ISRAEL Comments turned off

The protest movement can’t unravel the thread of Israel’s unique tapestry By Ruthie Blum

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-protest-movement-cant-unravel-the-thread-of-israels-unique-tapestry/

Anybody who lives in and loves Israel is aware of its miraculously beautiful mosaic of inherent paradoxes. It’s Middle Eastern, yet Western; war-torn, yet peace-obsessed; provincial, yet cosmopolitan; frenetic, yet relaxed.

It’s religious, yet secular; conservative, yet woke; judgmental, yet empathic; marriage-oriented, yet a singles’ magnet. And it’s a bureaucratic hell, while also an entrepreneurship heaven.

Aside from all of the above, the tiny state—still young at its soon-to-be 75th birthday—is a major player on the world stage. This is both good and bad news for the Jews.

On the one hand, it means that we managed to return to our ancient homeland and make the literal and figurative desert bloom. On the other, such a miraculous success story, against all odds and surrounding enemies, comes with a price.

Indeed, as is the case with many blessings, this one often feels like a curse. The weight of responsibility—the burden of serving as a “light unto the nations”—is only part of it.

Perhaps a greater difficulty for a once-scattered nation demonized and slaughtered in the Diaspora is the realization that the “ingathering of exiles” didn’t put an end to envy-sparked antisemitism. On the contrary, what the late historian Robert Wistrich called the “longest hatred” was simply transferred to the Jewish nation-state under the cloak of “legitimate criticism.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Death of Dissent If anyone thinks conditions will improve soon, just wait until this same Justice Department indicts Trump for “inciting” the events of January 6. By Julie Kelly

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/03/20/the-death-of-dissent/

The lead prosecutor in charge of the January 6 investigation, the largest probe in Justice Department history, just confirmed what American Greatness has reported for months: the number of criminal cases related to the Capitol protest is expected to at least double before it’s all over.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, an advisor to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign who took over the powerful office in late 2021, sent a letter to the chief judge of the D.C. District court warning up to 1,200 more individuals could face charges. 

“We expect the pace of bringing new cases will increase, in an orderly fashion, over the course of the next few months,” Graves told Beryl Howell, who ended her term as chief judge last week. Graves’ office just surpassed 1,000 total defendants in what he renamed the “Capitol Siege” investigation—which means the final caseload might well exceed 2,000.

Graves also indicated his team would ramp up the number of felony indictments; the overwhelming majority of charges so far are low-level offenses, including the laughable “parading in the Capitol” misdemeanor. The Biden regime clearly wants to juice the numbers before the 2024 election season.

And Graves isn’t wasting any time. Eight people have been charged since March 1, including a married couple from Indiana arrested on a civil disorder felony and four misdemeanors. The D.C. federal courthouse is monopolized by January 6 hearings and trials on a daily basis; one judge announced he would retire rather than deal with January 6 cases for the next several years.

In addition to ruining the lives of thousands of Americans for mostly nonviolent participation in the events of January 6, the Justice Department is accomplishing a more sinister goal: criminalizing and silencing political dissent in America. I warned two years ago, as Attorney General Merrick Garland’s prosecutors bastardized a post-Enron law in an attempt to turn political protesters into lifelong felons, that January 6 would be used in this manner.

MEDICINE AND HEALTH, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The “Trans Child” Is the New Totem of the American Left Christopher Rufo

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-trans-child-is-the-new-totem?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Joe Biden recently proposed in an interview that he would support federal legislation to force states such as Florida, Texas, and Tennessee to allow doctors to perform hormone therapies and sex change operations on children. This is all under the rubric of a deeply misleading term, “trans-affirming care,” that has become a deep conviction on the political Left. I’d like to analyze the clip in which Biden is talking about this and show that, for the Left, the so-called “trans child” serves almost as a religious totem. Let’s take a listen.

[President Biden:] Transgender kids is a really harder thing. What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, “close to sinful.” It’s just terrible what they’re doing. It’s not like a kid wakes up one morning and says, “You know, I decided I want to become a man” or “I want to become a woman” or “I want to change.” I mean, what are they thinking about here? They’re human beings. They love, they have feelings, they have inclinations that are, I mean, just to me is, I don’t know. It’s cruel. And the way we do it is we make sure we pass legislation like we passed on same-sex marriage. You mess with that, you’re breaking the law and you’re going to be held accountable.

