EDUCATION Comments turned off

DEI Drives Campus Antisemitism Gerrymandering Jews into an ‘oppressed’ class won’t save universities from a malevolent ideology. By Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on December 7th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/dei-drives-campus-antisemitism-harvard-ivy-ackman-israel-bds-b19ebd12?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Tuesday’s House hearing on campus antisemitism ratcheted up the pressure on American universities: counter the anti-Israel vitriol that exploded in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack or risk losing philanthropic and government support. The leading approach is sure to fail: doubling down on the ideologies and practices that led to the pro-Hamas fever in the first place.

Bill Ackman, the hedge-fund manager leading a Harvard donor revolt, told CNBC on Nov. 6 that he hadn’t previously read Harvard’s DEI statement. Though he had assumed DEI was “for all marginalized groups,” once he read the statement, he realized that “the DEI program at Harvard is limited to specific groups and exploits others.” Instead, Mr. Ackman suggested, DEI should cover all minorities, including Jews and Asians.

Jon Huntsman Jr. halted his contributions to the University of Pennsylvania on Oct. 15 to protest its leaders’ silence in the face of “hate,” which higher ed was “built to obviate.” An open letter to Penn President Liz Magill initiated by alumnus Marc Rowan called for mandatory antisemitism awareness training across the university. The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law has demanded that Penn add modules on antisemitism to the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion trainings.

College leaders are happy to oblige. As Ms. Magill told lawmakers Tuesday, Penn has created an Action Plan to Combat Antisemitism and a University Task Force on Antisemitism. Since antisemitism is “interconnected” to “other forms of hate,” Ms. Magill explained in a Nov. 1 message, Penn is also rolling out a presidential commission on Islamophobia. The university must do better to “reject hate in all its forms,” she said on Nov. 1.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why Are Islamists Claiming Non-Muslim Land? by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20203/why-are-islamists-claiming-non-muslim-land

For at least the past five years, the government of Turkey has threatened to invade and annex Greek islands in the Aegean Sea.

The Turkish media continues to falsely and repeatedly claim that “152 Greek islands and islets in the Aegean belong to Turkey”. These islands, however, historically and legally… belong to Greece.

Since its inception in Arabia in the seventh century, Islam has spread throughout the world by means of the sword. According to the Islamic law, the world is divided into the “dar al-Islam” (territory of submission to Allah), which denotes regions where Islam prevails, and the “dar al-harb” (territory of war), which refers to non-Muslim lands, yet to be conquered.

Islamists believe that once Islamic colonialism and occupation has taken place, the land conquered is forever Islamic…. Islamic supremacists such as Erdogan believe that because Thessaloniki was once under the occupation of the Islamic Ottoman Empire, it is a Muslim land eternally and must be returned to its rightful owner.

Jerusalem… was also under Ottoman occupation for four centuries (1517-1917). The Jewish people, however, reversing that pattern of Islamic colonialism and imperialism, re-established their homeland, now Israel, in 1948. Islamic supremacists still have not healed from the perceived affront by Israel’s indigenous people to Islamic conquest.

Islamists therefore say they want to reconquer Jerusalem and the rest of Israel. According to doctrine, the only religion that should rule over these lands – or any lands, for that matter — is Islam. Christians and Jews could be only “dhimmis”, second-class, tolerated subjects of an Islamic state where they are only allowed to stay alive on sufferance by paying a high “protection” tax, the jizya.

Theologically, according to Islamic scriptures, Judaism and Christianity are merely distorted versions of Islam. In the Islamic view, originally there was only Islam, which the Jews and Christians later distorted into Judaism and Christianity. All history, in this mindset, is therefore originally Islamic history and all major figures of history such as Adam and Eve are therefore Muslim. All Biblical figures, according to Islam, such as Abraham, David, Moses, and Jesus are also Muslim. So, any place related to them, in that view, is Muslim territory.

