The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a U.S. Marine on Friday who wanted to “bring the pain” to “a rich white area” and had studied racist mass shooters. The Marine boasted in disturbing social media posts about killing cats with a crossbow and hoping to become a serial killer, declaring, “the only way out is bloodshed.”
The arrest comes three months after an active-duty U.S. airman set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The airman’s social media revealed connections to Antifa and the “Stop Cop City” movement, a dismissive attitude toward the death of fellow U.S. servicemembers, and praise for intimidating graffiti on the house of an elected official who sponsored Utah’s law to protect minors from gender transition procedures.
These incidents suggest that the Biden administration’s military-wide “stand-down to address extremism in the ranks” was a failure.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the “stand-down” on February 5, 2021, less than three weeks into Biden’s term. He ordered all supervisors “within the next 60 days to conduct a one-day ‘stand-down,’” where service personnel would halt their other duties and focus solely on rooting out extremism.
The stand-down was only “just the first initiative” of “a concerted effort” at combatting extremism. On April 9, 2021, Austin commissioned an independent study on extremism, convened a Countering Extremist Activity Working Group (CEAWG), and ordered reviews of the military’s extremism definition, screening questionnaires, and retirement transition checklists. In December 2021, the CEAWG released a 21-page report containing six more recommendations. On May 10, 2022, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released a 56-page report with two additional recommendations.
Why, despite these considerable efforts, did multiple extremists manage to slip through the cracks?
The answer is unsurprising. Like nearly everything the Biden administration does, this search for extremists in the military was politically one-sided. The stand-down opportunistically seized on the then-recent January 6 incident to fearmonger about a supposedly imminent national takeover by militarized white nationalists (and, of course, those radicals who refused to take the COVID jab). There is no evidence that the stand-down ever addressed left-wing forms of extremism, such as Antifa, the anti-cop BLM riots (2020), or the violent attacks on churches and pregnancy resource centers (2022).
In fact, the 262-page independent review published by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in December 2023 rebuked the Biden administration’s misleading narrative about a dangerous white supremacist under-culture lurking in the military. One the one hand, their review “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” Among other evidence, a review of court-martial records dating back to 2012 found no more than “on case per year” of non-gang-related “prohibited extremist activities.”
On the other hand, the IDA rebuked the Biden administration for touting a false narrative of right-wing extremism because it “could lead to a significant division in the force along political and ideological lines, with some members of the military believing that they are being targeted for their views.” They even argued that “the risk to the military from widespread polarization and division in the ranks may be a greater risk than the radicalization of a few service members.”
Within weeks, President Joe Biden was fearmongering about right-wing extremism in yet another major speech.
Over the past four weeks, pro-terrorist occupations of college campuses (and even buildings) have served Americans with yet another warning of left-wing radicalism and its tendency to undermine civil society by targeting even non-political institutions.
In two recent examples, active members of the U.S. armed services with a history of left-leaning, extremist rhetoric reached a crisis point. One committed the ultimate act of self-harm by burning himself to death on a public sidewalk (as an act of anti-Semitism). The other was arrested for plotting a racially-motivated mass shooting — fortunately, before he executed his plan.
But don’t count on the DOD to mount a “coordinated effort” to respond to this trend anytime soon. From the favoritism of its FACE Act prosecutions, to targeting parents at school board meetings, to its retaliation against whistleblowers, to its biased prosecutions of political celebrities and their families, the Biden administration has routinely committed the very same error the IDA’s independent review warned against: creating “significant division … along political and ideological lines,” giving some Americans good reason to believe “they are being targeted for their views.”
This is why, when conducting a grandiose military extremism review that wasn’t really all that necessary, the DOD failed to discover some actual extremists lurking in the military.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2024-05-16 15:59:222024-05-16 15:59:22Biden’s Military Extremism Review Overlooked the Real Extremists in the Military
Joe Biden may want to abandon Israel, but that doesn’t mean congressional Republicans will let him. While the White House talks out of both sides of its mouth on America’s Middle East ally — saying support is “ironclad” one minute and refusing them weapons the next — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is about to make uncomfortable Democrats pick a side.
Like most conservatives, the speaker was stunned that Biden would try to tie Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands in Rafah by withholding arms from the Jewish state. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah,” the president warned, “I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem.”
The move, a pathetic attempt to appease the president’s anti-Semitic base, was blasted as “dangerous” by Republicans and some Democrats. “[I]t could have catastrophic effects with our very important ally Israel,” Johnson told reporters. “And we’ve denounced it. And we’ll continue to do so.”
In the meantime, the House GOP plans to force the issue, bringing its own Israel Security Assistance Act to the floor to override the White House on weapons shipments. If the president still refuses to comply, the bill would freeze the budgets of the Defense secretary, secretary of State, and National Security Council. “I think it is important for us to express again the will of Congress on the matter,” Johnson said, especially when Biden “has turned his back on Israel and is now carrying water for Hamas and Iran.”
And it’s not just the speaker’s party who are angry. Just last week, 26 members of the president’s party sent a letter to the White House expressing their outrage at the White House’s embargo. “We are deeply concerned about the message the Administration is sending to Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist proxies by withholding weapons shipments to Israel, during a critical moment in the negotiations,” they wrote.
The internal tension on the issue has done little to motivate Biden, who seems more intent on placating the rabid campus protestors than stopping World War III. “Antisemitism is spreading globally like wildfire,” the Democrats insist. “We fear that public disputes with our critical ally only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies. It also buttresses their agenda of chaos, brutality, and hate, and makes a hostage agreement even harder to achieve.”
Despite the pressure from Congress and the cracks in his own party, the White House announced that it “strongly, strongly oppose[s]” the House’s efforts, insisting, “If the President were presented with H.R. 8369, he would veto it.”
That kind of betrayal, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) called it, is inexcusable. Biden can drone on about his commitment to Israel all he wants, the longtime coach said, but “talk’s cheap.” “They’re our number one ally, and they’ve got problems,” Tuberville told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “Everybody says, ‘Well, there’s a lot of the civilians that might be getting killed or hurt.’ … But here’s the thing. This is war.”
The world also seems to have forgotten that Israel was the victim of a gruesome, deadly, and unprovoked terror attack. And “when people attack you, when people come after you, you have the right to take up for yourself,” Tuberville argued. “And that’s what Israel has done. They were attacked brutally. Several thousand people were killed. … I’ve seen the videos, and it’s horrifying.” Not to mention, he points out, “We still have hostages — American hostages — in Israel. And Joe Biden is sitting back, taking [his] time, trying to play both sides of the fence, because he does not want to lose voters, especially in the Muslim areas of Michigan and Minnesota. … [But] he’s going to get people killed. It’s what’s going to happen.”
Honestly, the Alabaman shook his head, “This guy, he’s the worst leader that we’ve had in office in many, many, many years. He’s letting these young people behind the scenes run our country. There’s no organization to what we’re doing.” Biden is talking out of both sides of his mouth, he said. “And you can’t do that when it comes to war. Somebody’s going to win. Somebody’s going to lose. And we are on Israel’s side as the United States of America, because they have been with us since day one. And we need to support them.”
It’s one of the reasons that this November is so important. “At the end of the day, you have got to have somebody in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue … that can make a decision and do what’s best — not just for us, but for our allies. And he is letting us down. Biden is letting us down on so many fronts. There’s not one thing that he’s done right, especially in foreign relations since he’s taken office — and it’s getting worse. And we’re going to end up in a world war if we don’t watch it. He’s got to stand up for our alliance.”
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Family Research Councilhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngFamily Research Council2024-05-16 15:45:372024-05-16 15:47:47If Biden Keeps Abandoning Allies: ‘We‘re Going to End up in a World War’: Senator
Washington, D.C. — Judicial Watch announced today that it received 13-pagesof records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the District of Columbia, explaining to illegal aliens and other noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.
The records came in response to an April 12, 2024, FOIA request for:
Materials presented and/or provided at the training;
Communications advertising/promoting the training; and
Materials provided to participants/attendees after the training.
On April 10, 2024, DC held a training event titled ”Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training” in which DC announced noncitizen voting would begin in 2024.
The PowerPoint presentation explains:
Non-US citizen residents of the District of Columbia can vote in local elections under the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022. Non-US citizen residents can vote in District elections for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, Chairman or member(s) of the DC Council, member(s) of the State [sic] Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s) Non-US citizen residents cannot vote for Federal Offices
To register to vote in the District of Columbia as a non-citizen, you must: Be at least 17 years old and 18 years old by the next General Election; Maintain residency in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days prior to the election in which you intend to vote; Not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; Not been found by a court to be legally incompetent to vote.
You must provide proof of your address in the District of Columbia at an Early Vote Center prior to Election Day or at the polling place assigned to your address on Election Day.
In 2023 the DC Council amended the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 to expand the definition of the term qualified elector to include otherwise eligible noncitizen residents, including illegal aliens.
DC’s law went a step further than those jurisdictions, though, by extending the franchise to undocumented immigrants.
The District’s action was opposed by congressional Republicans but they failed to overturn the measure.
“Illegal aliens and noncitizens should not vote in any elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That Congress allows the votes of citizens to be legally stolen by illegal aliens in our nation’s capital is inexcusable.”
According to federal law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, but a growing number of state and local elections allow noncitizens to vote, among them San Francisco and Oakland, California, along with some cities in Maryland and Vermont. In February, a state appeals court ruled a similar New York City law violates the state constitution.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Judicial Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJudicial Watch2024-05-16 15:16:202024-05-16 16:00:49Judicial Watch: New Documents Reveal D.C. Training for Noncitizen Voting
Campus fads come and go, but we’ve come a long way from swallowing goldfish, stuffing as many people as possible into phone booths, and the ever-popular drinking until you pass out. The latest craze among college kids is, as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) indelibly put it, “living in a pup tent for Hamas.” No sooner do cops clear out one encampment than another one springs up, and it looks as if they’re going to be with us for the rest of this semester and may even be revived once the universities reconvene next fall. This is, however, not even close to being a spontaneous phenomenon. The groundwork for what we’re seeing now has been laid for years.
Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has acknowledged that “professionals” were involved in the Columbia University encampment. Another sign that this isn’t exactly a grass-roots movement is the fact that a large number of the pro-Hamas protesters have identical tents. Which well-heeled leftist bought them? We don’t know and may never know, but someone certainly appears to have done some buying in bulk.
Still, the movement needed foot soldiers. The cadres had to be recruited and indoctrinated. That has been the work of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the professional organization of Middle East Studies professors at colleges and universities nationwide.
MESA, whose members dominate the Middle East Studies faculties of most colleges and universities in the United States, says that it is “a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom.” That strikes all the right notes, but as you likely suspect, the reality is not so noble and high-minded. MESA is a far-left, pro-jihad activist organization that is dedicated to providing an academic sheen to Marxist agitprop and Palestinian jihad propaganda.
To see what MESA busies itself with doing, scan the 25 items that are currently on the front page of the news section of the MESA website. Two stories are pinned to the top of the page; one of them is actually on the side of genuine justice and human rights, decrying the Iranian Islamic regime’s dismissal of professors who supported the recent Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran.
The other pinned story, however, is entitled “Campus Climate Resources,” which gives the initial impression that it’s propaganda about the myth of human-caused climate change; it’s actually about the “climate” on campus regarding support for the Palestinian jihad against Israel. MESA here offers an assortment of links to this article denouncing the alleged “repression of protest on campuses,” the alleged “targeting of Palestinian students in Israeli universities,” and the like.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of nineteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Center For Security Policyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngCenter For Security Policy2024-05-16 13:03:542024-05-16 13:06:09Why is the pro-Palestinian encampment craze sweeping our colleges?
The following is a series of links to articles, tweets and videos that give a solid sense of what is taking place across the Netherlands in the past couple of weeks. There is a lot of material here, and we have not vetted it all obviously. But the source is excellent and what we did see is too important to leave in the comments.
The agreement put together by the four coalition parties over the past five months covers 26 pages and contains what the new partners say is the headline strategy.
Given the title Hoop, lef en trots (hope, guts, and pride) the document is supposed to pave the way for ministers to flesh out actual policy and how the new strategy will be implemented. Nevertheless, it contains a string of detailed plans covering 10 key areas including immigration, the economy, public safety and boosting individual financial security.
“Whether we are talking about feeling secure about the future, healthcare, money in your pocket or the availability of sufficient housing, we have big ambitions,” the four parties say in the introduction. “We also want to reverse the much too high influx of refugees and immigrants. We want farmers, market gardeners and fishermen to have a future again.
Here are some of the main points:
[..]
This point is remarkably Trumpian:
“Research will start on the logistics of moving the Dutch embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”
The university of Leiden, the Netherlands, seems to be giving in to protester’s demands:
Today, after a constructive and fruitful discussion between the rector of @UniLeiden and the chair of Campus The Hague with SfP and LSP, we agreed on several concrete steps the University will take regarding its ties to Israeli Universities. We will publish the details tomorrow.
In de post schuwen de organisatoren dreigende taal niet. “Ze (de bestuurders, red.) zijn terecht doodsbang. We zullen ze blijven achtervolgen tot Palestina bevrijd is.”
