RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/01/colleyville-fort-hood-lloyd-billingsley/

“We do believe from our engagement with this subject that he was singularly focused on one issue, uh, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community, uh, but we’re continuing to work to find motive and, and we will continue on that path.”

That was Matt DeSarno, FBI special agent in charge, after the hostage incident in Colleyville, Texas, on Saturday. It was bizarre statement, as Robert Spencer noted, because the hostage-taker’s demands revolved around imprisoned jihadist Aafia Siddiqui, also known as “Lady al Qaeda.”  The FBI knew that but was “continuing to work to find motive.” It was as though the Great Brinks Robbery of 1950 left the FBI gasping in bewilderment.

The FBI did not name the “subject” of the Colleyville “engagement,” nor any of the hostages,  including the rabbi. Also unspoken was the biggest FBI lapse of all. The nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency failed to prevent “the subject,” Malik Faisal Akram, from taking the hostages in the first place. That recalls another act of Islamic terrorism just down the road at Fort Hood, Texas.

In 2009, U.S Army major Nidal Hasan was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing American soldiers then shipping out to Afghanistan. As Lessons from Fort Hood confirms, The FBI was fully aware of the communications but the Washington office of the FBI called off surveillance of Hasan. On November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers and wounded more than 30 others in the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since September 11, 2001.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2022/01/texas-synagogue-hostage-crisis-a-case-study-in-downplaying-antisemitism/

“And, in the historic harmony of American life, there are more anti-Jewish crimes perpetrated than all the other religiously motivated crimes combined — often at the hands of other minority groups. And the habit of downplaying this kind of antisemitism, or appropriating it for partisanship, is a dangerous game.”

Being cautious about assigning motive seems to apply only to certain politically inconvenient acts.

W atching the Congregation Beth Israel hostage situation unfold this weekend, one might have been under the impression that a 44-year-old British Islamist named Malik Faisal Akram had traveled 5,000 miles and then merely wandered into a temple in a Dallas suburb by happenstance, before taking four hostages and demanding the release of a notorious terrorist.

Akram — or as the Telegraph described him, a man “with an English accent” — allegedly demanded the release of Aafia Siddiqui, known by the moniker “Lady al-Qaeda,” from the nearby Carswell Air Force Base. Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist who spent years in North America, is serving an 86-year sentence for the attempted murder of a U.S. soldier in 2010. The Justice Department alleges that she was picked up carrying notes on how to manufacture a “dirty bomb” and held plans for potential attacks on the Empire State Building and the Brooklyn Bridge.

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/17/ii-tipp-poll-is-religion-under-attack-a-majority-say-yes/

Both sides of the political debate agree that there’s a schism of sorts in America, a cultural battle that transcends ordinary politicking and goes to the heart of how we see ourselves and our fellow Americans. And one of the elements of that cultural battle, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll suggests, is religion.

The monthly I&I/TIPP sounding of public opinion asked: “Do you agree or disagree with the statement “religion is under attack in the U.S.?”

Among those responding, 52% said they agree, while 40% said they disagree. About 9% said they weren’t sure (numbers don’t add to 100% due to rounding).

https://issuesinsights.com/2022/01/18/the-murdering-of-free-speech-in-america/

In Cato’s 15th letter, the writers who compiled the series of essays under a pen name inspired by the Roman senator who stood against the tyranny of Julius Caesar argued that “freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together.” Today, we are watching that death play out before us.

President Joe Biden, whose growing unpopularity is well-deserved, continued to carry on last week what has become a Democratic tradition: He asked the private sector to become partners in censorship with the federal government.

“I make a special appeal to social media companies and media outlets, please deal with disinformation and misinformation that’s on your shows,” he said during a virtual meeting from the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. “It has to stop.”

Of course, Big Tech and the legacy media have been happy to oblige.

“​​When the leader of the majority party in Washington, D.C., issues a demand, the largest corporations listen,” journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted in response to Biden’s “will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” proposition.

