NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Are Showing You Who They Are Believe them. by Derek Hunter

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/democrats-are-showing-you-who-they-are/

I had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1938; then, I had to check the books I owned to make sure they weren’t actually written in German. Once I confirmed it is 2023 and I live in the United States of America, I was left only to shake my head in disgust at what Democrats have exposed themselves to be.

Make no mistake, I never really thought they were great people. The party of slavery, Jim Crow, and segregation isn’t suddenly going to pull a 180 and not be monsters; it’s who they are. They’ve never changed their objectives, only their tactics. Now, their embrace of segregation is done in the name of tolerance, of providing a “safe space” to minorities. But make no mistake, the end result is the same.

That’s the thing about the left – they’ll happily tell you who they are and the horrible things they hold dear; all you have to do is believe them.

The terrorist attack in Israel two weeks ago brought out the worst in the left, but it’s also their true self. You can’t cheer for the wholesale murder of innocent people and “really be a good person, deep down.” No, that’s not how it works. It’s the opposite – they are raging bigots and monsters who manage to tamp it down below the surface most of the time until there’s something to protest or celebrate. It’s really that simple.

I’m not Jewish, and I’m disgusted. I can only imagine the sense of betrayal and horror Jews feel, as friends, neighbors, and colleagues felt so compelled to defend the murderers of Jews, for the express reason that they were Jewish, 24 hours after the attack. The Democratic Socialists of America, who count Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Cori Bush, and pretty must every other Nazi scum “progressive” among their ranks and supporter, marched in support of Hamas in New York City, the next day, before there was anywhere near an accurate body count, let alone an understanding of the scale of the evil. They didn’t march against Israel; they marched in favor of Hamas, literally celebrating the paragliders in the posters promoting it.

That’s a special kind of evil.

In the face of that, how can any normal person care what they have to say or do anything but recoil in disgust at what they’re advocating? They can’t.

The examples of the aforementioned Members of Congress spewing their anti-Semitism or lying about 500 dead in the most densely populated hospital on the planet, when there was really just a small parking lot fire caused by “friendly” terrorist fire, are well known. What isn’t as well known are the examples of small people in positions that wouldn’t get the attention an MSNBC host would, showing people the monsters they are.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Universities Celebrate the Mass Murder of Jews American academia has descended into barbarism. by Sara Dogan

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/universities-celebrate-the-mass-murder-of-jews/

Since Hamas initiated a brutal and barbaric terrorist attack against Israel and the Jewish people on October 7th, many Americans—Jewish and not—have mourned alongside the world’s only Jewish state and have understood the necessity of a swift and decisive military counterattack. But in the green quads and ivory towers of American academia, a very different reaction has been brewing. For the past two decades, the David Horowitz Freedom Center has shone a rare spotlight on the genocidal Jew hatred emanating from our college campuses. Student organizations like the Hamas-funded and Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Students for Justice in Palestine have infiltrated our universities and turned them training grounds for the next generation of jihadists. In the wake of Hamas’s barbarism, its slaughter and mutilation of innocent Jews, its campaign of rape and torture and beheading, we can now bear witness to the effects that two decades of Jew-hating pro-terror propaganda have wrought in our institutions of higher learning.

At Harvard, arguably America’s most prestigious university, over 30 student organizations signed onto a statement declaring that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Not to be outdone by Harvard, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Brown University released its own statement (co-signed by the Graduate Labor Organization and Teaching Assistant Labor Organization, as well as 25 additional organizations) stating that: “We, the undersigned, hold the Israeli regime and its allies unequivocally responsible for all suffering and loss of life, Palestinian or Israeli.”

At Cornell University, SJP held a rally to “Stop Israel’s Annihilation of Gaza.” History Professor Russell Rickford who spoke at the rally declared Hamas’s barbaric attack which included the rape of women, the beheading of babies, and the deaths of entire families as “exhilarating.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Pentagon Finally Admits to Dozens of U.S. Casualties amid Iran-Backed Attacks Noah Rothman

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-pentagon-finally-admits-to-dozens-of-u-s-casualties-amid-iran-backed-attacks/

Israel isn’t the only target.