[..]
“We zijn niet geïnteresseerd in ‘beschaafd debat’”, schrijven ze. “Fuck jullie met je uitnodiging! We willen geen gesprek, we willen revolutie.”
translates as:
In their post, the organizers do not shy away from threatening language: “They [the board] are right to fear for their lives. We will continue to stalk them until Palestine is freed”.
[..]“We are not interested in a civil debate. Fuck you and your invitation! We don’t want to talk, we want revolution”.
Another day, another university occupation in the Netherlands, and of course another baton session. In the city of Utrecht this time:
Police in Utrecht used batons against pro-Palestinian demonstrators who blocked a city bus containing other protesters. The bus contained around 40 pro-Palestinian activists who occupied a building at Utrecht University (UU) earlier on Wednesday. They were removed from the building by the police on Wednesday evening.
Just after midnight, peace had returned near the university building, according to an ANP reporter.
Before using their batons, the police wanted protesters outside to move away or they would use force. When the protesters did not comply, police officers struck them with their batons.
The city bus containing the activists left. It was not clear where it went. At an earlier pro-Palestinian protest in Utrecht this month, dozens of demonstrators were taken in buses to Houten, where they were dropped off at the cell complex and then allowed to go home.
The demonstrators on the bus occupied a university building at the Janskerkhof for hours. About 150 sympathizers stood outside for a long time. Anton Pijpers, the chairman of the university’s executive board, was also on site for a short time. A university spokesperson previously said that he would like to talk to the demonstrators.
However, the demonstrators said there was no negotiating with the Executive Board. Their demands have been known for a long time, but the university is not acting on them, they argued.
All Utrecht University buildings in the city center will reopen on Thursday. Education in the occupied Janskerkhof 15a building has been moved to another location, the university said on Thursday.
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) locations will also reopen on Thursday after a two-day closure due to Gaza support protests. The Executive Board finds the risk of opening the doors again acceptable and attaches great importance to resuming education and research. The UvA does not rule out new protests and is closely monitoring developments.
While the UvA and UU locations are reopening, Erasmus University in Rotterdam (EUR) is closing for one day. All buildings on the Woudestein campus and the Erasmus University College will be closed to accommodate pro-Palestinian organizations, which announced protests there from 1:00 p.m. The EUR wants to prevent “Amsterdam scenes.”
Video from attempted occupation of the Utrecht university’s humanities library last week:
Pro-Palestine uni students caught doing Nazi salute on Zoom call
Edwin Wagensveld (Pegida Netherlands) finally managed to burn a Quran in Arnhem, the city where he was assaulted by a mob and later banned by the mayor:
More on the intifada in Dutch academia and across Europe.
Video from last week, counter-protestors attacked the camp at Roeterseiland (uni of Amsterdam), flares were brandished around and thrown. I suspect these guys were hooligans (Ajax supporters):
Protests at the university of Groningen. Scuffles, general unfriendliness:
Some staff from the uni of Amsterdam stage a walkout to protest “police violence” against “protesters” last week. No masks, names and faces visible. I suspect some were involved with those protests:
and
Summary of the invasion of the uni of Amsterdam. Angry protesters are angry, press is harassed, vandalism etc. Baton work at 4m26 and 7m24. Reporter kicked out by aggressive masked men with Arab accents at 5.17 minutes.
A second round of protests at Dutch universities: Utrecht, Wageningen, Nijmegen, Groningen and Maastricht. Tent camps have been set up in some cities (Eindhoven, Groningen).
In Amsterdam, university buildings have been occupied again. The university has filed charges, and riot police is clearing the buildings as I write this. Liveblog here (in Dutch):
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Vlad Tepes Bloghttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngVlad Tepes Blog2024-05-16 12:33:482024-05-16 14:58:27The X File Videos: Islam and Communists in the Netherlands and Across Europe
A former senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official hobnobbed with employees from an anti-tobacco nonprofit just months before coming on as the group’s CEO, emails show.
Kathy Crosby, who played a leading role in shaping public health policy while serving as the director of Health Communication and Education at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, became the president and CEO of the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco and anti-nicotine activist organization, in August 2023.
Prior to her exit from the FDA, emails obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation show Crosby hobnobbing with Truth Initiative employees and even corresponding with the group’s then CEO about setting up a meeting.
“The emails the Daily Caller showed us raise some serious red flags,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the nonpartisan watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF.
“A federal employee is prohibited from accepting gifts, including comped tickets to conferences and galas, that are offered to her because of her status as a federal employee,” Chamberlain said. “That Ms. Crosby appears to have solicited the invitation to the gala she attended compounds the problematic nature of this episode. That she may have leveraged the event as an opportunity to seek outside employment is icing on the cake.”
Federal employees are barred both from soliciting gifts “to be given because of the employee’s official position” as well as from accepting those gifts. Additionally, they are prohibited from using their office for “private gain.” FDA employees are also barred from “seeking or negotiating for employment, that conflict with official Government duties and responsibilities.”
In April 2022, the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK) offered Crosby free tickets to its 2022 gala. Crosby was busy that year, so she declined the tickets but asked CTFK to “keep [her] in mind for next year’s event.”
Roughly a year later, Crosby responded to the same email thread and asked the CTFK if it would be “extending an invitation to any FDA colleagues to attend” the 2023 gala. Hours later, the organization offered Crosby complimentary tickets, which she then accepted, saying that she “should definitely be able to join” them this year.
Emails show that Crosby indeed attended the May 18, 2023, CTFK gala and networked with employees of the Truth Initiative while there.
Shortly after attending CTFK’s gala, Crosby emailed then-Truth Initiative president and CEO Robin Koval on May 22 to schedule a meeting so the two could “catch-up.” In the email, she also mentioned that she had already met with Howard Koh, a member of the organization’s board of directors, and other staff at the gala. Koval and Crosby ultimately agreed to meet on May 24, 2023.
“There’s a reason taxpayers are troubled by incestuous relationships between government agencies and activist groups and public health agencies are proving to be no exception,” Functional Government Initiative spokesperson Peter McGinnis said.
“These activist groups have business before the agencies—we know, for example, that [Trust Initiative] lobbies the FDA to increase fines on tobacco product manufacturers and sellers, while also spending millions to advocate for new product bans,” McGinnis continued. “It’s a coup for [Trust Initiative] to land a CEO who knows her way around the FDA, and it’s a lucrative jump for Ms. Crosby.”
On Aug. 15, 2023, Truth Initiative’s board announced its appointment of Crosby as the group’s president and CEO. Following the announcement, and while Crosby was still at the FDA, multiple Truth Initiative employees reached out via email to congratulate her.
“I just wanted to reach out and send a note to say congratulations,” one email from the group’s vice president of communications, Sarah Shank, reads. “It’s always a pleasure working with you and your team at FDA and I’m beyond thrilled to work with you in this new capacity here at Truth Initiative.”
“So excited for this next chapter with our organization,” Tina Morgan, the organization’s vice president of sponsorships, said.
Truth Initiative and Crosby didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“During Kathy Crosby’s 12 years as the Director for CTP’s Office of Health Communication and Education, she frequently communicated via email, phone calls, and in-person meetings with a wide range of stakeholders, including those from national public health organizations, industry, media, and state/local organizations,” an FDA spokesperson told the DCNF.
Crosby “immediately” notified the FDA that she was looking for a job outside the government and “recused herself from any official actions that would financially impact her future employer,” the spokesperson said, adding that Crosby’s attendance at the gala was also “reviewed and approved by FDA ethics officials” prior to the event.
In 2022, the Truth Initiative was hard at work attempting to influence policy through the FDA and other federal agencies.
According to the nonprofit’s 2022 annual report, they submitted 14 comments to federal agencies, provided “policy analyses and research” to inform FDA policymaking, urged the FDA to act against popular synthetic nicotine products, like ZYN, and recruited youth activists to submit comments to the FDA regarding its proposed rule to remove flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes from the market.
During her time at the FDA, Crosby was involved in crafting health warnings for cigarette packages and advertisements, formulating marketing restrictions for new tobacco products and shaping national policy broadly, according to her Truth Initiative biography.
Crosby spearheaded “public education and regulatory communication programs” which aided the federal government in successfully implementing the Tobacco Control Act, which regulates how tobacco products can be marketed.
All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2024-05-16 11:47:482024-05-16 11:52:17Former FDA Official Cozied Up To Activists Months Before Joining Them, Emails Show
Of the analytical frameworks into which to fit the eruption of anti-Israel protests on college campuses, there is no shortage. There’s the “free speech on campus” concept, the Arab-Israeli conflict paradigm, the lawless-university-radicals-of-the-1960s pattern.
The framework that fits the situation most neatly, though, is one that hasn’t been elaborated much. That is the “blood libel,” which a six-page entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica defines as “the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews, especially Christians, in order to obtain blood for Passover or other rituals.”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica also calls it “a complex of deliberate lies, trumped-up accusations, and popular beliefs about the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness.” The Judaica traces the origin of the story all the way back to Apion, an Egyptian who lived during the first century of the Common Era.
The historian Josephus writes in “Against Apion” that this claim that Jews deliberately sacrificed a non-Jew is “a most tragical fable … full of nothing but cruelty and impudence” and motivated by “an extravagant love of lying.” Josephus, writing in about 100 CE, calls Apion’s tale “a voluntary lie” that operated “to the delusion of those who will not examine into the truth of matters.”
Two thousand or so years later, we’re at it all over again, with the Jews yet again facing a Passover-season lie about deliberately killing non-Jews. So, at Columbia University, the anti-Israel mob renamed Hamilton Hall as “Hind’s Hall,” after a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who Israel has been blamed without evidence for killing.
To anyone who knows history, an Easter or Passover-season tale of Jews intentionally killing a child is familiar. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the places and dates: Norwich, 1144; Gloucester, England, 1168; Blois, France, 1171; Saragossa, Spain, 1182; Trent, Italy, 1475; Lublin, 1636.
By setting up the pro-Hamas university encampments on the first day of Passover, the anti-Israel protesters provided useful clarity that their false accusations of “genocide” against Israel fell squarely within this age-old tradition of groundlessly accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children to bake matzo. The protesters also help by making explicit references to “blood.” The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for example, advertised a series of events with a social media post headlined, “Palestinian blood is on Israel’s hands.”
Elisha Wiesel, son of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, writes that his father would ask, “Where are the history lessons on the blood libel, the historical precedent for accusing Jews of murder?”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry is by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a professor of history who taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The entry ends with a reference to an essay by Ahad Ha’am, who lived between 1856 and 1927 and was a champion of cultural Zionism.
That essay, “Some Consolation,” was written in Hebrew in 1892. It was brought out in English translation by Leon Simon in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society, as part of a collection of selected essays by Ha’am. The essay contemplates the possibility that, just as on today’s campuses, some individuals of Jewish background will side with the enemies.
“Since everybody hates the Jews, can we think that everybody is wrong, and the Jews are right?” he quotes a Russian writer as asking. “There are many among us Jews on whom a similar question half-unconsciously forces itself. Can we think, they ask, that all the vicious characteristics and evil practices which the whole world ascribes to the Jews are sheer imagination?”
Ha’am writes that the “useful lesson” of such a baldly false accusation is that it may strengthen Jewish confidence and prevent unwarranted guilt.
“There is nothing more dangerous for a nation or for an individual to plead guilty to imaginary sins,” he says. “Where the sin is real, there is opportunity for repentance; by honest endeavor the sinner may purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly, how can he get rid of his consciousness of guilt?”
The blood-libel accusation, he writes, “is the solitary case in which the general acceptance of an idea about ourselves does not make us doubt whether all the world can be wrong, and we right, because it is based on an absolute lie.”
He adds, “This will make it easier for us to get rid of the tendency to bow to the authority of ‘everybody’ in other matters.”
Today, the Jews aren’t entirely alone; we are blessed with many allies. Yet it can sometimes, in the media or on campuses or at the United Nations, feel again like everybody is against us. That does not make the accusations true.
Ha’am wrote: “‘But’ — you ask — ‘is it possible that everybody can be wrong, and the Jews right?’”
And here is how the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on “blood libel” by Ben-Sasson concludes, quoting the Ha’am essay in words that ring as true today as in 1892: “Yes, it is possible: the blood accusation proves it possible. Here, you see, the Jews are right and perfectly innocent.”
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Storyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story2024-05-16 08:22:162024-05-17 11:30:15How the Anti-Israeli Campus Protests Are the Latest Version of the Blood Libel
The Israeli military is ramping up operations throughout the Gaza Strip.
Developments in Rafah signify that the Israeli military is implementing a gradual expansion of its operation in Hamas’s last fortress.
The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in intensive operations in central and northern Gaza as well, where on Thursday, a tragic friendly-fire incident involving the Paratroopers’ 202 Battalion led to five IDF casualties.
The IDF’s 162nd Division is in charge of operations in Rafah, where it is overseeing an operation targeting key terrorist infrastructure and Hamas operational points. Once complete, the operation should also see the IDF in control of the strategic Philadelphi Corridor, via which Hamas has spent years smuggling weapons, both above and below ground.
