Israel Faces Hard Political Problems After the Gaza Fighting Charles Lipson

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/05/21/israel_faces_hard_political_probl

It’s hard waging war against terrorists camped out among civilians. It’s even harder when your best ally starts edging away. That was the position Israel faced after an abrupt change-of-face by the Biden White House.

Until Wednesday, the Biden team supplied the press with readouts stressing America’s “strong” and “unwavering support” for Israel, based on the president’s calls to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Those days are over. Biden buckled under growing pressure from anti-Israel factions within the Democratic Party and some allies in Europe and the Middle East.

The administration’s revised goals were Israel’s immediate de-escalation and a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Progressives want to go further. They hope to block a huge, scheduled sale of military equipment to Israel, including Iron Dome defensive missiles. (That progressive goal is a long shot since the Biden administration publicly supports the sale.)

The administration’s pressure on Israel returns the Biden White House to Obama-era policies, much like its resumption of Obama’s policies toward Iran. The people tied to those old policies are back, too. They have learned from their mistakes and can repeat them exactly. The policies themselves have become mainstream among Democrats and represent two decades of steady effort by the party’s left wing, including some progressive Jews, led by J Street.

Netanyahu tried to resist the new White House pressure, insisting Israel would fight until it achieved its objectives. But it was difficult to hold out for long. International pressure was building, not on Hamas terrorists firing rockets at civilians but on the Jewish state defending against them. The result was a cease-fire, brokered by Egypt, that began Friday morning. Like all such arrangements, it doesn’t come with a long-term warranty. Cease-fires are fragile. In any case, it is far short of a peace deal and even farther from resolving the Palestinian conflict.

The deadly exchange of fire has drowned out public discussion of several large — and difficult — questions that confront Israel as the fighting ends. The answers to these questions will determine the political outcome of the 2021 Gaza conflict, which may be different from the military outcome.

January 6th Commission, or Wrongthink Inquisition? The proposed commission is part of the rolling effort to target, smear, and chill half the country Benjamin Weingarten

https://weingarten.substack.com/p/january-6th-commission-or-wrongthink?token=

The contemplated January 6th Commission has little to do with January 6th and most everything to do with railroading the tens of millions of Trump voters represented by the tens of thousands of peaceful protesters in Washington that day, whose views the Ruling Class has ignored and whose interests it has undermined.

It is part of a continued, rolling effort to exploit the inexcusable, pathetic and disgraceful actions of several hundred people to further the narrative that up to half the country constitutes would-be or potential domestic terrorists, justify the pervasive use of Ruling Class power to pursue them and, in the near term, hang the events around the necks of Republicans to retain and augment political power.

This should have been blindingly clear since the prospect of such a commission was first raised. If it wasn’t, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) made it blatantly obvious when he recently quipped: “Republicans can let their constituents know: Are they on the side of truth, or do they want to cover up for the insurrectionists and for Donald Trump?”

This rhetoric should have proven the death knell of the exercise, but several dozen GOP House members evidently did not see it for what it was. There are two possible explanations. One is that they did not “know what time it is”—that their political opponents care not for a good-faith, sober fact-finding mission, aimed at securing liberty and justice for all in defense of our republic, but rather seek to rout them and punish their constituents. The other is that they did not believe it worth making the case to said constituents that the proposed commission is not only a needless and nakedly partisan component of a broader political onslaught, but downright chilling on its own ostensible terms.

House Democrats evidently do not believe such efforts might boomerang on them—nor do they seem to care about the long-term consequences to liberty and justice of the actions they are now taking.

Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters, by Steven E. Koonin By Reviewed by Rupert Darwall

https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2021/05/20/unsettled_what_climate_science_tells_us_what_it_doesnt_and_why_it_matters_by_steven_e_koonin_778065.html

On January 8, 2014, at New York University in Brooklyn, there occurred a unique event in the annals of global warming: nearly eight hours of structured debate between three climate scientists supporting the consensus on manmade global warming and three climate scientists who dispute it, moderated by a team of six leading physicists from the American Physical Society (APS) led by Dr. Steven Koonin, a theoretical physicist at New York University. The debate, hosted by the APS, revealed consensus-supporting climate scientists harboring doubts and uncertainties and admitting to holes in climate science – in marked contrast to the emphatic messaging of bodies such as Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

At one point, Koonin read an extract from the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report released the previous year. Computer model-simulated responses to forcings – the term used by climate scientists for changes of energy flows into and out of the climate system, such as changes in solar radiation, volcanic eruptions, and changes in the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – “can be scaled up or down.” This scaling included greenhouse gas forcings.

