How Palestinian Leaders Treat Their Refugees by Khaled Abu Toameh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17284/palestinian-leaders-refugees

These Palestinian officials, in other words, would rather see their people continue living in devastating poverty as refugees rather than improve their living conditions and search for new opportunities in Western countries. They want millions of Palestinians to remain stuck in refugee camps so that the Palestinian leadership can continue milking the world for money.

The assault on the woman triggered a wave of condemnations by Palestinian activists, who took to social media to express outrage over the Palestinian leadership’s decision to use force against Palestinian refugees.

The Palestinians who protested outside the PA embassy in Beirut, however, seem somewhat dubious that this new American money will go into the right hands. The protesters have been in Lebanon for several years now and the Palestinian leadership has done precious little to assist them.

Judging from experience, it is safe to assume that the Palestinians in Lebanon would be lucky to see a single dollar of the Biden administration’s new aid package. This is what happens when Western donors shower money on a corrupt and ruthless Palestinian leadership that sends its thugs to beat up starving refugees who are begging for help.

The Palestinian leadership, which is about to receive tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration, has once again proven that it does not tolerate any form of criticism, even if it comes from impoverished Palestinian who fled their homes in Syria.

This leadership has also shown how it cares nothing about the problems facing its people, especially those who were forced to flee their homes in Syria after the beginning of the civil war there in 2011.

The number of Palestinian refugees from Syria in Lebanon is estimated at 27,000, according to statistics from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). These refugees suffer from harsh living conditions as a result of the scarcity of relief aid and lack of stable financial resources.

About 87% of the Palestinian refugees displaced from Syria to Lebanon suffer from absolute poverty, according to UNRWA.

On April 12, members of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction in Lebanon used force to disperse dozens of Palestinians who were demonstrating outside the PA embassy in Beirut.

The protest was organized by Palestinian refugees who fled from Syria to Lebanon in the past decade. The protesters came to the embassy to ask for help in solving their humanitarian and economic crises. They also demanded that the embassy issue them Palestinian passports or travel documents so that they could leave Lebanon to start a new life in other countries, including the European Union and Canada.

The message the protesters sought to relay to Abbas and the Palestinian leadership: If you do not want to give us financial aid, at least help us move to other countries where we might live in dignity and earn a decent living.

Embarrassed by the protest, the PA embassy summoned its security guards and scores of Fatah activists from different parts of Lebanon to disperse the refugees.

Child Abuse in Plain Sight Forcing critical race theory on children is psychologically damaging. By Larry Sand

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/14/child-abuse-in-plain-sight/

I come from a time when schools existed to teach the ABCs, basic math and the amazing story of the American founding. While it’s true that Horace Mann, the man who first promoted universal public education, was a central planner, government schools usually turned out educated students whose values comported with those of their parents. But these days, driven by fads and pseudoscience, many schools seem to exist to frighten children by forcing them into believing some craze-du-jour that is often alien to their parents. Of late, the global warming (or is it climate change?) and gender fluidity fads have been cruelly forced upon children as young as five.

Then, most recently, we had the hysterical response to COVID-19. The ensuing school lockdowns have led children to live lives of social isolation, which have increased rates of anxiety, depression and suicide. Additionally, the learning loss has been incalculable.

And now, many of those who have been able get back to in-person classes are being subjected to woke schooling and its foundational underpinning, critical race theory. Those who condemn CRT pedagogy, which maintains that racism is pervasive and permanent, and divides students into “oppressor” and “oppressed” factions, usually comes from those who have an issue with its inherent radicalism. But what about its effects on children’s psyches?

In an eye-opening piece, Children’s Educational Opportunity Foundation President Lewis Andrews writes,

woke curricula involve much more than warped views of history, the scientific method, and social relations—they also employ instructional methods that have been shown to inflict serious psychological harm completely independent of what is being taught. These include the frequent use of shaming, forced public confessions of so-called ‘privilege,’ the acceptance of one’s socioeconomic background as an excuse for not achieving, and the promotion of ideological conformity as the best way to deal with social conflict.

How to Start a War Joe Biden, or those around him, seem determined to upset the peace they inherited. By Victor Davis Hanson

https://amgreatness.com/2021/04/14/how-to-start-a-war/

Wars often arise from uncertainty. When strong powers appear weak, truly weaker ones take risks they otherwise would not. 