Under the 162nd Division are the 401st Armored Brigade and the Givati Infantry Brigade, who have been highly active in eastern Rafah in recent days.
During Memorial Day and Independence Day (May 13 and 14) alone, the IDF eliminated around 100 terrorists throughout Gaza, according to the military.
According to IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, since the start of the IDF’s operation in Rafah on May 7—when Israeli tanks took control of the Gaza side of the strategically vital Rafah Crossing (a part of the Philadelphi Corridor)—Israeli forces in Rafah have killed around 100 terrorists, destroyed rocket launchers and located some 10 underground terror tunnels.
Hagari also described the seizure of numerous weapons caches containing anti-tank missiles, rockets and other explosives.
The IDF also released footage on May 14 showing armed terrorists adjacent to U.N. vehicles and shooting from an UNRWA compound in eastern Rafah. This evidence was promptly forwarded to senior members of the international community, with a call for urgent investigation into the ties between UNRWA’s logistics centers and Hamas operatives.
The goal of the phased operation in Rafah is the systematic dismantling of the four Hamas battalions left standing in Gaza, as the rest of what remains of the terrorist group dissolves into guerilla cells.
However, the IDF is gradually expanding operations not just in the south, but in the center and north of the Strip as well.
The IDF’s 99th Division has spent several days operating in central Gaza’s Zeitoun region, killing some 150 terrorists and destroying around 80 structures used by Hamas, including a Hamas war room embedded within an UNRWA school. The facility housed some 15 Nukhba force terrorists who had been involved in planning and implementing Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, according to the military.
On May 15, the Nahal Brigade left Zeitoun and began preparations for operations in other areas of the Strip, leaving behind one brigade combat team.
In northern Gaza, the IDF’s 98th Division, which previously led operations in Khan Yunis, initiated operations in a region of Jabalia that had not yet been entered by Israeli forces during the current conflict.
This new campaign has led to the elimination of approximately 80 terrorists in Jabalia, and the destruction of multiple rocket launchers, including long-range capabilities. Weapons workshops were also targeted and destroyed. Supporting these ground maneuvers, the Israeli Air Force has conducted more than 100 airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the IDF’s 143rd Division is leading attacks on Hamas in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, close to the Israeli border, to prevent the resurgence of terrorist bases close to Israel.
According to recent reports, some 450,000 people—a little under half of the civilian population that was in Rafah, have so far heeded the IDF’s calls to leave the area.
The rocket fire Hamas is directing at southern Israel represents the last of its projectile stockpiles, which were planted before the war, and Hamas will not have the ability to mass produce rockets so long as Israel continues its raids in Gaza, according to the IDF.
At the same time, Hamas will certainly try to rebuild its terror army, which is why the IDF will need to conduct targeted operations in Gaza for many years to come, as it has been doing for the past two decades in Judea and Samaria
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Storyhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngNEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli Story2024-05-16 07:52:192024-05-16 08:01:00IDF Gradually Tightens Grip on Hamas’s Last Bastion in Gaza
While driving through my rural district in Southwest Virginia, I am met with sign after sign indicating support for President Donald Trump. Even as I make my way to Richmond, suburban neighborhoods are flooded with Trump signs.
You might have heard the old adage that signs do not win elections — and they don’t. But they do serve as an indicator of where Americans stand.
In the past two weeks, Virginians have watched as college campuses across the Commonwealth are held hostage by violent demonstrators and radical activists. Protestors continue to throw rocks at police officers and storm into university buildings, forcing a swift response from law enforcement and then complaining about being held accountable for their actions.
Today, many parents and students fear their graduations may be canceled like Columbia’s because protestors are threatening to disrupt the ceremonies. These protesters are not only damaging these institutions, they are also damaging Biden’s reelection chances.
Despite voters affiliating these protestors with liberal Democrats, many of the protestors themselves refuse to vote for Biden because of his refusal to take a firm position on the conflict in Gaza.
Up until last year, Republicans maintained control of the Virginia House of Delegates. Despite losing control in 2023, we took seats that Democrats should have won in a landslide – like Republican Delegate Kim Taylor, who held onto her Biden+11 district by 53 votes.
On the Senate side, Republicans actually picked up a seat, dealing Democrats a near-fatal blow and knocking them down to a one-seat majority.
With the right messaging, Virginia is competitive and could give Donald Trump an additional 13 electoral votes in November.
Keep in mind that today’s national landscape is not the same as it was during our statewide elections in 2023 or even in 2020.
Illegal immigration, riots on college campuses, and worsening economic conditions are putting states like Virginia and Minnesota in play for Republicans.
These numbers and rallies are reminiscent of 2016, when Americans were engaged and ready to fight back against the establishment — the same year Trump came within five points of winning Virginia.
In 2021, Virginia rejected President Biden’s agenda by electing Republicans across the Commonwealth, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Key issues like parental rights and economic freedom drove Virginia voters to the polls, with many of them casting votes for GOP candidates.
These issues are still on their minds. Today, with violent protests devouring college campuses, chaos continuing to wreak havoc on our southern border, and inflation strangling hardworking Virginia families, Trump’s chances of flipping our Commonwealth red continue to grow.
Wren Williams serves in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the state’s 47th district. He previously served as Trump’s legal counsel in the 2020 Wisconsin recount, and is currently a Permanent Organization Committee Member for the Republican National Convention.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Daily Callerhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Daily Caller2024-05-16 06:26:012024-05-16 06:35:49DEL. WREN WILLIAMS: Biden Blunders Put Virginia In Play For Trump
President Joe Biden proposed two dates to debate former President Donald Trump Wednesday morning, with a list of guardrails including no live audience, according to The New York Times.
Biden suggested that Trump and himself face off in two televised debates, one in June and one in September, though the president said he will not participate in an event put on by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to the NYT. The president also said he did not want to debate in front of a live audience, rather his team wants the debates held in a television studio to avoid the reaction from in-person viewers.
“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal, I’ll even do it twice,” Biden said in a Wednesday debate message.
“So let’s pick dates Donald, I hear you’re free Wednesdays,” the president continued, alluding to Trump’s court appearances.
Later Wednesday morning, Biden said that he “received and accepted” a debate invitation from CNN scheduled for June 27, before telling Trump, “anywhere, any time, any place.” Trump accepted the invitation as well, setting the stage for the first debate in the general election.
I’ve received and accepted an invitation from @CNN for a debate on June 27th. Over to you, Donald. As you said: anywhere, any time, any place.
Biden then announced shortly before noon that he “received and accepted” a debate invitation from ABC scheduled for Sept. 10. Trump also accepted the ABC offer.
I've also received and accepted an invitation to a debate hosted by ABC on Tuesday, September 10th.
Trump says he’ll arrange his own transportation. I’ll bring my plane, too. I plan on keeping it for another four years.
As a part of their debate dates proposal Biden also only wants networks that hosted the 2016 Republican primary debates and the 2020 Democratic primary debates in 2020, the NYT reported. Those networks include CNN, ABC News, Telemundo and CBS News.
“There should be firm time limits for answers, and alternate turns to speak — so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden campaign chair, said in a letter obtained by the NYT.
“A candidate’s microphone should only be active when it is his turn to speak, to promote adherence to the rules and orderly proceedings,” she continued.
Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate.
The Biden campaign also wrote that they wanted to keep the forum to two candidates, excluding independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the NYT reported. If the debates were handled by the Commission on Presidential Debates, Kennedy has potential to reach the 15% polling threshold, the qualifying number to be on the stage. Kennedy did announce Wednesday evening that he “will meet the criteria” to participate in CNN’s debate before the deadline.
“I look forward to holding Presidents Biden and Trump accountable for their records in Atlanta on June 27 to give Americans the debate they deserve,” he said.
I’m happy to report that I will meet the criteria to participate in the @CNN debate before the June 20 deadline. I look forward to holding Presidents Biden and Trump accountable for their records in Atlanta on June 27 to give Americans the debate they deserve. #KennedyShanahan24
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 15, 2024
Trump responded to the proposal, agreeing to the time of the event, in a statement on Truth Social.
“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds,” Trump wrote. “That’s only because he doesn’t get them. Just tell me when, I’ll get there. ‘Let’s get ready to Rumble!!’”
Outside of the forums proposed by Biden, the former president said in a social media post that he agreed to attend a debate on Fox News set for Oct. 2.
The Trump campaign had been calling on Biden to debate the former president after the president admitted in an interview with Howard Stern that he was interested in debating.
“I don’t know if you’re gonna debate your opponent,” Stern said.
“I am, somewhere. I don’t know when, but I’m happy to debate him,” Biden replied.
Trump responded with a message of his own on May 9, telling Biden to set up a debate.
“Let’s set it up right now,” Trump said in a video message on Truth Social. “I’m ready to go anywhere that you are.”
The Biden campaign justified their decision to ditch the Commission on Presidential Debates, citing concerns about the original dates proposed, the Washington Post reported. The campaign also voiced concerns over the ability to get candidates to stay within the rules of the commission, the letter reportedly read.
“The Commission’s model of building huge spectacles with large audiences at great expense simply isn’t necessary or conducive to good debates,” Dillon wrote in a letter obtained by the Washington Post. “The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home — not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering.”
Is it just me or did President Biden throw Israel under the bus, presumably because the Muslim vote for his re-election is pretty shaky? Biden threatened Israel that the U.S. would withhold further weapons should Israel invade Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas.
I don’t think it’s just me. As Gary Bauer, founder and director of American Values, commented: “Biden is withholding military assistance, approved by Congress and that he signed into law, for Israel because he is afraid that he will lose the election if Israel finishes off Hamas. That is exactly what Pelosi accused Donald Trump of doing with aid to Ukraine.”
Bauer notes that Biden removed sanctions from Houthi terrorists and from the Iranian regime, which is still the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world. Yet he is leaving Israel high and dry, as it fights a must-win war for its national survival.
Again, I don’t think it’s just me. The excellent political cartoonist Gary Varvel wrote in his newsletter recently: “By refusing to give military aid to Israel, President Biden is supporting Hamas.”
All of the recent protests on campuses in favor of Hamas appear to be working. Rep. Ilhan Omar, an active Muslim and member of the Squad, tweeted (on X): “This is what young people across the country were protesting for and finally the needle has moved in a significant way. I hope we see more progress, but don’t ever let people tell you that your voices are meaningless and your actions are worthless. The arc of what is possible is always within us to bend.”
Some of those pro-Palestinian student protesters tried to spoil the comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement address at Duke over the weekend. They walked out on his speech, shouting, “Free Free Palestine.”
Meanwhile, at Columbia, a student was barred from the school recently for a threat of violence. He tweeted (on X): “Zionists, they don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live….The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live.”
What a lot of these young pro-Palestinians don’t realize is that ultimately, the position of Hamas calls for the death of Israel.
We keep hearing the phrase “From the River to the Sea.” What does that actually mean? It means that the modern state of Israel belongs to the Palestinians. The Jews have no claim on the land.
As Victor Davis Hanson notes, “When student protestors scream ‘From the river to the sea,’ that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on Oct. 7.”
Someone might say, “We need more dialogue.” How can you have dialogue with someone who does not agree with your right to exist?
Last month, I spoke again with New York Times best-selling author Robert Spencer on the radio about the anti-Israel protests at Columbia protests.
For this piece, I asked him for a statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large.
He told me, “The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is not based on land. It is based on Islam. The Qur’an says, ‘Drive them out from where they drove you out’ (2:191). Although it’s actually a historical myth that Israel drove the Arabs out, it is widely believed, and makes destroying Israel a matter of obeying a divine command. This means that while Palestinians might accept Israel in some form as a step toward realization of that goal, ultimately they can never allow Israel to exist at all, no matter how small it may be.”
All of this is ironic in light of Israel’s historic claim on that land. As the late Dr. Charles Krauthammer once noted, “Israel is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago.”
Why can’t there be lasting peace in the Middle East? Israel, a tiny nation-state, no bigger than New Jersey, is surrounded by hostile neighbors that don’t want it to continue to exist.
Israel is constantly having to deal with enemies from without and from within. The Judeo-Christian principle of “just war” applies to them—that is, that they have the right to defend themselves from those who would try to destroy them.
The ultimate question is: Does Israel have the right to exist? Of course, it does. Therefore, it has the right to defend itself. It’s too bad the current administration and many in the culture at large are acting like fair-weather friends based on shifting political winds.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJerry Newcombe, D. Min.2024-05-16 05:53:272024-05-16 05:58:16Throwing Israel Under the Bus
The Biden administration and European Union were equivocal from the start regarding Israel’s response to Hamas’s genocidal pogrom. Despite initially offering moral support, the Europeans immediately began exhorting Israel to respond “proportionately” while voices from the White House imperiously demanded an untenable two-state “solution.”
Joe Biden at first spoke sympathetically about Israel’s need to eliminate terrorists and destroy their infrastructure, but administration mouthpieces soon began to blather about the need for restraint, citing as justification false Gaza casualty statistics lifted directly from Hamas propaganda.