Let’s break that down. In a certain sense, Biden’s comment sounds reasonable, it sounds humane, it sounds fairly rational. But this is all based on manipulative language and a hidden ideology that operates under the surface.

First, the category “transgender kids”: that’s the first thing he says and he lays down the marker that that’s the category we’re talking about. But as my friend and colleague Colin Wright has pointed out, there’s no such thing as a “transgender kid.” And what Wright means by that is that a child is not innately transgender, but becomes transgender once the child enters the process of medicalization—hormones, surgeries, and other medical interventions. It’s not that they cannot have feelings of discomfort or dysphoria—that’s certainly true—but they only become transgender when adults intervene. These are parents, doctors, and psychotherapists, and then that child is put on Lupron, put on testosterone or estrogen, has the double mastectomy, or gets the penile inversion surgery.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Southern Border is a Hybrid War Zone And the targets are U.S. citizens and U.S. sovereignty. by Austin Bay

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/the-southern-border-is-a-hybrid-war-zone/

The March 12 Incident on the Paso Del Norte Bridge confirms the U.S.-Mexico border is once again a war zone.

The March 12 Incident is an outrage that demonstrates the U.S. is currently under continuous hybrid war assault.

The hybrid war’s current weapons: deadly drugs (fentanyl), human trafficking (to include child sex and work slavery), migrants sapping social welfare dollars budgeted for deprived American citizens and noncitizens voting illegally.

Illegal votes equal hijacked U.S. elections.

Don’t exclude these horrors: enemies evading border controls to spread infectious diseases and terrorists masked as illegal aliens who use porous and undefended borders to enter the U.S. and embed as “sleeper agents” for future enemy action.

Video cameras on the Mexican side captured the human wave assault’s initial surge. A swarming thousand — overwhelmingly male — funnels into the bridge and below a sign reading “Feliz Viaje” (bon voyage) attempt to physically overrun security personnel and break into the U.S.

The personnel to mob would crush and stomp: Border Patrol agents, local and state police — blue-collar American citizens with badges suddenly outnumbered 10 to one and defending the U.S. from invasion.

A justified question: If the American security personnel under human wave assault had fired a shot, would President Joe Biden have called them bigoted “racistracistracists”?

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

Florida Protects Minors from Gender Reassignment Medical Procedures And the Left descends into TOTAL MELTDOWN. by Joseph Klein

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/florida-protects-minors-from-gender-reassignment-medical-procedures/

The Florida Board of Medicine has put into effect a new rule prohibiting the use of puberty blockers, hormone therapies, or gender reassignment surgeries for minors under the age of 18 who say they want to change their gender identities. Trans activists and their supporters inside and outside of the medical field describe such transgender medical procedures as part of “gender-affirming care.”

Florida lawmakers are considering legislation that would codify these bans into law and make it a felony to provide any such so-called “gender-affirming” medical care to minors before their eighteenth birthday.

Left-wing progressives are in an uproar. Florida’s equivalent of New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democratic State Rep. Anna Eskamani, accused Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis of “erasing our trans babies” at a boisterous rally in Florida’s Capitol protesting the bans. “We are facing a governor who wants to commit genocide on trans people,” she said.

These are the words of an uncompromising pro-abortionist.

The transgender ideologues’ hysteria extends to the Biden administration.

“This is the first time I have seen a medical board weaponized against medical providers that are providing evidence-based, standard of care treatment,” said President Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services’ Assistant Secretary Rachel Levine, who is transgender.

Rachel Levine appeared recently at Connecticut Children’s Hospital, praising medical procedures for changing children’s gender and declaring that such medical procedures have the “highest support” of the Biden administration. “President Biden supports you. I as the Assistant Secretary for Health will support you and I talk about this topic, everywhere I go, to get the word out,” Levine said.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Another Golan Expedition for Convicted US Member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad Hatem Fariz and friends travel around Israel with impunity – while Israel is under threat from PIJ. March 21, 2023 by Joe Kaufman

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.frontpagemag.com/another-golan-expedition-for-convicted-us-member-of-palestinian-islamic-jihad/

Over the last few years, Hatem Fariz has been spending time in Israel – a lot of time. He did not always have that opportunity. Following his 2003 arrest and, later, his conviction for material support of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Fariz spent several years in jail, unable to travel, let alone overseas to Israel, the nation he and his co-conspirators allegedly sought to destroy. But Israel, it seems, has a serious gap in her security, and because of this, Fariz and his associates have been permitted to roam the countryside, including at times when Israel faces serious threats from PIJ. Last month was one of those times, as Fariz toured Israel’s Golan Heights.

