ISRAEL Comments turned off

Do Not Be Fooled by the ‘Anti-Hamas’ Protests by Bassam Tawil

Posted By on April 1st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21521/anti-hamas-protests

Those who are rushing to celebrate the protests in Gaza need to consider that they are most likely nothing but a show by the Iran-backed Hamas to fool the world into thinking that there is an uprising against the terrorist group.

After all, this is the same Hamas that kept signaling to everyone, years before its terrorists attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, that it was not interested in another round of fighting. Then it murdered and brutally tortured 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 251.

What would Norway or Denmark do if ISIS or Al-Qaeda were on its border, seeking to destroy it?

According to some reports, Hamas members have been spotted leading some of Gaza’s demonstrations.

Last year, Israel tried to encourage anti-Hamas clans to play a role in managing the Gaza Strip — without success. Regrettably, several clans have, over the past year, issued statements expressing support for Hamas as the “sole representative of the Gaza Strip.”

The current protests are taking place for one reason only: Hamas is conspicuously losing the war… The protesters are just angry that Israel retaliated so hard.

All Hamas would have to do for Israel to stop is to free the 59 remaining hostages, only 24 of whom possibly remain alive – but all of whom are victims of a kidnapping that should not have happened in the first place.

Sadly, there is no alternative to the complete removal of Hamas…. [T]here is no difference between Hamas’s political wing and its military wing. Hamas’s political wing, in fact, requires the military wing, to be able to stay in power.

If the West falls for Hamas’s latest ploy, the terror group will simply soon be able to take control of the Gaza Strip with a rebranded name. Hamas’s primary goal, after all, is to remain in power.

It is time to stop projecting Western values and aspirations onto Islamist societies. The protests in the Gaza Strip are not a shift toward peace. Instead, they are a symptom of the Palestinians’ failure, once again, to achieve their goal of murdering Jews and eliminating Israel.

Make no mistake: Once the Palestinians recover from the war, they will continue their jihad against Israel. Many of the “anti-Hamas” protesters will then reappear, this time complete with masks, weapons and military gear.

The recent anti-Hamas protests in the Gaza Strip are seen by some Western and Arab political analysts as a positive and encouraging development.

Those who are rushing to celebrate the protests in Gaza need to consider that they are most likely nothing but a show by the Iran-backed Hamas to fool the world into thinking that there is an uprising against the terrorist group.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Setting the Record Straight on Three Education Issues Overwrought allegations about “massive teacher layoffs,” the elimination of the DOE, and school choice abound. by Larry Sand

Posted By on April 1st, 2025

https://www.ruthfullyyours.com/wp-admin/post-new.php

As someone who has been writing about education issues for years, I have noticed that disinformation, misinformation, and all-around twaddle are now more ubiquitous than ever. I will cover three areas here.

Massive teacher layoffs

Various online articles report that “massive teacher layoffs” —notably in California— are “devastating, chaotic, and detrimental” to student learning conditions.” While some layoffs include other employees, including librarians and nurses, most cuts are to teachers.

Most of the hysterics don’t acknowledge that many districts are over-staffed due in part to the expiring $190 billion federal Covid relief funds. Also, a major contributor to the need for fewer teachers in California is that while there were 6.3 million students in 2006-2007, now just 5.8 million are enrolled, and the state projects that number to fall to 5.3 million by 2031.

Looking at the bigger picture, researcher Chad Aldeman reports that in the 2023-24 school year, public schools nationwide added 121,000 employees, hitting a record high, even though enrollment dropped by 110,000. He discloses that about one-third of these districts added teachers while serving fewer students. For instance, Philadelphia lost nearly 16,000 students but employed 200 more teachers, dropping its student-to-teacher ratio from about 17:1 to under 15:1.

Aldeman writes that about a quarter of all districts followed the path of California’s Capistrano Unified School District, which lowered its teaching force over time but not as fast as it lost students. Capistrano suffered a “22% decline in student enrollment but reduced its teaching staff by just 7%.”

It’s worth noting that in most of the country, where teacher union contracts are in play, layoffs are made based on seniority, not teacher quality. Hence, students suffer not because of fewer teachers but rather fewer good ones.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Trump Starts Undoing JFK’s Worst Mistake

Posted By on April 1st, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/04/01/trump-starts-undoing-jfks-worst-mistake/

While Democrats were busy hyperventilating over the nothingburger “Signal scandal,” President Donald Trump quietly took an action that could do more to drain the swamp – and Democratic Party finances – than any other action he’s taken to date.

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order that ends collective bargaining rights for most federal workers, a move that “is a magnitude of tenfold on what they’ve done so far on their attack of the federal workforce and the labor movement,” Cathy Creighton, director of Cornell University’s Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab, told the Washington Post.