And despite his initially supportive words following Iran’s air attack on April 13th, Biden immediately demanded caution and implored Israel not to retaliate, though it was his own weakness, appeasement, and attempts to disrupt Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas that emboldened Iran to attack.
These attempts included VP Kamala Harris’s threat of “consequences” in the event of an incursion into Rafah and Biden’s collusion on a feckless UN ceasefire resolution (to the benefit of Hamas) and proposal to require the labeling of goods produced in Judea and Samaria which will facilitate anti-Israel boycotts. Most recently, he announced a “pause” in arms shipments to Israel in a clear attempt to placate anti-Israel Democrats ahead of the 2024 election, and in the process encouraged Hezbollah to step up missile attacks from Lebanon.
Biden was supported in this policy madness by Senator Chuck Schumer, who had previously called on Israel to oust its duly elected government and accede to a two-state solution that most Israelis believe is impossible.
In trying to placate anti-Israel progressives, prominent Democrats clearly have no compunction against undermining an ally and sacrificing truth to do so.
Real truth, however, is neither relative nor subjective, but rather implicates immutable fact; and the truth regarding the attacks perpetrated against Israel is neither ambiguous nor reinforced by false comparisons to alleged Israeli conduct, as many on the political left — including Barack Obama — disgracefully asserted before Israel could even bury her dead in October.
Truth is not acquitted by unprincipled ideologues hawking moral equivalency, but by eyewitnesses and survivors — particularly those speaking from personal experience about what they saw and heard. And this was demonstrated in a recent program at a synagogue in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in conjunction with the organization StandsWithUs, featuring two young Israelis who witnessed firsthand the horrors of October 7th.
The first speaker, Aviv, was from Kibbutz Re’im before moving to Yesha, several miles from the Gaza border. He served as an IDF battalion medic while on active duty and, like many young Israelis, did some travelling after his service ended, before returning home for work and school.
He recounted how his family was together during the Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah weekend when Hamas attacked and how they had to rush for shelter. His younger brother, who had served in special forces, was killed by terrorists while protecting civilians in Yesha, and Aviv found his body — along with those of several friends — who had fallen together near a synagogue. Aviv described in sharp detail how he and his father guarded over them while the battle raged until they could be moved and prepared for burial. He then joined his reserve unit.
The second speaker, Avital, is an eighth-generation Israeli on one side of her family and grandchild of Holocaust survivors on the other. Avital explained that she served as an IDF company commander and was visiting her parents that weekend. She knew war had broken out by the sound of sirens on Shabbat/Yomtov. Both she and her older brother were called up, and her job upon activation was to manage the growing missing persons list, determine who was wounded, dead, missing, or kidnapped, and notify families.
She told of curating phone calls from witnesses and distraught people looking for news of missing loved ones, and said it was difficult learning who would not be returning home but having to maintain strict secrecy before notifying families.
These speakers’ words were direct, emotional, and deeply profound all at once. Despite their military backgrounds, they came across as just a couple of young Israelis who were intensely affected by what they experienced, and they told their stories straight and without political varnish. They also spoke of how Israeli society, which had seemed so fractured before the attack, was unified by a sense of common heritage and national resolve thereafter.
The truth they conveyed provided stark contrast to the pro-Hamas propaganda, anti-Israel vitriol, and racist Jew-hatred that are driving the narrative in the US – where classical stereotypes and conspiracy theories abound and atrocities against Jews are legitimized as “resistance” without shame or embarrassment in colleges and universities, city and town councils, Hollywood, and even the halls of Congress.
Emblematic of the banalization of antisemitism were the red bloody-hand pins worn by actors and artists at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, who claimed the pins were a humanitarian symbol advocating ceasefire in Gaza, though the image they bore actually commemorated the murders of IDF soldiers Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami by a bloodthirsty mob in Ramallah in 2001. The graphic motif used depicts the hands of terrorists covered with blood from the two Israelis they murdered and is recognized for its odious symbolism throughout Gaza and the territories — where most people surveyed support Hamas and its atrocities.
Though this imagery was originally used to glorify the savage murder of Jews, it was embraced by fatuous Hollywood “A-Listers” who can always be counted on to promote any and all progressive causes without demonstrating the slightest capacity for critical thought, moral decency, or just plain common sense.
As antisemitism in the US continues to skyrocket unabated, with Jews suffering more abuse than any other minority, the Biden administration’s response is to soft-pedal or claim beyond reason that Islamophobia is an equivalent (or greater) threat to moral order. Considering US law enforcement statistics showing that Jews are victimized by hate-crimes far more frequently than any other ethnic or racial minority group (including Arabs and African-Americans) and are at least six times more likely to be harassed than Muslims, the premise is ludicrous and insulting.
It also begs the question of why most Democrats refuse to concede the existence of virulent Jew-hatred on their side of the aisle. As a collective, Republicans are not bowing to pressure from anti-Israel, antisemitic zealots who dictate party zeitgeist. Democratic leadership is. Prominent Republicans are not publicly denying that Hamas terrorists raped and brutalized Jewish women and girls. Notable Democrats are.
While Congressional Republicans have condemned antisemitism and commenced investigating its ubiquity on college campuses, radical Democrats have belittled these efforts in order to appease antisemitic progressive and Islamist elements within their base. For his part, Biden will not chastise progressive party members by name for egregious anti-Jewish rhetoric or stop taking campaign contributions from donors who are also funding anti-Israel, antisemitic campus riots.
But minimizing antisemitism only encourages it.
The administration’s cognitive dissonance (or artifice) has international ramifications, as evidenced by its recent support for a UN resolution on “Measures to Combat Islamophobia,” which implies that anti-Muslim animus fuels the most pervasive forms of religious, ethnic, or racial hatred, persecution, or strife. It also implicitly prioritizes Islamophobia over global antisemitism, which in contrast truly has religious, ethnic, national, and racial overtones and is indeed the world’s oldest hatred.
Perhaps the resolution was intended to obscure the plethora of human rights abuses and acts of aggression committed by Islamist terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and the Houthis, and by oppressive regimes like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.
Or perhaps it was intended to trivialize the reality of antisemitism, of which the UN is the most significant global facilitator.
Whatever its motivation, the Biden administration refuses to acknowledge progressive responsibility for the wave of antisemitism pervading leftist academia, liberal political society, and allied identity communities, where rioters champion Hamas and its genocidal aims. Biden has failed to identify the progressive instigators or the complicity of radicals from his own party. These failures are stunning in their implication that Jewish lives do not really matter; and the liberal tendency to draw moral equivalency between Hamas’s barbarism and Israeli self-defense is positively obscene.
George Orwell once said that some ideas are so absurd only intellectuals could believe them. That sentiment still resonates today, particularly when amended thus: “Some hatreds are so twisted that only persons with preconceived, intellectualized biases could accept them.”
And so it is with those who mock truth by supporting Hamas, degrading its victims, calling for another Holocaust, and cheering on Iran with chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
Eighty former U.S. generals and admirals called in an open letter on Friday for a reaffirmation of the U.S.-Israeli bond.
“Given our experience as retired American military leaders, we are very concerned about the security impacts of increasingly strained U.S.-Israel ties, as Israel becomes a growing source of domestic division,” the group wrote in a letter, which the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA) released.
The group stated that it feels “compelled to declare that a strong Israel is vital to the United States national security, and it is imperative that America unequivocally stand by this indispensable ally.”
The JINSA letter named Iran and its terrorist proxies as “barbaric,” declaring them “enemies of the United States and everything we stand for.”…
“Against these barbaric enemies, Israel stands on the front lines of the fight for civilization…
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Jihad Watchhttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngJihad Watch2024-05-16 04:41:422024-05-17 10:13:43Eighty former U.S. Generals and Admirals: ‘Israel stands on the front lines of the fight for civilization’
President Trumps Vice Presidential pick will NOT be an attorney or a career Republican politician.
He or she will be a businessman or businesswoman with an entrepreneurial spirit who understands constitutional governance with the unfortunate R after his or her name.
The current do nothing weak Republican Party membership in Congress that is funding Joe Biden’s destruction of America, with the exception of a few patriots like Congresswoman Margorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), do nothing for the people they are supposed to represent.
They either indulge in personal gain or carry the water for the low life Communist maggots in the Democrat Party. They call our republic a democracy and most don’t even know the contents of the Federalist Papers.
President Trump is a highly intelligent risk taking capitalist entrepreneur that only tolerates the current republican agenda.
With exceptional skill Trump navigates the GOP base camp of losers because he will need them to support his Make America Great Again plan to fix our constitutional republic.
Our country would be better off with Trump running as an Independent conservative with independents in the majority. My opinion.
If only Americans would only get out of their Republican Party comfort zone and abandon their false promises and fake agenda and leave this useless party. They should regroup as independent Conservatives and embrace Constitutional governance.
The IRS, the Commerce Department, the Department of Labor, The Center For Disease Control the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, etc. etc. etc. serve no constitutional agenda and must be abolished.
Don’t forget the cancerous canker sore of the United Nations infesting New York City also funded by the bottom feeding Republican low life’s in Congress. The UN are the sewer rats spreading an unconstitutional Marxist agenda in our backyard.
This group of anti-Semitic Marxists must be removed from our republic along with all the foreign pro Palestinian students in our universities on F1 and F2 visas. The nation of Palestine doesn’t even exist it never has.
The new president of Argentina gets it and he terminated the government socialist departments I mentioned above in his country.
The new president of Panama gets it too and soon he will block the wide open water faucet of illegal immigrants entering his country en route to the US border.
President Trump also gets it and soon he will terminate the Communist Marxist agenda started by FDR and injected forcefully into our republic by Obama the atheist queer low IQ Marxist who is currently in his third term as installed President Biden’s puppet master.
It’s unfortunate that President Trump is forced to run as Republican but soon he will notify the American people of his Vice Presidential pick who will continue Trumps pro-constitutional entrepreneurial spirit well into 2028 and beyond.
Stay strong patriots and make sure you vote for Trump. Our grandchildren and future generations are depending on you to keep them free of this Marxist Biden/Obama boot currently on our necks.
Our future generations are also depending on us to create a public school system free of Washington, D.C. money, Marxist indoctrination and FBI harassment and instead we must rebuild a school system ran by local school boards with a constitutionally strong curriculum.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00Geoff Rosshttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngGeoff Ross2024-05-16 04:20:302024-05-16 04:22:25The next Vice President of our Republic will be a Constitutional Entrepreneur
On Tuesday, House Democrat leadership urged their colleagues in the party to vote against a GOP bill that pressures the Biden administration not to withhold arms from Israel as it fights Hamas following a deadly terrorist attack in October of last year.
Republican appropriators introduced the legislation after President Joe Biden halted the delivery of some weapons to Israel in protest of a full-scale ground operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
http://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.png00The Geller Reporthttp://drrich.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/logo_264x69.pngThe Geller Report2024-05-15 16:11:412024-05-15 16:15:42Democrat Leadership Urges Members To Oppose House GOP’s Israel Aid Bill
Biden’s Military Extremism Review Overlooked the Real Extremists in the Military
/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research CouncilThe Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested a U.S. Marine on Friday who wanted to “bring the pain” to “a rich white area” and had studied racist mass shooters. The Marine boasted in disturbing social media posts about killing cats with a crossbow and hoping to become a serial killer, declaring, “the only way out is bloodshed.”
The arrest comes three months after an active-duty U.S. airman set himself on fire outside the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The airman’s social media revealed connections to Antifa and the “Stop Cop City” movement, a dismissive attitude toward the death of fellow U.S. servicemembers, and praise for intimidating graffiti on the house of an elected official who sponsored Utah’s law to protect minors from gender transition procedures.
These incidents suggest that the Biden administration’s military-wide “stand-down to address extremism in the ranks” was a failure.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the “stand-down” on February 5, 2021, less than three weeks into Biden’s term. He ordered all supervisors “within the next 60 days to conduct a one-day ‘stand-down,’” where service personnel would halt their other duties and focus solely on rooting out extremism.
The stand-down was only “just the first initiative” of “a concerted effort” at combatting extremism. On April 9, 2021, Austin commissioned an independent study on extremism, convened a Countering Extremist Activity Working Group (CEAWG), and ordered reviews of the military’s extremism definition, screening questionnaires, and retirement transition checklists. In December 2021, the CEAWG released a 21-page report containing six more recommendations. On May 10, 2022, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) released a 56-page report with two additional recommendations.
Why, despite these considerable efforts, did multiple extremists manage to slip through the cracks?
The answer is unsurprising. Like nearly everything the Biden administration does, this search for extremists in the military was politically one-sided. The stand-down opportunistically seized on the then-recent January 6 incident to fearmonger about a supposedly imminent national takeover by militarized white nationalists (and, of course, those radicals who refused to take the COVID jab). There is no evidence that the stand-down ever addressed left-wing forms of extremism, such as Antifa, the anti-cop BLM riots (2020), or the violent attacks on churches and pregnancy resource centers (2022).
