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A Time to Celebrate Israel 100 years later, the Balfour Declaration is still misunderstood.By Lawrence J. Haas,

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

“His Majesty’s Government,” British Foreign Secretary Lord Arthur James Balfour wrote a century ago in a 67-word paragraph that changed the course of history, “view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object.”

The 100-year anniversary of the “Balfour Declaration” on Nov. 2, 1917, which paved the way for Israel’s creation, should be a time of unbridled celebration, an occasion to honor the region’s lone democracy and most dynamic economy. Instead, it has also become an opportunity for critics of Israel to relaunch their misguided, often dishonest, attacks that seek to undermine the country’s global legitimacy.

It is, then, important that Israel’s supporters not only celebrate this anniversary proudly but also remind the world of how the Balfour Declaration – enunciated in a letter from Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leading British Jew – came to be, what it represented and what followed in its wake.

Already, Thursday’s anniversary has stoked controversy. British Prime Minister Theresa May said her country should celebrate it “with pride,” invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to London to mark the occasion at a formal dinner and rejected Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ requests that London apologize for the declaration that, he suggests, fueled Palestinian suffering.

On the other hand, British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who calls leaders of the Jew-hating terror groups Hezbollah and Hamas his “friends” – turned down an invitation to attend that dinner. At the same time, Gwyneth Daniel, a great-granddaughter of David Lloyd George, Britain’s prime minister at the time of the declaration, calls May’s decision to celebrate “completely outrageous” and plans to protest outside that event.

The anniversary also comes at a time of rising global anti-Semitism as well as mounting attacks on Israel from global bodies and governments, universities and other nonprofits and grassroots movements.

The United Nations and its entities condemn Israel for alleged “crimes against humanity” while ignoring the actual horror perpetrated by Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh and many other governments. Meanwhile, public and private bodies ban Israeli products and shun its intellectuals, athletes, entertainers and other citizens.

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Germany: Violence Spirals in Refugee Shelters by Soeren Kern

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

German authorities have justified their failure to inform the public about the scale of the problem by citing the privacy rights of the criminal offenders.

Experts have long warned that the practice of housing migrants from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in tight accommodations is the ideal breeding ground for violence.

“A maintenance man who worked in a refugee shelter reported ‘mafia-like’ conditions. Refugees were required to pay for access to the electrical sockets there.” — Der Tagesspiegel.

Violent crime, including murder, rape and physical assault, is running rampant in German asylum shelters, according to a leaked intelligence report. German authorities, who appear powerless to stem the rising tide of violence, have justified their failure to inform the public about the scale of the problem by citing the privacy rights of the criminal offenders.

The report, leaked to the newspaper Bild, was prepared for Markus Ulbig, the interior minister of Saxony, where more than 40,000 migrants are being housed in refugee shelters. According to the report, there were ten murders or attempted murders at Saxon migrant shelters in 2016, as well as 960 physical assaults, 671 cases of grievous bodily injury, seven rapes, 10 sexual assaults of children and 268 cases of drug trafficking. The report also cited hundreds of incidents of theft, coercion, arson, brawls and attacks on police officers.

The violence at Saxon migrant shelters continued during the first six months of 2017: there were more than 500 physical assaults, several homicides and hundreds of reported thefts.

Experts have long warned that the practice of housing migrants from different ethnic and religious backgrounds in tight accommodations is the ideal breeding ground for violence.

In Germany as a whole, around 40,000 crimes — nearly 150 each day — were reported in refugee shelters during the first nine months of 2016, according to another leaked report by the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA). These crimes included 17,200 physical assaults, 6,500 thefts, 510 sexual assaults and 139 murders or attempted murders.

