ISRAEL Comments turned off

Why won’t the Jews just let themselves be killed? Nothing better captures the moral decay of our woke elites than their haughty disdain for the State of Israel. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/10/16/why-wont-the-jews-just-let-themselves-be-killed/

So let me get this right. If Israel bombs Hamas targets in Gaza, it is recklessly endangering civilian life. But if it gives civilians fair warning to move away from certain areas, it is engaging in ethnic cleansing. If it drops bombs in built-up suburbs, it is committing a war crime. But if it advises civilians to leave those built-up suburbs before the bombs come, it is also committing a war crime. If it attacks northern Gaza, that’s genocide. Yet when it tells the civilians of northern Gaza to leave first, that’s ‘forced transfer’, which is to say: genocide.

Everything Israel does is a war crime. Everything. Killing civilians – war crime. Trying not to kill civilians – war crime. Bombing populated areas – war crime. Giving a population time to leave before dropping bombs – war crime. The surrealism of these screams of ‘genocide!’ every time an Israeli soldier so much as picks up his gun was brought home by two headlines in the Independent last week, published just 10 hours apart. Israel is engaged in ‘collective punishment in Gaza’, claimed the first. ‘Israel accused of “trying to ethnically cleanse Gaza Strip” as one million ordered to evacuate’, said the second.

Got that, Israel? ‘Punish’ Palestinians and you’re a criminal. Do everything in your power to avoid ‘punishing’ Palestinians and you’re still a criminal. I’m starting to wish the Israel-haters would just say what they mean with their entire chest: ‘Let yourselves be killed, Jews. Don’t fight back. Don’t do anything at all.’

The twists in the public discussion of Israel’s military response to Hamas’s recent act of unspeakable barbarism have been extraordinary. It was predictable, given the Israelophobic myopia of the West’s cultural elites, that Israel would be damned the minute it took action against the neo-fascists who had just executed the worst act of anti-Semitic savagery since the Holocaust. All the usual accusations were made. Israel’s missile strikes add up to ‘collective punishment’. Israel is using ‘genocidal language’. It is committing ‘war crimes’. It is ‘breaking international law’. Etc etc. One is forced to wonder what kind of messed-up law prevents the victims of racist slaughter from pursuing their killers.

This time, what’s been most striking is that even Israel’s efforts not to hit civilians, not to ‘collectively punish’ Gazans, have been rebranded as war crimes. Consider its advice that the people of northern Gaza should evacuate their homes so that they won’t be injured or killed in bombings. This is being called ‘ethnic cleansing’. One Palestinian politician says it is further proof that Israel is waging a war of ‘annihilation’. This is linguistic contortionism of an Orwellian degree: in trying to avoid annihilating the people of northern Gaza, Israel is being annihilationist. War is peace, freedom is slavery, evacuation is annihilation. Ash Sarkar says the evacuation is a ‘Second Nakba’. Norway’s Refugee Council damns it as ‘forced transfer’, which – you guessed it – is a war crime. It must be. Israel’s doing it.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Another Trump Derangement Syndrome 2024 Election Interference Update By Stephen Kruiser

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/10/17/the-morning-briefing-another-trump-derangement-syndrome-2024-election-interference-update-n1735418

There is plenty of division to be found anywhere right of center on the American political spectrum. Republicans spend more time fighting other Republicans these days than they do going after Democrats. I don’t worry too much about that because I figure it’s better for everyone to get it out of their systems now rather than fight over dinner on election night next year.

One thing that a lot of people in this fractured coalition can agree on is that the Democrats are using corrupt, politically motivated prosecutors and judges to preemptively interfere with the 2024 presidential election. Even Republicans who are no longer fans of former President Donald Trump find themselves saying, “You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” every time a rogue prosecutor or judge absolutely mangles the law in an effort to keep him off of the ballot.

They’re interfering with the 2024 election because they say Trump tried to interfere with the 2020 election.

Makes perfect sense, doesn’t it?

We’re usually talking about unhinged prosecutors when we’re covering stories like this. Today we are dealing with a judge who has publicly been in the throes of Trump Derangement Syndrome for a while now. Victoria covered this latest legal circus:

The hearing in Judge Tanya S. Chutkan’s D.C. U.S. District Courtroom over whether to at least partially gag Donald Trump was at times contentious and at other times surreal and Kafkaesque. Chutkan ruled that Trump could not post or repost “attacks against Special Counsel, staff, court staff or personnel” as well as prohibited statements about witnesses or expert witnesses.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Our Post-Hamas Wreckage Middle East policy is in ruins By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/16/our-post-hamas-wreckage/

As Hamas goes, so with it go many of the following related Western pretensions.

