NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The passionate intensity of the know-nothing protester Why do people with no knowledge of the Israel-Hamas conflict feel the need to join these awful marches? Simon Evans

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/11/10/the-passionate-intensity-of-the-know-nothing-protester/

“The most-quoted poem to describe the world we live in has for some years now been WB Yeats’s ‘The Second Coming’. And especially the line, ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.’ Let us at least teach our children not to mistake one for the other. Especially when, on a rare occasion, the best display some conviction after all.”

A short video was shared on X this week in which two young female protesters at a pro-Palestine march were asked a pretty straightforward question about the crisis in the Middle East: ‘When Hamas invaded Israel on the 7 October, what was your initial reaction to that?’

The first one looked briefly confused. Was this a trick?, she seemed to be thinking. Her companion stepped in: ‘I don’t believe they did, did they? Hamas?’ Then something started coming back to the first one. The stirrings of something like a distant memory. ‘I think so…’, she said, trying to correct her friend who didn’t think Hamas had done anything.

Encouragingly, in the light of this, the first one then appeared to experience an awakening. ‘Honestly, I think I need to be a bit more clued up on everything that’s going on’, she said, before finally responding to the original question: ‘I feel like I’m not really qualified to answer that too well…’

Her companion, however, was having none of this. No room for doubt in her ranks. So she persisted in her Baudrillard-tier scepticism about the 7 October attack: ‘I mean, I’m not sure that I’ve seen anything that shows that that’s actually happened or that’s actually correct.’

It’s tempting to respond to this video by wondering who the fuck are these virtue-signalling halfwits and why aren’t they in a library studying? Yet even if these young women are typical of many of those attending the anti-Israel demos, a bit more understanding might be in order.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Let the Donor Revolution Begin By Michael B. Poliakoff & Steven McGuire

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2023/11/17/let_the_donor_revolution_begin_150070.html

The donor revolts at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and elsewhere are the long-overdue wake up calls that their faculty and administrators needed. The overwhelming majority of politically progressive faculty and administrators have long guarded their right to advance their cherished political causes inside and outside the classroom, while punishment has awaited those who challenge the shibboleths. Instead of the free exchange of ideas and the intellectual capaciousness that ultimately advance social justice, it is now clearer than ever that it is not social justice they have fostered but mindless ideology and hate.

In stunning irony, the leadership of so many of the nation’s top colleges and universities, initially unable to give a full-throated condemnation of a terrorist attack on Israeli civilians of monstrous savagery, miraculously discovered institutional neutrality and murmured effetely instead. In response to the backlash, they appeal to free expression, but their campuses have only what Penn donor and alumnus Clifford Asness has called “asymmetrical free speech where some have it and some don’t.”

While Penn Carey Law School’s eminent Professor Amy Wax is placed under investigation with serious threat of termination for alleged racial insensitivity, a professor who posted the logo of the military wing of Hamas on Facebook days after that terrorist organization’s horrific attack on Israeli civilians receives nothing more than an email.

Roger Waters, a notorious antisemite, is allowed to speak on Penn’s campus, but young women forced to share a locker room with a biological male are told, “Don’t talk to the media. You will regret it.”

At Harvard, the same President Claudine Gay who was instrumental in punishing gifted African American economist Roland Fryer, who dared to advance a data-driven challenge to the meme of racist policing, says pro-Hamas students will neither be punished nor sanctioned. Carole Hooven, who was canceled for stating a biological fact, might disagree with President Gay’s claim that Harvard “embraces a commitment to free expression.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The American Multimillionaire Marxists Funding Pro-Palestinian Rage Neville Roy Singham and his wife Jodie Evans are China propagandists—and a primary source of the fury exploding on our streets. By Francesca Block

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.thefp.com/p/american-marxists-funding-pro-palestinian-rage

The pro-Palestinian protests over the last month, where tens of thousands in the U.S. have chanted for the end of Israel, are not merely a story of organic rage. 

They are also funded in large part by an uber-wealthy American-born tech entrepreneur: Neville Roy Singham, and his wife Jodie Evans.