Many others see these events as the Jews, who were the indigenous population of Canaan and Judea, having had their land “stolen” by the Ottomans, similarly to how the Turkish military invaded the northern part of the Republic of Cyprus in 1974, or how the Christian Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire was “stolen” by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II and his troops on May 29, 1453 when they stormed Constantinople and triumphantly entered the Cathedral of the Hagia Sophia, after besieging the city for 55 days.

Many Islamists are therefore obsessed with conquering Israel, Spain and Portugal (al-Andalus), Greece, Cyprus and India for Allah – then the rest of the non-Muslim world.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Newsom Cancels Public Christmas Tree–Lighting amid Planned Pro-Palestinian Protests By Haley Strack

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/newsom-cancels-public-christmas-tree-lighting-amid-planned-pro-palestinian-protests/

California governor Gavin Newsom will conduct tonight’s Christmas tree–lighting at California’s state capitol virtually, amid threats from pro-Palestinian protesters.

The Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights announced that it would protest at the state capitol on Tuesday night — the same night Newsom was set to direct the annual Christmas tree–lighting ceremony. The group told KCRA Channel 3 that it wants to “out governor Gavin Newsom for hiding from the public because he doesn’t want to face their anger at his shameful stance in regard to the genocide in Gaza.”

“Governor Newsom decided to cancel the tree-lighting ceremony rather than face the public that is enraged by his shameful silence on the genocide in Gaza. This certainly doesn’t add up with his past stance with Native Americans,” Yassar Dahbour of the Sacramento Regional Coalition for Palestinian Rights said.

According to the local outlet, California Highway Patrol’s permit calendar originally slated a tree-lighting ceremony for Tuesday evening but had removed the event from the calendar as of Tuesday morning. The ceremony will now be held remotely, and California Highway Patrol has barricaded the area where the tree is located. Signage around the capitol building warns that trespassers will be arrested and prosecuted.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The People Who Mobbed a Jewish-Owned Restaurant in Philly Are Total Psychopaths By Jim Geraghty

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/the-people-who-mobbed-a-jewish-owned-restaurant-in-philly-are-total-psychopaths/

On the menu today: If you thought the angry mob that gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant in downtown Philadelphia Sunday night couldn’t get any more outrageous, wait until you hear how the organizers justified their decisions a day later. It’s rarely been clearer that those who are taking to the streets and chanting aren’t merely pro-peace, as they claim, they’re pro-the-other-side, even when the other side is Hamas and the stakes are therapy for traumatized children. There was a Kristallnacht vibe to the decision to harass a Jewish-owned restaurant and to treat it as an extension of the Israeli government. Meanwhile, the White House apparently believes that a one-paragraph statement of rebuke is all the moment needs. The president who said he chose to run for the Oval Office because “the soul of America is at stake” is strangely quiet at this moment.

I’m Sorry, but These People Are Psychopaths

On today’s Wall Street Journal op-ed page, under the headline, “Higher Ed has become a threat to America,” University of California Santa Cruz professor emeritus John Ellis concludes, “The biggest threat to our future isn’t climate change, China or the national debt. It is the tyrannical grip that a hopelessly corrupt higher education now has on our national life. If we don’t stop it now, it will eventually destroy the most successful society in world history.”

That’s an awfully big accusation. Hyperbolic, probably; let’s not hand-wave away the threats of our runaway $33.8 trillion national debt or Beijing’s aggressive buildup of the People’s Liberation Army. But it’s not completely inaccurate, either. Leftist professors and administrators have cultivated an environment where whoever can organize the biggest, angriest mob wins; left-wing violence is forgiven as de facto speech while right-of-center-speech is restricted for being de facto violence; and your constitutionally protected rights can be completely abrogated without warning or review. And that mentality has spilled out from campuses into our legislatures, courtrooms, newsrooms, and the public square. The politically motivated violence we see in our country today is not all driven by backwoods yokels marching through the streets of Charlottesville with Tiki torches.