In fact, the 262-page independent review published by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) in December 2023 rebuked the Biden administration’s misleading narrative about a dangerous white supremacist under-culture lurking in the military. One the one hand, their review “found no evidence that the number of violent extremists in the military is disproportionate to the number of violent extremists in the United States as a whole.” Among other evidence, a review of court-martial records dating back to 2012 found no more than “on case per year” of non-gang-related “prohibited extremist activities.”
On the other hand, the IDA rebuked the Biden administration for touting a false narrative of right-wing extremism because it “could lead to a significant division in the force along political and ideological lines, with some members of the military believing that they are being targeted for their views.” They even argued that “the risk to the military from widespread polarization and division in the ranks may be a greater risk than the radicalization of a few service members.”
Within weeks, President Joe Biden was fearmongering about right-wing extremism in yet another major speech.
Over the past four weeks, pro-terrorist occupations of college campuses (and even buildings) have served Americans with yet another warning of left-wing radicalism and its tendency to undermine civil society by targeting even non-political institutions.
In two recent examples, active members of the U.S. armed services with a history of left-leaning, extremist rhetoric reached a crisis point. One committed the ultimate act of self-harm by burning himself to death on a public sidewalk (as an act of anti-Semitism). The other was arrested for plotting a racially-motivated mass shooting — fortunately, before he executed his plan.
But don’t count on the DOD to mount a “coordinated effort” to respond to this trend anytime soon. From the favoritism of its FACE Act prosecutions, to targeting parents at school board meetings, to its retaliation against whistleblowers, to its biased prosecutions of political celebrities and their families, the Biden administration has routinely committed the very same error the IDA’s independent review warned against: creating “significant division … along political and ideological lines,” giving some Americans good reason to believe “they are being targeted for their views.”
This is why, when conducting a grandiose military extremism review that wasn’t really all that necessary, the DOD failed to discover some actual extremists lurking in the military.
AUTHOR
Joshua Arnold
Joshua Arnold is a senior writer at The Washington Stand.
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
If Biden Keeps Abandoning Allies: ‘We‘re Going to End up in a World War’: Senator
/in Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Family Research CouncilJoe Biden may want to abandon Israel, but that doesn’t mean congressional Republicans will let him. While the White House talks out of both sides of its mouth on America’s Middle East ally — saying support is “ironclad” one minute and refusing them weapons the next — Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is about to make uncomfortable Democrats pick a side.
Like most conservatives, the speaker was stunned that Biden would try to tie Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hands in Rafah by withholding arms from the Jewish state. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah — they haven’t gone in Rafah yet — if they go into Rafah,” the president warned, “I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities — that deal with that problem.”
The move, a pathetic attempt to appease the president’s anti-Semitic base, was blasted as “dangerous” by Republicans and some Democrats. “[I]t could have catastrophic effects with our very important ally Israel,” Johnson told reporters. “And we’ve denounced it. And we’ll continue to do so.”
In the meantime, the House GOP plans to force the issue, bringing its own Israel Security Assistance Act to the floor to override the White House on weapons shipments. If the president still refuses to comply, the bill would freeze the budgets of the Defense secretary, secretary of State, and National Security Council. “I think it is important for us to express again the will of Congress on the matter,” Johnson said, especially when Biden “has turned his back on Israel and is now carrying water for Hamas and Iran.”
And it’s not just the speaker’s party who are angry. Just last week, 26 members of the president’s party sent a letter to the White House expressing their outrage at the White House’s embargo. “We are deeply concerned about the message the Administration is sending to Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist proxies by withholding weapons shipments to Israel, during a critical moment in the negotiations,” they wrote.
The internal tension on the issue has done little to motivate Biden, who seems more intent on placating the rabid campus protestors than stopping World War III. “Antisemitism is spreading globally like wildfire,” the Democrats insist. “We fear that public disputes with our critical ally only emboldens our mutual enemies, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and other Iranian-backed proxies. It also buttresses their agenda of chaos, brutality, and hate, and makes a hostage agreement even harder to achieve.”
Despite the pressure from Congress and the cracks in his own party, the White House announced that it “strongly, strongly oppose[s]” the House’s efforts, insisting, “If the President were presented with H.R. 8369, he would veto it.”
That kind of betrayal, as Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) called it, is inexcusable. Biden can drone on about his commitment to Israel all he wants, the longtime coach said, but “talk’s cheap.” “They’re our number one ally, and they’ve got problems,” Tuberville told Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch” Tuesday. “Everybody says, ‘Well, there’s a lot of the civilians that might be getting killed or hurt.’ … But here’s the thing. This is war.”
The world also seems to have forgotten that Israel was the victim of a gruesome, deadly, and unprovoked terror attack. And “when people attack you, when people come after you, you have the right to take up for yourself,” Tuberville argued. “And that’s what Israel has done. They were attacked brutally. Several thousand people were killed. … I’ve seen the videos, and it’s horrifying.” Not to mention, he points out, “We still have hostages — American hostages — in Israel. And Joe Biden is sitting back, taking [his] time, trying to play both sides of the fence, because he does not want to lose voters, especially in the Muslim areas of Michigan and Minnesota. … [But] he’s going to get people killed. It’s what’s going to happen.”
Honestly, the Alabaman shook his head, “This guy, he’s the worst leader that we’ve had in office in many, many, many years. He’s letting these young people behind the scenes run our country. There’s no organization to what we’re doing.” Biden is talking out of both sides of his mouth, he said. “And you can’t do that when it comes to war. Somebody’s going to win. Somebody’s going to lose. And we are on Israel’s side as the United States of America, because they have been with us since day one. And we need to support them.”
It’s one of the reasons that this November is so important. “At the end of the day, you have got to have somebody in 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue … that can make a decision and do what’s best — not just for us, but for our allies. And he is letting us down. Biden is letting us down on so many fronts. There’s not one thing that he’s done right, especially in foreign relations since he’s taken office — and it’s getting worse. And we’re going to end up in a world war if we don’t watch it. He’s got to stand up for our alliance.”
AUTHOR
Suzanne Bowdey
Suzanne Bowdey serves as editorial director and senior writer at The Washington Stand.
RELATED ARTICLE: Biden’s Military Extremism Review Overlooked the Real Extremists in the Military
EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.
The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.
Judicial Watch: New Documents Reveal D.C. Training for Noncitizen Voting
/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Election Fraud, Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, Immigration, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Judicial WatchWashington, D.C. — Judicial Watch announced today that it received 13-pages of records in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from the District of Columbia, explaining to illegal aliens and other noncitizens how they can register to vote in local elections.
The records came in response to an April 12, 2024, FOIA request for:
On April 10, 2024, DC held a training event titled ”Non-Citizen Voting Education Virtual Training” in which DC announced noncitizen voting would begin in 2024.
The PowerPoint presentation explains:
Non-US citizen residents of the District of Columbia can vote in local elections under the Local Resident Voting Rights Amendment Act of 2022. Non-US citizen residents can vote in District elections for the offices of Mayor, Attorney General, Chairman or member(s) of the DC Council, member(s) of the State [sic] Board of Education, or Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner(s) Non-US citizen residents cannot vote for Federal Offices
To register to vote in the District of Columbia as a non-citizen, you must: Be at least 17 years old and 18 years old by the next General Election; Maintain residency in the District of Columbia for at least 30 days prior to the election in which you intend to vote; Not claim voting residence or the right to vote in any state, territory, or country; Not been found by a court to be legally incompetent to vote.
You must provide proof of your address in the District of Columbia at an Early Vote Center prior to Election Day or at the polling place assigned to your address on Election Day.
In 2023 the DC Council amended the District of Columbia Election Code of 1955 to expand the definition of the term qualified elector to include otherwise eligible noncitizen residents, including illegal aliens.
DC’s law went a step further than those jurisdictions, though, by extending the franchise to undocumented immigrants.
The District’s action was opposed by congressional Republicans but they failed to overturn the measure.
“Illegal aliens and noncitizens should not vote in any elections,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said. “That Congress allows the votes of citizens to be legally stolen by illegal aliens in our nation’s capital is inexcusable.”
According to federal law, only U.S. citizens can vote in federal elections, but a growing number of state and local elections allow noncitizens to vote, among them San Francisco and Oakland, California, along with some cities in Maryland and Vermont. In February, a state appeals court ruled a similar New York City law violates the state constitution.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Judicial Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Why is the pro-Palestinian encampment craze sweeping our colleges?
/in Culture War, Education, Elections, Hot Topics, Immigration, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Center For Security PolicyCampus fads come and go, but we’ve come a long way from swallowing goldfish, stuffing as many people as possible into phone booths, and the ever-popular drinking until you pass out. The latest craze among college kids is, as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) indelibly put it, “living in a pup tent for Hamas.” No sooner do cops clear out one encampment than another one springs up, and it looks as if they’re going to be with us for the rest of this semester and may even be revived once the universities reconvene next fall. This is, however, not even close to being a spontaneous phenomenon. The groundwork for what we’re seeing now has been laid for years.
Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has acknowledged that “professionals” were involved in the Columbia University encampment. Another sign that this isn’t exactly a grass-roots movement is the fact that a large number of the pro-Hamas protesters have identical tents. Which well-heeled leftist bought them? We don’t know and may never know, but someone certainly appears to have done some buying in bulk.
Still, the movement needed foot soldiers. The cadres had to be recruited and indoctrinated. That has been the work of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the professional organization of Middle East Studies professors at colleges and universities nationwide.
MESA, whose members dominate the Middle East Studies faculties of most colleges and universities in the United States, says that it is “a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom.” That strikes all the right notes, but as you likely suspect, the reality is not so noble and high-minded. MESA is a far-left, pro-jihad activist organization that is dedicated to providing an academic sheen to Marxist agitprop and Palestinian jihad propaganda.
To see what MESA busies itself with doing, scan the 25 items that are currently on the front page of the news section of the MESA website. Two stories are pinned to the top of the page; one of them is actually on the side of genuine justice and human rights, decrying the Iranian Islamic regime’s dismissal of professors who supported the recent Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran.
The other pinned story, however, is entitled “Campus Climate Resources,” which gives the initial impression that it’s propaganda about the myth of human-caused climate change; it’s actually about the “climate” on campus regarding support for the Palestinian jihad against Israel. MESA here offers an assortment of links to this article denouncing the alleged “repression of protest on campuses,” the alleged “targeting of Palestinian students in Israeli universities,” and the like.
Read more.
AUTHOR
Robert Spencer
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of nineteen books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. Spencer has led seminars on Islam and jihad for the FBI, the United States Central Command, United States Army Command and General Staff College, the U.S. Army’s Asymmetric Warfare Group, the Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), the Justice Department’s Anti-Terrorism Advisory Council and the U.S. intelligence community.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
The X File Videos: Islam and Communists in the Netherlands and Across Europe
/in Courts & Law, Culture War, Elections, Immigration, National Security, News, Policy, Politics/by Vlad Tepes BlogThe following is a series of links to articles, tweets and videos that give a solid sense of what is taking place across the Netherlands in the past couple of weeks. There is a lot of material here, and we have not vetted it all obviously. But the source is excellent and what we did see is too important to leave in the comments.
Wilders and friends have big plans:
Hope, guts and pride: The new right-wing Dutch coalition plans
The agreement put together by the four coalition parties over the past five months covers 26 pages and contains what the new partners say is the headline strategy.
Given the title Hoop, lef en trots (hope, guts, and pride) the document is supposed to pave the way for ministers to flesh out actual policy and how the new strategy will be implemented. Nevertheless, it contains a string of detailed plans covering 10 key areas including immigration, the economy, public safety and boosting individual financial security.
“Whether we are talking about feeling secure about the future, healthcare, money in your pocket or the availability of sufficient housing, we have big ambitions,” the four parties say in the introduction. “We also want to reverse the much too high influx of refugees and immigrants. We want farmers, market gardeners and fishermen to have a future again.
Here are some of the main points:
[..]
This point is remarkably Trumpian:
“Research will start on the logistics of moving the Dutch embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem”
The university of Leiden, the Netherlands, seems to be giving in to protester’s demands:
The university was re-occupied because protestors feel the university’s concessions do not go far enough. Article in Dutch:
Pro-Palestijnse betogers bezetten gebouw van Universiteit Leiden in Den Haag
The same goes for the university of Ghent, Belgium. Two articles in Dutch:
UGent geeft problematische samenwerkingen met Israëlische instellingen toe en roept extra mensenrechtencommissie samen
UGent wil band met instellingen in Israël verbreken, Leiden kondigt stappen aan
Article in English, cancelling research is a bit problematic:
Horizon Europe: Can Belgian universities cancel research contracts with Israel?
This article Pro-Palestijns protest na sluiting universiteit verplaatst naar Rotterdam CS in Dutch contains an interesting statement from an activist group in Rotterdam, the Netherlands:
In de post schuwen de organisatoren dreigende taal niet. “Ze (de bestuurders, red.) zijn terecht doodsbang. We zullen ze blijven achtervolgen tot Palestina bevrijd is.”
[..]
