ISRAEL, MEDIA Comments turned off

How the media echoes Hamas propaganda Natasha Hausdorff on the lies used to demonize Israel.

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/07/how-the-media-echoes-hamas-propaganda/

Israel has come to be the most demonized nation on Earth. Its actions in Gaza are continually vilified as ‘genocidal’. Last month’s air strikes against Iran were denounced as ‘unprovoked’ and ‘illegal’. In the one-sided narrative that is now dominant in the West, the Jewish State is the aggressor, while the terror groups and regimes that attack it are cast as innocent victims. Natasha Hausdorff – barrister and legal director at the UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust – joined Brendan O’Neill on his podcast, The Brendan O’Neill Show, to debunk the lies we are constantly told about Israel. What follows is an edited version of that conversation. You can watch the whole thing here.

Brendan O’Neill: How degraded has the debate become around Israel right now?

Natasha Hausdorff: It’s been deteriorating extremely rapidly – but this is perhaps unsurprising. For decades, we have had a media that, for the most part, propagates the lies of terrorist organisations. This has come to a head in everything we have seen being reported, in particular out of Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas. Ultimately, it is misinformation that has been informing – or perhaps disinforming – public debate.

O’Neill: What did you think when you saw a very large crowd of privileged Britons chanting ‘death to the IDF’?

Hausdorff: Let’s be clear that this was essentially calling for death to Jews. It is simply an evolution of ‘From the river to the sea’, which we’ve heard from 7 October onwards.

I saw a distinct lack of pretense to this sort of unbridled Jew hate. Glastonbury has been a very unwelcome place for Jews and Israelis for years. It was reported that there was even a Hitler flag being displayed on some of the tents. This is deeply, deeply concerning – but likely only the tip of the iceberg. There are many people who have been swept up in all this because they think it’s the fashionable thing. Apparently, it’s the way that you demonstrate your moral credentials these days – by siding with internationally proscribed terrorist organisations and saying things like ‘up Hamas’ and ‘up Hezbollah’.

O’Neill: What’s your response to the claim Israel is guilty of genocide?

Hausdorff: Not only is it grotesque, it has no basis in reality whatsoever. But it is being advanced with a very particular purpose. I remember being on SABC – the South African version of the BBC – just after South Africa had brought its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). My counterpart said, ‘Isn’t it marvelous now we can finally use Israel and genocide in the same sentence, and nobody can tell us otherwise?’.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Frightening Dream House of Zoran Mamdani Zoran Mamdani built his dream on radical chic—but now that he’s winning, he’s scrambling to bury the blueprint. By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/07/the-frightening-dream-house-of-zoran-mamdani/

After his first-place win in the New York City mayoral primaries, Zoran Mamdani is furiously denying everything that he once glibly thought was cutting-edge and cool.

So, like a good postmodern relativist, Mamdani now claims he didn’t really mean that violence was merely a “construct.”

I suppose Mamdani asked Jewish New Yorkers—the target of 44 percent of all hate crimes in the city—and discovered that their concussions and blood were all too real.

As a good soldier in the ranks of Black Lives Matter, Mamdani now insists he did not trash the police and advocate defunding them. Neither did he really, really mean to claim falsely he was African-American when he applied to college nor did really, really mean to do a video mocking the Jewish holiday of Hannukah.

Mamdani once thought it was cool to boast about defunding the police when he was an edgy, rising, left-wing community activist.

But then it was smarter to play it down as a candidate. And now it is essential to lie and deny it as a front-runner.

As a good communist, Mamdani echoed Karl Marx by bragging about his ultimate agenda: “the end goal of seizing the means of production.”

But whose “means of production” would Mamdani start seizing?

Trump Tower? Tesla dealerships? Amazon warehouses?

Mamdani warns us, “I don’t think that we should have billionaires, frankly.”

Then, please tell us, how would you get rid of them?

Confiscate their money? Tax them at a 99 percent rate?

Maybe dox them and let the public handle the rest?

Mamdani brags he would “globalize the intifada.”

Given that most define the intifada (“shaking off”) as the two violent Palestinian waves of terrorism against Israel, what then does Mamdani mean by globalizing it?

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Combatting Classroom Chaos A major problem that must be dealt with. by Larry Sand

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm-plus/combatting-classroom-chaos/

On April 23, President Trump signed an executive order directing public schools to develop student discipline policies without considering race and ethnicity. The order states, “The Federal Government will no longer tolerate known risks to children’s safety and well-being in the classroom that result from the application of school discipline based on discriminatory and unlawful ‘equity’ ideology.”