Actually, it is the first step toward righting a wrong committed by President John Kennedy in 1962 when he signed an executive order allowing federal workers the right to collectively bargain. Up until then, politicians on both sides of the aisle agreed that letting government workers unionize was a terrible idea.

Even the sainted FDR attacked the idea as “unthinkable and intolerable,” saying that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.”

But Kennedy needed to pay unions back for their crucial support in his narrow election victory and, once he did so, union membership among federal workers soared. In 1978, Congress turned Kennedy’s executive order into law with the Civil Service Reform Act, which had the strong support of the American Federation of Government Employees.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

‘Don’t You Know This City Belongs to Muslims?’: The Persecution of Christians, February 2025 by Raymond Ibrahim

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21512/persecution-of-christians-february

Some accounts of the “pure genocide” experienced by Christians at the hands of Muslims. — Nigeria.

“We, all Muslims, residents of Paccerakkang, especially Neighbourhood 02 and 03 STRONGLY REJECT the Establishment of a Church and worship activities in our environment forever.” — Text printed on banners, majesty.co.id, February 11, 2025, Indonesia.

Coptic Christians, for some inexplicable reason, appear to have become the most careless and fire-prone people in the world: more Coptic churches than any other kind seem to keep on “catching fire.” — copticsolidarity.org, February 20, 2025, Egypt.

The following are among the abuses and murders inflicted on Christians by Muslims throughout the month of February 2025.

The Muslim Slaughter of Christians

Democratic Republic of Congo: The beheaded corpses of seventy Christians—men, women, and children—were found inside a church. Earlier, on Feb. 12, Muslim militants of the Allied Democratic Forces, which is affiliated to the Islamic State, rounded up and marched 70 Christians to a Protestant church in Kasanga. There, the Christians were “tied up and decapitated with knives.” According to a regional expert,

“This was not just an act of terror. It was a targeted massacre of Christians, and it will not stop here… The ADF is part of a growing extremist network that wants to wipe out Christianity in the region. If nothing is done, more attacks will follow.”

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Anchor Babies Aweigh Augusto Zimmermann & Gabriël Moens

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://quadrant.org.au/news-opinions/america/anchor-babies-aweigh/

In a recent article published in Quadrant and entitled Trump’s Authoritarian Arrogance, Roger Partridge contends that the recent actions of the American President comprise an ‘unprecedented assault on constitutional government.’ He then accuses Donald Trump of ‘systematic dismantling of checks on presidential power.’ He also claims that his actions ‘reveal a leader rapidly consolidating personal control while declaring himself above the law.’[1]

To partially justify his claims Partridge provides the example of Trump’s Executive Order 14156, signed on January 20, 2025, on Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship. This order, aimed at denying the granting of citizenship to the children of parents who are either in the U.S. illegally or on temporary visas, stipulates ‘it is the policy of the United States that no department or agency … shall issue documents recognizing United States citizenship’ to these children. It further tasks ‘The heads of all executive departments and agencies’ with the issuing of ‘public guidance within 30 days of the date of this order regarding this order’s implementation with respect to their operations and activities.’[2] Accordingly, the Order is unlikely to be applied retrospectively because it does not propose the withdrawal of citizenship of those who have already become American citizens.

However, according to Partridge,

[Trump’s] declaration of a “border invasion” to suspend asylum rights exemplifies this overreach. Rather than work with Congress to reform immigration law, Trump simply decreed that America’s legal obligations to asylum seekers no longer apply. This is not normal policy implementation. It is rule by executive fiat.

The US, along with nearly every country in North, Central and South America, adopts the jus soli or “right of the soil” principle of citizenship. Jus soli is reminiscent of feudalism, where the socio-political organisation linked people and goods to the land. Today, it is justified by the need to incorporate the children of immigrants in the State where their parents legally arrived, with a clear intention to work and to participate in the country’s economic and social development.

The US and Canada are the only two “developed” countries, as defined by the International Monetary Fund, that still have unrestricted birthright citizenship laws. However, apart from the US, no country that adopts the ius soli principle has been automatically providing citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.  Nevertheless, Partridge postulates that the 1898 case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark, offers a precedent for such granting of citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants.[3]

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israel: an anti-colonial triumph Jews had to fight the British Empire to forge the state of Israel. James Heartfield

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/30/israel-an-anti-colonial-triumph/

The history of the conflict between Israel and Palestine has become a contest of one-sided interpretations and outright myths. For Israelis, Palestine was never a country. For Palestinians and their supporters in the West, Israel is an illegitimate settler-colonial state.

