ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israelis Vote on Tuesday: Here’s How it Works By Lori Lowenthal Marcus

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://saraacarter.com/israelis-vote-on-tuesday-heres-how-it-works/

At a lunch table in a restaurant in an artsy town near the coastal Israeli city of Haifa, several people were discussing the upcoming elections. Most of the conversation was in Hebrew, with large smatterings of other languages, as is so common throughout many cities and large towns in Israel.

“I will not vote for Bibi [Netanyahu]!” said the one Israeli-born person at the table about the current Israeli Prime Minister. “He is a liar and a thief!” This 80-plus year-old former kibbutznik is voting for HaAvoda – the Labor Party.

“I swore I would not vote for Netanyahu again, but I am going to,” said another woman at the table, an emigre from England who has lived in Israel for more than 35 years.BIBI EXHAUSTION SYNDROMEMost Israelis, it appears, fall into the camp of the second speaker. Many Israeli voters suffer from “Bibi Exhaustion Syndrome,” yearning for a prime minister with a fresh face and less arrogant demeanor. But despite the consistently strong showing in the polls of the new party Kachol v’Lavan (Blue and White), many Israelis secretly believe – or fear – that when Israelis slide their slips into the ballot box on Tuesday they will be unable to place their trust in Israel’s security with anyone other than Netanyahu. This,  despite the Prime Minister’s current legal problems.

HOW ISRAELI GOVERNMENTS ARE FORMED

Unlike the U.S., Israel has many viable political parties. Viable at least in the sense that a dozen have realistic chances of attaining some seats in the 120 seat Knesset, Israel’s parliament.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Beto O’Rourke injects himself into Israeli elections, calls Netanyahu a ‘racist’ By Rick Moran

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019

Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said yesterday that the relationship between Israel and the United States “must transcend” a “prime minister who is racist.”

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is apparently a “racist” because, well, Beto says he is.

The Hill:

“The US-Israel relationship is one of the most important relationships that we have on the planet, and that relationship, if it is successful, must transcend partisanship in the United States, and it must be able to transcend a prime minister who is racist, as he warns against Arabs coming to the polls, who wants to defy any prospect for peace as he threatens to annex the West Bank, and who has sided with a far-right racist party in order to maintain his hold on power,” O’Rourke said, referring to Netanyahu seeking to form a coalition with the Otzma Yehudit party.

Netanyahu, O’Rourke said, does not represent either the best interests of the U.S.-Israel relationship or a path to peace in the region.”We must be able to transcend his current leadership to make sure that the alliance is strong, that we continue to push for and settle for nothing less than a two-state solution, because that is the best opportunity for peace for the people of Israel and the people of Palestine,” O’Rourke said.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Pro-Hamas Muslim Leader Brags About Involvement with Anti-Crime Group Sofian Zakkout continues to promote Palestinian terrorists, claims Israel doesn’t exist.

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273408/pro-hamas-muslim-leader-brags-about-involvement-joe-kaufman

Carleen Vincent-Robinson and Ellen Cohn are members of the faculty at the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida International University (FIU). One is an expert in terrorism preparedness and the other, criminal behavior and analysis. Given their backgrounds, someone would be hard-pressed to figure that the two would be related to Sofian Zakkout, an individual who actively promotes Hamas and is a rabid anti-Semite. Yet, this is the case, as all three are board members together in Crime Stoppers of Miami-Dade County. Vincent-Robinson is President of it, and Cohn is Secretary. Why would the two embrace a man like Zakkout?

On March 29th and 31st, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, the President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), took to Facebook to boast about his position with the anti-crime organization, Crime Stoppers. He wrote the same thing both times – once using a Crime Stoppers graphic and logo to help make his point – “Just a reminder! Sofian Zakkout, an executive board member at the Miami Dade county Crime Stoppers. Serving against crimes since 2005.”

This was not the first time Zakkout has bragged about his involvement in Crime Stoppers. In fact, he has done so on many occasions. And while this normally should be seen as a matter of pride for someone to proclaim their involvement with what is known as a virtuous community service organization, considering Zakkout, it must only be viewed as an attempt by him to create a false sense of legitimacy for his sociopathic behavior.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Will Iran’s Regime Finally Cave In? by Giulio Meotti

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13892/iran-regime-cave-in

“Yes, the accused fled from a country where virtual bullies push against science, knowledge and expertise and resort to conspiracy theories to find a scapegoat for all the problems because they know well that finding an enemy, spy or someone to blame is much easier than accepting responsibility and complicity in a problem”. — Kaveh Madani, one of Iran’s leading environmentalists, who recently fled to London.