Observers say this is just the tip of the iceberg, as most crimes go unreported out of a fear of revenge. The BKA does not make public its data about migrant shelter criminality and there have been no additional leaks of such information. Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that migrant-on-migrant crime is endemic across Germany.In Saxony-Anhalt, for instance, a parliamentary inquiry into a stabbing between Afghans at an asylum shelter in Bernburg revealed that migrants have assaulted other migrants at shelters across the state, including in Aschersleben, Ballenstedet, Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Burg, Dessau-Rosslau, Eckartsberg, Genthin, Haldensleben, Halle, Harbke, Kemberg, Leuna, Lutherstadt Eisleben, Magdeburg, Naumburg, Oranienbaum, Oschersleben, Salzwedel, Sangerhausen, Seegebiet Mansfelder Land, Stassfurt, Wanzleben, Weissenfels, Wolmirstedt, Zeitz and Zerbst. The stabbings involved migrants from Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Benin, Bosnia, Burkina Faso, Eritrea, Gambia, Guinea-Bissau, India, Iran, Iraq, Kosovo, Macedonia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey and Ukraine.

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Stop the “Diversity” Visa Lottery, Gateway for Jihadists by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

Among the heaviest users of the US Diversity Visa lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems. Entering the Diversity Visa program, Islamists openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

In this lottery, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually much larger than 50,000 a year.

The terrorists, who share the goal of devastating everything we value, do not care about political correctness, or what the true purpose of the lottery might be. They see only the opportunity to take advantage of a hole in our immigration security.

The US immigration system is significantly flawed; it paves the way for terrorists to enter the country. Since 9/11, no serious actions have been taken to address this fundamental problem. Mercifully, President Donald Trump announced yesterday that he wants the Diversity Visa Program terminated.

As the world now knows, on October 31, in a jihadi vehicular attack, a terrorist, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, drove a rented pickup-truck onto a crowded bicycle path in lower Manhattan. He murdered at least eight innocent people — including students, school staff and tourists celebrating a reunion — and wounded eleven people. He celebrated by shouting “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is the greatest”). After police stopped his rampage by shooting and wounding him, he asked for an ISIS flag to be brought to his hospital room.

While politicians avoid the truth that “lone wolves” among terrorists effectively do not exist and, along with many in the mainstream media, refuse to tackle the underlying cause of this terror act and refrain from fully reporting on terrorism, we all badly need an open discussion about it.

The mainstream media would doubtless prefer to hide from you that Saipov, an Uzbek national, came to the US thanks to Senator Chuck Schumer’s “Diversity Program,” and that there are many flaws in the US immigration system. The Diversity Visa lottery is high among them.

Sayfullo Saipov (left), the Uzbek terrorist who carried out the October 31 attack in Manhattan, moved to the US thanks to the Diversity Visa Program.

The program accepts 50,000 people a year, totally at random. Citizens from some countries that are US-friendly, such as Canada and the United Kingdom, are not even allowed to apply. Other countries, known to be epicenters of jihadists and Islamist ideologies, are permitted to participate. The applicant does not even need to have a high school education. Among the heaviest users of this lottery are people in countries known to have terrorism problems — specifically Middle Eastern, North African and Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Syria, Turkey, Yemen, and Uzbekistan.

If you had grown up, as I did, in Syria and Iran, you would have seen Islamists gathering in groups to further their goals. You would also have seen them encouraging and informing their affiliate groups through various means, including social media, to enter the US Diversity Visa program. This, they openly felt, was their opportunity to access the US and cause destruction to the country and its people, which they viewed as their enemy.

Worse in this lottery is, not just the winner gains access. When a foreign person wins the lottery, the US gives out visas to his or her family as well — no matter where they were born. As a result, the number of people that come into the US thanks to the lottery program is actually far larger than 50,000 a year.

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Who Gets to Have Nuclear Weapons — and Why? The rules used to be controlled by two big powers, but not anymore. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

Given North Korea’s nuclear lunacy, what exactly are the rules, formal or implicit, about which nations may have nuclear weapons and which may not?

It is complicated.

In the free-for-all environment of the 1940s and 1950s, the original nuclear club included only those countries with the technological know-how, size, and money to build nukes. Those realities meant that up until the early 1960s, only Britain, France, the Soviet Union, and the United States had nuclear capabilities.