There is perhaps no historical moment that has been more distorted by such mythmaking than 1948, the year the British colonial ‘mandate’ ended and the modern state of Israel was founded. It was a moment of celebration for the Zionist movement, which had finally realised its dream of a Jewish homeland. But it was a moment of misery for Arabs. Indeed, it is remembered as a ‘catastrophe’ or ‘disaster’ – the Nakba. In their telling, it was the moment when hundreds of thousands were exiled to refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and in Lebanon and Syria.

To Arabs, Britain has often been portrayed as the midwife to the Israeli victory. ‘The British and the Jews defeated us’, said one prominent refugee at the time. The Brits gave ‘their weapons to the Jews’, said another. According to Palestinian artist Ismail Shammout, British support for Zionism was a conspiracy (1). The Arabs of Palestine were certainly right to conclude that history had defeated them. But the nature of that defeat has long been mischaracterised as a British-Jewish collaboration, when nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, after the Second World War, the Jews fought a war of national liberation against Britain, the ruling colonial power. They forced Britain to withdraw from the then British Mandate for Palestine, which it had ruled over since the 1920s. In the fighting between Arabs and Jews in 1948, Britain did not support the Jews. Britain was actually involved in arming the Arab forces and even fighting alongside them in an attempt to limit the Zionist victory.

This shouldn’t be all that surprising. Britain’s alliance with the Arabs began in the First World War, when Colonel TE Lawrence – otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia – allied with Sharif Hussein in a revolt against the Ottoman Empire (which was allied with Germany). The Arab Revolt ended Ottoman rule over the Middle East in 1918. After the war, in 1922, the League of Nations eventually gave Britain the mandate over Palestine (including ‘East Palestine’, which is today Jordan). This kickstarted more than 20 years of contested British rule in the Holy Land.

There had been a Jewish minority in Palestine for millennia. But its numbers had been growing during the 19th and 20th centuries, as refugees fled anti-Semitic persecution in Europe. As a result, by the interwar years, Jews in the area were becoming a numerical and political threat not just to British rule, but also to Arab aspirations to the land.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas Cracks Down on Protesters With Atrocities While an indifferent world yawns. P. David Hornik

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=email&utm_campaign=email-subscribe&r=

As I noted in a post on Thursday, last week parts of Gaza erupted in bitter anti-Hamas protests. The protesters weren’t friends of Israel or the West, but they were fed up with the misery Hamas has brought upon Gaza by fighting a vastly more powerful foe, Israel, and continuing to fight us.

As of Friday, though, the protests have stopped. Why would that be?

Israel’s Ynetnews reports:

Hamas has begun cracking down on Gazans who participated in recent protests against the group’s rule, executing six people and publicly beating others, according to Palestinian activists and residents. Among those killed was Odai al-Rubai, 22, a resident of Gaza City’s Tel al-Hawa neighborhood. Al-Rubai had called for public demonstrations and spoken out against Hamas on social media. He was abducted by Hamas operatives, tortured for four hours, and then returned to his family as he lay dying, witnesses said.

“He was dragged by a rope around his neck, beaten with clubs and metal rods in front of passersby,” said one resident who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution.

Another resident, Hussam al-Majdalawi, was reportedly kidnapped and beaten in Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp. Al-Majdalawi, who had also spoken against Hamas, was shot in the legs and left wounded in a public square, according to eyewitnesses.

The report goes on to detail other Hamas atrocities against protesters. It quotes a Gazan who says: “There isn’t a single journalist in Gaza who can speak about the crimes being committed here. The world has no idea what’s happening.”

It’s not so much that it has no idea, though, as that it doesn’t care.

No Jews, no news. Israel inflicting civilian casualties—at rates lower than other Western armies when fighting terror groups in urban warfare—is, of course, very big news and sets Hague kangaroo courts in action. Palestinians torturing and murdering other Palestinians—that’s cognitive dissonance, doesn’t fit the narrative.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in America Trump is racing to dismantle decades of leftist policies, but success hinges on speed, discipline, and the Supreme Court—while facing fierce resistance from entrenched institutions. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/03/31/reflections-on-the-counter-revolution-in-america/

When Donald Trump entered office, he faced a number of choices that had confronted the last three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. They all had the choice to either shrink government and reduce deficits or slow government growth while cutting taxes.

They had the choice of using American power to restore deterrence by invading belligerents (e.g., Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan) or targeting enemies without deploying ground troops to change governments.

Republicans could either impose tariffs to ensure trade balances and fair trade or argue that free, even if unfair, trade was in the U.S.’s interest by lowering consumer prices, keeping domestic producers competitive, and assuming foreign subsidies were unsustainable.

They had the choice to either reverse the left-wing domination of culture or moderate its fated influence.

They could have shut down the open border and eliminated illegal immigration or publicly condemned it while tacitly maintaining an influx of hundreds of thousands per year for the corporate world, rather than millions.

