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Where Are the Dot Connectors? Noah Rothman

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/where-are-the-dot-connectors/

You never have to wait long before an act of right-wing political terrorism or even vandalism stirs a cottage industry devoted to “connecting the dots.” Whether the connections are valid or spurious, sleuths emerge from the woodwork to eagerly draw crisscrossing threads across the paranoiac’s corkboard, linking the violence to the figures they imagine might benefit from violence. White supremacy and white nationalism, limited-government conservatism, support for the right to life, or even just taking a special interest in your child’s education — these are ideals with the capacity to radicalize. Only the keenest of observers with the requisite educational background and insight can see it.

Given this reliable tic, the degree to which the professional dot-connectors have abdicated their role in the last several weeks is quite conspicuous.

The FBI is treating the deployment of Molotov cocktails against a variety of elderly and middle-aged supporters of Israel, one of them reportedly a Holocaust refugee, as a “targeted terror attack.” As they should. The attacker came armed not just with firebombs but with the shibboleths that so often accompany pro-Palestinian violence.

It’s the third act of terroristic violence in service to this cause in as many months. The arson attack on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s home by an anti-Israel activist in April and the gunning down of two young people outside an Israeli embassy event in Washington, D.C., in May establish the trend. But the trendsetters are rarely treated to the tortured effort to establish nefarious associations that so often follows acts of right-wing violence.

It’s not like that exercise would be difficult. It wouldn’t take much enterprise to establish a through-line between the murderous violence targeting Jews and their supporters to the antisocial behavior that has typified this movement for decades — a condition that the 10/7 massacre only kicked into overdrive. Intrepid researchers might see the unheeded warning signs in the glorification of terrorism apparent among the college students who brandish Hamas and Hezbollah flags and headbands. They might identify ominous portents in the demonstrators’ efforts to block highways, bridges, and airport tarmacs — activities designed to endanger their neighbors.

The violent pro-Palestinian attack on the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters from which lawmakers were forced to flee in terror might have been treated as a sign of things to come. The menacing rhetoric accompanying this sort of activism should also have been a wake-up call. “There is only one solution: Intifada. Revolution.” “Death to America.” “Globalize the intifada.” “By any means necessary.” The network of activists who chant these and other slogans could not be more explicit about the actions they prescribe. “The slave who murders the slave master, who torches the master’s house and perhaps kills the ‘civilian’ slavers’ family and servants is wholly justified in their act,” the Australian far-left website Solidarity observes. “We do not condemn the Indigenous resistance against the violence of colonization.” That sort of candor is hardly uncommon on the fringes of society from which violent activists are drawn.

The media’s dangerous lies about Israel The world was told the IDF massacred starving Palestinians. Now the BBC admits it was ‘incorrect’. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/06/03/the-medias-dangerous-lies-about-israel/

1 June 2025. Make a note of that date. For there is a good chance it will be recorded as a day of infamy. As a day when the Jews were once again libelled as the slayers of innocents. As a day when the intellectual classes mimicked their benighted forebears of the medieval era and falsely accused the Jewish nation of spilling blood for sport. For many it was just an ordinary Sunday – but for those who will come to write the history of our times, it will stand out as a day of frenzied hearsay in which Jews were once again branded demons and bloodlusters.

Reports of a massacre in Gaza came early that day. It took place in Rafah, we were told, at one of the distribution centres overseen by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the US-Israel group that’s providing aid to Gaza’s needy. With depthless cruelty, IDF troops opened fire on the half-starved Palestinians queuing for meals. Thirty-one souls were slaughtered in the ‘aid-centre attack’, as the BBC swiftly called it. A venomous fury spread through the internet. No one can deny it now, people cried: Israel is ‘replicating’ Nazi tactics. Just as the Nazis told Jews they were being put on trains for a better life, so the New Nazis promise Palestinians food as ‘a pretext for slaughter’.

There was one problem with these breathless accounts of a wicked massacre: it seems no such thing took place. Last night, the BBC backtracked. It said it has now studied the ‘graphic video’ of the ‘aid-centre massacre’ and has ruled that it is ‘incorrect’. We were told the ‘massacre’ took place early in the morning, yet the ‘direction of the shadows’ in the clip point to an event that took place ‘after 7pm local time’. More devastatingly, the Beeb geolocated the clip and found that it was filmed in a part of Khan Younis that is 4.5km from the nearest aid-distribution centre. A journalist in Gaza confirmed it: the events in the viral clip are ‘unrelated to any aid-distribution site’.