Members of this small club did not worry that many other nations would make such weapons, because it seemed far too expensive and difficult for most.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States adhered to an unspoken rule that their losing Axis enemies of World War II — Germany, Italy, and Japan — should not have nuclear weapons. Despite their financial and scientific ability to obtain them, all three former Axis powers had too much recent historical baggage to be allowed weapons of mass destruction. That tacit agreement apparently still remains.

The Soviet Union and the United States also informally agreed during the Cold War that their own dependent allies that had the ability to go nuclear — including eastern-bloc nations, most Western European countries, Australia, and Canada — would not. Instead, they would depend on their superpower patrons for nuclear deterrence.

By the 1970s, realities had changed again. Large and/or scientifically sophisticated nations such as China (1964), Israel (1967), and India (1974) went nuclear. Often, such countries did so with the help of pro-Western or pro-Soviet patrons and sponsors. The rest of the world apparently shrugged, believing it was inevitable that such nations would obtain nuclear weapons.

The next round of expansion of the nuclear club, however, was far sloppier and more dangerous. Proliferation hinged on whether poorer and more unstable nations could get away with enriching uranium or acquiring plutonium in secret.

Some nations, such as Iraq and Syria, let on that they were developing nuclear weapons and were stopped by preemptive military strikes. Others, including South Africa, Ukraine, and Libya, were persuaded to halt their nuclear projects.

Pakistan was the rare rogue that managed to hide its nuclear enrichment, shocking the world by testing a bomb in 1998. Pakistan rightly assumed that once a nation proves its nuclear capability, it is deemed too dangerous to walk it back through disarmament.

Nonetheless, until the official nuclearization of North Korea in 2006, the nuclear club remained small (eight nations) and was thought to be manageable. Why?

First, those nuclear countries that were relatively transparent and democratic (Britain, France, India, Israel, and the United States) were deemed unlikely to start a nuclear war.

Second, the advanced but autocratic nuclear nations (China and Russia) were thought to have too much at stake in globalized trade and national prosperity ever to start a lose/lose nuclear war.

Third, any unstable rogue nuclear nation (Pakistan) was assumed to be deterred and held in check by a nearby nuclear rival (India).

The nuclear capability of dictatorial North Korea (and likely soon, theocratic Iran) poses novel dangers far beyond the simple arithmetic of “the more nuclear nations, the more likely a nuclear war.”

Neither North Korea nor Iran is democratic. Neither is a stable country.

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There’s a whole lot of diversity. And it’s killing us Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

New York City is an incredibly diverse place.

Here, an Uzbek Muslim immigrant in on a visa diversity lottery can run over Argentinian tourists, an Egyptian-Palestinian Muslim can shoot a Danish musician on the observation deck of the Empire State Building, Saudi Muslims can fly planes into the World Trade Center killing people from 77 countries, an Afghan Muslim can plant pressure cooker bombs in Chelsea, a Lebanese Muslim can open fire on a van of Jewish students and a Pakistani-Kuwaiti and Iraqi Muslim can bomb the World Trade Center.

Truly, diversity is our terror.

Nationally, the perpetrators and plotters of Islamic terrorism in just the last ten years have included Pakistanis (San Bernardino, Garland, UC Merced), Chechens (Boston Marathon bombing), Afghans (Orlando shootings), Somalis (Portland Christmas Tree bomb plot, Minnesota mall stabbing, Ohio State Car Ramming, Columbus Machete Attack), Palestinians (Fort Hood, Chattanooga recruitment shootings) and Iraqis (Bowling Green plot).

That’s a whole lot of diversity. And it’s killing us.

What do an Uzbek and an Algerian have in common that makes them both want to kill people in New York City? Their native countries are thousands of miles apart and they don’t even share a common language or culture. They do however share a common religion that tells them to kill non-Muslims.