The administration is justified in taking action. Restoring order to America’s classrooms requires reversing years of misguided federal policies that focused on racial quotas and therapeutic interventions. These policies have harmed academic achievement, endangered students, and made it more difficult for struggling students to get help. To succeed, the administration must respect local control while overcoming strong resistance from a deeply rooted education bureaucracy, whose radical agenda remains its primary goal.

Our current problems were intensified by a 2012 report from the Obama administration, which found that black students were “suspended, expelled, and arrested” at higher rates than white students. In response, the administration sent a “Dear Colleague” letter to state and local education agencies in 2014, warning of federal investigations if rates of “exclusionary discipline”—suspensions and expulsions—were racially disproportionate.

Not surprisingly, Obama’s redirect has been a disaster. Where schools have tried the racial bean-counting regimen, the results have been less than noteworthy. A North Carolina school districttried to improve discipline by implementing a policy that paid a non-profit over $800,000 to help develop. Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools had fewer suspensions during the school year and no expulsions, part of a broader shift toward “equitable discipline.”

However, the district reported a higher crime rate than the previous year. Critics say the changes have worsened conditions for students because disruption in class is not being addressed.

Surveys consistently show that student behavior has declined over the past decade, with school violence and overall classroom disorder now at all-time highs.

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

New York Times Struggles to Explain Why It Reported News to Traumatized Readers. – Jonathan Turley

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://jonathanturley.org/2025/07/06/new-york-times-struggles-to-explain-why-it-reported-news-to-traumatized-readers/

This week, the New York Times experienced an uprising in its ranks and among its readers. The paper was denounced by its own staff and liberal pundits called for the entire editorial staff to be canned. Why? Because The New York Times actually reported news that was deemed harmful to the Democrats, specifically Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani. The newspaper took the additional step of publishing a cringing explanation of why it reported the news that Mamdani lied on his Columbia application in claiming to be black.For liberals, it was an utter nightmare. For a party still defined by identity politics, Mamdani’s false claim over his race left many uncertain about how to react.The left has always maintained a high degree of tolerance for false claims by its own leaders, from Sen. Elizabeth Warren claiming to be a native American to Sen. Richard Blumenthal claiming to have served in the Vietnam War.

The problem is when a news eco-chamber for many readers is shattered by an errant outbreak of journalism. Many Times readers live within a hermetically sealed news silo, relying on MSNBC for cable, The New York Times for print, and BlueSky for social media. You can literally go all day without being exposed to an opposing view or fact. Then suddenly this happens.

The result is often anger. It is the same response many in higher education have to “triggering” views being expressed on campus by conservative or libertarian speakers.

The fact is that the Mamdani story was obvious news—and confirmed by the candidate himself. Mamdani identified as both Asian and African American on his 2009 Columbia University application, according to the New York Times.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Have We Reached Late-Stage Climate Hysteria?

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://issuesinsights.com/2025/07/07/have-we-reached-late-stage-climate-hysteria/

A United Nation’s report issued last month calls for the criminalization of spreading “disinformation and misinformation” about global warming. Is it the desperate act of a dying crusade – or business as usual for the climate fanatics?

While our hope is the former, it’s more likely the latter.

According to Elisa Morgera, the U.N. special rapporteur on climate change, governments should “criminalize misinformation and misrepresentation (greenwashing) by the fossil fuel industry” as well as “criminalize media and advertising firms for amplifying disinformation and misinformation by fossil fuel companies.”

This is disturbing. Who gets to decide what is “disinformation and misinformation”? We’ve already seen, thanks to COVID-19, that the meaning of those words is determined exploitatively by the ruling class and the loudest voices, not by any objective means.

Just the News quotes experts who say the call for criminalization shows a growing desperation among the climate alarmists. Given that global warming has cooled off considerably as a pressing issue for the public, this rings true.

Yet demanding that skeptics be arrested and tried is not a fresh fantasy for the alarmists. They’ve been dreaming about a 21st-century inquisition of those who hold dissenting views (the Galileos of our time?) for more than a decade:

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island urged the Justice Department “to consider filing a racketeering suit against the oil and coal industries for having promoted wrongful thinking on climate change,” author Walter Olson noted in 2015.
Twenty “scientists” wrote a letter to President Barack Obama to “strongly endorse” Whitehouse’s “call for a RICO investigation.”
In 2016, a year after  17 attorneys general pursued fraud allegations against climate change skeptics, Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch told the Senate Judiciary Committee that “the FBI was looking into information regarding climate change dissent and ‘whether or not it meets the criteria for what we could take action on,’” the Washington Times reported.
Even before that, a hack writing for Gawker claimed that “man-made climate change kills a lot of people,” that “it’s going to kill a lot more,” and insisted that “it’s time to punish the climate-change liars.”
Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” who is actually an engineer, said “we’ll see what happens” when asked about Robert Kennedy Jr.’s 2014 wish that there was a law to “punish” skeptics and “deniers.” Nye said he thought the “chilling effect” of punishment against “scientists who are in extreme doubt about climate change” was “good.”

