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Benny Avni: America’s Lloyd Austin, Who Stared ‘Evil in the Eye’ While Commanding GIs Against ISIS, Emerges as a Powerful Ally of Israel in the War Against Hamas The defense secretary’s clarity could go a long way toward muzzling the growing international criticism of Israel as ground operations begin in Gaza.

Posted By on October 14th, 2023

https://www.nysun.com/article/americas-lloyd-austin-who-stared-evil-in-the-eye-while-commanding-gis-against-isis-emerges-as-a-powerful-ally-

When, even as Israeli special forces are entering Gaza in preparation for a massive invasion,  a top official says that Hamas is worse than ISIS, what jumps out is the identity of the speaker: In this case it’s the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, who has devised much of America’s war on ISIS, and he knows the pitfalls of battling terrorism. 

“In countering ISIS, I felt that we were staring evil in the eye. What we are seeing with Hamas is taking that evil to another level,” Mr. Austin said Friday during a Tel Aviv press conference alongside his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant.

The retired four-star general’s clarity could go a long way toward muzzling the growing international criticism of Israel, which on Thursday urged northern Gaza civilians to evacuate and move farther south. On the Strip’s roads, long lines of cars were seen traveling away from Gaza City, where Israel is expected to concentrate its complex operation to dismantle Hamas’s military capabilities.

On Friday afternoon, special IDF units entered northern Gaza as the air force  constantly pummeled buildings at Shujaiyeh, Gaza City’s home to top Hamas leaders. The special forces reportedly discovered several bodies of abducted Israelis. 

Self-described international human rights bodies are complaining that 1.1 million Gazans living in the city and north of it have no place to go. Some accuse Israel of committing a war crime. The United Nations “considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” its spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, said. 

“All who can influence Israel must push for this madness to stop and the order to evacuate reversed,” a former UN official and current leader of the Norwegian Refugee Council, Jan Egeland, wrote on X. Even as similar organizations have, at best, weakly condemned the Hamas atrocities that launched the war, they are now urging America to muzzle Israel.

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Jihad on Israel: Where Does Turkey Stand? – Part II by Burak Bekdil

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20046/israel-turkey-jihad

The “final solution,” Erdoğan said, unwittingly, it seems, using Hitler’s term, “is the foundation of an independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem its capital and Israel retreating to pre-1967 borders.” Why not ask Israel to withdraw to its pre-Babylonian borders?

“Our Brothers in the Gaza Strip have been heavily bombarded in the past couple of days,” Erdoğan said. Really, Mr. Erdoğan, now why is that? What would your military do if terrorists bombarded Turkey’s civilians with thousands of rockets?

Erdoğan, finally, in what might be the laugh of the century, said he would like to play the honest broker between Israel and Hamas. Why not have Iran mediating between Israel and Hamas, or Greece mediating between Turkey and Cyprus, or Belarus mediating between Russia and Ukraine…?

When, on October 7, the terrorist group Hamas launched an unprovoked attack on Israel, killing more than 1,300 Israeli men, women and children (and wounding thousands more), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, rather than dusting off his usual inflammatory anti-Israel rants, uncharacteristically advised both sides for restraint. That was, after Erdoğan’s vow to isolate Israel internationally had brought Turkey a heavy geopolitical cost, This was Erdoğan’s pragmatist-self.

Only a few days later, as always, his ideological-self took the stage.

The “final solution,” Erdoğan said, unwittingly, it seems, using Hitler’s term, “is the foundation of an independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem its capital and Israel retreating to pre-1967 borders.” Why not ask Israel to withdraw to its pre-Babylonian borders?

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The Late, Great Hamas Finally Got its Wish Dreaming of their own version of the Holocaust. by Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-late-great-hamas-finally-got-its-wish/

Ever since Hamas was “elected” to run Gaza and then followed the usual “one election/one time” Middle East formula, it has bragged nonstop that its agenda is to erase Israel off the face of the earth (cf. the wall map in the office of our Rep. Rashida Tlaib).

Its unabashed nihilist boasts resonated throughout the Palestinian “movement.” Its fiery threats delighted the Arab street.

Indeed, Hamas was soon celebrated as the most “authentic” of the radical Palestinian terrorist movements.

Which cadre of thugs could top its end-of-days rhetoric, its assured and steady supply of money and weapons from Iran, its satanic eagerness to mutilate and dismember, and the sanctuary and financial wherewithal offered to it by our “ally” Qatar?

None.

Since Hamas was viewed as the most “volatile” and creepy of the Palestinian factions, and the most useful to Iran, the Obama and Biden administrations appeased the murderers. Was it not part of their hare-brained grand strategy of empowering theocratic Iran and its Syrian, Hezbollah and Hamas hirelings?