Some forcings in some computer models had to be scaled down to match computer simulations to actual climate observations. But when it came to making centennial projections on which governments rely and drive climate policy, the scaling factors were removed, probably resulting in a 25 to 30 percent over-prediction of the 2100 warming.

Pro-Terrorist Rioters Attack Jews Across Manhattan Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/05/pro-terrorist-rioters-attack-jews-across-manhattan-daniel-greenfield/

In today’s article, I discussed the growing wave of antisemitic violence in Los Angeles. But where LA politicians offered swift condemnation of those attacks, the much larger wave of attacks in New York City has been met with silence from Cuomo de Blasio, and Schumer.

And that’s not surprising.

New York is AOC territory. And condemning antisemitism risks falling afoul of the various lefty power blocs trying to carve up the city. Top that off with a year in which Cuomo and de Blasio, along with the media, openly targeted Orthodox Jews and blamed them for the spread of the virus, without a single word of protest or dissent, and you have the formula for the attacks by terror supporters now happening across Manhattan.

The criminal justice system had already been shut down. New York politicians had made it clear that antisemitism was a new political norm.

As of now, Andrew Yang and Eric Adams have also failed to comment on the attacks. The videos however are everywhere.

A pro-Palestinian demonstration in Midtown Manhattan turned violent after pro-Palestinian protesters engaged in violence against Jewish onlookers after making their way to the Diamond District.

Pro-Palestinian Mob Beats Up Jewish Men in Los Angeles By Catherine Smith

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/21/pro-palestinian-mob-beats-up-jewish-men-in-los-angeles/

A violent attack on Jewish diners by a pro-Palestinian mob in Los Angeles on Tuesday night was being investigated as a possible hate crime.

A pro-Palestinian mob brutally beat up a group of Jewish men Wednesday at a restaurant in Los Angeles, the day after a Palestinian Youth Movement-led protest was held in the city.

Video accounts of the incident posted on Twitter show the pro-Palestinian mob approaching a group of men dining at a sushi restaurant in West Hollywood and were asked if they were Jewish. When the men replied, “Yes,” they attacked them. The mob can be seen hurling bottles and yelling anti-Semitic slurs. According to one bystander the mob repeatedly struck one of the Jewish men “with a pole.” Police are investigating whether the incident was a hate crime, The Washington Free Beacon reported.

According to The Beacon, “the anti-Semitic attack took place in the early hours of the morning after a ‘Day of Action’ Palestinian solidarity march outside the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. The march coincided with a “Day of Rage” in the West Bank, for which the Palestinian Authority urged residents ‘to attack Israelis with rocks, molotov cocktails, and car rammings.’”

As reported, anti-Semitic attacks are on the rise in the United States. The Anti-Defamation League reported a four-decade high for anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, with only a slight decrease from that level in 2020.

Police are also investigating another possible anti-semitic incident involving an Orthodox Jewish man, who according to the report was chased Monday night in Los Angeles by a car full of people waving Palestinian flags.

Is the Biden Administration an Enemy of Israel and the Free World? by Guy Millière

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17392/biden-administration-israel-enemy

Biden made no distinction between a democratic ally of the United States and a terrorist organization he did not even name. He spoke as if he did not know that the calm was broken by a terrorist organization and by no one else, and that what prevents Palestinians from having freedom, prosperity and democracy is precisely that they are ruled by terrorists and people who supports terrorism.

On April 7, a US Department of State press statement said that the Biden administration had decided to restore US financial “aid to Palestinians”, without requiring that American money not be used for terrorist purposes….

The appointment to the post of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Israeli-Palestinian Affairs of Hady Amr, a man who has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid”, and said that he was “inspired by intifada”, seemed to confirm that the Biden administration would not be particularly “pro-Israel”…. Amr met Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Muhammad Ishtayya in Ramallah to negotiate the use of US financial aid to the PA while Israel was under missile fire….

In a PBS interview on April 2, one of the American negotiators, Robert Malley, announced that he wants “to remove those sanctions that are inconsistent with the deal”, “so that Iran enjoys the benefits that it was supposed to enjoy”. Nothing shows that the Biden administration has changed that position.

