WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Does Iran Realize Its Own Growing Danger? Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 20th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/19/does-iran-realize-its-own-growing-danger/

Iran understandably believes it is riding quite high.

It is flush with cash. It hints it almost has the bomb—and might use it soon.

The Iranians are bragging about their new tyrannical allies like Russia and China.

Iran boasts of now being the self-proclaimed leader of jihad on behalf of all Muslims. It gloats that it is feeding the Russian war-machine by exporting its own drones.

Tehran proudly supplied and funded Hamas’s savage murdering of Jewish children in Israel.

It eggs on its other pawn Hezbollah to launch a reputed 100,000-Iranian-supplied missiles into Israel.

It constantly provokes the U.S.—mostly by veiled threats to unleash anti-American terrorists in the Middle East and perhaps inside America itself.

But above all, Iran is giddy over the appeasing Biden administration.

Biden resurrected the unhinged Obama administration plan of empowering a “Shiite crescent”—of Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah, including Hamas.

This American idea of a radical bloc would supposedly birth “creative tension” and thus on autopilot balance the dominance of our friends in Israel and the Gulf regimes with our new Iranian clients. Yet the logical result of such madness was the massacre we saw in Israel.

Biden put pro-Iranian envoy Robert Malley—now under FBI investigation—in charge of begging Iran to restart the disastrous Iran Deal.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

A lie can get halfway around the world The evidence is increasingly clear that Israeli Defense Forces did not bomb a hospital in Gaza Charles Lipson

Posted By on October 20th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/lie-halfway-world-gaza-hospital-israel/

The charge damning Israel with bombing a hospital in Gaza has circled the globe at lightning speed, time and again. But slowly the truth is getting its pants on.

The evidence is increasingly clear that Israeli Defense Forces did not bomb a hospital in Gaza, either deliberately or inadvertently. A video, now publicly available, shows the rocket coming from inside Gaza, not from outside or from a plane. CNN has had experts confirm that analysis. The US has confirmed that point with sensitive (and still secret) signals-intelligence. So has Israeli intelligence, independent of the US. There is also at least one captured phone call among jihadists acknowledging that the rocket was fired from inside Gaza. That, too, is publicly available. We also know that almost one third of the rockets launched from Gaza, either by Hamas or Palestine Islamic Jihad, misfire and explode within their own territory. (Israel says this rocket was fired by Islamic Jihad.) So, the evidence is strong and mounting that Israel was not responsible for this deadly attack on civilians.

Still, it’s crucial to nail down all the facts before reaching a firm conclusion. Anyone who remembers secretary of state Colin Powell telling the United Nations that Saddam Hussein definitely, absolutely, certainly had weapons of mass destruction can be excused for waiting until all the evidence is in, the conclusions confirmed, the objections refuted by sources without an ax to grind.

Currently, the best judgment by intelligence professionals is that the deadly rocket was fired by a terrorist group from inside Gaza. They are confident in that conclusion and the evidence on which they base it. (Of course, the source of the rockets doesn’t lessen the human tragedy. Innocent people were killed.)

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Left’s Anti-Semitism Crisis Is the Right’s Opportunity France’s Marine Le Pen and Germany’s AfD are embracing Israel while socialists equivocate.By Joseph C. Sternberg

Posted By on October 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-european-lefts-anti-semitism-crisis-is-the-rights-opportunity-ee81b8b1?mod=opinion_lead_pos7

Wars have a way of scrambling politics near and far, and so it may become with the war Hamas has launched against Israel. One topsy-turvy outcome in Europe is that ostensibly anti-Semitic parties on the further reaches of the political right have embraced Israel—likely because they’ve realized that doing so emphasizes the left’s embarrassing anti-Semitic hypocrisies.

In France, representatives of the two main right-wing political movements—those led by Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour—participated in a pro-Israel rally days after the attack. Ms. Le Pen in the National Assembly last week expressed solidarity with Israel, describing Hamas’s attack as a “pogrom,” and reminding lawmakers of the need to “protect French Jews.”

That’s striking rhetoric from Ms. Le Pen’s party, now known as the National Rally, which has an awful record on anti-Semitism. The party’s founder and her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, is notorious for Holocaust denial, and Ms. Le Pen eventually expelled him from the party because of it. She herself has waded into debates about France’s culpability for the deportation of its Jews under Nazi occupation and whether kosher animal slaughter should be legal.

In Germany, a parliamentary resolution in support of Israel garnered support from the Alternative for Germany, or AfD. This movement of the populist right, which opinion polls suggest is now the second most popular party after the opposition conservative Christian Democrats, periodically stokes arguments over how Germany interprets the history of the Holocaust. But two AfD members of Parliament visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel in May.