Their campaign (remember the “they literally know nothing” media and the Obama “echo chamber” created by a boastful Ben Rhodes?) was to forge these disparate Islamists into a crescent of resistance to Israel and any “moderate” Arab regime (recall the Obama-Biden transitory hatred of the Gulf sheikdoms).

The result would be “creative tension”—as well as payback for the Israeli election of Netanyahu.

Through this formula, Obama believed he could always pressure Israel to grant concessions to radical Palestinians thanks to the looming threat of an ever-menacing (and soon-to-be nuclear) Iran with help from Obama’s other friends—the then-Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt and Obama’s pal the neo-Ottomanist and antisemite Erdogan of Turkey, Obama’s self-described personal liaison to the Islamic world.

Yes, this was sheer madness—if perhaps characteristic of Obama’s well-known orneriness.

Perhaps someday soon, a few disinterested historians might even record that the current nightmare in Israel is the logical end result of what Barack Obama, John Kerry (remember his Trump-era Paris reconnaissance with the Iranians?), Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Robert Malley, Joe Biden, Antony Blinken and a host of other incompetent but otherwise haughty and dangerous people once conjured up.

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ACT Test Scores Fall to 30-Year-Low By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/12/act-test-scores-fall-to-30-year-low/

A new report shows that the average high school student’s ACT college admissions test scores have fallen to their lowest point in 30 years, reflecting an ongoing decline in the quality of education in the United States after the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.

As Fox News reports, the average scores for the American College Testing (ACT) exams have fallen for the last six years in a row, with the decline becoming noticeably faster in the years during and after COVID. The average score in 2023 was 19.5 out of 36, which comes out to a percentage of 54%. In 2022, the average score was 19.8.

Furthermore, the average scores for reading, math, and science all fell below benchmark levels that are necessary for students to have a chance at succeeding in their first year of college. The only score that remained above the benchmark was English, which nevertheless also saw a decline compared to last year.

“The hard truth is that we are not doing enough to ensure that graduates are truly ready for postsecondary success in college and career,” said Janet Godwin, CEO of ACT Inc., the nonprofit organization of the same name which administers the tests.

At least 1.4 million American students took the ACTs this year, which is an increase from the number of students who took them last year. But that number is still below the levels seen before the pandemic. Out of those 1.4 million, only about 21% – roughly 294,000 – reached their benchmark levels for success in college. Of those who succeeded, ACT Inc. determined that there was an approximately 75% chance of students achieving a score of C or higher in the corresponding college courses, and a 50% chance of achieving a B or higher.

Godwin also emphasized the importance of the tests despite numerous college campuses increasingly turning away from standardized test scores as a factor in the admissions process. Some universities, such as the University of California system, are outright ignoring an applicants’ ACT or SAT scores, even if the scores are submitted in the application.

“In terms of college readiness, even in a test-optional environment, these kinds of objective test scores about academic readiness are incredibly important,” said Godwin.

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Hamas and Amoral Clarity Support for Hamas killers by the college DEI crowd reveals the real moral and intellectual rot in higher ed By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/12/hamas-and-amoral-clarity/

One unexpected blowback from the medieval Hamas’s barbaric murdering of hundreds of Israeli civilians is the revelation of current global amorality.

More than 20 Harvard university identity politics groups pledged their support to the Hamas murderers—to the utter silence for days of Harvard President Claudine Gay.

Americans knew higher education practiced racist admission policies. It has long promoted racially segregated dorms and graduations. And de facto it has destroyed the First Amendment.

But the overt support for Hamas killers by the diversity, equity, and inclusion crowd on a lot of campuses exposes to Americans the real moral and intellectual rot in higher education.

Democratic Socialist members of the new woke Democrat Party openly expressed ecstatic support for Hamas’s bloodwork.

Their biggest fears were not dead fellow Americans or hostages, or some 1,000 butchered Jewish civilians. Instead they were fearful that righteous Israeli retaliation might destroy the Hamas death machine.

Palestinians for years fooled naïfs in Europe and the Obama and Biden administrations into sending billions of dollars into Gaza.

These monies were channeled to tunnel into Israel, to obtain a huge rocket arsenal, and to craft plans to wipe out Jews.

The Biden administration has blood on its hands.

As soon as Biden took power, he resumed massive subsidies to radical Palestinians, canceled by the prior Trump administration.

He ignored warnings from his own state Department that such fungible moneys would soon fuel Hamas terrorism.

His administration dropped sanctions against Iran, ensuring that Tehran would enjoy a multi-billion-dollar windfall to be distributed to Israel’s existential enemies—another fact well known to the Biden administration.

If the Biden administration had announced overtly that it was rabidly anti-Israel, it would be hard to imagine anything it could have done differently from its present nihilist behavior.