I’m sorry, I can’t just drop the topic of that angry mob that gathered outside a Jewish-owned restaurant in downtown Philadelphia Sunday night. I know that a whole lot of people might think it was just an ugly, dumb thing that happened, but it’s over now, damage to the restaurant was minimal, and even the owner, renowned Israeli-born chef Michael Solomonov, doesn’t want to comment on Sunday’s incident. I can’t begrudge him the desire to move on and get back to business.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Officials Reveal New Details About the Bizarre D.C. Area House Explosion: Paula Bolyard

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/paula-bolyard/2023/12/05/official-reveal-more-information-about-dc-area-house-explosion-n4924501

At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Arlington County, Va., officials shared additional information about the bizarre home explosion that occurred in the Ballston neighborhood last night.

According to Arlington County Police Chief Andy Penn, the individual who was in the home at the time of the explosion is deceased. Fire officials found human remains in the house and believe that they belong to the suspect, James Yoo, 56, who owns the home. However, DNA tests have not yet confirmed the identity of the remains. “All factors point to that is this individual, but that has to be confirmed, and it’s going to take time to confirm that as well.”

Penn said the ACPD was called to the home at 844 N. Burlington Street at approximately 4:45 p.m. for reports of possible shots fired. “On-scene investigation revealed that a male suspect discharged a flare-type gun from the residence more than 30 times,” he said. “Officers attempted to engage with the suspect without success. A search warrant was ultimately obtained to allow our officers to secure any weapons to ensure there would be no ongoing threat to the community.”

It’s not clear why police needed a warrant to enter the home of someone firing a flare gun from the residence. Nevertheless, “members of the emergency response team initially attempted to execute the warrant through various forms of communications with the suspect. However, this was not successful.”

They deployed “non-flammable, less lethal chemical munitions to multiple areas within the residence where the suspect was believed to be hiding” in the hope that he would surrender.

Police say their only past interactions with Yoo were to address “calls for service for loud noise” over the past couple of years. 

“We are aware of concerning social media posts allegedly made by the suspect and these will be reviewed as part of the ongoing criminal investigation,” Penn added. 

Prior to the blast, residents of the area were evacuated for their safety, and fire officials turned off the gas to the home. There is no timeline for the investigation, but officials said debris was found “several streets over based on topography,” and 10-12 homes were damaged. 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Immorality of the Two State Solution A never-ending cycle of conflict and destruction. by John Nantz

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-immorality-of-the-two-state-solution/

Joe Biden is a famous incompetent when it comes to foreign policy. Don’t forget, his mentor and former boss, Barack Hussein Obama, quipped that one should never underestimate Biden’s ability to screw up any given policy situation beyond all semblance of rationally expected benefit. Well he didn’t say that exactly, but that’s the gist.

So, it stands to reason, if Biden is in favor of the Two State Solution in Israel, there’s probably something very wrong afoot. It’s the same kind of wrongheadedness that led the notoriously ineffectual U.N. to adopt the policy in 1947. The result of this piece of liberal statecraft has been 76 years of either simmering, or all out war in the Middle East.

The Two State Solution has ensured that the seeds of conflict and destruction sprout into a virulent kudzu that, despite occasional pruning, grows implacably, strangling any hope for peace in the region.

Both Gaza and the West Bank are products of this intractable and untenable state of existence. To put this state of affairs in perspective, imagine if the U.N. had carved out most of the south and the northern Midwest states and implanted ISIS in our midst. At least in terms of proportionate land mass, you have a rough idea of what Israel faces.

As an aside, Biden’s wide open border policy is fashioning a de facto American Two State Solution, pitting illegal aliens against citizens in an explosive environment ripe for demagoguery. Tens of thousands stream across the southern border in anonymity. Military aged males forming battalions of potential Mohammedan insurrectionists.