Sloppy braggadocio and serial promises of restraint alternatively trigger wars, too. Empty tough talk can needlessly egg on aggressors. But mouthing utopian bromides convinces bullies that their targets are too sophisticated to counter aggression.

Sometimes announcing “a new peace process” without any ability to bring either novel concessions or pressures only raises false hopes—and furor. 

Every new American president is usually tested to determine whether the United States can still protect friends like Japan, Europe, South Korea, Israel, and Taiwan. And will the new commander-in-chief deter America’s enemies Iran and North Korea—and keep China and Russia from absorbing their neighbors?

Joe Biden, and those around him, seem determined to upset the peace they inherited. 

Soon after Donald Trump left office, Vladimir Putin began massing troops on the Ukrainian border and threatening to attack.

Putin earlier had concluded Trump was dangerously unpredictable, and perhaps better not provoked. After all, the Trump Administration took out Russian mercenaries in Syria. It beefed up defense spending and upped sanctions.

The Trump Administration flooded the world with cheap oil to Russia’s chagrin. It pulled out from asymmetrical missile treaties with Russia. It sold sophisticated arms to the Ukrainians. The Russians concluded that Trump might do anything, and so waited for another president before again testing America.

In contrast, Biden too often talks provocatively—while carrying a twig. He has gratuitously called Putin “a killer.” And he warned that the Russian dictator “would pay a price” for supposedly interfering in the 2020 election. 

Unfortunately, his bombast follows four years of a Russian-collusion hoax, fueled by a concocted dossier paid for by 2016 candidate Hillary Clinton. Biden and others swore Trump was—in the words of Barack Obama’s former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper—a “Russian asset.”

Former CNN Producer Rips into Media for Trying to Have It Both Ways on COVID Vaccine Matt Vespa

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/04/14/why-a-former-cnn-producer-shredded-the-media-over-their-covid-vaccine-coverage-n2587950

Steve Krakauer is a former CNN producer and media executive. His recent Fourth Watch newsletter touched upon what we’re all talking about: the COVID vaccine. Specifically, the pause over the Johnson and Johnson vaccine after six women aged 18-48 suffered blood clots six-to-thirteen days after receiving the shot. Nearly seven million doses have already been administered. The risk is still IMMENSELY LOW—but the message is clear and vaccine hesitancy, which was already an issue, has now become another area where the panic peddlers can latch onto though it makes no sense. The experts want us to get vaccinated but then think we’ll just be nonreactive to news that’s packaged to scare us half to death. Is it good that Dr. Anthony Fauci said there’s no cause of alarm or anxiety for those who have received the J&J shot? Yes, but his credibility balance is negative. The experts have said that impending doom was upon us. Nothing happened. And now, on top of the expert class indirectly peddling vaccine hesitancy with their advice to get the shot but remain in the bunker and in abject terror, the media has also played a part in the hysteria. 

MSNBC’s Joy Reid said she’s going to remain hiding even after getting vaccinated. CNN’s Brian Stelter is mad more people, journalists especially, aren’t sharing their vaccine selfies. CNN also published why that could be a security risk. Krakauer noted that whether intentional or not, the media establishment is only fanning the flames of vaccine hesitancy (via Fourth Watch):

Consciously or subconsciously, the media is continuing to drive fear around COVID that undoubtably will lead to vaccine hesitancy. Take MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Sunday. The 7pm host tweeted to her two million followers that, when she’s fully vaccinated, she will be too “scurred” to get on an airplane or do “indoor activities” and that she plans to continue “double masking…for the foreseeable future”…

1,500 Rabbis Slam the ADL for ‘Grossly Misplaced Charges of Anti-Semitism’ By Tyler O’Neil

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/04/14/1500-rabbis-slam-the-adl-for-grossly-misplaced-charges-of-anti-semitism-n1440111

A coalition of 1,500 Orthodox Jewish rabbis condemned the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) after it called for Fox News to fire Tucker Carlson, accusing him of anti-Semitism. The Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) sent a letter rebuking the ADL and urging it to “discard its partisan preoccupations and undertake an urgently needed course correction.”

“There is nothing supremacist, much less antisemitic, about concerns that voting by illegal immigrants is a negation of America’s electoral system and a violation of our democracy,” Rabbi Yaakov Menken, CJV’s managing director, told PJ Media about the situation.

