ISRAEL Comments turned off

Blame Hamas and Hezbollah for Civilian Deaths, Not Israel by Con Coughlin

Posted By on December 29th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21250/hamas-hezbollah-civilian-deaths

Whether it is using schools, hospitals and other public buildings that are supposed to be afforded immunity in conflict under international law, or simply using Palestinian civilians as human shields, Hamas terrorists have consistently jeopardised the well-being of those they purport to defend.

Another area where Hamas deliberately intensifies the suffering of Palestinian civilians as a means of pressuring Israel to end its military offensive is by denying Palestinian families access to much-needed aid supplies.

When the Gazans, for whom the aid is intended, try to approach it, there have been reports of Hamas operatives shooting them.

If the Biden administration and its allies in the media, the United Nations and the European Union really want to see a peaceful resolution of the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, then they should direct their criticism of the wilful mistreatment of civilians towards Hamas and Hezbollah, and their backers, not Israel.

Ending the malign operations of terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah is the best means of ending the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon respectively, and providing ordinary Palestinians and Lebanese with a genuine opportunity to make a better life for themselves.

If Western politicians and aid agencies want to apportion blame for the high death tolls in the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon, then they need look no further than the Iranian-backed terror groups cynically risking the lives of innocent civilians to achieve their diabolical agenda.

From the moment Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists launched their deadly attack against Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking another 250 or so hostage, Hamas terrorists have shown a wilful disregard for the lives and well-being of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran’s Race to Nuclear Bombs: The Mullahs Have Got to Go by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on December 29th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21248/iran-race-to-nuclear-bombs

In addition, now that Syria has been closed off as a supply route to rearm Hezbollah, Iran is reportedly considering weapons airlifts directly to Lebanon to resupply Hezbollah, so they both can continue their shared goal of eliminating Israel. The mullahs have got to go. So long as they remain in power, the chances for enduring peace in the region is zero.

Iran’s recent losses have left the regime clinging to the hope that nuclear weapons will enable it to secure its reign and dominate the Middle East, then the rest of the world, using Venezuela and the Caribbean to incapacitate the “Great Satan,” the United States.

Allowing Iran to succeed in these endeavors is not a great idea. Both the Iranian people and the entire region need to be freed from a future of tyranny. The future of a nuclear-armed Iran, run by mullahs on a mission, must be averted; the opportunity will not be there forever.

This year, thanks to the relentless — and often maliciously vilified — efforts of Israel standing alone, like David against Goliath, to save the West from an autocratic tyranny, the Iranian regime has at last been facing significant setbacks. Israel, unthanked, has weakened Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, diminished their influence and destabilized their plan to wipe Israel — and after that Western civilization — off the map.

Compounding this, Iran’s longstanding ally, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, collapsed, further isolating Iran’s regime. These events have collectively dealt a heavy blow to Iran’s strategic leverage and regional ambitions. Complacency, however, would be a grave mistake.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

When Will the Press Notice the African Jihad? The assault on Israel is only one dot in a wider jihadist pattern.

Posted By on December 29th, 2024

Regarding Jason Riley’s “All the News That’s Suddenly Fit to Print After the Election” (Upward Mobility, Dec. 18): It is our great hope that the news the New York Times now deems fit to print might include the continuing African jihad. Islamic terrorists in more than eight countries are doing to innocent Africans, mostly Christians, what Hamas did to Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023. Jihadists storm African villages, murder and torture villagers, rape and then kidnap young women and girls as sex slaves.

Reporting this would reveal that the assault on the Jewish state is only one dot in a wider jihadist pattern. Dare we hope that a concept that so centrally threatens progressive doctrine would appear in the Grey Lady?

Charles Jacobs and Simon Deng

African Jewish Alliance

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Iran weakest since revolution, ripe for regime change David Isaac

Posted By on December 29th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/iran-weakest-since-revolution-ripe-for-regime-change/

Its “Axis of Resistance” cracking, most recently with the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran has never been as vulnerable since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, observers tell JNS.

With Iran’s leadership facing an emboldened Israeli military, the second coming of Donald Trump, internal fissures and a crisis of confidence among its people, experts say here lies a chance for regime change.

The extent of the damage to Iran’s drive for regional domination is evidenced by the remarks of its Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who in a speech on Dec. 11 admonished supporters to “not become depressed, hopeless or heartbroken,” and on Dec. 22 denied that Iran even had proxies.

Tehran has lost Hamas and Hezbollah, its major ally, Syria, and its primary air defenses to Israeli airstrikes, making any Israeli attack potentially even more effective. Moreover, despite its wealth of energy resources, Iran is in the midst of an energy crisis.