If what the BBC is now saying is correct, then we have just witnessed something truly horrifying. We have watched as an untruth spread with uncommon speed to every corner of the Earth. We have seen a serious calumny be taken as good coin by newsmakers and influencers. Worse, we’ve witnessed an eruption of bigotry. Reports of an ‘aid-centre massacre’ unleashed untold Jew hatred. Across social media, the cry went up: they’re demons, they’re Nazis, they claim to be the ‘Chosen People’ and yet they use food to tempt innocents into the path of murder. All were in agreement: the Jewish nation is the most evil nation.

CNN’s Sick Reaction to the Boulder Terror Attack Matt Margolis

https://pjmedia.com/matt-margolis/2025/06/01/cnns-sick-reaction-to-the-boulder-terror-attack-n4940354

You’d think an elderly woman getting burned alive at a pro-Israel event by a man hurling Molotov cocktails while screaming “This will end when Palestine is free” would be universally condemned as terrorism. But this is 2025, with the media’s moral compass still spinning wildly and antisemitism extremely fashionable on the political left. So, instead of acknowledging the obvious, CNN went into full denial mode the moment the FBI under Director Kash Patel called the Boulder firebombing exactly what it was: a targeted terror attack.

Despite the local police chief declining to confirm whether the Boulder attack was targeted, the FBI has classified it as such. The victims were part of the “Run for Their Lives” global walk—an event calling for Hamas to release hostages—and children were among those present. While the exact number of injuries isn’t clear yet, multiple people were hospitalized following the attack.

The suspect, Mohamad Soliman, didn’t quietly sneak in through the back door. He crashed the pro-Israel gathering in Boulder, Colorado, shouting anti-Israel slogans. He then launched into a violent assault—chucking incendiary devices at innocent people.

This isn’t hard to decipher. 

Tapper’s Book Condemns Journalists In More Ways Than One

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/05/27/tappers-book-condemns-journalists-in-more-ways-than-one/

The reaction to Jake Tapper’s and Alex Thompson’s book about how the White House “hid” Joe Biden’s mental decline has been brutal – and fittingly so. But their book inadvertently reveals something even worse about today’s corporate journalists.

Tapper and Thompson would have us believe that they were shocked! shocked! to discover that Biden was suffering serious and worsening mental infirmities while president, because the White House had so expertly hidden them. And that it was only through their intrepid reporting that the truth can now be told.

This is laughable on its face.

The stories the authors recount were all known by journalists all along. How else could they have churned out a book in a matter of months after Biden left office? Every story in that book, every one, was known to White House reporters who diligently refused to report them at the time. That includes “revelations” in the book such as that:

A small, tight-knit group in former President Joe Biden’s inner circle was running the White House like a ‘politburo,’ and they were the ‘ultimate decision-makers’ as Biden’s health and cognitive function continued to decline.

Tapper himself was one of the worst offenders. Just watch any of the long and damning collection of clips circulating on social media, like the one below, showing Tapper parroting White House talking points.

THE FUTURE OF FRONTPAGE AFTER DAVID HOROWITZ

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-future-of-the-david-horowitz-freedom-center/

When David first told me that he meant me to be his intellectual heir, I thought it was an honor I was not worthy of. I still think that way because no one could possibly replace David. And it’s not my job to replace him, but to take his principles, to build on them, to introduce them to a new generation of readers, writers and activists, and to make them relevant every single day.

That’s what I already do in my writing. It’s what I intend to do as the Freedom Center’s CEO.

After his passing, the David Horowitz Freedom Center board appointed me to head the organization. What that really means is that the incredible team that David built, Michael Finch, our president, Todd Snider, Mark Tapson, whose writings you already know and podcasts you listen to, Jamie Glazov, the editor of Front Page Magazine who wrote the definitive article on David’s life and work, Lonny Leitner, whose Go for the Heart training has changed politics, the Shillman fellows Bruce Thornton, Bruce Bawer and Jason Hill, who represent some of the finest intellectual talent we have to draw on, Robert Spencer, another Shillman fellow (an honor I also share with him), whose determination to tell the truth about Islam is in the finest traditions of David’s life, John Perazzo of Discover the Networks, Sara Dogan on the campus beat and the other valued warriors are still fighting to defeat the enemies of our country and our culture.

They’re carrying on David’s fight.