“We zijn niet geïnteresseerd in ‘beschaafd debat’”, schrijven ze. “Fuck jullie met je uitnodiging! We willen geen gesprek, we willen revolutie.”
translates as:
In their post, the organizers do not shy away from threatening language: “They [the board] are right to fear for their lives. We will continue to stalk them until Palestine is freed”.
[..]“We are not interested in a civil debate. Fuck you and your invitation! We don’t want to talk, we want revolution”.
Another day, another university occupation in the Netherlands, and of course another baton session. In the city of Utrecht this time:
Police used batons on pro-Palestinian protesters at Utrecht University
Police in Utrecht used batons against pro-Palestinian demonstrators who blocked a city bus containing other protesters. The bus contained around 40 pro-Palestinian activists who occupied a building at Utrecht University (UU) earlier on Wednesday. They were removed from the building by the police on Wednesday evening.
Just after midnight, peace had returned near the university building, according to an ANP reporter.
Before using their batons, the police wanted protesters outside to move away or they would use force. When the protesters did not comply, police officers struck them with their batons.
The city bus containing the activists left. It was not clear where it went. At an earlier pro-Palestinian protest in Utrecht this month, dozens of demonstrators were taken in buses to Houten, where they were dropped off at the cell complex and then allowed to go home.
The demonstrators on the bus occupied a university building at the Janskerkhof for hours. About 150 sympathizers stood outside for a long time. Anton Pijpers, the chairman of the university’s executive board, was also on site for a short time. A university spokesperson previously said that he would like to talk to the demonstrators.
However, the demonstrators said there was no negotiating with the Executive Board. Their demands have been known for a long time, but the university is not acting on them, they argued.
All Utrecht University buildings in the city center will reopen on Thursday. Education in the occupied Janskerkhof 15a building has been moved to another location, the university said on Thursday.
The University of Amsterdam (UvA) locations will also reopen on Thursday after a two-day closure due to Gaza support protests. The Executive Board finds the risk of opening the doors again acceptable and attaches great importance to resuming education and research. The UvA does not rule out new protests and is closely monitoring developments.
While the UvA and UU locations are reopening, Erasmus University in Rotterdam (EUR) is closing for one day. All buildings on the Woudestein campus and the Erasmus University College will be closed to accommodate pro-Palestinian organizations, which announced protests there from 1:00 p.m. The EUR wants to prevent “Amsterdam scenes.”
Only video I could find of this incident:
Video from attempted occupation of the Utrecht university’s humanities library last week:
Pro-Palestine uni students caught doing Nazi salute on Zoom call
Edwin Wagensveld (Pegida Netherlands) finally managed to burn a Quran in Arnhem, the city where he was assaulted by a mob and later banned by the mayor:
More on the intifada in Dutch academia and across Europe.
Video from last week, counter-protestors attacked the camp at Roeterseiland (uni of Amsterdam), flares were brandished around and thrown. I suspect these guys were hooligans (Ajax supporters):
Protests at the university of Groningen. Scuffles, general unfriendliness:
and
Some staff from the uni of Amsterdam stage a walkout to protest “police violence” against “protesters” last week. No masks, names and faces visible. I suspect some were involved with those protests:
and
Summary of the invasion of the uni of Amsterdam. Angry protesters are angry, press is harassed, vandalism etc. Baton work at 4m26 and 7m24. Reporter kicked out by aggressive masked men with Arab accents at 5.17 minutes.
Short report by local new network:
Elegant baton work:
Riot police intervenes at uni of Amsterdam (long, uneventful video, for the completist):
Vandalism at uni of Amsterdam:
Whole floor of uni of Amsterdam vandalized:
The same crap in Berlin, Germany:
and
Utrecht, the Netherlands and Geneva, Switzerland:
Free University of Brussels:
Greece:
Rome, Paris and Istanbul:
A second round of protests at Dutch universities: Utrecht, Wageningen, Nijmegen, Groningen and Maastricht. Tent camps have been set up in some cities (Eindhoven, Groningen).
In Amsterdam, university buildings have been occupied again. The university has filed charges, and riot police is clearing the buildings as I write this. Liveblog here (in Dutch):
Protesters at the university of Maastricht harass journalists. Video:
This is obviously a developing story, videos to follow soon.
RELATED ARTICLE: Erdoğan Has Found Another Way to Undermine German Democracy
EDITORS NOTE: This Vlad Tepes Blog column posted by Eeyore is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Former FDA Official Cozied Up To Activists Months Before Joining Them, Emails Show
/in Economy, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily CallerA former senior U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official hobnobbed with employees from an anti-tobacco nonprofit just months before coming on as the group’s CEO, emails show.
Kathy Crosby, who played a leading role in shaping public health policy while serving as the director of Health Communication and Education at the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, became the president and CEO of the Truth Initiative, an anti-tobacco and anti-nicotine activist organization, in August 2023.
Prior to her exit from the FDA, emails obtained by the Functional Government Initiative (FGI) and exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation show Crosby hobnobbing with Truth Initiative employees and even corresponding with the group’s then CEO about setting up a meeting.
“The emails the Daily Caller showed us raise some serious red flags,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the nonpartisan watchdog group Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF.
“A federal employee is prohibited from accepting gifts, including comped tickets to conferences and galas, that are offered to her because of her status as a federal employee,” Chamberlain said. “That Ms. Crosby appears to have solicited the invitation to the gala she attended compounds the problematic nature of this episode. That she may have leveraged the event as an opportunity to seek outside employment is icing on the cake.”
Federal employees are barred both from soliciting gifts “to be given because of the employee’s official position” as well as from accepting those gifts. Additionally, they are prohibited from using their office for “private gain.” FDA employees are also barred from “seeking or negotiating for employment, that conflict with official Government duties and responsibilities.”
In April 2022, the Campaign for Tobacco-free Kids (CTFK) offered Crosby free tickets to its 2022 gala. Crosby was busy that year, so she declined the tickets but asked CTFK to “keep [her] in mind for next year’s event.”
Roughly a year later, Crosby responded to the same email thread and asked the CTFK if it would be “extending an invitation to any FDA colleagues to attend” the 2023 gala. Hours later, the organization offered Crosby complimentary tickets, which she then accepted, saying that she “should definitely be able to join” them this year.
Emails show that Crosby indeed attended the May 18, 2023, CTFK gala and networked with employees of the Truth Initiative while there.
Shortly after attending CTFK’s gala, Crosby emailed then-Truth Initiative president and CEO Robin Koval on May 22 to schedule a meeting so the two could “catch-up.” In the email, she also mentioned that she had already met with Howard Koh, a member of the organization’s board of directors, and other staff at the gala. Koval and Crosby ultimately agreed to meet on May 24, 2023.
“There’s a reason taxpayers are troubled by incestuous relationships between government agencies and activist groups and public health agencies are proving to be no exception,” Functional Government Initiative spokesperson Peter McGinnis said.
“These activist groups have business before the agencies—we know, for example, that [Trust Initiative] lobbies the FDA to increase fines on tobacco product manufacturers and sellers, while also spending millions to advocate for new product bans,” McGinnis continued. “It’s a coup for [Trust Initiative] to land a CEO who knows her way around the FDA, and it’s a lucrative jump for Ms. Crosby.”
On Aug. 15, 2023, Truth Initiative’s board announced its appointment of Crosby as the group’s president and CEO. Following the announcement, and while Crosby was still at the FDA, multiple Truth Initiative employees reached out via email to congratulate her.
“I just wanted to reach out and send a note to say congratulations,” one email from the group’s vice president of communications, Sarah Shank, reads. “It’s always a pleasure working with you and your team at FDA and I’m beyond thrilled to work with you in this new capacity here at Truth Initiative.”
“So excited for this next chapter with our organization,” Tina Morgan, the organization’s vice president of sponsorships, said.
Truth Initiative and Crosby didn’t respond to requests for comment.
“During Kathy Crosby’s 12 years as the Director for CTP’s Office of Health Communication and Education, she frequently communicated via email, phone calls, and in-person meetings with a wide range of stakeholders, including those from national public health organizations, industry, media, and state/local organizations,” an FDA spokesperson told the DCNF.
Crosby “immediately” notified the FDA that she was looking for a job outside the government and “recused herself from any official actions that would financially impact her future employer,” the spokesperson said, adding that Crosby’s attendance at the gala was also “reviewed and approved by FDA ethics officials” prior to the event.
In 2022, the Truth Initiative was hard at work attempting to influence policy through the FDA and other federal agencies.
According to the nonprofit’s 2022 annual report, they submitted 14 comments to federal agencies, provided “policy analyses and research” to inform FDA policymaking, urged the FDA to act against popular synthetic nicotine products, like ZYN, and recruited youth activists to submit comments to the FDA regarding its proposed rule to remove flavored cigars and menthol cigarettes from the market.
During her time at the FDA, Crosby was involved in crafting health warnings for cigarette packages and advertisements, formulating marketing restrictions for new tobacco products and shaping national policy broadly, according to her Truth Initiative biography.
Crosby spearheaded “public education and regulatory communication programs” which aided the federal government in successfully implementing the Tobacco Control Act, which regulates how tobacco products can be marketed.
AUTHOR
ROBERT SCHMAD
Contributor.
RELATED ARTICLE: Activist Group’s Leader Declines To Participate In House Hearing On Her Org’s Alleged Influence Over Biden Admin
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How the Anti-Israeli Campus Protests Are the Latest Version of the Blood Libel
/in Culture War, Education, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli StoryOf the analytical frameworks into which to fit the eruption of anti-Israel protests on college campuses, there is no shortage. There’s the “free speech on campus” concept, the Arab-Israeli conflict paradigm, the lawless-university-radicals-of-the-1960s pattern.
The framework that fits the situation most neatly, though, is one that hasn’t been elaborated much. That is the “blood libel,” which a six-page entry in the Encyclopaedia Judaica defines as “the allegation that Jews murder non-Jews, especially Christians, in order to obtain blood for Passover or other rituals.”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica also calls it “a complex of deliberate lies, trumped-up accusations, and popular beliefs about the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness.” The Judaica traces the origin of the story all the way back to Apion, an Egyptian who lived during the first century of the Common Era.
The historian Josephus writes in “Against Apion” that this claim that Jews deliberately sacrificed a non-Jew is “a most tragical fable … full of nothing but cruelty and impudence” and motivated by “an extravagant love of lying.” Josephus, writing in about 100 CE, calls Apion’s tale “a voluntary lie” that operated “to the delusion of those who will not examine into the truth of matters.”
Two thousand or so years later, we’re at it all over again, with the Jews yet again facing a Passover-season lie about deliberately killing non-Jews. So, at Columbia University, the anti-Israel mob renamed Hamilton Hall as “Hind’s Hall,” after a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who Israel has been blamed without evidence for killing.
To anyone who knows history, an Easter or Passover-season tale of Jews intentionally killing a child is familiar. The Encyclopaedia Judaica gives the places and dates: Norwich, 1144; Gloucester, England, 1168; Blois, France, 1171; Saragossa, Spain, 1182; Trent, Italy, 1475; Lublin, 1636.
By setting up the pro-Hamas university encampments on the first day of Passover, the anti-Israel protesters provided useful clarity that their false accusations of “genocide” against Israel fell squarely within this age-old tradition of groundlessly accusing Jews of using the blood of Christian children to bake matzo. The protesters also help by making explicit references to “blood.” The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for example, advertised a series of events with a social media post headlined, “Palestinian blood is on Israel’s hands.”
Elisha Wiesel, son of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, writes that his father would ask, “Where are the history lessons on the blood libel, the historical precedent for accusing Jews of murder?”
The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry is by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, a professor of history who taught at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The entry ends with a reference to an essay by Ahad Ha’am, who lived between 1856 and 1927 and was a champion of cultural Zionism.
That essay, “Some Consolation,” was written in Hebrew in 1892. It was brought out in English translation by Leon Simon in 1912 by the Jewish Publication Society, as part of a collection of selected essays by Ha’am. The essay contemplates the possibility that, just as on today’s campuses, some individuals of Jewish background will side with the enemies.
“Since everybody hates the Jews, can we think that everybody is wrong, and the Jews are right?” he quotes a Russian writer as asking. “There are many among us Jews on whom a similar question half-unconsciously forces itself. Can we think, they ask, that all the vicious characteristics and evil practices which the whole world ascribes to the Jews are sheer imagination?”
Ha’am writes that the “useful lesson” of such a baldly false accusation is that it may strengthen Jewish confidence and prevent unwarranted guilt.
“There is nothing more dangerous for a nation or for an individual to plead guilty to imaginary sins,” he says. “Where the sin is real, there is opportunity for repentance; by honest endeavor the sinner may purify himself. But when a man has been persuaded to suspect himself unjustly, how can he get rid of his consciousness of guilt?”
The blood-libel accusation, he writes, “is the solitary case in which the general acceptance of an idea about ourselves does not make us doubt whether all the world can be wrong, and we right, because it is based on an absolute lie.”
He adds, “This will make it easier for us to get rid of the tendency to bow to the authority of ‘everybody’ in other matters.”
Today, the Jews aren’t entirely alone; we are blessed with many allies. Yet it can sometimes, in the media or on campuses or at the United Nations, feel again like everybody is against us. That does not make the accusations true.