This apparent unity in support of Israel on the further reaches of the right contrasts with the disarray on the left. While Ms. Le Pen was speaking up for Israel, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the French version of Bernie Sanders who founded the France Unbowed party, argued Israel and Hamas both were responsible for the violence and then picked a fight with a major Jewish organization.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

DeSantis vs. Newsom on Violent Crime New FBI data shows a sharp divergence in their records on public safety.

Posted By on October 20th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/desantis-vs-newsom-on-violent-crime-5161224f?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

California Gov. Gavin Newsom isn’t running for president in 2024, at least not yet, but he has agreed to a televised Fox News debate next month with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. One worthy topic will be their respective economic records, but they should also spend some time on public safety.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation this week released national statistics on 2022, and the headline was that violent crime fell 1.7%, dipping back to the same level as before the pandemic. But it’s a big country, and those averages don’t tell the whole story. In California violent crime is still up 13% since 2019. In Florida it’s down 31.5%. The rate of violent crime in Mr. Newsom’s state last year, 499.5 per 100,000 people, was nearly double that in Mr. DeSantis’s domain, 258.9 per 100,000.

The nearby chart shows a longer view. Amid the Covid lockdowns, the George Floyd protests, and a public backlash toward law enforcement, violence shot up in Florida, as in many other states, though California stayed on a higher plateau. But the real difference is what happened next: in 2021 and 2022, violent crime plunged in Florida while surging in California. One caveat is that the FBI in 2021 changed its methodology for calculating crime rates, but this affected all states, so it isn’t responsible for the obvious divergence.

2012’13’14’15’16’17’18’19’20’21’22225250275300325350375400425450475500525 Crime rates per 100,000 peopleCalif.Fla.

Mr. Newsom touts California’s strict gun-control laws, but at least a fifth of its aggravated assaults last year were committed with a knife or blunt object. Many of the state’s violent offenses are perpetrated by mentally ill or drug-addicted people living on the streets. Mr. Newsom himself was assaulted in 2021 by a homeless man in Oakland.

The FBI’s numbers on property crime add to the picture. In Florida such offenses are down 27% since 2019, about three times as much as nationwide, while in California they’re up 0.3%. Those figures likely underestimate the true difference, since businesses are less inclined to report theft to law enforcement in jurisdictions where it often goes unprosecuted.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Hamas: Genocidal Hatred and Jihad against All ‘Unbelievers’ by Uzay Bulut

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20066/hamas-genocide-hatred-jihad

Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, near the Gaza Strip. They murdered hundreds of civilians, took hostages (including children and the elderly), beheaded babies, burned people alive, shot children in front of their parents, shot parents in front of their children, and fired thousands rockets and missiles into a country smaller than New Jersey.

As of this writing, Hamas has killed more than 1,400 people in Israel since October 7; wounded more than 4,200 people, and abducted 199 hostages who were taken to unknown locations in Gaza.

Hamas, a jihadist organization, has a charter that calls for the obliteration of Israel and the extermination of the Jewish people.

Even though there are now no Jews left in the Gaza Strip, that is not enough for Hamas. Backed by Iran, Turkey and Qatar, Hamas is now the main organization perpetrating terrorist attacks on civilian targets throughout Israel. On October 7, Hamas breached Israel’s security barrier at the Gaza border with explosives and bulldozers, and thousands of Hamas terrorists poured into Israel, launching a massive war.

Hamas’s aggression against Israel is not a squabble over land or “settlements.” To Hamas and many Palestinians, the whole of Israel is one big settlement that needs to be ripped up by the roots and eradicated.

Meanwhile, the Palestinian-Arab leadership has rejected offers for a Palestinian state at least six times in the past 90 years, without so much as a counter-offer: in 1937, 1947, 1967, 2000, 2008 and in 2020. All the offers were made by or accepted by the Jews.

The reason for the current Palestinian-Arab statelessness is their own political leaders who have rejected all these offers and instead chosen war and terrorism over peaceful coexistence.

Seventy-five years after the establishment of the State of Israel, Muslim fanatics still hope to destroy it.

“The Koran defines the kafir and says that the kafir is hated (40:35), mocked (83:34), punished (25:77), beheaded (47:4), confused (6:25), plotted against (86:15), terrorized (8:12), annihilated (6:45), killed (4:91), crucified (5:33), made war on (9:29), ignorant (6:111), evil (23:97), disgraced (37:18), cursed (33:60), stolen from (Bukhari 5,59,537), raped (Ishaq 759) and a Muslim is not the friend of a kafir (3:28).” — Dr. Bill Warner, July 17, 2008.