In the 18 days since the Iran-backed terrorist organization Hamas murdered over 1,400 people, the network of terrorist proxies aligned with the Islamic Republic that populate the Middle East have taken similar aim at U.S. forces throughout the region. U.S. positions in Iraq and Syria have come under at least 13 drone and missile attacks. Last week, the Iran-aligned Houthi militia fired off a fusillade of rockets and unmanned vehicles “potentially headed for Israel” that were intercepted by an American Navy destroyer in the Red Sea.

And yet, the U.S. emerged from these attacks relatively unscathed. At least, that’s what the silence from Joe Biden’s Defense Department regarding the fallout from these attacks implied.

On October 18, the Pentagon revealed that one American contractor in Iraq died after experiencing a cardiac event while trying to seek shelter from an incoming rocket attack, which turned out to be a false alarm. The following day, a Defense Department spokesman acknowledged the “uptick” in attacks from Iran’s Shiite militia groups, but assured reporters that there was “no direct linkage” between their activities and Israel’s war with another Iran-backed terrorist entity.

When asked about casualty figures, the Pentagon could only say with confidence that no civilians were injured in the attacks. As for U.S. service personnel, the “numbers” were “all over the map” and therefore unreliable. “That’s another aspect that we’re looking at right now,” Brigadier General Pat Ryder assured reporters on October 19.

This week, the Pentagon finally got its hands around the rapidly deteriorating situation in the Middle East, and its assessment is shocking. At least 24 U.S. troops were wounded in the attacks on American positions in the Middle East, Defense officials admitted on Tuesday. Most of those are classified as “minor injuries,” but they nonetheless jeopardize the readiness of America’s forward positions. Moreover, the Pentagon expects these figures will rise in the coming days. “What we are seeing is the prospect for more significant escalation against U.S. forces and personnel across the region in the very near-term coming from Iranian proxy forces and ultimately from Iran,” Ryder advised. The Defense Department is “preparing for this escalation” and for the eventual prospect of “responding decisively.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Disgrace of the United Nations on Israel The Secretary-General abandons Israel, a state the U.N. helped to create.

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/antonio-guterres-united-nations-israel-palestine-hamas-gaza-c4adf77a?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

In the ever-expanding hall of shame for propagators of global disorder, prepare a special pedestal for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. His disgraceful remarks Tuesday to the Security Council are an example of why the U.N. can’t be counted on to keep the peace anywhere.

Mr. Guterres’s comments amount to nothing less than an apologia for Hamas terrorists, despite a few thin caveats. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said of the Iran-backed terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, which claimed more than 1,400 lives.

Lest anyone miss his point: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”

Although he allowed that these “grievances” don’t justify the “appalling attacks by Hamas,” he warned that “those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” We quote Mr. Guterres at length in case readers assume someone in his position couldn’t really have delivered a speech of this sort. He did.

Mr. Guterres seems to know little about the institution he leads. A U.N. resolution passed in 1947 recommended the partition plan for Palestine that led to the creation of Israel the following year, as our friends at the New York Sun note in a sharp editorial.

Meanwhile, for decades the U.N., under the auspices of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee agency exclusively for Palestinians, has discouraged permanent resettlement by refugees and runs schools that teach children Israeli territory belongs to them.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Hatred on Our Doorsteps By Bari Weiss and Oliver Wiseman

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-hatred-on-our-doorsteps-antisemitism?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Last Tuesday, Free Press staffers arrived for work in New York to discover antisemitic graffiti sprayed on hallway walls outside of our office. Fuck Israel and Fuck Jews, read the messages. The graffiti was found on three floors of the building as well as in the freight elevator. At the time of this writing, the police have not identified any suspects, but they are investigating it as a hate crime.

Since Hamas’s October 7 massacre, a wave of antisemitic hate—from physical violence to harassment—has affected Jews across the globe. So the vandalism in the building where some of us work, while vile, was hardly a bolt out of the blue.

It also pales into comparison to what many Jews in this country and across the world have experienced in recent days.