Ha’am wrote: “‘But’ — you ask — ‘is it possible that everybody can be wrong, and the Jews right?’”
And here is how the Encyclopaedia Judaica entry on “blood libel” by Ben-Sasson concludes, quoting the Ha’am essay in words that ring as true today as in 1892: “Yes, it is possible: the blood accusation proves it possible. Here, you see, the Jews are right and perfectly innocent.”
RELATED ARTICLE: Obama World’s Fingerprints Are All Over Campus Chaos
EDITORS NOTE: This UNITED WITH ISRAEL column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
IDF Gradually Tightens Grip on Hamas’s Last Bastion in Gaza
/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, News, Policy, Politics/by NEWSRAEL Telling the Israeli StoryThe Israeli military is ramping up operations throughout the Gaza Strip.
Developments in Rafah signify that the Israeli military is implementing a gradual expansion of its operation in Hamas’s last fortress.
The Israel Defense Forces is engaged in intensive operations in central and northern Gaza as well, where on Thursday, a tragic friendly-fire incident involving the Paratroopers’ 202 Battalion led to five IDF casualties.
The IDF’s 162nd Division is in charge of operations in Rafah, where it is overseeing an operation targeting key terrorist infrastructure and Hamas operational points. Once complete, the operation should also see the IDF in control of the strategic Philadelphi Corridor, via which Hamas has spent years smuggling weapons, both above and below ground.
Under the 162nd Division are the 401st Armored Brigade and the Givati Infantry Brigade, who have been highly active in eastern Rafah in recent days.
During Memorial Day and Independence Day (May 13 and 14) alone, the IDF eliminated around 100 terrorists throughout Gaza, according to the military.
According to IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, since the start of the IDF’s operation in Rafah on May 7—when Israeli tanks took control of the Gaza side of the strategically vital Rafah Crossing (a part of the Philadelphi Corridor)—Israeli forces in Rafah have killed around 100 terrorists, destroyed rocket launchers and located some 10 underground terror tunnels.
Hagari also described the seizure of numerous weapons caches containing anti-tank missiles, rockets and other explosives.
The IDF also released footage on May 14 showing armed terrorists adjacent to U.N. vehicles and shooting from an UNRWA compound in eastern Rafah. This evidence was promptly forwarded to senior members of the international community, with a call for urgent investigation into the ties between UNRWA’s logistics centers and Hamas operatives.
The goal of the phased operation in Rafah is the systematic dismantling of the four Hamas battalions left standing in Gaza, as the rest of what remains of the terrorist group dissolves into guerilla cells.
However, the IDF is gradually expanding operations not just in the south, but in the center and north of the Strip as well.
The IDF’s 99th Division has spent several days operating in central Gaza’s Zeitoun region, killing some 150 terrorists and destroying around 80 structures used by Hamas, including a Hamas war room embedded within an UNRWA school. The facility housed some 15 Nukhba force terrorists who had been involved in planning and implementing Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, according to the military.
On May 15, the Nahal Brigade left Zeitoun and began preparations for operations in other areas of the Strip, leaving behind one brigade combat team.
In northern Gaza, the IDF’s 98th Division, which previously led operations in Khan Yunis, initiated operations in a region of Jabalia that had not yet been entered by Israeli forces during the current conflict.
This new campaign has led to the elimination of approximately 80 terrorists in Jabalia, and the destruction of multiple rocket launchers, including long-range capabilities. Weapons workshops were also targeted and destroyed. Supporting these ground maneuvers, the Israeli Air Force has conducted more than 100 airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the IDF’s 143rd Division is leading attacks on Hamas in Beit Lahia and Beit Hanoun, close to the Israeli border, to prevent the resurgence of terrorist bases close to Israel.
According to recent reports, some 450,000 people—a little under half of the civilian population that was in Rafah, have so far heeded the IDF’s calls to leave the area.
The rocket fire Hamas is directing at southern Israel represents the last of its projectile stockpiles, which were planted before the war, and Hamas will not have the ability to mass produce rockets so long as Israel continues its raids in Gaza, according to the IDF.
At the same time, Hamas will certainly try to rebuild its terror army, which is why the IDF will need to conduct targeted operations in Gaza for many years to come, as it has been doing for the past two decades in Judea and Samaria
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EDITORS NOTE: This JNS – Jewish News Syndicate column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
DEL. WREN WILLIAMS: Biden Blunders Put Virginia In Play For Trump
/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Taxes/by The Daily CallerWhile driving through my rural district in Southwest Virginia, I am met with sign after sign indicating support for President Donald Trump. Even as I make my way to Richmond, suburban neighborhoods are flooded with Trump signs.
You might have heard the old adage that signs do not win elections — and they don’t. But they do serve as an indicator of where Americans stand.
In the past two weeks, Virginians have watched as college campuses across the Commonwealth are held hostage by violent demonstrators and radical activists. Protestors continue to throw rocks at police officers and storm into university buildings, forcing a swift response from law enforcement and then complaining about being held accountable for their actions.
Today, many parents and students fear their graduations may be canceled like Columbia’s because protestors are threatening to disrupt the ceremonies. These protesters are not only damaging these institutions, they are also damaging Biden’s reelection chances.
Despite voters affiliating these protestors with liberal Democrats, many of the protestors themselves refuse to vote for Biden because of his refusal to take a firm position on the conflict in Gaza.
Many pundits laughed at the idea that Trump could win a “blue state” like Virginia, but in reality Virginia is a purple state and should never be written off.
Up until last year, Republicans maintained control of the Virginia House of Delegates. Despite losing control in 2023, we took seats that Democrats should have won in a landslide – like Republican Delegate Kim Taylor, who held onto her Biden+11 district by 53 votes.
On the Senate side, Republicans actually picked up a seat, dealing Democrats a near-fatal blow and knocking them down to a one-seat majority.
With the right messaging, Virginia is competitive and could give Donald Trump an additional 13 electoral votes in November.
Keep in mind that today’s national landscape is not the same as it was during our statewide elections in 2023 or even in 2020.
Illegal immigration, riots on college campuses, and worsening economic conditions are putting states like Virginia and Minnesota in play for Republicans.
In March, I spoke at Donald Trump’s rally in our capital city, Richmond. In a blue city surrounded by blue suburbs, thousands of Virginians showed up to listen and support President Trump.
These numbers and rallies are reminiscent of 2016, when Americans were engaged and ready to fight back against the establishment — the same year Trump came within five points of winning Virginia.
In 2021, Virginia rejected President Biden’s agenda by electing Republicans across the Commonwealth, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Key issues like parental rights and economic freedom drove Virginia voters to the polls, with many of them casting votes for GOP candidates.
These issues are still on their minds. Today, with violent protests devouring college campuses, chaos continuing to wreak havoc on our southern border, and inflation strangling hardworking Virginia families, Trump’s chances of flipping our Commonwealth red continue to grow.
AUTHOR
WREN WILLIAMS
Wren Williams serves in the Virginia House of Delegates, representing the state’s 47th district. He previously served as Trump’s legal counsel in the 2020 Wisconsin recount, and is currently a Permanent Organization Committee Member for the Republican National Convention.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller.
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Biden Challenges Trump To Audience—Free Debates On His Friendliest Networks
/in Election Fraud, Elections, Featured, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Daily CallerPresident Joe Biden proposed two dates to debate former President Donald Trump Wednesday morning, with a list of guardrails including no live audience, according to The New York Times.
Biden suggested that Trump and himself face off in two televised debates, one in June and one in September, though the president said he will not participate in an event put on by the Commission on Presidential Debates, according to the NYT. The president also said he did not want to debate in front of a live audience, rather his team wants the debates held in a television studio to avoid the reaction from in-person viewers.
“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal, I’ll even do it twice,” Biden said in a Wednesday debate message.
“So let’s pick dates Donald, I hear you’re free Wednesdays,” the president continued, alluding to Trump’s court appearances.
Later Wednesday morning, Biden said that he “received and accepted” a debate invitation from CNN scheduled for June 27, before telling Trump, “anywhere, any time, any place.” Trump accepted the invitation as well, setting the stage for the first debate in the general election.
Biden then announced shortly before noon that he “received and accepted” a debate invitation from ABC scheduled for Sept. 10. Trump also accepted the ABC offer.
As a part of their debate dates proposal Biden also only wants networks that hosted the 2016 Republican primary debates and the 2020 Democratic primary debates in 2020, the NYT reported. Those networks include CNN, ABC News, Telemundo and CBS News.
“There should be firm time limits for answers, and alternate turns to speak — so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, Biden campaign chair, said in a letter obtained by the NYT.
“A candidate’s microphone should only be active when it is his turn to speak, to promote adherence to the rules and orderly proceedings,” she continued.
The Biden campaign also wrote that they wanted to keep the forum to two candidates, excluding independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the NYT reported. If the debates were handled by the Commission on Presidential Debates, Kennedy has potential to reach the 15% polling threshold, the qualifying number to be on the stage. Kennedy did announce Wednesday evening that he “will meet the criteria” to participate in CNN’s debate before the deadline.
“I look forward to holding Presidents Biden and Trump accountable for their records in Atlanta on June 27 to give Americans the debate they deserve,” he said.
Trump responded to the proposal, agreeing to the time of the event, in a statement on Truth Social.
“I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds,” Trump wrote. “That’s only because he doesn’t get them. Just tell me when, I’ll get there. ‘Let’s get ready to Rumble!!’”
Outside of the forums proposed by Biden, the former president said in a social media post that he agreed to attend a debate on Fox News set for Oct. 2.
The Trump campaign had been calling on Biden to debate the former president after the president admitted in an interview with Howard Stern that he was interested in debating.
“I don’t know if you’re gonna debate your opponent,” Stern said.
“I am, somewhere. I don’t know when, but I’m happy to debate him,” Biden replied.
Trump responded with a message of his own on May 9, telling Biden to set up a debate.
“Let’s set it up right now,” Trump said in a video message on Truth Social. “I’m ready to go anywhere that you are.”
The Biden campaign justified their decision to ditch the Commission on Presidential Debates, citing concerns about the original dates proposed, the Washington Post reported. The campaign also voiced concerns over the ability to get candidates to stay within the rules of the commission, the letter reportedly read.
“The Commission’s model of building huge spectacles with large audiences at great expense simply isn’t necessary or conducive to good debates,” Dillon wrote in a letter obtained by the Washington Post. “The debates should be conducted for the benefit of the American voters, watching on television and at home — not as entertainment for an in-person audience with raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering.”
AUTHOR
REAGAN REESE
White House correspondent. Follow Reagan on Twitter,
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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
Throwing Israel Under the Bus
/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Religion/by Jerry Newcombe, D. Min.Is it just me or did President Biden throw Israel under the bus, presumably because the Muslim vote for his re-election is pretty shaky? Biden threatened Israel that the U.S. would withhold further weapons should Israel invade Rafah, the last stronghold of Hamas.
I don’t think it’s just me. As Gary Bauer, founder and director of American Values, commented: “Biden is withholding military assistance, approved by Congress and that he signed into law, for Israel because he is afraid that he will lose the election if Israel finishes off Hamas. That is exactly what Pelosi accused Donald Trump of doing with aid to Ukraine.”
Bauer notes that Biden removed sanctions from Houthi terrorists and from the Iranian regime, which is still the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world. Yet he is leaving Israel high and dry, as it fights a must-win war for its national survival.
Again, I don’t think it’s just me. The excellent political cartoonist Gary Varvel wrote in his newsletter recently: “By refusing to give military aid to Israel, President Biden is supporting Hamas.”
All of the recent protests on campuses in favor of Hamas appear to be working. Rep. Ilhan Omar, an active Muslim and member of the Squad, tweeted (on X): “This is what young people across the country were protesting for and finally the needle has moved in a significant way. I hope we see more progress, but don’t ever let people tell you that your voices are meaningless and your actions are worthless. The arc of what is possible is always within us to bend.”
Some of those pro-Palestinian student protesters tried to spoil the comedian Jerry Seinfeld’s commencement address at Duke over the weekend. They walked out on his speech, shouting, “Free Free Palestine.”
Meanwhile, at Columbia, a student was barred from the school recently for a threat of violence. He tweeted (on X): “Zionists, they don’t deserve to live comfortably, let alone Zionists don’t deserve to live….The same way we are very comfortable accepting Nazis don’t deserve to live, fascists don’t deserve to live.”
What a lot of these young pro-Palestinians don’t realize is that ultimately, the position of Hamas calls for the death of Israel.
We keep hearing the phrase “From the River to the Sea.” What does that actually mean? It means that the modern state of Israel belongs to the Palestinians. The Jews have no claim on the land.
As Victor Davis Hanson notes, “When student protestors scream ‘From the river to the sea,’ that is not advocacy for a two-state solution. It is a call to eliminate the state of Israel—lying in between the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea—and its 10 million Jewish and Arab citizens. The Hamas charter is a one-state/no-Israel agenda, which we saw attempted on Oct. 7.”