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Biden Administration Failed to Remove 99 Percent of Illegal Immigrants Released into U.S., GOP Report Shows By David Zimmermann

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/biden-administration-failed-to-remove-99-percent-of-illegal-immigrants-released-into-u-s-gop-report-shows/

Since January 2021, the Biden administration has failed to remove more than 99 percent of the illegal immigrants who have been released into the U.S., according to a report led by House Republicans.

House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) and Immigration Subcommittee chairman Tom McClintock (R., Calif.) published new data that showed how the Biden administration and Department of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas have been downplaying the border crisis despite the extraordinary numbers.

At least 2,148,738 illegal aliens were released into the country, from President Joe Biden’s inauguration to March 31 this year, according to their findings, and only 108,102 have been removed from the country by immigration authorities. Of those removals, DHS deported only 5,993 illegals through official immigration-court proceedings, accounting for less than 0.3 percent of the total number of aliens released.

Furthermore, of the more than 5.6 million illegal aliens encountered at the southern border during that 26-month period, at least 2,464,424 had no confirmed departure from the U.S. as of March.

“These data contradict Secretary Mayorkas’s statements that the southwest border is closed and that illegal aliens are ‘quickly’ removed,” the 61-page report reads. “Instead, with more than 99 percent of illegal aliens staying inside the United States after being released by the Biden administration, there is virtually no enforcement of our immigration laws.”

Notably, only 6 percent of illegal immigrants were found to have a legitimate fear of persecution in the past two years, debunking Mayorkas’s claim they are just asylum-seekers looking for a new home.

“The vast majority of those individuals have not sought to evade law enforcement but have actually surrendered themselves to law enforcement and made a claim for relief under our laws,” Mayorkas told CNN host Chris Wallace in February, the report notes.

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The Truth behind Humanitarian Aid to Gaza Zach Kessel

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-truth-behind-humanitarian-aid-to-gaza/

In response to the Hamas attack on Israel, the Israeli government shut off Gazans’ access to its country’s electricity, food, and water. The move has drawn the expected condemnation of self-described proponents of human rights, such as Bernie Sanders, who said in a statement on Wednesday that “Israel’s blanket denial of food, water, and other necessities to Gaza is a serious violation of international law and will do nothing but harm innocent civilians.”

It’s worth diving into what happens when Israel does send humanitarian aid across the border into the Gaza Strip. As Hamas itself has publicly shared, the terrorist organization turns water pipes into rockets to fire at Israel. 

Not only does Hamas appropriate Israeli aid to turn it into weapons, it actively impedes Israel’s ability to deliver supplies that would increase Gazans’ quality of life. As former Israeli ambassador to the United States Michael Oren explains, Israel sends 1,200 truckloads of humanitarian assistance to its border with Gaza each month. Hamas allows only 400 trucks through. It is not Israel that is to blame for Gazans’ suffering but the terrorist organization it elected as its leadership in 2006 that fully took over the region the following year.

Another point of contention for many in the West is the idea that Israel deliberately targets high-density civilian areas in Gaza. This argument overlooks the fact that Hamas has ordered Gazans to ignore Israel’s calls for evacuation to more sparsely populated areas within the Strip. Not only is Hamas purposely throwing the people it purports to represent directly into the line of fire, it also uses them as human shields. It builds its infrastructure in those high-density areas, storing weaponry and building bases inside hospitals, schools, mosques, and United Nations buildings.

Israel will not let Hamas win the physical war. It’s important that we don’t let it win the information war, either.

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Dems Silent as House Republicans Urge Education Department to Protect Jews on Campus By Zach Kessel

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/house-republicans-urge-secretary-of-education-to-protect-jewish-college-students-as-palestinian-org-plans-day-of-resistance/

A group of 44 House Republicans sent a letter to Department of Education secretary Miguel Cardona urging the federal agency to protect Jewish college students in light of Thursday’s “national day of resistance,” organized by the national leadership of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). 

“We encourage the Department to engage immediately with colleges and universities on their obligations to take prompt and appropriate action to respond to harassment that creates a hostile environment for Jewish students,” reads the letter, which was led by Representative Tim Walberg (R., Mich.).

The letter was distributed to all House members Wednesday afternoon but had not been signed by any House Democrats as of Thursday afternoon. National Review contacted Democratic members of Walberg’s Michigan delegation, and only the office of Representative Debbie Dingell (D., Mich.) responded, saying “Rep. Dingell wants every student to be safe.”Walberg’s office, for its part, has “not heard from anyone.”

“There is nothing partisan about the issue or letter text,” a Walberg spokesman told NR when asked about the lack of reaction across the aisle.

The SJP — whose campus chapters are behind many of the pro-Hamas statements coming out of American universities over the past few days — is planning a nationwide day of protest on October 12.