ISRAEL, MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

After Missile Strike, Weizmann Lab Publishes Breathrough Leukemia Research By Tziona Gerson

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://unitedwithisrael.org/after-missile-strike-weizmann-lab-publishes-breathrough-leukemia-research/

A simple blood test procedure could screen for leukemia non-invasively, well before symptoms begin to express, revolutionizing the ability of the medical community to effectively target and treat the disease.

During the Iranian missile attacks that rocked Israel in the second half of June, few stories captured the resilience of the Israeli spirit like the one that occurred at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot.

On June 15, Weizmann labs took a direct hit from Iranian ballistic missiles, obliterating years, and in some cases, lifetimes worth of irreplaceable scientific research.

While luckily there were no casualties, the hit was a significant loss to an institution dedicated to expanding the scope of human knowledge.

Notably, the Cancer Research Unit was severely impacted, with entire labs destroyed.

Yet despite the mayhem, a joint project led by Professors Liran Shlush and Amos Tanay published a startling breakthrough in leukemia diagnostics, which could fundamentally change the means of diagnosis and treatment of this infamously pernicious form of cancer.

Breakthrough in the bloodstream

Leukemia, or cancer of the blood, is an aggressive cancer that originates in bone marrow and causes rapid proliferation of malformed blood cells.

These cells compromise the body’s ability to fight infection and circulate oxygen.

Current screenings for leukemia require a bone marrow biopsy, a painful procedure to extract bone marrow and test for leukemic cells.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Ted Kept His Cool, While Tucker was a Sucker Twelve days, no U.S. casualties, Iran’s nuclear threat neutralized—and Tucker Carlson is still busy losing arguments to Ted Cruz. By Arthur Schaper

Posted By on July 7th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/06/ted-kept-his-cool-while-tucker-was-a-sucker/

The war between Israel and Iran lasted twelve days.

Instead of a broad coalition of Arab states trying to push the Jewish state into the sea, one Islamic Republic (read: dictatorship) faced Israel, isolated from all other Muslim nations. Syria wouldn’t help, and Iranian proxies Hezbollah and the Houthis couldn’t since Israel wiped them out already.

Following targeted bombing campaigns, the nuclear Iran that pundits feared is no longer. The Iranian people are rising in the streets, bolder than ever before. Some even celebrated Israeli (and American) strikes on the Ayatollah’s nuclear facilities, watching the explosions from their homes.

However, one self-important commentator was fretting about the United States being dragged into another Middle Eastern conflict if Trump acted against Iran:

Tucker Carlson.

His doom and gloom bordered on hysterical.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Homes for hipsters From Zohran Mamdani to the YIMBYs, the leading figures in the housing debate have little to offer most Americans. Joel Kotkin

Posted By on July 6th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/07/05/homes-for-hipsters/

More than his good looks, charm and great social-media game, the biggest reason that Zohran Mamdani may become New York’s next mayor grows from his focus on the city’s affordability crisis, most of which is tied to high housing prices.

Mamdani’s ‘cost of living’ campaign – offering rent control, free buses, childcare and city-owned supermarkets – seems to some leftist pundits a potential road back to power, under the guise of the burgeoning YIMBY (‘yes in my backyard’) movement that seeks to lower rental prices through massive housing construction.

Although Mamdani claims his focus on affordability appeals to working-class voters who shifted to Donald Trump, his core constituency lies elsewhere – with relatively affluent, young, single and childless professionals. For them, rent control is a true blessing, although they may not need free buses or want city-financed grocery stores, unless they resemble Whole Foods.

Housing, of course, is not just a New York issue. It also has a particular resonance for younger Americans. A Harvard poll of 18- to 29-year-olds this year ranked housing as the third-most-important issue overall, after inflation and healthcare. The educated hipster class – Mamdani’s base – understandably worries about the fact that in New York, you need a $135,000-a-year salary to afford a decent place, without it eating up most of your paycheque.

