Democrats recalibrate their resistance to Trump Hannah Trudo

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5039827-democratic-party-trump-resistance/

Democrats are not planning an all-hands resistance to President-elect Trump.

At least not in 2016 style, when lawmakers, activists, volunteers and millions of angry voters mounted a party-wide effort to curb his newfound influence in Washington.

Where so much was once unprecedented, Trump is now familiar. Ahead of January 2025, the lack of a unified Democratic rebuttal to his second term is the latest sign that the party’s just beginning to soul search, trying to figure out what went wrong before banding together to bash the GOP.

“The one thing we seem to know is the strategy of being an anti-Trump party didn’t work any better than when we became a primarily anti-Bush party,” said Max Burns, a Democratic commentator. “In that transformation, we seem to have become unclear about what our actual pro-Democrat message is.”

“It’s more like Republicans post-1960 than anything,” he said, “where the loss led to a real round of questioning about what our values are and what our strategy is.”

On the one hand, the month-and-a-half postelection period can seem like decades, as D.C.’s political class awaits the unpredictable transition of power. On the other, it’s just a blip in what many expect to be a long undertaking to redefine the Democratic Party beyond Trump’s shadow. 

Americans Unhappy With ‘Woke’ DEI World In Business, Academia And Military: I&I/TIPP Poll Terry Jones

https://issuesinsights.com/2024/12/16/americans-unhappy-with-woke-dei-world-in-business-academia-and-military-ii-tipp-poll/

Responding to a powerful backlash from the public, big companies and universities are having second thoughts about their adoption of sweeping “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs. Many Americans complain such programs make America more divided, not less, the latest I&I/TIPP Poll shows.

A noticeable rise in the number of companies and educational institutions throttling back their DEI programs suggests that public pressure is having an impact, the national online I&I/TIPP Poll of 1,411 adults taken from Nov. 27-29 found. The poll has a margin of error of +/-2.6 percentage points.

I&I/TIPP asked this question: “A number of universities and major corporations have announced plans to cut their ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ programs in the coming years. To what degree do you support or oppose doing this?”

Possible responses were “support strongly,” “support somewhat,” “oppose strongly,” “oppose somewhat,” and “not sure.”

Overall, a plurality of 44% of those who answered the poll said they either supported it strongly (21%) or somewhat (23%), while 40% opposed it either strongly (22%) or somewhat (18%). A significant 15% said they weren’t sure.

The question shows some interesting schisms over DEI within the American electorate.

Israel’s ‘golden opportunity’ to wean itself off US military aid   By David Isaac

https://www.jns.org/israels-golden-opportunity-to-wean-itself-off-us-military-aid/

“The advantages of independence clearly outweigh the benefits of continuing the status quo,” Misgav Institute fellow Raphael BenLevi tells JNS.

On the one hand, the Ministry of Defense has made unprecedented purchases—more than $10 billion during 14 months of war—but on the other, Washington has leveraged that dependence to induce Israel to make decisions counter to its interests.

U.S. governments have tried to leverage weapons supply before, according to Raphael BenLevi of the Misgav Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy, a Jerusalem-based think tank. However, he tells JNS, “it’s been acute and extreme in the past year.”

Recent events have bolstered the argument of those who say that Israel’s long-term interests are not served by the current aid framework.

Under the U.S. Foreign Military Financing program, Israel receives about $3.3 billion in aid each year, provided as grants. Israel must use those funds to purchase American military equipment and services. Israel also receives $500 million annually for cooperative programs for missile defense.

“We’ve dug ourselves into this dependency. It’s like welfare. People on welfare get used to having a certain amount of external aid. A day comes when they have to rearrange their affairs in order to manage without it,” says BenLevi.

In September, BenLevi published a position paper for Misgav titled “The future of American military aid to Israel,” detailing the reasons for rethinking that assistance. There is an “unhealthy dynamic,” in which the U.S. gives and Israel takes, he argues, leaving Israel “beholden.”

“At the strategic level, the advantages of independence and moving to a more reciprocal relationship with Washington clearly outweigh the benefits of continuing the status quo of dependence and receiving aid, which are mainly on the immediate economic level,” he writes.