Since 2017, Singham has been the main funder of The People’s Forum, which has co-organized at least four protests after 1,400 innocent Israelis were slaughtered by Hamas on October 7. One rally, in Times Square, happened on October 8 before Israel had even counted its dead.

Based in Midtown Manhattan, The People’s Forum calls itself a “movement incubator for working class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.” But a review of public disclosure forms show that multimillionaire Singham and his wife Evans have donated over $20.4 million to The People’s Forum from 2017 to 2022 through a series of shell organizations and donor advisory groups—accounting for nearly all of the group’s funding. 

Singham’s wealth stems from Thoughtworks, a software consulting company that he launched in 1993 in Chicago and sold in August 2017 to private equity firm Apax Partners for $785 million. That same year, The People’s Forum was founded and set up on the ground floor of a multistory building on 37th Street just blocks from Times Square; Evans was also installed as one of its three board members. As of 2021, the organization employed 13 staff members and held more than $13.6 million in total assets. 

“I decided that at my age and extreme privilege, the best thing I could do was to give away most of my money in my lifetime,” said Singham, now 69, in a statement after selling his company, according to a New York Times investigation in August. 

But Singham is more than just a Marxist with deep pockets. He is also a China sympathizer who lives in Shanghai and has close ties to at least four propaganda news sites that boost the Chinese Communist Party’s image abroad, the Times reported.

These Chinese media interests are helping sow discord in the U.S., Rep. Mike Gallagher, the chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told The Free Press. 

“The Chinese Communist Party uses tools like Confucius Institutes on college campuses, TikTok’s addictive algorithm, and organizations like those that Mr. Singham funds to divide and weaken America,” Gallagher said. 

ANTI-SEMITISM, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The shameful nods to antisemitism from Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson Isaac Schorr

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://nypost.com/2023/11/16/opinion/the-shameful-nods-to-antisemitism-from-candace-owens-and-tucker-carlson/

Over the past month, antisemites of all stripes — emboldened by Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israeli civilians — have made their presence among us known.

They’ve celebrated Hamas’ atrocities and committed their own, fantasizing about the destruction of Israel, tearing down posters of abducted children and harassing their Jewish neighbors.

Much of the overtly antisemitic rhetoric and action across the West has been situated on the left, and conservatives have rightly pointed out as much, chalking up the deluge of hatred and wickedness on display to fallacious progressive theory.

But there is a cohort on the right complicit in this great reawakening of an ancient evil.

And that brings us back to Owens and Carlson.

The past few weeks have seen Owens repeat a series of blood libels.

In one breath, she’s implied the Israeli government is committing a genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

In the next, she’s submitted that Jerusalem’s historic Muslim Quarter (population: 22,000) is a ghetto where the city’s Muslims (population: 350,000) are forced to live.

After being called out on her ignorant smears by her Daily Wire colleague Ben Shapiro, Owens responded on X.

Candace Owens slams ‘emotionally unhinged’ Ben Shapiro as Israel feud escalates

“Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake,” wrote Owens, quoting the Book of Matthew’s fifth chapter.

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other,” she added.

“You cannot serve both God and money. Christ is King.”

And just like that, the mask clinging to her face by a thread fell off.

Shapiro, she argued without evidence and hardly any plausible deniability, had forsaken righteousness for wealth; is there a more textbook example of an antisemitic charge?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Elliott Abrams: Uncivil Servants: Foreign Policy Bureaucrats Target Israel Government employees take up petitions—sometimes anonymously—against the Jewish state.

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/uncivil-servants-foreign-policy-bureaucrats-target-israel-war-gaza-3bb7ceff?mod=opinion_lead_pos10

The Biden administration faces a wave of internal dissent against its support of Israel. On Nov. 14, more than 500 staff members and political appointees from about 40 government agencies sent a joint letter to President Biden criticizing his administration’s policy on the Gaza war, according to the New York Times.

