ISRAEL Comments turned off

EU Should Condemn Iran, Not Israel, for West Bank Violence by Con Coughlin

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/20915/eu-should-condemn-iran-not-israel

[T]he fact that the EU’s foreign policy chief [Josep Borrell] has even suggested imposing punitive measures against Israel, a country smaller than the state of New Jersey, when it is involved in a desperate fight defending itself against the world’s largest sponsor of state terrorism, Iran, and its proxy terrorist groups — Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Iraqi militias, as well as Iran’s powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — on at least seven fronts, shows a woeful lack of understanding of the conflict.

Borrell’s constant articulation of anti-Israeli views also raises questions about his suitability to continue holding such an important position in the EU. Earlier this year, he launched a blistering attack against the “Israeli occupation authorities” for imposing punitive measures against an openly genocidal Palestinian Authority (PA).

Even so, Borrell’s stance reflects the deep anti-Israel sentiment that exists within the EU bureaucracy… After Hamas terrorists murdered more than 1,200 Israelis, rather than receiving support for her gesture of solidarity by visiting Israel, during which [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen went to the Kfar Aza kibbutz (where at least 52 of 700 residents were murdered), she faced a barrage of criticism from EU insiders, with 800 EU staffers writing an official letter of complaint criticising her “uncontrolled” support of Israel.

[UN Secretary-General Antonio] Guterres’s willingness to focus his criticism on Israel, and not the Iranian-backed terrorists, is yet another example of the UN’s institutional anti-Israel bias. If the UN has any genuine interest in taking a balanced approach to the violence in the West Bank, then, instead of focusing its criticism exclusively on Israel, it would call on Iran to cease backing the network of terrorist groups it backs in the region, whose main goal is the destruction of Israel on the way to destroying the United States — the main representative of the West.

The failure of international bodies such as the EU and the UN to demonstrate any pretence of balance when intervening on vital international security issues such as the Iranian-sponsored conflicts taking place in Gaza, the West Bank and southern Lebanon not only makes a mockery of their claim to be independent arbiters on the issue. It also runs the risk of making them utterly irrelevant, to the extent that they suffer the same fate as the League of Nations in the 1930s, whose inability to confront fascism condemned it to abject failure.

The European Union’s dangerous bias on the Gaza conflict, where it constantly backs Iranian-backed terrorist groups at the expense of a democracy, Israel, has been exposed yet again by the latest anti-Israel stance adopted by Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign minister.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

MARK STEYN DRIFTING TO ARMAGEDDON

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.steynonline.com/14610/drifting-to-armageddon

Actually, it turns out I’ve gone full-on Bidenist, literally more submissive to his Delaware beach house than the Delaware beach house itself. As widely reported in Britain and Europe, “there is an American veto on Ukrainian use of Storm Shadow missiles to attack targets at depth in Russia, even though that will materially assist Ukraine.”

So what is still nominally the “Biden” Administration is restraining London and Paris from letting the Ukrainians strike Russia with their UK-provided Strike Shadows and French-provided SCALP missiles. The “Biden” Administration evidently feels nuclear Armageddon might not be helpful in, say, the tighter swing states such as Pennsylvania or Michigan, so would rather the next world war be postponed if possible until, oh, mid-November at the earliest.

Nevertheless, yesterday, Monday, a Ukrainian drone strike hit an oil refinery in south-eastern Moscow. The same day Polish aircraft were scrambled, and the country’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, told The Financial Times that “Poland has ‘duty’ to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine”.

It’s difficult to have a one-sided proxy war. At some point, the logic of the US, UK, France and Germany gifting Kiev with an arsenal they could never have accumulated on their own and then permitting Zelenskyy to lob his freebies deep into Russia will lead the Russkies to conclude that a state of war exists between them and Nato. What then? From The Guardian:

Russia will make changes to its doctrine on the use of nuclear weapons in response to what it regards as western escalation in the war in Ukraine, state media quoted deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov as saying on Sunday.

The west’s insouciance – indeed, total indifference – to “escalation” with a country that has more nukes than anybody else on the planet stands in marked contrast to its urge to de-escalate certain other conflicts. Headline from the BBC:

Harris tells Netanyahu ‘it is time’ to end war in Gaza

ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

David Lammy’s shameful appeasement of Hamas Punishing Israel with a partial arms embargo will embolden Islamofascists everywhere. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/03/david-lammys-shameful-appeasement-of-hamas/

Bereft of vision, the modern politician is obsessed with ‘optics’. Which makes foreign secretary David Lammy’s announcement this week that the UK will be suspending some arms exports to Israel all the more surreal. The optics of withholding weapons from the Jewish State the day after we discovered that its enemy is so ruthless it will happily murder young Jews in cold blood are atrocious. Did not one functionary in the Foreign Office think to raise his or her hand and say: ‘Sir, should we at least wait until the bodies of those six Israeli hostages are cold before we shame and punish the nation they came from?’