But to the main point, the plight of “Palestinians” is a result of the Arab world’s refusal to accommodate immigration from Gaza or the West Bank. It seems the Arab states take their borders much more seriously than America. As the current Two State Solution crisis evolves in Gaza, Egypt has refused to allow the incursion of refugees from Gaza. So much for the compassion of Mohammedans, practitioners of the “religion of peace.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A Possible Future For Hamas Depends On One Thing It’s connected to the tunnels. by Moshe Phillips

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/a-possible-future-for-hamas-depends-on-one-thing/

Just as the world’s media was focused on the first hostages to be freed from Hamas captivity on November 24 a key leader of Hamas named Khaled Mashal gave a video address to a conference of the International Islamic Forum of Parliamentarians stating that “the resistance is in good condition, and although some of its fighters and commanders have been martyred, our tunnels, ammunition and weapons are still intact and we can still maneuver, fire rockets and hit invading tanks.”
Israel and its allies must face the fact that the future of Hamas depends on these tunnels that Mashal specifically boasted about.

One cannot help but connect this statement to the story of four Israeli soldiers who were killed on November 10 by a hidden terrorist explosive device in a booby-trapped tunnel shaft next to a mosque in Gaza’s Beit Hanoun neighborhood.

The father of one of the soldiers, Major Moshe Yedidyah Leiter, grew up in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The question of the possible future of Hamas in Gaza is one that, tragically, now must be asked since the late November ceasefire has given Hamas the chance to refortify and resupply in their terrorist tunnels.

Dennis Ross, a U.S. envoy to the Middle East, admitted in an op-ed in the Washington Post in August 2014 that he put pressure on Israel to allow Hamas to import cement into Gaza.Ross acknowledged that he knew the cement might be misused. “At times, I argued with Israeli leaders and security officials, telling them they needed to allow more construction materials, including cement, into Gaza so that housing, schools and basic infrastructure could be built,” Ross wrote. “They countered that Hamas would misuse it, and they were right.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Dutch politician Geert Wilders aims to stop the invasion of Europe: Don Feder

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/dec/2/dutch-politician-geert-wilders-aims-to-stop-invasi/

Our myna-bird media refer to Dutch politician Geet Wilders, who could be the next prime minister of the Netherlands, as “far right,” hard right,” an “anti-Islam firebrand” and a “Donald Trump clone.” They missed MAGA Republican.

Mr. Wilders won a huge victory in last week’s parliamentary elections. His Party for Freedom went from 17 seats to 37 seats in the lower house — a plurality that puts Mr. Wilders in line to form the next government.

While he ran on a broad range of issues, the Dutch Donald is best known for promising to stem the tide of Muslim immigration.

He’s also pledged to move the Dutch Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Strange how so many “far right” leaders — including the newly elected president of Argentina — want to express their solidarity with the Jewish state. Someone forgot to tell them that they’re supposed to be antisemites.

Mr. Wilders joins a hardy band of immigration skeptics, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who cheered Mr. Wilders’ victory. (“The winds of change are here!”) The Alternative for Germany party, also opposed to open borders, is now in second place in polling, with 20% support. In France, Marine Le Pen waits her turn.

The Netherlands has taken in an average of 200,000 immigrants a year since 2016, most unassimilable.

The Netherlands, whose population is only 16 million, is now home to 1 million Muslims. Since the 2004 murder of filmmaker Theo van Gogh for exposing the treatment of women under Islam, a growing number of Dutch have concluded that the immigrants will not end up wearing wooden shoes and planting tulips.

The Dutch aren’t the only Europeans who are nervous. In France, a new mosque is opened every two weeks, and a Catholic institution is closed during the same period. In a gesture of goodwill, the grand imam of Paris has suggested that decommissioned churches be turned into mosques.

How thoughtful.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Islamic Antisemitism and its Leftist Twin The Unholy Collusion. by Bruce Thornton *****

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/islamic-antisemitism-and-its-leftist-twin/

Ever since Hamas’ savage pogrom against Israeli civilians, protests against Israel have featured blatant antisemitism and eliminationist rhetoric like “from the river to the sea” or “death to Jews,” typically heard from fringe cranks rather than students at prestigious American universities.