A synagogue in Berlin was firebombed. In Paris, the door of an elderly Jewish couple’s apartment was burned; theirs was the only one in the building to display a mezuzah. According to London police, there were 218 antisemitic hate crimes reported in the capital between October 1 and 18, a 1,350 percent increase over the same period last year. Mobs across the world have gathered to cheer for Hamas’s barbarism. And, as we have reported, Jews have been intimidated and demeaned in American cities and on U.S. university campuses in recent weeks.

If there is anything more ulcer-inducing than the rise in explicit Jew-hatred, it is the denial and downplay of it.

Take, for example, an exchange at the White House press briefing on Monday. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about President Biden’s “level of concern right now about a potential rise of antisemitism.” Jean-Pierre could not even bring herself to acknowledge the problem. Instead, she pivoted to anti-Muslim hate crimes:

We have not seen any credible threats. I know there’s been all these questions about credible threats. And so, [I] just want to make sure that’s out there. But look, Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim have endured a disproportionate number of hate-fueled attacks, and certainly President Biden understands that many of our Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian American loved ones and neighbors are worried about the hate being directed at their communities.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Qatar: Master Double-Dealer by Con Coughlin

Posted By on October 26th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20098/qatar-master-double-dealer

The hundreds of millions of dollars the Qataris have given Hamas during the past decade have been instrumental in helping the terrorist group to develop the infrastructure that enabled it to carry out its murderous assault on Israel in the first place.

Qatar would like the world to believe that it is acting as an honest broker with its efforts to secure the release of the Gaza captives. But the reality is that it deserves to be condemned by the West as a state that sponsors global terrorism, so long as it maintains its indefensible support for Hamas.Bin Khalifa Al-Thani at a ceremony in Doha, Qatar on February 6, 2012. (Photo by AFP via Getty Images)

There is a very good reason why the tiny Gulf state of Qatar finds itself so well-placed to play a central role in negotiating the release of Israeli hostages taken captive by Hamas during its barbaric assault against Israel.

The hundreds of millions of dollars the Qataris have given Hamas during the past decade have been instrumental in helping the terrorist group to develop the infrastructure that enabled it to carry out its murderous assault on Israel in the first place.

Qatar would like the world to believe that it is acting as an honest broker with its efforts to secure the release of the Gaza captives. But the reality is that it deserves to be condemned by the West as a state that sponsors global terrorism, so long as it maintains its indefensible support for Hamas.

Without the substantial financial backing Hamas has received from both Qatar and Iran, whose support for the terror group is estimated at $100 million a year, it is questionable whether Hamas would even be able to survive.

The extent of Qatar’s involvement with Hamas was laid bare during the atrocities committed against Israeli civilians on October 7, when Ismail Haniyeh, the terrorist mastermind behind the attacks, was seen cheering for joy in front of the television in his exclusive hotel suite in Doha, the Qatari capital, as the horrific events unfolded.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Blood Libel against Jews: Back with a Vengeance by Alan M. Dershowitz

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20096/blood-libel-israel-gaza-hospital

This conflict is not about occupation or settlements. The chants of anti-Israel protesters, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” means that the entire area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea — all of Israel — must be free of Jews.

The truth does not matter to bigots.

A document from the end of the 15th century features an illustration of a bearded Jew extracting the blood of a Christian child. The adjoining text explains that Jewish law requires that Passover matzoh be baked with the blood of Christian children.

Such documents were widely circulated through Europe during the Easter season and led to frequent pogroms — murder, rape, and destruction — against Jewish children, women and men in revenge for allegedly killing Christian children for their blood to make matzoh.

There was never any actual evidence of such cannibalism. In fact, Jewish law explicitly prohibits the consumption of any blood or its use in cooking.

The total lack of evidence, however, did not matter to those who were taught and believed what has come to be known as the “blood libel.” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, many believed that this falsehood was “true.”

This blood libel persisted throughout Europe into the early 20th century. Jews were put on trial and executed for supposedly killing Christian children for their blood.