First Order of Business: Permanently Neutralize Iran’s Nuclear Threat, but for Long-Term Stability Do Not Stop with That by Majid Rafizadeh

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21207/neutralize-iran-nuclear-threat

The regime’s primary goal is, first, to stay in power; second, to acquire nuclear weapons. No amount of diplomatic engagement will deter it from pursuing these objectives. Any agreement would merely buy more time for Iran to refine its nuclear technologies while easing international pressure. The regime’s strategy is to outlast all sanctions and inspections, while continuing its covert nuclear activities, repressing it citizens, and planning its future expansion.

The international community would do the world a favor by stopping Iran from reaching both goals. If not, there will be no chance of durable stability in the Middle East. It is as simple as that.

The idea of negotiating a “deal” to limit, control or “verify” Iran’s nuclear activities has proven to be both ineffective and dangerous…. Iran has repeatedly violated international agreements and deceived global watchdogs. It seems clear that any new deal would likely meet the same fate. Trusting such a regime to honor its commitments is like trusting the cat to guard the cream.

Only by neutralizing the entire Iranian threat will the world be able to work toward a future of stability, prosperity and peace.

The highest priority in addressing the upheavals in the Middle East is to eliminate — completely — Iran’s nuclear threat.

Iran is reportedly close to being a nuclear-armed state. Such a development would have catastrophic consequences for the region as well as for global stability. Acquiring nuclear weapons would embolden Iran’s regime, re-strengthen its proxies, and enable it to resume escalating its terror campaigns across the region.

Once Iran crosses the nuclear threshold, it will become virtually impossible to contain or neutralize its aggression – presumably the reason the regime is so eager to have nuclear weapons in the first place. The risk of retaliation by nuclear strikes would deter even the most powerful nations from military intervention. An Iran with nuclear weapons would fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East and beyond.

The unhinged crusade to find Israel guilty of genocide Ireland wants to change the definition of genocide in order to find the Jewish State guilty of it. Brendan O’Neill

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/13/the-unhinged-crusade-to-find-israel-guilty-of-genocide/

It’s not often I feel ashamed to be Irish. But today I do. For the Irish government is plotting something so slippery it boggles the mind. It says it will intervene in South Africa’s cranky, failing legal case against Israel and call for a ‘broader’ definition of genocide. It is worried that a ‘narrow interpretation of what constitutes genocide’ is letting Israel get away with murder. Strip away the legalese, prick the Dublin elite’s outsized view of itself as the plucky saviour of Palestine, and what we have here is a government calling for the laws of war to be tweaked in order that the world’s only Jewish nation might finally get its comeuppance.

It was Micheál Martin, Ireland’s Tánaiste (deputy prime minister), who unveiled the ruse to stitch up Israel by redefining the word ‘genocide’. Ireland, he said, will file an intervention at the International Court of Justice in the Hague later this month to shake up South Africa’s ‘case against Israel under the Genocide Convention’. We will ask, he said, that the ICJ ‘broaden its interpretation of what constitutes the commission of a genocide’. Right now, he moaned, a ‘very narrow interpretation’ holds sway and this is effectively granting ‘immunity’ to murderous states like Israel. Shorter version: Can’t prove Israel is committing genocide? No problem, just change the meaning of genocide!

The brazenness of Ireland’s meddling, the cynicism of it, is astonishing. Under the Genocide Convention, genocide is defined as acts of mass killing or destruction that are committed with the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group’. The reason South Africa’s case against Israel is stalling is because there is no proof of ‘genocidal intent’ on Israel’s part. The only thing Israel is ‘intent’ on destroying is Hamas – not a ‘racial group’ but an army of anti-Semites that raped and murdered more than a thousand Jews on 7 October and which longs to rape and murder more. Those of us who have not partaken of the Kool-Aid of Israelophobia know this – that Israel’s ‘intent’ is to defeat a foe, not erase a people.

An Arab-American Zionist congressman to watch By Ronn Torossian

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/12/an_arab_american_zionist_congressman_to_watch.html

Among the many new elected officials coming to Washington, D.C. is a cadre of exciting new pro-Israel representatives.

Along with the Jewish community, the United States is facing a challenge from the jihadis and those devoted to destroying the American way of life. Jews and non-Jews must rise up and fight back.