“This is a golden opportunity,” Janatan Sayeh, a research analyst with the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), told JNS on Tuesday, outlining the possibility of a one-two punch, with the U.S. imposing economic sanctions and Israel delivering military blows.

A U.S. prepared to inflict “Trump maximum pressure 2.0” and a newly confident Israel tackling Iran militarily “puts us in a good position,” he said.

Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-educated political scientist and expert on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, agrees. “Iran is currently at its weakest point since the 1979 Islamic Revolution,” he told JNS on Tuesday. It’s “vulnerable both internally and externally.”

Bashar Assad’s fall is “a catastrophic loss for Iran’s leadership,” Rafizadeh said, not only because Syria served as a conduit for Iran’s proxies, but because the Iranian people now perceive the regime as “increasingly vulnerable, which emboldens anti-government sentiment and protests.”

ISRAEL Comments turned off

This year, Israel showed us what anti-fascism really means In 2024, the Jewish State did more to combat racial hatred than any of its preening critics in the West. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on December 27th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/27/this-year-israel-showed-us-what-anti-fascism-really-means/

In the future, when humanity comes to its senses, 2024 will be seen as a watershed year in the battle against fascism. More fascist-adjacent killers and loons were bumped off over the past 12 months than in any other year in my lifetime. From the leader of an army of anti-Semites that tells its followers to buy cheap knives and ‘cut off the heads of Jews’ (Yahya Sinwar) to the spiritual head of a self-styled ‘Party of God’ that longs to excise those ‘cancerous’ Jews from the Middle East (Hassan Nasrallah), it’s been a rough year for neo-fascist nuts. And about time, too.

2024 is the year anti-fascism grew up. For years, ‘anti-fascism’ was the weekend hobby of bored rich kids. To say the masked wimps of ‘antifa’ gave anti-fascism a bad name is an understatement. They dragged its name into the gutter. Under their black-clad purview, anti-fascism entailed little more than shouting ‘BITCH’ at women who don’t want to see dicks in their changing rooms, weeping on the campus lawn whenever Ben Shapiro showed up, and having fisticuffs with working-class people who voted for Trump. The men of the Normandy landings and the International Brigades will have turned in their graves at the sight of these toytown radicals throwing milkshakes at ‘rednecks’ and calling it anti-fascism.

Now, thankfully, anti-fascism means something again. Largely courtesy of Israel’s war on the Jew-hating belligerents at its borders, a real fight with fascism has replaced the neurotic street theatrics of the affluent activist class that falsely called itself anti-fascism. Sure, these people might have slapped Richard Spencer once, but the IDF has throttled entire movements that were founded with the expressly fascistic intention to kill Jews and erase their homeland.

This year we bid adieu to Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza; the man widely suspected of being the architect of 7 October, the worst mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. It seems likely that Mohammed Deif was also hurried off this mortal coil by the IDF. He was the leader of the al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas, which did so much of the raping and butchering on 7 October.

ELECTIONS, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Lefty Legal Experts Call on Congress to Disqualify Trump in Last Ditch Effort to Keep Him From Taking Office By Debra Heine

Posted By on December 27th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/26/lefty-legal-experts-call-on-congress-to-disqualify-trump-in-last-ditch-effort-to-keep-him-from-taking-office/

Two Democrat legal experts are calling on Congress to take immediate action to prevent President-elect Donald Trump from taking office, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Evan A. Davis, the former editor in chief of the Columbia Law Review and David M. Schulte, the former editor in chief of the Yale Law Journal, called for Trump’s disqualification in an opinion piece for The Hill, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

Davis is a New York City attorney and a former president of the New York City Bar Association. He worked on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry staff during the impeachment process against Richard Nixon.

Schulte is an investment banker and good friend of Barack Obama. He owns the oceanfront Martha’s Vineyard home where the Obama and his family used to vacation when he was in office.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment bars individuals who have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or given aid or comfort to its enemies from holding “any office, civil or military.”

In a unanimous decision last March, the Supreme Court tossed out a Colorado court decision that barred Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s Republican presidential primary ballot.  The lower court had based its decision on 14th Amendment  provision.

In their 9-0 ruling, the Supremes concluded that “states have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

MEDICINE AND HEALTH Comments turned off

The Cure for Vaccine Skepticism To restore vaccine confidence to previous levels, we must support the nominations of Kennedy, Bhattacharya, and Makary. By Martin Kulldorff

Posted By on December 27th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/27/the-cure-for-vaccine-skepticism/

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

The only way to restore public trust in vaccination – which has taken a big hit since the lies attending the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine – is to put a well-known vaccine skeptic in charge of the vaccine research agenda. The ideal person for this is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been nominated to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

At the same time, we must put rigorous scientists with a proven track record of evidence-based medicine in charge of determining the type of study designs to use. Two ideal scientists for this are Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Dr. Marty Makary, who have been nominated to lead the NIH and FDA, respectively.