Diversity is a strength of Islamic terrorists. It unites Chechen-Avar mutts like the Tsarnaev brothers who set off a pressure cooker bomb in Boston with the Nigerian ‘Underwear Bomber”, and the Palestinians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, Somalis, Egyptians, Iraqis, Saudis, Lebanese, Syrians, Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians and Afghans bombing, stabbing, ramming and shooting their way across America and Europe.

Islam unites Muslims from around the world around the high purpose of killing non-Muslims.

Muslims don’t get along with each other. That’s why there are Sunnis fighting Shiites in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. It’s why Al Qaeda, ISIS and assorted Islamists were fighting each other in Syria. But what they’re fighting over is who gets to kill, conquer and enslave the rest of the world. They’re pushing and shoving each other to be the first in line to bring terror and death to the entire planet.

Their diversity has a common purpose. Our diversity is expressed in our victimhood.

Brits die in New York and Americans die in London. Italians and Germans are wounded in Barcelona. Spanish citizens, Italians and an Israeli woman fall victim to an attack in Berlin. A German teacher and two students die in a terrorist attack in Nice. Americans die in Paris, in London and in Jerusalem.

But that’s where our diversity ends. It doesn’t unite us. Instead it divides us.

American and European governments threaten to sanction Burma for fighting Muslim terrorism. The White House pressures Israel to make concessions to Palestinian Islamic terrorists. The British, Canadian and German governments criticize the White House for a Muslim travel ban. We back our Islamic terrorists and the Russians back theirs. Argentina, where most of the victims in the New York terror attack came from, conducted a government cover-up of Iran’s role in the AMIA bombing.

This is what our diversity looks like. Instead of standing together and forming a common front against a civilizational enemy, we sell each other out to show our Islamic foes that we’re really on their side.

And hope they kill us last.

“The last thing we should do is start casting dispersions on whole races of people or whole religions or whole nations,” New York Mayor Bill de Blasio insisted. “That only makes the situation worse.”

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America’s Terrorist Lottery Is it time to stop using games of chance to pick future Americans? Matthew Vadum

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

After a boastful, giddy Muslim jihadist from Central Asia gleefully mowed down eight innocents with a rented truck in a Manhattan park on Tuesday, President Trump called for an end to the “diversity visa lottery” program that brought him to America.

“We’re so politically correct that we’re afraid to do anything” about the Muslim terrorist threat, the president said at a meeting of his cabinet yesterday.

“I am going to ask Congress to immediately initiate work to get rid of this program … Diversity lottery. Sounds nice, it is not nice, it is not good. It hasn’t been good and we have been against it.”

Trump took to social media to fire a broadside at Democrats.

“The terrorist came into our country through what is called the ‘Diversity Visa Lottery Program,’ a Charles Schumer beauty. I want merit based,” Trump tweeted Wednesday at 7:24 a.m. Six minutes later he followed up with, “We are fighting hard for Merit Based immigration, no more Democrat Lottery Systems. We must get MUCH tougher (and smarter).”

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York), who co-sponsored legislation establishing the visa lottery when he was a member of the House of Representatives, deflected in a typically whiny response.

“President Trump where is your leadership? The contrast between President Bush’s actions after 9/11 and President Trump’s actions this morning could not be starker,” Schumer said on the floor of the Senate.

The United States has been awarding green cards through random games of chance for 20 years.

Perhaps spinning a roulette wheel for Supreme Court appointments would ease partisan acrimony in Congress. Maybe the craps table is the logical place to find the nation’s next treasury secretary.

It is a fact that the U.S. Department of State has been distributing green cards through visa lotteries since at least 1987. The current Diversity Immigrant Visa (DV) Program, was established by the Immigration Act of 1990, and took full effect in 1995. Like other applicants seeking permanent resident status, a DV applicant must meet national security-related and eligibility criteria to be issued a green card, which entitles the holder to live and work in the U.S. permanently. At a minimum, DV applicants must have a high school education and two years of work experience or work training within the previous five years, and pass an in-person interview.

