ISRAEL Comments turned off

Jerusalem Under Israeli Sovereignty What does America’s new leadership mean for the Jewish state? Dr. Shmuel Katz and Chaim Silberstein

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/understanding-geo-political-dynamics-jerusalem-dr-shmuel-katz-and-chaim-silberstein/

What does it mean for Israel that the United States has a new leader? Should we expect a repeat of previous policies, or will the President Biden and the new White House administration forge its own path?

Assuming the latter, these principles guide the U.S.-Israel relationship:

Broad popular American support for Israel
President Biden’s personal sympathy toward Israel
Shared Judeo-Christian values
America’s own strategic interests
The desire to strengthen America’s most trusted Mideast ally
The mutual desire to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons
The positive momentum generated by the Abraham Accords

Regarding Jerusalem, specifically, it is critical to reinforce the importance of united Jerusalem under Israeli control. The new administration will be under intense pressure, both from within and without, to take steps liable to compromise the future of united Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.

We must refrain from freezing construction in Jewish neighborhoods in the eastern part of Jerusalem, where nearly half of Jerusalem’s 570,000 Jews live. Under the Obama administration, most construction in those neighborhoods was frozen for six years, though it did not bring the parties any closer to peaceful resolution.

One positive stabilizing sign is reflected in the Biden administration’s commitment not to roll back the reality of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem and the recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

The administration also expresses commitment to a “two-state solution” regarding Palestinians, while recognizing that the parties are not quickly returning to the negotiating table. U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken added his wish that neither party “takes steps that make the already difficult process even more challenging.”

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden and the Uyghurs Rationalizing a communist regime’s monstrosities. Joseph Klein

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/02/biden-rationalizes-chinas-human-rights-abuses-joseph-klein/

President Joe Biden is so much in the tank for the Chinese regime that he is making excuses for the regime’s horrendous treatment of the Uyghurs, the mostly Muslim ethnic minority living in northwestern China. When asked about the human rights abuses against the Uyghurs during his townhall meeting hosted by CNN on February 17th, Biden chalked the problem up to Chinese history and cultural norms.

Biden said that when China “has been victimized by the outer world is when they haven’t been unified at home.” Biden went on to explain that “the central principle of [Chinese President] Xi Jinping is that there must be a united, tightly controlled China.” And then, in a nod to cultural relativism, Biden declared, “Culturally, there are different norms that each country and their leaders are expected to follow.”

In other words, forget about universal inalienable human rights, which no government can take away. Biden has opted instead for the notion that each government gets to define human rights for its people that correspond with its country’s own cultural “norms.”

China has detained over 1 million Uyghurs in what amounts to concentration camps, where they have been subjected to gang rape, sterilization, and torture. Xi called the Uyghurs “criminals” who must be remolded and transformed. The purpose of China’s “re-education” of ethnic minorities such as the Uyghurs, Xi said, was to guide “all ethnic groups on establishing a correct perspective on the country, history and nationality.”

Biden said during his town hall meeting that he told Xi he would speak out against what Xi is “doing with the Uyghurs in western mountains of China.” However, when given the opportunity to condemn China’s ethnic cleansing of the Uyghurs, Biden took a pass. He could have stood by his own Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s affirmation that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. But Biden did not do so.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Duped Generation that Supports BDS by Richard Kemp

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17091/bds-support

BDS tells its supporters that it is “an inclusive, anti-racist human rights movement that is opposed on principle to all forms of discrimination, including anti-semitism and Islamophobia”. That is a lie.

BDS has also succeeded in making life worse for Palestinian Arabs, the very people they falsely claim to help. This includes backing and strengthening the leadership of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Hamas….

Vast international funds provided to assist them have been systematically embezzled by their leaders for their own enrichment…. This month, the UK’s Jewish News revealed that $145 million of British taxpayers’ money has been spent on incitement in Palestinian schools since 2016 alone.

Young and impressionable men and women, whose main attention is on studying for their degrees, have been duped by Barghouti’s BDS rabble-rousers into thinking they were demonstrating in support of a two-state solution to be achieved by peaceful means.

Using words chillingly resonant of the Third Reich, Mahmoud Abbas said during a speech in Egypt: “In a final resolution, we would not see the presence of a single Israeli — civilian or soldier — on our lands”. He meant Jews. Israeli Arabs would be welcomed.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he and President Biden are “resolutely opposed” to BDS because it “unfairly and inappropriately singles out Israel and creates a double standard”. The US administration should take up the plans… to target organisations that engage with or otherwise support BDS, such as Amnesty International, Oxfam and Human Rights Watch, and cut off government funding. British and European governments should follow suit….

Yet again we approach the depths of the annual Jew Hate Week around the world. Its organizers know better than to call it what it is. They brand their hatefest “Israel Apartheid Week”, but their true meaning and purpose is blindingly obvious. Since its early festerings in Toronto in 2005, Jew Hate Week has inflicted itself on the world, polluting universities from America to Australia and from South Africa to Northern Ireland.