“Christians and Jews are infidels, but infidels are kafirs, too. ….Polytheists are Hindus, but they are also kafirs. The terms infidel and polytheist are religious words. Only the word “kafir” shows the common political treatment of Christian, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, animist, atheist and humanist.” — Dr. Bill Warner, July 17, 2008.

Turkey’s Islamist government — and Iran’s and Qatar’s — have for years been a lifeline for the Hamas jihadists.

Iran, Qatar and Turkey — the “heads of the snake” — must not be allowed to get a pass. They all have to be held accountable. The US should relocate its airbase in Qatar to its real ally, the United Arab Emirates.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Hamas ‘Inside Job’ Truthers Don’t Understand Israel or War by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20065/hamas-israel-inside-job

There have been two kinds of conspiracy theories circulated by ‘truthers’ after the Hamas massacre of Israelis.

The first kind essentially denies there was an attack or nitpicks the details. Those arguments are made in obvious bad faith by people who simply hate Israel and side with the terrorists. Any evidence presented to them is dismissed as fake.

The second kind of conspiracy theory is of the “inside job” variety most often involving a “stand down” order that allowed Hamas to massacre over 1,000 people without any military intervention. Some of the people pushing this stuff are the usual suspects, alt-righters and anti-semites, some of it’s coming from anti-war leftists and libertarians who treat every war as a vast conspiracy, and some from fringe figures in Israel.

The idea that Prime Minister Netanyahu or top generals would have issued a “stand down” (apart from being horrifying) makes no sense. Before this attack, he was the longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history. Now he’s been forced to join a unity government and polls show that most Israelis want him to resign. His political career may be over. Likewise that of the top generals. In Israel, they transition into politics. That is a whole lot less likely to happen now.

The 1973 Yom Kippur War disaster tanked Golda Meir and Moshe Dayan despite their heroic stature. There’s no political gain to letting the enemy murder over a thousand of your people in a preventable attack.

Finally, Israel is a small country. A whole lot of people know each other and are related or friends with each other. This conspiracy theory requires you to believe that military personnel who had friends and family living in these communities decided to ignore calls for help and sit around playing cards while they were being butchered. Not to mention ignore attacks on their own bases and allow their fellow military personnel to be murdered, tortured, and taken hostage.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Soros Open Society Foundations Closing Offices, Laying Off Staff By Lincoln Brown

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/10/17/open-society-foundations-closing-offices-laying-off-staff-n1735587

Have they tried turning the heat down? Putting on sweaters? Maybe couponing?

It may be a little premature to celebrate, but the Open Society Foundations are closing offices in Africa and laying people off. In fact, 40% of the organization’s offices on the African continent will be hanging out “Sorry, We’re Closed” signs, and the employees will be hitting the want ads. This is in spite of the fact that the organization is worth an estimated $25 billion. Closures also hit offices in Barcelona and Baltimore.

Bloomberg reports that earlier in the month, it obtained emails sent out to staffers announcing that the organization would be scaling back. One of those emails from Binaifer Nowrojee, vice president of programs, read, “With the decision by the board in June to cut the staff by more than 40%, our staffing size and footprint by necessity needs to diminish. We no longer have the bandwidth to operate multiple small offices, and thus the decision to further reduce our locations.”

In another email, Africa Executive Director Muthoni Wanyeki stated, “I’m very sorry that it’s turned out this way. It’s obviously not what any of us expected and I’m also very sorry that I didn’t have the information on this earlier,” she added, saying the changes aren’t what leadership ‘committed to two years ago.’” Grantmaker positions will reportedly be the hardest hit. Only three African offices will remain open. Programming positions outside of the United States will be pared down from 450 to 150 people.

According to Bloomberg, OSF announced that the offices in Spain and Baltimore were slated to be shuttered earlier in the year. The African offices have been in “transition” since 2021.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Are You Sure a Changing Climate Causes Severe Weather? Is so-called “consensus” a valid way to judge climate change? by William Balgord

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/are-you-sure-a-changing-climate-causes-severe-weather/

If you can’t convince all the people with straight-forward advocacy, then conduct a poll and use the results to convince anyone who will listen. Lately, this tactic would seem to be AP’s preferred mode of operation. Abe Lincoln said it somewhat differently.

This time AP thought better of running out its climate guru Seth Borentein to unveil another of his well-worn stories regarding who’s more at fault for weather-related disasters—mankind or Mother Nature—and assessing the blame for “man-made” climate change.

It should be realized (but generally is not) that AP, Reuters, and certain other MSM outlets have been gifted several million in grants from one or another of the George Soros-connected charitable foundations. The grants are intended to nudge public opinion in the direction of accepting the scientifically (unsupportable) position that man-made climate change is the principal underlying cause of adverse weather events in recent decades.