Gary Lineker: how virtue-signalling rots the soul His embrace of Israelophobia reveals the useful idiocy of the centrist dads. Tom Slater

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/19/gary-lineker-how-virtue-signalling-rots-the-soul/

We’ve seen the most mediocre minds of a generation destroyed by virtue-signalling. Gary Lineker – now out of the BBC, after he ‘accidentally’ shared an anti-Semitic Instagram post – is a grimly instructive example of a moralising centrist dad whose thirst for retweets led him down a deranged and dark path. A man who has swanned effortlessly from raging against Brexit to comparing the Tories to the Nazis to reposting an ‘anti-Zionist’ video that included an image of a rat, a quintessential piece of Nazi-era, Jew-hating propaganda. Apparently, Gary’s famed ability to detect resonances of the 1930s – he once accused Suella Braverman’s immigration rhetoric of being positively Goebbels-esque – failed him on this occasion.

A formal statement is expected today, announcing Lineker’s departure from the BBC’s football coverage. He had already agreed to leave Match of the Day at the end of the football season – the show he has helmed since 1999, shortly after his dazzling playing career had ended – but he was due to stay on for the 2026 World Cup. Since Lineker shared that despicable post, by a group called Palestine Lobby, things have finally hit breaking point. Even an ‘unreserved’ apology – claiming his amplification of an age-old anti-Semitic trope was an ‘accident’ for which he takes ‘full responsibility’ – wasn’t enough to keep his already acrimonious relationship with the Beeb intact.

There are those who are trying to present this as a free-speech issue – largely people who have hitherto expressed no interest in the subject and have actually led high-profile cancellation crusades in the past. Woke leftist Owen Jones – who led the charge to get Toby Young pushed out of a government appointment – has declared his solidarity with Lineker, claiming ‘the BBC has driven out one of their most popular stars for opposing genocide’. Even though Israel’s war against Hamas is not a genocide and Lineker has actually been kicked out for reposting material straight out of Der Stürmer. By OJ’s wonky standards that doesn’t render you unfit for taxpayer-funded work, but jokes about tits on Twitter 10 years ago absolutely does.

Qatar & Influence Operations and Saudi Arabia & Influence Operations Let’s refresh. Diana West

https://dianawest.substack.com/p/qatar-and-influence-operations-and?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2175125&post_id=163628450&utm

Before there was Qatar & influence operations, there was Saudi Arabia & influence operations. If it is Qatar is in the headlines for buying politicians, media, universities, and for its terrorist connections, Saudi Arabia was making the same headlines and more (anyone remember 9/11?) a few years ago. Don’t look now, but Saudi’s Alwaleed bin Talal is a constant player. For starters, he was Fox’s No. 2 owner then, and he is Twitter’s No 2 owner today. Meanwhile, according to Forbes, Qatar threw a few hundred million dollars into Elon’s Twitter purchase as well. Who knows?

Maybe, we are all Qataris now.

How did this happen? Some rather important part of it starts with Alwaleed’s buy into the leading American conservative media network, Fox News, over twenty years ago. The Saudi stake would grow to 7 percent, second only to holdings of the Murdoch family. I am posting a syndicated newspaper column I wrote on the subject in 2010. The whole thing bothered me then as it all bothers me, and greatly in this week of Trump’s Arabian Processional, about which I will have more to say. For now, the 2010 column, posted below, will serve as a refresher course — and for me, as well.

I will note that this column and hundreds more are collected in my 2013 book, No Fear.

Should Fox News register with the State Department as a foreign agent — an agent of Saudi Arabia? by Diana West, February 7, 2010

First off, is that a farfetched question? Not when a leading member of the ruling family of the Sharia-totalitarian “kingdom” of Saudi Arabia, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, has made himself the second-largest shareholder of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., Fox News’ parent company.

Just as Steven Emerson believes that American universities using Saudi mega-millions (many from Alwaleed) to set up Islamic studies departments should register as Saudi agents, I believe an American news channel part-owned and part-influenced by the Saudi prince should, too.

Bill Maher’s guest applauds host’s tirade against ‘weak and woke’ Dems who think America is ‘cringe’ Rep. Mike Lawler reacts after HBO host went off on Dems for ‘indulging nonsense’ from anti-American students By Madison Colombo

https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-mahers-guest-applauds-hosts-tirade-against-weak-woke-dems-who-think-america-cringe

HBO host Bill Maher is taking aim at young Democrats, accusing them of supporting anti-Israel movements and sympathizing with Hamas.