It was the latest of several protest letters. The Times reported that the administration has received similar messages, including three internal memos addressed to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and a letter “signed” by more than 1,000 employees of the Agency for International Development. The State Department requires that employees sign their names to dissent cables, but the other two letters have no signatures. The Times reported that these government employees wrote anonymously out of “concern for our personal safety and risk of potentially losing our jobs.”

The internal memos, two of which were sent during the first week of the war, called on Mr. Biden to press for an immediate cease-fire. One State Department memo, Axios reported, accused the president of “spreading misinformation.” Signed by 100 State Department and Agency for International Development employees, the memo said members of the White House and National Security Council showed a “clear disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”

Mr. Blinken responded to government employees’ protests in an email, according to Reuters. Mr. Blinken said the administration was organizing forums and “candid conversations” to hear employees’ feedback and ideas. “We’re listening,” he wrote. “What you share is informing our policy and our messages.” It would seem that the fear of losing one’s government job, or of angry mobs threatening the safety of the “signers,” was overblown.

The proper reaction would have been to squash the mutiny. Those who called for a cease-fire in week one were essentially saying Israel had no duty or right to protect itself after Hamas’s brutal attack on its civilians. Mr. Blinken should have told these government workers that he and the president reject their views as entirely wrong and contrary to U.S. national interests. Instead of encouraging the dissenters to offer more “feedback and ideas,” he should be wondering if he can count on such people to offer any sound advice on foreign policy—or even to implement a policy that he sets.

This wave of protests is anomalous. Between 2011 and 2021, according to the United Nations, more than 300,000 Syrian civilians died due to the conflict there. The highest death counts were between 2012 and 2015. Frederic Hof, the Obama administration’s special adviser on Syria policy, wrote in 2017 that “during 70 months of chaos in Syria, the United States had protected not one Syrian civilian from the homicidal rampages of Bashar al-Assad and his remorseless regime.” Yet in 2016 only 50 State Department officers protested Barack Obama’s Syria policy in a non-anonymous signed letter.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Hamas’s Barbarity Heightens the Crisis in Higher Education Jewish students bear the brunt of colleges’ culture of intolerance, conformity and ‘safe spaces.’ By Michael R. Bloomberg

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/hamass-barbarity-heightens-the-crisis-in-higher-education-free-speech-anti-semitism-0eb27bd9?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

The barbaric attack by Hamas against Israel—the intentional slaughter of defenseless civilians, including children and babies, and the taking of hostages—should have been a unifying moment for America. Shamefully, it has become something else: a wake-up call about a crisis in higher education.

It has been painful to watch students at elite colleges implicitly or explicitly endorse Hamas’s attack. They aren’t old enough to remember 9/11, and it’s clear they never learned its lesson: Intentionally targeting civilians for slaughter is inexcusable no matter the political circumstances.

For Americans, this isn’t a matter of defending Israel but of defending our nation’s most sacred values. One can support the Palestinian people and still denounce the intentional slaughter of civilians.

Why have so many students failed to do so? The answer begins where the buck stops—with college presidents. For years, they have allowed their campuses to become bastions of intolerance, by permitting students to shout down the voices of others. They have condoned “trigger warnings” that shield students from difficult ideas. They have refused to defend faculty who run afoul of student sentiment. And they have created “safe spaces” that discourage or exclude opposing views.

College presidents have also allowed campuses to become institutions of conformity. In a 2014 commencement speech at Harvard, I warned that many of America’s top colleges had become Soviet-like in their lack of viewpoint diversity. As I noted, 96% of donations from Ivy League faculty and staff in the 2012 presidential election went to Barack Obama, while only 4% went to another Harvard alumnus, Mitt Romney.

FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Biden Administration’s $10 Billion Prize to Iran: Just A Small Thank You for Engineering a War, Wounding 56 US Troops and Trying to Drive the US Out of The Middle East. by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on November 18th, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20152/biden-10-billion-prize-to-iran

From the Iranian regime’s perspective, annihilating Israel and the Jews would presumably be a major breakthrough, giving them a dominance over the Muslim world, even greater than Saudi Arabia’s.