This goes way beyond optics, of course. It is more than a failure of spin. It is a failure – a colossal, unforgivable one – of morality. As the bodies of the six slain Jews found in one of Hamas’s hellish lairs in Rafah were being transported back to a grief-stricken Israel, our government took action not against the Islamist extremists who carried out this unutterable atrocity, but against the nation that suffered it. Mere hours after the discovery of an act of fascistic savagery, our government handed a propaganda victory to the fascists by dragging Israel’s name through the mud. What were they thinking? Shameful doesn’t cover it.

Mr Lammy has said around 10 per cent of arms sales to Israel will be suspended. Thirty out of 350 arms-exports licences will be cancelled, primarily affecting parts for fighter jets, helicopters and drones. The reason for this smug, haughty smackdown of the Jewish State? Because there’s a ‘clear risk’, said Lammy, that such equipment will be used to ‘commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law’. Big talk from a politician who noisily supported the West’s imperial bombardment of Iraq that led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians and the widescale torture and rape of prisoners.

Many are damning Lammy’s partial embargo as gesture politics. ‘What is the point?’, headlines wonder. Denying Israel a few parts for planes won’t make much difference, some moan. For the frothing Israelophobes of the iffy left, nothing less than a complete arms embargo will do. They want not one gun to go to crazy Israel. If only there was a word to describe people who agitate morning, noon and night for the disarming of a Jewish nation that recently suffered the worst act of anti-Semitic violence since the Holocaust.

ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Tal Fortgang Destined to Fail Northwestern’s initiative to combat anti-Semitism does not respond to student protesters’ shallow worldview.

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/northwestern-university-initiative-to-combat-anti-semitism-destined-to-fail

Even among the jarring snapshots that emerged from this spring’s anti-Israel encampments, imagery from Northwestern University’s “Liberated Zone” was particularly vile. In addition to the usual signs calling for the elimination of Israel, the campus was defaced with a depiction of a crossed-out Star of David—a symbol not just of Israel, but of the Jewish people. Perhaps most horrifying was a sign featuring Northwestern’s Jewish president, Michael Schill, caricatured with horns and blood dripping from his face, with a dialogue bubble reading, “I [heart] genocide.”

At the time, Schill indicated that Northwestern would take the blatant anti-Semitism seriously. “[W]hen I see a Star of David with an X on it, when I see a picture of me with horns or when I hear that one of our students has been called a ‘dirty Jew,’ there is no ambiguity,” he said. “This needs to be condemned by all of us, and that starts with me.” 

Nothing more than that condemnation materialized. Northwestern did not punish any student demonstrators. In fact, the administration negotiated an end to the encampment by acquiescing to several of the group’s demands. Schill had formed an Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate in November 2023, but it disbanded in May after failing to find consensus on appropriate language to address festering Jew-hatred.

The kicker came last week, when Northwestern took a step likely to be emulated by other universities seeking to fend off lawsuits alleging violations of Jewish students’ civil rights. Schill announced that Northwestern would provide “expanded resources” and “educational opportunities” to combat “antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate.” At the heart of the plan: “Mandatory trainings on antisemitism and other forms of hate will be used in September at incoming student orientation and over the Fall Quarter for all returning students.” Naturally, there will also be “an integration of antisemitism and Islamophobia into the work of our Institutional Diversity and Inclusion Office, including a new religious literacy program.”

ELECTIONS Comments turned off

Daniel J. Flynn Kennedys Gonna Kennedy In endorsing Donald Trump, RFK, Jr., is following a long family tradition of opposing Democrats when their disgust with the party overwhelms their loyalty to it.

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-historical-precedent-behind-rfk-jrs-trump-endorsement

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., in suspending his presidential campaign as his family members long desired, nevertheless displeased those sharing his last name by endorsing Donald Trump in the process. “It is worse than disappointment,” Max Kennedy wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “We are in mourning.”

“Our brother Bobby’s decision to endorse Trump today is a betrayal of the values that our father and our family hold most dear,” a statement joined by five other Kennedy siblings read. “It is a sad ending to a sad story.”