Like other lawful permanent residents of the U.S., individuals admitted under the DV program are eligible to seek U.S. citizenship after a waiting period. Any permanent resident may voluntarily abandon this sought-after legal status by, for example, remaining outside the U.S. for a prolonged period of time, failing to file income tax returns while living outside the U.S., or declaring oneself a “nonimmigrant” on U.S. tax returns. Permanent resident status can be rescinded if the person concerned is found to have committed fraud in the immigration process or is convicted of a serious crime or crimes.

Up to 50,000 visas are issued under the DV program annually.

According to CNN:

Visas are awarded by random selection in select countries to promote immigration from places that don’t otherwise send many immigrants to the U.S. Roughly 1 million green cards are issued by the U.S. per year. In 2016, 45,664 diversity visas were issued. The vast majority of green cards are based on family connections, and other categories include employment-based visas and refugees or asylees.

One of the chief defenders of the DV program is the Congressional Black Caucus, which favors it because a lot of people come here from sub-Saharan Africa, explained Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. At one time, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas) wanted to double the quota for the program to 100,000, he said.

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Robert Mueller’s Small Fry By F. H. Buckley

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

Since Robert S. Mueller has pursued President Trump’s people so aggressively, we need to go back to the letter which appointed him as special prosecutor. It told him to look for signs of coordination between Trump’s campaign supporters and the Russian government. But that’s not all it said. The overarching purpose of Mueller’s appointment was “to ensure a full and thorough investigation of the Russian government’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.”

The distinction matters. There’s nothing wrong with seeking a rapprochement with the Russians. Sure, I know they’ve been beastly. But those are precisely the kinds of people you want to rein in, and the best way of doing so is by opening up a dialogue with them. There are deals waiting to be made with them, good for them, good for us, good even for the Ukrainians and Syrians.

If thinking like that is a crime, then I have to plead guilty. With my wife and Bob Tyrrell, I helped draft Trump’s major campaign speech on foreign policy, which he delivered at Washington’s Mayflower Hotel on April 27, 2016. In it, we had inserted some language signaling a willingness to reach out to Russia. “We can see how the rapid expansion of NATO to the borders of Russia might have troubled it, how it might have been taken as a threat,” we wrote. That line, perhaps too fawning, didn’t make it into the speech as delivered, and what was substituted was “Some say the Russians won’t be reasonable. I intend to find out.”

So are there foreign policy thought crimes now? Have foreign policy differences been criminalized? That’s what you’d think, reading the Washington Post on Tuesday morning. “Trump Official Urged Russian Outreach,” blared the headline. Well, how bout dat? Cash me outside.

Suppose next that, unlike me, the Trump official tries to broker a meeting with Russian officials, as George Papadopoulos did. But if you want a rapprochement with Russia, just how would you go about doing that, except by taking to Russians? Papadopoulos also wanted the trove of Hillary Clinton emails the Russians supposedly had. These were emails that she had illegally withheld, and that would have gone to the question of Russian interference in the election. Except nothing happened. Papadopoulos was a naïf who believed he was dealing with Putin’s niece when a casual perusal of Wikipedia would have told him that Putin doesn’t have a niece. As a private citizen, Papadopoulos did try to reach out to Russian officials, and in theory that would be a breach of the 1799 Logan Act, but that’s a dead letter. No one has been prosecuted under it, and it’s openly broken by people from both parties. Such as Obama. So they didn’t charge Papadopoulos with that.

So what did they get Papadopoulos for? The crime of talking to the feds without a lawyer at his side. They charged him with the crime of making a false statement about something which, had he told the truth, would not have been a crime. That’s how they nailed Martha Stewart, and that’s the crime to which Papadopoulos pled guilty.

And just what were the lies? Papadopoulos told the FBI that he had met a British academic and “Putin’s niece” before he joined the campaign. It turns out that he met them only after he did so. The FBI says that impeded their investigation, but can anyone explain why it might have made a difference? If you’re looking for coordination, the timing doesn’t matter if the discussions with the foreign nationals were ongoing, as they were.