Detailed re-analyses of weather data going back to 1950 and earlier show that assertion is not true, but the fact does not deter alarmists from spreading their message of doom and gloom.

But if an AP survey is to be given due credence, then the propaganda campaign in the MSM may in fact be doing exactly what its purveyors intend. The MSM invests considerable time and effort to spread alarmist narratives, so that the casual reader should not be surprised to learn that the AP’s interviewees harbored the opinions they expressed.

Most of us tend to have short memories. Very few present-day Americans even recall hearing about the desperate period of the 1930s, when the Great Depression and “Dust Bowl” with its prolonged heat waves and continent-wide drought became routine across the United States.

Today’s weather announcers often do not report true temperature readings but a calculated “heat index” that factors in the effect of humidity and lack of wind, to come up with a subjective temperature referred to as “real-feel.” It is the number most of us will hear or see tonight on TV.

It should also come as no surprise that the AP pollsters were able to get the kind of public responses they quote. AP reporters also took trouble to include some candid musings of a “Republican”, whom they portrayed as poster-child for those abominable “climate deniers.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Who or what are ‘the Palestinians?’ From time immemorial, Jews occupied the spot history knows as ‘Judaea.’ What happened to that? Roger Kimball

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://thespectator.com/topic/palestinians-plo-yasser-arafat-soviets/

It’s so cute when politicians like AOC and Rashida Tlaib, to say nothing of hysteric undergraduates and ill-informed lefties across the country, complain that Israel is an “apartheid state” that is illegitimately “occupying” the land West of the Jordan River from the Golan Heights down to the border of the Sinai Peninsula. 

Responding to the murderous attacks on Israeli civilians by Hamas on October 7, AOC decried “the occupation of Palestine” while Tlaib urged “ending the occupation, and dismantling the apartheid system” that can “lead to resistance.”

Hermeneuts of the world, unite! What does Tlaib mean by “resistance” here? Slaughtering innocent partygoers? Incinerating and beheading babies? Indiscriminately raping then murdering hostages? And what is the force of “lead to”? Is it meant to suggest that Israel is somehow to blame for such acts of “resistance” because — because why? Because the Jewish people occupy the place that was 1) their ancestral homeland and 2) with which they were reinvested by the Balfour Declaration of 1917, by the victorious Brits after World War One and and the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, explicitly to provide a “national home for the Jewish people,” and 3) by the creation of the state of Israel in 1948?

What group of people do they think belongs there?  

“Palestinians” is the usual answer.  But who or what are the “Palestinians”?“People from Palestine,” you say.  But what is Palestine?

From time immemorial, Jews occupied the spot history knows as “Judaea.” What happened to that? Gibbon said that Hadrian, who ruled from AD 117 to 138, was one of the “five good emperors.”  Maybe so, but there is a reason that the Jews proverbially accompanied any mention of Hadrian with the imprecation, “May God crush his bones.” 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Gaza Hospital and the Missing Aid Hamas steals from a U.N. refugee agency, which plays along.

Posted By on October 18th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/gaza-aid-unrwa-united-nations-hamas-israel-45bfbfe?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

On Tuesday a blast at a hospital in Gaza City reportedly killed hundreds of people. Hamas blamed an Israeli airstrike. The Israel Defense Forces said it was a failed missile from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a local proxy of Iran. About a quarter of Hamas and PIJ rockets fired in previous wars have fallen short and landed in Gaza. More details will come, but blowing up a hospital isn’t in Israel’s interest.

Hamas courts Palestinian casualties, knowing that it can blame Israel whenever the aftermath of its misfired rockets or human shields ends up on the news. Hamas shows such little concern for Gazans that it has long stolen their humanitarian aid. It’s another way the terrorist group uses Palestinian civilians, playing on Western sympathy to advance its jihadist brutality.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, known as Unrwa, took to Twitter on Monday: “@UNRWA received reports that yesterday a group of people with trucks purporting to be from the Ministry of Health of the de facto authorities in #Gaza, removed fuel and medical equipment from the Agency’s compound in #GazaCity.”

But hours later something strange happened: Unrwa deleted its tweet and said nothing was amiss. “With regards to reports on social media of looting of an UNRWA warehouse,” it wrote, leaving out that the reports had been its own, “UNRWA would like to confirm that no looting has taken place.” The agency didn’t reply to requests for comment.

Unrwa can pretend it never said what it said, but U.N. sources told Israel’s Walla News that the aid was stolen, and Israel’s military liaison to the Palestinians reports that 24,000 liters of fuel and medical supplies went to Hamas, whose underground bases use diesel generators.

Washington covers that tab. Since President Biden restored aid that was blocked by President Trump, the U.S. has been Unrwa’s largest donor, at $344 million in 2022.