Several of the Kennedy siblings, including former congressman Joseph and current journalist Douglas, did not attach their names to the statement.

“Personally,” reacted younger sister Kerry, “I completely disavow and separate and disassociate myself from my brother, Bobby Kennedy, and his flagrant and inexplicable effort to desecrate and trample and set fire to daddy’s memory.”

Our memories of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr., remain uncorrupted by facts. Like his brother John and so many others cut down in the prime of life, he appears to us as less a person than projection. In the case of Democrats, including many of his children, this amounts to a depiction of him as a loyal servant of the party. Falling for this seduction makes for an imaginary Bobby Kennedy, who always and everywhere acts to please the present. Reality, so often the imagination’s bête noire, objects.

Both Robert Kennedys, in fact, not only opposed Democrats in the White House when their disgust with party overwhelmed their loyalty to it but also voted Republican. Here the factual past overrules a present in search of not truth but affirmation. Who, really, “tramples” the memory of Robert F. Kennedy, Sr.?

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Take That! Biden-Harris DOJ Files Complaint against Hamas Mass Murderers Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/take-that-biden-harris-doj-files-complaint-against-hamas-mass-murderers/

More a campaign document than a charging instrument . . . and a fundamentally unserious one.

Could it be more fitting that, in the criminal complaint against Hamas leaders unsealed in Manhattan federal court today, the lead defendant charged by the Justice Department is Ismael Haniyeh. Yes, if you were wondering, that would be the Ismael Haniyeh who was killed during a daring Israeli Defense Forces operation in Tehran about five weeks ago (on July 31).

If there was any doubt about it, “September 10 counterterrorism” is back.

The expression refers to the eight years between the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center and the destruction of that complex in the jihadist atrocities that killed nearly 3,000 Americans on September 11, 2001. That is the period, spanning the Clinton administration, when our government decided to regard jihadist terrorism as a law-enforcement problem to be addressed foremost by courtroom prosecutions.

Merrick Garland, now the Biden-Harris administration attorney general, was a top lawyer in the Clinton Justice Department. The Clinton strategy was not the Justice Department’s doing; America’s counterterrorism strategy is the president’s call. But having been there at the time, I can attest that DOJ was the strategy’s most enthusiastic advocate.

I can further attest that the strategy was a national-security train wreck.

It makes sense, it should be needless to say, to conduct courtroom prosecutions of terrorists who are captured trying to carry out attacks in the United States during ostensible peacetime. There is an argument (I don’t subscribe to it, but it is commonly held nonetheless) that such prosecutions are required by the Constitution, especially if some of the terrorists happen to be American citizens (as was not uncommon in the Clinton-era terrorism prosecutions). It makes even more sense to prosecute material supporters of terrorism in order to choke off the funding and recruitment of foreign terrorist organizations — a significant improvement in American counterterrorism law enacted in the mid Nineties.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Stefanik Urges Probe into Hochul after Feds Bring Chinese Foreign-Agent Charges against Former Staffer

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/stefanik-urges-probe-into-hochul-after-feds-bring-chinese-foreign-agent-charges-against-former-staffer/?utm_

Representative Elise Stefanik called for a probe into New York governor Kathy Hochul and her administration after the Justice Department indicted the governor’s former deputy chief of staff on Tuesday for allegedly working as an agent of the Chinese government and the Chinese Communist Party.

Linda Sun, a former staffer for Hochul and former governor Andrew Cuomo, was arrested today with her husband, Chris Hu. The charges relate to her work as an unregistered foreign agent for the Chinese government and money-laundering that Hu allegedly engaged in to hide the proceeds of Sun’s efforts.

Until today’s arrests, few members of Congress had commented on some New York government officials’ apparent ties to China’s consulate general in Manhattan and pro-Beijing community organizations. Stefanik (R., N.Y.) is the first to call for an investigation into Hochul and her administration.

“Failed Far Left Democrat Kathy Hochul allowed Communist Chinese spy Linda Sun unfettered access to the highest levels of New York State government,” Stefanik said in a statement to National Review this afternoon.

“From allowing Chinese police stations, to maintaining a sister city partnership between NYC and Beijing, this is another example of New York Democrats facilitating the influence campaign of Communist China. I am calling for a complete investigation into Kathy Hochul and her administration so that hardworking New York taxpayers receive the transparency we deserve.”