Fariz had been part of a PIJ network run out of the Tampa Bay area of Florida, in the city of Temple Terrace. The ringleader of the network, fellow terror convict Sami al-Arian, was involved in PIJ’s establishment overseas and looked to install a PIJ hub within America. He did so by founding a mosque, a children’s school, a think tank, and a charity, all linked to PIJ. That mosque, Masjid Al-Qassam, a.k.a. the Islamic Community of Tampa (ICT), would be led by Fariz, following Fariz’s release from prison, and he continues to direct it.

Via Al-Qassam, Fariz manages a travel company, the Adam Travel Tampa Hajj Group, which he uses to bring others to the Middle East. While Adam Travel advertises that its trips are for visiting religious-oriented sites in Saudi Arabia, Fariz’s time is overwhelmingly spent trekking through various locations within Israel.

Many of the people Fariz takes with him on these trips have like feelings towards Israel and Jews in general. They post videos on social media of Israelis being blown up during ambushes and videos of successful rocket attacks on Israeli civilian structures. They post memorials for their favorite dead leaders from Hamas and PIJ. They call on “Allah” to “take revenge on the Jews.”

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden Administration Pushing Arabs Towards Iran by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19492/biden-pushing-arabs-towards-iran

Today, China is victorious by sponsoring the historic agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran, while the US has a new president who comes to destroy agreements reached by his predecessor, and even brags about it during his election campaign and his presidency.” — Saeed Al-Mryti, Saudi political activist, Twitter, March 14, 2023.

“[N]o matter how hard analysts try to beautify the situation for US policy, what Saudi Arabia has done today is a direct and successful blow to the Biden administration and its policy in the Middle East.” — Jubran Al-Khoury, Lebanese political analyst, annahar.com, March 12, 2023.

It is thus no surprise that Iran and its terror proxies – Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah – are expressing profound satisfaction over the Saudi-Iranian agreement. In their eyes, the agreement is an indication of the growing weakness of the US and the failed policy of the Biden administration in the Middle East. Thanks to the US administration’s fragility, the Iranian-led axis of evil has been significantly emboldened as America’s erstwhile Arab allies are rushing towards the open arms of the mullahs in Tehran.

Many Arabs and Muslims are celebrating the Saudi-Iranian agreement to restore diplomatic relations as a devastating blow to the Biden Administration, a victory for Iran and China, and a sign of Washington’s failed policies in the Middle East.

According to these Arabs and Muslims, the Saudi-Iranian pact is the direct result of the Biden Administration’s antagonism towards America’s traditional Arab allies, especially Saudi Arabia, and the American policy of appeasement towards the mullahs in Iran.

Lebanese-born American scholar Walid Phares wrote that in the past two years he has been issuing warnings that the Biden administration’s dealings with the Arab allies “were neither at the required level nor with the necessary depth.”

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Great Abdication In California, public officials now favor the lawless and deviant over the law-abiding and hardworking. Heather Mac Donald

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://www.city-journal.org/the-great-abdication-of-california

On August 15, 2022, an intersection in South Central Los Angeles fell prey to a particularly Southern Californian form of anarchy. Parked vehicles blocked the crossroad to through traffic, while inside the blockade, cars sped in tight circles, their burning tires emitting acrid smoke. Just after midnight, spectators to this “street takeover” stormed into a nearby 7-Eleven. They grabbed whatever lay closest to hand—candy, soft drinks, chips—jumped over the payment counter to get at cigarettes and lottery tickets, and pelted the lone salesclerk, cowering underneath the counter, with bananas and other items. The vandals live-streamed the mayhem from their smartphones. An hour earlier, a teenager had been fatally shot during a nearby street takeover.

Mass looting, in the post–George Floyd era, is hardly confined to California, but the sense of entitlement manifest in August’s double whammy of road and retail lawlessness is the signal feature of the state’s twin plagues of crime and vagrancy. California is being brought down by what one can call the Great Abdication. The law-abiding and the hardworking are no longer the main concern of public officials; instead, the interests of the lawless and the deviant prevail. Policy revolves around their alleged needs, not the needs of those whom they assault and encumber. The result of the Great Abdication has been brazen violence and streets mired in squalor.