These despicable displays and attacks on Jews––the latter up 388% in the U.S., and 1350% in London––have many causes, the most obvious being the widespread decay of educational standards, and the corruption of curricula by leftist political ideologies.

But the significant presence of “international students” from Muslim nations has exacerbated these scenes of a hate now colluding with another one––the left’s visceral hatred of the West and Marxism’s most successful rival, the United States. This collusion represents a lethal threat to our security and interests.

Traditional Christian hatred of Jews smeared them as “Christ-killers” who poison wells and use the blood of murdered Christian children to make Passover matzah. But starting in the 19th century, modern antisemitism demonized Jews as the stooges and villainous agents of the modern capitalist economies. The antisemitism that fueled Hitler’s “final solution” was not about deicide or the “blood libel,” but rather the national-socialist hatred of free-market capitalism; and the scientism of Darwinian racism with its fear of the racial pollution of the superior Nordic race by lesser ethnicities––the “settled science” of the early 20th century.

Traditional Muslim antisemitism, on the other hand, is a product of Islam. In the last few decades, however, it has been rationalized by Western apologists as having “nothing to do with Islam.” Rather, it reflects malign ideas from Europe, and the West’s “colonial” outpost Israel. Attacks on Jews in Europe, for example, by Muslim immigrants are regularly explained in terms of Israel’s “occupation” and its alleged crimes against the Palestinian Arabs. Over two decades ago historian Tony Judt rationalized murders of Jews as “a direct outcome of the festering crisis in the Middle East.”

Moreover, such scapegoating of Israel has also become more deeply embedded in the West’s foreign policy establishment. Testifying before Congress in 2010, General David Petraeus confirmed Osama bin Laden’s pretext for 9/11––“the creation and continuation of Israel”–– and attributed the U.S.’s difficulties in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Arab-Israeli conflict that “foments anti-American sentiment,” the “perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” and “anger over the Palestinian question.” Not a word about the 14 centuries of Islamic Jew-hatred and aggression against Christian Europe, and the doctrines and precepts mandating both.

No wonder, then, that these rote clichés provide the ignorant slogans and posters of today’s American “woke” students and their Muslim colleagues. They rationalize for both groups the protestors’ antisemitism, and Hamas’s butchery of Jews, and they furnish excuses for positive, sometimes celebratory references to the Holocaust and the flaunting of swastikas.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

EVs Aren’t The Edsel Of The 21st Century — They’re Far Worse

Posted By on December 6th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/12/06/evs-arent-the-edsel-of-the-21st-century-theyre-far-worse/

Economist Steve Moore recently compared EVs to the ill-fated Edsel, “one of the textbook marketing flops of all time.”

“All the automotive experts and Ford executives said it was a can’t-miss. Henry Ford (the car was named after his son) guaranteed hundreds of thousands of sales. But one big thing went wrong: Nobody ever bothered to ask car buyers what they thought of the new car,” he wrote.

“Given the all-in approach to electric vehicles at Ford and General Motors, it’s clear that Detroit never got the message.”

With all due respect to our good friend Steve, there is one key difference between the Edsel of the 1950s and EVs of the 21st century.

Taxpayers weren’t on the hook for hundreds of billions of dollars when the Edsel flopped.

The amount of taxpayer money being lavished on EVs is mind-boggling. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill included $7.5 billion in subsidies to build EV chargers. (Two years later, not one charger has been built with those funds.) President Joe Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” includes billions more in tax incentives for battery manufacturers and EV buyers.

In August, Biden’s Energy Department announced plans to “fuel the auto industry’s transition to electric vehicles with $12 billion in loans and grants.”

This, and much more, is all on top of the $22 billion in federal and state subsidies, regulatory credits, and other breaks that have already been showered on EVs. The Texas Public Policy Foundation estimates that EVs would cost $50,000 more than they do today were it not for all this “help.”