Other libels against Jews formed the basis for classic antisemitism, culminating in the Nazi lies that dehumanized Jews to an extent that made the Holocaust possible. Following the murder of 6 million innocent Jews, including babies, the world said, “Never again” and antisemitism abated in many parts of the world.

Now it is back with a vengeance, accompanied by blood libels and other systematic lies about the Jewish people and their nation state, Israel.

It is against this sordid historical background that the current blood libel — that Israel targeted a Gaza hospital deliberately causing the death of 500 Muslim children, women and men — can best be understood and assessed.

There is absolutely no evidence that Israel struck the hospital, whether deliberately or accidentally. Evidence from videos, photographs and telephone intercepts have proved to intelligence agencies worldwide that a barrage of rockets was launched toward Israel from near the hospital, almost certainly by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), and that one of the rockets malfunctioned mid-flight, landing not directly on the hospital but in its outdoor parking lot, and that the explosion killed far fewer than 500 people.

The claim of 500 people killed came, within minutes of the PIJ rocket strike, from the “Gaza Ministry of Health” – in other words from Hamas. They lie. No facts or numbers are ever verifiable. Moreover, Hamas claims that no rocket parts survived – another self-serving lie. Yet, their blood libel is widely believed by Israel’s enemies – perhaps because they want to believe it. It is too good a story to be ruined by the facts. As the journalist Becket Adams wrote in National Review:

“The Media Will Never Forgive Israel for Not Bombing That Hospital…. Reporters and pundits mishandled the Gaza hospital story because they wanted so badly for it to be true.”

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote:

“As the Israeli columnist Nahum Barnea pointed out to me, Palestinian Islamic Jihad achieved more this week with an apparently misfired rocket ‘than it achieved in all of its successful missile launches.'”

The “Muslim street” has been indoctrinated by its leaders to believe anything negative about Jews or Israel. And the Arab media generally reports Hamas lies and exaggerations — such as the claim that 500 civilians were killed at the hospital — as unvarnished truth.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Alarm on Energy Robert Bryce and Joel Kotkin

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://americanmind.org/salvo/alarm-on-energy/

The Second October War should wake America up to crucial geopolitical realities.

Fifty years ago, in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, the Arab members of OPEC initiated an oil embargo against the United States. The boycott was retribution for America’s support of Israel during its brief war against Egypt and Syria.

What was true in 1973 remains true in the wake of Hamas’s brutal terror attack on Israel on October 7: America’s national strength depends on the availability of cheap, abundant, reliable energy.

Our national security, and that of our allies, depends on energy security. Energy is the economy. We forget these realities at our extreme peril.

Fortunately, some things that were true a half-century ago are no longer so. Over the past decade or so, the geopolitics of energy have shifted dramatically in favor of the U.S., due mainly to the shale revolution. Instead of relying on oil imports, the U.S. has become a huge exporter of both oil and natural gas. We are now exporting about four million barrels of crude oil per day and record amounts of natural gas (about 20 billion cubic feet per day).

Even more remarkably, the U.S. is leading the world in energy efficiency and CO2 reductions. According to the latest Statistical Review of World Energy, per-capita energy consumption in the U.S. fell by about 20 percent between 1973 and 2022. In addition, U.S. CO2 emissions have dropped by about 915 million tons since 2000, the biggest reduction of any country on the planet.

But this progress is being threatened by climate-focused NGOs who are relentlessly promoting “net-zero” schemes that will bankrupt our economy and spell disaster for low- and middle-income Americans, as author Ruy Texeira explains in a trenchant essay, “The working class Isn’t Down with the Green Transition.” Indeed, the grassroots opposition of farmers, factory workers, truck drivers, and construction workers in North America, Europe, and Oceania is already leading to a reassessment of alt-energy policies, most notably in the United Kingdom and Germany.

ANTI-SEMITISM, BOOKS Comments turned off

The aftermath of Hamas’s attack on Israel has exposed the West’s moral collapse The protests we are seeing have nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with problems here at home Douglas Murray

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/20/israel-palestine-hamas-london-protests-anti-semitism/

There is a good rule about anti-Semitism. One reason it isn’t better known is because its best expression comes at the mid-point of the 20th century’s towering work of historical fiction: Life and Fate, by Vasily Grossman.

