RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.city-journal.org/article/lets-talk-about-political-violence

“The idea, the idea that there’s political violence or violence in America like this, is just unheard of. It’s not appropriate.” Thus said President Biden on Saturday, after a gunman shot former president Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally. As political truisms go, this one is up there with “the children are our future,” a statement so obvious that it makes you wonder why anyone would bother. (Though it’s also empirically dubious: It’s “unheard of”?)

But Biden’s insistence that his administration will tolerate no political violence deserves further exploration in a different context, given a statement released last week by his Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines. “In recent weeks,” it read, “Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years. We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”

A lone, disgruntled shooter is one thing; an orchestrated, nationwide campaign of unrest, which was partly paid for and organized by another nation and which has sometimes devolved to violence, is another. And it hardly takes a professional spy to realize what must be done when an enemy country is discovered to have agitated for uprisings on America’s campuses and in our streets: arrests, deportations, sanctions, and other defensive measures must follow.

The Biden administration would be wise to adopt the more assertive stance against political violence set by the president on Saturday. Up to now, that has not been the case. For example, Haines and her colleagues went out of their way to note that, though the Iranians are clearly involved in the anti-Jewish violence that has become a staple of so much of American urban and collegiate life these past eight months, many of those participating in anti-Israeli demonstrations did so of their own accord, with nonviolent intentions, and without any knowledge of Iranian involvement. “I want to be clear that I know Americans who participate in protests are, in good faith, expressing their views on the conflict in Gaza,” Haines said in her statement. “This intelligence does not indicate otherwise.”

https://www.commentary.org/articles/danielle-pletka/anti-semitism-money-power-network/

The mushrooming of anti-Semitic violence and activism on campuses across the United States is not an organic or spontaneous development. Money is flowing from the Arab world to universities, nongovernmental organizations, and professional terrorist sympathizers across the country. That money is paying for, organizing, educating, publicizing, and fanning the flames not simply of Israel-bashing, but of eliminationist Jew-hatred.

It demands a major response. Congress has begun investigating. Hearings in which university presidents have been unable to articulate any kind of standard that would protect Jewish students are driving headlines and major changes in leadership at elite educational institutions. Now key committees are digging into offshore efforts to direct and support campus anti-Semitism and anti-Israel activity. But things are a bit chaotic on Capitol Hill. Congress is moving in scattershot fashion, with multiple bills sponsored by a myriad of members. Little that is lasting can be accomplished in this way.

What is needed now is a systematic survey of the problem, backed by the federal investigative power of agencies like the FBI, followed by a careful legislative response. That, in turn, will raise a host of complex issues that must be addressed if we are to change the game and rip out the anti-Semitism in our institutions at the root.

In our democracy, regulating or even getting to the bottom of financial flows, particularly to nongovernmental nonprofit organizations (NGOs) and educational institutions, is not easy. The constitutional guarantee of free speech rightly colors all inquiries into the nature of foreign support for any group or school.

Questions are raised that are not easily dismissed. For example: Is money from France or Australia the same as money from China or Qatar? Can foreign funding of a university department or chair that has the effect of influencing the curriculum or the nature of study be regulated? What about NGO activity on campus: Does allowing NGOs that support terrorist organizations and their aims on campus constitute material support for terrorism, which is illegal under federal law? Is there a constitutional means of regulating or banning foreign-government-sponsored hate speech? Can Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be reasonably applied to donated dollars that seem to tilt the scales in favor of the causes of foreign actors?

First, we need to address the scope of the problem and determine its sources—apart from the frailties of human character that have driven anti-Semitic hatred for as long as there have been Jews. Where has this new anti-Semitism come from? What are the best tools to fight it? What are the roots of this 21st-century version of the world’s oldest hatred?

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https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20770/normalization-terrorism-jew-hate

It apparently never occurred to either the heads of the UN or the EU to consider that if you are a terrorist organization that commits war crimes, you do not get to choose how a war that you started is waged against you.

If you do not want a “bloodbath,” do not take hostages, hide them among civilians, try to prevent a rescue, then if they are rescued, profess shock at the fallout that you yourself have teed up.

BBC news asked with a straight face if, to spare the lives of the Gazan “civilians” who were keeping the hostages locked up in their homes, Israel had given prior warning before launching its rescue operation. The Israeli spokesman, also keeping a straight face, politely answered that a warning might have endangered the hostages and made the rescue more difficult.

The irony of all this seems completely lost on the political and media elites, who kept insisting that the Israeli rescue operation was somehow immoral. By condemning Israel’s rescue operation, they suggest that massacring and kidnapping 240 people is moral, and an act that should not require a military response.

The new purported Hamas agreement to a ceasefire apparently comes with “a major hurdle: The Iran-backed terror group is now demanding ‘written guarantees’ that mediators will continue to negotiate a permanent truce, once the first phase of the plan goes into effect, the Hamas rep said.”

Essentially, this demand means that Hamas and its handlers, Iran and Qatar, would like to start wars and then have someone else stop them when they do not like how they are going.

In contravention of the Geneva conventions, Hamas has refused to allow the Red Cross to check on the welfare of the hostages. One can imagine why.

To this day, there seems little-to-no interest in the fate or condition of the hostages still in Gaza. Instead, there is denial that the October 7 atrocities even took place, compared to an almost obsessive regard for the safety of, and humanitarian aid for Gazans. When the UN is unable to deliver the aid, Israel, not the UN, is blamed.

The Hamas murders, rapes, burning alive of babies and abductions – all the reasons why Israel was forced to go to war with Hamas to begin with — have retreated into the background.

What seems to matter instead to those who set the political and media agendas is to use the Hamas war once again to demonize the Jews as the world’s most inhuman people for wanting to live peacefully on their historical land without daily massacres from Iran and its proxies — Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the Houthis — which apparently plan to encircle them in a “Ring of Fire” — “six fronts of aggression against Israel” — as part of Iran’s attempt at hegemony in the Middle East.

Western elites seem happy to assist them in that fight.

Nine months after the Iranian-orchestrated October 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 mostly Israeli civilians, 116 hostages remain in Gaza, including at least 42 whom Israeli officials estimate were murdered by Hamas, after suffering unfathomable mental, physical and sexual abuse.