The outrage traces back to Carlson’s show last Thursday. “The Left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if you use the term ‘replacement,’ if you suggest that the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate of voters now casting ballots with new people, more obedient voters from the Third World,” Carlson said. “I have less political power because they are importing a brand new electorate.”

The ADL called for Fox News to fire Carlson, saying he “embraced a foundational theory of white supremacy.” White supremacist anti-Semites claim that Jews and others are orchestrating a “great replacement,” importing racial minorities in order to replace white people.

“Mr. Carlson’s attempt to at first dismiss this theory, while in the very next breath endorsing it under cover of a ‘voting rights question,’ does not give him free license to invoke a white supremacist trope,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote.

Yet Carlson’s remarks did not focus on race.

Pelosi Hijacks Everything for Her Agenda — Even the Holocaust By Rabbi Aryeh Spero

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/04/pelosi_hijacks_everything_for

One would expect the commemoration of something as tragic and sacred as the Holocaust be done in a respectful manner and not be manipulated for political goals. Such was not the case this week with Nancy Pelosi’s statement sent out on Holocaust Remembrance Day; known in Israel as Yom Ha’Shoah. Instead, she exploited the murder of six million Jews by Hitler and his regime into a manifesto of Democrat false talking points and the demonization of millions of Americans associated with conservatism and who voted for President Trump. It was sacrilege and shameful.

The first principle regarding the Holocaust is as follows: It was a unique, once-in-history genocidal plan to exterminate an entire race of people, Jews, across the globe simply because of who they were at birth. Unlike conventional warfare where antagonists may wish to eliminate those they are fighting, Hitler planned the systematic murder of those not only at war with him but those beyond the confines of the battle lines, searching for Jews worldwide even though they were not in the way of his territorial ambitions. They were murdered not for what they did or their conduct, but for simply being born into a people. While he did kill others during the war, the grand plan of Final Solution was specific to eradicating the Jewish people, no other group, from the face of the earth, leaving no trace of their ever having existed.

Holocaust Memorial Day was never established as a general memorial day for all those harmed during World War II, but as something specific to the once-in-history systematic implementation of that Final Solution plan to eradicate the Jewish people from existence and human history. The remedy for what happened is for the world to make sure, this time, that Never Again shall we stand by while adversaries, such as Iran, go about with plans to once again exterminate the Jewish people by destroying Israel, as is their announced plan, or by murdering all Jews worldwide who are Zionists, something every Jew is commanded to be.

Systemic Racism is a Conspiracy Theory Cult A conspiracy theory that explains everything in the world as racism. Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/systemic-racism-conspiracy-theory-cult-daniel-greenfield/

What is a conspiracy theory anyway? Conspiracy theories are, by definition, things that other people believe. Nobody believes in conspiracy theories, they believe that other people do.

As an old dead white Elizabethan male who invented the toilet once quipped, “Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? Why if it prospers, none dare call it treason.” Like treason, a conspiracy theory with the backing of the establishment becomes an article of faith.

What’s the most dangerous kind of conspiracy theory? The kind no one dares to call what it is.

Political extremism is invariably based on a set of conspiracy theories. And when the extremists take power then their conspiracy theories become establishment dogma. The dividing line is easy to spot. Extremists who aren’t in power invent conspiracy theories about those who are, while extremists who are in power invent conspiracy theories about those underneath them.

The shift from conspiracies about an established upper class to conspiracies about bad ideas held by the lower classes, or from class warfare to political correctness, was also a power shift.

It’s a covert confession about who really runs things by the conspirators who actually do.

While few will agree on what is a conspiracy theory, the most obvious symptom of a conspiracy theory is that it cannot be disproven. The most popular establishment conspiracy theory is systemic racism. Like most conspiracy theories, anything can be ascribed to systemic racism, from mathematics to the existence of a highway, it can be used to explain everything, and yet it so comprehensively pervades everything that its existence can never be disproven.

To test that theory, describe any element of life, no matter how random, milk, traffic signals, or weather, as racist, and you will find that these accusations have already been made, and that there is no way to disprove them in terms that a critical race theory believer will accept.

Dem Senator Who Secretly Met With Iran Minister Demands “Classified” Briefing on Israeli Action Against Iran Daniel Greenfield

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/04/dem-senator-who-secretly-met-iran-minister-demands-daniel-greenfield/

Iran Firsters are a problem. They’re an even bigger problem when they’re running the government.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), hoping to quell speculation of wrongdoing, has formally responded to reports that he held a secret meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif last week. But his explanation may raise more questions than it answers.