Someone might say, “We need more dialogue.” How can you have dialogue with someone who does not agree with your right to exist?
Last month, I spoke again with New York Times best-selling author Robert Spencer on the radio about the anti-Israel protests at Columbia protests.
For this piece, I asked him for a statement about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at large.
He told me, “The conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs is not based on land. It is based on Islam. The Qur’an says, ‘Drive them out from where they drove you out’ (2:191). Although it’s actually a historical myth that Israel drove the Arabs out, it is widely believed, and makes destroying Israel a matter of obeying a divine command. This means that while Palestinians might accept Israel in some form as a step toward realization of that goal, ultimately they can never allow Israel to exist at all, no matter how small it may be.”
All of this is ironic in light of Israel’s historic claim on that land. As the late Dr. Charles Krauthammer once noted, “Israel is the only nation on earth that inhabits the same land, bears the same name, speaks the same language, and worships the same God that it did 3,000 years ago.”
Why can’t there be lasting peace in the Middle East? Israel, a tiny nation-state, no bigger than New Jersey, is surrounded by hostile neighbors that don’t want it to continue to exist.
Israel is constantly having to deal with enemies from without and from within. The Judeo-Christian principle of “just war” applies to them—that is, that they have the right to defend themselves from those who would try to destroy them.
The ultimate question is: Does Israel have the right to exist? Of course, it does. Therefore, it has the right to defend itself. It’s too bad the current administration and many in the culture at large are acting like fair-weather friends based on shifting political winds.
©2024. Jerry Newcombe, D. Min. All rights reserved.
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Does truth really matter anymore?
/in Commentary, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Matthew Hausman, J.D.Antisemitism, hatred of Israel, and the perversion of truth in US politics, academia, and beyond.
Does truth really matter anymore? The world’s treatment of Israel since October 7th suggests it does not.
WATCH: Matthew Hausman joins TalkISrael
The Biden administration and European Union were equivocal from the start regarding Israel’s response to Hamas’s genocidal pogrom. Despite initially offering moral support, the Europeans immediately began exhorting Israel to respond “proportionately” while voices from the White House imperiously demanded an untenable two-state “solution.”
Joe Biden at first spoke sympathetically about Israel’s need to eliminate terrorists and destroy their infrastructure, but administration mouthpieces soon began to blather about the need for restraint, citing as justification false Gaza casualty statistics lifted directly from Hamas propaganda.
And despite his initially supportive words following Iran’s air attack on April 13th, Biden immediately demanded caution and implored Israel not to retaliate, though it was his own weakness, appeasement, and attempts to disrupt Israel’s campaign to destroy Hamas that emboldened Iran to attack.
These attempts included VP Kamala Harris’s threat of “consequences” in the event of an incursion into Rafah and Biden’s collusion on a feckless UN ceasefire resolution (to the benefit of Hamas) and proposal to require the labeling of goods produced in Judea and Samaria which will facilitate anti-Israel boycotts. Most recently, he announced a “pause” in arms shipments to Israel in a clear attempt to placate anti-Israel Democrats ahead of the 2024 election, and in the process encouraged Hezbollah to step up missile attacks from Lebanon.
Biden was supported in this policy madness by Senator Chuck Schumer, who had previously called on Israel to oust its duly elected government and accede to a two-state solution that most Israelis believe is impossible.
In trying to placate anti-Israel progressives, prominent Democrats clearly have no compunction against undermining an ally and sacrificing truth to do so.
Real truth, however, is neither relative nor subjective, but rather implicates immutable fact; and the truth regarding the attacks perpetrated against Israel is neither ambiguous nor reinforced by false comparisons to alleged Israeli conduct, as many on the political left — including Barack Obama — disgracefully asserted before Israel could even bury her dead in October.
Truth is not acquitted by unprincipled ideologues hawking moral equivalency, but by eyewitnesses and survivors — particularly those speaking from personal experience about what they saw and heard. And this was demonstrated in a recent program at a synagogue in Stoughton, Massachusetts, in conjunction with the organization StandsWithUs, featuring two young Israelis who witnessed firsthand the horrors of October 7th.
The first speaker, Aviv, was from Kibbutz Re’im before moving to Yesha, several miles from the Gaza border. He served as an IDF battalion medic while on active duty and, like many young Israelis, did some travelling after his service ended, before returning home for work and school.
He recounted how his family was together during the Shemini Atzeret/Simchat Torah weekend when Hamas attacked and how they had to rush for shelter. His younger brother, who had served in special forces, was killed by terrorists while protecting civilians in Yesha, and Aviv found his body — along with those of several friends — who had fallen together near a synagogue. Aviv described in sharp detail how he and his father guarded over them while the battle raged until they could be moved and prepared for burial. He then joined his reserve unit.
The second speaker, Avital, is an eighth-generation Israeli on one side of her family and grandchild of Holocaust survivors on the other. Avital explained that she served as an IDF company commander and was visiting her parents that weekend. She knew war had broken out by the sound of sirens on Shabbat/Yomtov. Both she and her older brother were called up, and her job upon activation was to manage the growing missing persons list, determine who was wounded, dead, missing, or kidnapped, and notify families.
She told of curating phone calls from witnesses and distraught people looking for news of missing loved ones, and said it was difficult learning who would not be returning home but having to maintain strict secrecy before notifying families.
These speakers’ words were direct, emotional, and deeply profound all at once. Despite their military backgrounds, they came across as just a couple of young Israelis who were intensely affected by what they experienced, and they told their stories straight and without political varnish. They also spoke of how Israeli society, which had seemed so fractured before the attack, was unified by a sense of common heritage and national resolve thereafter.
The truth they conveyed provided stark contrast to the pro-Hamas propaganda, anti-Israel vitriol, and racist Jew-hatred that are driving the narrative in the US – where classical stereotypes and conspiracy theories abound and atrocities against Jews are legitimized as “resistance” without shame or embarrassment in colleges and universities, city and town councils, Hollywood, and even the halls of Congress.
Emblematic of the banalization of antisemitism were the red bloody-hand pins worn by actors and artists at this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, who claimed the pins were a humanitarian symbol advocating ceasefire in Gaza, though the image they bore actually commemorated the murders of IDF soldiers Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami by a bloodthirsty mob in Ramallah in 2001. The graphic motif used depicts the hands of terrorists covered with blood from the two Israelis they murdered and is recognized for its odious symbolism throughout Gaza and the territories — where most people surveyed support Hamas and its atrocities.
Though this imagery was originally used to glorify the savage murder of Jews, it was embraced by fatuous Hollywood “A-Listers” who can always be counted on to promote any and all progressive causes without demonstrating the slightest capacity for critical thought, moral decency, or just plain common sense.
As antisemitism in the US continues to skyrocket unabated, with Jews suffering more abuse than any other minority, the Biden administration’s response is to soft-pedal or claim beyond reason that Islamophobia is an equivalent (or greater) threat to moral order. Considering US law enforcement statistics showing that Jews are victimized by hate-crimes far more frequently than any other ethnic or racial minority group (including Arabs and African-Americans) and are at least six times more likely to be harassed than Muslims, the premise is ludicrous and insulting.
It also begs the question of why most Democrats refuse to concede the existence of virulent Jew-hatred on their side of the aisle. As a collective, Republicans are not bowing to pressure from anti-Israel, antisemitic zealots who dictate party zeitgeist. Democratic leadership is. Prominent Republicans are not publicly denying that Hamas terrorists raped and brutalized Jewish women and girls. Notable Democrats are.
While Congressional Republicans have condemned antisemitism and commenced investigating its ubiquity on college campuses, radical Democrats have belittled these efforts in order to appease antisemitic progressive and Islamist elements within their base. For his part, Biden will not chastise progressive party members by name for egregious anti-Jewish rhetoric or stop taking campaign contributions from donors who are also funding anti-Israel, antisemitic campus riots.
But minimizing antisemitism only encourages it.
The administration’s cognitive dissonance (or artifice) has international ramifications, as evidenced by its recent support for a UN resolution on “Measures to Combat Islamophobia,” which implies that anti-Muslim animus fuels the most pervasive forms of religious, ethnic, or racial hatred, persecution, or strife. It also implicitly prioritizes Islamophobia over global antisemitism, which in contrast truly has religious, ethnic, national, and racial overtones and is indeed the world’s oldest hatred.
Perhaps the resolution was intended to obscure the plethora of human rights abuses and acts of aggression committed by Islamist terror groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and the Houthis, and by oppressive regimes like Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.
Or perhaps it was intended to trivialize the reality of antisemitism, of which the UN is the most significant global facilitator.
Whatever its motivation, the Biden administration refuses to acknowledge progressive responsibility for the wave of antisemitism pervading leftist academia, liberal political society, and allied identity communities, where rioters champion Hamas and its genocidal aims. Biden has failed to identify the progressive instigators or the complicity of radicals from his own party. These failures are stunning in their implication that Jewish lives do not really matter; and the liberal tendency to draw moral equivalency between Hamas’s barbarism and Israeli self-defense is positively obscene.
George Orwell once said that some ideas are so absurd only intellectuals could believe them. That sentiment still resonates today, particularly when amended thus: “Some hatreds are so twisted that only persons with preconceived, intellectualized biases could accept them.”
And so it is with those who mock truth by supporting Hamas, degrading its victims, calling for another Holocaust, and cheering on Iran with chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America.”
©2024. Matthew Hausman, J.D. All rights reserved.
Eighty former U.S. Generals and Admirals: ‘Israel stands on the front lines of the fight for civilization’
/in Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, Must Read, National Security, News, Policy, Politics, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by Jihad WatchAn obvious fact, obscured by resurgent Jew-hatred.
80 Former U.S. Military Officers: ‘Israel Stands on the Front Lines of the Fight for Civilization
AUTHOR
ROBERT SPENCER
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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
The next Vice President of our Republic will be a Constitutional Entrepreneur
/in Commentary, Elections, Hot Topics, News, Policy, Politics, Social Issues/by Geoff RossPresident Trumps Vice Presidential pick will NOT be an attorney or a career Republican politician.
He or she will be a businessman or businesswoman with an entrepreneurial spirit who understands constitutional governance with the unfortunate R after his or her name.
The current do nothing weak Republican Party membership in Congress that is funding Joe Biden’s destruction of America, with the exception of a few patriots like Congresswoman Margorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga), do nothing for the people they are supposed to represent.
They either indulge in personal gain or carry the water for the low life Communist maggots in the Democrat Party. They call our republic a democracy and most don’t even know the contents of the Federalist Papers.
President Trump is a highly intelligent risk taking capitalist entrepreneur that only tolerates the current republican agenda.
With exceptional skill Trump navigates the GOP base camp of losers because he will need them to support his Make America Great Again plan to fix our constitutional republic.
Our country would be better off with Trump running as an Independent conservative with independents in the majority. My opinion.
If only Americans would only get out of their Republican Party comfort zone and abandon their false promises and fake agenda and leave this useless party. They should regroup as independent Conservatives and embrace Constitutional governance.
The IRS, the Commerce Department, the Department of Labor, The Center For Disease Control the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Education, etc. etc. etc. serve no constitutional agenda and must be abolished.
Don’t forget the cancerous canker sore of the United Nations infesting New York City also funded by the bottom feeding Republican low life’s in Congress. The UN are the sewer rats spreading an unconstitutional Marxist agenda in our backyard.
This group of anti-Semitic Marxists must be removed from our republic along with all the foreign pro Palestinian students in our universities on F1 and F2 visas. The nation of Palestine doesn’t even exist it never has.
The new president of Argentina gets it and he terminated the government socialist departments I mentioned above in his country.
The new president of Panama gets it too and soon he will block the wide open water faucet of illegal immigrants entering his country en route to the US border.
President Trump also gets it and soon he will terminate the Communist Marxist agenda started by FDR and injected forcefully into our republic by Obama the atheist queer low IQ Marxist who is currently in his third term as installed President Biden’s puppet master.
It’s unfortunate that President Trump is forced to run as Republican but soon he will notify the American people of his Vice Presidential pick who will continue Trumps pro-constitutional entrepreneurial spirit well into 2028 and beyond.
Stay strong patriots and make sure you vote for Trump. Our grandchildren and future generations are depending on you to keep them free of this Marxist Biden/Obama boot currently on our necks.
Our future generations are also depending on us to create a public school system free of Washington, D.C. money, Marxist indoctrination and FBI harassment and instead we must rebuild a school system ran by local school boards with a constitutionally strong curriculum.
©2024. Geoff Ross. All rights reserved.
Democrat Leadership Urges Members To Oppose House GOP’s Israel Aid Bill
/in Commentary, Culture War, Elections, Hot Topics, National Security, Policy, Politics, Religion, Social Issues, Waste, Fraud and Abuse/by The Geller ReportIt’s not “just the squad”. Today’s Democratic Party is systemically antisemitic.
The entire anti-Israel narrative is a litany of lies about Israel. Lying about Israel is lying about Jews.
That’s anti-Semitism straight up. (hat tip Shirley)
Dem Leadership Urges Members To Oppose House GOP’s Israel Weapons Bill
AUTHOR
Pamela Geller
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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.