Despite its economic crisis, Iran continues to provide hundreds of millions of dollars every year to terrorists. ” When you throw in the money provided to other terrorists, the total comes close to one billion dollars. Let’s pause to consider that, because it bears repeating:The Iranian regime spends nearly a billion dollars a year just to support terrorism”. — Nathan A. Sales, U.S. State Department Ambassador-at-Large and Coordinator for Counterterrorism.

This impressive decline of the Iranian regime is being accompanied by petty and repressive laws. Iran recently handed down a sentence of 33 years in prison and 148 lashes to a prominent Iranian lawyer, Nasrin Sotoudeh, who dared to defend girls who were protesting Iran’s forced veiling laws. In another recent incident, an Iranian couple were arrested after their public marriage proposal went viral on social media.

The Islamic Republic of Iran today, through its terror proxies and puppet regimes, has been extending its hegemony to many capitals of the Middle East: Tehran, Baghdad, Damascus, Beirut, Sanaa. Iran continues to threaten the Middle East, the Mediterranean basin and potentially Europe. Forty years after its theocratic revolution in 1979, the mullahs speak (wishfully, one assumes) of a “declining” America.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

India: Women’s Plight Remains Grim by Jagdish N. Singh

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14001/india-women-discrimination

In spite of the recurring lip service, however — as well as attempts at reform — the situation for women in India remains unacceptable. Women face discrimination in every aspect of life.

Women in India also continue to be victims of various forms of violence, including being aborted, infanticide, genital mutilation, honor killings, acid attacks, sex-trafficking and rape. In fact, 99% of sexual assaults go unreported. Last year, two cases of child rape, allegedly perpetrated by police officers and a politician, led to mass protests demanding greater protection for women and children.

“The cultural design of oppression is so clever, that it instils a habit of distrust and trains women to demean, dismiss and discount other women… The real genius of this system lies in the fact that oppression has been recast as a virtue.” — Deepa Narayan, author of Chup: Breaking the Silence About India’s Women.

Addressing an International Women’s Day gathering in Varanasi on March 8, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi stressed the “crucial role” that women play in his country’s development.
Indian President Ram Nath Kovind echoed this sentiment on social media, tweeting:
“Women are the sheet-anchor of society, an inspiration for their families and for our nation. Let us strive to ensure equality of opportunity for every women [sic] and every girl child.”

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

If There Is “White Privilege,” What Does It Consist Of? Francis Menton

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2019-4-5-if-there-is-white-privilege-what-does-it-consist-of

You can’t have helped noticing that assertions of “white privilege” are all the rage on the left these days. Or maybe it’s “white male privilege.” For example, back in January, there was CNN’s Nia-Malika Henderson throwing down the “white privilege” gauntlet on Beto O’Rourke: “Beto’s excellent adventure drips with white male privilege.” Beto, of course, promptly acknowledged that Henderson was right, stating in Iowa on March 16, “As a white man who has had privileges that others could not depend on, or take for granted, I’ve clearly had advantages over the course of my life.”

When I first heard the term “white privilege” gaining currency, my initial reaction was to doubt that it could amount to much of significance. In my own experience, ever since I was old enough to notice, every institution that I came in contact with, to the extent I could tell, was making every effort it possibly could to attract and advance minorities candidates, particularly African Americans. In many cases, these efforts would clearly have the effect, explicit or implicit, of disadvantaging whatever white candidates were competing for a limited number of slots. For example:

Way back in 1968, when I was applying to college, elite colleges already explicitly practiced affirmative action. Although the details were closely guarded then as now, my own college (Yale) constantly boasted about its efforts to find and admit qualified minority candidates.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

All the Progressive Plotters By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/07/all-the-progressive-plotters/

Right after the 2016 election, Green Party candidate Jill Stein—cheered on by Hillary Clinton dead-enders—sued in three states to recount votes and thereby overturn Donald Trump’s victory in the Electoral College. Before the quixotic effort imploded, Stein was praised as an iconic progressive social justice warrior who might stop the hated Trump from even entering the White House.

When that did not work, B-list Hollywood celebrities mobilized, with television and radio commercials, to shame electors in Trump-won states into not voting for the president-elect during the official Electoral College balloting in December 2016. Their idea was that select morally superior electors should reject their constitutional directives and throw the election into the House of Representatives where even more morally superior NeverTrump Republicans might join with even much more morally superior Democrats to find the perfect morally superior NeverTrump alternative.

