend to justifying acts of terrorism.

They said they are ‘astonished’ and ‘horrified’ that anyone could condone the murders.

The Tuesday letter came 24 hours after more than 100 staff at the Ivy League college spoke out in support of the students.

The row was sparked by an October 9 statement from the Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which saw the students praise the ‘against the odds’ terror attack – which left 1,400 Israelis dead.

‘Yesterday was an unprecedented historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza, who tore through the wall that has been suffocating them in one of the most densely-populated areas on Earth for the past 16 years – an open-air prison blockaded by Israeli soldiers via land, air, and sea,’ they wrote.

‘Despite the odds against them, Palestinians launched a counter-offensive against their settler-colonial oppressor – which receives billions of US dollars annually in military aid and possesses one of the world’s most robust surveillance and security apparatuses.’

The statement sparked furious scenes, which have been replicated at colleges and universities across the country – roiling students and staff and seeing donors threaten to withdraw their funding. Some students who publicly defended Hamas have had their job offers rescinded. Billionaire investor Leon Cooperman has threatened to cut off donations to his alma mater over student support for Palestine.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

Higher Ed Support for Hamas Exposes Disdain for America in Top Colleges By Peter Wood

By on November 1st, 2023

https://tomklingenstein.com/higher-ed-support-for-hamas-exposes-disdain-for-america-in-top-colleges/

Why are American academics and American college students so drawn to an antisemitic movement?

If you don’t like the pro-Hamas demonstrations by American college students, then you won’t like American higher education, which is the garden in which these flowers were grown.

Within hours of the atrocities committed by Hamas operatives who invaded Israel on October 7, groups of American college students had organized to express their support for the terrorists. This caught many Americans by surprise. How could college students at some of America’s best universities sympathize with the perpetrators of gruesome attacks on unarmed civilians?

The surprise, however, was not universal. Those of us who pay close attention to American higher education were well aware of the rising tide of antisemitism on many campuses, and aware as well of the anger that these institutions had honed against Israel and the sympathies they had cultivated for Palestinian radicals. College officials were likewise aware that, among the students enrolled in their institutions, a significant number are affiliated with factions that loathe Israel, support Palestinian “resistance,” and are well-organized practitioners of public protest. Some college presidents initially issued mealy-mouthed disapproval or offered criticisms of both Hamas and Israel as equally at fault. After finding their equivocations poorly received, they issued new statements that were sometimes sterner about Hamas, but often continued to chastise Israel as well.

Some college presidents did forthrightly condemn Hamas and express strong support for Israel. At the end of October, a coalition founded by 16 college presidents issued a statement titled, “We Stand Together with Israel Against Hamas.” That statement eventually collected over 100 signatories.

But the larger academic scene lacks such common sense.

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