“Liberals are weak and woke, especially the white ones, and they indulge all sorts of nonsense from their kids,” Maher said on a recent episode of “Real Time with Bill Maher.”

“So talk to your children and remind them you don’t really want to live like your heroes in Hamas.”

Maher criticized young progressives for what he sees as a misguided admiration of extremist groups, hosting Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., and Democratic strategist Donna Brazile on his panel. 

Lawler said on “America Reports” that Maher’s commentary “hit the nail on the head” and the left must change course. 

“America is a beacon of hope, of freedom, of opportunity. And yet, they are embracing some of the worst actors on the stage, whether it be Hamas, China, or other countries around the globe that certainly do not provide for freedom of expression or speech in their countries.”

Maher’s comments come amid a wave of renewed anti-Israel protests on college campuses. In early May, dozens of protesters were arrested at Columbia University after occupying the school’s library. At least 80 people, mostly women, were detained.

How Do You Solve a Problem Like Tucker Carlson? By T.R. Clancy

http://Why does Tucker Carlson continue favorably showcasing people who say all the same things Israel’s worst enemies do?

In the opening sentence of Douglas Murray’s current bestseller, On Democracies and Death Cults, Murray writes, “Sometimes a flare goes up and you see exactly where everyone is standing.”

In this case, the flare was the October 7, 2023 pogrom in southern Israel perpetrated by Hamas and hordes of “innocent” Gazan civilians.

And that flare starkly illuminated the unmistakable outline of Tucker Carlson.

On the wrong side of the wire.

For years Carlson offered conservative punditry at outlets like the Weekly Standard, CNN, and MSNBC, until he really took off in 2016 as Fox News’s most popular conservative. In 2019, Michael Anton labeled Carlson “the de facto leader of the conservative movement — assuming any such thing can still be said to exist.”

His nightly monologues fearlessly exposed the debacles of the Russia hoax, COVID, “mostly peaceful” BLM riots, the rigged election, and the Biden administration’s Gestapo tactics towards the J6 protesters.

One could imagine that, once the Left had successfully assassinated Trump, the next worst troublemaker who needed shutting up would be Carlson.

Then the most shocking historical crime of this century happened, and Tucker Carlson had nothing to say. As weeks passed after October 7, his silence implied an unhealthy antipathy towards Israel’s cause.

Then, on November 15, 2023, Carlson interviewed Candace Owens, a frequent guest on Fox News, including Carlson’s former show. At the time of the podcast, Owens was in the middle of a flap with her then co-worker at the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro (an issue of its own that’s not the focus here).

When the conversation turned to Israel, Carlson’s thoughts on October 7 weren’t encouraging.

A new low for the Pulitzer Prize How gross to give the commentary prize to a man who denigrated the Israeli hostages. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/05/09/a-new-low-for-the-pulitzer-prize/

Back in normal times, many moons ago, it was frowned upon to denigrate women who’d been kidnapped by violent men. It would have been seen as especially sick to disparage women who’d been seized by an army of anti-Semites during a bloody carnival of Jew-killing. Speaking ill of such victims would likely have earned you scorn in decent society. Not anymore. Now it wins you the Pulitzer Prize.

This year’s Pulitzer Prize for Commentary has gone to Mosab Abu Toha, a writer from Gaza who lives in the US. The prize is overseen by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The judges praised Abu Toha’s essays in the New Yorker for showing the world ‘the physical and emotional carnage in Gaza’. They had rather less to say about his online hysterics, in which he called Israeli hostages ‘killers’ and denounced the BBC as ‘filthy people’ for daring to suggest the Bibas kids were murdered by Hamas.

The sleuths over at the Honest Reporting website have uncovered Abu Toha’s digital bitching. And it ain’t pretty. He flipped following the release of the British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari in January this year. ‘How on Earth is this girl called a hostage?’, he asked on Facebook. She’s a ‘soldier’, he said, who had been ‘detained’ by Hamas. And ‘this is the case [for] most of the “hostages”’.

Note those scare quotes. It’s amazing how hateful punctuation can be. The implication was as clear as it was vile: these aren’t real hostages. They’re not innocents. They’re occupiers who were taken as prisoners of war by Hamas. Here, Abu Toha both legitimised Hamas, treating it as a normal army doing normal army things, and denigrated the hostages, even going so far as to rob them of that title. ‘Soldiers’, ‘occupiers’ – ie, the fuckers had it coming.