The dedicated funds that this new $10 billion will release can now be used to put the finishing touches on the mullahs’ nuclear bomb – to threaten their Sunni neighbors in the Gulf, Europe, and above all, “The Great Satan, the United States. Iran’s plans for cutting “The Great Satan” (and others) down to size are already underway in Cuba and throughout South America. Earlier this month, Israel helped Brazil thwart an attack by the Iran-backed terrorist group Hizballah on Brazil’s Jews.

Sadly, the $10 billion looks suspiciously like a “pretty please” bribe not to try to drive the US out of the region this year [before the 2024 US election]; instead, wait for next year.

The solution is not to give Iran $10 billion as a prize for practicing extensive regional aggression and engineering mass-murder. Real solutions would include cutting the flow of funds by re-imposing — and enforcing — primary and secondary sanctions; incapacitating the port from which Iran sends oil to China; sending Ayatollah Khamenei and the leaders of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG) pictures of their homes; making the ruling mullahs seriously aware of military options, such as taking out the training bases and leadership of the IRGC, and employing significant military force when required — for instance now.

Who needs the Nobel Peace Prize when you can have the Biden War Prize? That’s right, the Biden administration announced this week that it plans to give the Iranian regime another $10 billion in unfrozen assets from Oman, apparently as a small token of appreciation for launching a savage war in the Middle East and targeting US troops in the region at least 56 times, wounding at least 56 US servicemen, many with traumatic brain injury — in just one month! Where does everyone sign up?

The total number of attacks on US troops by the Iranian regime since US President Joe Biden assumed office, is (so far) 139: 83 before March, 56 since. This new $10 billion comes on top of the earlier “closer to $60 billion” it already gave the regime by not enforcing sanctions against it.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Democratic Socialists of America Is a Hate Group Noah Rothman

Posted By on November 17th, 2023

https://www.nationalreview.com/2023/11/the-democratic-socialists-of-america-is-a-hate-group/

Many state and federal officials whose names grace its roster seem unvexed by the group’s terrorization of American Jews.

Despite the organization’s efforts to bury the evidence, CNN’s Jake Tapper helpfully reminded his followers on Thursday that the first reaction to the October 7 massacre of the New York chapter of the far-left group Democratic Socialists of America was to affirm the legitimacy of that unspeakable slaughter.

“In solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to resist 75 years of occupation and apartheid,” the group implored its allies to flood Times Square and register their satisfaction with Hamas’s barbarism. That is what is meant by the word “solidarity,” after all — a fellowship formed around shared goals and objectives. It describes a state of commonality and kinship. To judge by DSA’s actions, its organizers chose the right word to describe their outlook.

Well-meaning liberals and progressives who take exception to some Israeli policies are often quick to assure their skeptics that Hamas’s actions are unrepresentative of the Palestinian people writ large or even the Gazans over whom the terrorist organization illegitimately rules. The DSA disagrees. To judge from its reaction to the multiaxial attack on Israeli civilians, culminating in acts of murder, rape, dismemberment, and torture so obscene it would have made the Roman Colosseum blush, the DSA’s members seem incapable of denouncing Hamas’s tactics. Perhaps that’s why we’ve seen so many DSA followers deliberately menace American Jews and supporters of Israel’s right to defend itself against an avowedly genocidal terrorist group.

The October 8 pro-Hamas rally the DSA championed occurred as scheduled. There, protesters “cheered the rocket barrage that devastated Israeli citizens,” the New York Times reported, horrifying the politicians “aligned with New York’s left.” If the DSA’s allies were horrified then, imagine the psychological torment they’re enduring nearly a month into the outfit’s campaign of intimidation against American Jews and their allies.