Held on campuses at around this time each year, Jew Hate Week is the racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement’s flagship event for subverting university students to their malevolent cause. Palestinian-led, at the forefront of BDS are Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the US, and Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and War on Want in the UK. Democrat Squad members Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are among its main cheerleaders in America. In Britain, disgraced former Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn is a staunch supporter as are many of his party including members of parliament.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Erdoğan’s War Against Freedom on Campus by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17057/turkey-academic-freedom

On February 2, Turkish police detained more than 150 people peacefully protesting Erdoğan’s appointment of a party loyalist as BOUN’s new rector. It was the first time a non-BOUN graduate was appointed as head of the university since 1971. Students, professors and alumni have been protesting the appointment of rector Melih Bulu, a former member of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, since early January.

On February 3, Erdoğan denounced student protesters as “terrorists” and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations. By then the police had detained more than 250 students. Erdoğan admitted he feared the BOUN protests could grow into anti-government protests and said he would not let them swell.

In [Erdogan’s] Islamist worldview, youth dissent is good only if it protests ideas Islamism opposes, not if it protests Islamists.

Bosporus University (Boğaziçi Üniversitesi in Turkish, or BOUN in its acronym) is one of Turkey’s top three “Ivy League” higher education institutions. Established as Robert College in 1863, BOUN was the first American university founded outside the US. Its founders were wealthy philanthropist Christopher Robert and missionary Cyrus Hamlin. Robert College was handed over to the Turkish government in 1971 and reflagged itself as BOUN.

BOUN’s notable graduates include former prime ministers Tansu Çiller and Ahmet Davutoğlu. Times Higher Education put BOUN in 601-800 in its 2021 world university ranking. Every year about 2.5 million Turkish pupils take a national examination to enter a university. In last year’s examination 708 of the top 1,000 in 2.5 million contenders enrolled at BOUN. In other words, 70% of Turkey’s best students prefer this university.

Turkish Islamists have always been at odds with the liberal, pro-Western traditions of BOUN. In an interview, Binali Yıldırım, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s choice for prime minister in 2016, commented that he did not attend BOUN in his youth because he “saw boys and girls sitting and talking together in the university’s yard” and found the genders intermixing unacceptable. It was precisely this ideological incompatibility that opened a new front in the battle between tyrannical Islamism and an elite university.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Cotton Challenges Garland on Biden’s ‘Racial Equity’ Order By Zachary Evans

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/cotton-challenges-garland-on-bidens-racial-equity-order/?utm_

Senator Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) questioned President Biden’s nominee for attorney general Merrick Garland regarding Biden’s executive orders on “racial equity” on Monday.

Policies built around the relatively new concept of”equity” attempt to adjust for differences in background and economic status of the people affected by those policies. The term is used by the Biden administration in a different manner from “equality.”

“Equality suggests, ‘Oh, everyone should get the same amount.’ The problem with that, not everybody’s starting out from the same place,” Vice President Kamala Harris said on Twitter two days before the election.

During Garland’s nomination hearing at the Senate on Monday, the prospective attorney general told Cotton that he thinks “discrimination is morally wrong. Absolutely.”

“Are you aware President Biden has signed an executive order stating his administration will affirmatively advance racial equity,” Cotton asked. “Not racial equality but racial equity?”

“Yes,” Garland responded. “And I read the opening of that executive order, which defines equity as the fair and impartial treatment of every person, without regard to their status, and including individuals who are in underserved communities where they were not accorded that before.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Did Biden Pick Garland As AG To Wreak Revenge On Trump, GOP?

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/02/23/did-biden-pick-garland-as-ag-to-wreak-revenge-on-trump-gop/

Plainly, he’s no constitutionalist. He’s a political pragmatist, who tailors his constitutional views to the current political taste.

President Biden is now two-for-two in making awful selections for his Cabinet. The first was naming entirely unqualified far-left activist Neera Tanden to be director of the Office of Management and Budget. The second is his selection of appeals court judge Merrick Garland to be attorney general.

For those who don’t recall, Garland was nominated in March 2016 for a seat on the Supreme Court. The Obama administration sold him through the mainstream media as a potential court “moderate,” the best the Republicans could hope for.

Despite nonstop media pressure, Senate Republicans held fast, dragging their feet on confirmation hearings for Garland in the hopes (then seen by most political pundits as highly unlikely, if not impossible) that a Republican president would succeed Obama.

But, mirabile dictu, Donald Trump defied expectations and won the presidency. Consequently, not only did the country escape Garland, three new conservative justices — Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — are now on the nation’s highest court, thanks to Trump.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama Working Like The Devil To Steal The Next Election By Judi McLeod

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://canadafreepress.com/article/obama-working-like-the-devil-to-steal-the-next-

A clear and present danger on the road ahead to Election 2022 and beyond—totally ignored by the media.

What has “Resistance” leader former President Barack Obama been doing since the questionable outcome of the Nov. 3, 2020 election?

Working like the devil to control the outcome of the very next election!

Teaming up with old pal Eric Holder, former Attorney General of the U.S. in his administration, Obama wants to ban all Republicans from election—even before running—through a well-funded manipulation of the redistricting process.