“Again: so much of the censorship from Google and other tech monopolies is done not on their own accord but under pressure and threats from Democratic Party leaders.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2022/01/15/disclosures-released-dr-fauci-household-profits-exceeded-17-million-in-2020–included-income-royalties-travel-perks-and-investment-gains/?sh=281794d07d5f

Last night, U.S. Senator Roger Marshall received Dr. Anthony Fauci’s unredacted FY2020 financial disclosures. The release following a heated Senate exchange between Fauci and Marshall which concluded with Fauci called the senator a “moron.”

The financial disclosures contain a wealth of previously unknown information. For example, the Fauci household’s net worth exceeds $10.4 million.

During the pandemic year of 2020, their household income, perks and benefits, and unrealized gains totaled $1,776,479 — including federal income and benefits of $868,812; outside royalties and travel perks totaling $113,298; and investment accounts increasing by $794,369.

Here are the numbers as compiled by the auditors at OpenTheBooks.com, an organization I lead. This analysis used previously known information plus the newly released disclosures.

Investment Income: $794,369

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

President Biden’s two immediate predecessors fractured the nation with divisive talk. In his campaign, Mr. Biden promised unification. Instead, he has increased dissension, focusing on identity politics, federalizing voting laws and diminishing the role of the traditional family, all the while calling his political opponents misogynists, racists, xenophobes, bigots and domestic terrorists who want to destroy democracy. Such intemperate language does little to bridge legitimate differences between Democrats and Republicans – progressives and conservatives. He has wasted political capital, personally denigrating those with whom he disagrees, which has meant less time on issues that affect all Americans, regardless of Party – from the economy, inflation, education and illegal immigration at home to the consequences for the United States as to what is happening in the Middle East, Central Asia, China and Russia.

The calamitous withdrawal from Afghanistan sent a message to its allies that the United States’ commitment means little, and to its enemies that America need not be feared. The Abraham Accords, one of the Trump Administration’s finest achievements, has been stalled by the anti-Israel stand of the Biden Administration, and by a desire to reinstitute the Iranian nuclear deal. While Western imperialism of an earlier time is, perhaps justifiably, denigrated, its reincarnation in the East – in China and Russia – is ignored by the same pundits who criticize the West. Recent riots in Kazakhstan and the plight of the Uighurs in China’s Xinjiang Province are examples of unrest that are being dealt with harshly by Russia and China, while the West turns a blind eye.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/being-jewish-in-an-unraveling-america?token=

Last week, I met a rabbi in Los Angeles. We talked about surfing where to get the best pizza in the city and her kids and politics. At the end of the evening, she was making plans with a colleague, and they extended an invitation. Would I want to go to the shooting range with them next weekend?

I thought about the rabbi with her guns a lot over this Shabbat, as Jews who had gathered for services at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, were taken hostage by a man named Malik Faisal Akram. After nearly 11 hours, thanks to earthly miracles of law enforcement and perhaps heavenly ones as well, they were freed unharmed. Akram, who had predicted his own death in his rantings captured on Facebook livestream, was dead. 

The bad guy was killed. The good guys were saved. It doesn’t often turn out that way. All the Jews I know—even the atheists—are thanking God. 

But why, despite my gratitude, do I feel so much rage? Why does it feel like there is so little comfort to be found? What has changed?

I did not feel this way in the horrific aftermath of the Tree of Life massacre—the most lethal in all of American Jewish history.

Back then, in October 2018, it felt like the whole country grasped that a wound to the Tree of Life was a wound to the Tree of Liberty itself. That the monstrous attack in my hometown was not simply an attack on Jews, but an attack on our collective home. And that what was at stake in standing up against the deranged, conspiratorial mindset that led a neo-Nazi to the synagogue that morning was nothing less than America itself. 

What I now see is this: In America captured by tribalism and dehumanization, in an America swept up by ideologies that pit us against one another in a zero-sum game, in an America enthralled with the poisonous idea that some groups matter more than others, not all Jews—and not all Jewish victims—are treated equally. What seems to matter most to media pundits and politicians is not the Jews themselves, but the identities of their attackers.

And it scares me.