The Passions of 9/11, Redux

It has been 22 years since we saw crowds throughout the Middle East celebrating the murder of 3,000 civilians—and since newspapers had daily “idiot watch” notices of American intellectuals defending radical Islamist mass murderers. And now the madness is back again, and we are witnessing the recrudescence of normalizing radical Islamic terrorists abroad.

I suppose the theory is that no one in America cares much about radical Islamists foaming at the mouth, whether abroad or here. And the result is that they are empowered and their defense of murder is growing—yet its hubris will earn an almost-certain response, an anger slowly but insidiously growing at radical Islam.

A Middle East Policy in Ruins 

The current Biden appeasement of Iran and gift of billions of dollars in aggregate to the West Bank and Gaza are now, by bipartisan consensus, unsustainable. The only supporters of that lethal madness left are the embarrassments of BLM, the Squad, the Democratic Socialists of America, and the campus crowd.

Their collective hatred of Jews and Israelis was manifested in their delight over the post mortem mutilations of murdered women and children. And why—even before Israel had responded with air attacks—were leftists and Islamists suddenly celebrating the news of the executions of more than 1,200 Jews? It was instinctual, a Pavlovian response.

Even some leftist Democrats were shocked by their own constituents, whom they had created. Biden still might cling to his past destructive Middle East policies (and I expect him to restrict the Israelis within days after they begin to go in full force into Gaza), but the idea of continuing aid to the West Bank and Gaza or of “normalizing” relations with theocratic Iran will now be rightly seen as a suicidal delusion.

Ukraine and Gaza

Most Americans support arms for Ukraine to repel Russian aggressors.

But something is becoming strange about these two respective wars.

Why did the State Department more or less put no restrictions on Ukrainian retaliation, including operations against the Russian Black Sea Fleet—but the Secretary of State almost immediately called for a “ceasefire” to prevent Israeli retaliation, a mortal sin if he had dared say that about Ukraine’s similar response to aggression? Would an American diplomat lecture Ukraine about ending the “cycle of violence?”

Why does the U.S. discount any possibility of a strategic response from Russia—which reportedly has some 6,000-7,000 nuclear weapons—to attacks on its homeland, but seems almost terrified about calling Iran to account for its central role in arming and funding terrorists to start a war with Israel by slaughtering 1,200 civilians?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Biden to Visit Israel on Wednesday, Blinken Announces Ari Blaff

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-to-visit-israel-on-wednesday-blinken-announces/

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday evening that President Joe Biden will visit Israel on Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“On Wednesday, President Biden will visit Israel. He’s coming here at a critical moment for Israel, for the region, and for the world,” Blinken said during an official address following a meeting with Netanyahu on Monday evening local time.

“He is coming here to do the following: First, the president will reaffirm the United States’ solidarity with Israel and our ironclad commitment to its security,” Blinken said. “President Biden will again make clear, as he’s done unequivocally since Hamas’s slaughter of more than 1,400 people — including at least 30 Americans — that Israel has the right, and indeed the duty, to defend its people from Hamas, and other terrorists, and to prevent other attacks.”

The secretary of state reiterated later in his speech the need to alleviate growing concerns about access to food, water, and energy in the Gaza Strip. “It is critical that aid starts flowing to Gaza as soon as possible,” Blinken said. However, “we share Israel’s concern that Hamas will take control of the aid that enters Gaza,” he added, asserting that the United States will seek to prevent the terrorist group from pilfering any supplies.

According to Blinken, the United States plans to help create “safe zones” within Gaza where civilians will be protected and humanitarian aid will flow unimpeded.

While visiting the region, President Biden is expected to stop in Amman, Jordan, to meet with regional political leaders, including Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas, Egyptian president Fattah el-Sisi, as well as King Abdullah II of Jordan.

News outlets have reported that the development appears to signal the postponement of Israel’s invasion of the Gaza Strip. Israel Defense Forces troops and reservists have been massing along the southern border since the October 7 surprise attack by Hamas.

Earlier in the day, New York governor Kathy Hochul announced her intention to visit Israel to underscore her commitment to the Jewish state. “Tomorrow, I’ll be traveling to Israel for a solidarity mission where I plan to meet with diplomatic leaders and communities who have been devastated by the horrific Hamas attacks,” the Democratic governor said.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ron DeSantis Is a Man of Action, Not Just Words By Jeffrey Blehar

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/ron-desantis-is-a-man-of-action-not-just-words/

Most politicians blather and bloviate; that style tends to work electorally. Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is notably — and problematically for his national prospects — not one of them. He doesn’t do stand-up-comedian-style rallies or engage with ease in light banter. He doesn’t get up on a debate stage and start spouting half-considered college-dorm political theories. Instead, Ron DeSantis thinks and acts, and in his actions proves why people longing for executive competence in the White House continue to look to him as a better leader for the Republican Party than Donald Trump.