In general, no Republican president of the past 50 years sought to radically reduce the size of government and balance the budget. None closed the border and began deportations. None avoided optional ground wars while solely hitting aggressors from the air. None led a cultural counter-revolution to reverse the left’s long march through our institutions.

Why?

Because to have done so would have constituted a veritable cultural counter-revolution that would incur an unacceptable level of hatred and resistance from the entrenched left—defined by the nexus of the media, bureaucracies, campuses, foundations, Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the Democratic Party. The latter were deemed just too formidable—and dangerous—to confront in a single term, if ever.

Or so it was felt by prior Republican administrations. So, most stayed clear and sought to deregulate, cut taxes, keep illegal immigration to about 30,000 or so a month, and use rhetoric to oppose the left’s cultural revolution.

Not so with Trump. The target of four years of lawfare in his wilderness years, he has now become a true counterrevolutionary determined not to slow down the progressive trajectory of the last 60 years but to end it and return the U.S. to the center—at least as now defined by a balanced budget, reciprocal fair trade, full use of all modes of energy, a closed border, legal only immigration, no optional ground wars abroad and a fierce effort to end the woke/DEI/ESG/Green New Deal leftwing orthodoxy.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Judges vs. America: How the Deep State Is Overruling Your Vote The question is simple: Who runs this country—the voters or the judges? by Kevin McCullough

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/judges-vs-america-how-the-deep-state-is-overruling-your-vote/

Another day, another judicial blockade. Three more executive orders—each designed to advance the will of the American people—were unceremoniously put on ice by unelected black-robed obstructionists yesterday. That brings the total to 15 since President Trump took office in January 2025. That’s 15 direct assaults on the policies Americans voted for when they rejected the corruption and incompetence of the radical left.

Let’s be clear: This isn’t about “the law,” “checks and balances,” or “democracy” (a term the left constantly redefines). This is about deep-state operatives and activist judges blocking reform, hamstringing the administration’s efforts to clean up the mess left behind by Biden’s regime. The same establishment class that spent four years ignoring open borders, skyrocketing inflation, and a weaponized FBI now insists that every procedural technicality be followed before President Trump can act.

Consider what was just blocked. Among the three executive orders frozen yesterday was one expediting the deportation of violent criminal aliens, another targeting the corruption that allows bureaucrats to profit from their positions, and a third cracking down on federal grants abused by activist organizations masquerading as nonprofits.

Let me repeat that: judges intervened to stop the removal of dangerous criminals, protect corrupt bureaucrats, and ensure taxpayer money keeps flowing to left-wing political groups.

Someone, somewhere, please explain to me what law requires America to fund its own destruction. I’ll wait.

Of course, there is no such law. What we’re seeing is a coordinated legal resistance—engineered by well-funded leftist legal outfits, cheered on by corporate media, and rubber-stamped by judges who treat the Constitution as a Choose Your Own Adventure novel. The game is “Lawfare,” an endless stream of lawsuits designed to bog down the administration, tie up policies in court, and hope Trump runs out of time.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Dangerous Fake Peace What Israel has to insist on. by Dr. Shmuel Katz

Posted By on March 31st, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/dangerous-fake-peace/

Unfortunately, the history books are filled with stories addressing failed peace agreements which resulted in major setbacks to the involved nations.

The classic example is the peace agreement between Nazi Germany and the British Prime Minister Chamberlain, who showed his people the document of “Peace in Our Times” which was signed by Hitler and encouraged Hitler to advance his expansionist dreams, which resulted in World War II.

The failure of the Oslo Accords was another important example of a failed attempt to reach a peace agreement. One of the most important reasons for the failure of the accords was the lack of education for peace and reconciliation in the Arab schools and in the media.

This serious problem was enacted by design. When the leader of the PLO Yasser Arafat was asked by his people, why did he agree to proceed with a track towards a peace agreement with the state of Israel in 1993, he responded by referring to the deceptive actions of the Prophet Muhammad as they were related to his presumed peace agreement with the tribe of the Quraysh in Mecca, which was called the Treaty of al-Hudaybiya. Once Muhammad felt strong enough, the treaty was violated, he killed the Jews in the city of Kaybar and he ended up expanding his control on multiple tribes in the region.

As Israel is dealing with the terrorist organizations of Hamas in the Gaza strip and with Hezbollah in Lebanon, it is very clear, that these terrorist organizations have no intention to advance the situation toward a peaceful resolution of the conflict. This is in line with their hope to implement an imposed world domination, by which they will be able to force their religious ideology on everyone across the globe.

The fact that Hamas is a part of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood, and Hezbollah is a part of the axis of evil, which is led by the Shiite Iran, do not fight each other at this time, is related to the fact that they are fighting a common enemy composed of the state of Israel and the Western society led by the USA.