That novel, which takes the reader from the Battle of Stalingrad to the Nazi death camps, traverses the entire dark heart of the 20th century. Yet in the very middle of its 900 pages, the great Russian writer examines the question of anti-Semitism. He says almost everything.

Anti-Semitism is something which, as Grossman writes, can be met “in the marketplace and in the Academy, in the soul of an old man and in the games children play in the yard”. He describes it as always a means rather than an end, “a measure of the contradictions yet to be resolved”.

And here is the key point. “It is a mirror for the failings of individuals, social structures and state systems. Tell me what you accuse the Jews of, I’ll tell you what you are guilty of.”

I can’t tell you how many times in my life I have seen this. And never more than in the past fortnight.

Look at the protests against Israel that have erupted across Europe since the Hamas massacres two weeks ago today. There were no mass rallies in solidarity with the Jews who had been gunned down at a music festival, shot in the head at a bus stop, or decapitated in front of their parents.

Weirdly enough across Britain, Europe and the wider West, almost nobody had time for any such public expressions of sympathy. We did at the highest political levels. But on the streets? No.

The Jewish people of this country were effectively left alone, to try to mourn and suffer however they could. But wider sympathy of the kind we saw during the Black Lives Matter protests? Nope. Nowhere to be seen.

I happen to have been travelling across America and Europe this week, and everywhere I have been I have seen the same thing.

Mass pro-Palestinian protests in New York’s Times Square. Major protests in every European capital. In Lisbon, people waving Palestinian flags. In Norway, a protest of people showing their support for the Palestinians and their opposition to Israel.

In each place, I think the same thing. What are you doing? What has any of this got to do with you? Why are you silent about so much in the world and produce such noise on this?

There is an explanation for what, at the deepest level, is going on.

The Jews are – as Grossman says – attacked by anti-Semites whatever they do. If they are poor, they are criticised for being poor. If they are rich, they are suspected for being rich. If they are ultra-religious, they are accused of being outsiders. If they are secular, they are accused of being seditious.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

The Case for Foreign National Deportation Conditional citizenship is the only way to keep our Republic safe. by Jason D. Hill

Posted By on October 25th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-case-for-foreign-national-deportation/

Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that he will rescind student visas of foreign nationals in the U.S. and deport them to their home countries if they expressed support for Hamas terrorists’ attack against Israel.

In unequivocal terms, the presidential hopeful made it clear that the United States had no place for terrorist-supporting foreign nationals attending U.S. colleges and universities, as many pro-Palestinian student groups at various institutions across the nation release statements and organize demonstrations endorsing Hamas’ largest attack against Israel in decades.

“You see students demonstrating in our country in favor of Hamas,” DeSantis said. “Remember, some of them are foreigners.”

DeSantis told them he will be “canceling your visa, and I’m sending you home” if he wins the presidency in 2024.

DeSantis’ statement comes against the backdrop of hundreds of pro-Hamas and Pro-Palestinian student rallies across the United States.

After the attack against Israel by Hamas on October 7, Harvard Palestine Solidarity Groups released a statement signed by about 30 student organizations that read, “We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and other pro-Palestinian student groups at many other universities, including George Washington University, the University of Virginia, and the University of California, Berkley, also released similar statements on the weekend of Hamas’ attack.

Many other pro-Palestinian student groups at institutions across the U.S. still have their statements posted online and continue to participate in protests celebrating Hamas’ attack.

This is all reminiscent of Britain in 2019. In that year Britain stripped ISIS terrorist Jack Letts (known as Jihad Jack) of his British citizenship. Letts also possessed Canadian citizenship. Since the Islamic State fell in March of 2019, Britain faced the horrific possibility of scores of ISIS terrorists returning to the UK. Letts had travelled to Syria when ISIS declared its “caliphate” in 2014; there he admitted to fighting on the frontline with SIS and offered himself as a suicide bomber. After being wounded, he grew disillusioned with ISIS.