The Federalist first reported Monday that Murphy and other Democratic senators held a “secret” meeting with Zarif last week at the annual Munich Security Conference. The news immediately began to circulate in the media and led to speculation as to whether Murphy had undermined U.S. foreign policy or even potentially violated the Logan Act by holding the meeting.

Tuesday morning, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo commented on the reports, seeming to scold Murphy and his Democratic colleagues for meeting with Zarif, who, Pompeo noted, is “the foreign minister of a country that killed an American on December 27” and “is the largest world sponsor of terror and the world’s largest sponsor of anti-Semitism.”

Pompeo also noted Zarif’s status.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded to the news of the meeting.

“This guy [Zarif] is designated by the United States of America,” Pompeo said at a press conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. “He’s the foreign minister for a country that shot down a commercial airliner and has yet to turn over the black boxes. This is the foreign minister of a country that killed an American on December 27. And it’s the foreign minister of a country who is the largest world sponsor of terror and the world’s largest sponsor of anti-Semitism.”

The Gun-Control Melodrama Returns for Another Season But what’s the real purpose of the show? Bruce Thornton

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/04/gun-control-melodrama-back-another-season-bruce-thornton/

A new Democrat administration and two recent mass shootings mean it’s time for another episode of the gun-control melodrama that’s been running for decades. We all know the scenario: an obviously deranged person murders several people, Dem pols and pundits start fulminating about our lax gun control laws and gun-obsessed white males, followed by a bunch of ineffective proposals and policies that will do nothing about crime, but will annoy law-abiding gun-owners, which is ultimately the real purpose of the show––demonizing a political enemy.

The Biden outfit has announced “six initial actions to address the gun violence public health epidemic,” the White House informed us last week. None of them will do anything to stop mass killings, and some are trying to fix problems that existing federal laws already address. Two federal statutes concern homemade “ghost guns,” for example, which don’t have serial numbers. And state “Red-flag” laws would allow the police or family members worried about a seemingly unstable spouse, neighbor, or student to ask a judge for a temporary restraining order that would allow confiscation of the weapon. The potential threats to Second, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights, and the moral hazard of giving the vengeful or malicious an opportunity for weaponizing the law, should be obvious.

Then there’s the usual hysteria about “assault rifles.” The popular AR-15 (pop quiz: What does the AR stand for?), which anti-gun-nuts usually bring up when decrying “assault rifles,” is no such thing. It’s not an automatic weapon, which have been illegal since 1934, and is perfectly legal. It can be accessorized in ways that frighten those ignorant about guns and gun-laws, just as cars can be sold with optional spoilers or other racing accessories. But that doesn’t make them illegal.

Perhaps worst of all, Biden is making professional gun-control lobbyist David Chipman the head of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agency. You can get the measure of Chipman’s rabid partisan prejudices and impaired common sense by his comment that the surge of gun purchasers last year comprises conspiracy theorists prepping for the zombocalypse; and by his looney claim that members of the Branch Davidians––the group targeted in the 1993 Waco, Texas armed attack by FBI and ATF agents that killed 76 people including children––shot down two government helicopters.

Biden’s U.N. Ambassador: ‘White Supremacy Is Weaved (??!!) into Our Founding Documents and Principles’ By Brittany Bernstein

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/bidens-u-n-ambassador-white-supremacy-is-weaved-into-our-founding-documents-and-principles/

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Wednesday that racial equity is a top focus for her as “white supremacy is weaved into our founding documents and principles” in the U.S.

“When we raise issues of equity and justice at the global scale we have to approach them with humility,” Thomas-Greenfield said in remarks at the National Action Network’s virtual conference. “We have to acknowledge that we are an imperfect union and have been since the beginning and every day we strive to make ourselves more perfect.” 

She recounted a recent speech she gave before the UN General Assembly for the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination in which she spoke about how her great-grandmother was the child of a slave “just three generations back from me.”

The ambassador said that she grew up in the segregated south where she was bused to a segregated school.

“On the weekends, the Klan burned crosses on lawns in our neighborhoods,” she said. “I shared these stories and others to acknowledge on the international stage that I have personally experienced one of America’s greatest imperfections.”

“I’ve seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles,” Thomas-Greenfield said.