Vaccines are – along with antibiotics, anesthesia, and sanitation – one of the most significant health inventions in history. First conceived in 1774 by Benjamin Jesty, a farmer in Dorsetshire, England, the smallpox vaccine alone has saved millions of lives. Operation Warp Speed, which rapidly developed the COVID vaccines, saved many older Americans. Despite this, we have seen a sharp increase in general vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine scientists and public health officials who did not conduct properly randomized trials made false claims about vaccine efficacy and safety and established vaccine mandates for people who did not need the vaccines, sowing suspicion and damaging public trust in vaccination.

What went wrong? The purpose of the COVID vaccines was to reduce mortality and hospitalization, but the randomized trials were only designed to demonstrate short-term reduction in COVID symptoms, which is not of great public health importance. Since the placebo groups were promptly vaccinated after the emergency approval, they also failed to provide reliable information about adverse reactions. Despite these flaws, it was falsely claimed that vaccine-induced immunity is superior to natural infection-acquired immunity and that the vaccines would prevent infection and transmission.

Governments and universities then mandated the vaccines for people with superior natural immunity and for young people with very low mortality risk. These mandates were not only unscientific but with a limited vaccine supply, it was unethical to vaccinate low-mortality-risk people when the vaccines were needed by older high-risk people around the world.

Since government and pharmaceutical companies lied about the COVID vaccine, are they also lying about other vaccines? Skepticism has now spread to tried-and-true vaccines that are proven to work.

And there are real, unanswered vaccine safety questions. Seminal work from Denmark has shown that vaccines can have both positive and negative non-specific effects on non-targeted diseases, and that is something that must be explored in greater depth. Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) scientists studying asthma and aluminum-containing vaccines concluded that while their “findings do not constitute strong evidence for questioning the safety of aluminum in vaccines … additional examination of this hypothesis appears warranted.”

While VSD and other scientists should continue to do observational studies, we should also conduct randomized placebo-controlled vaccine trials, as RFK has advocated. Since we have herd immunity for many diseases, such as measles, trials can be ethically conducted by randomizing the age of vaccination to, for example, one versus three years old, while spreading the trial over a large geographical area so that the unvaccinated are not all living close to each other.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

No Circular Firing Squads This Time, Republicans Luckily, we’ve got opponents who refuse to learn from their mistakes. by Kurt Schlichter 1

Posted By on December 27th, 2024

https://www.frontpagemag.com/no-circular-firing-squads-this-time-republicans/

We’re starting to see the results of the November election in a variety of ways, both within our movement and among the enemy. Look, folks, we’re dealing with human beings. That means we’re dealing with human nature. And human nature never changes. We’re just as susceptible to its vagaries on the right as they are on the left. That means we’re going to fight among ourselves within the newly formed Trump coalition. That means people on our side are going to jockey for power, positions, prestige, and, of course, money. As far as the other side, despite the fact they are alien lizard people, they’re going to do what human beings tend to do. They will retreat to doing what’s comfortable, even if it isn’t the most effective tactic. We need to take advantage of that.

Human nature could end up handicapping us. Human nature could also end up handing us victories. We’ve got to be smart. We’ve got to be objective. We’ve got to think through what we’re doing to minimize our internal conflict and maximize the chaos on the other side. Are we doing that? The wackiness about the continuing resolution last week was an example of what we face. On our side, we have a very narrow majority which empowers dissenting individuals far out of proportion to their numbers. We’re also trying to navigate the reality that this is Donald Trump’s party and not the same GOP we grew up in. He’s the loudest voice, but he’s not the absolute dictator. There are incentives and rewards both for following him and defying him – as well as risks. How we manage our new coalition is the question. Our new coalition is not just conservatives. We conservatives make up a big chunk of it, but it’s also populists, anti-war folks who reject the old foreign policy consensus, as well as RFK granola/crunchy Make America Healthy Again types. Organized labor has an unprecedented presence too. Our Trump coalition is a new thing, a potentially unstable thing. We’re going to have growing pains.

This new coalition is unstable both because of competing interests and the fact that it hasn’t yet developed the institutional structures that minimize the disruption caused by internal disagreements. Let’s look at what happened with the continuing resolution. At one time, the Republicans were supposedly the budget-cutting party. They were the fiscal sanity folks, the deficit hawks. There’s still that faction in our coalition. But there’s another part of our coalition that really doesn’t care about debt that much. Donald Trump did not come into office as a budget cutter. Though he wants to see DOGE streamline the government and cut regulations, he did not get elected by promising to take a meat cleaver to America’s finances. In fact, he took entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and all the rest, which are the majority of our spending, completely off the table. So, you can see the problem. We’ve got both budget hawks and budget doves inside our tent. And that conflict has to be resolved.

ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe: The Fall of the Holy Renewable Empire by Drieu Godefridi

Posted By on December 27th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21244/europe-germany-renewable-energy

Literally “flat, dark calm,” Dunkelflaute is characterized by a simultaneous lack of wind and sun in winter, when demand for electricity in Germany is at its highest… On December 12 of this year, for example, German electricity production from wind and solar power was thirty times lower than the demand for it.

But this is “for the planet”, right? Not even close. Despite its commitment to so-called green energies, Germany still has a high carbon footprint due to its increased reliance on coal and lignite to make up for energy shortfalls.

Germany’s high electricity prices are leading to the relocation of its industry, as companies look for sites where energy costs are more affordable. How can you stay viable when you pay three times more for electricity than your competitors?

Whole swathes of Germany’s proud industry are collapsing. We only remember the big names — VW, BASF, Mercedes-Benz — but every big company that disappears or downsizes takes with it a myriad of small and medium-sized enterprises that end up collapsing along with it.

Dependence on unreliable energy sources (wind, solar), combined with the hasty phase-out of nuclear power, has made Germany’s electricity the most expensive in Europe and compromises the country’s — and ultimately the continent’s — energy autonomy.

Solar and wind power production falls drastically during unfavorable weather conditions. It happens, in fact, every year. This condition, however, now has far-reaching economic and environmental repercussions, revealing the flaws in an energy policy based on intermittent renewable energies. Why does Germany, while having one of the highest carbon footprints, now consume the most expensive electricity in Europe? How did the country lose its energy autonomy?

For the last fifteen years, Germany invested massively in solar and wind energy, while sabotaging its own nuclear power stations. By 2023, renewable energies accounted for 55% of electricity production in the country. In 2022, it was only 48%.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

How Israeli Arab Leaders Betray Their Own People by Khaled Abu Toameh

Posted By on December 26th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21245/israeli-arab-leaders

“For the longest time, I struggled with my identity. A Palestinian kid born inside Israel. Like…wtf. Many of my friends refuse to this day to say the word ‘Israel’ and call themselves ‘Palestinian’ only. But since I was 12, that did not make sense to me. So, I decided to mix the two and become a ‘Palestinian-Israeli.’ I thought this term reflected who I was. Palestinian first. Israeli second. But after recent events, I started to think. And think. And think. And then my thoughts turned to anger. I realized that if Israel were to be ‘invaded’ like that again, we would not be safe. To a terrorist invading Israel, all citizens are targets…. And I do not want to live under a Palestinian government. Which means I only have one home, even if I’m not Jewish: Israel.” — Nuseir Yassin (“Nas Daily”), Israeli Arab blogger, the day after October 8, 2023.

These [Arab Israeli] leaders will do anything to grab the attention of the media – even if that means inciting against Israel. They know that when they deal with the real problems facing their Arab constituents – such as unemployment and poverty – no one will write about them in the media. Yet, when these leaders make fiery statements against Israel, they often win headlines and front-page stories. As far as they are concerned, “I don’t care what you write about me as long as you spell my name right.”

By engaging in anti-Israel incitement, these Israeli Arab leaders are causing huge damage to their own constituents. These leaders make the Israeli Arabs look as if they are a “Fifth Column” — an enemy within. These leaders are stoking fear and mistrust between Jews and Arabs inside Israel, while ignoring that most Israeli Arabs say they feel comfortable living in the Jewish state.

If Israeli Arabs want to secure a prosperous future for themselves and their children, they need to get rid of extremist Arab leaders who speak and act against the interests of the Arab community inside Israel. If these Arab leaders are unhappy living in Israel, they are welcome to move to the West Bank, Gaza Strip or any Arab country — where they will quickly miss Israel’s democracy and freedom of speech.

The Iran-backed Palestinian Hamas terrorist group has long been seeking to spark a civil war between Israel’s Arab and Jewish citizens. Over the past few years, Hamas has called on the two million Arab citizens of Israel to revolt against their own country and join the Jihad against Israel.

Hamas’s attempts were partially successful in May 2021, when some Arabs attacked their Jewish neighbors. The assaults occurred at the same time as an Israeli military operation in the Gaza Strip. That operation was launched in response to rockets fired by Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups at Israel. Fortunately, the violence that erupted in 2021 ended quickly.