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November 3, 1932 President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt Laud Jewish Work in Palestine

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

The rebuilding of the Jewish National Home in Palestine is a project “which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone,” President Herbert Hoover declared on the occasion of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration yesterday, in a message addressed to the Zionist Organization of America and made public today by Morris Rothenberg, President of the Zionist Organization.

A similar message lauding the achievements of reconstruction in Palestine as a “tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people” was received from Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt, who pointed out that the establishment of the Jewish National Home in Palestine was close to the wish of President Wilson, who helped write the terms of the Balfour Declaration into the peace treaty.

The messages of President Hoover and Governor Roosevelt were issued in connection with the celebration by the Zionist Organization of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.

The message from the President reads as follows:

“On the occasion of your celebration of the fifteenth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, which received the unanimous approval of both houses of Congress by the adoption of the Lodge-Fish Resolution in 1922, I wish to express the hope that the ideal of the establishment of the National Jewish

Home in Palestine, as embodied in that Declaration, will continue to prosper for the good of all the people inhabiting the Holy Land.

“I have watched with genuine admiration the steady and unmistakable progress made in the rehabilitation of Palestine which, desolate for centuries, is now renewing its youth and vitality through the enthusiasm, hard work and self-sacrifice of the Jewish pioneers who toil there in a spirit of peace and social justice. It is very gratifying to note that many American Jews, Zionists as well as non-Zionists, have rendered such splendid service to this cause which merits the sympathy and moral encouragement of everyone.”

“Jewish achievement in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration vindicates the high hope which lay behind the sponsorship of the Homeland,” Governor Roosevelt said. “The Jewish development in Palestine since the Balfour Declaration is not only a tribute to the creative powers of the Jewish people but by bringing great advancement into the sacred land has promoted the well-being of all the inhabitants thereof.

“I shall personally watch with deep sympathy the progress of Palestine. I extend to your Organization my sincerest wishes for continued success and achievement.”

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Keeping Scott Pruitt Safe The EPA Administrator needs protection against unprecedented threats of violence.

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

Reform in Washington is always difficult, but at the Environmental Protection Agency it’s also dangerous. Since the Trump Administration took office, the agency has investigated more than 70 credible threats against EPA staffers, with a disproportionate number menacing Administrator Scott Pruitt and his family. The EPA responded by beefing up his security detail, but Mr. Pruitt’s political opponents are now trying to hold these warranted precautions against him.

Mr. Pruitt has received more than five times as many threats as his predecessor, Gina McCarthy. These include explicit death threats. Some have referenced Mr. Pruitt’s home address. Federal law enforcement has determined that some of those threatening Mr. Pruitt are likely capable of carrying out acts of violence. EPA security has already caught suspects prowling around the administrator’s neighborhood.

Mr. Pruitt would doubtless prefer the absence of threats to the presence of security. But his critics have suggested he’s part of the problem. Mr. Pruitt is a “pallid, oily anti-environment corporate shill,” SFGate columnist Mark Morford wrote last week, and “when you send death threats to the world and all who live on her, the world will, quite naturally, send them right back.”

Reps. Peter DeFazio (Ore.) and Grace Napolitano (Calif.) have called for the inspector general to launch an investigation into Mr. Pruitt’s security measures. The expenditures “constitute potential waste or abuse of taxpayer dollars,” they wrote in an Oct. 4 letter. The duo also claimed that “there is no apparent security threat against the Administrator to justify such a security detail or expenditures.”

But the EPA inspector general’s office—in addition to the agency’s criminal enforcement division and protective service—recommended 24/7 security for Mr. Pruitt based on the unprecedented threats. A lean team of agents share the responsibility for safeguarding Mr. Pruitt, and their salaries will cost taxpayers roughly $2 million a year. The EPA’s other safety precautions include a $15,780 upgrade of the card-access system in EPA offices.