After the Hamas attack that has left more than 1,000 Israeli civilians dead, as well as numerous Americans, SJP celebrated the violence in a letter announcing the “Day of Resistance.”

“Today, we witness a historic win for the Palestinian resistance: across land, air, and sea, our people have broken down the artificial barriers of the Zionist entity, taking with it the facade of an impenetrable settler colony and reminding each of us that total return and liberation to Palestine is near. As the Palestinian student movement, we have an unshakable responsibility to join the call for mass mobilization,” the SJP wrote.

“National liberation is near— glory to our resistance, to our martyrs, and to our steadfast people,” the letter continues.

SJP’s leaders go on to claim that: “settlers are not ‘civilians,’” that “responsibility for every single death falls solely on the zionist entity,” and that the terrorism Israel has faced is “legitimate, and all of it is necessary.”

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Marc Rowan: University Donors, Close Your Checkbooks Trustees, myself included, have sat in silence as our schools were taken over by ideologues. It’s time to wake up. By Marc Rowan

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/marc-rowan-university-donors-close

While Hamas terrorists were slaughtering Israeli Jews, university administrators were figuring out how to spin it. Do not just take my word for it; read their statements. Across academia, administrators issued statements on behalf of their institutions expressing a repulsive moral equivalence between victims of terror and the perpetrators of that terror. The antisemitic rot in academia is unmistakable.

At the University of Pennsylvania, where I sit on the Wharton School’s Board of Overseers, leaders have for too long allowed this kind of anti-Jewish hate, which sanitizes Hamas’s atrocities, to infect their campuses. There must be consequences.

I call on all UPenn alumni and supporters who believe we are heading in the wrong direction to close their checkbooks until President Liz Magill and Chairman Scott Bok resign.

It took less than two weeks to go from the Palestine Writes Literary Festival at the University of Pennsylvania to the barbaric slaughter of innocent civilians in Israel. Foreshadowing Hamas’s massacre, speakers at the gathering—hosted by various university departments and affiliates—advocated ethnic cleansing of Jews, referred to them as “European settlers,” and repeated various blood libels.

UPenn President Elizabeth Magill and Board Chair Scott Bok permitted UPenn to sponsor this conference and failed to condemn its hate-filled calls for violence. This is not a matter of free speech, but University-sponsored hate speech. 

Words and ideas matter. They mattered in the motivation of Hamas terrorists slaughtering more than 1,000 innocent civilians and kidnapping more than a hundred in their goal to annihilate Jews. In our viral, online world it is especially dangerous when once-fringe ideologies receive a stamp of legitimacy—especially from our elite academic institutions, which hold a special place in our society. By sponsoring the spread of the violent ideologies expressed in the Palestine Writes conference, they normalize and give their imprimatur to what would otherwise be considered morally reprehensible.

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Exodus of the Wrongthinkers from American Universities Colleges used to encourage the exchange of challenging ideas. Now faculty members who challenge students’ beliefs are being forced to leave the profession. By Francesca Block

Posted By on October 13th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/exodus-of-wrongthinker-university-professors

One sentence in a blog post almost ruined Thomas Smith’s career.

“If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle,” commented Smith, 65, a law professor at the University of San Diego.

He wrote it back in 2021, in a piece questioning the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic on his personal legal blog, which usually received only a few hundred visitors per day. 

But the backlash was swift. Smith estimates 60 students submitted a formal complaint to the administration and accused him of being racist, using derogatory language, and promoting conspiracy theories with “detrimental consequences.” Smith later updated his post to clarify that his ire was directed at the Chinese government, not its people.

A week later, Robert Schapiro, the dean of San Diego’s law school, announced an investigation into Smith in an email to the student body, stressing that “University policies specifically prohibit harassment, including the use of epithets, derogatory comments, or slurs based on race or national origin.”

So Smith hired an attorney known for defending other “cancelled” professors across the country. The university’s in-house counsel investigated him for two months, and ultimately concluded that the blog post was protected by the school’s academic freedom policies. Smith kept his job, but the ordeal left a sour taste in his mouth. 

“I felt anxious, I felt angry, I felt hurt, and I felt done,” Smith tells me with a nervous laugh. 

He said he loved to teach, but lately he’d been struggling to get published in prominent legal journals due to his traditionally conservative ideas arguing against DEI and ESG policies in corporate America. He also found himself self-censoring in his classes so as not to inadvertently offend his students or colleagues. 

But the attempt to cancel him in 2021 was the last straw. 

To hell with this, he thought. In November 2022, he submitted his formal plans to retire. 

Smith is now one of five right-leaning professors out of the 40 faculty at the University of San Diego School of Law who will retire after the spring of 2025. The others include civil rights and labor law scholar Gail Heriot, constitutional law professors Larry Alexander and Steven Smith, and criminal law expert and former law school dean Kevin Cole.