Among the many new elected officials coming to Washington, D.C. is a cadre of exciting new pro-Israel representatives. Abe Hamadeh is a 33-year-old incoming Arizona Arab American Republican congressman known for his advocacy of conservative values and his strong stance on issues, including law enforcement and border security. Hamadeh won Donald Trump’s endorsement and calls himself a common-sense politician. 

He is the youngest son of Syrian immigrants, and he grew up in a mixed-faith Arab-Druze household. As he has grown up, he started to “understand how the world actually works.” The first “inflection point” on Israel was the “Arab Spring” that began in 2010. Syria, where both his parents immigrated from, erupted in civil war, and Israel emerged as the “good neighbor.”

As he said, “My family is Syrian, and I remember that during the Syrian civil war, that Israel was actually having people who were injured come into the hospitals in Israel. So all this humanitarian aid was actually being done by the Israelis, and not the others in the Arab World… That was the first instance of me looking at the truth, and having my eyes opened. It just dismantles that whole narrative of Israel being this problem in the Middle East, when they’re actually being good neighbors.” Hamadeh says that Israel has “no bigger ally” than himself, and calls for the annihilation of terrorist groups that aim to harm it.

Syria’s New Prime Minister Makes Clear: No Reconciliation with Iran Hugh Fitzgerald

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/syrias-new-prime-minister-makes-clear-no-reconciliation-with-iran?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=syrias-new-prime-minister-makes-clear-no-reconciliation-with-iran

A rapprochement with Iran is very far from the thoughts of Syrians. Most of them recognize the vital support Iran gave to keep the mass-torturer and murderer Bashar Assad in power for nearly a quarter of a century. They will neither forget nor forgive. But there is always the possibility that some jihadist group in Syria will want, not in order to do Iran’s bidding but just because, as dutiful Muslims, they believe it their duty, to make war on the “Zionist entity.” It is this group that the IDF has to worry most about it. And since the Syrian military has dissolved into thin air, with many military sites left unguarded, the IDF knew that this was the time to remove the threat of those weapons from falling into the hands of a new, possibly hostile regime ensconced in Damascus, or from non-state actors inside Syria, by destroying as many of those weapons as possible.

Many Syrian refugees will want to return to their country. Some, however, will not want to go back, but must be forced to return, for they are an economic burden to the countries where they have been taken in. Turkey, for example, where three million Syrian refugees now live, is spending billions of dollars to maintain them. In Western Europe, countries have reacted to the overthrow of Assad by halting applications for asylum from Syria. The tyranny has ended, and the new regime promises to respect the rights of minorities, so why should people who want to leave Syria for economic reasons be allowed to claim refugee status? Furthermore, the millions of Syrians who are now in Western Europe — there are one million Syrians in Germany alone — need not be allowed to remain as “refugees,” a status to which they are no longer entitled. They should be repatriated at once. That would save those countries billions of dollars, and also reduce the Muslim presence in their lands that has proven to be so unsettling and dangerous.

When asked by that newspaper’s correspondent at Damascus about speculation that he is open to peace with Israel but not with Hezbollah, Russia, or Iran, Mr. Bashir declined to answer.

Biden-Harris regime releases national strategy to counter ‘Islamophobia’ Robert Spencer

https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/biden-harris-regime-releases-national-strategy-to-counter-islamophobia?

If this is implemented, as it very well could be, it will have a chilling effect upon any remaining honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism.

Today, the White House is releasing the first-ever U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. The Strategy was developed through a whole-of-government collaboration with a broad range of civil society partners to describe and address the bias, discrimination, and threats Muslim and Arab Americans have long faced. Over the past year, this initiative has become even more important as threats against American Muslim and Arab communities have spiked. In October 2023, six-year old Wadee Alfayoumi, an American Muslim boy of Palestinian descent, was viciously killed in his home in Illinois and over the last year there have been other grievous attacks on Muslim and Arab Americans.

The Strategy contains more than 100 Executive Branch Actions and more than 100 Calls to Action to every sector of society to prevent and address such violent attacks and to ensure that Muslim and Arab Americans enjoy the liberties and opportunities that are the bedrock of our country. With this initiative, we are creating a path for progress, in partnership with all levels of government, civil society, and the private sector, both now and over the long term.