You know street crime is bad when even rap celebrities complain about it. “Where I’m from, we like sneaky criminals. In L.A. . . . they bold!” opined Philadelphia rapper PnB Rock during a September 2, 2022, podcast. The day before, fellow rapper Wakko the Kid had been shot outside his North Hollywood house. The Kid had just returned home from a recording session when two men exited a parked car, yanked off his $80,000 necklace, and pumped 16 bullets into him and his audio engineer (both men survived). In February 2020, Brooklyn rapper Pop Smoke had been killed during a home invasion in the Hollywood Hills.

PnB Rock’s interlocutor on the podcast, DJ Akademiks, agreed with PnB’s assessment of the city’s robbers. “L.A.’s spooky, man,” Akademiks said. “I’m seeing mad videos, like they don’t even do it at night. . . . Broad daylight, that’s when they really do it.” A little over a week later, PnB Rock would himself be killed during a broad-daylight robbery at Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles in South Central Los Angeles. The assailant demanded PnB’s jewelry, fatally shot him when he resisted, and then grabbed his necklace anyway.

These rap stars had posted their diamond bling, luxury cars, and wads of cash on social media, often with location tags on the live photos. But less publicity-hungry residents have found themselves targeted as well, marked in upscale restaurants and bars and followed home, where they are assaulted exiting their cars.

EDUCATION, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Yale Law School—EXPOSED By J. Christian Adams

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2023/03/20/do-they-teach-law-at-yale-anymore-part-one-of-a-series-n1679841

Note: This is the first in a ten-part series at PJ Media examining what our nation’s top ten law schools are teaching. Hans von Spakovsky and I will undertake a deep dive into what is being taught in America’s top ten-ranked law schools.

Elite law schools have become training academies not so much for effective and competent lawyers, but instead for militant transformational radicals with a law degree.

Mainstream consumers of legal services, otherwise known as paying clients, would be shocked by the evolution that has taken place in the nation’s elite law schools. Instead of producing lawyers capable of helping clients, these schools now turn out leftist activists who are most competent at using transformational designs to upend centuries of legal traditions and institutions, including, ultimately, the U.S. Constitution itself.

This problem isn’t new. But the shocking behavior at Stanford by rude, belligerent proto-totalitarian students shouting down a federal judge laid bare this rancid evolution for everyone to see.

The next generation of lawyers at these schools isn’t focused on learning contracts, torts, civil procedure, and evidence as much as they are learning how to destroy treasured American institutions such as tolerance, liberty, and free speech.

This is important. Too many Americans still think a law degree from Harvard means that the graduating lawyer is competent to practice law. The opposite is becoming more true.

Harvard, Yale, and the elite law schools are graduating increasing percentages of incompetent lawyers, at least when it comes to what lawyers have long done: practice law.

P.C.-CULTURE Comments turned off

A couple of National Hockey League players have refused to be bullied into wearing pride jerseys during pregame warmups and much of the response has been madness – and worse. It’s another sign that Western culture is in a steep decline.

Posted By on March 21st, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/03/21/the-sweater/

In 1980’s “The Sweater,” an animated short that gets its title from the traditional term for a hockey jersey in Canada, a boy in Quebec accidentally receives a Toronto Maple Leafs jersey rather than the Montreal Canadiens No. 9 Maurice Richard jersey that his mother had ordered, and the jersey all his friends wear. As a Quebecois, he is humiliated by the Toronto jersey and benched by his coach. The peer pressure he feels to fit in is enormous.

Now in the 2020s, the pressure from radical activists and the corporate cowards who take a knee to them at every opportunity is on players to wear jerseys during warmups that celebrate the ​​LGBTQIA+ community.

But even in 2023, when so many among us are either part of the social bullying culture or so fearful of it that we’ve surrendered to it, there are still men of strength and principle. On Jan. 17, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov declined to wear a pride jersey in warmups, citing his Christian (Russian Orthodox) beliefs. So he sat in the locker room, banished, while his teammates took their pre-game skate.

“I respect everybody, and I respect everybody’s choices,” Provorov said after the game. “My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”

He mistreated no one yet he was viciously maligned by those who self-identify as inclusive, tolerant, and righteously fair.

However, within days, No. 9 Provorov game replica sweaters were selling out on the NHL Shop and at Fanatics, indicating that despite the hatred that was heaped on him – shameful hockey media hack E.J. Hradek suggested that Provorov return to Europe and “maybe get involved” in Russia’s war in Ukraine, while sports writer Cyd Zeigler huffed that “Proporov chose to embrace prejudice” – not just a few appreciated his position.