There were no threats to stop the new funding he had promised the Palestinians until they stopped firing rockets. He did not threaten to withdraw his promise of an office in Washington DC for them.

Most unsettling of all, while Iran’s proxy, Hamas, was raining nearly 4,000 rockets and missiles into a country the size of New Jersey, the US was engaged in talks in Vienna to discuss how much money the US was prepared to give Iran – to buy more weapons to batter Israel again?

Seemingly to destabilize Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the US administration made public a report accusing the him of being responsible for the murder of the anti-Saudi writer, Jamal Khashoggi, without specifying that Khashoggi was an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood, an arch-enemy of the House of Saud.

A recent article by Michael Doran and Tony Badran on Tablet explains why Israel needs to stay on guard and be ready to act decisively. A project designed during the Obama presidency and aiming to “create a new Middle Eastern order” seems to be underway. It would place the interests of Iran over those of US allies in the Middle East, thereby leading to the hegemony in the region of Iran. The project would erode new the Abraham Accords, push Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to come to an agreement with Iran and involve “forcing Israel into a more passive posture in the face of Iran’s rising power”. Is this project that the Biden administration is now implementing?

“[I]n war and conflict, one side wins and one side loses…. Israel must do what all nations… are doing to achieve victory: beating its enemy….” — Daniel Pipes, historian, Commentary, January 2017.

The Biden administration acts as if it does not see that it puts Israel and other longtime American allies in danger; it acts as if it does not see that behind Iran and the mullahs, China is on the move.

Is the Biden administration about to seriously diminish the status of the United States and the Free World to herald in a new world order that is radical and monstrous?

May 10, 6.07 pm. Six missiles fired by Iran’s proxy militia, Hamas from the Gaza Strip fly into Israel and quickly become more numerous. Most were destroyed by the Iron Dome, but not all. Within a week more than 3,000 missiles had been fired by Hamas. Some caused deaths, injuries and destruction. Hamas’s goal was to exhaust the capabilities of the Iron Dome and cause as many civilian casualties as possible. To that end, it targeted Tel Aviv at night when people are asleep. Without the Iron Dome, there would have been thousands of deaths. Hamas has committed war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The January 6 Commission Is All About Revenge If January 6 was the worst attack on the country since the Civil War, as Joe Biden preposterously claims, or comparable to 9/11, why must politicians and the media lie about what happened?  By Julie Kelly

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/20/the-january-6-commission-is-all-about-revenge/

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed legislation to create a 9/11-style commission to investigate the events of January 6, 2021. Thirty-five Republicans, including the ten who voted to impeach Donald Trump for “inciting” the violence that day, joined Democrats to advance the bill to the U.S. Senate where its fate is unclear.

The vote, ironically, came almost four years to the day that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, at the behest of many Republicans, appointed Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate the concocted crime of Trump-Russia election collusion. The January 6 commission, if passed, would be yet another extension of Crossfire Hurricane, the illicit probe launched by the FBI in 2016 in an effort to destroy one of Barack Obama’s most despised political enemies.

One special counsel investigation, numerous congressional and senate inquisitions, and two impeachment trials later, the Left’s insatiable lust to take down Donald Trump remains unsatisfied. But now, rather than just targeting the president and his family, millions of Americans must be punished for defying the ruling regime—which only partially includes the federal agencies, political leaders of both parties, the news media, and Big Tech. This dangerous crusade is accelerating at an alarming pace at the highest levels of government; apparently, it is of no concern to nearly three dozen Republican members of Congress who are helping Joe Biden and the Democrats exact their revenge on Trump supporters.

Prior to the vote, Democrats and Republicans promised the January 6 commission would expose the truth. The American public, the lawmakers admonished, deserve a full accounting of who was involved, who was responsible, and how to prevent another “attack” in the future.

About Those ‘DOA’ Abraham Accords Biden Administration policy—not a failed “peace process”—is the underpinning of the current Hamas war against Israel. By Shoshana Bryen

https://amgreatness.com/2021/05/20/about-those-doa-abraham-accords/

It is hard to be against a peace agreement. Really hard. But the Biden Administration is giving it a go. 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki slammed Donald Trump’s policies in the Middle East and called the Israel-United Arab Emirates-Bahrain Abraham Accords “DOA.”