In December 2022, when President Biden established an interagency group to increase and better coordinate efforts to counter Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and related forms of bias and discrimination, work began on this Strategy. In 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration released the first-ever National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism and announced the development of the first-ever National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. This latest strategy has four priorities:

Increase awareness of hatred against Muslims and Arabs and broaden recognition of these communities’ heritages. Muslims and Arab Americans have helped build our country since its founding, but they have also routinely experienced hate, discrimination, and bias due to baseless stereotypes, fearmongering, and prejudice. While individuals have sometimes been targeted because they are thought to be Muslim, it is also crucial to recognize that Arabs are routinely targeted simply for being who they are. Through new data collection and innovative educational efforts, the Administration is increasing awareness of these forms of hate as well of the proud heritages of Muslim and Arab Americans.

Iran Threatens Jordan, Smuggles Arms to Palestinian Terrorists in Israel by Lawrence A. Franklin

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21209/iran-threatens-jordan

Iran appears determined to destabilize Jordan, and is thus trying to drag the kingdom into its regional maelstrom by manipulating Jordanian national and terrorist substate entities to do its bidding.

The Islamist threat to the stability of the Kingdom has greatly increased with the fall of its neighbor Syria into the hands of the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a Sunni Islamist group committed to radicalizing the Levant, which includes Jordan.

Iran appears determined to destabilize Jordan, and is thus trying to drag the kingdom into its regional maelstrom by manipulating Jordanian national and terrorist substate entities to do its bidding. Pictured: A shipment of weapons smuggled into Israel from Jordan by a Bedouin Arab in December 2023, which was seized by the Israel Police. (Image source: Israel Police Spokesperson)

The Israeli Air Force (IAF), in a recent airstrike, destroyed three cross-border smuggling routes from Syria to Lebanon, which were being used by Iran to bring ship weapons to still-functioning Hezbollah terrorist cells. The Israeli strike took place just hours before a ceasefire took effect on November 26 between Israel and Hezbollah.

Iran’s special forces units, however, will no doubt continue their past efforts to smuggle arms through Jordan to Palestinian terrorist cells in Judea and Samaria (“the West Bank”). These smuggling operations will still enable terrorists there to kill Israelis and further entrench an atmosphere of fear among the hundreds of thousands of Israeli citizens who live in Judea and Samaria.

In one publicized incident, Israel’s internal security agency, the Shin Bet, seized caches of Iranian weapons being smuggled transported across Jordan’s unguarded borders. The arms included anti-tank missiles, rocket-propelled grenades, as well as Semtex and C-4 plastic explosives. The Shin Bet reported that the Special Operation Unit 4000 of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) had been tasked with that mission. The latest shipment of weapons bound for Palestinian Arabs in Judea and Samaria, intercepted and seized by Israel on November 27, 2004, was initiated from an IRGC camp in Syria.

Whatever Happened at West Point, It’s Not Good Charles Cooke

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/whatever-happened-at-west-point-its-not-good/

As I see it, there are only two explanations for West Point’s having falsely informed a journalist that Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, not only didn’t get in to West Point but never “even applied there.” Those options are that West Point lied or that West Point is incompetent. Neither is good.

I find it hard to believe that West Point would deliberately lie about such a thing. I also find it hard to believe that its staff would be so lazy or inept as to screw something like this up by mistake. This was not some random inquiry; it was connected to an extremely consequential political decision, and related to the reputation of a high-profile figure who, if he is accepted by the Senate, will soon occupy one of the most important jobs in the United States. That being so, how is it possible that West Point did not make one hundred percent sure that it was correct in its denial? Frankly, I’d be somewhat surprised if at least someone at West Point hadn’t preemptively looked into this after the nomination was made public. If I worked there, I think I would have. At the very least, a higher-up ought to have instructed all staff to make absolutely sure they were correct when dealing with inquiries of this sort.

In all likelihood, we’ll never know what happened. What we can say, however, is that this incident has probably helped Hegseth’s chances of being confirmed. One of the main criticisms that Hegseth — and Donald Trump — have advanced in recent years is that the military bureaucracy is both out of control and resistant to civilian oversight. And here we have a golden example of one of those bureaucrats appearing to lie to a journalist about a critic. Whether that lie was inadvertent or not is unclear, but, either way, it does a lot to bolster Hegseth’s case for change.