Aside from all the other madness that ensued after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, tens of thousands of Americans were left stranded in Israel, their flights canceled under wartime conditions. On Thursday, DeSantis signed an executive order authorizing the state of Florida, under its emergency-management laws, to extract as many Floridians as possible. His enemies soon dismissed “DeSantis Air” as little better than a crass publicity stunt. Ex-GOP congressman Adam Kinzinger, always eager for that next cable-news booking, haughtily mocked him, sounding like a Saruman-possessed King Theoden: “You have no power here!”

I hope DeSantis — like Gandalf in the The Two Towers — has released Kinzinger from his nihilistic delusions, because it turns out that a man with a plan and an idea of what can be achieved can get real things done. Last night, “DeSantis Air” landed in Tampa with 270 Americans aboard. All of them are grateful to be here, and they have the governor and his team to thank for the logistical work in getting them back without the State Department charging them thousands of dollars for the privilege. Those are concrete results, as measured in the real lives of American citizens. The guy gets things done.

What has depressingly gotten lost in the miasma of this ridiculous 2024 presidential campaign is that this is basically all Ron DeSantis does, all the time. DeSantis’s gubernatorial record has been covered in great detail here at National Review — his Covid and educational records are two highlights, and his natural-disaster management has been sterling as well — but simply consider what he has done since Hamas’s attack on Israel, balancing both the campaign trail with his duties as governor, to appreciate his abilities as an executive in charge of his brief. With the same executive order he used to authorize the above airlift, DeSantis also immediately ordered Florida state troopers to bolster security for Jewish schools and synagogues. Are you worried about the rising tide of antisemitism in academia across the country, as you very much should be? Not long ago, DeSantis appointed former Nebraska senator Ben Sasse the head of the University of Florida, and Sasse has fully justified his confidence, with a response to the Hamas atrocities that was the single most dignified public statement from a major university in the entire nation.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

McCarthy Predicts Jim Jordan Will Be Elected House Speaker By Matt Margolis

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/matt-margolis/2023/10/16/mccarthy-predicts-jim-jordan-will-be-elected-house-speaker-n1735341

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) expressed his confidence that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) will secure the necessary votes to win election as the next House Speaker. McCarthy shared his optimistic view during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.”

“I feel very good about where Jim Jordan is at. He has been an integral part of our team when we took the majority, helping us get the majority,” McCarthy told host Brian Kilmeade. “The real challenge here is, and I know a lot of people out there are afraid that will Republicans break off and go work with Democrats, the only reason anybody’s even talking about that is because eight Republican members worked with every single Democrat to remove me from speaker and put us into this tailspin and all based upon keeping government open.”

Jordan secured the Republican nomination for speaker on Friday, 124-81, but 55 House Republicans indicated that they wouldn’t support Jordan in a full House vote. Jordan can only lose four votes and still win the speakership.

For our VIPs: What the House GOP Can Learn From the Democrats

A floor vote is expected on Tuesday, and I wish I could be as confident about the outcome as McCarthy is. For starters, it’s not clear what, if anything, has changed since Friday. I can’t even argue that McCarthy might have inside knowledge on which to base his optimistic prediction because, frankly, his recent record on predicting the outcome of a vote hasn’t been very good. When Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) first pushed to oust McCarthy, the then-speaker shrugged off Gaetz’s intentions, predicting he’d ultimately keep his job.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ta Nehisi Coates Signs Letter Defending Hamas The police officers and firefighters who died on September 11 “were not human to me” by Daniel Greenfield

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/ta-nehisi-coates-signs-letter-defending-hamas/

You may remember Ta Nehisi Coates as America’s most prominent literary racist until Ibram X. Kendi came around.

He’s the guy who got a ton of awards for writing in “Between the World and Me” that the police officers and firefighters who died on September 11 “were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were menaces of nature; they were the fire, the comet, the storm, which could — with no justification — shatter my body.”

Now he’s taking that moral triumph and signing on to a letter, alongside Richard Ford, Molly Crabapple, China Miéville and a whole bunch of writers you don’t know, attacking Israel for bombing Hamas.

After 400 or so words attacking Israel, the letter gets around to mentioning what started all this only at the end.

“On Saturday, after sixteen years of siege, Hamas militants broke out of Gaza. More than 1,300 Israelis were subsequently killed with over one hundred more taken hostage—some of them friends and family of signatories to this letter. We deplore the loss of all innocent life and now, as we write this letter, Israel is executing the largest expulsion of Palestinians since 1948 as it bombs Gazans without discrimination.”