At least 139 people were arrested, including a DSA-affiliated member of the New York City Council and a state senator, during a menacing nighttime march through Gotham’s streets on October 23 billed as a demonstration calling on Israel to stand down and absorb the murder of its civilians. “I do not condemn Hamas,” read the signs they carried. “There is only one solution,” they droned in unison as they paraded down emptied streets and past lighted windows behind which the targets of their intimidation took shelter. “Intifada. Revolution.” This was another event sponsored by the DSA, which the organization’s social-media account gleefully promoted.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Don’t look to the Palestinian Authority for good governance by Gabriel Diamond

Posted By on November 17th, 2023

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4311098-dont-look-to-the-palestinian-authority-for-good-governance/

The Oct. 7 terrorist massacre in southern Israel made it all too clear that Hamas must go. But after it is gone, who will take the helm in Gaza? 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken commented that Gaza’s administration “must include Palestinian-led governance and Gaza unified with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.” Secretary Blinken and the Biden administration should think again.

Over the course of 11 days from May into June 2023, I spent hours in conversation with Palestinian Authority leaders. I had been selected to join a group of 30 undergraduates from Yale and West Point on a trip to Israel and the West Bank, part of the schools’ joint Peace and Dialogue Leadership Initiative. Trips like these offer Palestinian leaders an opportunity to court impressionable, young American students. The presentations from Palestinian Authority officials were as revealing as the living conditions we saw throughout the West Bank. The Palestinian people are being used as pawns by the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. must proceed with caution or risk substituting one corrupt authority with another.

Many Palestinians live in appalling conditions. In Bethlehem, I watched a little girl weave through moving cars to get to school — no crosswalks or traffic lights in sight. Even in areas that seem economically secure, infrastructure is severely lacking. Walking down an alley in Ramallah, I saw plastic tubing cracking along the side of an apartment building, causing precious water to gush onto the dusty road. 

I pressed the political leaders with whom we met to understand how this could be the reality for many Palestinians. The authorities who acted as our hosts emphasized the misfortunes of their people, but they took no responsibility themselves. In fact, the extent of their seeming indifference is astonishing. 

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development estimates that between 1994 and 2020, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has received more than $40 billion in international aid. The Biden administration dedicated $316 million just last year to supporting Palestinians. When I asked a Palestinian Authority official in Ramallah where American funding for the PA goes, he responded by saying that the U.S. does not provide any support at all. Algeria, he claimed, is the only country that offers financial aid. 

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Over 100 Rioters Attempt to Storm DNC HQ, Forcing Evacuation By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on November 17th, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/16/over-100-rioters-attempt-to-storm-dnc-hq-forcing-evacuation/

On Wednesday night, a mob of over 100 anti-Semitic rioters suddenly stormed the entrance to the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters, leading to clashes with Capitol Police and forcing the evacuation of several members of Congress inside.

As reported by ABC News, the Capitol Police acknowledged in a subsequent statement that officers had to “keep back” the crowd of approximately 150 people due to the manner in which they were “illegally and violently” protesting at the building’s main entrance. Six officers were injured, with injuries “ranging from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched;” all officers were treated at the scene.

At the time of the riot, seven members of Congress were inside the building, hearing from prospective candidates, when they were ordered to evacuate by Capitol Police. One member of Congress present at the time, Congressman Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), said that they were approached by “heavily armed and serious” Capitol Police officers. Others in attendance included House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), and Congressman Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), though Sherman said that Jeffries and Clark had already left by the time the rioters attacked.

From inside the building, Sherman said he could hear chants of “ceasefire now,” referring to the rioters’ opposition to Israel’s retaliation after a series of massive terrorist attacks by the Palestinian terror group Hamas one month ago, during the weekend of October 7th.

Sherman said that he expected the protest to last no more than 10 or 15 minutes, but was then approached by Capitol Police officers and told to evacuate.

“Then the Capitol Police came in big time and said, ‘We’re getting you out of here,’” Sherman recounted.

Another congressman who was in the building at the time was Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.), who described his experience in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter: “I was just evacuated from the @dccc office after the building was surrounded by protestors who had blocked all modes of ingress and egress. Grateful to Capitol Police for getting all members and staff out safely. To the protestors: PLEASE don’t do something irresponsible.”

Although the rioters were cleared out at around 10:00 PM, Capitol Police remained at the scene “out of an abundance of caution.”