Mr. Pruitt didn’t invent these threats, and Cabinet members shouldn’t have to fear violence as a price of public service. When the federal government protects Cabinet members from those who would harm them for doing their jobs, it is protecting American democracy.

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When Britain Renewed the Promise to the Jews ‘His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home.’ By Ruth R. Wisse

Posted By on November 2nd, 2017

In the living room of our daughter’s home hangs a 4-by-6-foot Jewish flag designed by her paternal great-grandfather, hastily sewn from blue and white material in his Montreal dry-goods store. In November 1917, on receiving news that the British government had just given its support for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine, Nathan Black strung the flag across his storefront and closed for the day. “Haynt iz a yontev,” he told his workers: “Today is a holiday.”

One hundred years ago on Nov. 2, Arthur Balfour, the British foreign secretary, sent a letter to Lord Walter Rothschild : “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

Known as the Balfour Declaration, it represented a diplomatic high point in the history of the Zionist movement founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. Herzl realized that Zionism would have trouble achieving its political objective of establishing “a home for the Jewish people in Palestine secured under public law” without support from one or more of the empires laying claim to the Jewish homeland. His attempt to win that support, cut short by his death in 1904, was taken over by others, such as Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow. The latter’s role in securing the Balfour Declaration was recently brought to light by historian Martin Kramer. Other countries, including France and the U.S., were involved in the discussions over the disposition of Palestine, but the credit for this document was Britain’s. At least on that score credit is deserved.

The Balfour Declaration was a landmark in the political life of Britain no less than in the self-determination of the Jews. Brutally expelled from England in 1290 and formally readmitted in 1656, Jews remained the barometer of toleration in the country’s political and private life.

English literature served up sinister characters like Shylock and Fagin that testify to powerful anti-Jewish prejudice. Then, in 1876, the British novelist George Eliot created the title character Daniel Deronda, an Englishman and Jew who determines to make the Jews a landed nation again, “giving them a national center, such as the English have, though they too are scattered over the face of the globe.” The threat to the Jews in Eliot’s novel comes not from violent aggressors but from Englishmen who cannot understand why Jews should remain a nation. Anticipating Zionism and the Balfour Declaration, Eliot interprets the ability of the English to accept Jewish national rights as the touchstone of their political maturity.

Yet Britain went back on its word. Attempting to appease Arab rulers, it rewarded Arab violence in Palestine in the 1930s by preventing Jews from entering land promised to them by the Bible and the British. While the British betrayal did not directly abet Hitler’s war against the Jews of Europe, it signaled a readiness to abandon the Jews to their fate. It certainly spurred the Arab war against Israel, which began where Germany’s war against the Jews left off. Churchill reminded Parliament in 1939 that the pledge of a Jewish homeland in Palestine had been made not only to the Jews but to the world and that its repudiation was a confession of British weakness.

The Jews would have returned to Zion with or without the consent of Europe. This is the people that, despite the murder of millions of potential Jewish citizens, and within Herzl’s predicted timeline of 50 years, recovered and defended its national sovereignty in the Land of Israel that had been under foreign domination for almost two millennia. But most of the Arab world rejected the very principle of coexistence and consequently spiraled into ever-escalating intramural conflicts. For Arab nations, too, acceptance of an autonomous Jewish presence, if and when it occurs, will be the gauge of their political maturity.

Meantime, in Britain’s Daily Mail, a “proud Jewish woman and patriotic Briton” wrote last month that “many of this country’s 270,000-strong Jewish community no longer feel we have a home here.” The immediate cause of her anguish is the emboldened anti-Semitism of the Labour Party, which traditionally included many Jews. This coalition of grievance endangers the democratic future of the country.

Our family’s flag celebrated a landmark in the restoration of Zion but also another great nation’s readiness to coexist with the Jews on an equal footing. That in itself will not bring peace to the world—but world peace cannot come without it.

Ms. Wisse, a former professor of Yiddish and comparative literature at Harvard, is the author of “Jews and Power” (Schocken, 2007).