“We felt there was not a constructive action by the prior administration, aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival. We don’t think they did anything constructive really to bring it into the long-standing conflict in the Middle East.”

Psaki appears to be channeling Washington Post columnist Max Boot. “The clashes in recent days between Israelis and Palestinians make clear that there is no ‘peace’ and no ‘new Middle East.’ It remains the same blood-soaked mess as ever. The Abraham Accords were nice, but they did nothing to resolve underlying conflicts in Yemen, Syria, Libya—or the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

It is understandable that critics choose not to consider the accords in their own context. Yemen, Syria, and Libya weren’t on the table. Neither was world hunger, relief for China’s Uighurs, or the U.S. national debt. And, deliberately, neither were the Palestinians. 

In the immediate aftermath of the September 2020 signing, a horde of pundits and politicians including Samantha Power, John Kerry, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Representative Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), and media including Reuters, CNN, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, the Guardian and more, spewed their litany about how much more dangerous the region had become and how the United States was doomed to fail. They are joined now by Representatives Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Bernie Sanders (again), and others.

They are wrong.

Glazov Gang: Killing Jews and Double Standards What country in the world would tolerate rockets killing its civilians?

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/glazov-gang-killing-jews-and-double-standards-frontpagemagcom/

Due to YouTube Censorship, The Glazov Gang has moved to Rumble. Please SUBSCRIBE.

This new Glazov Gang episode features features Barry Nussbaum, the son of Auschwitz survivors, the founder of the American Truth Project, and a news commentator on international affairs who has regularly appeared on major television networks. His new book is Because You Asked.

Barry discusses Killing Jews and Double Standards, reflecting on the question: What country in the world would tolerate rockets killing its civilians? 

Don’t miss it!

Another U.S. Ally Gets in Bed With Iran One that sits atop vital oil and gas pipelines. So what’s next? Kenneth R. Timmerman

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/05/another-us-ally-gets-bed-iran-kenneth-r-timmerman-0/

The answer is obvious: nothing good.

The Republic of Georgia lost 20 percent of its territory in 2008 to Russian invasion, and continues to struggle politically and economically from Russian interference in its domestic affairs.

The ruling Georgia Dream party, dominated by pro-Russian oligarch Bidzia (“Boris”) Ivanishvili, won parliamentary elections last October that the opposition declared were rigged. Since April 19, a new power sharing agreement hammered out by the European Union and the United States, seems have convinced the opposition to rejoin the parliament.

But Georgia’s northern neighbor and election irregularities are only part of the former Soviet republic’s problems. It also sits atop a key pipeline that transports oil from Baku, Azerbaijan, through Georgia to Turkey and Western Europe.

The Iranian regime has long sought to block the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, since it rivaled Iran’s own oil and gas exports to Turkey. Because of this, and because of a succession of weak governments in Georgia, the Iranians have established a powerful commercial and intelligence base inside Georgia that has influenced policies and infiltrated the Georgian security and judicial establishments.

Iran’s infiltration of Georgia and manipulation of Georgian state policy led the U.S. Department of Treasury to expose a network of Iranian sanctions-busting traders based in Tbilisi in 2014. As part of the 2015 Iran deal, U.S. sanctions against them were then lifted. By all accounts they continue to operate in Georgia today with the blessing of Georgian politicians and local banks.

The State Security Service has also established robust ties to its Iranian counterpart, the Ministry of Information and Security.

Under the control of then interior minister GeorgiGakharia, SSS-men raided an Iranian restaurant in Tbilisi in February 2018 and arrested its owner, claiming he was engaged in a dastardly plot to hire an assassin to murder other Iranians in Tbilisi.

The man they arrested, Alireza Soleimane-pak, also known as Hamid Reza Zakeri, was a defector from Iranian intelligence who became a witness in the 9/11 court case against the Iranian regime that ultimately led to a damage award in favor of the victims of over $16 billion. He was also a UN-registered political refugee.

I was involved in the 9/11 case, and have interviewed Mr. Soleimane-pak on many occasions over the past 18 years.Since learning of his arrest, I have traveled to Tbilisi twice to attend court hearings. 

The Republic of Georgia’s courts have struggled since the 2003 Rose Revolution to separate themselves from political interference.