On a national basis, Mamdani’s win could prove a critical boost to the YIMBYs. From their origins in California, they have always been an odd agglomeration, originally financed by Bay Area tech and real-estate elites, while also embraced by more predictable leftist advocates of rent control, heavy subsidies and public housing. As YIMBY policies – like rezoning and densification – have either failed to solve the problem, or failed to gain traction with the public, more draconian socialist approaches seem to be gaining currency.

The YIMBYs are at least right about one thing: the lack of new housing is a profound national failure. Homebuilders constructed a million fewer homes – including units – in 2024 than in 1972, when there were 130million fewer Americans. One estimate puts the US housing market short by an estimated 4.5 million homes.

But if YIMBYs have diagnosed a key problem, their solutions – wherever imposed – have tended to make things worse. High-density development, often seen as the alternative to urban sprawl, does not solve the problem of higher urban land costs and higher construction fees.

BOOKS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Making Patriots in an Unpatriotic Age Even as elites sneer at patriotism, small-town ceremonies and Walter Berns’s Making Patriots remind us that liberty cannot endure without love of country. By Roger Kimball

Posted By on July 6th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/07/06/making-patriots-in-an-unpatriotic-age/

Like many people in my neighborhood, I had an American flag ready to display when the nation’s big, beautiful birthday rolled around on Friday. I live in a small New England neighborhood where July 4 is a big deal. The 20-odd children who live here form an honor guard that parades briefly and lays a wreath at the foot of a tiny war monument. We raise the flag, recite the Pledge of Allegiance, and then a respected local addresses us after we sing the National Anthem. The ACLU hasn’t got wind of our activities yet, so we even engaged a friendly cleric to perform a benediction.

By contemporary standards, this exhibition of patriotic sentiment seems quaint. But I have always found the event moving and thought-provoking. It reminds me of how lucky I am to be an American, and it leads me to reflect on the extraordinary political genius that forged American liberty and made it, as Lincoln said in a fraught moment in 1862, “the last, best hope of earth.”

This year, preparing for the holiday festivities, I dusted off my copy of Making Patriots by the late political philosopher Walter Berns (1919–2015). I am glad I did. This brief, eloquent book is a beautiful tribute to patriotism, lately a much-besieged civic virtue (though Donald Trump is doing yeoman’s work to rescue it). Berns begins by noting that although Lincoln’s words are even more obviously true today than before, the patriotism that Lincoln commended (and which he knew was necessary to guarantee liberty) no longer enjoys widespread public support, at least among this country’s elites.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Columbia Cannot Be Trusted To Negotiate by Seth Mandel

Posted By on July 6th, 2025

https://www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/columbia-cannot-be-trusted-to-negotiate/

When the Trump administration accused Columbia University of violating the civil rights of its Jewish students, the school risked losing both its federal funding and even its accreditation. At the time, the preferred outcome for everyone seemed to be to have both sides come to an agreement that would alleviate the government’s concerns and reinstate Columbia’s funding.

Now, however, it’s not clear at all that the university can be trusted to negotiate a deal. Nor is it clear that whoever speaks for Columbia today will still be speaking for Columbia tomorrow or next week. It might be time to step back and have Columbia get its house in order before resuming talks.

In late March, Columbia agreed to terms laid out by the federal government in order to have $400 million of federal funding restored. Immediately the faculty and students pushed back on interim President Katrina Armstrong, who had taken over for Minouche Shafik in August. Armstrong wavered. She is no longer the president of Columbia.

Claire Shipman is, having become the institution’s third president in a period of seven months. Last month, Shipman was notified that the school’s accreditation was under review thanks to Columbia’s refusal to reform its practices to bring them in line with federal civil-rights law. Welcome to the big leagues, Claire Shipman.

Before accepting the divine punishment of being made president of Columbia, Shipman was its trustee board’s co-chair, so she isn’t new to this particular fight. In fact, Shipman appeared alongside Shafik and other school officials to testify at an April 2024 congressional hearing on campus anti-Semitism. Both Shafik and Shipman were very, very sad about what was happening to Jews on their campus under their watch. Meanwhile, as soon as Shafik and Shipman and Co. shipped off to Capitol Hill, the student body left behind in Morningside Heights built a tentifada encampment in defiance of Shafik’s expressed conciliation.

At that April 2024 hearing, Shipman had said: “We have a moral crisis on our campus.” She wasn’t wrong. But Shipman was part of that moral crisis. Just three months before that hearing, Shipman had argued in a text that “We need to get somebody from the middle east [sic] or who is Arab on our board. Quickly I think. Somehow.”

As the Free Beacon reported yesterday, Shipman had a plan to achieve that “somehow.” The board could get rid of Shoshana Shendelman, a Jewish trustee who’d been outspoken against anti-Semitism on campus.