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Your Tax Dollars At Work: Financing Virulent Antisemitism On Campus

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/17/your-tax-dollars-at-work-financing-virulent-antisemitism-on-campus/

Shortly after Hamas began its bloodthirsty campaign against Israel, student groups started issuing statements praising the terrorists and blaming Israel. If you were appalled, you’re not alone. But you’re also helping to pay for it.

At Harvard, 31 student groups made news when they announced that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” That prompted hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman to call for getting those students’ names so that “none of us inadvertently hire(s) any of their members.” At least a dozen businessmen endorsed Ackman’s call, according to the New York Post.

This was hardly an isolated incident. A few examples of what’s transpired on campuses over the past week.

Yalies for Palestine issued a statement saying “we hold the Israeli Zionist regime responsible for the unfolding violence and denounce the Israeli occupation, apartheid system, and military rule.”
A student group at the University of Virginia said “we stand in solidarity with Palestinian resistance fighters.”
The president of the New York University Student Bar Association expressed her “unwavering and absolute solidarity with Palestinians in their resistance against oppression,” and said that “Israel bears full responsibility for this tremendous loss of life.”
Rice University students honored the Hamas “martyrs.”
At the University of Wisconsin, pro-Palestinian students chanted “glory to the murders.” (School officials have been silent about the protest.)
Columbia University students issued a statement attacking “Israel’s apartheid and colonial system.” (An Israeli student was later attacked outside Columbia’s main library.)
At SUNY Binghamton, cars reportedly drove around campus with passengers chanting “death to Zionists.”
Other examples of attacks against Jews on college campuses can be found here.

Sen. Marco Rubio had it right when he said: “Across America, college students on federal taxpayer-subsidized student (loans) celebrated the murder of Jews.”

HISTORY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Hamas and Israel: A Thought Experiment Thomas Buckley

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/10/17/hamas-and-israel-a-thought-experiment/
Antisemitism was intentionally baked into “Palestinian” nationalism.

The Hamas attack on Israel was not only reprehensible and unconscionable, but also incredibly very astonishingly stupid.

Typically, when you enter into a conflict of any type – from a war to a game of Go Fish – you tend to think you can win in the end.  Sometimes you know it’s a long shot, sometimes you think you have a better chance, sometimes the brilliant plan you had going in turns out to be perfect or incredibly wrong.

But you tend not start something you know you cannot win and you know will end up killing you.

So what was Hamas thinking?  Other governments have done stupid things to start and during wars – Pearl Harbor was stupid (at least some in the Imperial government knew it at the time) because a war with the United States that lasted more than a couple of years was unwinnable.  Napoleon invading Russia was stupid because even though he achieved his goals — he took Moscow – he lost everything, including his most important ally:  his aura of invincibility.

Did Hamas think the raid would make Israel think “Wow, they really have a credible military now, maybe we should give them what they want”?  Impossible, because what Hamas wants is Israel – and especially Israelis – literally dead and gone forever.

There has been much chatter about blame and fault, with the vile crowds gathered in Harvard Square going on about de-colonization and settler mindsets and it’s not their land so Hamas can do anything it wants because they are noble and righteous fighters for social justice who just happen to decapitate babies.

This prattling does miss out on rather a large chunk of history, of course. There has never actually been a formal Palestinian “Palestine.” 

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Palestinian Lives Matter, Except to Hamas Responsibility for civilian casualties in Gaza lies with the jihadists.

Posted By on October 17th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-hamas-gaza-civilians-united-nations-1222797b?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

As Israel prepares for its likely ground invasion to pursue Hamas in Gaza, the world is warning about civilian casualties. The moral point to keep in mind as the fighting gets intense is that the responsibility for those casualties will lie with Hamas.

Israel has an obligation to do what it can to protect civilians, and it is doing so. It has warned Gazans to move to the south of the territory as it prepares its campaign. It is using precision-guided bombs when it can to target Hamas combatants rather than civilians. No one has a bigger strategic stake in reducing civilian Palestinian casualties than Israel given the propaganda fodder they provide its enemies.

Contrast that with Hamas, which gave no warning to the Israeli and foreign civilians it slaughtered on Oct. 7. Killing civilians was the explicit goal. Hamas has ordered Gazans not to flee, and its leaders hide weapons in hospitals, schools and mosques.

Israel built bomb shelters for its citizens. Hamas built a network of tunnels for its combatants but keeps its civilians above ground, where they can be used as human shields or casualties showcased on TV. It’s not too much to say that Hamas wants Palestinian casualties to stir an uprising on the West Bank and turn world opinion against the Jewish state.

Yet the United Nations and others criticize Israel more than they do Hamas. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres has denounced Israel’s evacuation order but he says little about Hamas’s human blockade.