EDUCATION Comments turned off

One-Third of K-12 Students Behind Grade Level By Eric Lendrum

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/09/03/one-third-of-k-12-students-behind-grade-level/

A recent study shows that roughly one-third of American K-12 students in the 2023-2024 academic school year are behind their grade level in a variety of subjects.

As Axios reports, the data was compiled by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through their “School Pulse Panel,” a survey of almost 4,000 grade schools that are considered nationally representative. The data from June of 2024, taken from the responses of 1,651 schools, shows that there has been virtually no change from the 2021-2022 school year, when 33% of students were learning at a level that was below their actual grade.

The study also examined the differences based on geographic region and locality, discovering that schools in the Western United States are performing worse than any other area of the country, with about 40% of students behind their grade level. When comparing urban areas and rural areas, the study found that 38% of students in city schools are behind their grade level, compared to 31% of students in suburban schools.

These findings further confirm that the long-term effects of the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdowns are continuing to be felt today, with the biggest impact being on American education. The quality of schooling in America plummeted sharply while schools were shut down, with virtually no improvement after the implementation of “remote learning” and “hybrid” schooling that combined partial in-person education with continued remote learning. Even after returning to full in-person schooling, many students have not recovered to pre-pandemic levels in their education.

Some of the strategies being employed by schools to combat this decline include hiring even more teachers, with 55% of schools choosing this strategy due to it being either “very” or “extremely effective.” Another 35% of schools are also spending more time focusing on target areas, while 18% are engaging in family outreach.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The Evil of Cowardice Ben Shapiro

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://pjmedia.com/benshapiro/2024/09/04/the-evil-of-cowardice-n4932220

On Saturday night, the Israeli military made a macabre and horrifying discovery: the slain bodies of six hostages taken by Hamas, including American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. All six hostages had been shot point-blank in the head some 48-72 hours prior, presumably upon the approach of IDF soldiers; Hamas terrorists chose to murder the hostages they had held in terror tunnels for over 300 days rather than risk their liberation.

The discovery sent the entire nation of Israel into mourning. On Oct. 7, Israelis were forced to remember that the enemy they face is not merely violent, but purely evil. In subsequent months, with the extraordinary progress of the IDF in Gaza over the protestations of the Biden administration, Hamas’ evils were relegated once more to the realm of military conflict. But the very thought of these victims — Goldberg-Polin, 23; Eden Yerushalmi, 24; Ori Danino, 25; Alex Lobanov, 32; Carmel Gat, 40; and Almog Sarusi, 27 — suffering without sunlight, food or water for nearly a year, all to be shot to death within hours of their possible freedom, reopened all the wounds of Oct. 7.

It turned out that all the diplomatic overtures made by America — overtures largely accepted by the supposedly intransigent administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — meant nothing. As Netanyahu pointed out, “whoever murders hostages does not want a deal.” That was predictable enough, given the fact that Hamas’ chief goal is its own survival — a goal directly at odds with Israel’s necessary goal of extirpating Hamas. That is why Hamas has consistently declared for months that there would be no hostage release without a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, along with the discharge of hundreds of convicted terrorists and murderers. Anything less than survival for Hamas is a loss. Dead Palestinians help Hamas achieve its goal of pressuring Israel; dead hostages help Hamas achieve its goal of pressuring Israel.

ELECTIONS, MEDIA Comments turned off

Here’s the Real Reason Harris Won’t Hold News Conferences Mark Tapscott

Posted By on September 4th, 2024

https://pjmedia.com/marktapscott/2024/09/03/is-this-the-real-reason-harris-avoids-the-media-n4932193

It’s going on 45 days since Vice President Kamala Harris last held a news conference with journalists, and speculation is rampant about how much longer she will go before convening another such gathering.

Here’s my suggestion: She won’t.

Or if she ever does, such gatherings will be few and far between.

Harris watched President Joe Biden all but ignore the White House press corps for more than three years. When he did deign to stand in front of the journalists to take a series of well-scripted questions, doing so invariably drew attention to his waning cognitive abilities.

But here’s the overlooked fact that is even more significant than the spotlight that shone on Biden’s decline during news conferences: rarely was he ever asked a challenging question by any of the assembled journalists other than Fox News’ Peter Doocy. And even rarer were the tough follow-ups that are essential to getting some semblance of the truth out of most politicians. More often, the questions have tended to be softballs that suggest most of the journalists present are sympathetic to the Biden-Harris administration.

What’s the lesson here that Harris and Democrats are likely drawing? Ignoring the national media is a no-downside proposition for them because, for the most part, the Mainstream Media is in their pockets.