Obama and Holder call the process “filibustering” and “gerrymandering”

Obama and Holder call the process “filibustering” and “gerrymandering”, with Obama once again playing the race card by calling it “another Jim Crow relic” that is preventing progress on voting rights.

This from the leaders of a Party who shows no shame or regret for denying the votes of some 74 million Americans who voted for President Donald Trump in the questionable 2020 Election!

Deceitful Democrats—always more than ready to take Republicans by surprise— through their support group the National Redistricting Action Fund (NDRC) are already working in 15 states to “demand fair maps – and an end to gerrymandering—during 2021 redistricting”.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Environmentalism, Trumpism, and the Working Class by William Murray

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://quillette.com/2021/02/20/environmentalism-trumpism-and-the-working-class/

The inauguration of President Biden as the 46th US President hasn’t produced quite the catharsis that Democrats (and others) had hoped for. After only a few months of one-party rule in Washington, DC—and the sputtering finale of impeachment—there should be fear among Democrats that attention will return to the signs of real damage done to the progressive/liberal project in the wake of its collision with the Trump train.

The shifting of both American political parties into one another’s former political spaces has been head-spinning. The trend of Republicans turning into the party of labor and Democrats becoming a party of capital looks to continue in the 2020s—something few people outside of Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot would have guessed 30 years ago. And it turns out that the promise of a Democrat-voting bloc made up of well-educated whites, blacks, and the growing Hispanic population delivering a decades-long progressive era in American politics is not coming to pass.

For nearly 20 years, this promised “coalition of the ascendant” has coalesced but failed to ascend. In 2009, with the inauguration of Barack Obama, Democrats in the House of Representatives controlled 256 seats and 58 seats in the Senate. In 2021, Democrats under Biden/Harris hold 221 seats in the House, while the Senate is split 50/50.

To be fair, a major caveat to the “coalition” argument involved keeping white working-class voters in the Democrat column while the promised growing populations of Hispanic and urban singleton voters delivered on its demographic determinism. Instead, the raw numbers from the 2020 general election suggest that Trump’s class rhetoric captured parts of the working classes that the Democratic Party had previously thought were untouchable.

So, what changed in America’s politics that would cause working class Hispanics and black voters to move toward Trump?

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden is set to repeat Obama’s Mideast failures — and wipe out US influence Dominic Green

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://nypost.com/2021/02/21/biden-is-set-to-repeat-obamas-mideast-failures/

Every now and then, America mislays one of its Mideast allies. “Who lost Iran?” they asked in 1979, as the shah’s regime went sideways, the answer being Jimmy Carter and the State Department. “Who lost Egypt?” they asked in 2012, as the Muslim Brotherhood took power, the answer being Barack Obama and the State Department.

“Who lost Israel?” will soon be added to this perplexed ­refrain. The answer will be President Biden and the State Department.

But this time, America will be losing the region as a whole — to its historic rival, Russia. Iranian mischief will wax again, and Washington’s Arab and ­Israeli allies will move on without anyone losing much sleep over what the White House thinks about anything. This is a deliberate strategic choice, and it will lead to the collapse of American ­influence in western Asia.

Team Biden appears bent on reviving the Iran deal at all costs. The costs include completing the Democrats’ turn away from the Jewish state and thoroughly alienating America’s Sunni-Arab clients. In reviving the nuclear deal, moreover, Washington will repeat a failed experiment in the hope of different results.

The Iranian regime won’t ­accept a tougher deal than the 2015 accord, and the Biden ­administration is Obama 3.0: The same team looks to rehabilitate its reputation, not to secure the ­national interest. The Obama-Bidenites will accept any humiliation from Tehran and call it a diplomatic breakthrough.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

The Polar Bear Paradox As climate moves to the center of the world stage, activists will lose influence over policy. By Walter Russell Mead

Posted By on February 23rd, 2021

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-polar-bear-paradox-11614035542?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

President Biden laid down a climate marker in his inaugural address: “A cry for survival comes from the planet itself. A cry that can’t be any more desperate or any more clear.” He returned to the theme in his speech last week to the Munich Security Conference, calling the climate crisis “existential.”

For environmentalists, those are welcome words. The Trump years saw the U.S. leave the Paris Agreement while pursuing aggressive deregulation at home. Climate change is now back on the national agenda.

There are two mistakes observers can make about this new era of climate diplomacy. The first is to think it won’t last or will be limited to rhetoric. Climate skeptics and fossil-fuel interests should brace themselves. The fight to reduce global greenhouse-gas emissions and to shift the world’s energy systems toward much lower emissions isn’t going away. Key positions up and down the government bureaucracy will be filled by committed greens who have thought long and hard about how to use the powers of the regulatory state to achieve green goals. A host of new policies—and new regulations—are sure to come.

Those who dismiss ideas like the “green new deal” as mere left-wing fantasies miss the enormous appeal of these programs for corporations looking for new business opportunities. It isn’t only renewable energy companies looking for government mandates and funding. It’s major auto manufacturers dreaming of replacing every gasoline-powered car and truck on the planet with an electric vehicle—and reaping the public-relations reward of looking virtuous. It’s construction companies looking to replace the existing energy infrastructure.