When that did not work, more than 60 Democratic House members voted to bring up Trump’s impeachment for vote. Trump had only been in office a few weeks. Then San Francisco billionaire Tom Steyer toured the country and lavished millions on advertisements demanding Trump’s removal by impeachment—and was sorely disappointed when he discovered that billion-dollar-fueled virtue-signaling proved utterly bankrupt virtue-signaling.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Democrats Will Regret Not Walking Away When They Could By Adam Mill

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/07/democrats-will-regret-not-walking-away-when-they-could/

One can imagine a future in which Democrats, reflecting on our present, are shouting to their past selves, “Walk away!” As I will show below, the Democrat’s continued obsession with opening the pandora’s box of the Mueller report will only make things worse for the get-Trump crowd as the hoax chickens increasingly come home to roost.

Politico recently reported the Special Counsel’s office rapidly wound down operations after delivering the report to Attorney General Barr. It took most of a weekend for Barr to wade through the report before issuing the summary. Calls for a full, unredacted release of the report could not be immediately accommodated because virtually everything in the report remained a tangled mess of grand jury information, classified information, and innuendo that the DoJ could not ethically release in the absence of an indictment. This, in contrast to the Starr report on then-President Bill Clinton which was drafted in a form ready for public release, the Mueller report inexplicably requires additional work to get the lion share into the public domain. Why, Byron York asked, would the Mueller team not prepare the report for public release? Why force the Attorney General to spend the time to comb through the materials to redact and excerpt the materials which must not be released. Didn’t the attorney with oversight, Rod Rosenstein, publicly warn Americans that uncharged conduct could not be released into the public domain? Isn’t that exactly one of the reasons that Rosenstein supported the dismissal of James Comey? The answer portends disaster for the Trump/Russia hoax truthers.

MEDIA Comments turned off

CNN disgraces itself over Mike Pompeo By Barry Shaw

Posted By on April 8th, 2019

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2019/04/cnn_disgraces_itself_over_mike_pompeo.html

CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked James Comey, the disgraced head of the FBI, if his FBI should have shut down “hate speech” at Trump rallies.

Hate speech, we need to understand, is speech the left disapproves of. Amanpour has said nothing about Hillary Clinton calling Trump supporters “deplorable,” not to mention the 24/7 CNN attacks on the president, including calling him a traitor.

When a journalist asks an FBI chief to close down speech she doesn’t like is when America and its media has reached a dangerous moment. It’s when liberal progressive news channels become intolerant regressive political machines.

This wasn’t a first for Amanpour, a once-great journalist now become a well-paid media party hack.

Amanpour was active in preventing Mike Pompeo, the U.S. Secretary of State, from becoming the recipient of the James Foley Freedom Award.

To remind ourselves, James Foley was beheaded by ISIS in 2014 by what President Obama described as “the JV team,” and it was the Trump Administration, including Pompeo, that gave the command and led the total defeat of ISIS.

Part of the proud record of Mike Pompeo in rescuing hostages was outlined in his letter to Diane, James Foley’s mother on April 2, 2019, on learning he had been selected to receive the award.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Trial Casts Light on Hardline Approach in Saudi Arabia By Susanne Koelbl

Posted By on April 7th, 2019

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/women-s-rights-trial-casts-light-on-hardline-approach-in-saudi-arabia-a-1258460.html

Three Saudi women are currently on trial in Riyadh, charged with espionage and conspiracy. The truth is that the women merely advocated for women’s rights. They have reportedly been tortured in a case that has cast light on the kingdom’s new hardline approach.

Eman al-Nafjan must have guessed they were coming for her. A few weeks before her arrest by Saudi authorities, the women’s-rights activist changed her profile picture on WhatsApp. Instead of her face and soft, brown hair, it showed a reptile with its mouth open. Deep in the animal’s throat was a frog, petrified by fear, at the moment of death.

It was a harbinger of doom. Nafjan, 38 years old and a well-organized mother of four children, had been committed to fighting for human rights in her country, especially women’s rights for over a decade. At the time, her youngest daughter was just 2.

Sometime between May 15 and 18, Nafjan was arrested. Around the same time, Saudi secret police rounded up other female activists from their homes. For years, the women have been fighting together for the right to drive and the abolition of Saudi Arabia’s so-called guardianship law, which gives men in the kingdom extensive control over their female relatives. Men can be notified via a government app when their wives or daughters want to cross the border.